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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 July 2017
Sometime after November 20, 1483, William Caxton published his English translation of Jacobus de Varagine's Legenda Aurea. This is the famous medieval compilation of saints' lives which Emile Mâle names among the ten books most useful to one seeking a just appreciation of the Middle Ages and which Henry Adams ranks with the Roman breviary as a guide to the stone carvings and stained glass of medieval cathedrals. Caxton's publication, augmenting by about one-third the original treatise, was his most ambitious work as translator, editor, and printer.
In preparing his Golden Legend the English printer asserts that he has used the original Latin and two translations, one French and one English. This last work is extant in nine manuscripts, more or less complete, all copies, and all representing one version. Although several critics have declared that this translation surpasses Caxton's in accuracy and beauty, some of its special peculiarities have not hitherto been considered. Who was its author? Apparently he remembered the warning of the Imitation: ‘For all man's glory, all temporal honor, and all worldly highness, to thine eternal glory compared is but as foolishness and vanity.’ His version of the Legenda is declared to be the work of ‘a synfulle wretche’ by whom it was ‘drawen out of Frensshe into Englisshe, the yere of our lorde a.M.CCCC. and. XXXVIII.’ The motive for this anonymity is revealed by the words which follow his humble self-designation: ‘whos name I beseche Jhesu Criste bi his mentis of his passioune and of alle these holis seintes afore written, that hit mai be written in the boke of everlastinge life.’
1 Richardson, E. C., Materials for a Life of Jacopo da Varagine (Parts I–IV in one volume, New York 1935) ix–x: Voragine is ‘the bad pun of a writer who described Varagine as a very “whirlpool” (vorago) of learning. … Jacopo's name was, in the Italian of his time, da Varagine, in the Latin of his time, de Varagine, and in modern Italian, da Varazze.’ Google Scholar
2 Mâle, E., L'Art religieux du XIII e siècle en France (Paris 1902) xi.Google Scholar
3 Adams, H., Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres (Boston 1930) 87.Google Scholar
4 Caxton, W., The Golden Legend (ed. Ellis, F. S., London 1931) I, 2–3.Google Scholar
5 Harleian 630, Egerton 876, Douce 372, Lambeth 72, B.M. Add. 11,565, B.M. Add. 35398, Lansdowne 350, Trinity College (Dublin) 319. For a description of the Trinity MS see Gerould, G., Saints' Legends (Boston 1916) 195–196. For the others, see Butler, P., Legenda Aurea, Légende Dorée, Golden Legend (Baltimore 1899) 50–70, 149–154. ‘The Ashburnham MS’ is now B.M. Add. 35298. None of these MSS have been edited. Several others, containing very small portions of the Legend need not be enumerated here. Unless otherwise indicated, quotations in the present study are from Harleian 4775, hereafter to be designated as H. Since the scribe's pagination is inaccurate, folio numbers will be given according to the Library of Congress pagination stamped on the lower left-hand corners of leaves in M.L.A. rotograph 343.Google Scholar
6 Cambridge History of English Literature (Cambridge 1909) III, 378; Gerould, , op. cit. 196.Google Scholar
7 Kempis, Thomas à, The Imitation of Christ III, xl, 6 (Translated by Whitford, R.; ed. Klein, E. J., New York 1941) 170.Google Scholar
8 Madan, F., Summary Catalogue of Western Manuscripts (Oxford 1922) IV, 610.Google Scholar
9 De sancta Sophia et tribus filiabus ejus; De resurrectione Domini; De virgine quadam Antiochena; De sancto Timotheo; De sancta Appollonia; De sancto Bonifacio martire; De sancto Stephano papa; De decollatione Johannis baptistae.Google Scholar
10 Brown, P. A., The Development of the Legend of Thomas Becket (University of Pennsylvania Dissertation, Philadelphia 1930) 36. The legend is missing from Harleian 4775 although listed in the table of contents.Google Scholar
11 H, fols. 510–513. A portion of this legend is taken from Varagine's, ‘Nativity of Our Lady,’ Legenda Aurea (ed. Grässe, Th., Dresdae et Lipsiae 1846) 585–594. The post-Varagine chapter on the Conception, ibid. 869–875, is not the source of the English version.Google Scholar
12 Only one folio of this chapter is found in H.Google Scholar
13 H, fols. 451–466.Google Scholar
14 H, fols. 515–518.Google Scholar
15 H, fol. 267. Cf. Caxton, , Legend III, 203–210; IV, 142–149. The most striking evidence that all MSS of the pre-Caxton Legend are copies of the same version is the garbling of the passage in which this sentence occurs. Butler, P., op. cit. (note 5 supra) 147.Google Scholar
16 Legenda Aurea 450.Google Scholar
17 Gerould, , op. cit. (note 5 supra) 195.Google Scholar
18 Butler, , op. cit. 54.Google Scholar
19 Ibid. 47–48.Google Scholar
20 H, fols. 383, 33, 131, 85, 385, respectively.Google Scholar
21 H, fol. 370.Google Scholar
22 H, fols. 163, 409, 73, respectively.Google Scholar
23 H, fol. 129.Google Scholar
24 H, fol. 41.Google Scholar
25 Legenda Aurea 190.Google Scholar
26 H, fol. 94.Google Scholar
27 H, fol. 95.Google Scholar
28 H, fol. 509.Google Scholar
29 H, fol. 162.Google Scholar
30 H, fol. 175.Google Scholar
31 Butler, , op. cit. (note 5 supra) 100, from MS B.M. Add. 11565, fol. 56 (xxxiii).Google Scholar
32 Caxton, , Legend III, 95–96.Google Scholar
33 Butler, , op. cit. from MS B.M. Add. 11565, fol. 55 (xxxii).Google Scholar
34 Caxton, , op. cit. IV, 54.Google Scholar
35 H, fol. 66.Google Scholar
36 Caxton, , op. cit. III, 12.Google Scholar
37 H, fol. 66.Google Scholar
38 Caxton, , op. cit. III, 13.Google Scholar
39 H, fol. 17.Google Scholar
40 Caxton, , op. cit. II, 132.Google Scholar
41 H, fol. 212.Google Scholar
42 H, fol. 197.Google Scholar
43 H, fol. 58.Google Scholar
44 H, fol. 96.Google Scholar
45 Caxton, , Legend V, 24–25.Google Scholar
46 H, fol. 209.Google Scholar
47 H, fol. 353.Google Scholar
48 Chambers, R. W., The Continuity of English Prose from Alfred to More and His School in Harpsfield's Life of More (EETS 186, London 1932) cxvii-cxviii.Google Scholar
49 Bokenham, O., Legendys of Hooly Wummen (ed. Serjeantson, M.S., EETS 206, London 1938); Jeremy, S.M., ‘The English Prose Translation of Legenda Aurea,’ Mod. Lang. Notes 59 (1944) 181–183.Google Scholar
50 Bokenham, O., Mappula Angliae (ed. Horstmann, C. in Englische Studien 10,1887) 1–34.Google Scholar
51 Ibid. 3.Google Scholar
52 S. Chad is in B.M. Add. 11565; SS. Chad, Oswald and Edward, King and Martyr, in Lambeth 72 and B.M. Add. 35298. The latter also has Edward, King and Confessor.Google Scholar
53 Legendys of Hooly Wummen xvii.Google Scholar
54 Ibid. xv.Google Scholar
55 Jesperson, O., Growth and Structure of the English Language (Leipzig 1905) 96–98.Google Scholar
66 H, fol 22; Mappula 30: noble and worthy; H, fol. 129: so nobil and so worthy.Google Scholar
67 H, fol. 9; Legendys of Hooly Wummen: lines 1035, 1504.Google Scholar
68 H, fol. 520; Mappula 6.Google Scholar
69 H, fol. 215; Mappula 31.Google Scholar
60 Legendys of Hooly Wummen xxix.Google Scholar
61 Ibid. xxx.Google Scholar
62 H, fol. 31.Google Scholar
