Jacobus de Voragine

Book illustration from the Legenda aurea by Jacobus de Voragine, manuscript from 1362.

Jacobus de Voragine (* 1228 or 1229 in Varazze southwest of Genoa / Liguria or in Genoa; † July 13 or July 14, 1298 in Genoa; alternative name forms: Jacobus a Voragine , Jacobus de V a ragine (= historically correct form) , Jacobus da Voragine , Iacopo da Varazze , Jakob von Varago ) was archbishop and ecclesiastical Latin writer.

In the late Middle Ages he wrote the widespread collection of saints' lives, the so-called Legenda aurea , which gained great importance both for literature and for the visual arts of the later centuries, with the addition of edifying ecclesiastical literature, as well as the legendary tales known in the folk. painters and sculptors based their representations on this valuable source in relation to the respective scenes and attributes.

Life

Jacobus entered the Dominican order in 1244 . Jacobus himself reports this in a short autobiographical note in his Chronicle of the City of Genoa (1298). Further notes concern a solar eclipse in 1239 (when he was still a child, as he writes) and a comet sighting in 1264.

According to some old biographies, he is said to have studied in Bologna and Paris and finally to have become a Lector in the Dominican Order and Magister theologiae (professor of theology). There is just as little evidence of this as his office as subprior (around 1258) or prior in Genoa and Asti , but he must have already held an important position within the order when he was promoted provincial prior of Lombardy in 1267 , a province that was to the whole of northern Italy. He held the office of provincial from 1267 to 1277 and from 1281 to 1286. He also took over from 1283 (death of the order general Giovanni da Vercelli ) to 1285 (election of the new general Munio von Zamora ) the function of head of the order. In 1274 he took part in the Council of Lyon.

Jacobus showed his ties to his hometown by securing two valuable relics for the convent of the Dominican Sisters dei Giacomo e Filippo in Genoa : on the one hand, the finger of the apostle Philip , which he severed from a hand kept there in Venice ; on the other hand the head of one of the virgins of St. Ursula , whom he had transferred from Cologne to Genoa in 1283 .

In 1288 Jacobus took part in the election of Archbishop of Genoa . However, since none of the candidates could achieve a majority of the votes, the appointment was postponed. In the same year he was used as a diffinitor during the General Chapter of Lucca . At the chapter of the Order of Ferrara in 1290 he still supported Munio von Zamora, whose removal was requested by representatives of the Roman Curia and was finally enforced in 1291. In 1292 Jacobus was appointed archbishop by Pope Nicholas IV .

In early 1295 he campaigned for the settlement of the disputes between the Ghibellines and Guelphs in Genoa and reached a peace treaty. In April of the same year he traveled to Rome on a diplomatic mission to meet Pope Boniface VIII , who wanted to extend the armistice between Genoa and Venice. This mission dragged on for 100 days without attaining a conclusion, which put Jacobus' patience to the test. In Genoa, however, the peace treaty between the Guelfs and Ghibellines only lasted until the end of the year, when fighting broke out again, during which the Cathedral of San Lorenzo was set on fire.

Jacobus died in 1298; his body was first buried in the church of San Domenico of the religious convent in Genoa. In the 18th century it was transferred to the Dominican church of Santa Maria di Castello. Relics can also be found in an urn in the Church of San Domenico in Varazze.

plant

• Legenda aurea.

Legenda aurea

From 1263 Jacobus worked on the Latin work later called Legenda aurea (Golden Legend), a collection of legends about the saints that originally comprised 170 texts and was arranged according to the year cycle.

A special feature of the text is the simple Latin , which gives it the typical legendary character. The work can be seen as a model for later legends with its simple narrative style and therefore advanced to the “people's book”, which served the believers of the time for religious edification as well as an aid to meditation and always also a call to imitatio Christi , i.e. the following in Christ was.

The Legenda aurea experienced an immense distribution in the late Middle Ages and was translated into many vernacular languages. Over 1000 manuscripts have been preserved. A particularly noteworthy copy dates from 1362 and was made in Strasbourg, it is kept as the so-called "Alsatian Legenda aurea" in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich (call number: cgm 6).

The complete Latin edition published by Johann Georg Theodor Grasse in 1846 was replaced in 1998 by that of Giovanni Paolo Maggioni.

• Legenda sanctorum , a one-volume and probably Jacobus' first work.

• The chronicle of the city of Genoa up to 1297 ( Chronica Januensis ) by Jacobus de Voragine is a valuable source for historiography.

• The Liber Marialis , also passed on as Mariale (aureum) , is one of four traditional series of sermons, which with 161 alphabetically arranged Marian sermons depicts the characteristics of St. Mary .

• Three collections of sermons and some other minor work.

Remembrance day

He was beatified in 1816 by Pius VII as a "peacemaker" . His feast day is July 13th.

Works

• Legend Sanctorum ( Legenda aurea , Historia Lombardica )
• Sermones de omnibus sanctis
• Sermones de omnibus Evangeliis dominicalibus
• Sermones de omnibus Evangeliis que in singulis feriis in Quadragesima leguntur
• Liber Marialis
• Chronica civitatis Ianuensis ab origine urbis usque ad annum MCCXCVII (Chronicle of the city of Genoa from the beginning to the year 1297)
• Legenda seu vita sancti Syri episcopi Ianuensis
• Historia translationis reliquiarum Sancti Iohannis Baptistae Ianuam
• Historia reliquiarum que sunt in monasterio sororum SS. Philippi et Iacobi de Ianua
• Tractatus miraculorum reliquiarum Sancti Florentii. and Historia translationis reliquiarum eiusdem
• Passio Sancti Cassiani
• Tractatus de libris a Beato Augustino editis (uncertain authorship)
• Legenda aurea - MS-C-6 digitized
• Legenda aurea - MS-C-7 digitized
• Legenda aurea (rhfrk.) - MS-C-120 digitized

expenditure

• Jacobi a Voragine Legenda Aurea , ed. by Johann Georg Theodor Grasse . Dresden and Leipzig 1846, 2nd edition Leipzig 1850, 3rd edition Breslau 1890. (Digital copies: 1st edition MDZ , 2nd edition archive.org , 3rd edition archive.org )
• Iacopo da Varazze: Legenda aurea. edizione critica a cura di Giovanni Paolo Maggioni. Florence 1998.
• Iacopo da Varagine: Cronaca della città di Genova dalle origini al 1297. Testo latino in appendice, trad. E note critiche di Stefania Bertini Guidetti. Genoa 1995.
• Iacopo da Varazze: Sermones qvadragesimales. Edizione critica a cura di Giovanni Paolo Maggioni. Sismel, Florence 2005.
• Jacques de Voragine, La légende dorée , arr. by Teodor de Wyzewa / Jean-Pierre Lapierre. Paris (2014).

German

• The holy life is newly printed. Strasbourg (Johann Knobloch) 1517.
• Legenda aurea . Richard Benz (translator). 2 volumes., Diederichs, Jena 1917–1921.
• Legenda aurea . Jacobus de Voragine. Selection of legends of saints. Edited by Jacques Laager, with 16 colored miniatures. 2nd Edition. Manesse Verlag, Zurich 1986.
• The Legenda aurea . Richard Benz (translator). 15th edition, Gütersloh 2007, ISBN 3-579-02560-0 (German complete edition).
• Legenda aurea . Ed., New transl. and with a detailed appendix vers. by Matthias Hackemann. Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-86647-284-6 (selection).
• Legenda aurea. Lat./Dt. Rainer Nickel (translator). Reclam, Stuttgart 2011, ISBN 978-3-15-008464-9 (selection of 24 legends).
• Jacobus de Voragine: Legenda Aurea - Golden Legend . Lat.-German, transl. by Bruno W. Häuptli . Herder Verlag, Freiburg im Breisgau 2014, ISBN 978-3-451-31222-9 .

literature

• Jenny C. Bledsoe: Practical Hagiography. James of Voragine's Sermones and Vita on St Margaret of Antioch. In: Medieval sermon studies. Volume 57, 2013, pp. 29-48.
• Carla Casagrande:  IACOPO da Varazze. In: Mario Caravale (ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 62:  Iacobiti-Labriola. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 2004.
• Jacques Le Goff: In search of sacred time. Jacobus de Voragine and The Golden Legend. Princeton 2014.
• Suzanne Judith Hevelone: Preaching the saints. The Legenda aurea and sermones de sanctis of Jacobus de Voragine . Boston 2010.
• Konrad Kunze : Jacobus a (de) Voragine (Varagine). In: Author's Lexicon . Volume IV, Col. 448-466.
• Kristina Lohrmann:  JACOBUS a Voragine, Dominican. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 2, Bautz, Hamm 1990, ISBN 3-88309-032-8 , Sp. 1414-1416.
• Giovanni Paolo Maggioni: Between Hagiography and Preaching. The Holy Cross in the works of James de Voragine. In: Hagiographica. Volume 20, 2013, pp. 183-218.
• Giovanni Paolo Maggioni: Iacopo da Voragine tra storia, leggenda e predicazione. L'origine del legno della Croce e la vittoria di Eraclio. In: 1492. Rivista della Fondazione Piero della Francesca. Volume 4/5 (2010/2011), pp. 5-30.

Web links

Wikisource: Iacobus de Voragine  - Sources and full texts (Latin)

• Literature by and about Jacobus de Voragine in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Jacobus de Voragine  in the German Digital Library
• Works by Jacobus de Voragine in the complete catalog of incandescent prints
• Iacobus de Voragine in The Latin Library (texts, Latin)
• Thesaurus sermonum Iacobi de Voragine (sermons, Latin)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Carla Casagrande: La vie et les oeuvres de Jacques de Voragine, op
2. ^ Carla Casagrande: La vie et les oeuvres de Jacques de Voragine, op ; parrocchie.it
3. ^ Digitized version of the manuscript