Translating theLegenda aureain Early Modern England

Abstract

To its admirers, the Legenda aurea is a powerful expression of medieval belief. To the evangelical pamphleteers of early modern England, it was a symbol of all the failings of unreformed religion. For historians, it is a convenient shorthand for popular hagiography before the Reformation. These readings, however, understate the Legenda's often ambiguous place in early modern devotional life. This article seeks to complicate the Legenda's history in late medieval and early modern England. It argues that the concept and the act of translation rendered Jacobus's text more complex than the historiographical shorthand allows. Translation contributed to the Legenda's power as a devotional work, was a means by which it found its use, impact and wide audience, and was central to how reformers remembered both the text itself and its author. The translated Legenda was not the exception to the narrative of the long Reformation, but an emblem of it.

The Legenda Aurea: From Holy Mediator to Icon of Idolatry

“…Caxton was widely associated with his printing of many works of fiction by the people of the Middle Ages, in particular, Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales; with Caxton's affiliation to a fictional work that seems to parody religious archetypes on a Christian pilgrimage, the translator and his reputation most likely contributed to a shift in attitudes toward the Legenda Aurea that pushed the text closer to the genre of entertainment (Ring, 2017). While the simple linear narrative structure of the saintly tales may have once lent itself well to a clear visual translation, the same attribute became more of a disadvantage once the text was published along fictional narratives that followed the same formula for easy and entertaining reading.…”

“…As mentioned previously, the original context in which the Latin printing of the Legenda Aurea would have been received by the Christian laity was oral recitation during a church service. For those who could not understand Latin -which would have been most of the congregation -a convenient mode of mediation between themselves and religious narratives would have been the clear and communicative iconography available in artistic renderings (Ring, 2017). When the only path of linguistic understanding was Latin, the pictorial middlemen of fresco cycles or iconic artworks would have been a helpful aid for understanding.…”