JACOBUS de VORAGINE.

Legenda Aurea.

      INCUNABLE LEAF. - Single leaf printed recto and verso. Text in double columns, with 47 lines to a column, text in Latin. with rubrication in red and blue and one blue initial, 3 lines, executed by hand. Strassbourg, Georg Husner, 1483. 26,8 x 19,4 cm. Jacobus de Voragine or Varagine (Italian: Giacomo da Varazze, Jacopo da Varazze (c. 1230-98) was an Italian chronicler and archbishop of Genoa. He was the author of the Golden Legend, one of the most popular religious works of the Middle Ages, a collection of the legendary lives of the greater saints of the medieval church. Jacobus was born in Varagine - today Varazze - on the Ligurian coast between Savona and Genova. His works include sermons on Gospel readings, saints' days, and the Virgin Mary; a chronicle of Genoa; and the Legenda aurea (Golden Legend, also known as the Lombardica historia). This book is a collection of saints' lives, of accounts of events in the lives of Christ and of the Virgin Mary, and of information about holy days and seasons, the whole arranged as readings (Latin: legenda) for the church year. Immensely popular in the Middle Ages, it was translated into all western European languages and gradually much enlarged. Medieval artists found the Golden Legend a storehouse of events and persons to be illustrated. The printer Georg Husner, popularly known as "the Printer of the 1483 Jordanus de Quedlinburg," produced several editions of the Legenda aurea, the most famous late medieval/early Renaissance compilation of biographies of Christian saints. The first appeared in 1479, the next in 1480, 1483, 1485. Georg Husner was a goldsmith, who became a leading Strasbourg printer, active during the period 1479 - 1505. He 'struck a new note in providing roman capitals for a text in round gothic'.