page_title: Golden Legend
section_title: Sources
hierarchical_section_title: Golden Legend / Sources
caption_attribution_description: English: The main source for the life of St. Barbara is the "Golden Legend (Legenda Aurea)," a 14th-century compilation of stories associated with the feast days of the Church calendar. In the early 4th century, at a time of persecution of the Christians, Barbara, a beautiful virgin, was said to have been hidden away in a tower by her pagan father in order to keep away suitors. Without his knowledge, she converted to Christianity. She then had a third window added to her tower as a sign of her belief in the Trinity. Her father learned of her conversion and chopped off her head. Soon after, he was killed by lightning. Barbara became the patron saint of those in danger of sudden death, such as soldiers and firefighters. This panel, which depicts a key moment in her legend, was the wing of an altarpiece dedicated to the saint. To make the story persuasive, the artist introduced historical as well as contemporary details. The tower was made to look Roman (to contemporary viewers who had never seen Roman architecture) by introducing windows characteristic of Romanesque architecture. Barbara's elegant attire and loose hairstyle would both have been recognizable to contemporaries as those of an unwed maiden. That her long hair is swept out of the way to bare her neck for execution is also a poignant reminder of her vulnerability. The artist cannot be identified by name, but the style, featuring large, active figures close to the picture surface, is that of a series of paintings depicting the story of Joseph now in museums in Germany.
context_page_description: The Golden Legend is a collection of hagiographies by Jacobus de Varagine that was widely read in late medieval Europe. More than a thousand manuscripts of the text have survived. It was likely compiled around the years 1259–1266, although the text was added to over the centuries.
  Initially entitled Legenda sanctorum, it gained its popularity under the title by which it is best known. It overtook and eclipsed earlier compilations of abridged legendaria, the Abbreviatio in gestis et miraculis sanctorum attributed to the Dominican chronicler Jean de Mailly and the Epilogus in gestis sanctorum of the Dominican preacher Bartholomew of Trent. When printing was invented in the 1450s, editions appeared quickly, not only in Latin, but also in almost every major European language. Among incunabula, printed before 1501, Legenda aurea was printed in more editions than the Bible and was one of the most widely published books of the Middle Ages. During the height of its popularity the book was so well known that the term "Golden Legend" was sometimes used generally to refer to any collection of stories about the saints.
context_section_description: Jacobus carefully lists many of the sources he used to collect his stories, with more than 120 total sources listed; among the three most important are Historia Ecclesiastica by Eusebius, Tripartate History by Cassiodorus, and Historia scholastica by Petrus Comestor.
  However, scholars have also identified other sources which Jacobus did not himself credit. A substantial portion of Jacobus' text was drawn from two epitomes of collected lives of the saints, both also arranged in the order of the liturgical year, written by members of his Dominican order: one is Jean de Mailly's lengthy Abbreviatio in gestis et miraculis sanctorum (Summary of the Deeds and Miracles of the Saints) and the other is Bartholomew of Trent's Epilogum in gesta sanctorum (Afterword on the Deeds of the Saints). The many extended parallels to text found in Vincent de Beauvais' Speculum historiale, the main encyclopedia that was used in the Middle Ages, are attributed by modern scholars to the two authors' common compilation of identical sources, rather than to Jacobus' reading Vincent's encyclopedia. More than 130 more distant sources have been identified for the tales related of the saints in the Golden Legend, few of which have a nucleus in the New Testament itself; these hagiographic sources include apocryphal texts such as the Gospel of Nicodemus, and the histories of Gregory of Tours and John Cassian. Many of his stories have no other known source. A typical example of the sort of story related, also involving St. Silvester, shows the saint receiving miraculous instruction from Saint Peter in a vision that enables him to exorcise a dragon:
  In this time it happed that there was at Rome a dragon in a pit, which every day slew with his breath more than three hundred men. Then came the bishops of the idols unto the emperor and said unto him: O thou most holy emperor, sith the time that thou hast received Christian faith the dragon which is in yonder fosse or pit slayeth every day with his breath more than three hundred men. Then sent the emperor for S. Silvester and asked counsel of him of this matter. S. Silvester answered that by the might of God he promised to make him cease of his hurt and blessure of this people. Then S. Silvester put himself to prayer, and S. Peter appeared to him and said: "Go surely to the dragon and the two priests that be with thee take in thy company, and when thou shalt come to him thou shalt say to him in this manner: Our Lord Jesus Christ which was born of the Virgin Mary, crucified, buried and arose, and now sitteth on the right side of the Father, this is he that shall come to deem and judge the living and the dead, I commend thee Sathanas that thou abide him in this place till he come. Then thou shalt bind his mouth with a thread, and seal it with thy seal, wherein is the imprint of the cross. Then thou and the two priests shall come to me whole and safe, and such bread as I shall make ready for you ye shall eat.
  Thus as S. Peter had said, S. Silvester did. And when he came to the pit, he descended down one hundred and fifty steps, bearing with him two lanterns, and found the dragon, and said the words that S. Peter had said to him, and bound his mouth with the thread, and sealed it, and after returned, and as he came upward again he met with two enchanters which followed him for to see if he descended, which were almost dead of the stench of the dragon, whom he brought with him whole and sound, which anon were baptized, with a great multitude of people with them. Thus was the city of Rome delivered from double death, that was from the culture and worshiping of false idols, and from the venom of the dragon.
  Jacobus describes the story of Saint Margaret of Antioch surviving being swallowed by a dragon as "apocryphal and not to be taken seriously" (trans. Ryan, 1.369).
caption: The life of St. Barbara, a virgin who turned to Christianity against the will of her pagan father, is mostly known from the Golden Legend.[17] The Walters Art Museum
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