If we tried to identify what some of the greatest differences between people in the Middle Ages and us might have been, we could rightly identify the worship of saints. In the Catholic Church, they are, of course, still very present today, but it is not that long ago that, for instance, St. Christopher was struck from the universal calendar of saints because his legend was identified as apocryphal and hence not fully trustworthy according to the Calendarium Romanum (1969). He was not demoted from his sainthood as such, but his veneration was assigned to local churches if they chose to do so. Saints certainly still matter for the Catholic Church (and other religions), but in medieval culture they really played a central role, which Martin Luther subsequently mostly rejected. Anyone entering a Gothic church will realize this aspect immediately, as documented by a plethora of sculptures, frescoes, and inscriptions dedicated to saints.

But the cult of saints was not only a religious ritual, it was also the topic of much writing. Jacobus de Voragine's Legenda aurea from ca. 1260 or later, was the most influential compilation of saints' lives, to which subsequent authors added more accounts. Next to the Bible, the Legenda aurea might well be identified as the most popular medieval text, with ca. 1000 manuscript copies still extant today, both in Jacobus's Latin and in many different translations.

The present volume includes a large number of critical studies examining particularly specific translations into a variety of Romance languages (Tuscan, Genoese, Sicilian, Old French, Occitan, Castilian, and Catalan), whereas the impact of the Legenda aurea in the world north of the Alps is not considered here. With one exception (Géraldine Veysseyre, French), all studies are in Italian, but each article offers at the end a brief abstract in good English. An abstract in Italian or French at the beginning of each article would also have been useful.

Overall, the authors focus on specific manuscript groups containing translations of the whole work or of selections. For a review, it might be just too much to engage with all the details covered here, so a more global evaluation will have to suffice. As becomes evident throughout this volume, each manuscript or group of manuscripts presents considerable challenges, which the authors address quite impressively, fully informed by the relevant research pertinent to their topics. There are four thematic groups that address, respectively, the Latin text, the Italian translations (esp. Genoese and Sicilian), the Italian translations produced in Florence, and finally the translations into Franco-Italian, in French (d'oil), Catalan, and Castilian. The volume concludes with an index of the manuscripts consulted and one index containing the authors' names, the works that have survived only anonymously and the major medieval writers and scholars involved in the copying, illuminating, and then printing of the Legenda aurea.

The authors regularly reflect on the challenges they face in working with their groups of manuscripts, and I wonder whether the final solution might not rest in digital versions that would put all texts into a vast online network. Of course, the differences between the original and the individual translations might not have been major, but comparisons would certainly be of considerable importance. As we learn throughout, the close focus on one manuscript or various manuscript groups sheds significant light on cultural conditions, such as the French versions produced in Tours, Modena, and Lyon (Fabrizio Cigni). Some studies pursue wider perspectives comparing manuscripts with each other, whereas others present a very close analysis of one manuscript, such as of the anonymous Florentine translation (LAI clxxvii) and its grammatical, syntactical, and typological features (Roberto Tagliani). Other scholars trace the reception history of specific translations, taking us even up to the eighteenth century (Laura Ingallinella).

With one exception, all articles are single-authored; Jacop Gesior and Fabio Zimelli, by contrast, worked together on the Catalan and Occitan translation of the Legenda. They highlight, for instance, that authors on both sides of the Pyrenees were in close contact with each other, but the Catalan translation was earlier and influenced the efforts with the text in Occitan. Luca Sacchi concludes the volume with a study on the Castilian versions. Since each author is also identified by his/her email address, we can easily contact them for further investigations. But there is no list of short author biographies. Altogether, this is a truly impressive volume that future scholars working on Jacobus de Voragine will have to consult in great details.

Albrecht Classen