Legendarium
Hungary, circa 1330
Gothic script
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vatican City
Vat. lat. 8541
Date of Publication of the Facsimile: 1990
Publisher: Belser Verlag, Zurich (Switzerland)
Series: Codices e Vaticanis Selecti
Reproduction: Belser Studio, Vatican City
Printing: Frank W Wesel, Baden-Baden (Germany)
Meditation on the life of Christ and of the saints was an important component of
medieval religious life. The King of Hungary, Charles Robert of Anjou, commissioned a
luxurious manuscript on this theme, painted by artists from the school of Bologna, and
with very little text. It incorporates subject matter from the
Golden Legend,
the popular compendium of saints' lives written by the Dominican Jacobus a Voragine,
around 1275.
Over the year, the original manuscript was dismantled and separate pages are now bound
together in at least three different places. This facsimile reproduces only the contents
of the Vatican codex. This is why the opening on display gives only the beginning of the
Life of St. Dominic and a middle portion of the Life of St. Francis. Clearly the mendicant
orders had become very influential for the lives of their founders to be included in such
a sumptuous book.
