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.

fol. 34v (112K)

fol. 35r (104K)

fol. 48v (112K)

fol. 49r (112K)

fol. 70r (104K)

fol. 71v (96K)

fol. 90v (120K)

fol. 91r (120K)

Horae BMV

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