Jacopo da Varagine (c. 1228–1298) is remembered today primarily for his immensely popular work The Golden Legend, a massive collection of stories about the saints. Compiled over the years 1260–67, The Golden Legend quickly eclipsed earlier collections of saints’ lives. One indication of its popularity is the fact that so many manuscript copies of the work have survived—more than one thousand according to some estimates. Despite the enduring influence of The Golden Legend, Jacopo remains an elusive figure because he left behind so little information about himself. In The Talents of Jacopo da Varagine, Steven A. Epstein sets out to remedy this situation through a careful study of all Jacopo’s works, including many hundreds of sermons and his innovative chronicle of Genoese history. In Epstein’s sure hands, Jacopo emerges as one of the most active and talented minds of his day. Indeed, Epstein argues that one needs to read all of Jacopo’s books, in a Genoese context, in order to understand the original scope of his thinking, which greatly influenced the ways generations of people across Europe experienced their Christianity. The rich sources for Jacopo’s sermons, saints’ lives, and history illuminate the traditions that inspired him and shaped his imaginative and artistic powers. Jacopo was also one of the inventors of social history, and his writings reveal complex and new perspectives on family life as well as the histories of gay people, slaves, Jews, and the medieval economy. Filled with impressive insights into the intellectual life of the thirteenth century, The Talents of Jacopo da Varagine will be of interest to a wide range of medieval scholars and students of religious history, church history, and hagiography as well as intellectual history and Italian history.

This book offers the first English translation of the Chronicle of the city of Genoa by the thirteenth-century Dominican Jacopo da Varagine, an author best known for his monumental book of saints’ lives, the Golden legend. Jacopo’s Chronicle presents a coherent vision of Genoa’s place in history, the cosmos and Creation as written by the city’s own archbishop – mixing eyewitness accounts with scholarly research about the city’s origins and didactic reflections on the proper conduct of public and private life. Accompanied by an extensive introduction, this complete translation provides a unique perspective on a dynamic medieval city-state from one of its most important officials, broadening the available literature in English on medieval Italian urban life.

Between 1250 and 1350, numerous Italian city-states jockeyed for position in a cutthroat political climate. Seeking to legitimate and ennoble their autonomy, they turned to ancient Rome for concrete and symbolic sources of identity. Each city-state appropriated classical symbols, ancient materials, and Roman myths to legitimate its regime as a logical successor to&—or continuation of&—Roman rule. In Urban Legends, Carrie Bene&š illuminates this role of the classical past in the construction of late medieval Italian urban identity.