James of Varazze (Jacobus a Voragine), Blessed

GIACOMO da VARAZZE (Jacobus a Varagine), blessed. – Born at Varazze around 1230, he donned the Dominican habit in 1244; he taught theology and preached in Genoa, Viterbo, and other cities of Italy from 1252 to 1267, the most fertile years of his intellectual production; he was provincial of Lombardy from 1267 to 1286, except for the period 1278–81, during which, as a simple friar, he was able to resume the life of prayer and study he particularly loved, to which he returned also between 1286 and 1288. In that year he refused the archbishopric of Genoa, but

had to accept it in 1292 at the command of Niccolò IV, and governed it for six years with prudence, self-denial, and courage. In 1295 he secured peace between the “masked” and the “rampini” (Genoese Guelphs and Ghibellines), but only briefly. Soon the struggles flared up again, even causing a fire in the Cathedral. In 1296 he recovered in Genoa relics of saints brought from the East. He died on the night of 13–14 July 1298, after regulating his episcopal administration by notarial deeds. An artist and mystic, he heroically disciplined himself to the duties of the militant apostolate. His cult was confirmed by Pius VII in 1816; his feast is celebrated on 13 July.

Between 1253 and 1279 he composed the Legenda sanctorum or Legenda aurea, which is not merely a hagiographical collection arranged chronologically. G. had the genius to present, in a popularizing Latin, the temporal and sanctoral circulum anni, explaining the meaning of the liturgical periods and ecclesiastical observances (vigils, octaves, fasts, ember days), and, as an enchanting narrator, illustrating the life of Jesus Christ and of the saints according to their respective feasts, commenting on them and drawing moral applications from them. The Legenda aurea could serve as a meditation on solemn occasions, as daily edifying reading, and at the same time as interesting reading because of the marvelous adventures of the heroes of Christ, which it recounts with a naïve but not childish faith. Indeed, it adheres to Latin sources, excluding the romantic episodes added by jongleurs; it pays more attention to the miraculous than to the adventurous; and it questions anachronistic dates and implausible events. The Legenda immediately achieved immense circulation, became the breviary of the laity of average education, and was the source of preaching and hagiographical art from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century. It was interpolated with other “Lives,” so that the 182 chapters of the oldest manuscript (Einsiedeln, 1288) had risen to 440 by the fifteenth century. First edition, mine, 1479; among the modern editions, a good one is that edited by Graesse, Regensburg 1890. First edition in the vernacular, Venice 1474, according to the poor translation by N. Manerbi, which was reprinted until the seventeenth century. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, partial editions of fourteenth-century versions; finally, a complete and good fourteenth-century translation published by A. Levasti, Florence 1924. G. also composed Sermones de sanctis and Sermones dominicales (1277–81), Sermones quadragesimales (1285–92), and Liber Marialis (1295). These are outlines of sermons collected at the request of his confrères, revealing intelligence, learning, psychological refinement, and holiness. They were published under the title: Sermones super Evangelia dominicarum, festa sanc-