BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION
The Golden Legend brings before us, as we open it, two figures which might well have taken their place among the personages whom its varied pages chronicle. These are Jacobus de Voragine, its author, and William Caxton, its translator. Both names are among those that retain a claim on our kindly remembrance. Both remind us of scenes and events that, though widely out of relation to our own time, may yet well attract and hold our attention.
Jacobus de Voragine
The older man was born in 1228 at a little town not far from Genoa on the Riviera,—Varaggio, where at this day his statue stands a prominent adornment of the Town Hall. At the age of sixteen Giacopo da Varaggio entered a religious order—that of the Friars Preachers, founded by S. Dominic de Guzman some thirty years earlier. That Order had been founded in great measure with the view of combating the dangerous propaganda of the Albigenses, who were gathering influence and armed force in the South of France and who menaced the very existence of Christianity and the stability of States. The Dominicans were mixed up in many stormy episodes and took part in the vigorous methods of repression
