Jacob DE VoRAGiNE, archbishop of Genoa, and au- thor of the Legenda aurea, was born at Viraggio, near Genoa, in 1230. He joined the preaching friars at Ge- noa in 1244, and became provincial of the order for Lom- bardy in 1267. For services rendered to the Church and to his order in different circumstances, he was final- ly made archbishop of Genoa in 1292, and died in 1298. His reputation rests exclusively on a compilation of le- gends which he wTote mider the title of Legenda Sanc- torum, or Legenda aurea (also known as the Historia L^ongobardica, on account of a short Lombard chron- icle it contains, attached to the life of pope Pelagius). The work consists of a series of fancif'id biographies, some compiled from older works, others merely made up of the traditions current among the people and in con- vents, aiany of the elements of these biographies are taken from apocrj-phal Gospels, Acts of the Apostles, and martyrologies, and are to be found in other anterior and contemporary works, such as the Passional, the le- gends of INIary, etc. Some of them are inventions of the ]\Iiddle Ages, and show how quickly fables become mixed up with history : such are the lives of Dominic and of Francis of Assisi. These legends are, moreover, entirely devoid of poetic beauty, that redeeming feature of many works of this kind. Jacob was a mere com- piler and chronicler, wthout taste and wthout talent ; a specimen of his coarseness is to be found in what he re- lates of Vespasian in his life of the apostle James. The only original part of the work is the preface or introduc- tion to the life of each saint, in v>-hich Jacob attempts to give an explanation of the meaning of their names , and these explanations consist in wonderfid etymologies and wild speculations, such as could be expected from an ignorant monk unacquainted with either tireek or Hebrew. The work was soon esteemed at its just value. The superior of the order, Berengarius de Landora, sub- sequently archbishop of Compostella (f 1330), commis- sioned Bernardus Guidonis, afterwards bishop of Lodeve (t 1331), to v.Tite a life of the saints from authentic sources. Bernardus, who was a zealous historian, set to work and produced a Speculum sanctorum in four vol- umes. This, however, did not meet with much success. The Legenda of Jacob became the Legenda aurea, and gained in popularity not only because it was shorter than the voluminous compilation of Bernardus, but es- pecially on account of its extravagant descriptions and relations of miraculous occurrences, which siuted the spirit of the Midtlle Ages much better than a plain, truthful narration of facts. Many translations of it were made into German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Eng- lish, and after the discovery of printing many editions of it were published. (See Brunet, Manuel de Vamateur de livres, iv, 687 sq. The latest edition is by Dr. Grasse, librarian of the king of Saxony, Lpz. 1845, 8vo) . To us
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the book is very important as an index to the supersti- tious spirit of tlie :Midille Ages. Among the other works of Jacob dc Yoragine we may mention iSermones de tem- pore et quadragesimales (Paris, 1500 ; Venice, 1589, 2 vols.) -.—Sermones de dominicisper annum (Venice, 1544, 4to, and 1566, foL) -.—Quadragesimale et de Sanctis "(Ven- ice, 1602, 2 vols. 4to) -.—Sermones de Sanctis (Lyon, 1494; PapiiE, 1500; Venice, 1580) -.—Mariale sive sermones de B. Maria Virgine (Venice, 1497, 4to ; Paris, 1503 ; May- ence, 161G, 4to). The latest editions of his collected ser- mons appeared at Augsburg (1760, 4 vols. fol.). All these sermons are mere sketches; those on the saints are full of fibles, and can be considered as a sort of supplement to the Legenda aurea ; the 160 sermons on Mary treat, in alphabetical order, of the virtues, perfection, and mir- acles of the Virgin. Lentz, in his Gesck. d. Homiletik (Brunswick, 1839, i, 257), gives a German translation of one of them as a specimen. Jacob also ^vrote m defense of the Dominicans, and doubtless against the attacks of St. Amour, a Defensorium contra impugnantes Fratres Prcedicatores, quod non vivant secundum vitam apostoli- cam (Venice, 1504). An abridgment which he prepared of the Summa virtutum etvitiorum of Wm. Peraldus, and his De ojjeribus et opusculis S.Aitgustini have never been printed (Quetif and Echard, i, 458). His chroni- cle of Genoa, down to 1297, has been published by IMu- ratori, Scriptores rerum Italic, ix, 1 sq. The assertion, made by Slxtus Senensis {Bibliotk. Sacra, lib. iv), that Jacob ^\T0te an ItaUan translation of the Bible, appears to be erroneous : no such work has ever been found, nor is it mentioned by contemporary ■writers; it is, more- over, highly improbable that the compiler of the Legen- da aurea shoidd have considered it desirable or profita- ble to give the fiction-loving people the Scriptures in the vernacular. See Herzog, Real- Encyklojmdie, vi, 399.
Jacob ben-Abba-Mari bex-Sijion (Simson), generally known as Jacob Anatoli (Anatolio), a Jewish philosopher, was bom in Provence in the latter half of the 12th ccntiu-y. He ivas the son-in-law of the celebrated writer Samuel Ibn-Tibbon, and, like him, be- came an ardent follower of Jlaimonides. In early life he acquired a thorough knowledge of the ^Vrabic lan- guage, and this enabled him to translate many of the philosophical works for the benefit of his Jewish breth- ren. But, unUke his great master, he was inclined to rationalism to such a degree that he set about attempt- ing to explain the miracles of the O.-T. Scriptiu-es in a natural way. His fame soon spread abroad, and when the emperor Frederick II, the last of the Hohenstaufen, looked about for a translator of Aristotle, his eyes fell on Anatoli, and he was invited to Naples, and paid an annuity from the emperor's private purse to perform the arduous task, or, according to some, to assist in the un- dertaking. He prepared, in conjunction with Michael Scotus, a translation of the Greek philosopher, together with the commentary' by the Arabian philosopher Aver- roes (Ibn-Koshd), into the Latin (comp. Griitz, GescJi. d. Jwcfeji, vii, 105, note 1 ; Roger Bacon, 6>/)«-a,ii, 140; Re- nan, Averroes et VAverrohme, p. 163 sq.). Jacob Ana- toli died about 1250. See Scholasticism; Scotus