U of T library acquires a 500-year-old classic
A 1507 edition of The Golden Legend is now the oldest English printed volume in the University of Toronto’s rare-books collection.

thestar.com
By Sammy Hudes
Sept. 24, 2016

When librarian P.J. Carefoote saw the opportunity to add what would be the oldest English-language book to the University of Toronto’s collection, he literally couldn’t wait to put his hands on it.

For Carefoote, medieval manuscripts and early books librarian at U of T’s Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, purchasing a 1507 copy of The Golden Legend is a significant milestone for the university.

Considered more popular than even the Bible at one point during the Middle Ages, the book blends fact and fiction in telling the stories of saints’ lives.

“People loved them because they were good stories,” Carefoote said. “The text itself is interesting, but for us I think what is important is the fact it’s an early instance of English printing.”

Compiled in the original Latin during the 1200s by the Italian Dominican archbishop Jacobus De Voragine, the stories became “immensely” popular two centuries later after being translated into the living languages of Europe.

“Certainly by the 15th century, people were reading them in French, German, Dutch and English,” said Carefoote. “The Bible was in Latin, so that was not as readily accessible, whereas this was in vernacular languages, so people could understand without anyone doing interpretation for them.”

William Caxton, who established the first printing press in England, translated The Golden Legend to English, and one of his students printed his version after his death. That’s the version now available at U of T.

Like all of the Rare Book Library’s works, it’s available for the public to read, and even touch, with their bare hands. Its pages, which total about 800, are made of rag, more durable than modern paper made from wood pulp.

The university acquired The Golden Legend two weeks ago after Carefoote saw it listed in a catalogue by a rare-books dealer. He made a move for it that day, knowing it wouldn’t be on the market very long because of how quickly early English texts are typically swept up.

The book contains evidence of censorship during the Reformation period, when reformers challenged the authority of the pope and the Catholic Church. Certain passages relating to Catholicism were crossed out in a large X, and references to the pope had been covered with black ink during the Reformation, but were later bleached.

“Anything that harks back to the pre-Reformation church, they’re trying to get rid of,” said Carefoote.

He also notes the “courage” of The Golden Legend’s earliest English translators, who at the beginning of the book included stories directly from the Bible translated to English, which at the time was illegal to do in England.

“They’re certainly pushing their limits,” he said.

As stories of the saints lost popularity under the Reformation, the last English edition of the era, also now at U of T, was printed in 1527. The Golden Legend disappeared from the presses for more than 300 years and wasn’t published again in English until 1896.

The acquisition of the work makes it the oldest printed English book in the library’s collection, which is home to more than 800,000 volumes, and one of the oldest in Canada.

Carefoote said the university’s English and history departments will make use of it and that he hopes to add even earlier works to the collection.

“We really want to get back, and we’re hoping we will, to the century before - because that’s the earliest English printing.”