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Sharon Kinoshita, Steven A. Epstein. The Talents of Jacopo da Varagine: A Genoese Mind in Medieval Europe., The American Historical Review, Volume 123, Issue 1, February 2018, Pages 293–294, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/123.1.293
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Remembered today for his Legenda Aurea (The Golden Legend, hereafter GL), the Dominican friar Jacopo da Varagine was born in Genoa around 1228/1229 and served as archbishop of that city from 1292 until his death in 1298. In The Talents of Jacopo da Varagine, Steven A. Epstein reconsiders Jacopo as the author not only of the GL, but of numerous sermons and of a history of his hometown. Together, these writings reveal Jacopo to be both a man of his time and distinctly Genoese—in “his special manner of disliking Jews in a [city] where there were none … [and his] love of tidiness and system, a desire to bring order out of chaos” (5–6). Throughout, Epstein foregrounds the question of how Jacopo’s mind worked, examining his choice of sources, what he emphasized or omitted, and the logic underlying what might seem like narrative digressions.
Chapter 1, “The Preacher,” examines Jacopo’s three collections of sermons: on saints, for Lent (from the 1270s and 1280s), and on Mary (1290s). Intended as models for his fellow Dominicans, these were expressly generic—detached from historical or local contexts—in order to reach the widest possible audience. In a close reading of two of the Lenten sermons, Epstein illustrates some of Jacopo’s characteristic moves, catalogues the sources (ancient, New Testament, Old Testament) of his citations, and concludes by considering how some of Jacopo’s topics (Jews, avarice, slavery) would have resonated in a Genoese context.
