Golden Legend
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The Golden Legend is a collection of 153 hagiographies by Jacobus de Voragine that was widely read in Europe during the Late Middle Ages. More than a thousand manuscripts of the text have survived. It was likely compiled around 1259–1266, although the text was added to over the centuries.
Legenda Aurea, c. 1290, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence
The story of Saint George and the Dragon is one of many stories of the saints preserved in the Golden Legend.
Illustration for Golden Legend, 1493
Saint Margaret attracts the attention of the Roman prefect, by Jean Fouquet from an illuminated manuscript
Hagiography
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A hagiography is a biography of a saint or an ecclesiastical leader, as well as, by extension, an adulatory and idealized biography of a preacher, priest, founder, saint, monk, nun or icon in any of the world's religions. Early Christian hagiographies might consist of a biography or vita, a description of the saint's deeds or miracles, an account of the saint's martyrdom, or be a combination of these.
Page from the Vita Sancti Martini by Sulpicius Severus
Calendar entries for 1 and 2 January of the Martyrology of Oengus.
Example of Greek Orthodox visual hagiography. This is one of the best known surviving Byzantine mosaics in Hagia Sophia – Christ Pantocrator flanked by the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist made in the 12th century.