Der Heiligen Leben

Der Heiligen Leben ('The Lives of Saints'), also known as Passional, was a German legendary, compiled by a Dominican friar from Nürnberg around 1400.^[1] Today, 197 manuscripts are known, along with 33 High German and 8 Low German imprints; the oldest imprint is that of Günther Zainer (Augsburg, 1471/72) and the latest is from Strassburg (1521). The 1502 edition had a print run of 1000 copies, an exceptional figure for the time.^[2] The collection originally contained 251 legends and became 'the most influential model for most of the vernacular legendaries of the fifteenth century',^[3] and was 'unparalleled in its overall popularity in the whole of Europe ... Hardly a work of German literature was read by such a wide audience'.^[4]

References

1. Beatie, Bruce A. (Oct 1977). "Saint Katharine of Alexandria: Traditional Themes and the Development of a Medieval German Hagiographic Narrative". Speculum. 52 (4): 785–800. doi:10.2307/2855374. ISSN 0038-7134. JSTOR 2855374. S2CID 162282486.
2. Marianne E. Kalinke, The Book of Reykjahólar: The Last of the Great Medieval Legendaries (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), p. 249.
3. Werner Williams-Krapp, 'German and Dutch Legendaries of the Middle Ages: A Survey', in Hagiograph and Medieval Literature: A Symposium (Odense: Odense University Press, 1981), p. 73, cited by Marianne E. Kalinke, The Book of Reykjahólar: The Last of the Great Medieval Legendaries (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), p. 4.
4. Werner Williams-Krapp, 'German and Dutch Translations of the Legenda Aurea,' in Legenda aurea: Sept siècles de diffusion. Actes du colloque international sur la 'Legenda aurea': texte latin et branches vernaculaires à l'Université du Québec à Montréal 11-12 mai 1983 (Montréal: Éditions Bellarmin, 1986), p. 229, cited by Marianne E. Kalinke, The Book of Reykjahólar: The Last of the Great Medieval Legendaries (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), p. 4.