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Vol. 27 The Kalendre of the Newe Legende of Englande

Edited from Richard Pynson’s printed editions of 1516. (1994)

Manfred Görlach (ed.) 

The Kalendre is a collection of epitomes of lives of 167 British saints drawn from John Capgrave’s Latin Nova Legenda Anglie (which had been printed by Wynkyn de Worde also in 1516). The Kalendre was intended to cater for the ‘unlettered’ by providing them with encyclopedic information in the vernacular about all of Britain’s national saints – for many of these, this is the only account that was ever written in English. Although the collection lacks the dimensions of Caxton’s Golden Legend, it is important as the last legendary to be printed before the Reformation, a last extension of medieval England. The present edition, the first for 470 years, prints the full text of the Kalendre. Comparison is made with the Latin sources, and there is a full hagiographical commentary geared to C. Horstmann’s edition of the Latin text.