Note 170 — Chapter II
Reading edition
In the thirteenth century many of the stories were collected in the Legenda Aurea by Jacques de Voragine, an archbishop of Genoa. After the discovery of printing the press teemed with this legendary literature, Flowers of the Saints, Acts of the Martyrs, etc., embellished with numerous engravings, representing with horrible minuteness the Dantean tortures on which the monkish mind loved to expatiate.