A Hagiographic excursus on Emotions: gaudium in the Legenda Aurea of Jacobus de Voragine

The dimension of emotions finds significant expression in the Legenda aurea of Jacobus de Voragine (1228/1229–1298). His gallery of saints was a valuable source of material for preachers, who could thus draw on references to states of mind and to emotions, in order to present to the faithful audience the moral virtues embodied by the viri Dei. Among the wide range of emotions, joy is the object of analysis in this paper, an emotion that finds various forms of expression, such as in the happiness of the martyrs who underwent their extreme test of faith, or in the parents who saw their children healed thanks to the miraculous intercession of the saints. Those were events in which gaudium is flanked by other emotions, from sadness to anger, which make the hagiographic context of the Legenda aurea concrete and more realistic.