The Legendary
History of the Cross
A SERIES OF
Sixty-four Woodcuts
From a Dutch book published by
Veldener, A.D. 1483
WITH
AN INTRODUCTION
Written and Illustrated
By JOHN ASHTON
PREFACE
By S. BARING GOULD, m.a.
London
T. Fisher Unwin
M.D.CCC.LXXXVII
Old Style Printers,
THE GRESHAM PRESS, LUDGATE HILL, E.C.
PREFACE.
THE origin of the mediæval romance ofthe Cross is hard to discover. It wasvery popular. It occurs in a good numberof authors, and is depicted in agood many churches in stained glass.
I may perhaps be allowed here to repeat what Ihave said in my article on the Legend of the Cross,in “Myths of the Middle Ages:”—
“In the churches of the city of Troyes alone itappears in the windows of four: S. Martin-ès-Vignes,S. Pantaléon, S. Madeleine, and S. Nizier. It isfrescoed along the walls of the choir of S. Croce atFlorence, by the hand of Agnolo Gaddi. Pietrodella Francesca also dedicated his pencil to the historyof the Cross in a series of frescoes in the chapel ofthe Bacci, in the church of S. Francesco at Arezzo.It occurs as a predella painting among the specimens[ii]of early art at the Accademia delle Belle Arti atVenice, and is the subject of a picture by Beham, inthe Munich Gallery. The Legend is told in full inthe ‘Vita Christi,’ printed at Troyes in 1517; in the‘Legenda Aurea’ of Jacques de Voragine; in a FrenchMS. of the thirteenth cent