Legende doree, ou, Sommaire de l'histoire des freres Mendians dans l'Ordre de Dominique, & de Francʹois : comprenant briefuement & veritablement l'origine, le progrez, la doctrine & les combats d'iceux : tant contre l'eglise gallicane principalement, que cotre les papes & entr'eux mesmes depuis quatre cens ans
Legende doree is a 1608 French polemical history of the Dominican and Franciscan friars, written by Nicolas Vignier and printed at Leyden by Jean le Maire for a readership of Protestant-leaning French reformed readers. The four pictures are decorative woodcut initials, each a large capital letter wrapped in leaf scrolls, foliage and fruit, one of which sits beside a line of French text. A designer might take from them the dense, hand-cut vegetal ornament typical of early seventeenth-century printing, useful for ornamental letterforms and border motifs.
