His two chief works are the _Chronicon januense_ and the _Golden Legend_ or _Lombardica hystoria_. The former is partly printed in Muratori (_Scriptores Rer. Ital._ ix. 6). It is divided into twelve parts. The first four deal with the mythical history of Genoa from the time of its founder, Janus, the first king of Italy, and its enlarger, a second Janus "citizen of Troy", till its conversion to Christianity "about twenty-five years after the passion of Christ." Part v. professes to treat of the beginning, the growth and the perfection of the city; but of the first period the writer candidly confesses he knows nothing except by hearsay. The second period includes the Genoese crusading exploits in the East, and extends to their victory over the Pisans (c. 1130), while the third reaches down to the days of the author's archbishopric. The sixth part deals with the constitution of the city, the seventh and eighth with the duties of rulers and citizens, the ninth with those of domestic life. The tenth gives the ecclesiastical history of Genoa from the time of its first known bishop, St Valentine, "whom we believe to have lived about 530 A.D.," till 1133, when the city was raised to archiepiscopal rank. The eleventh contains the lives of all the bishops in order, and includes the chief events during their pontificates; the twelfth deals in the same way with the archbishops, not forgetting the writer himself. The _Golden Legend_, one of the most popular religious works of the middle ages, is a collection of the legendary lives of the greater saints of the medieval church. The preface divides the ecclesiastical year into four periods corresponding to the various epochs of the world's history, a time of deviation, of renovation, of reconciliation and of pilgrimage. The book itself, however, falls into five sections:--(a) from Advent to Christmas (_cc._ 1-5); (b) from Christmas to Septuagesima (6-30); (c) from Septuagesima to Easter (31-53); (d) from Easter Day to the octave of Pentecost (54-76); (e) from the octave of Pentecost to Advent (77-180). The saints' lives are full of puerile legend, and in not a few cases contain accounts of 13th-century miracles wrought at special places, particularly with reference to the Dominicans. The last chapter but one (181), "De Sancto Pelagio Papa," contains a kind of history of the world from the middle of the 6th century; while the last (182) is a somewhat allegorical disquisition, "De Dedicatione Ecclesiae."