The Cult of St Katherine of Alexandria in Early Medieval Europe

Christine Walsh

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351892001
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: History

St Katherine of Alexandria was one of the most popular saints in both the Orthodox and Latin Churches in the later Middle Ages, yet there has been little study of how her cult developed before c. 1200. This book redresses the balance, providing a thorough examination of the way the cult spread from the Greek-speaking lands of the Eastern Mediterranean and into Western Europe. The author uses the full range of source material available, including liturgical texts, hagiographies, chronicles and iconographical evidence, bringing together these often disparate sources to map the way in which the cult of St Katherine grew from its early stages in the Byzantine Empire up to c.1100, its transmission to Italy, and the introduction and development of the cult in Normandy and England up to c.1200. The book also includes appendices listing early manuscripts containing Katherine's Passio and including key original texts on St Katherine of the period. This study will be welcomed by scholars of medieval history and the history of medieval art, and as a case-study for all those with an interest in the development of medieval saint's cults.

Chapter 1

Introduction

This book is about origins and the way in which the cult of an obscure Greek saint of dubious authenticity grew to become one of the most popular in Western Europe during the later Middle Ages. The saint in question is St Katherine of Alexandria.¹ She was believed to have been martyred c.305, although no contemporary evidence survives to support this date – or even her very existence.² What is beyond doubt, however, is that, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, St Katherine was one of the most popular saints in Western Europe. Even today, although Katherine was removed from the liturgical calendar of the Catholic Church in 1969 on the grounds that she was unlikely ever to have existed, it is possible to find altars to her in many Catholic churches and cathedrals, whilst the Orthodox Church still celebrates the feast day of the Great Martyr Katherine.³

In recent years much scholarly energy has been expended on studies of various aspects of the medieval cult of saints and the cult of St Katherine of Alexandria has received its fair share of attention. However, most modern studies have concentrated on the period of Katherine’s greatest popularity in the later Middle Ages and have tended to concentrate on particular aspects of her cult.⁴ Much less attention has been given to the cult’s origins. This largely results from that perennial bane of the medieval historian’s life, the difficulty of finding sufficient early sources from which to construct a meaningful analysis of events. However, although the sources are varied and scattered, enough survive to allow a coherent analysis to be made of the early Katherine-cult.

In order to keep within manageable bounds I have concentrated on the period from c.305 to c.1200, although I have occasionally dipped a toe into the waters of the thirteenth century when I wanted to include something relevant to my argument. I have also had to place some geographical constraints on the study and have concentrated on those areas in which the cult was particularly strong pre-1200: the Eastern Roman Empire (or Byzantine Empire, as it is better known today), Italy, Normandy and England.

Although Katherine is supposed to have been martyred in the early fourth century, no contemporary or even near-contemporary evidence exists for Katherine. The earliest reference to her that I have been able to find comes from the seventh century and it is not until the tenth century that her cult really begins to make an impression on the historical record.⁵ This lack of historicity did not inhibit the growth of Katherine’s cult, but it did impact on its nature by making it highly susceptible to alteration or reinterpretation in the light of changing social and religious attitudes and interests. As a result, an examination of the way the cult changed over time can illuminate these broader changes in society.

The lack of historical evidence for Katherine contrasts with many other saints whose cults began in the community which had known the living person. However, even in such cases, details of the saint’s life became available for interpretation after their death, with the emphasis inevitably being placed on traits considered emblematic of sainthood.⁶ As a result of this stereotyping of sainthood, all representations of saints’ lives contain what Delooz has called ‘real’ and ‘constructed’ elements.⁷ As the amount of factual information known about a saint decreases, so the constructed element of their story increases. Katherine is unencumbered by memories of her as a living person, thus becoming a prime example of a constructed saint.⁸ Whether this matters is a moot point. Many saints can be shown to have dubious origins or to be largely allegorical embodiments of virtues.⁹ The important fact is that people believed in Katherine’s existence, this sincerely held belief providing impetus to the cult.

The most obvious example of the way Katherine was constructed and reconstructed over time is to be found in her Life. This became increasingly elaborate as interest grew in those aspects of her life not included in the original version. The oldest part of her Life is the Passio or story of her martyrdom, which, in the period up to c.1200, is all that existed. The first significant additions were the linked stories of Katherine’s conversion to Christianity and her mystical marriage to Christ. Both these themes are missing from the early Greek and Latin texts, which simply contain a brief reference to Christ as her bridegroom.¹⁰

It has been suggested that the first indication of Katherine’s mystical marriage is to be found in a set of wall paintings in the church of Notre-Dame de Montmorillon, France. The paintings are in the lower church, which was built at the end of the eleventh or beginning of the twelfth century.¹¹ In the centre is the Virgin seated on a throne holding the Christ-child, one of whose hands rests upon the head of an unidentified woman wearing a crown and a halo. It is this painting which may represent Katherine’s mystical marriage to Christ. The reason is that to the left of the Virgin and Child, Katherine stands crowned and holding a cross whilst debating with the philosophers. On the right of the Virgin and Child is Maxentius burning the philosophers for losing the debate with Katherine. The date of these paintings is disputed and they have been variously described as emanating from the late twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Thibout, in his detailed study of these paintings, dates them to c.1200.¹² He points out that the mystical marriage is not present in the influential version of Katherine’s Passio included in De Voragine’s Golden Legend, written c.1260 and suggests that the central scene of the Virgin, Child and woman represents the union of Virgin and Church through the mediation of Christ.¹³

No known written references to Katherine’s mystical marriage occur before the mid-thirteenth century, but by the fourteenth, tales of her conversion and mystical marriage had become widespread.¹⁴ This reflected the growing interest in mystical experience and the number of mystics, particularly female, who underwent their own mystical marriage with Christ. So, for example, Raymond of Capua, in his Life of Catherine of Siena (1347–80), drew a parallel between her mystical marriage and that of Katherine of Alexandria.¹⁵ During the later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, religious interests shifted again, away from an emphasis on virginity as the path to sanctity and towards an emphasis on family life, so, for example, making it more acceptable for married people to be recognized as saints. This led to a parallel development in the Katherine Life whereby Katherine’s genealogy was very much elaborated.¹⁶

Whilst her Passio gave Katherine a literary existence, initially there was nothing to provide her with a physical existence. Indeed, the early Passio reflects the lack of relics, for in it, just before her execution, Katherine actually prays that her body should not be divided into relics, thus providing a convenient explanation for their absence. Given the importance of relics in the general development of the medieval cult of saints, as has been noted by many writers, the absence of primary relics helps to explain the initial slow growth of Katherine’s cult and it is significant that the pace only quickened when Katherine’s relics were ‘discovered’ on Sinai, probably in the late tenth century. Further primary relics of Katherine, namely three small bones, surfaced in Normandy in the first half of the eleventh century, but in the period up to c.1200 the only other relics to emerge were secondary ones, consisting of phials of the oil that flowed from her bones at Sinai and Rouen.

Despite the absence of relics, the cult did grow. There are a number of possible explanations for this. Katherine was a ‘universal’ saint in that she belonged to the common stock of saints recognized throughout Greek and Latin Christianity. As a result, she seems to have developed a persona which was not tied to one particular location unlike saints such as Alban at St Albans or Thomas Becket at Canterbury. Even after a relic-shrine for Katherine had been established on Sinai, this only provided a nominal focal point. Its inaccessibility for most people meant that veneration of Katherine was channelled through a multitude of local cult centres. Initially these took the form of altars to Katherine within churches dedicated to others; subsequently, in the later Middle Ages, whole churches were dedicated to the saint.

Sources

Only scattered manuscripts relating to Katherine survive from the period covered by this book (c.305 to c.1200). Those that do survive are difficult to date with any precision and often dating is based purely upon the palaeography of a manuscript. Unfortunately, this frequently leads to scholarly dispute over the correct dating of particular features of a script or of the usage of particular word forms, which weakens arguments built upon those manuscripts. In order to fill in some of the gaps I have, therefore, taken a cross-disciplinary approach, drawing on a wide variety of sources: hagiographies and related liturgical material, chronicles, works of art, seals and hitherto under-exploited charter evidence. The diverse nature of the sources has created methodological problems, as I have been forced to weave information together from a variety of documentary and non-documentary material, and lacunae inevitably remain.

In the chapters which follow I have used these disparate sources to map the way in which the cult of St Katherine emerged in the Greek-speaking world of the Byzantine Empire and was then transmitted to its early centres in Western Europe. Much of the evidence is impersonal but, occasionally, individuals can be identified to whom Katherine was an important figure. In them something can be glimpsed of the personal devotion to the saint, which others must have shared and which drove the growth in popularity of her cult. Chapter 2 discusses the lack of evidence for the historical Katherine and the importance of the Passio to the development of the early cult. Chapter 3 looks at the growth of the cult in the Byzantine Empire up to c.1100 whilst Chapter 4 examines the impact that the emergence of a major pilgrimage centre on Mount Sinai had on the growth of the cult in Western Europe during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Chapter 5 examines the transmission of the cult to Italy. Chapters 6 and 7 provide case studies of the introduction of the cult into Normandy and England respectively during the eleventh century. Normandy and England provide contrasting examples of the development of a saint’s cult. In the case of Normandy, the cult developed following the acquisition of primary relics of Katherine by a newly founded monastery. This was a new departure for the cult which had hitherto grown without the assistance of relics. England, on the other hand, was closer to the original process which had taken place in its Byzantine homeland, in that there were no primary relics of Katherine in England and the initial evidence for the cult is purely liturgical and hagiographical. The final chapter considers what light the particular case of the cult of St Katherine of Alexandria can shed on the general development of the medieval cult of saints and its relationship to changing social and religious attitudes.

Notes

1 The original Greek form of the saint’s name is Aικατερίνη or Εκατερίνα. Its etymological origins are highly obscure and much argued over. The name does not seem to be rooted in any known Greek word, although it has been suggested that it derives from καθαρός (katharós, meaning pure), but while this is suggestive of the Latin version of the name, it is unlikely to be the source of the Greek original (see C. Hardwick, An Historical Inquiry Touching Saint Catherine of Alexandria: to which is added a Semi-Saxon Legend, Cambridge Antiquarian Society, Quarto Publications, Series I (Cambridge, 1849) ii/15, pp. 5–6). However, the name does seem to have originated with the saint and the gradual spread of the use of the name Aikaterina/Katherine/Catherine can therefore provide indications of the geographical spread of the cult. The Greek form of her name was transliterated into Latin as Ækaterina or Ekaterina from which comes the final Western European form of Katherine or Catherine. There is no uniformity as to usage, but I have chosen to use Katherine except where Catherine forms part of a place name or occurs as such in a source. For a summary of the different forms of her name in different countries see H. Knust, Geschichte der Legende der Katharina von Alexandrien und der Hl. Maria Egyptiaca (Halle a.S., 1890), pp. 173–6.

2 305 is the date given in some of the earliest surviving Greek texts. For example, BAV, MS Palatinus, 4 of the 10–11^th century; BN, MSS lat 1538 of 10^th century and 1539 of 11^th century. See also J. Viteau, Passions de Saints Ecaterine et Pierre d’Alexandrie, Barbara et Anysia (Paris, 1897), pp. 4, 25. The question of dating Katherine and her execution is discussed in Chapter 2.

3 In 1963 following the conclusion of the second session of the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, commonly known as Vatican II, Pope Paul VI set up a council, known as the Consilium ad exequendam Constitutionem de Sacra Liturgia, to revise the liturgical calendar. It reported in April 1967 and, following approval by Paul VI, its conclusions were published in 1969 as the Calendarium Romanum ex Decreto Sacrosancti Oecumenici Concilii Vaticani II instauratum auctoritate Pauli PP. VI promulgatum. The report deleted St Katherine from the calendar of the Catholic Church.

4 For general works on the cult of saints see, in particular, the work of Peter Brown: P. Brown, ‘The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity’, Journal of Roman Studies, 61 (1971), pp. 103–52; P. Brown, The Making of Late Antiquity (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, 1978); P. Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in L...