medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Sts. Barlaam and Ioasaph were also wildly popular, and John Damascene wrote (a very long) Vita on them, yet it is pretty obvious that they were just
Christianized versions of Arabic transpositions of the story of Gautama Buddha.
Pope Joan was widely enough believed that even Catholic scholars did not argue against her existence, yet she never existed.
There are also several early "martyrs" who were not martyred. I seem to recall that Pope Clement I was not martyred, even though he was included as a
martyr in most martyrologies. . .
so, basically, yes, a lot of popular piety can grow up around a person or a legend that has little or no basis in historical reality (remember St. Christopher?).
Unfortunately (or maybe not, depending on your perspective).
George the Less (who actually knows nothing about C. of Alexandria)
On Wed, 26 Nov 2008 05:53:24 GMT, Marjorie Greene wrote:
>medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
>"Catherine of Alexandria (d. ca. 305, supposedly). The virgin martyr C.'s historicity is very poorly attested."
>How to pose my questions without sounding testy or argumentative...???
>Do ancient tradition and a huge corpus of icons (in the broadest sense of the term) count for nothing? Catherine is one of the most frequently portrayed
saints in both the eastern and western churches and her cult is one of the most ancient. She was apparently wildly popular and becomes ever more so the
farther back we go in time. One may discount the angelic translatio without throwing out the woman, no?
>Assuming she did not exist, what grain of something accounts for her putative existence? The legends surrounding other saints are equally fantastic yet
they endure. Could such a widely venerated woman have been completely fictitious?
>MG
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