medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

The virgin martyr Catherine's cult seems to have arisen in the seventh century; the miraculous translation of her body to the vicinity of the Holy Monastery of the God-trodden Mount Sinai (founded in the sixth century) seems to be a slightly later development.  She has Passiones in Greek (BHG 30-32) and, in texts derived from Greek originals, in Arabic, Georgian, and Latin.  As far as one can tell, her inclusion in calendars from western Europe does not antedate the tenth century (two instances: one from a Greek monastery in southern Italy, under 25. November, and the other from Monte Cassino, under 20. November).  In the tenth-century Metaphrastic Menologion and in the originally tenth-century Synaxary of Constantinople Catherine's feast day is 24. November; in other medieval synaxaries and in many Byzantine-Rite churches today it is 25. November.  In the Roman Rite (and also in churches whose sanctoral calendars have been influenced by the latter) it has usually been 25. November.  Catherine's historicity is so poorly attested that she was dropped from the general Roman Calendar between 1969 and 2002.  In the Roman Martyrology (edition of 2001) the first entry under today (25. November) is the commemoration of "Saint Catherine, of whom it is told that she was a virgin of Alexandria and was martyred, that she was endowed with acute intelligence, learning, and strength of spirit" and whose "body is venerated in the famous monastery on Mount Sinai."


Some period-pertinent images of St. Catherine of Alexandria:

a) as depicted (at right, martyrdom; at left, the martyrdom of the converted philosophers) in the late tenth- or very early eleventh-century so-called Menologion of Basil II (Città del Vaticano, BAV, cod. Vat. gr. 1613, p. 201):
http://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.gr.1613/0229
http://tinyurl.com/htpbwvm

b) as depicted (upper register at center) in the earlier eleventh-century mosaics (restored between 1953 and 1962) in the narthex of the church of the Theotokos in the monastery of Hosios Loukas (St. Luke of Stiria) near Distomo in Phokis: 
http://tinyurl.com/jv9o9hq
Detail view (in better light):
http://tinyurl.com/39uqg7t

c) as depicted (lower register: martyrdom; upper register: her body transported by angels) in one of four panels of a full-page illumination in the late twelfth-century so-called Bible of Saint Bertin (ca. 1190-1200; Den Haag, KB, ms. 76 F 5, fol. 40r, sc. 1A and 2A):
http://manuscripts.kb.nl/zoom/BYVANCKB%3Amimi_76f5%3A040r_min_a1%252ba2

d) as depicted in a thirteenth-century wall painting in Hailes Church in Hailes (Glos):
http://www.sacred-destinations.com/england/hailes-church/photos/d80_008

e) as depicted in an earlier thirteenth-century icon (full-length portrait; scenes) in the Holy Monastery of the God-trodden Mount Sinai in St. Catherine (South Sinai governorate):
http://tinyurl.com/ndgbow2

f) as depicted in an early thirteenth-century fresco (1208) in the chapel of Deir Mar Musa al-Habashi (Monastery of St. Moses the Ethiopian) near Al-Nabk (Nebek; Rif-Dimashq governorate) in Syria:
https://www.rom.on.ca/sites/default/files/imce/dscf0269.jpg

g) as depicted in an earlier thirteenth-century window (ca. 1220-1230) in the choir of Köln's Basilika St. Kunibert:
http://de.academic.ru/pictures/dewiki/75/K%C3%B6ln_St.Kunibert562.JPG

h) as depicted in an earlier thirteenth-century fresco (1233/1234; from the chapel of St. Nicholas in the Penteli caves in northern Attika) in the Byzantine and Christian Museum in Athens:
http://www.byzantinemuseum.gr/pictures/b_1950_1068.jpg
http://www.byzantinemuseum.gr/en/collections/wall_paintings/?bxm=1068

i) as depicted as depicted in a panel of a mid-thirteenth-century glass window (ca. 1245-1250; bay 202) in Strasbourg's cathédrale Notre-Dame:
http://therosewindow.com/pilot/Strasbourg/w202-A2.htm

j) as depicted in the mid-thirteenth-century frescoes (1259) in the church of Sts. Nicholas and Panteleimon at Boyana near the Bulgarian capital of Sofia:
http://galenf.com/Bulgaria/36/bu_0010b.jpg

k) as depicted in a later thirteenth-century Cistercian psalter (ca. 1260; Besançon, Bibliothèques municipales, ms. 54, fol. 11r):
http://tinyurl.com/332y45h

l) as depicted in a later thirteenth-century psalter for the Use of Reims (Carpentras, Bibliothèque municipale  Inguimbertine, ms. 77 (\1), fol. 178v):
http://tinyurl.com/3a8pdqe

m) as depicted in a late thirteenth-century Book of Hours for the Use of Thérouanne (ca. 1280-1290; Marseille, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 111, fol. 148r):
http://tinyurl.com/2v485b6

n) as depicted in an historiated initial "C" in a late thirteenth-century copy of Clemence of Barking's _La vie sainte Katherine_ (London, BL, MS add. 70513, fol. 246r):
http://arts.uwaterloo.ca/~drussell/images/Kth246r.jpg
NB: Texts of the poem from this and two other witnesses are available at no. 13 here:
http://margot.uwaterloo.ca/campsey/CmpBrowserFrame_f.html

l) as depicted on one side of a fourteenth-century double icon from Veria in northern Greece, now in the Byzantine and Christian Museum in Athens:
http://tinyurl.com/grgsgyv

m) as depicted in a fourteenth-century fresco on an arch soffit in the chiesa di San Salvatore in Canzano (TE) in northern Abruzzo:
http://tinyurl.com/nuzx5j7

n) as portrayed (at left, flanking St. Flavian of Rome; at right, St. Lucy) in a fourteenth-century fresco in the lower church of the basilica di San Flaviano in Montefiascone (VT) in northeastern Lazio:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/Montefiascone_san_flaviano.JPG

o) as depicted (at left; at right, St. Irene) as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. ca. 1311 and ca. 1322) in the church of St. Nicholas Orphanos in Thessaloniki:
http://tinyurl.com/p5yeban
Detail view:
http://tinyurl.com/p5n6deg

p) as depicted (at right; at left, St. Mary Magdalene) by Simone Martini in an earlier fourteenth-century fresco (ca. 1318-1320) at the entrance to the cappella di San Martino in the lower church of the basilica di San Francesco in Assisi:
http://www.wga.hu/art/s/simone/3assisi/1saints/saints20.jpg

q) as depicted (in this detail view, upper register at right) by Simone Martini in his earlier fourteenth-century Polyptych of Santa Caterina (1319) in the Museo nazionale di San Matteo in Pisa:
http://www.wga.hu/art/s/simone/4altars/3pisa/3pisa.jpg

r) as portrayed by the workshop of Orcagna in an earlier fourteenth-century marble relief (ca. 1320-1330) in the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore:
http://art.thewalters.org/detail/37848/saint-catherine-of-alexandria-2/

s) as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century French-language legendary of Parisian origin with illuminations attributed to the Fauvel Master (ca. 1327; Paris, BnF, ms. Français 183, fol. 100v):
http://tinyurl.com/ykkzgpo

t) as depicted (full-length portrait; scenes) in an earlier fourteenth-century panel painting (ca. 1330) by Gregorio d'Arezzo and Donato d'Arezzo in the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles:
http://tinyurl.com/hq9hxu4

u) as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century panel painting (betw. 1330 and 1350) by Barna da Siena of Catherine's mystical marriage with Christ, now in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston:
http://tinyurl.com/2ewhze2

v) as depicted (at right; at left, St. Augustine of Hippo) as depicted in a panel of an earlier fourteenth-century glass window (ca. 1340) in the entrance hall -- an enclosed porch -- of the Basilika Mariä Himmelfahrt in Gurk (Land Kärnten):
http://www.burgenseite.com/glas/gurk_glas_3.jpg

w) as depicted by Bernardo Daddi in an earlier fourteenth-century panel painting (ca. 1340) in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo in Florence:
http://tinyurl.com/qboldga

x) as depicted by Pietro Lorenzetti in an earlier fourteenth-century panel painting (betw. 1342 and 1345) in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York:
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/13.212

y) as depicted in a mid-fourteenth-century copy, from the workshop of Richard and Jeanne de Montbaston, of the _Legenda aurea_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (1348; Paris, BnF, ms. Français 241, fol. 316r):
http://tinyurl.com/yktrtxz

z) as portrayed (before and after restoration) in a later fourteenth-century sandstone sculpture (betw. 1350 and 1362) in the Kreuzkapelle of the Michaelerkirche in Vienna:
http://www.michaelerkirche.at/articles/2010/04/12/a2620/p0/HlKatharina_Vergleich.jpg

aa) as depicted (lower register at far left) by Paolo Veneziano and Giovannino Veneziano in their mid-fourteenth-century Coronation of the Virgin altarpiece (1358) in the Pinacoteca comunale in San Severino Marche (MC):
http://tinyurl.com/6ffo4r

bb) as depicted in the later fourteenth-century frescoes (1360s and 1370s; restored in 1968-1970) in the church of St. Demetrius in Marko's Monastery at Markova Sušica (near Skopje) in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia:
http://tinyurl.com/q6wyuj7

cc) as depicted in a later fourteenth-century fresco (?ca. 1360-1370) in the Pfarr- und Wallfahrtskirche Zu unserer lieben Frau in Mariapfarr (Land Salzburg):
https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7252/13444358534_e8f4dc4de9_b.jpg

dd) as portrayed in enamel on a late fourteenth-century silver gilt reliquary pendant of French origin (betw. 1370 and 1395) in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London:
http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O109237/reliquary-pendant-unknown/

ee) as depicted (disputing with philosophers) by  Cenni di Francesco di Ser Cenni in a later fourteenth-century panel painting (ca. 1380?) in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York:
http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/435863

ff) as depicted by the Troyes Master in the late fourteenth-century Hours of Prigent de Coëtivy (ca. 1380-1400; Rennes, Bibliothèque de Rennes Métropole, ms. 1511, fol. 223v):
http://tinyurl.com/jo47s6f

gg) as depicted by Giovanni di Benedetto and workshop in a late fourteenth-century Franciscan book of hours from Milan (ca. 1385-1390; Paris, BnF, ms. Latin 757, fol. 362v):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8470209d/f728.item.r=.zoom

hh) as portrayed in a late fourteenth- or earlier fifteenth-century ivory statuette from the Rhineland now in Paris in the Musée du Louvre (photographs courtesy of Genevra Kornbluth):
http://www.kornbluthphoto.com/images/Catherine1.jpg
http://www.kornbluthphoto.com/images/Catherine2.jpg

ii) as depicted (at right; at left, St. Nicholas of Myra) in a late fourteenth- or early fifteenth-century panel painting (ca. 1395-1400 or ca. 1405) by Gentile da Fabriano in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin:
http://www.wga.hu/art/g/gentile/various/virgin_c.jpg
http://bobandnellasworld.com/NoEurope%202011/Berlin/Gemaldegalerie/n30_0419_l.jpg

jj) as portrayed in an early fifteenth-century jewelled reliquary bust of gold and enamel in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York:
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/17.190.905/

kk) as depicted (scenes, starting here and going forward) in the earlier fifteenth-century Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry (ca. 1407; The Cloisters Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, ms. 1954 [54.1.1], fols. 15r-20r):
http://blog.metmuseum.org/artofillumination/manuscript-pages/folio-15r/ 

ll) as depicted (martyrdom) in an early fifteenth-century copy of the _Elsässische Legenda aurea_ (1419; Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek, Cod. Pal. germ. 144, fol. 208r):
http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/cpg144/0431

mm) as depicted (scenes) in an earlier fifteenth-century fresco (betw. 1428 and 1431) by Masolino da Panicale in the cappella di Santa Caterina in Rome's basilica di San Clemente:
http://www.wga.hu/art/m/masolino/clemente/02clemen.jpg

nn) as depicted in the earlier fifteenth-century Hours of Marguerite d'Orléans (ca. 1430; Paris, BnF, ms. Latin 1156b, fol. 175r):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b52502614h/f361.item.r=marguerite+d'orl%C3%A9ans.langFR.zoom

oo) as depicted (at right; at left, St. Dorothea) by the Master of the Darmstadt Passion in an earlier fifteenth-century panel painting (ca. 1440) in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Dijon:
http://tinyurl.com/mtfmgex

pp) as depicted by the court workshop of Frederick III in the mid-fifteenth-century Prayer Book of Frederick III (1447-1448; Vienna, ÖNB, cod. 1767, fol. 289r):
http://tarvos.imareal.oeaw.ac.at/server/images/7007426.JPG 

qq) as depicted with a donor in a mid-fifteenth-century glass window panel (ca. 1450; from the église Saint-Étienne in Elbeuf [Seine-Maritime]) in The Cloisters Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York:
http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/471896

rr) as depicted in grisaille (martyrdom) by Jean le Tavernier in the Suffrages of the mid-fifteenth-century Hours of Philip of Burgundy (ca. 1451-1460; Den Haag, KB, ms. 76 F 2, fol. 276r):
http://manuscripts.kb.nl/zoom/BYVANCKB%3Amimi_76f2%3A276r_min

ss) as depicted (at left, treading the emperor underfoot; at center, St. Nicholas of Myra; at right, St. Lawrence of Rome) in the mid-to-later fifteenth-century frescoes (ca. 1451-1476) of Nørre Tranders kirke in Nørre Tranders (Aalborg Kommune), Nordjylland:
http://aalborgstift.dk/assets/kirker/oestre/noerretranders/7024noerretranders.jpg
Detail view (Catherine):
http://aalborgstift.dk/kirker/aalborg-ostre/norre-tranders-kirke/kalkmalerier/#g3283=14533

tt) as portrayed by the workshop of Niclaus Gerhaert of Leiden in a later fifteenth-century polychromed wooden reliquary bust (ca. 1465) of northern Netherlandish origin in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York:
http://www.flickriver.com/photos/elissacorsini/2469273485/

uu) as depicted by Michael Pacher in a later fifteenth-century panel painting (1467) in the Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum in Innsbruck:
http://www.wga.hu/art/p/pacher/various/1lauren3.jpg

vv) as depicted in a later fifteenth-century panel painting by Carlo Crivelli (ca. 1470; from his now dismembered Montefiore altarpiece) in the Polo Museale di San Francesco at Montefiore dell'Aso (AP) in the Marche:
http://tinyurl.com/2c2cx9
Detail view:
http://tinyurl.com/2dd4ar

ww) as portrayed in relief on a wing of a later fifteenth-century altarpiece made in Köln, since 1931 in Sankt Peters Klosters kyrka in Lund:
http://tinyurl.com/285r4mv

xx) as portrayed in relief in a later fifteenth-century polychromed terracotta plaque from Utrecht (ca. 1480) in the Victoria and Albert Museu in, London:
http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O71863/st-catherine-of-alexandria-relief-unknown/
A better view:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/kotomi-jewelry/3516601530/

yy) as depicted (treading the emperor underfoot) by Thomas of Villach in a later fifteenth-century panel painting (ca. 1480-1490) in the (Stifts-)Pfarrkirche St. Salvator und Allerheiligen in Millstatt (Land Kärnten):
http://tarvos.imareal.oeaw.ac.at/server/images/7001032.JPG

zz) as depicted by Vittore Crivelli in a late fifteenth-century panel painting (1481) in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London:
http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O102400/st-catherine-of-alexandria-panel-from-an-crivelli-vittore/

aaa) as depicted (lower register at far left) by Sandro Botticelli in the central panel of his Barnabas Altarpiece (c1487) in the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence:
http://www.wga.hu/art/b/botticel/3barnaba/10barnab.jpg
Detail view:
http://tinyurl.com/k47pgzc 

bbb) as portrayed in relief in the late fifteenth-century lower choir stalls (1491-1492) in the catedral metropolitana de San Salvador in Oviedo:
http://tinyurl.com/ofqaqmu

ccc) as portrayed in a late fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century polychromed statue in Jelling Kirke in Jelling, Sydjylland:
http://tinyurl.com/299esod

ddd) as depicted in a late fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century icon in the Simonopetra monastery on Mt. Athos:
http://home.yebo.co.za/~xenitis/AgAikaterini.jpg

eee) as depicted on a panel of the late fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century chancel screen in St Mary's Church in North Tuddenham (Norfolk):
http://www.norfolkchurches.co.uk/northtuddenham/images/dscf5088.jpg 

fff) as depicted by Albrecht Dürer in a late fifteenth- or earlier sixteenth-century drawing in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York:
http://www.metmuseum.org/collections/search-the-collections/90001741

ggg) as depicted in a late fifteenth- or earlier sixteenth-century glass roundel of southern Netherlandish origin in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York:
http://tinyurl.com/heprypq

hhh) as depicted in an earlier sixteenth-century glass window panel of local origin in the Museum Schnütgen in Köln:
http://tinyurl.com/3adest2

Best,
John Dillon
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