St. Katherine of Alexandria: Texts and Contexts in Western Medieval Europe ed. by Jacqueline Jenkins, Katherine J. Lewis (review)

REVIEWS Horobin’s comparisons would have a context. They should not be treated as scribal idiosyncrasies but as aspects of a developing tradition. Horobin’s study represents careful work, but I have noted a few differences . On page 51, MI I.3654 should be GP. On page 53, GP I.77, Hg come should be comen; GP I. 651, Hg excuse should be excusen and El excusen should be excuse. On page 103, El I.67 and El I. 1016, his should be hise. On page 110, WB 268, some should be som. On page 116, ender of my lyf should be endere. The final e’s are flourishes in the manuscripts, but transcribed as e in the Variorum Wife of Bath. Also on page 116, in the And neer quotation, line 805 is lacking. Horobin page 30 has only th (7 them) forms for the obj. 3rd pl. The Anthology glossary has 121 th (them) forms, but 150 h (hem) forms. Horobin page 32 gives though as the IV form; the glossary has though two times, 8ow two times, thowe once, thof three times. Horobin page 44–46 discusses ayein as a Chaucerian form; the Anthology has ay 67 times, a9 22 times, ag 23 times. Horobin’s study was very interesting to me for comparison with the Chancery material. But it offers little real information about Chaucer’s language because it treats the forms in isolation, as if they sprang spontaneously from the inclination of the scribe. Against a broader background these, comparisons would be more meaningful. John H. Fisher University of Tennessee Jacqueline Jenkins and Katherine J. Lewis, eds. St. Katherine of Alexandria: Texts and Contexts in Western Medieval Europe. Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts 8. Turnhout: Brepols, 2003. Pp. xi, 257. $84.00. This collection of essays, which is focused on medieval devotion to Saint Katherine, continues an important line of inquiry that has developed in the study of medieval hagiography: the ways in which saints’ cults were constituted not just by medieval hagiographers but also by devotees of all social classes and educational backgrounds. One significant result of this approach is that researchers are demonstrating that there was no simple transmission of clerical text to lay audience in the medieval period . Indeed, the relationship between those who read and wrote hagioPAGE 323 323 ................. 11491$ CH13 11-01-10 14:02:36 PS STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER graphical texts and those whose knowledge of the saints came through other means is complicated, and as recent studies have shown, the specificities of a given audience and their ritual practices change the way a cult is understood or celebrated. St. Katherine of Alexandria: Texts and Contexts in Western Medieval Europe is a collection that illustrates this point well. The volume includes essays from various disciplines that investigate the production and reception of Katherine’s cult among various groups—women and men, aristocratic and lower-class families, clergy and laity. The ideology that underpins this work is supported by the range of geographical areas covered, for the essays address devotion to Katherine in France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Wales, and England. As editors Jacqueline Jenkins and Katherine J. Lewis acknowledge, the book follows a pattern established by Kathleen Ashley and Pamela Sheingorn in their groundbreaking collection Interpreting Cultural Symbols : Saint Anne in Late Medieval Society (Georgia, 1990). Thus, in addition to the interdisciplinarity and the geographical diversity of topics, Jenkins and Lewis have gathered a rich set of essays that analyze a variety of medieval texts, including seals, vitae, manuscript illumination, breviaries, and devotional sites. The result is a book that illustrates that there was not one single medieval cult of Saint Katherine, but many. That medieval saints were polysemous symbols is becoming a standard assertion in scholarship, and the essays included in St. Katherine of Alexandria demonstrate the multivalency of the Katherine image between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries. The ten essays include Christine Walsh’s historical study of the Norman role in the early development of the cult; Katherine J. Lewis’s discussion of rituals in which girls developed symbolic pilgrimages and prayed in English Katherine chapels for husbands; Jane Cartwright’s account of the sites...