Catherine of Siena: The Creation of a Cult

Description

How does one construct a saint and promote a cult beyond the immediate community in which he or she lived? Italian mendicants had accumulated a good deal of experience in dealing with this politically explosive question. The posthumous description of the life of Francis of Assisi (d. 1226) written by the Master General of the order, Bonaventure (d. 1274), could be regarded as paradigmatic in this regard. A similarly massive intervention in the production and diffusion of a cult can be observed in the case of the Dominican tertiary, Catherine of Siena (d. 1380), who in many respects (e.g. the imitation of Christ and her stigmatization) ‘competed’ with Francis of Assisi. Raymund of Capua (d. 1399), the Master General of the order, established the foundation for the dissemination of the cult by writing the authoritative life, but it was only the following generation that succeeded in establishing and disseminating the cult on a broad basis by means of copies, adaptations, and translations. The question of how to make a cult, which stands at the centre of this volume, thus presents itself in terms of the challenge of rewriting a legend for different audiences. The various contributions consider the role, not only of texts in many dfferent vernaculars (Czech, English, French, German, and Italian), but also of images, whether separately or in connection with one another. Front Matter ("Editorial Board", "Title Page", Copyright Page", "Table of Contents", "Illustrations"), p. i Free Access The Making of a Saint: Catherine of Siena, Tommaso Caffarini, and the Others - Introduction, p. 1 Jeffrey F. Hamburger, Gabriela Signori https://doi.org/10.1484/M.MWTC-EB.1.101773 Many Strategies and One Goal: The Difficult Road to the Canonization of Catherine of Siena, p. 25 Otfried Krafft https://doi.org/10.1484/M.MWTC-EB.1.101774 ‘Sacra lipsana’: The Relics of Catherine of Siena in the Context of Propagation, Piety, and Community, p. 47 Michael Hohlstein https://doi.org/10.1484/M.MWTC-EB.1.101775 Catherine of Siena and the Italian Public, p. 69 Gabriella Zarri https://doi.org/10.1484/M.MWTC-EB.1.101776 The Transmission of the Upper German Life of Catherine of Siena, p. 83 Thomas Brakmann https://doi.org/10.1484/M.MWTC-EB.1.101777 Humanist Lives of Catherine of Siena: Latin Prose Narratives on the Italian Peninsula (1461–1505), p. 109 Alison Frazier https://doi.org/10.1484/M.MWTC-EB.1.101778 Saintly Authorship in the Italian Renaissance: The Quattrocento Reception of Catherine of Siena’s Letters, p. 135 F. Thomas Luongo https://doi.org/10.1484/M.MWTC-EB.1.101779 ‘Pro solatio illicteratorum’: The Earliest Italian Translations of the Legenda maior, p. 169 Silvia Nocentini https://doi.org/10.1484/M.MWTC-EB.1.101780 Translating St Catherine of Siena in Fifteenth-Century England, p. 185 Dirk Schultze https://doi.org/10.1484/M.MWTC-EB.1.101781 ‘Uff daz man daz unsicher von dem sichren bekenen mug’. The Evidence of Visions in the Illustrated Vitae of Catherine of Siena, p. 215 Kristin Böse https://doi.org/10.1484/M.MWTC-EB.1.101782 The Dilemma of a Saint’s Portrait: Catherine’s Stigmata between Invisible Body Trace and Visible Pictorial Sign, p. 239 David Ganz https://doi.org/10.1484/M.MWTC-EB.1.101783 Wondrous Words: Catherine of Siena’s Miraculous Reading and Writing According to the Early Sources, p. 263 Catherine M. Mooney https://doi.org/10.1484/M.MWTC-EB.1.101784 Writing versus Voice: Tommaso Caffarini and the Production of a Literate Catherine, p. 291 Jane Tylus https://doi.org/10.1484/M.MWTC-EB.1.101785 Italian Holy Women against Bohemian Heretics: Catherine of Siena and the ‘Second Catherines’ in the Kingdom of Bohemia, p. 315 Tamar Herzig https://doi.org/10.1484/M.MWTC-EB.1.101786 Back Matter ("Titles in Series"), p. 339