Catherine of Siena : the creation of a cult

Abstract

Focusing on the critical case of Catherine of Siena (d. 1380), the essays in this volume consider the role of texts, translations and images in various media in constructing and disseminating the cult of a saint in the late Middle Ages.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 center 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 different vernaculars (Czech, English, French, German, and Italian), but also of images, whether separately or in connection with one another.