Katherine Group

   The Katherine Group includes the Middle English hagiographies (SAINTS’ LIVES) Seinte Katerine (St. Katherine), Seinte Iuliene (St. Juliana), and Seinte Marherete (St. Margaret), along with the devotional prose pieces HALI MEIDENHAD (Holy Maidenhood; Letter on Virginity), and SAWLES WARDE (Care of the Soul; Custody of the Soul). All of the hagiographies are directly adapted from Latin sources, and Sawles Warde is heavily dependent upon Latin sources as well. Of the group, only Hali Meidenhad appears to be substantively original, and it, too, relies upon a long history of related texts. The Katherine Group is so named because the legend of Katerine appears first in the primary manuscript. Also, of the virgin martyrs, Katherine is the one most directly committed to pure virginity, as the other women indicate they will marry their suitor if he converts. The group as a whole has gained attention from editors as well as scholars. Seinte Katerine is the most edited of the hagiographies, though overall, more modern editions of Sawles Warde have been produced.

   In manuscript tradition, as well as in content, the Katherine Group is closely related to anchoritic literature, particularly ANCRENE WISSE and the WOOING GROUP. London, British Library MS Royal 17 A.xxvii includes four Katherine Group pieces (the three hagiographies and Hali Meidenhad), and one from the Wooing Group (a fragment of loe Lofsong of ure Lefdi), while London, British Library, MS Cotton Titus D.xviii includes two incomplete versions of Ancrene Wisse, three Katherine Group texts (Seinte Katerine, Sawles Warde, and Hali Meidenhad), and one Wooing Group piece (the title piece, loe Wohunge of ure Laured). Overall, all of these texts present virginity, and its natural progression of becoming a Bride of Christ, as the best choice—spiritually, physically, personally, and socially— for women.While Ancrene Wisse provides the regulations for a virginal life, and the Wooing Group illustrates the joys of sponsae-brides Christi (brides of Christ), the Katherine Group provides concrete examples of the superiority of chastity. The three hagiographic pieces are similar in nature. They are composed in rhythmic prose that utilizes both alliteration and end-rhyme. All three virgin-martyr legends follow the standard paradigm of renunciation, testing, and consummation. In each, a beautiful, noble virgin living during the era of the Diocletian persecutions successfully resists marriage to a pagan, while also debating with devils and converting masses of bystanders. She is spectacularly and publicly tortured in graphic scenes that echo with overtones of sadomasochism, miraculously escaping unscathed until she is finally executed by beheading. Each of these saints is a legendary rather than historical figure, but this does not lessen the importance of these works. The legends illustrate contests of reason and strength, and instead of being designed to convert non-Christians, they are intended to reinforce existing faith. The heroic women on display in these texts skillfully elicit information from demons, and respond to them in kind, creating dialogues about the nature and state of Christian faith.

   The theme of heroic virginity is carried on throughout both of the other two works included in the Katherine Group, particularly in Hali Meidenhad, which specifically recommends the lives of Katherine, Margaret, and Juliana as templates for living a holy life. Hali Meidenhad is described in one of the Katherine Group manuscripts, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 34, as “an epistle on maidenhood written for the comfort of maidens.” Related to the early church tradition of treatises on virginity, a genre firmly established in the third and fourth centuries, Hali Meidenhad is a particularly graphic warning about the perils of sexual intercourse and the horrors of earthly marriage.

   Human men are described as rutting beasts who beat, starve, and sexually molest their wives. Children are presented as sources of both physical and spiritual pain. For instance, they cause pain, and perhaps even death, through childbirth, and they cause sadness through their own early deaths. The only way a woman can avoid the terrors of a carnal relationship is to preserve her virginity and turn all her emotions toward Christ, who is the perfect spouse. These descriptions are so lurid that Oswald Cockayne, an early editor of the text, referred to it as “coarse and repulsive.” The primary sources of the text are ALANUS DE INSULIS’s Summa de arte praedicatoria (Art of the Preacher), GREGORY THE GREAT’s Patoral curalis (Pastoral Care), the sermons of St. BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX, and Hildebert’s letter to the recluse Athalisa. Some scholars also suggest Pope INNOCENT III’s De miseria humanae conditionis (On the Misery of the Human Condition) as a possible source.

   Sawles Warde is primarily an expansion of De custodia interioris hominis (On the Keeping of the Inner Self), often attributed to St. ANSELM of Canterbury. However, other Latin sources may have contributed to its composition, too. In Sawles Warde, the body, which houses the soul, is described as a castle under siege.Wit (Reason) is in charge of the castle, whose gate (maidenhead) is being attacked by vices. The castle is also inhabited by the fickle Will (Desire),Wit’s wife, and is guarded by the ineffective Five Senses.Wit calls upon the four Cardinal Virtues for assistance, and they, with additional help from Fear and Love of Life, manage to successfully stave off the vices. In form, Sawles Warde is an intricate verse homily in ALLEGORY that some scholars believe is a precursor to later medieval allegorical drama.

   Bibliography

   ■ Hassel, Julie B. Choosing Not to Marry: Women and Autonomy in the Katherine Group. London: Routledge, 2002.

   ■ Facsimile of MS Bodley 34: Seinte Katerine, Seinte Marherete, Seinte Iuliene, Hali Meithhad, Sawles Warde. With an introduction by N. R. Ker. EETS o.s. 247. London: Published for the Early English Text Society by the Oxford University Press, 1960.

   ■ Millett, Bella, and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne. Medieval English Prose for Women. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.

   ■ Price, Jocelyn. “Liflade Seint Iuliene,”Medeivalia et Humanistica 14 (1986): 37–58.

   ■ Robertson, Elizabeth. Early English Devotional Prose and the Female Audience. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990.

   ■ Tolkien, J. R. R. “Ancrene Wisse and Hali Mei´?had,” Essays and Studies 14 (1929): 104–126.

   Michelle M. Sauer