The Katherine Group (Bodley MS 34)

by Emily Rebekah Huber, Elizabeth Robertson (Editor)

The Katherine Group brings together for the first time newly edited and translated versions of three dynamic saints' lives, The Lives of Saints Katherine, Margaret and Juliana, a quirky but rhetorically persuasive guide to virginity, Hali Meidenhad, and a psychologically astute sermon, Sawles Warde (""The Guardianship of the Soul""). These works are important witnesses to the development of Middle English writing after the Conquest and to the rigorous anchoritic spiritual life pursued by female recluses in medieval England.

Genres: Literature

369 pages, Paperback

Published September 15, 2016

Reviews

[Isabelle Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

As Jocelyn Wogan-Browne has it, this is a manuscript that not only drips with "exceptional aural lushness" (The Virgin Speaks, 2001), being alive with alliterative prose, but that incites an important discussion into women's engagement with "theological practice".
While there are problematic strands to MS Bodley 34 (that attribute a sense of attractiveness to the notion of suffering and being sacrificed as a young woman, as Karen Winstead points out in her work Chaste Passions (2000)) it is nonetheless a marvellously characterful account of monastic devotional writing (likely intended for an anchoritic/clerical audience). As a resolute and refreshing rendering of authoritative female conduct, the first three texts include the lives of the Saints: Katherine of Alexandria (who gives her name to the title of this manuscript & inspired cult renown and was thought, at the time, to be second favourite only to the Virgin Mary), Margaret & Juliana. The latter part, made famous by J.R.R Tolkien's linguistic analysis of the manuscript (AB language), involves two authoritative folios on Holy Maidenhood & The Guardianship for the Soul.