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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
The anachronistic ascription of membership of the Moslem faith to the persecutors of Christians in the period before the Peace of the Church appears in Anglo-Norman hagiography in the late twelfth century, or early thirteenth, and in English lives later in the thirteenth century. It may be, at least in part, the result of the corruption in meaning of a derivative of the word Mahomet, found in Anglo-Norman as mahumez in the early twelfth century and in English by the end of the same century in the form of maumez, idols. The confusion in identification was made possible by the attribution of the rôle of the Roman officials to the Moslems—both groups martyred Christians in large numbers—and by an association of practices and qualities based on the opposition, real or alleged, of both Romans and Moslems to the Christian faith.
1 Chardri, , La Vie des set Dormanz, Merrilees, B., Anglo-Norman Text Society 35 (London 1977) pp 7, 41.Google Scholar
2 [‘St Katherine,’ The] S[outh] E[nglish] L[egendary, D’Evelyn, C. and Mill, A. J.,] EETS OS 236 [(London 1956 reprinted 1967)] pp 539, 541, 542 Google Scholar.
3 Thaon, Philippe de, Le Livre de Sibile, H. Shields, Anglo-Norman Text Society 37 (London 1979) p 78 Google Scholar.
4 Seinte Marharete, [pe Meiden ant Martyr, Mack, F. M., EETS OS 193 (London 1934)] p 2 Google Scholar. The period of composition most recently suggested for this work is 1190–1200, possibly a few years later: Dobson, E.J., The Origins of ‘Ancrene Wisse’ (Oxford 1976) p 166 Google Scholar. The same word, in the form of mahomet, is found with the same meaning in medieval French, and examples of the same confusion of Moslem and Roman persecutors exist within the same period: ‘La Vie de Sainte Catherine d’Alexandrie as contained in the Paris Manuscript La Clayette,’ Todd, H. A., PMLA 15 (1900) pp 19, 62 Google Scholar; ‘Les Vies de Sainte Catherine d’Alexandrie en ancien Français, 2, La Vie du MS. 948 du Tours,’ Fawtier-Jones, E. C., Romania 58 (1932) p 212 Google Scholar.
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11 W[illiam of] T[yre, continuation, Historia Rerum in Partibus Transmarinis Gestarum,] RHC Occ 2, p 524.
12 Constable, G., ‘The Second Crusade as seen by Contemporaries,’ Traditio 9 (1953) p 213 n 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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20 Tudebod, imitated and continued, Historia Peregrinorum euntium Jerusolymam ad Liberandum Sanctum Sepulchrum de Potestate Ethnicorum, RHC Occ 3 p 222.
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22 Ibid 2 p 2.
23 Ibid 2 pp 156–8.
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25 WT, RHC Occ li p 40.
26 BD, RHC Occ 4 p 15. See also GF pp 1–2, and Riley-Smith, What were the Crusades? pp 32–3.
27 BD, RHC Occ 4 p 15.
28 Historia quœ dicitur Gesta Dei per Francos, RHC Occ 4, pp 159, 205.
29 Roland 2 p 72.
30 Ibid 2 p 118. The other early chansons de geste do not follow ‘l’exemple épuré et exceptionnel de la sévère Chanson de Roland’: J. Horrent, Le Pèlerinage de Charlemagne: Essai d’ Explication littéraire avec des Notes de Critique textuelle, Bibliothèque de la Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres de l’Université de Liège 158 (Paris 1961) p 75. In two of these chansons mal martire and malvais martire are found, applied in each case to the enemies of the speaker and implying that the death desired for the opponents is death in a wrongful cause: Gormont et Isembert, A Bayot, Les Classiques français du moyen âge (Paris 1914) p 6; Guillaume 2 p 1029.
31 ‘It is safe to speak evil of those whose malignity exceeds whatever ill can be spoken’: Guibert of Nogent, quoted from, Southern, R. W., Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages (Cambridge Mass. 1962) p 31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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34 Wilson, R. M., ‘A Note on the Authorship of the “Katherine Group”,’ Leeds Studies in English and Kindred Languages 1 (1932) pp 24–7 Google Scholar. Dobson, , The Origins of ‘Ancrene Wisse’ p 115 Google Scholar.
35 [La Vie de] Seint Auban[: an Anglo-Norman Poem of the Thirteenth Century, Harden, A. R., Anglo-Norman Text Society 19 (Oxford 1978)] pp 2, 11, 16 Google Scholar.
36 Ibid p 48.
37 Ibid pp 31,35.
38 Ibid p 21.
39 Ibid pp ix-xiii.
40 SEL, EETS OS 236 p 541.
41 A[It]e[nglische] L[egenden,] n[eue] F[olge, Carl Horstmann (Heilbronn 1881) p 242.
42 Ibid p 165.
43 Ibid pp 260–64; The Life of St Katherine: the Tale of the Knight and his Wife: and an Account of the Magical Manuscript of Dr. Caius,]. Halliwell, O. (Brixton Hill 1848) pp 1–19 Google Scholar. There is also a handsome facsimile edition: The Cambridge University Library MS. Ff.2.38, introduced by McSparran, F. and Robinson, P. R. (London 1979)Google Scholar. It is possible that the life may be very early fifteenth-century, but the existence of an early fifteenth-century Welsh manuscript containing a translation of this work and showing evidence of corruption in translation or transmission, suggests fourteenth-century composition: Vita sancti Tathei and Buched seintly Katrin, Bell, H. I., The Bangor Welsh MSS Society 1 (Bangor 1909) pp 31–99 Google Scholar.
44 AeL, nF, p 260.
45 Ibid p 262.
46 Ibid pp 261, 262, 263.
47 Ibid p 262.
48 Capgrave, [John], [The Life of St Katherine of Alexandria, Carl Horstmann, EETS OS 100 (London 1893 reprinted 1975)] p 274 Google Scholar.
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50 Ibid 236 pp 533–43; AeL, nF pp 242–59; ibid pp 165–73; ibid pp 260–4.
51 The most recent edition of this is in Seinte Katerine, EETS SS 7 pp 144–203.
52 Th. Graesse (1890 reprinted Osnabriick 1965) pp 789–97.
53 Delehaye, H., Les Passions des Martyrs et les Genres littéraires (Brussells 1921) pp 245–6 Google Scholar.
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55 The statement that Bokenham held a doctorate is found in the colophon to the unique manuscript of his lives: Bokenham, Osbern, Legendys of Hooly Wummen, Serjeantson, M.S., EETS OS 206 (London 1938) p 289 Google Scholar.
56 ‘The Life of St Catharine of Alexandria in Middle English Prose,’ (A. Kurvinen unpub. D. Phil, thesis Oxford 1960).
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58 Cambridge MS Gonville and Caius College 390/610, f 56v. The text was edited from another manuscript which cannot now be located and which did not contain this information: The Life and Martyrdom of Saint Katherine of Alexandria, Virgin and Martyr, Gibbs, A. G. H., Roxburghe Club (London 1884)Google Scholar.
59 The text consulted was the 1483 (?) edition of The Golden Legende ff 384r-390r.
60 Longleat MS 55, ff 55r-65r. The author appears to have believed that Alexandria was in Greece: ibid f55r-v.
61 The reference to Mahoun is retained in the latest of the South English Legendary manuscripts, MS Bodley 779, f 112v, which is dated d450: Görlach, M., The Textual Tradition of the South English Legendary, Leeds Texts and Monographs, New Series 6 (Leeds 1974) pp 75–77 Google Scholar. Cambridge MS Gonville and Caius College 175–96 is fifteenth-century; James, M. R., A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Gonville and Caius College 2 vols (Cambridge 1907) 1 pp 199–201 Google Scholar. Cambridge MS, University Library Ff.II.38 is dated late in the reign of Henry VI: Richardson, F. E., Sir Eglamour of Artois, EETS OS 256 (London 1965) p xii.Google Scholar
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63 The Auchinleck Manuscript National Library of Scotland Advocates’ MS. 19.2.1, introduced by Pearsall, D. and Cunningham, I. C. (London 1977) p x Google Scholar.
64 Examples of this are: Passio Sanete Katerine by an unidentified Richard, Cambridge MS Corpus Christi College 375, ff 1r-54r; Bodley MS Laud Misc. 515, f 109r-116r.
65 Simulacra was favoured, as the word for idols, by Richard, Cambridge MS Corpus Christi College 375, f 11r-v, but the author of the passion in Bodley MS Laud Misc. 515 prefered periphrastic expressions: ‘Statuasque precantur Supplicibusque putant inflectere marmora verbis’: ibid f 110r.
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67 Auban, Saint pp xii–xiii, xvii Google Scholar.
68 MP 3 pp 352–361.
69 Riley-Smith, , Crusades: Idea and Reality pp 19–34 Google Scholar.
70 Ibid p 34.
71 Southern, , Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages p 38 Google Scholar.
72 Hudson, A. Selections from English Wycliffite Writings, (Cambridge 1978) p 107.Google Scholar
73 Ibid pp 19, 23; Wycliffe, John, Two Short Treatises, against the Orders of the Begging Friars, Iames, T. (Oxford 1608) p 12.Google Scholar
74 Russell-Smith, J., ‘Walter Hilton and a Tract in Defence of the Veneration of Images,’ Dominican Studies 7 (1954) p 200.Google Scholar
