THE LIFE OF SAINT KATHERINE, PROLOGUE: FOOTNOTES

1 Lines 5-8: They look to you with all their heart; / Their love, their joy, is so earnestly fixed on you, / Lord, that they cannot stop pursuing and following you

2 For if he fails [to receive his request], it (what he asked for) is not for his profit

3 To seek your life (biography) for eighteen years

4 Thus the [story of] your life was kept locked up (little known)

THE LIFE OF SAINT KATHERINE, PROLOGUE: NOTES

8 Thou ledyst the daunce. According to the OED,"to lead the dance" is a figurative expression meaning"to take the lead in any course of action" (dance, 6a). However, the rejoicing of the saints in heaven is often represented as a dance. See, for example, The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. Lynn Staley (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1996), p. 60, line 1150, and p. 62, lines 1199-1200.

16-43 alle the privileges . . . / . . . thi loveris alle. Following Jacobus de Voragine's Legenda aurea, Capgrave presents Katherine as a sort of omnibus saint, who has obtained all the favors God has granted his other saints, including John the Evangelist (Jesus visited his deathbed), Nicholas of Myra (oil flowed from his grave), the Apostle Paul (blood mixed with milk ran from his severed throat), Margaret of Antioch (God promised to honor requests made in her name), and Clement of Alexandria (angels adorned his grave). That Margaret, Clement, Paul, and Nicholas are mentioned is not accidental, for these are the saints with whom Katherine is most frequently paired in medieval iconography. For a translation of Jacobus de Voragine's Katherine legend, which was the most widely known life of that virgin martyr in the late Middle Ages, see The Golden Legend, trans. William Granger Ryan, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 2.334-41.

59 all that scharp whele. An allusion to the emperor Maxentius' attempt to mangle Katherine with a torture instrument consisting of revolving spiked wheels. See 5.1240-1400.

62 Ryth for straungenesse of his derk langage. This story of how Katherine's Life must be transcribed from an illegible source bears a striking resemblance to the story of the genesis of Margery Kempe's Book.

78-112 a revelacyoun / . . . God ofte sythe. The priest's vision is a humorous reenactment of Ezekiel 2:8-3:3, in which a heavenly messenger commands the prophet to eat a scroll. Unlike Capgrave's priest, Ezekiel does as he is told without protest. A nearly identical incident occurs in Revelation 10:8-10; John, like Ezekiel, immediately swallows the scroll.

101 clospe ne hook. The covers of medieval manuscripts were often equipped with clasps and hooks.

119-26 Amylion fytz Amarak . . . / . . . ye schall more clere. Capgrave places Amilion's discovery of the MS in the 1360s, during the reign of Peter I of Cyprus and the papacy of Urban V.

143 all the sevene artes. Defined by Martianus Capella in the fifth century, the Seven Liberal Arts was an educational curriculum consisting of the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, dialectic) and the quadrivium (music, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy). Capgrave details Katherine's pursuit of this curriculum in 1.302-99. For more on the subject, see David L. Wagner, ed., The Seven Liberal Arts in the Middle Ages (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983).

150 be is repeated in MS.

163-68 Byschop in Alysaunder . . . / . . . syng and rede. Capgrave is identifying Athanasius with the fourth-century theologian and bishop of Alexandria who, according to longstanding tradition, originally composed Katherine's passion. Mech adversyté (line 165) refers to Athanasius' struggle to discredit the views of the Alexandrian priest Arius, who denied the divinity of Christ. Because Arianism was favored by emperors at the time, Athanasius was repeatedly forced into exile. Apparently eager to anticipate all questions, Capgrave admits he does not know whether Katherine's biographer also wrote the so-called "Athanasian Creed," which was recited during prime, one of the eight liturgical hours that structured communal worship in medieval religious houses.

198 A hundred yere aftyr. Capgrave is attributing Arrek's Latin translation to the late fifth century (somewhat more than a century after Athanasius' death in 373).

236-38 that hevynly reyne / That Apollo bare abowte . . . / . . . mannes soule. Apollos was a learned Alexandrian convert (Acts 18:24-28) whom Paul commends for "watering," or nourishing, the newly sown Christian community at Corinth (1 Corinthians 3:5-9).