ABSTRACT
For many historians of the medieval West, the period between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries is to be seen in terms of the ‘shaping’ or ‘making’ of Europe. More specifically, the model of outward growth and expansion from a notional ‘core’ to relatively under-settled or under-governed peripheries has been deservedly influential. The main narrative elements of the Passio of St Katherine as established by the eleventh century are easily summarised. In any case, the cult of St Katherine was probably already known in the Latin world before the composition of Latin Passio texts. The attractions of St Katherine to men and women in eleventh- and twelfth-century Norman worlds could thus be extensive and multifarious. Her willingness to suffer imprisonment provided a prototype for female monastic vocations. The growing cult of St Katherine encapsulated the tendencies and modes of expression of monastic spirituality in the Anglo-Norman and Norman worlds.
