ABSTRACT
This chapter examines two translations only recently attributed with confidence to Catherine of Saint Magdalen, a Poor Clare from the English convent at Gravelines. One of the most published female translators of the early seventeenth century, Evelinge's considerable spiritual and literary contributions to English Catholicism merit scholarly attention. Not only do Evelinge's works illuminate the ways Franciscan spirituality informed learning at Gravelines, but they also participated in contemporary attempts to restore and define English Franciscanism both at Gravelines and beyond. The convent's mixture of Franciscan and Ignatian spiritual modes only became a source of discord after the English Franciscan friars gained jurisdiction of the Gravelines convent in 1618. Evelinge's translation of The Declarations was also an official expression of Franciscanism that heightened the order's respectability among English Catholics. Evelinge's translation also had an intra-Catholic partisan edge, since it presents Franciscanism as the best possible means of waging the battle against heresy.
