Music and Gender in the Medieval Cult of St. Katherine of Alexandria c.1050-1300

Abstract

The widespread uniformity of ritual chant for St. Katherine in late medieval sources suggests that its history had always been characterized by stability and consistency. A study of eleventh- and twelfth-century sources, however, reveals an earlier diversity of liturgical practice. Liturgies for St. Katherine adhered to three distinct but porous traditions, each with a systematically composed office at its foundation. Although these chant families would extend across Europe and the boards of the Mediterranean Sea, they were all created contemporaneously in close proximity to medieval Rouen. Moreover, a broad study and organization of sources reveals the communal practices of the monastery of Ste-Catherine, Rouen, which held St. Katherine’s relics, and the liturgical office composed by the monk Ainard, despite claims that his music has been lost or that he composed a prose vita of St. Katherine, not a liturgical office. Musical-liturgical sources also clarify the role of the Crusades in the dissemination of devotion to St. Katherine. They demonstrate that liturgical devotion to St. Katherine in the Kingdom of Jerusalem was western in origin and that the Crusades and their accompanying movement of individuals and growth of organizations were a vehicle through which reverence for St. Katherine circulated in multiple directions. Considering the offices for St. Katherine in the context of the Crusades and ecclesiastical reform, this dissertation theorizes a gendered reading of the offices and their transmissions. It argues that members of the Knights Templar and the nuns of Fontevraud, particularly those associated with the comital family of Anjou/the royal family of Jerusalem appear to have taken an interest in promoting the nascent cult, possibly because of the complicated representations of gender within the St. Katherine liturgies that may have resonated with their own non-normative gender performance.