01 — Foundations

The source-critical and historical ground of the whole collection. This section opens with the flagship statement of the Catherine source problem — that there is no firm written attestation of her before roughly the ninth or tenth century — and sets the traditional Alexandrian setting against it. Everything that follows is read in the light established here.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Great-Martyr)

This section establishes the two foundations on which the collection rests: the honest source-critical frame, and the historically real setting the late legend invokes. The Source Problem is the flagship — a dated inventory of the sources as artifacts, the recensions of the Greek Passio, the Menologion of Basil II and Symeon Metaphrastes, and the conclusion that the Passio “provides no evidence that Katherine ever existed as a living person.” Alexandria and the Tradition sets out the city of learning and the age of persecution in which the legend is set — a real stage for a late drama.

Section Contents

• The Source Problem — FLAGSHIP: the Passio is late, with no firm attestation before c. 9th–10th century; the dated source inventory; the recensions; the historicity question foregrounded per METHODOLOGY §3.5
• Alexandria and the Tradition — the traditional setting: Alexandria as the city of learning, the Diocletianic persecution, the learned noble virgin, and the disputed emperor

See Also

• The Absence of Early Evidence — the second flagship, on the missing early evidence
• The Narrative — the legend whose setting this section describes
• Modern Scholarship — the scholarship grounding the source-critical reading
• The Xenia Methodology Flagship — the repository’s model for the thinly-sourced saint
• METHODOLOGY.md — the citation and attestation standard

References

• Walsh, Christine. The Cult of St Katherine of Alexandria in Early Medieval Europe. Ashgate, 2007.
• Farmer, David Hugh. The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, s.v. “Catherine of Alexandria.”
• Menologion of Basil II (Synaxarion), Vat. gr. 1613, c. 976–1000.
• Eusebius of Caesarea. Ecclesiastical History 8.14.
• METHODOLOGY.md §3.5, this repository.