04 — The Mystical Marriage Tradition

The later Western “Mystical Marriage of St Catherine” — the vision in which the Christ Child places a ring on her finger — and how it differs from the spare Eastern emphasis on the Great-Martyr. This section distinguishes the versions per METHODOLOGY §4 and traces the legend’s growth from a bare kernel to an elaborate romance.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Great-Martyr)

This section treats the most famous late development of the legend. East and West distinguishes the textual betrothal (the ring-vision, present in the Eastern Metaphrastic tradition) from the developed Western image-cult of the mystical marriage (literary from the early fourteenth century, in art from c. 1340), and keeps Catherine of Alexandria rigorously apart from Catherine of Siena. The Developing Legend traces the whole growth of the legend — the conversio prequel supplying her royal birth and conversion, the Golden Legend‘s fixing of the Western form, the painters’ completion of the image — reading the growth itself as evidence of construction.

Section Contents

• East and West — the Western mystical-marriage iconography and its difference from the Eastern tradition; distinguishing the versions per §4; the two Catherines (Alexandria and Siena)
• The Developing Legend — how the legend grew, layer upon layer, from the Menologion kernel to the conversio and the Renaissance marriage

See Also

• The Source Problem — the dated inventory of the legend’s layers
• Iconography — the visual tradition of the mystical marriage
• The Absence of Early Evidence — why the growth implies construction
• Modern Scholarship — the Golden Legend as transmission witness
• METHODOLOGY.md — §4 on distinguishing versions of a disputed tradition

References

• “Mystical marriage of Saint Catherine.” Wikipedia (the literary and artistic dating; the East/West distinction).
• Jacobus de Voragine. The Golden Legend, c. 1260. Trans. W. G. Ryan. Princeton University Press, 1993.
• Walsh, Christine. The Cult of St Katherine of Alexandria in Early Medieval Europe. Ashgate, 2007.
• “Catherine of Alexandria.” OrthodoxWiki (the Eastern conversio and ring-vision).