Klöster im Hochmittelalter

112 I Claire Taylor Jones

Catherine's forceful personality, however, was never felt in German-speaking
territories. The northern branch of the Dominican Observance ascribed its
foundation not to Catherine but to the German friar Conrad of Prussia and
celebrated no comparably charismatic female figure.4 With no native German
women to serve as a Dominican figurehead, Catherine was thus all the more
important for the Southern German movement not on the strength of her per-
sonality but instead as mediated through literature that depicted her form of life,
her activities, and her piety. The Italian partisans of the Observance had already
begun to refashion Catherine of Siena into an exemplar of Observant values.5
Since Catherine's own writings and the Miracoli were never translated into Ger-
man, her influence on the German lands was mediated through texts about her
composed in Latin by Italian Observant Dominicans.
Three such texts concerning her did achieve fairly wide distribution in Ger-
man-speaking Europe, but the German reception of Catherine as an inspira-
tional holy figure was complicated by the fact that the models promoted in Ital-
ian cities did not always suit the German (or any) context. The Legenda maior,
the Third Order or Penitent Rule, and the liturgical office Inmortali laude fol-
lowed unexpected paths of dissemination and use. Raymond of Capua wrote his
account of Catherine's life, the Legenda maior, in order to support her canon-
ization.6 Its most widespread German translation, Der geistliche Rosengarten,
was initially circulated among the pious laity, whose lives may have resembled
Catherine's own, but by the end of the century, it was popular as devotional
reading for nuns. Similarly, Tommaso Caffarini's rule for the so-called Third
Order of Penitents does seem anecdotally to have governed pious laypeople in
southern Germany, but the German translation survives only from houses of
Observant Dominican nuns. Finally, the liturgical office for Catherine's feast,
composed by the Observant Dominican humanist Tommaso Schifaldo, was

4 The foundational essay on the development of the Observance in Germany is Eugen Hill-
enbrand, Die Observantenbewegung in der deutschen Ordensprovinz der Dominikaner,
in: Reformbemühungen und Observanzbestrebungen im spätmittelalterlichen Ordenswe-
sen (Berliner historische Studien 14/Ordensstudien 6), ed. by Kaspar Elm, Berlin 1989,
pp. 219-271.

5 Sylvie Duval, The Observance's Women. New Models of Sanctity and Religious Discipline
for the Female Dominican Observant Movement during the Fifteenth Century, in: Religious
Orders and Religious Identity Formation, ca. 1420-1620. Discourses and Strategies of Ob-
servance and Pastoral Engagement, ed. by Bert RoEST/Johanneke Uphoff (The Medieval
Franciscans 13), Leiden/Boston 2016, pp. 13-31, esp. pp. 14-18; F. Thomas Luongo, The
Historical Reception of Catherine of Siena, in: A Companion to Catherine of Siena (as in
note 1), pp. 23-45, esp. pp. 26-29.

6 Ann W. Astell, Heroic Virtue in Blessed Raymond of Capua's Life of Catherine of Siena, in:
Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 42 (2012), pp. 35-57.