"If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it." - Margaret Fuller
It is St Catherine’s Day today and for reasons that shall become obvious, it is also the International Day to object to Violence Against Women. St Catherine was an Alexandrian princess who was baptised a Christian secretly. When her father arranged for her to marry a pagan prince, she refused. She was condemned to be broken on a spiked wheel (the “Catherine Wheel”) in approximately 310 AD.
She is the patron saint of carters, spinners and spinsters. These workers celebrated her day by drinking hot ale and eating pies:
Rise, maidens, rise Bake your Cattern pies Bake enough and bake no waste And let the Bellman have a taste.
Also lacemakers claim her for her own as she was confused with Queen Catherine of Aragon who burned all her lace and ordered new when times were hard, thus supporting the lacemakers. Lacemakers jumped for luck over a lit candle on this day:
Kit be nimble, Kit be quick Kit jump o’er the candlestick.
The flower associated with St Catherine is love-in-a-mist, Nigella damascena. However, An Early Calendar of English Flowers, associates the laurel with this Saint.
Soon the laurel alone is greene When Catherine crownes all learned menne.
Incidentally, a “poet laureate” indicates the old custom of crowning great poets and winners of poetical competitions in ancient times with laurel. A Bachelors degree is derived from this crowning with laurel, also. Bachelor is derived from baccalaureatus i.e. “berry laurelled”, hence “Catherine, crowning all learned men”. Here is a painting by Cenni di Francesco di Ser Cenni: “Saint Catherine Disputing” ca. 1380 Tempera on wood, gold ground , Metropolitan Museum of Art)
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