A wave of enthusiasm for St. Katherine now swept across Europe. Her name was inscribed on the local Norman Kalendar,[237] her story was written and re-written in Latin and in the vernacular, in prose and in verse. A Latin version was the work of Amandus, a pupil of Isambert of Trèves, and a semi-Saxon version was written during the reign of Henry II. An early French version of about 1200 was perhaps the work of a nun. There were a host of others, many of which are in MS. and await tabulation.[238] All accounts conclude with the translation of the body to Sinai; the earlier ones dwell on the oil, a cure for all ills. And the story was not only read. In 1119 Geoffroy of Gorham came from Paris to Dunstable and wrote a Ludus de Katerina, which was performed by his scholars, on which occasion the clothes that had been borrowed, took fire and were burnt.
Churches and chapels were now built and placed under the protection of the saint. In 1148 Queen Matilda founded the hospital and church of St. Katherine near the Tower which continued till 1825, when it was destroyed to make room for the docks. In 1229 King Louis of France built a church of St. Katherine in Paris, which had been vowed by his knights at the Battle of Bouvines. First the University of Paris, and then the University of Padua, accepted St. Katherine as its patron saint, and in the year 1307 the Doge Pietro Gradenigo founded the Festa dei Dotti in Venice, in honour of her. The numerous incidents in her story supplied pictorial art with a new cycle of subjects. The scene of the martyrdom and translation to Sinai were first represented on small pictures of a great panel painted by Margaritone d’Arezzo (1216-93), which is now in the National Gallery.
In Sinai itself the importance of St. Katherine was more tardily recognised. We look in vain for mention of her in the account of the Anonymous Pilgrim of the eleventh century, and in the booklet On the Holy Places, which Fretellus, archdeacon of Antioch, wrote for the Count of Toulouse about the year 1130. It is not till the year 1216, when Magister Thietmar visited Sinai that we hear of the exhibition to a pilgrim of the relics which had now been translated from the height of the mountain to the convent church.
CHAPTER XIV
SINAI DURING THE CRUSADES
VARIOUS circumstances combined to raise the convent of Sinai to great prosperity during the early Middle Ages. On the one side it received regular contributions in money from Europe; on the other it attracted the attention of the pilgrims owing to the increasing fame of St. Katherine. Further it secured the direct protection of the Moslim rulers of Egypt owing to a development in trade.
When the Arabs conquered Egypt, the desire arose for a direct communication by water to Arabia, and the fresh-water canal which connected the Nile with the Red Sea was cleared. Corn was now shipped on the Nile for Djar, the port of Medina, where goods coming from India and China were disembarked and re-shipped for Egypt. But owing to a dispute between the ruler of Egypt and his uncle at Medina, in the year 775, the port of Djar was closed to the Egyptians. The ships bearing Eastern goods for Egypt for a time landed at Roman Clysma, near Suez, which secured a new lease of life as Arabic Kolzoum. But Kolzoum like Arsinoë, silted up, while Suez as a port was not yet in being. On the west coast of the peninsula of Sinai lay Raithou, near which a landing stage offered the advantages of a natural harbour. Ships therefore landed near Raithou, called Raya by the Arabs, where the goods were transferred to camel-back for conveyance to Cairo and Alexandria.
The monks of the convent of Sinai were in direct connection with the monks at Raithou, who owned large palm groves, and doubtless controlled the landing stage. For the place which here grew up came to be known as Tur, an Arabic word signifying height, which was first applied to the convent of Sinai. Mukaddisi (c. 985) mentioned Tur Sina and noted that the Christians had a convent there, and some well-cultivated fields, and olive trees of great excellence.[239] The Christians called it Porta Santa Katerina or simply Santa Katerina (1383). The use of Tur as a port brought the Sultan of Egypt into relation with the monks, and acted as a safeguard to the convent.