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The Knights of St. Catherine
The records of the mediæval Western
Church and of some of the royal bureaucracies
mention in passing that certain knights
were "of St. Catherine" or "of the Order
of St. Catherine". Although the oldest
instances of this usage are uninformative,
by the late Middle Ages it was possible
for an upper-class traveller to obtain this
title by making the famously arduous
pilgrimage to
the Monastery of
St. Catherine near
Mount Sinai, or the considerably
easier one to
St. Catherine's Church, Bethlehem.
The Monastery of St. Catherine undertook extensive fund-raising
campaigns in the mediæval West, and was directly
responsible for the initial spread of the cult of
St. Catherine in Roman Catholic territory (although
the monastery itself was always Orthodox). Not surprisingly,
several of the documented Knights of St. Catherine seem
to have acted as local sponsors for these projects, and, though
probably not secretly Orthodox themselves, were at least
friends of Orthodoxy in an hostile environment.
A number of separate Orthodox and Roman Catholic
authorities considered themselves empowered to bestow the
title; the Abbot of Sinai knighted someone as recently as 1956.
Sometimes the leaders of pilgrimages themselves
would knight their followers as "Knights of St. Catherine";
some pilgrims seem to have simply knighted each other,
or themselves. Apparently it was the pilgrimage itself
which validated the knighthood.
Tradition, however, asserts that
in earlier times the Order was more than
an honourary decoration, that it was a real "Order"
like the Hospitallers or Templars. Antiquaries of the
late XVII and early XVIII Centuries published detailed
accounts of the Order. Its knights were said to
have followed the Rule
of St. Basil (but without the requirement of celibacy;
the knights were married men who served two-year shifts
in the desert).
They guarded the Monastery
and its caravan-lines in the Crusader period or
even earlier, and were vaguely associated with
the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, into which the Palestine
branch of the Knights of St. Catherine was eventually
absorbed. There is no hard evidence to support any of these claims,
and all of the historically documented Knights
lived well after the Crusades;
on the other hand, the tradition
does not seem particularly far-fetched or anachronistic,
and many historians accept that the Knights of St. Catherine
at least aspired to have an organised conventual life in
the Holy Land, whether or not they ever actually attempted it.
--- Norman Hugh Redington
Under construction --- far from complete! Read with caution.
- ABOUT:
- Names of Some Known (and Alleged) Knights:
X Century
- Richard I the Fearless, Duke of Normandy:
Although sometimes listed as a Knight of St.
Catherine in secondary sources, Richard Sans
Peur, so far as I can tell, has only a single, tenuous link
to Sinai. According to one of the many mediæval
romances in which he figures, he encountered a band of
ghost-knights (riding a flying carpet!) whose job,
apparently, was to expiate their sins by waging posthumous
supernatural warfare against demons. This greatly appealed
to Richard, who wanted to enlist. Although as a living man
this was not permitted him, the ghost-knights flew him from
the Seine to St. Catherine's Monastery (where he prayed through
the night while his supernatural companions were
fighting in the desert)
and brought him back the next morning. At Sinai, a visiting
French pilgrim who had been given up for dead by his wife
gave Richard half of a wedding band, forestalling the wife's remarriage
and proving that the incident was real and no dream. It is
possible to give many incidents in this story a figurative
or spiritual interpretation, some with a specific Sinai
connection, but as historical evidence its value would seem
limited.
- XV Century:
- Anselme Adornes: A merchant-prince
of Bruges who travelled the known world; his colourful
life has been dramatised in a series of historical novels by
Dorothy Dunnett and in a Belgian movie. He was knighted
at Sinai. As advisor to James III of Scotland, he
was blamed for the loss of Berwick and hanged by the king's
opponents in 1483; his body is in Bruges' famous Eastern-influenced
Kerk van Jeruzalem.
- Graf Philipp von Katzenellenbogen
- Pedro Sánchez de Mena of Burgos
- Detlev Schinkel:
A pilgrim from Schleswig
who reached both Sinai and St. Anthony's hermitage
in Upper Egypt in 1436. At the latter site, he left
heraldic graffiti including the arms of the Knights
of St. Catherine.
- Jakob Truchseß
- Simón Vázquez of Castile
- Lambrecht van den Walle:
Travelled with
Anselme Adornes.
- XVI Century:
- Martin von Baumgarten: Author of a well-known
early travel-book, Peregrinatio in Ægyptum,
Arabiam, Palestinam, et Syriam. He was knighted at Sinai
in 1507.
- M. Daubray, Baron de Bruyeres:
Secretary to the King of France.
He was
a source for the antiquarian writers late in the century.
- Estêvão da Gama:
The son of Vasco da Gama
and leader of a Portuguese attack on Ottoman ports in the Red Sea.
He made several of his men Knights of St. Catherine
at the monastery after raiding at-Tur in 1541.
- XX Century:
- Wendell Phillips: Knighted in Cairo by Abp.
Porphyrius III of Sinai. A controversial American businessman,
adventurer, and self-taught archæologist who is
said to have been the prototype for Indiana Jones,
Phillips led an expedition to Sinai in 1951.
- William B. Terry:
A member of Phillips's expedition.
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