Our CATIMA database is currently under construction. The database draws upon a range of textual materials: 14th- and 15th-century saints’ lives and legendaries in Middle English, Latin, and Anglo-Norman, and manuscript collections of northern hagiographies, as well some evidence from late medieval material culture, including stained glass programmes, statuary, shrine architecture, and manuscript illuminations
We have categorised our data by saint, but also according to manuscript, text-type, object-type, language, hagiographer (where known), geographical area, and date. As such the database will provide up-to-date information on key northern saints (including their literary traditions and presence in extant manuscripts), but through its structure and built-in multi-layered maps it will also allow for cross-referencing and geographical visualisation of northern saints’ cults (as expressed in literary narratives, kalendars, art, dedications, etc).
Overall, our approach includes data on both literary and material geographies of northern sanctity, cross-referencing of which will shed important light on the multifaceted significance of region and nation to late medieval devotion to saints from the north of England. The model and its results are also intended to prompt reflection on these themes and their various medieval articulations more broadly in England and further afield.
