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The patron saint of spinners and spinsters
Catharine is the patron saint of scholars, educators, philosophers, and librarians, but also of wheelwrights, spinners, lacemakers, ropemakers, and of young unmarried women.
Writing this month’s feature on church wall paintings (see Lost and Found: wall paintings and rood screens in Welsh Churches) got Sherds thinking about the reasons for the popularity of St Catharine (other spellings are available!). She must rank with St Christopher as the saint most-frequently depicted in medieval wall paintings and stained glass. The Church of the Holy Rood in Woodeaton, Oxfordshire, has a 14th-century St Christopher with a Norman French inscription that explains why every church in Britain probably once had some representation of him on the north wall, facing the main entrance to the church. Ki cest image verra la jur de male mort ne murra, it says, meaning ‘Who looks
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