her native city, and a vision of his, concerning the legitimacy of
the claims of Urban the Sixth to the papal throne, was brought
forward as one of the arguments that induced England, on the
outbreak of the Great Schism in the Church (1378), to adhere to the
Roman obedience for which Catherine was battling to the death. A
letter which she herself addressed on the same subject to King
Richard the Second has not been preserved.

About 1493, Wynkyn de Worde printed The Lyf of saint Katherin of
Senis the blessid virgin, edited by Caxton; which is a free
translation, by an anonymous Dominican, with many omissions and the
addition of certain reflections, of the Legenda, the great Latin
biography of St. Catherine by her third confessor, Friar Raymond of
Capua, the famous master-general and reformer of the order of St.
Dominic (d. 1399). He followed this up, in 1519, by an English
rendering by Brother Dane James of the Saint's mystical treatise the
Dialogo: "Here begynneth the Orcharde of Syon; in the whiche is
conteyned the reuelacyons of seynt Katheryne of Sene, with ghostly
fruytes and precyous plantes for the helthe of mannes soule."[10]
This was not translated from St. Catherine's own vernacular, but
from Friar Raymond's Latin version of the latter, first printed at
Brescia in 1496. From the first of these two works, the Lyf, are
selected the passages--the Divers Doctrines devout and
fruitful--which Pepwell here presents to us; but it seems probable
that he was not borrowing directly from Caxton, as an almost
verbally identical selection, with an identical title, is found in
the British Museum, MS. Reg. 17 D.V., where it follows the Divine
Cloud of Unknowing.

Margery Kempe is a much more mysterious personage. She has come down
to us only in a tiny quarto of eight pages printed by Wynkyn de
Worde:--

"Here begynneth a shorte treatyse of contemplacyon taught by our
lorde Jhesu cryste, or taken out of the boke of Margerie kempe of
Lynn."

And at the end:--

"Here endeth a shorte treatyse called Margerie kempe de Lynn.
Enprynted in Fletestrete by Wynkyn de worde."

The only known copy is preserved in the University of Cambridge. It
is undated, but appears to have been printed in 1501.[11] With a few
insignificant variations, it is the same as was printed twenty years
later by Pepwell, who merely inserts a few words like "Our Lord
Jesus said unto her," or "she said," and adds that she was a devout
ancress. Tanner, n