674, 1022, and 2373. It has been published from the Harl. MS. 1022
by Professor C. Horstman, who observes that "it is very old, and
certainly prior to Walter Hilton."[9] It is evidently by one of the
followers of Richard Rolle, dating from about the middle of the
fourteenth century. External and internal evidence seems to point to
its being the work of the anonymous author of the Divine Cloud of
Unknowing.

This is not the place to tell again the wonderful story of St.
Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), one of the noblest and most truly
heroic women that the world has ever seen. Her life and manifold
activities only touched England indirectly. The famous English
captain of mercenaries, Sir John Hawkwood, was among the men of the
world who, at least for a while, were won to nobler ideals by her
letters and exhortations. Two of her principal disciples, Giovanni
Tantucci and William Flete, both Augustinian hermits, were graduates
of Cambridge; the latter, an Englishman by birth, was appointed by
her on her deathbed to preside over the continuance of her work in
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