Spiritual Teachings by Catherine of Siena in BL Harley 2409: An Edition

Abstract

London, British Library, MS Harley 2409, written in the first half of the fifteenth century, contains a text that has come to be referred to as “long Version C” of The Cleanness of Soul, and which for some time has been considered as based on Catherine of Siena’s Dialogo. The latter, however, is wrong, as Jennifer N. Brown (2015) has recently shown. Part of the text is probably based on William Flete’s Documento spirituale, and it is this part which may most correctly be referred to as Cleanness of Soul. It is extant in three versions, of which Version C survives in Harley 2409 and in five other manuscripts. The version in Harley, however, contains additional material from elsewhere. I shall offer a brief discussion of the whole text, its sources and its textual affiliations as well as the first critical edition of what in this long version may more generally be called “Spiritual Teachings by Catherine of Siena”.