Catherine Holland

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A seventeenth-century woman who used the familiar letter as an instrument both for religious understanding and for taking control of her own life, CH is known as a convent autobiographer. She also wrote other texts, few of which have survived: translated biographies, religious analysis of various kinds, and perhaps poetry.

Milestones

1637

CH was born, one of eleven children.
Durrant, Catherine S. A Link between Flemish Mystics and English Martyrs. Burns, Oates and Washbourne.
271

20 September 1664

CH , as a nun of hardly two weeks' standing, began writing the story of her conversion, by the order of her confessor.
Durrant, Catherine S. A Link between Flemish Mystics and English Martyrs. Burns, Oates and Washbourne.
271
CH writes the date thus, in a Protestant country which, like Britain, was then still using Old Style, but in a Catholic community, when Catholic countries were using New Style. The date she means may be one reckoned eleven days earlier in Britain.
Durrant, Catherine S. A Link between Flemish Mystics and English Martyrs. Burns, Oates and Washbourne.
272, 305

6 January 1720

CH died in her convent, the Nazareth Monastery in Bruges.
Durrant, Catherine S. A Link between Flemish Mystics and English Martyrs. Burns, Oates and Washbourne.
305
Latz, Dorothy L., editor. “Neglected Writings by Recusant Women”. Neglected English Literature: Recusant Writings of the 16th-17th Centuries, Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg.
25

1925

CH 's autobiography first saw print in abridged form, more than two centuries after her death, in Catherine S. Durrant 's A Link Between Flemish Mystics and English Martyrs.
Durrant, Catherine S. A Link between Flemish Mystics and English Martyrs. Burns, Oates and Washbourne.
title-page
Latz, Dorothy L., editor. “Neglected Writings by Recusant Women”. Neglected English Literature: Recusant Writings of the 16th-17th Centuries, Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg.
45n18

Biography

Birth and Family

1637

CH was born, one of eleven children.
Durrant, Catherine S. A Link between Flemish Mystics and English Martyrs. Burns, Oates and Washbourne.
271

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