ERRATA, CORRIGENDA AND JUST PLAIN GOOFS

When I wrote DEATH COMES AS EPIPHANY, ten years ago, I was just starting my second trip through graduate school. Since then I’ve been studying and learning more and more about the twelfth century. In doing so, I’m found that some of the things I put into this book weren’t accurate. Now this doesn’t stop movie producers or politicians, but just in case any of you are basing dinner arguments on my information, I want us to get it right.

First of all, I wish I hadn’t bothered to give Catherine a last name. Family names weren’t commonly used then, even by the nobility. Catherine’s father might have been called Hubert LeVendeur to distinguish him from other Huberts but the name wouldn’t have been used by other family members. But it was not a legal name used in all situations. Also, if I’d skipped the LeVendeur name, I wouldn’t have had to answer the people who wanted to know why she didn’t change it when she married. The practice of a woman taking her husband’s name at marriage (or her father’s last name at birth) is fairly recent and seems to be mostly from Northern Europe. Anyone know when it started? Drop me a line and share.

In Epiphany the mistake I’m most embarrassed about is when Catherine distracts the family from Edgar’s escape by pretending that her rope burns were stigmata. Well, this was supposed to be 1138 and the first case of stigmata was in Saint Francis of Assisi, who wouldn’t be born for another forty-three years. So the likelihood is that, even if Catherine had started to bleed from all five wounds her family would have just thought she’d had a bad fall. After this book came out a friend of mine who specializes in Jewish life in the Middle Ages took me to task for Catherine’s easy acceptance of her father’s Jewish heritage. He was quite right. Catherine had been taught by Abelard, who was very sympathetic to the Jews, and she had been raised around her Jewish relatives, even though she didn’t know they were kin. However, this was not a secular society and she honestly believed that heaven was open only to Christians. Therefore, she would have had a much more emotional reaction to the news, even if she had later learned to accept it. In THE DEVIL’S DOOR, her sister, Agnes, learns of the family heritage and her revulsion is more in line with what would have been normal. In later books I do show Catherine’s grief at her father’s and cousin’s refusal to become Christians, but she will always love them. This is in keeping with her training and her heart.

Finally, I know that I made errors in my description of the building of Saint Denis. Architecture is my weakest area of study. I just can’t visualize three dimensions from two. I will be happy to hear from anyone who can make it clear to me. I hope that these mistakes do not detract from your enjoyment of the book. -Sharan