A wave of enthusiasm for St. Katherine now swept across Europe. Her name was inscribed on the local Norman Kalendar,[237] her story was written and re-written in Latin and in the vernacular, in prose and in verse. A Latin version was the work of Amandus, a pupil of Isambert of Trèves, and a semi-Saxon version was written during the reign of Henry II. An early French version of about 1200 was perhaps the work of a nun. There were a host of others, many of which are in MS. and await tabulation.[238] All accounts conclude with the translation of the body to Sinai; the earlier ones dwell on the oil, a cure for all ills. And the story was not only read. In 1119 Geoffroy of Gorham came from Paris to Dunstable and wrote a _Ludus de Katerina_, which was performed by his scholars, on which occasion the clothes that had been borrowed, took fire and were burnt. Churches and chapels were now built and placed under the protection of the saint. In 1148 Queen Matilda founded the hospital and church of St. Katherine near the Tower which continued till 1825, when it was destroyed to make room for the docks. In 1229 King Louis of France built a church of St. Katherine in Paris, which had been vowed by his knights at the Battle of Bouvines. First the University of Paris, and then the University of Padua, accepted St. Katherine as its patron saint, and in the year 1307 the Doge Pietro Gradenigo founded the _Festa dei Dotti_ in Venice, in honour of her. The numerous incidents in her story supplied pictorial art with a new cycle of subjects. The scene of the martyrdom and translation to Sinai were first represented on small pictures of a great panel painted by Margaritone d’Arezzo (1216-93), which is now in the National Gallery. In Sinai itself the importance of St. Katherine was more tardily recognised. We look in vain for mention of her in the account of the _Anonymous Pilgrim_ of the eleventh century, and in the booklet _On the Holy Places_, which Fretellus, archdeacon of Antioch, wrote for the Count of Toulouse about the year 1130. It is not till the year 1216, when Magister Thietmar visited Sinai that we hear of the exhibition to a pilgrim of the relics which had now been translated from the height of the mountain to the convent church. CHAPTER XIV SINAI DURING THE CRUSADES VARIOUS circumstances combined to raise the convent of Sinai to great prosperity during the early Middle Ages. On the one side it received regular contributions in money from Europe; on the other it attracted the attention of the pilgrims owing to the increasing fame of St. Katherine. Further it secured the direct protection of the Moslim rulers of Egypt owing to a development in trade.