Her younger sister has rejected their father because he was born a Jew. Catherine she hates because, first of all, to her mind, Catherine received all the blessings and gifts - and always got her own way. Agnes has perverted that into a belief that the family (Agnes, herself) is being punished because Catherine rejected God (left the Paraclete/got her own away AGAIN).
Their mother has retreated from moral decision into madness and is confined to a convent. Hubert, their father, is tortured by his own sense of guilt and an almost hidden wish to return to the faith of his fathers.
Into all this stew, Hubert's much loved older brother, Eliazar, commits the worst crime a Jew can in a world dominated by the medieval Catholic church. Although inadvertently, he has converted a Christian to Judaism. This, if discovered, puts his family, and the entire Jewish community of Paris at risk. In fact, the risk is so great, that the Jewish community would have cast him out - or even put him to death and merely cast out the remainder of his family - if they had discovered.
Catherine is shaken to her core by this discovery, but by the end has regained her essential curiosity and a pragmatic faith that permits her to be aware of the physical cause of events, but to allow their interpretation as a miracle.
It is certainly an interesting view into the twelfth century mind. I think perhaps it fits with Arthur C. Clarke's observation that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." In the twelfth century, it would be viewed from the other end and, admittedly, not specifically related to technology. But, phenomena unexplainable by current knowledge must be interpreted as magic (or miracle).
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