St Catherine of Siena - 1919 Alfred W Pollard

7/30/2019 St Catherine of Siena - 1919 Alfred W Pollard

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Messages of tbe SaintsEdited by Alfred W. Pollard

ST CATHERINE OF SIENA


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UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUMEST FRANCIS POVERELLO

By Laurence Housman(With an Introduction to the Series by

A. W. Pollard)BLESSED JOAN OF ARC

By A. Maude Royden


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ST CATHERINEOF SIENA *BY ALFRED W. POLLARD

LONDONSIDGWICK AND JACKSON LTD.3 ADAM STREET, ADELPH1, W.C.

1919


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PREFACEIt is hoped that this sketch of St Catherineof Siena may persuade any readers it mayobtain to turn for fuller knowledge of her toProfessor Edmund Gardner's Saint Catherineof Siena : a Study in the Religion, Literatureand History of the Fourteenth Century in Italy(J. M. Dent & Co., 1907), to which it is deeplyindebted ; to Matilde Fiorilli's edition ofthe Libro delta Divina Dottrina (Bari, Gius.Laterza & Figli, 191 2), or, failing that, to theEnglish translation of it by Algar Thorold(Kegan Paul & Co., 1896; second edition,abridged, 1907), and to her letters, either inthe originals or in Miss Vida D. Scudder'sEnglish selection from them (St Catherineof Siena as seen in her Letters. J. M. Dent &Co., 1905). In the present sketch there isnothing original, save possibly its point of


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vi PREFACEview and (I believe) the chapter on StCatherine's Book.

Since this note was written ProfessorGardner has added to my debt by readingmy proofs.

A. W. P.


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CHAPTER IPREPARATION

The saints have done many wonderful things,but few of their achievements strike theimagination more vividly than that of thewoman, the daughter of a Sienese dyer, solittle educated that until nearly the end ofher life she could not write her own letters,who brought back the Pope from Avignon toRome in the teeth of the College of Cardinals.Of her, as of her Master, the question mightwell have been asked : " By what authoritydoest thou these things?" To see for our-selves, as best we may, how St Catherinegained her authority, her power to influenceothers, is the problem before us. Nor is it oneof merely antiquarian or historical interest.She lived in days when greed and crueltyand lust made all Italy seethe with pain, asgreed and cruelty and lust have made all


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2 ST CATHERINE OF SIENAEurope seethe during the last five years.Her love could not overcome a world so benton evil, yet it was great, and while she livedshe helped many and went on helping themafter her death. In every century since shedied men and women have found her helpful,and perhaps she should be most helpful intimes so like her own.

Catherine Benincasa was born on LadyDay, 1347, the year before the Great Plague.She was a jolly little child, so bright andsunny in her ways that the neighbours allcalled her Euphrosyne (which, even in thepretty Italian form Eufrosina, seems a verylearned and classical way of praising her),and though she played her childish play atbeing an anchoress, creeping home at duskwhen nothing exciting happened, and sawher childish visionthe Lord Christ appar-elled as a Pope, with St Peter, St Paul andSt John, appearing in the sky over the greatChurch of San Domenico in the tanner'squarter of Sienashe seemed normal enoughto those around her. Despite the fact that


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PREPARATION 3she was the twenty-fourth child born of thesame mother she was strong, and in herprime could carry an ass's load up the steepto her house. According to her confessor-biographer (a truthful man,no doubt reportingwhat she had told him), when she was nomore than six she made up her mind to haveno husband, no betrothed, but Christ. Yetlater on, when she was approaching whatwas considered a marriageable age, she lether hair be dyed and dressed herself prettilyto please an elder sister, herself a wife, whomshe dearly loved, and this did not look likean ascetic. But in August, 1362, whenCatherine was four or five months overfifteen, this favourite sister, Bonaventura, wastaken from her by death ; Catherine's griefwas great, and it would seem as if theremembrance of her sister's counsels to heradded bitterness to it. She had come toone of the halting places of life, where roadsseparate, and had now no doubt as to whichwas hers.

In the strenuous city life of mediaeval Siena


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4 ST CATHERINE OF SIENAeven a moderately well-to-do dyer mightneed to strengthen his position by politicmarriages, and now that Bonaventura's deathhad weakened one bulwark, Catherine'sparents desired that she should marry a manwho might be used as another. But at thispoint Catherine's will, if it had ever wavered,was finally fixed : she would have no spousebut Christ. Her mother, Lapa, had a willalso, and resolved that as her daughter wouldnot marry she should work and have no timefor dreaming ; so Catherine was set to dothe drudgery of the house and given nosolitude, day or night. She submitted withpatience and something more. She " made be-lieve " (the childish phrase suits the simplicityof the story) that her father was the LordChrist, her mother Our Lady, her brothersand sisters the apostles. With such a tale inher head it became easy to serve them notmerely patiently, but joyfully ; and she didso. Of course after a little time her fathergave way. How could he do otherwise?He called the family together and declared


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PREPARATION 5his will that Catherine should no more bereproached, but be released from her drudgeryand given a little room to herself, to orderher own life there as she thought best.A sinner who writes about saints mustalways remember that there is probablymuch in them which his sins incapacitatehim from understanding, but to belittle thesaints by avoiding or minimising distastefulfacts is a poor kind of biography. Let itbe owned then that in the judgment ofthis lover of St Catherine she put her newlygained freedom to a bad use. For threeyears she lived the life of an anchoress in herlittle room, leaving it only to go to Mass,speaking to no one save her confessor, orthose whom her confessor brought to her.Moreover she tortured very cruelly the bodywhich God had given her. We are told thatshe had been wont to scourge herself severelyeven as a little child, and that when herparents, in order to win her to their views asto marriage, had sought to divert her withthe gaieties of the baths of Vignone, she had


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6 ST CATHERINE OF SIENAdeliberately scalded herself badly in order togain an insight into the pains of hell andpurgatory. When the freedom to rule herown life was given her she disciplined herselfmuch more severely, using the scourge threetimes a day, and wearing a steel chain whichcut her flesh. 1 She lived at first on bread andwater and herbs ; then on bread and wateralone ; then took hardly any food at all. Bya great effort she reduced her sleep alsoalmost to nothing, sometimes, it is said, to nomore than half-an-hour in two days. Shedesired earnestly to be accepted as one ofthe Mantellate, a society of women, mostlyof advanced age, who wore cloaks of Domin-ican black and white, and were under therule of the Order, though they continued tolive in their own homes. The Mantellateof Siena were naturally averse to receivingso young a postulant, but were induced

1 We may rejoice with Mr Gardner that she abstained frominflicting on herself a hair shirt, because it could not bekept clean. She was modern in refusing to believe thatholiness could be enhanced by dirt.


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PREPARATION 7to consentif she were not too pretty.Catherine's biographers are agreed that theattraction of her face lay in no sensuouscharm, but we are told that the conditionthe Mantellate imposed was the more easilysatisfied as she was just then recovering froman illness which had greatly, though only fora time, disfigured her. Her acceptance by theMantellate is best dated early in 1363, andthis suggests that her austerities even by thistime were telling on her. Soon she was neverfree from pain, though she took little heedof it and never let it disturb her cheerfulness.The one pain which she seems to have foundintolerable was that brought on by takingfood, so that when the extremity of her fastbecame a subject of angry comment, as if shefasted more than others for her own glory, orwere claiming to live miraculously withoutfood, and she tried to avoid scandal byeating when she knew she was observed, shewas driven afterwards to excite vomitingartificially.To what degree self-isolation, the torture


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PREPARATION 9unflinchingly till she found a better onethen she gave it up to a considerable extentfor herself, and wrote of it with much wisdomand insight to help others.

Catherine tortured her body in the beliefthat she could thereby help to expiate notonly her own sins, but the sins of those whomshe loved, and of all the world. The charityof her motive did not suffice to save her fromthe horrible reactions with which the bodyrepays those who torture it. Fra Raimondowrote that she had " renewed the ancientworks of the Fathers of Egypt," and like theEgyptian hermits she suffered, before herthree years of seclusion were ended, intoler-able anguish from obscene visions which filledher little room with horror, and in one greatassault drove her from it to the church.Even there the foul shapes pursued her untilshe lifted up her heart in the cry : " I havechosen suffering for my consolation and willgladly bear these and all other torments inthe name of the Saviour," when at last thehorrors disappeared. The words of her cry


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10 ST CATHERINE OF SIENAwere a remembrance of some which had cometo her in a vision in which Christ Himselfhad seemed to encourage her to welcomesuffering, for already she had many visionsof Christ and at times these were so intimatethat it seemed as if He were pacing her littleroom by her side, reciting the Psalter withher, verse for verse, as one religious woulddo with another. These happy visions cul-minated in one on the last day of the Carnivalin 1366, when the Lord, in the presence ofHis Blessed Mother, and of St John, St Pauland St Dominic and the prophet David(playing on his psaltery), espoused her toHimself with a ring in which were inset fourpearls encircling a diamond, bidding her,until she celebrated her eternal nuptialswith Him in heaven, to preserve it ever with-out stain. No other human eyes saw thatring, but Catherine told her confessor thatit never went from her sight. The visionand the reality with which she invested itform a not very surprising climax to the threeyears' imitation of the hermits of the desert


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PREPARATION 11by a woman on the way to nineteen. Wemay set beside them Catherine's belief thata new and constant pain in her side whichcame to her tortured body at the time of herfather's death (1368) was the price she paidto deliver his soul from purgatory. Let itextenuate incredulity that in neither casedoes that of her critic extend to a doubt thather love fell short of its desire. Rather weshould believe that it did indeed bring herinto closer union with her Master, and didindeed avail her father's soul in its progressafter death ; nor was she any less great asaint because she took her loving visionsas expressions of literal facts as regards themanner in which her desires were accom-plished. In her age and amid her surround-ings, how could she do otherwise?

It seems probable that at least some in-stances of St Catherine's powers of thought-reading, clairvoyance and mental suggestionoccurred during the time of her seclusion,and it will be convenient to consider here afew typical cases of them, if only because


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12 ST CATHERINE OF SIENApowers of the same kind have come to othersseemingly as a result of austerities similar tothose she had practised, and a like concen-tration of the will. Primarily such powersseem to belong to a stage of evolution inwhich language and reason are only imper-fectly developed, and to grow weaker andless common as their place is taken by othermeans of gaining and communicating know-ledge and influencing the wills of others.Birds and beasts, and even some insects,certainly possess some measure or adum-bration of them ; they seem to have playedquite a large part in the life of primitive manand to play such a part still in communitieswhich have not advanced far beyond theprimitive type. On the other hand, suchpowers seem to reappear among the highlycivilised, as if for work on a new plane, tohave been possessed and exercised by holymen of various religions (as well as bysome very unspiritual imitators), and to havebeen undoubtedly possessed and exercised byChrist Himself. In the case of St Catherine


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PREPARATION 13there is good evidence that she did at timesknow what was passing in the minds ofothers, have a mental vision of their surround-ings and how they were engaged, influencetheir wills, occasionally almost to the pointof coercion, by mental suggestion, and in-fluence their bodies in like manner to theovercoming of disease. She certainly con-vinced a Fra Bartolommeo di Domenico thatshe had supernormal (which, of course, hetook to be supernatural) means of knowingwhat he had been doing and saying, andwhere and with whom. Converted himself,Bartolommeobrought amore stalwart doubter,Fra Lazzarino of Pisa, a lecturer on philosophyand a Franciscan, though no lover of OurLady Poverty. As he was leaving her room,mildly edified by her conversation, Catherineasked for his prayers, and he by way ofspiritual compliment perfunctorily requestedher to pray for him. It is a dangerous thingto ask a saint to pray for you, if you don'tmean it, and so Fra Lazzarino discovered.The next day he had such an access of tears


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14 ST CATHERINE OF SIENAthat he had difficulty in preparing his lectureand still greater difficulty in delivering it.He was greatly bewildered ; but when thetears continued he was at last remindedof his perfunctory request for the youngMantellata's prayers and hastened to herfor enlightenment, whereafter followed realcontrition, a great giving away of his un-Franciscan acquisitions, and true discipleshipof Our Lady Poverty and Catherine.Another notable case of Catherine's will

power was the bringing of the principalmembers of two Sienese families, the Tolomeiand Rinaldini, to the Church of San Cristofaro,there to be reconciled with their enemies,the Maconi. The Tolomei and Rinaldinihad made one appointment to negotiate withthe Maconi, who had put their cause in thehands of Catherine ; but they had deliberatelybroken their agreement in order to floutboth their enemies and their mediator. Buta little later on, when no appointment wasmade, they were drawn, they knew not how,to the Church, and there found the Maconi


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PREPARATION 15and Catherine awaiting them, and recognisingthe hand of God in their strange leading,submitted to be reconciled.The most striking and best authenticated

instance of Catherine's power over disease isthat of Matteo Cenni, rector of the Casadella Misericordia, or Hospital, at Siena,who, when stricken with the plague anddespaired of by his friends (including FraRaimondo, who tells the story), rose up fromhis bed at her bidding, a hale man, and atea hearty meal.The resuscitation of Matteo Cenni happened

in 1374, the reconcilement of the Tolomeiand Maconi probably in 1376. From 1366,or earlier, to the end of her life the fame ofCatherine's supernormal powers and of theefficacy of her prayers which were answeredthroughthem seems steadily to have increased.Added to the stories of her austerities andcontinued abstinence from food, this no doubtlargely accounted for the increase in theauthority of the dyer's daughter of Siena,whose official position in the Church was


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PREPARATION 17one of the officially recognised "saints" ofthe Catholic Church, at the outset they werean obstacle. The word hysteria may nothave been in use at Siena in the fourteenthcentury, nor was there much knowledge ofreligious psychology ; but a girl newly passedinto womanhood who had visions and wassaid by her friends never to eat or to drinkwas naturally suspect. The Dominicans, whoat first had been gracious to her and hadgiven her a special privilege for the frequentreception of the holy Eucharist,1 were greatlyincensed when she developed a habit, whichnever left her, of falling, immediately afterher communion, into a trance, sometimes oflong duration, during which she was com-pletely insensible. They did not want womenwho went off into trances in their church,and on one occasion threw her out into theblazing Italian sun and left her to come toherself as best she could. Other doubtersmade trial of her insensibility and she was

1 The Dominican rule seems to have contemplated recep-tion only fifteen times during the year.

B


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18 ST CATHERINE OF SIENAtwice (the second time at Avignon in theheight of her fame) given wounds which,though she showed no sign of feeling themat the time, subsequently caused her greatpain. The Mantellate also were muchdisturbed, and she was even summonedto Florence by the superiors of her order,to explain what were considered hereccentricities.

Hostile criticism of the kind we have notedwas no doubt partly overcbme by convincinginfluential critics of the reality of her powers,but mainly by her daily life. After theCarnival of 1366 she had received what sheinterpreted as a divine intimation that shewas to give up her seclusion and go out towork for God in the world. At first shereturned to her father's house, and wouldgladly have resumed her menial work ; butthis her family would not allow. Thus setfree a second time, she devoted herself partlyto the care of the sick and seems to havelighted, probably by her own choice, onmore than a usual proportion of those whose


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PREPARATION 19diseases, bodily or mental, exacted the greatestwealth of love from their nurses. There arestrange stories of two of those she nursed,one of them a Mantellata, persecuting herwith abuse or abominable slanders, while shewas devoting herself to their needs. Herpatience was so great that it seems to haveevoked a morbid desire to test it to theutmost, till it overcame even the morbidity.A third story may show that she herself hadnot yet wholly escaped from the morbidimpulses which had caused her to scaldherself at the baths of Vignone and becomean all too faithful hermitess of the desert.Finding herself nauseated by the stench fromthe wound of one of her patients she drankthe water in which she had washed it, andwas rewarded by a peculiarly comfortingvision. If Catherine's eye had offended herspiritually she would certainly have pluckedit out. The saints are apt to take thesedrastic measures with themselves, though sel-dom with others. St Catherine was especi-ally apt to do so, because her anger at any


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20 ST CATHERINE OF SIENAweakness she found in herself was unitedwith a belief that only by hatred of herselfcould she become one with Christ. But shewould not have recommended such a draughtto anyone else, and (though such punish-ments have been imposed) she would havebeen swept with grief if any lover of hershad imposed it on another. She had littleregard for her own personality, but for thepersonality of others she had a constant re-gard, the outcome of that intellectual chastitywhich is one of her supreme notes.Up to 1370, and even later, the variedsources from which Catherine's life is known

to us often leave us uncertain as to what shewas doing in a particular year and as to theyear to which any event should be assigned.We cannot follow her doings during the fouryears 1366 to 1370 at all closely, but it seemsprobable that when she was not nursing, orpraying, or meditating, much of her timemust have been spent in talking and listeningto talk. She was a very human woman (it isdistressing to have to acknowledge how many


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22 ST CATHERINE OF SIENAfriend returning after an absence, and madehim sit down and tell her all about himself."She looked everyone in the face, even youngmen," another reminiscence tells us, and fora religious, whose other habits denotedexceptional austerity, to look straight at ayoung man, must have been a great surprisein mediaeval Siena. Sometimes she mayhave looked very straight indeed, for someof those who came to her were unwillingpenitents, and when in reply to her entreatythat they would go to their priest and confesstheir sin they suggested that they had con-fessed quite recently, by her supernormalpower she told them the sin which they werekeeping back, and they went away penitentto seek absolution. Other visitors, men oflearning and dignity, came at times to testher, and went, as Fra Lazzarino had gone, togive their goods to the poor, and begin theirspiritual lives anew under her influence. Ona Sunday in the autumn of 1370 rumour ranthrough Siena that she had suddenly died.Fra Bartolommeo heard it when he had just


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PREPARATION 23finished preaching, and hastened to her cell,which he found crowded with her friends, allconvinced that she was dead. Catherineherself believed that she did actually die onthat Sunday afternoon and come back to lifewith a new mission, after the four hours'divorce of soul and body, so that it formsa landmark in her career. But the rumourrunning through the city and the crowd offriends shows that she was already recognisedas a missioner, though as yet on a small scale.She was still only in her twenty-fourth year,but her period of preparation had ended.What had it done for her ?Whether with Fra Raimondo, her first

biographer (who about this time became herconfessor), we regard Catherine's life as ananchoress as ideally good, or think of it as, initself, almost wholly bad, we are bound to ownthat it did much for the effectiveness of herwork. Her lovers of different temperamentsand standpoints may perhaps reach an agree-ment as to it in the seven words : She wasstrong enough to stand it. She was not


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24 ST CATHERINE OF SIENAnaturally morbid, not naturally, perhaps, evenself-introspective. She viewed her soul ob-jectively, as an instrument for helping tosave others, and except for the one sin (asshe considered it) of dyeing her hair anddressing prettily when she was fifteen (andthis, we may be sure, because it was linkedin her mind with her sister's death) she didnot worry about her sins as affecting herown salvation. Self-knowledge was one ofthe two foundations of her religion, but it wasalways self-knowledge in the light of the loveof God, and no one who really believes in thelove of God can worry about himself, howeverdeep his repentance. Catherine was so farfrom worrying that the one thing she wantedwas to be sent to hell (with the impossiblecondition that she was to continue to loveGod in it) and thereby expiate the sins ofothers. If we please, we may call thatmegalomania, but it was very far removedfrom the morbidity which makes the weakself-introspective soul a misery to itself andto all who have to deal with it. And as


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PREPARATION 25regards the megalomania : is not the faithwhich can even contemplate the possibilityof being able to move a mountain sheermegalomania to all who judge it withoutrecognising that it is based not in self-confidence, but in the knowledge of the loveand power of God ? This middle-class Sienesewoman was soon to tell two Popes and all thegreat persons of her day their duty, and shewas bold to do this, because she believed, notthat she herself was a great person, but thatGod had given her a great mission to carryout. She trained herself to carry out thatmission according to the ideas of her day, andpursued these with a relentless thoroughnesswhich at least added to her inborn couragea patience and self-control soon to stand herin good stead. She clothed her visions of Godwith mediaeval colour and imagery and pre-cision of detail, which latter-day critics findhard to accept. That she was mediaeval inher methods and outlook helped her in herown day as no anticipation of modern ideascould have done, and should not hinder her


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26 ST CATHERINE OF SIENAin ours. The important point is that she wasstrong enough to emerge from her period ofpreparation with a mind exceptionally saneand well-balanced, with no inclination toovervalue austerities which she had herselfpractised as a discipline for use by others,and a hold upon the realities of the religiouslife quite independent of the visions whichhad accompanied her own progress. Alsoshe had meditated long and deeply and in sodoing had laid the foundations of a faith inwhich her intellect found full play.


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CHAPTER IITHE BURDEN OF ITALY : AVIGNON

Like her vision of four years earlier StCatherine's "mystical death" in 1370 senther back into the world convinced that shehad received a wider mission. The numberof her penitents, both " religious " and lay,increased, and among them and the men andwomen already working in the same spiritnot a few became more or less formally herdisciples. After eighteen months of quietwork of this kind we find her, early in 1372,taking the burden of Italy upon her shouldersand writing two letters of exhortation toCardinal d'Estaing, then newly appointedPapal Legate and governor of Bologna, anoffice which tasked him with carrying onthe Pope's war with Bernabo Visconti, lordof Milan.The burden of Italy in 1372 was heavy

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28 ST CATHERINE OF SIENAbeyond conception. In one set of cities andstates the inhabitants existed to be fleecedby the representatives of a French Pope liv-ing at Avignon, surrounded by kinsmen andcourtiers eager to make Italy their prey;in another they were at the mercy of despots,of whom the Visconti of Milan were the mostrestless and the worst ; in a third the noblesand middle-class workers and traders wereever conspiring against each other to put thecommunity beneath the heel of their faction,while the unskilled workers hated them both.Cities and states of all three classes wereconstantly at war, one with another, or in asuccession of leagues. To increase theirpower they hired fighting-men from othercountries, and these passed from one pay-master to another, with no thought save asto which would give the highest wage, andthe best chance of sacking a town. Whenno one was employing them these free-lancesmoved about, blackmailing cities and plunder-ing the country wherever they went, so thatthe folk from the neighbouring farms must


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AVIGNON 29needs seek comparative safety behind thewalls with which every little hill-town wasringed.

In this general insecurity the sin whichflourished more than any other and seemedto infect all classes alike was cruelty. Thestrong were cruel in their pursuit of powerand gain and pleasure ; the weak were cruelwith the horrible cruelty of cowardice ; eventhose who sought after justice and peacewere cruel in the punishments with whichthey tried to deter their opponents. IfBernabo Visconti hanged or blinded thosewho interfered with his hunting and burntthe friars who reproved him, the Florentinesflayed alive a monk suspected of treachery,and at Siena the flesh of conspirators wastorn off with hot pincers before they wereallowed to die. Catherine had been cruelto herself in her penances, but for all the illsof Italy her one remedy was love, and shepreached it unceasingly to all whom shecould reach.Cardinal d'Estaing, to whom her first public


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30 ST CATHERINE OF SIENAletters were addressed, belonged to the bettertype of ecclesiastics. He was a stern ruler,but honest and zealous to do right. To thisprince of the Church the dyer's daughter ofSiena wrote bidding him lay aside all self-love and the servile fear which makes menafraid to do justice lest they should lose byit, and carry out his charge with the samefervent charity which (and not the nails)kept God-and-Man fastened upon the cross.The Holy Father himself must be inflamedwith this charity, so that he may considerthe loss of souls more than of cities ; for it issouls, not cities, that God demands.Whether d'Estaing answered these letters

is not known, but it is probable that he wasimpressed by them, since a year later thePope's nephew, Gerard du Puy, to whosecruel mercies had recently been entrustedthe government of Perugia, sought outCatherine by his uncle's orders, and it wasmost likely through a report by d'Estaingthat Gregory had heard of her. Du Puy'scommunication appears to have been general


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AVIGNON 31in character, and Catherine's answer is con-cerned with reforms, dwelling on the need ofthe Church " to be pulled down even to thefoundation," so that it might be utterly-reformed, reproaching the Pope with hisnepotism and tolerance of the sins of theclergy, and bidding Du Puy, of all men, tohelp in removing the " wolves and incarnatedemons," all whose thoughts are of finepalaces, gluttony and harlots. Gregory,however, may have had a specific object inthe mission of Du Puy to Catherine whichbrought down on him these exhortations.In her second letter to d'Estaing she hadalluded to the duty of all Christians to pre-pare for war against the infidels, and earlyin 1373 the Pope had proclaimed a crusadeagainst the Turks for which popular supportwas essential. If he guessed that in Catherinehe would find a useful instrument he wasright. Her political horizon was limited ;her own order of the Mantellate had beenfounded by St Dominic for the wives andwidows of the men who fought in his crusade

1


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32 ST CATHERINE OF SIENAagainst the Albigenses, and she took a crusadeat its face value, as an opportunity to die forChrist. The Pope's project filled her withenthusiasm, and a little later on she workedhard for it.

Meanwhile, in November, 1373, an am-bassador of Bernabo Visconti, who was tryingto engage Siena on the side of Milan againstthe Pope, also sought out Catherine, andprovoked the letter to his lord in which shetramples on any pretence Bernabo may havemade to be acting as a divinely appointedscourge of the Church. Catherine's twindoctrines as a diplomatist were already fullyformulated. It was the Pope's duty to punishthe evil ministers of Christ's blood, thePope's sin if he failed to do so ; but if theVicar of Christ failed, only God Himselfcould rightly punish these ministers ; anylayman who tried to do so thereby cut himselfoff from the body of Holy Church.We have a further proof of Catherine'sgrowing importance in her summons to achapter-general of the Dominicans held at


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AVIGNON 33Florence in May, 1374, an incident onlyknown from the record of an anonymouschronicler who tells us that she was there" deemed to be a great servant of God."When she returned home at the end of Juneshe found the plague, which had alreadybroken out in Florence, raging much morefuriously at Siena, and in spite of her fear-less ministrations two of her brothers, asister and eight nephews died of it. Catherineworked on devotedly in the stricken city,and it was at this time that Matteo Cenni,rector of the Casa della Misericordia, theheadquarters of Sienese philanthropy, asalready narrated, rose up at her bidding ahale man from what had seemed his death-bed. Another fighter of the plague, FraRaimondo delleVigne, a Dominican of greatreputation, believed that she had miraculouslyrestored him also to health and now becameher confessor, and before long her disciplealso, and eventually her first biographer.Catherine, as he tells us, had endured muchfrom her earlier directors ; Fra Tommaso,

c


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34 ST CATHERINE OF SIENAhis immediate predecessor, had done betterfor her, but Raimondo gave her more supportthan she had ever received before, and shewelcomed it as a special gift from Mary.

In the middle of August Catherine her-self was dangerously ill, and went for herconvalescence to a Dominican convent atMontepulciano of which Fra Raimondo hadbeen director, and written the life of SantaAgnese, its patroness. For St AgneseCatherine had conceived a great devotion,and in connection with her visits to the bodyof the saint Raimondo records two miracles,which, if we can trust him, are both excel-lently authenticated and both very difficultto believe. 1

Before the end of 1374 the Pope com-municated again with Catherine by anotheremissary whose personality has some signi-ficance. As a religious intervener in papal

1 On one occasion, he tells us, one of the feet of St Agnesraised itself to meet the lips of St Catherine as she bent tokiss it ; on the other the body of the saint was covered withgrains of white, as by a fall of manna.


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AVIGNON 35and Italian statecraft the dyer's daughterof Siena had been preceded by theSwedish princess Birgitta (or St Bridget) whohad come to Rome in 1349 (five years afterthe death of her husband), and for nearly aquarter of a century laboured continually forthe reform of the Church, striving to convertsuccessive Popes with visions and prophecies.The Popes seem to have kept out of her wayas much as they could, and though she wasallowed to found her order, the impressionshe leaves is of a pathetic and (politically)rather futile figure. But if she could notconvert the Popes she made them uneasy,and after her death, in June, 1 373, her director,Alfonso da Vadaterra, who under her influencehad resigned his bishopric to become a hermit,had been staying with Gregory at Avignon.It was he who now brought to Catherinethe Pope's blessing, and the "indulgence"promised to those who helped the crusade.The Pope's choice of St Bridget's director ashis messenger suggests a further recognition ofCatherine's spiritual influence in the Church.


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36 ST CATHERINE OF SIENACatherine welcomed Gregory's message as

a proof that " the Holy Father has begun toattend to the honour of God and of HolyChurch." The Pope's motives were prob-ably more complex than she imagined. Acrusade was no longer an attempt to rescuethe keeping of the Holy Places from theTurk, a task reserved for our own day. Itmight be looked on as a real League ofNations against a ruthless power whosemenace to Christendom continued to growfor another two centuries, and both in its riseand fall brought misery wherever it spread.On a narrower view a crusade would at leastdeliver Italy from the free-lances and divertother powers from attacking the papalpossessions. Whatever his motive, Gregoryhad already launched his summons toChristendom, and St Bridget, who probablyknew too well how little the spirit of Christhad been present in earlier crusades, haddenounced it. Now a successor to Bridgethad arisen whose simple-hearted enthusiasmfor the crusade was already known. In the


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38 ST CATHERINE OF SIENAreality of the existence of God, the idea that" a creature knowing itself to be a creature canhave vainglory " seemed (as we have alreadynoted) ridiculous ; but when a correspondent(identified by Mr Gardner with the poet-anchorite, Bianco dall' Anciolina) remon-strated with her bitterly in verse and prose,and revived the old story that her inability toeat was a pretence, she answered him humblythat she well knew that the devil went aboutto deceive her, and begged Bianco's prayers,more particularly that God would enable herto eat like others, if it were His will, as itwas hers. Nor was there any protest againsthis attack save in the quiet words : " And Ibeseech you, too, not to be hasty in judging,unless you are quite sure that you see thingsas they are in God's sight."

It was while at Pisa, at Mid-Lent in 1 375, inthe Church of Santa Cristina, that Catherineaccording to her own belief received thestigmata, marks as of the nails which piercedChrist's hands and feet on the cross. Herconfessor, Fra Raimondo, who had given


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AVIGNON 39her the Holy Communion, watching herprostrate in one of her usual trances afterreceiving it, saw her little by little rise to herknees, her face radiant, her arms outstretched,and when she had stayed long in thatposition, suddenly fall back as if mortallywounded. Her friends thought that she wasdying, and that it was a second miracle whenin answer to their prayers she rallied, andfully recovered her strength the next Sunday,when she again received the sacrament.That no marks were visible they believed tobe due to Catherine's own prayer. It seemsmore likely that once again, as at the timewhen she believed that Christ placed aninvisible ring on her finger, a trance ex-perience was so vivid to her that she couldnot distinguish it from reality. 1 Only afew weeks earlier she had written to Bianco :

1 The stigmatisation of St Catherine is on an altogetherdifferent plane from that of St Francis, which, however itmay be explained, seems to have been evidenced by realwounds. It should be noted that before this experience atPisa she believed that a stigma had already been given herin her right hand.


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AVIGNON 41increased her. sense of her own nothingness,her own unprofitableness as a servant towhom God had entrusted so much and whocould do so little in return. Her ecstaticillusions, as this lover of her holds them, maybe naturally explained as resulting from hertreatment of her body ; but if the devil hada hand in them he might well curse her, asshe believed he did, 1 for never giving him achance.The crusade for which Catherine worked

so hard during her stay at Pisa came tonothing. In Italy (and not only in Italy)the Christian powers suspected each othertoo deeply for common action. WhileCatherine was still at Pisa the grievances ofthe Florentines against the Pope came to ahead. In the previous June Gregory had

1 Delia Doltrina, lxvi. : "A curse on you, for I can findno device to deal with you. If I plunge you in the depthby confusing your mind, you lift yourself to the heightsof mercy. And if I exalt you on high, you abase yourselfto the depths of hell by humility and harry me in hell itself.I will have no more to do with you, for you beat me withlove as with a bludgeon."

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AVIGNON 43go to Lucca in his interests, thence returningto Pisa, where her influence was great. Fora while she held both cities neutral, thoughher own Siena made a treaty with Florence.Then in December came a great uprising ofthe cities in the States of the Church againstthe tyranny of the papal officials, and in thesame month by creating seven Frenchcardinals, of whom one was the hated Gerarddu Puy, the oppressor of Perugia, Gregoryshowed himself obstinate in his ill-doing. Ifhe had been as other temporal princes inItaly his cause would have been hopeless ;but while his enemies were capturing hiscities and gaining over Pisa and Lucca hesummoned all the Florentines who had heldoffice since the previous June (1375) toappear before him at Avignon, and thesummons clearly preluded a full use of hisecclesiastical power. Catherine wrote to himpleadingly and unflinchingly : pleadingly,that he would win back the rebels by love ;unflinchingly in her clear statement of factsas to the wickedness of the papal officials


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44 ST CATHERINE OF SIENAand the ruin caused by his own bad appoint-ments. Unhappily Gregory was too weak,too much under the influence of those aroundhim, to do either mercy or justice.During the spring of 1376 events moved

quickly, too quickly perhaps to please theFlorentines. On 20th March Bologna, incitedby their emissaries, rose against the Pope,and though eight days later Hawkwood'smercenaries sacked Faenza on the plea offorestalling a similar revolt, the atrocitiesthey committed stiffened Italian feeling. Onthe other hand, rumours of a papal crusadeagainst Florentine commerce daily gatheredstrength, and to keep a door open for peacethey persuaded Fra Raimondo, to whom, asCatherine's director, Gregory would be likelyto listen, to go to Avignon in their interest.Raimondo had barely started, however, whenthe Pope, despite the impassioned appeal ofthe Florentine ambassadors to the figure oftheCrucified which hung in the great hall ofAvignon, placed Florence under an interdict.Raimondo had taken with him a letter from


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AVIGNON 45Catherine ; now a vision came to her in whichChrist laid a cross upon her neck and put anolive into her hand, bidding her offer themto both the combatants, and in obedienceto this vision she proposed herself to theFlorentines as a mediator.The text of the letter in which Catherine

offered her services to Florence has comedown to us and is quite explicit. Neithernow, nor at any time, did she swerve by ahair's-breadth from the simple doctrine whichshe had expounded to Bernabo Visconti.Nothing in her eyes could excuse revoltagainst the Vicar of Christ, but she believedunfalteringly that if the Florentines submittedto Christ's Vicar Christ would inspire him tobecome a loving father to them and givethem a good peace. It is humanly probable,from what we know of Gregory's characterand the power which Catherine gained overhim, that the Florentines would have donewell to accept her mediation whole-heartedly.But it was much to ask of the leaders of arevolt against cruel oppression, and from the


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46 ST CATHERINE OF SIENApoint of view alike of safety and dignity, heroffer was too full of risks to commend itselffor sincere adoption to business men andofficials. On the other hand straightforwardrejection would have thrown away such helpas might be gained from her advocacy andhave been a false move in a contest in whichreligious opinion counted for much. A middlecourse seems to have been taken, pettilyastute, by no means straightforward. Therewas a War Cabinet in Florence, an " Eightof War," but for other matters the ordinarygovernment of the republic, which accordingto its jealous custom passed into new handsevery two months, remained in force. Thesecivil governors received Catherine with allhonour, acquiesced in all she proposed, andsent her on to Avignon in the belief that shehad full powers, which would be confirmedby special envoys who would speedily followher. But nothing was put in writing, noentries were made in the city records ; and,the Eight of War, though doubtless cognisantof all that was done and conversing with her


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AVIGNON 47individually, seem to have held no officialcommunication with her of any kind. ThusCatherine's help was secured, while theirown hands remained freea mean arrange-ment, doubtless, but we must remember thatin a state of society in which belief in thepossibility of inspiration was fairly generalpoliticians had to make shifts to escape fromdifficulties to which those of our own day arenot exposed.On the evidence which has come down to

us Gregory's dealings with Catherine as toFlorence contrast very favourably with thoseofthe Republic itself. She arrived at Avignonon 1 8th June, and two days later was re-ceived in private audience by the Pope. FraRaimondo acted as interpreter, and we havehis solemn witness, " before God and men,"that to prove to Catherine his desire for peaceGregory told her that he " placed it absolutelyin her hands," only bidding her "to have atheart the honour of the Church." It isprobable that in taking this risk he wasinspired by Catherine's personality to think


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48 ST CATHERINE OF SIENAfor once " of souls rather than cities " ; but ifhe paused to estimate the risk politicallyhe had more than enough statecraft to beable to recognise that it was small. If theFlorentines had trusted Catherine furtherthan as an advocate likely to modify the"atmosphere" of the papal court in theirfavour, they would not have sent her toAvignon unaccredited. Whatever Gregory'smotive, he satisfied Catherine that all waswell on his side, and had the kindly thoughtto assign her an excellent house with a chapelin it, and provide for the maintenance thereof herself and her famiglia, the not incon-siderable company of men and women whotravelled with her, as long as she stayed inAvignon.

Catherine had been led to believe that newambassadors from Florence would join herat once. Days passed and none arrived." Believe me, Catherine," Raimondo representsthe Pope as saying to her, " they have deceivedyou and will deceive you : they will send nomission, or if they do send, its instructions

il


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AVIGNON 49will be such that it will come to nothing."For eight days Catherine waited, then shewrote to the Eight of War. The letter beginswith a summons to true grief for the wrongthey had done by their revolt. They arebidden to ask for life as sons who had beenas dead, and assured that God's goodnesswill give it them if they really humble them-selves and recognise their faults. If, as rumourreports, they have imposed new taxes on theclergy they have wronged God and comenear to ruining the hope of peace. If theyhinder the grace of the Holy Spirit, they willput Catherine herself to great shame andreproach, for what save shame and confusioncan result if she tells the Holy Father onething and they do another? And then shegives the story of her interview with thePope and tells them how he listened to hergraciously, showing his desire for peace, likea good father who thinks not so much of thewrong his son has done to him as whetherhe has become humble and so can be fullypardoned. At the end of the conversation

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50 ST CATHERINE OF SIENAthe Pope had told her that if her account ofthe Florentines was true he was ready toreceive them as his children and to do whatshe should think right. He could not saymore till their ambassadors arrived. " Imarvel," she ends, "that they are not yetcome. When they arrive I shall meet themand then go to the Holy Father, and willwrite to you how the business proceeds. Butyou with your taxes and changes are spoil-ing the seeds I sow. Do so no more, forthe love of Christ crucified and your ownprofit."Such a letter addressed to a War Cabinet

strikes strangely on modern ears. If itarrived before the mission started (on orabout 7th July) the "Eight" must haveresolved to ignore it and so perhaps gave thethree ambassadors their cue. On or a littlebefore 17th July they were at last at Avignon.At her summons they came to see her. FraRaimondo was present at the interview, andwe have his account of it. Catherine re-minded them of the promises she had received


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AVIGNON 51from the " priors and governors " of the city,and told them how the Pope had put thepeace in her hands, and they could thereforehave a good peace if they wished it. " Butthey, like deaf adders, closed their ears tothe sound of peace and answered that theyhad no commission of any sort to dealwith her, nor to do the things which shetold them."As far as the Florentines could do so they

had brought upon Catherine the shame andconfusion which she had written to themwould result if by their acts they repudiatedher. No shame nor confusion ensued. Shecontinued, Raimondo tells us, to plead theircause, and two cardinals (one of them Pierred' Estaing) were commissioned to treat withthe ambassadors, negotiations which led tono result. Her influence with the Popeseems to have increased now that she wasno longer directly the spokeswoman of therebellious city. In a visit she paid to thewife of Louis of Anjou at Villeneuveshe inflamed the Duke with a great ardour


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52 ST CATHERINE OF SIENAfor the crusade. Attempts to entangle her inher talk at Avignon only led to the conver-sion of some of her adversaries. Yet the factremains that her proffered mediation hadwholly failed.

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CHAPTER IIITHE BURDEN OF ITALY : THE RETURN OF

THE POPE AND PEACE WITH FLORENCESt Catherine had come to Avignon tomake peace between the Pope and Florence.When the Florentines refused her mediationshe stayed on to be the deciding factor inbringing the Pope back from Avignon toRome. Since 1305, save for Urban V.'s threeyears' visit to Italy (1367- 1370), the Popeshad lived in luxury at Avignon under Frenchprotection, and had enforced to the utmosttheir temporal rights in the States of theChurch only to win tribute for themselvesand place their favourites in offices whichthey mostly abused. A Pope as bad asClement VI. would have occasioned no lessscandal at Rome than at Avignon, butAvignon became a plague spot in the eyes ofall reformers and return to Rome was looked

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54 ST CATHERINE OF SIENAon as the necessary beginning of any cleans-ing of the Church. Gregory XI. himself hadplayed with this idea since before he wasPope. He is even said to have taken asecret vow that he would return. But hewas a Frenchman (a de Beaufort), surroundedwith French relations and French cardinals,and ill-health made him shrink from facingthe desolation of Rome and the task ofdealing with the troubles of Italy at closequarters. Catherine, like Bridget before her,had urged his return from her first com-munication with him. Since she came toAvignon she had been able to urge itpersonally, and by the time the Florentineenvoys arrived Gregory had already begunto make preparations for departure. Hence-forth Catherine was his main inspiration incarrying out this policy, which, save ford'Estaing, found no support among thecardinals.

During the six weeks or so which followedher brief visit to the Duchess of Anjou atViUeneuve Catherine had, at most, only a


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THE RETURN OF THE POPE 55single audience with the Pope. Though shehated astuteness (the devil's substitute forwisdom) she had enough of it to be surethat the best chance of getting Gregory toleave Avignon lay in lulling the alarm of theFrench party and then persuading him toswift action. The Pope, on his part, knewthat to summon her would quicken opposition,but at least three times he consulted her byletter or message. Once it was to ask howhe could be right in rejecting the advice ofthe great majority of his cardinals, a secondtime to inquire anxiously whether she sawno obstacle to his journey, a third to laybefore her a letter (probably forged) from apretended well-wilier who, while applaudinghis project, played on his fears of assassina-tion. In each case Catherine had her answerready. Assurance had come to her in atrance that, contrary to his wont, the moreGregory was opposed in this matter themore he would feel such a strength increasingin him as no man could take from him, andher faith helped her to bring the prophecy


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56 ST CATHERINE OF SIENAto pass. So she bade him play his partvirilmente, casting aside all servile fear,since for fear, save of God, there was noneed, while she denounced the warningletter, as not written by its reputed author,but forged by the servants of the devil atthe papal court.On 13th September 1376, some eightweeks after Catherine's rebuff by the Floren-

tine ambassadors, Gregory started on thefirst stage of the long journey from Avignonto Rome. According to a story confusedlytold, his father, the old Count de Beaufort,threw himself prostrate before him to preventhis departure, and with the singularly unaptquotation : " Thou shalt trample upon the aspand the basilisk " the Pope stepped over him.A stronger man would have shown morelove, but love was just what Gregory lacked,and because he lacked it the courageousreturn to Rome, to which Catherine hadinspired him, brought no good to himselfand only aggravated, at least for a time, theills of the Church.


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THE RETURN OF THE POPE 57Catherine started from Avignon on the

same day as the Pope, but being encumberedwith no state and only her famiglia asretinue, reached Genoa long before him.When he arrived there on 18th October,after a tempestuous voyage from Marseilles,he was so disheartened that we are told byFra Tommaso Caffarini, one of Catherine'sdisciples, that he visited her in disguise, anddrew from her enough strength to keep himon his way. Leaving Genoa on 29th Octoberhe landed at Corneto, in the Papal States, on5th December and, after receiving from theRomans an offer of the "full dominion"of the city, made his triumphal entry on17th January 1377. Catherine, meanwhile,after being detained at Genoa by illnessamong her followers, had reached Sienasome time in December, and wrote Gregorya letter of encouragement while he waslingering at Corneto. About the same timeshe replied to the request of a party amongthe Florentines for an account of what shehad done at Avignon by permitting one of


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58 ST CATHERINE OF SIENAthe best-loved of her followers, StefanoMaconi, to go to Florence, where he inter-viewed the " Eight of War " and was almostmurdered by a Pope-hating mob. She her-self pleaded with Gregory in letter afterletter, beseeching him to subdue his rebel-lious subjects by love and show more carefor the souls committed to him than for theestates of the Church. Deaf to her appealshe would yield nothing and only offeredthe Florentines extortionate and humiliatingterms of peace. On 3rd February a frightfulmassacre at Cesena, ordered by CardinalRobert of Geneva, sent a thrill of horrorthrough Italy without eliciting any repudia-tion from the Pope. Well might Catherinewrite, in bitterness of soul : " It seems thatthe devil has taken the lordship of the world,not by his own power, for he can do nothing,but by our gift."

According to Mr Gardner it was probablyin the first half of this year (1377) thatCatherine reconciled to death a young noble,Niccolo di Toldo, condemned, it is usually


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THE RETURN OF THE POPE 59said, for a few thoughtless words against thegovernment of the state, though possiblyhe had really joined in a conspiracy againstit. This is the account of what she did forhim from her letter to Fra Raimondo

" I went to visit him of whom you know,whereby he received so great comfort andconsolation that he confessed and disposedhimself very well ; and he made me promiseby the love of God that when the time cameI would be with him ; and so I promised anddid. Then in the morning before the belltolled I went to him and he received greatconsolation. I led him to hear Mass, and hereceived the Holy Communion, which he hadnever received since his first. His will wasconformed and submitted to the will of God,and only a fear was left of not being strongat the moment. But the measureless andglowing goodness of God beguiled him, en-dowing him with so great affection and lovein the desire of God that he could not bewithout Him, and he said to me : ' Be with


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60 ST CATHERINE OF SIENAme and do not abandon me, so shall I be nototherwise than well, and die content ' ; andhe leaned his head on my breast. Then Ifelt a tumult of joy and an odour of hisblood, and my own also, which I desire toshed for the sweet Bridegroom Jesus. Andas the desire of my soul waxed and I felt hisfear, I said : ' Comfort thee, sweet my brother,for we shall soon come to the nuptials ; thouwilt go to them bathed in the sweet blood ofthe Son of God, with the sweet name of Jesus(may it never leave thy memory), and Iwait for thee at the place of justice.' Thenhis heart lost all fear (think of it, Father),and his face changed from sadness to joy,and he rejoiced, he exulted, and said* Whence comes so great grace to me thatthe sweetness of my soul will await me atthe holy place of justice?' See, he hadcome to so much light that he called theplace of justice holy ! And he said : ' Ishall go all joyous and strong, and it willseem to me a thousand years before I comethere, when I think that you are waiting for


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THE RETURN OF THE POPE 61me.' And he spoke so sweetly of the good-ness of God, that one could scarcely bear it.

" I waited for him at the place of justice,waiting with continual prayer and the pre-sence of Mary and of Catherine, Virgin andMartyr. Before he arrived, I lay down andstretched my neck upon the block ; but therecame nothing, for I was full of love of myself.Then up ! I prayed, I constrained, and criedto Mary that I would this grace that sheshould give him light and peace of heart atthat moment, and then that I should see himreach his goal. Then my soul was so full thatalthough a crowd was there I could not see acreature, for the sweet promise made to me.

" Then he came like a meek lamb ; andseeing me he began to laugh, and would haveme make the sign of the cross. When hehad received the sign, I said : ' Down ! Tothe bridal, sweet my brother ! soon shaltthou be in everlasting life.' He lay downwith great meekness, and I stretched out hisneck, and bent over him, and called to hismind the Blood of the Lamb. His lips said


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62 ST CATHERINE OF SIENAnought but 'Jesus' and ( Catherine' ; and ashe spoke I received his head in my hands,closing my eyes in the Divine Goodness, andsaying : ' I will.' "

With her eyes thus closed to the horror infront of her and her will identified with God's,Catherine saw the soul of the dead manborne into the flame of the Divine love, andreceived into the wounded side of Christ.As he entered that refuge he seemed to herto look back, as a bride, ere she enters herhusband's house, turns back to look gratefullyon those who have borne her company onher way. " I remained on earth," she wrote," with the greatest envy."

For the last five months of 1377 Catherinewas in the country outside Siena, mostly atthe Rocca d'Orcia, a castle belonging to thepowerful Sienese family, the Salimbeni, tomake peace between two of its membershaving been the first object of her expedition.But the country folk when they found her


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THE RETURN OF THE POPE 63amongst them came from all sides to listento her, and many were healed in body andmind as well as in soul. To answer to theseappeals for help and continue her work as apeacemaker Catherine stayed on at the Roccamonth after month till the ruling party atSiena became suspicious that she might beplotting with their enemies, and sentremonstrances to her, which she answeredwith some indignation. Meanwhile shelearnt to write for herself, and took apleasure in her new accomplishment (itseemed to her miraculous), which helped herto bear the absence at Rome of her belovedconfessor, Fra Raimondo, and also the angerof the Pope, who resented strongly certainproposals of hers with which Raimondo hadbeen charged. Catherine was always readyto believe that any failure was the result ofsome fault in herself, and she answeredhumbly through Raimondo, asking forgive-ness, though she did not swerve one jot fromher old message that if Gregory would over-come his enemies he must do so by love, and


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64 ST CATHERINE OF SIENAlove alone. The Pope was quickly pacifiedand influenced perhaps by some informationas to the state of affairs at Florence whichRaimondo had obtained from a partisansource, determined to use Catherine as anagent on his side to bring about a peace forwhich both sides were now sincerely anxious.The Pope had weighted the scales heavily

against the Florentines by backing histemporal warfare with a religious interdictwhich they had at first scrupulously obeyed.Florence had now forced its priests to resumetheir ministrations, and there was a dangerthat the spiritual weapon thus used forpolitical ends might break in its wielder'shands. The expense of the war, moreover,had emptied the papal treasury, and at thesame time it was becoming clear that thelonger it lasted the less the Florentines wouldbe able to pay. Gregory had thus verystrong reasons for hastening peace and heseems to have used Catherine little morescrupulously than the Florentines had usedher some months before. She was not


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PEACE WITH FLORENCE 65dispatched this time without credentials, buther real mission was to the heads of a factionin the city, not to the State itself.

In the desire, seldom for long realised,to prevent revolutions and internal strifealmost every free city in Italy had devisedsome ingenious check on its ruling party. InFlorence one of these checks took the formof a right vested in the chiefs of the Guelphfaction, who had little direct power in theState, to "admonish" any peculiarly obnoxiousopponent and thereby exclude him fromoffice. The right was essentially one to besparingly used, but the idea which underlayCatherine's mission was that the men ofimportance in the war party at Florencewere very few and that if these could beremoved peace might easily be arranged.An emissary of the Pope by entering thecity to encourage the Guelphs to embark onsuch a policy ran very great risks, and forthis reason Gregory had refused to send FraRaimondo. Catherine, he hoped, would beprotected from violence by her sex and the


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66 ST CATHERINE OF SIENAreverence in which she was held. To herdanger was an attraction, and she obedientlyproceeded to Florence, where she found manyfriends. Introduced to the heads of theGuelph faction, she told them unhesitatinglythat anyone in Florence who was hinderingpeace between the Holy Father and hischildren deserved to be deprived of office asa destroyer rather than a governor of thecommonwealth. Her consistent denial ofthe right of laymen to punish priestly ill-doing made this the only advice she couldgive and fully justified her in giving it. Butthe Guelph leaders used her prestige fortheir own ends as unscrupulously as thePope. Hailing her as a prophetess they" admonished " opponent after opponent withevery appearance of party and personal spite,till they precipitated a double revolution andgravely imperilled the cause of peace whichother events were helping to forward.

Early in March, 1378, a peace conferencehad met at Sarzana, and negotiations wengoing well when it was dissolved by the new;


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68 ST CATHERINE OF SIENAher Catherine had been linked with theparty of the Guelphs, who had acclaimed heras a prophetess. She had urged moderationon their leaders, but it was the papal policywhich had launched them on their career of" admonishing," and this policy she hadpresented as her own. Those who revoltedagainst it were sure that she must be a badwoman, and because they had previouslybelieved her to be holy, they called her ahypocrite. After the houses of the Guelphleaders had been burnt, on 22nd June, newscame to that in which she was lodging thatan armed mob was on its way to kill her.Fearful for their own safety her hosts beggedher to go, and she went with one or two ofher company to a neighbouring garden, andthere awaited the mob in prayer. Theycame with cries against the " wicked woman "and Catherine (it was the only really selfishthing she ever did, for she was encouragingthem to commit murder), with great cheer-fulness prepared herself for martyrdom.Facing a rioter who was brandishing a sword


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PEACE WITH FLORENCE 69and crying louder than the rest : " Where isCatherine ? " she placed herself on her kneesbefore him so that he could convenientlystrike off her head and joyously bade himdo anything which God would let him toherself, but not to touch her friends. Thesword-brandisher first feebly bade her goaway, and when she renewed her exhorta-tions himself fled in confusion, taking hisfellow-rioters with him. Catherine's briefmoment of utter joy was thus quickly ended,and she wept bitterly with the disappoint-ment. " The Eternal Bridegroom played agreat trick on me," she wrote to Fra Rai-mondo, and was convinced that it was forher sins that she was considered unworthyof martyrdom. Her friends wished to hurryher back to Siena, but she steadfastly refusedto leave what she regarded as her post untilpeace was concluded, and stayed near or inFlorence through the month which, to thoseless anxious for martyrdom, was full ofdoubts and fears, and culminated in thesecond revolt, that of the unskilled workers.


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CHAPTER IVST CATHERINE'S BOOK

It was at the moment in her career to whichwe have now come, when she was resting inthe summer of 1378, after returning fromFlorence, that Catherine composed a longtreatise, the Libro della Divina Dottrina, oftencalled, from the expressed subject of oneof its sections, and its form and underlyingintention, Dialogo della Divina Providentia.The full title of the book, as given in theoldest extant manuscript,1 may be translated :" The Book of Divine Doctrine given by theperson of God the Father speaking to theintellect of the glorious and holy virginCatherine of Siena of the order of Preachers,written as she dictated it in the vulgar tongue,

1 Siena MS., T. ii. 9, printed in 1912 under the editorshipof Matilde Fiorilli as part of the series Scrittori d' Italia(Bari, Gius. Laterza & Figli).

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72 ST CATHERINE OF SIENAabiding in rapture at the time, and listeningwhat the Lord God should speak within herand rehearsing it before many." The "many"here mentioned were, or included, Catherine'ssecretaries, one of whom, a Sienese notary,Ser Cristofano di Gano Guidini, says evenmore explicity that she was in abstraction{astrazione) when she made the book, withoutany sensation save the power of speech, " andGod the Father spoke in her, and sheanswered and asked, and she herself recitedthe words of God the Father spoken to her,and also her own words which she spoke toHim in her asking." The other secretarieswho wrote from Catherine's dictation wereBarduccio Canigiani, Neri Pagliaresi andStefano Maconi, and the last of these, in hisevidence in the " process " which procuredthe preliminary recognition of her sanctity,told how he had written down part of it asshe " with her virgin mouth " dictated it" mitabili modoTThe manner in which the book came into

being thus assuredly appeared miraculous to


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ST CATHERINE'S BOOK 73Catherine's secretaries, and we should notdoubt that it appeared miraculous also to thesaint herself. To students of our own daythe fact that the discourses were deliveredunder trance conditions gives them no higherclaim to acceptance. Apparently Catherinewas accustomed to meditate in dialogue, andwhen she trusted her subconscious self towork out in words the problems over whichshe had agonised during the three years ofheroic diplomacy from which she was nowtaking a brief rest, the form of her meditationsbecome the form of her booknot (thoughprobably in no other way could she havewritten it) to its advantage. From Hebrewprophets to the latest tract-writer those whowould convey to others the thoughts as tothe character and will of God which wellup within them when the mind is stilled toreceive the Divine influence have been tooready to prefix the name of God to their ownmessage, and of this unconscious confusionbetween the energy rightly recognised asGod-sent and its entirely human expression


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74 ST CATHERINE OF SIENAthe Libro delta Dottrina is a striking instance.Sensitive readers will feel at every turn thatthe long discourses which are put into themouth of God are really translations from thethird person to the first, Catherine's ardentthoughts about God converted into God'slectures to her about Himself and His deal-ings with men. In the process the fierypassion of her love and adoration is at timestransmuted into something akin to humanself-satisfaction, a poor version, we may besure, of that self-contemplation which sometheologians have pictured as the chief workof God. And even not very sensitive readersmust be affronted when thoughts not worthyof Catherine herself, confusions, pedantries,ideas from an altogether lower plane thanthat which she had reached, are attributed toGod. 1 The way in which she delivered her

1 The confusions, doubtless due to trance conditions, aremainly cases of too rapid transitions from one metaphor orvision to another. As an example of a pedantry (of a kindin which the sermons and commentaries of her day abound)we may take the interpretation of the splendid promise11 Where two or three are gathered in my name I will be in


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ST CATHERINE'S BOOK 75message forbade revision. There is drossmixed with the gold, but the gold is there,and it is worth all the patience and intellectualeffort needed to make it our own.To this difficulty, for which Catherine

herself was responsible, the copyists, trans-lators and editors of her book have addedanother, which makes it seem much moreformless and confused than the trance con-ditions under which it was dictated reallyleft it. The oldest manuscript was finallydivided into one hundred and sixty-sevenchapters, but the ornamental capitals showthat at an earlier stage it had only onehundred and one, and originally it is clearthe midst of them," not literally of the Divine presence whichis felt in human fellowship, but metaphorically of the gift ofit when the three powers of the soul, Memory, Intellect andWill, are knit together in worship. Of ideas from a lowerplane the worst is the statement, as to men not in a state ofgrace who do good works, that sometimes God rewards themin things temporal "treating them as an animal which isfattened for slaughter" ("a questi cotali l'e remunerato incose temporali, facendo di loro come de l'animale ches'ingrassa per menarlo al macello").Cap. 46.


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76 ST CATHERINE OF SIENAthat the book had none at all, but ran onin much larger sections. Unfortunately thelater of the two chapter-dividers marked thebeginning of certain portions which heespecially admired, as Trattato della Discre-zione, della Orazione, della Providenzia, anddell' Obbedienza, and these notes have beentaken as the basis of a division into four, orsometimes five or six books, which is quitemisleading. 1 Of all this Catherine herselfis quite innocent. The book was begun andcompleted in some nine or ten weeks, be-tween the end of July and some time inOctober, 1 378, and she clearly spoke straighton, day after day. The only way to followthe drift of her thought is to mark the pointsat which she pauses to summarise what shehas said, or to give thanks to God for Hisinstruction, or ask for light on new subjects.

Disregarding the notes of the later scribe1 Thus the Trattato della Discrezione is made to cover

fifty-six chapters (9-64). Discretion is really the subject ofonly three chapters (9-1 1) in the introductory section closedby the summary in Chapter 12.


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ST CATHERINE'S BOOK 77and following the clues left by Catherineherself we find that her first twelve chaptersform an introduction, partly personal; 13-30are a Cry for Mercy and an exposition ofChrist as the means of it, the Bridge bywhich man ascends from earth to heaven31-55 are on Sin and its Remedy ; 56-86, onthe Upward Way ; 87-96, on Tears as thesymbols of vain and saving grief; 97-107,on the Illumination of the Soul and therestraint of the judgments which those soilluminated may be tempted to pass onothers; 108-134, on the inevitable subjectsof such judgments in 1378, the defects andwickedness of the ministers of the Church ;1 35-1 5 3, on the nature of God's Providenceby which wickedness is permitted; 154-165,on the nature of Obedience which inCatherine's view made it deadly sin to revoltagainst the rulers of the Church, howeverwicked, and of the higher obedience of thosewho take monastic vows. Finally, 166-167form a brief conclusion. Even with thisbald summary we can begin to see how


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78 ST CATHERINE OF SIENAintensely personal and relevant to its dayis the book which the saint dictated in thelate summer of 1378 at the end of her vainstruggle to make the Florentines reverenceas a loving father the Pope who sent " devilsincarnate" to torture Italy, and the Pope toreform the Church and be indeed a lovingfather even to the rebellious.The book begins with a personal experience

of St Catherine (who speaks of herself asalcuna serva di Dio) in the autumn of 1377.Her whole life had become a continuousprayer, based on her long discipline in know-ledge of herself and of the goodness of God,and one day there came to her a greatrevelation of the love which God has forHis servants. Wishing " in more manlywise " (virilmente, Catherine's great word, isuntranslatable) to know and follow the truthshe made four petitions : the first for herself(since the soul cannot profit another, unlessit first profits itself) ; the second for the re-form of the Church ; the third in general forall the world, and specially for the peace of


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ST CATHERINE'S BOOK 79the rebels against the Church ; the fourth forthe Divine Providence over all things, andespecially for " a particular case," whichseems, though this is not certain, to havebeen that of her beloved confessor, FraRaimondo,from whom she was now separated.Her longing was great and grew greater whenthe First Truth showed her the needinessof the world and in what a tempest of offenceagainst God it lay. In her grief for theoffence and her joyous hope that God wouldprovide against so great evils, she attainedto the communion in which the soul seemsto bind itself fast with God, and knows betterHis truth (" the soul being then in God, andGod in the soul, as the fish is in the sea andthe sea in the fish "), and desire came uponher for the morning to hear Mass, the daybeing a feast of Mary. When the morningcame and the hour of Mass she knelt in thestress of desire, and with great knowledgeof herself, taking shame for her imperfections,and seeming to herself the cause of the evildone over all the world. In this knowledge


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82 ST CATHERINE OF SIENAAt the end of this introduction comes a

praise of God for His gifts to man, and a crythat God will turn His anger against her buthave mercy on His people. In reply Godlaments over the whole world and showsHis dolcissima figliuola the universe heldin the hollow of His hand. She yearns tosweat blood, and carries the soul of her con-fessor before the Divine Goodness, bringingback that lesson that we must bear ourselvesvirilmente, which she so often preached tohim. In her trance she sees how sin havingbroken the road to heaven Christ becamethe Bridge. There are three steps in theBridge, His feet, His side, His mouth, corre-sponding to the first affection of the soul, tolove and peace. The stones of the Bridgeare virtues, its hostelry the Eucharist. Itreaches to heaven and yet abides on earth.Beneath the bridge flows a river, the river ofSin, and here for some sixteen chapters wehave a Dominican treatise on sin and itspunishment, followed by a vision of the joyof God's servants who in seeing Him know, r


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ST CATHERINE'S BOOK 83and in knowing Him they love, and in lovingHim lose all will but to do His. Then thevision of the Bridge recurs, and we have thedoctrine of the Upward Way. The threesteps of the Bridge become first the threepowers of the soul, Memory, Intellect andWill, and then its three states, that of theMercenary Servant, the Faithful Servant,and the Loving Son. To the third statethe soul rises by persevering in love whenthe comfort of God's presence is withdrawn.He who cannot rise to this state cannot lovehis neighbour unselfishly, but will always belooking for the comfort of his friendship.But to be able to love God and Man un-selfishly, for themselves and not for what wecan get from them, is the Peace of the Soul.The next ten chapters of the Delia Dottrina1 Catherine distinguishes two aspects in this state : the

one that of the soul's utter love of God regardless of allspiritual consolations and delights, the other that of its per-fect union in Him which is itself supreme delight, so thatthe soul which disregards its own delight attains it. Thesetwo aspects she calls the third and fourth states, but regardsthem as inseparable.


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84 ST CATHERINE OF SIENAform a little mediaeval treatise on Tears, thefive kinds ofthem and how they are connectedwith the different states of the soul, and ofthe fruits of tears, and of those who cannotweep. Catherine valued tears, but speaks ofthem in the spirit ofher praise of " Discretion,"so that she connects them with her deepestdoctrine. In the same way in the next tenchapters she sets out problems in their originpersonal to herself in such a way that theanswers to them are among the most helpfulin her book. If, she asks, in her intercessionfor individual souls she sees one full of lightand desire for God and another dark andtroubled, or one disciplining itself with greatpenances and another not, is she to pass anyjudgment as to their spiritual state? Andagain, how is she to distinguish the visionswhich God sends her from the evil counter-feits of them? In one of her letters she hadmade the test of visions to consist partly inthe good vision beginning in bitterness andending in joy, while the evil begins with joyand ends in bitterness ; here the answer she


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ST CATHERINE'S BOOK 85receives assumes that good and evil visionsmay be alike in their sweetness, but the goodstrengthens the soul for right action and theevil does not. As regards the judgment ofother souls the answer takes a wider scopethan the question. It contemplates the pos-session of such supernormal powers of read-ing the thoughts of others, even at a distance,as Catherine herself undoubtedly possessed ;but even the illuminata, she is told, cannotsee what God is doing with another soul, orwhat the soul is doing with itself, and Godalone can pass right judgments. The answer,moreover, applies not only to judgments, butto all remonstrance and reproof. Even wherethere is strong presumption of evil in theindividual soul the condemnation must be asof a sin to which reprover and reproved areboth liable, and only at the unmistakablebidding of the Holy Spirit must the indi-vidual sinner be denounced. This, as we seeabundantly in her letters, was the methodwhich Catherine herself had been led toadopt, and though like other methods of


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86 ST CATHERINE OF SIENAdealing with sin it has been debased by thosewho follow it in form but not in spirit, it isthe method of the love of Christ.

After renewed thanksgiving Catherinemakes intercession for the mystical body ofthe Church, for her spiritual children andfor her two confessors, and then asks as tothe defects of the Church's ministers. Theanswer dwells first on the dignity of thepriesthood and on the virtue of the sacramentof the Body of Christ which no defect of thecelebrant can lessen. It is against God's willthat laymen should take upon them to punishbad priests ; they should reverence priestsas priests, whether they be good or bad. Butthe iniquity of priests and ministers is great.In the forefront is the sin of injustice in thefailure of the hierarchy to correct thosesubject to them. Lasciviousness, unnaturallust, luxury, avarice (shown more especiallyin buying and selling benefices and prelacies),pride and all forms of self-love are rampant.The condemnation is measured, but unspar-ing, and the assertion of the evils is put, we

I


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ST CATHERINE'S BOOK 87must remember, into the mouth of God Him-self. Yet to the same source is attributedan absolute prohibition of the punishment ofevil priests or bishops by laymen. Theseevil priests must be prayed for, and left forGod to deal with. In this, as in all herteaching, Catherine was a faithful followerof St Dominic. Nevertheless it is significantof how hardly even her faith was tried thatit is at this point x that she grappled with theproblem of evil in the section Delia DivinaProvidentia which has been taken as analternative, though it is a less suitable, titleto her book. In her anguish she had cried :

" To thee, Father eternal, all things arepossible : granted that Thou hast made uswithout ourselves, but to save us withoutourselvesthis Thou wilt not do ; yet I prayThee that Thou force their will and dispose

1 In the only modern English translation of the Dialogo(that by Mr Algar Thorold. London, 1896) this section isaltogether omitted and its title transferred to the first ninechapters of the Introduction !


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88 ST CATHERINE OF SIENAthem to will that which of themselves theydo not. And this I ask of Thee by Thyinfinite mercy."

It is the last cry of the despairing sinner,that God will make him good despite himself;the last cry of the lover of men, that Godwill make them into decent puppets ratherthan let them make themselves devils. ThatSt Catherine could not refrain from it at theend of her meditation on the sins of thepriesthood shows how deeply she felt. Thenshe stills her mind and listens as the innervoice, which seemed to her not her own butthat of God Himself, tells once more thestory of man's first disobedience, of redemp-tion by Christ for all who place their hopein Him, and of the absolute providence ofGod, so that nothing happens to His creatureswhich is not in accord with this providence,and all that God permits is for our good andour salvation. Catherine was a woman ofthe fourteenth century, instructed by con-fessors of its most strictly orthodox order,


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ST CATHERINE'S BOOK 89and to believe equally whole-heartedly inGod's omnipotence and man's free will washer settled faith, despite the cry whichanguish had wrung from her. It was im-possible that she should believe, as perhapsthe Church may yet come to believe, that asChrist in a measure emptied Himself of Hisdivinity in taking our flesh, so in giving manfree will, even though it be a limited free will,God in a measure emptied Himself of Hisomnipotence, and took the great adventureof leading man from stage to stage by thegrace which man will accept. She finds thefirm ground of experience in her belief thatto those who trust in God nothing can evercome amiss ; that God, in her pretty phrase,can always bring a rose out of our thorns.There is, indeed, no section of her book morefull of beauty than this, and we may guessthat as her orthodox belief, clad in suchrichness of phrase, was poured out from herunconscious mind, the recital brought herpeace.That the last section of the Lib

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St Catherine of Siena - 1919 Alfred W Pollard

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