Chapter 6: Catherine's Doctrine

Catherine’s Doctrine

The attentive reader will no doubt have perceived how great have been the difficulties at every step taken, in the previous chapters, towards a critically clear and solid account of Catherine’s life. He will, then, be quite prepared again to find difficulties, though largely of another order, in the task that now lies before us,--the attempt at a clear and authentic reproduction of her teaching.

1. Four difficulties in the utilization of the sources.

The sources are, it is true, at first sight, fairly abundant,--altogether about one hundred of the two hundred and eighty pages of the Vita ed Opere. But four peculiarities render their utilization a matter of much labour and caution.

For one thing, they certainly include no piece written by herself, and probably none written down before 1497. Catherine’s memory can no doubt be trusted, and with it much of the oldest version of those great turning-points of her inner life which occurred long before that date, and which she thus, later on, communicated to her two closest friends. Yet hers was a mind so constantly absorbed in present experiences and in self-renewal as to be all but incapable of dwelling, in any detail, upon her past experiences or judgments.

And next, within and for this her “doctrinal,” her “widowed” and “suffering” period, we are perplexed by the total absence of logical or indeed of any other order in the presentation of these discourses and contemplations. We have either to do without any order at all, or to construct one for ourselves,--which latter course of itself already means a reconstruction of the book.

But far more delicate is the task presented by the third peculiarity,--the fact, demonstrated both by the internal evidence and analysis and by the external evidence of the MSS., of the bewildering variety of forms and connections in which one and the same doctrine, sometimes an obviously unique saying, will appear. Six, ten, even twelve or more variants are the rule, not the exception. And I am specially thinking, under this heading, of contemporary variations--that is, variations of form that can reasonably be attributed either to her own initiative at work under differences of mood and of starting-point; or to the variety of the minds who apprehended and registered this teaching at the time of its delivery; or to both influences simultaneously. In the first case we get, say, her doctrine as to man’s weakness and sinfulness, in two moments of depression and consolation respectively, registered by one and the same disciple,--say, by Vernazza or by Marabotto. In the second case we get some such two sayings as rendered the one by Vernazza and the other by Marabotto severally. And in the third case we get both the depressed and the joyful original sayings, as they have passed through the minds of both Vernazza and Marabotto.

And lastly, we get another class, redactional variations; and these it is often as difficult as it is always necessary to detect. I mean the parallel passages, evolved in course of time by her attendants or constructed by successive redactors, more or less on the model of, but also with more or less of departure from, her own authentic sayings: blurred, partly inaccurate echoes, as it were, of her own living voice. These will generally have grown up but semi-consciously, or at least have arisen from simple motives of her glorification or of literary filling-in or rounding-off. For we must not forget the forty years which passed between her death and the Vita.

I am thinking here too of the theological limitations and corrections, introduced into the older text in the form of definite counter-statements, which we shall find to be especially visible in the Trattato; and of the, doubtless preponderatingly unconscious, modifications of an analogous kind which determined the composition of the Dialogo, and are traceable throughout that whole long work. For here again we have to remember how, between her living teachings, so ardent and familiar, so entirely from within and unoccupied with the world without, which reached up to 1510, and even the earliest MS. redaction of the contemporary jotting down of those sayings which we still possess,--that of 1547,--runs the great upheaval of the Protestant Reformation, beginning with Luther’s Theses of 1517. Catherine’s own fellow God-parent to Vernazza’s eldest daughter, the Doctor of Laws Tommaso Moro, had meanwhile become a Calvinist (1537), and then had returned to the Catholic Obedience in 1539, first under this his God-daughter’s influence. No wonder that what, under the magic suasion of her living personality, in times as yet free from the controversial and polemical tone and temper, and through and for her friends already won to and comprehensive of her teachings, had been certainly registered, and perhaps for a while transmitted, in its own pristine, winningly daring and unguarded, form, would, with her old friends dead and a new generation grown up and engrossed in attack and defence of various points of the Catholic position, be felt to require tempering and safeguarding, rewriting and controversial utilization. Hence we get three successive steps. The theological counter-statements in the Trattato, probably introduced between 1524 and 1530. The controversial point and utilization attempted in the very title of the Vita which promises, “una utile e cattolica dimostrazione e declarazione del Purgatorio,” and in the Preface, which declares the book to contain things “specially necessary in these our turbulent times,” touches which go back probably to 1536, perhaps even to 1524-1530. And the composition of the entire Dialogo, hardly begun before 1546.[221]

It is interesting to note how neither for the approbation of the first edition in 1551 (by the Dominican Fra Geronimo of Genoa), nor during the examination by the Congregation of Rites and the final approbation by Pope Innocent XI, 1677-1683, was any additional correction required or (as far as I know) even suggested. The latter point is particularly striking; for we have thus the very Pope who, in 1687, condemned Molinos’ teaching, solemnly approving Catherine’s doctrine four years before, after a seven years’ examination.

2. Catholic principles concerning the teaching of Canonized Saints.

Now it is a well-known principle of Catholic theology, propounded with classic clearness and finality by Pope Benedict XIV, in his standard work On the Beatification and Canonization of the Servants of God, that such an approbation of their sayings or writings binds neither the Church nor her individual members to more than the two points, which are alone necessary with respect to the possibility and advisability of the future Beatification and Canonization of the author of the sayings or writings in question. The Church and her individual members are thus bound only to hold the perfect orthodoxy and Catholic piety of such a saintly writer’s intentions, and again the (at least interpretative) orthodoxy of these his writings, and their spiritual usefulness for some class or classes of souls. But every kind and degree of respectful but deliberate criticism and of dissent is allowed, if only based upon solid reasons and combined with a full acceptance of those two points.

And indeed it is plain that heroism in action and suffering is one thing, and philosophical genius, training and balance is another; and even, again, that deep and delicate experiences on the one hand, and the power of their at all adequate analysis and psychological description, are two things and not one. Still, it is also evident that in proportion as a Saint’s doctrine is, professedly or at all events actually, based upon or occasioned by his own experience will it rightly demand a double measure of respectful study. For, in such a case, we can be sure not only of the saintly intentions of the teacher, but also of his doctrines being an attempt, however partially successful, at expressing certain first-hand, unusually deep and vivid experiences of the religious life, experiences which, taken in their substance and totality, constitute the very essence of his sanctity.

Now this is manifestly the case with Catherine. And hence she furnishes us with those very conditions of fruitful discussion, so difficult to get in religious matters. On the one hand, her undoubted sanctity and the personal experimental basis of her doctrine gain for her our willingness, indeed determination, first of all patiently to study and assimilate and sympathetically to reconstruct her special spiritual world from her own inner starting- and growing-point, and all this, at this first stage, without any question as to the completeness or final truth and value of the intellectual analyses and syntheses of these experiences elaborated by herself. And, on the other hand, we find ourselves driven, at our second stage, to examine the literary sources and philosophical and theological implications of this her teaching--if pressed; and to make various respectful, but firm and free distinctions and reservations, with regard to these sources and affinities. For here, in these her analyses and syntheses, a special quality of her own temperament is ever at work, and causes her to express, as best she can, a concentration of a whole host of the strongest feelings concerning just the one point of that one moment’s experience, with a momentary complete exclusion of all the rest. Here, again, her dependence, for her categories of thought and general language, imagery and scheme of doctrine, upon Fra Jacopone da Todi and upon the Pseudo-Dionysian writings is readily traceable,--the latter, compositions which we have only now succeeded in tracing, with final completeness and precision, to their predominantly Neo-Platonist source. And here we cannot but carefully consider the impressive series of Church pronouncements which have occurred since Catherine spoke and her devotees wrote. All these matters shall be carefully studied in the second volume.

3. The fortunate circumstances of Catherine’s teaching.

It was a rare combination of numerous special circumstances,--several of them unique,--which rendered possible the retention and indeed solemn approbation of the difficult and daring doctrine and language not rarely to be met with in the Vita (in contradistinction to the so-called Opere).

For one thing, the originator, the subject-matter and form, above all the school of her doctrine, all combined to secure it the largest possible amount of liberty and sympathetic interpretation. The originator, the soul from whom the doctrine had proceeded, had not herself written down one word of it; but she had spoken it all, warm from the very heart which loved and lived it: the cold and chilling process of deliberate composition had but little part in the whole matter, and that part was not hers. The subject-matter was not primarily dogmatic, and not at all political or legal; it dealt not with theological systems or visible institutions, but with the experiences of single souls: and at all times a great latitude has been allowed in such subject-matter, when proceeding, as here, from some saintly soul as the direct expression of its own experience. The form was not systematic, and aimed at no completeness; all was incidentally addressed to a few devoted disciples, in short monologues or homely conversations. The title Trattato, given later on to the collection of her detached thoughts on Purgatory, is thoroughly misleading; her whole spirit and form were precisely not that of the treatise. And the school to which she so obviously belonged was probably her chief protection. Indeed, the doctrinally difficult passages are, in a true sense, the least personal of her sayings: we shall find all their doctrinal presuppositions,--as to the immobility, indefectibility, deification of the soul; the possession by the soul of God without means or measure; and the like,--to go back to the writings which, purporting to be by the Areopagite Dionysius, the Convert of St. Paul, but composed in reality between A.D. 490-520, so profoundly influenced all mystical thinking and expression for one thousand years and more of the Church’s life.

And again, the period during which the corpus of Catherine’s doctrine was in process of formation was specially favourable to such large toleration. For if she died in 1510, ten years before the outbreak of the Protestant Reformation, with its inevitable reaction, her chief chronicler, the saintly philanthropist Vernazza, did not die, a true martyr to that boundless love of souls which he had derived from his great-souled friend, till 1524; and her Confessor Marabotto did not depart till 1528. Thus her doctrine would remain substantially untouched and treasured up till some twenty years after her death, and thirteen years after the great upheaval.

We have already noted that (somewhere about 1528, and on to 1551) her teaching did meet with some opposition. It will be interesting to study (in the Appendix) how the objection arose and was met. Here it must suffice to point out that, whereas Catherine’s Purgatorial doctrine is free from any final difficulty on the score of orthodoxy, it is just that doctrine which was hedged in and glossed before all the rest; and that whereas other parts of her teaching, in the form given in the Vita, are full of such difficulty, they remain strangely unmodified to this very day. It will appear that the Dialogo was in part composed to perform an office towards those doctrinal chapters of the Vita, similar to that performed by the glosses in and towards the text of the Trattato. Hence the glosses of the Trattato will have, in the following collection of sayings, to be removed from my text, and the statements of the Dialogo will have to be ignored in my text. These glosses or re-statements shall be considered later on, whenever these additions or substitutions are of sufficient interest.

4. The theological order of presentation adopted.

Then again, it is far from easy to settle upon the right order and method of presentation. The more closely we study the chapters in question the more do we find that the strange discomfort and disgust, engendered by any lengthy reading of them, proceeds from the curiously infelicitous manner of their composition. These chapters, in so much as they supply genuine materials, consist of a large number of detached, usually short sayings, of every kind of tone and mood, occasion and mental and emotional context and connotation, and yet all concerning but a few great central realities and truths. These sayings in themselves do not at all represent links in a chain of reasoning; they are numberless variations on some few fundamental experiences of the soul. Hence they require to be given in loose co-ordination, or in free grouping around some great central truth; somewhat like what is done, with such marked felicity, for Our Lord’s own sayings, which also are occasional and freely various, by the oldest of our Gospels, St. Mark. “And,” “and again,” can be used to join these recurrent similitudes, aspirations, emotional reflections; not “because” nor “therefore,” still less “firstly,” “secondly,” “thirdly,” as the Redactors have been so fond of doing. Hence the reader in the Vita feels himself in a constant state of abortive motion, and is ever being promised a precision which usually ends in vagueness.

Let us then group these parallel sayings around some few great central truths or dispositions. But what is the order of these great centres to be? Here again a difficulty occurs, and this time from the very nature of the doctrine concerned. For the special characteristic of her teaching, a teaching so largely derived both from her own intensely unitive character and (through the Dionysian writings, Proclus and Plotinus) from Plato himself, is precisely an infinitely close-woven organization, in which part vibrates in sympathy with part, in which each point carries with it the whole, and in which each one idea and feeling passes, as it were, right through, and colours and is coloured by all the rest. It would be almost as satisfactory to turn the impassioned discourse of Diotima in the Symposium into a series of numbered propositions, as here to try and detach any one feeling or idea from out of the living network of its fellows, in and through which it is, and gets and gives, its special self.

The historical order (i.e. the order in which, successively, each doctrine grew up and dominated her thinking) is, alas! as we have seen, out of the question.--The psychological order (i.e. the order in which the doctrines, such as we have them, would reproduce themselves within her own mind during that last period of her life, 1496-1510) would doubtless throw most light upon the special characteristics of her spirituality, and upon the hidden springs of her doctrine. But it is far too difficult, and must remain too largely hypothetical, to be even distantly aimed at here and now: some such attempt will be made in a later chapter, with the help of the materials first collected and grouped here in a more conventional way.--The theological order (i.e. the order in which these doctrines would appear if made to find their places in an ordinary manual of scholastic theology) is the one that I shall here endeavour to follow as far as possible. For thus I can start with a scheme so thoroughly familiar as nowhere itself to require any explanation; and I can thus help to bring out, from the first, the characteristic peculiarities of the mystical position generally, and of her own variety of it in particular.

I will then take here, successively, her teachings as to God in Himself, and Creation; Sin, Redemption, and Sanctification; and the Last Things. But I do so quite loosely, for I shall try nowhere to break off any bridge that she herself has thrown across from one subject to the other, and shall be satisfied if I can succeed in grouping her doctrine even approximately within those three divisions, according to the predominance of this or that point of her teaching. And, for this, I shall not shrink from a repeated utilization of one and the same text, when (as happens so often) it looks in many directions, and becomes fully clear only in juxtaposition with various parts of her teaching.

5. Literary sources of Catherine’s teaching.

We have evidence, as regards literary influences, that Catherine fed her mind on three books or sets of books: the Bible, the Pseudo-Dionysian Treatises, and the Lode of Jacopone da Todi.

The allusions to passages of Scripture are continual, but mostly of a swiftly passing, combinatory, allegorizing kind. Direct quotations and attempts at penetrating the objective sense of particular passages are rare, for most of the direct quotations are clearly due to her historians, not to herself; yet they exist and put her direct study of Scripture beyond all doubt. Her favourite Bible books were evidently Isaiah and the Psalms, and the Pauline and Joannine writings. Some touches (remarkably few for a mystic) are derived from the Canticle of Canticles, and many less obvious ones from the Synoptic Gospels; but there are no certain traces, I think, of any other Old Testament books, nor, in the Pauline group, of any passage from the Pastoral Epistles.

The evidence for her direct knowledge and use of Dionysius is, it is true, but circumstantial. But the following three facts seem, conjoined as they are in her case, sufficient to prove this knowledge. (i) We have already seen how her cousin and close spiritual friend, Suor Tommasa, wrote a devotional treatise on Denys the Areopagite, presumably before Catherine’s death, since Tommasa was sixty-two years of age in that year 1510; it would be strange indeed if Catherine did not, even if but from this quarter, get to know some of the Dionysian writings, perhaps even whilst they could still only be read in MS. form. (ii) Marsilio Ficino published in Florence, in 1492, his Latin translation of the Mystical Theology and of the Divine Names, with a copious commentary; and the book, dedicated to Giovanni de’ Medici, Archbishop of Florence and future Pope Leo X, found its way at once to all the larger centres of life, learning and devotion in Italy. Thus Catherine lived still eighteen years after the publication of this, the first printed, edition of any part of Denys (original or translation); even if she did not know these writings before, it seems again very unlikely that she would not get to know them now. (iii) There are, it is true, no direct quotations from Denys, nor does his name appear in the Vita ed Opere, except in that account of Suor Tommasa. But numerous sayings of Catherine bear, as we shall see later on, so striking a resemblance to passages in those two books of Denys, that it is difficult to explain them by merely mediate infiltration; and that those sayings ultimately, as to their literary occasion, go back to the Areopagite, is incontestable. I quote Denys from the usually careful translation of the Rev. John Parker: The Works of Dionysius the Areopagite, Pt. I, London, Oxford, 1897, with certain corrections of my own.

The proofs for her knowledge and love of Jacopone da Todi’s Italian “Praises” is, on the other hand, direct and explicit. The Vita, p. 37, makes her say: “Listen to what Fra Jacopone says in one of his Lode, beginning: ‘O amor di povertade,’” and then gives her word-for-word commentary on verse 23 of this his Loda LVIII. Words from this same verse are again quoted by her on p. 62; the opening line of this Loda is put into her mouth on p. 83; and another verse, the sixth, is quoted by her, as by the Blessed Jacopone, on p. 92. I have been able to find many other sayings of hers which are hardly less directly suggested by the great Umbrian than these. Here, again, she probably knew the Lode in MS. form, before they appeared in print in 1490; but will in any case have known them in this their printed form. I have carefully studied in this, the first printed edition (Florence: Bonaccorsi), all the Lode bearing upon subjects and doctrines dear to Catherine. They are twenty in all, from among the hundred and two numbers of that collection.[222]

6. The Psycho-physical Occasions or Reflexes of her Doctrine. Her special reaction under and use of her literary sources shall be examined in a later chapter.

The psycho-physical occasions or reflexes of her various teachings, as far as the interconnection can be traced with probability, shall also be studied in the second volume. But already here I would have the reader clearly to understand, that nowhere are such psycho-physical conditions and experiences to be considered the causes of her doctrine, as though the lower produced the higher, and as though the spiritual were the automatic resultant and necessary precipitate of certain accidental, involuntary conditions in time and space. For everywhere such conditions can only, at best, be accepted as the occasions or materials for the development or illustration of some spiritual doctrine, or, contrariwise, as the psychic effects and embodiments of some vividly realized invisible truth or law; whilst this spiritual teaching itself is derived from far other and deeper causes,--the interaction of her own experience and free spiritual powers and of God’s grace, and the conflict of these with her own passions, the whole helped or hindered by the world without.

I. God As Creative Love. The Creature’s True And False Self; True And False Love.

1. Creation, an overflow of Goodness.

First, then, we will take the sayings about Creation, and the original, substantially indelible character of all created beings. “I saw a sight which satisfied me much. I was shown the Living Fountain of Goodness, which was (as yet) all within Itself alone, without any kind of participation. And next I saw that It began to participate with the creature, and made that very beautiful company of Angels, in order that this company might enjoy His ineffable glory, without asking any other return from the Angels than that they should recognize themselves to be creatures created by His supreme goodness.… And hence, when they were clothed in sin by their pride and disobedience, God suddenly subtracted from them the participation of His goodness.… Yet He did not subtract it all, for in that case they would have remained still more malign than they (actually) are, and they would have had Hell infinite in pain, as they now have it in time.” … “When we ourselves shall depart from this life,--supposing we are in mortal sin,--then God would subtract from us His goodness and would leave us in our own selves, yet not altogether, since He wills that in every place there should be found His goodness accompanied by His justice. And if any creature could be found that did not participate in His goodness, that creature would be as malignant as God is good.”[223]

2. Natural conformity between God and all rational creatures.

From her sayings as to Creation and Pure Love, Creation’s cause, we come to those as to the Natural Conformity between God and Rational Creatures; His constant care for the human soul; and the consequent law of imitative love incumbent upon us. “I see God to have so great a conformity with the rational creature, that if the Devil himself could but rid himself of those garments of sin, in that instant God would unite Himself to him, and would make him into that which he, the Devil, attempted to achieve by his own power. So too with regard to man: lift off sin from his shoulders, and then allow the good God to act,--God who seems to have nothing else to do than to unite Himself to us.”--“It appears to me, indeed, that God has no other business than myself.”--“If man could but see the care which God takes of the soul, he would be struck with stupor within himself.”--“I see that God stands all ready to give us all the aids necessary for our salvation, and that He attends to our actions solely for our good. And, on the contrary, I see man occupied with things that are opposed to his true self and of no value. And at the time of death God will say to him: ‘What was there that I could do for thee, O man, that I did not do?’ And man himself will then see this clearly.”--“When God created man, He did not put Himself in motion for any other reason than His pure love alone. And hence, in the same way as Love Itself, for the welfare of the loved soul, does not fail in the accomplishment of anything, whatever may be the advantage or disadvantage that may accrue from thence to the Lover, so also must the love of the loved soul return to the Lover, with those same forms and modes with which it came from Him. And then such love as this, which has no regard for aught but love itself, cannot be in fear of anything.”[224]

3. Relations between Love, God; love of our true self; and false self-love.

We can take next her teachings as to the relations between the love of God, love of our true self, and false self-love. “The love of God is our true self-love, the love characteristic of and directed to our true selves, since these selves of ours were created by and for Love Itself. The love, on the other hand, of every other thing deserves to be called self-hatred, since it deprives us of our true self-love, which is God. Hence ‘Him love, Who loveth thee,’ that is, Love, God; and ‘him leave who doth not love thee,’ that is, all other things, from God downwards.”[225]

“God so loves the soul, and is so ready to give it His graces, that, when He is impeded by some sin, then men say: ‘Thou hast offended God,’ that is, thou hast driven away God from thee, Who, with so much love, was desiring to do thee good. And men say this, although it is really man who then suffers the damage and who offends his own true self. But because God loves us more than we love our own selves, and gives more care to our true utility than we do ourselves, therefore does He get designated as the one who is offended. And, indeed, if God could be the recipient of suffering, it would be when, by sin, He is driven away by and from us.” “This corrupt expression: ‘Thou hast offended God.’” “Thou couldst discover, (O soul,) that God is continually willing whatsoever our true selves are wishing; He is ever aiming at nothing but at our own true spiritual advantage.”[226]

Hence happiness and joy, different from all mere pleasure, ever accompany this reconquest of our true self-love and this our re-donation of it to its true source. “Man was created for the end of possessing happiness. And having deviated from this his end, he has formed for himself a false, selfish self, which in all things struggles against the soul’s true happiness.” “This divine love is our proper and true love.” “Man can truly know, by continual experience, that the love of God is our repose, our joy, and our life; and that (false) self-love is but constant weariness, sadness, and a (living) death of our true selves, both in this world and in the next.” “All sufferings, displeasures, and pains are caused by attachment to the false self. And although adversities many a time seem to us to be unreasonable, because of certain considerations which we believe to be true and indeed quite evident; yet the fact remains that it is our own imperfection which is preventing us from seeing the truth, and this it is which causes us to feel pains, suffering, and displeasure.” “O Love! if others feel an obligation to observe Thy commandments, I, on my part, freely will to have them all ten, because they are all delightful and full of love.… This is a point which is understandable only to him who himself experiences it; for in truth the divine precepts, although they are contrary to our sensuality, are nevertheless according to our own spirit which, of its very nature, is ever longing to be free from all bodily sensations, so as to be able to unite itself to God through love.”[227]

4. The true self instinctively hungers after God.

The sayings as to the close correspondence between the true self and God lead us on easily to those about the true self’s instinctive recognition of God, and its hunger for the possession, for the interiorization of God. “If I were to see the whole court of heaven all robed in one and the same manner, so that there would be no apparent difference between God and the Angels: even then the love which I have in my heart would recognize God, in the same manner as does a dog his master. Love knows how, without means, to discover its End and ultimate Repose.” “If a consecrated Host were to be given me together with other non-consecrated ones I would, I think, distinguish It by the taste, as wine from water.”--“When she saw the Sacrament upon the Altar in the hand of the priest, she would exclaim within herself (as it were, addressing the priest): ‘O swiftly, swiftly speed It to the heart, since It is the heart’s own food.’”[228]

5. Superiority of interior graces over exterior manifestations. No good within herself apart from divine grace.

Catherine’s hunger for the interiorization of all the external helps of religion, even, indeed specially, of the Holy Eucharist Itself, leads us on to her statements as to the superiority of interior graces and dispositions over all exterior manifestations and sensible consolations, and as to the nature of acts produced by the false self or apart from the grace of God. “If we would esteem the operations of God” as they truly deserve, “we should attend more to things interior than to exterior ones.… The true light makes me see and understand that we must not look to what proceedeth from God to aid us in some special necessity and for His glory, but that we must look solely to the pure love with which He performs His work with regard to us. When the soul perceives how direct and pure are the operations of love, and that this love is not intent upon any benefit that we could confer upon It, then indeed the soul also desires, in its turn, to love with a pure love, and from the motive of the divine love alone.”[229]

“This not-eating of mine is an operation of God, independent of my will, hence I can in nowise glory in it; nor should we marvel at it, for to Him such an operation is as nothing.”--And to her Confessor Don Marabotto she says reprovingly, when he too wanted to smell the strange, strengthening odour which she smelt on his hand: “Such things as God alone can give” (i.e. states and conditions in the production of which the soul does not co-operate) “He does not give to him who seeks them; indeed, He gives them only on occasion of great need, and in order that we may draw great spiritual profit from them.”[230]

“If I do anything that is evil, I do it myself alone, nor can I attribute the blame to the Devil or to any other creature but only to my own self-will, sensuality, and other such malign movements. And if all the Angels were to declare that there was any good in me, I would refuse to believe them, because I clearly recognize how that all good is in God alone, and that in me, without divine grace, there is nothing but deficiency.”--“I would not that, to my separate self, even one single meritorious act should ever be attributed, even though I could at the same time be certified of no more falling from henceforward and of being saved; because such an attribution would be to me as though a Hell.” “Rather would I remain in danger of eternal damnation than be saved by, and see, such an act of the separate self.” “The one sole thing in myself in which I glory is that I see in myself nothing in which I can glory.”

“Yet it is necessary that we should labour and exercise ourselves, since divine grace does not give life nor render pleasing unto God except that which the soul has worked; and without work on our part grace refuses to save.”--“We must never wish anything other than what happens from moment to moment, all the while, however, exercising ourselves in goodness. And to refuse to exercise oneself in goodness, and to insist upon simply awaiting what God might send, would be simply to tempt God.”[231]

6. God is Pure Love, Grace, Peace, and the Soul’s True Self.

The passages concerning the close relations between man’s pure love and instinct for God, and Pure Love, God Himself, easily lead us on to those in which Pure Love, Peace, Grace, the True Self, indeed the Essence of all things are positively identified with God. “Hearing herself called” to any office of her state or of charity, “she would,” even though apparently absorbed in ecstatic prayer, “arise at once, and go without any contention of mind. And she acted thus, because she fled all self-seeking as though it were the devil. And she felt at such times as though she could best express her feelings by means of the glorious Apostle’s words: ‘Who then shall separate me from the love of God?’ and the remainder of the great passage. And she would say: ‘I seem to see how that immovable mind of St. Paul extended much further than he was able to express in words; since Pure Love is God Himself: who then shall be able to separate Him from Himself?’” Elsewhere and on other occasions we find her declaring: “Love is God Himself”; “Pure Love is no other than God”; “the Divine love is the very God, infused by His own immense Goodness into our hearts.”[232]

She also declares that: “Grace is God”; that “Peace is God,”--“wouldest thou that I show thee what thing God is? Peace,--that peace which no man finds, who departs from Him.” And further still: “The proper centre of every one is God Himself”; “my Me is God, nor do I recognize any other Me, except my God Himself;” “my Being is God, not by simple participation but by a true transformation of my Being.” “God is my Being, my Me, my Strength, my Beatitude, my Good, my Delight.” Indeed “the glorious God is the whole essence of things both visible and invisible.”[233]

All these startling statements are but so many expressions of one of the most characteristic moods and attitudes of her mind and heart. For in her vehemence of love and thirst for unification she would exclaim: “I will have nothing to do with a love that would be for God or in God; this is a love which pure love cannot bear: since pure love is (simply) God Himself”; “I cannot abide to see that word for, and that word in, since they denote to my mind a something that can stand between God and myself.”[234]

All this doctrine would be summed up by her in certain favourite expressions. “She was wont often to pronounce these words: ‘Sweetness of God, Fulness of God, Goodness of God, Purity of God’”; and at a later time “she had continually on her lips the term ‘(clear) Fulness’” (Self-adequation, nettezza).[235]

Ii. Sin, Purification, Illumination

1. The soul’s continuous imperfection. Self-love and Pure Love, their contradictory characters. Every man capable of Pure Love.

Catherine’s extreme sensitiveness is no doubt a chief cause of the peculiar form in which she experiences her sinfulness and faults and their actually slow purification, as expressed in those of her sayings which refer to the growth of love and to the continuous imperfections of the soul. “From the time when I began to love Him, that love has never failed me”; “indeed it has continually grown unto its consummation in the depths of my heart.” This growth takes place only step by step; and is in reality never complete, and never without certain imperfections. “The creature is incapable of knowing anything but what God gives it from day to day. If it could know (beforehand) the successive degrees that God intends to give it, it would never be quieted.” “When from time to time I would advert to the matter, it seemed to me that my love was complete; but later, as time went on and as my sight grew clearer, I became aware that I had had many imperfections.… I did not recognize them at first, because God-Love was determined to achieve the whole only little by little, for the sake of preserving my physical life, and so as to keep my behaviour tolerable for those with whom I lived. For otherwise, with such other insight, so many excessive acts would ensue, as to make one insupportable to oneself and to others.” “Every day I feel that the motes are being removed, which this Pure Love casts out (cava fuori). Man cannot see these imperfections; indeed, since, if he saw these motes, he could not bear the sight, God ever lets him see the work he has achieved, as though no imperfections remained in it. But all the time God does not cease from continuing to remove them.” “From time to time, I feel that many instincts are being consumed within me, which before had appeared to be good and perfect; but when once they have been consumed, I understand that they were bad and imperfect.… These things are clearly visible in the mirror of truth, that is of Pure Love, where everything is seen crooked which before appeared straight.”[236]

And yet the slowness of this purification is, in the last resort, caused, if not by the incomplete purity of her love, at least by the deep-rootedness and evasive character of the wrong self-love that has to be extirpated. “This our self-will is so subtle and so deeply rooted within our own selves, and defends itself with so many reasons, that, when we cannot manage to carry it out in one way, we carry it out in another. We do our own wills under many covers (pretexts),--of charity, of necessity, of justice, of perfection.” But pure love sees through all these covers: “I saw this love to have so open and so pure an eye, its sight to be so subtle and its seeing so far-reaching, that I stood astounded.” “True love wills to stand naked, without any kind of cover, in heaven and on earth, since it has not anything shameful to conceal.” And “this naked love ever sees the truth; whilst self-love can neither see it nor believe in it.” “Pure love loves God without any for (any further motive).”[237]

And man, every man, is capable of this pure love and of the truth which such love sees: “I see every one to be capable of my tender Love.” “Truth being, by its very nature, communicable to all, cannot be the exclusive property of any one.”[238]

2. Exactingness of Pure Love.

The next group of sayings deals with the purity of Love, and the severity with which this purity progressively eliminates all selfish motives and attachments, whilst itself becoming increasingly its own exceeding great beatitude. “Pure Love loves God without why or wherefore (perchè)” “Since Love took over the care of everything, I have not taken care of anything, nor have I been able to work with my intellect, memory and will, any more than if I had never had them. Indeed every day I feel myself more occupied in Him, and with greater fire.” “I had given the keys of the house to Love, with ample permission to do all that was necessary, and determined to have no consideration for soul or body, but to see that, of all that the law of pure love required, there should not be wanting the slightest particle (minimo chè). And I stood so occupied in contemplating this work of Love, that if He had cast me, body and soul, into hell, hell itself would have appeared to me all love and consolation.”[239]

Yet the corresponding, increasing constraint of the false self is most real. “I find myself every day more restricted, as if a man were (first) confined within the walls of a city, then in a house with an ample garden, then in a house without a garden, then in a hall, then in a room, then in an ante-room, then in the cellar of the house with but little light, then in a prison without any light at all; and then his hands were tied and his feet were in the stocks, and then his eyes were bandaged, and then he would not be given anything to eat, and then no one would be able to speak to him; and then, to crown all, every hope were taken from him of issuing thence as long as life lasted. Nor would any other comfort remain to such an one, than the knowledge that it was God who was doing all this, through love with great mercy; an insight which would give him great contentment. And yet this contentment does not diminish the pain or the oppression.”[240]

3. Blinding effect of all self-seeking. The gradual transformation of the soul.

There is next a group of sayings as to the immense, blinding and staining effect of even slight self-seekings, and as to how God gradually transforms the soul. “God and Sin, however slight, cannot live peaceably side by side (stare insieme). Since some little thing that you may have in your eye does not let you see the sun, we can make a comparison between God and the sun, and then between intellectual vision and that of the bodily eye.” “After considering things as they truly are, I find myself constrained to live without self.” “Since the time when God has given the light to the soul, it can no more desire to operate by means of that part of itself which is ever staining all things and rendering turbid the clear water of God’s grace. The soul then offers and remits itself entirely to Him, so that it can no more operate except to the degree and in the manner willed by tender Love Himself; and henceforth it does not produce works except such as are pure, full and sincere; and these are the works that please God-Love.”[241]

“I will not name myself either for good or for evil, lest this my (selfish) part should esteem itself to be something.” “Being determined to join myself unto God, I am in every manner bound to be the enemy of His enemies; and since I find nothing that is more His enemy than is self in me, I am constrained to hate this part of me more than any other thing; indeed, because of the contrariety that subsists between it and the spirit, I am determined to separate it from all the goods of this world and of the next, and to esteem it no more than if it were not.”[242]

“When she saw others bewailing their evil inclinations, and forcing themselves greatly to resist them, and yet the more they struggled to produce a remedy for their defects, the more did they commit them, she would say to them: ‘You have subjects for lamentation (tu hai li guai) and bewail them, and I too would be having and bewailing them; you do evil and bewail it, and I should be doing and be bewailing it as you do, if God Almighty were not holding me. You cannot defend yourself, nor can I defend myself. Hence it is necessary that we renounce the care of ourselves unto Him, Who can defend this our true self; and He will then do that which we cannot do.’”[243]

“As to the annihilating of man, which has to be made in God, she spoke thus: ‘Take a bread, and eat it. When you have eaten it, its substance goes to nourish the body, and the rest is eliminated, because nature cannot use it at all, and indeed, if nature were to retain it, the body would die. Now, if that bread were to say to you: “Why dost thou remove me from my being? if I could, I would defend myself to conserve myself, an action natural to every creature”: you would answer: “Bread, thy being was ordained for a support for my body, a body which is of more worth than thou; and hence thou oughtest to be more contented with thine end than with thy being. Live for thine end, and thou wilt not care about thy being, but thou wilt exclaim (to the body): ‘Swiftly, swiftly draw me forth from my being, and put me within the operation of that end of mine, for which I was created.’” … The soul, by the operation of God, eliminates from the body all the superfluities and evil habits acquired by sin, and retains within itself the purified body, which body thenceforth performs its operations by means of these purified senses.… And, when the soul has consumed all the evil inclinations of the body, God consumes all the imperfections of the soul.’”[244]

In each particular instance, the process was wont to be as follows: “When her selfish part saw itself tracked down by Love, Catherine would turn to Him and say: ‘Even though it pain sense, content Thy will: despoil me of this spoil and clothe me with Love full, pure and sincere.’”[245]

4. Suddenness and gratuitousness of God’s light; the obstacles to its operation.

We get next a set of apparently contrary sayings, concerning the suddenness of God’s illumination; how the degree of this light cannot be determined by man; and what are, nevertheless, the conditions under which it will not act. In some cases, “the soul is made to know in an instant, by means of a new light above itself, all that God desires it to know, and this with so much certainty that it would be impossible to make the soul believe otherwise. Nor is more shown it than is necessary for leading it to greater perfection.” “This light is not sought by man, but God gives it unto man when He chooses; neither does the man himself know how he knows the thing that he is made to know. And if perchance man were determined to seek to know a little further than he has been made to know, he would achieve nothing, but would remain like unto a stone, without any capacity.”[246]

And she would pray: “Be Thou my understanding; (thus) shall I know that which it may please Thee that I should know. Nor will I henceforth weary myself with seeking; but I will abide in peace with Thine understanding, which shall wholly occupy my mind.” “If a man would see properly in spiritual matters, let him pluck out the eyes of his own presumption.” “He who gazes too much upon the sun’s orb, makes himself blind; even thus, I think, does pride blind many, who want to know too much.” “When God finds a soul that does not move, He operates within it in His own manner, and puts His hand to greater things. He takes from this soul the key of His treasures which He had given to it, so that it might be able to enjoy them; and gives to this same soul the care of His presence, which entirely absorbs it.”[247]

5. God’s way of winning souls and raising them towards pure love. The fruits of full trust.

The next group can be made up of passages descriptive of the dealings adopted by God with a view to first winning souls as He finds them, and then raising them above mercenary hope or slavish fear; and of the childlike fearlessness inspired by perfect trust in God. As to the winning them, she says: “The selfishness of man is so contrary to God and rebellious against Him, that God Himself cannot induce the soul to do His will, except by certain stratagems (lusinghe): promising it things greater than those left, and giving it, even in this life, a certain consoling relish (gusto). And this He does, because He perceives the soul to love things visible so much, that it would never leave one, unless it saw four.”[248]

And, as to God’s raising of the soul, she propounds the deep doctrine, which only apparently contradicts the divine method just enunciated, as to the necessary dimness of the soul’s light with regard to the intrinsic consequences of its own acts, a dimness necessary, because alone truly purificatory, for the time that runs between its conversion, when, since it is still weak, it requires to see, and its condition of relative purity, when, since it is now strong, it can safely be again allowed to see.“ If a man were to see that which, in return for his good deeds, he will have in the life to come, he would cease to occupy himself with anything but heavenly things. But God, desiring that faith should have its merit, and that man should not do good from the motive of selfishness, gives him that knowledge little by little, though always sufficiently for the degree of faith of which the man is then capable. And God ends by leading him to so great a light as to things that are above, that faith seems to have no further place.--On the other hand, if man knew that which hereafter he will have to suffer if he die in the miserable state of sin, I feel sure that, for fear of it, he would let himself be killed rather than commit one single sin. But God, unwilling as He is that man should avoid doing evil from the motive of fear, does not allow him to see so terrifying a spectacle, although He shows it in part to such souls as are so clothed and occupied by His pure love that fear can no more enter in.”[249]

And as to the full trust of pure love, we have the following: “God let her hear interiorly: ‘I do not want thee henceforward to turn thine eyes except towards Love; and here I would have thee stay and not to move, whatever happens to thee or to others, within or without’; ‘he who trusts in Me, should not doubt about himself.’”[250]

And this Love gives of itself so fully to those that give themselves fully to It, that when asked by such souls to impetrate some grace for them she would say: “I see this tender Love to be so courteously attentive to these my spiritual children, that I cannot ask of It anything for them, but can only present them before His face.” In other cases, as in those of beginners when sick and dying, she would be “drawn to pray for” a soul, and would “impetrate” some special “grace for it.” “Lord, give me this soul,” she would at times pray aloud, “I beg Thee to give it me, for indeed Thou canst do so.” And “when she was drawn to pray for something, she would be told in her mind: ‘Command, for love is free to do so.’”[251]

Iii. The Three Categories And The Two Ways

The next set of sayings so eminently constitutes the aggregation, if not the system, of categories under and with which Catherine habitually sees her types and pictures, and thinks and feels her experiences of divine things, that it will require careful discrimination and grouping.

1. The Three Categories: “In” Concentration; “Out” Liberation; “Over,” Elevation.

There is, first, the great category of in, within, down into; that is, recollection, concentration. “The love which I have within my heart.” “Since I began to love It, never again has that Love diminished; indeed It has ever grown to Its own fulness, within my innermost heart.” Hence she would say to those who dwelt in admiration of her psycho-physical peculiarities: “If you but had experience (sapeste) of another thing which I feel within me!” And again,“If we would esteem (aright) the operations of God, we must attend more to interior than to exterior things.” And, with regard to the Holy Eucharist, she would whisper, when seeing at Mass the Priest about to communicate: “O swiftly, swiftly speed It down to the heart, since it is the heart’s own food ”; and she would declare, with regard to her own Communion: “In the same instant in which I had It in my mouth, I felt It in my heart.”[252]

There is, next, the category of out, outside, outwards; that is, liberation, ecstasy. “The soul which came out from God pure and full has a natural instinct to return to God as full and pure (as it came).” “The soul finds itself bound to a body entirely contrary to its own nature, and hence expects with desire its separation from the body.” “God grants the grace, to some persons, of making their bodies into a Purgatory (already) in this world.” “When God has led the soul on to its last stage (passo), the soul is so full of desire to depart from the body to unite itself with God, that its body appears to it a Purgatory, keeping it far apart from its (true) object.” “The prison, in which I seem to be, is the world; the chain is the body”; “to noble (gentili) souls, death is the end of an obscure prison; to the remainder, it is a trouble,--to such, that is, as have fixed all their care upon what is but so much dung (fango).” And, whilst strenuously mortifying the body, she would answer its resistances, as though so many audible complainings, and say: “If the body is dying, well, let it die; if the body cannot bear the load, well, leave the body in the lurch (O soul).”[253]

And all this imprisonment is felt as equivalent to being outside of the soul’s true home. “I seem to myself to be in this world like those who are out of their home, and who have left all their friends and relations, and who find themselves in a foreign land; and who, having accomplished the business on which they came, stand ready to depart and to return home,--home, where they ever are with heart and mind, having indeed so ardent a love of their country (patria), that one day spent in getting there would appear to them to last a year.”[254]

And this feeling of outsideness, seen here with regard to the relations of the soul to the body and to the world, we find again with regard to sanctity and the soul. In this latter case also the greater is felt to be (as it were) entrapped, and contained only very partially within the lesser; and as though this greater could and did exist, in its full reality, only outside of the lesser. “I can no more say ‘blessed’ to any saint, taken in himself, because I feel it to be an inappropriate (deforme) word”; “I see how all the sanctity which the saints have, is outside of them and all in God.” Indeed she sums this up in the saying: “I see that anything perfect is entirely outside of the creature; and that a thing is entirely imperfect, when the creature can at all contain it.” Hence “the Blessed possess (hanno) blessedness, and yet they do not possess it. For they possess it, only in so far as they are annihilated in their own selves and are clothed with God; and they do not possess it, in so far as they remain (si trovano) in their particular (proprio) being, so as to be able to say: ‘I am blessed.’”[255]

There is, in the third place, the category of over, above, upwards; that is elevation, sublimation. We will begin with cases where it is conjoined with the previous categories, and will move on into more and more pure aboveness. “I am so placed and submerged in His immense love, that I seem as though in the sea entirely under water, and could on no side touch, see, or feel anything but water.” And “if the sea were the food of love, there would exist no man nor woman that would not go and drown himself (affogasse) in it; and he who was dwelling far from this sea, would engage in nothing else but in walking to get to it and to immerse himself within it.”[256] The soul here feels the water on every side of it, yet evidently chiefly above it, for it has had to plunge in, to get under the water.

“Listen to what Fra Jacopone says in one of his Lauds, which begins, ‘O Love of Poverty.’ He says: ‘That which appears to thee (to be), is not; so high above is that which is. (True) elevation (superbia) is in heaven; earthy lowness (umiltà) leads to the soul’s own destruction.’ He says then: ‘That which appears to thee,’ that is, all things visible, ‘are not,’ and have not true being in them: ‘so high’ and great ‘is He who is,’ that is, God, in whom is all true being. ‘Elevation is in heaven,’ that is, true loftiness and greatness is in heaven and not on earth; ‘earthy lowness leads to the soul’s own destruction,’ that is, affection placed in these created things, which are low and vile, since they have not in them true being, produces this result.”--“I feel,” she says in explanation of what and how she knows, “a first thing above the intellect; and above this thing I feel another one and a greater; and above this other one, another, still more great; and so up and up does one thing go above the other, each thing ever greater (than its predecessors), that I conclude it to be impossible to express even a spark (scintilla) as to It” (the highest and greatest of the whole series, God). Here it is interesting still to trace the influence of the same passage of Jacopone (again referred to in this place by the Vita), and to see why she introduced “greatness” alongside of “loftiness” into her previous paraphrase.[257]

Now this vivid impression of a strong upward movement, combined with the feeling of being in and under something, gives the following image, used by her during her last illness: “I can no longer manage to live on in this life, because I feel as though I were in it like cork under water.” And this “above,” unlike to “outside,” is accompanied by the image, not of clothing but of nakedness; the clothes are left below. “This vehement love said to her, on one occasion: ‘What art thou thinking of doing? I want thee all for myself. I want to strip thee naked, naked. The higher up thou shalt go, however great a perfection thou mayest have, the higher will I ever stand above thee, to ruin all thy perfections’”--this, of course, inasmuch as she is still imperfect and falls short of the higher and higher perfections to which her soul is being led.[258]

And as to man’s faculties, she says: “As the intellect reaches higher (supera) than speech, so does love reach higher than intellect.” And again, as a universal law: “When pure love speaks, it ever speaks above nature; and all the things which it does and thinks and feels are always above nature.”[259]

2. The Two Ways: the Negative Way, God’s Transcendence; the Positive Way, God’s Immanence.

Now these three categories of within and inward, outside and outward, above and upward position and movement, can lead, and do actually lead in Catherine’s case, to two separate lines of thought and feeling. And these lines are each too much a necessary logical conclusion from the constant working of these categories, and they are each again far too much, and even apart from these categories, expressive of two rival but complementary experiences, for either of them to be able to suppress or even modify the other. Each has its turn in the rich, free play of Catherine’s life. I will take the negative line first, and then the positive, so as to finish up with affirmation, which will thus, as in her actual experience and practice, be all the deeper and more substantial, because it has passed, and is ever re-passing, through a process of limitation and purification.

First, then, if grace and God are only within, and only without, and only above, she will and does experience contradiction and paradox in all attempts at explaining reality; she will thus find things to be obscure instead of clear; and she will end by affirming the unutterableness, the unthinkableness of God, indeed of all reality. “I see without eyes, I understand without understanding, I feel without feeling, and I taste without taste.” “When the creature is purified, it sees the True; and such a sight is not a sight.” “The sight of how it is God” who sends the soul its purifying trials “gives the soul a great contentment; and yet this contentment does not diminish the pain.” Still, “pure love cannot suffer; nor can it understand what is meant by pain or torment.” “The sun, which at first seemed so clear to me, now seems obscure; what used to seem sweet to me, now seems bitter: because all beauties and all sweetnesses that have an admixture of the creature are corrupt and spoilt.” “As to Love, only this can we understand about It, that It is incomprehensible to the mind.” “So long as a person can still talk of things divine, and can relish, understand, remember and desire them, he has not yet come to port.” For indeed “all that can be said about God is not God, but only certain smallest fragments which fall from (His) table.”[260]

And yet those experiences of God’s presence as, apparently, in a special manner within us, and without us, and above us, also lead, by means of another connection of ideas, to another, to a positive result. For those experiences can lead us to dwell, not upon the difference of the “places,” but upon the apparent fact that He is in a “place” of some sort, in space somewhere, the exact point of which is still to find; and, by thus bringing home to the mind this underlying paradox of the whole position, they can help to make the soul shrink away from this false clarity, and to fall back upon the deep, dim, true view of God as existing, for our apprehension, in certain states of soul alone, states which have all along been symbolized for us by these different “places” and “positions.” And thus what before was a paradox and mystery qua space, because at the same time within and without, and because not found by the soul “within” unless through getting “without” itself, becomes now a paradox and mystery qua state, because the soul at one and the same time attains to its own happiness and loses it, indeed attains happiness only through deliberately sacrificing it. And we thus come to the great central secret of all life and love, revealed to us in its fulness in the divine paradox of our Lord’s life and teaching.

God, then, first seems to be in a place, indeed to be a place. “I see all good to be in one only place, that is God.” “The spirit can find no place except God, for its repose.”[261]

If God be in a place, we cannot well conceive of Him as other than outside of and above the soul, which itself, even God being in a place, will be in a place also. “God has created the soul pure and full, with a certain God-ward instinct, which brings happiness in its train (istinto beatifico).” And “the nearer the soul approaches” (is joined, si accosta) “to God, the more does the instinct attain to its perfection.” Here the instinct within pushes the soul “onwards, outwards, upwards.” And the nearer the soul gets to God in front, outside and above of it, the happier it becomes: because, the more it satisfies this its instinct, the less it suffers from the distance from God, and the more does it enjoy His proximity.[262]

This approach is next conceived of as increasingly conveying a knowledge to the soul of God’s desire for union with it; but such an approach can only be effected by means of much fight against and through the intervening ranks of the common enemies of the two friends; and, as we have already seen, chief amongst these enemies is the soul’s false self. “The nearer man approaches to (si accosta) God, the more he knows that God desires to unite Himself with us.” “Being determined to approach God, I am constrained to be the enemy of His enemies.”[263]

And then, that “place” in which God was pictured as being, is found to be a state, a disposition of the soul. Now as long as the dominant tendency was to think God with clearness, and hence to picture Him as in space, that same tendency would, naturally enough, represent this place He was in as outside and above the soul. For if He is in space, He is pictured as extended, and hence as stretching further than, and outside of, the soul, which itself also is conceived as spacially extended; and if He is in a particular part of space, that part can only, for a geocentric apprehension of the world, be thought of as the upper part of space. But in proportion as the picture of physical extension and position gives way to its prompting cause, and the latter is expressed, as far as possible, unpictorially and less clearly, but more simply as what it is, viz. a spiritual intention and disposition, she is still driven indeed, in order to retain some clearness of speech, to continue to speak as of a place and of a spacial movement, but she has now no longer three categories but only one, viz. within and inwards. For a physical quantity can be and move in different places and directions in space; but a spiritual quality can only be experienced within the substance of the spirit. “God created the soul pure and full, with a certain beatific instinct of Himself” (i.e. of His actual presence). And hence, “in proportion as it (again) approaches to the conditions of its original creation, this beatific instinct ever increasingly discovers itself and grows stronger and stronger.”[264]

And God being thus not without, nor indeed in space at all, she can love Him everywhere: indeed the what she is now constitutes the where she is; in a camp she can love God as dearly as in a convent, and heaven itself is already within her soul, so that only a change in the soul’s dispositions could constitute hell for that soul, even in hell itself. “O Love,” she exclaims, after the scene with the Friar, who had attempted to prove to her that his state of life rendered him more free and apt to love God, “who then shall impede me from loving Thee? Even if I were in the midst of a camp of soldiers, I could not be impeded from loving Thee.” She had, during the interview, explained her meaning: “If I believed that your religious habit would give me but one additional glimpse” (spark, scintilla) “of love, I would without doubt take it from you by force, were I not allowed to have it otherwise. That you may be meriting more than myself, I readily concede, I am not seeking after that; let those things be yours. But that I cannot love Him as much as you can do, you will never succeed in making me even understand.” “I stood so occupied in seeing the work of Love (within my soul), that if it had thrown me with soul and body into hell, hell itself would have appeared to me to be nothing but love and consolation.” And, on another occasion, she says to her disciples: “If, of that which this heart of mine is feeling, one drop were to fall into hell, hell itself would become all life eternal”; and she accepts with jubilation this interpretation of her words, on the part of one of them (no doubt Vernazza): “Hell exists in every place where there is rebellion against Love, God; but Life Eternal, in every place where there is union with that same Love, God.”[265]

And she now cannot but pray to possess all this love,--love being now pictured as a food, as a light, or as water, bringing life to the soul. “O tender Love, if I thought that but one glimpse of Thee were to be wanting to me, truly and indeed I could not live.” “Love, I want Thee, the whole of Thee.” “Never can love grow quiet, until it has arrived at its ultimate perfection.” And, in gaining all God, she gains all other things besides: “O my God, all mine, everything is mine; because all that belongs to God seems all to belong to me.”[266]

But if she loves all God, she can, on the other hand, love only Him: how, then, is she to manage to love her neighbour? “Thou commandest me to love my neighbour,” she complains to her Love, “and yet I cannot love anything but Thee, nor can I admit anything else and mix it up with Thee. How, then, shall I act?” And she received the interior answer: “He who loves me, loves all that I love.”[267]

But soon her love, as generous as it is strong, becomes uneasy as to its usual consequences,--the consolations, purely spiritual or predominantly psychical or even more or less physical, which come in its train. And even though she is made to understand that at least the first are necessarily bound up with love, in exact proportion to its generosity, she is determined, to the last, to love for love itself, and not for love’s consequences, battling thus to keep her spirituality free from the slightest, subtlest self-seeking. “This soul said to its Love: ‘Can it really be, O tender Love, that Thou art destined never to be loved without consolation or the hope of some advantage in heaven or on earth” accruing to Thy lover?’” “And she received the answer, that such an union could not exist without a great peace and contentment of the soul.” And yet she continues to affirm: “Conscience, in its purity, cannot bear anything but God alone; of all the rest, it cannot suffer the least trifle.”[268]

And she practices and illustrates this doctrine in detail. “One day, after Communion, God gave her so great a consolation that she remained in ecstasy. When she had returned to her usual state, she prayed: ‘O Love, I do not wish to follow Thee for the sake of these delights, but solely from the motive of true love.’” On another similar occasion she prays: “I do not want that which proceedeth from Thee; I want Thyself alone, O tender Love.” And again, “on one occasion, after Communion, there came to her so much odour and so much sweetness that she seemed to herself to be in Paradise. But instantly she turned towards her Lord and said: ‘O Love, art Thou perhaps intending to draw me to Thee by means of these sensible consolations (sapori)? I want them not; I want nothing except Thee alone.’”[269]

Iv. The Other Worlds

We have now gone through Catherine’s contemplations and conceptions as regards the soul’s relations with its true Life and Love, here and now, on this side the veil. We have, in conclusion, to try and reproduce and illustrate her teaching as to these relations on the other side of death.

1. No absolute break in the spirit’s life at the body’s death.

Now here especially is it necessary ever to bear in mind her own presupposition, which runs throughout and sustains all her doctrine. For she is sure, beyond ever even raising a question concerning the point, that her soul and God, her two great realities and experiences, remain substantially the same behind the veil as before it, and hence that the most fundamental and universal of the soul’s experiences here can safely be trusted to obtain there also. Hence, too, only such points in the Beyond are dwelt on as she can thus experimentally forecast; but these few points are, on the other hand, developed with an extraordinary vividness and fearless, rich variety of illustration. And it is abundantly clear that this assumption of the essential unity and continuity of the soul’s life here and hereafter, is itself already a doctrine, and a most important one. We will then take it as such, and begin with it as the first of her teachings as to the Beyond.

“This holy soul,” says the highly authoritative prologue to the Trattato, in close conformity with her constant assumptions and declarations, “finding herself, whilst still in the flesh, placed in the Purgatory of God’s burning love,--a love which consumed (burnt, abbrucciava) and purified her from whatever she had to purify, in order that, on passing out of this life, she might enter at once into the immediate presence (cospetto) of her tender Love, God: understood, by means of this furnace of love, how the souls of the faithful abide in the place of Purgatory, to purge themselves of every stain of sin that, in this life, had been left unpurged. And as she, placed in the loving Purgatory of the divine fire, abode united to the divine Love, and content with all that It wrought within her, so she understood it to be with the souls in Purgatory.”[270]

2. Hell.

The details of her doctrine as to the Beyond we can group under three heads: the unique, momentary experience and solitary, instantaneous act of the soul, at its passing hence and beginning its purgation there; the particular dispositions, joys and sufferings of the soul during the process of purification, as well as the cause and manner of the cessation of that process; and (generally treated by her as a simple contrast to this her direct and favourite purgatorial contemplation) the particular dispositions, sufferings, and alleviations of lost souls. Since her teachings on the last-named subject are more of an incidental character, I shall take them first, and make them serve, as they do with her, as a foil to her doctrine of the Intermediate State: whilst her conception of Heaven, already indicated throughout her descriptions of Pure Love, is too much of a universal implication, and too little a special department of her teaching, to be capable of presentation here.

As to the cause of Hell, she says: “It is the will’s opposition to the Will of God which causes guilt; and as long as this evil will continues, so long does the guilt continue. For those, then, who have departed this life with an evil will there is no remission of the guilt, neither can there be, because there can be no more change of will.” “In passing out of this life, the soul is established for good or evil, according to its deliberate purpose at the time; as it is written, ‘where I shall find thee,’ that is, at the hour of death, with a will either determined to sin, or sorry for sin and penitent, ‘there will I judge thee.’” Or, in a more characteristic form: “There is no doubt that our spirit was created to love and enjoy: and it is this that it goes seeking in all things. But it never finds satiety in things of time; and yet it goes on hoping, on and on, to be at last able to find it. And this experience it is that helps me to understand what kind of a thing is Hell. For I see that man, by love, makes himself one single thing with God, and finds there every good; and, on the other hand, that when he is bereft of love, he remains full of as many woes as are the blessings he would have been capable of, had he not been so mad.”[271]

And yet, and this is her own beautiful contribution to the traditional doctrine on this terrible and mysterious subject, neither are the sufferings of the lost infinite in amount, nor is their will entirely malign. And both these alleviations evidently exist from the first: I can find no trace anywhere in her teaching of a gradual mitigation of either the punishment or the guilt. Indeed, although she always teaches the mitigation of the suffering, it is only occasionally that she teaches the persistence of some moral good. Thus her ordinary teaching is: “Those who are found, at the moment of death, with a will determined to sin, have with them an infinite degree of guilt, and the punishment is without end”; “the sweet goodness of God sheds the rays of His mercy even into Hell: since He might most justly have given to the souls there a far greater punishment than He has.” “At death God exercises His justice, yet not without mercy; since even in Hell the soul does not suffer as much as it deserves.” But occasionally she goes further afield, and insists on the presence there, not only of some mercy in the punishment, but also of some good in the will. “When we shall have departed from this life in a state of sin, God will withdraw from us His goodness, and will leave us to ourselves, and yet not altogether: since He wills that in every place His goodness shall be found and not His justice alone. And if a creature could be found that did not, to some degree, participate in the divine goodness, that creature would be, one might say, as malignant as God is good.”[272] There can be no doubt, as we shall see further on, that this latter is her full doctrine and is alone entirely consistent with her general principles.

Certain details of her Hell doctrine which appear in immediate contrast to, or in harmony with, some special points of her Purgatorial teaching, had better appear in connection with the latter.

3. Purgatory; the initial experience and act.

Let us now take, in all but complete contrast to this doctrine as to Hell, what she has to say about Purgatory. And here we have first to deal with the initial experience and act, both of them unique and momentary, of the soul destined for Purgatory. As to that experience, only one description has been preserved for us. “Once, and once only, do the souls (that are still liable to, and capable of, purgation) perceive the cause of (their) Purgatory that they bear within themselves,--namely in passing out of this life: then, but never again after that: otherwise self would come in (vi saria una proprietà).”[273]

And this unique and momentary experience is straightway followed by as unique and momentary an act, free and full, on the part of the experiencing soul. Catherine has described this act in every kind of mood, and from the various points of view, already drawn out by us, of her doctrine, so that we have here again a most impressive and vivid summing-up and pictorial representation of all her central teaching.

“The soul thus seeing” (its own imperfection) and, “that it cannot, because of the impediment” (of this imperfection) “attain (accostarsi) to its end, which is God; and that the impediment cannot be removed (levato) from it, except by means of Purgatory, swiftly and of its own accord (volontieri) casts itself into it.”[274] Here we have the continuation of the outward movement: the soul is here absolutely impeded in that, now immensely swift, movement, and is brought to a dead stop, as though by something hard on the soul’s own surface, which acts as a barrier between itself and God; it is offered the chance of escaping from this intolerable suffering into the lesser one of dissolving this hard obstacle in the ocean of the purifying fire: and straightway plunges into the latter.

“If the soul could find another Purgatory above the actual one, it would, so as more rapidly to remove from itself so important (tanto) an impediment, instantly cast itself into it, because of the impetuosity of that love which exists between God and the soul and tends to conform the soul to God.”[275] Here we have an extension of the same picturing, interesting because the addition of an upwards to the outwards introduces a conflict between the image (which evidently, for the soul’s plunge, requires Purgatory to lie beneath the soul), and the doctrine (which, taking Purgatory as the means between earth and heaven, cannot, if any spacial picturing be retained at all, but place Heaven at the top of the picture, and Purgatory higher up than the soul which is coming thither from earth). The deep plunge has become a high jump.

“I see the divine essence to be of such purity, that the soul which should have within it the least mote (minimo chè) of imperfection, would rather cast itself into a thousand hells, than find itself with that imperfection in the presence of God.”[276] Here the sense of touch, of hardness, of a barrier which is checking motion, has given way to the sense of sight, of stain, of a painful contrast to an all-pure Presence; and the whole picture is now devoid of motion. We thus have a transition to the immanental picturing, with its inward movement or look.

“The soul which, when separated from the body, does not find itself in that cleanness (nettezza) in which it was created, seeing in itself the stain, and that this stain cannot be purged out except by means of Purgatory, swiftly and of its own accord casts itself in; and if it did not find this ordination apt to purge that stain, in that very moment there would be spontaneously generated (si generebbe) within itself a Hell worse than Purgatory.”[277] Here we have again reached her immanental conception, where the soul’s concern is with conditions within itself, and where its joys and sorrows are within. Its trouble is, in this case, the sense of contrast, between its own original, still potential, indeed still actual though now only far down, hidden and buried, true self, and its active, obvious, superficial, false self. In so far as there is any movement before the plunge, it is an inward, introspective one; the soul as a whole is, for that previous moment, not conceived as in motion, but a movement of her self-observing part or power takes place within her from the surface to the centre; and only then, after her rapid journey from this her surface-being to those her fundamental ineradicable requirements, and after the consequent intolerably painful contrast and conflict within herself, does she cast herself, with swift wholeheartedness, with all she is and has, into the purifying place and state.

And, in full harmony with this immanental conception, the greater suffering which would arise did she abide with this sight of herself and yet without any moral change is described as springing up spontaneously within herself. “The soul, seeing Purgatory to have been ordained for the very purpose of purging away its stains, casts itself in, and seems to find a great compassion (on the part of God) in being allowed (able) to do so.” This appears to be only a variety of the immanental view just given.[278]

4. Purgatory: the subsequent process.

We have finally to give her doctrine as to the particular dispositions, joys, and sufferings of the soul during the process of its purgation, and as to the cause and manner of the cessation of that process.

As to the dispositions, they are generally the same as those which impelled the soul to put itself in this place or condition. Only whereas then, during that initial moment, they took the form of a single act, an initiation of a new condition, now they assume the shape of a continuous state. Then the will freely tied itself; now it gladly though painfully abides by its decision and its consequences. Then the will found the relief and distraction of full, epoch-making action; now it has but to will and work out the consequences involved in that generous, all-inclusive self-determination. The range and nature of this, its continuous action will thus be largely the very reserve of those of that momentary act. “The souls that are in Purgatory are incapable of choosing otherwise than to be in that place, nor can they any more turn their regard (si voltare) towards themselves, and say: ‘I have committed such and such sins, for which I deserve to tarry here’; nor can they say, ‘Would that I had not done them, that now I might go to Paradise’; nor yet say, ‘That soul is going out before me’; nor, ‘I shall go out before him.’ They are so completely satisfied that He should be doing all that pleases Him, and in the way it pleases Him, that they are incapable of thinking of themselves.” Indeed they are unable even to see themselves, at least directly, for “these souls do not see anything, even themselves in themselves or by means of themselves, but they (only) see themselves in God.” Indeed we have already seen that to do, or to be able to do, otherwise, would now “let self come in (sarebbe una proprietà).”[279]

And the joys and sufferings, and the original, earthly cause of the latter, are described as follows. “The souls in Purgatory have their (active) will conformed in all things to the will of God; and hence they remain there, content as far as regards their will.” “As far as their will is concerned, these souls cannot find the pain to be pain, so completely are they satisfied with the ordinance of God, so entirely is their (active) will one with it in pure charity. On the other hand, they suffer a torment so extreme, that no tongue could describe it, no intellect could form the least idea of it, if God had not made it known by special grace.” And indeed she says: “I shall cease to marvel at finding that Purgatory is” in its way as “horrible as Hell. For the one is made for punishing, the other for purging: hence both are made for sin, sin which itself is so horrible and which requires that its punishment and purgation should be conformable to its own horribleness.” For in Purgatory too there still exist certain remains of imperfect, sinful habits in the will. “The souls in Purgatory think much more of the opposition which they discover in themselves to the will of God,” than they do of their pain. And yet, being here with their actual will fully at one with God’s purifying action (an action directed against these remains of passive opposition), “I do not believe it would be possible to find any joy comparable to that of a soul in Purgatory, except the joy of the Blessed in Paradise.”[280]

Now the sufferings of the soul are represented either as found by it, under the form of an obstacle to itself, whilst in motion to attain to God, a motion which in some passages is outward, in others inward; or as coming to it, whilst spacially at rest. Only in the latter case is there a further attempt at pictorially elucidating the nature of the obstacle and the cessation of the suffering. It is fairly clear that it is the latter set of passages which most fully suits her general teaching and even imagery. For, as to the imagery: after that one movement in which the soul determines its own place, we want it to abide there, without any further motion. And, as to doctrine: more and more as the soul’s history is unfolded, should God’s action within it appear as dominating and informing the soul’s action towards God, and should change of disposition supplant change of place.

First, then, let us take the clearer but less final conception, and see the soul in movement, in a struggle for outward motion. “Because the souls that are in Purgatory have an impediment between God and themselves, and because the instinct which draws the soul on to its ultimate end is unable as yet to attain to its fulfilment (perfezione), an extreme fire springs up from thence (within them), a fire similar to that of Hell.” We have here an application and continuation of the transcendental imagery, so that the impediment is outside or on the surface of the soul, and God is outside and above this again: but the whole picture here, at least as regards the fire, is obscure and tentative.[281]

Or the soul is still conceived as in movement, but the motion is downwards from its own surface to its own centre, a centre where resides its Peace, God Himself. “When a soul approaches more and more to that state of original purity and innocence in which it had been created, the instinct of God, bringing happiness in its train (istinto beatifico), reveals itself and increases on and on, with such an impetuousness of fire that any obstacle seems intolerable.”[282] Here we have the immanental picturing, the soul moving down, under the influence of its instinct for God, to ever fuller masses of this instinct present within the soul’s own centre. But the extreme abstractness and confusion of the language, which mixes up motion, different depths of the soul, and various dispositions of spirit, and which represents the soul as capable of approaching a state which has ceased to exist, cast doubts on the authenticity of this passage. In both these sets where the soul is in motion, we hear only of an impediment in general and without further description; and, in both cases, the fire springs up because of this impediment, whereas, as we shall see, in the self-consistent form of her teaching the Fire, God, is always present: the impediment simply renders this Fire painful, and that is all.

And next we can take the soul as spacially stationary, and as in process of qualitative change. Here we get clear and detailed pictures, both of what is given to the soul and of what is taken away from it. The images of the positive gain constitute the beautiful sixth chapter of the Trattato. But its present elaborate text requires to be broken up into three or four variants of one and the same simile, which are probably all authentic. I give them separately.

“If in the whole world there existed but one loaf of bread to satisfy the hunger of every creature: in such a case, if the creature had not that one bread, it could not satisfy its hunger, and hence it would remain in intolerable pain.”[283] Note how, so far, the nature of the possession of the bread is not specified, it is simply “had”; and how the pain seems to remain stationary.

“Man having by nature an instinct to eat: if he does not eat, his hunger increases continually, since his instinct to eat never fails him.”[284] Here all is clearer: man now takes the place of the creature in general; the possession is specified as an eating; the pain is a hunger; and this hunger is an ever-increasing one.

“If in all the world there were but one loaf of bread, and if only through seeing it could the creature be satisfied: the nearer that creature were to approach it (without seeing it and yet knowing that only the said bread could satisfy it), the more ardently would its natural desire for the bread be aroused within it (si accenderebbe),--that bread in which all its contentment is centred (consiste).”[285] Here the image for the nature of the appropriation has been shifted from the least noble of the senses, taste and touch, to the noblest, sight: there is still a longing, but it is a longing to see, to exercise and satiate fully the intellectual faculties. And yet the satiety is evidently conceived not as extending to these faculties alone, but as including the whole soul and spirit, since bread would otherwise cease to be the symbol here, and would have been replaced by light. Note too the subtle complication introduced by the presentation, in addition to the idea of an increase of hunger owing to lapse of time, of the suggestion that the increase is caused by a change in the spacial relations between the hungering creature and its food, and by an ever-increasing approach of that creature to this food.

“And if the soul were certain of never seeing the bread, at that moment it would have within it a perfect Hell, and become like the damned, who are cut off from all hope of ever seeing God, the true Bread. The souls in Purgatory, on the other hand, hope to see that Bread, and to satiate themselves to the full therewith; whence they suffer hunger as great as will be the degree to which they will (eventually) satiate themselves with the true Bread, God, our Love.”[286] Here it is noticeable how the specific troubles of Hell and Purgatory are directly described, whereas the corresponding joys of Heaven are only incidentally indicated; and how the full sight is not preceded by a partial sight, but simply by a longing for this full sight, so that, if we were to press the application of this image, the soul in Purgatory would not see God at all. And yet, as we have seen above, souls there see, though not their particular sins, yet their general sinful habits; for what are the “impediment,” the “imperfection,” the “stain,” which they go on feeling and seeing, but these habits? And they see themselves, though not in themselves, yet in God. But, if so, do they not see God?

The answer will doubtless be that, just as they do not see their sins any more in their specific particularity, but only feel in themselves a dull, dead remainder of opposition and imperfection, so also they do not, after the initial moment of action and till quite the end of their suffering, see God clearly,--as clearly as they do when the process is at an end. During one instant at death they had seen (as in a picture) their sins and God, each in their own utterly contrasted concrete particularity; and this had been the specific cause of their piercing pain and swift plunge. And then came the period of comparative dimness and dulness, a sort of general subconsciousness, when their habits of sin, and God, were felt rather than seen, the former as it were in front of the latter, but both more vaguely, and yet (and this was the unspeakable alleviation) now in a state of change and transformation. For the former, the blots and blurrs, and the sense of contrariety are fading gradually out of the outlook and consciousness; and the latter, the light and life, the joy and harmony of the soul, and God, are looming clearer, nearer, and larger, on and on. And even this initial feeling, this general perception, this semi-sight and growing sight of God, is blissful beyond expression; for “every little glimpse that can be gained of God exceeds every pain and every joy that man can conceive without it.”[287]

The imagery illustrative of what is taken from the soul, and how it is taken, is two-fold, and follows in the one case a more transcendental, in the other case a more immanental, conception, although in each case God is represented as in motion, and the soul as abiding in the same place and simply changing its qualitative condition under the influence of that increasing approach of God and penetration by Him.

The illustration for the more transcendental view is taken from the sun’s light and fire’s heat and a covering. It is, as a matter of fact, made up of three sayings: one more vague and subtle, and two more clear and vivid, sayings. “The joy of a soul in Purgatory goes on increasing day by day, owing to the inflowing of God into the soul, an inflowing which increases in proportion as it consumes the impediment to its own inflowing.”--God’s action upon the imperfect soul is as the sun’s action upon “a covered object. The object cannot respond to the rays of the sun which beat upon it (reverberazione del sole), not because the sun ceases to shine,--for it shines without intermission,--but because the covering intervenes (opposizione). Let the covering be consumed away, and again the object will be exposed to the sun and will answer to the rays in proportion as the work of destruction advances.”--Now “Sin is the covering of the soul; and in Purgatory this covering is gradually consumed by the fire; and the more it is consumed, the more does the soul correspond and discover itself to the divine ray. And thus the one (the ray) increases, and the other (the sin) decreases, till the time (necessary for the completion of the process) is over.”[288]

It is clear that we have here three parallel passages, each with its own characteristic image, all illustrative of an identical doctrine: namely, the persistent sameness of God’s action, viewed in itself, and of the soul’s reaction, in its essential, central laws, needs, and aspirations; and the accidental, superficial, intrinsically abnormal, inhibitory modification effected by sin in that action of God and in the corresponding reaction of the soul.--The first, dimmer and deeper saying speaks of an inflowing of God, with her usual combination of fire-and-water images. We seem here again to have the ocean of the divine fire, Itself pressing in upon the soul within It, yet here with pain and oppression, in so far as the soul resists or is unassimilated to It; and with peace and sustaining power, in so far as the soul opens out to, and is or becomes similar to, It. We hear only of an “impediment” in general, perhaps because the influx which beats against it is imaged as taking place from every side at once.--The second saying, the most vivid of the three, speaks of sun-light, and of how, whilst this sun-light itself remains one and the same, its effect differs upon one and the same object, according as that object is covered or uncovered. Here we get a “covering,” since the shining is naturally imaged as coming from one side, from above, only. But here also it is the same sun which, at one time, does not profit, and, at another time, gives a renewed life to one and the same object; and it is clear, that either Catherine here abstracts altogether from the question as to what consumes the covering, or that she assumes that this consumption is effected by the sun itself.--The third saying is the least simple, and is indeed somewhat suspicious in its actual form. Yet here again we have certainly only one agent, in this case fire, which again, as in the case of the influx and of the sun-light, remains identical in itself, but varies in its effects, according as it does or does not meet with an obstacle. The ray here is a ray primarily of heat and not of light, but which is felt by the soul at first as painful, destructive flame, and at last as peaceful, life-giving warmth.

Now, amongst these three parallel sayings, it is that concerning the inflowing, which leads us gently on to the more immanental imagery--that of fire and dross. And this image is again given us in a number of closely parallel variants which now constitute one formally consecutive paragraph,--the third of Chapter X of the Trattato. “Gold, when once it has been (fully) purified, can be no further consumed by the action of fire, however great it be; since fire does not, strictly speaking, consume gold, but only the dross which the gold may chance to contain. So also with regard to the soul. God holds it so long in the furnace, until every imperfection is consumed away. And when it is (thus) purified, it becomes impassible; so that if, thus purified, it were to be kept in the fire, it would feel no pain; rather would such a fire be to it a fire of Divine Love, burning on without opposition, like the fire of life eternal.”[289] Here the imperfection lies no more, as a covering, on the surface, nor does the purifying light or fire simply destroy that covering and then affect the bare surface; but the imperfection is mixed up with the soul, throughout the soul’s entire depth, and the purification reaches correspondingly throughout the soul’s entire substance. Yet, as with the covering and the covered object, so here with the dross and the impure gold, sin is conceived of as a substance alien to that of the soul. And, so far, God appears distinct from the fire: He applies it, as does the goldsmith his fire to the gold. But already there is an indication of some mysterious relation between the fire of Purgatory and that of Heaven. For if the very point of the description seems, at first sight, to be the miraculous character of the reward attached, more or less arbitrarily, to the soul’s perfect purification, a character indicated by the fact that now not even fire can further hurt the soul, yet it remains certain that, the more perfect the soul, the more must it perceive and experience all things according to their real and intrinsic nature.

Another conclusion to the same simile is: “Even so does the divine fire act upon the soul: it consumes in the soul every imperfection. And, when the soul is thus purified, it abides all in God, without any foreign substance (alcuna cosa) within itself.”[290] Here God and the fire are clearly one and the same. And the soul does not leave the fire, nor is any question raised as to what would happen were it to be put back into it; but the soul remains where it was, in the Fire, and the Fire remains what it was, God. Only the foreign substance has been burnt out of the soul, and hence the same Fire that pained it then, delights it now. Here too, however, God and the soul are two different substances; and indeed this Fire-and-Gold simile, strictly speaking, excludes any identification of them.

“The soul, when purified, abides entirely in God; its being is God.”[291] Here we have the teaching as to the identity of her true self with God, which we have already found further back. But the soul’s purification and union with God which there we found illustrated by the simile, so appropriate to this teaching, of the absorption of food into the living body, we find indicated here by the much less apt comparison of the transformation of gold by fire. For in this latter case, the gold remains a substance distinct from the fire, whereas the doctrine requires a simile such as a great pure fire expelling all impurity from a small, impure fire, and then itself continuing to live on, with this small fire absorbed into itself. But we shall see later on, why, besides the intrinsic difficulty of finding an at all appropriate simile for so metaphysical a doctrine, the imagery always becomes so ambiguous at this point. We shall show that a confluence of antagonistic doctrines, and some consequent hesitation in the very teaching itself, contribute to keep the images in this uncertain state. However, the possibly glossorial importation of this most authentic teaching of hers into this place and simile only helps to confirm the identity of the Fire with God, and the non-moving of the soul, throughout this group of texts. For the gold abides in the fire, as the soul abides in God; and the identification which is thus established of the painful with the joyous fire, and of both with God, is what will have suggested the introduction in this place of the further identification of the soul with God. And it is the continued abiding of the identical soul, a soul which has not moved spacially but has changed qualitatively, in the identical fire, God, which has helped to suggest the insertion in this place of the doctrine that the soul, in its true essence, is identical with God. God, in this final identification, would be the gold, the pure gold of the soul; and this pure gold itself would generate a fire for the consumption of all impurity, in proportion as such impurity gained ground within it. And, in proportion as this consumption takes place, does the fire sink, and leave nothing but the pure gold, the fire’s cause, essence, and end. In any case, we have here one more most authentic and emphatic enforcement of the teaching that the place of Purgatory is really a state; that its painfulness is intrinsic; and that it is caused by the partial discord between spirit and Spirit, and is ended by the final complete concord between both.