Chapter 7: Catherine's Remains and Cultus

Catherine’s Remains And Cultus; The Fate Of Her Two Priest Friends And Of Her Domestics; And The Remaining History Of Ettore Vernazza

Introductory

I now propose to attempt, in these last two biographical chapters, to give, first, an account of the fate of Catherine’s remains and possessions; and, next, of the vicissitudes in the lives of her companions and immediate disciples. I shall thus range from the day of her death on Sunday, September 15, 1510, up to 1551, the year of the publication of the Vita e Dottrina; indeed, in the instance of one particular disciple, up to 1587. And I shall do so, partly as a further contribution to the knowledge of her own character and even of her doctrine, this finest expression of what she spiritually was, and of her influence upon her immediate little world; and partly in preparation for the study of the influence of this entourage back upon the apprehension and presentation of her figure, upon the growth of her “Legend,” and upon the contemporary and gradual, simultaneous and successive, upbuilding of that complex structure, her “Life.” This latter inquiry is probably too technical to interest the majority of readers, and will be found relegated to the Appendix at the end of this volume.

I shall group all the facts, alluded to above, under five heads: her burial, and the events immediately surrounding it; the different removals of the remains, and the chief stages of her Official Cultus; the fate of her two priest friends and advisers, and of her domestics; the remaining history of her closest friend Ettore Vernazza; and finally the long career, rich in autobiographical annotations, of Ettore’s daughter, Catherine’s God-child, Tommasina (Battista) Vernazza. We shall thus first finish up what is predominantly the story of things, and of the more external, even although the most splendid and authoritative, appreciation and authentication of her holiness; and shall only then go back to what is (almost exclusively) an interior history of souls, and one which will materially contribute to our apprehension of Catherine’s special character and influence and to a vivid perception of the advantages, strength, limits, and difficulties of that particular kind of religion and of its attestation and transmission. Ettore’s and Battista’s stories, however, are so full that I must give three entire sections to Ettore, and one whole chapter to Battista.

I. The Burial And The Events Immediately Surrounding It. September 15 To December 10, 1510.

1. The Burial, September 16.

We have seen how, in the evening of Thursday, September 12, the already dying Catherine had, in a Codicil, declared that she desired to be buried wheresoever the priests Jacobo Carenzio and Cattaneo Marabotto should decide. She died in the early morning of Sunday, the 15th; and already on the next day, with the rapidity which, in such matters, continues characteristic of southern countries, the burial took place.

First, Dons Jacobo Carenzio and Cattaneo Marabotto declared, in a written document, that “knowing the late Donna Caterinetta to have ordained that her body should be buried in such a place as they themselves might ordain: they, in consequence, willed and ordained that her said body be buried in the Church of the Hospital.”[292] And next, the funeral took place with a certain amount of pomp: for authentic copies are still extant of the expenses incurred,--among other things for wax candles, including three white-wax flambeaux, amounting in all to over one hundred pounds weight of wax.[293] The evidently highly emaciated, and hence naturally flexible, body had been enclosed in a “fine coffin of wood,” and was now, at this first deposition, put in “a resting-place (deposito) against one of the walls” of the Church. There can be no doubt that this first resting-place was not the monument of her husband Giuliano, although the latter was still visible and readily accessible for a considerable time after,--certainly up to 1522, and probably down to 1537.[294]

2. Catherine’s possessions at the time of her death.

And next, on Tuesday the 17th, an Inventory was drawn up of the things possessed by Catherine at the moment of her death, for the use of the Hospital “Protectors,” the Trustees and Executors of her Will. An authentic copy of it is still extant, and furnishes first-hand evidence for the presence, up to the very last, and amongst the tangible objects and small possessions in daily use, of memorials and expressions of the three great stages of her life, and of the (in part successive and past, in part simultaneous and still present) layers, or as it were concentric rings, of her character. We thus get a vivid presentation of that variety in unity and unity in variety, which is of the very essence of the fully living soul; and we also see how incapable of being otherwise than caricatured, if expressed in but a few hyperbolic words, was even her spirit of poverty and of mortification, in this her last stage, which, in some sense and degree, still retained and summed up, and in other ways added a special touch of a large freedom to, all the various previous stages of her life.

The list gives the things according to the rooms in which they stood, beginning with her own death-room, and, here, with her own bed. In this “the room” (camera) there are “a down coverlet” and “two large mattresses”; “three” (other) “coverlets, one of vermilion silk” and “two of” some simpler “white” material; “two blankets, one vermilion, the other white”; “five-and-a-half pairs of sheets”; and “a pillow”: all this for Catherine’s bed. And these clothes, together with those of the bed of the “famiglia” (the maid Argentina), constitute, together with the two bedsteads, absolutely all the chattels present in this “bedroom” (camera).

“In the” adjoining “room with the blue wall-hangings and the” intervening “curtain,” there were: “three stuff gowns, one black and the other Franciscan-colour,” i.e. grey; “two silk gowns”; “two jackets, one” of which was again “of grey stuff, without a lining”; seven other garments, “one being of black silk”; a very small amount of body-linen; “three table-cloths and twenty-one towels”; “two silver cups and saucers” and “six silver spoons”; “eight pewter candlesticks”; “one casserole”; “four wooden basins”; “a kettle”; and a few other poor odds-and-ends, for kitchen and sick-room use; and a three-legged table and one or two other articles of simple furniture.

And finally “a closet” (recamera) is mentioned, with a press in it.

It is noticeable that here, again, no printed book or manuscript of any kind is mentioned: but it is clear that she herself had, some time after her Will of March 18, 1509, given away her dearly prized “Maestà”-triptych to Christoforo di Chiavaro, for this picture nowhere occurs in this list; and something of the same kind may have occurred with one or two books.

But if we group these things somewhat differently, we at once get a vivid conception of the precise, and hence complex, sense in which she can be said to have died very poor; and we get clear indications of the three stages of her life. For the silver service is a survival from her pre-conversion, worldly-wealthy days; the pewter candlesticks, and the rough, sparse furniture, belong to her directly penitential first-conversion period and mood; and the soft, warm, gay-coloured coverlets and apparel of rich material are no doubt predominantly characteristic of her last years when, largely under Don Marabotto’s wise advice, she allowed herself a greater freedom in matters of external mortification, and readily accepted bodily attentions and comforts, reserving now the fulness of her attention to matters of interior disposition and purification. She thus attained, by means of and after all those previous forms of mortification, to a perfected, evangelical liberty, in which the death to self was, if somewhat different, yet even more penetrative than before.

In the evening of this day, the Protectors of the Hospital formally renew their acceptance of the office of Trustees and Executors, imposed on them by Catherine’s Will of March 18 of the previous year.[295]

3. Distribution of Catherine’s chattels.

And thirdly, there are the various sellings, re-sellings, and distributions of her humble little collection of things, which take place with the slow multiplicity of steps, dear to all corporations. Workmen get paid, on November 22, for carrying her property on to the market-place, for the sale. On the same day Argentina receives “such things left to her in Catherine’s Will as Catherine had not herself already given to her maid.” And, on December 10, the remainder of that property, which had evidently been bought in by the Hospital on that November day, is finally re-valued, bought, and divided up by and between the Protectors, who take most of the large furniture; Marabotto, who buys ten things (a pair of fire-irons, a wardrobe, and a gilt article amongst them); her brother Lorenzo, who acquires four things (amongst them “a woman’s work-box?--capsetina a domina”); and the Rector, Don Carenzio, who becomes possessed of the down coverlet and of a piece of vermilion cloth.[296]

Here the absence of all buying by or for Vernazza or a representative of his is noticeable. He was evidently still far away, busy in putting his and his dead Saint-friend’s large ideas into practice; and his three daughters, the eldest of whom was but thirteen, were being brought up in two Convents.

The fate of Catherine’s little house is too closely bound up with that of one of her friends for its history to be easily severable from his. It stands over to the third section.

Ii. The Different Removals Of The Remains, And The Chief Stages Of Her Official Cultus

1. Opening of the “Deposito.” Successive “translations.”

Catherine’s remains were left “for about eighteen months” in their first resting-place, (deposito) by one of the walls of the “Hospital Church.” But then “it was found that the spot was damp, owing to a conduit of water running under the wall. And the resting-place was broken up, and the coffin was opened: and the holy body was found entire from head to foot, without any kind of lesion.” “And so great a concourse of people took place, to see the body, that the remains were left exposed indeed for eight days; but, owing to a part of them having been abstracted,” apparently at the opening of the coffin, “they were exhibited shut off (from the crowd) in a side-chapel, where they could be seen but not touched.” “And after this, the remains were deposited high up, in a sepulchre of marble, in the Church of the Hospital.”[297]

The interest of this removal consists in three sets of facts, the last set being of capital importance among the determining causes of her cultus and eventual canonization. For one thing, we still have the accounts of the expenses incurred in connection with it, the Hospital repaying, to two ladies (one of them Donna Franchetta, the wife of Giuliano’s cousin Agostino Adorno) and to Don Marabotto, the sums expended by them upon this translation and sepulchre: Marabotto’s expenses being in part for “causing the stone for the sepulchre to be brought.” These accounts are put down in the Hospital Cartulary under July 10, nearly twenty-two months after the first deposition; but the expenses may well have been incurred by those three friends, three or four months before. We thus find two ladies (a relative and a friend), and Don Marabotto, to the fore; but no mention of Carenzio, although the latter was at the time, as we shall see, still Rector of the Hospital and living in Catherine’s little house there.

And secondly, it is on this occasion that mention is made of the picture which I have more or less identified with the portrait reproduced in this volume. There are two highly ambiguous entries concerning it. “To account of the Sepulture of the late Donna Caterinetta Adorna, for divers expenses incurred by Don Cattaneo Marabotto: to wit, for a picture, and for causing the stone for the sepulture to be brought, £7 10s.”; “the Maintenance Committee (fabrica) of the Hospital, for a picture erected in the Church of the Hospital, above the Altar: to the credit of Don Cattaneo Marabotto, £9 7s.”[298] Now I take it that only one interpretation is at all a probable one, viz. that both these entries, in the comfortably slipshod way in which most of these accounts were kept, refer somehow to one and the same picture; and that this picture was a portrait of Catherine. For it is certain that the second account refers in some way to Catherine and to this first transference of her remains; it is highly unlikely that two pictures of herself would be produced and paid for, on one and the same occasion; and it is most improbable that Marabotto would care, on occasion of all this popular enthusiasm for his deceased friend and penitent, to spend money on a picture representative of some figure other than her own.

The reader will note that the portrait which I thus connect with this picture has not, as yet, got any nimbus, an absence hardly possible in any much later picture.[299] And I take it that the picture was placed above an altar, possibly even the Altar (the High Altar) of the Church, not only because that was the most honorific place, but also a little because the sepulchre had been placed too high up for the relatively small picture to be sufficiently visible if attached to the monument itself.

And thirdly, we have here, in this week-long public veneration of the remains, and in this erection of her picture over one of the Church Altars, the first unmistakable beginnings of a popular cultus. For the evidences and expressions of devotion to her, which I have recorded at the time of her death, were all restricted to the circle of her personal friends, and her first deposition remained, apparently, free from any popular concourse or commotion. The series of cures attributed to her intercession does not begin till this opening of the deposito. Certainly the first, and possibly the first four, of these cases, as given by Padre Maineri (1737), occurred in connection with this first opening.[300] And it is certain that, if the (greater or lesser) incorruption of the body was possibly nothing even physically so very remarkable, given all the circumstances;[301] and if this fact left the question of her sanctity intrinsically entirely where it found the matter: yet the incorruption it was that gave the first, and, as it turned out, an abiding impulse to the popular devotion. Indeed, as we shall see later on, it is highly improbable that, but for this condition of the body, a cultus would ever have arisen sufficiently popular and permanent to lead on to her Beatification and Canonization. But as things now stood, the movement had been set going, and it continued on and on.

The remaining translations were: a second one, into “an honourable sepulchre lower down,” still before 1551, and already mentioned in the first edition of the Vita of that year; a third, in 1593, when the remains were placed in their present position, but in a marble monument, up in the choir, above the Church entrance; and a fourth and fifth, in 1642 and 1694, when the body was placed, for the first and second time, in shrines having glass sides, so that the relics could be seen: that of 1694 is the one in which the remains still repose. And in 1709, Cardinal Lorenzo Fiesco being Archbishop of Genoa, the body was reclothed, on June 13, by ladies, amongst whom was a Maria B. Fiesca.[302] We thus see how unbroken was, in this case, the authentication of the remains, and how fresh remained, most naturally, the interest taken in their cultus by Catherine’s most powerful family.

2. Motives operating for Catherine’s Canonization.

It is indeed clear that Catherine’s greatness,--what made her a large, rich mind and saintly spirit,--is one thing; and that Catherine’s popularity,--what occasioned the official recognition of that greatness,--is another thing. Her mind and teaching, her character and special grace and attrait, were of rare width and penetration; in part, they were strikingly original through just this their depth of psychological and spiritual self-consistency and closeness of touch with the soul’s actual life. And these points had profoundly impressed a very small group of friends. And again, her work among the poor and sick had been long, varied, and utterly devoted. And here she had been widely appreciated. Yet these, the two lives which, between them, constituted all her sanctity and significance, had, the former nothing, and the latter but little and only mediately, to do with the forces which led on eventually to her formal canonization.

The motives for putting Rome in motion for this her canonization were, no doubt, predominantly three. There was the popular devotion, which apparently was first aroused, and was then instantly turned into a downright cultus, by the discovery, in May or June 1512, of the incorruption of her remains; and which from thenceforward continued and grew, in connection with these relics and with the physical cures and ameliorations attributed to the touch of the dead body, or of its integuments, or even of the oil of the lamp which evidently soon (presumably on occasion of that first outburst of devotion) was kept lit before Catherine’s resting-place.[303] There was next the gratitude of the Hospital authorities to Catherine for her life-work amongst them; and their most natural and laudable wish to utilize her sanctity and its recognition for the benefit of the ever-continuous and pressing necessities of their vast institution and its Church. And finally, there was the feeling of clanship and the active interest taken in the matter by the (all but regal) family of the Fieschi, backed, as they were, by the Republic of Genoa and various other sovereign bodies and persons.

The combination of these three things proved sufficiently powerful to take the place of certain ordinary incentives which were wanting, and even to overcome certain unusual difficulties which were undoubtedly present, in the case. Certain incentives were lacking. For there was, in this instance, no Religious Order to put forward and to work, with all the continuous, unresting, unhasting momentum of an institution, for a saintly subject of its own, a subject whose glorification would bring honour and profit to the body from which she sprang, and an accession of popularity to the special object and work of that Order. And certain obstacles were present. For few characters, interior ideals and explicit teachings, could be found more sui generis, more profoundly, even daringly original and all re-constitutive, and less immediately understandable and copyable, than are these of Catherine. But the enthusiasm and self-interest of the populace, of a charitable institution, and of a powerful family, replaced what was thus lacking and overcame what was thus operative; and the directly visible and universally understandable part of her life and example, was allowed to outweigh any objection that could be urged on the ground of the less obvious and more difficult, far more original and profound, sides of her special personality and piety.

And a matter which further helped on the canonization was that when Pope Urban VIII, in 1625, published his Bull forbidding thenceforth, under grave penalties, that any one, “even though he have died with the reputation of extraordinary Christian perfection, be called ‘Blessed’ or ‘Saint,’ until he has first been declared to be such, and to merit religious worship, by the Holy Roman See”; and ordaining that the same rule should be practised concerning persons already deceased, who were currently recognized as saints: he excepted, with regard to this second class, those who, “during an immemorial course of time” previous to the publication of this Bull, had been venerated as saints by the people, without opposition or complaint on the part of the Church authorities. For this “time immemorial” was considered by theologians to amount, as a minimum, to a hundred years. And since religious worship had begun to be paid to her certainly not later than 1512, and the title “Beata” had already then been publicly given to her, Catherine continued, even after Pope Urban’s Bull, to be invoked and venerated as “Blessed,” with the knowledge, though without any positive and express approbation, of the Roman Church.[304]

3. Canonization, 1737.

But the devotees of Catherine, naturally enough, were not content with less than a formal approbation, and, as usual, the obtaining of the latter was a very long and elaborate affair. At the beginning of 1630 a petition was sent in to Cardinal Cesarini in Rome; who, after much examination, gave his opinion on May 24, 1636. There the matter again rested for twenty-four years.--But in 1670 the very active and able Florentine, Cardinal Azzolini, (the same whose interesting correspondence with that undisciplined and wayward, but thoroughly sincere and much-maligned woman, Queen Christina of Sweden, has been recently published,) became the “Ponente,” the Advocate, for the cause.[305] The Cardinal wrote in 1672 to Archbishop Spinola of Genoa for his opinion; and the latter, after much further examination, declared that the cultus of Catherine, having existed for over a century before Pope Urban’s Bull, she ought, in accordance with the tenor of that Bull, to be maintained in possession of that same cultus. The Congregation of Rites approved of this sentence on March 30, 1675, and Clement X, the now eighty-five years old Altieri Pope, gave it his assent. Thus Catherine had a full official recognition as “Beata.”

Next came the examination of her doctrine and “writings,” from 1676 onwards, culminating in their approbation, for purposes of Canonization, by Pope Innocent XI (Odescalchi) in 1683. It is this investigation which, with some of the discussions concerning her virtues, adds considerably to our materials and means for judging of her teaching. I have already touched on these discussions; and they will occupy us again in the second volume.

And then, in 1682, Cardinal Azzolini, supported by King Louis XIV of France and the King of Spain, again presses Rome,--this time with a view to reaching Canonization. And on Cardinal Azzolini dying, Cardinal Imperiali became second “Ponente” of the cause. In 1690 the City of Genoa obtained leave from the Congregation of Rites for the recitation of the Office and for the Celebration of the Mass of the Common of Widows, in honour of Blessed Catherine; in 1733 an Office and a Mass proper to herself were approved; and in 1734 her eulogy was inserted in the Roman Martyrology, under date of March 22 (her conversion-day): “At Genoa, the Blessed Catherine, widow, distinguished by her contempt of the world and love of God.”

But meanwhile the long process as to the heroic degree of her virtues had issued in the Report of the Commission in 1716; and in the affirmative decree of the Congregation of Rites, confirmed by Clement XII (Corsini) in 1733.

And, before the conclusion of this investigation of her virtues, the examination of the miracles ascribed to her intercession had been begun in Genoa in 1730, by a deputation consisting of the Archbishop De-Franchi and two Bishops, sitting in the Archiepiscopal Palace; and six miracles were, in 1736, approved as valid, from amongst the numerous cases alleged to have occurred in 1730. And then three from amongst these six miracles were finally approved by Rome, on April 5, 1737, as efficient towards Canonization.

And at last, on April 30 of the same year, Feast of St. Catherine of Siena, Pope Clement, “in order that the faithful of Christ may, in Blessed Catherine, have a perfect example of all the virtues, and especially of the love of God and of their neighbour; and that a new honour and ornament may shine forth for the Republic of Genoa; orders the present Decree for the Canonization of the said Blessed Catherine,--a Canonization which has still to be carried out,--to be expedited and published.”--And on May 18 following, on the Feast of the Holy Trinity, the same Pope performed, in the Basilica of St. John Lateran, the function of the Canonization of Blessed Catherine, together with that of three other Beati: the two Frenchmen, Vincent de Paul, Founder of the Congregation of the Mission (the Lazarists) (1576-1660), and Jean François Regis, a Jesuit Mission-Preacher in the Huguenot parts of France (1597-1640); and the Italian Giuliana Falconieri, Foundress of the Third Order of Servites (1270-1341).[306]

It was now, on this canonization-day, over two hundred and sixteen years since Catherine Fiesca Adorna, that keen and ardent spirit, had flown to God, her Love. We must return to those earlier times.

III. The Fate Of Catherine’s Priest Friends.

Introductory.

In thus reverting to the period which immediately succeeded Catherine’s death, and to the predominantly obscure and humble persons who had directly known her well, we bid adieu, indeed, to things massive, fixed, and final: yet we exchange the description of what, after all, was but an authoritative declaration of accomplished facts, for the study of that alone directly soul-stirring thing, the picture and drama of living, energizing human souls; of how these souls were being influenced by a greater one than themselves; and again of how these, thus influenced, lesser minds and hearts transmitted, developed, and coloured the tradition of the life to which they owed so much.

Now the effect, or at least the record of the effect, of the conception of Catherine formed by her two Priest friends and by her domestics back upon her transmitted image and upon the growth of her Legend, is, apart from the indications in the Vita already given or still to be considered, upon the whole, but slight. Still, as we shall eventually find, the few facts as to the subsequent lives of these persons, which shall now be given, are of very distinct use in appraising their respective shares in the gradual constitution of the Vita e Dottrina.

1. Don Carenzio, 1510-1513.

I take Don Jacopo Carenzio first, since he was the Priest in actual attendance upon Catherine at the last, and because he now, no doubt immediately after the funeral or at latest on the day of the removal of her chattels to the market-place, became possessed, as we shall see, of Catherine’s little house. He was thus the one who alone could continue and augment a cultus as strictly local as even Argentina’s had been, during those weeks, perhaps months, of sole night-charge of her dying mistress in these very rooms.

The identification of the building is complete. For as far back as October 6, 1497, not long after Giuliano’s death,--he was still alive on July 14,--the Protectors of the Hospital referred to their “grant to Catherine, during her lifetime, of the enjoyment and use of a house with a greenhouse, forming part of the Hospital.” And in this greenhouse she, on the evening of Sunday, March 18, 1509, had, in the presence of Vernazza and four other witnesses, dictated her Fourth Will to Battista Strata. It was, then, of a size sufficient to render it worth mentioning, and it was evidently closed in. Now there is a legal instrument, dated Saturday, August, 30, 1511, drawn up at a meeting held by the four “Protectors,” “in the chief (sitting-) room of the Residence of the Rector, in which the late Donna Caterinetta was wont to live.” And in this they declare that, “seeing that the Reverend Don Jacopo Carenzio, the Rector, is about to go to his home at Diano, for the purpose of carrying out a matter of the greatest importance to himself, and is shortly to return from thence, and that he wishes to persevere throughout his life in the said office of Rector; and since they desire that he should willingly hasten his return, and should be able to persevere with full confidence, and should not, as long as he lives, be moved from this room together with the whole building contiguous with it, to the room which, with its appurtenant building, is at present in the course of erection as the official residence of the Rector; they have altogether conceded to the above-named Reverend Jacopo, Rector, present and accepting, the said room together with the whole building belonging to this room, for him to hold and inhabit throughout his life, together with the greenhouse.”[307]

Here three points are of interest. Don Carenzio is, then, a native of the little Diano Castello on the Western Riviera hillside, some fifty English miles from Genoa and some twenty short of San Remo; and must have belonged to some humble family in that insignificant little place. His origin is thus in marked contrast to Marabotto’s, and still more to Vernazza’s. And next, it is clear that the house and greenhouse inhabited and used by Don Carenzio till his death are identical with those tenanted by Catherine, ever since at least the death of Giuliano. And thirdly, it is equally clear that this house was in no part identical with the two rooms still shown as the Saint’s. For these latter are high up from the ground; do not now form, and probably never formed, part of a disconnected house; and they no doubt stand on another site. The little house will have been demolished at latest in 1780, when the present great quadrangle was built.[308]

Now here, in these rooms full of the memory of Catherine, Don Carenzio will, not unreasonably, have hoped to live during many years. For it is not likely that he was older than, or indeed as old as, Don Marabotto, since he was now occupying that same office of Rector which Marabotto had held some six years previously. And yet Marabotto did not die till eighteen years later, whereas Carenzio’s death came soon. For his funeral took place on January 7, 1513, for which day there is an entry in the Hospital Cartulary for the cost of twenty-three pounds-weight of wax candles,--less than one-fourth the amount used at Catherine’s obsequies; and for that of the Priest’s vestments in which the body was robed and buried.[309]

It seems unlikely that Carenzio was not buried in the Hospital Church, seeing that he died whilst, apparently, still ex-officio Rector of the Hospital. But, if he was interred there, his monument, like that of Giuliano, was cut off and buried away in and with the Church end in 1537, or was covered up in some restoration; for there is no trace of it either in the Church itself or in any book treating of the sepulchral monuments of Genoa.

It is remarkable also that, though he had been the one priest present at Catherine’s death, and had tenanted Catherine’s own rooms throughout the two years and two or three months since her death, and had, alongside of Marabotto, been appointed by Catherine herself as the person to determine the place of her sepulture: his name nowhere occurs in connection with the plan for the opening of her deposito some eighteen months after her death; nor with the execution of that plan; nor with any of the consequent initiations of a public cultus. It is impossible to doubt that we have here some little counter jealousy and return exclusion, a sort of answer by Marabotto to his, Marabotto’s, own enforced absence from the death-chamber and his twenty-four hours’ ignorance of his Penitent’s death, which we had to note in its proper place. Poor little human frailties which may have appeared less petty and more completely excusable at close quarters than they look at this distance of time! I take it that, if there was a deliberate exclusion of Carenzio, the ceremony of opening the resting-place will have been timed to tally with some absence of the Rector,--say, on another visit to his native Diano.

2. Don Marabotto, 1510-1528.

As to Don Cattaneo Marabotto, I have not been able to discover much. We have already seen how he bought ten of Catherine’s chattels on December 10, after her death. On July 7, 1511, he pays over to Catherine’s old servant, the maid Maria (Mariola Bastarda), her late mistress’s little legacy, in a form to be described presently.

But the most important facts concerning him--apart from his share in the Vita, which shall be considered at length hereafter--are the following three. There is, first, the fact (already dwelt upon) that he, and apparently he alone, initiated, or at least led and directed, the plan of opening the deposito, exposing the body, giving it a marble sarcophagus, and erecting a picture over an altar in the Church to Catherine. And next, that “still in 1523 Argentina del Sale was his servant,”--she had evidently then, on Catherine’s death in 1510, become his attendant.[310] And thirdly, that he did not die till 1528.[311]

There seems to be but little doubt that he was, at least slightly, Catherine’s junior. Yet already on his first intercourse with her, he, the Rector of the Hospital, must have been a fully mature man. I suppose him to have been born somewhere about 1450; in which case he will have been about seventy-eight at the time of his death.

In any case, he lived long enough to see and hear much of a kind to console and strengthen his devotion to Catherine and his faith in the self-rejuvenating powers of the Church, and much of a nature to dismay and alarm the gentle, peaceable old man. For there were the opening of the coffin; the incorruption; the popular concourse and enthusiasm; the graces and the cures of May to July 1512. And there were Luther’s ninety-five Theses nailed to the University Church of Wittenberg, on the Eve of All-Saints, 1517; and Pope Leo X’s condemnation of forty of them in 1520, and amongst them three Theses which concerned the doctrine of Purgatory, one of which must have seemed strangely like one of Catherine’s own contentions. And there were the books of Henry VIII of England and of Erasmus against Luther, in 1522, 1524, and in Italy the foundation of the Capuchin Order in 1527; there were, too, the Peasants’ War and Luther’s marriage in Germany in 1525, and, in 1527, the sacking of Rome by the Imperial troops. And through all this world-wide, epoch-making turmoil and conflict we think of him, probably not simply from our lack of documents, as leading a quiet, obscure, somewhat narrow existence; yet one redeemed from real insignificance by his silent watchfulness and action, and still more by his writing, in honour of his large-souled Penitent, ever so sincerely felt by him as indefinitely greater than himself.

I do not know where he was buried. It was not, however, in the Hospital Church; for in that case there would have been some entry in the books of the expenses incurred in connection with his funeral.

IV. The Fate Of Catherine’s Three Maid-Servants.

As to Catherine’s three maid-servants the facts that can still be traced are as follow.

1. Benedetta.

The widow and Franciscan Tertiary Benedetta Lombarda, although her name had continued to appear in the documents from Giuliano’s Will in 1496 down to Catherine’s last will of March 1509, disappears after this latter date entirely from sight. Since both Mariola and Argentina reappear in the Hospital books, (although Mariola had, like Benedetta, ceased to serve Catherine at the last), it looks as though Benedetta had died between the Will of March 1509 and Catherine’s death in September 1510. Yet it is possible that Catherine herself handed over to Benedetta her little share in the former’s money and chattels; and that Benedetta is no more mentioned after her mistress’s death because, unlike Mariola and Argentina, she did not continue to live in and belong to the Hospital, whose accounts alone are our extant sources of information for the other two servants.

2. Mariola.

But as to Mariola and Argentina, and their lives after 1510, we do know something. Mariola (Maria) Bastarda had, on leaving Catherine’s service, (probably only some weeks, but possibly some months before her mistress’s death), become one of the servants, or under-nurses (filia), of the Hospital; and, on July 7 of the following year (1511) she was clothed a Novice in the Convent of Bridgettines in Genoa, with the money left to her in Catherine’s Will.[312]

The latter fact is interesting as showing how purposely vague and ambiguous, and how little capable of being pressed, are at least some of the statements of the Vita, if taken as they stand and prior to any distinction of documents and of their varying degrees of trustworthiness. For there we read, after the scene where the evil spirit within the maid declares Catherine’s true surname to be “Serafina”: “this possessed person (spiritata) was endowed with a lofty intelligence, and lived to the end in virginity.” Who would readily guess that we have here to do with little Mariola? The passage is, I think, in part modelled upon Acts xxi, 9: “And he” (Philip the Evangelist, one of the seven Deacons) “had four daughters virgins, who did prophesy.” Even so then did Catherine, the teacher, have “a spiritual daughter,” a virgin, who “prophesied,” divined and announced, the true character of her mistress.--“We believe,” continues the Vita, “that the Lord had given her this spirit to keep her humble. She finished her life in a holy manner.” Who would guess that this meant profession as a Nun? The point is, I take it, kept vague in part to make the insertion of the words which follow possible. “Nor did the evil spirit ever depart from her, till well-nigh the very end, when she was about to die.” It is evident that this cannot be pressed: and that either the attacks continued to the end, but were rare and slight; or that they were serious and frequent, but ceased a considerable time before her death. For, though we do not know when she died, we have no right to assume, in evidently still so young a person, that death came soon.

3. Argentina.

And Argentina appears in several documents. So in an entry of the Hospital Cartulary for November 22, 1510, as to the value of the things then handed over to her in accordance with Catherine’s Will. So again in three legal documents drawn up for her and in her presence,--a Will of October 1514, a Codicil of some later (unspecified) date, and a second Will of January 15, 1522. In the Codicil she doubles the little sum she had left to the Hospital in 1514; and in the last document she declares her wish to be buried “in the Church of the Annunciata, in the monument (vault) of the late Giuliano Adorno, or in such other as may seem good to …”; and leaves moneys “for Masses to be said for her soul, by two of the Brethren of the Monastery of San Nicolò in Boschetto.”[313]

This group of papers is interesting. For we see from it how even an obscure little serving-woman was wont, in Italy, the classic country of Law and Lawyers, and during these claimful, pushing times, to have Wills and Codicils drawn up for her. We perceive, too, how proud and fond Argentina remained of her former avocation of servant to Giuliano, since only he and not his Saint-wife lay in that vault; and how, nevertheless, an uncertainty possesses her mind as to whether this can or will be carried out--no doubt owing to the fact that the vault had not received the remains of his wife, and had not indeed probably been opened again at all since his death, twenty-five years before. And we can note how Argentina, together with, and no doubt at least in part because, of her late mistress, has an affection for the Monastery and Pilgrimage Church of San Nicolò, on that wooded hill, so near to Catherine’s former villa.

And Argentina appears finally in that list of conclusions (already referred to in Marabotto’s case) as continuing to live in the Hospital; and as still living in it in 1523; and, similarly, as continuing in the capacity of servant to Don Marabotto. I have already pointed out the difficulties inherent in this statement, but believe it to be correct. Yet it would be of considerable importance if we could reach lower down, and could fix the exact death-date of poor Marco del Sale’s ardent-minded, imaginative little widow. Since she was doubtless considerably, I think quite twenty years, younger than Marabotto, and since even the latter lived on, we know, till 1528, six years after this Will, there was nothing, in the matter of actual age, to prevent her living on up to 1550 or beyond. And circumstances connected with the growth of Catherine’s legend seem to point, as we shall find, to Argentina having died in any case after Marabotto, and probably not before 1547. Similarly, Catherine herself did not die till twenty-six years after her first Will (1484-1510).

V. The Two Vernazzas: Their Debt To Catherine, And Catherine’s Debt To Them.

We now move on from these four figures which, seen against the living background of those strenuous times, appear indeed small and contracted; and which, in relation to Catherine, appear rather as a mere memory and mechanical continuation of her limitations, and specially of the phenomenal accidents and relative monotony of her sick-room period, than as a rich and vigorous, because truly personal, expansion and re-application of her many-sided action, breadth and warmth, and human practicality, during the times of her fullest self-expression. Such a new facing of the new problems, with a strength both old and new, enkindled indeed at her light and warmth, and yet developed also from the vigorously fresh centres of other deep hearts and virile minds and wills, we must now attempt to picture, in the case of the two greatest of Catherine’s disciples, Ettore Vernazza and his eldest daughter Battista. And yet if, in the former four cases, while the results of this influence appeared few and insignificant, the actual fact and source of this influence were plain beyond all cavil: in these latter two instances we have, indeed, a rich crop of thoughts and acts, of wisdom and of heroism, but then it is mostly impossible to sort out what is here the direct and unmistakable outcome of Catherine’s influence.

The great, open, spiritual and even temporal, battlefield, if not of Europe at least of Italy; the abuses and tyrannies, but also the necessity and the power for good, of governments; and the strenuous, tragic, and transformatory conflicts of single wills within their own soul’s world, and again with other wills, both single and combined: all this lies spread out here like a map before us, seen from the bracing heights of time. There is nothing here, at least in the Ettore’s case, that the most intolerantly robust, or even the most hysterically would-be strong, mind could suspect of sickliness. And yet, if undoubtedly much of all this fruitful virility in Catherine’s closest friend, and in Catherine’s God-daughter, proceeds from Catherine herself, it nevertheless springs up and grows within them, not as an avowed, nor probably, for the most part, even as conscious, imitation or reminiscence.

Thus here again we get an impressive instance of one profound sense in which the grain of wheat of any great and wholesome influence must die. For only if and when broken up, selected from, and assimilated to and within, another mind’s and heart’s life and system, can that older living organism, which yet was, in the first instance, so moving just because of its unique organization round a centre possible only to that one other soul, truly and permanently develop and enrich a living centre not its own. And so in this case too: Catherine’s influence is all the more real in Ettore and Battista, because the latter are in no sense simple copies of the former. She has lived on in them, at the cost of becoming in part ignored, in part absorbed, by them: and continues to influence them through certain elements of her life that have been assimilated, and through the reinterpreted image of that life’s historic reality, an image which is ever reinviting them to do and to be, mutatis mutandis, what she herself had done and been.

But, indeed, (even apart from all direct influence exercised by Catherine’s personality upon them, or by them upon Catherine’s legend), these two lives are interesting as further authentic illustrations of Catherine’s school and spirit, and, indeed, of the mystical element of religion in general.

I shall first take the father, devoting three sections to him.

VI. Ettore Vernazza’s Life, From 1509 To 1512.

Introductory.

We possess, if few, yet quite first-rate materials for the reconstruction of the remaining part of Vernazza’s life. For there are his own testamentary provisions as to the disposition of his property, (as elaborate and vividly characteristic as Mr. Cecil Rhodes’s), drawn up in 1512 and 1517, and occupying twelve closely-printed octavo pages; and there is a long, homely, and admirably realistic description of his life and character, written by Battista, not, it is true, till 1581, when she was eighty-four years of age, and nearly sixty years after her father’s death, but which is, there is no reason to doubt, perfectly truthful, generally accurate, and all the more moving, in that the living man and his large-hearted heroism were thus continuing to touch and inspire his daughter, at the very moment of her writing, with a finely restrained emotion, of deeds and personalities witnessed, by her own eyes and spirit, over half a century before. I shall take the several documents, not each as they stand but piecemeal, according to the dates of the events recorded or of the legal act performed.

1. Ettore’s married life; and thought of the monastic state.

“My Father and Mother,” writes Battista, “lived together” from 1496 to 1509 “in the greatest peace, since they wished each other every kind of good; so that I do not remember ever having heard one word of dissension pass between them.--And although my Mother was a beautiful and attractive young woman, and was loved by persons deserving of esteem, yet she would stay at home, alone, with her children. And my Father acted similarly, except when he was obliged to go out on some business. Otherwise I do not remember having ever noticed either of them going out to some late party (veglià), as is the custom in Genoa.”--And she tells how “he was so abstemious” in the matter of food, “that he was wont strictly to limit the amount of bread that he ate. But my Mother, noticing this, had the breads baked very substantial.”

“And when my Mother died” in the spring of 1509, “my Father thought of becoming a Lateran (Augustinian) Canon. But, on asking the advice of Padre Riccordo da Lucca,” (I take it, himself a Lateran Canon,) “who was just then preaching in Genoa with very great fervour, the latter did not encourage him to carry out his intention, observing, as he did, my Father’s inclination for founding works of charity.” And her father proved docile. Indeed she says of him generally that “he greatly mortified his self-will, and for this reason had put himself under obedience to a priest, who had the reputation of being exceptionally devoted (molto buono), and obeyed him as though he had been the very voice of God.” “And my Father then gave up his own house, and went to live in rooms which had been got ready for him in the Hospital for Incurables, of which he was one of the Managers and indeed one of the first Builders. And here he always lived, when he was in Genoa; here he died; and this institution he made his heir.”[314]

Here it is interesting to note the similarities and differences between this union, so happy and thus blessed with three children, and Catherine’s marriage, so unhappy and childless; between his thought of a religious vocation after his marriage was over, and Catherine’s before hers was begun; and between his fifteen years of residence in the midst of the incurable poor at the Chronici, and Catherine’s similar, though earlier and longer, life surrounded by the sick poor at the Pammatone. There is some likeness, too, in the matter of corporal mortification; although, with Vernazza, it is less acute, but is apparently kept up throughout his life, whilst with Catherine the active bodily mortifications are very prominent whilst they last, but are kept up thus for but a few years. As to obedience, we have here, for Vernazza, a more authoritative account than are any of the general statements on the same point with regard to Catherine; but in Catherine’s case many concrete instances give us a definite idea as to the character and limits of this docility, whereas all such instances are, in Vernazza’s case, restricted to the above incident alone. Yet this one example of his obedience shows how largely conceived, how simply divinatory and stimulative of his own deepest (although as yet but half-born) ideals, how ancillary to his own grace-impelled self-determination, and hence how truly liberating, were this direction and docility. The Venerable Cardinal de Berulle’s determination of Descartes to a philosophical career, and St. Philip Neri deciding Cardinal Baronius to write his entirely open-minded, indeed severe, Ecclesiastical Annals, would doubtless be true parallels to this particular relationship.

2. Ettore’s great Will of 1512.

We have already seen that Ettore was away from Genoa from about September 10, 1510, onwards, and that he was far away at the time of Catherine’s death. He may well have been away most of the year 1511, nor is there indeed any indication that he was in Genoa at the opening of Catherine’s deposito in May to July 1512. But he was certainly there in October 1512, for on the 16th of that month he drew up a munificent and far-sighted deed of gift, of one hundred shares of the Bank of St. George, to various charitable and public purposes.

Vernazza had already previously provided for his three daughters; and now orders that the interest of these other shares (a capital amounting, at the time, to the value of some £10,400) should, for the first nine years, be used by the “Protectors” of the Incurables for the benefit of that Institution, which thus occupies the first place in his solicitudes.

And then these shares should be allowed to multiply, by means of their accumulated interests and of the reinvestments of the latter, till they had reached the number of five hundred shares; and then, if and when an epidemic arose and the citizens fled from the city, the income of these shares for three years should be given to the Board of Health, for the use of those suffering from the epidemic. And when the shares had become two thousand, a commodious Lazaretto-house should be bought or built, with the income of not more than ten years. And after this, when the shares had become six thousand, one half or more of their interest should go towards the keep and nursing of the patients in this Lazaretto.

After these three stages devoted to the victims of the Plague, he determines the point at which the interest of the moneys shall be applied successively to providing marriage portions for honest poor girls of Genoa and of his home villages of Vernazza, Arvenza, and Cogoleto, preference being always given to the large clan of Vernazzi; to providing means for honest poor girls desiring to enter Convents that keep their Rule (monasteria observantiae), up to £100 each, with a similar preference as in the previous case.

And then he attends to the poor in general. To providing extra pay for the Notaries and Clerks of the “Uffizio della Misericordia,” “on condition that they devote all their time to the interests of the poor exclusively; and that they make diligent inquiry as to the means of the poor and their several characters, and find out whether they are in real want or not, and draw up a book in which all the poor, individuals and families, shall be inscribed clearly and by name,--in each case with a note indicating whether they belong to the first, second, or third degree of necessitousness.” To paying two Physicians and two Surgeons, for otherwise entirely gratuitous service of the sick poor alone, and doubling this pay during the prevalence of an epidemic, “but strictly enforcing the loss, in salary, of double the amount of any moneys they can be proved to have accepted from their patients.” All this, together with these four Doctors’ names, to be annually proclaimed in the streets by the town-crier. To paying a Dispenser and instituting a Dispensary, exclusively for the sick poor and entirely gratuitous, up to £2,000 a year for the latter. To appointing two Advocates and two Solicitors, for the exclusive and gratuitous service of the poor, in any and all cases of law-suits and molestations. The same proclamation as with the Doctors, to be made in this matter also. And to maintaining foundling boys and girls of Genoa, under provisions which are carefully laid down.

And then he turns to the three Institutions and their like with which he, as notary, as father and as philanthropist, has been specially identified. He fixes the point when two lectures in Philosophy or Theology, one by a Dominican and another by a Franciscan, are to be instituted, for every working day, in the Chapel of the Notaries of Genoa; when one free meal a month is to be provided for eight monastic and charitable institutions, amongst which are the Franciscans of the SS. Annunziata, the Benedictines of San Nicolò in Boschetto, the Canonesses of S. Maria delle Grazie, and the Hospital for Incurables,--“but the expenses are not to exceed £600 a year” (about six guineas each meal)--“nor is money to be given, but the eatables themselves are to be bought for, and given to, the institutions”; and when a Superintendent (Sindaco) of the Incurables is to be appointed, with £100 pay a year.

And then he comes back to the poor in general; and thinks also, (somewhat like unto his and Catherine’s ideal, St. Paul as “a citizen of no mean city,”) of the external appearance and utility of his native town of Genoa. The point is fixed when they are to “pay for the poor their hardest imposts, especially those on food”; and when they are to “repair, decorate, and enlarge the Cathedral Church of San Lorenzo,” and to “build a harbour-mole, improve the harbour, and attend to the decoration and look of the town (ornamentis civitatis), according to their discretion.”

And he then finishes up with a characteristic reversion to efficacious solicitude for his clan, by marriage benefits for his young kinswomen in the future and by thought for his ancestors and predecessors in the past; and with a no less characteristic divinatory greatness of mind, by the creation of a kind of People’s College or Working-man’s University, which appears here curiously wedged in between the thoughts for his clan in the future and in the past. For he determines the points when the Protectors shall again provide for marrying honest poor girls of his three home villages, and for comforts for the prisoners at Christmas and Easter; when they are to “buy a large and well-situated house, and therein organize a public course of studies, with four Doctors of Law, four very learned Physicians, and two Masters of Grammar and Rhetoric, who shall, all ten, be each bound to deliver one lecture on every working day, and to devote all the rest of their time to the interests of the poor”; and when finally they are to provide for “Masses for his ancestors and predecessors,”--Masses for himself and immediate belongings having been already, no doubt, provided for in his previous Will, since we find such provisions repeated in his last Will, to be given later on.[315]

We thus get here a persistent preoccupation with the most manifold interests of the poor; a shrewd knowledge of men, and careful provisions calculated to rouse their indolence and to check their self-seeking; an utterly unsentimental, realistic, Charity-Organization sort of spirit shown in the insistence upon a careful and complete knowledge of the real degree and kind of want, and of the precise means appropriate for helping the various kinds of poor; a high estimate of knowledge, which he desires to offer to all, according to their various capacities and needs; and lastly, an entire freedom from pietism, for he thinks of, and provides for, harbour-works and the beautifying of the town. There is a large, open-air, operative, sanely optimistic and statesmanlike spirit about it all.

And if all this is in full keeping with, and but expands and supplements, the tenacious realism of a born organizer and administrator: the soaring idealism and universalism of his saint-friend Catherine’s stimulation, and his and her joint experiences and interests, are also directly suggested to us. For there is the special stress laid on the plague-stricken, whom they had tended together in 1493; the interest in physicians and in drugs for the poor, an interest in which she must have preceded him by twenty years or more; and the repeated preoccupation with the marrying of poor young women, and, next after it, with the convent-dowries of girls in socially similar circumstances, in each case especially of kinswomen of his own. This preoccupation was no doubt occasioned chiefly by the thought of his own most happy marriage and of his own children, the two elder now already well settled as Nuns, but the third still possibly to be married; yet we are also vividly reminded of Catherine’s own repeated occupation with the marrying of relatives of her own, and Limbania’s and her own early entrance, and wish to enter, into the Religious state. And then his benefactions include Catherine’s Hospital Church, her favourite Boschetto Church, and that Convent of the Grazie, the scene of her own conversion and the home of her sister Limbania, as well as of his daughters Battista and Daniela. But indeed the whole character of the outlook, in its successive absorption in, each time, just one particular task; in its occupation with succour in proportion to the divinely ordained and ready-found bonds and ties of nature, bonds and ties so dear to the omnipresent God; and in its, nevertheless, in nowise restricting itself to this interest, but moving on and on, distance appearing beyond distance, with love and welcome for all the heroisms and helplessnesses: is all marked with Catherine’s imperial spirit of boundless self-donation.

Vii. Ettore In Rome And Naples; His Second Will; His Work In The Genoese Prisons

1. Ettore in Rome.

And perhaps already in 1513, but, if so, not before March of that year (the date of Pope Leo’s accession), Vernazza was in Rome,--hardly, I think, for the first time. And Battista again tells us, in her long letter of 1581, how that “the incurables in Rome”--which was then, at the beginning of Giovanni de’ Medici’s (Leo X’s) reign, the brilliant centre of the Renaissance at its zenith--“were left to lie in baskets, moaning” for alms, “in the Churches. It was piteous to see them thus forsaken and badly cared for.”

Now there is good reason to think that Vernazza had known the Pope when, as Cardinal de’ Medici, he had, in 1500, stayed for some time in Genoa, in the house of his married sister, Donna Maddalena Cibò. And so Vernazza now presented himself before the Pope, “and said to him: ‘You, Holiness, have a fine work in hand, in patronizing the Arts and Letters: but you cannot leave this Rome of yours saddened by so piteous a spectacle.’” And the Pope thanked him, and begged him to accept the charge of founding and undertaking the government of the Arch-Hospital. And the two “Cardinals, Caraffa,” the vigorous and devoted, but harshly austere Neapolitan, who was, later on, joint-founder of the Theatines and then Pope Paul IV, “and Sauli,” the Genoese, “helped him in his work. Indeed the latter said to him: ‘If you require money, come to me.’”

And this Roman work of Vernazza straightway put forth two offshoots, far away. For “Caraffa founded in Venice a hospital on the model of the one in Rome.” And “there happened to be in Rome” at this time “a certain Bartholommeo Stella, a rich and very generous (molto galante) young man. And Vernazza saw him and gained such an influence with him as to end by sending him to Brescia, to promote there also these fruits of Christian faith.”

And in Rome itself “Leo X gave Vernazza practical proofs of his gratitude, and set him forth on his return journey with demonstrations of great honour (magnifiche demonstrazioni). And the Arch-Hospital having been thus set going and Vernazza being back in Genoa, Leo X addressed a Brief to him, informing him that his Hospital in Rome was in a state of confusion (andava sossopra); ‘I think’ (adds Battista) ‘because its Governors wanted each to be above the other.’ And he returned to Rome, and quieted all controversy.”[316] I take this second Roman journey to have been not before 1515; but it may have occurred any time before 1522, the year of Pope Leo’s death.

This group of facts shows Vernazza’s directness and independence of observation, his initiative and energy, and his courage and respectful liberty of speech, qualities which are all reminiscent of Catherine’s scene with the Friar; the rapidity with which a necessary work, which has been delayed for centuries, and which has required the whole-hearted vigour of a rare personality to call it into being, grows and multiplies, when once it is in existence; and the manner in which the petty, sterilizing ambitions of men can be efficiently checked only by a combination of strength of will, administrative ability, gentle tact and complete disinterestedness,--a combination which again reminds one of Catherine, the successful Rettora.

2. Ettore in Naples.

It will have been after this second visit to Rome that Vernazza first went to Naples. And there again “he formed a Hospital,” in this case “at the risk of his life; for some evil-wishers there wanted to kill him, being unable to bear the idea that a ‘foreigner’ should have anything to do with the affairs of the city (ordinasse quella città). Once the ‘Ave Maria’ had sounded, he did not again issue from his lodging during that day. And yet” even among such untoward circumstances, “he managed not to leave Naples before having, with God’s help, achieved his object,--of providing his much-loved poor with such an institution ready to their hand.”

It was in Naples, too, evidently at the beginning of this very visit, that another generous idea and institution of his first occurred to him, or at least was first put into execution. The whole occurrence reveals a curious mixture of the most divers qualities and, indeed, requires in part to be excused, on the ground of numerous external difficulties which stood in the way of an excellent work, and of the finessing methods evidently deemed, even by good people, to be quite allowable for attaining a good end, in this age of violence, suspicion and intrigue. “A certain Religious, Padre Callisto of Piacenza, was preaching at that time in Naples. Vernazza went to him and said: ‘Father, these Neapolitans are a haughty people, and refuse to bend so low as to found hospitals. But during last night the thought came to me that if a person refuses to mount ten steps--it is still possible to get him to go up fifteen; and when such a person had done the latter, he would find that he had unconsciously mounted the ten as well. Now I cannot discover a more humiliating act than the accompanying of those who have been condemned to death, on their way to execution; and in this city they are led to the gallows with their minds in a state of desperation and without any one to comfort them. Well, then, do this. Preach to the people and tell them that the very first men of Naples have been to see you, with a view to founding a society for escorting these unhappy persons; and say to them: “Let him who cares to enter this society, come to me, to be inscribed on the rolls in a secrecy so complete that even a husband shall be unable to tell his wife.”’ And Padre Callisto, after hearing these words, did, devoted man that he was, his very best, and with such good effect that many went to have themselves inscribed. “But many of those Neapolitan nobles reproved him, saying: ‘Perchance you think yourself still in your Lombardy! We are nobles, and we refuse to form an escort for these culprits.’ And he would answer: ‘If your Lordship does not care to go, do not go. It was the very first men of Naples who sought me out, for the purpose of instituting this society.’ And thus it was actually founded, and indeed became very numerous and much honoured; and those unhappy men received much comfort. And later on, this same society proceeded to found the Hospital.”[317]

There is one repulsive feature in this story. For if the declaration that the very first men of the city had visited the preacher was a statement that damaged no one; which but anticipated what actually occurred soon after; and was the means for the effecting of two works, profoundly useful to all concerned in them and which could not, otherwise, at that time and place, have been carried out at all: yet it was a clear untruth. But all the rest, how admirable it is! Moral, and indeed physical courage; cool-headed, humorous, manly because unflinching, and yet quite uncynical and hopeful, knowledge of the petty perversities of the human heart; and entirely devoted, slow excogitation, concentration of will, and toughly resisting perseverance in a work of the purest philanthropy: all this and much else is visibly present.

3. Ettore’s Will of 1517.

It may well have been after his return from this journey that Vernazza drew up the Will which we still possess, dated 7th November 1517, and which is interesting in several respects.[318] For one thing, he orders his body to be buried in the Church of the SS. Annunziata,--the Hospital Church, and leaves a legacy for Masses “to the Friars of the Annunziata of Genoa.”[319] And he leaves a similar bequest to the Benedictines of San Nicolò in Boschetto. It is clear that he wanted to be buried in the same Hospital Church as Catherine, and had a devotion similar to hers for the Pilgrimage Church upon the hill.

Secondly, there are careful records and provisions concerning his three children. As to his two eldest, Tommasa (Battista) and Catetta (Daniela), he simply looks back and “declares that he gave to his two daughters that are in the Monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie, to them or to the said Monastery, three thousand Genoese pounds from his own property, and two hundred pounds in addition,--(the latter) spent upon their rooms, habits, and other requisites.” And that “these sums are to be counted as taking the place of dowries which would have accrued to them” (in case of marriage). But as to the youngest, Ginevrina, he looks both back and forwards. “The same Testator is well aware that he placed the said Ginevrina in the Monastery of Saint Andrew,[320] that she might grow up with good morals and in the fear of God, since Testator was unable to keep her by him, having very often been obliged, for the transaction of business in favour of the poor and for other charitable works, to proceed to Rome and other places; and that there existed written directions (of his) in the hands of the Nuns, as to Ginevrina being free, in due time and at the proper age, to choose either to serve God (in Religion), or to marry according to the social rank of the Testator.” And he confirms a legacy of £500, already promised by him to Ginevrina “as appears from a certain document signed by the Abbess of the said Monastery of Saint Andrew”: this money being no doubt in addition to another sum already paid by him to the Convent; and the whole is evidently intended to pay for Ginevrina’s keep, if necessary for life, in case she neither entered Religion nor married. “In case of her becoming a Nun and making her Profession in the said Monastery, he leaves her £100, for the adapting and furnishing of one room for her use; nor can these £100 be spent otherwise.” And if she chooses to wed, the Protectors of the Incurables, his Executors and Heirs, “are to marry her to some young man of good reputation and behaviour, apt at managing his own affairs and at earning money,--all this as perfectly as possible, according to the judgment of the said Protectors.” If she thus marries with their consent, she is to have £3,000 for her dowry; but if she marries without it, she is to have only £1,500.

Here we note Ettore’s high esteem for business capabilities: they are to be required of his possible son-in-law, as one of the conditions for gaining the full dowry; and the curiously unmodern certainty with which he assumes that his still quite young daughter will desire, should she become a Nun, to do so at Sant’ Andrea, and, should she neither wed nor enter Religion, is sure to care to live on for life in this one convent. As a matter of fact Ginevrina, who was evidently very happy at Sant’ Andrea, took the veil there, still during her father’s lifetime, hence within seven years of this date, as Sister Maria Archangela.[321]

And thirdly, we get the striking provision that “any member of the Society of Priests and Laymen” who administer the Hospital for Incurables, “shall have the use of the furniture of the Testator (there remaining), on condition that such member live in this Hospital or in that of the Pammatone (hard by), and not otherwise.” He thus comes back here, once again, to one of the deepest convictions of his life: that only by actually living amongst and with the poor, poor yourself; only by doing the work which the right hand finds to do, with such might and thoroughness that both hands, indeed the whole man, body and soul, are drawn into, and are, as it were, coloured by it: that only by such fraternal-paternal sympathetic identification with its object can such service really rise above the dreary perfunctoriness and the ghastly optimism of mere officialism, and have the fruitfulness begotten only by life directly touching life. And here Catherine’s spirit and example, her long life in the very midst of the great Hospital close at hand, are once more fully apparent.

4. Ettore in the Genoese prisons.

And, about this time, Vernazza introduced into Genoa the practice and Society which he had first founded in Naples. It was carried out, here also, in the profoundest secrecy. His “Company of St. John the Baptist Beheaded” consisted of himself and three companions: Salvage, Lomellino, and Grimaldo. The Lomellini now owned Giuliano’s former Palace in the Via S. Agnese, and the Grimaldi were one of the great Guelph families of Genoa. These four “took a house with a garden, in an out-of-the-way position; and there they started their association. And ever after, when the members met, they always prayed for these their four founders; and always, my Father being dead, began with his name: ‘Dominus Hector de Vernatia requiescat in pace.’” “I once,” adds Battista, “asked the priest who was their Confessor: ‘What matters do they discuss, when they are thus assembled?’ But he answered: ‘I may not tell’; and put on a particular expression and said: ‘The Hospital for Incurables has only ten thousand lire, and it spends twenty-six thousand. And the Giuseppine and the Convertite’ (two other favourite good works of Vernazza) ‘have also to be provided for!’”[322] Evidently the subject-matter of all this elaborate secrecy consisted in plans and means for aiding the condemned (often enough innocent or but politically guilty persons) and benefiting the poor; and the privacy was an imperious necessity in those harsh, turbulent and suspicious times. It was Vernazza’s own Roman patron and collaborator, the Neapolitan Cardinal Caraffa, who later on, as Pope, imprisoned for two years (1557-1559), in the Castle of St. Angelo, the great and saintly Cardinal Morone, on ungrounded suspicion of heresy; and it was his other patron and most intimate fellow-worker, the Genoese Cardinal Sauli, who, later on, was himself tortured and put to death, the victim of political hatred and suspicion, in his own native city.

And now, (conversely from 1461, when a Fregoso Doge had driven out an Adorno,) an Adorno Doge had just driven out and exiled a Fregoso, and had executed Paolo da Novi. And Vernazza “knew well a close friend of this Doge Adorno, one who indeed had helped him to his dignity. And yet afterwards they became mortal enemies, and the Doge condemned his former close friend to death. Now this man having been,” continues Battista, “attended by some one all night, who tried to comfort him and bring him to patience, the poor prisoner somehow derived no consolation from his attendant’s endeavours, but went on repeating: ‘When I remember all that I have done for him…!’ And it was impossible to quiet him. Then he who was spending the wakeful night with him, having noted that all his words had been hitherto of no avail, inspired by God, took another way and said: ‘Indeed and indeed you are right,’ and made himself infirm with the infirm, and echoed all that the prisoner said, making it appear as though he himself, in a similar case, would be likely to act identically. And then, and only then, the condemned man began to feel relief, and started the telling of his own trouble. And when his companion had agreed to all his points, and at last noticed that the prisoner had thoroughly ventilated all his grievance, he said: ‘Indeed, my dear brother, you do not merit this death; but reflect whether, before these occurrences, you did not perform some action which merited it.’ Then the latter reconsidered his case, and said at last: ‘Yes,--I killed a man.’ And his companion replied: ‘Behold, my brother, the true cause of your death’; and added other most appropriate words with such good effect that the man became profoundly contrite and died in the very best dispositions of soul.” “Now I think,” comments Battista, “that the companion was a member of the Society of St. John Baptist, and was, indeed, my Father himself; since my Father told me the story too much in vivid detail (troppo per sottile) for him to have been only a reporter. I believe that, to this hour, this society is carrying on the same kind of work.”[323]

Here again we have the same irrepressible, humorously resourceful, tenderly shrewd and world-experienced service of God, in and through His image, in any and every fellow-man; the same breadth in thoroughness; the same universality working itself out, and achieving its substance and self-consciousness, in the particular, as we saw at work in Naples. And this activity, all but its humour, recalls the soaring, world-embracing spirit of Catherine absorbed in self-identification with the pestiferous woman’s dying aspirations and with the cancer-disfigured navvy’s preoccupations for his little wife.

Viii. Ettore Again In Naples; His Death In Genoa; Peculiarities Of His Posthumous Fame

1. Naples and the Signora Lunga.

It must have been before this prison experience, for Ottaviano Fregoso was still Doge, that Vernazza was again in Naples, and that a thoroughly characteristic, romantic little episode occurred, which not all her seventy-one years of convent life, and the sixty years that had elapsed since its happening, prevent Battista from recounting with a delightfully entire sympathy.

Here in Naples, then, “he joined hands with a certain rich lady, called the Signora Lunga, for the purpose of procuring as many things as possible” for the institutions which he himself had founded or occasioned. This lady, a Spaniard, had been the wife (she was now the widow) of Giovanni Lungo or Longo, President of the Sacred Council.[324] “They went together from house to house, begging for mattresses” for the Hospital. “And this lady now withdrew from the world at large, and lived in that Hospital, and governed and ruled it; and combined with this the execution of other works of mercy. And she had so great a devotion for my Father, that she was wont to say to him: ‘If you were to tell me to cut and wound my own person, indeed I would straightway do it.’ But on Fregoso writing and pressing him to return to Genoa, Vernazza wrote back, that if he, the Doge, promised to be favourable to him, and to help him in a good work which he had in his mind, he, Vernazza, would come at once. And the Doge wrote back that he would do all that Vernazza wished. And then, one morning early” (no doubt at dawn), “not wishing that the Signora Lunga should see him depart, he got into the saddle. And she, by good chance, saw him, and asked him: ‘Where are you going?’ And he struck his spurs into his mule: ‘To Genoa,’ he cried; and flew away; and never saw the Signora Lunga any more.”[325]

Something fresh and bracing breathes and beats here still. We have here the same man who, devoted in every good and filial way to Catherine, had yet left her, no doubt then also on an errand of large-hearted mercy, even in those last days of her life; who now, once again, breaks suddenly away; and who does so again at the call of souls entirely without conventional claims upon him, and who are quite unable to repay him with anything that merely drifting nature ever can hold dear. But here the relation is evidently not that of a man towards a woman much older than himself, and of the spiritual discipleship of a relatively inexperienced soul towards one already far advanced in sanctity: it is clearly one of at least parity of age,--perhaps, indeed, the woman was the younger of the two,--and of largely equal companionship, which would presumably, unchecked, have easily led on to an entirely honourable and happy marriage. And thus, once again, his devotedness had to live and thrive on concrete, untransferable renouncements and sacrifices claimed by his true self in that unique moment and situation: and this too although he will have been at least tempted wistfully to try and delude himself with the monstrous superstition of an automatic sanctity, a merely theoretic and yet somehow real heroism.

2. The Plague and Ettore’s death in Genoa, June 1524.

“And, arrived in Genoa,” Vernazza “revealed the secret of his heart to the Doge, and his Lordship gave him seven thousand lire and the Privilege,”--the latter being necessary, “since no one cared to have the Lazaretto” (for this was Vernazza’s project) “in proximity to their villas,” and hence the Government had to insist upon its foundation upon the least inconvenient of the various possible sites. And Vernazza in consequence “began to construct a great building for the poor victims of the Plague, and presented it with an endowment of one hundred shares of St. George’s, leaving them to multiply, so that at his death they had increased by eleven shares; and now” (in 1581) “they have reached a great number of thousands of pounds.” And after continuing with an account of his further Bank dispositions, and of his early attempts to help the poor (already given by us), Battista finishes up this part of her account by declaring: “he was wont to go about saying, with conviction and great confidence, that he hoped all things from God; and that, whenever he put his hand to anything, God put the yeast into that paste.”[326]

And her mention of the Lazaretto then leads her on to the final, still vivid and yet self-restrained, account of her father’s death. “The Plague being very severe (calda) in Genoa,”--it was past mid-June 1524,--“he came to visit me, and said to me: ‘What do you think I had better do? I am determined in no manner to forsake the poor. Do you think I had better go about on horseback or on foot? In which way do you think I would be safest from infection?’ ‘Oh, Father,’ I said, ‘here we are coming to the Feast of the Baptist, and are at the highest of the heat; and you are determined to go amongst them?’ And he: ‘And is it my fate, to hear such things from you? How truly happy should I be, if I were to die for the poor!’ Then I, seeing so much fortitude in that holy soul, said to him: ‘Father, go.’ But he was not content with looking after the Lazaretto: I think that he scoured the country far and wide. And hence he caught the infection. And on the” (Eve of) “the Feast of the Nativity of St. John Baptist,” June 23, “he confessed and communicated. And in three days he quietly fell asleep in the Lord.”[327]

Surely rarely has so noble a finish been so nobly told! And two things in particular are deserving of special notice. First, there is here again that characteristic combination of quiet reflective common-sense and self-oblivious devotedness. Who could anticipate that the man who so carefully weighed the respective risks of different methods of visiting the sick, would, at the same time, be full of a glad willingness, indeed desire, to die for them? Yet not only does this rich soul exhibit such a living paradox, with an apparent ease and spontaneity, but it is this very extraordinary variety in unity that is an operative cause and element both of the greatness of the act and of its appealingness.

And secondly, it is, I think, not far-fetched to find in this heroic death-ride, if not a direct or even a conscious effect, yet at all events an impressive illustration of, and practical parallel to, Catherine’s teaching as to Heaven being already present everywhere where pure love energizes, and to her picture of the soul’s glad Purgatorial plunge. We know that it was Vernazza himself who, say in 1497, drew forth from her that teaching; and we shall find that it was predominantly he who so carefully registered for us in writing those numerous, vivid picturings of the soul’s joyously voluntary self-dedication to suffering and apparent death. And whether at the moment fully conscious of this or not, his act of some twenty years later illustrates and embodies that teaching; and that teaching again universalizes and brings home to us this action. High on horseback he goes forth, the strong, sound-bodied, whole-hearted man, deliberately sure of finding and of bringing Heaven, wheresoever pure love may be wanted and may joyously appear: joyously fruitful, amidst the very ghastliness of death. And he is rapidly brought low, first on to his bed of sickness, and in a few days into the grave. Indeed he himself had, by his own act, gladly accepted, we may say willed, all this: he himself had cast himself down and away into that deep common fosse, amongst the many thousands of his ever-obscure and now disfigured friends and fellow-dead.

3. His posthumous fame; its unlikeness to Catherine’s celebrity.

For so it was indeed. Instead of burial in the Pammatone Church, under the same roof with his saintly inspirer, the poor pestilential body was buried away, amongst the whole army of others who, like himself, had died of the Plague, without a stone or token of any kind, to mark where this simple hero lay. Nor was it till 1633, over a century later, that a statue was erected to him at his Lazaretto. For the bust in the rooms of his “Compagnia del Mandiletto” is hardly older; and the hideous gaunt plaster statue in the Albergo dei Poveri is no doubt much younger still.

Only in 1867, on June 23, the anniversary of the day on which he prepared himself to die, was a memorial erected to him which is truly worthy of the man. Santo Varni’s more than life-size marble statue, which represents Vernazza seated, a strongly built man still in his years of vigour, with a head and countenance striking because of their lofty brow, powerful chin, spiritual, mobile lips, large, keen, far-outward-looking eyes; and with thoroughly individual, operative yet sensitive hands, the left extended open, as though to give and ever again to give, and the right reposing upon the case containing the Chart of the Hospital’s foundation: stands, a striking symbol, in the vestibule of the Hospital for Incurables which he founded, where for fifteen years he lived, and where he died.[328] One would be glad to think that the likeness of this admirable work of art reposed upon grounds more direct than one or other of the very late and unworthy representations that preceded it; the authentic portrait of his daughter Battista,[329] who may, after all, have been unlike him in looks; and the sympathetic imagination of a great artist. It was Vernazza himself who prevented any contemporary representation of his own features. For Battista tells us, in her letter of 1581, “he also mortified himself in any inclination to honour. Thus, as is well known, when the Lazaretto had been erected, and he was asked to have his portrait painted to be placed there, he answered: ‘I do not want smoke,’ and refused to act as he was bidden.”[330]

Now here we cannot but find a contrast between Catherine and Ettore; yet it only concerns their posthumous earthly fate and fame. A picture of Catherine was, no doubt, no more painted in her lifetime with her knowledge than was a portrait of Ettore. Yet we know that, in her case, a picture was painted, if not secretly during her lifetime, in any case by some eyewitness, and not more than eighteen months after her death; and a popular religious Cultus to her sprang up and grew, on occasion of that early opening of her coffin. But Ettore has to wait over a century for his first artistic embodiment, and of religious Cultus there was never any question.[331] Whence this difference? Have we any kind of reason for suspecting Ettore’s heroism, indeed sanctity of life and death? Was he indeed clearly much the lesser in the Kingdom of God than was his friend?

The question, it will be noted, does not imply any criticism of the Church’s wise requirement of a previous Cultus, as one of the conditions for the introduction of any and every Process; still less is there any disposition to call in question the choice of Catherine for saintly honours, a choice which this whole book would hope to demonstrate as particularly courageous, wise and indeed providential. The point raised concerns simply the psychology of popular devotion, and the human reason why, given that one was certainly a Saint and the other was presumably another one, there is this marked contrast in the posthumous history of these two lives.

Now if the question be taken thus, the answer can hardly be doubtful. Certainly not because of her profoundly original doctrine, by which Catherine is speculatively more interesting and humanly more complete than Vernazza, was Catherine prized and preferred to Vernazza by the crowd. Nor did they single her out precisely because of her works and long life of mercy, for Vernazza’s labours of this kind no doubt exceeded Catherine’s, both in their variety and in their visible extension. But it was the psycho-physical peculiarities of the life of Catherine, and the more or less complete incorruption of the body: these two things, neither of which has any necessary connection with that faithful and heroic use of free-will and that spirit and grace of God in which the whole substance of sanctity consists, which, each leading on and back to and strengthening the impression and tradition of the other, determined the outbreak and onflow of popular devotion in the one case, and the absence of which prevented the growth of any such cultus in the other. And thus we have here one more instance of the pathetic irony of fate, or rather one of those many mysterious operations of the divine will which, under the ebb and flow of influences that seem merely human and deteriorative, works in history for the slow upward-raising of our poor kind.

When the well-known ecstatic Augustinian Nun, Anne Catharine Emmerich, died at Dülmen, in Westphalia, on February 6, 1824, her remains also were not long allowed to rest undisturbed in the grave. Already in mid-March the poetess Luise Hensel, who had much loved and venerated her, caused the grave to be opened quite privately, in hopes of finding the body still incorrupt, and of once more being able to gaze on that striking countenance. And a few days later, on March 21 and 22, the grave and coffin were again, this time officially, opened. In both cases the body was found still incorrupt, and two pale red spots appeared on the cheeks. But when, on October 6, 1858, the grave was opened a third and last time, nothing was found of the coffin but one nail, and the body was now represented only by so many separate bones.[332] Now when, some twenty years ago, I visited Dülmen in the company of a distinguished Münster Priest, the latter told me, as we stood together by the grave-side, that this discovery had greatly checked the survivals or beginnings of any such local and popular cultus as had been expected and hoped for by Anne Catharine’s, mostly distant or foreign, admirers.

Similar cases it would be easy to multiply; and they all point to the great advantage, probably to the actually determining incentive, which accrued to the Cultus of Catherine, in that her body continued more or less incorrupt, and thus added a sensible marvel after death to the sensible marvels of her fasts and ecstasies during life. Whereas Catharine Emmerich’s analogous psycho-physical condition during life was not thus reinforced by an unusual physical condition after death. And Ettore, again, had evidently nothing physically, or even psycho-physically, abnormal about him, either in life or in death.