Chapter 8: Battista Vernazza's Life

Battista Vernazza’s Life

Introductory

We have, in the characters described in the previous Chapter, dwelt upon figures remarkably unlike Catherine, on her psycho-physical side. Yet it would be only too easy for us now-a-days, by dwelling too much upon the foregoing contrast, to grow actually unfair to Catherine’s kind of temperament and health, and to her mode of apprehending truth and of attaining sanctity. We might thus come to overlook or to underestimate the important fact that certain psycho-physical, neural peculiarities or states most certainly constitute the general antecedents, concomitants or consequences (probably, indeed, one of the necessary though secondary conditions), not indeed of sanctity, but of at least some forms of the contemplative gift, habit, and attainment. We might, too, forget that neither this contemplative gift itself, nor even those neural peculiarities, are at all incompatible with great practical shrewdness and an unusually large external activity; indeed that such rare and costly contemplative picturings and symbolizations of the Unseen are, when true and deep, means and helps for the contemplative, in his own life and often still more in his influence upon others, towards a great recollection and concentration, which would not only turn the soul away from the dispersion and feverishness that sets in towards the close of external action, but would also bring it back renewed to such outward-moving, joyful-humble creativeness, as wholesome recollection itself requires. For without such contact with the material and the opposition of external action, recollection grows gradually empty; and without recollection, external action rapidly becomes soul-dispersive. Hence it is plain, that the true significance and living system of any such deep soul may be on too large a scale not to require, for its due exhibition, that we survey it in connection with some other supplementary life,--like unto some Gobelin design or cloth-pattern, so large as to require two contiguous walls or two human figures to show its totality by means of their combination.

Now Vernazza the father, who throughout his life possessed the most robust and normal health, can fairly be taken as Catherine’s supplementary figure, for the years when ill-health was limiting her normal range of energies, on their operatively outgoing, philanthropic side; and is thus a living protest against isolating Saints’ lives from their complementary extensions and effects. But Battista, his daughter, gives us, in her own person and up to the end of her life, an example of the combination and stimulating interaction of the Contemplative and the Practical, the Transcendent and the Immanental, the heroically normal and Universal and the tenderly Personal, indeed the more or less psycho-physically peculiar. Catherine was the greater, more original, and more winning Contemplative, and Ettore was more massively Practical than was Battista. Yet Battista possessed both gifts, from early times up to the end, apparently unclouded and unbroken by any kind of incapacitation.

I. Battista’s Life, From April 1497 To June 1510.

We have already seen how Ettore’s eldest child was born on April 15, 1497, and was held at the font by Catherine, receiving, however, the name of Tommasa, after the God-father, the celebrated Doctor of Law, Tommaso Moro. Giuliano was still alive, but already gravely ill. Nothing could well prove more clearly Vernazza’s closeness of friendship for the Adorna and for Moro than his making them thus his first-born’s God-parents. And Moro’s subsequent history makes this, his intimate collocation and spiritual affinity with Catherine a matter suggestive of much reflection.

With her beautiful young mother still alive and living at home with her, Tommasa, a child of precocious intelligence, took to writing verse of various kinds, as early as at ten years of age. Vallebona quotes, from Semeria’s Secoli Christiani della Liguria, ten short lines written by her at that age, and which he apparently holds to have been addressed to her God-mother. They are, however, too vague and hyperbolical for one to be sure as to whom they are dedicated; her own mother or the Blessed Virgin would, I think, fit the case respectively as well as, or better than, Catherine. The “short days” prophesied for herself by the little girl, were destined to amount to ninety years![333]

On her mother dying, some time in 1508 or 1509,--Bartolommea can hardly have been more than thirty-two years of age, and Ettore some six years older,--Vernazza decided, as we know, against continuing an establishment of his own and keeping his three daughters with him. It is certain from his Wills that he had no near female relative whom he could have asked to come and help, or to take, the children; and clear that he was determined not to marry again, so as to remain completely free for his philanthropic work. And hence he was driven to the alternative of boarding the girls in the two convents that we know.

And already on June 24, 1510, on the feast of her father’s favourite Saint and prison-work Patron, Tommasa received the habit of an Augustinian Canoness of the Lateran, and changed her name to Battista. Catherine had still not quite twelve weeks to live, and may well have been deeply interested in her God-daughter’s taking of the veil in that very Convent and at the very age where and when she herself had, half-a-century before, desired to receive it.[334] We cannot but feel that the Superiors were wise who, at that earlier date, had found thirteen too young an age for even an Italian, so early physically mature, and a Catherine, so little suited for marriage, to take even this first and revocable step in the Religious life; and we would doubtless have experienced some uneasiness at the time when Tommasa was somehow allowed to take this identical step at the very same age. Yet we have, as we shall see, full and absolutely conclusive, because first-hand, evidence, that every one concerned in the case acted with true insight. Rarely indeed can a woman have been more emphatically in her right place, than Battista during her seventy-seven years at Santa Maria delle Grazie. And this complete and comfortable appropriateness of vocation no doubt helped her large, balanced, virile mind to feel, with the Church, that such a vocation is but one amongst the numberless forms of even heroic devotedness, a devotedness of which the essence is interior and is capable of being exercised, and which requires to be represented in every honest circumstance and calling of God’s great, many-coloured world.

Of Catetta’s further history, beyond her reception of the veil in the same Convent, under the name of Daniela, some time before November 1517, and of Ginevrina’s later lot, beyond her becoming a Cistercian Nun, under the name of Maria Archangela, at Sant’ Andrea, some time between 1517 and 1524, I have been unable to discover anything. But as to Battista, I wish to dwell upon three characteristic episodes of her long life; they all three throw much light both upon Catherine and (still more) upon the whole question of Mysticism.

Ii. Battista And Her God-Father, Tommaso Moro

The first episode illustrates the rigoristic side of the pre-Reformation Catholic temper and teaching, and the terrible complications, perplexities and pitfalls of those strenuous, confusing times. For we must now move on fifteen further years from that interview with her father, a few days before his death, in June 1524, to reach this event, the first fresh one in Battista’s life of which we have a record.

1. The early stages of Lutheranism and Calvinism.

The Religious Revolution had now well nigh reached its culmination. Battista’s father had only lived to see what may rightly be termed the first step in the Teutonic stage and element of the movement, a stage which, in spite of its political and social, indeed religious, violences and fanaticisms,--and even these came mostly after Vernazza’s death,--retained, if in large part illogically yet with great practical advantage, a considerable portion of the old Catholic convictions and spiritual attitude. Luther had indeed, as we saw, published his Theses in 1517, and Pope Leo X had condemned nearly one-half of them in 1520 in his Bull of Excommunication. And Melanchthon, the mild and deeply learned, had also broken with the Old Church, and had begun, in 1521, the publication of his Loci. But an earnest Catholic (in this case a Teutonic) Reformer had become Pope, in the person of Adrian Dedel of Utrecht (Hadrian VI), in 1522, 1523. And in the very year of Ettore’s heroic death, Erasmus, proving, under the stress of the times, substantially true to the Old Faith, was writing against Luther; whilst in Italy, Vernazza’s old patron, Cardinal Caraffa, was helping to found the Theatine Order.

But within the next fifteen years matters move on and further. For first the Teutonic stage of the Revolution takes its second step, and hardens, and formally and permanently organizes itself; whilst its socially anarchical effects reach their zenith. For there are the Peasants’ War and Luther’s marriage in 1525; and the capture and the sack of Rome by the Imperial (largely Lutheran) troops in 1527; and the Revolutionists’ assumption of the name of “Protestants,” at the Diet of Speyer, in 1529. And, on the Roman Church’s part, the Capuchins are founded in 1525, and the Barnabites in 1530. And this whole Teutonic stage of the Revolution can be taken as closed, for the time, by the terrible Saturnalia of the Anabaptists at Münster, 1533-1535; the executions of the Catholic Humanists, Bishop Fisher and Chancellor More, in England, 1535; and Erasmus’s death in 1536.

And the second element and stage, the Romanic Revolution, was now fully and independently at work, with its indefinitely greater coldness and logical completeness, and its systematic antagonism to the Old Faith. And if the Saxon Mystical-minded Peasant-monk, Luther, stood at the head and in the centre of the first movement, the Picardese bourgeois lawyer and Humanist, Calvin, stands now at the head of this second movement. Born in 1509, he flees, now an avowed Protestant, in 1535 to Basle; and in the spring of 1536 publishes his Institutio Religionis Christianae, which was destined to remain his chief work.

Now it was in the summer of that year that Calvin went to stay at the Court of Renée de Valois, daughter of the French King Louis XII, and Duchess of Ferrara, who had already been gained over to the cause of the Lutheran Reformers; and who was now influenced, by her grim, relentless guest, to move still further away from the Old Church. And though the Roman Inquisition succeeded in forcing Calvin to leave Italy, after not many weeks’ stay: yet the cases of Vittoria Colonna, Bernardino Occhino, and of our Tommaso Moro, show us all plainly, though each differently, how complex and difficult, how obscure and full of pitfalls, was the situation for even permanently loyal and indeed saintly, and still more for simply earnest and eager, souls. For Vittoria Colonna, that truly saint-like daughter of the Church, not only stays, during the following year, with the Duchess Renée at Ferrara, and indeed stands God-mother to her daughter Eleonora (born June 19, 1537), the child that, later on, became the friend of the poet Tasso: but Vittoria is the close friend and confidante of that most zealous preacher, that restless, ardent, absolute-minded Bernardino Occhino, who, born in Siena in 1487, had joined the Franciscan Reform, the later Capuchins, in 1534, and indeed, in 1539, became their General. It is to Vittoria indeed that, on his deciding not to obey the summons to Rome, there to defend himself against the (no doubt, in part, unfair) attacks upon his teaching, he, in the night of August 22, 1542, before his flight and abandonment of his Order and of the Church, writes his still extant sad and saddening letter of self-exculpation.[335] But this latter catastrophe was not to take place till three years after the date at which I would now linger.

2. Moro becomes a Calvinist: probable causes of this step.

It must, I think, have been through some influence emanating from the not very far away Ferrara, that the Genoese Tommaso Moro was, just about this time, carried away into Calvinism. We must not forget that, deplorable as was such an aberration, there were two excuses for him, which would apply no doubt, in varying degrees, to many others even of those who were, at this time, permanently lost to the Church.

For one thing the views held, and allowably held, during two or three generations, on points of Grace and Free-will, of Predestination and the corruption of the natural man, by even those whom the Church eventually raised to her Altars, were, as a matter of fact, less removed from the Protestant Reformers’ positions, than were probably any views (with the exception of the extreme Jansenist position) which have prevailed in the Catholic Church since the Protestant Reformation. St. Catherine, Moro’s fellow God-parent, had expressed herself, in certain moods, in so rigoristic a sense on these deep matters, as to invite the comment of the Bollandist Sticker that these passages are caute legenda.[336] Yet Catherine, in speaking thus, simply resembled probably all her really earnest contemporaries--witness the great Paris Chancellor Jean Gerson, some time before, and the devoted Cardinals Contarini and Morone and Vittoria Colonna, a little after Catherine’s own zenith.[337]

Again, the practical, moral abuses were most real and often very pressing; and whilst the numerous attempts at Reform extending now over a century (the Council of Constance had assembled in 1414) had emphasized this fact, they had also plainly shown, by their practical abortiveness, how very difficult the attainment of such a universally desired Reform persisted in appearing, if there was to be no final breach with Rome.

And the fullest consequences of such a breach could not be present to the experience, or even to the imagination, of the first who made it, as they are to us, or even as they were after the second step of the Romanic Revolution had been taken by Lelio Socino, the Sienese and his nephew Fausto Socino, the founders of Socinianism, who died respectively in 1562 and 1604,--the former shortly after Occhino had died, in 1560, miserably alone and out of the Catholic Roman Church.

3. Battista’s letter to Moro, September 1537; its effect.

Now it was on September 10, 1537, that his Augustinian God-daughter wrote, to her now Calvinist God-father, a letter which occupies five pages of print in the fifth, a handsome octavo, edition of her works published in Genoa in 1755. Though the earliest of all her extant, or at least of her printed, letters, it is evidently an answer to a communication of his, in which he had urged certain objections against the Roman Church. And that communication must have been provoked by a first letter from herself--a letter which, though probably less theologically interesting and learned, will have been more uniformly touching than the one preserved. Yet if that first note had clearly succeeded in getting him to state his case, this second letter also, we shall see, completely attained its still more important object.

Moro had insisted that the Roman Church followed merely human inventions in the matter of (1) Fasting; (2) Confession; (3) the Real Presence; (4) Public Prayer and Psalmody; (5) Vows; and (6) Extreme Unction.--The order is curious, but is evidently not hers but his. Extreme Unction stands in the obvious position--at the end. The vows of Religion immediately precede it, probably because, at this time, they typified something not only irrevocable but sepulchral to this ardent Calvinist. Public Prayer and Psalmody would naturally precede these vows, as an appropriate link between the life of the cloister, so largely given to the Divine Office, and the Real Presence, its celebration being and requiring the most marked of all the exhibitions of Public Prayer. Confession would stand before the Real Presence, as being actually practised before the reception of Communion. And Fasting, finally, would precede Confession, and would, most characteristically, head the whole list, because the completest and most universally binding of all Fasts is that which is antecedent to Holy Communion; and because, in beginning thus, Moro can start his attack on the Church by the criticism of something that is obviously and avowedly external.

The tone of Battista’s answer is interesting throughout, for a double reason. There is in it a successful, very difficult combination of filial respect and of lofty reproof; and there runs through all the argumentation a sort of legal hard-headedness, entirely in its place on the lips of the lawyer’s daughter in dealing with her lawyer correspondent. I give her answers to his second and fifth objections, since the former is interesting as touching on the point of the obligation and frequency of Sacramental Confession, which has occupied us much in her God-mother’s life; and the latter gives a vivid insight into Battista’s own deeply genuine and happy vocation.

As to Confession, she writes: “You hold one opinion, and the Church holds another; and to this Church it has not appeared good to constrain us to confess ourselves in public, nor always to manifest our whole interior to any and every man who may reprehend us. In this latter case we should have been left without any protection. You grudge obeying her once a year; how then would you carry out the other plan? Certainly the said Church would have but little authority if she could not lay down ordinances, according to her own judgment, concerning the mode (of administration and reception) of the Sacraments already ordained by Christ.”

As to Vows, she finishes up by declaring: “According to my humble judgment, that thing cannot be called slavery which a soul elects for itself, by an act of free choice alone, and with a supreme desire. And in this matter you really can trust me, since here I am, living under the very test of experience, and yet I have no consciousness of being bound to any obligation: so little indeed that, if I had full licence from God to do all those things of which I have deprived myself by my vows, I would do neither more nor less than what I now am actually doing; indeed no taste for anything beyond these latter things arises within me. How then do you come to give the name of servitude to that which gets embraced thus with supreme delight? Perchance you will say ‘not every one is thus disposed.’ My dear Sir: he who does not find this inclination within him, let him not execute it. Neither Christ nor His Church constrain any one in this matter.”[338]

The effect of this homely and sensible, straightforward and firm, first-hand witness to a strong soul’s full daily life of faith and self-expansion in and for Christ in His extension, the Old Church, was evidently decisive, perhaps immediate. It is at least certain that Tommaso Moro came back to the Roman obedience; that he became and died a Priest and Religious; and that his return is universally attributed to the instrumentality of this letter.[339]

III. BATTISTA’S COLLOQUIES, NOVEMBER 1554 TO ASCENSION-DAY 1555.

Yet her letters form but a small part of the literary output of this many-sided woman. Her printed writings fill six stout volumes, in all some 2,400 octavo pages, and fall into four chief divisions. The independent verses consist only of four “Canticles of Divine Love,” twelve “Spiritual Canticles,” and five “Sonnets.” Yet even the second division, which alone fills quite five out of the six volumes, and consists of Spiritual Discourses or Dissertations, contains much verse, since the Discourse (which invariably takes its title and starting-point from some, originally or interpretatively, Mystical Biblical text) usually finishes up with a chapter of eight verses, in which she sums up metrically the doctrine which she has just expounded in finely balanced and stately prose. Mostly proceeding from some Pauline, or, more often still, some Joannine text, these writings evince throughout a fine Christian-Platonist breadth of outlook and concentration and expansion of devotional feeling, and have much of that unfading freshness which appertains to the universal experiences of religion, wherever these are experienced deeply and anew and are communicated largely in the form and tone of their actual experimentation. These Discourses would also, of course, furnish all but endless parallels and illustrations to Catherine’s teachings.

Yet it is the last two divisions of Battista’s writings which are the most entirely characteristic and suggestive--her Colloquies and her Letters. As to the seventy-five pages of letters, I have already given extracts from two, of the years 1581 and 1589, and shall presently give portions of two others, of the years 1575 and 1576. But in this section I want to translate and comment upon a considerable portion of her Colloquies, so interesting for various reasons, all directly connected with the subject of this book. These contemporary annotations occupy only eleven pages of print, but they constitute, I think, one of the most instructive first-hand documents of mystical and religious psychology in existence, and have nowhere, as yet, received any of the comparative and analytic study they so richly deserve.

It is but right to remember throughout, that even all her other writings (including the Discourses which are so general and, in a manner, quite public in their tone) were, with the sole exception of her Sonnets, none of them printed with her knowledge and consent. A certain Secular Priest, Gaspare Scotto, did indeed print some at least of the Discourses, without her knowledge, during her long lifetime; but the Colloquies were certainly never meant for any eyes other than her own, and were doubtless not printed, or indeed known, until after her death. I suppose them to have first appeared in the collected edition of her works, published in 1602, fifteen years after her demise.

Now these Colloquies belong to three periods. The first set is timed vaguely una volta; and the third is also but approximately fixed; but the second, by far the longest and most important series, is, at its main turning-points, dated with absolute precision. And since its authenticity, the identity of the chronicler with the experiencing person, and the complete contemporaneousness of the record, are all beyond cavil or question (the majority of the entries were evidently put down by her on the very day, often probably within the hour, of the cessation of the experience thus chronicled)--the document can serve as a simply first-hand illustration of, and commentary on, the analogous experiences of Battista’s God-mother, experiences which, in the latter case, were nowhere recorded by their subject, nor indeed by others till probably, in some cases, a considerable time after their occurrence. And if here again there can be no difficulty, for any sincere and consistent believer, in holding that we have to do with enlightenments of the mind and stimulations of the affections and will, proceeding as truly from God as they led back to Him: we cannot but, here again, find plentiful indications of the antecedent material, and of the co-operation, response, and special colour furnished throughout by the human subject’s special sex and age, race and period, temperament, training, and reading. Not all the latter conditions put together would explain even half of the total experience; yet had these conditions been different, the total experience would have differed, not indeed in its fundamental contents, yet in its special forms and applications. As matters stand, these latter are often strikingly like those manifested in the teaching of Catherine, Battista’s fellow-Genoese. I will now take the nine most interesting days of this series,[340] stopping after certain of them to point out parallels and peculiarities.

1. Experience of November 17, 1554.

“On (Saturday) November 17, 1554” (Battista was now fifty-seven and a half years old), “having, before Holy Communion, a great desire to die to all things, I prayed with all my heart that God, in the most perfect manner possible, would slay me and unite me with Himself. And in so doing I renounced into His hands all myself and everything existing under heaven, whilst electing God anew as my only Love, my only Solace, my only Comfort, and my All. And I refused to accept every consolation arising from such interiorness, however holy the latter might be, except inasmuch as the consolation arises whilst the interior is distinctly occupied with God, and does not turn its gaze upon itself or upon any (other) belovèd object. Even if I could enjoy all this, quite justly, till the day of judgment, I renounce it all. Nothing pleases me, except my God. And if I were assured, which God forbid, of going (to abide) under Lucifer, still would I will, neither more nor less than my God alone. And it would be grievous to me to embrace, even for one single hour, anything else but Him.--After this Communion I remained with a most intense impression of renouncing, with regard to all things and to all moments, all myself and every other thing that is lower than Thee; and with a determination to keep Forty Days of silence, depriving myself during them, as far as my own will and inclination went, even of such reasoning as turned on religious subjects.--And acting thus, by means of Thy grace alone, I arrived, in my inner heart, at having no other actions left, except those of adoring Thee and praying for all men. Whence it happened that I experienced the most quiet and consoling week that, possibly, I have ever had, up to this hour, in all my life.”

It is clear that even the first part of this week’s experience was not written down later than at the end of that week; indeed it reads more as if written down on at least two, and perhaps three, occasions. We have here many close parallels to Catherine: to her exclamation of “God is my Being … my Delight”; to the Divine Voice heard by her, “I do not wish thee henceforth to turn thine eyes to right or left”; to the question asked, and the interior answer heard, by her, as to “love and union not being able to exist without a great contentment of soul”; to her assertions that “the attribution to her own separate self of even one single meritorious act, would be to her as though a Hell,” and that “she would rather remain in eternal condemnation than be saved by such an act of the separate self”; to her Love saying within her, “that He wanted her to keep the Forty Days in His Company in the Desert”; and to her declaration that she could not pray for Vernazza and his fellow-disciples separately, but could only “present them” collectively “in His presence.” And in Battista’s phrase of “going under Lucifer,” we have again, if we take it together with the renunciation of “all things lower than God,” an illustration of those sayings of Catherine which I have grouped under the special category of “up” and “above.”[341]

And note, in Battista’s record, how the contradiction, which appears between her affirmation of having love for God alone, and the admission that she loved herself and other things (since she is determined not to let her mental gaze rest upon these latter beloved objects), is more apparent than real. For the former love is the direct and central object of her fully deliberate and free endeavours; the latter is instinctive, continuous, inevitable, but, inasmuch as it now still remains actively willed at all, it is but the consequential and peripheral object of that willing. As in all deep religion there is here an heroic willing at work to effect a genuine displacement of the centre and object of interest; the system from being instinctively man-centred, becomes a freely willed God-centredness.

2. Experience of November 25, 1554.

“On Sunday” (November 25), “the Feast of St. Catherine” (Virgin Martyr of Alexandria) “was being celebrated. And I communicated with new emotion. And when I received the Host, I willed Thee, my God, alone; renouncing all the rest into Thy hands: I but desired to die and unite myself with Thee. And I felt within me those colloquies of Thine own extreme love; and Thou didst say unto me, O my Joy, ‘The thing that thou seekest is (already) produced eternally in My Divine Mind. Thou desirest to feed on mutability, and I desire to feed thee on eternity.’ And I do not remember in what connection Thou didst say,‘ Ego ero merces tua magna nimis’ (Gen. xv, 1).”

Here, on her God-mother’s Saint’s day, we find that act of pure love at the moment of Holy Communion so dear to Catherine also; and we get here, as in the previous group (but here, even on occasion of the Holy Eucharist), prayer and aspiration directed to God pure and simple, or to God conceived as Love and Joy, precisely as in the Fiesca’s ordinary practice.[342] And the inner voice, if it says deeply mystical things, also directly quotes Scripture in Latin, whilst the scrupulous care of Battista, in registering her oblivion of the precise context in which this quotation appeared, is interestingly characteristic of her nature and experience.

3. Experience of December (9?), 1554.

“On Sunday” (December 9?) “I communicated; and I experienced within myself the most tender colloquies of Thy Majesty, which said to me, ‘The time will come when thou must be so occupied with Me--with My Divinity, My Infinity, My Glory--that, even if thou shouldst so wish, thou wouldest be unable to break off this preoccupation. I have elected thee from amongst thousands. I want to make thee My very Self.’ … Then Thou saidst unto me, ‘I do not want thee to merit, but to return the love which I ever bear thee.’”[343]

Here we have parallels to Catherine’s practice and declarations in Battista’s ever-growing occupation with God; in her, at first sight, strongly pantheistic, because apparently substantial, identification of her true self with God; and in her doctrine that God desires not that we should merit, but that we should, by purely loving, make Him a return of His own pure love. And, as but an apparent contrast, note how here it is God Who chooses out Battista’s soul from amongst thousands; whilst, with Catherine, we have herself instinctively choosing out God, even were He, per impossible, like to one of the whole Court of Heaven (the angels, “whose number is thousands of thousands,” Apoc. v, 11). For the difference consists, at bottom, only in the fact that each dwells, in these special instances, upon the other half of the complete mystic circle of the divine and human intercourse. The same complete scheme is, in reality, experienced and proclaimed both by the widow and the nun,--indeed God’s prevenient election of the soul, and His special attention to it, is even more strongly emphasized by the older woman: “It appears to me, indeed, that God has no other business than myself.”[344]

Remark, too, how here again an unmistakable text of Scripture appears as part of the words heard by Battista. But since it is a composite quotation--“I have elected thee,” coming from Isa. xliii, 10; xliv, 1; xlviii, 10; and “elected among thousands,” coming from Cant. v, 10, where the elect is (as with Catherine) the Bridegroom, and not (as with Battista) the Bride,--therefore, no doubt, it does not appear in Latin or with any reference.

4. Experience of December 16, 1554.

“The following Sunday” (December 16) “I communicated with a greater desire for Union than usual, and with a more detailed sight concerning it. And after this communion I prayed in such a state of Union,--without any means either of thoughts or of anything else that could be made to intervene, remaining naked in Thy bosom as I have been from eternity. And whilst praying thus, I felt that certain words were being spoken within me, the gist of which (la sentenza) seems to me to have been, that my prayer did not reach to the reality of Union itself. So that there then came to my mind that which Paul says, Rom. viii (26), that ‘we do not know how to pray sicut oportet.’ And Thou saidst to me that, above all understanding of mine, Thou wouldest produce the effect; indeed the thing is already effected continuously in Thy divine mind. And Thou saidst to me, my only Love, that Thou didst will to make me Thyself; and that Thou wast all mine, with all that Thou hadst and with all Paradise; and that I was all Thine. That I should leave all, or rather the nothing; and that (then) Thou wouldst give me the all. And that Thou hadst given me this name--at which words I heard within me ‘dedi te in lucem gentium’--not without good reason. And it seemed then, as though I had an inclination for nothing except the purest Union, without any means, in accordance with that detailed sight which Thou hadst given me. So then I said to Thee: ‘These other things, give them to whom Thou wilt; give me but this most pure Union with Thee, free from every means.’”

Here we again have numerous parallels. Battista’s state of Union, without any means that could be made to intervene, compares readily with Catherine’s declaration: “I cannot abide to see that word ‘for’ (God) and ‘in’ (God), since they denote to my mind something that can stand between God and myself.” Battista’s description, “remaining naked in Thy bosom, as I have been from eternity,” resembles Catherine’s sayings: “True love wills to stand naked. This naked love sees the truth”; “the soul in that state of cleanness in which it was created”; “the angels and man, when disobedient, were clothed in sin”; and the words heard by her: “I want thee naked, naked.” The answer granted to Battista, that “possessing her Lord, her only Love, she possessed at the same time all Paradise,” recalls Catherine’s declaration that “if of what her heart felt but one drop were to fall into Hell, Hell itself would become Eternal Life.” And Battista’s prayer, “these other things, give them to whom Thou wilt; give me but this most pure Union with Thee,” is substantially like Catherine’s answer to the Friar, “that you should merit more than myself--I leave that in your hands; but that I cannot love Him as much as you, is a thing that you will never by any means get me to understand.”[345]

And we get here two further interesting particularities as to such “locutions.” In this case Battista only “feels,” at the time of their occurrence, that certain words are being spoken within her (once before she has used that remarkably general term, instead of the more obvious and specific “hear”); and she possesses, on coming (evidently soon after) to write them down, a but approximate remembrance of them, and a certainty as to their substance alone. And then we find here the interesting case of two different simultaneous locutions: one voice referring to the name which our Lord had given her, and another, at this point, quoting the text, “dedi te in lucem gentium.” The text, in this full form, occurs in Isaiah xlix, 6, and is there spoken by God to His servant Israel, v. 3; but part of it, expanded to “a light to the revelation of the Gentiles,” is, in Luke ii, 32, quoted by Simeon of Christ. We thus, in this place, get three different, yet simultaneous, levels of consciousness within Battista’s soul: her own (more or less ordinary) consciousness and “voice” recognized by her own self, as such; another, deeper, extraordinary consciousness and “voice” proceeding, according to her apprehension, from our Lord’s presence and action within her; and finally a third, deepest consciousness and “voice” taken, I presume, to be directly communicated by God Himself. It is to be noted that, though interior “locutions” seem to have been fairly frequent with Catherine, there is no case on record in her life of more than two levels of consciousness, two “voices,” at one and the same moment, her own and Love’s.

5. Experience of December 23, 24, 1554.

“The following night” (December 23 to 24), “I woke up and found impressed upon my mind (the words): ‘comedite bonum,’ Isaiah lv (2). And this impression remained with me (throughout the day),--an impression of eating God, and of inviting all others to the same Divine food.--In the evening,--it was the Vigil of the Nativity,--I had a sight of how, God Himself having taken our nature, and having done so as the Infinite one, the very greatest virtue must be diffused throughout this same (human) nature: a truth which he knew who says: ‘Plena est omnis terra gloria eius,’ Isaiah vi (3). If by one man sin entered into all, by a God-man how much good has not entered into us all? Romans v, 15-19. If God has made Himself Flesh, what virtue is there which He has denied to this same flesh?--And in the night of the Nativity, after Matins, I had a sight of that extreme, eternal and incomprehensible Love, which, unable to abide within Itself, had become ecstatic into the thing It loved, and had indeed, by means of Its Almighty power, become that very thing. Whence it is that, seeing Thy Majesty gone forth out of Thyself and become me, I was determined, in virtue of that self-same love, to go forth from myself and, in every manner, make myself into Thy very Self. And Thou, my God, didst say that Thou hadst descended to the same degree as that to which Thou wantedst man to ascend.”

Here Battista’s “impression of eating God, and of inviting all others to the same Divine food” is substantially identical with Catherine’s doctrine as to the “One Bread, God,” and “all creatures hungering for this One Bread.” Battista’s sight of “God being diffused throughout human nature,” is analogous to Catherine’s teaching as to no creature existing that does not, in some measure, participate in His goodness,--although, with characteristic difference, Battista dwells on the ennoblement of that nature through the Incarnation of God, and Catherine insists upon the nobility contemporaneous with, and intrinsic to, Man’s original Creation. And Battista’s determination to go forth from herself is identical, in substance, with all the sayings of Catherine which I have grouped under the “outside” “outwards” category.[346]

And note how, in this group, Battista mentally sees, instead of interiorly hearing, the truth of the Incarnation of the Infinite, and of the consequent ennobling of our whole nature; how this sight then suggests to her mind a definite text (recognized by herself as such), and then an amplification of another text (not perhaps identified by her as such at all): and how the transition from that sight to these texts is so smooth and rapid that it is practically impossible to mark off precisely where she held the simply given experience to end, and her own action and comment to begin. The fact of the matter no doubt is that, in both cases, though very possibly in different degrees, there was divine and human action indistinguishably co-operant throughout.

And mark again how her “vista”--“of that extreme, eternal, and incomprehensible Love which had become ‘ecstatic’ into the Thing it loves”; her consequent determination to “go forth from herself,” and the voice which told her that He wanted her “to ascend in the same degree as He had descended”: all goes back, for its literary suggestion, to the Dionysian “Divine Names”: “Divine Love is ecstatic, not permitting any to be lovers of themselves but of those beloved. The very Author of all things, through an overflow of His loving goodness, becomes ‘out of Himself,’ and is led down from the eminence above all, to being in all.” “He is at once moving and conducting Power to Himself, as it were a sort of everlasting circle.” “Let us restore all loves back to the one and enfolded Love and Father of them all.”[347] Not the less truly did Battista’s mental lights and voluntary determinations come from God, because they consisted, for the most part, in a vivid realization and acceptation, in and for her particular case, on this Christmas night in 1554, of spiritual facts and truths which had been slowly and successively revealed, experienced, and formulated as far back as the Hebrew Prophets and the Greek Plato, and above all by our Lord, and in St. Paul’s writings and the Gospel of St. John. These truths were none the less hers, because they had been successively experienced and proclaimed, so long ago by others; and their suggestion and realization to and in her, were as truly the work of God in her own case as they were in that of those others.

6. Experience of December 27, 1554.

“This morning” (December 27), “which is the Feast of the Evangelist John, when I awoke, I suddenly heard the words being spoken within my mind: ‘To-day I am determined to divide thy soul from thy spirit’--and later on, when the Host was being elevated at Mass and I was praying about this matter, I had a sight or Thou didst say unto me--I cannot remember precisely which it was,--enough, it appeared to me that as, when the soul is divided from the body, the soul, in so far as immortal, flies to its destined place, and the entire body remains dead: so also, when the almighty hand of God makes a similar division of the soul from the spirit, the former, the animal part (of man), remains dead, but the spirit, (truly) free (at last), flies to its natural place, which is God, the Living Fountain.”

Here we are at once reminded of Catherine’s experience of “Love once speaking within her mind”; of her sayings which dwell on the separation of the soul from the body, and on the flight of the spirit to its natural place, God; and of her sight of “the living Fountain” of Goodness.[348] But Battista’s psychology is entirely clear and self-consistent, as to the precise extension of, and the precise distinction between, the terms “spirito” and “anima”; whereas, in the authentic sayings of Catherine, “anima” is used sometimes as inclusive of, and sometimes in contradistinction to, “spirito.” We shall see how it is only the later systematizing Dialogo-writer who brings perfect consistency, and a scheme identical with Battista’s, into Catherine’s terminology. Yet in Catherine’s image of the assimilation of bread by man, in illustration of the assimilation of man’s nature by God, we find Battista’s two stages of the divisional process. For there the body is first purified up to the actual level of the soul, and then the soul itself is purified perfectly, its animal part being eliminated or dominated by the spiritual part.[349]

It is interesting, too, to note how Battista cannot decide here whether this interpretation of the short sentence she had heard was mentally seen or interiorly heard by her; indeed, she is sure only that, whilst she was praying to understand the meaning of that sentence, the meaning thus sought appeared to her, by some means or other, to be so and so. It is then abundantly clear from this, that the difference between an interior sight and an interior voice, and again between either of these and the admittedly normal workings of her own mind, was, at times, so delicate, as either not to be clear to her own consciousness, even at the very time of the experience; or, at least, to fade away from her memory before she came to chronicle the experience.

7. Experience of January 6, 1555.

“On the Feast of the Epiphany” (January 6, 1555), “before Communion, I felt ineffable and most tender colloquies, and greatly I rejoiced because of them. For I had caused Masses to be said and prayers to be prayed, by various persons during many days, with the intention that, if these colloquies were not from Thee, I might no more experience them; but that, if they were Thine, they might be produced within me more clearly and more efficaciously. And seeing that I now felt them more than usual, and in a more admirable manner, I had and have a firm hope that they were Thine. Whence it happened that (having, on that same blessed day, to go up to receive Thee in the Sacrament), I felt Thy Majesty more than once calling me within me, ‘Come, since I want to devour thee entirely.’ … It seems to me that ‘entirely’ was one of the words, but I have no firm remembrance of this. But I know well that Thou saidst several times, ‘Come, since I want to devour thee.’ … To me it seemed that I merited rather to go under Lucifer, than into the Infinite Light (Luce).”

We get here a number of interesting parallels and contrasts to Catherine’s teaching and practice. God’s devouring of the soul; God pictured as Light; souls conceived as higher up or lower down in space, according to their degree of goodness or of badness; even the pleasure in a play upon words: all this finds its close counterpart in Catherine.[350] But far more important is the difference in the subject-matter of their scruples and in their respective attitudes towards psychically unusual experiences. In Catherine’s case there is no record of anxieties concerning other things than her degree of detachment and her administrative responsibilities; indeed her whole practice and teaching, continuously bent as they were upon the ethico-spiritual truth and upon the practical application of her unusual experiences, make it morally certain that her anxieties never turned upon these forms and means themselves. She was, as it were, too much occupied with the content of the cup, ever to be actively perplexed as to the cup itself. Battista, on the contrary, seems to have been quite free from scruples of Catherine’s melancholic type; but did not, evidently, always soar as highly as her God-mother above all anxious occupation with the form of her experiences. And, indeed, if, in this instance, it was evidently the form of her experiences which perplexed her, it was also the renewed and heightened experience of this peculiar form which reassured her.--Yet the very fact of such a perplexity, and again the moderation with which, even at the end of it all, she but “hopes that it all comes from God,” shows a healthy reluctance to trust too readily or too much to such tests and indications. It would probably not be unfair to put her attitude towards such things midway between Don Marabotto’s readiness of belief and Catherine’s soaring ethico-spiritual transcendence.

It is noticeable too that, if the inner voice is more distinct than before, Battista’s anxious care for accuracy is also, if possible, more on the alert than ever: witness her remarks as to the word “all.”

8. Experience of the Second Sunday in Lent, 1555.

“On the second Sunday (in Lent), having communicated, I felt Thine ineffable reasonings; but, since I did not write them down at once, I do not any more venture to write them down, having in great part lost the memory of them. But this I remember, that the words were like those which the Bridegroom says to the Bride in the Canticle (of Canticles).”

Here the difference between this form of apprehension and that of ordinary vivid thinking is so faintly distinct, that she can only declare that she “felt” (without deciding between hearing, seeing, or any other of the more definite senses) “reasonings” (without being sure of their “explicitation” in words or images); and she herself recognized at the time, and later on remembers that contemporary recognition of, their likeness to the texts of the Canticle of Canticles. It is evidently the profound reluctance, cultivated by her for half a century or more, to treat the deepest acts of the soul as other than directly and exclusively the acts of God in that soul, which makes her not see and admit here the large co-operation of her own mind.

Remark also a characteristic difference from Catherine, in that the latter’s teaching is, we have already seen, entirely free from any influences characteristic of the Song of Songs.

9. Experience of Ascension Day, 1555.

“On the Lord’s Ascension Day Thou didst say to me, O my Love, that, up to this point, I had walked by Faith, but that now Thou wast determined to give me direct assurance (certezza); and that there was no occasion for me to go on writing down Thy words, since I should read them in my own experience. And on my asking what Thou wouldst operate within me, Thou didst affirm to me that I should ever possess Thee in my heart.”--“Another time I felt that I was being told: ‘I generate My Son, having an infinite Cognition of Myself; similarly I generate thee, by infusing into thee that same cognition. But (this) My Cognition is without measure; and thine shall be according to that measure which I shall, by My goodness, be impelled to give thee, in suchwise that of this cognition and of thine intellect there shall be effected one identical thing; so that I shall place My Word, My Concept, which I possess within Myself, in thee, according to the capacity for it which I shall deign to give thee; and so that, again, thy spirit shall be a son within My Son, or rather one only son with Him: and thus will I have generated thee.’ Hence, O Lord, according to this Thy showing, those are generated by Thee, who, united by grace to Thy Majesty, repose in Thy Paternal Bosom, together with Thine only Begotten. But He is by nature one sole substance with Thee--He whom Thou art ever ineffably generating; and we are united with Thee, through reposing in Thy bosom by simple grace and by a singular privilege of Thy love; and in so far as we thus abide there in Thee, Thou generatest us in more and more light and ardour. Hence then Thou generatest him who abides in Thee.”

We have here, in the last locution of this series, the most complicated and seemingly original of them all. Yet here we can still find parallels to Catherine: in the addressing of God as “my Love”; in the fact that the locution proceeds from, and its interpretation is submitted, not to our Lord, but to God, to Him who indeed generates His Son without measure and directly, yet all other souls also, though in measure and by and through His Son; and in the declaration that now she should have a kind of direct assurance in lieu of Faith.[351]

And here especially we can trace the large Neo-Platonist (Dionysian) element in Battista’s Mysticism. There is the first, perfect circle, God’s perfect cognition of Himself, a cognition which produces a fresh (though co-eternal) centre of cognition, which latter in return perfectly cognizes Him who perfectly cognized it. And then there is a derivative imperfect circle--since that perfect cognizedness and cognizing, which is God’s Son, can only be imperfectly imparted to the souls of creatures: yet again we have a circle for the very thing which is cognized by God is, in this instance also, the same which cognizes Him. And lastly, this distance between the perfect and imperfect circles is, as far as possible, overcome by an attempted and momentary identification of the perfectly cognized and cognizing circle, Christ, with the perfectly cognized but imperfectly cognizing one, every human soul in its potentiality and divinely intended end.

And this large Platonist scheme of a progression of Ideas appears here coloured and Christianized, by means of four scriptural texts in particular: Ps. cix, 31, “in the brightness (splendours) of the saints, from the womb, before the day star (Lucifer) I begot thee”; John i, 18, “the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father”; xiii, 23, “there was leaning on Jesus’ bosom one of His disciples whom Jesus loved”; and Luke xvi, 23, “the rich man beheld Abraham from afar, and Lazarus in his bosom.” The first two passages give her the eternal and continuous generation and abiding of the Son by and in the Father; and the last two suggest a similar abiding and (interpretatively) generation, together with that Son, of the faithful soul, in and by God, continuously and for ever.

Note, too, the double meaning, so characteristic of mystical utterances, contained in the sentence, “I generate My Son, having an infinite Cognition of Myself”; which indicates both the mode of generation (“by means of an infinite cognition”), and the nature of the generated one (“who has an infinite cognition”). And by this literary device, the intense close-knitness of the perfect circle is strikingly adumbrated.

And remark how Battista finishes up this soaring flight by an interpretation of a perfect sobriety. Indeed it is this moderation and good sense along with so immense an Idealism and intense Interiority which, together, constitute her noblest characteristic and should make us overlook the comparative absence of spontaneous charm and tender freshness, which cannot but strike us if we allow ourselves to contrast the piety of Battista with that of Catherine.

IV. Some Further Letters Of Battista, 1575 To 1581.

Before the experiences and confidences of an almost painful privacy and emotional intensity, which require, in part, a considerable amount of patient interpretation from us, if they are to move and touch us, we found and dwelt upon a moral attitude and a document full of immediately understandable heroism and virile common-sense: the scene with her father before his death-ride, and the letter to Dottore Moro. And, somewhat similarly, three further documents succeed to these intermediate confidences, documents full of love and esteem for the externally ordinary vocation of the vast majority of us all, of a large undaunted outlook, and of a shrewd and persevering public spirit. The apparent mental contraction and subjectivity we have just passed through with her is but the recollective movement, the, as it were, drawing itself together for the spring of action on the part of an already large and expansive soul, and leads on and out to fresh and still larger horizons, and, indeed, effects them.

1. Letter to Donna Anguisola, 1575.

We have first a letter of June 10, 1575 (Battista was now seventy-eight years of age, and had been a Religious for sixty-five years) addressed to a widowed noblewoman with young children--the Illustrious Lady Andronica Anguisola.[352] The reader will note the transition, evidently quite natural and spontaneous in the writer, from a soaring Mysticism, full of Pauline, Joannine, and Dionysian forms, and of deep, personally experimental content, to the most practical and shrewd, wisely unflinching, homely heroism. There are few documents, I think, which show with an equal impressiveness how startlingly direct and immediate can be and is the application of such, apparently, purely transcendental, serene contemplations and affections to the struggling, clamorous world of our human passions, circumstances, difficulties, and duties: and how only that transcendence and this immanence, taken and working thus together, give to the soul a height without inflation, and a concrete particularity without pettiness. I shall break up the long letter into three sections, omitting only two, relatively commonplace, passages in the middle and at the end; and shall again point out certain parallels and peculiarities at the end of each section.

(1) Opening of the letter.

“Most Honoured Madam in the Crucified,

“‘I have come to place (cast) fire upon the earth, and what will I but that it be enkindled’ (Luke xii, 49). By these most divine words we can understand, in part, to what a supreme degree such a most happy fire is of importance, since the Eternal Word came down from Heaven to kindle it in His so dearly-loved rational earth. And this great effect could not but follow, since the Paternal goodness willed to communicate to our misery the ardour which He possesses eternally in His Heart. And what else is this communication to us of His infinite love than the planting within our minds of His own intrinsic, incomprehensible delights? His Majesty, in His infinite courtesy, takes His delights in abiding with the children of men (Prov. viii, 31). But He desires that these delights should proceed from both sides, so that, as He takes these delights in us, by His own intrinsic natural goodness, He similarly wills that we, by means of that same goodness which is poured into us by that fire which Christ places upon our earth,--as Paul demonstrates when he says (Rom. v, 5), ‘The charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Ghost who is given to us,’--He wills, I say, that, set in motion by the immense potency of this infused fire, we should place, in return, all our delights in His Majesty; and then, to speak according to our human fashion, His unmeasured love attains to its intent. In this correspondence lie hidden away delights beyond all comprehension, considering that it is His own goodness that comes down (into us), as He demonstrates when he says, ‘We will come to him, and will make our abode with him’ (John xiv, 23); and that He raises us up beyond all measure in suchwise that, of the Increate Heart and of the created one, there is made, by the operation of Him who says, ‘The Father who is in Me, worketh’ (John x, 38; v, 17), a single most secret and inestimable union.”

Here, again, we find close parallels to Catherine in “His own intrinsic incomprehensible delights,” “His infinite courtesy,” “the immense virtue of this infused fire,” and “to speak according to our human fashion.” And the whole general conception of a mutual and corresponding action and circle between God and the soul, the whole movement beginning in and by God, and leading back and ending in Him, is here, once more, the common property of Battista and her God-mother.[353] Yet “The Crucified,” with which the whole letter opens, and “His Heart,” the “Increate Heart,” applied directly to God Himself, are expressions we should seek in vain in Catherine. The historical Christ, and a most legitimate anthropomorphism, find here a place, indeed a prominence, which they have not there. And note the sobriety with which Battista insists on the analogical character of all this speculation, for she “speaks” only “according to our human fashion”; and the allegorizing involved in the “His dearly-loved rational earth,” the earth that souls dwell on having here become simply identical with those souls themselves. And especially remark the mystically characteristic doubleness of meaning, and the conception of the substantiality of the divine indwelling, involved in the phrase, “His own intrinsic, incomprehensible delights.” For this phrase means both “the delight which, for our minds, is intrinsically bound up with the thought of God,” and the “delight which He himself takes in His indwelling whilst abiding within us”; and the latter idea involves a belief in the soul’s delight in Him being but a sympathetic echo and answer to His delight in this His own indwelling, a delight thus actually in operation within the human soul.

Mark, too, how her opening her letter with a formally announced text is but an instance of her life-long literary form of composition--the homily; how saturated is the whole with (evidently first-hand) scriptural meditation; and how wise and like her own father is her treatment of this soul, so near to delusion in the very intemperance of her search after perfection. A warning note of a claim about to be made upon her correspondent’s effective self-immolation has been struck, from the first, by the words, “the Crucified”; and yet this note is first followed by a paragraph sufficiently soaring to satisfy even the most lofty moods of the Signora Andronica.

(2) Central part of the letter.

“I have taken up my pen from a desire that you may be wholly and entirely devoted to the Lord, with a whole-hearted abandonment. I do not mean that you should abandon the care of your children: on the contrary, I wish that you may give the greatest care to them, both within and without. For the within, by desiring heart-wholly that they may be joined (cleave) to God, with all they are; and for the without, by helping them studiously to avoid everything that leads to sin.” She then gives the examples of SS. Felicitas and Monica, and of St. Louis of France, and proceeds: “Now note, dear Madam, how great is the fruit of good government on the part of parents. Indeed, according to the little light which God deigns to give me, this alone appears to me necessary--that your Ladyship should observe the counsel of St. Paul, where he says (Eph. iv, 1) ‘that we should walk worthily in the vocation in which we are called.’ Now you are called to the government of your children. Hence I pray you to study how to act, that you may be able to render a good account of it to God. You will remember how our Christ, on the point of going to His death, renders an account to His eternal Father concerning those whom His Father had given into His charge, saying, ‘of them whom Thou hast given Me (in charge), I have not lost one’ (John xviii, 9).

“Consider, my very dear Friend, how that our great God, being infinitely perfect, or, in better terms, perfection itself, we cannot either add to or detract from His glory even the slightest point, as the Prophet saw who said (Ps. ci, 13), ‘Thou, O Lord, art ever the same’ (endurest for ever), ‘unchangeable and invariable.’ All that we can do for Him, is to come in aid to His dear images, to His beloved children, as the Lord shows in Matt, xxv, 40, ‘that which ye shall do unto one of these My least, ye shall have done it unto Me.’--I know well that you desire to withdraw yourself from all the cares of the world, in order to be able to occupy yourself entirely with God. But do you not know that ‘Charity seeketh not the things that are her own’ (1 Cor. xiii, 5), that is, her own utility? That desire which your Ladyship has for herself, let her have it equally for her children. Are we not obliged to love our neighbours as ourselves? (Matt. xix, 19). And hence, how much more our children! That step in perfection, of entirely abandoning all things, your Ladyship cannot take, without great damage to your neighbour,--damage, I mean, to souls. Remember how full of perils is the period of youth; I beg of you, with all possible insistence, for God’s sake, to have a greater care of these young souls than of yourself, since the necessity is greater.”

Here, again, there are parallels to the God-mother: in the love of that intensely unifying term, “si accostino,” “cleave to,” “be joined to,” of St. Paul, so dear to Catherine also; in the love of all souls, as God’s dear images, but specially of those bound to us by blood, so marked in Catherine’s testamentary dispositions, as distinct from the descriptions, possibly even from the surface-appearances, of her last nine years; and in the greater care to be given to others than to our own selves, when their necessity is greater than ours, so heroically practised by Catherine in the case of the Plague.[354] The chief difference, here again, is the prominence given by Battista to the Historic Christ, by her quotation of the words of St. Matthew,--words which, though so obviously applicable to Catherine’s work and duties, nowhere occur throughout Catherine’s own contemplations or discourses.--Note again the ambiguity of the “within and without” in connection with the care to be bestowed, since the words are intended to cover respectively both Donna Anguisola’s intention and exterior action, and her children’s interior dispositions and visible acts.

(3) Conclusion of the letter.

“But pray indeed to His Majesty that He may give you grace so great as to enable you to abandon all things interiorly. Here is the point in which all perfection consists. And I will pray to Him for this, in union with yourself. I most certainly desire, for my part, that your generous heart may have no other delight but God. And do you convert that human consolation which men are wont to take in their children, into a great desire that they may cleave to God; that they may not offend Him, and that they may bear His Majesty in their hearts. And when those things have been actually effected, do you then take the greatest delight in them, whilst mortifying that merely human pleasure which men take in the mutable prosperity of their children, in the most pleasing consolation which arises from their company, and in such-like things. And, from such a course of action, various advantages will follow. First, you will, I think, be thus doing what is most pleasing to God; next, you will be most useful to your neighbour; and lastly, your Ladyship will have carried off a great victory over your own self.”

Here we can trace two close parallels to special points of Catherine’s practice and teaching. In the doctrine that the point of all perfection consists in the interior abandonment of all things, we get but a re-statement of Catherine’s teaching as to God’s love being practicable everywhere; and in the advice to practise interior mortification in the matter of resting in the consolation of her children’s company, we have not only a parallel to Catherine’s early and transitory convert practice, but also an application to human intercourse of Catherine’s, and indeed also Battista’s, continuous and ever-growing practice of detachment from sensible consolations in the soul’s intercourse with God.[355]

We can hardly doubt that this letter was as effectual in keeping Donna Anguisola within the limits of family duties, as the letter of forty-six years before had been in bringing back Dottore Moro to the world-wide spiritual family of the Ancient Church.

2. Letter to Padre Collino, 1576.

And we have next a letter, written in 1576, when she was seventy-nine, to that Father Serafino Collino at Cremona, to whom, five years later, she was to write the truly classical account of her father, which has been the main source of our study of that heroic figure.

And indeed already in this letter she preludes, as it were, to that outburst of filial praise, by first dwelling here upon the effects of her father’s life as they were maturing visibly around her. “A very spiritual, wise, and noble person,” writes Battista, “has been visiting me; and in the course of talk she asked me, ‘Well, and what did you think of the great miracles that God has been working during these times of acute conflict, in this our city--miracles such as no one ever heard of throughout the course of ancient Roman history or in connection with any other warfare?’ And I, knowing well that this person has three Doctors of Theology living continuously in her house, guessed that these men must have carefully scrutinized and examined the whole matter. So I simply asked, ‘What miracles do you mean?’ And she answered me, ‘The city has been for so long a time in arms, a prey to the good and to the wicked, to the wise and to the mad, and has been affording the greatest possible opportunity for acts contrary to justice. And yet, throughout the city within the walls, no one has ever been offended,--no man, in his person; no woman, in her honour; and no man or woman, in their possessions.’”

And then Battista comments on her visitor’s declaration. “As to their persons, all men went about in the city with swords drawn and erect, and spoke injurious words to those of the opposite party. And it really seems as though their hands were tied, for they used their tongues indeed but not their hands; not one drop of blood has been spilt. Within the city two homicides were, no doubt, committed during this time, because of a difference on a point of honour; but none on account of party spirit. Similarly outside of Genoa the son of Signer Antonio d’Oria was killed--not by the opposite party, but by another nobleman like himself,--they had come to words. As to female honour, the women went and came to visit each other, and frequented Mass, whether they belonged to one party or to the other; and the greater number of gentlewomen went out of Genoa, accompanied by their daughters, passing through the very midst of the city, and going down the wharf to get on board their boats; and yet never was any discourtesy shown to any one of them. Similarly, with regard to possessions: quantities of these were sent out of Genoa; great masses of them were deposited in the Monasteries--and yet never even a trifle was ever taken. On this latter point we of this Convent can bear direct witness. For although so much property and money was brought to the Monastery delle Grazie, that it became difficult to move about the house because of the quantity of cases and stray boxes deposited there, nevertheless not even to the poor carriers who brought them was the slightest violence done, although they had to pass through all those drawn and raised swords; nor was a single word said to us Nuns, who appeared in the gateway to receive the goods.”[356]

Now the well-informed lawyer, Professore Morro, thinks that all this was the direct result of Ettore Vernazza’s far-sighted and devoted philanthropy. And he is no doubt right. For we still possess the entries, in the Cartulary of St. George, of the great works carried out by that powerful Banking Body, in conformity with and by means of Ettore’s directions and moneys, amongst Genoa’s teeming poor and sick and ignorant, in the years 1531 and 1553.[357] Indeed even the printed documents bring the administration of this great, ever-growing fund down to the year 1708.

And the points that here concern the character of Battista are this her omnipresent and yet bashful pride in her large-hearted father; her virile joy in the public good; her immensely sane and direct tastes as to the city’s improvement; and her glad finding of a miracle in things thus readily verifiable, universal, interior, and yet profoundly operative in the visible work-a-day life of man. There is something strikingly modern in this severely social, and already more or less statistical, way of testing improvement, an improvement which is found here, not in any vaguely assumed increase of impulsive or perfunctory almsgiving in the one class, or of dependence and passivity in the other, but in the closely scrutinized proofs of a remarkable growth in general self-respect, self-maintenance, public spirit and sense of social interdependence, on the part of all parties and classes.

And in the daughter’s judgment concerning all this it is again easy to trace a likeness to her father, with his careful regulations for a great Register of the Poor, and his provisions for harbour-works and the embellishment of the city. But Catherine’s spirit is also present, with its emphatic insistence upon God’s love as practicable everywhere, and upon truth as, of its very nature, public-spirited and meant for all.[358]

3. Second letter to Padre Collino, 1581.

And five years later still (she was now eighty-four) Battista writes her long account of her father’s life, which we studied in connection with him, but which would well deserve a detailed analysis from the standpoint of the daughter’s dispositions, so keen and large, so tender, true and immensely operative, long after most men have died, or are living on in a selfish second childhood.

V. Battista’s Death, 1587.

And then at last, six years afterwards, at four o’clock in the afternoon of May 9, 1587, Pope Sixtus V being Pope and Mary Stuart having but six months still to live, Battista died in her Convent, fully three generations old. During her last years she had been allowed to communicate daily, and had thus, at the end, added one more trait of resemblance to her God-mother, who, as we know, had, for some thirty-five years of her life, found her greatest strength and consolation in this the simplest, most central and deepest of all the Christian devotions and means of Grace.[359]

One hundred and forty years had now passed since the birth of Catherine, and seventy-seven since her death. It is indeed time that we should, having accumulated so much material, proceed in the next volume to an examination and exposition of the underlying spiritual facts and laws specially brought home to us by the group of lives we have been studying, and of which the central figure was that, for us, largely elusive but immensely suggestive, many-sided and yet rarely beautiful, soul and influence, which the Church venerates as St. Catherine of Genoa.

Conclusion

Wherein Lies The Secret Of Spiritual Persuasiveness

But let us first conclude this volume by attempting an answer, however preliminary and general, to the definite question with which it opened out.

I. The Question

We asked there, how any deeper, will-moving intercommunication can even be possible amongst men? For the mere possession of, and appeal to, the elementary forms of abstract thinking, which seem to be our only certain common material, instrument and measure of persuasion, appear never, of themselves, to move the will, or indeed the feelings; whereas all that is endowed with such directly will-moving power appears, not only as specifically concrete and as hopelessly boxed up within the four corners of our mutually exclusive individualities, but also as vitiated, even for each several owner, by an essentially fitful and fanciful subjectivity.

Ii. The Answer

Now I think that even the survey of the three great lives, and of those four minor ones, which has been just attempted, forcibly suggests, both positively and negatively, at least the general outlines of the true answer to this pressing question.

1. Only a life sufficiently large and alive to take up and retain, within its own experimental range, at least some of the poignant question and conflict, as well as of the peace-bringing solution and calm: hence a life dramatic with a humble and homely heroism which, in rightful contact with and in rightful renunciation of the Particular and Fleeting, ever seeks and finds the Omnipresent and Eternal; and which again deepens and incarnates (for its own experience and apprehension and for the stimulation of other souls) this Transcendence in its own thus gradually purified Particular: only such a life can be largely persuasive, at least for us Westerns and in our times.

We would thus have an attempt, ever renewed, ever widening, ever deepening, at the formation of, as it were, a concrete, living, breathing image of the Abiding and the One; of Law, Love, and Duty; of God: an image formed out of the seemingly shifting, shrinking flux, and the apparently shapeless mass of our actual, bewildering human manyfold; our flesh and sweat, and tears and blood, our joy and laughter, our passions and petty revolts, our weariness and isolations. Attend primarily to minimizing or eliminating all such friction and pain; to being clear, materially simple and static, a fixed Thing, rather than vivid, formally unified, and dynamic, a growing Personality: or again, let the friction be so great, or the courage and fidelity so small, as to lead to the break-up of all genuine recollection and harmonization; and, in the former case, such a character or outlook may be considered “safe” or “correct” or “sensible”; and, in the latter, the character and outlook will not be consolidated at all, or will be breaking up: but in neither case will the life be persuasive. For to be truly winning, the soul’s life must become and must keep itself full and true.

2. Now it is simply false that man can, even for his own self alone, hold spiritual reality, even from the first, in a simply passive, purely dependent, entirely automatic and painless fashion; or that he can, even at the last, possess it in a full, continuous and effortless harmony and simultaneousness.

God no doubt holds all Truth and Reality as one great Here and Now, or rather He possesses them entirely outside of space and time; nor can we attribute to Him directly any interior conflict, effort, or suffering. And, again, we ourselves too possess within our minds an element and an apprehension of the Abiding and the Simultaneous; and their rudiments operate within us, if all-diffusively yet most powerfully, from the very first. Indeed the continuous increase in definiteness and influence of that element and of its apprehension here, and the indefinite expansion and continuously conscious possession of this same element hereafter, are respectively the highest aim and fullest achievement of our spiritual life. And finally, the further the soul advances, the more it sees and realizes the profound truth, that all it does and is, is somehow given to it; and hence that, inasmuch as it is permanent at all, it is grounded upon, environed, supported, penetrated and nourished by Him who is its origin and its end. Here all the soul’s actions tend to coalesce to simply being, and this being, in so far as there and then acceptable to the conscience, comes more and more to be felt and considered as the simple effect of the one direct action of God alone.

And yet as to God, some kind and degree of Incarnational doctrine is necessary, and is indeed (in varyingly perfect or imperfect forms) the common property of all higher religion; and Christians have learnt to think the profound thought, of God Himself being in a mysterious closeness to even our most secret perplexities and inarticulate pain.--And by ourselves, poor weaklings, that vast, continuous Simultaneity and Harmony of God can only be more and more nearly approached, if, upon our mostly shadowy, and (when at all clear) our short-lived consciousness of an inchoate simultaneity and harmony of our own, we work an orderly successiveness, and attempt a Melody: an humble, creaturely imitation of the Eternal, Spaceless Creator, under the deliberately accepted conditions and doubly refracting media of time and space. Real temptation, true piercing conflict, heavy darkness, and bewildering perplexity; the constant encountering (as a necessary condition and occasion of all growth) of numberless and multiform remoter risks of failing and of falling: all this forms an essential part of this painful-joyous probation and virile, because necessarily costing and largely gradual, self-constitution of man’s free-willing spirit.

And the place and function, in all this spiritual growth-in-conflict, of Science, both in its most determinist and apparently most anti-spiritual mood, and in its subtler though no less destructive-seeming attitudes, will turn out, we shall find,--now that our generation is getting to know Science’s special scope and implications,--to be of simply irreplaceable value and potency.

And though, in the other life, our earthly pain and temptation are to be no more, we may be sure that, even there, the essential characteristics of our nature will not be reversed. Hence we may be able, later on in this book, to hazard some not all-ungrounded conjecture as to the possible substitute and form in Heaven for what is essentially noble and creaturely in our sufferings and self-renunciations here on earth.

And lastly, though God’s action in all things in general, and in our individual soul in particular, be more and more recognized as all-pervasive in proportion as the soul advances: yet this action will have to be conceived as operating in and through and with our own; as in each case finding, in one sense, its very matter, in another, its very form, in our own free-willings. For Spirit and spirit, God and the creature, are not two material bodies, of which one can only be where the other is not: but, on the contrary, as regards our own spirit, God’s Spirit ever works in closest penetration and stimulation of our own; just as, in return, we cannot find God’s Spirit simply separate from our own spirit within ourselves. Our spirit clothes and expresses His; His Spirit first creates and then sustains and stimulates our own. The two, as regards the inner life of the human soul, rise and sink together. But more as to this too hereafter.

3. We shall indeed, throughout the next volume, have ample opportunities for noting how numerous, definite, far-reaching and at all times operative, even though still but partially unfolded, are the evidences for, and the consequences and applications of, such a fundamental conception, as they are furnished and required by all deeper human life; hence, above all, by Religion; and in Religion, again, specially by its ever largely elusive, yet ever profoundly important, constituent, the Mystical Element.

Appendix To Part Ii

Chronological Account And Critical Analysis Of The Materials For The Re-Constitution Of Saint Catherine’s Life And Teaching.

Introduction

The following laborious study of the growth and upbuilding of the Life and Legend of St. Catherine is a study worth the making. For this study will bring out fully the test and reasons which have guided the process of documentary selection and estimation adopted throughout the second part of this book, indicating thus the precise degree of reliability pertaining to my narrative. But especially will it furnish a detailed, and peculiarly instructive, example of what, with numberless differences in degree, kind, and importance, can be traced throughout the history of the transmission of the image and influence of great religious personalities and teachers. These continuously recurring phenomena can be taken as, together, constituting the general forms and laws which regulate the growth of all religious devotional biography.

These general laws appear to be as follows.

1. Three Laws.

There is the law of contemporary, simultaneous, spontaneous variation of apprehension. Vernazza and Marabotto, writing down, at the time of their occurrence or communication, certain facts and sayings with an equal self-oblivion, sincerity, and truthfulness, give us apprehensions which, in great part objectively valuable, are, nevertheless, more or less differing pictures of one and the same fact or saying, or different selections from amongst the moods and manifestations of one living personality observed by them.--There is the law of posterior, successive, reflective variation of elaboration. The Dominican Censor and Battista Vernazza, re-thinking Catherine and her teaching, in other times and away from her direct influence, necessarily see her differently again: they are, as it were, spiritual grandchildren, who rather themselves absorb her and re-state her to their generation than they are themselves absorbed by her.--And there is the law of conservation, juxtaposition, and identification. First the Redactor of the Book of 1528-1530, and lastly the Redactor of that of 1551--probably, both times, Battista--with, in between, in 1547, the Redactor who attempted a quadripartite reschematizing of the Life--could not but try and soften the variations produced by the two other laws.

2. The third law tends to confuse the operation of the other two.

And note how it is precisely this third law and stage which largely tends to make the effects of the two other laws into causes of vagueness, confusion, and scepticism. For instead of conceiving the unity and identity of the subject-matter (a deep spiritual personality) as essentially inexhaustible, and as requiring, for its least inadequate apprehension, precisely both those simultaneous and spontaneous, and those successive and reflective experiences and reproductions of it, as furnished by the two other laws, this stage tends to confuse the identity of the apprehended subject-matter with a sameness in the apprehension of it; and, whilst thus robbing that subject-matter of its richness and movement, to introduce an element of arrangement and timidity into the originally quite naïf, and hence directly impressive, evidences of the observers. Yet the instinct and object of this third law is as legitimate and elementary as are those of the other two, since a real unity and utilization of all the preceding variety is as necessary as the variety to be thus integrated, and since the other two laws show a similar variety of actuation throughout religious literature.

3. Examples.

We find (to move in Church History back from St. Catherine) these three tendencies at work in the constitution of the Life and Legend of St. Francis of Assisi, A.D. 1181(?)-1226, traced for us now, with so much sympathy and acumen by M. Paul Sabatier and the Bollandists. We get them again in the case of St. Thomas of Canterbury, A.D. 1118-1171, especially in that of his Death and Miracles, so carefully studied in Dr. Edwin Abbot’s remarkable book (1898). And, once more, in those Merovingian Saints, the great Martin of Tours in their midst, at the end of the fourth century, whose Lives have been so interestingly described by Bernouilli (1900). And we find them, with especial clearness, in the growth of the Life of St. Anthony, about A.D. 250-356, as contained in Palladius’s Historia Monachorum, now that Abbot Cuthbert Butler has given us his admirable analysis and edition of that deeply instructive compiler (1898, 1904).

If we take the Bible, we find (on moving here in a contrary direction) these laws again at work in the elucidation and elaboration of the great figure of Moses and of his world-historic life-work. For if here we get but little that can claim to be by his pen, or even, as literature, to be contemporaneous with him (since the earliest Corpus of Laws, the Book of the Covenant, reaches probably only in its substance back to him), yet here, too, the earliest consecutive descriptions of his life, by the Jahvist and Elohist writers, give us two different, though probably more or less simultaneous, largely naïve, accounts and impressions of his life and work. And these simultaneous variations are followed, later on, by the successive, increasingly reflective variations and developments of Deuteronomy and of the Priestly Code. And lastly, these documents get constituted (in probably two great stages), by Redactional work, into the great composite History and Legislation of our present last four Books of Moses.--So again with David. We have the David of some few of the Psalms; the David of the Books of Samuel, in a double series of most vivid and spontaneous, more or less simultaneous but somewhat differing, accounts; the David of the greater part of the Psalter, the result of a long process of devout successive reflection and re-interpretation; and the David of the Books of Chronicles, where pragmatic systematization reaches its height.--And so too with the Maccabean Heroes, whose history appears, apprehended with varying degrees of contemporary, simultaneous, spontaneous vividness, and of subsequent, successive, reflective pragmatism, in the documents and redactional settings of the First and Second Books of Maccabees.--And the growth indicated in these three cases covered respectively some eight hundred, seven hundred, and one hundred years.

But it is, of course, in the New Testament that the interest and importance of these laws reaches its height. If here we once more move backwards, the case of St. Paul (martyred A.D. 64) furnishes us with parallel contemporary accounts of the spontaneous type, in his own Epistles and in the six “We”-passages by the eyewitness St. Luke in the Acts of the Apostles; whilst the remaining account in the Acts is doubtless by a later, more reflective and pragmatic, writer.--And in the apprehension and interpretation of Our Lord’s inexhaustible life, character, teaching, and work, we find very plainly the three tendencies and stages. We get the contemporary, simultaneous, spontaneous stage, in the cases of the Aramaic annotations of the Apostle Levi-Matthew, which we still possess, translated and incorporated both in the larger and later book, our canonical Greek St. Matthew, and in the corresponding parts of our St. Luke; and in the reminiscences of another eyewitness, presumably St. Peter, given us by a disciple in what is still the substance of our Canonical St. Mark. We get the posterior, successive, increasingly reflective or contemplative stage, chiefly in the two great types furnished, first by the Pauline, and then by the Joannine writings. And we get the juxtaposing, unifying, largely identifying stage and law operating above all in the, partly successive, Canonization of the New Testament Corpus. And these three stages can be taken as having their downward limits in about A.D. 30, 100, 200; so that here we cover a period of some hundred and seventy years.

4. Three different attitudes possible.

And, in all these and countless other cases, we can take up three different attitudes: the impoverishing, sectarian, “purity” attitude; the destructive, sceptical, “identity” attitude; or the fruitful, truly Catholic “approximation” and “development” attitude. The first attitude assumes (ever in part unconsciously) the possibility and necessity of a purely objective apprehension of Personality, of such a Personality being a static entity, both in itself and in its effects upon, and its apprehendedness by, other souls, and of the earliest among the observations concerning such a Personality ever giving us such a purely objective, exhaustive picture and experience, or at least the nearest approach (in all respects) to such an exhaustive objectivity. The third attitude would so understand the admitted identity of the Personality observed as practically to identify also the simultaneous and successive observers and observations, and to eliminate all variety and growth in that spirit’s own inner life and in its apprehension by other minds. Only the second attitude would, by recognizing both the constant, necessary presence of a subjective element in all these simultaneous and successive apprehensions, and the indefinite richness and many-sided apprehensibleness of all great spiritual Personalities, welcome and draw out all the difference in unity of these many “reactions,” as so many means, for a growing soul, towards a growing knowledge of that life and character, whose very greatness is, in part, measurable by the depth, variety, and persistence of these several effects, pictures, and embodiments of itself in different races, times, and souls.

Let us, then, betake ourselves to a systematic examination of one example of these world-wide three laws: the trouble taken will be well spent.

Had I found room to print my notes in justification of the text adopted by me, the reader would have gained some idea of the exceeding complexity of the materials furnished by the printed Vita e Dottrina. Indeed the original Preface to that book (1551) finds it necessary to conclude with the words “we therefore” (because of the book’s utility, indeed necessity, “in these turbulent times”) “beg the devout reader not to be disturbed” (stomacharsi now changed to meravigliarsi) “if he finds here matters which appear to be out of their proper order” (non ben ordinate), “and which are sometimes repeated; since attention has been given, neither to much precision” (distinzione), “nor to the order of events, nor to elegance of form, but only to that truth and simplicity with which its facts and discourses were gathered by devout spiritual persons” (“her Confessor and a Spiritual Son of hers”) “from the very lips of that Seraphic Woman.” Both the praise and the blame of this pregnant sentence will appear to be most fully deserved.

In our Second Part we have, in imitation of all experience in life itself, been thrown in medias res, and have thus gained some general idea and curiosity as to the sources of our knowledge; in this Appendix we will now, without repeating details already given, take this evidence, as much as possible, in its chronological order. And at each stage I shall attempt so to analyze the evidence of that stage, as to be able to use it as a check and test of the evidence of the next stage.--We shall, however, have to bear in mind that this method has necessarily, at each earlier stage, somewhat to beg the question; for, in order to make its meaning everywhere sufficiently clear, it has from the first to assume a confidence of tone, which can be justified only by the whole argument, and which therefore has its logical place only at the very end.

This Appendix shall consist of two Divisions, of seven stages and eight sections respectively. The first Division gives the dated Documents, or such as can readily be restricted to within certain years; and the second Division analyses the remaining, undated Corpus and attempts to fix its origin and value.

First Division: Account And Analysis Of The Documents Previous, And Immediately Subsequent To, The “vita E Dottrina” With The “dicchiarazione.”

I. First Stage, 1456 To September 12, 1510, All Legal.

The documents of the first stage are all legal papers, and entirely contemporary and authentic. They have to furnish the skeleton which receives its clothing of flesh from the other documents. I shall here describe only those not described in Part II, and shall refer back to that Part for those already described there.

1. Deed of 1456.

There is, first, a deed of August 27, 1456. From amongst the shares belonging to Pomera (formerly) wife to (the late) Bartolommeo de Auria (Doria), but now (Sister) Isabella, in the convent of St. David; at the instance of Andrea de Auria, her only son, her heir, and of Francesca, the mother of Catherine, daughter of Jacobo de Fiesco: two shares of the Bank of St. George (£200) are set apart, for the benefit of the said Catherine, for her marriage, if she marries according to her Mother’s advice.[360] Note how early (Catherine is not yet nine years old) her mother, Francischetta (so a note to the copy of this document, no doubt correctly, calls her, and suspects Pomera to have been her sister), is thinking of Catherine’s marriage; and how, although Catherine’s father is still alive, nothing is said as to his consent, perhaps simply because, this money coming from a maternal aunt and cousin, only the mother’s wishes are considered to be important here.

2. Catherine’s Marriage Settlement, January 1463.

There is, next, Catherine’s marriage settlement, made “at Genoa, in the quarter of St. Laurence, to wit in the sitting-room (caminata) of the residence of Francisca, formerly wife to the late Don Jacobo de Fiescho,” “with the public street in front, the house of Urbano de Negro at its right, and that of Sebastiano de Negro at its left and back”; “in the evening of Thursday, January 13, 1463”; between Giuliano Adorno, son of the late Don Jacobo, on the one hand, and Francisca, mother of Caterinetta and Jacobo and Giovanni de Fiesco, brothers of the same. Giuliano thereby pledges himself to give Catherine on their marriage, £1,000, and he “mortgages to her,” up to this amount, “a certain house of his own, situate in Genoa in the quarter of St. Agnes, with the public street in front, the house of Baldassare Adorno at the right hand” (it belonged before this to Don Georgio Adorno), “and on the other hand the public street.” And Francesca, Jacobo, and Giovanni promise to pay Giuliano, in bare money and in wedding outfit for Catherine, £400 on completion of the marriage, and another £400 in the course of the following two years; and they mortgage to him, up to this amount, the house in which the settlement is being made. Giuliano is to be free to live with his wife and her family in this same house, for these first two years after his marriage, without any payment.

At this date, then, Giuliano is already fatherless, and Catherine’s brother Lorenzo is still too young to have any legal voice in the matter. Although Catherine is, after the first two years, not guaranteed anything beyond £1,000 capital, or say £40 a year income, her outfit is a handsome one.

3. Catherine’s first Will, June 1484.

Then there is Catherine’s first Will, June 23, 1484, after twenty-one years of marriage. She is “lying” although “fully herself in mind, intellect, and memory,” yet “languid in body and weighted down by bodily infirmity, in the room, her residence, in the women’s quarters of the Hospital of the Pammatone,” which “she has inhabited for a considerable time (jamdiu).” “And knowing herself to be without children, and without hope of future offspring,” she leaves the life-interest in her marriage-dowry of £1,000 to her husband, Giuliano; bids divide up, at his death, the bulk of this capital between the Hospital and her eldest brother Jacobo (£300 to each), and her two younger brothers Giovanni and Lorenzo (£150 to each); and orders her body to be buried in the Hospital Church.[361]

Ten years, then, after her Conversion, Catherine had already been living for a considerable time within the Hospital. They do not as yet occupy a separate building, or even a set of rooms within the Hospital; and, though both live within it, they evidently occupy separate rooms in different parts of the great complex of buildings; for the room here mentioned is simply Catherine’s (camera residentiae testatricis, where residentiae must be a descriptive and not a partitive genitive), and forms part and parcel of the women’s wards (in domibus mulierum). Her absence of hope as to offspring evidently arises primarily from the life of continence she is leading. Yet this latter determination is clearly not caused by any specific knowledge of her husband’s past infidelity: for Thobia must have been now some ten years old, yet there is no kind of mention of her; whilst, later on, Catherine never fails to remember her, with one exception to be presently explained. There is no mention of nephews and nieces, doubtless because her brothers were, as yet, either unmarried or childless, or, at least, daughterless. She is fairly well off, for besides this possession of £1,000 she gets her room and board free, and Giuliano has still some property of his own more considerable than hers. And the share left by her to relations is large--£600--as over against £300 to a public charity (the Hospital), and £100, presumably, for the funeral, minor charities, and Masses. If she says nothing, as yet, as to burial in the same grave with her husband, this is doubtless because she herself appears now to be the one likely to die first.

4. Giuliano’s Will, October 1494.

There is, fourthly, the first and last Will, October 20, 1494, of “the Reverend Sir, Brother Giuliano Adorno, professing the Third Order of St. Francis, under the care of the Friars Minor Observants,” already described on pages 151, 152. The will is drawn up in the “sitting-room” (caminata) of the “habitation” of the Testator. Now the Notary, Battista Strata, in a foot-note to a first draft of an (unfinished) Will of Catherine, writes: “On the day on which I drew up Don Giuliano’s”; which words (owing to a multiplicity of converging indications) can only refer to this Will of October 2, 1494. And in this draft Catherine leaves legacies to the servants Benedetta (Lombarda) and Mariola Bastarda, as “abiding with, and dwelling in the house with, Testatrix.” It is clear then that, by now, Catherine and Giuliano are living under the same roof, in a distinct house within the hospital precincts, with two personal attendants for their common use. They will have moved, out of their separate single rooms, into this house, upon Catherine becoming Matron, in 1490. In this draft there appear also, for the first time, her brother Jacobo’s two daughters (£100 each); and her sister, the Augustinianess Limbania (£10).

5. Four minor documents, 1496-1497.

There are, next, certain minor documents of 1496-1497, which modify points of previous Wills and clear up details of her life. Thus, on June 17, 1496 Catherine signs a deed of consent to the sale of the Palace in the S. Agnese (Adorni) quarter.--On January 10, 1496, Giuliano, “sane in mind although languid in body,” orders, in a Codicil, that Catherine shall carry out, according to the directions of a certain Friar Minor, a vow made by himself to St. Anthony of Padua; notes that the Palace has been sold; and declares that she is to be free to annul, amend or diminish, according to her own judgment, his legacy of £500 to the Hospital.[362] And, in the Cartulary of the Bank of St. George, Catherine’s name appears as an Investor: on July 14, 1497 as “wife of Giuliano Adorno”; but on October 6 as “wife and testamentary heiress of the late Giuliano Adorno.”[363] These entries were considered on page 149 note. On the second occasion she orders that the Bank shall, after her death, annually pay over the interest of the fourteen shares (£1,400), now bought by her, to the Hospital of the Pammatone, in return for “the enjoyment and usufruct of a house and a greenhouse (viridario) of (within) the said Hospital,” which had been conceded to her for her lifetime. The sum (about £56 a year) thus ceded by her is a handsome one, as she had, by now, well earned the use of this house by her constant labours for the Hospital, including her matronship from 1490 to 1496. I take it that she was again thinking of Thobia; so that this relatively large sum would cover at least part of the Hospital’s expenses incurred for this poor girl.

6. Catherine’s second Will, May 1498.

This has been studied on pages 152-154.

7. Deed of Cession, September 18, 1499; and Codicil of January 1503.

These have been studied on pages 155, and 168, 169.

8. Third Will, May 21, 1506; and Codicil of November 1508.

These have been described on pages 172-174; and 175, 176.

9. Fourth and last Will, March 18, 1509; and two last Codicils, August 3 and September 12, 1510.

These have been described on pages 185-187; 202, 203; and 212-214, respectively.

We have thus described all the fifteen documents which alone still bear dates within the range of Catherine’s lifetime, and whose contemporaneousness is above all challenge. They all have the pedantic, at first sight unmoving, indeed repulsive, form of legal documents. Yet the substance of quite ten of them undoubtedly proceeds from Catherine; and they all give us a most precious, precise certainty with regard to many cardinal points of locality, date, sequence, and self-determination in her life. True, neither the day, nor even the month, of her Birth or Baptism; nor the year of her Conversion; nor the date of the beginning of her Daily Communions; nor the facts as to the rarity or frequency of her Confessions; nor the day or month of Giuliano’s death, have been recoverable by any contemporary attestations. But on other points we thus possess a series of absolutely reliable documents, ranging from 1456 to 1510, whose testimony nothing can be allowed to shake.

II. Second Stage: Five Further Official And Legal Documents, 1511-1526; And Four Mortuary Dates, 1524-1587.

And this first stage of the evidence is followed by a second, as dry and legal, and as absolutely reliable, as the other; yet which still does not refer to any chronicle or notes of her life, (as either already extant or as in process of registration or radaction), but only to the fate of her remains and to certain turning-points in the lives of her disciples and eyewitnesses. I note here only those documents which fix for us the dates of the beginning of her Cultus, and which give us the latest contemporary proof for those persons being still alive.

1. We get thus the Hospital Account for the Moneys spent on the Religious Clothing of the Maid-Servant Mariola Bastarda, July 7, 1511; the entry in the Hospital Cartulary of the expenses incurred for the transport of stone and for a picture, in connection with the first opening of Catherine’s Deposito, July 10, 1512; the account, in the same book, concerning the funeral of Don Jacobo Carenzio, who had died occupying Catherine’s little house within the Hospital precincts, on January 7, 1513; a Will of the little widow-attendant Argentina del Sale, of January 15, 1522; and the Will of Don Cattaneo Marabotto, still “in good bodily and mental health,” May 11, 1526,--a document drawn up in his dwelling-place, the house belonging to his friends, the Salvagii.[364]

2. And to this group we can add four further dates, the first and last two of which are completely certain. Ettore Vernazza died on June 26 or 27, 1524; the year is fixed by the great plague epidemic which carried him off, and the month and day, by his daughter’s letter. Cattaneo Marabotto died, there is no reason to doubt, in 1528. Catherine’s Dominican cousin and close friend, Suor Tommasa Fiesca, died, eighty-six years of age, in 1534. And Battista Vernazza died, aged ninety, on May 9, 1587.[365]

Hence, up to eighteen years after her death, the two closest of Catherine’s confidants were alive; whilst one who had known her, and had been thirteen at the time of Catherine’s death, was still alive seventy-seven years after that event.

III. Third Stage: Bishop Giustiniano’s Account Of Catherine’s Life, Remains, And Biography, 1537.

Our third stage is in strikingly manifold contrast to the other two. It is represented by but one single, largely vague and rhetorical, but human and directly psychological, document; and is the first that tells us of a Life.

1. The text.

Monsignore Agostino Giustiniano, Bishop of Nibio, published his Castigatissimi Annali … della Republica di Genova, in Genoa, in 1537. There, on p. 223, he tells us that he was born (of socially distinguished parents) in that city in 1470. And under the date of 1510 (p. 266) he writes: “And in the month of September, it pleased God to draw to Himself Madonna Catarinetta Adorna, who was daughter of Giacobo di Flisco, Vice-Roy of Naples for King René, and wife to Giuliano Adorno, with whom she lived many years in marital chastity. And her life, after the Divine goodness had touched her heart in the years of her youth, was all charity, love, meekness, benignity, patience, incredible abstinence, and a mirror of every virtue, so that she can be compared to St. Catherine of Siena. And all the city has participated in, and has perceived, the odour of the virtues of this holy matron, who, when rapt in the spirit, spoke, amongst other matters, of the state of the souls that are in Purgatory, things excellent and rare and worthy of being attended to by such persons as have a taste for the religious and spiritual life. Her body is deposited in the Oratory of the larger Hospital, and offers a spectacle no less admirable than venerable, appearing (come che sia) all entire with its flesh, so that she looks alive,--as though she had been placed there to-day; and yet full twenty-five years have passed since she began to lie there dead. The great consciousness of God, the special virtues, the saintly deeds, accompanied by an immense love, which were manifested by this venerable matron, would furnish matter well worthy of being recorded here. Yet we shall pass them over, for the sake of brevity; especially since a book worthy of respect (un digno libro) has been composed, concerning these things exclusively, by persons worthy of confidence (digne di fede).”

2. Its testimony.

Now this is a statement which we have every reason to trust. For Bishop Giustiniano, himself a native of Genoa, forty years of age at the time of Catherine’s death, was a man of education, of solid character, and of social position; who, throughout his long book, is uniformly truthful and generally accurate; and who had here no conceivable reason for inventing or seriously misstating the few facts alleged by him. These facts, as regards the matter in hand, are three: that she spoke of various (evidently various spiritual) matters, and, amongst these, of the state of the souls in Purgatory; that a Book was extant at the end of 1535, which concerned itself exclusively with Catherine; and that persons worthy of trust had produced this Book.

(1) Giustiniano knows of no writings of hers: she had not written, but had only “spoken excellent and rare things,” and she had done so “when rapt in the spirit.” The exaggeration here (for when in ecstasy, she spoke nothing, or but a few broken words at most) is interesting, since it probably grew up as an explanation of, and consolation for, her not having herself written anything; since during the ecstasy she would be incapable of anything but speech, and out of the ecstasy she would not remember the sights and sounds perceived during the trance. And yet, thus, what had to be written down by others, whilst she was in ecstasy, would be more precious, because more immediately “inspired,” than what she herself could have thought, remembered, and written down, in her ordinary psycho-physical condition.

(2) The Book, in existence at the end of 1535, not only contained sayings concerning the state of the souls in Purgatory, but must have contained these sayings already collected together in a separate chapter or division. For her sayings concerning this matter by no means form the larger, or the most immediately striking, part of her authentic teaching, taken as a whole; and only if already collected into a more or less separate corpus would they have been singled out in this manner.--But, if this reasoning is sound and proves the existence of the Trattato, already more or less separate as at present, similar reasoning will prove the non-existence of the Dialogo. For the Trattato, even in its present length, fills but fifteen large-print octavo pages; while the Dialogo fills ninety. It is practically inconceivable that the latter document, which can never have existed otherwise than more or less separately, should have been overlooked here, where another, so much shorter, and at first sight less authoritative, is dwelt on with emphasis.

(3) More than one hand had participated in the production of the Book. It is characteristic of the rhetorically loose phraseology of the times that the word “composto” is so used as to leave it quite uncertain whether several original contributors of materials and but one Redactor who constituted these materials into a Book are meant, or whether a succession of Redactors is already implied.

3. Surviving eyewitnesses.

Certainly by this time the three chief eyewitnesses of her later earthly existence, Carenzio, Vernazza, and Marabotto were all dead, since respectively twenty-two, eleven, and seven years. Tommasa Fiesca had died in the previous year. Only Mariola Bastarda and Argentina del Sale, her old maid-servants, were probably still alive, from among the circle of Catherine’s constant companions; and Battista Vernazza, who was but thirteen when her God-mother died, had still fifty-two years to live. Yet we have to come still later down amongst extant documents before we can get any further evidence, whether external or internal, as to which of these persons, or who else (probably or certainly) wrote down the original contemporary notes; and as to who constituted these notes, (on one or on successive occasions) into this “Giustiniano-book,” as I shall call the manuscript “Vita e Dottrina,” extant in 1535.

IV. Fourth Stage: The Two Oldest Extant Manuscripts Of The “vita E Dottrina” With The “dicchiarazione.”

The fourth stage of evidence is, as to its contents, the most important of all: but it is, as we shall see, twelve years younger: it belongs to the years 1547, 1548. It consists of two Manuscripts, the duodecimo-volume B. 1. 29 of the University Library; and the square octavo-volume of the Archives of the Cathedral Chapter, both in Genoa. Here, at last, we are face to face with an actual Life of our Saint. I have carefully collated them both upon the ninth Genoese Edition of the Vita ed Opere, Genova, Sordi Muti: the first MS., throughout, and the second one, sufficiently to make sure of its entire dependence upon the first. I have named them MS. A and MS. B respectively.

1. Manuscript A.

1. Its date and scribe.

Manuscript A is very interesting. It opens out as follows: “Jesus. Here beginneth the book in which is contained the admirable life and holy conversation of Madonna Catherinetta Adorna.… This book was begun and written at the request of her Magnificent Ladyship, the Lady Orientina, Consort to the most magnificent and generous, illustrious Lord Adam Centurione, when she was being vexed by a grave and well-nigh incurable infirmity, during now already thirteen months, by a Religious of the Observance … on the 7th of October of the year fifteen hundred and forty-seven.”--And Catherine’s Life concludes with the words: “Laus Deo semper. This book was written at the request of the Consort, of happy memory, of the … Lord Adam Centurione, who lay vexed by a most grave infirmity, during now two years. Many a time she would sit and find consolation, in her most painful torments, by reading of the burnings (incendii) which were suffered, for so long a time, by this holy woman.… At the thirteenth hour of the fourth of February God took her to Himself. She, a few days before she passed away, begged me with tears, in the presence of the Magnificent Lady, the Lady Ginetta, her most beloved daughter, to finish that which I had undertaken to produce for her own self. And so it will be of use to the latter, and will help her to bear her pains and travails, which may the Lord alleviate, by giving her good patience.”--After this follow thirty pages; containing an Italian version of St. Bernard’s Sermon on the death of his Brother Gerard, (Chapter XXVI of his Sermons on the Canticle of Canticles). And the whole concludes with the words: “Finished in the year Fifteen hundred and forty-eight, on the thirteenth of February.”

We have here, then, very precise dates: this Life was written between October 7, 1547, and February 4-13, 1548, by a Franciscan Observant, first for the wife, and then for the daughter, of a Doge of Genoa.

2. Comparison with the Printed “Life.”

Now the whole forty-two chapters of this Life, together with the Sermon, are engrossed throughout, in a careful and upright uncial script. On close comparison with the Printed Life the differences turn out to consist, either of vocabulary and dialect, of a simply formal kind; or of additions and variations in the subject-matter, of an exceedingly trite and would-be edifying character; or of a very few additional passages of genuine importance; or of divisions, transpositions, and lacunae--the latter mostly of a significant and primitive kind; or, finally, of one highly interesting change, effected in his own copy, by the copyist himself.

(i) Vocabulary.

The Observant’s vocabulary is a curious mixture of downright (late) Latin, old French, and modern Italian. So “pagura” (paura); “in si” (se, Fr. soi); “despecto” (dispetto); “alchuna,” “anchora” (alcuna, ancora); “lingeriare” (ligare, Fr. lier); “summissa” (sommessa, Fr. soumise); “una fiata” (una volta, Fr. une fois); “dido” (digito, o. Fr. doight).[366] Some of these and such-like forms no doubt stood in his Prototype. Thus, whilst he simply copies, he writes--“pecto” and “licet”; when he makes up sentences of his own, he writes “petto” and “abenchè.” And his single Chapter XIII has, on two pages, “per il che”; but, on its last two pages, it has the elsewhere universal “perochè” (perchè).--Yet his language is, upon the whole, so uniform, whilst his sources (as we shall see) are so varied; and again his uniform language is in such marked contrast to Giustiniano’s educated Genoese Italian of 1535, and to that of the Printed Vita of 1551: that much of it, even where he is copying the substance of his Prototype, must be his own.

(ii) Worthless additions and variations, of two kinds.

The additions and variations are mostly of two kinds. They are either of a directly edificatory character. So the three pages descriptive of the devotion of the crowd, on occasion of the opening of the coffin, in the spring of 1512; the very general statement as to the miracles that occurred on that occasion; and, further back, the expansion (by this Franciscan scribe) of Catherine’s comments on (the Franciscan) Jacopone da Todi’s “la superbia in cielo c’è.”[367] And in one place, to produce edification by a sense of contrast, he adopts a touch of (doubtless legendary) gossip against Giuliano, for the heading of his Chapter XXIV runs: “How she comported herself towards her husband, who was very contrary to her temperament; and concerning her indefatigable patience in bearing with him, and even with the beatings which he gave her”;[368]--where the end marked off by me is no doubt the Observant’s own addition,--possibly, as we shall see, on the authority of Argentina del Sale.--Or these additions are introduced to minimize or ward off scandal. So when, after expanding the parallel between the conversions of St. Paul and Catherine, he adds: ‘“For He spoke, and they were (re-)made’ (Ps. xxxii, 9). But we must not curiously seek for the reason of this action”; and then proves his point by three further Biblical texts. So too when, after giving an abbreviated account of the contrast between Thommasina’s and Catherine’s rate of spiritual advancement, he again adds some Bible text and some moralizing of his own. And so again where, after reproducing the passage as to her being linked to God with a thread of gold, he expatiates, once more in Scriptural words, on the presence of filial fear and the absence of all servile fear within her. And so where, after following his Prototype (as still preserved in the Printed Life), and declaring his belief that it is reasonable and licit to believe her soul to have entered Heaven immediately after death, he continues: “Hence he who does believe this, does not lose in merit” (non demerita; an obvious litotes for “merits”), “and he who believes it not, does not offend.” In all these cases the Biblical texts appear in the Vulgate Latin.[369]

There can be no doubt that it is this slight recasting of the language, and this insertion of trite and timid moralizing of his own, which, together with the careful engrossing of his copy throughout, and its occasional pretty decoration and illumination, permitted the Observant to talk (although, even thus, in a manner most misleading for our present habits of language) of having “written this Book.”

(iii) Two genuine dates and accounts.

Yet, even amongst the passages which appear in his MS. as additional to the later texts, are two evidently genuine and suggestive dates and accounts. There is a description of Catherine’s great attack of “fire at her heart,” more full and primitive, and more definitely dated than any one of its many variants and echoes to be found in the Printed Life: the slip in the date (he writes November 11, 1506, when his own age-indications, and the position of the anecdote, clearly require 1509) will have had something to do with the strangely uncertain position of this episode in the Printed Life.[370]--And further back, in opening out the beautiful story of Marco and Argentina, he writes: “There being in the quarter of the Quay (contrada del Molo) one Marco del Sale, suffering from a cancer in the nose, who, fourteen months before his infirmity, had taken to wife a virtuous young woman named Argentina, spiritual daughter of Madonna Catherinetta, as is said above.”[371] This very precise distance of time, between that humble wedding and the poor navvy’s illness, will have been derived by the Observant from Argentina herself, probably still living at the time of his writing, even now hardly sixty years old.--Hence his long-winded addition, as to the mediation of the “spiritual daughter” (certainly Argentina), in the matter of our knowledge of Catherine’s prayer for the dying Giuliano,[372] may also have been derived from that gossipy little woman.

(iv) Divisions and transpositions.

As to the divisions and transpositions, the chief of these consist in the first six chapters of the Printed Vita appearing here broken up into (the first) ten chapters; in the MS. Chapters XI to XVI being gradually caught up by the Printed series,--indeed the MS. Chapter XVI corresponds to Chapters XVI to XVIII of the published book; in the Chapters XVII to XIX of the MS. corresponding to Chapters XX and XXI of the Print; and Chapters XX, XXI, and XXII of the MS., corresponding respectively to Chapters XXIV, XXV, and XXVII of the Print. Then for three Chapters follows considerable variation: the MS. Chapters XXIII, XXIV, and XXV hold the positions respectively of the Printed Chapters XXXVII, XLV and XLVI there. And then again there is likeness for three Chapters--MS. Chapters XXVI to XXVIII corresponding to Printed Chapters XXVIII and XXIX there. And once more three MS. Chapters (XXIX to XXXI), quite different in sequence to anything there, are followed by two Chapters (XXXII and XXXIII) corresponding to the Printed Chapters XXIX and XXX. Four more MS. Chapters (XXXIV to XXXVII), without any match, as to order, in the Printed book, are followed by two Chapters (XXXVIII and XXXIX), corresponding, respectively, to the beginning and end of Chapter XXXI there; and by Chapter XL, identical with the opening of Chapter XL and with Chapter XLI there. And, above all, Chapter XLI here, corresponds to the Dicchiarazione (Trattato) there; and is followed here by a final Chapter (XLII), made up of a bewilderingly different succession of paragraphs,--paragraphs which, in the Printed Life, stand in Chapters XLIX; XVII; and XLVIII to LII. And, whereas the first forty Chapters of this MS. average six or seven pages in length, Chapters XLI and XLII are respectively forty-five and forty-eight pages long.

(v) Lacunae.

These transpositions would alone suffice to show how complicated is the textual history of the Vita: we may have to consider some of them later on. But it is the lacunae which are especially interesting. One of these is quite certainly right, as against the printed text. Paragraphs 23 to 25 of Chapter L of the Print are wanting here. Those pages give an entirely fantastic, and formally vague, account of a supposed interior stigmatization of Catherine, and of a preposterous elongation of one of her arms,--both “facts” based explicitly upon the authority of Argentina.[373] And the circumstance of the scribe being a disciple of the stigmatized St. Francis, and the probability that Argentina was still accessible, conjoin to render the absence of these paragraphs from this MS. simply decisive against their historical character.--The longest of all the omissions, that of the Dialogo, must, even more, be explained on the ground of its non-existence at this time, or, at least, of its not being known to the Scribe, or again, of its having as yet no kind of authority. For not only does he make no use of, or allusion to this, very long, and (were it primitive) simply supreme document, but, as we shall find, quite a number of his facts contradict the Dialogo’s version of them; and we shall soon see that, had he known and esteemed the document, he would not have allowed such a defiance of it to remain without correction.

Over against these two non-appearances of spurious or secondary matter, we have to set three omissions of highly valuable material. The two interconnected, obviously entirely historical, paragraphs concerning Maestro Boerio,--his attempt to cure Catherine, and the excessive impression made upon her by his scarlet robes,[374]--are both wanting here. But we shall see that they were probably not incorporated in any Vita, till the preparation of the Printed Life of 1551.--Matters stand differently with respect to the third omission,--the beautifully vivid, inimitably daring and characteristic, Chapter XIX, containing Catherine’s dialogue with the Friar, who, according to the well-informed Parpera, was a Franciscan Observant.[375] It is impossible to hold that this, most historical and well-preserved, story did not stand in the Observant’s Prototype, or that it was otherwise unknown to him; its omission is doubtless deliberate and “prudential.”--An interesting instance of demonstrable omission on his part, is indeed furnished also by his version of the beautiful story of Suor Tommasa’s life: his abbreviation of it is so obvious and yet so unintelligent, that only a reference to the full account, which lay certainly before him and is still preserved in the Printed Life, makes any satisfactory sense of what he has retained.[376]

3. Modification from a tripartite scheme to a quatripartite one.

But the most interesting of all the differences between this MS. A of 1547 and the Printed Life of 1551 is another group of omissions, connected, as these are, with the one single modification introduced into his own text by the Scribe himself. The whole of the matter corresponding to the Printed Life’s Chapter XLIV (all but the first seven lines) and that corresponding to the first three paragraphs of its Chapter XLIX, which treat consecutively, and with an inimitable vividness and a daring, unreflective truthfulness, of her most unusual self-revelations to her Confessor Don Marabotto,[377] is omitted--possibly, again, in part at least, from fear of scandal; but more probably because, even at this time, this (the most private and consecutive) contribution to the Life, still existed separately, perhaps from all, and presumably from most, copies of the Vita then in circulation. And such a copy will have been the Observant’s Prototype.--Only when he had finished copying out his manuscript, will he have discovered that, if he would take any, even though silent, account of that contribution, which, by now, will have become known to him, he must, at all costs, break up and seriously modify one of his chapters. We have already studied the treble, most solemn affirmation, by Catherine and her Confessor themselves, in that Printed Chapter XLIV, as to her twenty-five years of spiritual loneliness and guidance by God alone;[378] and we have seen that (since we cannot place her Conversion before 1474, nor the beginning of her later practice of Confession after 1499) we are forced (if we take her words in their obvious sense, as applying to Confession as well as to Direction, and assume her First Convert-Period, the penitential time, to have been accompanied throughout by repeated Confessions) to make this first Period very short.

Now the volume of 1547, 1548, consists throughout of paper, all but the first three leaves and the tenth leaf, which are of parchment. The first leaf remains blank; the second contains the Observant’s Preface on its obverse; the third holds, on its two sides, the first two pages of the Vita. That Preface was certainly written before all the rest, or at least certainly during the lifetime of Donna Orientina Centurione, i.e. before February 4, 1548; nor does anything in those first two (parchment and paper) pages of text suggest that they are an insertion subsequent to the following (paper) pages. At first, then, the copy will have consisted of three parchment leaves, and then of nothing but paper leaves; and the Observant will have made the last of these parchment leaves the sole and opening parchment leaf of the text of the Book.

But matters stand differently with the tenth leaf, pp. 19, 20 of the MS., which begins with the words “bisogna, sono apparecchiata a confessar”--“(if) necessary, I am prepared to confess my sins in public” (Catherine’s words, on occasion of her Conversion); and ends with “(abru) savano insino al core. Poi fù tirata al Petto”--“Love, with those penetrating rays of its own, which burnt her, even to the heart. She was then drawn to the Breast” (narrative words which, in the scheme of her Life that follows upon the Conversion-story, mark the transition from one of this scheme’s stages to another).

Now here we have clear indications that these two parchment pages hold a modified text. For that last parchment-leaf word “Petto” is picked up, on the paper continuation, by “Pecto,” the ordinary form of the Observant’s Prototype: see his page 81. And the whole book (all but this parchment leaf and its highly restricted effects), still attributes four years to her First Convert-Period, her Penitential, Purgative Stage.

Indeed, this solitary parchment leaf itself still allows us to trace, (as though the leaf were a Palimpsest), both this, the original, length of that Period, and the fact of that Period having then been the first of three, and not, as now, of four such periods.--For this leaf, in finishing up the manuscript’s fourth chapter, the history of her Conversion,[379]--declares that “this sight (of her sins) and this contrition (for them) lasted fourteen months, during which she went on confessing herself, continually increasing her self-accusation (aggravando la colpa); after the passing of which months, all sadness was lifted from her, nor did she have any memory of her sins,--as though she had cast them into the depths of the sea.” And then, in the opening of the fifth chapter,[380] the scheme and conspectus of her Convert Life runs as follows. She is first “drawn to the feet of Christ” and abides there “one year until she had satisfied her conscience by Contrition, Confession, and Satisfaction.”--“She next felt herself drawn, with St. John, to repose on the Breast of her Loving Lord.… The sight of the sins committed by her against God would come to her, so that she would be, as it were, wild (arrabbiava) with grief, and would lick the ground with her tongue; and in this wise she appeared to derive relief for her tempestuous feelings (affannato cuore). And she abode thus for three years, during which she was, as it were, wild with grief and love, with those penetrating rays of its own, which burned her to the very heart.[381] She was then drawn to the Breast”--which last parchment-leaf word is taken up by the next, ordinary paper-leaf: “Breast; and here she was shown the Heart of Christ.… And she abode many years with this impression of His burning Heart.--And then she was drawn (still) further up, that is, to the Mouth; and there she was found worthy of being kissed by the true Solomon.… And she no more (directly) recognized her human acts, whether they had been done well or evilly; but she saw all in God.”[382]

We see here how the original four years of her First Period, which are still retained elsewhere by the Printed Vita,[383] have been broken up by the scribe of this Manuscript into two shorter (first and second) Periods, of fourteen months (one year), and three years respectively; how the copyist, both in his first apportionment of length to his new First Period, “fourteen months,” and in his second assignment, now of one year (since he has to divide up the original Four years so as to get them again by addition, “one year” and “three years”), leaves us two curious echoes of the “Four” of his Prototype; how his amended description of his new second Period is still largely the old Penitential description, for she still sees her sins (a sight which is here an anachronism), and she is still prostrate on the ground (a prostration which exactly suits the Feet, but in no way the Breast of Christ); how the Observant has been half-hearted and clumsy, for he has now left two successive Breast-Periods, hardly differentiated from each other; and how he was able to shift (though not to change) the original single Breast-Period (now his second Breast-Period), because of its conveniently vague time-note of “many years.” All this laborious, yet timid, incomplete and ineffectual change, thus forced upon an evidently long-established, toughly resisting composition, can only have taken place under some severe pressure of evidence; and the root-causes of the change are somehow connected with the question as to the duration, in her life, of the perception and Confession of her sins. For the Confession of her sins, which (in the old scheme) extended over four years, is now restricted to fourteen months or one year; and if contemplative and restful love are now anticipated (from the original second Period) in the new second Period of three years, yet an intense sight of her particular sins, piercing contrition for them, and a complete prostration on the ground, are all indeed retained, from the original Feet-Period, for this new second Period, but Confession has disappeared from these three years.

Now we have precisely such absolutely constraining evidence in Marabotto’s treble chronicle of Catherine’s own words, with regard to the twenty-five years during which she was led by God’s spirit alone. It is clear then that the most important of Marabotto’s notes did not exist incorporated with, or at least had not originally formed part of, and did not dominate, the scheme of the Vita which the Observant had before him; and that, upon his later knowledge of, or pondering over them, he understood Catherine’s words to have applied, not simply to Direction but to (at least at all habitual) Confession as well.

2. Manuscript B.

1. Its very primitive heading.

Manuscript B starts indeed with a heading demonstrably older than that of MS. A. For its “De la Mirabile Conversione et Vita de la q(uondam) donna Catherinetta Adorna” is more primitive, because of its “the late,” which indicates a time of writing not yet far removed from the date of her death; its “Donna,” less honorific than the “Madonna” of the other MSS.; and, above all, its giving “Conversione” before “Vita,” instead of “Conversatione” after “Vita,” since thus we are assured of “Conversione” being no slip of the pen for “Conversatione,”--Conversion coming necessarily before, and holy Conversation coming after, in consequence of, an admirable life.--And this title will originally have headed a booklet containing simply the story of her Conversion and early Convert life, say, up to the end of Chapter VI of the Printed Vita, p. 17b; or, since even the “et Vita” of this title reads like a later addition, only up to the end of the present printed Chapter II, p. 6c. I think there is no doubt that we have here the original heading of a tract put together on occasion of the first public Cultus, in the summer of 1512.

2. Body of MS. B dependent upon MS. A.

But the body of MS. B is demonstrably later than, indeed dependent upon, MS. A; for here the scribe silently adopts the modification, effected by the writer of MS. A in his own text, with regard to doubling the Breast-Period; and yet, even here, we have still the Observant’s “Petto” for the first period, and the “Pecto” of the Observant’s Prototype for the second period.[384] “Come” now appears throughout, in lieu of MS. A’s “Como.” And Giuliano’s name is omitted (all but once, in Catherine’s mouth) in the Husband-Chapter.[385]

3. Order, division, numeration of the Chapters.

The order, division, and numeration of the Chapters is identical with those of MS. A, all but that Chapter XXXIX of MS. A (equivalent to the unimportant pp. 82b-83a of Chapter XXXI in the Printed Life) is here omitted. No Chapter numbered XXXIX appears here, but, after a small break behind Chapter XXXVIII, the Trattato follows, as Chapter XL.

4. Laceration at end of Manuscript.

And this Chapter XL is abruptly broken off in the midst of a penultimate paragraph: “et per gratia li sono monstrati et” are the last words. The authentication of the MS., appended immediately after this rough ending, shows this laceration to be at least as old as 1672. Nor is it a case of some complete set or sets of leaves being lost, since one leaf has had to be torn off, from the still remaining other half-sheet.[386] The last part, no doubt, contained the end of the Trattato and the Passion-Chapter; and will, like its Prototype, MS. A, have been without a trace of the Dialogo. Indeed I suspect that it was the latter circumstance which, when once this elaborate composition had come to be prized, gave rise to the, surely deliberate, destruction of the evidence for its absence here. MS. A will, in that case, have been saved from a similar fate, by its special appropriation to a powerful family; by its superior, uncial kind of script; and, above all, by its important contemporary date and dedication at the end.

V. Fifth Stage: Manuscript C

Our next, deeply interesting stage, is represented by one single MS. in the University Library, Genoa,--catalogued as B. VII 17. It is a careful copy, made throughout by the Protonotary Angelo Luigi Giovo, and subscribed by himself on April 20, 1671, of, as he there says, “Another ancient MS. received from the Signora ----, Matron of the Great Hospital, who declared that she had herself received it from the Nuns of the Madonna delle Grazie; and which is believed, with great probability, to be the MS. copied by Ettore Vernazza and sent to the Venerable Donna Battista, his daughter. The book, in view of the antiquity of the paper, of the character of the binding of the copy, and of the other peculiarities, has been judged by experts to belong to the above-mentioned Period.” The reader will soon see why I place (not necessarily the execution, but the text of) the MS. thus copied by Giovo, before the printing of the Vita in 1551, and will thus be helped to a decision as to the “greatly probable” attribution to Ettore Vernazza.

1. Differences in text of MS. C from MSS. A and B.

Giovo’s Copy (my MS. C) follows, up to the end of its Chapter XLI (the Trattato), the division, number, and sequence of the chapters, and the peculiarities of the text, of MS. A, with an all but unbroken closeness: even the slip, of 1506 (for 1509), in the date of the great attack of “fire at heart,” reappears here as it stands there (fol. 33v of MS. C, compared with p. 193 of MS. A). But the “Petto” and “Pecto,” of respectively the first and second Breast-Periods in MSS. A and B, read here, in both cases, as simply “Petto” (MS. C, fol. 3).--There is but one at all remarkable addition in this, the Vita-part of the MS. In the account of the refusal to accept Catherine on the part of the Nuns of the very Convent where, as we shall see, the Prototype copied by Giovo was no doubt written, there occur the new words: “Although her Confessor was instant with them (to take her), knowing her, as he did, better than the Nuns knew her” (MS. C, fol. 1v).--And, in concluding further on (on its fol. 71v seq.) with the Passion-Chapter, as this stands in MS. A (Chapter XLII), a Chapter which here (for a reason to be given in a minute) is not numbered, the MS. still follows closely (although now with a few generally unimportant additions, omissions, and transpositions of paragraphs), the matter, order, and literary form of MS. A.--Only one, formally slight, but materially significant, difference exists here between Giovo’s text and the Printed Life. The Printed Life, p. 142b, reads: “After this, she felt a hard nail at heart”; to this MS. C adds (fol. 72r) “so that she seemed nailed to the Cross.” Neither set of words occurs in MSS. A and B. MS. C here gives us something unlike Catherine’s, but very like Battista’s, special spirit.

2. The great addition: the “Dialogo,” Part First.

(1) The “Dialogo” originally no longer.

But it is in the pages intermediate between the Trattato and the Passion (foll. 53v to 71v), that lies the interest of this MS. For here we get, for the first time, the Dialogo, although, as yet, only its eventual First Part (pp. 185-225 in the Printed Life). Chapter XLI (the Trattato) has just finished, by only six lines short of its printed form, with the words “because that occupation with Himself which God gives to the soul, slight though it be, keeps the soul so occupied, that it exceeds everything, nor can the soul esteem anything else.” And immediately next there come (53v) the title-words: “Here follows a certain beautiful Allegory (Figura) which this holy soul institutes (fà) concerning the Soul and the Body.”--The eventual division into (17) chapters is still absent, and the work seems, at this time, to have been planned to be no longer than it is here. For it concludes with the emphatic climax: “Now the Spirit, having come to hold this creature in this manner, declared: ‘I am determined henceforth no more to call her a human creature, because I see her (to be) all in God, without any (mere) humanity.’” For these words simply re-cast the last words of the scheme of her entire life, given by the Vita: “She said: ‘I live no more, but Christ lives in me.’ Hence she could no more recognize the quality of her human acts, in themselves--whether they were good or evil; but she saw all in God” (Pr. L., p. 6c).

(2) The “Dialogo’s” two stages, each comprising two steps, and their suggestions in the “Vita.”

Now the Dialogo, as here given, consists of two chief stages, and each stage contains two steps.

Chapters I to VI give the first stage--the history of a soul in a state of moral and spiritual decline and contraction: all this, in the form of a Dialogue between the Soul, the Body, and Self-Love.--Throughout this first stage Self-Love holds dominion. But, during the first step, the Soul (although it already distinguishes, with regard to what it intends to practise, between simply avoiding grave sin and striving after perfection) still continues fairly determined not to commit sin, and still leads the Body. During the second step, on the contrary, even this simple avoidance of grave sin has ceased, for now the Body leads the Soul. Thus first the Soul, and then the Body, each leads the other during one step, for “one week.”--These two steps or weeks stand for the two lustres of Catherine’s pre-Conversion-Period, for the lukewarm, and then the positively dissipated, lustre respectively. Chapters I to III give the first week, equivalent to the first five years of her married life, 1463 to 1468; and Chapters IV to VI give the second week, and correspond to the second five years, 1468 to 1473.[387]

Chapters VII to XXI describe the second stage, that of Conversion and Transformation, which (notwithstanding its appearance of instantaneous and complete attainment of its end) is here presented as, in reality, by far the longer and the more difficult, although the alone fruitful and happy one. Chapters VII to XIII describe the first step. Chapters VII to IX give us the Soul’s longing for Light; the spark of Pure Love shown to it, on its conversion-day; and a long address by the Soul to the Body and Self-Love, and the answers of these two.[388] In this address the Soul for the first time speaks of “the Spirit.”[389] Chapter X makes the Soul for the first time address “the Lord,” “O Signore,” on the one hand: and her “Humanity” “O Umanità,” on the other.[390] In Chapters XI and XII the Soul stands alone, face to face with the Lord, who appears to it in two successive visions,--first as Christ alive and walking along all stained with blood from head to foot; and, on a later occasion, as Christ evidently motionless and presumably dead, with His five fountain-wounds, which are sending drops of burning blood towards mankind. And these two visions, so carefully kept apart, doubtless typify the two periods of Catherine’s Convert life,--the two steps of her second stage: the moving, scourged and cross-bearing Christ stands for the active penance of the first four years or fourteen months; and the motionless, crucified Christ stands for the passive purification of the rest of her life.[391] Chapter XIII has no dialogue, but describes her active penances and good works, and mentions the Soul, Humanity, and the Spirit.[392]

And then, up to the end, in Chapters XIV to XXI, which give us the second step, the dialogue reappears, but now no more between the three Dramatis Personae (Soul, Body, and Self-Love) of the pre-Conversion-Period; but between the two interlocutors of the post-conversion time (the Spirit and Humanity).[393] And there is here but one sporadic mention, an invocation, of “the Lord” (p. 214c).

Thus only after its Conversion does the Soul itself become aware of, or does it name, either the Spirit or its “Humanity”; and only after the two successive Christ-Visions do these two new experiences and conceptions entirely replace the three old ones of Soul, Body, and Self-Love. In a word, we have here, carefully carried through, the scheme, so clearly enunciated by Battista Vernazza in 1554, of the two successive divisions effected by God in Man, during the process of Man’s purification: first, the separation (division) of the Soul from the Body; and then the separation (division) of the Spirit from the Soul.[394] And, in strict accordance with this scheme, the Soul here becomes conscious of being, in its upper reaches, Spirit, only on the day that it has broken away from the domination of the downward-tending Body, and of Self-Love. And once the Soul has thus affirmed the Spirit and denied the Body, the “Body” and the “Soul” cease to be directly mentioned; the one term “Humanity” now takes the Soul’s and the Body’s place. For now the Soul, in so far as it has still not completely identified itself with the Spirit, does not any more attach itself directly to the Body and the Body’s pleasures,--to, as it were, the upper fringe of the Body,--but to the sensible-spiritual consolations which are the necessary concomitants and consequences of the Soul’s affirmation and acceptance of the Spirit,--hence, as it were, to the lower fringe of the Spirit. “I would have thee know,” the Spirit now says to Catherine, “that I fear much more an attachment to the spiritual than to the bodily taste and feeling. Man goes his way ‘feeding’ his spiritual sensuality upon the things which proceed from God, and yet these things are a very poison for the Pure Love of God.”[395]

3. The “Dialogo” intensifies or softens certain narratives and sayings given by the “Vita.”

Now these interesting forty pages of the first Dialogo derive (with the sole exception of three little touches) their entire historical materials from the Vita e Dottrina, and, indeed, from but those parts of this corpus which already appear in MSS. A and B, and in the previous pages of MS. C itself. But all these materials have been re-thought, re-pictured, re-arranged throughout, by a new, powerful, and experienced mind, a mind dominated by certain very definite, schematic conceptions as to the constitution of the human personality, the nature of holiness, and the laws of its growth, and which is determined to find or form concrete examples of these conceptions, in and from the life of Catherine.

(1) Cases of intensifying.

There are, first, five cases of the intensifying of authentic Vita-accounts, intensifications necessary, or at least ancillary, to the scheme underlying the whole Dialogo-composition.

As to the pre-conversion sinfulness, during her second “week,” Catherine’s soul is made to say: “In a short time I was enveloped in sin; and, abiding in that snare, I lost the grace (of God) and remained blind and heavy, and from spiritual I became all earthly.”[396] Yet there is no evidence that Catherine, even at that time, ever committed grave sin; nor does there exist an authentic saying of hers which, however intense its expressions of contrition, conveys an impression really equivalent to this passage.--As to the form of her contrition, “so greatly was this soul alienated (from her own self) and submerged in the sight of the offence of God, that she no longer seemed a rational creature, but a terrified animal.”[397] Yet the earlier accounts, which certainly do not minimize here, keep well within the limits of normal, though intense, human feeling and expression of feeling.--As to the forcible means taken by her to overcome her fastidiousness in the matter of cleanliness and in the sense of taste, “she would put the impurities into her mouth, as though they had been precious pearls.”[398] Yet the original versions, drastic enough in all conscience, nowhere imply that there was any such relish, even of a merely apparent kind.--As to her post-conversion poverty, the Spirit says to her: “Thou shalt work to provide for thy living,” and the narrative declares: “The Spirit made her so poor, that she would have been unable to live, had not God provided for her by the means of alms.”[399] Yet we know from her wills that (though the Hospital authorities gave her free lodging, and perhaps, at first, free board as well) she retained, up to the last, an appreciable little income, and herself conferred many an alms out of these her own means.

Nevertheless, in each of these cases, the Dialogo exaggeration is suggested by some phrase or word in the Vita which has been taken up into the new context and medium of this other mind, and has come to mean something curiously (though often in form but slightly) different from that older account.--Thus, in this fourth instance, the Vita-accounts had said: “nel principio di sua conversione, molto si esercitò.” “Viveva ancora molto sottomessa ad ogni creatura.” “Quantunque ella fosse in tutto dedicata ed occupata negli esercizii di esso Spedale, nondimeno mai volle godere ne usare una minima cosa di quello per viver suo; ma, per quel poco che abbisognava, si serviva della povera sostanza sua: onde ben si scorgeva che il suo dolce Amore era quello il quale operava in lei ogni cosa per vera unione.” “Si esercitò nelle opere pie, cercando i poveri, essendo condotta delle Donne della Misericordia, e le davano danari ed altre provvisioni.”[400] The Dialogo-writer has worked all this up as follows: “Io (lo Spirito) ti avviso primieramente voler io che tu pruovi che cosa sia esser ubbidiente, acciò tu divenghi umile e soggetta ad ogni creatura; ed acciochè ti possi esercitare, lavorerai per provedere al viver tuo.” “Primieramente la fece tanto povera, che non avrebbe potuto vivere, se Dio non l’avvesse provveduta per via di limosine. Poi quando le Signore della Misericordia l’addimandavano per andare a’poveri … ella sempre con loro andava.”[401] I have italicized the words taken over by the Dialogo. Thus her own poor substance (i.e. her own modest income), and the money given to her by the Misericordia-ladies for distribution among the poor, becomes a substance, alms and money, given to herself as to a poor person.

The fifth case concerns the affections. In the Vita-proper nothing is more characteristic of Catherine, up to the spring of 1509, than her swift and deep affective sympathy, and the fearless forms of its manifestation. True, Catherine “would” (certainly up to 1490, perhaps more or less up to 1496) “abide at times,” up to six hours on end, “as though dead.” But, “on hearing herself called, she would suddenly arise and betake herself, in answer, to whatever was required of her, however small a service this might be.” And indeed “she served the sick with most fervent affection:” thus she attended throughout a week upon a poor pestiferous woman; and at the end, “unable further to contain herself, kissed” the dying woman “upon the mouth with great affection of heart, and so caught the pestilential fever, and well-nigh died of it.”[402]--Then, too, there is the Vita’s quite general, indeterminate remark, “she (Catherine) felt no pain at the deaths of her (two elder) brothers and of her sisters” (the latter should be “sister,” unless, perhaps, a sister-in-law is included) in 1502.[403] But her extant wills have shown us how actively thoughtful she remained, even in 1506 and 1509, for her brother, nephews and nieces, and humble retainers; and the deeply affectionate scenes with Marco and Argentina occurred between 1503 and 1506. Marco, the poor navvy, was dying “of a cancer in the face,” and Catherine, at Argentina’s asking, “as though with prompt obedience, betook herself to him”; and he “threw his arms round Catherine’s neck, and, pressing her with sobs, seemed unable to have done with weeping.[404] And then, still weeping, with great tenderness he besought Catherine to adopt his wife as her spiritual daughter,” and Catherine did so, and “loved this spiritual daughter much.”[405]--Only in the very late actions, the change as to her burial-place (Will of March 1509), and the exclusion of all her attendants on January 10, and of most of them on and after August 27, 1510,[406] are there indications of any absence or renunciation of tender and spontaneous human affection.

But here again the Dialogo both closely presses and profoundly changes the original accounts. For here the Spirit declares to her: “in these exercises” of work among the poor, “I shall keep thee … as though thou wast dead. I will not allow thee to make friends with any one, nor that thou shouldst have any particular affection for any relative; but I want thee to love all men, and this without affection, both poor and rich, both friends and relatives. I do not want thee, in thine interior, to know one person from the other, nor would I have thee go to any one from motives of friendship; it will suffice to go when thou art called.” And thus “she went, when the Misericordia-ladies asked her to go into dwellings that would have frightened away all ordinary mortals. But she, on the contrary, deliberately touched these sick (voleva toccarli), for the purpose of giving them some refreshment to soul and body.”[407]--Note how skilfully the call, and the going at the call, the affection and its spontaneous manifestations in the original accounts, have been altered and crossed by the Dialogue’s re-statement.--Here again we are strongly reminded of Battista, in her letter to the Signora Andronica in 1575, encouraging her to “abandon all things,” her children included, “interiorly,” and “to mortify the most pleasing consolation which arises from the children’s company.” Indeed, already in 1554, Battista has, in one of her own Colloquies, refused to accept every avoidable consolation arising from her pure election by God.[408] Only by such a reference of these Dialogo-passages to Battista, the many-sided, the ever-affectionate daughter and public-spirited woman, can we come to see them in a wider context; indeed only thus can they cease to be profoundly repulsive.

(2) Cases of softening.

There are two instances of the softening of (doubtless authentic) doctrinal sayings given by the Vita-proper. Her evidently impulsive exclamation: “I would not have grace or mercy, but justice and vengeance exercised against the malefactor,”--has here become: “She did not attach any importance to her sins, on the ground of the punishment awaiting them, but solely because they had been enacted against the infinite goodness of God.”--And her bold declaration: “If any creature could be found which did not participate in the divine goodness, that creature would be as malignant as God is good,” here reads: “The soul bereft of the Divine love becomes well-nigh as malignant as the Divine love is good and delightful. I say ‘well-nigh,’ for God shows it a little mercy.”[409] The proclamation of some moral good even in lost souls, is thus weakened to an admission of some consolation in the latter.

4. Re-statement of the Conversion-experiences of March 1474.

But it is in the matters of Catherine’s Conversion in the Convent-Chapel, on March 22, 1474, and of the Vision of the Bleeding Christ in the Palazzo Adorno, soon after, that the Dialogo’s transformation of the Vita-accounts reaches its highest interest. I give it here as the chief of many such re-statements which I have carefully analyzed.

Vita-proper, Vita (Dialogo), pp. 199c, pp. 4a-5b. 200c, 202c, 208c, 209a, b. 209c, 210a, 211a, b.

Subitocchè se gli fù inginocchiata Quando Iddio vuole purgare innanzi, receve una un anima … le manda il ferita al cuore d’immenso suo divino lume, facendola amore di Dio, con una vista vedere una scintilla di quel così chiara delle sue miserie puro amore con quale ci ama e diffetti, e della bontà di Dio … essendo noi nemici per che ne fù per cascare in terra. molte offese che gli abbiamo Onde … restò quasi fuor di fatte.… E le fà vedere quel sè: e perciò internamente affocato amore.… Tutto gridava con ardente amore: questo fù dimostrato da Dio “Non più mondo, non più peccati.” in un instante, coll’ operazione Ed in quel punto.… sua purissima.… Questo … Per la viva fiamma d’infocato raggio d’amore fù quello che amore il dolce Iddio ferì quell’ anima in un istante impresse in quell’ anima … … che la fece restare in tutta la perfezione.… quel punto quasi fuori di sè.…

Vedeva ancora le offese che Le fù ancora mostrato … quanti gli aveva fatte; e perciò gridava: erano tutti i suoi diffetti “O amore mai più, mai … in modo che sommerse più, peccati.” Se le accese poi sè stessa con tal un odio di sè medesima, che dispregio che avrebbe detto non si poteva sopportare, e i suoi peccati pubbliccamente diceva: “O amore, se bisogna, per tutta la città, nè altro sono apparecchiata di confessare poteva dire se non: “O Signore i miei peccati in pubblico.” mai più mondo, nè peccati.”

Ma volendo il Signore accendere Stando l’anima in questa intrinsecamente più quasi disperazione di sè l’amor suo in quest’ anima, ed medesima … vedendosi un insieme il dolore dei suoi carico da disperato alle spalle, peccati, se le mostrò in ispirito … era come una cosa insensata colla Croce in spalla, piovendo ed attonita fuori di sè.… tutto sangue, per modo che la Essendo un giorno in casa, casa le pareva tutta piena di le apparve in vista interiore rivoli di quel sangue, il quale il Signor Nostro Gesù vedeva essere tutto sparso per Christo, tutto insanguinato amore: il che le accese nel da capo a’ piedi, in modo che cuore tanto fuoco, che ne pareva che da quel corpo usciva fuor di sè, e pareva piovesse sangue per tutta la una cosa insensata per tanto terra dove andava; e le fù amore e dolore che ne sentiva. detta in occulto questa parola: “vedi tu questo sangue? tutto è sparso per amor tuo, e per soddisfazione de’ tuoi peccati.” In queste parole le fù data una gran ferita d’amore verso esso Signor nostro Gesù Christo, con una confidenza tale, che disparve quella prima vista tanto disperata e si rallegrò un poco in esso Signore.…

Questa vista le fù tanto Le fù mostrata un altra penetrativa che vista maggior di quella, e tanto più grande che con lingua non si potrebbe dire … le fù infuso un raggio d’amore nel cuore.… Gridava e sospirava molto più e le pareva sempre vedere (e senza comparazione che della cogli occhi corporali) prima vista, la quale fù dell’ esser maligno di sè stessa. Questo raggio d’amore le fù il suo Amore tutto insanguinato lasciato impresso con quelle e confitto in Croce. cinque fontane di Christo, le quali mandavano goccie d’affuoccato sangue di acceso amore verso dell’ uomo.

Hence D. gives but one exclamation as to “world” and “sins,” and constructs this out of the two (mutually differing) exclamations of the same kind given by V., the second of which now stands in V. after the Bleeding-Christ episode. Whilst spacing all out, D. keeps to the order and context of V.’s paragraphs. And D. utilizes the curious, silent change from the moving Christ to the affixed Christ in V.’s account of the single vision in the Palace, so as to constitute two perfectly distinct visions. The Cross of both these doublets of V., (the “Croce” which, in the first part of V.’s single account, is “in spalla,” on His shoulder; and the Cross which, in the second part of the same account, He is nailed to), has, in D., disappeared from both separate visions. And yet the Cross hovers about the first vision, here transformed into a “carico alle spalle,” a load upon Catherine’s shoulders,--an oppression on her mind; and is presupposed in the second vision, since those “five fountains sending forth burning blood” are, of course, the wounds of Christ, whilst He hangs affixed to the Cross as described in V.’s second part. And the “Signore piovendo tutto sangue,” and the “rivoli di sangue, sparso per amore, il che accese nel cuore tanto fuoco,” of V., have, in D., become “quelle cinque fontane di Christo, le quali mandavano goccie d’affuocato sangue e di acceso amore.”--This fountain-imagery is derived from numerous authentic sayings and “viste” of Catherine as to the “living Fount (fonte) of the divine goodness,” or “of infinite love,” and “the clear waters coming from the divine fount.” The very word “fountain” (fontana) occurs in one of V.’s descriptive passages; and the idea appears in Catherine’s address to Our Lord at the well (pozzo) of Samaria, and in her thereupon receiving refreshment of soul, by the gift of “a little drop (gocciola)” of that divine water.[410] And the fountains are here made to proceed from a ray of love; and this again comes from numerous authentic sayings of hers: in one case the “raggio d’amore” appears split up into several rays: “raggi … affocati di divino amore.”[411]

5. Three new authentic details.

And yet these remarkable forty pages furnish us with three fresh statements or implications of detail, respectively too precise, vivid and verisimilar and too little obvious, to be easily attributable to any but a new and authentic source of information. There is the vividly precise information that, during Catherine’s actively penitential period, “the love of God, wishing that she should lose all relish in what she ate, made her always carry some epatic aloes and pounded agaric about with her; and whenever she suspected that one kind of her food was about to give her more pleasure than another, she would furtively put a little of that most bitter compound upon it, before eating it.” There is the formal declaration that “she also went to the poor of San Lazaro.” And there is the statement, already noticed, that, after her conversion, she had “to work to provide for her living,” and “that she would have been unable to live, unless God had provided for her by way of alms.”[412]

Now the first statement should be compared with Battista Vernazza’s, similarly precise, pharmaceutical detail as to the cassia used by her father in doctoring the poor in 1493, recorded by Battista, nearly ninety years later, in 1581:[413] Battista would, then, have been quite capable of remembering and recording that aloes-and-agaric detail some seventy years after the event. As to the second statement, I have already given the various solid reasons which point to Catherine’s co-operation with Battista’s father in his work amongst the Pestiferous, as far back as the year 1493.[414] And as to the third statement (in apparently direct conflict with the declaration in the Vita-proper, that, although entirely devoted to the service of the Hospital, she never would enjoy or use the slightest thing belonging to it for her own living[415]) the Wills prove to us that, however exaggerated be the language of D., it, and not V., is here substantially in the right. For, though she could have afforded to live in modest style, on her own little income, she did, as a matter of fact, hold her little house rent-free from the Hospital, in return for her services to it. Here also Battista would have known the precise facts from her father, who had himself drawn up or witnessed three documents referring to these matters.

6. Battista Vernazza, the author of this first “Dialogo.”

The reader will by now be concluding with me, that all these peculiarities of the Dialogo point to one person as its author: Battista Vernazza. And all its other circumstances and characteristics make for the same conclusion.

(1) Particular circumstances.

There is the place. For the original of MS. C., in which appear the first traces, (this whole first part), of D., came from Battista’s own Convent; and thus a document which, in its later narrative part, contained, as we shall find, so much primary matter due to Vernazza the father, and so much secondary composition and arrangement due to Vernazza the daughter; and which, in its dialogue part, gave much original literary work due to a Vernazza: would easily (no doubt soon after Battista’s death), come to be considered as the work and the copying of Ettore Vernazza alone. And there is the date. For if this first part was written in 1548, 1549, Battista would have been fifty or fifty-two years old. And we have already considered writings of hers, written, with equal subtlety of psychological distinctions and even greater vigour of style, in 1554, 1555, and even in 1575, at seventy-eight and eighty-four years of age.[416]

There is, too, the form, so curiously schematic and abstract, and, in part, far-fetched, yet based upon a minute, most ingenious use of scriptural texts. Thus those two “weeks,” (symbols for the two, respectively lukewarm and sinful, lustres), are no doubt suggested by the “seventy weeks” which “the man Gabriel” declares to Daniel “shall be shortened upon the Jewish people, that transgression may be finished, and everlasting justice may be brought and vision may be fulfilled”;[417] and by Jacob’s twice seven years of servitude under Laban, and by Laban’s words “make up the week of days of this match.”[418] We thus get Catherine’s two weeks (of years) of servitude to sin, and her two successive “matches” or alliances, entered into between her soul and body under the influence of self-love. We found a similar minute ingenuity in Battista’s use of Scripture in 1554.[419]

And there is a complex, abstract, astonishingly self-consistent psychology running through the whole, and one simply identical with the psychology treated by Battista as more or less a point of revelation to herself in 1554. And, partly as effect or as cause of that psychology, the Dialogo has a painfully great, at times downrightly repulsive, insistence upon detachment from emotional feeling, both in intercourse with fellow-creatures, and in spiritual commerce with God, that is simply identical, in its parallelism, range, depth, and doctrinal setting, with the position which Battista takes up in her Colloquii of 1554.[420]

Again we get here a prominent and persistent occupation with the historic Christ and His passion, that are as unlike Catherine’s as they are identical with Battista’s spiritual trend. For, during her Conversion-Vision, Catherine here sees that “burning love which Our Lord Jesus Christ manifested when upon earth, from His Incarnation up to His Ascension”; and this corresponds precisely with Battista’s sight (vista), in 1554, of “the Infinite Love manifested unto men, in and by the life of Christ, at the Nativity and at the Ascension.” And the Christ-Vision here becomes two separate apparitions; that of the Crucified Christ is declared “greater than” that of the Walking Christ; and there is an insistence upon “those five Fountains,” an image derived indeed from Catherine’s “living fountain of Goodness, which participated with the creature,” but which, in Catherine, is conceived in connection with God and metaphysically, and here is transferred to the historic and crucified Christ, in close keeping with Battista’s whole emphatic Christo-centrism.[421]

And, finally, we find here certain daring anthropomorphisms without any full parallel in Catherine’s sayings, but entirely matched by expressions of Battista. God is here not as, in Catherine’s manner, Himself an irradiating Love, but is “ever standing with burning rays of love in His hand, to inflame and penetrate the hearts of men,” a combination of the Thing-imagery dear to Catherine (for Love is here still a luminous, burning substance), and of the human, Personal picturing prominent with Battista (for God here has a hand, in which He holds that substance). This latter picturing (probably in 1550) is not unlike the more spiritual anthropomorphism of “the Increate Heart” of God, used by Battista in 1575 a passage already exceeded here, in the Dialogo, by the words, “God showed her the love with which He had suffered”--words which, if pressed, would introduce suffering into the divine nature Itself.[422]

(2) General considerations.

All these cumulative reasons of detail will be indefinitely fortified by what I shall have to say as to the character of the subsequent parts of the Dialogo, and in proof of these parts and the first instalment being by one and the same author. But, meanwhile, we can press this further general consideration, that only a person with considerable traditional authority in matters concerning Catherine, and yet a person, not a direct eyewitness or full contemporary, hence an individual without any additional information, and unhampered by the (otherwise necessary) regard for the sensitiveness of still living contributors to the original biography, can possibly have written such a document. For this production, when it first appears complete, in the first Printed Vita of 1551, will there occupy quite one third of the whole book; and yet, whilst incorporating practically all, and only all, the material of those other two-thirds (the Trattato alone excepted), it gives to everything a fresh grouping and setting, colour and atmosphere, drift and character. Only a remarkable, powerful mind; a writer skilled in mystical subjects; one with leisure for such a careful composition; one, too, sufficiently in sympathy with Catherine to be attracted to, and helped through, the difficult task; a person living now, thirty-eight years after Catherine’s death, in an environment of a kind to preserve her memory green: all these conditions must, more or less, have met and been realized in the writer of this curious, forcible book.--And Battista, the God-daughter of the heroine of the work, and the eldest, devoted daughter of the chief contributor to the already extant biography; a Contemplative with a deep interest in, and much practical experience of, the kind of spirituality to be portrayed and the sort of literature required; a Nun, during thirty-eight years, in the very Convent where Catherine’s sister (one of its foundresses) had lived and died, and where Catherine herself had desired to live and where her Conversion had taken place; a woman who was but thirteen at the time when Catherine died, after nine years of much suffering and seclusion, and who, even now but fifty-one years of age, had outlived all the close friends and original chief biographers of Catherine by thirty-five, twenty-four, and twenty years: Battista, and Battista alone, united in her own person all these necessary conditions. And it will have been the sensitively original and strongly synthetic cast of Battista’s mind which made the strangely fragmentary, repetitive, contradictory, static, and yet abrupt and unharmonized multiplicity of the Vita both irritating as it stood, and yet (with its considerable elements of unmistakably first-hand portraiture of a rarely large and lofty mind and character) profoundly stimulative to a re-thinking, re-feeling, re-stating of the whole,--at least, up to the zenith of that Soul’s perfection.

But our next stage will make all this clearer still.

VI. Sixth Stage: First Printed Edition Of The “vita-Dottrina-Dicchiarazione,” 1551; Examination Of All It Possesses In Addition To Mss. A, B And C, Apart From The “dialogo.”

At last we reach the publication of the Life, in Genoa, in 1551.[423] A printing-press had not been established in Genoa till 1536 (by Bellone); hence the Life appeared only fifteen years after the earliest date possible for its publication,--other cities not being, as yet, sufficiently interested in Catherine to think of such an undertaking.--Only further on shall I attempt some analysis, estimation, and attribution of that corpus of earlier and earliest constituents of the Book, which, although frequently referred to at our last two stages, had there to remain unanalyzed. In these remaining two stages I intend to treat only, first of the Introductory parts of the Book, special to its printed form, and then of the Second “Chapter” of the Dialogo (its present Second and Third Parts).

Here then we have to deal with the matter which, amongst our extant documents, appears for the first time in the Printed Vita of 1551, and first with that part of it which is there devoted to the publication of the Book. This part of the matter consists, in the order of its place in the Book, of the Title with its Picture; the Approbation; the Preface; and the Subscription.

1. Title-page.

The Title-page has: “Book of the Admirable Life and Holy Doctrine of the Blessed Catarinetta of Genoa, in which is contained a Useful and Catholic Demonstration and Declaration of Purgatory.” And underneath appears a picture of Our Lord Crucified, and Blessed Catherine on her knees before Him, and crowned with a Diadem; with the text: “I confess to Thee, Father, Lord of Heaven and Earth, that Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them unto little ones” (Matt. xi).

Note here, in the Title, the correct and most attractive baptismal form of her Christian name, Catarinetta, which appears here for the last time, either in the Title, the Heading, or the Subscription of her Life; and the disappearance, which is final, of her family name Adorna, which had figured in the titles of all the MSS. Thus “La miranda vita e sancta conversation di Madonna Catherinetta Adorna,” the older heading of MS. A, which will have been that of the Giustiniano book (a heading which itself had succeeded to “De la Miranda Conversione di quondam Donna Catherinetta Adorna” of the booklet of 1512, still preserved in MS. B), has here become “La vita mirabile e dottrina santa de la Beata Catarinetta da Genoa.”--And note how, for the first time, mention is made in the title of what has hitherto been but a long Chapter of the Vita; and how what in the MSS. had, in that Chapter’s heading, claimed but to be a matter of devotional experience (“How, by comparison of the divine fire, which she felt in her heart and which purified her soul, she saw interiorly and understood how the Souls abide in Purgatory”), has here been given, some thirty years after the Papal condemnation of Luther’s theses on Purgatory, a controversial point,--it is now “a Useful and Catholic Demonstration and Declaration of Purgatory.” We have here an attitude of mind inevitably different from Catherine’s pure positiveness.--And remark, too, the continued non-indication of the Dialogo, although this is now present, like the “Dimostrazione,” as a distinct document in the Book: the Dialogue is evidently still too new to be able to modify the old title-page, and to appear there alongside of a composition which, though but one-sixth of its own length, is now some thirty and more years old.

In the Picture Catherine wears a diadem, a compromise between an indication of her noble birth and a hint of the nimbus which they shrink from giving to her unequivocally. And she is kneeling before the Christ Crucified,--evidently an attitude chosen as specially typical of her whole life and doctrine, because of the passages in the Vita: “She ever seemed to see her Love affixed to the Cross”; “she was next drawn to the side of the Crucified”; “she appeared in very truth as a body affixed to a Cross,” with the dependent account of her “interior stigmatization,”--“she received a new wound at her heart, so that she might feel within herself the wound in the side of her tender Love”; and the amplifications of some of these passages in the Dialogo.[424] Yet only the first three passages occur in the MSS.; and the first two are carefully restricted there to her first Conversion-Period (of four years at most), whilst the third passage refers to a (quite unusual) bodily posture, assumed by her on one single occasion during her last illness, an attitude which remained uninterpreted by herself. The fact is that the precise contrary of what this picture suggests is one of the chief characteristics of Catherine, for she is habitually absorbed in contemplations remarkably lacking in historical imagery and setting. And the Dialogo parallels and variants which, as we have seen, so largely increase this historical element, and especially this occupation with Christ Crucified, are characteristic, not of Catherine but of Battista. The picture is, no doubt, the consequence of this increasing emphasis laid, in her successive Vitae, upon a side of religion all but entirely absent from the middle and last periods of Catherine’s actual life; and fully expresses Battista’s feeling, who, just as she addressed her whole long letter of 1575 in Donna Anguisola, “in the Crucified,” will have seen to it that the whole book concerning her own God-mother was placed at the feet of the Crucifix.

2. The Approbation.

The Latin Approbation runs: “I, Fra Geronimo of Genoa of the Order of Preachers, Apostolic Inquisitor into Heretical Pravity throughout the whole Dominion of Genoa, assent to this Book being committed to print, for the consolation and instruction of spiritual persons. Witness this my autograph.” The points of interest in connection with this Approbation will appear, as we proceed, to consist in the reasons why such theological “corrections” as were actually introduced into the doctrinal parts of the Vitae had all been made long before this date, probably none of them later than 1530; and why they were, throughout, practically restricted to her very sober and correct Purgatorial teaching, and left her other, far more daring, sayings more or less untouched. I can find no traces of any theological changes introduced, for this edition of 1551, into the Vita-Dicchiarazione sections; but we shall see how three points and tendencies of the Vita-proper have been indirectly criticised and “corrected” by means of their re-statement in the Dialogo, which was certainly finished, and possibly begun, with a view to its appearance in the company of the Vita and the Dicchiarazione.

3. The Preface.

The Preface consists of seven full and balanced, dignified and self-restrained, thoroughly well-informed and yet, in part, deliberately obscure and illusive, sentences. It still excludes the idea of any literary authorship on the part of Catherine: “Madonna Caterinetta, of whose admirable Conversion, Life, and Doctrine, together with her many privileges and particular graces, we shall write.… Here, in her Life and Holy Doctrine is to be found.…” Not Catherine writes, but “we,” i.e. the final Redactor, or all the Contributors together with him; and not her Writings are to be found here, but her “Doctrine” only. Indeed, it all “has been collected with truth and simplicity by two devout spiritual persons, from the very lips of the Seraphic Woman herself.” More would quite evidently have been claimed, if more had been true.

And it contains two or three evident additions to its original text, made for this publication in view of the entire Dialogo’s first appearance here; additions which contain an expression which may well have occasioned or helped on the legend of “Catherine, an Author,” a legend which was sure to spring up at the first opportunity and provocation. The fifth sentence reads at present as follows: “Sono in questo libro [dignissimi suoi trattati dell’ amor di Dio e dell’ amor proprio] una bellisima e chiarissima dimostrazione del Purgatorio, e in che modo vi stiano dentro le anime contentissime, [e un bel dialogo dell’ Anima con il Corpo e Amor poprio, dal quale ne seguita un amoroso colloquio dell’ Anima con il suo Signore] ed altre dignissime cose da sapere, veramente tutte di eccellentissima speculazione ed utilità [e massime in questi turbolenti tempi necessarie].”[425]

Now even the last set of bracketed words seems an addition, and points to the existence of the body of this Preface at a period prior to “questi turbolenti tempi,” times that I take to be 1536-1537, when Battista’s God-father Moro lapsed into Calvinism. Ever since 1520, when Luther’s Purgatory doctrines were condemned, these writings would have been held, if not “necessary,” at least “of most excellent utility.”--There is, any way, no doubt as to the two previous sets being insertions. For note, if they be retained, the slovenly repetition, by the first set, of “dignissimi” in the midst of a most finished composition; the extraordinary use of the word “Trattati,” to signify either Chapter XXV (which bears the title “Dell’ Amor Proprio e del Divino Amore,” and is a collection of sayings pronounced on at least three different occasions), or Chapters XXV and XXVI,--in either case, Chapters which are no more significant or authentic than any other of the doctrinal chapters. And remark, in the second set, the curiously mild praise for the Dialogo contained in the one positive “un bel,” wedged in between the two superlatives lavished on the “Dimostrazione” and the two superlatives given to the remaining doctrinal parts of the Book. The object of that first “Trattati” insertion is evidently to pick out some one or other of the already ancient Chapters of the Vita, which have some special likeness to the subject-matter and title of the Dialogo, so as to prevent the latter from looking too suspiciously different from the rest of the doctrine traditionally ascribed to Catherine.

I take this Preface to have existed, without these additions, in the “worthy book” described by Giustiniano in 1536. But as that careful writer insists upon the precise length of time, because it had been considerable, during which Catherine’s body had lain incorrupt, and says nothing about the antiquity of the book, a point he would hardly have failed to urge had he been able to do so, I hesitate to push this Book, and this its Preface, further back than 1530, a very probable date for the first (at least complete) fusion of Vernazza’s and Marabotto’s separate contributions, since these two chief disciples would then have been dead six and two years respectively, and the culmination of Protestant “turbulence” in Calvin’s open revolt and Moro’s defection would not be taking place for another five and six years respectively.--Catherine indeed appears here no more as the “quondam Donna Catarinetta” of MS. B, but still as “Madonna Catherinetta, figliuola di M. Giacomo della nobilissima casa Fiesca, maritata a M. Giuliano Adorno,” a designation distinctly earlier than the “Beata Catarinetta di Genoa” of the Title. And the Book, its substance, is declared to have been “collected by two spiritual persons (Religiosi), her devotees, from the very lips of the Seraphic Woman herself.” This passage, it is true, now reads “Raccolto dai divoti religiosi (suo Confessore e un figliuolo suo spirituale).” But, where the Preface is above the suspicion of having been touched up, a “cioê” introduces such a bracket; the rhythm of this sentence, in the midst of this otherwise exquisite Preface, is woefully imperfect; and the evidently deliberate ambiguity of “divoti religiosi” is rendered all but nugatory by the considerable clearness of the bracketed information. The clause will originally have read, “Da due religiosi sui divoti,” for this obviates all three objections. But, in this deliberately mysterious form, it must have been written when both were dead, and yet when the death of the last was still recent; and this again brings us to a date soon after Marabotto’s death in 1528.

Who wrote this Preface? Much in it points to Battista. So the use of “cioè,” so characteristic of her Colloquies and Letters and also of the Dialogo; and the phrase “divote persone,” recurring in the Dialogo;[426] and the doctrinal tone of “l’amoroso Signor Nostro, sitibondo della salute delle sue razionali creature,” “il suo consolatorio spirito,” “la perfetta e consummata unione possibile ai viatori,” and “quasi non più fide, ma già certezza,” all closely like passages in her Colloquies and in her Letter to Donna Anguisola. The mysteriousness and equality of designation, applied to both Ettore and Don Cattaneo, would come with a special naturalness from Battista, spontaneously anxious to place her heroic father’s sanctity and intimacy with Catherine on a level with those of Catherine’s priest-friend and Confessor Marabotto. And, if written in 1530, Battista would at the time have been a formed writer,--a woman of thirty-three years of age.--There are, no doubt, certain differences. The Dialogo nowhere has such an “ancorchè … niente (non) dimeno” clause. “Un Serafino,” “essa Serafica Donna” of this Preface, are, in strictness, unmatched in Battista’s, otherwise even intenser, writings. “La perfetta e consummata unione possibile ai viatori” is a more ordinary and technical phrase than I can find elsewhere in Battista’s writings. Above all, the general style and rhythm is here, somehow, a little different from that of those other writings.--Still, these differences are explicable by the writer of the Preface finding himself largely bound by the existing Vita-materials, and by their very niceties of expression. The Author of the Preface is certainly identical with the Redactor of the first (tripartite) Vita e Dottrina; and this Redactor, we shall find, must be Battista. The insertions in the Preface, containing the praise of the Dialogo, are certainly the work of another hand.--Upon the whole, then, we can safely attribute the Preface, in its original form, to Battista Vernazza.

4. The Subscription.

The subscription to the Vita-proper, in this first Edition, runs: “Here ends the life of the noble Matron, Catarinetta Adorna”; which thus still retains (like the Preface, but against the Title) the warmly human and precise, domestic and familiar designation of the first heading of MS. A.

VII. Seventh Stage: The Second “chapter” Of The “dialogo,” Which Appears For The First Time In The Printed “vita,” 1551.

1. Three remarks concerning the two Parts of this “Chapter.”

(1) The additions to the Dialogo which appear here for the first time, and which amount to its present Parts Second and Third, are given in this First Edition as one single, the Second, “Chapter,” following upon the older part here designated “Chapter First.” In the Fourth Edition, 1601, this division of the Dialogo is formally announced on the Title-page: “With a Dialogue, divided into two Chapters, between the Soul, the Body, and Self Love; and (the Soul and) the Lord.” I do not know precisely when those two “Chapters” were replaced by the present Three Parts, and when these Parts were divided up into the present Chapters; it was, in any case, after the sixth edition (1645).

(2) These last two Parts seem to have been written, from the first, with a view to eventual division into two. For though the whole of this Second Chapter is not much longer than the First Chapter (forty-seven and a half pages, against forty), it yet divides up very well at about half-way, since the first half here ends with a piece of moralizing narrative, applied to the whole earthly existence: “The more valiant a man is at the beginning, the greater martyrdom should he expect at the end … nor does God cease to make provision … up to that Man’s death.”[427]

(3) This whole “Chapter” Second is by the same author as “Chapter” First; in this Second, even more than in that First “Chapter,” there are no historical materials other than those still present, more or less untouched, in the Vita-proper; and yet these materials have again been modified, in their sequence and setting, their tone and pitch, their drift and meaning, and all this throughout by the same powerful and experienced, often deep and touching, but also, in great part, painfully abstract and straining, absolute-minded and excessive writer.

2. General indications of identity of authorship for “Chapters” First and Second.

(1) “Chapter” First had, we know, concluded with a paraphrase of the last stage in the scheme of Catherine’s spiritual growth as given in the Vita-proper, and had thus reached the ne plus ultra of perfection for any creature, either here or in the world to come. “And now the Spirit said: ‘I am determined no further to call her a human creature, since I now see her (to be) all in God, without any Humanity’”: a statement which may well (like the corresponding Spiritual-Kiss stage in the Vita’s scheme)[428] have been intended, at the time of its composition, both to describe directly her great middle years, 1474-1499, and to sum up generally her later life, 1499-1510.--But no such hyperbolic language, when thus applied to man as we know him, or as we can even conceive him here below, can, of course, be kept up. And thus here in the Dialogo (as previously in the corresponding place in the Vita-proper), what had originally been the conclusion of a self-contained account of her Conversion, became, owing to the desire of utilizing much extant material which directly described her years of physical break-up, but one chapter in the story of her total life. Hence we now find, both in the Vita-proper and the Dialogo, an instructive anti-climax, in an attempted description (the Dialogo gives this in its “Chapter” Second) of her successive states from 1497 to her death in 1510, states and changes which, were we to take the concluding words of the Vita-scheme and of the Dialogo’s “Chapter” First at all strictly, would, in great part, be impossible.

(2) In the Dialogo’s First “Chapter” we found a remarkably free, deliberately pragmatic handling of the Vita-materials, in the making two different visions on two separate occasions (the Vision of the blood-stained Moving Christ, and the Vision of the blood-pouring Fixed Christ) out of the one, curiously composite, Moving-Fixed Christ-Vision of the Vita; and this doubling introduced, into that First Part, a special kind of obscurity, a sort of eddying, circular, repetitive movement and practical fixedness. Similarly we find here, in the Second “Chapter,” the one description of her resumption of Confession, given by the Vita-proper, is made into two accounts, accounts still further separated from each other here than the two visions were separated from each other there. For the first ten and a half Chapters, pages 226b to 242b, give us her history from 1497 to 1501. And, amongst these, Chapter First to Third cover the years 1497 to 1499; and at the end of Chapter Third, page 232b, we get an account of how “she began to confess her sins” (necessarily, at this period, to Marabotto) “with such Contrition, that it appeared a marvellous thing”--a description which has been taken from the story of her First Conversion-Period, but which is made to do duty here, at the date of her beginning to confess, in a very different manner, to Don Marabotto, twenty-five years after those Conversion-Confessions. Yet only at the beginning of the second half of Chapter Tenth (p. 242c) do we hear, (wedged in between two passages, pp. 242b, 243b, which are re-castings of descriptions of a scene which occurred on January 10, 1510, Vita, pp. 139a-140c) of God giving her the help of a “Religioso,” “suo Confessore,” i.e. Marabotto (p. 242c). This is followed, not two pages later on (p. 244b), by a description of the experience of the “Scintilla” on August 11, 1510 (Vita, p. 148b), and by an allusion to her death on September 15, 1510 (p. 245c).--This doubling was no doubt effected for the purpose of introducing as much variety as possible into what is, anyhow, a monotonous narrative; of being thus able to produce a more ordinary and “correct” account of her dispositions and acts, on occasion of the resumption of her Confessions in 1499, than could be given by the direct utilization of Marabotto’s description of them; and of thus, by these two narratives in lieu of that single one, giving greater place and prominence to the practice of Confession than this practice actually occupied in her real life.

3. Closer examination of the earlier portion of “Chapter” Second.

A closer examination of the whole Second “Chapter” of the Dialogo fully substantiates this conclusion, and brings out other interesting points. Let us take the eleven Chapters of the present Part Second.

(1) The first two Chapters describe her condition when “the Soul could no more correspond to the sensations of the Body,--the Body remained, as it were, without its natural being, and dwelt confused and stunned, without knowing where it was or what it should do or say” (pp. 226c, 227a). And then the Soul begins to address “the Lord” (p. 229a). And on p. 230b we hear, for the first time, of its “sweet and cruel Purgatory.” And Chapter Third tells of the Soul’s painful prison-life, and of vomitings, emaciation, and occasional inability to move (pp. 230b-232a).--Now Purgatory, prison-house and these psycho-physical conditions do not appear, in the Vita-proper, till “nine years before her death,” and, indeed, in great part only within the last year of her life.[429] Indeed it is only the characteristic intensity with which the Dialogo here describes the fresh access of Contrition, and the resumption of frequent Confession for evidently new offences (a description entirely inappropriate to this late stage of her life), that makes it difficult to realize that these three Chapters are dealing with 1497 to 1499. And the exaggeration here exactly corresponds to the exaggeration, in Part (“Chapter”) First, of her earlier sinfulness, and her first Conversion and Contrition.

(2) Chapter Fourth then gives a short description of another “ray of love”; and then apostrophizes, in seven “oh” and “che” sentences, such a state of soul (pp. 232c-233c). Chapter Fifth contains one question and answer exchanged between the Soul and the Lord, and then three narrative-exclamatory paragraphs (pp. 233c-235a). Chapter Sixth gives two explanations by the Lord of the Soul’s sufferings, interrupted by the Soul’s thanks and acceptance (pp. 235b-237a). And then Chapter Seventh describes a lull in the Soul’s battles and trials (pp. 237a-238a). And this lull is followed, in Chapter Eighth, by a declaration from the Lord that she has now been led up to the door of Love but has not yet entered in (pp. 238a-239a); and, in Chapter Ninth, by a dialogue (for the first time in the entire work) between the Spirit and the Soul, the former being now determined to separate itself from the latter; and, at the end of this same Chapter, by a description of this, now more or less achieved, separation (pp. 239a-241a; 241b).--These conflicts and dialogues between the Spirit and the Soul, are closely like the conflicts and dialogues between the Spirit and “Humanity” in Part First.[430] Yet there, the historical materials are derived chiefly from the Vita-proper, pp. 20a-21b, 96b-97c (which give an account of her work from 1473 to 1497); whilst here they come exclusively from pp. 133b-138b of the Vita-proper (which tell her experiences from November 11 to the end of December 1509).

(3) And the last two Chapters, Tenth and Eleventh, are particularly difficult and self-destructive, obscure and disappointing. The Tenth (to be fully analyzed presently), is difficult, because it starts with fragments of Vita-information which, in the Vita, rightly refer, in large part, to the beginning of the last ten years of her life, and even to 1499 in particular,--hence to a period long anterior to all that has been described in the Dialogo ever since Chapter Third of this Part. And these fragments are here made to lead up to a re-statement of the scene of January 10, 1510, when she shut herself off from every one, but when Marabotto managed to overhear her soliloquy (pp. 241c-244a compared with pp. 139b, 113c.) And the Eleventh Chapter is obscure and disappointing, because, after giving the “scintilla”-incident of August 11, 1510, and a final short dialogue between the “Lord” and her “Humanity” (again a combination of Dramatis Personae which has occurred nowhere else), it finishes, not with any description or even affirmation of her earthly end, but simply with an account as to the necessity of Purgation, and, in particular, with the words “a martyrdom which never ceases until death” (pp. 244a-245c).

4. Closer examination of later portion of “Chapter” Second.

Part Third, on the contrary, is peculiar in this, that its Dialogue passes exclusively between but two interlocutors, the Soul and the Lord: it thus brings back the whole composition to its opening form of strict duologue,--although there the speakers had been the (unpurified) Soul and the Body. The present thirteen Chapters constitute, in substance, a single, all but unbroken, disquisition on God’s love for the Soul, and on the Soul’s growth in the love of God; although the form alternates between Chapters of questions and answers, and Chapters of rapturous descriptions and apostrophizings of Love.

(1) Chapters First and Second consist of such questions and answers, and conclude with an, abruptly introduced, account of her former spiritual conversations with her friends, which (though based upon the beautiful document in the Vita-proper, pp. 94b-95c, and upon the fragment there, p. 97b, and though the narrative here has a certain noble warmth of its own) is given here merely as a something to be transcended, and which, by now, had been actually left far behind. Thus, as in Parts First and Second the Dialogo had given a characteristically rigoristic, indeed exaggerating, account of her Conversation and her later Purification respectively, so here again this curious book is more severe than are the authentic accounts on which it otherwise relies.

(2) Chapter Third gives a question and answer as to the comprehensibility of this love. The answer incorporates Catherine’s description of her soul as, so to speak, under water in an ocean of peace; and interestingly turns the “scintilla,” the “spark of love,” into a “stilla,” a “drop,” suggested, no doubt, by the “goccia,” “the drop of love,” which figured so prominently in Catherine’s great conversation with her spiritual children.[431]--Chapters Fourth to Sixth open out with a page where the Lord declares how the pure and love-absorbed Soul alone holds Love (p. 253); and consist, for the rest, of exclamatory descriptions of this love, the soul proffering first ten “O Amore” apostrophes (pp. 253c-258b), then one “O Amore puro” address (pp. 259c, 260a). And the tenth of those apostrophes introduces a characteristic sentence from the Vita-proper: “the Soul,--if bereft of charity,--when it is separated from the Body, would, rather than present itself thus before that (Divine) cleanness and simplicity, cast itself into Hell.”[432]--And Chapter Seventh then makes the Lord ask the Soul to tell him some of the words which it addresses to Love; the Soul does so, and the Lord approves of them (pp. 260b-261b).

(3) And then Chapter Eighth begins a narrative piece (pp. 261c-263c); but which, after a transitional, exclamatory paragraph (p. 263c), arrives at three short questions and answers. The first two questions and answers are by the Soul and the Lord respectively; the third question and answer are respectively by the Lord and the Soul (pp. 264a, b). We shall presently see that, in this set of short sentences, we have reached the culmination of the whole Dialogo, and that, in astonishingly explicit daring, they exceed any and all of Catherine’s authentic sayings.

(4) Chapter Ninth then gives a narrative description of the apparently empty and abandoned condition of the advanced Soul, and, for this purpose carefully utilizes (whilst completely altering the meaning and context of) Marabotto’s description of Catherine’s first Confession to him. And in its last paragraph it again (but here with less change) incorporates other passages of that descriptive Chapter.[433] Then comes Chapter Tenth, with a short question and answer between the Lord and the Soul, the latter partly in verse (p. 267a). And this is followed by two descriptive paragraphs, how that this soul “seemed to mount above Paradise itself”; “this heart is transformed into a tabernacle of God”; and “such souls, were they but known, would be adored upon earth” (pp. 267b, c; 268a).

(5) This description is followed by a long rapturous suspension of the dialogue form, since here the Writer himself addresses successively, in three “O” paragraphs, the “soul, heart, and mind”; “Love”; and “the Spirit naked and invisible.” And, after a little exclamation as to the inadequacy of all words (this also is introduced by an “O”), he similarly invokes (in three other “O” paragraphs), “my tender Lord”; the “infinite Good”; and “the Lord” (pp. 268b-269c).--The present, most unskilful, division makes Chapter Eleventh begin with these last three of the seven “O’s.” And after the seventh “O” paragraph and a descriptive passage, still addressed to “the Lord,” composed of five “Thou” sentences, follows another short interruption,--apologizing for the delay in the narrative and the inadequacy of the words used. And then two “Oimè,” and one “O terra, terra” paragraph finish up the Writer’s exclamations, and bring us back to the interrupted dialogue-form (pp. 269c-271b). Here again a violent division has been effected in the text by Chapter Twelfth being made to exclude the first, but to include, the second “Oimè” (p. 271a). And this Chapter, after finishing the “Terra-terra” paragraph, and, with it, the whole digression, re-opens the dialogue with a curious, serpentine, all but unbroken series of seven questions of the Soul and answers of the Lord, in which each successive question picks up the previous answer and point reached, and tries to reach a deeper one. “What is Thine Operation within man? A Moving of the heart of man. And this Movement? A Grace. And this Grace? A Ray of Love. And this Ray of Love? An Arrow. And this Arrow? A Glimpse (Scintilla) of love. And this Glimpse? An Inspiration.” And at this point, description is declared to be unable to proceed further (pp. 271b-272c.)

(6) And then Chapter Thirteenth finishes up the whole by two questions and descriptive answers. The first question and answer passes between the Writer’s own mind and his heart, and thus again constitutes a break in the dialogue; and the second question and answer occurs between the Lord and the Soul. The first answer dwells upon personal experience, as the sole means of some real apprehension of Love; and the second answer concludes the whole book with a majestic paraphrase of Catherine’s doctrine as to the immanental, inevitable, self-determined, and self-endorsed character of the Soul’s joys and sufferings, here and hereafter, on Earth, in Purgatory, indeed in Hell itself (pp. 273a-275a). Such passages as these make up for much of the often painfully intense, abstract, schematic, rigoristic, and too exclusively transcendental character of this remarkable book, and explain its fascination for a mind of such rare experience and breadth as was that of Friedrich Schlegel. I shall presently group together the finest sayings peculiar to the work.

VIII. Seventh Stage Continued: Minute Analysis Of One Passage From The Second “chapter.”

But I must still give for this last “Chapter,” as I did for the First “Chapter,” a synoptic demonstration, by means of one example among many, of the strange manner in which the Dialogo-writer combines the most detailed dependence on the materials of the Vita-proper with the most sovereign independence concerning the chronology, context, and drift of those same materials.--And again I choose an originally unique occurrence and description, so as to eliminate all possibility of an explanation by an original multiplicity of facts and accounts.

Catherine as “Garzonzello” or “Figliuolino.”

Dialogo (Vita), p. Vita-proper, pp.-- 266a, b, c.

Il corpo, essendo costretto 117b. Non potendosi seguire l’anima, resta per quel sopportare, per non aver più tempo quasi senz’ anima, operazione nè sentimenti dell’ senza umano conforto, anima, col corpo tutto debole.…

… e non si sà nè si può 117c. “Io non so dove mi aiutare. sia.”

Però è di bisogno che dagli 127a. Quali la servivano altri sia aiutato, ovvero restavano stupefatti, non sapendo occultamente da Dio gli sia che farle. provveduto, altrimenti restarebbe 120a. … provveduto tal quella creatura abbandonata bisogno, a lui non restava di essa provisione memoria alcuna.

121a. Perseverò molti anni con bisogno che il Confessore le stasse d’ appresso, per sostentare l’umanità.

117c. Dei peccati che diceva non le erano lasciato vedere come peccati che avesse … come un figliuolino, il quale, fatti, ma come d’un garzonzello, non avendo i suoi bisogni, il quale da giovinetto fà altro riparo non ha se non di qualche cosa di cui è ignorante, piangere tanto che gli sieno il quale, essendogli dati. detto “tu hai fatto male” per questa parola muta subito di colore e diventa rosso, ma non già perchè conosce il male.

Non è dunque meraviglia, 119c. “Non posso più sopportare se a simili creature Iddio tanti assedi esteriori provvede di particolari persone ed interiori; per questo mi che le aiutino, e per ha Iddio provveduto del mezzo loro sia alle necessità vostro mezzo … quando da dell’ anima e del’ corpo sovvenuto, mè siete partito, vò lamentadomi altrimenti non potriano per la casa.” vivere.

120a. era di bisogno che il Confessore non si partisse da lei.… Dio, sempre glieli Vedi come il nostro Signor dava … tutti i sussidi all Gesù Christo lasciò a San anima e al corpo … per Giovanni [al]la sua diletta mezzo di lui, al quale in quell’ Madre in particolar cura; e instante provedeva di lume così fece ai suoi discepoli e fà e di parole convenienti alla di sempre all’ altre sue divote lei necessità. persone; di modo che l’uno 121b. Questa tutto divina soccorre l’altro, così all’anima … operazione. Il Confessore come al corpo, con quella era legato col vincolo del unione divina. divino amore.

E perchè in generale le 117b. Dio gli diede lume e persone non conoscono queste grazia di consoscere quell’ operazioni, nè hanno insieme operazione. quella unione, perciò a simili 120b. E perchè quella continua cure bisognano particolari persone, conversazione e stretta colle quali Iddio operi famigliarità facevano alcuni colla sua grazia e lume. mormorare, non intendendo l’opera e la necessità.…

Chi vide queste creature e 117b. … col corpo tutto non le intende, gli sono più senza vigore, quasi derelitto presto d’ ammirazione che in se medesimo. di edificazione, dunque non giudicare, se non vuoi errare … resta l’umanità senza vigore ed abandonata quasi come morta.

The Dialogo-writer having, as we saw, combined, for the purpose of describing Catherine’s latter-day habits, V.’s account of her unusually peaceful dispositions of soul, obtaining in 1499, with V.’s account of her Penance and Confessions in 1473: now utilizes here Marabotto’s account of her Confessions to him from 1499 onwards (an account which the writer had rejected there), for an entirely different purpose and context than those developed by the Confessor himself. For, in the Vita-proper account, it is in connection with the Confession of her sins that we get the highly original and curious “garzonzello” parallel; and Catherine’s lamentations do not there occur in any relation to this parallel, but they arise only when Marabotto is not at hand to comfort her. In the Dialogo-version it is simply in relation to this requirement of his presence and to its postponement, that Catherine behaves like a “figliuolino,” and cries till she gets what she wants. And yet there is not the slightest doubt that it is really the “Garzonzello” Confession-passage which (left unutilized by the writer in his account of the Contrition and Confessions of her last period, Dialogo, pp. 231c-232b, no doubt because of the difficulty and apparent temerity of the facts and doctrines implied), has here been used after all, but with all its originality and daring carefully eliminated from it. For nowhere else, in the Vita-proper, does a “Garzonzello”-passage or language, or anything like them, occur; nowhere else again, in the Dialogo does a “figliuolino”-passage or wording, or anything really resembling them, appear; and these two, respectively unique and very peculiar, passages, both occur at one and the same stage of her life, and in connection with one and the same couple of persons.

IX. Seventh Stage Concluded: Character And Authorship Of This Second “chapter.”

Let us take these two points simultaneously, and move, from the more formal and literary qualities, through indications of the more or less external life-circumstances of the author, on to the writer’s special views and aims in psychology and spirituality.

1. The writer’s power.

The following passages, all more or less peculiar to the Dialogo, suffice, I think, to prove his power.

At the beginning of these, her last nine years, the Lord explains to Catherine the means by which Love may be known: “My love can be better known by means of interior experience than in any other way; if man is to acquire it, Love must snatch man from man himself, since it is man himself who is his own chief impediment,”[434]--a passage that recalls Thackeray’s Arthur Pendennis, his Friends and his Greatest Enemy--namely, his own self.

These years are, a little later, described in language no doubt suggested, probably through some Patristic passage, by Plato, the harmonious. “This soul now abode like a musical instrument which, as long as it remains furnished with chords, gives forth sweet sounds; but which, bereft of them, is silent. Thus she too, in the past, by means of the sentiments of soul and body, was wont to render so sweet a harmony, that every one who heard it rejoiced in it; but now, alienated from those sentiments, as it were without” psychic “chords, she remained entirely bare and mute.”[435]

And we are told of “words which the heart alone speaks to the soul alone”[436]--a passage which recalls Pascal’s saying, “The heart has reasons which Reason does not know.”

Amongst the rapturous addresses we find, “O Spirit naked and invisible! No man can hold thee (here below), because of thy very nakedness! Thy dwelling-place is in Heaven, even whilst, joined to the body, thou happenest still to tarry upon earth! Thou dost not know thine own self, nor art thou known by others in this world. All thy friends and (true) relatives are in Heaven, recognized by thee alone, through an interior instinct infused by the Spirit of God.”[437] An apostrophe which, in part, strongly recalls Henry Vaughan’s poem, “They are all gone into a world of light, and I alone am lingering here.”

The final address in this series of apostrophes to Love, God, contains the sentences: “O Lord, how great is Thy loving care, both by day and by night, for man who knows not even his own self, and far less Thee, O Lord. Thou art that great and high God, of whom we cannot speak or think, because of the ineffable super-eminence of Thy Greatness, Power, Wisdom, and Goodness infinite. Thou labourest in man and for man with Thy Love, and in return Thou willest that the whole man should act for Love, and this because, without Love, nothing good can be produced. Thou workest solely for man’s true utility; and Thou willest that man should operate solely for Thine honour, and not for his own (separate) utility.”[438] A passage strongly coloured by Dionysian ideas.

And yet the writer continues to think and to write, but says: “These words of mine are like ink: for ink is black and of an evil odour; and yet, by its means, many ideas are apprehended, which otherwise would be ignored altogether.”[439] Here we have an image, based as it is upon a vivid sensible perception of a chemical compound, which reminds one of the epatic-agaric passage in “Chapter” First of the Dialogo, and of the reference to cassia in Battista’s letter of 1581.[440]

And the whole Book finishes up with two impressive passages. The first, as to the means of knowing Love, is as Pauline as is most of the remaining doctrine of the Dialogo: “Not by means of external signs, nor even by martyrdoms, can this love be comprehended. Only he who actually experiences it can understand something of it.”[441] And the second concludes all with a forcible and comprehensive paraphrase of Catherine’s central doctrine,--as to the Soul’s condition and action, revealed at the moment of death: “Every man bears within his own self the sentence of his own judgment, pronounced indeed by God, yet each man himself ratifies it, in and for his own case and self. There is no place totally bereft of God’s mercy. The very souls in Hell itself would suffer a greater Hell outside of it than they do within it.”[442]--We have had repeated proofs of how great were Battista’s gifts and experience in such-like eloquent writing, from the earlier Dialogo-Chapter, and from her Colloquies and Letters.

2. Indications of special knowledge.

I am compelled to pass over the emotional rhythm, and the mystical ambiguity and paradox, that appear, in identical forms, in Battista’s avowed writings and here. But we must briefly dwell upon some special sources of interest in Catherine, and of certain knowledge of a peculiar kind, traceable in the writer of this second “Chapter”; both sets of passages clearly point to Battista as their author.

(1) There is the deeply-felt description of Catherine’s conversation with her disciples: “This soul would many times abide with her spiritual friends, discoursing of the Divine Love, in suchwise that it appeared to them all as though they were in Paradise. And indeed, what delightful colloquies took place! Both he who spoke and he who listened, one and all would get nourished by spiritual food, of a sweet and delectable kind. And, because the time sped so quickly, they could not attain to satiety; but they would abide so enkindled and inflamed, that they knew not what more to say. And yet they could not depart, and would seem as though in an ecstasy. Oh! what loving repasts, what delightful food, what sweet viands, what a gracious union, what a divine companionship!”[443]--Now it is true that the writer has here certainly utilized four pregnantly descriptive lines in the Vita-proper, and the fine account there, undoubtedly by Ettore Vernazza, as regards these conversations.[444] Yet one readily feels, at the moved and moving tone of the re-telling here, that the writer was specially impelled to dwell with a tender, living sympathy upon those meetings of forty years ago. Now Battista must, of course, again and again, have heard from her Father’s own lips, during those fourteen years that he lived on after Catherine’s great soul had gone to God, of these unforgettable talks, in which he himself had played so large a part, as questioner, interpreter, and chronicler.

(2) And the other set of passages points, even more definitely, to the same daughter and father. Catherine’s “humanity,” being threatened by the Spirit with various future sufferings, asks to be told the precise offence, charge (la causa), which will bring so great a martyrdom with it, without hope of any help. But “she was answered that this grace,” of knowing exactly what and why she should suffer, “would be accorded to her in due time, as happens with men condemned to death, who, by hearing read aloud to them the precise sentence pronounced upon their specific misdeeds, support with a greater peace of mind their ignominious death.”--And: “Since I am forsaken on all sides,” Catherine says to God, “give me at least, O Lord, some person that may be able to understand and comfort me, amidst the torments that I see coming upon me--as men are wont to do for those who are condemned to death, so that the latter may not despair.”--And the natural man in such advanced souls is described as suspended in mid-air, “like unto one who is hung, and who touches not the ground with his feet, but abides in the air, attached to the cord which has caused his death.”[445] Ettore’s life-long, detailed interest in, and experience of, prisoners and condemned men, whom he, the Founder of the Society of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, so loved to attend and help throughout their last night and at the scaffold, speak here through the devoted daughter who, countless times, must have listened to that father’s prison-experiences, which we found her describing, still most vividly, in 1581, thirty years after the publication of these Dialogo-passages.[446]

3. Schematic, intensely abstract psychology.

At this spiritual stage “there was, as it were, a chain. God, Spirit, draws to Himself the Spirit of man, and there this Spirit abides completely occupied. The Soul, which cannot abide without the Spirit, follows the Spirit, and is there kept occupied. And the Body, which is subject to the Soul, thus prevented from possessing its natural sensations and its natural sustenance, remains, as it were, forsaken and outside of its natural being.”--“God at times allowed the Spirit to correspond with the Soul, and the Soul with the Body.… But when God withdrew that Spirit into Himself, all the rest (the Soul) followed after it; and hence the Body remained like dead.” The two dividings, first of the Soul from the Body, and then of the Soul from the Spirit, so much emphasized in those other documents,[447] is thus carried through in this “Chapter” also.

4. Rigorism.

We find here the same exaggeration as to Catherine’s faults and contrition, and the same rigoristic doctrine as in “Chapter” First, although, here also, counterbalanced by a noble tenderness of heart. Thus her but semi-conscious attachment to, and self-attribution of, spiritual consolations, is here magnified into a grave sin. “How can I act, so as to make satisfaction for this sin, which is so great and so subtle?” her soul asks God, concerning but semi-conscious attachment to spiritual consolations. And of her social affections, as manifested in her great colloquies with her friends, Catherine now says, “All other loves” than the direct love of God “now appear to me as worse than sheer self-loves.”--“She began to confess her sins with so great a contrition that it appeared a wonderful thing,” we are told of Catherine, in 1499-1510; yet we know, from the unimpeachable testimony of Don Marabotto himself, that “the wonderful thing” about these latter Confessions was precisely the absence of that former keen sense of, and sorrow for, specific sins.[448]

5. Pronounced Christo-centrism and daring Anthropomorphism.

We get, again, the predominance of the Personal conceptions and imagery over those of Thing or Law, and the same greater attention to the historical element of religion, that characterize Battista’s writings and “Chapter First” of the Dialogo, as against Catherine’s authentic sayings.

Catherine’s energetic repudiation of “the corrupt expression, ‘You have offended God,’” is replaced by God saying to Catherine, “Know that I cannot be offended by man, except when he raises an obstacle to the work which I have ordained for his good.”[449] Catherine has angrily declared that the term could never be correctly used; the Dialogo explains how special and metaphorical is its correct use.

The Lord declares here: “I descend with a fine thread of gold, which is My secret love, and to this thread is bound a hook, which seizes the heart of men. I hold this thread in My hand and ever draw it towards Myself.” The hook and hand are additions to her authentic declaration, “She seemed to herself to have in her heart a continuous ray of Love … a thread of gold, as to which she had no fear that it would ever break.”[450]--We get here the Wedding-feast imagery that is entirely wanting in Catherine’s authentic sayings. “There is no shorter way to salvation than (the owning of) this delightful wedding-garment of charity”[451] A garment, generally in a bad sense, is quite Catherinian; a wedding-garment is exclusively Battistan.--And the parallel between St. John’s care of the Blessed Virgin, and Marabotto’s attendance upon Catherine[452] is quite foreign to Catherine’s mind.

And the whole Dialogo culminates in a double, daring yet graduated, anthropomorphic picturing of the deification of the perfect soul, interestingly different from Catherine’s favourite Ocean and Fire similes, and from her description of the Soul as respectively submerged in, and transformed by, this infinite and all-penetrating living Ocean-Fire, God. The Soul asks what is the name which the Lord gives to perfect souls; and the Lord answers (in Latin, as ever with Battista) with the text of Ps. lxxxi, 6: “I have said, ye are Gods, and all of you sons of the Most High”; a text which still leaves us with separate human personalities face to face with the distinct Spirit-Person, God. And then, to the Lord’s question, as to what the Soul declares its heart to be, the Soul answers (this climax has been carefully led up to all along): “I say that it is my God, wounded by love,--in Whom I live joyful and contented.”--For, as in Battista’s own Colloquy of December 10, 1554, we get three simultaneous “voices” at different depths of her consciousness, so here, in this composition of 1550, Catherine hears simultaneously within herself three voices--of the Lord, of her own soul, and of her own heart. And Catherine can here declare that now her heart is God, and God wounded by Love; for Battista can write in 1576 that, in the perfect state, “of the Increate Heart and of the created heart there is made a single, most secret and inestimable union,”[453] and that Increate Heart appears here as wounded, because God is ever, in Battista’s mind, explicitly identified with Christ, and Christ’s Passion is ever in her thoughts. Catherine identifies her true self with God, and God with Love; and conceives her own heart as filled with love and inflamed and pierced by it; but nowhere figures God with a Heart, or that Heart as wounded, for she has little or nothing of Battista’s anthropomorphic tendency in regard to God, or of her historical picturings with regard to Christ.

The entire Dialogo then is the work of Battista Vernazza; and we have to eliminate it, all but completely, from the means and materials directly available for the constitution of Catherine’s life and doctrine. The next Division will now attempt to deal finally with the chief of these means--the Dimostrazione (Trattato) and the Vita-proper.

Second Division: Analysis, Assignation, And Appraisement Of The “vita-Dottrina-Dicchiarazione” Corpus, In Eight Sections.

We now find ourselves in face of the most difficult, and the alone directly important, corpus of documents concerning Catherine’s inner life: the Vita e Dottrina, together with the Dicchiarazione or Trattato. It will be best to begin with this Trattato, and only after a careful study of this little book, which, as we know, contains the most original and valuable part of Catherine’s teaching, to finish up with an examination of the, now separate, Life and (other) Doctrine.

I. The “dicchiarazione”: The Two Stages Of Its Existence.

1. The “Dicchiarazione,” from the first a booklet by itself.

All the Manuscripts give the Dicchiarazione (Trattato) substantially as we have it at present, although ever as but a Chapter of the Vita e Dottrina, and not, as yet, itself divided up in any way. Even the last Editions of the Printed Vita still retain a reference to this old arrangement: “The soul purifies itself, as do the souls in Purgatory, according to the process described in the Chapter appropriated to this matter.”[454]

Yet the very length of this “Chapter,” then as now, and the solemn introductory paragraph, both point to its having, at first, formed a booklet by itself. Thus the longest of the other doctrinal Chapters of MS. A (Chapters XV, XVI, XX, and XL) are respectively 29, 22, 19, and 17½ pages long; whilst the Trattato-Chapter XLII runs to 46 pages. Only the Narrative-Chapter XLI, the Passion, is of an exactly equal length; but we shall find that this Chapter also existed, originally, in part at least, as a separate document. And the introduction to Chapter XLII is unparalleled by anything in such a position. “This holy Soul, whilst yet in the flesh, finding herself placed in the purgatory of God’s burning love, which consumed and purified her from whatever she had to purify, in order that, in passing out of this life, she might enter at once into the immediate presence of her tender Love,--God: understood, by means of this fire of love, how the souls of the faithful abide in the place of Purgatory to purge away every stain of sin that, in this life, they had not yet purged.” I have here omitted (after “understood”) “in her soul,” as marring the rhythm; and (before “stain of sin”) “rust and,” since the whole group of words appears in MS. A as “ogni rubigine di macchia di peccato,” requiring the suppression of at least one of the first two nouns: we shall find that “rubigine” is secondary.

I have also omitted, from what I hold was the first form of this Introduction, the present second sentence and comparison: “And as she, placed in the loving purgatory of the divine fire, abode united to this Divine Love, and content with all that He wrought within her: so she understood the state of the Souls that are in Purgatory.” For all the circumstances and dispositions of this contentment have already been anticipated in the “How the Souls abide in Purgatory” of the first sentence.--We can still show, I think, when and why this second sentence was added. Let us get at the reason slowly.

2. Three differences between the first seven and the last ten Chapters.

The first seven of the present seventeen Chapters of the Dicchiarazione (Dic.) are indeed like, but also unlike, the last ten Chapters, in three important matters.[455]

(1) All the seventeen Chapters are full of ideas, even of special words and peculiar groups of words, appearing also in various places of the Vita-proper. Yet the last ten Chapters alone have, in addition, four complete paragraphs standing, as such, in the Vita-proper. The two paragraphs of Chapter Eight, and the first paragraph of Chapter Nine, of the Dicchiarazione (“Più ancora dico che io veggio”--“se fosse possibile,” Vita, pp. 175c-176c), are identical with paragraphs four and five of Chapter Thirty of the Vita-proper (“E perciò diceva: io veggio”--“se fosse possibile,” Vita, pp. 78c, 79a).

Dic.’s text still keeps two primitive readings: “Gate” of Paradise, in a first saying, unassimilated to the plural “arms” of God in the second saying; against V.’s assimilation, “gates” and “arms.” Again “stain” and “stains,” alongside of “imperfection”; against V.’s treble “imperfection.” But in all else V. is clearly the older text: thus “His company” (against “His glory”); “un minimo chè” (against “un minimo brusculo”); “appear before God” (against “find himself in the presence of the Divine Majesty”); “purge” (against “lift away”); and other points.

But if this general priority of the V.-text be admitted, then this part of Dic. must have been constituted at a time when these parts of V.’s text were already so definitely fixed in themselves, and so firmly worked into their present contexts, that the Redactor of this part of Dic. dared not take them simply away from their old home, and did not modify them so as to conform with the glosses traceable in the earlier Chapters of Dic. (note here, in Ch. VIII, the absence of the “rubigine” present in the earlier Chapters). And this means that this part of Dic. was constituted when this part of V. was no more new, and Dic.’s own earlier chapters had been fixed for some time.

(2) All the Dicchiarazione Chapters are based on the assumption of a true analogy, indeed a continuity, between the soul’s purgation, Here and There. But only the last ten Chapters give passages (three whole Chapters) treating exclusively of this-world sufferings, and an address to souls that, in this world, run the risk not simply of Purgatory but of Hell hereafter.

Thus Chapter Eleven (Vita, pp. 178b-179a) is now indeed superscribed, “Of the desire of the souls in Purgatory to be quite free from the stains of their sins”; and contains the clause “non che possa guardare il Purgatorio siccome un Purgatorio” (179a). But all the chapter-headings are recent, and the heading here is quite inaccurate, for throughout the account (with the probable exception of the clause quoted, which is a gloss) the soul is simply in this world, as on pp. 23b, 49b, 61b, 106a, 114c of the Vita, which readily calls such this-world sufferings a “Purgatory,” 128b, 136c, 137a. Here, however, much of the form (e.g. “to contaminate,” “to occasion”), and some of the doctrine (the resurrection effected by Baptism) is alien to Catherine’s habits. The Chapter is, then, made up, about equally, of genuine sayings referring exclusively to this-world purgations, and of redactional amplifications of a systematizing and sacramental kind.

Chapter Twelve (Vita, p. 179b, c) is now subscribed, “How suffering conjoins itself with joy in Purgatory,” and concludes with “Thus the souls in Purgatory experience.…” Yet here too the body of the text nowhere directly refers to, or consciously implies, the other-world Purgatory; for its last clause, “ma questa contentezza non toglie scintilla di pena,” requires freeing from the gloss, “alle Anime che sono in Purgatorio,” which now stands between “contentezza” and “non.”

Chapter Seventeen (Vita, pp. 182c-184c) now indeed opens with an explicit reference by Catherine of “this purgative form that I feel it in my mind, especially since the last two years” to the souls in “the true Purgatory”; but this reference and the five last words of this long Chapter, “e il Purgatorio lo purifica,” are clear glosses, since Catherine is here exclusively occupied with the purgative character of her this-world sufferings, and not with any likeness of them to the other-world Purgatory. And indeed, since considerations about the other-world Purgatory first occur, in any certainly authentic Vita-passages, only after the great “ray”-experience of November 11, 1509 (the experience stands on p. 133b, where the MSS. give the date; the considerations appear only on pp. 136b-137a, 144b, 146b), the “last two years” here must mean that already three years or so before her death she had come to dwell much on the purifying function of her sufferings. Only during the last ten months does she seem to have dwelt upon these sufferings as illustrating the purgations of the other life.

And finally, Chapter Fifteen (Vita, p. 181b, c) is headed now: “Reproofs addressed by the souls in Purgatory to worldly persons.” But the text still begins with “a desire comes over me (Catherine) to cry out so as to strike fear into every man on earth,” and deals throughout with her this-life fears for such persons, not with respect to Purgatory, but with regard to Hell.

(3) Even the first seven Dicchiarazione Chapters we shall find to contain short theological glosses. But only in the last ten Chapters can we find extensive passages incompatible with Catherine’s authentic teaching, or at least quite unlike her undoubted utterances.

Chapter Thirteen (Vita, p. 180a, b) is now entitled: “How the souls in Purgatory are no longer in a state to merit; and how they regard the charity exercised in the world for them.” Yet this very Dicchiarazione’s utterly authentic opening sayings (Vita, pp. 169c, 170a, b) eliminate clearly the second question: such souls do not and cannot regard such charity at all. And though Catherine (who put the question of merit, even as to the soul’s this-world action, so emphatically behind that of love)[456] never considers merit in connection with Purgatory, yet she conceives the souls in Purgatory as purifying themselves of certain passive habitual defects, by one initial free election of the condition of suffering, and by then continually willing the painful condition,--volitional acts and dispositions that are usually held to imply merit.

The first paragraph then opens with: “If the souls in Purgatory could purge themselves with contrition, in one instant they would pay all their debt.” Yet there is no such dilemma in Catherine’s authentic thought as “instant purgation through contrition, of a necessarily perfect kind,” or “no purgation through such contrition”; for throughout the first seven Chapters purgation takes place through love and general contrition, in a thorough but gradual, seemingly slow, manner, and this not because God prevents the soul’s self-purification by what would be the normal means, but, contrariwise, because He does not interfere with the intrinsic, normally necessary interconnection of sin and suffering, sorrow, self-renunciation, love and joy.

The second paragraph runs: “Of the payment not one penny is remitted to those souls.…” This imagery of the payment of something as external to the payer as is money, in view of so external a change as getting out of prison, can hardly be Catherine’s, at least not as the deliberate expression of her purgatorial conception. The last paragraph reads: “They are henceforth incapable of seeing except [so much as] God’s will[s] … they can no more turn [with any attachment] to see the alms given for their intention by those that are living upon earth [except within the (general) apprehension of that all-just balance of the divine will], leaving God to do as He pleases in all things [God, who pays Himself as it pleases His infinite goodness]. And if they could turn to see those alms [outside of the divine will], this would be an act of self-love (proprietà)…” (180b). We have here a substantially authentic saying, but the bracketed words are certain glosses, introducing the utterly un-Catherinian ideas and images of the souls being allowed to see what is being done for them, of God’s balance, and of His paying Himself.

Chapter Fifteen’s last paragraph (Vita, p. 181c), which warns the soul that “the (kind of) Confession and Contrition necessary for such a Plenary Indulgence (as shall instantly purify it from all sin) is a thing most difficult to gain,” is also quite unlike Catherine’s preoccupations, tone, and teaching.

3. Remaining passages of the last ten Chapters not accounted for by the three peculiarities just detailed.

The three last paragraphs of Chapter Nine (Vita, pp. 176c-177b) and the very similar short Chapter Fourteen (ibid. pp. 180c, 181a) are more painfully composite and more repeatedly worked over than, I think, even the most tormented passages of the first seven Chapters.

We thus are left with but four paragraphs, the last two of Chapter Ten (Vita, pp. 178a, b) and the two of Chapter Sixteen (pp. 181c-182b). These two sets form two couples of illustrative descriptions of the Purgatorial process; and, in each set, the first paragraph is easier to read but is less authentic than the second, very composite, much-glossed paragraph. The second paragraph of the first set reads: “L’oro quando è purificato [per sino a ventiquattro caratti] non si consuma poi più, per fuoco che tu gli possi dare; perchè non si può consumare se non la sua imperfezione. Così | fâ il divin fuoco | dell’ anima: Dio la tiene tanto al fuoco, che le consuma ogni imperfezione [e la conduce alla perfezione di ventiquattro caratti, ognuna però in suo grado]. E quando è purificata, resta tutta | in Dio [senz’ alcuna cosa]| in sè stessa; ed il suo essere è Dio | [il quale quando ha condotta a sè] l’anima così purificata [allora l’anima] resta impassibile [perchè più non le resta da consumare] e se pure, così purificata, fosse tenuta al fuoco, non le saria penoso, anzi le saria fuoco di divino amore, come vita eterna, senza contrarietà.” The bracketed words are all more or less certain glosses. But there is here, besides, a conflation (indicated by vertical lines) of two applications of the gold-dross-fire simile: “Così dell’ anima: Dio la tiene … imperfezione. E quando è purificata, resta tutta in Dio; e se pure, così purificata, fosse tenuta …”; and “così fà il divin fuoco dell’ anima, che le consuma ogni imperfezione; e quando è purificata resta in sè stessa, ed il suo essere è Dio.” Both applications are probably authentic; the latter is too daringly simple and too delicately consistent with Catherine’s surest purgatorial conceptions not to be genuine.

The second paragraph of the second set contains the important passage: “Perchè sono in grazia l’intendono e capiscono | Dio | così come sono, secondo la loro capacità; [e perciò a quel] le da un gran contento, il quale non manca mai; anzi lo và loro accrescendo tanto, quanto più si approssimano a Dio.” This seems a conflation of two authentic sentences: “Perchè--grazia, l’intendono e capiscono così come sono--capacità;” and “perchè--grazia, Dio le da un gran contento--a Dio.” And the paragraph concludes with: “Ognì poca vista che si possa avere di Dio, eccede ogni [pena ed ogni] gaudio che l’uomo può capire, [e benchè la eccede, non leva loro però una scintilla di gaudio o di pena];” where the brackets indicate glosses, since the sight of God is directly ever a source of joy.

4. “Dic.” 1 and “Dic.” 2 referred to, respectively, by the first and second sentences of the Dicchiarazione’s present Introduction.

Now the result reached by our analysis of the Dicchiarazione’s last ten Chapters, viz. that this group (with the possible exception of the two sets of similes in Chapters Ten and Sixteen and much of Chapter Seventeen), was constituted under different, later circumstances than was that of the first seven Chapters, is borne out, indeed required, by the present Narrative-paragraph that introduces all the seventeen Chapters. For the two sentences of this paragraph are similar in form but different in matter. In the first sentence the soul is “placed in Purgatory” in order that, “passing from this life, it may be presented in the sight of its tender Love, God”; Purgatory is “a place”; and the souls are in that place “to purge away every stain of sin.” And this corresponds exactly to Chapters Four, Six, and Seven respectively, which deal with the diverse souls that “have passed from this life” (p. 172c); with the sight or non-sight of “God, our Love” possessed by them (p. 174c); and with God and Hell as “places,” and of the soul’s purgatorial plunge “so as to join God” (p. 175c). In the second sentence, the soul, “placed in the loving Purgatory of the divine fire, stands united to the divine Love and content with all that It operates within her,” and Purgatory is not called a “place.” And this corresponds precisely with Chapter Twelve (p. 179b), “as though a man stood in a great fire … the love of God gives him a contentment.…”

The second sentence, a pale, at first sight redundant, double of the first, will, then, have been added to the first sentence, when the second set of chapters was added to the first set.

II. The Earlier “dicchiarazione,” And Its Theological Glosses.

I will here analyse such paragraphs of these first seven chapters, as most fully illustrate the astonishing complexity of the whole, and as, between them, furnish all the theological “corrections” to be found in this earliest Dicchiarazione.

1. The two Sayings-paragraphs of Chapter First (“Vita,” pp. 169c, 170a, c.).

I print these sayings (here now broken up) in parallel columns and in the order of their present position. Columns first and third (numbered together as I) will turn out to contain original sayings, and column second (numbered II) will appear as but a Redactor’s re-statement, which (a sort of link between the two sets) first paraphrases the set that has just preceded, and then restates the set that will immediately follow. The arabic numbers indicate the several sayings, in their original and secondary forms (the numbers of the latter being bracketed): thus II (1), (2), (3), stands for the secondary versions of I 1, 2, 3, respectively. I double-bracket the additions (theological glosses) of the Printed text, and I single-bracket two MS. clauses which are clearly a gloss.

I 1 Ii (1) I

Le Anime che Non possono avere sono nel Purgatorio alcuna memoria non possono propria neppure d'avere altra elezione altri, nè in bene che di essere in nè in male [[dacui esso luogo; [e ricevano maggior questo è per ordinazione afflizione del suo di Dio, il quale ordinario]]; ma hanno ha fatto questo tanto contento giustamente;] nè di essere nell’ si possono più voltare ordinazione di Dio, verso sè stesse, e che adoperi tutto nè dire: “io ho quello che gli piace fatto tali peccati, e come gli piace, per i quali merito che di sè medesime di star qui”; non ne possono nè possono dire pensare [[con maggiore “non vorrei averli lor pena.]] fatti, perchè anderei ora in Paradiso”; nè dire ancora “quello ne esce più presto di mè,” ovvero “io nè usciro più presto di lui.”

(2) e solamente 2. La causa del veggiono l’operazione Purgatorio che hanno della divina in loro, veggiono bontà, la quale ha una sol volta tanta misericordia nel passare di dell’ uomo per condurlo questa vita, e poi a sè, che di mai più, imperocchè pena o di bene vi saria una che possa accadere proprietà. in proprietà, non se ne può vedere.

(3) e se’l potessero 3. Essendo dunque vedere, non sarebbero in carità, e da in carità pura. quella non potendo Non possono più deviare con vedere che siano attual diffetto, non in quelle pene possono più volere per i loro peccati, se non il puro volere e non possono aver della pura quella vista nella carità. mente: imperocchè vi sarebbe una imperfezione attiva.

(4) la quale non [4. ed essendo in può essere in esso quel fuoco del luogo, perchè non Purgatorio, sono nell’ vi si può attualmente ordinazione divina peccare. (la quale è carità pura), e non possono più in alcuna cosa da quella deviare, perchè sono privati così di attualmente peccare come sono di attualmente meritare.]

Here the middle sayings are sufficiently recent to have in II (1) imitated the secondary “ordinazione di Dio” clause present in I 1. And the two theological “corrections,” still absent from MSS. A and B, both appear among these middle sayings; they attempt to explain the non-attention of the souls to all particular things, as a non-remembrance of such things as would add to their distress.

2. The first two paragraphs of Chapter Second (pp. 170c-171b).

Originally single sentences have here been repeatedly broken up and scattered about amongst other similarly broken-up passages: we can still trace the motive for this procedure. I first print them as they stand, double-bracketing, at the end, the interestingly obvious theological “correction” that immediately follows a most authentic, directly contrary, statement.

“Non credo che si possa trovare contentezza da comparare a quella di un’ anima del Purgatorio, eccetto quella de’ Santi di Paradiso: ed ogni giorno questa contentezza cresce per l’influsso di Dio in esse anime, il quale và crescendo, siccome si và consumando l’impedimento dell’ influsso. La ruggine del peccato è l’impedimento, e il fuoco và consumando la ruggine: e così l’anima sempre più si và discuoprendo al divino influsso. Siccome una cosa coperta non può corrispondere alla riverberazione del sole, non per diffetto del sole, che di continuo luce, ma per l’opposizione della copertura: così sè si consumerà la copertura, si discoprirà la cosa al sole, e tanto più corrisponderà alla riverberazione, quanto la copertura più si andrà consumando.

“Così la ruggine (cioè il peccato) è la copertura dell’ anima, e nel Purgatorio si và consumando per il fuoco: e quanto più si consuma, tanto sempre più corrisponde al vero sole Iddio: però tanto cresce la contentezza, quanto manca la ruggine e si discopre al divin raggio: e così l’uno cresce e l’altro manca, finchè sia finito il tempo. [[Non manca però la pena, ma solo il tempo di stare in essa pena.]]”

Here the last (double-bracketed) sentence is a deliberate theological correction, for it formally contradicts the precise point and necessary consequences of the whole preceding, most authentic, specially characteristic doctrine.--In that preceding part three parallel illustrative similes (between the intact general statement and the equally untouched general conclusion) have been broken up, and dovetailed into each other, in a most bewildering manner; and this from a (possibly but semi-conscious) desire to obscure a characteristic feature of her teaching. I shall now give these five sentences in English, and will disentangle the three middle ones from each other.--The general statement: “I do not think that a contentment could be found comparable to that of a soul in Purgatory, except that of the Saints in Paradise; and every day this contentment is on the increase.”--The three images descriptive of the cause and mode of this increase, arranged according to the increasing materiality of their picturings. (1) “The influx of God into the soul goes increasing, in proportion as it consumes the impediment to that influx, and as the soul opens itself out more and more to the influx.” (2) “As an object, if covered up, cannot correspond to the beating of the sun upon it, not through any defect in the sun, which indeed shines on continuously, but because of the opposition of the covering, (so that) if this covering be consumed, the object will open itself out to the sun: even so does the soul in Purgatory more and more correspond with the true sun, God, when its covering, sin, gets consumed.” (3) “Rust is an impediment to fire, and fire goes consuming rust more and more: so does the rust, that is the sin, of the souls in Purgatory, get consumed by the fire; and their contentment grows in proportion as the rust diminishes and as the soul uncovers itself to the divine ray (of fire).”--The conclusion, which perhaps applies grammatically only to the last image, but which, as to the sense, most certainly refers to all three pictures. “And thus does the one (the influx, sun-light, fire-ray) increase, and does the other (the impediment, covering, rust) decrease, until the time (necessary for the whole process) be accomplished.”--The three images are in no case supplementary, but each is complete and parallel to the other two. As the fire that meets with the obstacle of the rust is the same fire as that which removes the rust, so is it in all three cases: in each case God, and His direct presence and action, are the “influx,” “sun-light,” “fire-ray”; in each case a sinful, morally imperfect, habit of the soul is the “impediment,” “covering,” “rust”; and in each case the suffering as well as the joy, and the changing relations between the two, proceed exclusively from the differing relations of but two forces: the soul and God. It is only the peculiar, Redactional dovetailing of the fragments of these three parallel similes which now conveys the impression that the divine sun-light and fire-ray reaches the uncovered soul in proportion as the soul’s covering and rust is destroyed by material fire; and to convey this very impression, was, no doubt, the motive of this dovetailing. The authentic passage on p. 178b, tells how the same divine fire which, at first, pains because it has still to purify the soul, increasingly fills the soul with joy in proportion as it can penetrate the soul unopposed: a doctrine also explicitly taught by Catherine, in her dialogue with Vernazza as to the effect of a drop of Love were it to fall into Hell (pp. 94c, 95b).

3. Third paragraph of Chapter Third.

The much-tormented Chapter Third has, at the opening of its third paragraph (p. 172b), an interesting theological “correction.” The complete passage now reads: “E perchè le anime che sono nel Purgatorio [[sono senza colpa di peccato perciò non]] hanno impedimento tra Dio e loro, [[salvo che quella pena, la quale le ha ritardate, che]] l’istinto non ha potuto avere la sua perfezione: e vedendo per certezza quanto importi ogni minimo impedimento, ed essere per necessità di giustizia ritardato esso instinto: di qui nasce un estremo fuoco.” The bracketed words are two interdependent glosses. For though in some other, possibly authentic, passages the souls in Purgatory “non hanno colpa di peccato,” this most certainly applies only to mortal sin or a still active, formal affirmation of venial sin; since the very raison d’être of Purgatory is “the rust of sin,” pp. 169b, 170c, 171b, 173c, 181a; “the stain of sin,” pp. 169b, 171c, 176b; “a mote of imperfection,” p. 176a; “a stain of imperfection,” p. 176b; “a passive defect,” p. 170b; “opposition to the will of God,” p. 177b; an “impediment of sin,” 177b. And the Vita-proper says quite plainly: “Both Purgatory and Hell are made for Sin: Hell to punish and Purgatory to purge it” (p. 64b).--And this gloss is in strict conformity with the glosses that affirm static suffering: in both cases all change is excluded from the soul in Purgatory, since this Purgatory is neither intrinsically necessary nor amelioratively operative within the soul.

4. First paragraph of Chapter Fourth.

Chapter Fourth is comparatively easy, but probably largely secondary, because uncharacteristic of her teaching. Yet it contains a “correction” deserving of notice. I give the two sentences which prove both points. “Quei dell’ Inferno … hanno seco la colpa infinitamente, e la pena [non però tanta, quanta meritano; ma pur quella] che hanno è senza fine. Ma quei del Purgatorio hanno solamente la pena, perciocchè la colpa fù cancellata nel punto della morte … e così essa pena è finita, e và sempre mancando [[quanto al tempo, come s’è detto]]” (p. 173a).--The double-bracketed passage, directly referring to the gloss on p. 171b, is, like the latter, a theological “correction.” But also the single-bracketed words are a gloss, since they disturb both grammar and rhythm of the passage, and introduce a point foreign to the argument which is being conducted in this place.--Indeed, even the remaining parts of these sentences are misleading, since Catherine held no such simple and absolute distinction as infinite guilt in the one case, and apparently no moral imperfection in the other. For of the lost she says: “If any creature could be found which did in nowise participate in the divine goodness, that creature would be as malignant as God is good” (p. 33b); and as to the souls in Purgatory, they are imperfect in precise proportion as they do and can suffer.

5. First two sentences of Chapter Fifth.

Here we find the strongest instance of the strange clumsiness characteristic of the theological “corrections.” I give the sentences as they now stand, simply numbering the sentences thus amalgamated, and bracketing at once the undoubted glosses.

(1) “Le Anime del Purgatorio hanno in tutto conforme la loro volontà a quella di Dio; e però corrisponde loro colla sua bontà, e restano contente quanto alia volontà, e purificate d’ogni lor peccato quanto alla colpa. [[Restando così quelle Anime purificate, come quando Dio le creò]]

(2) “e per essere passate di questa vita malcontente e confessate di tutti i loro peccati commessi. … [Iddio subito perdona loro la colpa e] non resta se non la ruggine del peccato, del quale poi si purificano nel fuoco, mediante la pena; [e così]

(3) “purificate d’ogni colpa, unite a Dio per volontà [[veggiono chiaramente Dio, secondo il grado che fà lor conoscere, e]] veggiono [ancora] quanto importi la fruizione di Dio, e che l’anime sono state create a questo fine.” (Pp. 173c, 174a.)

According to Catherine’s unvarying authentic teaching, souls go to Purgatory precisely because they are not already “pure as when God created them,” and they there do not “clearly see God.” Indeed, the second sentence here distinctly states, that “there” still “remains” in them “the rust of sin,” from which they “there” purify themselves. And the two “veggiono” conclusions of the third sentence contradict each other: for if they see clearly how much the fruition of God matters to them, then they do not as yet possess that full fruition, i.e. they do not as yet clearly see God.

These glosses are made entirely intolerable by a third Redactional sentence here, which announces “an example,” or figure, of the doctrine here conveyed, and then proceeds to do so in the beautiful Chapter Sixth. For Chapter Sixth gives us the simile of the One Bread, “the bare sight of which would satiate all creatures”; and the division of all souls into those “in Purgatory,” which “have the hope of seeing the Bread”; those in Hell, which “are bereft of all hope of ever being able to see the Bread”; and, by implication, those in Heaven, that see and satiate themselves with the Bread. And “the nearer a man were to get to the Bread, without being able to see it, the more would the natural desire for this Bread be enkindled”; “not having it, he would abide in intolerable pain” (p. 174b, c).

III. Five Conclusions Concerning The History Of The “dicchiarazione.”

1. The authentic sayings, collected throughout the Seventeen Chapters, all belong, at earliest, to the last nine, and indeed probably to the last two or three, years of Catherine’s life.--At the latter date Vernazza had been her close friend for twelve, and Marabotto, her Confessor for eight years. To one or the other, or to both, we undoubtedly owe the first writing down of this, originally small, nucleus of authentic sayings,--probably in (many cases) on the very day when Catherine uttered one or several of these thoughts.--The One-Bread-Simile Chapter, and one or two other passages, contain slightly varying doublets of the same saying, the registration of one of which may well be by Vernazza, and the registration of the other by Marabotto, each of these two auditors getting, perhaps, addressed by Catherine in a slightly different form, or himself looking out for that part or context of a saying which specially appealed to him, or slightly, and probably quite unconsciously, giving to the identical declaration a somewhat differing characteristic “colour” of his own. Vernazza is, however, doubtless the first chronicler of the majority of these sayings, in 1508-1510.

2. These sayings must have been collected together in a first shorter Dicchiarazione (equivalent to the greater part of the present first seven chapters and possibly one or two other passages), not long after her death, probably simultaneously with, but separately from, a short “Conversione” account. The first public Cultus in May-July, 1512, giving rise as it did to a painter’s picture of her, cannot have failed to suscitate some such manuscript booklets. This short Dicchiarazione will already have had the first sentence of the present introduction prefixed to it, and this sentence, so like and yet somewhat unlike Battista’s writings (Battista who was as yet only fifteen), will have been written by Ettore. These Chapters already, I think, contained the “colpa di peccato” and other technically theological passages, probably introduced by Marabotto; but the Chapters will as yet have been free from the theological “corrections,” which still come away too easily from the rest of the text (in contradistinction to the difficulty in the analysis of its other, much more resistant components) not to be considerably younger than these latter.

3. The “corrections” insist upon three doctrines, in each case in demonstrable contradiction with Catherine’s authentic teaching: the complete absence of all guilt, sin, imperfection, even though merely passive and habitual, in the soul, even in its first moment in Purgatory; the simply vindictive, not curative, hence static, nature of the suffering throughout the soul’s prison time, right up to this time’s sudden cessation; and this soul’s clear vision of God from first to last. Thus no increase or extension of purity, no work of love, is effected in or by the soul during, or by means of, its Purgatory.--Now Pope Leo the Tenth, in his Bull Exsurge Domine of May 16, 1520, against Luther, reprobated four propositions concerning Purgatory; and the second part of the second of these propositions declares: “It is not proved, by any reasons or by any texts of Scripture, that the souls in Purgatory are out of a state capable of merit or of an increase of Charity.”[457] The Censure of this doctrine must have seemed to menace Catherine’s teaching on this same point. For she nowhere indeed declares these souls to be capable of meriting, nor does she teach that there is any increase in the intensity of their love; yet by the one free act of self-determination to Purgatory, and by the gradual extension of this determination of active love throughout all the regions and degrees of the passive will and habitual dispositions of the soul, her teaching must, to an at all nervous theologian, have seemed, at the time, to come perilously near to the admission, respectively, of merit and of an increase of love in the Beyond. And the degree in which the fight with nascent Protestantism was raging precisely around such Purgatorial questions, and the solemnity of the Pope’s condemnation, at this early stage of Catherine’s Cultus and reputation, must have combined to render the introduction of these disfiguring glosses an apparent necessity.--I take them to have been introduced soon after Vernazza’s death in 1524, hence some twelve years after the constitution of these seven Chapters; presumably by the Inquisitor to the Republic of Genoa for the time being.

4. The addition of the last ten Chapters to the first seven Chapters, and of the second sentence to the Introduction, will have occurred some time after the constitution of the Vita-proper, say, in 1531 or 1532; but, in any case, was not due to Vernazza or Marabotto. And the glosses will have been introduced into these ten Chapters quasi-automatically, and simply as a consequence to the very deliberate “corrections” of those previous seven Chapters; for now Catherine’s reputation had had another twelve years in which to grow, and the Bull had been studied for another twelve years.--But no such glosses were introduced into the Vita-proper, either as to this, or indeed, perhaps, any other point. For this Vita treated only quite incidentally of the other-world Purgatory; and this, in those times specially delicate, subject-matter had received every precautionary attention in the Dicchiarazione professedly devoted to it. And other, intrinsically more important points, even though treated here with great boldness, were felt to remain as open as before.

But we must now get on to this Vita-proper.

IV. The “vita”-Proper, Its Divisions And Parts, And Chief Secondary And Authentic Constituents.

1. The three great divisions, and their clearly secondary parts.

The Vita-proper, as we now have it in print, falls into three great Divisions, of respectively two, four, and two parts each. The first and last Divisions hold by far the greater amount of the primary material; whereas the middle Division only gives us here and there chapters or paragraphs of admirable freshness and beauty.

The eight opening Narrative Chapters, pp. 1b to 21b, and the next nine Chapters of Discourses, pp. 21b to 50c, form the two parts of the first Division, each part being more or less complete and homogeneous within itself; and yet they are together in marked contrast to most of the materials of the following Division. It is within the limits of this first Division, and probably even of its first part, that must subsist the materials, predominantly derived from Ettore Vernazza, of that first “Conversione”-booklet of 1512.

The second Division opens out with the most important Narrative Chapter Nineteenth, pp. 51a-53c; but the remaining seven Chapters of this its first part (pp. 53c-70a), contain very little which is not findable elsewhere in a more primary form. Then follow, as a second part, seven Chapters of a bewildering variety of form: three are largely Narrative and important (Chapters XXVII to XXIX, pp. 70b-77b); the next (Chapter XXX, pp. 77b-79a) gives Discourses, only in part authentic; the next again (Chapter XXXI, pp. 79b-83c) is chiefly Narrative and important; Chapter XXXII, pp. 83c-88b, is now one long Discourse which incorporates some short but important authentic sayings; and Chapters XXXIII to XXXV (pp. 88c-96b) are, the first, a Narrative; the last two, Discourses; and, in all three cases, preponderatingly secondary and negligible. Then a third part consists of a largely Narrative Chapter of delightful authenticity and freshness (Chapter XXXVI, pp. 94b-96b); a tryingly composite but valuable Narrative Chapter (Chapter XXXVII, pp. 96b-97c); and an important Narrative Chapter with dates (Chapter XXXVIII, pp. 98a-100a). And, as a fourth part, we get a group of three Chapters, of which the first and last contain highly original matter (Chapters XXXIX-XLI, pp. 100a-103b, 106a-111b), but of which the middle one (Chapter XL, pp. 103c-105c) can safely be neglected. Ettore’s chroniclings are again strongly represented in this Division.

And the last Division consists, in its first part, of five important Narrative Chapters. (Chapters XLII-XLVI, pp. 111c-126c), clearly by various hands, and of markedly manifold tone and emotional pitch. And the second part consists of the six Chapters concerning her Passion, Death, and Cultus (Chapters XLVII-LII, pp. 127a-166a), of which we can safely neglect Chapter XLVII, pp. 127a-131c (wanting in the MSS., and a mere collection of passages still present, in a more primitive form and connection, in other parts of the Vita); and pp. 161c-166a (which treat of events subsequent to Catherine’s death). This last Division gives the most important of the communications that can with certainty be attributed to Marabotto. And as Division First’s first part, Catherine’s Conversion, will have existed very early in a separate form, and its second part will have, if added later, been thus added very soon; so this Third Division’s second part, Catherine’s Passion, will early have existed separately; and to this will have been prefixed, still in early times, the Narrative Chapters XLII, XLIII, XLV, and XLVI of the first part, all dealing with matters occurring from 1496 onwards.

2. Five main additions of the Printed Vita as against the extant MSS.

We have now reduced the bulk of the Vita-proper by 34½ pages, but the remaining 132 pages are capable of further reduction. For the Printed Vita, as compared with the MSS., contains, besides the already rejected Chapter XLVII, five main additions.

The first addition (in the order of the Printed Vita) is the beautifully vivid and daring, certainly historical scene between Catherine and the Friar (Chapter XIX, pp. 51a-53b), a record doubtless due to Ettore Vernazza, and which will have been omitted by the Franciscan Scribe of MS. A from scruples with regard to the doctrine implied.

The second is Chapter XLIV, omitted from p. 117b to p. 121b,--Catherine’s declarations as to her lonely middle period and the account of her Confessions to Don Marabotto, undoubtedly here recorded by this Priest; matter again which the Franciscan Friar might well consider dangerously daring, but which, we have seen, had not yet been incorporated with the Franciscan’s Prototype, perhaps indeed not with any copy of the then extant Vita.

The third is the fourth paragraph of Chapter XLVIII, p. 133b, giving a new and beautiful description of the “Scintilla” experienced by Catherine on November 11, 1509. It is of late composition, and Battista Vernazza is no doubt its author.

The fourth consists of three new paragraphs to Chapter XLIX, descriptive of Maestro Boerio’s three-weeks’ attempt at curing her, sometime in May-July 1510 (pp. 146c-147c), and of evidently the same Physician’s visit in his scarlet robes on September 2 (p. 154b). Both passages, of transparent authenticity and still but little enlarged, will have been contributed by this Physician’s Priest-son Giovanni Boerio, who, dying in his seventies, in 1561,[458] must himself have been twenty at the time of his Father’s attendance, and may well have had his Father’s contemporary notes before him when composing these interestingly vivid contributions.

And the fifth brings three new paragraphs for the events of September 4, 1510 (Chapter L, pp. 155b-156a), already referred to here, on pp. 209, 210.

The MSS. read: “On the following day [4th September], being in great pain and torment, she extended her arms in suchwise as to appear in truth a body fixed to a cross; so that, according as she was interiorly, so also did she show in her exterior, and she said--”[459] Hereupon follows a long prayer so obviously modelled throughout upon Our Lord’s High-Priestly prayer (John xvii, 1-26), and so elaborately reflective, that it cannot but most distantly represent anything spoken now by her who had been so interjectional in her remarks ever since August 16 (pp. 149b-155b).--Now the Printed Vita introduces between “… exterior,” and “and she said,” the following account: “Whence, it appears to me, we should indeed believe that the spiritual stigmata were impressed in that body which was so afflicted and excruciated by her Love; and although they did not appear exteriorly, they nevertheless could easily be recognized through the Passion which she felt; and that she suffered in her body that pain which her Love had suffered on the Cross: as we read of the Apostle (Gal. vi [17]) who bore the stigmata of Our Lord Jesus Christ, not indeed exteriorly but interiorly, through the great love and desire which he felt within himself for his Lord.”

“In proof that this holy woman bore the stigmata interiorly, a large silver cup was ordered to be brought in, which had a very high-standing saucer”; the cup was “full of cold water, for refreshing her hands, in the palms of which, because of the great fire that burned within her, she felt intolerable pain. And on putting her hands into it, the water became so boiling that the cup and the very saucer were greatly heated. She also sustained great heat and much pain at her feet, and hence she kept them uncovered; and at her head she similarly suffered great heat with many pains.”

Argentina is then quoted as having seen how “one of” Catherine’s “arms lengthened itself out by more than half a palm beyond its usual length; yet she never said one word as to whence such great pains proceeded. It is true that, on one occasion, before her last infirmity, she predicted that she would have to suffer a great malady, which would not be natural but different from other infirmities, and that she would die of it; and that, before her death, she would have within herself (in sè) the Stigmata and the Mysteries of the Passion: and this the aforesaid Argentina revealed later on to many persons.

“Now this Beata being thus, with her arms extended, in pains so great that she could not move.…” And then follows the “said” with the long prayer, as given in the MSS.[460] Stigmatization is thus attributed, but in two degrees and of two kinds. “Spiritual Stigmata,” like St. Paul, who had them “through the great love and desire which he felt within himself for his Lord”: this is the conception of the writer of the first paragraph, doubtless Battista Vernazza. “Stigmata impressed within her body,” intense interior physical pain, proved to be such by the intense interior physical heat, and this heat proved by the insides of Catherine’s hands causing cold water to boil: this was no doubt Argentina’s view--at least as time went on. And note the interesting combination of both views effected by the Redactor in the clauses “the spiritual stigmata were impressed in her body,” “through the Passion which she felt,” and “she bore the stigmata interiorly.”

V. Age And Authorship Of The Literature Retained

The next points to consider, in detail, are the authorship and antiquity of the literature retained by us.

1. Indications concerning Ettore Vernazza.

The indications to be found within the Vita begin at pp. 98c, 99a, where, after six lines concerning “several ecstasies” which occurred in one particular year and which Catherine herself had called “giddiness” (vertigine), we are told: “One day that she was talking with a Religious, that Religious said to her: ‘Mother, I beg you, for the glory and honour of God, to elect some person that would satisfy your mind, and to narrate to this person the graces which God has granted to you, so that, when you die, these graces may not remain … unknown, and the praise and glory due for them to God may not be wanting.’ And then this Soul answered that she was quite willing (ben contenta), if this were pleasing to her tender Love; and that, in that case, she would elect no other person than himself.” “And then, speaking on another occasion with the said Religious, she began to narrate to him her Conversion. And she acted similarly later on, as well as she could, with regard to many other things, which have been faithfully collected and put into the present book” (Vita, pp. 98c, 99a). The Preface, we know, mentions “two Religious, her devotees, her Confessor and a Spiritual son of hers, by whom the (matter of the) book has been collected from the very lips of the Seraphic Woman herself” (Vita, p. viiic): and we know, beyond all cavil, that these two men were Cattaneo Marabotto, the Priest, and Ettore Vernazza, the Lawyer. The passage just given, Vita, pp. 98c, 99a, unmistakably refers to one of these two; and the address of “Mother,” and the answer of “Son,” which occurs here immediately after the words translated (p. 99b), fit only Vernazza.

Now the opening words of the first two, closely interconnected, paragraphs of that Chapter XXXVIII (Vita, p. 98a, b) are: “In the year 1507”; the first words of the next two paragraphs, which also belong together, are: “It happened in a certain year.” The subjects and sequences of those two sets correspond pretty closely; and the second set is in simple juxtaposition to the first set. Yet the sets differ: the first contains a definite date but no allusion to any interlocutor, and Catherine moves about and overcomes her scruples by intercourse with God alone; the second is without a date but refers repeatedly to a witness, and Catherine is physically quiescent and solicits spiritual help from a disciple. Each set is, in its own way, equally vivid and peculiar: they can hardly be doublet narratives of the same event.--The second set, then, gives a later stage of her health and dispositions; and the “ecstasies,” “giddinesses,” which left her “half dead,” must refer to the “assault” of November 11, 1509, which left many other, similarly deep, impressions and definite records. The penultimate paragraph of the Printed Vita (p. 165c) reads in the MSS.: “Now those who saw and observed these wonderful operations during fifteen years;” and this (since Marabotto did not become Catherine’s Confessor nor presumably know her, at least intimately, till 1499) must refer specially to Vernazza, Thus 1495 marks the beginning of his intimacy with Catherine; in 1497 he could ask Catherine to stand God-mother to his first child; and the Vita gives, pp. 122c, 123a, “what she said after her husband’s death,” hence in the autumn of 1497, “to a spiritual son of hers,” who is certainly Vernazza, “concerning the character of Messer Giuliano.”--The conversation of November 1509 is, then, not the starting-point of Vernazza’s observations, or even of his registrations, but only the date from when Catherine began deliberately to tell him about her past history.--All this gives us the following canon: whatever in the Vita is attributable to Vernazza can, if its subject-matter is posterior to 1495, have been observed and written down by him, then and there, as it occurred; if its subject-matter is prior to 1495, then we have what, at best, is derived from Catherine’s memory and communication to him. And there exists no earlier trained and reliable witness of Catherine’s spiritual dispositions and sayings than Vernazza from this date onwards.

Two beautiful scenes and compositions have undoubtedly been directly witnessed and contemporaneously chronicled by Vernazza,--the conversation about Love and Hell, with Ettore as the chief interlocutor after Catherine herself (Vita, pp. 94b,-95c), between July 1495 and 1502; and the Scene with the Friar, which it is best to put back to the end of 1495 or the beginning of 1496, since it is more natural to take her words, “if the world or a husband,” as referring to a still living husband.--We can also, I think, attribute to the same intermediary the authentic central part of the analogous discourse as to “that corrupt expression: you have offended God,” Chapter XXXIX, pp. 100c-101b.--And it is Ettore again through whom, doubtless, we derive all but everything that is authentic in the Dicchiarazione, as we have already found.

Vernazza’s contributions to the second category, i.e. reminiscences of Catherine brought to paper by him, are also very important and more numerous; but they are, I think, generally worked up with parallel accounts due to Marabotto, as we shall presently note.

2. Indications of Marabotto.

The locus classicus concerning Don Cattaneo appears in the Vita in Chapter XLIV, p. 117b, of which long and most important Chapter (pp. 116c-121b) only the first seven lines occur in the MSS. The passage (omitting a highly glossed bracketed clause and a parallel, secondary half-sentence) runs: “After this, ( ), the Lord gave her a Priest (Prete) to have a care of her soul and body. [ ] He was elected Rector of the Hospital in which she abode, and he was wont to hear her Confessions, to say Mass for her, and to give her Communion, as often as she liked. This Priest (Sacerdote), at the request of various spiritual persons devoted to this Beata, has written a considerable part (buona parte) of this work, having many times tempted her on and incited her to tell him of the singular graces which God had given her and had effected within her [; especially since (massime che) this Religious, owing to long experience and intercourse, knew and understood particularly well (molto bene) the sequence of her life].”

This introductory authentication is followed by the highly reliable and important matters described in my Chapter IV,--her manner of Confession; the incident of the perfume from Marabotto’s hand; her solemn declaration as to her twenty-five years of complete interior loneliness with God; and the murmurs of some of her friends as to the closeness of their intimacy, and his consequent absence from her for three days. All this (pp. 117b-121b) was certainly written down by Marabotto himself, at the time, in substantially its present form.

Although this whole series now opens out with “la prima volta che si volle confessare a questo Religioso” (p. 117c), the words “a questo Religioso” are doubtless an addition of the Redactor. For everywhere else Marabotto is always “il Confessore” or “suo Confessore,” whilst “un Religioso” is reserved for Vernazza: and wherever she uses any specific appellation to the Confessore,--a thing which is quite exceptional,--she says “Padre”; whilst where she does so to the Religioso, she says “Figliuolo.”[461] And, wherever the Confessore addresses her, there is never any specific address; whereas the Religioso constantly addresses her as “Madre.”[462]

As to “Confessore,” we get one mentioned as Confessor to the Convent of S. Maria delle Grazie in 1460, p. 2b the same or another Confessor of the same Convent in 1473, p. 4a, c, is called “buon Religioso.” Both these men, or this one man, heard Catherine’s Confessions at those dates. But, a most important point: all the other Confessore-passages throughout the book refer to after 1499, and to Marabotto alone. For this is a list of them all. On p. 7c: here she is “so gravely ill, as to be unable to eat,” a thing belonging to the times after 1499. (In events of an obviously earlier date,--her fervent Communions,--pp. 8a, c, we get not “Confessore” but simply “Sacerdote.”) On p. 10c: here “to test her, he commanded her to eat,” an action of which the results are described on pp. 117b, 119c. On page 108b: but here her fasting is liable to damage her health, which points to after 1501. On p. 113b: but here the Confessore remains her sole aid, as in the accounts referring to Marabotto in January 1510 and shortly before, pp. 120a, 121b; 120b, 139a-c. On p. 115b: but here the possessed “spiritual daughter” is certainly Mariola Bastarda, who did not live with Catherine till after Giuliano’s death in 1497. On pp. 117b-121b: the Confessore is throughout avowedly Marabotto, and a treble indication here forces us to date his Confessorship from not before 1499. The remaining “Confessore”-references,--pp. 130a, 138c, 139a, b, c; 140b, c; 143c, 156c, 157b,--are all explicitly subsequent to 1501 and pertinent to Marabotto alone.

Now there is no good reason for doubting Marabotto’s original, and still largely unmodified, authorship of all the above passages in which he himself occurs. Only as to the scene with the possessed Mariola, Chapter XLIII, pp. 115a-c, have I long hesitated to attribute something so insignificant in substance, and yet so pompous in form, to Marabotto, either as action or as composition. Yet I have ended, for the reasons given in my Chapter IV, by thinking that, after all, this scene does go back, more or less, to him.

3. References to other witnesses.

There are but few other references to witnesses in the Vita. On p. 124a, in the account of Suor Tommasa Fiesca, there are “the Nuns of her first and second Monastery”--San Silvestro and the Monastero Nuovo,--and “secular persons, her familiar and devoted friends.” I take this admirably vivid and naïve account, pp. 123b-124b (which exists in the MSS. without this sentence and Tommasa’s death-date, 1534), to rest upon Suor Tommasa’s own reminiscences of her heaven-storming cousin, but to be the composition of Battista Vernazza.--And on p. 158c “several of the ten Physicians,” who assembled by Catherine’s bedside on September 10, 1510, “are still alive in this year (1551),” but the very vague account of their examination is no doubt due to a non-medical pen.

Vi. Analysis Of The Conversion-Narratives

Let us now take the first of the four Narrative Passages in which the largest or clearest conflations of original documents and of subsequent glosses are traceable: the Conversion-Scene and subsequent Apparition, March 1473; the “Scintilla”-Experience, November 11, 1509; the Temptation of August 23, 1510; and her Death on September 14, 1510. Roman and Arabic numerals indicate the probable provenances from different contributors, and from different narratives of each contributor, respectively; square brackets indicate glosses; and E, C, and B stand respectively for the handiwork of Ettore Vernazza, of Cattaneo Marabotto, and of Battista Vernazza.

THE TWO CONVERSION-SCENES, pp. 4a-5c.

(a) In the Chapel.

I. 1. Il giorno dopo la Festa di San Benedetto [ad istanza di sua sorella monaca] andò Caterina [per confessarsi d’] al Confessore di esso Monistero, benchè non fosse disposta a confessarsi: ma la sorella le disse, “almanco vattegli a raccommandare, perchè è buon religioso”; ed, in verità era un uomo santo. 2. Subitochè se gli fù inginocchiata innanzi, ricevè una ferita al cuore d’immenso amore di Dio, con una vista così chiara delle sue miserie e diffetti e della bontà di Dio, che nè fù quasi per cascare in terra.

II. 1. Onde per quei sentimenti d’immenso amore e delle offese fatte al suo dolce Iddio, fù talmente tirata [per affetto purgato] fuor delle miserie del mondo, che restò quasi fuor di sè; I. 3. e [perciò] internamente gridava con ardente amore: “non più mondo, non più peccati.” Ed in quel punto, se ella avesse avuto mille mondi, tutti gli avrebbe gettati via.

III. Per la viva fiamma del infocato amore che essa sentiva, il dolce Iddio impresse in quell’ anima, e le infuse, in un subito, tutta la perfezione per grazia: onde la purgò di tutti gli affetti terreni, la illuminò col suo divin lume, facendola vedere coll’ occhio interiore la sua dolce bontà, e finalmente in tutto la unì, mutò e trasformò in sè, per vera unione di buona volontà, accendendola da ogni parte col suo vivo amore.

[Stando la Santa per quella dolce ferita quasi alienata da’ sensi innanzi al confessore e senza poter parlare]

I. 4. Nè avvedendosi il Confessore del fatto, per caso fù chiamato e levasi. Dappoichè assai presto fù retornato, non potendo ella appena parlare per l’intrinseco dolore ed immenso amore, allo meglio che potè gli disse: “Padre, se vi piacesse, lascerei volontieri questa Confessione per un’ altra volta”: e così fù fatto. 5. Si parti dunque Caterina e retornata a casa [si sentì così accesa e ferita di tanto amor di Dio, a lei interiormente mostrato colla vista delle sue miserie, che pareva fuors di sè] ed entrata in una camera la più segreta che potè, ivi molto pianse [e sospirò con gran fuoco].

[In quel punto fù istrutta intrinsecamente dell’ orazione, ma la sua lingua] I. 6. non poteva dir altro salvo questo: “O Amore, può essere che mi abbi chiamata [con tanto amore] e fattomi conoscere in un punto quello che colla lingua non posso esprimere?” II. 2. Le sue parole in tutti quei giorni altro non erano che sospiri, e così grandi che era cosa mirabile: ed aveva una si estrema contrizione [di cuore] per le offese fatte a tanta bontà, che se non fosse stata miracolosamente sostenuta, sarebbe spirata e crepatole il cuore.

(b) In the Palace.

I. 7. (?) [Ma volendo] il Signore [accendere più intrinsecamente l’amor suo in quest’ anima ed insieme il dolore dei suoi peccati,] se le mostrò in ispirito colla Croce in spalla, piovendo tutto sangue, [per modo che la casa le pareva tutta piena di rivoli di quel sangue,] il quale vedea essere tutto sparso per amore: il che le accese nel cuore tanto fuoco, che nè usciva fuor di sè [e pareva una cosa insensata per lo tanto amore e dolore che ne sentiva.]

II. 3. (?) [Questa vista le fù tanto penetrativa, che] le pareva sempre vedere (e cogli occhi corporali) il suo Amore tutto insanguinato e confitto in Croce; e perciò gridava: “O Amore, mai più, mai più peccati.” I. 8 (?) Se le accese poi un odio di sè medesima, che non si poteva sopportare, e diceva: “O Amore, se bisogna, sono apparechiata di confessare i miei peccati in pubblico.”

I. 9. Dopo questo fece la sua [generale] Confessione con tanta contrizione e tali stimoli, che le passavano l’anima [. E benchè] Iddio [in quel punto che le diede la dolce ed amorosa ferita, le avesse perdonato tutti i suoi peccati, abbrucciandoli col fuoco del suo immenso amore; nondimeno volendo soddisfare alla giustizia, la fece passare per la via della soddisfazione] disponendo che questa contrizione [lume e conversione] durasse [ro] circa quattro [dici] anni, in capo a quali [, poichè ella ebbe soddisfatto, le fù levata della mente la predetta vista in forma tale che] mai più non vide neppure una minima scintilla dei suoi peccati, come se tutti fossero stati gettati nel profondo del mare.

There is a striking parallelism of sights, sayings, and their sequences, between the dated events in the Convent-Chapel, and the undated ones in the Palace, divided off by the passage II 2, with its vague “all these days.” Both sets have a “Vista,”--partly of “offese fatte”; have next “and hence she cried ‘no more sin’”; and the first concludes with a wish, expressed to the Confessor, to put off her Confession, and the second with an exclamation, addressed to God, of her readiness for even a public Confession.--This Christ-Vision, or any other Passion-scene, is nowhere implied or referred to in all her recorded post-Conversion sayings and doings; the legendary instinct, we know, developed, from this single adult occupation with the Passion, the “interior stigmatization” story; and in the Palace Narrative itself there has been, in any case, some uncertainty, shifting, or doubling of the tradition as to that figured vision,--for the actual vision cannot have represented Christ both as walking and carrying His Cross, and as motionless and hanging upon it. Are the two sets, then, but two variant records of one sole event, and is the second but the result of an early determination to find more of an historical, pictorial element in Catherine’s spiritual experiences than had actually been present in it?

Yet strong reasons operate on the other side. We have one, and only one, absolutely certain detail from her childhood, the presence, in her bedroom, of a Pietà (Vita, pp. 1c, 2a); yet nowhere, in her subsequent actions and sayings, is there the slightest allusion to this picture-scene which had so deeply moved her childhood.--And the most vivid and characteristic details of the two Conversion-experiences are delicately different in each set.

The first set, (a), consists of three documents. Document I 1, 2; 3; 4-6 continues the story of Catherine’s relations with the “monistero” of the Madonna delle Grazie, and of her prayer on the eve of St. Benedict’s day, told on pp. 2b-3c; is most vivid, precise, and homely; and is doubtless the work of E. Document II 1, 2 is a colourless parallel to I 2, 6; yet in I 2 she sees her own miseries, in II 1 she is drawn out of the miseries of the world: II is thus probably an ancient doublet, and, if so, then part of some annotations by C. And document III is obviously from yet another, later, hand,--that which produced the originally tripartite scheme of Catherine’s Convert life (pp. 5c-bc), for the three “la” (her, Catherine) after “onde” of III require but three stages of perfecting; whilst now the printed text attempts (by italicizing “unì” and “transformò”) to produce four stages, in keeping with the following, now quadripartite scheme. The second set, (b), begins as though nothing had yet happened or as if, at least, the past event had been but a step towards something greater. Yet precisely such series of apparent anti-climaxes occur demonstrably elsewhere in her life.--The account of II 3 (?) is irreconcilably different from that of I 7 (?): for there Christ is moving, carrying His Cross and raining blood upon objects not Himself, here He is motionless, probably dead, affixed to the Cross, and His blood has merely stained His own body; there she sees “in the spirit,” here “with bodily eyes”; there, for some minutes, here continuously; there, followed by speechless ecstasy, here, by penitential exclamations. And this II 3 (?) is not a later stage of the vision given in I 7 (?), as though, dissolving-view-like, the Moving Christ had shaded off into a Fixed Christ, (although Catherine’s Viste give us such changes, e.g. that of the Divine Fountain’s successive self-communications, Vita, pp. 32c, 33a). For the very Redactor treats the second “Vista” as simply identical with the first; and Battista, we saw, so entirely realizes the contradiction between the two accounts, as to make two quite distinct events out of them (Dialogo, pp. 209b, 211a, b).--This second account can hardly be a gloss, for Battista already found and respected it when at work on the Giustiniani-book of 1529 or 1530, and was thus powerfully influenced by it when composing her Dialogo in about 1547. Indeed, this II 3 (?) has been the starting-point of all the stigmatization-glosses elsewhere, and can hardly be a gloss itself.--If all this be so, then either Catherine herself told the Christ-Vision to one disciple in two different ways; or told it to two companions, to each in a different way; or told the story so vaguely, or with such rich vividness and ambiguity, as to be differently understood by these two different hearers. Only one of the two latter alternatives would cover the facts, since no one writer could remain unaware of the contradiction between these two accounts. Hence we here require two writers, both considerably prior to Battista and much respected by her; only E and C answer to these tests; and, in that case, the Living Christ, seen in the Spirit, comes to us through E, and the Dead Christ, seen with the bodily eyes, reaches us through C.--And then comes I 8, of clearly first-hand authority, and belonging, I think, to E’s account.

I 9, concluding the Vita’s Conversion-story, must evidently contain some words, originally belonging to document I, concerning her Confession, since I has already twice (I 4, I 8) referred to such a coming Confession. And such words are here: “Dopo questo--l’anima”; “Iddio disponendo-circa quattro anni” (this is the original text here); and a vivid description of her suddenly ceasing to see her particular sins.

Vii. The Sayings-Passages: Three Tests For Discriminating Authentic From Secondary Sayings

As to the Sayings, it is obviously more difficult to decide as to their provenance, authenticity, and date of enunciation and literary fixation. Yet three tests have proved solidly helpful towards gaining a respectably large collection of texts which can, with high historical probability or even certainty, be reasoned from as truly Catherine’s, even in their form.

1. Rhythm.

There is the test of rhythm and rhyme, since the Vita describes her “wont” of “making rhymed sayings in her joy,” and gives irrefragable proofs of her deep love of Jacopone’s poetry.[463] The still obviously rhymed or rhythmical sayings all answer to the other tests of genuineness; and many sayings now turned, by successive Redactors, into more or less sheer prose, can still be restored to their original poetic form. All these rhythmic, rhymed sayings have an utterly naïve, expansive tone, markedly different from the high-pitched redactional rhetoric in which they are now embedded, or again from Battista’s far more literary poetry: hence they cannot spring from this strong and busy intellect.--Thus she hears her Love say: “Chi di Mè | si fida, || di sè | non dubita”; possibly simply quoting, she says to her soul, “ama chi t’ama, | e chi non t’ama lascia”; and she sums up her life’s ideal as, “s’io mangio o bevo, | s’io [] taccio o parlo, | dormo o veglio; | s’io son in chiesa, in casa, in piazza: | s’io son inferma | o sana: | s’io muojo o non muojo: || ogni ora di vita mia, | tutto voglio che sia, | Dio e prossimo: || non vorrei potere ne volere, | fare, parlare nè pensare | eccetto tutto Dio.||”[464]--And there are her repetitive utterances, beginning with “non più mondo, non più peccati,” on March 22, 1472, and finishing with “andiàmo, non più terra, non più terra,” of August 25, 1510.[465]

2. Simplicity.

The second test requires the sayings to be short and simple, and to be followed, in the present text, by carefully clausulated doublets, or to be themselves now glossed and expanded. Such sayings occur specially in Chapters I to VIII; XVIII and XIX; XXVII to XXIX; XXXVI to XXXVIII; XLIV to XLVI; and in Chapter L. All these Chapters are largely narrative; can in great part be traced to Vernazza or Marabotto; and yield sayings readily attributable to her first Conversion-Period (which she doubtless recounted to those Friends), or to 1495-1510, the years of her intercourse with those intimates.

3. Originality.

And the third test consists of a daring originality, which, often softened and counteracted by the successive Redactors, precludes all idea of sayings expressive of it proceeding from any one of less authority than herself. These sayings again are all short; they too occur, all but exclusively, in the Chapters indicated and in the Dicchiarazione; they are all referable to the years 1495-1510, and to the registration first of Vernazza, and, later on, of Marabotto.

Very few of the sayings grouped together by me in my Chapter VI but satisfy at least two of these three tests.

VIII. Conclusion. At Least Six Stages In The Upbuilding Of The Complete Book Of 1551. The Slight Changes Introduced Since Then. First Claims To Authorship For Catherine.

1. The Stages.

It would appear, then, from the preceding analyses, that the successive stages in the composition and redaction of the Vita-Dicchiarazione complex of documents cannot have been fewer than the following:--

(i) Description and Registration, (1) first by Vernazza (1495-1510), (2) then also by Marabotto (1499-1510), more or less on the day of their occurrence and utterance, of Catherine’s actions, psycho-physical condition, and sayings expressive of her present spiritual experiences; and of her deliberate reminiscences concerning her past, especially her early Convert life. And similar contemporary Annotations, of much lesser volume, by (3) Suor Tommasa Fiesca, (4) Maestro Boerio, and (5) Don Giacomo Carenzio--the latter two, only since May 1510.

(ii) Redaction, probably in connection with the first public Cultus in the summer or autumn of 1512, of (1) a short Conversione-booklet, by Vernazza, perhaps already with slight contributions by Marabotto; (2) a short Dicchiarazione-booklet, also by Vernazza, probably as yet without the theological “corrections”; and (3) a short Passion-account, by Marabotto, with additions by Carenzio and, in substance, contributions by Argentina.

(iii) Redaction, after the death of the last of the two chief friends (Marabotto, in 1528), by Battista Vernazza, in 1529 or 1530, of a tripartite Vita, made up chiefly of II (1) and II (3), and a longer Dicchiarazione, now with the theological glosses,--these latter presumably from the pen of Fra Gaspar Toleto, O.P., the Inquisitor for the Republic of Genoa, or his successor, Fra Geronimo da Genova.

(iv) Partial change of the tripartite scheme of the Vita-Dottrina to a quadripartite one, early in 1548.

(v) Composition by Battista Vernazza of (1) the Dialogo, “Chapter” I alone, 1549; and then (2) of “Chapter” II (the present Parts II and III), in 1550.

(vi) Final Redaction of the text of the Printed Vita-Dicchiarazione-Dialogo, by means of all the preceding Documents, of which I (4) and possibly the Confession-descriptions of I (2) are now incorporated in the complete Vita for the first time; and, with the help of gossipy reminiscences of Argentina, possibly only now reduced to writing--in 1550, 1551. This final Redactor would again be Battista Vernazza.

2. The Changes.

Now from 1551 onwards this whole corpus has remained stationary, with the exception of purely formal modifications, such as one synonym for another; of, since 1737, her designation, on the title-page and in some other places, as “Santa Caterina da Genova,” and, throughout the text, as “Caterina” (only the Ancient Preface still retains the strictly correct “Caterinetta,” Vita, p. viii); and of two other, more important changes.

The first important change is the insertion (later than the fourth edition, Venice, 1601) at her death-moment,--between “e in quel punto” (after raising her forefinger heavenwards) “quest’ anima beata” and “con una gran pace … spirò,”--of the words: “dicendo: In manus tuas commendo spiritum meum.” This, intrinsically appropriate, last saying prevented henceforth her last, directly recorded, words from being something so little beautiful or characteristic as the “cacciate via questa bestia” with which all the MSS., and all the editions till at least 1601, had the fine courage to conclude the series of her sayings.

And the second change is a modification in the titles of the Book and of its several parts, of significance as indicating the growth of the legend attributing literary composition to her. The First Printed Edition (1551) has: “Book of the admirable Life and holy Doctrine of the Blessed Caterinetta of Genoa, in which is contained a useful and Catholic Demonstration and Declaration” (Elucidation) “of Purgatory”; and in the body of the Book this “Demonstrazione” appears as Trattato del Purgatorio, after the Vita-proper. But though the complete Dialogo appears here, behind the Trattato and divided into two “Chapters,” no mention is made of it on the title-page.--The Second Edition, Florence, 1568, adds to the title: “with a Dialogue between the Soul and the Body, composed by the same,” thus attributing, apparently, full literary authorship by Catherine to precisely that document with which she has least of all to do.--The Fourth Edition, Venice, 1601, simply adds, after “Dialogue,” “divided into two Chapters”; and the Fifth, 1615, modifies this to “three Chapters, between the Soul, (and) the Body; Humanity, (and) Self-love; the Spirit and the Lord God, composed by the Beata herself.”

The first French translation, Paris, 1598, puts the Dialogue before the Treatise, and still attributes Catherine’s direct authorship to the Dialogue alone. But the first Latin translation, Freiburg in Breisgau, 1626, has “Life and Doctrine of Blessed Catherine Adorna … (and) the two excellent Treatises of the same: 1. Dialogue between the Soul and the Body; 2. Concerning Purgatory.” Here both works are attributed to her, in exactly the same degree; but that degree is not clearly specified.[466]

I do not know how soon after the Sixth Edition, Naples, 1645, which is still without it, the quite unambiguous title of the Thirteenth Edition, Genoa, of about 1880: “Vita ed Opere di S. Caterina da Genova,” was adopted, nor how soon the present Second Title-page to the Trattato and Dialogo--“Works of St. Catherine”--was inserted. Yet even here the old correct name for the whole Book still appears as the heading on p. 1: Vita e Dottrina, although now, owing to that Second Title-page, “Doctrine” only covers the Doctrinal Chapters of the Vita-proper.

Thus not till 1568 was anything claimed as a composition of Catherine’s pen, and then only the Dialogue; and not till 1626 was the Treatise put into the same category as the Dialogue. Pope Clement XII, in his Bull of Canonization in 1737, declares the Dialogue to be her composition, whilst nothing is said concerning the Treatise, although the Bull itself most wisely follows the account of the Vita-proper, and softens down or ignores the different version of the Dialogue, in the two crucial cases of Catherine’s Vision of the Bleeding Christ and of the degree of her poverty.[467]

Footnotes

[1] The remainder of this section is for the most part expressed in the words of Prof. Edouard Zeller’s standard Philosophie der Griechen. I have used the German text.

[2] Rep. VII, 518b.

[3] Phaedo, 67c, 64, 69c.

[4] Theaetetus, 168a.

[5] Parmenides, 134c.

[6] Theaetetus, 176a.

[7] Luke ix, 51-56; Matt. xxvi, 51, 52; Mark x, 13-16; ix, 30-32.

[8] I have been much helped throughout the remainder of this section by many of the groupings and discussions of texts in Prof. H. J. Holtzmann’s Lehrbuch der N. T. Theologie, 2 vols., 1897. Inge’s Christian Mysticism, 1899, has also, in its pp. 44-74, furnished me with some useful hints.

[9] Matt. vi, 26, 28; Mark iv, 27, 28; Matt. xiv, 32; xvi, 2, 3.

[10] Matt. v, 17; vi, 1, 2, 5, 16; v, 23.

[11] Mark v, 25-29; vi, 56.

[12] Mark vi, 12, 13; i, 9, 10; Matt. iii, 13-19; Mark xiv, 22-25; Matt. xxvi, 26-29; Luke xxii, 15-19.

[13] Matt. v. 3, 8; xi, 25, 26, 28-30; Mark viii, 34, 35; Matt. xvi, 24, 25; x, 38, 39; Luke ix, 23, 24; xiv, 27; xvii, 33; Mark vii, 14, 15.

[14] Mark ix, 35, 36; x, 15; x, 14.

[15] Mark xii, 24-27; Matt. xxii, 29-33; Luke xx, 34-38.

[16] 1 Cor. xv, 3-8; xi, 23-26.

[17] Acts ii, 1-13; ix, 1-9; xxii, 3-11; xxvi, 9-18; 1 Cor. xii; xiv; 2 Cor. xii, 1-9.

[18] 1 Cor. i, 18, 22-25; ii, 14, 15.

[19] Col. i, 26; ii. 2; iv, 3, 4.

[20] 1 Cor. ii, 6; iii, 1.

[21] 1 Cor. ii, 10, 11.

[22] Eph. iii, 5; Rom. vi, 6, 8; viii, 11.

[23] Col. i, 15-17; Eph. i, 10; Col. iii, 11; 1 Cor. x, 4; Col. i, 15, 17; iii, 11; Eph. iv, 13; Gal. ii, 20; iv, 19; 2 Cor. iii, 18.

[24] John i, 14; 1 John i, 1; John v, 28, 29.

[25] 1 John i, 5; iv, 8; John iv, 24; iii, 16; vi, 44; xvii, 18.

[26] John xvii, 24; viii, 58; i, 3, 10; i, 9; 1 John i, 2; John i, 11; xiv, 6; x, 7-9; vi, 35; xv, 1.

[27] John iii, 3, 5; 1 John v, 10; John vii, 17; iii, 21.

[28] 1 John iii, 2, 5; v, 6.

[29] John ii, 23, 24; iii, 2; iv, 39, 42; xiv, 11; xx, 29.

[30] John iii, 36; v, 24; 1 John iii, 14; v, 20.

[31] John xiv. 20, 21.

[32] I have been much helped in this section by Prof. R. Eucken’s admirably discriminating, vivid book, Die Lebensanschauungen der grossen Denker, in its first and fourth editions, 1890, 1902.

[33] I have been much helped, towards what follows here, by pages 51 to 128 in M. Maurice Blondel’s great book, l’Action, 1893.

[34] I have found much help towards formulating the following experiences and convictions in Professor William James’s striking paper, “Reflex Action and Theism,” in The Will to Believe, pp. 111-114, 1897.

[35] I have been much helped towards the general contents of the next four sections by that profoundly thoughtful little book, Fechner’s Die drei Motive und Gründe des Glaubens, 1863, and by the large and rich conception elaborated by Cardinal Newman in his Preface to The Via Media, 1877, Vol. I, pp. xv-xciv.

[36] See, for this point, the admirably clear analysis in J. Volkelt’s Kant’s Erkenntnisstheorie, 1879, pp. 160-234. This book is probably the most conclusive demonstration extant of the profound self-contradictions running through Kant’s Epistemology.

[37] Works of St. John of the Cross, translated by David Lewis, Vol. I, ed. 1889, p. 298.

[38] Ibid. Vol. II, ed. 1890, pp. 541, 542.

[39] Œuvres de Fénelon, Paris, Lebel, Vol. IX, 1828, pp. 632, 652, 668.

[40] Tractatus de Gratia et Libero Arbitrio, cap. xiv, § 47.

[41] Summa c. Gentiles, 1-3, c. 70, in fine.

[42] For the recent instances, see Walter Elliott’s Life of Father Hecker, New York, 1894, p. 369; The Treatise on Purgatory, by St. Catherine of Genoa, with a Preface by Cardinal Manning, 1858, 1880, 19--; F. W. Faber’s All for Jesus, ch. ix, sections iii-v; Aubrey de Vere’s Legends and Records of the Church and the Empire, 1898, pp. 355, 356; George Tyrrell’s Hard Sayings, 1898, pp. 111-130.

[43] I have done my best to recover the day, or at least the month, but in vain. The baptismal register of her Parish Church (the Duomo) is, as regards that time, destroyed or lost.

[44] Not a shadow of reasonable doubt is possible as to the authenticity of these relics. Buried as she was in the Church of the Hospital of Pammatone, which latter she had first simply served, and then directed and inhabited, during thirty-seven years, her resting-place remained a centre of unbroken devotion up to her Beatification and Canonization, when the relics were removed but a few yards upwards, and placed in their glass shrine above and behind the altar in the Chapel of the Tribune--the Deposito di S. Caterina--where they have rested ever since. The special character of the brow and of the hands is still plainly recognizable. Of the four or five portraits mentioned by Vallebona, not one can be traced back to her lifetime.

In the Manuale Cartularii of the Pammatone Hospital, under date of 10th July 1512 (p. 62), (I quote from an authentic copy which I found among various documents copied out by the protonotary P. Angelo Giovo, and prefixed to his MS. Latin life of the Saint preserved in the Biblioteca della Missione Urbana, Genoa, No. 30, 8, 140,) there is an entry of money (7 lire 10 soldi, equivalent to about £7 10s.) paid by the administrators of the Hospital to Don Cattaneo Marabotto, her Confessor and Executor: “Ratio sepulturae q(uondam) D(ominae) Catarinettae Adurnae pro diversis expensis factis p(er) D(ominum) Cattaneum Marabottum, videlicet pro pictura et apportari facere lapides ipsius sepulturae.” The payment must have been either for expressly painting a picture, or for buying one already painted. We would, however, expect, in the former case, for the entry, in analogy with its final clause, to run: “pro pingi facere picturam.” In the latter case, we are almost forced to think of the picture as painted by some friend or disciple of the Saint, not for herself or for her relations or friends (for in that case it would hardly have been sold, but would have been left or given to the Hospital), but for his own consolation, or in hopes of its being eventually bought for the Hospital (and this may well have been done during her lifetime). In any case, this entry attests that a portrait of the Saint was in existence at the Hospital not two years after her death, and which was approved of by one of her closest friends. I take it that that portrait was placed on her sepulchral monument erected to her in January 1512 in the Hospital Church. If still extant, at least in a copy, that original or copy is, presumably, at the Hospital still.

Now there are but three pictures at the Hospital which claim to be portraits of her and are not, avowedly, copies. (1) The large oil painting of her standing figure, in the room adjoining the closet now shown as the place where she died, is clearly a late, quite lifeless composition. (2) The portrait-head in the Superioress’s room has been carefully examined for me by a trained portrait painter, who reports that the picture consists of a skilful ancient foundation now largely hidden under much clumsy repainting. (3) The picture reproduced at the head of this first volume, now in the sacristy of the Santissima Annunziata in Portorio (the Hospital Church), is clearly the work of one hand alone. It is without the somewhat disagreeable look present in the previous portrait, a look doubtless introduced there by the unskilful restoration. If then the sacristy picture is a copy of the Superioress’s picture, it will have been copied before the latter picture was thus repainted. This sacristy picture now hangs in an old-fashioned white-and-gold wooden frame with “Santa Catarina da Genova” in raised letters carved out upon it, a carving which is evidently contemporary with the frame’s make. The frame thus cannot be older than 1737, the year of Catherine’s canonization. But the portrait is without trace of a nimbus and carefully reproduces the very peculiar features of a particular face, head, and neck.

The original painting, thus still more or less before us in these two pictures, was evidently by no mean artist, and strikes a good connoisseur as of the school of Leonardo da Vinci (died 1519). There were several good painters of this school resident in Genoa about this time: Carlo da Milano, Luca da Novara, Vinzenzo da Brescia, and Giovanni Mazone di Alessandria. In the very year of her death, and still more two years later, she was publicly and spontaneously venerated as Blessed, and this Cultus continued unbroken up to the Bull of Urban VIII, of 1625. Hence the further back we place one or both of these portraits, the more naturally can we explain the absence of the nimbus. Everything conspires, then, to prove that one of these portraits goes back, in some way, to the picture painted for or bought by Marabotto, and which adorned her monument from 1512 to 1593.

I have striven hard but in vain to find some scrap of Catherine’s handwriting. The late Mr. Hartwell Grisell of Oxford, and the Cavaliere Azzolini dei Manfredi of Rome, both of them life-long collectors of Saints’ autographs, have kindly assured me that they have never come across a word even purporting to be in her handwriting. The fourteen wills and codicils made in her favour or by herself are all, according to the universal custom of the time and country, written throughout in a rapid, cursive hand by the lawyer himself alone, with certain slight signs (crosses or lines) for further identification of his authorship, but with no signature of any kind. There is no shadow of a true tradition as to any of her sayings or thinkings having ever been written down by herself. And the business books of the Hospital, kept, at least in part, by Catherine from 1490 to 1496, when she was its matron, have long ago been destroyed by fire.

[45] See Opere Spirituale della Ven. B. Vernazza, Genova, 1755, 6 vols., Vol. I, p. 3.

[46] Op. cit. p. 45.

[47] Although the Church and Monastery belonged, as Catherine’s Will of 1509 puts it, to “the Order of St. Benedict of the Congregation of Saint Justina in Padua”--a Congregation founded from Monte Cassino between 861 and 874--yet the community were evidently closely bound up with the Augustinian Canons Regular of the Lateran, or at all events with the foundation of the Convent of Augustinian Canonesses at Santa Maria delle Grazie. For the concession of Pope Nicolas V for the latter Convent is addressed to his “Beloved sons of Saint Theodore of Genoa” (Augustinian Canons) “and of Saint Nicolas in Boschetto.” And this close connection with, and action for, a Church and Convent so dearly loved by Catherine, will have necessarily been one of the causes of her affection for the Benedictine country-side Church.

[48] This evidently most authentic anecdote stands in the Vita, p. 3, in a doubly disconcerting context. Her prayers, always elsewhere recorded together with their effects, are here abruptly left, without any indication of their sequel; and the prayer for a three months’ illness is followed by an attempted explanation of it--that she had gone through three months of mental affliction. I take it that some other continuation has been suppressed, or, at least, that the present explanation owes its “three months” to a quaint determination to find at least a retrospective correspondence between her prayer and the happenings of her life.

[49] Vita, p. 4, first two paragraphs. I hope to show in the Appendix that we owe their getting on to paper to Ettore Vernazza, and that he derived their contents from Catherine herself, some time after 1495.

[50] Ibid. p. 4. § 3.

[51] Vita, p. 4, § 3; p. 5, § 1.

[52] Ibid. p. 5, §§ 2, 3. I have, together with the Bull of Canonization, deliberately omitted the first two sentences of § 3, which (with their representation of Our Lord as appearing not alive with the Cross, but dead on it, and with their repetition here of the exclamation as to “no more sins” of her conversion-moment) form an interesting doublet, with a complex and eventful history attaching to it. See Appendix to this volume.

[53] Vita, p. 5c.

[54] Vita, p. 5c.

[55] Vita, pp. 5c, 6,--as they appear in MS. “A.” This matter of these periods has given me much trouble, since there are two rival traditions concerning them to be found, really unreconciled, within the oldest documents of the Vita. The point is fully discussed in the Appendix.

[56] Ibid. cc. ix-xli, pp. 21c-111c.

[57] Vita, p. 7a.

[58] I take the above to have been the actual course of events, for the following reasons. (1) The text just given talks of “the desire for Holy Communion” having been given to her on that day in 1473, and of this desire “never failing her throughout the remainder of her life”; but it does not say, that the desire for daily Communion was given to her then, or that such a desire was continuously satisfied from the first. (2) On page 18b we have: “For about two years she had this desire for death, and this desire continued within her, up to when she began to communicate daily.” This passage, (which does not occur, here or with this Communion notation, in the MSS.,) originally without doubt referred to her later desire for death, carefully described by Vernazza (pp. 98a, b; 99b, c) as occurring in 1507--a description in the midst of which now occurs an account of certain death-like swoons which attacked her in 1509 (pp. 98c, and 133b; this latter experience is given in the MSS. as occurring in November 1509). Still this passage points to a tradition, or early inference, that the beginning of the daily communions did not synchronize with her conversion nor indeed with any other very marked date, but took place not many years after her return to fervour. (3) It is impossible to assume that she did not communicate at all during these first fourteen months, since there is no evidence that, even before her conversion, she had ever abstained from Holy Communion altogether, and since two Eastertides with their strict obligation recurred twice within this period. And if she did communicate repeatedly within this time, then this Lady-Day, three days after her conversion, would be a most natural occasion for one of these communions. And the desire and not its gratification would be mentioned, because the writer characteristically wants her conversion to be followed by something absolutely unintermittent, and such unintermittence attached, for the present, not to her communions themselves, but only to her desire for them.

[59] Vita, pp. 8, 9. A MS. list of conclusions concerning various points of her life, which is contained in the volume Documenti su S. Caterina da Genova, in the University Library of Genoa, declares this interdict to have lasted ten days, and in the year 1489. This information is probably correct.

[60] Ibid. pp. 8, 9.

[61] Vita, p. 7b.

[62] I have been unable to discover more than one case illustrative of the practice of that time and town. The Venerable Battista Vernazza, an Augustinian Canoness from 1510 to 1587, was not allowed daily Communion till the last years of her life. Opere, Genoa, 1755, Vol. I, p. 21.

[63] Vita, p. 116c. This passage opens a chapter full of the most authentic information, derived directly from Don Marabotto, her Confessor and close friend from 1499 onwards. I have, in her saying, read “Amore” for the “Signore” of the text of the Vita: my reasons will appear later on.

[64] Vita, pp. 119c, 116c, 117b.

[65] Ibid. p. 16b.

[66] Vita, p. 6.

[67] Ibid. p. 140b, c.

[68] See here, ch. v, § ii, 2 and 5.

[69] Denzinger’s Enchiridion Definitionum, ed. 1888, No. 363.

[70] Summa Theologica, III, supplem. quaest. 6, art. 3.

[71] Denzinger, op. cit. No. 780; Summa Theologica, III, supplem. quaest. 6, art. 3.

[72] Antonii Ballerini, Opus Theologicum Morale, ed. Palmieri, S.J., Prato, 1892, Vol. V, pp. 576-597. The large variations in the earlier practice of Penitence and Confession are admirably described in Abbé Boudhinon’s articles, “Sur l’Histoire de la Pénitence,” in the Revue d’Histoire et de Littérature Religieuses, 1897, pp. 306-344, 496-524.

[73] The reason for this lies in the emphatic, repeated conviction of R. 1, based, no doubt, upon the authentic documents (probably Vernazza’s memoranda) that he has incorporated, (a conviction which appears wherever his scheme was not tampered with by R. 2,) that her great penitential period lasted four years (so still on pp. 12b, 13b twice, 14c; and originally, no doubt, on p. 6a, and probably on p. 5c, where now we read “a little over a year,” and “about fourteen months” respectively). For not all the subsequent doctoring, that shall be traced later on as having been applied by R. 2 to some of the refractory passages, succeeds in making it likely that these penitential exercises outlasted the complete disappearance from her sight of her sins, which we have already quoted from the last likely passage. And it is equally improbable that formal and repeated Confession should not have formed part and parcel of the whole of this penitential time. On the other hand, “her Confessor,” on p. 7_7_, and “the spiritual physician” on p. 8a, indeed all other mentions of a Confessor throughout the Life subsequent to her first convert Confession, will be shown in the Appendix to apply exclusively to Don Marabotto, and to the last eleven years of her life.

[74] Vita, p. 56b, c. Her words as printed there are: “Io non vorrei grazia ne misericordia [nella presente vita] ma giustizia e vendetta del malfattore.” But the words I have bracketed are certainly a gloss; for she is speaking here out of the fulness of her feeling, without the intrusion of reflection. And as regards temporal punishment in the other life, and the soul’s attitude towards it there, she says in the Trattato, p. 180b: “Know for certain, that of the payment required from those souls (in Purgatory), there is not remitted even the least farthing, this having been thus established by the divine justice.… Those souls have no more any personal choice, and can no more will anything but what God wills.”

[75] Dialogo, pp. 203a, 208b.

[76] From the authenticated copies of the entries in the Cartulary, prefixed to the MS. Life of the Saint in the Biblioteca della Missione Urbana, Genoa, Nos. 30, 8, 14; and from careful copies of the still extant original Wills made for me by Dre. Ferretto, of the Archivio di Stato, Genova.

[77] Benedicti XIV, De servorum Dei Beatificatione et Beatorum Canonisatione, ed. Padua, 1743, Vol. II, p. 239a.

[78] Vita, pp. 56c; 3c; 95c; 124c, 125b; 122b.

[79] I have followed here, for my terminus a quo, Vallebona rather than the Bollandists (who prefer 1474 for the date of her conversion), because the ten years required between her marriage in January 1463 and her conversion, have fully elapsed by March 1473, and because the earlier we place her conversion, the larger is the number of lonely convert years that we can find room for, and the more nearly accurate her own allegation of twenty-five years of such loneliness becomes. If we follow the chronology given in the text we get a thoroughly understandable sequence: Catherine’s conversion, March 1473; Giuliano’s bankruptcy, summer of that year; his conversion under the joint influence of her zeal and of his misfortune; the decision of the couple to settle in the midst of the poor and suffering, whom they were now determined to serve, and the execution of this decision, between Michaelmas and Christmas of the same year.

[80] Vallebona, p. 55.

[81] Lived 1550-1614, worked heroically amongst the poor and pestilential sick, founded the Order of the Fathers of a Good Death, and was himself at Genoa, already gravely ill, in 1613.

[82] Vallebona, pp. 55, 56, shows, from Giuliano’s still extant will of 1497, how this income from his property in the Island of Scios alone amounted to about 30,000 modern Italian lire. We shall study the instructive growth of legend in the matter of Catherine’s “poverty” later on.

[83] Vita, p. 122b.

[84] Vallebona, pp. 106, 108.

[85] An interesting legendary development in the Dialogo of this very straightforward account of the Vita will occupy us later on.

[86] Vita, pp. 20, 21.

[87] Ibid. p. 12.

[88] See an interesting article: “De Suor Tommasina Fieschi,” by F. Alizeri, in Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria, Genova, 1868, pp. 403-415.

[89] The choice of subjects may possibly betray the influence of Catherine--of the Pietà which Catherine had so much loved as a child, and of her special devotion to the Holy Eucharist. But the particular form of the latter is in Tommasina unlike Catherine: had Catherine painted that symbolical picture, it would have referred to the moment, not Consecration, but of Communion.

[90] Vita, pp. 123, 124. Suor Tommasa did not die till 1534, over 86 years of age. I have been unable to discover her baptismal and her married names. We shall give some further details about Catherine’s probable relations with her, as writer and as painter.

[91] Vita, pp. 12, 13.

[92] Ibid. pp. 5, 6, 14.

[93] Ibid. p. 13.

[94] Vita, p. 6a.

[95] Ibid. 14b. I have introduced into my account a note of gradualness which is presented by no single (even authentic) document of the Vita, but which any attempt at harmonizing those documents imperatively requires. For there is, on the one hand, the repeated insistence upon her four years of particular penances for her own particular sins; and the vivid account of the final complete withdrawal of all sight of those sins and of all desire for those penances (Ibid. pp. 12b, 13c; 14b, 5c). And there is, on the other hand, the, apparently, equally authentic saying, as to her performing her penances, before the end of those years, without any particular object in view (Ibid. p. 14b). The only unforced harmonization is then to assume that a period, in which the sight of her particular sins had been at first all but unintermittent and then still predominant, had shaded off into another period, in which this sight occurred in ever fewer moments, until at last, at the end of four years, a day came on which it ceased altogether.

[96] The only possible dates are 1475 or 1476. For the change referred to takes place “some appreciable time (alquanto tempo) after her conversion” (Vita, p. 10a); and yet it must be early enough to allow of twenty-three Lents and Advents between the beginning of the change up to its end. And this end came at latest in 1501 (p. 127a), but probably in 1499, the year in which Don Marabotto became her Confessor. The Lent of 1496 (what remained of it on Lady-Day of that year) seems to me the more likely of the two possible starting-points.

[97] Vita, p. 10a.

[98] Ibid. p. 11a.

[99] Ibid. p. 10b.

[100] Vita, p. 8a.

[101] See below, next page.

[102] MS. “A,” p. 24, title to chapter vii; Vita, p. 10a. Twenty-five Lents are too many, because: (1) it is impossible to interpret the “alquanto tempo dopo la sua conversione,” when these fasts began (Ibid. p. 10a), as less than two years; and (2) it is impossible to bring her resignation of the Matronship of the Hospital lower down than the autumn of 1497, a resignation which the Ibid. (p. 96) tells us took place in consequence of her “great bodily weakness,” which forced her to “take some food after Holy Communion to restore her bodily forces, even though it were a fast day.” This allows for at most twenty-three Lents and twenty-two Advents.

[103] Ibid. p. 11b.

[104] Vita, p. 11c. I take the last section of this chapter (pp. 11, 12) to be a later, exaggerating doublet to this account.

[105] Ibid. p. 11b.

[106] Ibid. p. 14b, 5c.

[107] Vita, p. 16b.

[108] Ibid. pp. 23a, 49a.

[109] Ibid. p. 15b.

[110] Vita, pp. 15c, 97a, 15c.

[111] Ibid. pp. 15c, 16a, 47b.

[112] Ibid. p. 17b.

[113] I translate Frate predicatore thus, because the generally well-informed Parpera (in his Vita of the Saint, 1681) identifies him with Padre Domenico de Ponzo, an Observant Franciscan and zealous preacher. Boll. p. 161 D. In other places, also, the Vita makes use of purely popular and misleading designations:--p. 117b “questo Religioso” is Don Marabotto, Secular Priest; pp. 94c, 95a, c, 98c, 99b, “Religioso” is Vernazza, layman; p. 123b, “Sorelle” is a Sister and Sisters-in-law. Even the final Redactor in the Preface, p. viiic, calls the Secular-Priest Marabotto and the Layman-Lawyer Vernazza, “divoti religiosi.”

[114] Vita, pp. 51, 52. I take this episode to have occurred whilst the pair were still living out of the Hospital, because of the giunta in casa, which could hardly be applied to their two little rooms in the latter, whilst this sensitiveness to the opinion of others in this matter of love appears psychologically to be more likely during the early years of her convert life than from 1490 onwards, when, as Matron, she occupied a separate little house within the Hospital precincts (hence sua casa in Vita, p. 96b).

[115] I shall give reasons in due course for holding that the rooms still shown in the Hospital as Catherine’s are different from any ever occupied by herself, and that the little house within the Hospital grounds, in which she died in 1510, and into which she (and Giuliano) probably moved in 1490, has long ceased to exist.

[116] Vita, p. 20b. This characteristic fact has been “explained away” in the Dialogo. See Appendix.

[117] Vita, p. 20c.

[118] Ibid. p. 21c. All the books and papers of the Hospital referring to these years up to her death, were long ago destroyed by fire. I have, however, no doubt as to the, at least substantial, accuracy of the above account. For ten wills and assignments, drawn up, by various lawyers, in her presence, by her desire and at her dictation,--nine of them during the years of her weakness and illness,--are still extant, have been carefully copied out for me, and will be analyzed further on. They are all, except on one minor point, admirably precise, detailed, and wise.

[119] Vita, p. 21b.

[120] The above paragraph is based, with Vallebona, op. cit. pp. 67-72, upon the assumption that Catherine took the kind of share described in the labours of this time; since it is practically unthinkable that she should not have acted as is here supposed, given the combination of the following facts, which are all beyond dispute. (1) The fully reliable Giustiniani in his Annali describes, under the date of 1493, the incidents of the Pestilence as given above; tells us how well, nevertheless, the sick and poor were looked after by those who, from amongst the educated classes, remained amongst them; and affirms that the Borgo di San Germano, identical with the Acquasola quarter, was assigned to those stricken by the Pestilence. (2) Agostino Adorno, Giuliano’s cousin, was Doge of Genoa during this year. And the friendly terms on which the cousins were at this time are proved by Giuliano’s Will of the following year (October 1494). (3) Catherine had already been Matron of the Hospital for two years and more, and was to continue to be so for another three years. She certainly did not absent herself from her post at this time. And her Hospital directly abutted against the Acquasola quarter. (4) The details furnished by all the sources conjointly with regard to her six years’ Headship of the Hospital, are so extraordinarily scanty, that we must not too much wonder at the all but complete dearth of any allusion to a work which cannot have lasted longer than as many months. (5) The Dialogo, p. 222b, says: “She would go, too,” (i.e. besides visiting the sick and poor in their own houses,) “to the poor of San Lazzaro, in which place she would find the greatest possible calamity.” This clearly refers to some special (Lazar-, Leper-) Refuge, and the term can certainly cover aid given to the pest-stricken. And we shall see that the record here is derived from the writer’s father, Ettore Vernazza, the heroic lover of the pest-stricken poor.

I have, in my text, assumed that the Vita gives us an anecdote relative to her visiting the pestiferous sick of Acquasola. But to do this, I have had (a) to take “pestiferous fever” as equivalent to “Pestilence,” and to assume that it was not an isolated precursory case of the coming general visitation; (b) to omit, in the Vita’s text, “nell’ ospedale,” as an indication where the sick woman was; and “allo stesso servizio (dell’ ospedale),” as descriptive of where Catherine went back to: the anecdote may well originally have been without indication of the place in which the infection came to reduce her to death’s door.

[121] Inaugurazione della Statua d’Ettore Vernazza (1863), Genova, Sordo-Muti, 1867. Most of my facts concerning Ettore and his daughters are taken from this brochure, with its careful biographical Discourse by Avvocato Professore Giuseppe Morro (pp. 5-31), and its ample collection of admirable wills and financial decisions (pp. 61-94).

[122] Quoted ibid. p. 21. It is absolutely certain that these words refer to the pestilence of 1493, since the epidemic did not again visit Genoa till 1503, when Vernazza must have been over thirty years of age. And Battista’s silence as to any meeting between her Father and Catherine must not be pressed, since she nowhere mentions Catherine, and yet we know for certain how close and long was the intimacy between them.

[123] The words of the Vita, p. 105c, that those who wrote this Life “saw and experienced these wonderful operations for many years,” are given in MS. “A” as “during fifteen consecutive years (per quindici continui anni),” p. 366. All points to her having got to know Don Marabotto later than at this time and than Vernazza, yet only the one or the other of these two men can be meant; hence Vernazza must be intended here. But I have nowhere in the Vita been able to trace passages that could with probability be both attributed to Vernazza, and dated before the years 1498-1499.

[124] The precise date of Vernazza’s marriage is unknown. But since his eldest child was born on April 15, 1497, it cannot have taken place later than June 1496. The date of the sale of the Palazzo is derived from Catherine’s act of consent to the sale, preserved in the Archivio di Stato; a copy lies before me. The date of her resignation is derived from the Vita, p. 96b, which says she did so “quando fù di anni circa cinquanta.” This “circa” must no doubt here, as so often (as, e.g., on p. 97b, where “circa sessanta-tre” refers to November 1509, when she was sixty-two), be interpreted as “nearly fifty”: she was really forty-nine.

[125] The date of Tommasina’s birth comes from Ritratti ed Elogi di Liguri Illustri, Genova, Ponthenier; the date of the beginning of Giuliano’s illness from his Codicil of January 10, 1497, in which he declares himself as “languishing” and “infirm in body”; and the approximate date of his death from two entries in the Cartulary of the Bank of St. George, as to investments made by Catherine (copies in Documenti su S. Caterina da Genova, University Library, Genoa, B. VII, 31), of which the first, on July 14, 1497, gives her name as “Catterinetta, filia Jacobi di Fiesco et uxor Juliani Adorni”; and the second, on October 6, 1497, describes her as “uxor et heres testamentaria quondam fratris Juliani Adorni.”

[126] Vita, pp. 122b, c, 123a. I have preserved the descriptive account of Catherine’s prayer and of its effect, although it may possibly be but a later dramatized interpretation of the undoubtedly authentic report of her declaration made to Vernazza.--The immediate cause of Giuliano’s pain and impatience is given by Vita, p. 122b, as “una gran passione d’urina”; Vallebona, p. 73, declares the malady to have been a “cestite cronica” (tape-worm). I have omitted a short dialogue which is given, after her remark to Vernazza, as having occurred between her friends and herself, concerning her liberation from much oppression, and her own indifference to all except the will of God, because her answer is given in oratio obliqua, and is quite colourless and general; the passage is doubtless of no historical value: there never lived a less conventional, vapidly moralizing soul than hers.

[127] I work from careful copies specially made for me direct from the originals, by Dre. Augusto Ferretto, of the Archivio di Stato in Genoa.

[128] Inaugurazione, pp. 12, 13.

[129] I work again from a copy made by Dre. Ferretto from the original in the Archivio di Stato, Genoa.

[130] Marabotto’s help in business matters cannot, on any large scale, have begun till considerably later than his spiritual help. For whereas her Codicil of 1503 nowhere mentions Marabotto, her Will of 1506 leaves him, as we shall see, a little legacy; her Will of 1509 protects him against all harassing inquisition into the details of his administration of her affairs; and her Codicil of 1510 mentions only him and Don Carenzio. And it is incredible that business help should have been given throughout four years, and should have failed to gain any recognition in a document which commemorates so many lesser services. Marabotto was Rector in 1504 (I owe this date to the kindness of the Rev. Padre Vincenzo Celesia, author of the MS. Storia dell’ Ospedale di Pammatone in Genova, 1897); he was no more Rector in September 1509, but Don Jacobo Carenzio then held this post (Catherine’s Codicil of that date). Indeed already in March 1509 Marabotto seems not to have been Rector (Catherine’s Will of that date mentions him repeatedly, but nowhere as Rector). I take the Offices of Rettore (Master), and of Rettora (Matron), to have never been exercised simultaneously: but that, at any one time, there was always only a Rettore or a Rettora presiding over the whole Hospital. The Office of Rettora was abolished altogether in 1730 (Storia dell’ Ospedale, p. 1135).

[131] Vita, p. 117b.

[132] The Appendix will show that the “Religioso,” the “dolce figliuolo,” of pp. 94, 95, and the “Religioso, figliuolo,” of pp. 98, 99, must be Ettore Vernazza, and not Cattaneo Marabotto.

[133] I take all these facts from F. Federici’s careful MS. work, Famiglie Nobili di Genova, sub verbo Marabotto.

[134] Vita, p. 118, a, b. The first of these two passages is followed, in the same section, by two other slightly different accounts. The third of these is no doubt authentic, but refers to a still later period: it shall be given in its proper place. These two authentic accounts are (as is often the case in the Vita) joined together by a vague and yet absolute, unauthentic account, which declares that she told him all things (apparently on all occasions): a statement untrue of any time in her life.

[135] Vita, pp. 117c, 118a.

[136] Vita, p. 94c. The three lines which follow in the printed Vita are wanting in MS. “A” of 1547, p. 235, and are a disfiguring gloss of R 2.

[137] Vita, pp. 94, 95.

[138] Vita, p. 97b; 250, a, b.

[139] Angel, 50b; Cherub, 16a, 97b; Seraph, 130b.

[140] Vita, pp. 47b, 50a, 72b.

[141] Ibid. p. 115b.

[142] Ibid. p. 115b. There are three passages in the Vita referring to cases of possession. (a) Page 39b makes Catherine, in finishing up a discourse as to Evil being essentially but a Privation of Love, refer to a “Religioso” and to a “Spiritato,” and how the latter, “costretto” by the former to tell him what he was, “answered with great force: ‘I am that unhappy wretch bereft of love.’ And he (the evil spirit) said so with a voice so piteous and penetrating, that it moved me (Catherine) through and through with compassion.” The Possessed One is here a man. In MS “A” (p. 92) the story is still quite loosely co-ordinated with her speech; it was originally no doubt an independent anecdote; and was, possibly after a good many intermediary literary fixations, introduced into this place and connection by R 1 or R 2. (b) Page 115a, b, gives the story reproduced in the text above. The Possessed One is here a woman; and here the entire passage formally claims directly to reproduce an actual scene from Catherine’s life. (c) Page 162a gives an anecdote of a “figliuola spirituale” of Catherine, who had “il demonio adosso”; and tells how, at the time of her Mistress’s death, the “spirito” within her, “costretto,” declared that he had seen Catherine unite herself with God,--and all this with “tormento,” so that “pareva a sè intollerabile.” This passage clearly refers to the same person as that of passage b.

As to the historicity of the event described in the text, we must distinguish between the general fact of Catherine’s moral and psychic ascendency over Mariola, a fact as entirely beyond dispute as it is valuable and characteristic; and the occurrence of the scene as given above. As to the latter, the question of its value is of course distinct from that of its occurrence. Its supposed evidential worth is nil, since Mariola had been intimate with and devoted to Catherine for probably a good ten years at least. But the scene may nevertheless have actually occurred. It is true that the partly parallel case of the “Spiritato” shows how easily such a dramatization of doctrine or transference of experience can occur. And Denys the Areopagite and Jacopone da Todi are full of this comparison of the soul arrived at a state of union to an Angel, Cherub or Seraph; and these writers have greatly influenced not only Catherine’s authentic teaching, but also the successive amplifications and modifications of her life and sayings. And again we shall prove that certain legendary matters were inserted in the Vita at a late date--between 1545 and 1551. But these passages all claim to be based upon evidence supplied by Argentina del Sale; and they were evidently not accepted by Marabotto (1528); the literary form of these legends differs much from that of our passage; and if the former are still absent from MSS. “A” and “B,” the latter is already present in both. And we have such entirely first-hand proof for the curiously naïf, formal, exteriorizing character of Marabotto’s mind, as to leave it always possible that he did bring about a little scene of the sort here described. If so, Marabotto’s rôle in it will have been prompted, in part, by a wish still further to increase Catherine’s hold upon Mariola’s mind.

[143] Vita, p. 112a.

[144] Vita, p. 72b.

[145] Ibid. p. 113b. I take these two motives alone to have operated throughout such actions of hers during this last period. The additional motive attributed to her (Ibid. pp. 129c, 130a, and 134a), where she is represented as applying a lighted candle or live coal to her bare arm, for the purpose of testing whether her interior spiritual fire or this exterior material one is the greater, is entirely unlike Catherine’s spirit. It belongs to the demonstrably legendary and disfiguring interpretations which shall be studied further on. The sentence on p. 134a, in which she herself is made to declare this motive, is most certainly a worthless gloss.

[146] Vita, p. 127a.

[147] It is remarkable how tough-lived has been the legend which makes Vernazza have an only child. Not only Father Sticken (Acta Sanctorum, September, Vol. V, pp. 123-195) has it in 1752, but even Vallebona, in his Perla dei Fieschi, still repeats it in 1887. And yet the Inaugurazione pamphlet had appeared in Genoa in 1867, giving on pp. 13, 14, 72, 73 the fullest proofs as to the reality of these two other children.

[148] Vita, p. 123b.

[149] I get the date of 1502 for those three deaths from Angelo L. Giovo’s MS. Vita of the Saint in the Biblioteca della Missione Urbana (Part I, ch. iii). All three names are prominent in the Will of 1498; in the Codicil of 1503, Jacobo and Giovanni are both styled “the late,” and her brother Lorenzo has become the sole residuary legatee. Limbania appears nowhere after the Will of 1498.

[150] Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria, Genova, 1868, p. 411 (with plate). The article is dated 1871.

[151] Vita, pp. 124b-126. I get Argentina’s maiden name from a Will of hers of the year 1522, of which a copy exists in the MS. volume Documenti relativi a S. Caterina da Genova, in the Genoa University Library, B. VII, 31. I have taken Argentina to have previously known, perhaps even to have served, Catherine, because of her surprise at Marco’s ignorance as to the identity of his visitor; and I have treated such possible service as but slight, because in Giuliano’s Will of 1494 and in Catherine’s Will and Codicil of 1498 and 1503, legacies are left to the two maids Benedetta and Mariola, but not a word appears as yet as to Argentina. The date as to the year I derive from the following facts:--(1) Catherine, as soon as Marco is buried, carries out her promise to him, and receives Argentina into her house: so the Vita, pp. 126c, 125c. (2) Whereas in the Codicil of 1503 there is still no trace of Argentina, in the Will of 1506 she appears, and receives legacies of personal linen, etc. These gifts are somewhat increased in the Will of 1509. Argentina has evidently not been long in Catherine’s service at the time of the drawing up of the Will of 1506. (3) The Protonotary Angelo L. Giovo (MS. Vita of the Saint of the Biblioteca della Missione Urbana Part I, ch. iii) puts down the date of Marco’s death as 1495. Although this is evidently wrong, I think it wise to keep at least one of his numbers, which I do by fixing upon 1505.

[152] Documenti su S. Caterina da Genova, University of Genoa Library, gives a note by Angelo L. Giovo, based on the Book of the Acts of the Protectors of the Hospital: “1506, Marzo, 16mo. Si vede che detta Catarinetta Adorna haveva cura dell’ Hospitale, ricevendo li figli esposti e li pegni per essi.”

[153] From Dre. Ferretto’s copy of the original in the Archivio di Stato.

[154] The clause in this Will which says, “And Testatrix, knowing that the said Giuliano her husband, left to a certain female Religious £150: Therefore she herewith annuls the said legacy, in virtue of the power given her for this purpose,” reads, at first sight, like a harsh, unjust act. But it follows upon a similar annulation of the legacy to the Hospital; and we may be quite sure that Catherine, who had now loved and served this Institution for thirty-three years, would not treat it unjustly. And in the Will of 1509 Catherine explains that the former legacy has been annulled, “in consideration of the satisfaction or settlement (solutio) already effected by Testatrix herself with regard to the said legacy.”

[155] Documenti: extracts by Giovo from “Acts of the Protectors.”

[156] From Dre. Ferretto’s copy of the original in the Archivio di Stato, Genoa.

[157] From Dre. Ferretto’s careful copy of the original in the Archivio di Stato, Genoa.

[158] In the printed Vita a passage occurs on p. 10b, describing the interior heat which accompanied her great fasts (1476-1499). But the passage is wanting in the MSS., and is no doubt only a gloss to explain how, at those times, she came to drink water mixed with vinegar.

[159] “Operazione”: Vita, pp. 106c, 117b, 121b, 143b, 148b, 149c. “Assalto”: pp. 138b, c (3); 139a; 143, b, c (3); 144a (2); 148a. “Assedio”: p. 118b. “Saetta”: pp. 141a, 145a. “Ferita”: p. 141a, c (2). “Raggio”: pp. 133b, 157c. “Scintilla”: pp. 132a, 148b. The “ferita” occurs already (as a “dolce ferita”) in the account of her Conversion, pp. 4, 5; and “saetta,” “ferita,” “raggio” and “scintilla,” appear very often in her own sayings.

[160] The passage in Vita, p. 10b, which declares that she “felt” (tasted) something sweet within her, upon drinking that salt and sour water during her long fasts, is wanting in the MSS., and is itself an interesting attempt to materialize her saying, on p. 11b, as to the “other thing” (i.e. the love of God), that she was “feeling” (tasting) within herself.

[161] Vita, p. 8a.

[162] Ibid. p. 9b. The present conclusion of the sentence, and all the parallels throughout the rest of the page, show plainly that the sentence originally read as I have given it.

[163] Vita, p. 9b.

[164] Ibid. p. 16b.

[165] Ibid. p. 5b.

[166] Vita, p. 98, a, b. This is the first of three incidents, given in chronological order, all referring to her desire for death, which make up Chapter XXXVIII of the printed Vita. The last two are, beyond all doubt, conversations with Vernazza; and this first incident is also probably transmitted to us by him.--I have in my translation left out the numerous glosses by which the various Redactors have desperately attempted to eviscerate this story, attempts based on the double conviction, that Catherine was already absolutely perfect, and that “every desire is imperfect” (p. 100a). These changes will be studied later on.

[167] Vita, pp. 118, b, c, 119b, 119a. This vivid and simple dialogue is followed (p. 119b) by a clearly secondary parallel discourse of Catherine. Only the descriptive end of this latter paragraph is no doubt authentic, and has been incorporated in the above translation.

[168] Vita, p. 127a.

[169] I translate the above from the oldest account of the event, given by MS. “A,” p. 193, at the opening of its Chapter XXIX (the number is accidentally omitted), which is headed: “How in the year 1506, on the 11th of November, there came upon her so great a burning in the heart, that she wondered at her not expiring.” This 1506, repeated in the opening line of the chapter itself, is an undoubted slip; for she is said to be 63 years old (and she was in her 63rd year in 1509), and the place occupied by the corresponding paragraph in the printed Vita, p. 133b (within a year of her death, p. 132b, and some time before December 1509, p. 138b), again clearly marks the date as 1509.

[170] Vita, p. 132a, b. The first eight sentences have been in part fused by R 1 into fewer larger periods. The last sentence is wanting in MSS. “A”and “B”; although clearly formed upon the model and with the material of the previous sentences, it appears in the printed Vita as referring to an “altra vista” (see p. 133b).

[171] Vita, p. 135a. I have, in Catherine’s speech, omitted a final clause, “which burns me entirely within and without,” because it is not necessary to the sense, and violates the rhythm, which is ever present in all Catherine’s authentic sayings.

[172] Ibid. pp. 135c, 136a. I have omitted two glosses introduced by “cioè,” “that is”; and three short amplifications, which introduce a direct conflict between the two parts. There is, within this particular picture and scene, no direct conflict, but, at first, a complete contrariety of aim.

[173] Vita, p. 136c. This is one out of four or five parallel sayings which are accumulated here. They shall be examined later on.

[174] Vita, pp. 98c, 99a; 99b, c. I have, in the first conversation, omitted the introductory attribution of her use of the word “giddiness” to humility; and, in the second, suppressed the conclusion which repeatedly declares that never again did any such desire arise within her. For both clauses have got a vague and secondary form, and the second is in direct contradiction with the facts.

[175] Vita, 138c.

[176] Vita, pp. 139b, 140b, c. I have omitted the evidently derivative, transcendentally reflective, second of the three paragraphs in which this story now appears; the explanatory glosses of the same tone as that paragraph; a redundant sentence in Catherine’s speech; and the evidently late and schematic designation of “assalto” for the entire incident, which is, surely, nothing of the sort.

[177] Vita, pp. 120b; 119c, 120a. The sequence and date assumed above I think to be, all things considered, the most likely among the possible alternatives. As to her remarks to Marabotto, they appear in the Vita before his three days’ absence. But the interior evidence seems strongly in favour of my inversion of that (evidently, in any case, very loose and quite unemphasized) order.

[178] Ibid. pp. 141c, 143c.

[179] Vita, p. 141c.

[180] Ibid. 142a. MSS. “A” and “B” open out their chapter on her last illness with the statement that it was (only) four months before her death that she took to her bed. I take it that from the end of January 1510 onwards, she was often in bed, yet still sometimes out of it; but that from mid-May to the end she no more left it.

[181] Ibid. p. 142b, c. I have, in her prayer, omitted the first seven words of the present text: “(Già sono trentacinque anni in circa, che) giammai, Signor mio …” For she would hardly inform God of the approximate number of years of her convert life; the double “già” points to a gloss; and such a gloss would almost irresistibly find its way into this place, so as to mitigate the absoluteness of the statement.

[182] Ibid. p. 143b. I have omitted the words: “which (the right shoulder) appeared as though severed from the body; and similarly one rib seemed severed from the others …” They have precisely the same “colour,” and no doubt proceed from the same contributor, as the longer passage relative to her supposed stigmatization, absent from all the MSS., but given in the printed Vita on the authority of Argentina.

[183] Vita, pp. 143c, 71c. The second passage, though occurring in an early chapter of the Vita, undoubtedly belongs to these final months and fits well into this particular day.

[184] Ibid. p. 144a. I have accepted this passage, because of its great vividness. But pp. 139b-145b of the printed Vita do not exist in the MSS.

[185] Ibid. p. 145b. On pp. 145c, 146a, she is said to have, during this time, seen many visions of Angels, to have laughed in their company, and to have herself recounted this after these occurrences. She is similarly declared to have seen Evil Spirits (i Demoni), but only with slight fear. And these passages occur also in the MSS.--But they stand so entirely outside of any context or attribution to any definite days; such general assertions prove, throughout the Vita, to be so little trustworthy; and they are such vague and colourless doubles of similar, but definitely dated and characterized, reports to be accepted in their place a little lower down, that I cannot but reject them here.

[186] Vita, pp. 144b; 145c.

[187] Ibid. p. 145c.

[188] Ibid. p. 146b.

[189] Vita, pp. 146c-147c.

[190] Lingard’s History of England, ed. 1855, Vol. IV, p. 166; James Gairdner, Henry VII, London, 1889, p. 208.

[191] The five passages of the Vita concerning Physicians (pp. 71c, 72a; 145c, 146b; 146c-147c; 158c, 159a) all bear very clear marks of successive additions, glosses, and re-castings,--always in the direction indicated above.

The entire Boerio-episode (pp. 146c-147c), is wanting in all the MSS. It is, however, most plainly authentic. I believe both the episode and a further passage concerning Boerio to have been furnished by Boerio’s son, a Secular Priest, who died a septuagenarian in 1561; his monument still exists in the Church of the Santa Annunciata, at Sturla, near Genoa. See the Biografia Medica Ligure, by Dottore G. B. Pescetto, Genova, 1846, Vol. I, p. 104.--There are some suspicious symptoms connected with that first consultation of Physicians: Boerio’s interviews read as though they had not been quite recently preceded by such an activity--and it is possible that we have here an account produced by a retrogressive doubling of the undoubtedly authentic consultation of the 10th of September, to be described presently. Still, there is nothing intrinsically improbable in the account itself. I have, then, allowed both consultations to stand.

[192] Vita, p. 72a.

[193] Copies of these six entries in the Manuale Cartularii of the Hospital exist attached to the MS. Vita in the Biblioteca della Missione Urbana.

[194] From the copy of the original Codicil in the Archivio di Stato, made for me by Dre. Ferretto. The Inventory exists attached to the MS. Vita just mentioned.

[195] Vita, p. 148b. It is remarkable that, since January 10, this is the first date given by the Vita; that a series of dated days then extends onwards to August 28 (pp. 148a-152a); that then a gap occurs, filled in with a general but authentic account (pp. 152b-153c), evidently by another hand, the same writer who gave us the (also dateless) account from mid-January to mid-May (pp. 141b-145b); and that the dated chronicle is finally carried on from September 2 to the end, September 15 (pp. 153c-161a). If I am right as to the oneness of authorship as regards these two undated parts, then they are either not by Vernazza; or if they are, then Vernazza must have been about Catherine till September 2.

Now the Vita, p. 120b, tells us how Marabotto on one occasion left her “for three days,” at a time when she was already suffering much from “accidenti.” It is evident, that this absence fits in admirably with the gap already mentioned. Hence these dateless accounts can hardly be by Marabotto; and indeed their whole tone and point of view are unlike his. They might be by Carenzio: we shall see how strikingly objective and precise are the oldest constituents of the report as to the last three days of her life, during which, or at least at the end of which, Marabotto was as certainly absent as was Vernazza. There is, however, I think, some difference of tone between this latter report, and those dateless passages; whereas those passages are strikingly similar, in form and tone, to the oldest constituents of the Trattato, which are undoubtedly the literary work of Vernazza.

The probabilities then are, that these dateless accounts are by Vernazza; and that he left Genoa on September 1 or 2.

[196] Vita, p. 148c. “Disse molte belle parole al santo Sacramento [e ai circonstanti, con tanto fervore e pietà,] che ognuno ne piangeva per divozione.” I have omitted the bracketed words, as a disfiguring gloss.

[197] Vita, p. 149b. I have neglected the numerous glosses to this account, and have read “several” instead of “seven” days, since she was again in great distress on August 22, or 23 at latest (Ibid. p. 149c).

[198] Ibid. p. 149c. I have here omitted an evidently later insertion and transition between that highly localized paralysis and the death-like sickness of the whole of her; and have made the latter come on after the former, for how otherwise could any one know about that paralysis?

[199] Ibid. p. 150b. This fact and passage have occasioned an interesting succession of obvious accretions and re-statements.

[200] Ibid. p. 151a, b. I have in the text followed the MSS. as against the printed Vita, and have omitted a long clause, which attempts to find the explanation of these words of hers in a subsequent permanent change of attitude towards all those from whom she asked or received a service.

[201] Vita, p. 153b.

[202] Vita, pp. 150a, 154b, 127c, 153c.

[203] A copy of this entry exists, in the Priest Giovo’s handwriting, in the collection of Documents prefixed to the MS. Vita of St. Catherine, in the Biblioteca della Missione Urbana, Genoa.

[204] Vita, p. 154b, and the Inventory among the documents in the Vita, volume of the Biblioteca della Missione.

[205] Vita, pp. 153a, 155a; 157c, 158a. For this 7th September three heat-and-light impressions are given: (1) “A ray of divine love”; (2) “a vision of fiery stairs”; and (3) this apprehension of the whole world on fire. Perhaps the first also is authentic; the last is certainly so. The middle one seems to be secondary, and to have slipped in to form a transition and link between the other two accounts.

[206] Ibid. p. 153a.

[207] Vita, p. 155b, c. A third paragraph, pp. 155c, 156a (equally wanting in all the MSS. and claiming to be based on the authority of Argentina), follows here, and tells how the latter saw one of her mistress’s arms grow over half a palm in additional length, during the following night; and again how Catherine had told her, Argentina, that she, Catherine, “would before her death bear the stigmata and mysteries of the Passion in her own person.” These “facts” are thoroughly characteristic of the source from which they are no doubt derived.--A fourth paragraph, p. 156b, c, has also been omitted by me, although it occurs also in the MSS. It contains a long prayer put into Catherine’s mouth, and modelled on our Lord’s High Priestly Prayer in John xvii, 1-13. It is far too long, elaborate, and uncharacteristic to be authentic.

[208] Ibid. p. 156c.

[209] Ibid. p. 158b. I have here omitted, after “miseries,” the clause “through which she had passed.” For during her middle period she seems indeed not to have seen her faults till after she herself had got beyond them: yet that particular dispensation was then vouchsafed her because of the excessive pain which the sight of still present imperfections would have caused her; and it is that peculiarity which explains the extreme rarity or absence of Confession during that time. But now we have both the pain and the Confession: and I cannot find any instances, as in this case, of (evidently keen) annoyance, or of Confession, with respect to past and overcome imperfections.--I have also omitted a sentence after “departed from her”: “not that they were matters of any importance, but every slightest defect was intolerable to her.” For this is to judge the Saint by another standard than that of her own conscience, and to make her sanctity consist of scrupulosity.--And I have dropped a further notice for the same day,--a “vista” vouchsafed to her of “a pure and perfect mind, into which only the memory of divine things can still enter,” with her corresponding laugh and exclamation: “O, to find oneself in this degree (of perfection) at the time of death!” For, beautiful as it is, this clause but reproduces, in the softened form of a general and joyous aspiration, what the previous anecdote had given as a particular and depressing consciousness. And the previous anecdote was evidently offensive to both Redactors.

[210] Vita, pp. 158c, 159a, b.

[211] Vita, p. 159c. The Codicil I give from Dre. Ferretto’s copy of the original in the Archivio di Stato, Genoa. I have, in the Vita passage, omitted a sentence which now stands between the drop-of-water incident, and that of the attack at night, which declares: “All this day she remained without speaking, without ever opening her eyes or eating or drinking”; for it would be difficult, if we retain it, to find room for the drawing up of the Codicil, which certainly took place before the attack.

[212] Vita, p. 160a.

[213] Vita, pp. 169c, 161a.

[214] Vita, pp. 161c-163a.

[215] Vita, p. 162b.

[216] Ibid. pp. 163b-164a.

[217] Ibid. p. 153a (end of August or beginning of September 1510), “through the intense heat of this fire of love she became yellow all over, like the colour of saffron”; p. 161b, (“after death) that yellow colour was spread over her whole body, which at first had only been around the region of the heart”; p. 164c (on opening her coffin in the autumn of 1511), “the skin which corresponded to the heart was still red in sign of the ardent love which she had harboured in it, the rest of the body was yellow.”

[218] Vita, pp. 17c, 18a, (97c).

[219] Ibid. p. 129b, (165c). In both places there is an explicit reference to Saint Ignatius (of Antioch), “whose heart, when examined after his martyrdom, was found to have written upon it, in letters of gold, the sweet name of Jesus.” Perhaps also two lines of Jacopone da Todi had some influence here. In Loda LXXXVIII, v. 11, he says of the perfected soul: “The heart annihilates itself, undone (melted down) as though it were wax, and finds itself, after this act, bearing the figure (the seal-impression) of Christ Himself.”

[220] Ibid. p. 165c.

[221] These and similar matters will be found carefully studied in the Appendix.

[222] Lode III, XIII, XXXIII, XXXV, XLV, LVIII (a) and (b), LXXIII, LXXV (a) and (b), LXXVII, LXXIX, LXXXI, LXXXIII, LXXXV, LXXXVIII, LXXXIX, LXXXX, LXXXXVII, LXXXXIX.

[223] Vita, pp. 32c, 33a, b. I must refer the reader, once for all, to the Appendix, for the explanation of the methods used in the selection and the emendation of the texts presented in this chapter.

[224] Vita, pp. 29c; 91c; 30b; 55c, 56a; 61a.

[225] Ibid. p. 76c.

[226] Ibid. pp. 101b; 101a; 79c.

[227] Vita, pp. 36b; 80c, 81a; 74b.

[228] Ibid. pp. 9b; ibid., 8c.

[229] Vita, p. 11c.

[230] Ibid. p. 11b.

[231] Vita, pp. 22b; 25c; 26b.--105c.--25c, 26a, 80b.

[232] Ibid. pp. 15c, 16a.--9b; 53b; 67c.

[233] Vita, pp. 26b; 50b.--36b; 36c.--36b.

[234] Ibid. p. 48b.

[235] Ibid. pp. 23c; 27a. The fact of “Nettezza” remaining at last her only term for the perfection of God shows plainly how comprehensive, definite, and characteristic must have been the meaning she attached to the word. The history of this conception no doubt begins with Plato’s “the Same”; and this, through Plotinus and Victorinus Afer’s Latin translation of him, reappears as “the Idipsum, the Self-Same,” as one of the names of God in St. Augustine; a term which in Dionysius (largely based as he is upon Plotinus’s disciple Proclus) occurs continually, and can there be still everywhere translated as “Identity” or “Self-Identity” (so also Parker). But with Catherine the idea seems to have been approximated more to that of Purity, although I take it that, with her, “Purità” means the absence of all excess (of anything foreign to the true nature of God’s or the soul’s essence); and “Netezza,” the absence of all defect, in the shape of any failure fully to actualize all the possibilities of this same true nature. I have had to resign myself, as the least inadequate suggestions of the rich meaning of “Netezza” and “Netto,” to alternating between the sadly general terms “fulness” and “full,” and the pedantic-sounding “self-adequation,” with here and there “clear fulness.”

[236] Vita, pp. 15b, 22c; 23b; 49a; 69a.

[237] Vita, pp. 31c, 32a.--66a, 66b, 87c, 107a.

[238] Ibid. pp. 75b, 66b.

[239] Ibid. pp. 87c, 106a, 106c.

[240] Vita, p. 114a.

[241] Ibid. 28c, 29a, 29b.

[242] Ibid. pp. 42b, 43c.

[243] Vita, p. 42a.

[244] Ibid. pp. 83c, 84a, 86b, 87a.

[245] Ibid. p. 108b.

[246] Vita, pp. 81b.

[247] Ibid. pp. 81c; 82a; 103b.

[248] Ibid. p. 31b.

[249] Vita p. 54b, c.

[250] Ibid. pp. 52c, 53a.

[251] Ibid. pp. 95c, 125a; 122c; 76a.

[252] Vita, pp. 9b, 15b; 11b, 8c; 155a.

[253] Vita, pp. 136b, 183c; 19b, 107b.

[254] Ibid. p. 113c.

[255] Ibid. pp. 24b, 23b, 24b.

[256] Vita, pp. 59c, 76c, 77a.

[257] Ibid. p. 37a.

[258] Vita, pp. 94a; 109b.

[259] Ibid. pp. 87c, 53b.

[260] Vita, pp. 23c, 24a, 23c, 22c, 61c; 77b.

[261] Ibid. pp. 34c; 175c.

[262] Vita, pp. 171c, 172a.

[263] Ibid. pp. 30a, 29c; 43c.

[264] Ibid. pp. 171c, 172a.

[265] Vita, pp. 52a; 51b; 106c.-94c; 95b.

[266] Ibid. pp. 23a; 24a.

[267] Vita, p. 60c.

[268] Ibid. pp. 76b; 27a.

[269] Ibid. pp. 8a; 15b.--8c.

[270] Vita (Trattato), p. 169b. See also Vita, Preface, p. viiib; and p. 144b.

[271] Vita, pp. 172c; ibid.--38b, c; 39a.

[272] Vita, pp. 173a.--173b.--33b.

[273] Ibid. (Trattato), pp. 170b (169c).

[274] Vita (T.), p. 175b.

[275] Ibid. (T.), p. 177b.

[276] Ibid. (T.), p. 176a; Vita proper, p. 78c.

[277] Vita (T.), p. 175a (see p. 169b).

[278] Ibid. (T.), p. 176a.

[279] Vita (T.), pp. 169c, 170a.--182b.

[280] Vita (T.), pp. 173c, 174a; 171b.--64b; 177b.--170c.

[281] Ibid. (T.), p. 172b.

[282] Vita (T.), p. 172a.

[283] Ibid. (T.), p. 174b.

[284] Ibid.

[285] Vita (T.), p. 174b.

[286] Ibid.

[287] Vita (T.), p. 182b.

[288] Vita (T.), p. 170c.

[289] Vita (T.), p. 178b.

[290] Vita (T.), p. 178b.

[291] Ibid.

[292] A copy of this document exists prefixed to the MS. Vita of the Biblioteca delta Missione Urbana.

[293] Copy in the same volume.

[294] Vita, p. 164b. This first coffin is still extant: it stands now, empty in a glass case, in the smaller of the two rooms shown in the Hospital as her last dwelling-place. Twice over the Vita talks of a “deposito,” although directly only in connection with its opening “about eighteen months later,” i.e. not before March 1512. Now Argentina del Sale declares, in a Will of the year 1522 (a copy, in Giovo’s handwriting, exists in the volume of the Biblioteca della Missione), that she desires to be buried “in the Church of the Annunciata, in the monument of the late Giuliano Adorno.” Thus Giuliano’s grave was still generally known and fully accessible twelve years after Catherine’s death; and it was a “monumento,” not a “deposito.” I have been completely baffled in all my attempts to trace the eventual fate of that monument, or even its precise site, or the precise date of its disappearance. I can but offer two alternative conjectures. (1) It stood in the choir-end of the Church. If so, it will have been covered up, promiscuously with many another vault and mortuary slab, when, in 1537, this end was cut off, for the purpose of widening the bastion which still runs behind it and above it, outside. (2) The “monument” was a slab on the floor of the nave or of some side-chapel. The present flooring of all the former, and of a large part of the Chapels, is relatively new; and it is (all but certainly) superimposed upon the old flooring or at least upon the old sepulchral slabs, since not one inscription remains visible in the nave. And if Giuliano’s “monument” lay there, it will still be extant, hidden away under the present flooring.--In either case it remains remarkable that the slight trouble was not taken to shift nave-wards, or to raise to the newer nave- or chapel-flooring, the “monument” of Catherine’s own husband. There are certainly monuments still visible in the Church older than 1497. It is impossible to resist the conclusion that some occasion was gladly seized for not moving or raising this monument, and for thus letting the saintly wife appear entirely alone in the Hospital Church, unattended by any memorial of her very imperfect husband.

[295] The Inventory and this Acceptance both exist, in copy, in the MS. Vita of the Biblioteca della Missione. I owe a careful copy of the former to the kindness of Don Giacomo C. Grasso, the Librarian.

[296] From the documents in the MS. Vita of the Biblioteca della Missione.

[297] Vita, pp. 164b, c, 165c. Great and repeated stress is laid here, with unattractively realistic proofs and details, upon the damage done by the damp to the coffin and grave-clothes, and upon the contrasting spotlessness of the body.

[298] MS. Vita of the Biblioteca della Missione.

[299] Even the little engraving of the title-page of the first edition of the Vita (1551), which shows Catherine kneeling before a crucifix, represents her, not indeed with a nimbus, but with a diadem upon her head.

[300] Reprinted in Vita, p. 282b.

[301] A little Prayer-book marker picture, which will, I think, have been first engraved in 1737, when the body was, as indeed it is to this hour, considered quite incorrupt, already gives the large paper rose which has lain ever since in the place of the mouth and nose, which have perished long ago. But I have been unable to test the claim to incorruption further back than this.

[302] Vita, pp. 165c, 27b, 277a. In this last passage Maria Fiesca makes a declaration as to the partial fleshiness and elasticity of the body, e.g. of the right shoulder; and as to its extraordinary weight.

[303] All three classes of cases are represented in Padre Maineri’s account, reproduced in the Vita, p. 282b, c.

[304] Maineri, in Vita, p. 278, b, c. The first edition of the Vita calls her “Beata” on its title-page. MS. “A,” of 1547, 1548, has simply “Madonna Catherineta Adorna” on the Franciscan copyist’s own title, and “Beata” on the title copied by him from the MS. used by him.

[305] There is evidence that the many-sided Queen took an interest in Catherine, in the Oratorian G. Parpera’s very careful Beata Caterina di Genova Illustrata, Genova, 1682. But the Index of her Latin (and Italian) MSS. in the Vatican Library contains no indication of any MS. “Life” or “Doctrine” possessed by Christina.

[306] The main facts and dates of these paragraphs devoted to the various Processes are derived from Padre Maineri’s very clear account, first published in 1737, and reprinted at the end of the Vita, pp. 278-282.

[307] Copy in MS. Vita in the Biblioteca della Missione.

[308] So Padre Celesia, op. cit. p. 1121.

[309] Copy in the MS. Vita of the Biblioteca della Missione.

[310] From twenty-two conclusions concerning Catherine and her circle, constituting one of the papers in the volume, Documenti, etc., of the University Library. They were evidently written after 1675 and before 1737 (Catherine is “Beata” throughout), but are, wherever I have been able to test them, as a rule completely right, and never entirely wrong. It is certainly somewhat strange that Argentina should, as is there stated, have “continued in the said Hospital, and was living in it still in 1523,” and should have “similarly continued to be the servant of the Priest Cattaneo (Marabotto).” Still, she may have slept at the Hospital and worked at Marabotto’s. I had thought of concluding from this that Marabotto had been given Catherine’s house in the Hospital, after Don Carenzio’s death there. But the apparently complete absence of any mention of Marabotto in the Hospital books, after July 1512, makes me shrink from doing so.

[311] I am proud of this important discovery, since even Giovo had to leave a blank for this date in his Chapter IV of Part I of his MS. Vita, in the Biblioteca della Missione, written in 1675. I found the date amongst some notes and copies, in a sprawly handwriting, not Giovo’s, but the same which copied out the entry as to Carenzio’s funeral expenses. It is true that in Marabotto’s case this writer gives no proof or document; yet there is no reason for distrusting his assertion.

[312] Copy from Hospital Cartulary in MS. Vita of the Biblioteca della Missione Urbana: “1511, 7 Julii: Hereditas quondam Caterinetae Adurnae, pro Maria, olim famula ipsius et filia Hospitalis, pro legato facto dictae Mariae per dictam q(uondam) Caterinetam, £50.--Maria praedicta pro D. P. Cattaneo Marabotto, qui habuit curam guarnimentorum ipsius Mariae, dedicatae in Monasterio Sanctae Brigidae, £50.”--I take these two successive entries to refer to two successive stages of the same transaction, and to but one and the same sum.

[313] From the documents given in the MS. Vita of the Biblioteca della Missione Urbana.

[314] My quotations from this letter are all taken from Giuseppe Morro’s careful address on Vernazza, published in Inaugurazione della Statua d’Ettore Vernazza, Genova, 1867, pp. 5-31. It stands in extenso in the fine edition of his daughter’s works: Opere Spirituale della Ven. Madre Donna Battista Vernazza, 6 vols., Genoa, 1755; Vol. VI, Letter XXV.

[315] The document is given in fall, and carefully analyzed, in Inaugurazione, etc., pp. 61-70.

[316] Battista’s letter, as quoted in Inaugurazione, p. 16.

[317] Inaugurazione, pp. 17, 18.

[318] Printed in Inaugurazione, pp. 71-73.

[319] The present, second and much larger and detached SS. Annunziata, on the square of that name, was not built (for the Capuchins) till 1587. In Giuliano’s and Catherine’s Wills of 1494, 1498, and 1506, the Hospital Church occurs indifferently as “Church of the Annunciation of the Order of Friars Minor of the Observance” with and without the addition of “adjoining the Hospital,” or “adjoining the Hospital of Pammatone.”

[320] This was a Cistercian Convent, founded in the twelfth century, outside one of the Genoese gates. Only its Chapel survived the destruction of the Convent at the time of the Revolutionary secularization. And even this Chapel was in January 1903 in process of demolition, to make room for the new Via Venti Settembre.

[321] The three daughters’ names in Religion all occur in a document of the Bank of St. George printed in Inaugurazione, p. 79.

[322] Inaugurazione, p. 18, quoting Battista’s letter of 1581.

[323] Inaugurazione, pp. 19, 20.

[324] I derive this particular from Professore G. Morro’s Inaugurazione, p. 20.

[325] Inaugurazione, p. 20.

[326] Inaugurazione, p. 21.

[327] Inaugurazione, pp. 21, 22. Battista’s account would lead one to place that last Communion on the Feast itself; but the various inscriptions erected by the most careful Committee of 1867, shows that it occurred really on the Eve. See Inaugurazione, pp. 37; 39, 40. One more instance of a slight displacement of date effected by a (no doubt unconscious) desire to find a full synchronism between the Feast of the Baptist and the final Communion of one so devoted to that Saint. The Committee evidently shrank from interpreting her “three days after”: it may evidently mean either the 26th or the 27th.

[328] As to the older monuments, see Inaugurazione, p. 5. An excellent photograph of Varni’s statue forms the title-picture to this publication.

[329] An engraving of this (now lost) portrait exists in Ritratti ed Elogii di Liguri Illustri, Genova, Ponthonier, and appears reproduced here as the Frontispiece to Vol. II.

[330] Inaugurazione, p. 26.

[331] Even such a rhetorical apostrophe as occurs in the peroration of Dottore Morro’s speech (Inaugurazione, p. 30): “Thou worthy of incense and of altars, as was that Catherine Fieschi, whose friend and confidant and spiritual son thou wast, and who was God-mother to thy own first-born,” stands, I think, alone.

[332] Schmöger: Leben der gottseligen Anna Katharina Emmerich, Freiburg, 1867, 1870, Vol. II, pp. 892, 898, 900.

[333] Vallebona, op. cit. p. 83: “Santissima mia Diva, | questo mio cor ricevi: | che quando al sole apriva | le luci a giorni brevi, | infin d’allor fei voto, | con animo devoto, | non mai, madre adorata, | esser da Te sviata.” “My most holy Protectress” and “adored Mother” may apply to Catherine. But I have had to punctuate so as to make “che” = “perchè,” as in Jacopone throughout: so that we now have not a declaration of time, as to when she, the Protectress, accepted Tommasa’s heart (which might well have been at Baptism); but a prayer that this Mother may accept her heart, in view of the fact that she, Tommasa, had, from her first opening of her eyes to life (surely, on coming to some degree of reason), vowed never to be parted from this Mother. And thus the application to Catherine remains possible but becomes uncertain.

[334] I feel obliged to put the matter in this hypothetical form because of the several undeniable indications of Catherine’s loss of interest in many, perhaps most, events and occurrences, since, at latest, the beginning of 1509.

[335] See the admirably vivid account of, and wisely-balanced judgment concerning, these events, in the Catholic Alfred von Reumont’s little book, Vittoria Colonna, Freiburg, 1881, pp. 117-152; 194-215.

[336] Acta Sanctorum, Vol. VI, pp. 192-196.

[337] For Gerson’s “Rigorism,” see J. B. Schwab’s admirable monograph, Johannes Gerson, Regensburg, 1858; and for Contarini’s, Morone’s, and the Colonna’s views, see Reumont’s Vittoria Colonna.

[338] Opere, Vol. VI, p. 192.

[339] See the Preface to the Opere, Vol. I, p. 10.

[340] Opere, ed. Genoa, 1755, Vol. V, pp. 218-227.

[341] See here, pp. 265, 266; 272; 280; 264, 265; 135; 160, 274-276.

[342] See here, pp. 116; 117, 266.

[343] The last clause here is very obscure in the original: “non voglio meritare te, ma rimeritare lo amore che ti porto”; but I take the above translation to render correctly the substantial meaning.

[344] See here, pp. 265; 262, 263, 261.

[345] See here, pp. 266, 268; 285; 261; 275, 159, 141.

[346] See here, pp. 260, 261, 273, 274.

[347] Ch iv, §§ xiii, xiv, xvi (Parker, pp. 48-50).

[348] See here, pp. 138; 277; 260.

[349] See here, p. 270.

[350] See here, pp. 270; 290; 275, 270.

[351] See here, pp. 138, 139; 265, 260; 272.

[352] Opere, ed. 1755, Vol. VI, pp. 247, 248.

[353] See here, pp. 263, 266, 280; 272, 275; 292; 277, 262.

[354] See here, pp. 284; 166-174; 143-145.

[355] See here, pp. 140, 141; 131, 116.

[356] Inaugurazione, pp. 26, 27.

[357] Ibid. pp. 74, 75, 77, 78. Ibid. p. 94.

[358] Here, pp. 319, 320; 140, 141, 268.

[359] Date of death: Ritratti ed Elogii di Liguri Illustri, Genova, Ponthenier (Elogio della Ven. Battista Vernazza). Communion: Opere della Ven. B. Vernazza, ed. cit., Vol. I, p. 21. The portrait-frontispiece of the second volume of this work is a faithful facsimile of the portrait (a lithograph by F. Scotto) published among the Ritratti, between 1823 and 1830. The original picture, which will have hung in the convent of S. Marie delle Grazie, I have not been able to trace. The portrait now in possession of the Nuns of the convent of S. Maria in Passione, the successors of those Canonesses, is a quite conventional, inauthentic likeness.

[360] “A(nno) 1456, 27 Augti, ex Locis Pomerae uxore Bartolomaei de Auria et a de modo Isabellae dedicatae in monasterio S. David, ad instantiam Andreae Auria, unici ejus filii ex heredis, et Franciscae matris Catherinetae filiae Jacobi de Flisco, Loci duo in ratione dictae Catherinetae per ejus maritare et (si) dictae Franciscae fecerit consilio.” From parchment-bound small folio vol.: Documenti su S. Catherina da Genova MSS., in R. University Library, Genoa.

[361] From Dre. Ferretto’s copy of original in the Archivio di Stato Genoa.

[362] The originals of both deeds are in the Archivio di Stato, Genoa, Atti del Not. Battista Strata, folie 39, parte II, and 96 (parte III).

[363] Copies of these two entries, in the MS. volume “Documenti … Caterina da Genova,” University Library, Genoa, B VII 31.

[364] The first four documents exist, copied, in the Vita of the Biblioteca della Missione Urbana; the last is in the Archivio di Stato, and has been copied out plain for me by Dre. Ferretto.

[365] Ettore Vernazza: Inaugurazione, pp. 21, 22; 39, 40. Cattaneo Marrabotto: Don Giovo’s declaration among the “Conclusions” (in his own handwriting) attached to the MS. Vita of St. Catherine in the Biblioteca della Missione Urbana, Genoa. Tommasa Fiesca: Fed. Alizieri, in Atti della Società di Storia Patria, Vol. VIII, Genoa, 1868, p. 408. Battista Vernazza, Opere Spirituali della Ven. B. Vernazza, Genoa, ed. 1775, Vol. I, Preface.

[366] MS. A, pp. 3; 367; 368-398; 399.

[367] Ibid. pp. 361-363; 364; 87, 88.

[368] MS. A, p. 160.

[369] Ibid. pp. 134; 168; 198-200; 329; in contrast respectively with pp. 62; 124; 76; 161 of the Printed Life.

[370] MS. A, p. 193, which appears, in a somewhat modified form, in the Pr. L., p. 97c; and, with further transformations, on pp. 139a; 139c; 140a; 140b of the same.

[371] Ibid. p. 169, compared with Pr. L., p. 124c.

[372] Ibid. p. 163, compared with Pr. L., p. 122c.

[373] Pr. L., pp. 155b-156a.

[374] Pr. L., pp. 146c-147c; 154b.

[375] Pr. L., pp. 51a-53b.

[376] MS. A, p. 168, compared with Pr. L. pp. 123b-124b.

[377] Pr. L. pp. 116c-121b; 139a-140c. Retained lines: MS. p. 40 = Pr. L., p. 116c.

[378] Pr. L., p. 119c.

[379] MS. ch. iv = Pr. L., ch. ii, pp. 4a-5c.

[380] MS. ch. v = Pr. L., ch. ii, pp. 5c-6c.

[381] I purposely leave this sentence in its tell-tale clumsiness of form.

[382] This corresponds, as to its substance, to Pr. L., pp. 5c-6c.

[383] Pr. L., p. 14c.

[384] MS. B. fol. 2r et v.

[385] Ibid. fol. 19r et v.

[386] MS. B: the break, on fol. 30r; the abrupt ending, on bottom of fol. 33v.

[387] Hence Dialogo (Pr. L.) pp. 185c-190c is an expansion of the Vita-proper (Pr. L.) p. 31; and Dialogo pp. 191a-198a is an expansion of Vita-proper p. 33.

[388] Hence Dialogo (Pr. L.) pp. 198b-206b corresponds to Vita-proper pp. 4a-5a.

[389] P. 205c.

[390] Pp. 206c, 207b.

[391] Dialogo pp. 207c-212a is thus equivalent to Vita-proper p. 5b.

[392] Dialogo, pp. 212b-212c is hence equivalent to Vita-proper pp. 12b-13c.

[393] Dialogo pp. 213c-225c thus corresponds to Vita-proper pp. 9b, 15b; 13c, 14a; 20a, 21a; 123b; 13b; 96b-97a.

[394] See here, pp. 353, 354.

[395] Dialogo, pp. 215c, 216a.

[396] Dialogo, p. 197a.

[397] Ibid. p. 209b.

[398] Ibid. p. 223c.

[399] Ibid. p. 221c.

[400] Dialogo, pp. 20a, 13c, 21a, 20a.

[401] Ibid. pp. 220c, 222c.

[402] Ibid. p. 21b.

[403] Dialogo, p. 123b.

[404] From MS. A, p. 174: “Li buttò le braccie al collo, e, stringendola con singulti, non si poteva saziar di piangere.” The Printed Vita, p. 125b, has only: “La abbracciò piangendo, per lungo spazio di tempo.”

[405] See here, pp. 169-171.

[406] See here, pp. 185, 186; 194; 205.

[407] Ibid. pp. 221, 222a.

[408] See here, pp. 363; 346, 347.

[409] Ibid. pp. 56b, 203a; 33b, 202b.

[410] Vita, pp. 32c, 26c, 58a, 48a, 135a.

[411] Ibid. pp. 76a, 157c; 103b.

[412] Vita, pp. 212c, 213a; 222b; 220c, 221c.

[413] See here, p. 146.

[414] See here, pp. 145, 146.

[415] Vita, p. 21a.

[416] See here, pp. 344-358; 359-364.

[417] Dan. ix, 24.

[418] Gen. xxix, 20; xxx, 27.

[419] See here, pp. 351, 355.

[420] Compare, as to human intercourse, Dialogo p. 221b, with Battista’s advice, given here p. 363; and, as to spiritual consolations, Dialogo pp. 215c, 216a, with Battista’s Colloquies, here pp. 346, 347.

[421] Catherine, Pr. Vita, p. 209c; Battista, in one of the Colloquii given in the Opere, loc. cit., but not otherwise reproduced here; Catherine, Pr. Vita, pp. 209c, 211c, 211b, 32; Battista, here, pp. 359, 360.

[422] Catherine, Pr. Vita, p. 97b; Battista, Pr. Vita, p. 201b; here, p. 360; and Dialogo, p. 211a.

[423] I have not succeeded in finding a copy of this rare book: the six chief libraries of Genoa; the Ambrosian Library, Milan; and the Vatican and Angelica Libraries, Rome, are certainly without it. My general description, and my special reproduction of one passage, of it are taken from a series of very careful accounts of the successive early editions of the book, preserved among the Documents relative to the Process of Catherine’s Beatification of 1630-1675, in the Archiepiscopal Archives, Genoa.

[424] Vita, pp. 5b, 6b, 155b-156a; 211b, 264b.

[425] Vita, pp. viic, viiia; viiib.

[426] Colloquies, Opere, Vol. V, p. 219. Letters, ibid. Vol. VI, p. 24. Dialogo, pp. 187b, 215b, 220c, 223b, 237c, 247b, 248c, 273b. Dialogo, p. 266b.

[427] Vita: Chapter Second, pp. 226a-275a. Part Second, pp. 226a-245c; Part Third, pp. 246a-275a. The moralizing narrative: last sentence, p. 245c.

[428] Dialogo p. 225c, paraphrase of Vita p. 6c.

[429] “Nine years before her death,” Vita, p. 127a; “one year before she passed away,” p. 132b; Purgatory, pp. 128c, 129a; 136c, 144b; “Prison of the Body,” p. 137a; emaciation, pp. 144a, 160b; vomitings, pp. 127c, 138c, 160a, b; inability to move, pp. 128a, 137b.

[430] Vita, pp. 227a-241b; 213c-225c.

[431] The “scintilla,” “stilla,” and “immersion in the sweetness of Love”: Dialogo, p. 252a, b, c. In the Vita-proper “scintilla” is but once (and in a doubtful passage) so used, p. 148b; in the other passages “non una minima scintilla” means there “not a glimpse” of this or that, pp. 5c, 62a. “Stilla” of Blessedness, p. 119c; “goccia” of Love, pp. 94b-95c; “gocciola” of spiritual water (refreshment), p. 135b. “Ocean” and immersion therein, pp. 59b, 60b.

[432] Vita, pp. 78c, 79a.

[433] Thus Vita (Dialogo), p. 266a = Vita (proper), p. 117b, c; and Vita (Dialogo), p. 266c = Vita (proper), pp. 120b, 117b.

[434] Dialogo, p. 234b.

[435] Dialogo, p. 241b.

[436] Ibid. p. 260b.

[437] Vita, p. 268c.

[438] Ibid. p. 269c.

[439] Ibid. p. 270b.

[440] Dialogo, p. 212c; and here, p. 146.

[441] Ibid. p. 273a.

[442] Ibid. p. 275a.

[443] Dialogo, p. 250b.

[444] Vita, p. 97b: “This creature would appear with a countenance like unto a Cherub; she gave great consolation to every one who gazed upon her, and those who visited her knew not how to depart from her.” And pp. 94b-95c. See here, pp. 159-161.

[445] Ibid. pp. 231a; 242b; 248c; 249a.

[446] See here, pp. 327-329.

[447] See here, pp. 353, 354.

[448] Dialogo, pp. 242b; 221b; 232b; Vita-proper, 117c, 118a.

[449] Vita-proper, pp. 101b; Dialogo, 247b.

[450] Dialogo, p. 248c; Vita-proper, 76a.

[451] Dialogo, p. 259c.

[452] Ibid. 266b.

[453] Dialogo, p. 264b; and here, pp. 349-351, 360.

[454] Vita, p. 144c.

[455] First seven Chapters: Vita, pp. 169b-75c. Last ten chapters: Ibid. pp. 175c-184c.

[456] See here, pp. 140, 141.

[457] Denzinger, Enchiridion Definitionum, ed. 1888, p. 178, No. 38: “Animae in Purgatorio non sunt securae de earum salute saltem omnes; nec probatum est, ullis aut rationibus aut Scripturis, ipsas esse extra statum merendi aut augendae charitatis.”

[458] His Epitaph, in the Church of the Annunciation, at Sturla, just outside Genoa, is given in full in Pescetto’s Biografia Medica Ligure, Genova, 1846, p. 104.

[459] MS. A, p. 348 = Pr. L., 155b, 156b.

[460] Pr. Vita, pp. 155b, c, 156a.

[461] Padre: pp. 117b, 118b; Figliuolo, pp. 99b; 94b, c, 95a, b; 122c.

[462] Madre, pp. 98c; 94b, c, 95a, b (twice).

[463] Vita, pp. 50b, 37a-38a; 61c, 62a; 83a; 92a.

[464] Vita, pp. 53a, 76c, 73a.

[465] Vita, pp. 4b, 151b.

[466] I derive all these titles from the Documents in the Curia Arcivescovile of Genoa already referred to. The Editions 1568, 1601, I have examined in the Ambrosian Library, Milan.

[467] The Bull is given in full by Fr. Sticker: Acta Sanctorum, Sept., Vol. V, ed. 1866, pp. 181 F-188 A. See there, p. 183 B, E. In the former passage the double description is rightly attributed to the same event; and the contradiction between them is ably eliminated by the Bull’s words: “She seemed to herself to behold the image of the suffering Saviour” (instead of Vita, p. 5b, “affixed to the Cross”); and, in the latter passage, the description of her poverty is kept free from the extravagances of the Dialogo, pp. 220c, 221c.

End Of Vol. I

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