A DECADE OF ITALIAN WOMEN.

VITTORIA COLONNA.

From an Original Painting in the Colonna Gallery at Rome

A DECADE
OF
ITALIAN WOMEN.

BY
T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE,
AUTHOR OF "THE GIRLHOOD OF CATHERINE DE' MEDICI."

IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.

LONDON:
CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY.
1859.
[The right of Translation is reserved.]

LONDON:
RADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.

PREFACE.

The degree in which any social system has succeeded in ascertaining woman's proper position, and in putting her into it, will be a very accurate test of the progress it has made in civilisation. And the very general and growing conviction, that our own social arrangements, as they exist at present, have not attained any satisfactory measure of success in this respect, would seem, therefore, to indicate, that England in her nineteenth century has not yet reached years of discretion after all.

But conscious deficiency is with nations at least, if not always with individuals, the sure precursor of improvement. The path before us towards the ideal in this matter is a very long one; extends, indeed, further than eye can see. What path of progress does not? And our advance upon it will still be a sure concomitant and proof of our advance in all civilisation. But the question of more immediate moment is, admitting that we are moving in this respect, are we moving in the right direction? We have been moving for a long time back. Have we missed the right road? Have we unfortunately retrograded instead of progressing?

There are persons who think so. And there are not wanting, in the great storehouse of history, certain periods, certain individuals, certain manifestations of social life, to which such persons point as countenancing the notion, that better things have been, as regards woman's position and possibilities, than are now. There are, painted on the slides of Mnemosyne's magic lanthorn, certain brilliant and captivating figures, which are apt to lead those who are disgusted with the smoke and reek of the Phœnix-burning going on around them, to suppose that the social conditions which produced such, must have been less far from the true path than our present selves. Nay, more. There have been constellations of such stars, quite sufficiently numerous to justify the conclusion, that the circumstances of the time at which they appeared were in their nature calculated to produce them.

Of such times, the most striking in this respect, as in so many others, is that fascinating dawn time of modern life, that ever wonderful "rénaissance" season, when a fresh sap seemed to rush through the tissues of the European social systems, as they passed from their long winter into spring. And in the old motherland of European civilisation, where the new life was first and most vehemently felt,—in Italy, the most remarkable constellations of these attractive figures were produced.

The women of Italy, at that period remarkable in different walks, and rich in various high gifts, form in truth a very notable phenomenon; and one sufficiently prevalent to justify the belief, that the general circumstances of that society favoured the production of such. But the question remains, whether these brilliant types of womanhood, attractive as they are as subjects of study, curiously illustrative as they are of the social history of the times in which they lived, are on the whole such as should lead us to conclude, that the true path of progress would be found to lead towards social conditions that should be likely to reproduce them?

Supposing it to be asserted, that they were not so necessarily connected in the relationship of cause and effect with the whole social condition of the times in which they lived, as that any attempt to resuscitate such types need involve a reproduction of their social environment; even then the question would remain, whether, if it were really possible to take them as single figures out of the landscape in which they properly stand, they would be such as we should find it desirable to adopt as models of womanhood? Are these such as are wanted to be put in the van of our march—in the first ranks of nineteenth century civilisation? Not whether they are good to put in niches to be admired and cited for this or that virtue or capacity; nor even whether they might be deemed desirable captains in a woman's march towards higher destinies and better conditioned civilisation, if, indeed, such a progress were in any sane manner conceivable; but whether such women would work harmoniously and efficiently with all the other forces at our command for the advancement of a civilisation, of which the absolute sine quâ non must be the increased solidarity, co-operation, and mutual influence of both the sexes?

It may be guessed, perhaps, from the tone of the above sentences, that the writer is not one of those who think that the past can in this matter be made useful to us, as affording ready-made models for imitation. But he has no intention of dogmatising, or even indulging in speculations on "the woman's question." On the contrary, in endeavouring to set before the reader his little cabinet of types of womanhood, he has abstained from all attempt at pointing any moral of the sort. The wish to do so is too dangerously apt to lead one to assimilate one's portrait less carefully to the original than to a pattern figure conceived for the purpose of illustrating a theory. Whatever conclusions on the subject of woman's destiny, proper position, and means of development are to be drawn, therefore, from the consideration of the very varied and certainly remarkable types set before him, the reader must draw for himself. It has been the writer's object to show his portraits, more or less fully delineated according to their interest, and in some measure according to the abundance or the reverse of available material, in their proper setting of social environment. They have been selected, not so much with any intention of bringing together the best, greatest, or most admirable, nor even the most remarkable women Italy has produced, as with a view of securing the greatest amount of variety, in point of social position and character. Each figure of the small gallery will, it is hoped, be found to illustrate a distinct phase of Italian social life and civilisation.

The canonised Saint, that most extraordinary product of the "ages of faith," highly interesting as a social, and perhaps more so still as a psychological phenomenon;—the feudal Châtelaine, one of the most remarkable results of the feudal system, and affording a suggestive study of woman in man's place;—the high-born and highly-educated Princess of a somewhat less rude day, whose inmost spiritual nature was so profoundly and injuriously modified by her social position;—the brilliant literary denizen of "La Bohème;"—the equally brilliant but large-hearted and high-minded daughter of the people, whose literary intimacies were made compatible with the strictest feminine propriety, and whom no princely connections, lay and ecclesiastical, prevented from daring to think and to speak her thought, and to meet with brave heart the consequences of so doing;—the popular actress, again a daughter of the people, and again in that, as is said, perilous walk in life, a model of correct conduct in the midst of loose-lived princesses;—the nobly-born adventuress, every step in whose extraordinary excelsior progress was an advance in degradation and infamy, and whose history, in showing us court life behind the scenes, brings us among the worst company of any that the reader's varied journey will call upon him to fall in with;—the equally nobly-born, and almost equally worthless woman, who shows us that wonderful and instructive phenomenon, the Queen of a papal court;—the humbly born artist, admirable for her successful combination in perfect compatibility of all the duties of the home and the studio;—and lastly, the poor representative of the effeteness of that social system which had produced the foregoing types, the net result, as may be said, of the national passage through the various phases illustrated by them:—all these are curiously distinct manifestations of womanhood, and if any measure of success has been attained in the endeavour to represent them duly surrounded by the social environment which produced them, while they helped to fashion it, some contribution will have been made to a right understanding of woman's nature, and of the true road towards her more completely satisfactory social development.

CONTENTS.

ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA.

Born, 1347. Died, 1380.

CATERINA SFORZA.

Born, 1462. Died, 1509.

VITTORIA COLONNA.

Born, 1490. Died, 1547.

A DECADE OF ITALIAN WOMEN.

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA.

(1347–1380.)

CHAPTER I.

HER BIRTH-PLACE.

There are not many chapters of history more extraordinary and more perplexing than that which relates the story of St. Catherine. Very perplexing it will be found by any, who may think it worth while to examine the record;—which is indeed well worthy of examination, not only as illustrative of one of the most obscure phases of human nature, but also as involving some highly interesting questions respecting the value of historic evidence.

Of such examination it has received but little. Among Catholics the "legend" of the Saint is to this day extensively used for such purposes as similar legends were intended to serve. Orthodox teachers have used the story unsparingly as stimulus, example, and testimony. But orthodox historians have passed over it with the lightest tread and most hurried step; while such Protestant readers as may have chanced to stray into the dim, despised wilderness of Romish hagiography, have in all probability very quickly tossed the volume aside, compendiously classing its subject in their minds with other dark-aged lumber of martyrs, who walked with their heads in their hands, and saints who personally maltreated the enemy of mankind.

Yet a very little consideration of the story will show, that it cannot with fairness be thus summarily disposed of. After seeing large solid masses of monastic romance and pious falsehood evaporate from the crucible of our criticism, there will be still found a very considerable residuum of strangely irreducible fact of the most puzzling description.

It is to be borne in mind, moreover, that the phenomena to be examined are not the product of the dark night-time of history, so favourable to the generation of saints and saintly wonders. Cock-crow was near at hand when Catherine walked the earth. The grandsons of her contemporaries had the printing-press among them; and the story of her life was printed at Florence in the ninety-seventh year after her death. While the illiterate Sienese dyer's daughter was working miracles, moral and physical, Petrarch and Boccaccio were still writing, and Dante had recently written. Giotto had painted the panels we still gaze on, and Niccolò of Pisa carved the stones we yet handle. Chroniclers and historians abounded; and the scene of the strange things recorded by them was at that time one of the centres of human civilisation and progress. We are there in no misty debateable land of myth and legendary song; but walk among familiar facts of solid well-authenticated history, studied for its lessons by statesmen, and accepted as the basis of theories by political philosophers. And yet, in the midst of these indubitable facts, mixed with them, acting on them, undeniably influencing them, we come upon the records of a story wild as any tale of Denis or Dunstan.

SIENA.

When once launched on the strange narrative, as it has come down to us, it is somewhat difficult to remember steadily how near we are all along to the solid shore of indisputable fact. Holding fast to this, therefore, as long as may be, we will approach the subject by endeavouring to obtain some idea of the material aspect of the "locus in quo."

No one perhaps of the more important cities of Italy retains the visible impress of its old republican medieval life to so remarkable a degree as Siena. Less favoured by fortune than her old enemy, and present ruler, Florence, she has been less benefited or injured by the activity and changes of modern days. And the city retains the fossilised form and shape which belonged to it at the time when its own stormy old life was finally crushed out of it. The once turbulent, energetic, and brave old city, sits there still, on the cold bleak top of a long spent volcano—emblem meet enough of her own nature and fortunes—grim, silent, stern, in death. The dark massy stone fronts, grand and gloomy, of old houses, built to defy all the vicissitudes of civic broils, and partisan town-fighting, still frown over narrow streets, no longer animated by the turbulent tide of life which filled them during the centuries of the city's independence.

The strange old "piazza," once the pulsating heart, whence the hot tide of the old civic life flowed through all the body of the little state, still occupies its singular position in the hollow of what was in some remote ante-Etruscan time, the crater of a volcano. Tall houses of five or six stories stand in a semicircle around this peculiar shell-shaped cup, while the chord of the arc they form, is furnished by the picturesque "palazzo pubblico," with its tall slender tower of dark brick, and quaintly painted walls. Like the lava tide, which at some distant period of the world's history flowed hence down the scored sides of the mountain, the little less boiling tide of republican war and republican commerce, which Siena was wont to pour out from the same fount, is now extinct and spent. But such lazy, stagnant, unwholesome life as despotism and priestcraft have left to Siena, is still most alive in and around the old piazza.

Up the sides of this doubly extinguished crater, and down the exterior flanks of the mountain, run steep, narrow, tortuous and gloomy, the flagstone-paved streets of the old city. So steep are they in some parts, that stairs have to take the place of the sloping flagstones, which are often laid at such an angle of declivity as to render wheel-traffic impossible. On the highest pinnacle of the rim, overlooking the hollow of the once crater, stands the Cathedral, on such uneven ground, that its east end is supported by a lofty baptistery, built underneath it on the rapid descent. In the most ornamented style of Italian-gothic architecture, and picturesque, though quaint, in its parti-coloured livery of horizontal black and white stripes in alternate courses of marble, the old church still contains a wonderful quantity of medieval Sienese art in many kinds. Carving in wood and in stone, painting in fresco and in oil, inlaid work and mosaic, richly coloured windows and gilded cornices, adorn walls, floor, and roof, in every part. The whole history of art from the early days, when Sienese artists first timidly essayed to imitate barbaric Byzantine models, to its perfect consummation in those glorious ages which immediately preceded the downfall of Italian liberty, is set forth in this fine old church, as in a rich and overflowing museum. Some half dozen popes sleep beneath sculptured tons of monumental marble in different parts of it,—among them two of the very old Sienese family of Picolomini.

FONTEBRANDA.

On another peak, or spur, of the deeply seamed mountain, stands the huge unornamented brick church and monastery of St. Dominic, so situated, that between it and the Cathedral is a steep gorge, the almost precipitous sides of which the old city has covered with stair-like streets. Deep at the bottom of this gorge, near a gate in the city wall, which runs indefatigably up and down the mountain ridges and ravines in its circuit around the spacious city, now a world too wide for its shrunken population, is that old fountain, which one passing word of the great poet has made for ever celebrated. Here is still that Fontebranda,[1] which, with all its wealth of sparkling water, the thirst-tormented coiner in the thirtieth canto of the Inferno, less longs for than he does to see in torment with him those who had tempted him to the deed he was expiating.

The Dantescan pilgrim, who, among his first objects at Siena, runs to visit this precious fountain, finds, not without a feeling of disappointment, a square mass of heavy ugly brickwork, supported on some three or four unornamented arches on each of its four sides. Within is a large tank, also of brick, the sides of which rise about two feet above the level of the soil; and this is perennially filled by a cool and pure spring from the sandstone side of the mountain, which there rises in a broken cliff immediately behind the ungraceful, though classic building. Descending the steep street in search of this poet-hallowed spot, with the Cathedral behind him, and St. Dominic's church high on its peak above and in front of him, the visitor finds that he is passing through a part of the city inhabited by the poorer classes of its people. And near the bottom of the hill, and around the fountain itself, it is manifest to more senses than one, that a colony of tanners and dyers is still established on the same site which their forefathers occupied, when Giacomo Benincasa was one of the guild.

The general aspect of this remote and low-lying corner of the city is squalid and repulsive. Eyes and nose are alike offended by all around them. And the stranger, who has been attracted thither by the well-remembered name of "Fontebranda," hastens to reclimb his way to the upper part of the town; probably unconscious, perhaps uncaring, that within a few yards of him lies another object of pilgrimage, classic after another fashion, and hallowed to the feelings of a far more numerous body of devotees. For a little way up the hill, on the left hand side of the poverty-stricken street, as one goes upwards, among the miserable and filthy-looking skin-dressers' houses, is still to be seen that of Giacomo Benincasa, in which his daughter Catherine, the future Saint, was born, in the year 1347, and lived dining the greater portion of her short career.

CATHERINE'S BIRTH-PLACE.

The veneration of her fellow citizens during the two centuries which followed her death, has not permitted the dwelling to remain altogether as it was when she inhabited it. The street front has been sufficiently altered to indicate to any passenger, that it belongs to some building of more note than the poor houses around it. Two stories of a "loggia," or arcade, of dark brick, supported on little marble columns,—four arches above, and four below,—run along the front of the upper part of the building. On the ground-floor, a large portal, like that of a chapel, such as in fact now occupies the entire basement story, sufficiently shows that the building within is no longer a poor dyer's habitation. On the side is a smaller door opening on a handsome straight stone staircase, eight feet wide. By this entrance visitors are admitted to gratify for an equal fee their Catholic devotion or heretic curiosity.

The whole lower floor of the house, once, as tradition, doubtless correctly, declares, the dyer's workshop (as similar portions of the neighbouring houses are still the workshops of modern dyers), is now a chapel. "Virginea Domus," is conspicuously carved in stone above the portal, somewhat unfairly ignoring the existence of poor Giacomo in his own workshop. The walls are covered with frescoes by Salimbeni and Pachierotti, and a picture by Sodoma adorns the altar. Ascending the handsome flight of stone stairs, the visitor finds most of the space on the first floor occupied by another chapel. This was the living room of the family, and is nearly as large as the workshop below. But at the end of it, farthest from the street, and therefore from the light also, there is a little dark closet, nine feet long by six wide. It is entered from the larger room by a very low door, cut in a very thick wall, and has no other means of receiving light or air. This was Catherine's bedchamber. The pavement of the little closet is of brick, and on this, with a stone—still extant in situ—for a pillow, the future Saint slept. The bricks, sanctified by this nightly contact with her person, have been boarded over to preserve them from the wear and tear of time, and from the indiscreet pilfering of devout relic-hunters.

Various treasures of this sort, such as the lamp she used to carry abroad, the handle of her staff, &c., are preserved on the altar of the adjoining chapel: and one or more other oratories have been built and ornamented in and about the Saint's dwelling-place. But the only spot which has any interest for a heretical visitor is the little dark and dismal hole—Catherine's own chamber and oratory—the scene of the young girl's nightly vigils, lonely prayers, spiritual struggles, and monstrous self-inflictions.

"Surely," cries the pious pilgrim, "as holily penetential a cell, as ever agonized De profundis rose from to the throne of Grace!"

"Truly," remarks the philosophic visitor, "a dormitory well calculated, in all its conditions, to foster and develop every morbid tendency of mind or body in its occupant!"

CHAPTER II.

THE SAINT'S BIOGRAPHER.

A great number of devout writers have occupied their pens on "legends" and biographies of St. Catherine, more or less complete in their scope and pretensions. The public library at Siena contains no less than seventy-nine works, of which the popular Saint of the city is the subject. Almost all of them, however, seem to be based more or less directly and avowedly on the work of "the Blessed" Raymond of Capua.

Perhaps some heretic's untutored mind may be so ignorant as not to know that the adjective joined to Raymond in the preceding sentence is not only an epithet, but a title. "Beatification," is a spiritual grade inferior to "sanctification," conferred by the same unerring authority, and implying different and inferior privileges and position.

Childish trash enough it seems. Yet may not possibly some disciple of that modern school of moralists, which teaches that happiness is not, or should not be man's highest and ultimate aim, see in this assertion of the superiority of "sanctification" to "blessedness," one of the many instances in which Rome's pettifogging formalism and unspiritual materialism have fossilised a lofty thought into a low absurdity?

Be this as it may, Raymond of Capua was never in Rome's hierarchy "more than blessed."

This "Beato Raimondo" was "in the world" Raimondo delle Vigne, great-grandson of Pietro delle Vigne, the celebrated Chancellor of the Emperor Frederick II., who right royally rewarded his life-long services by putting his eyes out. Raymond his great-grandson was a Dominican monk; and became[2] twenty-fourth general of the order, in 1578, at the time when a schism in the Church, divided between two popes, produced a corresponding schism in all the monastic orders. Raymond governed that portion of the Dominican fraternity which recognised the Pope, subsequently acknowledged by the Church as the true one.

Having been sent, in 1367, to preside over the Dominican convent in Siena, he was there by divine[3] intervention, say the learned historians of the literature of the order, appointed confessor and confidant to St. Catherine. The superior sanctity of the penitent was however soon made manifest. For when Siena was ravaged by a pestilence, in 1372, and Prior Raymond having caught it, while ministering to the sick, lay dying, he was miraculously restored to health by the prayers of St. Catherine.

The General of the Dominicans, as he shortly afterwards became, was a man of mark, moreover, beyond the limits of his own Society; for he was employed on several missions and negotiations by the Pope. With such qualifications and opportunities, he certainly would seem to have been the most competent person imaginable to give the world an account of his saintly penitent's career. This he has done in a work often reprinted, and most recently at Milan, in two good-sized octavo volumes, in 1851. The "Life of Saint Catherine of Siena, the Seraphic spouse of Jesus Christ" forms volumes nine and ten of an "Ecclesiastical Library," brought out at a very cheap rate, as a means of supplying the people of Italy in the nineteenth century with wholesome and profitable mental food.

POPULAR LITERATURE.

A glance at the nature and quality of this work is desirable for several reasons. In the first place, it is necessary to ascertain how far we can implicitly rely on its statements of matters of fact respecting Catherine's history. In the second place, a knowledge of the mental calibre and intellectual standing of the Saint's confessor, confidant, and friend, cannot but assist us in estimating her own character. And lastly, it is no little interesting to observe what spiritual and intellectual provender is provided in these days for the population of Italy by those who have the education and guidance of her people in their hands.

This widely circulated work is an Italian translation from the original Latin of Father Raymond, executed by Bernardino Pecci, Bishop of Grosseto. In the notice of St. Catherine, in the "Biographie Universelle," it is stated, among a singularly large number of other[4] errors, that Raymond translated into Latin the Life of the Saint from the Italian of Fra Tommaso della Fonte, who preceded him in his office of confessor, making some additions to the original text. But a very cursory examination of the book would have sufficed to show the French writer that, although Father Raymond frequently cites Fra Tommaso as the authority for some of his statements, the entire composition is wholly the work of the former.

An equally short glance at this "Life" will also suffice to convince any one in search of the facts of the Saint's career, that little assistance is to be got from Father Raymond. It is indeed very evident, that the author did not write with any intention of furnishing such. He rarely gives any dates, and scarcely makes any pretence of observing chronological order. He says, that he writes in his own old age, long after the events occurred; owns that he forgets much; and, though carefully and ostentatiously winding up every chapter with a reference to his authorities for the statements contained in it, is yet avowedly throwing together a mass of anecdotical recollections, as they occur to him. He rarely, if ever, records any unmiraculous and unsaintly doings;—mentions, for instance, that she performed such and such miracles at Pisa, or discoursed in such and such terms at Genoa; but does not give the slightest hint why she went thither, or when. In short, the whole scope and object of the book is devotional, and in no degree historic. It is written for the promotion of piety, and especially for the glory of the Order of St. Dominic, and of the Dominican St. Catherine. The wonders related are evidently intended to cap other wonders. They constantly consist of performances essentially similar to those recorded of older saints, but enhanced by some added circumstance of extra impossibility. And the writer, in his competitive eagerness, often pauses in his narration to point out, that no former recorded miracles have come up to that he is relating in outrageousness of contradiction to the laws of nature.

FATHER RAYMOND'S WORK.

Were it not, however, for these and such like evidences of the animus of the writer, and were it not also, it must be added, for the exceeding difficulty of supposing that an undoubtedly distinguished man, a contemporary of Petrarch and Boccaccio, could have believed the monstrous impossibilities he relates as facts,—the tone of the book would seem to be that of sincerity. In a subsequent chapter, the reader will have an opportunity of examining some specimens of these extraordinary relations. For the present, as a taste of the quality of this remarkable book, reprinted in 1851 for wide circulation among the readers of Italy, and as a means of judging how far it is possible to credit the writer with simple-hearted sincerity, he may take the following passages from a long prologue of thirty pages, which the learned author opens with a quotation from the Apocalypse, "I saw an angel descending from Heaven, having the key of the Abyss and a great chain in his hand;"—and in which he points out the application of these words to St. Catherine. Having shown at much length that she may well be considered an angel descending from Heaven, he proceeds thus:—[5]

"Finally we find added to the words of St. John, which have been taken as a foundation for this prologue, the following phrase: 'Et catenam magnam habens in manu suâ;' which, like those that precede them, adapt themselves to our subject, and explain the significance of her name. What wonder is it, that Catherine should have a chain,—catena? Is there then no agreement in the sound of the two words? Since if you pronounce 'Caterina' with a syncope, you have 'Catena;' and if to 'Catena' you join a syllable, you have the name of 'Caterina.' Shall we attach ourselves then to words and appearances only, neglecting the things and the mysteries signified by these words? Not only the words, but also the things themselves point out to us the applicability. Since catha in the Greek tongue signifies that which in the Latin is universe.[6] Hence also the Catholic Church is from the force of the Greek word properly called in Latin Universal. Caterina therefore and Catena signify in our tongue University; which thing also a chain—catena—manifests in its very nature."

After many pages of such extraordinary nonsense, he arrives at the conclusion, that Caterina certainly means Universality, and that in this name, made Catena by syncope, "lies hidden perhaps no small mystery!"

It does seem wholly incredible, that this should be the best product of the mind of one, chosen out to be the foremost of the Dominicans of his day, and selected by the Pope to be entrusted with important missions. It is difficult not to suspect, that this great-grandson of Frederick II.'s famous Chancellor was a very different man, when subtly diplomatising in Rome's interest with courts and princes, or when considering in council the interests of his order, from what he shows himself when addressing the people. Surely the Concio ad Populum must have differed from the Concio ad Clerum as widely as any sect's esoteric ever did from its exoteric doctrines. And the "no small mystery of Caterina cut down by syncope to Catena," was, we may well believe, not the subject of very serious meditations behind the screen on the priestly side of the altar. Is it indeed possible to abstain from the conviction, that we have detected the reverend figure of Father Raymond of Capua, General of the Dominicans, very decidedly laughing in his sleeve at that poor ill-used people, to whose proneness to be deceived, Rome has ever answered with so ready and so hearty a decipiatur?

POPULUS VULT DECIPI; DECIPIATUR.

One other specimen of the quality of this Dominican monk's work may not be superfluous in enabling the reader to make up his mind respecting him and his teaching.

He tells us[7] that Catherine, when in her seventh year, retired one day into some corner of the house, where she could not be seen or overheard, and thus prayed:—

"O most blessed and holy Virgin, first among women to consecrate by a perpetual vow thy virginity to the Lord, by whom thou wast graciously made mother of His only begotten son, I pray of thy ineffable goodness, that without considering my merits or my weakness, thou wouldst be pleased to do me the great favour[8] of giving me for husband Him, whom I desire with all the passion of my soul, thy most Holy Son, our only Lord Jesus Christ; and I promise to Him and to thee, that I will never receive any other husband, and that with all my power I will preserve for Him my purity ever unblemished."

"Do you perceive, O reader!" continues the biographer, "with what order all the graces and virtuous operations of this Holy Virgin are powerfully and sweetly regulated by that Wisdom which disposes all things? In the sixth year of her age, while yet seeing her spouse with the eyes of the body, she gloriously received his benediction. In the seventh year, she made the vow of chastity. The first of these numbers is superior to all others in perfection: and the latter is called by all theologians, the number of Universality. What then can be understood from this, if not that this Virgin was destined to receive from the Lord the Universal Perfection of all the virtues; and consequently to possess a perfect degree of glory? Since the first number signifies Perfection, and the second Universality, what can they signify, when put together, other than Universal Perfection? Wherefore she was properly called Catherine,[9] which signifies, as has been shown, Universality."

This, and some three or four hundred closely printed pages of similar material, has recently (1851) been published at a price, which only a very large circulation could make possible. "And yet," cry the priests and priest-ridden rulers of the nations for whom this spiritual food is provided, "we are accused of keeping our people in ignorance, and discouraging reading! On the contrary, we carefully teach our flocks, and seek but to provide them wholesome instead of poisonous mental food. Here is reading, calculated to make men good Christians, good subjects—and to keep them quiet."

IMMORTALITY OF FALSEHOOD.

Volumes might yet be written, and not superfluously, though many have been written already, on the deliberate, calculated, and intentional soul-murder perpetrated by this "safe" literature! And it is curious to mark how this poor sainted Catherine, and her "blessed" confessor are still active agents for evil nearly five hundred years after the sepulchre has closed on them!

"Like vampyres they steal from their tombs,
To suck out life's pith with their lying,"

as a poet sings, who has well marked the working of saints and saint-worship in that unhappy land.

Truth is immortal! as is often said. Yes! but men do not perhaps so often consider, that, as far as human ken may extend, falsehood unhappily is in its consequences equally immortal.

CHAPTER III.

THE FACTS OF THE CASE.

Little reliable information as to the real unmiraculous events of Catherine Benincasa's life is to be obtained, as has been seen, from the pages of her professed biographer. But there is another pietistic work, forming part of the same "Ecclesiastical Library," in which Father Raymond's book has been recently reprinted, that offers somewhat better gleanings to the inquirer into the facts of the case. This is a reprint in four volumes (Milan, 1843–4) of the Saint's Letters, with the annotations of the Jesuit, Father Frederick Burlamacchi. These letters had been already several times published, when the learned Lucchese Jesuit undertook to edit them in the beginning of the eighteenth century. The former editions were imperfect, incorrect, and uncommented. But the Jesuit, jesuitlike, has done his work well; and his notes, appended to the end of each letter, contain abundant information respecting the persons to whom they are addressed, the events and people alluded to in them, and, wherever attainable, the dates at which they were written. To the labours therefore of Father Burlamacchi is due most of the information thrown together in the following concise account of Catherine's career; in which it is intended, leaving aside saintship and miracles for a moment, to give the reader a statement of those facts only which a sceptical inquirer may admit to be historical.

ACCEPTANCE BY THE "MANTELLATE."

Thus denuded of all devotional "improvement," and of all those portions of the narrative which alone clerical writers have for the most part thought much worth preserving, the story can present but a very skeleton outline indeed; for the notices of the Saint to be met with in contemporary lay writers are singularly few and scanty.

Catherine was one of the youngest of a family of twenty-five children. Her twin sister died a few days after her birth. At a very early age she was observed to be taciturn, and solitary in her habits; and was remarkable for the small quantity of nourishment she took. At about twelve years old she manifested her determination to devote herself to a religious life. The modes of this manifestation, and the difficulties she encountered in carrying her wishes into execution against the opposition of her family, as related by her biographer, are curious; but cannot be admitted into this chapter of "facts."

Some few years later than this, it should seem,—but Father Raymond's aversion to dates does not permit us to ascertain exactly at what age,—Catherine, with much difficulty, and being confined to her bed by illness at the time, persuaded her mother to go to certain religious women attached to the order of St. Dominic, and prefer to them her petition to be admitted among them. These devotees were termed—"Mantellate di S. Domenico,"—"the cloaked women of St. Dominic;" and they appear to have been bound by the vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience. But they were not strictly nuns, as they were not cloistered, but lived each in her own habitation, and went about the city freely. On these grounds the Mantellate made much difficulty about receiving Catherine into their society; alleging, that they conferred their habit only on widows, or elderly single women, as scandal would be caused by a young woman leading a single but uncloistered life. On being further urgently entreated, however, on the behalf of Catherine, they agreed to send a deputation of their body to visit the sick girl, promising to receive her, if it should be found that, though young, she was not pretty. The deputed judges came; and to Catherine's great delight pronounced favourably as to the absence of any disqualifying personal charms; though the more gallant confessor insinuates, that their decision was in great part influenced by the effects of illness on the candidate's appearance. She was accordingly made a sister of St. Dominic, and placed under the spiritual guidance and direction of the friars of that order.

Then we have exceedingly copious accounts of penitences, austerities, and abstinence, which, though in all probability true to a frightful degree, yet, certainly cannot, as related by Father Raymond, be accepted as unmiraculous truths. One circumstance mentioned by him, however, at this point of his narrative, does not seem liable to any suspicion, and is worth noting. Her early confessors, he says, did not believe the miraculousness of her fasts and sufferings.

From this period to the end of her life we have accounts of her frequent, apparently daily, "ecstasies," or fits. And it is interesting to observe, that the descriptions of these seizures given by her biographer on more than one occasion, show them to have been very evidently of a cataleptic nature. The Dominican monk of course has not, or at least does not manifest, the least suspicion that these "ecstasies" were attributable to any other than a directly miraculous cause. But his account is sufficiently accurate to render the matter satisfactorily clear to modern readers.

FATHER RAYMOND'S DOUBTS.

The passage, in which he first speaks of these fits, of his own doubts concerning the nature of them, and especially of the mode he adopted to arrive at a correct decision on this point, is sufficiently curious.

"Shortly[10] afterwards," he says, having been telling the story of some vision, "she lost the use of her corporal senses and fell into ecstasy. Hence proceeded all the wonderful things that subsequently took place, both as regards her abstinence, such as is not practised by others, her admirable teaching, and the manifest miracles, which Almighty God, even during her lifetime, showed before our eyes. Wherefore, since here is the foundation, the root, and the origin of all her holy works.... I sought every means and every way, by which I might investigate whether her operations were from the Lord, or from another source,—whether they were true or fictitious. For I reflected, that now was the time of that third beast with the leopard's skin, by which hypocrites are pointed out; and that in my own experience I had found some, especially among the women, who easily deceive themselves, and are more readily seduced by the enemy, as was manifested in the case of the first mother of us all. Other matters also presented themselves to my mind, which constrained me to remain uncertain and dubious concerning this matter. While I was thus in doubt, unable to acquire a strong conviction on either side of the question, and anxiously wishing to be guided by Him, who can neither deceive nor be deceived, it struck me, that if I could be certain, that by means of her prayers I had obtained from the Lord a great and unusual sense of contrition for my sins, beyond anything I was wont to feel, this should be for me a perfect proof that all her operations proceeded from the Holy Ghost."

He then recounts at length, what may be as well told in a few words,—how he besought her to pray for him, telling her, that he desired to have a proof of the efficacy of her prayer by being conscious of an unusually strong sense of contrition within himself,—how she promised that he assuredly should have this proof,—how he was next day confined to his bed by illness, and so weak as to be hardly able to speak; and how, being then visited and exhorted by Catherine, who herself left with difficulty a sick bed to come to him, he did feel especially and unusually contrite; and so the required proof was complete, and he was ever after ready to accept any amount of miraculous performance on the part of the Saint with perfect faith in its reality and sanctity.

Did the diplomatist General of the Dominicans really think that he had obtained the proof, he says he wished for? Were the other women, whom he had deemed impostors or dupes of the evil one, equally devoted to and in the hands of the Dominican Order, equally fervent and promising in their vocation of saintship, and equally endowed with the strength of character and will, which united to her physical infirmities, rendered Catherine so rarely and highly valuable an instrument for the promotion of "religion" and the glory of the order?—questions, which must be left to the consideration of the reader. On a subsequent occasion, Father Raymond describes[11] more at length the nature of the seizure, to which Catherine was subject. We are told that,—

HER ECSTASIES.

"Whenever the remembrance of her sacred husband,"—by which phrase thousands of times repeated in the course of his work, the monk always alludes to our Saviour,—"became a little refreshed in that holy mind, she withdrew herself as much as she could from her corporal senses; and her extremities, that is to say, her hands and her feet became contracted and deadened; her fingers first. Then her limbs became so strongly fixed both in themselves, and attached to the places which they touched, that it would have been more possible to break them to pieces than to remove them in any wise. The eyes also were perfectly closed; and the neck was rendered so rigid, that it was not a little dangerous to her to touch her neck at such moments."

The frequency and duration of these attacks appear to have increased. At a later period[12] of his narrative, Father Raymond tells us that "the inferior and sensitive part of her nature abandoned her for the greater part of her time, and left her deprived of sensation. Of which," he says, "we are assured a thousand times by seeing and touching her arms and her hands so rigidified, that it would have been easier to break the bone, than remove them from the position in which they were. The eyes were completely shut; the ears did not hear any sound however great, and all the bodily senses were entirely deprived of their proper action."

These passages will leave little doubt on the minds of any who have witnessed the phenomena of catalepsy, that Catherine was habitually subject to attacks of that complaint. The hint to be derived from the writer's declaration, that she threw herself into this state "as much as she could," is worthy of notice; and will not seem surprising to those who have studied this form of disease. Those also, who have watched the physical phenomena of animal magnetism, will not fail to remark the similarity of the facts recorded of Catherine, to those they have been accustomed to observe.

For several years of her life after her profession, and previous to 1376, we find various undated intimations of her being in different cities of Tuscany; and Father Raymond has recorded her complaints, that people both secular and of "the order," had been scandalised by her frequent travelling, whereas she had never gone any whither, she declares, except for the salvation of souls. But when it is remembered what travelling was in those days, and that to go from Siena to Florence, Pisa, or Lucca, was to cross the frontier of her own country, and traverse the dominions of foreign and often hostile states, it seems strange, that a young girl of obscure origin, and necessarily with small pecuniary resources at her command, should have found the means of travelling about the world, accompanied, as she appears always to have been, by a suite of confessors and other ecclesiastical followers. To render these journeyings yet more difficult and puzzling, we find contemporary mention of her frequent illness. She is again and again confined to her bed by fever, and "her ordinary infirmities," and "accustomed sufferings;"—a state of things that would seem to put out of the question for her the wandering mendicant friar's ordinary inexpensive mode of locomotion.

THE PAPAL SEE AT AVIGNON.

Not a word, however, is to be found throwing light on any such difficulties; and they must be left to the reader, as they present themselves. It may be noted, however,—rather, though, to the increase than to the lessening of the strangeness of the circumstances,—that by special Papal Bull she was permitted to carry with her a portable travelling altar, and the confessors who accompanied her were specially licensed to absolve all such penitents as came to the Saint for spiritual advice and edification.

In the year 1376 Catherine was in her twenty-ninth year; and we then come to the most important and most remarkable incident in her career. At that time Gregory XI., the last of seven French popes, who had succeeded one another in the chair of St. Peter, was living at Avignon, where for the last seventy-three years the Papal Court had resided to the infinite discontent and considerable injury of Italy. To put an end to this absenteeism, and bring back the Pontiff, and all the good things that would follow in his train, was the cherished wish of all good Italians, and especially of all Italian churchmen. Petrarch had urgently pressed Gregory's predecessor, Urban V., to accomplish the desired change; Dante had at an earlier period laboured to accomplish the same object. But it was not altogether an easy step to take. The French Cardinals who surrounded the Pope at Avignon were of course eager to keep him and the Court in their own country. The King of France was equally anxious to detain him. The French Pope's likings and prejudices of course pointed in the same direction. Rome too was very far just then from offering an agreeable or inviting residence. The dominions of the Church were in a state of almost universal rebellion. The turbulence of the great Roman barons was such, that going to live among them seemed as safe and as pleasant as finding a residence in a den of ruffians.

Thus all the representations of the Italian Church, and all the spiritual and temporal interests, which so urgently needed the ruler's presence in his dominions, had for some years past not sufficed to bring back the Pope to Rome. Under these circumstances Catherine, the obscure Sienese dyer's illiterate daughter, determined to try her powers of persuasion and argument on the Pontiff, and proceeded to Avignon for that purpose in the summer of 1376. In the September of that same year, the Pope set out on his return to Rome! The dyer's daughter succeeded in her enterprise, and moved the centre of Europe once more back again to its old place in the eternal city!

It should seem, that she was also charged by the government of Florence, then at war with the Pope, to make their peace with him. And this object also, though it was not accomplished on the occasion of her visit to Avignon, she appears to have subsequently contributed to bring to a satisfactory termination. But it is remarkable, that in none of the six letters to Gregory, written in the early months of 1376, does she speak a word on the subject of Florence. The great object of her anxiety is the Pope's return to Rome. There are four letters extant written by her[13] to Gregory, while she was in Avignon. But neither in these is the business of the Florentines touched on. So that we must suppose, says Father Burlamacchi in his notes to Letter VII., that this affair was treated by the Pope and the Saint in personal interviews,[14] or in other letters now lost.

HER LETTERS TO POPE GREGORY.

But it seems strange, that she should write elaborate letters to a person inhabiting the same town, and with whom she was doubtless in the habit of having frequent personal intercourse. And the suspicion naturally arises that these compositions were intended, at all events in great measure, for the perusal of others besides the person to whom they were avowedly written. One of them is extant in the form of a Latin translation by Father Raymond. It is true, that that language was probably the only medium of communication between the Italian Saint and the French Pope. Nevertheless, the question,—Did this letter ever originally exist in any other form than the Dominican's Latin presents itself.

The following testimony however of the historian Ammirato, who wrote about two hundred years after the events of which we are speaking, seems to show decisively, that from her own time to that of the author, she was generally considered to have been the principal cause of the restoration of the Papal Court to Rome.

"There was living," he writes,[15] "in those days a young virgin born in Siena, who from the great austerity of her life, from the fervour of her zeal of charity, and indefatigable perseverance in all good works, was even in her lifetime deemed holy by all, and is so by the writer of these lines, though the reader may perceive, that he has no special devotion to her. Nor was this opinion conceived without the appearance to many persons of wonderful signs of a miraculous and supernatural character." Having briefly described these wonders in words, which certainly do not reveal any disbelief of them in his own mind, he continues thus:—

"It came into the minds therefore of those, who then governed Florence, that she might be of use in effecting a treaty of peace with the Pope. And if they had themselves no really sincere desire for this, yet the employment of her in the matter served to prove to others, who were opposed to the war with the Pope, that no efforts were wanting on their part to obtain peace. Being, therefore, urged by the war[16] commissioners to proceed to Avignon on this mission, she did not refuse to undertake it, but went thither, as is related by herself in one of her letters. And it is a certain fact, not only that she was well received and affectionately listened to by the Pope, but that by her instances he was induced to restore the Apostolic seat to Rome."

Not having been able to bring the negotiation for peace to a conclusion, she returned to Florence in the autumn of 1376, and remained there living in a house provided for her by Niccolò Soderini[17] and others connected with the government, while she continued to use her influence in every possible way for the conclusion of a treaty. Becoming thus well known to the Florentines, she was, says Ammirato, "considered by some to be a bad woman, as in more recent times, similar opinions have been held respecting Jerome Savonarola."

SHE RESTORES THE POPE TO ROME.

It should seem, however, that Catherine must have been favourably known in Florence some years before this time from an incidental notice of the chronicler, Del Migliore, who has recorded that in 1370 her brothers were publicly presented with the freedom of the city. And it is difficult to suppose that such an honour could have been conferred on them on any other grounds than the celebrity of their saintly sister.

Muratori also testifies,[18] that Catherine contributed much to the restoration of the Papal Court to Rome, saying that she wrote to the Pope on the subject. He appears not to have been aware that she went thither.

Again, Maimbourg, who took the contrary side in the great schism, which so soon afterwards divided the Church into two camps, and who is far from being prejudiced in favour of Catherine, admits that the Pope, "resolved at last to re-establish the see in Rome, in consequence of the urgent and repeated solicitations of St. Catherine of Siena."[19]

The Abate Ughelli bears his testimony[20] also to the efficacy of Catherine's exertions in this matter.

"The greatest part," he says, "of the praise due to Gregory's return to Rome belongs to Catherine of Siena, who with infinite courage made the journey to Avignon, and at last induced the Pontiff to return, and by his presence dispel those evils which had shockingly overrun all Italy in consequence of the absence of the popes. So that it is not surprising, that writers, who rightly understood the matter, should have said that Catherine, the virgin of Siena, brought back to God the abandoned Apostolical seat oil her shoulders."

It should appear, then, that it must be admitted, strange as it may seem, among the facts of the Saint's life, that the restoration of the Pope and his Court to Rome, that great change so important to all Europe, so long battled and struggled for and against by kings, cardinals, and statesmen, was at last brought about by her.

Without pausing at present to look further into a result so startling, it will be better to complete this chapter, by briefly adding the few other authentically known facts of her story which remain to be told.

Gregory XI. died on the 27th of March, 1378. On the 7th of April sixteen cardinals entered into conclave for the election of his successor. Of these, eleven were Frenchmen, and all of course anxious to elect a Frenchman. But seven out of the eleven being Limousins, were bent on creating one of their number Pope. The other four Frenchmen were opposed to this; and by favour of this dissension the Italians succeeded in placing an Italian, Bartolomeo Prignani, in the sacred chair, who took the name of Urban VI.

This took place while Catherine was still at Florence. There are two letters written by her thence to the new Pope. In one of them she alludes to a "scandalo," which had occurred; and was in truth nothing less than a city tumult, in which some turbulent rioters of the anti-church party had threatened her life. It is recorded,[21] that the Saint intrepidly presented herself before the mob, saying, "I am Catherine. Kill me, if you will!"—on which they were abashed and slunk off.

HER DEATH.

Two other letters to Urban VI. follow, which appear to have been written from Siena; and on the 28th of November, 1378, in obedience to the Papal commands, she arrived in Rome. There are then four more letters written to the Pope after that date; and on the 29th day of April, 1380, she died at the age of thirty-three, after long and excruciating sufferings.

Father Raymond was at Genoa at that time; and declares that in that city at the hour of her death, he heard a voice communicating to him a last message from Catherine, which he afterwards found she had uttered on her death-bed, word for word as he heard it. "And of this," he adds, solemnly, "let that Eternal Truth, which can neither deceive nor be deceived, be witness." Nevertheless, some may be inclined to think that this statement has no right to be included among the facts of the case. Such sceptics may, however, be reminded that it is a certain and not altogether unimportant fact, that Father Raymond makes this solemn assertion.

The extant letters of the Saint, 198 in number, are also facts, of a very singular and puzzling nature. But it will be more convenient to defer any examination of this part of the subject to a future and separate chapter.

CHAPTER IV.

THE CHURCH VIEW OF THE CASE.

Authentic history, conceiving herself justified, probably, in leaving a saint in the hands of her own professional advisers and chroniclers, has meddled so little with Catherine biographically, that it was easy to give within the limits of a short chapter a tolerably complete summary of all that can be said to be really known of her story. The professional records of her career as Saint and Thaumaturgist on the other hand are exuberant, minute in detail, and based on abundance of that sort of evidence to their veracity, which the writers of such narratives are wont to consider as most irrefragable and conclusive. And these stories are by no means deficient in interest even to those, whose habits of mind lead them to distinguish widely between such and the materials for what they would admit to be history. For it is a genuine historical fact, and one of no light importance, that these things were believed, were written by men of learning, and are still believed by thousands. It is an historical, as well as a very curious psychological fact, that the statements in question were considered by the writers and thousands of readers of them during many generations to have been proved to be true by the evidence adduced. And it is an historical question, far more interesting, unfortunately, than easy to be solved, who were the believers of the officially received narrative, and who were not.

HER AUSTERITIES.

For these reasons the Church view of the case, is at least as important a part of any satisfactory account of the Saint as the lay view, which was the subject of the last chapter. But all attempt to state the former with the completeness with which it has been sought to lay the latter before the reader, would, within any limits endurable by Englishmen of the nineteenth century, be wholly futile. It will be necessary to proceed by way of specimen-giving. And in the present case that compendious mode of examination will not be so unsatisfactory as it sometimes is found to be. For the masses of visions, penitences, revelations, and miracles recorded, with their respective confirmatory evidences, are so perfectly homogeneous in their nature, that the handful may very confidently be accepted as a fair sample of the contents of the sack.

The austerities and self-inflictions by which she prepared herself for her career internally, and at the same time gave proof of her vocation externally to those around her, began at an almost incredibly early age, and went on increasing gradually in intensity and monstrosity till they pass from the probable to the highly improbable, and thence to the manifestly impossible and miraculous. The line of demarcation which limits the latter, will be differently drawn by different minds. But the perfectly authentic records of human achievement in this department, are such as warn us against absolutely refusing our belief to any horrible self-torment under which life may possibly be retained.

At five years old, it was her practice in going up stairs to kneel at each step to the Virgin.

She habitually flogged herself, and induced other children to imitate her in doing so, at six years of age. At seven, she deprived herself of a great portion of her food, secretly giving it to her brother, or throwing it to the cats. At the same age, she would watch from the window to see when a Dominican monk passed, and as soon as ever he had moved on, she used to run out and kiss the spot on the pavement on which he had placed his feet.

HER GREAT SIN.

At twelve years old, being then marriageable, her mother begged her to comb her hair and "wash her face oftener." But this she steadfastly refused to do, till her mother having requested a married sister for whom Catherine had the warmest affection, to use her influence with her, she yielded, and began to pay some attention to the cleanliness of her person and the neatness of her dress. "When she afterwards confessed this fault to me," says the "Blessed" Raymond, "she spoke of it with such sighs and tears, that you would have supposed she had been guilty of some great sin. And as I know that, now that she is in heaven, it is lawful for me to reveal such things as redound to her praise, though they were heretofore secret, I have determined to insert here what passed between her and me on this subject. For she frequently made a general[22] confession to me, and always when she came to this point, she bitterly accused herself with sobs and tears. So that although I knew that it is the peculiarity of virtuous souls to believe that sin exists where in truth it does not,"—(observe the morality and think a little of the practical and psychological consequences of it)—"and to deem it great, where it is in fact small, nevertheless, since Catherine accused herself as meriting eternal punishment for the above fault, I was obliged to ask her, whether in acting as she had done, she had at all proposed or wished to violate her vow of chastity? To which she replied, that no such thought had ever entered her heart. I again asked her, whether, since she had no intention of transgressing her vow of virginity, she had done this in order to please any man in particular, or all men in general? And she answered that nothing gave her so much pain, as to see men, or be seen by them, or to be where any of them were. So that whenever any of her father's workmen, who lived in the house with him, came into any place where she chanced to be, she used to run from them, as if they had been serpents, so that all wondered at her." (Note the general state of manners and individual state of mind indicated by the fact, that such conduct should be deemed a praiseworthy proof of maidenly purity!) "She never," she said, "placed herself at the window, or at the door of the house to look at those who passed."—(Surely the Saint forgot her pious habit of looking out for the Dominicans, in order to kiss their footsteps.)—"Then I asked her in reply, for what reason this act of having attended to her dress, especially if it were not done in excess, merited eternal punishment? She answered, that she had loved her sister too much, and appeared to love her more than she loved God, for which reason she wept inconsolably, and did most bitter penance. And on my wishing to reply, that, although there might have been some excess, yet seeing that there had been no bad or even vain intention, there was nothing contrary to divine precept, she lifted up her eyes and voice to God, crying, 'O Lord my God, what kind of spiritual father have I now, who excuses my sins? Was it right then, Father, that this bad and most worthless creature, who without labour or merit of her own has received so many favours from her Creator, should spend her time in adorning this putrid flesh, at the instigation of any mortal? Hell, I think, would have been no sufficient punishment for me, if the divine mercy had not shown me pity.' Thereupon," concludes the conscientious confessor, "I was constrained to be silent." He felt that his penitent's view of her sin was the just one, as indeed was sufficiently shown by the following conclusion of the story of the Saint's temporary backsliding.

Her sister continued to persuade her to pay attention to her person. "But the omnipotent Lord not being able any longer to endure that his chosen bride should in any way be kept at a distance from him, removed that obstacle which prevented her from uniting herself to God. For Bonaventura, the Saint's married sister, who instigated her to vanity, being near the time of her confinement, died in child-birth, young as she was. Observe, O reader, how displeasing and hateful to God it is to impede or divert those who wish to serve him. This Bonaventura was, as has been said, a very worthy woman, both in her conduct and in her conversation; but because she endeavoured to draw back to the world her who wished to serve God, she was smitten by the Lord, and punished with a very painful death." Take care, therefore, what you do, all mothers and sisters, of any who may seem to have a vocation for the cloister, lest you share the fate of Bonaventura Benincasa, doomed by God to a fearful death for having persuaded her sister to wash her face!

And to such practical teaching is the Saint's story moralised to this day even as 500 years ago!

HER FASTING.

At about this period of Catherine's life—to return to the series of her penances and mortifications—she wholly abandoned the use of animal food. At fifteen she left off wine. At twenty she gave up bread, living only on uncooked vegetables. She used to sleep but one quarter of an hour in the twenty-four; always flogged herself till the blood streamed from her three times a day; and lived three years without speaking. She wore a chain of iron round her body, which gradually eat its way into her flesh. And finally, she remained wholly without food for many years. This Father Raymond declares to have been the case within his own knowledge, and adds with much triumph, "that we know from Scripture that Moses fasted twice during a space of forty days, and Elias once, and that our Saviour accomplished the same, as the Gospel tells us: but a fast of many years has not hitherto been known."

Passing from the Saint's achievements in this kind, we find her equally distancing all competitors in the matter of personal and familiar communication and conversation with the Deity.

She began to have visions at six years old. Returning home one day about that time, through the streets of Siena, she saw in the sky immediately over the Dominican's church a throne, with Christ sitting on it dressed in Papal robes, accompanied by St. Paul, St. Peter, and St. John.

At a later period, Christ appeared to her daily as soon as she retired to her cell, as she informed Father Raymond, for the purpose of teaching her the doctrines of religion, which, said she to her confessor, "no man or woman ever taught me, but only our Lord Jesus Christ himself, sometimes by means of inspiration, and sometimes by means of a clear bodily appearance, manifest to the bodily senses, and talking with me, as I now talk with you."

Again, a little farther on in her career, we read that "the Lord appeared to Catherine very frequently, and remained with her longer than he had been wont to do, and sometimes brought with him his most glorious mother, sometimes St. Dominic, and sometimes both of them: but mostly he came alone and talked with her, as a friend with a most intimate friend; in such sort, that, as she herself secretly and blushingly confessed to me, the Lord and she frequently recited the Psalms together, walking up and down the chamber, as two monks or priests are wont to recite the service. Oh, marvel! Oh, astonishment! Oh, manifestation of divine familiarity unheard of in our times!" exclaims the biographer: as he truly well might!

Very soon after this, having tried in vain, as she informed her confessor, to learn to read, she one day prayed God, that, if it was His will that she should read, he would teach her at once, to avoid further loss of time in learning. She rose from her knees perfectly well able to read any writing as readily and quickly as any learned man could. This Father Raymond heard her do; but on asking her to spell the words she could not, and did not know the letters; a proof, says the confessor, of the reality of the miracle! In another place it is incidentally mentioned that she read especially the Psalter. Does not this, joined to the Dominican's proof of the miracle, seem to indicate, that what passed for reading was in fact repeating by heart?

HER MARRIAGE.

On a subsequent day, in carnival time, while the others in the Saint's family were carousing, and she was alone in her chamber, Christ appeared to her, and said that he was come to keep his promise of marrying her. Then appeared the Virgin, St. John, St. Paul, and St. Dominic, and David with a harp, on which he played very sweetly. The Virgin then took Catherine's hand in hers, and holding out the fingers towards her son, asked if he would deign to espouse her "in the faith. To which the only begotten Son of God graciously consented, and drew forth a golden ring, with four pearls and a magnificent diamond in it, which ring he placed with his own most holy right hand on the ring-finger of the right hand of Catherine, saying, 'Behold I marry you in the faith to me your Creator and Saviour.'" After adding some further exhortations, the vision disappeared; but as a proof of its reality, there remained the ring on the finger of Catherine! It was not indeed visible to any eyes but those of the Saint herself, adds Father Raymond with perfect composure and contentment; but she saw it, inasmuch as she has many times confessed to me, though with many blushes, that she always continued to see the ring on her finger, and was never long without looking at it.

One day while she was praying to God to renew her heart, Christ suddenly appeared to her—or, in the words of the biographer, her eternal spouse came to her as usual—opened her side, removed her heart, and carried it away with him. So truly was this done, that for several days she declared herself to be without any heart, pointing out to those who objected that it was impossible, that with God nothing is impossible. After some days Christ again appeared, bearing in his hand what seemed a human heart, red and shining, again opened her side, put the new heart in, and closed the aperture, saying, "See, dearest daughter; as I took from you the other day your heart, so now I will give you mine, with which you will always live!" And as a proof of the miracle, there remained evermore in her side the scar, as she herself and her female companions had often assured Father Raymond. A further confirmation of the fact was moreover to be seen in the remarkable circumstance, that from that day forth, the saint was unable to say, as she had been wont, "Lord, I commend to thee my heart," but always said, "Lord, I commend to thee thy heart."

Another time the first person of the Trinity appeared to her "in a vision," and she seemed to see him pull from out his mouth our Saviour Christ in his human form. Then he pulled from out his breast St. Dominic, and said to her, "Dearest daughter, I have begotten these two sons, the one by natural generation, the other by sweet and loving adoption." Then the Almighty enters into a detailed comparison between Christ and St. Dominic, and ends by saying, that the figure of the latter had now been shown her "because he resembled much the body of my most holy naturally begotten and only son."

Once when she was carrying some comforts to a sick poor woman, Christ, "joking with her," suddenly made the things so heavy that she could hardly carry them. Then, when she wished to leave the sick woman, still jesting, he took from her the power of moving. Being troubled, therefore, and yet at the same time smiling, she said to her heavenly spouse, who was jesting with her, "Why, dearest husband, have you thus tricked me? Does it seem to you well to keep me here, and thus mock and confuse me?" She adds more remonstrances of this sort, and at last, "the eternal husband seeing the secret annoyance of his wife, and not being in a manner able to endure it, he restored to her her previous strength."

THE BEGGAR-MAN.

Upon another occasion, when she was at her devotions in the church of the Dominicans, a poor beggar, who appeared to be about thirty-two or thirty-three years old, implored her to bestow on him some clothing. The Saint bade him wait a minute; and returning into a private chapel, she drew off by the feet, "cautiously and modestly," says Father Raymond, an under garment without sleeves, which she wore under her outer clothing because of the cold, and very gladly gave it to the poor man. Upon which the beggar replied, "Madonna, since you have furnished me with a woollen garment, I pray you to provide me with one of linen also." To which she willingly consented, saying, "Follow me, and I will readily give you what you ask." So she returned to her father's house, followed by the poor man, and going into a store room, where the linen clothing of her father and brothers was kept, she took a shirt and pair of drawers and joyfully gave them to him. But he, when he had got these, did not desist from begging, saying, "Madonna, what can I do with this garment, which has no sleeves to cover the arms. I beg you to give me some sleeves of some sort, that so my whole clothing may be your gift." Upon this, Catherine, not the least displeased with his importunity, searched all over the house to find some sleeves to give him. And finding by chance, hanging on a peg, a new gown belonging to the servant, which she had never yet worn, she instantly stripped the sleeves from it, and gave them to the beggar. But he, when he had taken them, still persevered, saying, "See now, Madonna, you have clothed me, for which may He reward you, for love of whom you have done it. But I have a companion in the hospital, who is in extreme want of clothing. If you will give him some garment, I would willingly carry it to him from you." Upon which, Catherine, in no wise displeased at the poor man's reiterated demands, or cooled in the fervour of her charity, bethought her how she could find some clothing to send to the poor man in the hospital. But, in the words of the biographer monk, "remembering that all the family, except her father, disapproved of her almsgiving, and kept all they had under lock and key, to prevent her from giving the things away to the poor, and further discreetly considering that she had taken away enough from the servant, who was herself poor, and therefore ought not to have everything taken from her, she found that her resources were confined wholly to herself. She, therefore, seriously discussed in her mind the question, whether she ought to give the poor wretch the only garment which remained to her. Charity argued for the affirmative; but maidenly modesty opposed a negative. And in this contest charity was overcome by charity. That is to say, the charity which pities the bodies of our neighbour, was conquered by the charity which regards their souls; since Catherine considered that great scandal would arise if she were to go naked, and that souls ought not to be scandalised for the sake of any alms to the body." Accordingly, she told the beggar, that she would willingly have given him that, her only covering, if it had been lawful to do so—but that it was not permissible. "I know," said he, smiling, "that you would give me anything you could. Adieu!" And so he went. On the following night, however, Christ came to her, holding in his hand the garment she had given the poor man, now all adorned with pearls and gems, and said, "Dost thou know this gown? Thou gavest it to me yesterday, and charitably clothedst me when I was naked, saving me from the pain of cold and shame. Now I will give thee from my sacred body a garment, which, though invisible to men, shall preserve both thy body and soul from cold." So saying, he pulled from out the wound in his side a garment of the colour of blood, exceedingly resplendent, and clothed her with it. And, in fact, so perfectly did it fulfil, though invisible, the purpose for which it was given, that the Saint never afterwards wore any under garment, either in summer or winter, nor did she ever more suffer from the cold.

THE HEAVENLY GARMENT.

It occurred frequently, that the most hardened sinners were reclaimed by her intervention, but not by the means of exhortation or persuasion—(in this there would have been nothing worth telling)—but by direct application to God, and asking the required conversion as a favour to herself. There was a certain inveterate reprobate in Siena, who having led an exceedingly wicked life, was near his death, and obstinately refused to confess, or humble himself in any way. "Fallen into final impenitence, he continually committed that sin against the Holy Ghost, which is not forgiven either in this world, or the world to come, and thus deservedly was going down to eternal torments," says Father Raymond. In short, if he had lived anywhere but in Siena, or if his parish priest had not bethought him of applying to Catherine in the difficulty, he would infallibly have perished eternally. But what luck some people have! Catherine, on being applied to, undertook the case immediately, but found it a rather more difficult one than usual; for, on praying to Christ to rescue the dying sinner, he answered her by saying, "The iniquities of this man, horrible blasphemer as he is, have risen up to heaven. Not only has he blasphemed with his mouth me and my saints, but he has even thrown into the fire a picture, in which was my image, and that of my mother, and others of my saints. It is, therefore just that he should burn in eternal fire. Let him alone, my dearest daughter, for he is worthy of death." Catherine, however, replied with many arguments, given at length by her biographer; but, nevertheless, for a long time she could not prevail. From five in the evening till the morning, Catherine, watching and tearful, disputed with the Lord for the salvation of that soul, he alleging the sinner's many and grave sins, which justice required to be punished, and she insisting on the mercy, for the sake of which he had become incarnate. At last the Saint conquered, and at dawn of day Christ said, "Dearest daughter, I have granted your prayer, and I will now convert this man, for whom you pray so fervently." So from that hour all went well. The sinner began to confess, the priest began to absolve him, and he died within a few hours. But it was a very near run thing. For the priest who had applied to Catherine had found on reaching her house, that she was in a trance or ecstasy, and could not be spoken with. He waited as long as he could, and when he could wait no longer, he left a message with a companion of Catherine's to the desired effect. As it was, all went well. But it is clear that if a few hours more had been lost, if the Saint's trance had lasted longer, or her long argument on the subject had not been concluded when it was, or if the woman with whom the message was left, had made any blunder about the matter, or forgotten it, the man's evil life would have produced its natural consequences according to God's eternal law, and he would have been damned.

MIRACLE DONE ON HER MOTHER.

It has been suggested by some, eager to exercise the candour which can see whatever of excellence there may be in every system, that the many stories of Catherine's successful efforts to convert the most hardened sinners, are a proof of her having possessed that confidence in the latent good in every human heart which is one of the best results of a truly philosophic faith in God; and which would in truth go far to show that her heart unconsciously, if not her intellect consciously, had placed her in advance of the ethics and theology of her day. But the story just related fatally destroys any such agreeable theory. The conversion of the sinner was to be achieved not by any human action on his heart, but by wholly different means. The Saint did not even seek to see or speak with him. The conversion was to be a miracle, worked as a special favour granted to her. The dying sinner's moral capabilities had nothing whatever to do with the matter.

There is another even more remarkable instance in which the Saint prevails with God to work a miracle, which He declares at the time to be hurtful to the person who is the subject of it. Catherine's mother, Lapa, was dying, but was most unwilling to die. Her daughter, therefore, prayed that her health might be restored to her, but was answered that it was better for Lapa that she should leave this life then. With this answer she returns to her mother, and endeavours to reconcile her to the necessity of then dying, but in vain. Thus the Saint became mediator between the Lord and her mother, supplicating the one not to take Lapa out of the world against her will, and exhorting the other to be resigned to the disposition of the Lord. But Catherine, who with her prayers, constrained, as it were, the Omnipotent, could not, by her exhortation, bend the weak mind of her mother. So the Lord said to his wife, "Tell your mother that if she will not leave the body now, the time will come when she shall greatly desire death, and not be able to find it." Lapa, however, could not make up her mind to die, nor would she confess in preparation for death; and, accordingly, died unshriven. Then her daughter cried to God, and said, "Oh, Lord God! are these then the promises you made me, that no one of this house should perish? * * * * * And now I see my mother dead without the sacraments of the church! By thy infinite mercy I pray thee, do not let me be defrauded in such a manner! Nor will I move hence for an instant as long as I live, until thou shalt render back my mother to life." So God, although he knew that it was bad for her mother, recalled her again to life; and she lived to be eighty-nine years old, surviving all her numerous children, tried by much adversity, and often longing for that death which she had before so unwisely rejected.

THE STIGMATA.

One of the most remarkable miraculous events which occurred to her was the following, related by Father Raymond as having happened at Pisa in his presence. Catherine had received the sacrament, and was, as usual with her at such times, in a trance. Her confessor and some others were awaiting her recovery from it, when they saw her suddenly rise with a start to a kneeling posture, with her arms stretched out horizontally, and in a minute or two more fall prostrate. Soon afterwards she came out of her trance, and immediately calling aside her confessor, said, "Be it known to you, my father, that I now bear on my body the marks of the crucifixion of our Lord Jesus Christ." "And I," says the monk, "having told her that I had observed as much from the movements of her body while she was in her trance, asked her in what manner the Lord had performed that miracle? And she said, 'I saw the crucified Lord descending towards me with a great light, which caused me, from the impetus of my soul to meet its Creator, to raise up my body, then I saw five bloody rays descending from the scars of his most holy wounds, and directing themselves to the hands and feet and heart of my body. Upon which, knowing what the mystery was, I exclaimed, "O Lord my God, let not, I pray you, the scars appear externally on my body; it is enough for me to have them internally." Then, while I was yet speaking, the rays, before they reached me, turned from blood-colour to a pure and splendid light, and touched the five parts of my body, that is, my hands, my feet, and my heart.' I asked her further, 'Do you now feel in those spots any sensible pain?' To which, with a deep sigh, she replied, 'So great is the pain I feel in all those five places, but especially in my heart, that it appears impossible to me to live many days, unless the Lord perform some further miracle.'"

To appreciate the importance and bearing of this miracle, the fierce and bitter rivalry which existed between the Dominicans and Franciscans must be borne in mind. St. Francis had received these five wounds, the counterpart of Christ's wounds, in the same way. The marks are familiarly known among hagiographers and their readers as the stigmata, and the having received them was the crowning glory of St. Francis, and the proud and exclusive boast of his Franciscans: and now the Dominicans were even with them. The Sienese Pope, who canonized Catherine, Pius II., gave his approbation to a service, in which this reception of the stigmata was prominently asserted. And so severely was the blow felt by the indignant Franciscans, that they obtained from the next Pope but one, Sixtus the Fourth, himself a member of their Order, a decree to the effect that St. Francis had an exclusive right to, and monopoly of that special miracle, and that it was accordingly forbidden to represent St. Catherine receiving the stigmata under pain of ecclesiastical censures!

Whether the opposition monk, Sixtus, intended by this decree to assert that no such miracle was performed on Catherine, or that it ought not to have been performed in justice to St. Francis, or that having been unfortunately performed, nothing ought to be said about it, is left to the very unsatisfactory conjectures of indiscreet inquirers.

The tendency observable in many of the austerities and miracles related of St. Catherine, to outdo the austerities and miracles of other saints, is especially remarkable in this of the stigmata. The degree in which it served the purpose of the Dominicans, is the measure of the suspicion attaching to it. But as there is nothing incredible in the supposition that Catherine may have imagined all she related in her trance, so it is by no means unlikely that such diseased dreamings may have been the natural product of a waking fancy filled with, and dwelling on this much envied manifestation. Perhaps the condition so providently introduced, as it seems, that the scars were not to be visible, may be suggestive of a fraudulent intention. But, on the other hand, it should seem, that if fraud had been planned, it would have been very easy, for one who subjected her body to so much self-inflicted torment, to submit to the required wounds beforehand.

OTHER MIRACLES.

In another instance there seems to be emulation of a higher model. Wishing to give wine away to the poor against the desire of her family, she miraculously causes a barrel to become for a long while inexhaustible, the wine drawn from it being, at the same time, of a much superior quality to that originally put into it.

Many details are recorded of her ministry to the sick; but, strangely enough, the most prominent circumstances in each case, are those which go to prove her readiness to encounter whatever was most loathesome; and some of the particulars of her victories over the natural repugnances of mind and body in this respect—often of a nature in no wise conducive to, or connected with the well-being of her patient—are far too revolting for reproduction on any English page.

The reader has now an abundant—perhaps he may think a superfluously abundant—specimen of that part of Catherine's history which the Church most loves to preserve, contemplate, and enlarge on, and of the kind of teaching she draws from it—draws from it, be it again observed, for this is an important part of the subject—at this present day.

The morality set forth by example in the tales of the Saint abstracting the property of her relatives to give it to any mendicant who begged of her, is more largely and accurately reduced to systematic precept in the "Manual for Confessors," now in use as the rule for those who have the guidance of the popular conscience. It is there laid down, that a wife or son may "take" from the goods of a husband or father, who will not give for the purpose, what is requisite for "good works!"

The stories which represent the Creator as capriciously reversing his decrees with the unconscientious levity of an earthly potentate ruled by an exacting favourite, and inflicting undeserved torment and miserable death in accordance with the suggestions of evil passions wholly fiend-like, are still shaping the Italian peasant's conception of the Almighty, and thus poisoning the master well-head of all spiritual and moral amelioration.

The depravation, or rather the annihilation of the natural conscience, which necessarily results from attributing fearful sinfulness to trifling and absurd omissions and inadvertences, and from installing an admiration for useless, and often mischievous practices on the throne, which should be occupied in the human soul by reverence for man's homely duties, and homely affections, is still doing its appointed work as busily and as surely as it did five hundred years ago, and has been doing ever since,—with what results, we see.

But it is sufficient to have indicated to the reader the importance, from this point of view, of this story of a Saint, who, alas! but too truly "being dead, yet speaketh." It would require an analysis extending over the whole field of national character, to trace all the ramified evil produced by the views of God and man involved in such stories as those related in the preceding pages. And if there were no other reason against here attempting such an essay, it might assuredly be urged, that such considerations have no place in a chapter devoted to the Church view of the case.

CHAPTER V.

ST. CATHERINE AS AN AUTHOR.

The literary phase of Catherine's career and character, especially as seen in her letters, is by no means its least curious and suggestive aspect. The indications of what she herself was, and yet more, the evidences obtainable from them of the undeniably exceptional and extraordinary position she held among her contemporaries, are valuable, and yet at the same time not a little puzzling.

Her works consist of a treatise occupying a closely printed quarto volume, which Father Raymond describes as "a Dialogue between a Soul, which asked four questions of the Lord, and the same Lord, who made answer, and gave instruction in many most useful truths;" of her letters, three hundred and seventy-three in number; and of twenty-six prayers.

This Dialogue is entitled, "The book of Divine Doctrine, given in person by God the Father, speaking to the mind of the most glorious and holy Virgin, Catherine of Siena, and written down as she dictated it in the vulgar tongue, she being the while entranced, and actually hearing that which God spoke in her." It is stated to have been dictated by the Saint in her father's house in Siena, a little before she went to Rome, and to have been completed the 13th of October, 1378. This dialogue has been divided into five parts, though no such division existed in it, as it fell from her lips. The first part treats of Discretion; the second of Prayer; the third of the Divine Providence; the fourth of Obedience; and the fifth of Consummate Perfection. The four first exist in manuscript in the original Italian, as they were taken down from the lips of the entranced Saint; though these ancient manuscript copies abound, we are told by the modern editor of them, Girolamo Gigli, with such errors as frequently not only to alter the sense, but to render it inconsistent with true orthodoxy. Of course nothing but the purest doctrine could have been uttered by the Saint, and these dangerous errors have been corrected. But the fifth treatise is not extant in the original, but only in Father Raymond's Latin translation of it, from which the published Italian version has been re-translated.

HER "DIALOGUE."

The French oratorian, Father Casimir Oudin,[23] in his Supplement of Ecclesiastical writers, omitted by Bellarmine, quietly says, "She wrote, or Raymond de Vineis wrote in her name, a work inscribed," &c. &c. It is very possible, that the Frenchman's suspicion may be just. But, with the exception of some allusions and subtleties, indicating, perhaps, a greater acquaintance with scholastic theology than the Saint may be thought to have possessed, there is nothing in the work itself to belie the origin attributed to it. It could not, indeed, have been written down from the Saint's dictation, as it professes to have been, in the form and sequence in which we have it printed; because it is intermingled (without any typographical or other advertisement, that the reader is about to enter on matter of a different authorship and pretensions)—with long passages descriptive of the Saint's mode of receiving the revelation, written in the person of the secretary, and bearing a strong likeness to Father Raymond's style and phraseology. But the Saint's own utterances are exactly such as might have been expected from such a patient, and much resemble in many respects those which many readers have probably heard in these latter days, from persons in all likelihood similarly affected in greater or less degree. As the latter have often been found to bear a singular resemblance in quality and manner to the verbose and repetitive inanities of some very slenderly gifted extempore preacher, so these ecstatic outpourings of St. Catherine are like the worst description of the pulpit eloquence of her day and country. Low and gross as the taste and feeling of the age were, especially in matters spiritual and theological, it is difficult to imagine that Catherine could have gained any part of the great reputation and influence she undeniably exercised in high places from this production. The reader may see from the following passage, taken quite at haphazard from its pages, whether his impression on this point agrees with that of the writer.

Catherine dictates these sentences as hearing them word for word as she repeats them, from the mouth of God!

"Know, O daughter! that no one can escape from my hands, because I am He, who I am; and ye do not exist by yourselves, but only in so far as ye are created by Me, who am the Creator of all things that have existence, except only Sin, which does not exist, and therefore has not been created by me. And because it is not in me, it is not worthy of being loved. And therefore the Creature offends, because he loves that which he ought not to love, which is sin, and hates Me, whom he is bound and obliged to love; for I am supremely good, and have given him existence by the so ardent fire of my love. But from Me men cannot escape. Either they fall into my hands for justice on their sins, or they fall into my hands for mercy. Open therefore the eyes of your mind, and look at my hand, and you will see that what I have said to you is the truth." Then she raising her eyes in obedience to the supreme Father, "saw enclosed in his hand the entire universe," &c., &c.[24]

It is evident, that this could not have been written from the Saint's dictation. But the work may have been composed from notes taken down while she poured forth her trance-talk. And such an hypothesis would not be incompatible with Oudin's supposition, that the book, as we have it, was composed by Father Raymond. In any case the staple of its contents, if not inferior to the generality of the theological literature of the time, shows at least no such superiority to it as to place the author in the high and exceptional position Catherine is proved to have occupied.

Twenty-six prayers have been preserved among the works of Saint Catherine; and it might be supposed, that such a record of the secret outpourings of an ardent heart in its communion with the infinite God, sole object of its fervent aspirations and daily and nightly meditations, would have been calculated to throw considerable light on the character, capabilities, and mental calibre of the worshipper. But these documents afford no glimpse of any such insight. They are not the sort of utterances that could ever bring one human heart nearer to another: and no assimilating power of sympathy will enable the reader of them to advance one jot towards a knowledge of the heart from which they proceeded. The impression they are calculated to produce, is either that the Saint was a self-conscious actor and pretender, or that they are not her compositions. And the latter, perhaps, may be considered the more probable hypothesis.

HER PRAYERS.

Though addressed in form to the Deity, there is little that can be accurately called prayer. The speaker, or writer rather, seems continually to forget his avowed object, and runs off into long statements of the nature and attributes of the Deity, and ecclesiastical propositions based thereon, evidently prompted rather by didactic views on mortal hearers, than by effort to hold communion with the Almighty. It is all dry, cold, repetitive, verbose theology, instead of the spontaneous warm utterances of either a thankful or a contrite heart;—neither the expression of an earnest spirit, nor the production of an eloquent writer.

There remain the letters, by far the most interesting and valuable of the Saint's reputed works. They are 373 in number, and form two stout quarto volumes of the Lucca edition. In the four octavo volumes of the cheap Milan reprint before mentioned, only the first 198 are given; though there is no word of notice or explanation to indicate, that the work is not complete. On the contrary, the fourth volume is entitled "fourth and last;" and we are left to the hopeful conjecture, that the devout editors found the speculation so bad a one commercially, that they thought fit to close the publication suddenly, and leave their subscribers to discover as late as might be, that they had purchased an imperfect book.

The 373 letters of the entire collection have among them many addressed to kings, popes, cardinals, bishops, conventual bodies, and political corporations, as well as a great number written to private individuals. And it seems strange, that among so many correspondents of classes, whose papers are likely to be preserved, and many of whom, especially the monastic communities, would assuredly have attached a high value to such documents, no one original of any of these letters should have been preserved.

ORIGINALS OF HER LETTERS.

Girolamo Gigli, the editor of the quarto edition of the Saint's works, printed at Lucca and Siena, in 1707–13, an enthusiastic and laborious investigator and collector of every description of information regarding her, gives in his Preface to the letters, a careful account of the manuscript collections from which they have at different times been printed, but has not a word to say of any scrap of original document. "As soon," he writes, "as the saintly Virgin had ascended to heaven in the year 1380, some of her secretaries and disciples collected from one place and another some of her letters and writings." But the words which follow this seem to indicate that even these earliest collectors did not possess any of the original manuscripts, but made copies of them, in most cases probably from other copies. "The blessed Stefano Maconi," he says, "having transcribed the book of the Dialogue, added at the end of it some epistles; and another larger collection was made, also by him as I think, in a certain volume which exists in the library of the Certosa at Pavia. Buonconti also collected not a few, as may be seen by an ancient copy in his writing, which was among the most notable things left by the Cardinal Volunnio Bandinelli, and now belongs to the Signor Volunnio, his nephew and heir. We have another abundant collection in an ancient manuscript preserved in the library of St. Pantaleo at Rome; and this is one of the most faithful of all those I have seen in its orthography and style; and as far as can be judged by the character of the writing, the scribe must have been contemporary with the Saint. But the blessed Raymond of Capua, her confessor, left to the Dominicans of Siena two very large volumes of her letters neatly copied out on parchment, in which nearly all those collected by the others are contained. And these most precious documents are rendered more valuable by the testimony given to their authenticity by the blessed Tomaso Caffarini in the above cited reports made at Venice."[25]

The epistles were first printed by Aldus in 1500, just 180 years after Catherine's death, and afterwards in many other editions, all, according to Gigli, exceedingly incorrect, and requiring much critical care both in the restoration of the text to its original Tuscan purity, and in the arrangement of the letters, as far as possible, in their due chronological order. This, however, is made subsidiary in Gigli's edition to a division of them according to the persons to whom they were addressed. Thus those to the two Popes, Gregory XI. and Urban VI., come first; then those written to cardinals; then those to bishops and other ecclesiastical authorities; and lastly those to private individuals.

And this is the substance of all the Sienese editor has to tell us respecting the texts, manuscript and printed, on which his own has been formed. But the Saint's confessor, and one or two of her disciples, have recorded some circumstances respecting the lost originals of these letters which require to be noticed.

It is stated in perfect accordance with all probability, that Catherine had never learned to read or write, as was in those days the case with the great majority of women in stations of life far superior to her own. Her biographer's account of her miraculously acquiring the power of reading by sudden endowment has been related in the preceding chapter. And at a later period of her life we are told that she similarly acquired the power of writing, "in order that she might be able," writes Girolamo Gigli in his Preface to the Letters, "to carry out the office of her apostolate by more agencies than one, and in more places than one, at the same time, Christ gave her by a wonderful method the use of the pen, in the short schooling of a trance, and by the teaching of St. John the Evangelist, and of the blessed Doctor, Aquinas, as the Saint herself affirms in a letter to the above-mentioned blessed Raymond her confessor."

One of the most interesting points of inquiry in the life of St. Catherine turns on the question, more fully examined in a subsequent chapter, how far was she, or was she not, entirely sincere in her statements and pretensions. Now if she makes the statement attributed to her respecting her acquisition of the art of writing, it must be concluded that she was guilty of wilful imposture. No possible self-deception could have misled her as to the fact of her previous ignorance of writing, and as little as to that of her writing after the trance. It will be well therefore to observe accurately what she really does say herself upon the subject. In 1377, when she was in the thirtieth year of her age, after her return from Avignon, and before her final journey to Rome, she was inhabiting a villa belonging to the noble Sienese family of Salimbeni, situated on an isolated eminence overlooking the road to Rome, and called "Rocca d'Orcia." Hence she wrote a very long letter—the longest probably in the whole collection—occupying, as it does, twelve full octavo pages—to Father Raymond; and concludes it with the following lines.

HER POWER OF WRITING.

"This letter, and another which I sent you, I have written with my own hand from this isolated fortress, with many sighs and abundance of tears, so that seeing with my eyes, I did not see. But I was full of admiration at myself, and at the goodness of God, considering his mercy towards creatures, who have reason in them, and his providence, which abounded upon me, giving and providing me with the aptitude for writing for my comfort, I having been deprived of that consolation, which by reason of my ignorance I knew not. So that on descending from the height (does this mean 'on coming out of my trance,' or 'on leaving this fortress?') I might have some little vent for the feelings of my heart, so that it should not burst. Not being willing to take me as yet out of this darksome life, God formed it in my mind in a wonderful manner, as the master does to the child, to whom he gives an exemplar. So that, as soon as ever he was gone from me, together with the glorious Evangelist John, and Thomas Aquinas, sleeping I began to learn."

Now the entire value of this incident in the eyes of the fourteenth, and the entire incredibility of it in the eyes of the nineteenth century, and consequently its stringency as evidence against the sincerity of St. Catherine, depends on the length of time intervening between the moment when she began to learn in her sleep, and that at which she first wrote. All her own admiration of herself and of God's providence in the matter, all her own belief in miracle, and her beginning to learn in her sleep, we may admit without founding thereon any impeachment of her sincerity. Nor need we be accurate in taking the sense of her statement, that she then began to learn. Most people would find it difficult to say when they began to learn most things. And on the other hand the phrase would seem to express, that she did not complete her learning to write in that same trance. We have other indications also of a gradual advance in the art. The long letter, in which the Saint makes the above statement, is certainly not the first product of her new acquirement. She speaks of having written a former letter to the same correspondent. But neither was that her first writing.

In the evidence given by the Beato Tomaso Caffarini on the occasion of the examination of her pretensions to canonization, he deposes: "I further testify, that I heard from Master Stephen,[26] of Siena," by means of letters from him, how that this Virgin, after that she miraculously learned to write, rising up from prayer with a desire of writing, wrote with her own hand a little letter (litterulam), which she sent to the said Master Stephen, and in which was the following conclusion, written, that is to say, in her own vernacular: "Know, my son, that this is the first letter, which I ever wrote;"—much such a first attempt as the most unmiraculously taught of penmen might be likely to make.

HER FIRST PENMANSHIP.

Consistently then with all that Catherine distinctly asserts on the subject, we may believe, that despite her ready credence of her own environment with the supernatural at every moment of her life, the only miracle on the occasion of her newly acquired power of writing was worked by that intensely strong will, which works so many miracles in this world, and which all Catherine's history shows her to have eminently possessed.

The same witness further testifies that the above-mentioned Stephen informed him that Catherine had after that frequently written in his presence both letters and some sheets of the book[27] she composed in the vulgar tongue, all which writings he—Stephen—had preserved in the Carthusian convent of Pontignano near Siena, over which he presided. And there, according to Girolamo Gigli, "they were known to have been in existence for many years, until, not long ago," says he, writing in 1707, "they were transported to Grenoble, at the time when the monks of Pontignano, as well as all those of the Carthusian order, were obliged to send all their papers to the Grande Chartreuse." And so they vanish out of our sight.

Further Caffarini testifies, that he saw and had in his own possession at Venice a prayer, written miraculously, as he says, by Catherine, with a piece of cinnabar, immediately on waking from a trance; meaning, apparently, that trance, during which she obtained the faculty of writing. He gives the prayer in Latin prose. But Gigli says that it ought to be written in the Tuscan as verse, in the manner in which it is printed by Crescimbeni in the third volume of his "Volgare Poesia," as follows:—

"O Spirito santo, vieni nel mio cuore;
Per la tua potenzia trailo a te, Dio:
E concedemi carità con timore.
Custodimi Christo da ogni mal pensiere,
Riscaldami e rinfiammami del tuo dolcissimo amore,
Sicchè ogni pena mi paja leggiere.
Santo il mio padre, e dolce il mio Signore,
Ora ajutami in ogni mio mestiere,
Christo amore, Christo amore."

This writing, in cinnabar, Caffarini declares is "now," 1411, in the Dominican nunnery at Venice. But this also has shared the ill fortune which seems to have attended every scrap of the Saint's writing. For Gigli states that all his efforts to obtain any tidings of it in his own time had been in vain.

A few other letters are recorded to have been written by her own hand, especially one to Pope Urban. But it is admitted, that the great bulk of the letters were written by her secretaries, of whom she seems to have kept three regularly employed, besides occasionally using the assistance of several other of her companions and disciples. A few of the letters are recorded to have been dictated by her, when in a state of trance or extasy; but there is nothing in either their matter or manner to distinguish them from the rest. Whatever may have been the true physical characteristics of these trances, it is perfectly clear, that the mind which dictated the letters in question, was pursuing the habitual tenor of its daily thoughts, neither obscured nor intensified by the condition of the body. They are neither more nor less argumentative, neither more nor less eloquent, than the others of the collection. And it seems strange, that the same state of abstraction from all bodily clog or guidance, which so often left her mind impressionable by visions and hallucinations having to her all the vivid reality of material events, should on other occasions have been compatible with the conduct of mental operations, in no respect differing from those of her ordinary waking state. But it is to be observed, that the authority on which it is stated, that these letters were dictated by the Saint in a state of extasy, is only that of her amanuenses; and that, admitting them to have been of perfect good faith in the matter, nothing is more probable, than that, all agape, as they were ever for fresh wonders, and evidences of Saintship, any trifling circumstance, such as long continuance in the same attitude, or closed eyes, may have been considered sufficient evidence of trance.

HER LITERARY MERITS.

The very high reputation, and that not altogether of a pietistic or ecclesiastical nature, which this large mass of writings has enjoyed for several centuries has appeared to the present writer an extremely singular fact. It will justify him however in occupying some pages, and the reader's attention with a translation[28] of one of the most esteemed of the collection. Be it what it may, it can hardly be otherwise than interesting to any reader to see a specimen of compositions, said to have produced so widely spread and important results, and praised by so many men of note; and the means, which it will give him of comparing his impressions of it with those of the writer, will in some degree lessen the diffidence with which the latter must express an opinion wholly at variance with so large a quantity of high authority.

A great deal of the praise bestowed on St. Catherine's writings by Italian critics has reference to their style and diction. Written at a time when the language, fresh from the hands of Dante, of Petrarch, and of Boccaccio, was still in its infancy, and in a city in all times celebrated for the purity of its vernacular, they have by the common consent of Italian scholars taken rank as one of the acknowledged classics of the language;—"testa di lingua," as the Tuscan purists say. The Della Cruscans have placed them on the jealously watched list of their authorities; and an enthusiastic Sienese compatriot has compiled a "vocabalario Caterineano," after the fashion of those consecrated to the study of the works of Homer and Cicero. Of course no one from the barbarous side of the Alps can permit themselves any word of observation on this point. Had no such decisive opinion been extant to guide his ignorance, it might probably have seemed to a foreigner, that the Saint's style was loose in its syntax, intricate in its construction, and overloaded with verbosity. But we are bound to suppose, that any such opinion could be formed only by one ignorant of the real beauties of the language: especially as we know how great and minute is the attention paid to diction by Italian critics.

But these philological excellences are after all the least part of the praise that has been lavished on Catherine as an author. Her admirers enlarge on the moving eloquence, the exalted piety, the noble sentiments, the sound argumentation of her compositions, especially her letters. And it is not from an Italian, or a Dominican, but from a French Jesuit and historian, Papire Masson, that we have the following enthusiastic praise of that letter more especially, which it is intended to submit to the reader of these pages.

HER LETTER TO CHARLES V.

"Several epistles are extant," writes this sixteenth century Frenchman, "from Catherine of Siena to Urban, and one to King Charles V., written on the 6th of May, 1379, to uphold that Pope's cause. And certainly nothing more weighty or more elegant could have been conceived or written by any man of that time, not even excepting Petrarch, whose genius I admire, and whose works I generally prefer to those of any other writer of that age."

To the present writer such an opinion appears perfectly monstrous, and wholly unaccountable on any simply literary consideration of the matter. It may be admitted to be no little extraordinary that a poor dyer's daughter in the fourteenth century should write these letters, such as they are; that she should possess so much knowledge of the general state of Church politics in Europe, as they evince; and most of all that having popes, kings, and cardinals for her correspondents, she should be listened to by them with respect and attention. Even to the Pope, she on more than one occasion ventures on a tone of very decided reproof; and it should seem, that Urban VI., a choleric and violent tempered man, received from her in good part communications couched in language such as rarely reaches Papal ears. "The blessed Christ," she says, in writing to Urban of the vices of the ecclesiastics, a topic to which she returns again and again, "complains of this, that his Church is not swept clean of vices, and your Holiness has not that solicitude on the subject which you ought to have." Again, when there had been riots in Rome, in consequence of the Pope having failed to keep certain promises he had made to the people, she "humbly begs him to take care, prudently to promise only what it will be possible for him to perform in its entirety."

All this is curious enough, and abundantly sufficient to prove that Catherine was an influential power in her generation. It will be the business of a following chapter to offer some suggestions as to the explanation of this remarkable fact. But let the causes of it have been what they may, it is difficult to suppose that they can be found in the persuasive eloquence, or literary merit of her appeals to those in power.

CHAPTER VI.

CATHERINE'S LETTER TO THE KING OF FRANCE.

The letter selected as a specimen of the vast mass of the Saint's correspondence is perhaps the most specially celebrated of the whole collection. It was to Charles V. of France, on the 6th of May, 1379, on the subject of the favour shown by him to the party of the Anti-pope Clement VII., and runs as follows:—

"Dearest father in sweet Christ Jesus, I Catherine the slave of the servants of Jesus Christ, write to you in his precious blood, with the desire to see in you[29] a true and entirely perfect light, in order that you may know the truth of that which is necessary to you for your salvation. Without this light, we shall go into darkness; darkness which will not permit us to discern that which is hurtful to the soul and to the body, from that which is useful to us; and thus destroys the perceptions of the soul, so that good things are made to seem bad, and bad things good, that is to say, vice. And those things, which lead us to sin, appear to us good and delightful; and virtue, and that which leads us to virtue, appears to us bitter and of great difficulty. But he, who has light, knows well the truth; and accordingly loves virtue, and God, who is the cause of all virtue; and hates vice, and his own sensuality, which is the cause of all vice. What is it, that takes from us this true and sweet light? The self-love which a man has for his own self, which is a cloud that obscures the eye of the intellect, and hides from the pupil the light of the most holy faith. And thus a man goes as one blind and ignorant, following his own frailty, wholly given up to passion, without the light of reason, even as an animal, which, because it has no reasoning powers, allows itself to be guided by its own sensations. Great pity is it that man, whom God has created in his own image and likeness, should voluntarily by his own fault make himself worse than the brute animal, that like an ungrateful and ignorant creature, neither knows nor acknowledges the benefits of God, but attributes them to himself. From self-love proceeds every evil. Whence come injustice, and all the other faults? From self-love. It commits injustice against God, against itself, against its neighbour, and against Holy Church. Against God it commits injustice, in that it does not render glory and praise to his name, as it ought to do. To itself it does not render hatred and dislike of vice, and love of virtue; nor to its neighbour benevolence; and if it is found in a ruler, it does not do justice to its neighbour, because it does so[30] only according to the pleasure of human creatures, or for its own natural pleasure.[31] Nor to the Church does it render obedience, or assistance, but continually persecutes it. All is caused by self-love, which does not permit a man to know the truth, because he is deprived of light. This is very manifest to us, and we see it, and have proofs in ourselves every day that it is so.

HER LETTER TO CHARLES V.

"I would not, dearest father, that this cloud should take the light from you; but I wish that there should be in you that light, which is able to make you know and discern the Truth. It appears to me, from what I hear, that you begin to allow yourself to be guided by the counsel of evil men; and you know, that if one blind one leads another, both fall into the ditch. So will it happen to you, if you do not find some better remedy than what I hear of. It is a matter of great wonder to me, that a Catholic man, who is willing to fear God, and to be manlike, should let himself be guided like a child, and should not see how he leads himself and others into so great ruin, as is the contaminating the light of the most Holy Faith according to the word and counsel of those whom we see to be members of the devil, corrupt trees, whose faults are manifest to us by the poison of heresy they have recently disseminated, saying that Pope Urban VI. is not truly Pope. Open the eye of your mind,[32] and see that they lie in their throats,[33] may be put to confusion by their own showing, and be seen to be worthy of heavy punishment, from whatever side we turn ourselves. If we turn to those, who, as they say, elected Urban Pope from fear of the fury of the people, they say what is not the truth, since they, in the first instance, had elected him by an election so canonical and orderly, that never was any other supreme pontiff so elected. They in truth gave out, that they proceeded to elect for fear the people should rise, but not that from this fear they elected Bartholomew, Archbishop of Bari, who is now Urban VI. And this much I confess is the truth, and do not deny it. He whom they elected by fear was the Cardinal of St. Peter,[34] as is evident to every one; but the election of Pope Urban was made in a legitimate manner, as has been said. This election they announced to you, and to us, and to the other rulers of the world, manifesting by their deeds, that which they told us in words, doing reverence to him, that is to say, adoring him as Christ on earth, and crowning him with all solemnity, and by remaking anew the election with great unanimity. From him, as from the supreme Pontiff, they besought favours, and used them. And if it were not true that Urban is Pope, but that he has been elected under the constraint of fear, would not they be worthy eternally of confusion? That the pillars of Holy Church, set up for the spreading of the faith, should for fear of bodily death, be willing to consign themselves and us to eternal death, by showing us as our father one who was not so. And would they not be thieves, taking and using[35] that which they had no right to use? Indeed, if that were true, which they now say, as true it is not, still Urban VI. is truly Pope. But fools and blinded madmen as they are, they have shown and given to us this truth, and hold a lie for themselves. This truth they confessed so long as his Holiness delayed to correct their vices. But as soon as he began to attack them, and to show that their wicked mode of life was displeasing to him, and that he was minded to put an end to it, they immediately raised their heads. And against whom have they raised them? Against the holy faith. They have acted worse than renegade Christians.

HER LETTER TO CHARLES V.

"Oh! miserable men! They and those who follow them know not their own ruin; for if they knew it, they would seek the Divine aid; they would acknowledge their fault, and not be obstinate as the devils, as devils they in truth appear, and have taken on them the office of such. The office of the devils is to pervert souls from Christ crucified, to withdraw them from the way of the truth, to lead them into lies, and to gather them through pain and through punishment to himself, who is the father of lies, giving them that fate which he has for himself. In like manner these men go subverting the truth which they themselves have given us; and returning to lies, have introduced division into the whole world. And that evil which they have in themselves, that they propose to us. Have we the will to know thoroughly this truth? Let us look now and consider their life and conduct, and what following they have of themselves, who are followers of the vestiges of iniquity; since one devil is not contrary to another, but on the contrary they agree together. And pardon me, dearest father (for such I will consider you, as long as I see you to be a lover of truth, and confounder of lies), for I speak thus, because grief for the damnation of them and of others, and the desire I have for their salvation, causes me to do so. I say this not in disparagement of them, as God's creatures, but in disparagement of vice and of the heresy which they have sown throughout the world, and of the cruelty of which they are guilty towards themselves, and towards the humble souls that perish by their means, for which they must give an account to the Supreme Judge. For if they had been men having the fear of God, or if not the fear of God, respect for the opinion of the world, they would patiently have borne the worst that Pope Urban could have done to them, or even greater contumely, and would have preferred a thousand deaths to doing what they have done; for to greater shame they cannot come, than to appear to the eyes of mankind schismatics, and heretical despisers of the holy faith. If I look to spiritual and corporeal loss, I see them by heresy deprived of God as regards his mercies, and in the body reasonably deprived of their dignities; and they themselves have done it. If I look to the Divine judgment I see it close upon them, if they do not lift themselves out of this darkness; for every fault is punished, and every good deed is rewarded. It will be hard for them to kick against God, if they possessed the greatest possible human power. God is the supreme strength, which fortifies the weak who confide and trust in Him. And it is the truth; and the truth is that which makes us free. We see that only the truth of the servants of God follows,[36] and holds this truth of Pope Urban VI., confessing him to be truly Pope, as he is. You will not find a servant of God, who is a servant of God, that holds the contrary.[37] I do not speak of such as wear outside the garment of lambs, but inside are ravenous wolves. And do you suppose that, if this were not the truth, God would endure that His servants should walk in such darkness? He would not endure it. If He endures it in the wicked men of the world, He would not endure it in them; and therefore He has given them the light of His truth, for He is no despiser of holy desires but is the accepter of them, like a kind and merciful Father as He is. I would that you would call to you such men as these, and cause them to declare this truth to you; and that you would not choose to walk so ignorantly. Let not your private interest move you; for that would be worse in you than in any other. Have pity on the many souls which you cast into the hands of the devils. If you will not do good, at least do not evil; for evil frequently turns more to the hurt of him who does it, than of him whom the doer of it wishes to injure. So much evil comes of it, that by it we lose the grace of God, temporal wealth is consumed, and the death of men follows from it. Alas me! And it does not seem that we[38] see the light; for the cloud of self-love has taken from us the light, and does not let us see. For this reason we are apt to receive any evil information, that may be given to us against the truth by lovers of themselves. But if we have the light it will not be so; but with great prudence and holy fear of God, you would be willing to know and investigate this truth by means of men of conscience and knowledge. If you choose, ignorance need not fall upon you, since you have where you are the fountain of knowledge,[39] which I fear you may lose if you continue in your present course; and you know well how your kingdom will fare, if they shall be men of good consciences, who will not follow a human will with servile fear, but will maintain the truth. They will declare it to you, and will put your mind and soul at rest. Now act not so any more, most dear Father! consult your own conscience; think that you must die, and that you know not when; put before the eye of your intellect, God and his truth, and not interest, or love of country; for as regards God, we ought not to make any difference between one country and another, since we all proceed from His holy mind, are created in His image and likeness, and redeemed by the precious blood of His only-begotten Son. I am certain that if you have light you will do this, and will not wait for time, for time does not wait for you; and will invite them[40] to return to their holy and true obedience, but otherwise not. And for this reason I said that I desired to see in you a true and perfect light, in order that with the light you may recognise and love and fear the truth. My soul will then be made happy by your safety, at seeing you come out from so great an error. I say to you nothing further. Remain in the holy and sweet love of God. Pardon me if I have been too heavy on you with my words. My desire for your safety urges me to say them to you by my mouth in your[41] presence, rather than by writing. May God fill you with His most sweet grace. Jesus is sweet; Jesus is love."[42]

HER LETTER TO CHARLES V.

Such is the composition pronounced to be unsurpassed for weight of reasoning and eloquence, and to be equal to the writings of Petrarch! Can it be supposed that, putting out of the question any influence exercised by the character of the writer, any human mind was ever persuaded to do or to think anything by such an address? As argument it is surely worse than in any other point of view. With the exception of the passage pointing out the insincerity of the cardinals who raised objections to the election of Urban, there were perhaps never strung together so many absurdly glaring instances of begging the question. And as for rhetorical power, surely in this waste of pleonastic phrases, redundant tautology, and trite common-place hack-preacher's topics, there is no faintest trace even of that untaught eloquence which strong feeling and earnest conviction are apt to command.

And yet looking at the matter in hand from the fourteenth century point of view, what a subject it was to call forth an awful and heart-stirring appeal! If a true Pope be anything, how tremendous and infinitely horrible a phenomenon must an Anti-pope be. Think of the adulteration of the infallible with the fallible, of the doubts engendered, where certainty is imperatively needed, of the sacraments nullified, and the one half of sacred Christendom cheated into eternal perdition, as the necessary result of void ordinations, void baptisms, and void absolutions, and think for a moment how Petrarch, or still better how Dante, would have written on such a subject!

But Catherine must have sincerely believed that her utterances were the utterances of inspiration, and must necessarily have effect as such. For that she bestowed on this long and important letter none of the ordinary care and labour which such a composition would naturally claim from a merely human author, is curiously shown by the record which has preserved the fact, that the Saint dictated three other long letters on the same 6th of May on which she composed this! It is recorded also that she occasionally dictated as many as three letters to three secretaries at the same time. Her biographer and commentators consider the excessive outpouring of words one of the most remarkable proofs of her supernatural claims and powers. And more sceptical minds may admit it as at least a proof of wonderful energy, and indomitable strength of volition.

CHAPTER VII.

DUPE OR IMPOSTOR?

The official accredited story of this undoubtedly extraordinary and exceptional woman contains, as has been sufficiently seen, a large number of statements, which probably every reader of these pages will, without hesitation, pronounce to be false. Many of the events stated to have happened undoubtedly never did happen; but the question will still remain, how large a portion of the tale must be deemed fraudulent fiction by those who cannot believe things to have happened which contradict the known laws of nature. And when this shall have been answered as satisfactorily as may be under the difficult circumstances of the investigation, it will yet remain to be decided who is to be deemed to have been guilty of fraud.

Before entering on these questions; it may be just suggested to the reader,—as a caution to be borne in mind, not as a point intended to be dwelt on in considering the matter,—that we are perhaps not altogether so well aware what are the laws of nature in the case of persons afflicted as Catherine was, as some of us are apt to imagine.

Looking at the matter, however, from the most ordinary points of view, it may perhaps be found, that as regards Catherine herself, it is not so necessary to consider her an impostor, as it may at first sight of the matter appear.

Of the austerities, mortifications, and abstinences recounted, all perhaps may be admitted to have been possible,—especially bearing in mind that Catherine's life was neither a long nor a healthy one—except the fasting for years, and the sleeping only one quarter-of-an-hour per diem. As to the fasting, it is mentioned incidentally in another part of Father Raymond's book, that she was sustained only by the sacramental bread, which she seems to have been in the habit of taking daily. May it not be possible, that the idea of her living without food, may have been generated by some talk of hers, in quite her usual strain, of this Holy Eucharist being her only nourishment, etc., etc., meaning spiritual nourishment? But then was Father Raymond deceived by any such expressions? Did he really believe that she lived for years without taking food? For in his account, no mistake of meaning is possible. He, at all events, intends his readers to believe the simple fact in its naked absurdity.

As for the sleep, it maybe remarked that in the case of a person subject to daily trances and states of insensibility, it is very difficult to say how many hours are passed in sleep, and what is sleep, and what not.

In the next place, all the relations of visions seen in "extasy," and of conversations held, and sensations suffered during them, may—due consideration being given to what we know of the patient—be accepted as not only possible but exceedingly probable. And this category will comprise the greatest part of the whole budget of wonders. Even in those cases, in which an abiding evidence of what had happened to her in trance is said to have remained appreciable only by her own senses, as in the case of the marriage ring, and the pain after the infliction of the stigmata; those most able to form an opinion on such matters, will not think, probably, that it is attributing too much to the imagination of a cataleptic patient, living on raw vegetables, wholly without active occupation, and engrossed by a series of highly exciting thoughts on one ever-present subject of a mystical and transcendental nature, to suppose that she may have in all sincerity imagined herself to see and to feel as she described.

POSSIBLE EXPLANATION OF MIRACLES.

Of many of the miracles, including some of those most insisted on and boasted of by her biographer,—as for instance of the restoration of her mother to life,—a natural explanation, not necessarily involving any intentional falsehood, is so obvious, as to need no pointing. And others may, without any great improbability, be referred to mistake, inaccuracy, or exaggeration. On the whole, I do not think that the evidence constrains us to convict Catherine of falsehood or imposture in her miraculous pretensions. The impression of her innocence of this cannot, however, I think, be stated in any more forcible form. Few persons, probably, will obtain from an impartial consideration of the story, any satisfactory conviction that she was wholly sincere. We find her guilty of falsehood to her mother at an early period of her life, when she represents herself as frequenting certain hot baths with a different purpose than the real one, which was to burn herself by their heat, as a means of discounting eternal burning hereafter. This deception is related by her confessor as a holy and praiseworthy act. And the whole tenor of his morality, and of that of the school to which he belongs, forbids the idea, that a high reverence for truth, as truth, formed any part of their teaching. There is nothing in all we know of Catherine, either from her own writings, or from those of her biographer, to indicate that her spiritual conceptions, religious system, or theory of morals, differed in any respect from the standard orthodoxy of her time and country. We find no more elevated notions of Deity, no saner views of duty, no nobler beau-ideal of human excellence. Her history may be regarded as the culminating expression of the ascetic divinity of that age. She lived wholly surrounded by, and devoted (very literally) body and soul, to a fiercely fanatical community, eager and conscientiously bound to advance their system and the glory of their order by all and every means. Their thoughts were her thoughts, their interests her interests, and their views of all things in heaven and earth, her views. And it must be admitted, that these considerations make it very difficult to suppose, that she would have felt the least scruple in lending herself to any scheme of pious fraud, which might appear calculated to promote the "glory of God," and of the order of St. Dominic. If she could have felt any such scruple, she assuredly would have been far in advance of the moral theories and feelings of her day; and this, as has been seen, there is every reason to think that she was not.

FATHER RAYMOND'S INSINCERITY.

The same consideration of the story, as it has been handed down to us, which, despite the suspicion that a pupil of Father Raymond and the Dominicans of the fourteenth century could not have had any very strict ideas of the sacredness of truth, leads us nevertheless to believe it more probable that Catherine was no conscious impostor, by no means points to the same conclusion respecting the monk, her biographer and confessor. Of course he could have had no means of ascertaining the reality of the visions she represented herself to be in the daily habit of seeing, beyond the natural probabilities of the case. And it is likely enough, that the cataleptic trances and convulsions witnessed by him, may have appeared to him, as to the generality of his contemporaries, the signs and consequences of supernatural communion with, and especial favour of, heaven. But there remain other portions of the narrative, in which facts are stated as having occurred within the writer's knowledge, which he must have known to be untrue. He could not have been deceived into supposing that Catherine lived for many years without food, though her own expressions on the subject, as has been pointed out, may have been equivocal. In one passage of her letters, referred to as containing authority of her own for the statement, the Saint, in speaking of the bodily sufferings she had recently endured, says that her body remained without food. But she says no word to indicate how long her fast lasted, and the reference is clearly a dishonest one.

Among the vast number of miracles related, it is difficult to find cases on which a charge of wilful fraud against the Dominican biographer can be safely pressed to conviction. In so many instances mistake may have been possible. In so many others, whatever he may have been inclined to believe in his own heart, he had no means of testing with certainty the truth of her statements to him; and, therefore, cannot be convicted of falsehood for repeating them. He may have believed them to be real facts. But one case of fair conviction is enough; and that we have in the statement of the total abstinence from food for many years. It should seem then, that although we may acquit Catherine of conscious deception, we must believe her confessor,—the Barnum, who "brought out" the wonder, introduced her to the world, and reaped the profit of her,—to be a rogue and impostor.

Such a subject as this enthusiastic strong-willed cataleptic girl, was a rare and most valuable catch for the Dominican Order, and was to be turned to the best account accordingly. A real producible miracle-working Saint, who did veritably pass daily into a state of rapt extasy, and whose excitable and diseased brain was in that state ever prompt to impose on her imagination as realities whatever phantasmagoria of hallucinations her ghostly instructors chose to ply her waking fancy with, was a treasure calculated to bring much grist, spiritual as well as temporal, to the Dominican mill. In that remarkable case of the stigmata, which so admirably supplied the sons of St. Dominick with exactly what they needed, to enable them to hold their own against the rival Order of the Stigmatised St. Francis, how readily may be conceived the sort of conversation and suggestions, which must have prepared the mind of Catherine to reproduce the miracle for them as soon as her infirmity should set free her imagination from the world of reality!

And this capability of being played upon, rendered her, it is to be observed, a far more valuable instrument in the hands of those who touched the keys than if she had been a mere accomplice of imposture. Such an every-day cheat would hardly have accomplished the feats, and held the position, which are the most remarkable facts in this strange story, and which present an enigma, that requires some examination in the closing chapter of it.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE SECRET OF HER INFLUENCE.

The recent reprint, and large circulation of the "Legend" and Letters of St. Catherine, give a present interest to her story, which it would otherwise want, and indicate but too clearly, that her influence is not a mere thing of the past, but a living and active fact. But the causes and nature of this influence are far from being a secret to those who have paid any attention to the present condition of Italy, and who understand the modus operandi, and policy of a church, the whole purpose, scope, and meaning of whose being, is the preservation of its own existence, and that of the sovereigns, its partners and accomplices in the subjugation and plundering of the people. And the direct and indirect uses of Saintly literature towards this end, however well worthy of being studied, form no proper part of the present subject. The influence, far more difficult to be accounted for, which Catherine cannot be denied to have exercised over Popes and Kings, her contemporaries, is what should be here explained, as far as any explanation can be found for it.

That none such must be sought in the literary qualities of her writings, has probably been made sufficiently manifest. When every allowance has been made for the intellectual difference, which may be supposed to exist between a fourteenth century and a nineteenth century reader, it still remains incredible, that such missives, as that above translated from the Saint's Italian, should, irrespectively of any otherwise manifested claims of the sender of them, have been found powerfully persuasive by those to whom they were addressed. We have no proof, indeed, that this especial letter did produce any effect on the King of France. And with regard to the letters written to Urban, after the breaking out of the schism, it may be argued, that, whatever he may have privately thought of Catherine's pretensions and powers, he was no doubt too well aware of the importance an enthusiastic, well accredited Saint, might be of to his party, to think of throwing cold water on her zeal and exertions. The success of her mission to Avignon, however, and the employment of her intercession with the Pope by the rulers of Florence, testify abundantly to the esteem in which she was held.

Can it be supposed, that the wide-spread reputation she acquired, and the marvellous power she exercised, were derived from the impression made on her contemporaries by her virtues, the purity of her life, the earnestness of benevolence, and the zeal of her charity? But that would be to attribute to mere goodness a power over one of the most corrupt generations in the history of the world, which it has never been seen able to exert over any age. It would be to attribute to the virtue of Catherine a triumph, which the infinitely more perfect virtue of One infinitely greater than she failed to achieve.

HER MORAL NATURE.

Of all possible solutions this would be the least compatible with the conditions of the age in which she lived. But the low morality, to which mere purity of life would have appealed in vain, was especially favourable to the powerful and successful operation of another class of the Saint's pretensions. In proportion as the intellectual and moral darkness of men make a spiritual conception of Deity more and more impossible to them, are they prone in the desolation of their unacknowledged, but none the less effective atheism, to accept with ready awe and reverential fear any such gross material manifestations, as profess to reveal to them a God sufficiently ungodly not to be disturbingly out of place in their scheme of life and eternity. Those "ages of faith," therefore, whose title to that appellation consists in their eager readiness to accept and believe any quantity of such miracles as could be conceived to proceed only from the will of a God created in the likeness of a very unspiritual man, were probably as little faithful to any spiritually profitable ideal of the Divine nature, as any generations since the dawn of Christianity.

To such ages Catherine was admirably adapted to appeal with remarkable force and success. Her strength of will, and her infirmity of body, both contributed to produce the effect to be explained. The first, as evidenced by the unflinchingly persevering infliction of self-torments, such as would have been wholly intolerable to a weaker will, and by continued exertion under suffering, weakness, and malady, made a large and important part of the saintly character; as the same qualities differently evidenced would have led to eminence in any career, and in any age. But joined to this potent strength of will may be observed evidences of a very remarkable degree of spiritual egotism, and "the pride that apes humility." The poor Sienese dyer's daughter must have been one of those rare natures, to whom the quiet obscure career marked out for them, as it might seem, irrevocably by the circumstances of their birth, was an intolerable impossibility. A woman, poor, plebeian, unlettered, frail in health, and in the fourteenth century! Surely no possible concatenation of circumstances could be devised, from which it would appear so impossible to emerge into power and celebrity! But the "Io Caterina schiava dei servi di Dio," of the letters, who thinks that entire nations shall be accepted or rejected as reprobate by the Eternal in accordance with the measure of HER merits or demerits, and who bargains with God to bear in HER own person the sacrilegious sin of a whole revolted people!—this Caterina was one whom no position could doom to the obscurity intolerable to such idiosyncrasies. And she rushed forth with uncontrollable determination on the one only path open to her;—not by any means necessarily with the conscious intention of making hypocritical use of the profession of sanctity for the achievement of distinction; but driven by the unrecognised promptings of ambition to the determination to excel in the department of human endeavour, which all contemporary opinion pointed out to her, as the highest, holiest, and noblest, open to mankind.

But the peculiar infirmity to which she was subject contributed a part of her extraordinary adaptability to the career she was to run, fully as important as any of the elements of strength in her character. Not only did her frequent cataleptic trances obtain from the people the most unhesitating belief in her supernatural communion with God, and in the miraculous visions which she related, in all probability with perfect sincerity, as having taken place therein; but they had as powerful a subjective as an objective effect. The Saint arose from each of these abnormal conditions of existence, nerved for fresh endurance, armed with increased pretensions, and animated with renewed enthusiasm, the result of hallucinations produced by the intensity of her waking wishes, imaginations, and aspirations.

THE DOMINICAN ORDER.

To these fortunately combined elements of success must be added a third, perhaps hardly less essential to it than either. Catherine, with her equally valuable and rare gifts and infirmities, fell from the outset of her career into hands well skilled and well able to make the most of them. She was from the beginning a devoted member of the great Order of St. Dominick; and it may be doubted on which side lies the balance of obligation between the Saint and her order. If she was to them a fruitful source of credit, profit, and power, they afforded her a status, worldly-wisdom, and backing, without which she could not have attained the position she did. She had for her confessor and special adviser one whom we must suppose to have been the most notable man among the Dominicans of his time, inasmuch as he became their General. And we have seen enough of this able monk in his quality of Saint-leader, to authorise the belief, that he was quite ready to supply as much of the wisdom of the serpent, as might be needed to bring to a good working alloy the Saint's dove-like simplicity. In what exact proportions the metal was thus run, that was brought to bear on the Popes and other great people so strangely influenced by Catherine, it is impossible to say. But there will be little danger of error in concluding, that the effect of either ingredient solely would not have been the same.

Finally, should it still seem difficult to believe, that two fourteenth century Popes, one a mild Frenchman, and the other an overbearing and choleric Italian, should have accepted the Sienese Virgin as a special messenger from Heaven, have really credited her miraculous pretensions, and have accorded a respect to her epistles on the score of their being inspired (which they assuredly would not have yielded to them as simply human compositions), it may be suggested, that men placed in the position of those Popes may possibly not have sincerely believed all that they deemed it politic to seem to believe. The miracle-working Saint, who came with such a man as Father Raymond to prompt her, backed by all the power and interest of the Dominican Order, with the ambassadorial credentials of the revolted and dangerous community of Florence in her hand, and with almost unlimited power of moving and directing the passions of large masses of the populace, was not a personage to be set at nought by a prudent Pontiff in the position of either Gregory XI. or Urban VI.

The history of Catherine's Saintship since her canonisation has been too much the same, as that of all her brethren and sisters of the calendar, to make it at all interesting to enter into details of the "dulia"—not worship! observe Protestant reader!—offered to her. She has her chapels, her relics, her candles, her office, her day, her devotees, like the rest of Rome's holy army. But what she could not be permitted to have, despite the recognition of Urban VIII., in 1628, was a claim to blood-relationship with the noble family of Borghese. Whether the Saint's heraldic backers were correct in attributing to her such an honour, or those of the Borghese right in disputing the fact, it is clear that that remarkably noble family had not sufficient respect for saintly reputation, however exalted, to endure that a dyer's daughter, let her have been what she might, should mar by her vicinity the nobleness of the many barbarous barons and worthless knights who have borne the family name. So great was the outcry they raised, that Urban VIII. was obliged infallibly to unsay his previous saying on the subject.

ANECDOTE OF THE PRESENT POPE.

By way of a conclusion, which, while it shows, that in the case of Catherine at least, there is an exception to the rule that excludes a prophet from honour in his own country, proves also that the subject of her Saintship is not a matter of mere historical interest, but aspires to the dignity of an "actualité," an anecdote may be told of the present Pope's recent journey through Tuscany.

Arrived at Siena, he too, like his predecessors, either thought it holy, or thought it politic, to pay due attention to the popular Saint in her own city. He accordingly directed the Saint's head, in its setting of silver and precious stones, to be brought from the Dominican church to his lodging in the Grand-ducal palace. But the populace of the city, especially the women of the ward in which the Saint was born, estimated the value of the precious relic so much more highly than they did the honesty of the Pontiff, that they insisted on not losing sight of their treasure, and could hardly be persuaded that Pio Nono had no burglarious intentions respecting it.

CATERINA SFORZA.

1462.-1509.