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Title: The Mystical Element of Religion, as studied in Saint Catherine of Genoa and her friends, Volume 1 (of 2)
Author: Hügel, Baron Friedrich von
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Mystical Element of Religion, as studied in Saint Catherine of Genoa and her friends, Volume 1 (of 2)" ***
number 50206.
THE MYSTICAL ELEMENT
OF RELIGION
_All rights reserved._
[Illustration: _Walker & Boutall, ph, sc_
_St. Catherine of Genoa. (Caterina Fiesca Adorna.)_]
THE MYSTICAL ELEMENT
OF RELIGION AS STUDIED
IN SAINT CATHERINE OF
GENOA AND HER FRIENDS
BY BARON FRIEDRICH VON HÜGEL
MEMBER OF THE CAMBRIDGE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY
VOLUME FIRST
INTRODUCTION AND BIOGRAPHIES
LONDON: J. M. DENT & CO.
NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO.
MCMVIII
RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,
BREAD STREET HILL, E.C., AND
BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.
PREFACE
The following work embodies well-nigh all that the writer has been able
to learn and to test, in the matter of religion, during now some thirty
years of adult life; and even the actual composition of the book has
occupied a large part of his time, for seven years and more.
* * * * *
The precise object of the book naturally grew in range, depth and
clearness, under the stress of the labour of its production. This
object will perhaps be best explained by means of a short description
of the undertaking’s origin and successive stages.
Born as I was in Italy, certain early impressions have never left me;
a vivid consciousness has been with me, almost from the first, of the
massively virile personalities, the spacious, trustful times of the
early, as yet truly Christian, Renaissance there, from Dante on to the
Florentine Platonists. And when, on growing up, I acquired strong and
definite religious convictions, it was that ampler pre-Protestant,
as yet neither Protestant nor anti-Protestant, but deeply positive
and Catholic, world, with its already characteristically modern
outlook and its hopeful and spontaneous application of religion to
the pressing problems of life and thought, which helped to strengthen
and sustain me, when depressed and hemmed in by the types of devotion
prevalent since then in Western Christendom. For those early modern
times presented me with men of the same general instincts and outlook
as my own, but environed by the priceless boon and starting-point
of a still undivided Western Christendom; Protestantism, as such,
continued to be felt as ever more or less unjust and sectarian; and the
specifically post-Tridentine type of Catholicism, with its regimental
Seminarism, its predominantly controversial spirit, its suspiciousness
and timidity, persisted, however inevitable some of it may be, in its
failure to win my love. Hence I had to continue the seeking and the
finding elsewhere, yet ever well within the great Roman Church, things
more intrinsically lovable. The wish some day to portray one of those
large-souled pre-Protestant, post-Mediaeval Catholics, was thus early
and has been long at work within me.
And then came John Henry Newman’s influence with his _Dream of
Gerontius_, and a deep attraction to St. Catherine of Genoa’s doctrine
of the soul’s self-chosen, intrinsic purification; and much lingering
about the scenes of Caterinetta’s life and labours, during more than
twenty stays in her terraced city that looks away so proudly to the
sea. Such a delicately psychological, soaring, yet sober-minded
Eschatology, with its striking penetration and unfolding of the soul’s
central life and alternatives as they are already here and now, seemed
to demand an ampler study than it had yet received, and to require a
vivid presentation of the noble, strikingly original personality from
whom it sprang.
And later still came the discovery of the apparently hopeless
complication of the records of Catherine’s life and doctrine, and how
these had never been seriously analyzed by any trained scholar, since
their constitution into a book in 1552. Much critical work at Classical
and Scriptural texts and documentary problems had, by now, whetted my
appetite to try whether I could not at last bring stately order out of
this bewildering chaos, by perhaps discovering the authors, dates and
intentions of the various texts and glosses thus dovetailed and pieced
together into a very Joseph’s coat of many colours, and by showing
the successive stages of this, most original and difficult, Saint’s
life and legend. All this labour would, in any case, help to train
my own mind; and it would, if even moderately successful, offer one
more detailed example of the laws that govern such growths, and of the
critical method necessary for the tracing out of their operation.
But the strongest motive revealed itself, in its full force, later than
all those other motives, and ended by permeating them all. The wish
arose to utilize, as fully as possible, this long, close contact with
a soul of most rare spiritual depth,--a soul that presents, with an
extraordinary, provocative vividness, the greatness, helps, problems
and dangers of the mystical spirit. I now wanted to try and get down to
the driving forces of this kind of religion, and to discover in what
way such a keen sense of, and absorption in, the Infinite can still
find room for the Historical and Institutional elements of Religion,
and, at the same time, for that noble concentration upon not directly
religious contingent facts and happenings, and upon laws of causation
or of growth, which constitutes the scientific temper of mind and its
specific, irreplaceable duties and virtues. Thus, having begun to write
a biography of St. Catherine, with some philosophical elucidations,
I have finished by writing an essay on the philosophy of Mysticism,
illustrated by the life of Caterinetta Fiesca Adorna and her friends.
* * * * *
The book’s chief peculiarities seem to spring inevitably from its
fundamental standpoint: hence their frank enumeration may help towards
the more ready comprehension of the work.
The book has, throughout, a treble interest and spirit;
historico-critical, philosophical, religious. The historico-critical
constituent may attract critical specialists; but will such specialists
care for the philosophy? The philosopher may be attracted by the
psychological and speculative sections; but will the historical
analysis interest him at all? And the soul that is seeking spiritual
food and stimulation, will it not readily be wearied by the apparent
pettiness of all that criticism, and by the seemingly cold aloofness of
all that speculation?--And yet it is the most certain of facts that the
human soul is so made as to be unable to part, completely and finally,
with any one of these three great interests. Hence, I may surely hope
that this trinity of levels of truth and of life, which has so much
helped on the growth of my own mind and the constitution of my own
character, may, in however different a manner and degree, be found to
help others also. This alternation and interstimulation between those
three forces and interests within the same soul, and within this soul’s
ever-deepening life, is, in any case, too fundamental a feature of this
whole outlook for any attempt at its elimination here.
Then there is a look of repetition and of illogical anticipation about
the very structure of the book. For the philosophical First Part
says, in general, what the biographical Second Part says in detail;
this detail is, in reality, based upon the critical conclusions
arrived at in the Appendix, which follows the precise descriptions
of the biography; and then the Third, once more a philosophical,
Part returns, now fortified by the intervening close occupation
with concrete contingent matters, to the renewed consideration, and
deeper penetration and enforcement, of the general positions with
which the whole work began.--Yet is not this circular method simply a
frank application, to the problems in hand, of the process actually
lived through by us all in real life, wherever such life is truly
fruitful? For, in real life, we ever start with certain general
intellectual-emotive schemes and critical principles, as so many
draw-nets and receptacles for the capture and sorting out of reality
and of our experience of it. We next are brought, by choice or by
necessity, into close contact with a certain limited number of concrete
facts and experiences. And we then use these facts and experiences
to fill in, to confirm or to modify that, more or less tentative and
predominantly inherited, indeed ever largely conventional, scheme
with which we began our quest. In all these cases of actual life,
this apparently long and roundabout, indeed back-before, process is,
in reality, the short, because the only fully sincere and humble,
specifically human way in which to proceed. The order so often followed
in “learned” and “scientific” books is, in spite of its appearance of
greater logic and conciseness, far longer; for the road thus covered
has to be travelled all over again, according to the circular method
just described, if we would gain, not wind and shadow, but substance
and spiritual food.
Then again, there is everywhere a strong insistence upon History as
a Science, yet as a Science possessing throughout a method, type
and aim quite special to itself and deeply different from those of
Physical Science; and an even greater stress upon the important, indeed
irreplaceable function of both these kinds of Science, or of their
equivalents, in the fullest spiritual life. Here the insistence upon
History, as a Science, is still unusual in England; and the stress upon
the spiritually purifying power of these Sciences will still appear
somewhat fantastic everywhere.--Yet that conception of two branches
of ordered human apprehension, research and knowledge, each (in its
delicate and clear contrastedness of method, test, end and result)
legitimate and inevitable, so that either of them is ruined if forced
into the categories of the other, has most certainly come to stay.
And the attempt to discover the precise function and meaning of these
several mental activities and of their ethical pre-requisites, within
the full and spiritual life of the soul, and in view of this life’s
consolidation and growth, will, I believe, turn out to be of genuine
religious utility. For I hope to show how only one particular manner
of conceiving and of practising those scientific activities and
this spiritual life and consolidation allows, indeed requires, the
religious passion,--the noblest and deepest passion given to man,--to
be itself enlisted on the side of that other noble, indestructible
thing, severe scientific sincerity. This very sincerity would thus not
empty or distract, but would, on the contrary, purify and deepen the
soul’s spirituality; and hence this spirituality would continuously
turn to that sincerity for help in purifying and deepening the soul.
And, surely, until we have somehow attained to some such interaction,
the soul must perforce remain timid and weak; for without sincerity
everywhere, we cannot possibly develop to their fullest the passion for
truth and righteousness even in religion itself.
And then again a Catholic, one who would be a proudly devoted and
grateful son of the Roman Church, speaks and thinks throughout the
following pages. Yet it is his very Catholicism which makes him feel,
with a spontaneous and continuous keenness, that only if there are
fragments, earlier stages and glimpses of truth and goodness extant
wheresoever some little sincerity exists, can the Catholic Church
even conceivably be right. For though Christianity and Catholicism be
the culmination and fullest norm of all religion, yet to be such they
must find something thus to crown and measure: various degrees of, or
preparations for, their truth have existed long before they came, and
exist still, far and wide, now that they have come. Otherwise, Marcion
would have been right, when he denied that the Old Testament proceeds
from the same God as does the New; and three-fourths or more of the
human race would not, to this very moment, be bereft, without fault
of their own, of all knowledge of the Historic Christ and of every
opportunity for definite incorporation into the Christian Church,
since we dare not think that God has left this large majority of His
children without any and every glimpse and opportunity of religious
truth, moral goodness, and eternal hope. Yet such a recognition of some
light and love everywhere involves no trace of levelling down, or even
of levelling up; it is, in itself, without a trace of Indifferentism.
For if some kinds or degrees of light are thus found everywhere, yet
this light is held to vary immensely in different times and places,
from soul to soul, and from one religious stage, group or body to
another; the measure and culmination of this light is found in the
deepest Christian and Catholic light and holiness; and, over and above
the involuntary, sincere differences in degree, stage and kind, there
are held to exist, also more or less everywhere, the differences caused
by cowardice and opposition to the light,--cowardices and oppositions
which are as certainly at work within the Christian and Catholic Church
as they are amongst the most barbarous of Polytheists. I may well have
failed adequately to combine these twin truths; yet only in some such,
though more adequate apprehension and combination resides the hope for
the future of our poor storm-tossed human race,--in a deep fervour
without fanaticism, and a generous sympathy without indifference.
And lastly, a lay lover of religion speaks throughout, a man to
whom the very suspicion that such subjects should or could, on that
account, be foreign to him has ever been impossible. A deep interest
in religion is evidently part of our very manhood, a thing previous
to the Church, and which the Church now comes to develop and to save.
Yet such an interest is, in the long run, impossible, if the heart
and will alone are allowed to be active in a matter so supremely
great and which claims the entire man. “Where my heart lies, let my
brain lie also”: man is not, however much we may try and behave as
though he were, a mere sum-total of so many separable water-tight
compartments; he can no more fruitfully delegate his brains and his
interest in the intellectual analysis and synthesis of religion, than
he can commission others to do his religious feeling and willing, his
spiritual growth and combat, for him.--But this does not of itself
imply an individualistic, hence one-sided, religion. For only in close
union with the accumulated and accumulating experiences, analyses and
syntheses of the human race in general, and with the supreme life and
teaching of the Christian and Catholic Church in particular, will such
growth in spiritual personality be possible on any large and fruitful
scale: since nowhere, and nowhere less than in religion, does man
achieve anything by himself alone, or for his own exclusive use and
profit.
And such a layman’s views, even when thus acquired and expressed with a
constant endeavour to be, and ever increasingly to become, a unit and
part and parcel of that larger, Christian and Catholic whole, will ever
remain, in themselves and in his valuation of them, unofficial, and, at
best, but so much material and stimulation for the kindly criticism and
discriminating attention of his fellow-creatures and fellow-Christians
and (should these views stand such informal, preliminary tests) for the
eventual utilization of the official Church. To this officiality ever
remains the exclusive right and duty to formulate successively, for the
Church’s successive periods, according as these become ripe for such
formulations, the corporate, normative forms and expressions of the
Church’s deepest consciousness and mind. Yet this officiality cannot
and does not operate _in vacuo_, or by a direct recourse to extra-human
sources of information. It sorts out, eliminates what is false and
pernicious, or sanctions and proclaims what is true and fruitful, and a
development of her own life, teaching and commission, in the volunteer,
tentative and preliminary work put forth by the Church’s unofficial
members.
And just because both these movements are within, and necessary to,
one and the same complete Church, they can be and are different from
each other. Hence the following book would condemn itself to pompous
unreality were it to mimic official caution and emphasis, whilst ever
unable to achieve official authority. It prefers to aim at a layman’s
special virtues and function: complete candour, courage, sensitiveness
to the present and future, in their obscurer strivings towards the
good and true, as these have been in their substance already tested
in the past, and in so far as such strivings can be forecasted by
sympathy and hope. And I thus trust that the book may turn out to be as
truly Catholic in fact, as it has been Catholic in intention; I have
striven hard to furnish so continuous and copious a stream of actions
and teachings of Christian saints and sages as everywhere to give the
reader means of correcting or completing my own inferences; and I
sincerely submit these my own conclusions to the test and judgment of
my fellow-Christians and of the Catholic Church.
* * * * *
My obligations to scholars, thinkers and great spiritual souls are far
too numerous and great for any exhaustive recognition. Yet there are
certain works and persons to whom I am especially indebted; and these
shall here be mentioned with most grateful thanks.
In my Biographical and Critical Part Second, I have had, in Genoa
itself, the help of various scholars and friends. Signor Dottore
Ridolfo de Andreis first made me realize the importance of Vallebona’s
booklet. Padre Giovanni Semeria, the Barnabite, put me in touch with
the right persons and documents. The Cavallière L. A. Cervetto, of the
Biblioteca Civica, referred me to many useful works. The Librarian of
the Biblioteca della Missione Urbana copied out for me the inventory
of St. Catherine’s effects. And Signor Dottore Augusto Ferretto, of the
Archivio di Stato, made admirably careful, explicitated copies for me,
from the originals, so full of difficult abbreviations, of the long
series of legal documents which are the rock-bed on which my biography
is built.
The courteous help of the Head Librarian of the Genoese University
Library extended to beyond Genoa. For it was owing to his action,
in conjunction with that of the Italian Ministry, of the English
Embassy in Rome, and of the British Museum Authorities, that the three
most important of the manuscripts of St. Catherine’s life were most
generously deposited for my use at the latter institution. I was thus
enabled to study my chief sources at full leisure in London.
The Rev. Padre Calvino, Canon Regular of the Lateran, made many kind
attempts to trace any possible compositions concerning St. Catherine
among the Venerable Battista Vernazza’s manuscripts, preserved by the
spiritual descendants of Battista’s Augustinian Canonesses in Genoa; it
was not his fault that nothing could be found.
The Society of Bollandists lent me, for a liberal length of time,
various rare books. I shall indeed be proud if my Appendix wins their
approbation, since it deals with subject-matters and methods in which
they are past-masters. Father Sticker’s pages on St. Catherine, in
their _Acta Sanctorum_ (1752), are certainly not satisfactory; they
are, however, quite untypical of the Bollandists’ best work, or even of
their average performances.
My obligations in my Psychological and Philosophical Parts First and
Third are still more numerous and far more difficult to trace. Indeed
it is precisely where these obligations are the most far-reaching that
I can least measure them, since the influence of the books and persons
concerned has become part of the texture of my own mind.
But among the great religious spirits or stimulating thinkers of
Classical and Patristic times, I am conscious of profound obligations
to Plato generally; to Aristotle on two points; to St. Paul; to
Plotinus; to Clement of Alexandria; and to St. Augustine. And the
Areopagite Literature has necessarily been continuously in my mind.
Among Mediaeval writers St. Thomas Aquinas has helped me greatly, in
ways both direct and indirect; Eckhart has, with the help of Father H.
S. Denifle’s investigations, furnished much food for reflection by his
most instructive doctrinal excesses; and the extraordinarily deep and
daring spirituality of Jacopone da Todi’s poetry has been studied with
the greatest care.
The Renaissance times have given me Cardinal Nicolas of Coes, whose
great Dialogue _de Idiota_ has helped me in various ways. And in the
early post-Reformation period I have carefully studied, and have been
much influenced by, that many-sided, shrewdly wise book, St. Teresa’s
Autobiography. Yet it is St. John of the Cross, that massively virile
Contemplative, who has most deeply influenced me throughout this work.
St. Catherine is, I think, more like him, in her ultimate spirit, than
any other Saint or spiritual writer known to me; she is certainly far
more like him than is St. Teresa.
Later on, I have learnt much from Fénelon’s Latin writings concerning
Pure Love, of 1710 and 1712; together with Abbé Gosselin’s admirably
lucid _Analyse de la Controverse du Quiétisme_, 1820, and the Jesuit
Father Deharbe’s solid and sober _die vollkommene Liebe Gottes_, 1856.
Among modern philosophers I have been especially occupied with, and
variously stimulated or warned by, Spinoza, with his deep religious
intuition and aspiration, and his determinist system, so destructive
because taken by him as ultimate; Leibniz, with his admirably
continuous sense of the multiplicity in every living unity, of the
organic character, the _inside_ of everything that fully exists, and
of the depth and range of our subconscious mental and emotional life;
Kant, with his keen criticisms and searching analyses, his profound
ethical instincts, and his curious want of the specifically religious
sense and insight; Schopenhauer, with his remarkable recognition of the
truth and greatness of the Ascetic element and ideal; Trendelenburg,
with his continuous requirement of an operative knowledge of the chief
stages which any principle or category has passed through in human
history, if we would judge this principle with any fruit; Kierkegaard,
that certainly one-sided, yet impressively tenacious re-discoverer
and proclaimer of the poignant sense of the Transcendent essential to
all deep religion, and especially to Christianity, religion’s flower
and crown; and Fechner, in his little-known book, so delightfully
convincing in its rich simplicity, _die drei Motive und Gründe des
Glaubens_, 1863.
Of quite recent or still living writers, two have been used by me
on a scale which would be unpardonable, had the matters treated
by them been the direct subjects of my book. In Part First whole
pages of mine are marked by me as little but a _précis_ of passages
in Dr. Eduard Zeller’s standard _Philosophy of the Greeks_. I have
myself much studied Heracleitus, Parmenides, Plato and Plotinus; and
I have, also in the case of the other philosophers, always followed
up and tested such passages of Zeller as I have here transcribed.
But I did not, for by far the most part, think it worth while, on
these largely quite general and practically uncontested matters, to
construct fresh appreciations of my own, rather than to reproduce,
with due consideration and acknowledgments, the conclusions of such an
accepted authority. And already in Part First, but especially in Part
Third, I have utilized as largely, although here with still more of
personal knowledge and of careful re-examination, considerable sections
of Professor H. J. Holtzmann’s _Lehrbuch der Neutestamentlichen
Theologie_, 1897--sections which happen to be, upon the whole, the
deepest and most solid in that great but often daring work. The
same Professor Holtzmann is, besides, a most suggestive religious
philosopher; and his penetrating though very difficult book _Richard
Rothe’s Speculatives System_, 1899, has also been of considerable use.
Other recent or contemporary German writers to whom I owe much, are
Erwin Rhode, in his exquisite great book, _Psyche_, 2nd ed., 1898;
Professor Johannes Volkelt, in his penetratingly critical _Kant’s
Erkenntnisstheorie_, 1879; Professor Hugo Münsterberg, in his largely
planned although too absolute _Grundzüge der Psychologie_, Vol. I.,
1900; Professor Heinrich Rickert, in his admirably discriminating
_Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung_, 1902; and also
two friends whose keen care for religion never flags--Professors
Rudolf Eucken of Jena and Ernst Troeltsch of Heidelberg. Eucken’s
_Lebensanschauungen der grossen Denker_, 1st ed., 1890; _der Kampf
um einen geistigen Lebensinhalt_, 1896; and the earlier sections of
_der Wahrheitsgehalt der Religion_, 1902, have greatly helped me.
And Troeltsch’s _Grund-probleme der Ethik_, 1902, has considerably
influenced certain central conceptions of my book, notwithstanding the
involuntary, rough injustice manifested by him, especially elsewhere,
towards the Roman Church.
Among present-day French writers, my book owes most to Professor
Maurice Blondel’s, partly obscure yet intensely alive and religiously
deep, work _L’Action_, 1893; to Dr. Pierre Janet’s carefully
first-hand observations, as chronicled in his _Etat Mental des
Hystériques_, 1894; to Monsieur Emil Boutroux’s very suggestive paper
_Psychologie du Mysticisme_, 1902; to various pregnant articles of the
Abbé L. Laberthonnière in the _Annales de Philosophie Chrétienne_,
1898-1906; and to M. Henri Bergson’s delicately penetrating _Essai sur
les Données Immédiates de la Conscience_, 2nd ed., 1898.
And amongst living Englishmen, the work is most indebted to Professor
A. S. Pringle-Pattison, especially to his eminently sane _Hegelianism
and Personality_, 2nd ed., 1893; to Professor James Ward, in his
strenuous _Naturalism and Agnosticism_, 1st ed., 1899; to the Reverend
George Tyrrell’s _Hard Sayings_, 1898, and _The Faith of the Millions_,
2 vols., 1901, so full of insight into Mysticism; and, very especially,
to Dr. Edward Caird, in his admirably wide and balanced survey, _The
Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers_, 1904.
But further back than all the living writers and friends lies the
stimulation and help of him who was later on to become Cardinal Newman.
It was he who first taught me to glory in my appurtenance to the
Catholic and Roman Church, and to conceive this my inheritance in a
large and historical manner, as a slow growth across the centuries,
with an innate affinity to, and eventual incorporation of, all the
good and true to be found mixed up with error and with evil in this
chequered, difficult but rich world and life in which this living
organism moves and expands. Yet the use to which all these helps have
here been put, has inevitably been my own doing: nowhere except in
direct quotations have I simply copied, and nowhere are these helpers
responsible for what here appears.
And then there have been great souls, whom I cannot well name here, but
whom I would nevertheless refer to in reverent gratitude; souls that
have taught me that deepest of facts and of lessons,--the persistence,
across the centuries, within the wide range of the visible and indeed
also of the invisible Church, of that vivid sense of the finite and the
Infinite, of that spacious joy and expansive freedom in self-donation
to God, the prevenient, all-encompassing Spirit, of that massively
spontaneous, elemental religion, of which Catherine is so noble an
example. Thus a world-renouncing, world-conquering, virile piety,
humble and daring, humane, tender and creatively strong, is at no time
simply dead, but it merely sleepeth; indeed it ever can be found,
alive, open-eyed irresistible, hidden away here and there, throughout
our earthly space and time.
* * * * *
In matters directly connected with the publication of the work I have
especially to thank Messrs. Sciutto of Genoa, the photographers to
whom I owe the very successful photographs from which the plates that
stand at the head of my volumes have been taken; Mr. Sidney E. Mayle,
publisher, of Hampstead, for permission to use the photogravure of
St. Catherine’s portrait which appeared as an illustration to a paper
of mine, in his scholarly _Hampstead Annual_, 1898; Miss Maude Petre,
who helped me much towards achieving greater lucidity of style, by
carefully reading and criticizing all my proofs; and my publisher,
who has not shrunk from undertaking the publication of so long a work
on so very serious, abstruse-seeming a subject. Even so, I have had
to suppress the notes to my chapter on “Catherine’s Teaching,” which
throughout showed the critical reasons that had determined my choice of
the particular sayings, and the particular text of the sayings, adopted
by me in the text; and have had to excise quite a third of my Appendix,
which furnished the analysis of further, critically instructive texts
of the _Vita e Dottrina_, the _Dicchiarazione_ and the _Dialogo_. If a
new edition is ever called for, this further material might be added,
and would greatly increase the cogency of my argument.
* * * * *
The work that now at last I thus submit to the reader, is doubtless
full of defects; and I shall welcome any thoughtful criticism of any
of its parts as a true kindness. Yet I would point out that all these
parts aim at being but so many constituents of a whole, within which
alone they gain their true significance and worth. Hence only by one
who has studied and pondered the book as a whole, will any of its parts
be criticized with fairness to that part’s intention. To gain even but
a dozen of such readers would amply repay the labour of these many
years.
I take it that the most original parts are Chapter Eight, with its
analysis of Battista Vernazza’s interesting Diary; the Appendix, with
its attempts at fixing the successive authors and intentions that
have built up the _Vita e Dottrina_; Chapter Nine, which attempts to
assign to psycho-physical matters, as we now know them, their precise
place and function within the vast life-system, and according to the
practical tests, of the great Mystical Saints; and Chapter Fifteen,
with its endeavour to picture that large Asceticism which alone
can effect, within the same soul, a fruitful co-habitation of, and
interaction between, Social Religion, the Scientific Habit of Mind, and
the Mystical Element of Religion.
* * * * *
Kirkegaard used to claim that he ever wrote _existentially_, pricked on
by the exigencies of actual life, to attempt their expression in terms
of that life, and in view of its further spiritual development. More
than ever the spiritual life appears now as supremely worth the having,
and yet it seems to raise, or to find, the most formidable difficulties
or even deadlocks. I can but hope that these pages may have so largely
sprung from the exigencies of that life itself,--that they may have
caught so much of the spirit of the chief livers of the spiritual life,
especially of St. Catherine of Genoa and of St. John of the Cross, and,
above all, of the One Master and Measure of Christianity and of the
Church,--as to stimulate such life, its practice, love and study, in
their readers, and may point them, spur them on, through and beyond all
that here has been attempted, missed or obscured, to fuller religious
insight, force and fruitfulness.
FRIEDRICH VON HÜGEL.
_Kensington_, _Easter 1908._
“Grant unto men, O God, to perceive in little things the
indications, common-seeming though they be, of things both
small and great.”
ST. AUGUSTINE, _Confessions_, Bk. XI, ch. xxiii, 1.
CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME
The frontispiece photogravure reproduces an oil-painting preserved
in the sacristy of the Santissima Annunciata in Portorio, the Church
of the Pammatone Hospital in Genoa. This painting is probably a copy
(perhaps not older than 1737) of the portrait which hangs in the
superioress’s room in the same hospital, and which is presumably the
picture referred to by documents as extant in 1512, eighteen months
after Catherine’s death. The copy has been reproduced in preference to
the original, because the original has been considerably and clumsily
restored, whereas the copy gives us the older portrait as it existed
before this restoration.
PAGE
PART I.--INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I.--THE THREE CHIEF FORCES OF WESTERN
CIVILIZATION 3-49
Introductory 3-10
I. The First of the Three Forces: Hellenism, the Thirst
for Richness and Harmony 10-25
II. The Second of the Three Forces: Christianity, the Revelation
of Personality and Depth 25-39
III. The Third Force: Science, the Apprehension and Conception
of Brute Fact and Iron Law 39-48
IV. Summing up: Hellenism or Harmonization, Christianity
or Spiritual Experience, and Science or Acceptance
of a Preliminary Mechanism, all three necessary to
Man 48, 49
CHAPTER II.--THE THREE ELEMENTS OF RELIGION 50-82
Introductory 50
I. The Three Elements, as they successively appear in the
Child, the Youth, and the Adult Man 50-53
II. Each Element ever accompanied by some amount of the
other two. Difficulty of the Transition from one Stage
to the other 53-55
III. Parallels to this Triad of Religious Elements 55-58
IV. Distribution of the Three Elements amongst Mankind
and throughout Human History 58-65
V. Causes operative in all Religion towards minimizing or
suppressing one or other Element, or towards denying
the need of any Multiplicity 65-70
VI. The Special Motives operating in each Element towards
the suppression of the other Elements 70-77
VII. Three Final Objections to such a conception of Religion,
and their Answers 77-82
PART II.--BIOGRAPHICAL
CHAPTER III.--CATHERINE FIESCA ADORNA’S LIFE, UP
TO HER CONVERSION; AND THE CHIEF PECULIARITIES
PREDOMINANT THROUGHOUT HER CONVERT YEARS. 85-127
Introductory 85, 86
I. Proposed Study of the Mystical-Volitional Element in
a Particular, Concrete Instance: St. Catherine of
Genoa 86-90
II. The Materials and Aids towards such a Study 90-93
III. Peculiarities of the Genoese Climate and Geographical
Position; of the Ligurian Character; and of the Times
into which Catherine was born. Her Family, Father
and Mother 93-97
IV. Catherine’s Life, up to the Preliminaries of her Conversion:
Autumn 1447 to Mid-March 1474 97-104
V. Her Conversion, with its immediate Preliminaries and
Consequences, March 1474 104-109
VI. The Two Conceptions concerning the Character and
_Rationale_ of her Penitential Period and of her whole
Convert Life. The Position adopted here 109-113
VII. Catherine and the Holy Eucharist 113-116
VIII. Catherine and Confession and Direction 117-123
IX. Catherine and Indulgences 123-126
X. Peculiarities concerning the Invocation of Saints and
Intercessory Prayer 126, 127
CHAPTER IV.--CATHERINE’S LIFE FROM 1473 TO 1506, AND
ITS MAIN CHANGES AND GROWTH 128-174
I. First Period of Catherine’s Convert Life: Giuliano’s
Bankruptcy and Conversion; their Work among the
Poor, March 1473 to May 1477 128-131
II. Catherine and Tommasa Fiesca: their Difference of
Character and _attrait_. Peculiarity of Catherine’s Penitence
and Health during this Time 131-133
III. Change in the Temper of Catherine’s Penitence, from
May 1474 onwards 133-135
IV. Catherine’s Great Fasts 135-137
V. Second, Central Period of Catherine’s Convert Life,
1477-1499: its Special Spiritual Features 138-141
VI. Catherine and Giuliano move into the Hospital in 1479,
never again to quit it. She is Matron from 1490 to
1495 141-143
VII. Catherine and the Plague. The Outbreak of 1493 143-145
VIII. Catherine and Ettore Vernazza, 1493-1495 145-147
IX. Catherine’s Health breaks down, 1496; other Events of
the same Year 147-149
X. Events of 1497 149-154
XI. Beginning of her Third, Last Period; End of the
Extraordinary Fasts; First Relations with Don Marabotto 155-159
XII. Her Conversations with her Disciples; “Caterina Serafina.”
Don Marabotto and the Possessed Maid 159-162
XIII. Catherine’s Sympathy with Animal-and Plant-Life: her
Love of the Open Air. Her Deep Self-knowledge as to
the Healthiness or Morbidness of her Psycho-physical
States 163-166
XIV. Catherine’s Social Joys and Sorrows, 1501-1507 166-174
CHAPTER V.--CATHERINE’S LAST FOUR YEARS, 1506-1510.
SKETCH OF HER CHARACTER, DOCTRINE, AND
SPIRIT 175-250
I. Catherine’s External Interests and Activities up to May
1510. Occasional slight Deviations from her old Balance.
Immensely close Interconnection of her whole
Mental and Psycho-physical Nature. Impressions as
connected with the Five Senses 175-181
II. More or less _Maladif_ Experiences and Actions 182-200
III. Catherine’s History from May to September 9, 1510 200-211
IV. The Last Six Days of Catherine’s Life, September 10-15 211-219
V. Sketch of Catherine’s Spiritual Character and Significance 220-250
CHAPTER VI. CATHERINE’S DOCTRINE 251-294
Introductory 251-260
I. God as Creative Love. The Creature’s True and False
Self; True and False Love 260-266
I. Sin, Purification, Illumination 266-272
III. The Three Categories and the Two Ways 273-280
IV. The Other Worlds 281-294
CHAPTER VII.--CATHERINE’S REMAINS AND CULTUS; THE
FATE OF HER TWO PRIEST FRIENDS AND OF HER
DOMESTICS; AND THE REMAINING HISTORY OF
ETTORE VERNAZZA 295-335
Introductory 295, 296
I. The Burial and the Events immediately surrounding it.
September 15 to December 10, 1510 296-300
II. The Different Removals of the Remains, and the Chief
Stages of her Official Cultus 300-306
III. The Fate of Catherine’s Priest Friends 307-311
IV. The Fate of Catherine’s Three Maid-servants 311-314
V. The Two Vernazzas: their Debt to Catherine, and
Catherine’s Debt to them 314, 315
VI. Ettore Vernazza’s Life, from 1509 to 1512 316-321
VII. Ettore in Rome and Naples; his Second Will; his
Work in the Genoese Prisons 321-329
VIII. Ettore again in Naples; his Death in Genoa, June 1524;
Peculiarities of his Posthumous Fame 329-335
CHAPTER VIII.--BATTISTA VERNAZZA’S LIFE 336-367
Introductory 336, 337
I. Battista’s Life, from April 1497 to June 1510 337-339
II. Battista and her God-father, Tommaso Moro 339-344
III. Battista’s _Colloquies_, November 1554 to Ascension Day
1555 344-358
IV. Some further Letters of Battista, 1575-1581 358-366
V. Battista’s Death, May 1587 366, 367
CONCLUSION TO VOLUME I
WHEREIN LIES THE SECRET OF SPIRITUAL PERSUASIVENESS 367-370
APPENDIX TO PART II
CHRONOLOGICAL ACCOUNT AND CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF
THE MATERIALS FOR THE RE-CONSTITUTION OF
SAINT CATHERINE’S LIFE AND TEACHING 371-466
Introduction: The Three Laws that govern the Growth of
Religious Biography; Complexity of the Materials for
Catherine’s Life 371-376
FIRST DIVISION: ACCOUNT AND ANALYSIS OF THE DOCUMENTS
PREVIOUS, AND IMMEDIATELY SUBSEQUENT
TO, THE “VITA E DOTTRINA” WITH THE “DICCHIARAZIONE,”
IN SEVEN STAGES 376-433
I. First Stage: August 1456 to September 12, 1510, all
Legal 376-380
II. Second Stage: Five further Official and Legal Documents,
1511-1526; and Four Mortuary Dates, 1524-1587 380, 381
III. Third Stage: Bishop Giustiniano’s Account of Catherine’s
Life, Remains, and Biography, 1537 382-384
IV. Fourth Stage: The Two Oldest Extant Manuscripts of
the “Vita e Dottrina” with the “Dicchiarazione.”
Manuscript A (October 1547 to February 1548), and
Manuscript B 384-395
V. Fifth Stage: Manuscript C (copy of a MSS. of 1550?),
first appearance of the “Dialogo,” “Chapter” First 395-410
VI. Sixth Stage: First Printed Edition of the
“Vita-Dottrina-Dicchiarazione,” 1551; Examination of all it
possesses in addition to Manuscripts A, B, and C, apart
from the “Dialogo” 411-417
VII. Seventh Stage: The Second “Chapter” of the “Dialogo,”
which appears for the first time in the Printed “Vita,”
1551 417-424
VIII. Seventh Stage continued: Minute Analysis of one Passage
from the Second “Chapter” 424-427
IX. Seventh Stage concluded: Character and Authorship of
this Second “Chapter” 427-433
SECOND DIVISION: ANALYSIS, ASSIGNATION, AND APPRAISEMENT
OF THE “VITA-DOTTRINA-DICCHIARAZIONE”
CORPUS, IN EIGHT SECTIONS 433-466
I. The “Dicchiarazione”: the Two Stages of its Existence 434-440
II. The Earlier “Dicchiarazione,” and its Theological
Glosses 440-447
III. Five Conclusions concerning the History of the
“Dicchiarazione” 447-449
IV. The “Vita”-Proper, its Divisions and Parts, and its
Chief Secondary and Authentic Constituents 449-453
V. Age and Authorship of the Literature retained 453-457
VI. Analysis of the Conversion-Narratives 458-462
VII. The Sayings-Passages: Three Tests for discriminating
Authentic from Secondary Sayings 462, 463
VIII. Conclusion: At least Six Stages in the Upbuilding of the
Complete Book of 1551. The Slight Changes introduced
since then. First Claims to Authorship for Catherine 463-466
“He is not far from every one of us; for in Him we live, and
move, and have our being.”--Acts xvii, 27, 28.
“Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”--2
Corinthians iii, 17.
THE MYSTICAL ELEMENT OF RELIGION
PART I
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I
THE THREE CHIEF FORCES OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION
INTRODUCTORY.
1. _An enigma of life: the Universal and Abiding does not move the
will; and what does move it is Individual and Evanescent._
Amongst the apparent enigmas of life, amongst the seemingly most
radical and abiding of interior antinomies and conflicts experienced
by the human race and by individuals, there is one which everything
tends to make us feel and see with an ever-increasing keenness and
clearness. More and more we want a strong and interior, a lasting yet
voluntary bond of union between our own successive states of mind,
and between what is abiding in ourselves and what is permanent within
our fellow-men; and more and more we seem to see that mere Reasoning,
Logic, Abstraction,--all that appears as the necessary instrument
and expression of the Universal and Abiding,--does not move or win
the will, either in ourselves or in others; and that what does thus
move and win it, is Instinct, Intuition, Feeling, the Concrete and
Contingent, all that seems to be of its very nature individual and
evanescent. Reasoning appears but capable, at best, of co-ordinating,
unifying, explaining the material furnished to it by experience of all
kinds; at worst, of explaining it away; at best, of stimulating the
purveyance of a fresh supply of such experience; at worst, of stopping
such purveyance as much as may be. And yet the Reasoning would appear
to be the transferable part in the process, but not to move; and the
experience alone to have the moving power, but not to be transmissible.
2. _Our personal experience as regards our own convictions._
Experience indeed and its resultant feeling are always, in the first
instance, coloured and conditioned by every kind of individual
many-sided circumstances of time and place, of race and age and sex,
of education and temperament, of antecedent and environment. And it
is this very particular combination, just this one, so conditioned
and combined, coming upon me just at this moment and on this spot,
just at this stage of my reach or growth, at this turning of my way,
that carries with it this particular power to touch or startle, to
stimulate or convince. It is just precisely through the but imperfectly
analyzable, indeed but dimly perceived, individual connotation of
general terms; it is by the fringe of feeling, woven out of the past
doings and impressions, workings and circumstances, physical, mental,
moral, of my race and family and of my own individual life; it is
by the apparently slight, apparently far away, accompaniment of a
perfectly individual music to the spoken or sung text of the common
speech of man, that I am, it would seem, really moved and won.
And this fringe of feeling, this impression, is, strictly speaking, not
merely untransferable, but also unrepeatable; it is unique even for the
same mind: it never was before, it never will be again. Heraclitus, if
we understand that old Physicist in our own modern, deeply subjective,
largely sentimental way, would appear to be exactly right: you cannot
twice step into the same stream, since never for two moments do the
waters remain identical; you yourself cannot twice step the same man
into the same river, for you have meanwhile changed as truly as itself
has done, Πάντα ῥεῖ: all things and states, outward and inward, appear
indeed in flux: only each moment seems to bring, to each individual,
for that one moment, his power to move and to convince.
3. _Our experience in our attempt to win others._
And if we transmit this emotion or conviction to another mind, or if we
seem to be able to trace such transmission when it has been actually
effected in ourselves or in others, we shall find that, in proportion
as one mind feeds, not forces, another, the particular bond and
organization of the mental and emotional picture which cost us so much,
moved us so much, has, in each case, been snapped and broken up; the
whole has been again resolved into its constituent elements, and only
some of these elements have been taken up into the already existing
organization of the other mind, or have joined together in that mind,
to form there a combination which is really new. Even a simple scent or
sound or sight comes charged to each of us with many but most differing
connotations, arousing or modifying or supplanting old or new ideas
and impressions in the most subtle, complex, and individual manner.
Insist upon another mind taking over the whole of this impression,
and you will have rightly and necessarily aroused an immediate or
remote hostility or revolt against the whole of what you bring. Hence
here too we are again perplexed by the initial enigma: the apparently
insurmountable individuality of all that affects us, and the equally
insurmountable non-affectingness of all that is clearly and certainly
transmissible from any one man to another.
4. _This mysterious law appears to obtain in precise proportion to the
depth and importance of the truths and realities in view._
And if we seem boxed up thus, each one away from our fellow, in all our
really moving and determining inclinations and impressions, judgments
and affections, with regard to matters on which we feel we can afford
to differ deeply and to be much alone; we appear to be more and not
less so, in exact proportion as the importance of the subject-matter
increases. In moral and spiritual, in religious and fundamental
matters, we thirst more, not less, for identity of conviction and of
feeling; and we are, or seem to be, more, not less, profoundly and
hopelessly at variance with each other than anywhere else.
And more than this: the apparent reason of this isolation seems but to
aggravate the case, because here more than anywhere else imagination,
feeling, intuition seem indeed to play a predominant, determining part;
and yet here more than anywhere else we feel such a predominance to
be fraught with every kind of danger. Thus here especially we feel as
incapable of suppressing, indeed of doing without these forces, as of
frankly accepting, studying, and cultivating them. Now and then we
take alarm and are in a panic at any indication that these springs and
concomitants of life are at work within us; yet we persist in doing
little or nothing to find sufficient and appropriate food and scope
and exercise for the right development and hence the real purification
of these elemental forces, forces which we can stunt but cannot kill.
Nothing, we most rightly feel, can be in greater or more subtle and
dangerous opposition to manly morality or enlightened religion than
the seeking after or revelling in emotion; nothing, we most correctly
surmise, can equal the power of strong feeling or heated imagination to
give a hiding-place to superstition, sensuality, dreamy self-complacent
indolence, arrogant revolt and fanaticism; nothing, even where such
things seem innocent, appears less apt than do these fierce and
fitful, these wayward and fleeting feelings, these sublimities and
exquisitenesses, to help on that sober and stable, consistent and
persistent, laborious upbuilding of moral and religious character,
work, and evidence which alone are wanted more and more. Indeed, what
would seem better calculated than such emotion to strain the nerves,
to inflame the imagination, to blunt common-sense and that salt of the
earth, the saving sense of the ridiculous, to deaden the springs of
research and critical observation, to bring us, under the incalculably
sapping influences of physical abnormalities, close up to where sanity
shades off into madness, and ethical elevation breaks down into
morbidness and depravity?
5. _The experience of the human race: the two series of personalities,
movements, races._
And the secular experience of the race would seem fully to bear
out such suspicions. For have we not there a double series of
personalities, events, and movements far too long and widespread not
to be conclusive? On the one hand, there are those that seem to spring
from dimly lit or dark feeling, to arise,--as it were, hydra-like, to
sting and madden, or mist-like, to benumb all life, and turn it into
mere drift and dreaming,--from out of the obscure, undrained, swampy
places of human ignorance and passion. On the other hand, there are
those that are formed and fashioned by clear, transparent thought; and
these flourish in the cultivated, well-drained plains of human science
and strict demonstration.
Among the first series, you have the Pantheistic schools and
personalities of the decaying Roman Empire, Plotinus the Ecstatic, and
Jamblichus, and such other dreamers, straining up into the blue; the
somewhat similar, largely subterranean, Jewish and Christian sects
and tendencies of the Middle Ages; the Anabaptist and other like
groups, individualistic, fantastic, in considerable part anomistic and
revolutionary, of the Reformation period; and such phenomena as the
Eternal-Gospel troubles and the Quietistic controversy in the Roman
Church. And above all, in the East, we have, from time immemorial,
whole races, (in the midst of a world crying aloud for help and
re-fashioning, but which is left to stagnate and decay,) still dreaming
away their lives in Buddhistic abstraction and indifference.
Among the second, the light, clear series, you have whole races,
the luminous, plastic, immensely active Greek, the strong-willed,
practical, organizing Roman, and the Anglo-Saxon determined “to stand
no nonsense”; you have an Aristotle, sober, systematic; one side at
least of the great Mediaeval Scholastic movement, culminating in
St. Thomas, so orderly and transparent; above all, modern Physical
Science, first subjecting all phenomena to rigorous quantitative and
mathematical analysis and equation, and then reacting upon philosophy
as well, and insisting, there and everywhere, upon clearness, direct
comparableness, ready transferableness of ideas and their formulae, as
the sole tests of truth. Descartes; Kepler, Galileo; Hobbes, Spinoza
are, in increasing degrees, still perhaps the most perfect types of
this clear and cool, this ultimately mathematical and Monistic tendency
and position.
6. _The dark, intuitive personalities and schools, apparently a mere
stop-gap, transition, or reaction against the clear, discursive ones._
And further, the personalities and schools of the interiorly
experimental, emotional kind seem to appear upon the scene but as
stop-gaps or compensations for the other series, in periods of
transition or reaction, of uncertainty or decay. So at the break-up
of the Roman Empire (Neo-Platonism); so at the end of the Patristic
period and just before the official acceptance of Scholasticism (St.
Bernard); so during the foundering of the Mediaeval fabric of life and
thought in the Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
(Pico, Paracelsus); so in the German Romanticism of sixty years
ago, as a reaction against the survivals of the eighteenth-century
Rationalism; so now again in our own day, more slightly, but not less
really, in a revival of spiritual philosophy. It looks then as though
the experimental-emotional strain could only thrive fitfully, on the
momentary check or ruin of the clear and “scientific” school; as
though it were a perhaps inevitable disease breaking in occasionally
upon the normal health of the human mind. For the eventual result
of the world’s whole movement surely seems to be the reclamation of
ever-increasing stretches of knowledge and theory from the dominion of
vague, irresponsible, untestable feeling, and their incorporation in
the domain of that unbroken, universal determinism, of those clear and
simple, readily analyzable, verifiable, communicable, and applicable
laws which, more and more, are found to rule phenomena wheresoever we
may look.
7. _This seems especially to apply to the Intuitive-Emotional element
of Religion._
And if the prima facie trend of centuries of thought and conflict
appears to rule out of court even such a fringe of individual
experience and emotion as ever accompanies and stimulates all religion:
the verdict of history, indeed of any survey of contemporary life,
if only this be sufficiently large, would seem fatal to any type
of religion in which this individual experience and emotion would
form religion’s core and centre, as in the case of the specifically
experimental-emotional school generally, and of the Mystics in
particular.
To take some such survey, let us look, to begin with, outside of where
Catholic discipline and unity somewhat obscure, at first sight, even
the legitimate and indeed the really existing diversities of school
and tendency. In the Church’s organism each divergence has ever been
more largely tempered and supplemented by the others; and since the
Reformation, indeed in part even more recently, owing to an entirely
intelligible and in part inevitable, reaction, even most legitimate
and persistent divergencies, which flourished in rich and enriching
variety throughout the Middle Ages, have largely ceased to appear in
any obvious and distinct embodiments. Let us look then first to where
such diversities grow unchecked, and indeed generally tend to excess
and caricature. Let us take contemporary English Protestantism, and
then Foreign Protestantism in the large lines of its history. In both
cases the experimental-emotional strain and group will seem to compare
unfavourably with its competitors.
For if we look about us in England, we seem to have little difficulty
in classing the tendencies within the Established Church under the
headings of High, Broad, and Low; indeed we can readily extend this
treble classification to all the various schools and bodies of English
Protestantism. We can easily conceive of the greater portion of English
Nonconformity as but a prolongation and accentuation of the Evangelical
school in the Established Church: the readiness and ease with which
the former at certain moments unite and coalesce with the latter, show
quite conclusively how close is the affinity between them. We almost
as readily think of the Unitarian and Theistic bodies as prolongations
and further sublimations of the Anglican Broad Church view, though
here, no doubt, the degrees and kinds of difference are more numerous
and important. And if it would be hard to find an extension, still more
an accentuation, of the Anglican High Church party amongst the English
Nonconformists, a strain largely identical with the sacerdotal current
elsewhere has always existed in the Presbyterian churches. Nor must
we forget the powerful and constant, both repellent and attractive,
influence exercised by Rome upon even those outside of her obedience.
To be quite philosophical, the survey ought to include all types of
English Christianity; and, in that case, the High Church position would
rank rather as a dilution, as a variety, incomplete and inconsistent
though it be, of the type represented most strikingly and emphatically
by Rome, than as a variant of the types having their centres at
Wittenberg and Geneva.
And if we next turn to German Protestantism, especially to the
simultaneous variations of its short-lived, fluid, formative period,
we shall there too find this treble tendency. The Evangelical strain
will be represented here by the numerous Illuminist and Anabaptist
personalities, groups and movements to which Luther himself had
given occasion, which but emphasized or caricatured his own earlier
Mysticism; but which, when they threatened, by their revolutionary,
communistic fanaticism and violence, completely to discredit and ruin
his own movement, he suppressed with such ruthless and illogical
severity. And the Broad Church strain will here be found emphasized and
caricatured in Socinianism, and in such milder forms of Rationalism as
prepared the way for it or followed in its wake. And finally, the High
Church strain is not so hard to discover in much of the doctrine and
in some of the forms and externals of Orthodox, official Lutheranism.
Indeed in foreign Protestantism generally,--in Zwinglianism, in
Calvinism, and in its other bodies and sects, we can trace various
forms of, and degrees of approximation to, one or other of these three
types, the Historical, the Experimental, the Rational.
Now looking at the scene of battle, for the moment quite generally,
it would seem as though, of these three types and tendencies, the
Emotional and Experimental had proved itself decidedly the weakest
for good, the strongest for evil of the three, and this both in the
past and in the present, both in England and abroad. We have here in
England, in the past, the Puritan excesses in Ireland, Scotland, and
England itself; and later on and down to the present, the largely
dreary and unlovely, narrow and unjust monotony of Evangelicalism. We
have there abroad, in the past, the Peasants’ War and the Anabaptist
Saturnalia at Münster; and later on and down to the present, that
Pietism which has so often barred the way to a just appreciation of
Historical Christianity and to a candid acceptance of rational methods
and results, and this without its being able to find any constructive
or analytic working principle of its own. Both in England and in
Germany, indeed throughout the cultivated West, only the Historical,
Traditional school on the one hand, and the Rationalistic, Scientific
school on the other hand, seem to count at all: it is they which alone
seem to gain ground, or at least to hold it, at the Universities and
amongst the thinking, ruling classes generally.
8. _Yet this adverse judgment will appear largely misleading, if we
study the matter more fully._
And yet this first aspect of things will, I think, turn out to be
largely deceptive, to be but one side and one teaching of that
noble inheritance, that great output of life and experience, past
and present, which is ready to our hand for ever-renewed study and
assimilation in human history and society, and which, taken as
it really is,--as the indefinite prolongation of our own little
individual direct experiences,--can alone help us to give to these
latter experiences a full, life-regulating value. Let us take then the
foregoing objections, and let us do so as but so many starting-points
and openings into our great subject. This preliminary discussion will
but prepare the ground and method for the following detailed study,
and for the final positions of the whole book. Indeed even the book’s
opening question can be answered only by the whole book and at our
labour’s end.
I. THE FIRST OF THE THREE FORCES: HELLENISM, THE THIRST FOR RICHNESS
AND HARMONY.
We revert then to the apparent interior antinomy from which we
started,--the particular concrete experience which alone moves us and
helps to determine our will, but which, seemingly, is untransferable,
indeed unrepeatable; and the general, abstract reasoning which _is_
repeatable, indeed transferable, but which does not move us or help
directly to determine the will. And we here begin by the study of the
antinomy, as this has been explicated for us by Hellenism, the earliest
and widest of the three main mental, indeed spiritual, forces that are
operative within each of us Westerns, on and on.
1. _The antinomy in the pre-Socratics._
Heraclitus appeared to us an impressive exponent of the former truth,
of the apparent utter evanescence of these particular impressions
and experiences, of the complete shiftingness of the very faculty
within us and of the environment without us, by which and in which we
apprehend them. An ever-changing self in the midst of an ever-changing
world, basing its persuasiveness and persuadableness, indeed even its
conscious identity with itself and its communion with others, upon the
ever-changing resultants of all these changes: this would surely seem
to be a house built not upon the sand but upon the quicksands.
Now we have to remember that Parmenides had, already in early Greek
times, been equally emphatic, perhaps equally impressive, on the other
side of this very question,--on the impossibility of Becoming, of
Change; and on the certainty and knowableness of the utter Oneness
and Permanence of all Being.[1] All that really _is_, he maintained,
excludes all Becoming: the very notion of Being is incompatible with
that of Becoming: the first is utterly without the second. All real
Becoming would be equivalent to the real existence of Non-Being. Hence
all Multiplicity and Becoming is necessarily but apparent, and masks
an underlying absolute Unity and Permanence, which can be reached by
the intellect alone. And this position of Parmenides was felt to be
so strong, that all the subsequent Greek Physicists took their stand
upon it: the four unchangeable elements of Empedocles, the Atoms of
Leucippus and Democritus (atoms of eternally unchanging shape and
size, and of one absolutely uniform and unchanging quality) are but
modifications of the doctrine of Parmenides concerning the Oneness and
Unchangeableness of Being.
But even Heraclitus himself is far removed from denying all Oneness,
all Permanence. For, according to him, a permanent law of permutation
runs through and expresses itself in the shiftingness of all things
perceptible by sense; or rather one eternal physical substance, Fire,
of ceaselessly active properties, is continually manifesting itself,
in a regular succession of appearances, from fire to air, from air to
water, from water to earth, and then backwards up again to fire.
And when once the Greeks begin to break away from all this
Hylozoism,--these systems which uniformly, from Thales to Democritus,
attempt to explain all things by some one living or moving Matter,
without the intervention of Spirit or of Mind,--Spirit appears in
Anaxagoras as the One, and as present, everywhere and in varying
degrees, as the principle of the motion of that co-eternal matter
which is here, on the contrary, conceived of as but apparently
homogeneous anywhere, and as really composed of an indefinite number
and combination of qualitatively differing constituents.
Thus in all its schools, even before Socrates and Plato, Greek
philosophy clung to the One and the One’s reality, however differently
it conceived the nature of this Unity, and however much it may have
varied as to the nature and reality of the Many, or as to the relation
and the bond subsisting between that Unity and this Multiplicity. Only
at the end of this first period do the Sophists introduce, during a
short time marked by all the symptoms of transition, uncertainty,
and revolution, the doctrine, of the unknowableness, indeed of the
unreality, of the One, and with it of the exclusive reality of mere
Multiplicity, of evanescent Appearances.
2. _In Socrates._
But Socrates opens out the second and greatest period of Greek
philosophy, by reverting to, indeed by indefinitely deepening, the
general conviction that Oneness underlies Multiplicity. And he does
so through the virtual discovery of, and a ceaseless insistence upon,
two great new subject-matters of philosophy: Dialects and Ethics. It
is true that in both these respects the Sophists had prepared the
ground: they had, before him and all around him, discussed everything
from every then conceivable point of view; and they had, at the same
time, helped to withdraw man’s attention from pure speculation about
physical nature to practical occupation with himself. But the Sophistic
Dialectic had ended in itself, in universal negation and scepticism;
and the Sophistic Anthropology had, partly as cause, partly as effect
of that scepticism, more and more completely narrowed and dragged down
all human interest, capacity, and activity to a selfish, materialistic
self-aggrandizement and a frank pleasure-seeking. Socrates indeed took
over both these subjects; but he did so in a profoundly different
spirit, and worked them into a thoroughly antagonistic view of
knowledge and of life.
Socrates begins, like the Sophists, with the Multiplicity of impression
and opinion, which we find occasioned by one and the same question
or fact; and like them he refuses to take the Physicists’ short cut
of immediate and direct occupation with things and substances, say
the elements. Slowly and laboriously he works his way, by the help of
Dialectics, (for these have now become a means and not an end,) around
and through and into the various apprehensions, and, at last, out of
and beyond them, to a satisfactory concept of each thing. And the very
means taken to arrive at this concept, and the very test which is
applied to the concept, when finally arrived at, for gauging the degree
of its finality, both these things help to deepen profoundly the sense
of a certain Multiplicity in all Oneness and of a certain Oneness in
all Multiplicity. For the means he takes are a careful and (as far as
may be) exhaustive and impartial discussion and analysis of all the
competing and conflicting notions and connotations occasioned by each
matter in dispute; and the test he applies to the final concept, in
view of gauging the degree of its finality, is how far this concept
reconciles and resolves within its higher unity all such various and
contrary aspects suggested by the thing, as have stood the brunt of
the previous discussion and have thereby proved themselves true and
objective.
Socrates again, like the Sophists, turns his attention away from
Physics to Ethics; he drops speculation about external nature, and
busies himself with the interior life and development of man. But the
world in which Socrates’ method necessarily conceives and places man,
and the work and standard which he finds already latent in each man,
for that man to do and to endorse in himself and in the world, are
both entirely different from those of the Sophists, and occasion a
still further, indeed the greatest of all possible deepenings of the
apprehension of Oneness and of Multiplicity.
For the world of Socrates is a world in which Reality and Truth reign
and are attainable by man; never does he even ask whether truth _is_
or can be reached by us, but only what it is and where it lies and
how it can be attained. And since Socrates instinctively shares the
profoundly Greek conviction that Reality and Truth are necessarily
not only one but unchanging, he assumes throughout that, since Truth
and Reality do exist, Oneness and unchanging Being must exist also.
And thus the Oneness of Reality and the Multiplicity of Appearance
are re-established by him in Greek philosophy. And their apprehension
is indefinitely deepened and extended, since, whatever _is_ being
knowable, and knowable only through Dialectics, and Dialectics having
left us with concepts each in a sense a one and a many, Life itself,
Reality and all Nature must, somehow and to some extent, be also a one
and a many. And man according to Socrates is required, already as a
simple consequence of such convictions, to discover and acknowledge and
organize the One and the Many in his own interior life and faculties.
For if his senses tell him of the Many, and his reason alone tells him
of the One, and the Many are but appearances and the One alone is fully
real,--then it will be in and through his reason that he is and will be
truly man.
Thus immediately within himself does man have a continuous, uniquely
vivid experience of the One and the Many, and of the necessity,
difficulty, and fruitfulness of their proper organization; and from
hence he will reflect them back upon the outer world, adding thus
indefinitely, by means of Ethics, to the delicacy and depth of
his apprehension of such Oneness and Multiplicity as, by means of
Dialectics, he has already found there. But further, he now thus
becomes conscious, for the first time at all adequately, of the
difference between his own body and his own mind. And here he has no
more a Oneness _and_ a Multiplicity, he is directly conscious of a
Oneness _in_ Multiplicity, of a ruling and organizing power of the mind
in and over the body; and the One here is unseen and spiritual, and
the Many is here found to be an organism of forces and of functions
designed, with profound wisdom, to correspond with and to subserve
the soul. And this Microcosm is readily taken as a key and an analogy
wherewith to group and explain the appearances of the world without.
Much appears in that outer world as unreduced to system; but then
similarly within us much is still in a state of chaos, of revolt. In
that world no one ruler can be directly perceived; but then similarly
within us, the one ruling mind is perceptible only in its effects. And
this inner organization, ever required more than realized, is not a
matter of abstract speculation, of subtle induction, adjournable at
will; it is a clamorous consciousness, it is a fact that continually
requires acts to back it or to break it. Strengthen it, and you have
interior expansion and life; weaken it, and you bring on shrinkage and
death. For the passions are there, active even if _we_ refuse to be
active, active against us and above us, if not under us and for us;
and their submission to the reason, to effort, cannot fail, once our
attention is fully turned that way, more than anything else to keep
alive and to deepen our sense of the organization of all that lives, of
the presence of the One _and_ the Many, of the One _in_ the Many, in
all that truly lives at all.
3. _In Plato._
Now this dialectical method and this ethical subject-matter get
applied, investigated, and developed, with ever-increasing complexity
and interaction, by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, the three spiritual
generations of this, the greatest period of Greek Philosophy. And the
more penetrating the method becomes, and the more deeply it probes the
subject-matter, the more intense and extensive is found to be this
Unity in Multiplicity both within man and without him.
In the teaching of Socrates both the method and the apprehension of
Unity and Multiplicity are as yet, so to speak, in bud. Dialectics are
here still chiefly a Method, and hardly as yet a Metaphysic as well.
The soul here is as yet but simply one, and virtue is also simply one,
and simply and directly identical with knowledge, and hence directly
teachable: the very possibility that the will may not or indeed cannot
follow, necessarily, automatically, the clear perception of what is
really good for it, is one quite foreign to the mind of Socrates,
indeed to all Greek thinkers up to the very end of the classical
philosophy.
In Plato the methods and the results are both, as it were, in
flower. Dialectics have here become both a systematic method, and
a metaphysical system: not only are Ideas true, and the only means
for reaching truth, but they alone are true, they alone fully _are_,
and exist as separate self-subsisting realities. And as in the world
within, Goodness is, in this profoundly ethical system, seen and willed
and striven for as supreme, so also in the world without, is the Idea
of Goodness considered as existing supreme from all eternity, and as
somehow the Cause of all that truly _is_.
It is true that Plato nowhere succeeds in finding in his system
a fitting place for a Personal God: for, among other reasons,
the Platonic Ideas are all, from the lowest to the highest, but
Hypostasized Concepts of Kinds, and are hence, quite consistently,
considered to be perfect and supreme, in precise proportion as they are
general. The highest Idea will thus of necessity be the most general,
the most devoid of all determination, and hence the least personal of
them all.
It is true also that in his Metaphysics generally he insists so much
upon the complete severance and self-sufficingness of the Ideas as
over against Appearances, that he prepares his own inevitable failure
again to bridge over the gulf that he himself has thus dug too deep
and broad. Especially is his half-suggestion misleading, that the
transition to Phenomenal Multiplicity is but a further extension of
the Multiplicity already observable in the world of Ideas. For these
two Multiplicities are evidently entirely different in kind. Each Idea
is conceived as necessarily eternal, unchanging, complete and perfect
in its own way; whereas each appearance is conceived as necessarily
temporal, changing, incomplete, and imperfect even in its own way.
It is true again, that, in Psychology, Plato breaks up the Soul
into the three parts of the Reason, the Irascible Passions, and the
Concupiscible Passions, and that he discriminates between them even
as to their place of residence in the body. And correspondingly
he distinguishes, in Ethics, the four Cardinal Virtues, Prudence,
Fortitude, Temperance, and Justice: he distributes the first three
virtues among the three parts of the soul, allotting ever one of these
virtues specially to one part; and makes Justice to be the general
virtue that sees to each part carrying out its own special work and
virtue, and respecting the work of the other two. And thus we seem to
get away from the Oneness of the soul and the Oneness of virtue, as
already taught by Socrates.
It is finally true that not only does Matter remain unexplained and
treated as though in itself a mere nothing; but that it is considered,
nevertheless, as somehow strong enough to hinder and hamper the Idea
which really constitutes that Matter’s sole reality. Hence also
springs Plato’s saddening aloofness from and contempt for all trades
and handicrafts, for all the homely tastes, joys, and sorrows at all
peculiar to the toiling majority. And herein he but considerably
deepens and systematizes one of the weakest and most ruinous traditions
of his class, age, and people, and falls far short of Socrates, with
his deep childlike love of homely wisdom and of technical skill and
productiveness. Indeed Matter is considered to be the one occasion
of all sin, just as ignorance is considered to be the one true cause
of sin. For although Plato throughout holds and proclaims free-will,
in the definite sense of freedom of choice; and although he, in some
passages, declares the ignorance which (according to him) is the
necessary condition of a wrong choice, to be itself voluntary and
culpable and to spring from an avoidable attachment to the world of
sense: yet he clings, nevertheless, to the Socratic position that all
ignorance and immorality are involuntary, that no man does or can act
against what he sees to be for his own good.
All this would of itself suffice to show how and why the Platonic
system has, as such, long ceased to live or to be capable of
resuscitation. And yet even some of the apparent weaknesses just
referred to are nearly or even entirely strong points in his scheme. So
with his treble division of the Soul, if we but soften the distinction
of actual parts into a difference of function or of object. For,
already in Plato’s own judgment, these parts admit of and require a
regular hierarchy of subordination: the Irascible part is the natural
ally, if properly tamed and broken in by the Reason, of this Reason
against the Concupiscible part: it is the winged steed amongst the two
horses of the chariot of the soul, and the charioteer, the Reason,
has to see to it that this his winged steed flies not recklessly, but
lends all its strength to keep its heavy, wingless, downwards-tending
yoke-fellow from plunging them all into the deep and dark. Hence all
this really makes for a true, because rich and laborious, Unity in
Multiplicity. The same applies to the scheme of the four Cardinal
Virtues; for here also there is a balancing and interaction of forces
and of duties, which together are well fitted to deepen and fruitfully
to unify the soul.
But above all, there are four main conceptions which, with varying
degrees and kinds of clearness, consistency, and proof, run throughout
the Dialogues, and which not all the ever-increasing perception of the
complexity of their implications, nor all the never-ending costingness
of their reproduction, have long kept mankind from accepting and
working into their own inner life and into their outlook and labour
upon the world without.
There is, first, the sense of the Universal nature of philosophy.
Philosophy is here not a science alongside of other sciences, nor
a sect existing with a view to the advantage of its members, nor a
substitute for religion or science, art or action; but it stands
for the totality of all mental activity, the nearest approach to an
adequate realization of the reasonable nature of man. Hence philosophy
has constant relations with all departments of human thought and
action; or rather they all, with their several methods and ideals,
come to enrich and stimulate philosophy, whilst philosophy, in return,
reacts upon them all, by clarifying and harmonizing them each with
itself and each with all the others.
There is, next, the constant conviction of the reality of moral
accountableness on the one hand, and of the strength of the passions
and of the allurements of sense on the other, of the costing ethical
character of the search for light and truth, of the ceaseless necessity
of a turning of the whole man, of conversion. “As the bodily eye
cannot turn from darkness to light without the turning of the whole
body, so too when the eye of the soul is turned round, the whole soul
must be turned from the world of generation unto that of Being, and
become able to endure the sight of Being, and of the brightest and
best part of Being, that is to say of the Good.”[2] Hence Philosophy
is a Redemption, a Liberation, a Separation of the soul from the
body, a Dying and seeking after death, a constant Purification and
Recollection of the soul; and the four Cardinal Virtues are so many
purifications;[3] and men who have once come to lay the blame of their
own confusion and perplexity upon themselves, will hate themselves and
escape from themselves into Philosophy, in order to become different
and get rid of their former selves.[4]
There is, in the third place, the dominant consciousness of
Multiplicity in Unity and of Unity in Multiplicity, and of the
necessity of the soul’s ever moving from one to the other--moving out
of itself and into the world of Multiplicity, of sense and exterior
work; and moving back into itself, into the world of Unity, of spirit
and interior rest. Hence there is and ought to be a double movement
of the soul. And this double action does not continue on the same
plane, but the moving, oscillating soul is, according to the faithful
thoroughness or cowardly slackness of these its movements, ever either
mounting higher in truth and spirit, or falling lower away into the
sensual and untruthful. For these its ascensions are “effortful,”
painful, gradual; they are never fully finished here below, and they
nowhere attain to that absolute knowledge which is possessed by God
alone.[5] “We ought,” he tells us, “to strive and fly as swiftly as
possible from hence thither. And to fly thither is to become like God”;
but he adds, “as far as this is possible.”[6]
And there is, lastly, an unfailing faith in an unexhausted,
inexhaustible, transcendent world of Beauty, Truth, and Goodness,
which gives of itself, but never gives itself wholly, to that
phenomenal world which exists only by participation in it; and in
a Supreme Goodness, felt and half conceived to be personal and
self-communicative, as the cause of all that is anywhere beautiful and
one and good.
These four characteristics of Universality, Conversion, Unification,
Transcendence, we find them together in Greek philosophy once, and once
only, namely in Plato. Twice again we have indeed a world-embracing,
world-moving scheme placed before us, and in each case two of these
four characteristics reappear in a deepened and developed form. For
Aristotle works out, more fully and satisfactorily than Plato, the
characters of Universality and of Unification; especially does the
latter find a great improvement. And Plotinus insists, even more
constantly and movingly than Plato, upon Conversion as a necessary
means, and upon Transcendence as a necessary characteristic of all
true philosophy. But Aristotle has lost the Conversion from out of
his scheme, and also the Transcendence conceived as at the same time
immanent in the world; and Plotinus has lost the Universality, and the
Unification conceived as a Unity in Multiplicity.
4. _In Aristotle._
As to Aristotle, the improvements upon Plato are marked and many.
There is the doctrine of the non-existence of the General apart from
the Particular; the doctrine of Matter as not simple Non-Being, but
as Not-yet-Being, the Possible, the Not-yet-Actual, which is waiting
the presence of the Form to give it the Actuality for which it is
destined, since Matter requires Form, and Form requires Matter; and
the doctrine, here first fully developed, of Motion, the Moved and the
Moving.
Since all Motion, Change, Natural Life spring from Form (and a
particular Form), working in and with Matter (a particular and
appropriate Matter), the ultimate First Moving Cause must Itself be
all-moving and all-unmoved, that is, it must be Pure Form. We thus get
the first at all adequate philosophical presentation of Theism: for
this Pure Form is then shown to be eternal, unchanging, all thought,
self-thinking, and absolutely distinct from the world which it moves.
In all other real Beings the Form has, in various degrees, to contend
with the manifold impediments of Matter; and in proportion to the
Form’s success, does the resultant Being stand high in the scale of
Creation. The plant, with its vegetative and plastic soul, stands
lowest in the scale of organic life; next comes the animal, with its
sensitive and motive soul; and highest stands man, with his rational
and volitional soul. And each higher Being takes over, as the lower
part of his own nature, the functions and powers of the lower Being;
and hence, since all Beings constitute so many several parts of the
world’s systematic whole, they are all deserving of the closest study.
And Man, destined to be the highest constituent of this whole, can
become so only by moving as much as may be out of his entanglement in
the lower, the passive functions of his soul, and identifying himself
with his true self, with that active power, that pure reason which,
itself pure Form, finds its proper objects in the Forms of all things
that are.
Thus we get a system of a certain grand consistency and an impressively
constant re-application of certain fundamental ideas to every kind of
subject-matter. But the Platonic Dualism, though everywhere vigorously
attacked, is yet nowhere fully overcome.
For in Metaphysics, Plato’s “One alongside of the Many” becomes with
Aristotle the “One throughout the Many”: to the mind of the latter,
the Separate General, Pure Form as existing without Matter, is a mere
abstraction; Matter without Form is a simple potentiality; Matter and
Form together, and they only, constitute the Particular, and (in and
by it) all actual and full Reality. And only Reality, in the highest
and primary sense, can, according to him, form the highest and primary
object of Knowledge. Yet knowledge never refers to the Particular, but
always to the General; and, in the Particular, only to the General
manifested in it. And this is the case, not because, though the
Particular is the fuller Reality, we can more easily reach the General
within it; but, on the contrary, because, though we can more easily
reach the Particular, the General alone is abiding and fully true and
really knowable.
Again, for Aristotle the Particular, which alone really exists, is
constituted a particular and really existent Being, in virtue of its
participation in Matter; but it is constituted as abiding, true,
and knowable, in virtue of its Form. The cause of its Reality is
thus different from that of its Truth; the addition of the simple
Potentiality of Matter has alone given Reality to the pure Actuality of
Form.
Finally, for Aristotle all Movement, as comprehensive of every kind of
change, being defined as the transition from Potentiality to Reality,
as the determination of Matter by Form, can be called forth, in the
last resort, only by a pure Form which, though the cause of all Motion,
is itself unmoved, is pure Thought and Speculation, a thinking of
thinking,--God eternally thinking God and Himself alone. Yet this
God is, if thus safely distinguished from the world, yet hardly more
Personal than Spirit was in Anaxagoras, or the Idea of Good was in
Plato. For not only does Aristotle refuse Him a body and all psychic
life, but with them he eliminates all Doing and all Producing, all
Emotion and all Willing, indeed all Thinking except that of His own
lonely Self-Contemplation. And yet the activity of the will is as
essential to Personality as that of thinking; and thinking again we can
conceive as personal only if conditioned by a diversity of objects and
a variety of mental states. And this God’s relations with the world are
strangely few and still curiously materialistic. For He but sets the
world in motion, and has no special care for it or detailed rule over
it; and since, of the three or four kinds of motion, spacial motion is
declared to be the primary one, and its most perfect form to be the
circular, and since a circle moves quickest at its circumference, He is
conceived as imparting to the world a spacial and a circular movement,
and this, apparently, from a point in space, since He does so from
outside. His transcendence is, so far, but a spacial one.
In Physics, Aristotle still constantly describes Nature as an
harmonious, reasonable Being, an all-effecting force. There is here a
mythical strain at work, and yet nowhere is a subject clearly defined
to which these various qualities could be attributed.
In Anthropology again, the active soul, the rational and free-willing,
the immortal principle, is that which specially distinguishes and
constitutes Humanity, and which indeed is the Form of the lower
soul-powers and of the body as well. Yet it is these lower soul-powers,
it is the passive, the vegetative and sensitive, the mortal soul-powers
which, in and with the body, constitute this particular man, and only
particular men are really existent. Where and how then is this living
man’s Personality, his indelible consciousness of the unity of his
nature, to arise and to be found in all this medley?
And finally, in Ethics, Aristotle maintains and develops, it is true,
the great Socratic tradition of conceiving all virtue as active,
and demands with Plato that the whole man should, as much as may
be, put himself into all his moral acts. Indeed Aristotle makes
here the great advance of definitely denying the Socratic doctrine
that virtue consists in knowledge, and of abolishing the Platonic
distinction between ordinary and philosophic virtue. All moral
qualities are, according to him, matters of the will; and arise, in
the first instance, not through instruction, but through exercise and
education. But in place of Plato’s grandly organic, though still too
abstract scheme of the Cardinal Virtues, each of the three partial
ones pressing upwards and requiring and completing the others, and all
three bound together by the general fourth, we get a more detailed and
experimental, but only loosely co-ordinated enumeration and description
of the virtuous habits, all of them so many means between two vicious
extremes. The purificatory, recollective, self-fleeing, grandly
organic, deeply religious tone and drift of Plato’s philosophy, that
priceless conviction that we must give all if we would gain all, has
disappeared.
Everywhere then we get in Aristotle that noble Greek insistence, upon
Action and Energy, upon Reason and Clearness, upon the General and
Unification. But at all the chief turning-points we get a conflict
between the General, which is alone supposed to be fully true, and the
Particular, which is alone supposed to be fully real. And hence we are
left with an insufficient apprehension of the inexhaustibleness of
all Reality, of its indefinite apprehensibleness but ever inadequate
apprehendedness. And above all, as both cause and effect of all this,
we find here only a slight and intermittent hold upon the great
fact and force of Personality in both God and man. In a word, if in
Plato the abstracting process went in general still further than
in Aristotle: in Aristotle the supply of experimental material of
a spiritual kind which in Plato was ever enriching, supplementing
and correcting the abstract reasoning and its results in matters of
spirituality, is almost entirely in abeyance.
5. _In Plotinus and Proclus._
In the third and last period of Greek Philosophy, we can pass by the
Stoic and Epicurean, and also the Sceptical schools. For, great as
was their practical importance and influence, these schools never
aimed at embracing the totality of life; no one of them ever, as a
matter of fact, cultivated more than one side of a purely individual
self-education and peace-seeking. They reproduced and continued, on
a larger scale, those interesting three minor Socratic schools which
themselves had, even during the full times and universal systems of
Plato and Aristotle, constituted as it were the backwaters away from
the main stream of Greek speculation. The Stoic system carries on the
Cynic school; the Epicurean, the Cyrenaic; and the Sceptical, the
Megaric. Unity and Rest is monopolized by the Stoic, and Multiplicity
and Movement by the Epicurean; whilst the Sceptic attempts to stand
apart from and above both. What Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, living
in still many-sided and public-spirited times, had, in their lives and
teaching, seen and practised together; now, in a period of spiritual
poverty and self-seeking, is seen and practised by separate schools
separately, each in external conflict with the other.
Only the system of that great mystical soul, Plotinus, has, for our
present purposes, a claim on our close attention. Indeed this, the
last great attempt at synthesis of the ancient Greek mind, will have
to occupy us in such detail throughout a great part of this book, that
here we can but briefly indicate its chief characteristics as regards
the One and the Many.
It is then clear that Plotinus is an even more intensely and
exclusively religious spirit than is Plato himself. Some of his
descriptions of the soul’s flight from the world of sense and of the
soul’s substantial touch of God in ecstasy, and again his penetrating
apprehension of the timeless and spaceless characteristics of Spirit,
have never ceased, at least indirectly, to leaven, and to lend much of
their form to, the deepest recollective aspirations of religious souls
in Europe and Western Asia, for some fourteen centuries at least.
Yet this religious sense is here so exclusive, and it thirsts so
vehemently for perfect unity and for an infinite Superiority and
utter Self-sufficingness of God, that it readily allies itself
with, and reinforces by a massive enthusiasm and asceticism, the
abstractive trend which, so strong at all times in Greek philosophy,
was at this period already, for other reasons, growing more intensely
abstractive than ever. Under this double influence Plotinus reduces
the two great, deliberate, alternating movements of the soul,--its
Outgoing to the Particular and Contingent, and its Incoming to the
General and Infinite, as they are taught by Plato,--to one only, that
of Recollection and Abstraction, a movement ever up and away, from
all Multiplicity, to the One alone. And he denies to this One all
Multiplicity whatsoever,--hence all such conscious, volitional action
upon the world as is involved in Plato’s magnificent, though never
worked out, intuition that it is love, (some energizing analogous to
our thinking, loving and willing the existence, the self-realization
and the happiness of other self-conscious beings,) which moves the
Good, as it were, to go out from Itself, and to communicate Itself
to others. Here, in Plotinus’s scheme, Man begins indeed with
sense-impressions and imaginative picturings, with discursive reasoning
and intuitive reason, with feelings, volitions, and energizings
of every kind. But the more he moves up, the more of all this he
leaves utterly behind; till, in ecstasy, all will, love, thought,
consciousness, cease altogether. For man has thus been getting nearer
and nearer, and more and more like, the One; and this One is just
nothing besides sheer, pure Oneness,--it is neither Will, nor Love, nor
Thought, nor Self-consciousness, in any degree or sense of these words.
Plotinus’s scheme is thus indeed prompted by some of the deepest
Mystical aspirations. But whilst in its one deliberate movement--that
of man up to God--it starts from convictions and requirements that are
deeply ethical, libertarian, spiritual, theistic: it will be shown, in
its conception of the nature of the One and of this One’s relations
down into the world, to be curiously naturalistic and determinist, and
subtly materialistic. Thus does Greek Philosophy end in an impressively
all-devouring Abstraction, in an intense Realism destructive, step by
step, of precisely all that concrete, individual, personal Beauty,
Truth, and Goodness, of all the spiritual, hence organic, interior,
self-conscious reality, which had given occasion to this system.
We have now but so many hypostatized abstractions, each more pale
and empty than the other, each ever more simply a mere category of
the human mind, indeed, but a category appropriate to Things and
to Mathematico-Physical Laws, not to Spirit and to Ethico-Personal
Organisms. The system, in its ultimate upshot and trend, is thus
profoundly anti-Immanental, anti-Incarnational: a succession of
increasingly exalted and increasingly empty Transcendences, each of
which is, as it were, open upwards but closed downwards, takes the
place of all deliberate operations and self-expressions of the Higher
in and through the Lower, hence of all preveniences and condescensions
of God.
And in Proclus, practically the last non-Christian Greek Philosopher,
all these intensely abstractive, naturalistic features get finally and
fully systematized, whilst but intermittent traces remain of Plato’s
richly manifold, organized activities and his at times strikingly
incarnational conceptions; and only skeleton-schemes persist of those
rapt recollective experiences of Plotinus which, derived in his case
from direct experience, constitute him, among all Philosophers, as Dr.
Edward Caird most aptly calls him, the “Mystic par excellence.”
II. THE SECOND OF THE THREE FORCES: CHRISTIANITY, THE REVELATION OF
PERSONALITY AND DEPTH.
Now the whole of this clear, conceptual, abstractive Greek method, in
as far as it identified abstractions with realities, and names with
things, and reasoning with doing, suffering, and experience; and sought
for Unity outside of Multiplicity, for Rest outside of Energizing, for
the Highest outside of Personality and Character as these are developed
and manifested in the permeation and elevation of the lower; has in
so far been succeeded and superseded by two other great world-moving
experiences of the human race, experiences apparently even more
antagonistic to each other than either appears to be to the Greek view:
Christianity and Scientific Method.
1. _The unique fulness and closeness of unity in multiplicity of our
Lord’s life._
As to Christianity, it is really impossible to compare it directly
with Hellenism, without at once under-stating its originality. For
its originality consists not so much in its single doctrines, or even
in its teaching as a whole, and in the particular place each doctrine
occupies in this teaching, as in its revelation, through the person
and example of its Founder, of the altogether unsuspected depth and
inexhaustibleness of human Personality, and of this Personality’s
source and analogue in God, of the simplicity and yet difficulty and
never-endingness of the access of man to God, and of the ever-preceding
condescension of God to man. Hence if Christianity is thus throughout
the Revelation of Personality; and if Personality is ever a One in
Many, (and more deeply One and more richly Many, in proportion to the
greatness of that spiritual reality): then we need not wonder at the
difficulty we find in pointing out any one particular doctrine as
constitutive of the unique originality of Christianity.
For a Person came, and lived and loved, and did and taught, and died
and rose again, and lives on by His Power and His Spirit for ever
within us and amongst us, so unspeakably rich and yet so simple, so
sublime and yet so homely, so divinely above us precisely in being
so divinely near,--that His character and teaching require, for an
ever fuller yet never complete understanding, the varying study, and
different experiments and applications, embodiments and unrollings
of all the races and civilizations, of all the individual and
corporate, the simultaneous and successive experiences of the human
race to the end of time. If there is nothing shifting or fitful or
simply changing about Him, there is everywhere energy and expansion,
thought and emotion, effort and experience, joy and sorrow, loneliness
and conflict, interior trial and triumph, exterior defeat and
supplantation: particular affections, particular humiliations, homely
labour, a homely heroism, greatness throughout in littleness. And in
Him, for the first and last time, we find an insight so unique, a
Personality so strong and supreme, as to teach us, once for all, the
true attitude towards suffering.
Not one of the philosophers or systems before Him had effectually
escaped falling either into Pessimism, seeing the end of life as
trouble and weariness, and seeking to escape from it into some
aloofness or some Nirvana; or into Optimism, ignoring or explaining
away that suffering and trial which, as our first experience and as our
last, surround us on every side. But with Him, and alone with Him and
those who still learn and live from and by Him, there is the union of
the clearest, keenest sense of all the mysterious depth and breadth and
length and height of human sadness, suffering, and sin, _and_, in spite
of this and through this and at the end of this, a note of conquest and
of triumphant joy.
And here, as elsewhere in Christianity, this is achieved not by some
artificial, facile juxtaposition: but the soul is allowed to sob
itself out; and all this its pain gets fully faced and willed, gets
taken up into the conscious life. Suffering thus becomes the highest
form of action, a divinely potent means of satisfaction, recovery,
and enlargement for the soul,--the soul with its mysteriously great
consciousness of pettiness and sin, and its immense capacity for joy in
self-donation.
And again, His moral and spiritual idealism, whilst indefinitely higher
than that of any of the philosophers or prophets before Him, has
nothing strained or restless, nothing rootless or quietistic, nothing
querulous or disdainful, or of caste or sect about it: the humblest
manual labour, the simplest of the human relations, the universal
elemental faculties of man as man, are all entered into and developed,
are all hallowed in smallest detail, and step by step.
And finally His teaching, His life, are all positive, all constructive,
and come into conflict only with worldly indifference and bad faith.
No teacher before Him or since, but requires, if we would not be led
astray by him, that we should make some allowances, in his character
and doctrine, for certain inevitable reactions, and consequent
narrownesses and contrarinesses. Especially is this true of religious
teachers and reformers, and generally in exact proportion to the
intensity of their fervour. But in Him there is no reaction, no
negation, no fierceness, of a kind to deflect His teaching from its
immanent, self-consistent trend. His very Apostles can ask Him to call
down fire from heaven upon the unbelieving Samaritans; they can use
the sword against one of those come out to apprehend Him; and they
can attempt to keep the little ones from Him. But He rebukes them; He
orders Peter to put back the sword in its scabbard; and He bids the
little ones to come unto Him, since of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.
Indeed St. Mark’s Gospel tells us how the disciples begged Him to
forbid a man who did not follow them from casting out devils in His
name; and how He refused to do so, and laid down the great universal
rule of all-embracing generosity: “He that is not against us, is with
us.”[7]
2. _This rich unity of life occasions three special presentations of
it, the “Petrine,” “Pauline,” “Joannine.”_
Now it is this very reality and depth, and hence the rich Unity, the
growth, variety, and manifold fruitfulness of His life and teaching,
which explain, as a necessity and an advantage, that we should have
those successive pictures and conceptions of Him which already the New
Testament presents. _Because_ Socrates was so great and impressive, we
have the two successive, remarkably divergent, portraits of him: the
external, historical, by Xenophon; the internal, typical one, by Plato;
and _that_ is all. _Because_ our Lord is so unspeakably greater, and
continues, with inexhaustible freshness, to be the very life of the
lives of Christians, we have three or four classical portraits of Him
in the New Testament; and, in a certain true manner and degree, each
successive age, in a measure each single soul, forms, and has to form,
its own picture of Him.
We can roughly classify these pictures under the three successive types
of the “Petrine,” the “Pauline,” and the “Joannine,” provided we do
not forget that the precise limits of the first of these divisions are
difficult to draw, and that there are growths and diversities of aspect
to be found within the Pauline type. For the Petrine type will here be
sought in the Synoptic Gospels, and in particular in those accounts
and sayings there which appear to give us the closest reproduction
of our Lord’s very acts and words and of the impressions produced by
these upon the original witnesses. The Pauline type will embrace four
main stages or developments: that of the four or five of the earlier
Epistles--the two to the Thessalonians and those to the Galatians,
Corinthians, and Romans; that of the Epistles of the Captivity,
Colossians, Philippians, Ephesians; that of the Pastoral Epistles; and
that of the Epistle to the Hebrews. And even in the least diversified,
the Joannine type, there is the variation between the Gospel and
Epistles on the one hand, and the Apocalypse on the other.
But taking these three types as each a unity, we shall hardly be guilty
of an empty schematization, if the Petrine or Primitive-Apostolic
group represents to us mainly the simplest statement of the external
facts, and specially of the traditional, the Jewish side of our Lord’s
teaching; and if the Pauline and Joannine groups each mainly represent
to us, in various degrees and combinations, the two manners in which
the hidden significance of these facts, as intended for all men and for
all time, can be penetrated, viz. by thought and speculation, and by
feeling and operative experience.
Of course none of the three groups is without a large element common to
it and to the other two: it is the same facts that are looked at and
loved, by means of the same powers of the soul, and within the same
great common principles and convictions. Only the precise antecedents,
point of view, temper of mind; the selection, presentation, and
degree of elaboration of the facts and of their spiritual meaning;
the preponderance of this or that mental activity; the reasons and
connections sought and seen, are often widely different in each,
and produce a distinctiveness of impression which can be taken to
correspond roughly to the three main powers of the soul: to the range
of sense-perception and of memory; to that of reasoning; and to that
of intuition, feeling, and will. If each group had _only_ that element
which can be taken as being its predominant one, then any single group
would be of little value, and each group would imperatively require
ever to be taken in conjunction with the other two. But, as a matter of
fact, neither are the “Petrine” writings free from all reasoning and
mystical affinities; nor are the “Pauline,” free from the historic,
positive spirit, or, still less, from the mystical habit; nor the
“Joannine” free from the deepest teaching as to the necessity of
external facts, or from some argument and appeals to reason. Hence each
group, indeed each writing even singly, and still more all three groups
if taken together, profoundly embody and proclaim, by the rich variety
of their contents and spirit, the great principle and measure of all
life and truth: unity in and through variety, and steadfastness in and
through growth.
Specially easy is it to find in all three types the two chief among
the three modalities of all advanced religion: the careful reverence
for the external facts of nature (so far as these are known), and
for social religious tradition and institutions; and the vivid
consciousness of the necessity and reality of internal experience and
actuation, as the single spirit’s search, response, and assimilation
of the former.[8]
3. _The “Petrine” attestations: their special message._
Thus the “Petrine” group gives us, as evidence for the observation and
love of the external world: “Behold the birds of the air, how they sow
not, neither harvest nor gather into barns”; “Study the lilies of the
field how they grow, they toil not, neither do they spin: yet I say
unto you, that not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed as one of
these”; “The seed sprouts and shoots up, whilst the man knows not; the
earth beareth fruit of itself, first the stalk, then the ear, then the
full grain in the ear”; “When now the fig-tree’s shoot grows tender and
putteth forth leaves, you know that summer is nigh”; and, “When it is
evening, you say: ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ And in
the morning: ‘It will be foul weather to-day, for the heaven is red and
lowering.’”[9]
And as to reverence for tradition we get: “Think not that I have come
to destroy the law or the prophets; I have come not to destroy but to
fulfil.” And this respect extends to existing religious practices:
“Beware,” He says, “lest you do your justice before men, to be seen
by them,” but then describes the spirit in which they are to practice
their “_sedaka_,” this “justice” which they are to do, with its three
quite traditional divisions of alms-deeds, prayer, fasting, the three
Eminent Good Works of Judaism. And again: “If thou offer thy gift upon
the altar,” the doing so is in nowise criticised.[10]
Indeed there is no shrinking from the manifestation, on the part of the
crowd, of new and even rude forms of trust in the visible and external:
“A woman who had been suffering from an issue of blood during twelve
years, … coming in the crowd behind Him, touched His garment, for she
said: ‘If I but touch His garments I shall be saved.’ And straightway
the issue of blood was dried up”; and the crowds generally “put the
sick in the open places, and begged Him that they might but touch the
hem of His garment; and such as touched it were healed”; and this “hem”
consisted doubtless in the blue tassels, the Zizith, worn by every
religious Jew at the four corners of his cloak.[11]
And the twelve Apostles, whom He sends out with special instructions,
“going forth preached that men should repent, and went casting out many
devils, and anointing many sick with oil and healing them.” Indeed
there is, as the act preliminary to His public ministry, His baptism in
the Jordan; and there is, as introductory to His Passion, the supremely
solemn, visible, and audible act which crowns the Last Supper.[12]
But this same group of documents testifies also to a mystical, interior
element in Our Lord’s temper and teaching. “Blessed are the poor in
spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” “Blessed are the clean
of heart, for they shall see God,” are Beatitudes which cannot be far
from the _ipsissima verba_ of Our Lord. “In that hour Jesus answering
said: ‘I confess to Thee, Father, Lord of Heaven and earth, that Thou
hast hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed
them unto babes: yea, Father, for this hath been well-pleasing before
Thee.’ … ‘Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I
will refresh you. Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am meek
and humble of heart, and you shall find refreshment for your souls: for
My yoke is sweet and My burden is light.’” is deeply mystical passage
doubtless expresses with a vivid exactitude the unique spiritual
impression and renovation produced by Him within the souls of the first
generations of His disciples. And the three Synoptists give us five
times over the great fundamental mystical paradox: “If a man would
come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow
Me. For whosoever shall be determined to save his soul, shall lose it;
but whosoever shall lose his soul for My sake, shall find it.” And the
great law of interiority is recorded in St. Mark: “Listen unto Me, ye
all, and understand: nothing that entereth from without into a man can
defile him, but only the things that proceed from a man are the things
that defile a man.”[13]
And we get in Mark the fundamental interior virtue of childlikeness,
and the immanence of Christ in the childlike soul: “If anyone wish
to be first, let him be the last of all men and all men’s servant.”
“And taking a little child He placed it in the midst of them; and
having embraced it, He said unto them: ‘Whosoever shall not receive
the kingdom of God as a little child, shall not enter therein.’”
“Suffer little children to come unto Me, for of such is the kingdom of
heaven.”[14]
And the spirituality of the soul’s life in heaven, and the eternal
_Now_ of God, as the Living and Vivifying Present, are given in all
three Synoptists: “In the Resurrection they neither marry nor are
given in marriage, but are as the angels in heaven. But concerning the
resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken by
God, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the
God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.”[15]
4. _The “Pauline” group of writings: its special teaching._
The Pauline group furnishes by far the greater amount of the explicit
reasoning to be found in the New Testament; where, _e.g._, does the
New Testament furnish a parallel to the long and intricate argument
of chapters Third to Eleventh of the Epistle to the Romans, with
its constant “therefores” and “buts” and “nows”? Yet this same
group of writings also emphasizes strongly, though more rarely, the
external-fact side of religion, and is deeply penetrated by the
intuitive-emotional, the mystical spirit of Christianity.
The external, historical side is represented by the careful description
and chronological arrangement observable in the account of six
successive apparitions of the Risen Christ; and by the reference
back to the acts and words used in the Eucharistic act at the Last
Supper.[16]
Yet throughout the writings of St. Paul and of his school, it is
the mystical, interior, experimental element that permeates the
argumentative-speculative and the historical constituents. The chief
manifestations of this mystical spirit and conviction, which really
penetrates and knits together the whole of the Pauline teaching, can
perhaps best be taken in a logical order.
First then it is St. Paul who, himself or through writers more or
less dependent on him, gives us by far the most definite and detailed
presentation of by far the most extraordinary experiences and events
to be found in the New Testament outside of the Gospels themselves.
For the author of the Acts of the Apostles gives us the lengthy
description of the Pentecostal Visitation, and, three times over,
that most vivid account of Our Lord’s apparition to Saul on the way
to Damascus. And St. Paul himself describes for us, at the closest
first hand, the ecstatic states of the Christian communities in their
earliest charismatic stage; he treats the apparition on the way to
Damascus as truly objective and as on a complete par with the earlier
apparitions accorded to the chosen Apostles in the first days after
the Resurrection; and he gives us the solemn reference to his own
experience of rapture to the third Heaven.[17] We should, however,
note, in the next place, as the vital complement, indeed as the
necessary pre-requisite, to this conviction and to the effectiveness
of these facts,--facts conceived and recorded as external, as temporal
and local,--St. Paul’s profound belief that all external evidences,
whether of human reasoning and philosophy or of visible miracle, fail
to carry conviction without the presence of certain corresponding
moral and spiritual dispositions in those to whom they are addressed.
“The word of the Cross,” the very same preaching, “is to those that
are perishing foolishness, but to us that are being saved the power
of God.” And the external, taken alone, can so little convince, that
even the seeking after the external, without requisite dispositions,
will but get us further away from its hidden function and meaning. “The
Jews ask for signs (miracles), and the Greeks seek wisdom (philosophy);
but we preach Christ crucified, who is to the Jews a stumbling-block,
and to the Gentiles foolishness; but to those who are called, both
Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For
the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is
stronger than men.” And the cause of this difference of interpretation
is shown to lie in the various interior dispositions of the hearers:
“The animal man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for
they are foolishness to him, and he is incapable of understanding
them, because they are spiritually discerned; but the spiritual man
discerneth all things.”[18]
And yet this mystery of religion has to be externally offered, to be
preached to us, and is preached to all men; it is intended by God to
be known by all, and hence it is He who stimulates men to external
preaching and external hearing, as to one of the pre-requisites of its
acceptance: “The mystery which was hidden from the ages has now been
made manifest”; he desires the Colossians to be strengthened in “the
knowledge of the mystery of God and Christ”; and has to “speak the
mystery of the Christ,” to “make it manifest.”[19]
And since this preaching, to be effective, absolutely requires, as
we have seen, interior dispositions and interior illumination of the
hearers, and since these things are different in different men, the
degrees of initiation into this identical mystery are to be carefully
adapted to the interior state of those addressed. “We preach wisdom
amongst the perfect τέλειοι,” the technical term in the heathen Greek
Mysteries for those who had received the higher grades of initiation.
“I was not able to speak unto you as unto spiritual men, but (only) as
unto fleshly ones, as unto infants in Christ. I have fed you with milk,
not strong food, for you were not yet able.”[20]
And since all good, hence also the external preaching, comes from God,
still more must this all-important interior apprehension of it come
from Him. In a certain real sense the Spirit is thus organ as well as
object of this interior light. “God has revealed unto us the wisdom of
God through the Spirit; for the Spirit searcheth all things, even the
deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, unless
the spirit of man that is in him? even so no man knoweth the things of
God, except the Spirit of God.”[21]
But further, the mystery revealed in a unique degree and form in
Christ’s life, is really a universal spiritual-human law; the law of
suffering and sacrifice, as the one way to joy and possession, which
has existed, though veiled till now, since the foundation of the world.
“The mystery of Christ, which in former generations was not made
manifest unto the sons of men, but has now been revealed to His holy
apostles and prophets in the spirit.” And this law, which is Christ’s
life, must reappear in the life of each one of us. “We have been
buried together with Him through Baptism unto death, in order that, as
Christ rose again from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we
also may walk in the newness of life”; “We know that our old man has
been crucified together with Him. But if we have died with Christ, we
believe that we shall live with Him”; “If the Spirit who raised Jesus
from the dead dwelleth in you, He who raised Jesus from the dead will
quicken your mortal bodies through His Spirit dwelling within you.”[22]
Christ’s life can be thus the very law of all life, because “He is
the first-born of all creation, for in Him all things were created
in heaven and on earth,” “all things were created through Him”; “and
He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together”; “all
things are summed up in Christ”; “Christ is all in all.” So that in
the past, before His visible coming, the Jews in the desert “drank
from the spiritual rock which followed them, and the rock was Christ.”
And as He Himself is the perfect image of God, so all things are, in
varying degrees, created in the image of Christ: “(Christ) who is the
image of the living God”; “all things were created unto Him.” And
since man is, in his original and potential essence, in a very special
sense “the image and glory of God,” his perfecting will consist in a
painful reconquest and development of this obscured and but potential
essence, by becoming, as far as may be, another Christ, and living
through the successive stages of Christ’s earthly life. We are bidden
“all attain unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of
the fulness of Christ,” so that, in the end, we may be able to say
with the Apostle himself: “I live no more in myself, but Christ lives
in me”; a consummation which appears so possible to St. Paul’s mind,
that he eagerly, painfully longs for it: “My children, with whom I am
again in travail, until Christ be formed in you.” And indeed “we all,
with unveiled face reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are
transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the
Lord, the Spirit.”[23]
We have then in St. Paul not only a deeply mystical element, but
mysticism of the noblest, indeed the most daringly speculative,
world-embracing type.
5. _The “Joannine” group: its characteristic truths._
And finally the Joannine group furnishes us with an instance, as
strong as is conceivable within the wide pale of a healthy Christian
spirit, of the predominance of an interior and intuitive, mystical,
universalistic, spiritual and symbolic apprehension and interpretation
both of external fact and of explicit reasoning.
The Visible and Historical is indeed emphasized, with a full
consciousness of the contrasting Gnostic error, in the culminating
sentence of the solemn Prologue of the Gospel, “And the Word was made
Flesh and tabernacled amongst us, and we saw His glory,” and in the
equally emphatic opening sentence of the First Epistle: “That which
was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our
eyes, what we have beholden, and our hands have handled, … we announce
unto you.” Hence too the Historical, Temporal Last Judgment, with its
corporal resurrection, remains as certainly retained in this Gospel as
in St. Matthew: “The hour cometh in which all those that are in the
monuments shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and those that have
done good shall come forth unto the resurrection of life, but those
that have worked evil, unto the resurrection of judgment.”[24]
And Reasoning of a peculiarly continuous, rhythmically recurrent
pattern, is as present and influential everywhere, as it is difficult
to describe or even to trace. For it is here but the instrument and
reflex of certain Mystical conceptions and doctrines, of a tendency
to see, in everything particular and temporal, the Universal and
Eternal; to apprehend Unity, a changeless Here and Now, in all
multiplicity and succession, and hence to suppress explicit reasoning
and clear distinctions, movement, growth, and change, as much as may
be, both in the method of presentation and in the facts presented. If
the Synoptists give us the successive, and write, unconsciously but
specially, under the category of Time: the Fourth Gospel consciously
presents us with simultaneity, and works specially under the category
of Space.
The Successive is here conceived as but the appearance of the
Simultaneous, of the Eternal and Abiding. Hence the historical
development in the earthly experiences, teachings, and successes of
Christ is ignored: His Godhead, that which _is_, stands revealed
from the first in the appearances of His earthly life. Hence too the
various souls of other men are presented to us as far as possible under
one eternal and changeless aspect; they are types of various abiding
virtues and iniquities, rather than concrete, composite mortals.
God appears here specially as Light, as Love, and as Spirit. Yet these
largely thing-like attributions co-exist with personal qualities, and
with real, ethical relations between God and the world: “God so loved
the world, as that He gave His only begotten Son, in order that anyone
who believeth in Him may not perish, but may have everlasting life.”
The Father “draws” men, and “sends” His Son into the world.[25]
And this Son has eternally pre-existed with the Father; is the very
instrument and principle of the world’s creation; and “is the true
Light that enlightened every man that cometh into the world.” And this
Word which, from the first, was already the Light of all men, became
Flesh specially to manifest fully this its Life and Light. Indeed He is
the only Light, and Way, and Truth, and Life; the only Door; the Living
Bread; the true Vine.[26]
This Revelation and Salvation is indeed assimilated by individual souls
and is received by them at a given moment, by a birth both new and from
above, and is followed by a new knowledge. But this knowledge is not
absolute nor unprogressive. Everywhere the Evangelist has indeed the
verb γιγνώσκω, but nowhere the noun Gnosis; and the full meaning of the
Revelation of the Father by the Son is to be only gradually revealed
by the Holy Spirit. And this special new knowledge is not the cause
but the effect of an ethical act on the part of the human soul,--an
act of full trust in the persons of God and of His Christ, and in the
intimations of the moral conscience as reflections of the divine will
and nature. “If any man willeth to do His will, he shall know of the
doctrine, whether it be from God, or whether I speak from myself”; “He
who doeth the truth, cometh to the light.”[27]
And this trust, and the experimental knowledge which flows from it,
lead to an interior conviction so strong as to make us practically
independent of external evidences. Hence in the First Epistle, this
“we _know_” is repeatedly emphasized: “We _know_, that, if He shall
be manifested, we shall be like Him”; “You _know_, that He was made
manifest, that He might take away sins.” And this knowledge is
communicated by the Spirit of God to man’s soul; the spirit bearing
witness, there within, to the truth of Christ’s words, communicated
from without. “The Spirit it is that beareth witness, for the Spirit
is the Truth.”[28]
External signs (miracles), and a certain un-ethical assent given to
them and their implications, these things are, even at their best,
but preliminary, and, of themselves, insufficient. Hence Our Lord can
find “many who believed in His name, seeing His signs (miracles) which
He did”; and yet could “not trust Himself to them.” Nicodemus indeed
can come to Our Lord, moved by the argument that “thou hast come a
teacher from God, for no man can do the signs (miracles) that thou
doest, unless God be with him.” But then Our Lord’s whole conversation
with him renders clear how imperfect and ignorant Nicodemus is so
far,--he had come by night, his soul was still in darkness. So also
“many Samaritans believed in Him, because of His sign,”--His miraculous
knowledge of her past history, shown to the Woman at the Well; but more
of them believed because of His own words to them: “We ourselves have
(now) heard, and we _know_ that this man is of a truth the Saviour of
the world.” Hence He can Himself bid the Apostles, in intimation of
their full and final privilege and duty, “believe in Me” (that is, My
words and the Spirit testifying within you to their Truth), “that I
am in the Father, and the Father is in Me”; and, only secondarily and
failing that fulness, “but if not, then believe, because of the very
works.” And the whole Joannine doctrine as to the object and method of
Faith is dramatically presented and summed up in the great culminating
scene and saying of the Fourth Gospel: “Thomas” (the Apostle who
would see a visible sign first, and would then build his Faith upon
that sight) “saith to Him: ‘My Lord and my God.’ Jesus saith to him:
‘Because thou hast seen Me, Thomas, thou hast believed; blessed are
they that have not seen, and have believed.’”[29]
And this Faith and Knowledge arising thus, in its fulness, at most only
on occasion, and never because, of spacial and temporal signs, are
conceived as a timeless, Eternal Life, and as one which is already,
here and now, an actual present possession. “He who believeth in the
Son, hath eternal life”; “He who heareth and believeth My word, hath
eternal life”; “We know that we have passed from death unto life”;
“We know Him that is true, and we are in Him that is true, in His Son
Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.”[30] There is then
a profound immanence of Christ in the believing soul, and of such a
soul in Christ; and this mutual immanence bears some likeness to the
Immanence of the Father in Christ, and of Christ in the Father. “In
that day” (when “the Father shall give you the Spirit of Truth”) “ye
shall know that I am in My Father, and you are in Me, and I in you.”[31]
III. SCIENCE: THE APPREHENSION AND CONCEPTION OF BRUTE FACT AND IRON
LAW.
But now, athwart both the Hellenic and the Christian factors of our
lives, the first apparently so clear and complete and beautiful,
the latter, if largely dark and fragmentary, so deep and operative,
comes and cuts a third and last factor, that of Science, apparently
more peremptory and irresistible than either of its predecessors.[32]
For both the former factors would appear to melt into mid-air before
this last one. _They_ evidently cannot ignore _it_; _it_ apparently
can ignore _them_. If Metaphysics and Religion seem involved in a
perpetual round of interminable questions, solved, at most and at
best, for but this man and for that, and with an evidence for their
truth which can be and is gainsaid by many, but cannot be demonstrated
with a peremptory clearness to any one: Science, on the other hand,
would appear to give us just this _terra firma_ of an easy, immediate,
undeniable, continually growing, patently fruitful body of evidence and
of fact.
And not only can Metaphysics and Religion not ignore Science, in
the sense of denying or even overlooking its existence; they cannot
apparently, either of them, even begin or proceed or end without
constant reference, here frank and open, there tacit but none the
less potent, to the enterprises, the methods, the conclusions of the
Sciences one and all, and this even in view of establishing their own
contentions. And more and more of the territory formerly assigned to
Metaphysics or Religion seems in process of being conquered by Science:
in Metaphysics, by experimental psychology, and by the simple history
of the various philosophical systems, ideas, and technical terms,
and of the local and temporal, racial and cultural antecedents and
environments which gave rise to them; in Religion, by an analogous
observation and study of man in the past and present, of man studied
from within and from without.
1. _Three characteristics of this scientific spirit._
Now this scientific spirit has hitherto, since its birth at the
Renaissance, ever tended to the ever-increasing development of three
main characteristics, which are indeed but several aspects of one
single aim and end. There was and is, for one thing, the passion
for Clearness, which finds its expression in the application of
Mathematics and of the Quantitative view and standard to all and every
subject-matter, in so far as the latter is conceived as being truly
knowable at all. There was and is, for another, the great concept
of Law, of an iron Necessity running through and expressing itself
in all things, one great Determinism, before which all emotion and
volition, all concepts of Spontaneity and Liberty, of Personality
and Spirit, either Human or Divine, melt away, as so many petty
subjective wilfulnesses of selfish, childish, “provincial” man, bent
on fantastically humanizing this great, cold thing, the Universe, into
something responsive to his own profoundly unimportant and objectively
uninteresting sensations and demands. There was and is, for a third
thing, a vigorous Monism, both in the means and in the end of this
view. Our sources of information are _but one_,--the reasoning,
reckoning Intellect, backed up by readily repeatable, directly
verifiable Experiment. The resultant information is _but one_,--the
Universe within and without, a strict unbroken Mechanism.
If we look at the most characteristically modern elements of Descartes,
and, above all, of Spinoza, we cannot fail to find throughout, as
the reaction of this Scientific spirit upon Philosophy, the passion
for those three things: for Clearness and ready Transferableness of
ideas; for one universal, undeniable Common Element and Measure for
all knowledge of every degree and kind; and for Law, omnipresent and
inexorable. That is, we have here a passion for Thing as over against,
as above, Person; for the elimination of all wilfulness, even at the
cost of will itself, of all indetermination, obscurity and chance, even
at the cost of starving and drying up whole regions of our complex
nature, whole sources of information, and of violently simplifying and
impoverishing the outlook on to reality both within us and without.
2. _Fundamental motive of entire quest, deeply legitimate, indeed
religious: Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant._
And yet how unjust would he be who failed to recognize, in the case of
Spinoza especially, the noble, and at bottom deeply religious, motives
and aspirations underlying such excesses; or the new problems and
necessities, the permanent growth and gain, which this long process of
human thought has brought to Religion itself, especially in indirect
and unintentional ways!
For as to the motives, it ought not to be difficult to any one who
knows human history and human nature, to see how the all but complete
estrangement from Nature and Physical Fact which, from Socrates
onwards, with the but very partial exception of Aristotle, had, for
well-nigh two thousand years, preceded this reaction; how the treatment
of Matter and the Visible as more or less synonymous with Non-Being and
Irrationality, as a veil or even a wall, as a mere accident or even
a positive snare, lying everywhere between us and Reality, could not
fail to require and produce a swing of the pendulum in the opposite
direction. And the feeling and the perception of how superficial and
unreal, how oppressively confined, how intolerably fixed and ultimate,
how arrogant and cold and fruitless, such persistent neglect of the
Data of Sense had somehow, at last, rendered philosophy, gave now
polemical edge to men’s zealous study and discovery of _this_ world.
This study was perceived, even by the shallower thinkers, to be fair
and rational and fruitful in itself; and it was found, by some few
deep spirits, to be a strangely potent means of purifying, enlarging,
“deprovincializing” man himself. The severe discipline of a rigorous
study of man’s lowly, physical conditions and environment, things
hitherto so despised by him, was now at last to purify him of his own
childish immediacy of claim. The pettily selfish, shouting Individual
was to pass through the broad, still, purgatorial waters of a temporary
submergence under the conceptions, as vivid as though they were direct
experiences, of ruthless Law, of Mechanism, of the Thing; so as to pass
out, purified and enlarged, a Person, expressive of the Universal and
Objective, of Order and of Law.
It is especially in Spinoza that this deeper, universally human and
ethical, indeed we can say religious, implication and ideal of the
rigorously scientific spirit is present in all its noble intuition
and aspiration, and that at the same time, alas, this deep truth is
forced into a ruinously inappropriate method and formulation. For the
original end of the entire quest, an end which is still emotionally
dominant and which furnishes the hidden dialectic of the whole,--Man,
his nobility and interior purification and beatitude,--has here,
intellectually, become but a means; Man, in the real logic of this
system, is, hopelessly and finally, but a wheel in the huge mechanism
of that _natura naturata_ which Spinoza’s own richness and nobility of
character transcends with potent inconsistency. And this very system,
which is so nobly human and Christian in its ethical tone and in its
demand of a Conversion of the whole man, in its requiring man to
lose and sacrifice his petty self that he may gain his true self and
become a genuine constituent of the Universe and Thought of God, is
also the very one which, by its ruthless Naturalism and Determinism of
Doctrine and its universally Mathematical and Quantitative form and
method, logically eliminates all such qualitative differentiation and
conversion as impossible and futile.
The prima facie view of life as it presents itself to the clarifying,
Scientific Intellect, namely the omnipresence of the determinist
mechanism, has never been more impressively felt and pictured than by
Spinoza; the dispositions and happiness of the purified, disinterested
soul have rarely been experienced and described with more touching
elevation and power. But there is no real transition, indeed no
possibility of such, in his system, from that first aspect to this
latter state; for that first aspect, that apparent determinism, is for
his logic _not_ merely apparent or secondary, but the very truth of
truths, the very core and end of things.
And this bondage of mind to matter, this enslavement of the master to
the servant, this narrow, doctrinaire intellectualism and determinism,
is more hidden than cured in Leibniz, who, if he brings the immense
improvement because enrichment of a keen sense and love of the
Historical, loses, on the other hand, Spinoza’s grandly Conversional
tone and temper. A cheerful, easy, eminently sane but quite inadequate
bustle of manifold interests; a ready, pleasant optimism; an endless
laboriousness of the reasoning faculty; all this, even though carried
out on a scale unique since the days of Aristotle, is necessarily
unequal to face and bear “the burthen of all this unintelligible
world.”
And yet here, in him who may not unfitly be called the last of the
Dogmatic Rationalists and Optimists, we have already those great
perceptions which were destined more and more to burst the bonds of
this cold, clear, complete, confining outlook. For one thing, as
already stated, there is, alongside the love of the Material and
Mathematical, an almost equal love of the Historical and Human. There
is, for another thing, the deep consciousness of the Individuality
and Interiority of all real existences,--all that _is_ at all, has
an inside to it. And, finally, in further enforcement of this latter
doctrine, there is the fruitful conception of Subconscious States of
feeling and of mind in all living things.
Yet it is only in Kant that,--with all his obscurities and numberless
demonstrable inconsistencies, with all his saddening impoverishment
of the outlook in many ways,--we get, little conscious as he himself
is of such a service, the deep modern explanation of the ancient
pre-scientific neglect and suspicion of natural research. Here we are
led to see that the strictly Scientific view of Nature is necessarily
quantitative, but that the strictly Ethical, Spiritual view of man is
as necessarily qualitative; that the analysis of all natural phenomena
but leads to judgments as to what _is_, whereas the requirements of
human action lead to judgments of what _ought to be_. Here the weak
point lies in the contrast, established by him and pushed to the degree
of mutual exclusion, between Reason and Will. For the contrast which we
find in actual life is really between the deeper reason, ever closely
accompanied by deep emotion, this reason and emotion occasioning, and
strengthened by, the action of the whole man,--and all this is not
directly transferable; and the more superficial reasoning, having with
it little or no emotion,--the action of but one human faculty,--and
this action is readily transferable.
3. _Place and function of such science in the totality of man’s life._
The mistake in the past would thus lie, not in the doctrine that the
Visible cannot suffice for man and is not his mind’s true home; nor in
the implication that the Visible cannot directly and of itself reveal
to him the Spiritual world. The error would lie entirely in the double
implication or doctrine, that there is really nothing to be known about
Nature, or that what can be known of it can be attained by Metaphysical
or Mystical methods; and again that strictly quantitative, severe
scientific method and investigation can, even in the long run, be
safely neglected by the human soul, as far as its own spiritual health
is concerned.
We take it then that mankind has, after endless testings and
experiences, reached the following conclusions. We encounter
everywhere, both within us and without, both in the physical and
mental world, in the first instance, a whole network of phenomena;
and these phenomena are everywhere found to fall under certain laws,
and to be penetrable by certain methods of research, these laws and
methods varying indeed in character and definiteness according to the
subject-matter to which they apply, but in each case affording to man
simply indefinite scope for discovery without, and for self-discipline
within.
And all this preliminary work and knowledge does not directly require
religion nor does it directly lead to it; indeed we shall spoil both
the knowledge itself, and its effect upon our souls and upon religion,
if religion is here directly introduced. The phenomena of Astronomy and
Geology, of Botany and Zoology, of human Physiology and Psychology, of
Philology and History are and ought to be, in the first instance, the
same for all men, whether the said men do or do not eventually give
them a _raison d’être_ and formal rational interest by discovering the
metaphysical and religious convictions and conclusions which underlie
and alone give true unity to them and furnish a living link between the
mind observing and the things observed. Various as are these phenomena,
according to the department of human knowledge to which they severally
belong, yet they each and all have to be, in the first instance,
discovered and treated according to principles and methods immanent and
special to that department.
And the more rigorously this is accomplished, both by carrying
out these principles and methods to their fullest extent, and by
conscientiously respecting their limits of applicability and their
precise degree of truth and of range in the larger scheme of human
activity and conviction, the more will such science achieve three
deeply ethical, spiritually helpful results.
Such science will help to discipline, humble, purify the natural
eagerness and wilfulness, the cruder forms of anthropomorphism, of the
human mind and heart. This turning to the visible will thus largely
take the place of that former turning away from it; for only since the
Visible has been taken to represent laws, and, provisionally at least,
rigorously mechanical laws characteristic of itself, can it be thus
looked upon as a means of spiritual purification.
Such science again will help to stimulate those other, deeper
activities of human nature, which have made possible, and have all
along preceded and accompanied, these more superficial ones; and this,
although such science will doubtless tend to do the very opposite, if
the whole nature be allowed to become exclusively engrossed in this
one phenomenal direction. Still it remains true that perhaps never has
man turned to the living God more happily and humbly, than when coming
straight away from such rigorous, disinterested phenomenal analysis, as
long as such analysis is felt to be both other than, and preliminary
and secondary to, the deepest depths of the soul’s life and of all
ultimate Reality.
And finally, such science will correspondingly help to give depth and
mystery, drama and pathos, a rich spirituality, to the whole experience
and conception of the soul and of life, of the world and of God.
Instead of a more or less abstract picture, where all is much on the
same plane, where all is either fixed and frozen, or all is in a state
of feverish flux, we get an outlook, with foreground, middle distances,
and background, each contrasting with, each partially obscuring,
partially revealing, the other; but each doing so, with any freshness
and fulness, only in and through the strongly willing, the fully active
and gladly suffering, the praying, aspiring, and energizing spiritual
Personality, which thus both gives and gets its own true self ever more
entirely and more deeply.
4. _Science to be taken, throughout our life, in a double sense and
way._
In such a conception of the place of Science, we have permanently
to take Science, throughout life, in a double sense and way. In the
first instance, Science is self-sufficing, its own end and its own
law. In the second instance, which alone is ever final, Science is
but a part of a whole, but a function, a necessary yet preliminary
function, of the whole of man; and it is but part, a necessary yet
preliminary part, of his outlook. Crush out, or in any way mutilate or
deautonomize, this part, and all the rest will suffer. Sacrifice the
rest to this part, either by starvation or attempted suppression, or by
an impatient assimilation of this immense remainder to that smaller and
more superficial part, and the whole man suffers again, and much more
seriously.
And the danger, in both directions,--let us have the frankness to admit
the fact,--is constant and profound: even to see it continuously is
difficult; to guard against it with effect, most difficult indeed.
For to starve or to suspect, to cramp or to crush this phenomenal
apprehension and investigation, in the supposed interest of the
ulterior truths, must ever be a besetting temptation and weakness for
the religious instinct, wherever this instinct is strong and fixed, and
has not yet itself been put in the way of purification.
For Religion is ever, _qua_ religion, authoritative and absolute. What
constitutes religion is not simply to hold a view and to try and live
a life, with respect to the Unseen and the Deity, as possibly or even
certainly beautiful or true or good: but precisely that which is over
and above this,--the holding this view and this life to proceed somehow
from God Himself, so as to bind my innermost mind and conscience to
unhesitating assent. Not simply that I think it, but that, in addition,
I feel bound to think it, transforms a thought about God into a
religious act.
Now this at once brings with it a double and most difficult problem.
For Religion thus becomes, by its very genius and in exact proportion
to its reality, something so entirely _sui generis_, so claimful
and supreme, that it at once exacts a two-fold submission, the one
simultaneous, the other successive; the first as it were in space, the
second in time. The first regards the relations of religion to things
non-religious. It might be parodied by saying: “Since religion is
true and supreme, religion is all we require: all things else must be
bent or broken to her sway.” She has at the very least the right to a
primacy not of honour only, but of direct jurisdiction, over and within
all activities and things. The second regards the form and concept of
religion itself. Since religion always appears both in a particular
form at a particular time and place, _and_ as divine and hence
authoritative and eternal; and since the very strength and passion of
religion depend upon the vigorous presence and close union of these two
elements: religion will ever tend either really to oppose all change
within itself, or else to explain away its existence. Religion would
thus appear doomed to be either vague and inoperative, or obscurantist
and insincere.
And it is equally clear that the other parts of man’s nature and of his
outlook cannot simply accept such a claim, nor could religion itself
flourish at all if they could and did accept it. They cannot accept
the claim of religion to be immediately and simply all, for they are
fully aware of being themselves something also. They cannot accept her
claim to dictate to them their own domestic laws, for they are fully
aware that they each, to live truly at all, require their own laws
and their own, at least relative, autonomy. However much man may be
supremely and finally a religious animal, he is not _only_ that; but
he is a physical and sexual, a fighting and artistic, a domestic and
social, a political and philosophical animal as well.
Nor can man, even simply _qua_ religious man, consent to a simple
finality in the experience and explication, in the apprehension and
application of religion, either in looking back into the past; or
in believing and loving, suffering and acting in the present; or in
forecasting the future, either of the race or of himself alone. For the
_here and now_, the concrete “immediacy,” the unique individuality of
the religious experience for _me_, in this room, on this very day, its
freshness, is as true and necessary a quality of living religion as any
other whatsoever. And if all life sustains itself only by constant,
costing renovation and adaptation of itself to its environment, the
religious life, as the most intense and extensive of all lives, must
somehow be richest in such newness in oldness, such renovative,
adaptive, assimilative power.
5. _All this seen at work in man’s actual history._
Now it is deeply instructive to observe all this at work historically.
For here we find every variety of attitude towards this very point.
There are men of Religion who attempt to do without Science, and
men of Science who attempt to do without Religion. Or again, men of
Religion attempt to _level up_,--to assimilate the principles and
results of the various sciences directly to religion, or at least to
rule those scientific principles and results directly by religion.
Or men of Science attempt to _level down_, to make religion into a
mere philosophy or even a natural history. Yet we find also,--with
so persistent a recurrence in all manner of places and times, as
itself to suggest the inherent, essential, indestructible truth of the
view,--another, a far more costing attitude. This attitude refuses
all mutilation either of normal human nature or of its outlook, all
oppression of one part by the other; for it discovers that these
various levels of life have been actually practised in conjunction by
many an individual in the past and in the present; and that, where they
have been practised within a large organization of faith and love,
they have ever led to a fuller reality and helpfulness both of the
science and of the religion concerned. Hence the mind thus informed
cannot doubt the truth of this solution, however difficult at all times
may be its practice, and however little final at any time can be its
detailed intellectual analysis.
IV. SUMMING UP: HELLENISM OR HARMONIZATION, CHRISTIANITY OR SPIRITUAL
EXPERIENCE, AND SCIENCE OR ACCEPTANCE OF A PRELIMINARY MECHANISM, ALL
THREE NECESSARY TO MAN.
To sum up all this first chapter, we have got so far as this. We have
seen that humanity has, so far, found and worked out three forces and
conceptions of life, forces which are still variously operative in each
of us, but which find their harmonious interaction in but few men,
their full theoretical systematization in none.[33]
There is the ancient, Greek contribution, chiefly intellectual and
aesthetic, mostly cold and clear, quick and conclusive, with, upon
the whole, but a slight apprehension of personality and freedom, of
conscience and of sin, and little or no sense of the difference and
antagonism between these realities and simply Mathematical, Mechanical
laws and concepts. It is a view profoundly abstract, and, at bottom,
determinist: the will follows the intellect necessarily, in exact
proportion to the clearness of information of the former. And the
strength of this view, which was possible even to that gifted race
just because of the restrictedness of its knowledge concerning the
length and breadth of nature and of history, and still more with regard
to the depths of the human character and conscience, consists in its
freshness, completeness, and unity. And this ideal of an ultimate
harmonization of our entire life and of its theory we must never lose,
more and more difficult though its even approximate realization has of
necessity become.
There is next the middle, Christian contribution, directly moral and
religious, deep and dim and tender, slow and far-reaching, immensely
costly, infinitely strong; with its discovery and exemplification of
the mysterious depth and range and complexity of human personality
and freedom, of conscience and of sin; a view profoundly concrete
and at bottom libertarian. The goodwill here first precedes, and then
outstrips, and determines the information supplied by the intellect:
“Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God.” And the
strength of this position consists in its being primarily not a view,
but a life, a spiritual, religious life, requiring, implying, indeed
proclaiming, definite doctrines concerning God and man, and their
relations to each other, but never exhausted by these doctrines even
in their collectivity, inexhaustible though these in their turn are by
their union with the life of the spirit, their origin and end.
There is finally the modern, Scientific contribution, intensely
impersonal and determinist, directly neither metaphysical nor
religious, but more abstract even than the Greek view, in the
mathematical constituent of its method, and more concrete in a sense
than Christianity itself, in the other, the sensible-experiment
constituent of its method. The most undeniable of abstractions, those
of mathematics, (undeniable just because of their enunciation of
nothing but certain simplest relations between objects, supposing
those objects to exist,) are here applied to the most undeniable of
concretions, the direct experiences of the senses. And this mysterious
union which, on the surface, is so utterly heterogeneous, is itself
at all explicable only on mental, metaphysical assumptions and on the
admission of the reality and priority of Mind. It is a union that has
turned out as unassailable in its own province, as it is incapable
of suppressing or replacing the wider and deeper truths and lives
discovered for us respectively by Hellenism and Christianity.
Only in the case that man could but reckon mathematically and observe
with his senses, or in the case that man were indeed provided with
other faculties, but that he found Reality outside him and within him
to be properly apprehensible by the mathematico-experimental process
alone, could there be any serious question of such a final suppression
of by far the greater and deeper portion of himself. Instead of any
such deadlock the facts of these last four centuries bear out the
contention that neither can the religious life suppress or do without
the philosophical and the scientific, nor can either of these other two
lives suppress or permanently do without its fellow or without religion.
But all this and its detailed practical application will, I trust,
become much clearer as we proceed.
CHAPTER II
THE THREE ELEMENTS OF RELIGION
INTRODUCTORY.
We have found then that all life and all truth are, for all their
unity, deeply complex, for us men at all events; indeed that they
are both in exact proportion to their reality. In this, our second
chapter, I should like to show the complexity special to the deepest
kind of life, to Religion; and to attempt some description of the
working harmonization of this complexity. If Religion turned out to
be simple, in the sense of being a monotone, a mere oneness, a whole
without parts, it could not be true; and yet if Religion be left too
much a mere multiplicity, a mere congeries of parts without a whole, it
cannot be persuasive and fully operative. And the several constituents
are there, whether we harbour, recognize, and discipline them or not;
but these constituents will but hinder or supplant each other, in
proportion as they are not somehow each recognized in their proper
place and rank, and are not each allowed and required to supplement
and to stimulate the other. And though no amount of talk or theory
can, otherwise than harmfully, take the place of life, yet observation
and reflection can help us to see where and how life acts: what are
the causes, or at least the concomitants, of its inhibition and of
its stimulation and propagation, and can thus supply us with aids to
action, which action will then, in its turn, help to give experimental
fulness and precision to what otherwise remains a more or less vague
and empty scheme.
I. THE THREE ELEMENTS, AS THEY SUCCESSIVELY APPEAR IN THE CHILD, THE
YOUTH, AND THE ADULT MAN.
Now if we will but look back upon our own religious life, we shall
find that, in degrees and in part in an order of succession varying
indefinitely with each individual, three modalities, three modes of
apprehension and forms of appeal and of outlook, have been and are at
work within us and around.[34]
1. _Sense and Memory, the Child’s means of apprehending Religion._
In the doubtless overwhelming majority of cases, there came first,
as far as we can reconstruct the history of our consciousness, the
appeal to our infant senses of some external religious symbol or place,
some picture or statue, some cross or book, some movement of some
attendant’s hands and eyes. And this appeal would generally have been
externally interpreted to us by some particular men or women, a Mother,
Nurse, Father, Teacher, Cleric, who themselves would generally have
belonged to some more or less well-defined traditional, institutional
religion. And their appeal would be through my senses to my imaginative
faculty first, and then to my memory of that first appeal, and would
represent the principle of authority in its simplest form.
All here as yet works quasi-automatically. The little child gets
these impressions long before itself can choose between, or even is
distinctly conscious of them; it believes whatever it sees and is told,
equally, as so much fact, as something to build on. If you will, it
believes these things to be true, but not in the sense of contrasting
them with error; the very possibility of the latter has not yet come
into sight. And at this stage the External, Authoritative, Historical,
Traditional, Institutional side and function of Religion are everywhere
evident. Cases like that of John Stuart Mill, of being left outside of
all religious tradition, we may safely say, will ever remain exceptions
to help prove the rule. The five senses then, perhaps that of touch
first, and certainly that of sight most; the picturing and associative
powers of the imagination; and the retentiveness of the memory, are
the side of human nature specially called forth. And the external,
sensible, readily picturable facts and the picturing functions of
religion correspond to and feed this side, as readily as does the
mother’s milk correspond to and feed that same mother’s infant.
Religion is here, above all, a Fact and Thing.
2. _Question and Argument, the Youth’s mode of approaching Religion._
But soon there wakes up another activity and requirement of human
nature, and another side of religion comes forth to meet it. Direct
experience, for one thing, brings home to the child that these
sense-informations are not always trustworthy, or identical in its own
case and in that of others. And, again, the very impressiveness of this
external religion stimulates indeed the sense of awe and of wonder, but
it awakens curiosity as well. The time of trustful questioning, but
still of questioning, first others, then oneself, has come. The old
impressions get now more and more consciously sought out, and selected
from among other conflicting ones; the facts seem to clamour for
reasons to back them, against the other hostile facts and appearances,
or at least against those men in books, if not in life, who dare to
question or reject them. Affirmation is beginning to be consciously
exclusive of its contrary: I begin to feel that _I_ hold _this_, and
that _you_ hold _that_; and that I cannot do both; and that I do the
former, and exclude and refuse the latter.
Here it is the reasoning, argumentative, abstractive side of human
nature that begins to come into play. Facts have now in my mind to
be related, to be bound to other facts, and men to men; the facts
themselves begin to stand for ideas or to have the latter in them
or behind them. The measuring-rod seems to be over all things. And
religion answers this demand by clear and systematic arguments and
concatenations: this and this is now connected with that and that; this
is true or this need not be false, because of that and that. Religion
here becomes Thought, System, a Philosophy.
3. _Intuition, Feeling, and Volitional requirements and evidences, the
Mature Man’s special approaches to Faith._
But yet a final activity of human nature has to come to its fullest,
and to meet its response in a third side of Religion. For if in
Physiology and Psychology all action whatsoever is found to begin with
a sense-impression, to move through the central process of reflection,
and to end in the final discharge of will and of action, the same final
stage can be found in the religious life. Certain interior experiences,
certain deep-seated spiritual pleasures and pains, weaknesses and
powers, helps and hindrances, are increasingly known and felt in and
through interior and exterior action, and interior suffering, effort,
and growth. For man is necessarily a creature of action, even more
than of sensation and of reflection; and in this action of part of
himself against other parts, of himself with or against other men,
with or against this or that external fact or condition, he grows and
gradually comes to his real self, and gains certain experiences as to
the existence and nature and growth of this his own deeper personality.
Man’s emotional and volitional, his ethical and spiritual powers, are
now in ever fuller motion, and they are met and fed by the third side
of religion, the Experimental and Mystical. Here religion is rather
felt than seen or reasoned about, is loved and lived rather than
analyzed, is action and power, rather than either external fact or
intellectual verification.
II. EACH ELEMENT EVER ACCOMPANIED BY SOME AMOUNT OF THE OTHER TWO.
DIFFICULTY OF THE TRANSITIONS FROM ONE STAGE TO THE OTHER.
Now these three sides of the human character, and corresponding three
elements of Religion, are never, any one of them, without a trace
or rudiment of the other two; and this joint presence of three such
disparate elements ever involves tension, of a fruitful or dangerous
kind.[35]
1. _Utility of this joint presence._
In the living human being indeed there never exists a mere apprehension
of something external and sensible, without any interior elaboration,
any interpretation by the head and heart. We can hardly allow, we
can certainly in nowise picture to ourselves, even an infant of a
few hours old, as working, and being worked upon, by nothing beyond
these sense-perceptions alone. Already some mental, abstractive,
emotional-volitional reaction and interpretation is presumably at
work; and not many weeks or months pass before this is quite obviously
the case. And although, on the other hand, the impressions of the
senses, of the imagination and the memory are, normally, more numerous,
fresh, and lasting in early than in later years, yet up to the end
they continue to take in some new impressions, and keep up their most
necessary functions of supplying materials, stimulants, and tests to
the other powers of the soul.
Thus, too, Religion is at all times more or less both traditional
and individual; both external and internal; both institutional,
rational, and volitional. It always answers more or less to the needs
of authority and society; of reason and proof; of interior sustenance
and purification. I believe because I am told, because it is true,
because it answers to my deepest interior experiences and needs. And,
everything else being equal, my faith will be at its richest and
deepest and strongest, in so far as all these three motives are most
fully and characteristically operative within me, at one and the same
time, and towards one and the same ultimate result and end.
2. _The two crises of the soul, when it adds Speculation to
Institutionalism, and Mysticism to both._
Now all this is no fancy scheme, no petty or pretty artificial
arrangement: the danger and yet necessity of the presence of these
three forces, the conflicts and crises within and between them all,
in each human soul, and between various men and races that typify or
espouse one or the other force to the more or less complete exclusion
of the other, help to form the deepest history, the truest tragedy or
triumph of the secret life of every one of us.
The transition from the child’s religion, so simply naïve and
unselfconscious, so tied to time and place and particular persons and
things, so predominantly traditional and historical, institutional and
external, to the right and normal type of a young man’s religion, is
as necessary as it is perilous. The transition is necessary. For all
the rest of him is growing,--body and soul are growing in clamorous
complexity in every direction: how then can the deepest part of his
nature, his religion, not require to grow and develop also? And how can
it permeate and purify all the rest, how can it remain and increasingly
become “the secret source of all his seeing,” of his productiveness and
courage and unification, unless it continually equals and exceeds all
other interests within the living man, by its own persistent vitality,
its rich and infinite variety, its subtle, ever-fresh attraction and
inexhaustible resourcefulness and power? But the crisis is perilous.
For he will be greatly tempted either to cling exclusively to his
existing, all but simply institutional, external position, and to fight
or elude all approaches to its reasoned, intellectual apprehension
and systematization; and in this case his religion will tend to
contract and shrivel up, and to become a something simply alongside
of other things in his life. Or he will feel strongly pressed to let
the individually intellectual simply supplant the institutional, in
which case his religion will grow hard and shallow, and will tend to
disappear altogether. In the former case he will, at best, assimilate
his religion to external law and order, to Economics and Politics;
in the latter case he will, at best, assimilate it to Science and
Philosophy. In the first case, he will tend to superstition; in the
second, to rationalism and indifference.
But even if he passes well through this first crisis, and has thus
achieved the collaboration of these two religious forces, the external
and the intellectual, his religion will still be incomplete and
semi-operative, because still not reaching to what is deepest and
nearest to his will. A final transition, the addition of the third
force, that of the emotional-experimental life, must yet be safely
achieved. And this again is perilous: for the two other forces will,
even if single, still more if combined, tend to resist this third
force’s full share of influence to the uttermost. To the external
force this emotional power will tend to appear as akin to revolution;
to the intellectual side it will readily seem mere subjectivity and
sentimentality ever verging on delusion. And the emotional-experimental
force will, in its turn, be tempted to sweep aside both the external,
as so much oppressive ballast; and the intellectual, as so much
hair-splitting or rationalism. And if it succeeds, a shifting
subjectivity, and all but incurable tyranny of mood and fancy, will
result,--fanaticism is in full sight.
III. PARALLELS TO THIS TRIAD OF RELIGIOUS ELEMENTS.
If we would find, applied to other matters, the actual operation and
co-operation, at the earliest stage of man’s life, of the identical
powers under discussion, we can find them, by a careful analysis of our
means and processes of knowledge, or of the stages of all reflex action.
1. _The three constituents of Knowledge._
Even the most elementary acquisition, indeed the very possibility,
of any and all certitude and knowledge, is dependent for us upon the
due collaboration of the three elements or forces of our nature, the
sensational, the rational, the ethico-mystical.[36]
There is, first, in the order of our consciousness and in the degree of
its undeniableness, the element of our actual impressions, the flux of
our consciousness as it apprehends particular sights and sounds, smells
and tastes and touches; particular sensations of rest and movement,
pleasure and pain, memory, judgment, and volition, a flux, “changeless
in its ceaseless change.” We have so far found neither a true object
for thought, nor a subject which can think. And yet this element,
and this alone, is the simply, passively received, the absolutely
undeniable part of our experience,--we cannot deny it if we would. And
again, it is the absolutely necessary pre-requisite for our exercise or
acquisition, indeed for our very consciousness, of the other two means
or elements, without which there can be no real knowledge.
For there is, next in the logical order of the analysis of our
consciousness and in the degree of its undeniableness, the element
of the various forms of necessary thought, in as much as these are
experienced by us as necessary. We can, with Aristotle, simply call
them the ten categories; or we can, with greater precision and
extension, group them, so far with Kant, under the two main heads
of the two pure “aesthetic” Perceptions of time and space, on the
one hand; and of the various “analytic” Forms of judgment and of the
Categories of Unity, Reality, Substance, Possibility, etc., on the
other hand. Now it can be shown that it is only by means of this whole
second element, only through the co-operation of these “perceptions”
and forms of thought, that any kind even of dim feeling of ordered
succession or of system, of unity or meaning, is found by our mind in
that first element. Only these two elements, found and taken together,
present us, in their interaction, with even the impression and
possibility of something to reason _about_, and something _wherewith_
to reason.
The second element then differs from the first in this, that whereas
the first presents its contents simply as actual and undeniable, yet
without so far any necessity or significance: the second presents its
contents as both actual and necessary. By means of the first element
I see a red rose, but without any feeling of more than the fact that a
rose, or at least this one, _is_ red; it might quite as well be yellow
or blue. By means of the second element, I think of a body of any kind,
not only as actually occupying some particular space and time, but as
_necessarily_ doing so; I feel that I _must_ so think of it.
And yet there is a third and last element necessary to give real
value to the two previous ones. For only on the condition that I
am willing to trust these intimations of necessity, to believe
that these necessities of my subjective thought are objective as
well, and correspond to the necessities of Being, can I reach the
trans-subjective, can I have any real knowledge and experience of
anything whatsoever, either within me or without. The most elementary
experience, the humblest something to be granted as really existing
and as to be reasoned from, is thus invariably and inevitably composed
for me of three elements, of which only the first two are directly
experienced by me at all. And the third element, the ethico-mystical,
has to be there, I have to trust and endorse the intimations of
necessity furnished by the second element, if anything is to come of
the whole movement.
Thus, here also, at the very source of all our certainty, of the worth
attributable to the least or greatest of our thoughts and feelings
and acts, we already find the three elements: indubitable sensation,
clear thought, warm faith in and through action. And thus life here
already consists of multiplicity in unity; and what in it is absolutely
indubitable, is of value only because it constitutes the indispensable
starting-point and stimulation for the apprehension and affirmation
of realities not directly experienced, not absolutely undeniable, but
which alone bear with them all the meaning, all the richness, all the
reality and worth of life.
2. _The three links in the chain of Reflex Action._
We can also find this same triad, perhaps more simply, if we look
to Psychology, and that most assured and most far-reaching of all
its results, the fact and analysis of Reflex Action. For we find
here that all the activities of specifically human life begin with a
sense-impression, as the first, the one simply _given_ element; that
they move into and through a central process of mental abstraction and
reflection, as the second element, contributed by the mind itself; and
that they end, as the third element, in the discharge of will and of
action, in an act of free affirmation, expansion, and love.
In this endless chain composed of these groups of three links each,
the first link and the last link are obscure and mysterious: the
first, as coming from without us, and as still below our own thought;
the third, as going out from us, and seen by us only in its external
results, never in its actual operation, nor in its effect upon our
own central selves. Only the middle link is clear to us. And yet the
most mysterious part of the whole process, the effect of it all upon
the central self, is also the most certain and the most important
result of the whole movement, a movement which ever culminates in a
modification of the personality and which prepares this personality for
the next round of sense-perception, intellectual abstraction, ethical
affirmation and volitional self-determination,--acts in which light and
love, fixed and free, hard and cold and warm, are so mysteriously, so
universally, and yet so variously linked.
IV. DISTRIBUTION OF THE THREE ELEMENTS AMONGST MANKIND AND THROUGHOUT
HUMAN HISTORY.
Let us now watch and see where and how the three elements of Religion
appear among the periods of man’s life, the human professions, and
the races of mankind; then how they succeed each other in history
generally; and finally how they exist among the chief types and phases
of the Oriental, Classical Graeco-Roman, and Judaeo-Christian religions.
1. _The Elements: their distribution among man’s various ages, sexes,
professions, and races._
We have already noticed how children incline to the memory-side, to
the external, social type; and it is well they should do so, and
they should be wisely helped therein. Those passing through the
storm-and-stress period insist more upon the reason, the internal,
intellectual type; and mature souls lay stress upon the feelings
and the will, the internal, ethical type. So again, women generally
tend either to an excess of the external, to superstition; or of the
emotional, to fanaticism. Men, on the contrary, appear generally
to incline to an excess of the intellectual, to rationalism and
indifference.
Professions, too, both by the temperaments which they presuppose, and
the habits of mind which they foster, have various affinities. The
fighting, administrative, legal and political sciences and services,
readily incline to the external and institutional; the medical,
mathematical, natural science studies, to the internal-intellectual;
the poetical, artistic, humanitarian activities, to the
internal-emotional.
And whole races have tended and will tend, upon the whole, to one or
other of these three excesses: _e.g._ the Latin races, to Externalism
and Superstition; the Teutonic races, to the two Interiorisms,
Rationalism and Fanaticism.
2. _Co-existence and succession of the Three Elements in history
generally._
The human race at large has evidently been passing, upon the whole,
from the exterior to the interior, but with a constant tendency to
drop one function for another, instead of supplementing, stimulating,
purifying each by means of the other two.
If we go back as far as any analyzable records will carry us, we
find that, in proportion as religion emerges from pure fetichism,
it has ever combined with the apprehension of a Power conceived, at
last and at best, as of a Father in heaven, that of a Bond with its
brethren upon earth. Never has the sacrifice, the so-to-speak vertical
relation between the individual man and God, between the worshipper
and the object of his worship, been without the sacrificial meal, the
communion, the so-to-speak lateral, horizontal relations between man
and his fellow-man, between the worshippers one and all. Never has
religion been purely and entirely individual; always has it been,
as truly and necessarily, social and institutional, traditional and
historical. And this traditional element, not all the religious genius
in the world can ever escape or replace: it was there, surrounding
and moulding the very pre-natal existence of each one of us; it will
be there, long after we have left the scene. We live and die its wise
servants and stewards, or its blind slaves, or in futile, impoverishing
revolt against it: we never, for good or for evil, really get beyond
its reach.
And yet all this stream and environment of the traditional and social
could make no impression upon me whatsoever unless it were met by
certain secret sympathies, by certain imperious wants and energies
within myself. If the contribution of tradition is _quantitatively_
by far the most important, and might be compared to the contribution
furnished by the Vocabulary to the constitution of a definite,
particular language,--the contribution of the individual is,
_qualitatively_ and for that individual, more important still,
and might be compared to the contribution of the Grammar to the
constitution of that same language: for it is the Grammar which,
though incomparably less in amount than the Vocabulary, yet definitely
constitutes any and every language.
And there is here no necessary conflict with the claim of Tradition.
It is true that all real, actual Religion is ever an act of submission
to some fact or truth conceived as not only true but as obligatory, as
coming from God, and hence as beyond and above our purely subjective
fancies, opinings, and wishes. But it is also true that, if I could
not mentally hear or see, I should be incapable of hearing or
seeing anything of this kind or of any other; and that without some
already existing interior affinity with and mysterious capacity for
discriminating between such intimations--as either corresponding to
or as traversing my existing imperious needs and instincts--I could
not apprehend the former as coming from God. Without, then, such
non-fanciful, non-wilful, subjective capacities and dispositions,
there is for us not even the apprehension of the existence of such
objective realities: such capacities and dispositions are as necessary
pre-requisites to every act of faith, as sight is the absolute
pre-requisite for my discrimination between black and white. Hence as
far back as we can go, the traditional and social, the institutional
side of religion was accompanied, in varying, and at first small or
less perceptible degrees and forms, by intellectual and experimental
interpretation and response.
3. _The Three Elements in the great Religions._
Even the Greek religion, so largely naturalistic up to the very end,
appears, in the centuries of its relative interiorization, as a
triad composed of a most ancient traditional cultus, a philosophy of
religion, and an experimental-ethical life; the latter element being
readily exemplified by the Demon of Socrates, and by the Eleusinian and
Orphic Mysteries.
In India and Tibet, again, Brahmanism and Buddhism may be said to have
divided these three elements between them, the former representing as
great an excess of the external as Buddhism does of abstruse reasoning
and pessimistic emotion. Mahometanism, while combining, in very
imperfect proportions, all three elements within itself, lays special
stress upon the first, the external element; and though harbouring, for
centuries now and more or less everywhere, the third, the mystical
element, looks, in its strictly orthodox representatives, with
suspicion upon this mysticism.
Judaism was slow in developing the second, the intellectual element;
and the third, the mystical, is all but wholly absent till the Exilic
period, and does not become a marked feature till still later on, and
in writers under Hellenistic influence. It is in the Book of Wisdom,
still more in Philo, that we find all three sides almost equally
developed. And from the Hasmonean period onwards till the destruction
of Jerusalem by Titus, we find a severe and ardent external,
traditional, authoritative school in the Pharisees; an accommodating
and rationalizing school in the Sadducees; and, apart from both, more a
sect than a school, the experimental, ascetical, and mystical body of
the Essenes.
But it is in Christianity, and throughout its various vicissitudes and
schools, that we can most fully observe the presence, characteristics,
and interaction of these three modalities. We have already seen how
the New Testament writings can be grouped, with little or no violence,
according to the predominance of one of these three moods, under the
heads of the traditional, historic, external, the “Petrine” school; the
reasoning, speculative-internal, the Pauline; and the experimental,
mystical-internal, the Joannine school. And in the East, up to Clement
of Alexandria, in the West up to St. Augustine, we find the prevalence
of the first type. And next, in the East, in Clement and Origen, in
St. Gregory of Nyssa, in the Alexandrian and the Antiochene school
generally, and in the West, in St. Augustine, we find predominantly a
combination of the second and third types. The Areopagitic writings of
the end of the fifth century still further emphasize and systematize
this Neo-Platonic form of mystical speculation, and become indeed
the great treasure-house from which above all the Mystics, but also
largely the Scholastics, throughout the Middle Ages, drew much of their
literary material.
And those six or seven centuries of the Middle Ages are full of the
contrasts and conflicts between varying forms of Institutionalism,
Intellectualism, and Mysticism. Especially clearly marked is the
parallelism, interaction, and apparent indestructibleness of the
Scholastic and Mystical currents. Abelard and St. Bernard, St. Thomas
of Aquin and the great Franciscan Doctors, above all the often
largely latent, yet really ceaseless conflict between Realism and
Nominalism, all can be rightly taken as caused by various combinations
and degrees, insufficiencies or abnormalities in the action of the
three great powers of the human soul, and of the three corresponding
root-forms and functions of religion. And whereas, during the
prevalence of Realism, affective, mystical religion is the concomitant
and double of intellectual religion; during the later prevalence of
Nominalism, Mysticism becomes the ever-increasing supplement, and at
last, ever more largely, the substitute, for the methods of reasoning.
“Do penance and believe in the Gospel” becomes now the favourite text,
even in the mouth of Gerson (who died in 1429), the great Nominalist
Doctor, the Chancellor of the then greatest intellectual centre
upon earth, the University of Paris. A constant depreciation of all
dialectics, indeed largely of human knowledge generally, appears even
more markedly in the pages of the gentle and otherwise moderate Thomas
of Kempen (who died in 1471).
Although the Humanist Renaissance was not long in carrying away many
minds and hearts from all deeper consciousness and effort of a moral
and religious sort, yet in so far as men retained and but further
deepened and enriched their religious outlook and life, the three
old forms and modalities reappear, during the earlier stages of the
movement, in fresh forms and combinations. Perhaps the most truly
comprehensive and Christian representative of the new at its best, is
Cardinal Nicolas of Coes, the precursor of modern philosophy. For he
combines the fullest adhesion to, and life-long labour for, External
Institutional authority, with the keenest Intellectual, Speculative
life, and with the constant temper and practice of experimental and
Mystical piety. And a similar combination we find in Blessed Sir Thomas
More in England, who lays down his life in defence of Institutional
Religion and of the authority of the visible Church and its earthly
head; who is a devoted lover of the New Learning, both Critical and
Philosophical; and who continuously cultivates the Interior Life. A
little later on, we find the same combination in Cardinal Ximenes in
Spain.
But it is under the stress and strain of the Reformation and
Counter-Reformation movements that the depth and vitality of the three
currents gets specially revealed. For in Germany, and in Continental
Protestantism generally, we see (immediately after the very short
first “fluid” stage of Luther’s and Zwingli’s attitude consequent upon
their breach with Rome) the three currents in a largely separate
condition, and hence with startling distinctness. Luther, Calvin,
Zwingli, different as are their temperaments and both their earlier
and their later Protestant attitudes and doctrines, all three soon
fall back upon some form and fragmentary continuation, or even in
its way intensification, of Institutional Religion,--driven to such
conservatism by the iron necessity of real life and the irrepressible
requirements of human nature. They thus formed that heavy untransparent
thing, orthodox Continental Protestantism. Laelius and Faustus Socinus
attempt the construction of a purely Rationalistic Religion, and
capture and intensify the current of a clear, cold Deism, in which the
critical mind is to be supreme. And the Anabaptist and other scattered
sects and individuals (the latter represented at their best by
Sebastian Frank) attempt, in their turn, to hold and develop a purely
interior, experimental, emotional-intuitive, ecstatic Religion, which
is warm, indeed feverish and impulsive, and distrusts both the visible
and institutional, and the rational and critical.
In England the same phenomenon recurs in a modified form. For in
Anglicanism, the most characteristic of its parties, the High Church
school, represents predominantly the Historical, Institutional
principle. The Latitudinarian school fights for the Rational, Critical,
and Speculative element. The Evangelical school stands in close
spiritual affinity to all but the Unitarian Nonconformists in England,
and represents the Experimental, Mystical element. We readily think
of Laud and Andrewes, Pusey and Keble as representatives of the first
class; of Arnold, Stanley, and Jowett as figures of the second class;
of Thomas Scott, John Newton, and Charles Simeon as types of the third
class. _The Tracts for the Times_, _Essays and Reviews_, and (further
back) Bunyan’s Works, would roughly correspond to them in literature.
And this trinity of tendency can also be traced in Catholicism. Whole
Religious Orders and Congregations can be seen or felt to tend,
upon the whole, to one or the other type. The Jesuits can be taken
as predominantly making for the first type, for fact, authority,
submission, obedience; the Dominicans for the second type, for thought,
a philosophico-speculative, intellectual religion; the Benedictines,
in their noble Congregation of St. Maur, for a historico-critical
intellectual type; the French Oratory, for a combination of both the
speculative (Malebranche) and the critical (Simon, Thomassin); and
the Franciscans, for the third, for action and experimental, affective
spirituality.
And yet none of these Orders but has had its individuals, and even
whole secondary periods, schools, and traditions, markedly typical of
some current other than that specially characteristic of the Order
as a whole. There are the great Critics and Historians of the Jesuit
Order: the Spanish Maldonatus, the New Testament Scholar, admirable for
his time, and helpful and unexhausted still; the French Denys Petau,
the great historian of Christian Doctrine and of its development;
the Flemish Bollandists, with their unbroken tradition of thorough
critical method and incorruptible accuracy and impartiality. There are
the great Jesuit Mystics: the Spanish Venerable Balthazar Alvarez,
declared by St. Teresa to be the holiest mystical soul she had ever
known; and the Frenchmen, Louis Lallemant and Jean Joseph Surin. There
are those most attractive figures, combining the Scholar and the
Mystic: Blessed Edmund Campion, the Oxford Scholar and Elizabethan
Martyr; and Jean Nicolas Grou, the French translator of Plato, who
died in exile in England in 1800. The Dominicans have, from the
first, been really representative of external authority as well of
the speculative rational bent; and the mystical side has never been
wanting to them, so amongst the early German Dominicans, Tauler and
Suso, and many a Dominican female Saint. The Benedictines from the
first produced great rulers; such striking types of external authority
as the Pope-Saints, Gregory the Great and Gregory VII (Hildebrand), and
the great Benedictine Abbots and Bishops throughout the Middle Ages
are rightly felt to represent one whole side of this great Order. And
again such great mystical figures as St. Hildegard of Bingen and the
two Saints Gertrude are fully at home in that hospitable Family. And
the Franciscans have, in the Conventuals, developed representatives of
the external authority type; and in such great philosopher-theologians
as Duns Scotus and Occam, a combination which has more of the
intellectual, both speculative and critical, than of the simply
ascetical or even mystical type.
And if we look for individual contrasts, we can often find them in
close temporal and local juxtaposition, as in France, in the time of
Louis XIV, in the persons of Bossuet, Richard Simon, and Fénelon, so
strikingly typical of the special strengths and limitations of the
institutional, rational, experimental types respectively. And yet the
most largely varied influence will necessarily proceed from characters
which combine not only two of the types, as in our times Frederick
Faber combined the external and experimental; but which hold them all
three, as with John Henry Newman in England or Antonio Rosmini in Italy.
V. CAUSES OPERATIVE IN ALL RELIGION TOWARDS MINIMIZING OR SUPPRESSING
ONE OR OTHER ELEMENT, OR TOWARDS DENYING THE NEED OF ANY MULTIPLICITY.
Let us end this chapter with some consideration of the causes and
reasons that are ever tending to produce and to excuse the quiet
elimination or forcible suppression of one or other of the elements
that constitute the full organism of religion, and even to minimize or
to deny altogether the necessity of any such multiplicity.
1. _The religious temper longs for simplification._
To take the last point first. How obvious and irresistible seems
always, to the specifically religious temper, the appeal to boundless
simplification. “Can there be anything more sublimely, utterly simple
than religion?” we all say and feel. In these regions, if anywhere, we
long and thirst to see and feel all things in one, to become ourselves
one, to find the One Thing necessary, the One God, and to be one
with Him for ever. Where is there room here, we feel even angrily,
for all these distinctions, all this balancing of divers faculties
and parts? Is not all this but so much Aestheticism, some kind of
subtle Naturalism, a presumptuous attempting to build up bit by bit
in practice, and to analyze part from part in theory, what can only
come straight from God Himself, and, coming from Him the One, cannot
but bear the impress of His own indistinguishable Unity? And can there
be anything more unforcedly, unanalyzably simple than all actual
religion,--and this in exact proportion to its greatness? Look at St.
Francis of Assisi, or St. John Baptist; look above all at the Christ,
supremely, uniquely great, just because of His sublime simplicity!
Look at, feel, the presence and character of those countless souls
that bear, unknown even to themselves, some portion of this His
impress within themselves, forming thus a kind of indefinitely rich
extension of His reign, of the kingdom of His childlikeness. Away then
with everything that at all threatens to break up a corresponding
simplicity in ourselves! Poverty of spirit, emptiness of heart, a
constant turning away from all distraction, from all multiplicity both
of thought and of feeling, of action and of being; this, surely, is
the one and only necessity for the soul, at least in proportion to the
height of her spiritual call.
2. _Yet every truly living Unity is constituted in Multiplicity._
Now in all this there is a most subtle mixture of truth and of error.
It is profoundly true that all that _is_ at all, still more all
personality, and hence above all God, the Spirit of spirits is, just
in that proportion, profoundly mysteriously One, with a Unity which
all our best thinking can only distantly and analogously represent.
And all religion will ever, in proportion as it is vigorous and pure,
thirst after an ever-increasing Unification, will long to be one and
to give itself to the One,--to follow naked the naked Jesus. Yet all
the history of human thought and all the actual experience of each
one of us prove that this Unity can be apprehended and developed, by
and within our poor human selves, only in proportion as we carefully
persist in stopping at the point where it can most thoroughly organize
and harmonize the largest possible multiplicity of various facts and
forces.
No doubt the living soul is not a whole made up of separate parts;
still less is God made up of parts. Yet we cannot apprehend this Unity
of God except in multiplicity of some sort; nor can we ourselves become
rightly one, except through being in a true sense many, and very many,
as well. Indeed the Christian Faith insists that there is something
most real actually corresponding to this our conception of multiplicity
even and especially in God Himself. For it as emphatically bids us
think of Him as in one sense a Trinity as in another a Unity. And it
is one of the oldest and most universal of Christian approaches to
this mystery, to conceive it under the analogy of the three powers of
the soul. God the Father and Creator is conceived as corresponding to
the sense-perception and Imagination, to Memory-power; God the Son and
Redeemer, as the Logos, to our reason; and God the Holy Spirit, as
corresponding to the effective-volitional force within us; and then we
are bidden to remember that, as in ourselves these three powers are
all united in One personality, so in God the three Persons are united
in One substance and nature. Even the supremely and ineffably simple
Godhead is not, then, a mere, undifferentiated One.
And if we take the case of Our Lord, even when He is apprehended in the
most abstract of orthodox ways: we get either the duality of natures,
God and Man; or a trinity of offices, the Kingly, the Prophetic,
and the Priestly,--these latter again corresponding roughly to the
External, the Intellectual, and the Mystical element of the human soul.
And even if we restrict ourselves to His Humanity, and as pictured in
any one Gospel, nay in the earliest, simplest, and shortest, St. Mark,
we shall still come continually upon a rich multiplicity, variety, and
play of different exterior and interior apprehensions and activities,
emotions and sufferings, all profoundly permeated by one great end and
aim, yet each differing from the other, and contributing a different
share to the one great result. The astonishment at the disciples’
slowness of comprehension, the flash of anger at Peter, the sad
reproachfulness towards Judas, the love of the children, the sympathy
with women, the pity towards the fallen, the indignation against the
Pharisees, the rejoicing in the Father’s revelation, the agony in the
Garden, the desolation on the Cross, are all _different_ emotions. The
perception of the beauty of the flowers of the field, of the habits
of plants and of birds, of the varieties of the day’s early and late
cloud and sunshine, of the effects of storm and rain; and again of
the psychology of various classes of character, age, temperament,
and avocation; and indeed of so much more, are all _different_
observations. The lonely recollection in the desert, the nights spent
in prayer upon the mountains, the preaching from boats and on the
lake-side, the long foot-journeyings, the many flights, the reading and
expounding in the Synagogues, the curing the sick and restoring them to
their right mind, the driving the sellers from the Temple-court, and so
much else, are all _different_ activities.
And if we take what is or should be simplest in the spiritual life
of the Christian, his intention and motive; and if we conceive this
according to the evidence of the practice of such Saints as have
themselves revealed to us the actual working of their souls, and of
the long and most valuable series of controversies and ecclesiastical
decisions in this delicate matter, we shall again find the greatest
possible Multiplicity in the deepest possible Unity. For even in such
a Saint as St. John of the Cross, whose own analysis and theory of
the interior life would often seem all but directly and completely to
exclude the element of multiplicity, it is necessary ever to interpret
and supplement one part of his teaching by another, and to understand
the whole in the light of his actual, deliberate, habitual practice.
This latter will necessarily ever exceed his explicit teaching, both in
its completeness and in its authority. Now if in his formal teaching
he never wearies of insisting upon detachment from all things, and
upon the utmost simplification of the intentions of the soul, yet he
occasionally fully states what is ever completing this doctrine in his
own mind,--that this applies only to the means and not to the end, and
to false and not to true multiplicity. “The spiritual man,” he writes
in one place, “has greater joy and comfort in creatures, if he detaches
himself from them; and he can have no joy in them, if he considers them
as his own.” “He,” as distinct from the unspiritual man, “rejoices in
their truth,” “in their best conditions,” “in their substantial worth.”
He “has joy in all things.”[37] A real multiplicity then exists in
things, and in our most purified apprehension of them; varied, rich
joys related to this multiplicity are facts in the life of the Saints;
and these varied joys may legitimately be dwelt on as incentives to
holiness for oneself and others. “All that is wanting now,” he writes
to Donna Juana de Pedraça, his penitent, “is that I should forget
you. But consider how that is to be forgotten which is ever present
to the soul.”[38] An affection then, as pure as it was particular,
was ever in his heart, and fully accepted and willed and acknowledged
to its immediate object, as entirely conformable to his own teaching.
St. Teresa, on the other hand, is a character of much greater natural
variety, and yet it is she who has left us that most instructive record
of her temporary erroneous ideal of a false simplicity, in turning
away, for a number of years, from the consideration of the Humanity of
Christ. And a constant, keen interest in the actual larger happenings
of her time, in the vicissitudes of the Church in her day, was stamped
upon all her teaching, and remained with her up to the very end.
Perhaps the most classic expression of the true Unity is that implied
by St. Ignatius of Loyola, when he tells us that “Peace is the
simplicity of order.” For order as necessarily implies a multiplicity
of things ordered as the unity of the supreme ordering principle.
Fénelon, doubtless, at times, especially in parts of his condemned
_Explication des Maximes des Saints_, too much excludes, or seems to
exclude, the element of multiplicity in the soul’s intention. Yet,
both before and after this book, some of the clearest and completest
statements in existence, as to the true unity and diversity to be
found in the most perfect life, are to be found among his writings. In
his Latin Epistle to Pope Clement XI he insists upon the irreducible
element of multiplicity in the motives of the very highest sanctity.
For he maintains first that, though “in the specific act of Love, the
chief of the theological virtues, it is possible to love the absolute
perfection of God considered in Himself, without the addition of any
motive of the promised beatitude,” yet that “this specific act of love,
of its own nature, never excludes, and indeed most frequently includes,
this same motive of beatitude.” He asserts next that though, “in the
highest grade of perfection amongst souls here below, deliberate
acts of simply natural love of ourselves, and even supernatural acts
of hope which are not commanded by love mostly cease,” yet that in
this “habitual State of any and every most perfect soul upon earth,
the promised beatitude is desired, and there is no diminution of the
exercise of the virtue of hope, indeed day by day there is an increase
in this desire, from the specific motive of hope of this great good,
which God Himself bids us all, without exception, to hope for.” And he
declares finally that “there is no state of perfection in which souls
enjoy an uninterrupted contemplation, or in which the powers of the
soul are bound by an absolute incapacity for eliciting the discursive
acts of Christian piety; nor is there a state in which they are
exempted from following the laws of the Church, and executing all the
orders of superiors.”[39]
All the variety, then, of the interested and of the disinterested; of
hope and fear and sorrow; of gratitude and adoration and love; of the
Intuitive and Discursive; of Recollection and external Action, is to be
found, in a deeper, richer, more multiple and varied and at the same
time a more unified unity, in the most perfect life; and all this in
proportion to its approach to its own ideal and normality.
Indeed the same multiplicity in unity is finely traced by St. Bernard,
the great contemplative, in every human act that partakes of grace
at all. “That which was begun by Grace, gets accomplished alike by
both Grace and Free Will, so that they operate mixedly not separately,
simultaneously not successively, in each and all of their processes.
The acts are not in part Grace, in part Free Will; but the whole of
each act is effected by both in an undivided operation.”[40]
VI. THE SPECIAL MOTIVES OPERATING IN EACH ELEMENT TOWARDS THE
SUPPRESSION OF THE OTHER ELEMENTS.
Now the elements of Multiplicity and Friction and of Unity and
Harmonization, absolutely essential to all life, everywhere and always
cost us much to keep and gain. But there are also, very special reasons
why the three great constituents of religion should, each in its own
way, tend continually to tempt the soul to retain only _it_, and hence
to an impoverishing simplification. Let us try and see this tendency
at work in the two chief constituents, as against each other, and in
combination against the third.
1. _In the Historical and Institutional Element, as against all else._
We have seen how all religiousness is ever called into life by some
already existing religion. And this religion will consist in the
continuous commemoration of some great religious facts of the past.
It will teach and represent some divine revelation as having been
made, in and through such and such a particular person, in such and
such a particular place, at such and such a particular time; and
such a revelation will claim acceptance and submission as divine
and redemptive in and through the very form and manner in which it
was originally made. The very peculiarity, which will render the
teaching distinctively religious, will hence be a certain real, or
at least an at first apparent, externality to the mind and life of
the recipient, and a sense of even painful obligation answered by a
willing endorsement. All higher religion ever is thus personal and
revelational; and all such personal and revelational religion was
necessarily first manifested in unique conditions of space and time;
and yet it claims, in as much as divine, to embrace all the endless
conditions of other spaces and other times.
And this combination of a clearly contingent constituent and of an
imperiously absolute claim is not less, but more visible, as we rise
in the scale of religions. The figure of Our Lord is far more clear
and definite and richly individual than are the figures of the Buddha
or of Mahomet. And at the same time Christianity has ever claimed for
Him far more than Buddhism or Mahometanism have claimed for their
respective, somewhat shadowy founders. For the Buddha was conceived
as but one amongst a whole series of similar revealers that were to
come; and Mahomet was but the final prophet of the one God. But Christ
is offered to us as the unique Saviour, as the unique revelation of
God Himself. You are thus to take Him or leave Him. To distinguish and
interpret, analyze or theorize Him, to accept Him provisionally or
on conditions,--nothing of all this is distinctively religious. For,
here as everywhere else, the distinctive religious act is, as such, an
unconditional surrender. Nowhere in life can we both give and keep at
the same time; and least of all here, at life’s deepest sources.
With this acceptance then, in exact proportion as it is religious,
a double exclusiveness will apparently be set up. I have here found
my true life:--I will turn away then from all else, and will either
directly fight, or will at least starve and stunt, all other competing
interests and activities--I will have here a (so to speak) _spacial_,
a _simultaneous_ exclusiveness. Religion will thus be conceived
as a thing amongst other things, or as a force struggling amongst
other forces; we have given our undivided heart to _it_,--hence the
other things must go, as so many actual supernumeraries and possible
supplanters. Science and Literature, Art and Politics must all be
starved or cramped. Religion can safely reign, apparently, in a desert
alone.
But again, Religion will be conceived, at the same time, as a thing
fixed in itself, as given once for all, and to be defended against all
change and interpretation, against all novelty and discrimination.
We get thus a second, a (so to speak) _temporal_, _successive_
exclusiveness. Religion will here be conceived as a thing to be kept
literally and materially identical with itself and hence as requiring
to be defended against any kind of modification. Conceive it as a
paste, and all yeast must be kept out; or as wine, and fermentation
must be carefully excluded. And indeed Religion here would thus become
a stone, even though a stone fallen from heaven, like one of those
meteorites worshipped in Pagan antiquity. And the two exclusivenesses,
joined together, would give us a religion reduced to such a stone
worshipped in a desert.
Now the point to notice here is, that all this seems not to be an
abuse, but to spring from the very essence of religion,--from two of
its specific inalienable characteristics--those of externality and
authority. And although the extreme just described has never been
completely realized in history, yet we can see various approximations
to it in Mahometan Egypt, in Puritan Scotland, in Piagnone Florence, in
Spain of the Inquisition. Religion would thus appear fated, by its very
nature, to starve out all else, and its own self into the bargain.
What will be the answer to, the escape from, all this, provided
by religion itself? The answer and escape will be provided by the
intrinsic nature of the human soul, and of the religious appeal
made to it. For if this appeal must be conceived by the soul, in
exact proportion to the religiousness of both, as incomprehensible
by it, as exceeding its present, and even its potential, powers of
comprehension; if again this appeal must demand a sacrifice of various
inclinations felt at the time to be wrong or inferior; if it must come
home to the soul with a sense of constraining obligation, as an act
of submission and of sacrifice which it ought and must make: yet it
will as necessarily be conceived, at the same time, and again in exact
proportion to the religiousness both of the soul and of the appeal,
as the expression of Mind, of Spirit, and the impression of another
mind and spirit; as the manifestation of an infinite Personality,
responded and assented to by a personality, finite indeed yet capable
of indefinite growth. And hence the fixity of the revelation and of the
soul’s assent to it, will be as the fixity of a fountain-head, or as
the fixity of river-banks; or again as the fixity of a plant’s growth,
or of the gradual leavening of bread, or as that of the successive
evolution and identity of the human body. The fixity, in a word, will
be conceived and found to be a fixity of orientation, a definiteness of
affinities and of assimilative capacity.
Only full trust, only unconditional surrender suffice for religion. But
then religion excites and commands this in a person towards a Person;
a surrender to be achieved not in some thing, but in some one,--a some
one who _is_ at all, only in as much as he is living, loving, growing;
and to be performed, not towards some thing, but towards Some One,
Whose right, indeed Whose very power to claim me, consists precisely
in that He is Himself absolutely, infinitely and actually, what I am
but derivatively, finitely and potentially.
Thus the very same act and reasons which completely bind me, do so only
to true growth and to indefinite expansion. I shall, it is true, ever
go back and cling to the definite spacial and temporal manifestations
of this infinite Spirit’s personality, but I shall, by this same act,
proclaim His eternal presentness and inexhaustible self-interpreting
illumination. By the same act by which I believe in the revelation of
the workshop of Nazareth, of the Lake of Galilee, of Gethsemane and
Calvary, I believe that this revelation is inexhaustible, and that its
gradual analysis and theory, and above all its successive practical
application, experimentation, acceptance or rejection, and unfolding,
confer and call forth poignant dramatic freshness and inexhaustible
uniqueness upon and within every human life, unto the end of time.
All this takes place through the present, the _hic et nunc_,
co-operation of the living God and the living soul. And this
ever-to-be reconquered, ever-costing and chequered, ever-“deepenable”
interpretation, is as truly fresh as if it were a fresh revelation.
For all that comes from the living God, and is worked out by living
souls, is ever living and enlivening: there is no such thing as mere
repetition, or differentiation by mere number, place, and time, in this
Kingdom of Life, either as to God’s action or the soul’s. Infinite
Spirit Himself, He creates an indefinite number of, at first largely
but potential, persons, no one of which is identical with any other,
and provokes and supports an indefinite number of ever different
successive acts on the part of each and all of them, that so, through
the sum-total of such sources and streams of difference, the nearest
creaturely approach may be achieved to the ocean of His own infinite
richness.
2. _In the Emotional and Volitional Element, as against the Historical
and Institutional Element._
Now the tendency of a soul, when once awake to this necessary freshness
and interiority of feeling with regard to God’s and her own action,
will again be towards an impoverishing oneness. It will now tend to
shrink away from the External, Institutional altogether. For though it
cannot but have experienced the fact that it was by contact with this
External that, like unto Antaeus at his contact with Mother Earth, it
gained its experience of the Internal, yet each such experience tends
to obliterate the traces of its own occasion. Indeed the interior
feeling thus achieved tends, in the long run, to make the return to the
contact with the fact that occasioned, and to the act that produced
it, a matter of effort and repugnance. It seems a case of “a man’s
returning to his mother’s womb”; and is indeed a new birth to a fuller
life, and hence humiliating, obscure, concentrated, effortful, a matter
of trust and labour and pain and faith and love,--a true death of
and adieu to the self of this moment, however advanced this self may
seem,--a fully willed purifying pang. Only through such dark and narrow
Thermopylae passes can we issue on to the wide, sunlit plains. And both
plain and sunshine can never last long at a time; and they will cease
altogether, if they are not interrupted by this apparent shadow of the
valley of death, this concrete action, which invariably modifies not
only the soul’s environment, but above all the soul itself.
Thus does a simply mental prayer readily feel, to the soul that
possesses the habit of it, a complete substitute for all vocal prayer;
and a generally prayerful habit of mind readily appears an improvement
upon all conscious acts of prayer. Thus does a general, indeterminate
consciousness of Christ’s spirit and presence, easily feel larger and
wider, to him who has it, than the apparent contraction of mind and
heart involved in devotion to Him pictured in the definite Gospel
scenes or localized in His Eucharistic presence. Thus again does a
general disposition of regret for sin and of determination to do better
readily feel nobler, to him who has it, than the apparent materiality
and peddling casuistry, the attempting the impossible, of fixing for
oneself the kind and degree of one’s actual sins, and of determining
upon definite, detailed reforms.
Yet, in all these cases, this feeling will rapidly lead the soul on
to become unconsciously weak or feverish, unless the latter manfully
escapes from this feeling’s tyranny, and nobly bends under the yoke and
cramps itself within the narrow limits of the life-giving concrete act.
The Church’s insistence upon _some_ vocal prayer, upon _some_ definite,
differentiated, specific acts of the various moral and theological
virtues, upon Sacramental practice throughout all the states and stages
of the Christian life, is but a living commentary upon the difficulty
and importance of the point under discussion. And History, as we have
seen, confirms all this.
3. _In the Emotional and Volitional, singly or in combination with the
Historical and Institutional, as against the Analytic and Speculative
Element._
But just as the Institutional easily tends to a weakening both of
the Intellectual and of the Emotional, so does the Emotional readily
turn against not only the Institutional but against the Intellectual
as well. This latter hostility will take two forms. Inasmuch as the
feeling clings to historical facts and persons, it will instinctively
elude or attempt to suppress all critical examination and analysis
of these its supports. Inasmuch as it feeds upon its own emotion,
which (as so much pure emotion) is, at any one of its stages, ever
intensely one and intensely exclusive, it will instinctively fret under
and oppose all that slow discrimination and mere approximation, that
collection of a few certainties, many probabilities, and innumerable
possibilities, all that pother over a very little, which seem to make
up the sum of all human knowledge. Such Emotion will thus tend to be
hostile to Historical Criticism, and to all the Critical, Analytic
stages and forms of Philosophy. It turns away instinctively from the
cold manifold of thinking; and it shrinks spontaneously from the hard
opaque of action and of the external. All this will again be found to
be borne out by history.
A combination of Institutionalism and Experimentalism against
Intellectualism, is another not infrequent abuse, and one which is
not hard to explain. For if external, definite facts and acts are
found to lead to certain internal, deep, all-embracing emotions and
experiences, the soul can to a certain extent live and thrive in and
by a constant moving backwards and forwards between the Institution
and the Emotion alone, and can thus constitute an ever-tightening bond
and dialogue, increasingly exclusive of all else. For although the
Institution will, taken in itself, retain for the Emotion a certain
dryness and hardness, yet the Emotion can and often will associate
with this Institution whatever that contact with it has been found to
bring and to produce. And if the Institution feels hard and obscure,
it is not, like the Thinking, cold and transparent. Just because the
Institution appears to the emotional nature as though further from its
feeling, and yet is experienced as a mysterious cause or occasion of
this feeling, the emotional nature is fairly, often passionately, ready
to welcome what it can thus rest on and lean on, as something having a
comfortable fixity both of relation and of resistance. But with regard
to Thinking, all this is different. For thought is sufficiently near
to Feeling, necessarily to produce friction and competition of some
sort, and seems, with its keen edge and endless mobility, to be the
born implacable foe of the dull, dead givenness of the Institutional,
and of the equal givenness of any one Emotional mood. One of the
spontaneous activities of the human soul, the Analytic and Speculative
faculty, seems habitually, instinctively to labour at depersonalizing
all it touches, and thus continually both to undermine and discrown the
deeply personal work and world of the experimental forces of the soul.
Indeed the thinking seems to be doing this necessarily, since by its
very essence it begins and ends with laws, qualities, functions, and
parts,--with abstractions, which, at best, can be but skeletons and
empty forms of the real and actual, and which, of themselves, ever tend
to represent all Reality as something static, not dynamic, as a thing,
not as a person or Spirit.
Here again the true solution will be found in an ever fuller
conception of Personality, and of its primary place in the
religious life. For even the bare possibility of the truth of all
religion, especially of any one of the characteristic doctrines of
Christianity, involves a group of personalist convictions. Here the
human person begins more as a possibility than a reality. Here the
moral and spiritual character has to be built up slowly, painfully,
laboriously, throughout all the various stages and circumstances of
life, with their endless combinations of pleasure and pain, trouble
and temptation, inner and outer help and hindrance, success and
failure. Here the simply Individual is transformed into the truly
Personal only by the successive sacrifice of the lower, of the merely
animal and impoverishingly selfish self, with the help of God’s
constant prevenient, concomitant, and subsequent grace. And here this
constantly renewed dropping and opposing of the various lower selves,
in proportion as they appear and become lower, to the soul’s deepest
insight, in the growing light of its conscience and the increasing
elevation of the moral personality, involves that constant death to
self, that perpetual conversion, that unification and peace in and
through a continuous inner self-estrangement and conflict, which is the
very breath and joy of the religious life.
Only if all this be so, to a quite unpicturable extent, can even the
most elementary Christianity be more than an amiable intruder, or a
morbid surplusage in the world. And at same time, if all this be so,
then all within us is in need of successive, never-ending purification
and elaboration; and the God who has made man with a view to his
gradually achieving, and conquering his real self, must have stored
means and instruments, for the attainment of this man’s true end,
constant readiness, within himself. Now our whole Intellectual nature
is a great storehouse of one special class of such instruments. For it
is clear that the moral and spiritual side of our nature will, more
than any other, constantly require three things: Rest, Expression,
and Purification. And the intellectual activities will, if only they
be kept sufficiently vigorous and independent, alone be in a position
sufficiently to supply some forms of these three needs. For they can
rest the moral-spiritual activities, since they, the intellectual
ones, primarily neglect emotion, action, and persons, and are directly
occupied with abstractions and with things. They can and should express
the results of those moral, spiritual activities, because the religious
facts and experiences require, like all other facts, to be constantly
stated and re-stated by the intellect in terms fairly understandable by
the civilization and culture of the successive ages of the world. Above
all, they can help to purify those moral-spiritual activities, owing
to their interposing, by their very nature, a zone of abstraction,
of cool, clear thinking, of seemingly adequate and exhaustive, but
actually impoverishing and artificial concepts, and of apparently
ultimate, though really only phenomenal determinism, between the direct
informations of the senses, to which the Individual clings, and the
inspirations of the moral and spiritual nature, which constitute the
Person. Thus this intellectual abstractive element is, if neither
minimized in the life of the soul, nor allowed to be its sole element
or its last, a sobering, purifying, mortifying, vivifying bath and fire.
VII. THREE FINAL OBJECTIONS TO SUCH A CONCEPTION OF RELIGION, AND THEIR
ANSWERS.
Now there are three obvious objections to such a conception: with their
consideration, this Introduction shall conclude.
1. _This conception not excessively intellectual._
Does not, in the first place, such a view of life appear
preposterously intellectual? What of the uneducated, of the toiling
millions? What of most women and of all children? Are then all
these, the overwhelming majority of mankind, the objects of Christ’s
predilection, the very types chosen by Himself of His spirit and
of God’s ideal for man, precluded from an essential element of
religion? Or are we, at the least, to hold that an ethical and
spiritual advantage is necessarily attached, and this too for but
a small minority of mankind, to a simply intellectual function and
activity? If there was a thing specially antagonistic to Christ and
condemned by Him, it was the arrogance of the Schools of His day; if
there is a thing apparently absent from Christ’s own life it is all
philosophizing: even to suggest its presence seems at once to disfigure
and to lower Him. Is then Reasoning, the School, to be declared not
only necessary for some and for mankind at large, but necessary, in a
sense, for all men and for the religious life itself?
The answer to all this appears not far to seek. The element which we
have named the intellectual, is but one of the faculties of every
living soul; and hence, in some degree and form, it is present and
operative in every one of us. And there is probably no greater
difference between these degrees and forms, with regard to this
element, than there is between the degrees and forms found in the other
two elements of religion. For this intellectual, determinist element
would be truly represented by every however simple mental attention to
_things_ and their mechanism, their necessary laws and requirements.
Hence, the Venerable Anna Maria Taigi, the Roman working-man’s wife,
attending to the requirements and rules of good washing and of darning
of clothes; St. Jean Batiste de la Salle, the Breton gentleman,
studying the psychology of school-children’s minds, and adapting
his school system to it; St. Jerome labouring at his minute textual
criticism of manuscripts of all kinds; St. Anselm and St. Thomas
toiling at the construction of their dialectic systems,--all these,
amongst endless other cases, are but illustrations of the omnipresence
and endless variety of this element, which is busy with the rules and
processes that govern things.
And it is impossible to see why, simply because of their superior
intellectual gifts and development, men like Clement of Alexandria and
Origen, Cassian and Duns Scotus, Nicolas of Coes and Pascal, Rosmini
and Newman, should count as necessarily less near to God and Christ,
than others with fewer of such gifts and opportunities. For it is
not as though such gifts were considered as ever _of themselves_
constituting any moral or spiritual worth. Nothing can be more certain
than that great mental powers can be accompanied by emptiness or
depravity of heart. The identical standard is to be applied to these
as to all other gifts: they are not to be considered as substitutes,
but only as additional material and means for the moral and spiritual
life; and it is only inasmuch as they are actually so used, that they
can effectively help on sanctity itself. It is only contended here that
such gifts do furnish additional means and materials for the devoted
will- and grace-moved soul, towards the richest and deepest spiritual
life. For the intellectual virtues are no mere empty name: candour,
moral courage, intellectual honesty, scrupulous accuracy, chivalrous
fairness, endless docility to facts, disinterested collaboration,
unconquerable hopefulness and perseverance, manly renunciation of
popularity and easy honours, love of bracing labour and strengthening
solitude: these and many other cognate qualities bear upon them the
impress of God and of His Christ. And yet they all as surely find but a
scanty field of development outside of the intellectual life, as they
are not the only virtues or class of virtues, and as the other two
elements each produce a quite unique group of virtues of their own and
require other means and materials for their exercise.
2. _Such a conception not Pelagian._
But, in the second place, is not such a view of life Pelagian at
bottom? Have we not argued throughout, as if the religious life were to
be begun, and carried on, and achieved simply by a constant succession
of efforts of our own; and as though it could be built up by us,
like to some work of art, by a careful, conscious balancing of part
against part? Is not all this pure Naturalism? Is not religion a life,
and hence an indivisible whole? And is not this life simply the gift
of God, capable of being received, but not produced by us; of being
dimly apprehended as present, but not of being clearly analyzed in its
process of formation?
Here again there is a true answer, I think. Simply all and every
one of our acts, our very physical existence and persistence, is
dependent, at every moment and in every direction, upon the prevenient,
accompanying and subsequent power and help of God; and still more is
every religious, every truly spiritual and supernatural act of the soul
impossible without the constant action of God’s grace. Yet not only
does all this not prevent the soul from consciously acting on her own
part, and according to the laws of her own being; but God’s grace acts
in and through the medium of her acts, inasmuch as these are good: so
that the very same action which, seen as it were from without, is the
effect of our own volition, is, seen as it were from within, the effect
of God’s grace. The more costly is our act of love or of sacrifice, the
more ethical and spiritual, and the more truly it is our own deepest
self-expression, so much the more, at the same time, is this action a
thing received as well as given, and that we have it to give, and that
we can and do give it, is itself a pure gift of God.
What then is wanted, if we would really cover the facts of the case, is
evidently not a conception which would minimize the human action, and
would represent the latter as shrinking, in proportion as God’s action
increases; but one which, on the contrary, fully faces, and keeps a
firm hold of, the mysterious paradox which pervades all true life, and
which shows us the human soul as self-active in proportion to God’s
action within it, according to St. Bernard’s doctrine already quoted.
Grace and the Will thus rise and fall, in their degree of action,
together; and man will never be so fully active, so truly and intensely
himself, as when he is most possessed by God.
And since man’s action is thus in actual fact mysteriously double, it
should ever be so considered by him; and he should, as St. Ignatius
of Loyola says, “pray as if all depended on his prayer, and act as if
all depended on his action.” Hence all man’s action, though really
incapable of existing for an instant without the aid of God, and though
never exclusively his own, can be studied throughout, preliminarily as
though it were his exclusive production on its analyzable, human side.
And man not only can, he ought to be as thoughtful and careful, as
reasonably analytic and systematic about this study of his action as he
was careful and consistent in its production,--in both cases, whilst
praying and believing as though it were all from God, he can and should
behave also as though this action were exclusively his own. As St.
Thomas admirably says: “We attribute one and the same effect both to
a natural cause and to a divine force, not in the sense of that effect
proceeding in part from God, and in part from the human agent. But the
effect proceeds entire from both, according to a different mode: just
as, in music, the whole effect is attributed to the instrument, and the
same entire effect is referred to man as the principal agent.”[41]
3. _Such a conception not Epicurean._
But, in the last place, is not such a view of life Epicurean? Where
is the Cross and Self-Renunciation? Is it not Christ Himself Who has
bidden us cut off our right hand and pluck out our right eye, if they
offend; Who has declared that he who hateth not his own father and
mother for His sake is not worthy of Him; Who has asked, “What doth
it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of
his own soul?” and Who has pronounced a special woe upon the rich,
and a special blessing upon the poor in spirit? Does not our view, on
the contrary, bid a man attend to his hands and eyes, rather than to
their possible or even actual offending, euphemistically described
here as “friction”; bid him love his father and mother, even though
this introduce a conflict into his affections; bid him take care to
gain, as far as may be, the whole of his own possible interior and
exterior world, as though this would of itself be equivalent to his
saving his soul; and thus bid him become rich and full and complex,
an aesthete rather than a man of God? In a word, is not our position
a masked Paganism, a new Renaissance rather than the nobly stern old
Christianity?
Now here again a true answer is found in a clear intelligence of the
actual implications of the position. For if the Intellectual action
were here taken as capable of alone, or in any degree directly, forming
the foundation of all our other life, so that on a mathematically
clear and complete system, appealing to and requiring the abstractive
powers alone, would, later on, be built, according to our own further
determination, the Institutional and Experimental, or both or neither;
then such a position, if possible and actualized, would indeed save us
the simultaneous energizing of our whole complex nature, and would, so
far, well deserve the accusation of unduly facilitating life; it might
be taken as, at least, not beginning with the Cross. But here this is
not so. For from the first the External and the Mystical elements are
held to be at least as necessary and operative as the Intellectual
element; and it is impossible to see how the elimination of this
latter, and of the ever-expensive keeping it and its rivals each at
their own work, could deepen the truly moral sufferings and sacrifices
of the soul’s life.
If again the Intellectual action were taken, as by Gnosticism of
all sorts, as the eventual goal of the whole, so that the External
and Mystical would end by being absorbed into the Intellectual, our
Knowledge becoming coextensive with Reality itself, then we might
again, and with still deeper truth, be accused of eliminating the
element of effort and of sacrifice,--the Cross. But here, on the
contrary, not only the Intellectual alone does not begin the soul’s
life or build up its conditions, but the Intellectual alone does not
conclude and crown it. Eternally will different soul-functions conjoin
in a common work, eternally will God and the souls of our fellows be
for us realities in diverse degrees outside and beyond of our own
apprehension of them, and eternally shall we apprehend them differently
and to a different degree by our intelligence, by our affection, and by
our volition. Hence, even in eternity itself we can, without exceeding
the limits of sober thinking and of psychological probability, find
a field for the exercise by our souls of something corresponding to
the joy and greatness of noble self-sacrifice here below. The loving
soul will there, in the very home of love, give itself wholly to and
be fulfilled by God, and yet the soul will possess an indefinitely
heightened apprehension of the immense excess of this its love and act
above its knowledge, and of God Himself above both. And here again it
is impossible to see how the elimination of the intellectual element,
which becomes thus the very measure of the soul’s own limitations, and
of the exceeding greatness of its love and of its Lover, would make the
conception more efficaciously humbling and Christian.
Both at the beginning, then, and throughout, and even at the end of
the soul’s life, the intellectual element is necessary, and this above
all for the planting fully and finally, in the very depths of the
personality, the Cross, the sole means to the soul’s true Incoronation.
PART II
BIOGRAPHICAL
CHAPTER III
CATHERINE FIESCA ADORNA’S LIFE, UP TO HER CONVERSION; AND THE CHIEF
PECULIARITIES PREDOMINANT THROUGHOUT HER CONVERT YEARS
INTRODUCTORY.
_Each of the three Elements of Religion, again multiple. The two main
functions of each._
We have so far considered religion as constituted, on its human
side, by the interaction of three modalities,--the Historical, the
Intellectual, the Experimental. But it is of course clear that each of
these is again, just because it is a living force, a Multiplicity in
Unity. The first distinction we can find in each would break each up
into two parts.
The Historical modality readily gives us the function busy with the
Historical Person and the function occupied with the Historical Thing.
The former function will insist upon all the temporal and local
sayings, doings, and happenings, that together make up the picture and
memory of the Prophet or Founder; the latter will transmit certain
rites and symbols instituted or occasioned by him. And either the
suppression of these latter things, or the taking them apart from the
person from whom they issued and to whom they ever should lead back,
will turn out equally impoverishing: the very friction of this Thing,
coming from a Person, and leading to a Person, and operating within our
own personality, will be found to help to make the latter truly such.
The Intellectual modality will as readily split up into the Analytic
and the Synthetic. The former will busy itself with distinguishing
and weighing, and with reducing everything as far as possible to its
constituent elements. The latter will attempt to reconstitute the
living whole, as far as may be, in such terms of clear reason. The
former will have more affinity with the discursive reason, the second
with the contemplative; the former with religious History, and the
approaches to religious Philosophy,--Physiology and Experimental
Psychology and the Theory of Knowledge; the latter with Religious
Philosophy proper,--the Metaphysics of Religion.
The Experimental modality, finally, will as readily break up into
Intuitions and Feelings of every mental and moral kind, and Willings,
the determinations of which, close as they are to the feelings, are
not identical with them, but often exist more or less without or even
against them.
And this whole series of six movements exists only in Persons; it
begins with an at least incipient Person and ends in the fullest
self-expression of Personality, the determination of the will. And
Things--both external (Institutions) and internal (analytic and
synthetic Abstractions)--are but ever operative, necessary means
towards the firm constitution and expansion of that rich life of the
living soul within which the first apprehension and ordering of such
thinkings and doings took their rise.
I. PROPOSED STUDY OF THE MYSTICAL-VOLITIONAL ELEMENT IN A PARTICULAR,
CONCRETE INSTANCE: ST. CATHERINE OF GENOA.
Now it is the fact of the Multiplicity in Unity, to be found in each of
these modalities of religion, that makes it desirable to study each of
them, as far as may be, separately. And of these the deepest and most
near to our living selves, and hence also most far away from our clear
analysis, is the Experimental. It is this Element then that I propose
to study in a particular concrete instance: St. Catherine of Genoa.
1. _Disadvantages of such a method and of this particular instance._
The disadvantage arising from such a method of procedure is obvious: no
one life, even were it the richest and most completely knowable, can
exhaust, can indeed do more than simply suggest, the true questions,
let alone the adequate answers. But such a biographical study can hope
to arouse attention and interest in the living facts of religion, in
a manner in which no simple theory or generalization can do; and it
can stand out, in the midst of any such attempt at explanation, as an
emphatic reminder, to both writer and reader, of the inexhaustible
richness and mystery, of the awe-inspiring and yet stimulating
surplusage which is ever furnished by reality over and above all our
best endeavours at commensurate presentation or analysis.
And quite special disadvantages attach to the study of this particular
Saint. Her character, for one thing, is distinctly wanting in humour,
in that shrewd mother-wit which is so marked a feature in some of the
great Spanish Mystics, in St. Teresa especially, but which is not
quite absent even in the less varied and very austere St. John of
the Cross. There is, on the contrary, a certain monotony, a somewhat
wearying vehemence, about our Genoese. Her experience, again, is
without the dramatic vicissitudes of the reform of an Order or the
foundation of Monasteries, as with St. Teresa; or of contact and even
conflict with the temporal and spiritual officiality of her time, as
with St. Catherine of Siena. Nor is her life lit up by the beautiful
warmth of happy, requited domestic affection, nor is it varied and
extended by the rich possession of children of her own. And again
her life is obscured and complicated, at least for our comprehension
of it, by a nervous ill-health which it is impossible for us to care
about, in itself. And, finally, special difficulties attach to the
understanding of her. Unlike St. Teresa, St. John of the Cross, and
many other Saints, she did not herself write one line of her so-called
“Writings”; and yet it is these, mostly very abstruse and at times all
but insuperably difficult, “Writings,” records which did not attain
their present form and bulk till a good forty years after her death,
that contain the most original part of her legacy to the Church.
2. _The drawbacks of the instance outweighed by its rare combination of
characteristics._
Yet all this is balanced if not exceeded by a rare and stimulating
combination of characteristics. The very ordinariness of her external
lot,--a simple wife and widow, at no time belonging to any Religious
Order or Congregation; the apparently complete failure of her earthly
life, which gives occasion to the birth within her of the heavenly
one; the rich variety and contrasts of her princely birth and social
position, and the lowly, homely activity and usefulness of her forty
years of devotedness; the unusually perfect combination of a great
external action and administrative capacity with a lofty contemplation;
the apparent suddenness and whole-hearted swiftness of her Conversion,
succeeded by the long years of interior conflict and painful growth,
unhelped, practically unknown, by any one but God’s inspiring
Spirit, and these years again followed by a period of requiring and
practising the ordinary mediate docilities; the strange nervous
health of especially her later years, so carefully and truthfully
recorded for us, a psychic condition interesting if but for her own
lofty superiority to attaching any direct importance or necessarily
miraculous meaning to it: all this, even if it were all, helps to give
an extraordinary richness and instructiveness to her life.
But stimulating, transfiguring, embracing all this, appears her special
spiritual apprehension and teaching, of a quite extraordinary depth,
breadth and balance, distinction and refinement. The central oneness
of the soul’s nature and sufferings and joys here and hereafter, and
the resultant psychological character and appeal, to be found in all
true experience or forecasting of such things; the never-ceasing
difference between Spirit and Matter; the incomprehensibility, but
indefinite apprehensibleness, for the clean of heart, of God and
spiritual realities; the pure disinterestedness of His love for us,
and the corresponding disinterestedness of all true love for Him; the
universality of His light and love, and the excess of His mercy above
His justice; the innate affinity between every human soul and Him, and
the immanence of Himself within us; the absence of all arbitrary or
preternatural action in the forces and realities constitutive of the
spiritual world and life; the constant union of right suffering with
deep peace, and the final note of joy and of self-conquering triumph
issuing from complete self-renunciation: all this and much more appears
in her teaching with a spontaneity, breadth, and balance peculiarly its
own.
3. _Men who have been devoted to her spirit. Its vitality._
No wonder then that, from the contemporary circle of her devoted
friends and disciples onwards, Catherine should have attracted,
throughout the centuries and in many lands, a remarkable number of
deep minds and saintly characters. The ardent young Spaniard, St.
Aloysius Gonzaga, and the shrewd and solid Savoyard Bishop, St.
François de Sales, love to quote and dwell upon her example and
her doctrine. Mature theologians, such as Cardinal Bellarmine, the
hard-headed controversialist; Cardinal Bona, the liturgical and
devotional writer; and Cardinal de Berulle, the mystical-minded founder
of the French Oratory; and again, such varied types of devotedness
as Madame Acarie, the foundress of the French Reformed Carmelites;
the Baron de Renté, that noble Christian soldier; Bossuet, the hard
and sensible; and Fénelon, the elastic and exquisite,--all love her
well. Such thoroughly representative ascetical writers again as the
Spanish Jesuits Francisco Arias and Alfonzo Rodriguez; the French ones,
Saint-Jure and Jean Joseph Surin; the Italian, Paolo Segneri; the
Pole, Lancisius; and the German, Drexel, all drew food and flame from
her character and doctrine. Then at the beginning of the Nineteenth
Century, Friedrich von Schlegel, the penetrating, many-sided leader
of the German Romantic school, translated her _Dialogue_. In our own
time Father Isaac Hecker, that striking German-American, loved her as a
combination of contemplation and external action; Father Faber strongly
endorsed her conception of Purgatory; Cardinal Manning occasioned and
prefaced an admirable translation of her _Treatise_; and Cardinal
Newman has incorporated her Purgatorial teaching in the noblest of his
poems, “The Dream of Gerontius.” Indeed, General Charles Gordon also
can not unfairly be claimed as her unconscious disciple, since her
teaching, embodied in Cardinal Newman’s poem, was, besides the Bible
and “Imitations,” his one written source of strength and consolation,
during that noble Christian captain’s heroic death-watch at Khartoum.
And among quite recent or still living writers, Mr. Aubrey de Vere has
given us a refined poetic paraphrase of her _Treatise_, and Father
George Tyrrell has developed its theme in one of his most striking
Essays.[42]
I too have, in my own way, long cared for her example and teaching,
and for the great questions and solutions suggested by both. A dozen
times and more have I visited and lingered over the chief scenes of her
activity; and the literary sources of all our knowledge of her life
have been dwelt upon by me for twenty years and more.
I have but very few new details and combinations to offer, in so far
as her external life is concerned. It is with regard to the growth of
her historic image and the curious vicissitudes which I have been
able to trace in the complication of her “Writings”; as to her spirit
and teaching; and as to the place and function to be allotted in the
religious life to such realities and phenomena as those presented by
her, that I hope to be able to contribute something of value. For
although the substance and the primary phenomena of religion are
eternal, they appear in each soul with an individuality and freshness
pathetically unique; and their attempted analysis and apprehension, and
their relations to the other departments of human life, necessarily
grow and vary. Indeed it would be truly sad, and would rightly tempt
to disbelief in an overruling Providence and divine education of the
human race, if the four centuries that intervene between our Saint and
ourselves had taught us little or nothing of value, in such matters
of borderland and interpretation as nervous health, the psychology of
religion, and the distinguishing differences between Christian and
Neo-Platonic Mysticism. Whole Sciences, indeed the Scientific, above
all the Historic spirit itself, have arisen or have come to maturity
since her day. Hence the realities of her life, as of every religious
life, remain fresh indeed with the deathless vitality of love and
grace, and but very partially explicable still; and yet the highest
intellectual honour of each successive period should be found in an
ever-renewed attempt at an ever less inadequate apprehension and
utilization of these highest and deepest manifestations of Authority,
Reason, and Experience,--of the Divine in our poor human life.
II. THE MATERIALS AND AIDS TOWARDS SUCH A STUDY.
1. _The “Vita e Dottrina,” 1551._
All the biographies of St. Catherine, and all the editions or
translations of her “Works,” are based upon the _Vita e Dottrina_
published in Genoa, by Jacobo Genuti, in 1551. I work from the
thirteenth Genoese edition, a reprint of that of 1847 (_Tipi dei
Sordo-Muti_). All our knowledge of her mental and physical condition,
and of her spiritual doctrine, is practically restricted to this book,
and indeed, as we shall see, to its first two parts, the “Vita” and the
“Trattato.”
The _Vita_ is, in its fundamental portions, the joint production of her
devoted disciples, Cattaneo Marabotto, a Secular Priest, her Confessor;
and Ettore Vernazza, a Lawyer, her “spiritual son.” Its fifty-two
chapters (166 octavo pages) are only in small part narrative; quite
thirty-five of them are filled with discourses and contemplations of
the Saint, evidently, in the simpler of the many parallel versions
accumulated here, taken down, at the time of the Saint’s communication
of them, with quite remarkable fidelity. But the whole suffers from the
inclusion of much secondary, amplifying, repetitive matter; is badly
arranged; is kept, almost throughout, above all definite indications of
the precise successions, dates, and places; and is deficient in unity
of view and literary organization. The result is, of necessity, largely
insipid and monotonous.
The first of the “Works” is the _Treatise on Purgatory_, the seventeen
chapters of which (17 pages) are again hard reading, owing to their
evidently consisting of but a mosaic of detached, sometimes parallel
sayings, spoken on various occasions and according to the experience
and fulness of the moment, and without any reference to the previous
one. I shall show reason for holding that this little collection of
sayings was originally shorter still (consisting probably of but the
matter which now makes up the first seven of its seventeen chapters);
that the original chronicler and first redactor of these sayings was
Vernazza; and that certain obvious and formal contradictions which
appear in the present text must be theological glosses introduced some
time between 1520 (or rather 1526) and say 1530 (at latest 1547).
The second of the “Works,” the _Spiritual Dialogue between the Soul,
the Body, Self-love, the Spirit, the Natural Man, and the Lord God_, is
divided into three parts, and fills forty-five chapters (120 pages).
I hope to show conclusively that this _Dialogue_ was at first no
longer than its present Part I; that even this did not exist before
1547; that the whole was written by one and the same person, some one
who had never (at least intimately) known the Saint, and who had no
other direct material than our present _Vita_ and _Trattato_; that
this person was the Augustinian canoness, Battista Vernazza, Ettore’s
eldest daughter; and that the whole has been written for the purpose
of attempting some unification and systematization of what in the
_Vita_ appeared to the writer as wanting in unity and in correctness
of wording or of feeling. In this case we get a fairly continuous
re-statement, in part a heightening, in part a minimizing of the
historical facts of Catherine’s life, which, just because we have thus
a pragmatic, theological transfiguration of the older materials,
caused by a penetrating admiration, and resulting in some true increase
of insight into its subject-matter, forms a precious document for the
psychology and the effect of such states of mind.
The Oratorian Giacinto Parpera’s book: _B Caterina da Genova …
Illustrata_, Genova, 1682, gives, in its three parts, respectively the
opinions of Saints and Theologians concerning the Saint; a systematic
analysis of her doctrine; and an explanation of certain terms and
declarations more or less peculiar to her. It is decidedly learned and
in parts still useful; but pompously rhetorical and full of “anatomia,”
_i.e._ much wearisome numbering and indefinite sub-division. The Jesuit
Padre Maineri’s _Vita de S. Caterina di Genova_, Genova, 1737,--written
on occasion of her canonization,--contains nothing new.
2. _Later books on Catherine._
A sensible discussion of difficult or obscure points connected with her
life occurs in the Bollandists’ Life of the Saint, written by Father
Sticken in 1752 (_Acta Sanctorum_, September, Vol. V, ed. 1866, pp.
123-195). But the greater part of the discussion is vitiated by the
assumption of the independent value, indeed of Catherine herself being
the author, of the entirely secondary _Dialogo_; Sticken had not seen a
single MS. life or document; and the most important part of her entire
personality, her doctrine, had, according to the general plan of the
work, to be passed over by him.
I have also had before me Alban Butler’s accurate compilation;
Monseigneur Paul Fliche’s disappointing book, which, though he declares
that he has consulted the MSS. Lives, is but a rhetorical amplification
of the Life of 1551, with here and there a useful date or other detail
added by himself (Paris, 1881); and the Rev. Baring Gould’s hasty and
slipshod account, which completely ignores the “Works” (_Lives of the
Saints_, Vol. X, ed. 1898).
But by far the most important printed matter which has hitherto
appeared since 1551, indeed the only one which contains anything at all
significant that is not already in the _Vita ed Opere_, is Sebastiano
Vallebona’s booklet, _La Perla dei Fieschi_, Genova, 2nd ed., 1887,
109 pp. It publishes many a painstaking recovery and identification
of various dates and sites, relationships, family documents and
contemporary events; and has helped me greatly in such matters.
3. _The Manuscripts._
It is, however, to the careful analysis of the important still extant
MS. material, that I owe far more than to all the printed matter
subsequent to 1551. And indeed I can say without exaggeration that this
is the first serious attempt at a critical presentation of Catherine’s
Life and Teaching. A detailed account of my materials and method will
be given in the Appendix to this volume.
III. PECULIARITIES OF THE GENOESE CLIMATE AND GEOGRAPHICAL POSITION; OF
THE LIGURIAN CHARACTER; AND OF THE TIMES INTO WHICH CATHERINE WAS BORN.
HER FAMILY, FATHER AND MOTHER.
Catherine Fiesca was born in Genoa, towards the end of the year
1447.[43] She thus belonged to a race and a time full indeed of
violence and conflict, intrigue and cruelty, excessive in all things;
but hence full too of courage and of daring, of boundlessly expansive
energies, and of throbbing life.
1. _The Genoese country and character._
Lying at the foot of imposing mountain terraces, at the great central
bend and chief natural harbour of the rocky, sun-baked, mountain-backed
Riviera, Genoa formed, from early, pre-Roman days, the natural capital
of this thin strip of territory which, eastward from Spezia and
westward from Nice, looks all along towards the sea, and towards the
broad blue sea alone. And the natural influences of the country seem
ever to have been met and doubled by a fierce, explosive strain in the
characters of the successive races that peopled this narrow, steep,
hot sea-board. The ferocious, wild Ligurians gave the Romans trouble,
right up to the end of their dominion; and the subsequent Lombard
invasion and subjugation did little to change their character. The keen
rivals of Venice, in her trade and power in the East, and the mortal
foes of their competitor Pisa, so near to their own gates, the Genoese
did much for trade and commerce, but little for science and art, and
were feared and hated by the Tuscans, in their rich and fertile lands,
and with their large and liberal culture. Sailors, adventurers,
free-booters; great merchants and carriers and bankers; conspirators
and revolutionaries,--they have produced great admirals, such as Andrea
Doria; great administrative and warlike Popes, in the persons of the
two masterful, irascible della Roveres, from the twenty miles distant
Savona,--Sixtus IV, and Michael Angelo’s friend and patron, Julius II;
a great navigator, in Christopher Columbus; a fierce and fanatical, but
lofty and utterly disinterested revolutionary, in Mazzini; and a brave,
reckless condottiere in Garibaldi, born as far away as Nice, but whose
mother came from the near Chiavari.
2. _The times into which Catherine was born._
And our Saint was born in the midst of singularly active, changeful,
far-outward-looking, swift-onward-moving times. Columbus had been born
the year before; Fust and Gutenberg were printing the first printed
books three years later; Constantinople was taken by the Turks when she
was six years old.
The Mediaeval system was, at last, breaking up fast. That whole
conception of life and polity of peoples had rendered services too
great, indeed too unique, to civilization and religion; they had
been for too long the faithful instrument, expression and result
of a certain stage and aspect of human and Christian character and
development, for this break-up not to have been slow, reluctant, and
intermittent at first, notwithstanding the heavy blows levelled,
often unconsciously, at the system from both within and without the
Church. Pope Boniface’s Bull, _Unam Sanctam_, which stretched and
strained the Mediaeval conception to breaking-point (1302); the dreary
blank and confusion of the seventy years of the Avignon exile of the
Papacy (1309-1377); the thirty years’ distraction of the great Papal
Schism (1378-1409); the fierce revolts and tragic fates of Wycliffe
and of Hus, in 1384 and 1415; the ineffectual Council of Constance
(1414-1418),--all this had already taken place. And not even such
saintly figures as Tauler and Blessed Henry Suso in Germany, and
St. Catherine of Siena in Italy and France; or such nobly reforming
characters as the French Chancellor Gerson, who had died eighteen years
before our Saint’s birth (1429); or the bold and spiritual German
Philosopher-Cardinal Nicolas of Coes, who died when she was seventeen
(1464),--could achieve more than to announce and prepare the transition
to a great modification of Christendom, and to indicate the eternal
and necessary source from which it must spring, and the new temporal,
contingent form which it might take.
But the scandals, revolts, and repressions, on a scale and with results
which turned Reform into Revolution, and broke up Western Europe into
those two hostile camps, which, towards the end of four centuries,
we see, alas! hostile still--these things were yet to come. Roderigo
Borgia was to be Pope (1492-1503) only towards the end of her life. And
only after she had been seven years dead, was Luther to nail his theses
on the University-Church door at Wittenberg (1517), and more than a
generation later were Mary Tudor in England and Philip II in Spain
(1553-1598) to attempt, for the last time on so large a scale, the task
of keeping and winning minds and souls, by ruthless physical repression.
Catherine lived thus within a period which, in its depths, was already
modern, but not yet broken up into seemingly final, institutionalized
internecine antagonisms. And hence we can get in her a most restful
and bracing pure affirmativeness, an entire absence of religious
controversy, such as, of necessity, cannot be found in even such
predominantly interior souls as the great Post-Reformation Spanish
Mystics. Her whole religion can grow and show itself as simply
positive, and in rivalry and conflict with her own false self and with
that alone.
3. _The Fieschi family._
And the particular family from which she sprang, and the period of its
history at which she appeared, each helped to bring right into her
blood and immediate surroundings the more general conditions of her
race and time.
The Fieschi had indeed a long past story, securely traceable through
a good two centuries and a half before Catherine’s birth. They sprang
from the little seaside town of Lavagna, twenty English miles east
of Genoa, where shipbuilding is still carried on. Here it was that
Sinibaldo de’ Fieschi, the first of the two Popes of the family,
Innocent IV (1243-1254), was born, whose whole Pontificate was one long
vehement struggle with his former friend, the masterful and sceptical
Emperor Frederic II of Germany. His nephew was Pope, under the title
of Hadrian V, for but a few months (1276). It was from Pope Innocent’s
brother Robert that St. Catherine was descended.
The Fieschi were the greatest of the great Guelph families of Genoa,
such as the Grimaldi, Guarchi, and Montaldi. The great Doria family,
with the Spinola, Fregosi, and Adorni was as strongly Ghibelline. And
the endless, fierce conflict between these two factions, in Genoa
itself and along both Rivieras, led to the calling in, and to the
temporary supremacy over Genoa, of the Dukes of Milan, the Counts of
Montferrat, and of the Kings of Naples and of France. The Revolution
of 1339, which put an end to the exclusive rule of the Nobles, and
introduced elective Doges or Dukes as life-long heads of the Republic,
really altered little or nothing of all this.
Indeed the Fieschi had, just now at Catherine’s birth, reached the
full height of their power and worldly splendour. For the two Popes
of the family had already reigned two centuries before, and Cardinal
Luca Fieschi lay buried in the Cathedral for over a hundred years;
but the Fieschi now possessed numerous fiefs in Liguria, Piedmont,
Lombardy, and even in the Kingdom of Naples; Nicolò Fieschi, a cousin
of the Saint, was, in Catherine’s time, a prominent member of the
College of Cardinals; and her own father was Viceroy of Naples to King
René of Anjou. There was indeed exactly a century yet to run, up to
the beginning of the downward course of the family,--the disastrous
conspiracy of the Fieschi against the Dorias (1547), which forms the
subject of Schiller’s well-known play.
Catherine’s father had been Viceroy of Naples to that René Duc of
Anjou, Count of Provence, Duke of Lorraine, and titular King of Naples,
whose adventurous career and immensely popular character still stand
out so vividly in history. The “roi débonnaire,” the friend of the
Troubadours and father of Margaret of Anjou, Consort to King Henry VI
of England, figures life-like in Scott’s _Anne of Geierstein_; and his
strikingly _bourgeois_ profile may still be seen, as part of the vivid
portraiture of his kneeling figure which faces the corresponding one of
his Queen, upon the great contemporary triptyche picture, representing
in its central division the Madonna and Child in the branches of a tree
(in allusion to the Burning Bush and the Rod of Jesse), which hangs in
the choir of the cathedral of Aix, King René’s old wind-swept and now
sleepy Provençal capital. Since Charles I of Anjou (1265-1285), the
Angevine Kings had made Naples the capital of their Kingdom; Duke René
was the last of the Angevines to hold or seriously to claim it. He lost
it in 1442 to the Spaniards; but still in 1459 he attempted, by means
of a Genoese fleet, to repossess himself of his old kingdom, so that
Catherine’s father could, even up to the time of his death in 1462,
retain the title of Vice-Roy of Naples. Her mother, Francesca di Negro,
also belonged to an ancient and noble Genoese family.
IV. CATHERINE’S LIFE, UP TO THE PRELIMINARIES OF HER CONVERSION: AUTUMN
1447-MID-MARCH 1474.
1. _The house where she was born; her brothers and sister._
Catherine was born in one of the many palaces of the Fieschi, in the
one which stood in the Vico Filo, close to the dark grey limestone
façade of the Cathedral of San Lorenzo. The palace was hemmed in, on
its two sides and at its back, by the houses of Urbano and Sebastiano
di Negri, and was demolished when the then Piazza dei Fieschi was
enlarged and became the present Piazza di San Lorenzo. The house now
facing the Cathedral doorway occupies approximately the site of that
old palace.
She was the youngest of five children. There were three sons: Giacomo,
named after his father; and Lorenzo and Giovanni, no doubt named
respectively after the great Roman deacon, the titular saint of the
Cathedral, and who already appeared upon his gridiron, on the quaint
Mediaeval relief over its portal; and after the Baptist, whose reputed
relics lay there, in the great Chapel, rebuilt for them soon after
this time (1451-1496). Last came the two daughters: Limbania, named
after a beatified virgin and contemplative, a Genoese Augustinian Nun
of the thirteenth century, and Catherine, christened and in all the
legal documents always called by this diminutive, presumably after St.
Catherine of Alexandria, who had an altar in the Cathedral. And the
Cathedral was their Parish Church.
2. _Catherine’s physical appearance; her qualities and habits of body
and of mind._
In this house, then, Catherine grew up and lived till she was sixteen.
The beautiful, tall figure; the noble oval face with its lofty brow,
finely formed nose, and powerful, indeed obstinate chin; the winning
countenance with its delicate complexion and curling, sensitive,
spiritual mouth-line; deep grey-blue spiritual eyes; the long, tapering
fingers; the massive dark brown or black hair; still more the quickly
and intensely impressionable, nervous and extremely tense and active
physical and psychical organization; and then the very affectionate,
ardent, aspiring, impatient and absolute qualities and habits of her
mind and heart and will,--all these things we are not merely told, we
can still see them and find them, in part, even in her remains, but
more fully in her portrait, and above all, in her numerous authentic
utterances.[44]
3. _The few certain details concerning her early years. Santa Maria
delle Grazie._
We have, as only too often in such older biographies, but very few
precise and characteristic details concerning her early years. She
had in her room a Pietà, a representation of the Dead Christ in His
Mother’s arms, and we are told how deeply it affected her every time
she entered this room, and raised her eyes up to it. The other points
mentioned, her early bodily penances, silence, and gift of prayer (the
latter said to have been communicated to her at twelve years of age),
read suspiciously like simple assumptions made by her biographers,
and in any case do not help to individualize her, in these years of
uncertain, tentative, or as yet but little characteristic, forms of
goodness.
But from thirteen, for three years onwards, the young girl is very
certainly and deeply drawn to the Conventual life, as she sees it
practised by her sister Limbania, who, true to the example of her
own Genoese Augustinian Patron Saint, had become a member of the
Augustinian Canonesses of our Lady of Graces, and now lived there happy
and devoted in the midst of that very fervent and cultivated Community.
Limbania was one of the nineteen Foundresses of this Convent, who,
on August 5, 1451, received the habit of Canonesses Regular of the
Lateran, from the hands of Padre Giovanni de’ Gatti, at that time
Superior of S. Teodoro outside the walls of Genoa, a house of the same
Order. Among these Novices occur a Simonetta di Negro, no doubt a
cousin of Catherine, and Nicola and Lucia da Nove, two sisters; these
facts will have helped Catherine to hope for admission together with
her own sister Limbania.[45]
The Convent and its Chapel, both secularized, are still in existence,
at a quarter of an hour’s walk from Catherine’s palace-home. Moving
from here, along the Vico Chiabrera, up the Via dei Maruffi (now San
Bernardo), and across the latter, up one of the many steep, very
narrow little alleys, to the Piazza dei Embriaci, and again up by the
tall, slim, grey tower of the Crusader Guilielmo Embriaco, we arrive
at last at a level, all but deserted, sun-baked piazza, called, after
its Church, Sta Maria in Passione. Face this Church, and the long,
tall house on your left hand, covered with dim, faded frescoes, is
Limbania’s Convent, so loved by Catherine. The right door leads into
the Chapel, which Vallebona[46] found in 1887 in use as a wood-store,
and which I saw in May 1900 turned into a music-hall: where the altar
had stood, were a dingy stage, and tawdry wings. The pompous frescoes
and stuccos on the walls and ceiling are evidently of the seventeenth
century or even later. The adjoining Convent still retains a small
figure of St. Augustine sculptured on a corbel on the vault of the
first landing. The Byzantine, dark brown Madonna-and-Child picture,
which Catherine so often prayed before in the Chapel, can still be
seen, on the left-hand wall of the Chapel of St. Thomas Aquinas, in the
Church of S. Maria di Castello, which is close by, at a lower level
than the Piazza of the Convent.
4. _Catherine’s marriage. The Adorni family._
The Convent Chaplain was Catherine’s Confessor, and through him she
attempted to gain the permission of the Nuns to enter their Community.
But whilst they hesitated and put her off, on the very reasonable
ground of her unusual youth, her father died (end of 1461); and a
particular combination, from amongst the endless political rivalries
and intrigues of Genoa, soon closed in upon the beautiful girl, member
of the greatest of the Guelph families of that turbulent time. It was
a bad and sorry business, and one likes to think that the father,
had he lived, would not thus have sacrificed his daughter. For if in
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet we have two youthful lovers joining
hands and hearts, in spite of the secular enmity of their respective
houses; here, alas! in real life, we have the contrary spectacle, the
deep because dreary tragedy of two great rival factions making--rather,
hoping to make--peace, by the enforced union of two mutually
indifferent and profoundly unsuited young people.
Not but that socially the two were admirably matched. For Giuliano
Adorno belonged to a family hardly inferior in antiquity and splendour
to Catherine’s own. Six different Adorni had been Doges of Genoa in
1363, 1385, 1413, 1443, 1447, 1461; and the one of 1413 had been
Giuliano’s own grandfather. They were Lords of the Greek Island of
Chios (Scio), which they had helped to conquer for Genoa in 1349.
And now the last Doge of the family, Prospero Adorno, had just been
driven from the Ducal throne by Paolo Campofregoso, the strong-willed
representative of the great rival, though also Ghibelline, family of
the Fregosi. Campofregoso was now both Duke and Archbishop of Genoa. By
an alliance with the Fieschi, the most powerful of the Guelph families,
the Adorni could hope, in their turn, to oust the Fregosi, and to
reinstate themselves at the head of the great Republic. The ideals,
antipathies or indifference of a girl of sixteen were not allowed to
stand in the way; and so the contract was signed on January 13, 1463.
The marriage was celebrated soon afterwards in the Cathedral of San
Lorenzo, in the Chapel of St. John the Baptist, since the Campanaro
family, which had built it in 1299, and the Adorni, who had married
into and succeeded the Campanaro, were excepted from the rule
prohibiting the access of women to this Chapel. Since Cardinal Giorgio
Fieschi had recently died, Bishop Napoleone Fieschi, of Albenga,
presided at the ceremony.
5. _Giuliano’s character. Catherine’s pre-conversion married life._
Giuliano’s father was dead; only his widowed mother, Tobia dei Franchi,
remained. It was, however, with Catherine’s mother, in the old Palazzo
near the Cathedral, that the young couple were to live, and actually
stayed, during the first two years.
Giuliano was young and rich; his two elder brothers occupied high
naval posts; his first cousin, Agostino Adorno, was a man of noble
character and great initiative; and a descendant of this cousin, also
Agostino, was later on Beatified. But Giuliano himself did at first
worse than nothing, and never did much throughout his life. A man of
an undisciplined, wayward, impatient, and explosive temper; selfish
and self-indulgent; a lover of obscure and useless, in one instance
criminal, squandering of his time, money, health, and affections, he
did not deserve the rare woman who had been sold to him; and would
possibly indeed have managed to be a better man with a wife he had
really loved, or with one of a temperament and outlook more ordinary
and nearer to his own. As it was, he was hardly ever at home, and,
according to his own later penitent admission and testamentary
provisions, he was, some time during the first ten years of his
marriage, gravely unfaithful to his wife.
Catherine, on her part, spent the first five of these dreary years
in sad and mournful loneliness, at first in her mother’s house, and
afterwards, at least in the winter-time, in Giuliano’s own palace,
a building which stood exactly where now stands the Church of Saint
Philip Neri, in the Via Lomellina (at that time, Via Sant’ Agnese), and
near the Piazza Annunziata. In the summer-time she would stay, mostly
alone again, at Giuliano’s country seat at Prà on the Western Riviera,
just beyond Pegli, and six English miles from Genoa.
This latter property is still in existence, but was, some twenty years
ago, on the extinction of the male line of the Adorni, sold to the
Piccardo family. The present moderate-sized house, standing close to
the high-road and sea-beach, although evidently rebuilt (probably
on a considerably smaller scale) since Catherine’s time, no doubt
occupies part at least of the old site. But the Chapel which, in the
Saint’s days, adjoined the house, was described by Vallebona (in 1887)
as turned into a stable; and in April 1902 an elderly serving-man of
the Piccardo family showed me the precise spot, on a now level meadow
expanse closely adjoining the house, where he himself, some fifteen
years since, had helped to pull down this chapel-stable. He showed me
the (probably seventeenth-century) picture representing the scene of
the Saint’s conversion, which had, at that time, been still in this
building, and which is now hung up in a small Confraternity-Chapel near
by in Prà.
As to money of her own, Catherine had, as we shall see later on, her
dowry of £1,000, to which Giuliano had contributed £200. But we have no
evidence of any good works performed by her in this decade, although,
as we shall find, it must have been during these summers that she, at
least occasionally, walked or rode over the wooded hill-path to the old
Benedictine Pilgrimage Church and Monastery of San Nicolò in Boschetto,
three or four English miles away. These buildings are now secularized
and empty, but, even so, impressive still.[47]
It is but natural to suppose that she was as yet too little at one
with her true self, to be able to surmount her lot, or even seriously
to attempt such a task, by escaping from the false self and from all
attempts at finding happiness within the four corners of the demands of
her most sensitive and absolute disposition. To learn to do things well
takes time,--and even if it be but the finding out that those things to
do are _there_, ready and requiring to be done; or the seeing that we
are doing them badly. Hence above all does the learning to suffer well,
the turning pain into self-expansion and self-escape, as well as into
fruitful action, require time, special graces, and unusual fidelity of
soul. And even the noblest nature will usually begin by thinking of
getting, rather than of giving; it will simply thirst to be loved, and
to find its happiness in its own heart’s perfect “comprehendedness.”
Catherine tried to find relief, first in one attitude on her life’s sad
couch of mental suffering, and then in another; and neither brought
her any alleviation. During the first five years she had hidden
herself away, and had moped in solitude; the last five, she had given
herself to worldly gaieties and feminine amusements, short, however,
of all grave offence against the moral law. And at the end of these
experiences and experiments she, noble, deep nature that she was, found
herself, of course, sadder than ever, with apparently no escape of any
kind from out of the dull oppression, the living death of her existence
and of herself.
V. HER CONVERSION, WITH ITS IMMEDIATE PRELIMINARIES AND CONSEQUENCES,
MARCH 1474.
1. _Her prayer, March 20, 1474. Her conversion, March 22._
From after Christmas-time in 1472, Catherine’s affliction of mind had
become peculiarly intense, and a profound aversion to all the things
of this world made her fly anew from all human intercourse; and yet
her own company had become insupportable to her, as nothing whatsoever
attracted her will.
And at the end of three months, on the 20th of March 1474--it was the
eve of the Feast of St. Benedict--she was praying in his little church
still standing close to the sea, at the western end of Genoa, not far
beyond Andrea Doria’s Palace, built so soon after her death. And in her
keen distress she prayed: “St. Benedict, pray to God that He make me
stay three months sick in bed.”[48]
And two days later, when Catherine was visiting her sister at her
Convent, Limbania proposed to her, since she declared herself
indisposed to go to confession (although the Feast of the Annunciation
was at hand), at least to go and recommend herself in the Chapel to the
chaplain of the Convent, who was indeed a saintly Religious. And, at
the moment that she was on her knees before him, her heart was pierced
by so sudden and immense a love of God, accompanied by so penetrating a
sight of her miseries and sins and of His goodness, that she was near
falling to the ground. And in a transport of pure and all-purifying
love, she was drawn away from the miseries of the world; and, as it
were beside herself, she kept crying out within herself: “No more
world; no more sins!” And at that moment she felt that, had she had in
her possession a thousand worlds, she would have cast them all away.[49]
2. _Views and truths concerning this Experience._
One of the various writers who have successively, and in great part
differently, moralized upon the chief events of her life, dwells on
this great moment as achieving in her soul all the usually lengthy
and successive effects of the purgative, illuminative, and unitive
progression, and as, in that one instant, bringing her soul to that
highest state of transformation, in which the will is wholly united
to God.[50] But having regard to the fact, patent on every page of
her biography and “Works,” that, for the remaining thirty-seven years
of her life, her interior history represents one continuous widening
and deepening and moving onwards of efforts, trials and pains, of
achievements and ideals--a fact actually schematized by another writer
(who, as I shall show, is the penultimate Redactor of the Life) not
two pages lower down--it is clear that we must be careful to conceive
this perfection as relative to her previous state or even to the final
goodness of many saintly souls. We must, in a word, try to realize
vividly, and constantly to recall, certain complex truths, without
which the very greatness of the experience here considered will but
help to check or deflect our apprehension of the spiritual life.
For one thing, the deeper and the more unique the soul’s experience,
and the richer such experience is, the more entirely does all that
the soul is, and ever was, wake up and fuse itself in one indivisible
act, in which much of the old is newly seen to be dross and is so far
forth excluded; and in which the old that is retained reappears in a
fresh context, a context which itself affects and is itself affected
by all the other old and new ideas and feelings. It thus clearly bears
the stamp upon it of the profound difference between Time, conceived
as a succession of moments of identical quantity and quality, each in
juxtaposition and exterior to the other, mathematical time, such as
our clocks register on the dials,--a conception really derived from
space-perception and exterior, measurable _things_--and Duration,
with its variously rapid succession of heterogeneous qualities, each
affecting and colouring, each affected and coloured by, all the others,
and all producing together a living harmony and organic unity, all
which constitutes the essentially unpicturable experience of the
living _person_. Such a moment is thus incapable of adequate analysis,
in exact proportion as it is fully expressive of the depths of the
personality and of its experience: for each element here, whilst,
in its living context, an energy and a quality which at each moment
modifies and is modified by all the other elements, becomes, in an
intellectual analysis, when each is separated from the others, a mere
dead thing and a quantity.
And secondly, such an experience is throughout as truly a work of pure
grace, a gift, as it is a work of pure energy, an act. And here again,
the grace and the energy, the gift and the act are not juxtaposed, but
throughout they stimulate and interpenetrate each other, with the most
entirely unanalyzable, unpicturable completeness. It is indeed in exact
proportion to the fulness of this interstimulation and penetration, to
the organic oneness of the act, that such an act is this one particular
soul’s very own act and yet the living God’s own fullest gift. Grace
does not lie without, but within; it does not check or limit, but
constitutes the will’s autonomy.
And thirdly, it is an experience which leaves the soul different
forever from what it was before; which purifies her perfectly, in and
for that moment, from all her stains of actual sin committed up to
that moment; and which materially strengthens her inclinations towards
good and weakens her tendencies towards evil. But the soul herself
lives on; and she lives but in and through successive acts of all
kinds. Hence it is not an act,--there is none such, here below at
least,--which takes or can take the place of fresh acts to be produced
again and again throughout her life, The soul has not, in any sense
or any degree, been approximated to that utterly paradoxical thing,
a saintly automaton. She is not raised above the limitations and
imperfections, the obscurities and conflicts, the failings and sins
of humanity. She _could_ fall away and commit grave sin; she actually
_does_ commit minor sins of frailty and surprise. Her interior efforts
and experiences are now but on a larger, deeper scale, and on a higher
plane, and take place from a new vantage-ground, a position which has,
however, itself to be continually actively defended and reinforced.
Temptation, trial, sorrow, pain; hope, fear, self-hatred, love and joy,
with ever-renewed and increased aspiration and effort, all variously
change and deepen their combinations and qualities, outlook and
ideals. But they do not for one moment cease. All things but grow in
depth and significance, in variety within unity, in interiority and
interpenetration.
And finally, although conversions of the apparent suddenness and
profound depth and perseverance of the one here studied, are rightly
taken to be very special and rare graces of God, yet it would be but
misinterpreting and depreciating their true significance to make their
suddenness the direct proof and measure of their own supernaturalness
or the standard by which to appraise the altitude of the goodness of
other lives. God is as truly the source of gradual purification as of
sudden conversion, and as truly the strength which guards and moves us
straight on, as that which regains and calls us back. Hence such acts
as Catherine’s should not be entirely separated off from those acts
of love, contrition and self-dedication which occur, as so many free
graces of God in and with the free acts of man, more or less frequently
in the secret lives of human beings throughout the world.
3. _The Second Experience, in the Palace._
Catherine then was kneeling on, in these great moments of her true
self’s self-discovery and self-determination, with her true Life
now at last felt so divinely near and yet still so divinely far:
she was kneeling on, oblivious of time and space, incapable of
speech--throughout a deep, rich age of growth, during but some minutes
of poor clock-time--whilst the chaplain was called away by some little
momentary matter. And when he returned, she was just able to utter:
“Father, if you please, I should like to let this confession stand over
to another time.” And returning home, she was so on fire and wounded
with the love which God had interiorly manifested to her, that, as
if beside herself, she went into the most private chamber she could
find, and there gave vent to her burning tears and sighs. And, all
instructed as she had suddenly become in prayer, her lips could only
utter: “O Love, can it be that Thou hast called me with so much love,
and revealed to me, at one view, what no tongue can describe?” And
her contrition for her offences against such infinite goodness was so
great, that, if she had not been specially supported, her heart would
have been broken, and she would have died.[51]
And yet, though her biographer, no doubt rightly, represents her
feeling and dispositions as now at their uttermost,--they may well
have actually been so, at that moment for that moment,--they were
nevertheless evidently capable of indefinite subsequent increase.
Indeed it must have been on this same day, or on one of the next
three days, that, in one of the rooms of the palace in the Via S.
Agnese,--(the approximate spot is marked in the Church of St. Philip
by a fine picture representing the scene, hung over the altar of one
of the left-hand-side chapels),--“Our Lord, desiring to enkindle still
more profoundly His love in this soul, appeared to her in spirit with
His Cross upon His shoulder dripping with blood, so that the whole
house seemed to be all full of rivulets of that Blood, which she saw
to have been all shed because of love alone.” “And filled with disgust
at herself, she exclaimed: ‘O Love, if it be necessary, I am ready to
confess my sins in public.’”[52]
4. _Two peculiarities of this Experience._
Here two things are remarkable. This is, to begin with, her first and
last vision (_visione_), which I can find, in the sense of a picture
produced indeed “in the spirit,” but yet evidently apprehended with
a sense of apparently complete passivity in the perceiving mind
and of objectivity as to the perceived thing, and remembered as
such throughout her life. For the frequent subsequent “sights” or
picturings (_viste_) are avowedly only of the nature of profoundly
vivid, purely mental, more or less consciously voluntary and subjective
contemplations and intuitions; whilst her only other “visions,” those
seen during the last stage of her last illness, seem indeed to have
been of an even more sensible kind than this _visione_, but they were
entirely fitful and left no permanent impression behind them.
And again, this is the one only picture of any, even of a voluntary,
meditational kind, concerning the Passion, to be found throughout her
life; all her other contemplations and impressions of whatever kind are
of other subjects.
5. _Her general confession._
It was after these fundamental experiences that, once more in the
Chapel of the Augustinianesses, apparently four days later, on the 24th
of March, “she made her general confession, with such contrition and
compunction as to pierce her soul.”[53]
VI. THE TWO CONCEPTIONS CONCERNING THE CHARACTER AND _RATIONALE_ OF HER
PENITENTIAL PERIOD AND OF HER WHOLE CONVERT LIFE. THE POSITION ADOPTED
HERE.
At this point of the Life two successive reporters or redactors
introduce, respectively, a general reflection on the character and
_rationale_ of the period of penitence now immediately ensuing, and a
scheme and forecast as to the stages in the ascensional movement of her
entire convert life.
1. _The older conception._
The first reporter,--evidently the same who, in connection with the
Conversion scene, had described her soul as, there and then, at the
culmination of holiness,--here says: “And although God, at the moment
when,” four days before, “He had given her that love and pain, had
there and then pardoned her all her sins, consuming them in the fire
of His love; yet He, wishing her to satisfy the claims of justice,
led her by the way of satisfaction, in such wise as to cause this
special contrition, illumination, and conversion to last about fourteen
months,” and it is no doubt implied by him that frequent confession was
practised throughout this time.[54]
Thus we get an impressive instance of the rich and complex experience
on which the Catholic doctrine is built, as to how, on the one hand,
pure and perfect love ever instantly obliterates all sin; how, on the
other hand, such perfect love, in those who explicitly know and accept
the Church’s claims, involves a determination to confess all such grave
sins as may have been committed; and how, finally, such subsequent
confession is itself operative within the soul. For as between the soul
and the body, so between the Mystical and Sacramental, there is a real
and operative connection, though one which, however inadequately known
by us, we know to be one not of simple identity or coextension.
And the experiences and doctrines here specially considered appear
to require the conception of contrition and pardon as but the
necessary expression and effect of true, operative love; and to demand
the conclusion that purification participates in the essentially
positive nature of love, its cause. The removal of bodily impurity
is a negative act, and, as such, is limited and unrepeatable; but
spiritual purification would thus, as something positive, be capable of
indefinite increase and repetition. And hence the deep philosophical
justification of repeated contrition and confession for the same sins,
even though already pardoned. We shall find that such a view is also
to be found in St. Catherine’s own doctrine, though there is nothing
to show that the thought of this paragraph is derived from Catherine
herself. I take it to proceed from Cattaneo Marabotto.
2. _The later conception._
The second writer, the penultimate Redactor of the book as we now have
it, finds three successive levels in her whole life’s constant growth
and upward movement, and discovers a type of each in some love-impelled
figure or scene of the Bible. And so the writer gets his periods
symbolized respectively by the two New Testament scenes of Christ’s
feet, and the Penitent Magdalen drawn by Him to them, and of Christ’s
breast, and the Beloved Disciple reposing peacefully upon it; and by
the Old Testament poetic picture, and its allegorical interpretation,
of Christ’s (the true Solomon’s) mouth, and the Bride’s kiss. And
some four years are assigned to the first period, “many” years to the
second, and her last years to the last: 1478 and 1499 would be the
approximate dates dividing off these periods. We shall find this scheme
to proceed from Battista Vernazza.
Time-honoured though it be, this symbolism in no way fits Catherine’s
case. For, excepting during the short first period, her direct and
formal occupation with the Sacred Humanity is, throughout her convert
life, practically confined to the Eucharistic Presence; and again, her
words and contemplations are (as indeed the unhappiness of her marriage
experience would lead one to expect and as the whole temper of her mind
and devotion require) quite remarkably free from all affinity to the
Canticle of Canticles. And yet this, in so far inappropriate, framework
helps to emphasize the all-important fact of the constant growth and
deepening ever at work within her life.
Indeed, the short, general characterization of each of these successive
periods which follows after each symbol here, is derived from passages
of the _Vita_ which are doubtless based upon direct communication
by herself. Thus the detailed sight of her own particular sins and
of God’s particular graces towards herself, characteristic of the
relatively short first period, is succeeded by the second, long and
profoundly lonely, period of an apparent union of the divine and of the
human personalities, in which all distinct perception of her own acts
appears to have usually been lost,--a union which can lead her to the
point of saying: “I have no longer either soul or heart of my own; but
my soul and my heart are those of my Love.” Yet in her third and last
period, the consciousness of her own acts and of their differentiation
is described as fully reappearing within her mind. For though we are
presented here with a kind of immersion in the Divinity, in which she
appears so to lose herself interiorly and exteriorly as to be able to
say with St. Paul: “I live no longer, but Christ lives in me”; and
though we are told that she was no longer able to discern between
the good and evil of her acts, by means of any direct examination of
them: yet her acts are now again perceived to be her own; to be some
of them good and some of them faulty; and are seen, as several and
as differing, by her own self, but “in God.”[55] So did the Lady of
Shallot, all turned away though she was from the world of sight, see in
her mirror the different figures as, good and bad, they moved on their
way, more truly and clearly than she had ever seen them formerly by any
direct perception.
3. _Position adopted in this study concerning Catherine’s spiritual
growth._
Now these periods of interior, experimental, mystical vicissitude
and growth have also their corresponding variations of religious
analysis and speculation, and of external actions and events; and these
variations are not only the concomitants and expressions of the inner
growth, but are also, in part, the subject-matter and occasion for
the next stage of mystical experience. And since Catherine’s special
characteristic consists precisely in the richness and variety of
her life at any one moment, and in the successive, ever-accelerated
enrichment which it achieves almost up to the end, any obliteration of
this successive growth, or any one-sided attention to any one aspect
of her life during any one of its chief periods, will readily take all
life-likeness out of her portrait.
Yet to achieve anything like this comprehension is most difficult, if
only because it has to be attempted with the aid of materials which,
where their registration is contemporary with the events chronicled,
belong, all but the legal documents, to the last fifteen years of
her life; and because, even within this last period, they are rarely
furnished with any reference to their exact place within that period.
There is throughout the book a most natural and instructive, indeed
in its way most legitimate and even necessary, insistence upon the
apparently complete independence and aloofness, the transcendence of
her inner life. And this insistence goes so far that a self-sufficing
Eternity, a completely unchanging Here and Now, floating outside and
above even the necessary and normal affections, actions, and relations
of human life and fellowship, seems, especially from after her
conversion till up to the beginning of her physical incapacitation,[56]
to have taken the place of the characteristically human struggle in
and through time and space, with and through our fellow-creatures.
As in Leibniz we get a divinely pre-established harmony between the
dispositions and the acts of the body and those of the soul, which
appear indeed as though indestructibly interrelated, but which, in
reality, operate throughout without one instant’s direct interaction:
so here, the external is not indeed represented as neglected by her,
nor as anything but in complete harmony with her inner life, and as
indeed inspired by God, yet her own mind and soul are but reluctantly
permitted to appear as expressing themselves in it, as requiring and
affected by it. She appears as having got outside of, and away from,
all the visible and purely human, rather than deeper into and behind
it; to have achieved the ignoring of it rather than its conversion and
transfiguration and its appointment to its own intrinsic place and
function in the full economy of the soul’s new life.
And yet all this is, even in the minds of the authors, but one aspect
of this complex life, and one which, taken alone, would at once do
injustice to its other aspect, the grand depth and range of its
immanental quality. And even in as much as the transcendental aspect
is really attributable to the predominant trend of Catherine’s own
character and teaching, it in no way invalidates the fact of the actual
astonishing many-sidedness and balance of her life, especially before
her last few years, but will be found to proceed essentially from
her rare mode of achieving this many-sidedness and balance, or, more
strictly still, from her own feeling as to this mode, and her analysis
and theory of it. We have no direct concern with this her reflection at
present: what she actually did and directly was, is all we would wish
to try and sketch just now.
VII. CATHERINE AND THE HOLY EUCHARIST.
1. _A daily Communicant from May 1474 onwards._
On the following day, then, on the Feast of the Annunciation, 25th
March, 1473, “her Lord gave her the desire of Holy Communion, a
desire which never again failed her throughout the whole course of her
remaining life. And He so disposed things that Communion was given her,
without any care on her part; she was often summoned to receive it,
without any asking, by priests inspired by God to give it to her.”[57]
After trying every possible interpretation of this most annoyingly
obscure text by the light of three or four other passages, I have come
to think it to mean that, on this Lady-Day, she, for the first time
since now ten years, received Holy Communion with a keen desire for
its reception; and that this desire remained from this day forward
unintermittently with her, till the end of her life: but that this
desire, which at first may not have been set upon daily Communion,
began to be satisfied by a daily reception only some time in May 1474.
It is anyhow certain that from this latter date onwards she was a daily
communicant up to September 13, 1510, the day before her death.[58] The
exceptions were most rare,--I take it of an average of once or twice a
year,--and were always owing to some insuperable obstacle, mostly of
ill-health.
2. _Her practice as regards the Holy Eucharist, throughout her Convert
Life._
Since Holy Communion was the great source and centre of her love and
strength, and the one partially external experience and practice which
was thus renewed day by day throughout her life, and in the spiritual
apprehension and effect of which we cannot trace any distinct periods,
I shall dwell here, once for all, upon the characteristics of this
devotion of hers, which were at all special to herself.
For one thing, even her ardent love of Holy Communion did not suppress
a bashful dislike of being noticed or distinguished in the matter:
“At the beginning of her conversion she had at times a feeling as of
envy towards Priests, because they communicated on as many days as
they would, without any one wondering at it.” “Once when, for a few
days, the city was under an interdict, she went every morning a mile’s
distance outside of the city walls, so as to communicate; and she
thought that she would not be seen by any one.”[59]
Next, there is a most characteristic eagerness for interiorization, for
turning the Holy Eucharist, perceived without, into the heart’s food
within; and a corresponding intensity of consciousness and tenderness
at the moment of reception. “When she saw the Sacrament on the altar in
the hands of the priests, she would say within herself: ‘Now swiftly,
swiftly convey it to the heart, since it is the heart’s true food.’”
And “one night she dreamt that she would be unable to communicate
during the coming day, and waking up, she found that tears were
dropping from her eyes, at which she wondered, since hers was a nature
very slow to weep.” And “when at Mass, she was often so occupied with
her Lord interiorly, as not to hear one word of it; but when the time
for Communion arrived, at that instant she would become conscious of
exterior things.” And she would say: “O Lord, it seems to me, that if
I were dead, I should return to life to receive Thee; and that if an
unconsecrated host were given to me, I should recognize it to be such
by the mere taste alone, as one discerns water from wine.”[60]
Again, her Communion practice bears upon it the stamp of a staunch
virility; of a constant emulation between her own generous turning-away
from its sensible consolations and the divine action, which seems
to have maintained these consolations throughout her life; and of a
determination to abstain even from such deeply consoling Communions,
if such abstention were the more perfect practice for her. “One day,
when she had communicated, there came to her so much odour and so much
sweetness, that she felt as though in Paradise. But turning at once
towards her Love she said: ‘O Love, wouldest thou perchance draw me to
Thee with these savours (_sapori_)? I desire them not, since I desire
but Thee, and Thee whole and entire!’” And “one day a holy Friar,”--it
was probably the Observant Franciscan, Father Angelo of Chiavasso (near
Genoa), beatified later on,--“said to her: ‘You communicate every day:
what kind of satisfaction do you derive from it?’ And she answered
him simply, explaining to him all her desires and feelings. But he,
to test the purity of her intention, said: ‘There might possibly be
some imperfection in such very frequent Communion,’ and then left her.
And Catherine having heard this, fearing such imperfection, at once
suspended her Communions, but at the cost of great distress. And the
Friar, hearing a few days later of how she cared more not to do wrong
than to have all the consolation and satisfaction of Communion, sent
her word by all means to return to her daily Communions; and she did
so.”[61]
And finally, her Communions produced effects direct and indirect,
spiritual and psychical. The indirect, psycho-physical effects being
variable, and related to the varying conditions of her health, will
be noted as far as possible under the different periods of her life
and, collectively, in the chapter on such psycho-physical questions.
The spiritual effects no doubt grew, but this growth we have no
sufficient materials for pursuing in detail. Yet they have throughout
this peculiarity, that, central and all-permeating as this Eucharistic
influence no doubt was, yet it nowhere takes the form of any specially
Eucharistic devotion or directly Eucharistic meditation or doctrine,
outside of Holy Communion itself and of the immediate occupation with
_it_. Some deep indirect effects on her general tone, imagery, and
teaching will be studied in our second volume.
VIII. CATHERINE AND CONFESSION AND DIRECTION.
1. _Catherine arouses criticism in the matter of Direction._
Now if Catherine occasioned some criticism and testing of her spirit by
the (for that period) very unusual frequency of her Communions,[62] it
is equally on record that she aroused some surprise and apprehension,
by the absence of all Direction, during the many years of the second
period of her convert life. And if, in the matter of her daily
Communions, she had readily entered into the suggestion that there
might be imperfection in this her dearest habit, and yet had to
continue along her unusual way, so too, in this matter of Direction,
she evidently was from the first ever ready to proceed in the ordinary
manner, and yet found herself compelled to follow a lonely course.
“If she attempted to lean upon any one (_accostarsi ad alcuno_), Love
instantly caused her mental suffering so great that she was obliged to
desist, saying, ‘O Love, I understand Thee.’ And when she was told that
it would be well, and more secure, if she were to put herself under
obedience to another, and whilst she was in doubt as to what to do,
her Lord answered her thus within her mind: ‘Confide in Me, and doubt
not!’”[63] Such suggestions will have been made and such scruples will
have been suffered many a time, during the long years in which, in this
matter, her way was an extraordinary one.
2. _The facts concerning Catherine’s confessions. Catholic obligations._
But in this matter of Direction and Confession, the _Vita_, if we were
to take its present constituents as of uniform value, is astonishingly
vague, ambiguous, and contradictory. Let us take the facts, in the
order of their certainty, moving from the quite certain to the less and
less certain ones; and let us then try and appraise the upshot of the
whole examination.
We are then, first, absolutely certain that Catherine herself, not
later than 1499,--this date shall be justified later on,--said to Don
Marabotto, (and that he then and there, or shortly afterwards, wrote
down,) the following words: “I have persevered for twenty-five years in
the spiritual way, without the aid of any creature.” And he, in this
matter which concerns his own Confessing and Directing of her during
the last eleven years of her life (1499-1510), twice over solemnly
reaffirms and drives home the reality of the fact thus communicated
to him by herself. “She was guided and taught interiorly by her
tender Love alone, without the means of any [fellow-]creature, either
Religious or Secular”; “she was instructed and governed thus by God,
for about twenty-five years.”[64] And conformably with this, we get the
short dialogue between herself and Love, as just given, and such words
as the following, which she declared that Love itself spoke to her
mind,--evidently during, and probably at the beginning, of these many
years: “Take from the remainder of Scripture this one word ‘Love,’ with
which thou shalt ever walk straight … enlightened, without error, and
(all this) without guide or means provided by any other creature.”[65]
In the next place, it is equally certain that, with all her biographers
down to this day (_e.g._ Monseigneur Fliche, pp. 350, 351), her words
must be understood to exclude at least all Direction from those
years. And it is, moreover, practically certain that at least the
second Redactor (R. 2) of the _Vita_ understood her words to apply
to Confession also. For whereas, in the older tripartite scheme of
R. 1, the four years of Penance of her first period were filled by
her labours for “satisfying her conscience by means of contrition,
confession, and satisfaction,” R. 2 breaks up those four years into
two periods,--the first, of “a little over a year”; and the second,
of (no doubt) three years,--and does so with a view to thus making
room for the “about twenty-five years” of Catherine’s affirmation.
Now whereas R. 2 in his first period talks thus of Confession; in his
second one, he talks twice of Contrition, and twice of Sorrow, but
nowhere of Confession; and again, whereas in his third (R. 1’s second)
period “many” (no doubt twenty-one) years, there is still no reference
to Confession, indeed here not even to Sin or Contrition in general;
in the fourth (R. 1’s third) period (of eleven years), when she was
being regularly confessed and directed by Marabotto, she, it is true,
“was incapable of recognizing, by direct examination, the nature of
her acts, whether they were good or bad,” but still she was able to
see, and actually “saw all things,” hence also these acts and their
difference, “in God.”[66]
Thirdly, it is certain that some reasonable doubt can be entertained
as to whether Catherine’s words, solemnly emphatic though they are,
were not understood too literally by Marabotto and the second Redactor.
Nothing is, indeed, more obvious and striking throughout all the
authentic memorials of her, than the delightfully simple, grandly
fearless veracity of her mind. She never speaks but according to the
fulness of her conviction: like with all souls most near unto the
childlike Master, Christ, it can be said of her that “one never knows
what she is going to say next.” And we shall find her insight into
herself at any given moment, even with regard to such partly medical
matters as her psycho-physical condition, to be quite astonishing in
its depth and delicacy. Yet the fact remains, that she was as truly
a person of intense and swiftly changing feelings, exaltations, and
depressions, as she was one of a rich balanced doctrine and of a quite
heroic objectivity and healthy spiritual utilization of all such
intensities. This very heroism and objectivity of hers, so constant
and watchful in all her practical decisions and general doctrinal
statements, no doubt helped to make her feel both the need and the
licitness of giving full and truthful utterance also to the intense and
swiftly passing feelings of her heart.
One such utterance is specially to the point. She had already been
for eleven years the much-helped penitent of that utterly devoted
priest-friend Don Marabotto, when, in January 1510, he overheard her
(the extant report of the scene is certainly his own and contemporary
with the event) saying to God, shut up alone, as she thought, in
one of her rooms: “There is no creature that understands me. I find
myself alone, unknown, poor, naked, a stranger and different from
all the world.” Yet this does not prevent her finding comfort and,
indirectly, even physical improvement, in and from Marabotto’s sympathy
and words, when these are offered to her not many hours later on.[67]
The abnormally rapid and complete change of feeling depicted here, no
doubt occurred during the last eight months of her life, long after
her health had begun to break up permanently; and cannot directly
illustrate her frame of mind during the years 1474-1499, when she was
in health and relatively strong. Still, she was clearly ever of a
high-strung, intense temperament; and her health was already seriously
impaired when, in 1499, she spoke the words concerning the utter
loneliness of that whole quarter of a century. And if the emphatic
words, spoken to God Himself in 1510, were compatible with confession,
and, indeed, a certain kind of continuous direction, at the very time
and during eleven years before they were spoken: her words uttered
in 1499 to Marabotto, will have been compatible with at least some
confession during a period of years of which the first lay almost a
whole generation behind her. And we shall find at least two other cases
in which Marabotto appears, on Catherine’s own authority, as having
clearly misunderstood the nature of some phenomena connected with
herself.[68]
Yet for all this, the account which we shall have to give later on
of the characteristics of her confessions to Marabotto,--an account
directly derived from himself,--makes it practically impossible to
assume that even simple confession was practised, at all or otherwise
than quite exceptionally, during those many years.
Now we have, as a fourth point, to remember that although the Fourth
Council of the Lateran, in the year 1215, had decreed that “All
the Faithful of either sex, after coming to years of discretion,
are bound to confess all their sins at least once a year”:[69] yet
already St. Thomas Aquinas had, in his Commentary on the Sentences of
Peter Lombard, composed in 1252-1257, taught that, since the divine
institution and obligation extends, strictly speaking, only to the
confession of mortal sins, “he that has not committed any mortal sins
is not bound to confess venial sins, but it is sufficient for the
fulfilling of the Church’s precept, for him to present himself to the
priest, and to declare himself free from the consciousness of mortal
sin.”[70] And nothing has changed, as to the nature and extent of
this obligation, since Catherine’s time. The Council of Trent, the
decrees of which were confirmed by Pope Pius IV in 1564, more than
half-a-century after her death, carefully explains that “_all_ the
sins” of the decree of 1215 means all “_mortal_ sins”; and further
declares that “the Church did not, by the Lateran Council, decree that
the faithful should confess,--a thing she knew to be instituted and
necessary by divine right,” but had simply determined the circumstances
and conditions under which this obligatory confession was to take
place.[71] And Father Antonio Ballerini, S.J. (_d._ 1881), gives us
the conclusions, identical with that of St. Thomas, of those great
authorities Francis Suarez (_d._ 1617), Cardinal John de Lugo (_d._
1660), and Hermann Busenbaum (_d._ 1668),--all three, Jesuits like
himself,--and himself endorses their decision. Suarez indeed declares
this view to be the common opinion of Theologians.[72]
3. _Probable course of Catherine’s confession-practice._
With these four points before us, let us attempt to reconstruct some
outline of what really happened in her own case, and try and show what
constituted the specifically Catholic quality of this her practice, so
unusual in the middle and later ages of the Church. We shall, then, do
wisely, I think, by considering that the “twenty-five years,” alleged
by her own self, were, as a strict matter of fact, not more than
twenty-one;[73] that during the four first convert years that preceded
this middle period, just as during the last eleven which succeeded it,
she had recourse to confession with the frequency considered normal
in and for these times, in the case of a daily communicant living in
the world; but that, during the intervening period, she was allowed to
substitute that simple occasional, perhaps only annual, presentation
of herself and declaration to the priest in the place of confession
proper, which we have seen to be considered, in a case of such a purity
of soul as hers, as sufficient for fulfilling the Church’s precept, by
a practical consensus of all the great casuist authorities. And thus we
have here again a memorable, and this time a long-persisting, instance
of how the intrinsic and operative connection between the Individual
and the Social, the Mystical and the Institutional elements of Religion
is not a simple identity or coextension,--a point which we already
found exemplified during the first hours of her convert life.
And the Catholic spirit in this her present course will consist in
her full observance of all to which the Church strictly obliges; in
her readiness at all times to walk in the ordinary way, and in her
repeated attempts, even during this second period, to do so; in her
actually and fervently following the ordinary course whenever she
could, _i.e._ in the first and last period; and finally in her ever
faithfully obeying the promptings of God’s Spirit which, by various
converging spiritual peculiarities, circumstances and means, showed,
with practical plainness, the kind and degree of extraordinary interior
acts and habits which were to be, in large part, _her_ form of the
“Mind of the Church.” For it is indeed certain that the special
characteristic of the Catholic mind is not, necessarily, universally
and finally, the conception and practice of sanctity under the precise
form of the devotional spirit and habits special to the particular part
or period of the Church in which that individual Catholic’s lot may be
cast. What _is_ thus characteristic, is the continuous and sensitive
conviction that there is something far-reaching and important beyond
the Church’s bare precepts, for every soul that aims at sanctity, to
find out and to do; that this something (_sc._ the Church’s mind) is,
always and for all, _presumably_, the most fervent form and degree of
the devotional temper and habits of the Church, as practised in that
time and country; and that it is for God Himself, if He so pleases, to
indicate to the soul that He now wants its fervour to consist in an
observance of the Church’s precepts and spirit under a form and with an
application partially different from the most fervent practice of the
ordinary devotions of that time and place, though this new observance
will be no less costing or heroically self-renouncing than the other.
And this He does usually by slow, often simply cumulative and indirect,
but always solid, painful, and practically unmistakable, because
unsought, means and experiences,--all these attained to well within the
Church. For the Church’s life and spirit, which is but the extension
of the spirit of Christ Himself, is, like all that truly lives at all,
not a sheer singleness, but has a mysterious unity in and by means of
endless variety. Even at any one moment that spirit expresses itself in
numerous variations, by means of various races, rites, orders, schools,
and individuals. And yet not the sum-total of all these simultaneously
present variations is ever as rich as is the sum-total of that spirit’s
successive manifestations in the past. Nor once more can this latter
sum be taken as anticipating all the developments and adaptations which
that ever-living spirit will first occasion and then sanction in His
special organ, the Church. Catherine’s particular, divinely impelled
substitute for the ordinary devotional practice shall be described
later on.
IX. CATHERINE AND INDULGENCES.
A further peculiarity, somewhat analogous to the one just examined,
seems to have characterized her devotional practice--in this case,
throughout her convert life. It had therefore, perhaps, best be
described in this place.
1. _The assertions of the “Vita.”_
Three items of information are furnished by the _Vita_, on one and the
same half-page.
(1) “She had such a hatred of self,” says the _Vita_, “that she did not
hesitate to pronounce this sentence: ‘I would not have grace and mercy,
but justice and vengeance shown to the malefactor.…’”
(2) “For this reason it seemed that she did not even care to gain
the Plenary Indulgences. Not as though she did not hold them in great
reverence and devotion, and did not consider them to be most useful and
of great value. But she would have wished that her own self-seeking
part (_la sua propria parte_) should rather be chastized and punished
as it deserved, than to see it pardoned (_assoluta_), and, by means of
such satisfaction, liberated in the sight of God.”
(3) “She saw the Offended One to be supremely good, and the offender
quite the opposite. And hence she could not bear to see any part of
herself which was not subjected to the divine justice, with a view to
its being thoroughly chastized. And hence, so as not to give this part
any hope of being liberated from the pains due to it, she abstained
from the Plenary Indulgences and also from recommending herself to the
intercessions of others, so as ever to be subject to every punishment
and condemned as she deserved.”[74]
2. _Three points to be noted here._
Here I would note three things.
For one thing, there can be no serious doubt as to the authenticity
of the saying that opens out this group of communications and as to
the substantial accuracy of the two parallel, and (I think) mutually
independent, reports as to her practice: since the saying belongs to
the class of short declarations given in _oratio directa_, which we
shall find to be remarkably reliable throughout the _Vita_; and the
reports testify to something so unusual, so little sympathetic to the
hagiographical mind, so much in keeping with the remainder of her
doctrine and practice, that we cannot believe them misinformed. The
author of the _Dialogo_ evidently fully accepted these three passages,
when, in about 1549, she paraphrases them thus: “She therefore made no
account of her sins, with respect to their punishment, but only because
she had acted against that Immense Goodness”; “She found herself to be
her who alone had committed all the evil, and alone she wanted to make
satisfaction, as far as ever she could, without the help of any other
person.”[75]
For another thing, we have absolutely final contemporary documentary
evidence of the importance attached by herself both to Indulgences,
and the gaining of them (at least by other people), and to Masses and
prayers for the Dead, inclusive of herself when she should be gone. For
as to Indulgences, we have entries in the Cartulary of the Hospital
(under the dates of March 11, April 10, May 29, and August 23, 1510) of
various considerable sums, amounting in all to over £300, paid by the
Hospital, at the first date, for Catherine’s nephew Francesco, at all
the other dates for herself, for the withdrawal of a suspension of the
Indulgences attached to the Hospital Church, and for the transference,
in that year, of the day appointed for their acquisition. Both these
matters were carried out in Rome by means of Catherine’s second nephew,
Cardinal Giovanni Fiesco. This, it is true, is evidence that only
covers the last six months of her life.
But as to Masses and Prayers for her own soul after death, we have (1)
her second Will, of May 19, 1498, where she leaves one share in the
Bank of St. George (£100) to the Observant Franciscans of the Hospital
Church, “who shall be bound to celebrate Masses and Divine Offices for
the soul of Testatrix”; (2) her Codicil, of January 5, 1503, where she
leaves (in addition) £3 apiece to two Monasteries “for the celebration
of Masses for her own soul”; (3) her third Will, of May 18, 1506, which
confirms all this; and (4) her last Will, of March 18, 1509, where
she leaves £3 each to three Monasteries, which are each to “celebrate
thirty Masses for her soul,” £3 to a fourth Monastery for Prayers for
her soul, and £25 to the Franciscans of the Hospital Church for the
celebration of Masses to the same effect.[76]
The reader will at once perceive that these facts are fully compatible
with the attitude so emphatically ascribed to her in the _Vita_, only
if we take these latter statements as expressive of certain intense,
emotional moods; or of some relatively short penitential period; or of
what she did and felt with regard to herself alone and for whilst she
was to live here below, not of what others should do for themselves at
all times and for herself when she was gone.
And finally, we know exactly how and why the doctrine and practice
described in those passages in the _Vita_ were accepted by the
Congregation of Rites, as forming no obstacle to her canonization.
Pope Benedict XIV, in his great classical work on Beatification and
Canonization, says, “After I had ceased to hold the office of Promoter
of the Faith,” (the date will have been between 1728 and 1733,) “I
know that a controversy arose as to the doctrine of a certain _Beata_,
with regard to the truth of which it was possible to have different
opinions.” And after giving this _Beata’s_ doctrine and practice as
these are presented by Catherine’s _Vita_, and citing the arguments
used against their toleration, he proceeds: “But the Postulators
answered (1) that this _Beata_ had not omitted to gain Plenary
Indulgences from any contempt for them, since her veneration for them
was demonstrated by most unambiguous documents” (no doubt Cardinal
Fiesco’s action, in her name and at her expense, in Rome in 1510, is
meant); “(2) that it is the doctrine of very many theologians, that
those do not sin, who do not labour to gain Indulgences because they
desire to make satisfaction in their own persons in this world or
to suffer in the next; (3) that we should not confound safety with
perfection: it appears indeed to be safer to atone for one’s fault both
by one’s own good works _and_ by Indulgences; but not more perfect,
supposing that a man abstains from Indulgences because his love of
God and his detestation of having offended Him are so great that he
desires to make satisfaction to Him, by bearing the whole of the
merited punishment; and (4) that examples are not wanting of perfect
souls, that have, for a while, desired to bear, even for the sins of
others, the pains of Hell itself, although without falling away from
the friendship and grace of God. And hence the Congregation of Sacred
Rites considered that this doctrine did not militate against the
holiness of the said _Beata_ or against the approbation of her virtues
as heroic.”[77]
X. PECULIARITIES CONCERNING THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS AND INTERCESSORY
PRAYER.
And a third and last peculiarity is particularly instructive as showing
how entirely an unusual, at first sight quietistic, practice is not
restricted, in her case, to specifically Catholic habits.
1. _The facts._
This peculiarity has already appeared in part in the second of the two
accounts as to her attitude towards Indulgences. “She abstained from
recommending herself to the intercession of others.” And this is borne
out, but (as we shall find) with certain unforeseeable restrictions, by
the rest of the _Vita_. As regards even the Saints, one only invocation
of any one of them is on record,--that of St. Benedict in 1474, already
given.
And if she did not ask others for prayers for herself in her own
lifetime, her own prayers for others were evidently rare, were
apparently always concerned with their spiritual welfare, and were
generally produced only under some special interior impulsion. Hence
when asked, in 1496 or later, by Vernazza, in the name of several of
her spiritual children, to pray that God might grant them “some little
drops of His Love,” she answers that “for these I cannot ask anything
from this tender Love; I can but present them in His presence.” This
is, no doubt, because she sees them to be already full of the love of
God. Whereas in 1495 the poor working man, Marco del Sale, is dying
of a cancer in the face, and is in a state of wild impatience: so she
prays most fervently for him. It is true that the _Vita_ adds that she
did so, “having had an interior movement to this effect. For she never
could turn to pray for a particular object, unless she had first felt
herself called interiorly by her Love.” Still, this did not prevent
her, in 1497, from praying most fervently for patience for her husband,
(who was dying from a painful complaint,) simply “because she feared
that he might lose his soul,” and without any other more peculiar
incentive than this.[78]
2. _The rich variety of her life._
Evidently here again, as with the Confessions and Indulgences, her life
and practice were indefinitely varied and spontaneous, and incomparably
richer than the preconceptions and logic of at least some of her
biographers will admit, or indeed than many of her own fervent sayings,
so vividly expressive of certain moments or sides of her career or
character, suggest or even seem to leave possible. But the underlying
meaning and ultimate harmonization of these apparent inconsistencies
between her doctrine and her practice, we can only gradually hope to
find.
CHAPTER IV
CATHERINE’S LIFE FROM 1473 TO 1506 AND ITS MAIN CHANGES AND GROWTH
Let us now attempt, as far as the often scanty and obscure evidence
permits, to give, in the following two chapters, some general account
of the changes and growth observable in her external surroundings,
her human intercourse and social occupation, her physical health and
psychical mood, and above all of those inner experiences and spiritual
apprehensions of hers which dominated all the rest, during each of the
three main periods of her convert life. This general account will,
I trust, suggest the main points for our later investigations, and
will show at once how largely artificial, though necessary, all such
dividing into periods must be, in the case of so deeply unified and
diversified an inner life as Catherine’s.
I. FIRST PERIOD OF CATHERINE’S CONVERT LIFE: GIULIANO’S BANKRUPTCY AND
CONVERSION; THEIR WORK AMONG THE POOR, MARCH 1473 TO MAY 1477.
1. _Giuliano’s affairs. Catherine’s attitude._
The first six months of her first period (this latter we take to have
extended from March 1473 to May 1477) were still spent in Giuliano’s
Palace of the Via Agnese and in his country mansion at Prà.[79] But
all was now swiftly changing, or already greatly changed, both around
her and within. Anxiety, hope, grief, consolation--inasmuch as such
feelings could still for her cluster around events external to her
deepest spiritual life, and could make themselves at all separately
felt during this period of profound absorption in her new large life of
love and penance--must all have centred in her husband. For Giuliano
had by now got his affairs into such disorder as to be unable to keep
up his great social position; and by the autumn of 1473 he had sold his
mansion at Prà, and had vacated and let his palace in Genoa itself.[80]
He was also by now a very sincere convert, in his own manner and
degree; and it was no doubt now that he told Catherine, although
she can hardly have failed to know already, of the existence of a
poor little girl whom, with an apparently ominous indication of weak
indulgence on the part of his widowed mother, he had called Tobia.
We shall be able to prove Catherine’s grand magnanimity and true,
cordial forgiveness--directly, no doubt only for and at a later
period; but the documents will show that she knew all the decisive
circumstances long before, and there is no room for doubt that her
dispositions had changed or grown as little as had her knowledge.
2. _Life in the little house outside the Hospital._
Catherine and Giuliano had now, in the autumn of 1473, moved into a
humble little house, in the midst of artisans, mostly dyers, and of the
poor of various sorts, close to the Hospital of the Pammatone, even
then already a vast Institution. This dwelling is probably identical,
as to the site, with the house still standing at the junction of the
Via S. Giuseppe with the Via Balilla, and which bears on its front
a picture of Saints Catherine Adorna and Camillus of Lellis[81] at
the feet of the Madonna. Since the income remaining to them still
amounted, up to Giuliano’s death in 1497, to the equivalent of some
£1,200 a year,[82] this self-abnegation and humble identification
with the lives of the toiling, nameless poor, must have been an act of
deliberate choice, and not one of any degree of necessity. It was never
suspended or revoked by either of them.
They now agreed together to a life of perpetual continence; and
Giuliano became a Tertiary of the Order of St. Francis,[83] amongst
those attached to the Hospital-Church of the Santissima Annunciata in
Portoria, itself served by Observant Franciscans. Their only little
servant-maid, Benedetta Lombarda, was also a Franciscan Tertiary.
But Catherine herself now shows, in this matter of the Religious
State, an interesting clearing-up of her own special way and form of
sanctity. We saw how much the fervent but inexperienced girl of sixteen
had been moved and had longed to be an Augustinian nun; and now the
sadly experienced wife of twenty-six, even in the midst of her first
convert days, and though surrounded at home, in Church, and in the
Hospital, by Religious of the popular and expansive type presented
by the Franciscans, (a type which her own deep sympathy with, indeed
penetration by, the teaching of the great Franciscan Mystic Jacopone
da Todi, will show to have been closely akin to her own,) manifests no
thought of becoming a Religious, even in the slight degree represented
by the Third Order. And up to her death, thirty-seven years later,
she never wavers on this point. A highly characteristic scene and
declaration illustrative of this attitude of hers will be given further
on.
The Hospital of Pammatone had been founded by Bartolommeo Bosco, one of
those large-hearted merchant princes of whom Genoa has had not a few,
in 1424, in the street of that name; and only quite recently, in 1472,
the Friars of the adjoining Church of the Annunciata had agreed to the
incorporation of their own infirmary for sick poor with Bosco’s larger
institution. Hence Catherine and Giuliano found 130 sick-beds always
occupied by patients, and over 100 foundling girls, who were being
trained as silk-workers, all ready to their hands and service.[84]
Catherine was besides gradually introduced to the poor of the district,
by the _Donne della Misericordia_--ladies devoted to such works of
mercy--and betook herself to her tasks with characteristic directness
and thoroughness.[85] She must first, and once for all, completely
master all squeamishness in this her lowly work. So she betook herself
to cleansing their houses from the most disgusting filth; and she
would take home with her the garments of the poor, covered with dirt
and vermin, and, having cleansed them thoroughly, would herself return
them to their owners. And yet nothing unclean was ever found upon
herself. She also tended the sick in the Hospital and in their homes,
with the most fervent affection, speaking to them of spiritual things
and ministering to their bodily wants, and never avoiding any form of
disease, however terrible.[86]
II. CATHERINE AND TOMMASA FIESCA: THEIR DIFFERENCE OF CHARACTER AND
_ATTRAIT_. PECULIARITY OF CATHERINE’S PENITENCE AND HEALTH DURING THIS
TIME.
1. _Catherine’s penances._
And throughout this first period of four years, her penances were
great. She wore a hair-shirt; she never touched either flesh-meat or
fruit, whether fresh or dried; she lay at night on thorns. And by
nature courteous and affable, she would do great violence to herself by
conversing as little as possible with her relations when they visited
her, and, as to anything further, paying heed neither to herself nor to
them; and she acted thus for the purpose of self-conquest; and if any
one was surprised at it, she took no notice.[87]
2. _Catherine and Tommasina._
But one visitor must, even during this period, have been treated by her
with much of her natural spontaneity and ardent expansiveness. She was
a cousin of her own age, a Fiesca and a married woman like herself;
like herself, too, in the wish, just now awakened, to belong entirely
to God, and in her ultimate complete conversion and ardent love of God.
We can attempt to describe her here, as throwing further light upon
Catherine’s idiosyncrasies, at this period in particular.
Tommasina was different from Catherine in the slow, tentative character
of her first turning to God; and different, too, in the eventual form
of her life; for, when later on a widow, she became first, in 1490,
an Augustinian Canoness at Santa Maria delle Grazie; and then, in
1497, a Dominican Nun at the Monastero Nuovo di San Domenico. This
latter convent she had been given to reform and became its Prioress.
In both houses she was known as Suor Tommasina (Fieschi).[88] She
was different again in that she there spent some of her time in
painting many a religious picture, chiefly of the Pietà, and a highly
symbolical composition, illustrative of the moment of Consecration at
Mass.[89] She executed also in exquisitely fine needlework a piece
which represented, above, God the Father surrounded by many Angels,
and, below, Christ with other figures of Saints. Finally she occupied
herself in writing and produced in original composition a treatise on
the Apocalypse, and another on Denys the Areopagite.
And the future Suor Tommasa showed now some of that precious gift of
humour, denied to her otherwise greater cousin. For, no doubt with a
bright twinkle in her eyes at the sight of Catherine’s characteristic
vehemence of onslaught, Tommasa would declare that Catherine was
pushing her and giving her no quarter; and that it would be a great
humiliation for herself if, after all said and done, she were to turn
back. But any such feeling of even the possibility of such a relapse,
was amazing to Catherine, and she said: “If I were to turn back, I
would wish that my eyes might be put out, and that I should be treated
with every other kind of indignity.”[90]
3. _Peculiarity of Catherine’s penitence._
But such intercourse as this must, during this first period, have been
the exception. For her dominant, closely interrelated characteristics
were now a continuous striving to do things contrary to her natural
bias and an alert looking to do the will of others rather than her
own. She moved about with her eyes bent upon the ground. Six hours a
day were spent in prayer, and this although--perhaps just now in part
because--the body greatly felt the strain: the strongly willing spirit
had dominated the weak flesh. Indeed, during this time she was so full
of interior feeling and so occupied within herself, that she was unable
to speak, except in a tone so low as to be barely audible; she seemed
dead to all exterior things.[91]
And these external circumstances and practices are all only the
setting, material, occasion and expression of this her first period’s
actively penitential spirit, when she was persistently pursued by the
detailed sight of her own particular inclinations, her own particular
sins against God, and God’s particular graces towards her own self.
Her very acts of charity and of friendliness, her very prayers, get
all restricted or prolonged, willed or suffered, as, at least in
part, but so many occasions for a love-impelled, yet still reflective
self-mastery and mortification. And it was no doubt during this time
that, when present one day at a sermon in which the conversion of the
Magdalen was recounted, her heart seemed to whisper to her: “Indeed I
understand,” so similar did her own conversion appear to her to that of
the Magdalen.[92]
4. _Her physical health._
As to her physical health, the fire which she felt in her heart seemed
to dry up and burn her interiorly. And so great a physical hunger would
possess her, that she appeared insatiable; and so quickly did she
digest her food, that it looked as if she could have consumed iron. Yet
she had no inclination to other than ordinary food, and did not fail to
keep all the ordinary fasts and abstinences.[93]
III. CHANGE IN THE TEMPER OF CATHERINE’S PENITENCE, FROM MAY 1474
ONWARDS.
Time wears on, and Catherine is still in the same house, and with the
same health, and with the same companions and occupations, penances
and prayers. But the interior dispositions and emotional promptings,
and the mental apprehension of them all, are gradually changing and
are growing wider and freer and less particularized. “She now began
to experience a more affective way, so that she was often as though
beside herself; and” though still “moved by a great interior thirst
after self-hatred, and by a penetrating contrition, she would often lie
prostrate on the ground”; she would do so, “hardly knowing what she was
doing, yet somehow gaining thus some relief for her heart,” overflowing
as it was with a boundless, profound, but now more and more general,
sorrow and tender love.[94] The note of a spontaneous, expansive,
instinctive love is now growing in predominance in her prayer and human
intercourse; and her very penances, though still performed, are now
often practised from a general unreflective instinct of love-impelled
self-hatred, without any conscious application to any particular
inclinations or sins.
For as to her intercourse with others, she will probably already now
have practised many an act of that beautiful and characteristic,
impulsive, expansive tenderness, of which we shall have a good many
examples from the end of her second period. And as to the character
of her mortifications, we hear the following: “Whilst engaged on such
great and numerous mortifications of all her senses, she was sometimes
asked, ‘Why are you doing this (particular) thing?’ And she would
answer, ‘I do not know, except that I feel myself interiorly drawn
to do so, without any opposition from within. And I think that this
is the will of God; but it is not His will, that I should propose to
myself any (particular) object in so doing.’”[95] I take it that, with
this growing intermittence in the sight of her particular sins, her
Confessions, though still practised, will have become less frequent,
and her Holy Communions more so.
IV. CATHERINE’S GREAT FASTS.
1. _The assertions of the “Vita.”_
And a little later on, again on the Feast of the Annunciation (March
25, 1476),[96] another change took place, a change primarily concerned
with her health, but one which brought out also the deep spirituality
of her religion. On this day she experienced one of those interior
locutions, which are so well authenticated in the lives of so many
interior souls; and “her Love said that He wanted her to keep the Forty
Days, in His company in the Desert. And then she began to be unable
to eat till Easter; on the three Easter Days she was able to eat; and
after these she again did not eat, till she had fulfilled as many days
as are to be found in Lent.”[97] Similarly with regard to Advent. “Up
to Martinmas” (November 12) “she would eat like all the world; and then
her fast would begin, and would continue up to Christmas-Day.” Her
subsequent Lenten fasts are described as beginning with Quinquagesima
Monday and ending on Easter Sunday morning.[98]
2. _Substantial accuracy of these accounts. Three facts to be
remembered._
I take it that there can be no reasonable doubt as to the substantial
accuracy of this account. But the following three facts must be borne
in mind as regards the physical aspect of the matter.
The fast, for one thing, is not an absolute one. The account itself
declares that she now and then drank a tumblerful of water, vinegar,
and pounded rock-salt.[99] And to this must be added both the daily
reception of wine--I suppose as much as a wineglassful--which was,
according to a Genoese custom of that time, received by her, as a kind
of ablution, immediately after her Communion;[100] and such slight
amount of solid food as, when in company, she would force herself to
take and would sometimes, though rarely, manage to retain.[101]
Again, the fast varies partly, in different years, in the date of its
inception; and partly it does not synchronize with the beginning of
the ecclesiastical fast. In the first year her Lenten fast begins on
Lady-Day, in the following years on Quinquagesima Sunday; her Advent
fast begins throughout on Martinmas, November 12.
And finally, the number of such fasts cannot be more than twenty-three
Lents and twenty-two Advents. The MS. of 1547 has preserved the
right tradition of a difference in the numbers of the Lenten and
Advent fasts, but has raised the number of the former to a round,
symmetrical one. It gives twenty-five Lents and twenty-two Advents.
The printed _Vita_ of 1551 levels the numbers respectively down and
up to twenty-three Lents and as many Advents.[102] Some further minor
physical points will be considered in a later chapter.
3. _Effect of these Fasts, and her attitude towards them._
But two other matters are here of direct spiritual interest: the
effect of these fasts on her spiritual efficiency, and her own
two-fold attitude towards them. For we are told, again I think quite
authentically, that during these fasts she was more active in good
works, and felt more bright and strong in health, than usual;[103]
answering thus to one of the tests put forward by Pope Benedict XIV,
for discriminating supernatural, spiritually valuable fasts from
simply natural ones. But with him we can find our surest tests in
what is altogether beyond the range of the physical and psychical:
in her own moral estimate of all these matters. For one thing, there
appears here again that noble shrinking from any singularity of this
kind within herself, and from all notice on the part of others. “This
inability to eat gave her many a scruple at first, ignorant as she
was as to its cause, and ever suspecting some delusion; and she would
force herself to eat, considering that nature required it. And though
this invariably produced vomiting, yet she would make the attempt
again and again.” “She would go to table with the others, and would
force herself to eat and drink a little, so as to escape notice and
esteem as much as possible.”[104] And again here, as in all matters
visible and tangible, she shows an impressive loneliness in the midst
of her more carnal-minded disciples. “She would say within herself,
in astonishment” at their stopping to wonder at things so much on the
surface: “If you but knew another thing, which I feel within myself!”
And she would declare: “If we would rightly estimate the operations
of God, we should wonder more at interior than at exterior things.
This incapacity to eat is indeed an operation of God, but one in
which my will has no part; hence I cannot glory in it. Nor is there
cause for our wondering at it, since for God this is as though a mere
nothing.”[105]
4. _The fasts form no part of her penitence._
These fasts, although beginning within her first period are not
characteristic of it; and her biographers rightly put them into a
chapter distinct from her penances, properly speaking. These penances
will have continued alongside of, and in between, these fasts for about
a year after the beginning of the latter. And then at last, at the
end of this first period of four years, “all thought of such (active)
mortifications was, in an instant, taken from her mind in such guise
that, even had she wished to carry out such mortifications, she would
have been unable.” For “the sight of her sins was now taken from her
mind, so that she henceforth did not catch a glimpse of them,--as
though they had all been cast into the depths of the sea.”[106]
V. SECOND, CENTRAL PERIOD OF CATHERINE’S CONVERT LIFE, 1477-1499: ITS
SPECIAL SPIRITUAL FEATURES.
We now come to the second, longest, and central period of her life,
1477-1499. But though at first sight Chapters VI to XLII, and XLV
of the _Vita_ would seem exclusively to treat of these twenty-two
years, examination proves this to be far from the case. If little or
nothing from the first period is to be found there, very much from the
third is embedded in those pages. And this scantiness of information
springs from the simple fact that, during these twenty-two years,
her inner life is led by herself alone, without any direct human aid
of companionship; and her sufficient health, and the correspondingly
large amount of external activity among the sick and poor, leave her
but little or no time for those conferences and discourses amongst
friends, of which her last period is full. This dearth of evidence is
all the more to be regretted, since these central years represent the
culmination of her balance and many-sided power.
1. _Interior change._
For the first two years of this time she and Giuliano continued to
live in their small house of the Portoria quarter, very busy, both of
them, amongst the sick and poor, as well in the houses round about as
in the Hospital. Indeed, externally, little or no change can have been
apparent. It was the interior change, the moving away from the actively
and directly penitential state into one of expansive love and joy,
which alone, as yet, marked a new period.
2. _The Three Rules of Love. The Divine method of the soul’s
purification._
Some time during these new beginnings it must have been that “her Love
once said within her mind: ‘Observe, little daughter, these three
rules. Never say “I will,” or “I will not.” Never say “mine,” but ever
say “our.” Never excuse thyself, but be ever ready to accuse thyself.’”
And another time He said: “When thou sayest the ‘Our Father,’ take for
thy foundation ‘Thy Will be done.’ In the Hail Mary, take ‘Jesus.’ In
Holy Scripture take ‘Love,’ with which thou wilt ever go straightly,
exactly, lightly, attentively, swiftly, enlightenedly, without error,
without guide, and without the means of other creatures, since Love
suffices unto itself to do all things without fear or weariness, so
that martyrdom itself appears unto it a joy.”[107]
But this her love, just because it is so real and from God, appears
indeed to fill her at any given moment, yet it grows and shows
her, at each fresh stage, both its own incompleteness and her own
imperfection, in her and its former stages. “At any one moment the love
of that moment seemed to me to have attained to its greatest possible
perfection. But then, in the course of time, my spiritual sight having
become clearer, I saw that it had had many imperfections.” “Day by day
I perceive that motes have been removed, which this Pure Love casts
out and eliminates. This work is done by God, and man is not aware of
it at the time, and cannot then see these imperfections; indeed God
continuously allows man to see his (momentary) operation as though it
were without imperfection, whilst all the time He, before Whom the
heavens are not pure, is not ceasing from removing imperfections from
his soul.”[108]
As ever throughout her life so now also, consolations are not the aim
and end, but only the actual effects of her devotedness, and the ever
fresh incentives to increased disinterestedness and self-surrender.
And, with regard to these consolations, she again strove to escape all
notice. “She would at times have her mind so full of divine love, as to
be all but incapable of speaking; and would be in so great a transport
of feeling as to be obliged to hide herself so as not to be seen.
She would lose the use of her senses and remain like one dead; and,
to escape the occurrence of such things, she would force herself to
remain in company as much as possible. And she would say to her Lord:
‘I do not want that which proceedeth from Thee, but I want Thee alone,
O tender Love.’ But just because her love was so sincere and she fled
from consolations, her Lord gave her of them all the more.”[109]
3. _Her Ecstasies._
If on one of the many occasions when she had hidden herself away in
some secret spot, she was ever discovered by any one, they would find
her walking up and down, and seeming as though she would wish to do
so without end; or they would come upon her with her face in her
hands, prostrate on the ground, entranced, and with feelings beyond
description or conception. “These ecstasies would almost always last
three or four hours; and if, on coming to herself, she spoke of the
wonders she had seen, there was no one to understand her, and so she
kept silence.” “And if called during one of these trances, she would
not hear, even though they did so loudly.”[110]
This inattention would, however, occur only in case the call was simply
one of curiosity. For on other occasions “she would remain as though
dead for six hours; but on being called to the doing of any duty,
however trifling it might seem, she would instantly arise and respond
and go about the doing of this her obligation. And she would thus leave
all, without any kind of trouble, according to her wont of flying from
self-will as though it were the devil. And coming thus forth from her
hiding-place she would have her face flushed, so as to look like a
cherub, and to seem to have upon her lips the ‘who then shall separate
me from the love of Christ?’ of the glorious Apostle.” And “on thus
arising from those trances, she seemed to feel stronger both in body
and in soul,”[111] as in the case of the fasting.
Even in the midst of her work absorptions would occur like unto these
in all but their length of duration: “At times her hands would sink,
unable to go on, and weeping she would say, ‘O my Love, I can no more’;
and would thus sit for a while with her senses alienated, as though
she had been dead. And this would occur oftener at one time than at
another, according to the varying fulness of experience present in that
purified mind.”[112]
4. _Pure Love, independent of any particular state or form of life._
And she was full of the conviction, and cared much for the formal
acknowledgment on the part of others, that the possession and the
increase of the most perfect love is independent of any particular
state or form of life, and is directly dependent upon two things
only, the grace of God and the generosity of the human will. “One
day a Friar and Preacher,[113] perhaps to test her or because of some
mistaken notion, told her that he himself was better fitted for loving
than she, because he having entered Religion and renounced all things
both within and without, and she being married to the world as he was
to Religion, he found himself more free to love God, and more acted
upon by Him. And the Friar went on, and alleged many other reasons.
But when had spoken much and long, an ardent flame of pure love seized
upon Catherine, and she sprang to her feet with such fervour as to
appear beside herself, and she said: ‘If I thought that your habit had
the power of gaining me one single additional spark of love, I should
without fail take it from you by force, if I were not allowed to have
it otherwise. That you should merit more than myself, is a matter that
I concede and do not seek, I leave it in your hands; but that I cannot
love Him as much as you, is a thing that you will never by any means
be able to make me understand.’ And she said this with such force
and fervour, that all her hair came undone, and, falling down, was
scattered upon her shoulders. And yet all the while this her vehement
bearing was full of grace and dignity.--And when back at home, and
alone with her Lord, she exclaimed: ‘O Love, who shall impede me from
loving Thee? Though I were, not only in the world as I am, but in a
camp of soldiers, I could not be impeded from loving Thee.’”[114]
There is probably no scene recorded for us, so completely
characteristic of Catherine at her deepest: the breadth and the
fulness, the self-oblivion and the dignity, the claimlessness and the
spiritual power--all are there.
VI. CATHERINE AND GIULIANO MOVE INTO THE HOSPITAL IN 1479, NEVER AGAIN
TO QUIT IT. SHE IS MATRON FROM 1490 TO 1495.
The special character, both in form and content, of Catherine’s
spiritual life and doctrine will occupy us in Chapter VI. Here we
have as yet specially to busy ourselves with its external and social
occasions and effects. And these effects were both large and constant;
indeed they were on the increase up to 1497, two years before this
second period comes to a close.
1. _Catherine and Giuliano occupy two small rooms in the Hospital._
For in 1479 the couple shift their quarters from outside the Hospital
to within that great building, and there, for eleven years, they
together occupy two little rooms, living without pay and at their own
expense, but entirely devoted to the care of the poor sick and dying
and of the orphans collected there.[115] Indeed Catherine never again
lived outside the walls of the Hospital during the thirty-one years
that still remained to her on earth.
2. _Catherine’s double life here, 1479-1490._
And here in these rooms, and for eleven years, she worked among
the sick, as but one of their many nurses. The spacious, high,
white-washed, stone-flagged wards, with the great tall windows shedding
floods of glaring light or cheering sunshine, according to the season
without and to the mood of the poor sick within, stand still as
they stood in Catherine’s day. True, new wards have been added; the
lay female Nurses of her time have been in part replaced by Nursing
Sisters, and the Observant Friars by Capuchins; much, very much has
been discovered since, both as to man’s body and as to the facts and
functions of his mind; all things, and man’s interpretation of all
things, seem as though irretrievably changed. And yet the mystery of
devoted love, its necessity, difficulty, and actual operative presence,
as an occasional pang and aspiration in us all, as a visible, dominant
influence in some of us, remain with and in us still unchanged, with
all the freshness of an elemental force, indestructible, inexhaustible.
This devoted work of Catherine, this her serving of the sick “with
the most fervent affection, and immense solicitude,”[116] had also
the remarkable circumstance about it that, “notwithstanding all
this her attentive,” outward-looking “care, she never was without
the consciousness of her tender Love; nor again did she, because
of this consciousness, fail in any practical matter concerning the
Hospital.”[117]
3. _Matron of the Hospital, 1490-1496._
And this double life continued thus, and grew in depth and breadth. And
at the end of fourteen years of such humble service, she was, in 1490,
appointed Matron (_Rettora_) of the whole Institution, apparently the
same year as that in which her now widowed cousin Tommasina entered the
Augustinian Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie. During the six years
in which she held this office, she had much administrative business and
responsibility weighing upon her. Large sums of money passed through
her hands, and she always managed to spend and to account for them with
the greatest care and success. Indeed “her accounts were never found
wrong by a single _danaro_ (farthing).”[118]
VII. CATHERINE AND THE PLAGUE. THE OUTBREAK OF 1493.
It must have been after she had thus shown a rare devotedness
and talent in an ordinary Nurse’s work, and had next, as Matron,
manifested, for some years, a remarkable administrative ability, that,
in 1493, she rose, in both capacities, to the very height of heroism
and efficiency.
1. _Catherine’s general activity._
Early in January of that year, quite exceptionally cold weather visited
the city: the harbour was frozen over; and early in the spring the
Plague broke out so fiercely, and raged so long--till the end of
August--that of those who remained in the stricken city, four-fifths
succumbed to the terrible disease. Most of the rich and noble, all
those that did not occupy any official post, fled from the town. But
Catherine not only remained at her post, but she it was no doubt
who organized, or helped to organize, the out-of-door ambulance and
semi-open-air wards which we know to have been instituted at this
juncture on the largest scale. The great open space immediately at the
back of and above the Hospital, where now still stretch the public
gardens of the Acquasola, she managed to cover with rows of sailcloth
tents, and appointed special Doctors (mostly Lombards), Nurses, and
Priests and Franciscan Tertiaries, for the physical and spiritual care
of their occupants. Throughout the weeks and months of the visitation
she was daily in their midst, superintending, ordering, stimulating,
steadying, consoling, strengthening this vast crowd of panic-stricken
poor and severely strained workers.
2. _The pestiferous woman._
And “on one occasion, she found” here, “a very devout woman, a Tertiary
of St. Francis, dying of” this “pestilential fever. The woman lay there
in her agony, speechless for eight days. And Catherine constantly
visited her, and would say to her, ‘Call Jesus.’ Unable to articulate,
the woman would move her lips; and it was conjectured that she was
calling Him as well as she could. And Catherine, when she saw the
woman’s mouth thus filled, as it were, with Jesus, could not restrain
herself from kissing it with great and tender affection. And in this
way she herself took this pestilential fever, and very nearly died of
it. But, as soon as ever she had recovered, she was back again at her
work, with the same great attention and diligence.”[119]
How much there is in this little scene! Beautiful, utterly
self-oblivious impulsiveness; a sleepless sense of the omnipresence
of Christ as Love, and of this Love filling all things that aspire
and thirst after it, as spontaneously as the liberal air and the
overflowing mother’s breast fill and feed even the but slightly
aspiring or the painfully labouring lungs and the eager, helpless
infant mouth; swift, tender, warm, whole-hearted affection for this
outwardly poor and disfigured, but inwardly rich and beautiful
fellow-creature and twin-vessel of election; an underlying virile
elasticity of perseverance and strenuous, cheerful, methodical
laboriousness; all these things are clearly there.
Only when everything had again returned to its normal condition did
she once more restrict herself to the administrative work of the
Hospital.[120]
VIII. CATHERINE AND ETTORE VERNAZZA, 1493-1495.
It must have been during this epidemic of 1493 that Catherine first got
to know, or at least first to work with, a man hardly less remarkable
than herself.
1. _Ettore’s family, marriage, and philanthropic work._
The Genoese notary Ettore Vernazza, Catherine’s junior by some
twenty-three years, (as in the cases of his still greater
contemporaries and compatriots, Columbus, Pope Julius II, and Andrea
Doria, the year of his birth remains uncertain, but is probably 1470,)
was a scion of the ancient house of Vernaccia, which derived its name
from a wine-producing village on the Eastern Riviera. A Riccobono
Vernaccia had been Chancellor of Genoa, as far back as 1345. Ettore,
the first of the family to write his name Vernazza, was the son of
the Notary Pietro Vernaccia and of Battistina Spinola, his wife. A
sister of his, Marietta, married into the Fieschi family.[121] And if
Catherine really did go among the pestiferous sick, she can hardly
have failed to meet Ettore, now twenty-three years old. For his eldest
daughter, the Augustinian Canoness, the Venerable Battista Vernazza,
a most careful writer and one full of a life-long vivid remembrance
of her father, in an account of Ettore, written by her in Genoa in
1581 (she was born in 1497, four years after the event she describes),
tells of “a great compassion which he had conceived when still very
young, at the time that the pestilence raged in Genoa, and when he used
to go around to aid the poor, and when he found that, by means of a
preparation of cassia, he could bring them back from (certain) death to
life.”[122]
2. _Ettore’s character; Catherine’s chief biographer._
Ettore was, and he kept and made himself, and rare graces fashioned
him ever increasingly into, a man of fine and keen, deep and
world-embracing mind and heart, of an overflowing, ceaseless activity,
and of a will of steel. To him, the earliest and perhaps up to the
end the most intimate, certainly the most perceptive, of Catherine’s
disciples and chroniclers, we owe the transmission of many of the
reminiscences of her conversion and early strivings (no doubt
primarily derived from her own self), and of probably more than half
of such authentic sayings and discourses of hers, as were recorded
contemporaneously with their utterance. Indeed all that remains to us
of written testimony, contemporaneous in this strict sense of the word,
and that is other than legal documents, can, up to 1499, be safely
attributed to him. And all such constituents of the now sadly mixed up,
and most varyingly valuable, materials and successive layers of the
_Vita ed Opere_ as can with probability be assigned to his composition,
are characterized by a remarkable clearness and consistency, restraint
and refinement, elasticity and freshness of spiritual apprehension
and sympathy. Thus Ettore’s influence back upon the formation of
Catherine’s literary image and of our entire, especially of our
authentic, conception of her, was predominant, and her influence
upon his whole life was decisive; and hence his life can be rightly
taken as an indefinite extension and new application and necessary
supplementation of her own life and doctrine. I shall then, for both
these reasons, try and work up what we can recover concerning the
successive stages of his intercourse with Catherine and of the growth
of his own life up to her death, into the corresponding vicissitudes of
her remaining years.
It must have been two years later (1495) that Vernazza became her
disciple; and probably some two or three years still further on, that
Ettore began to keep (no doubt at first only quite occasional) records
of her Sayings and Doings.[123]
IX. CATHERINE’S HEALTH BREAKS DOWN, 1496; OTHER EVENTS OF THE SAME YEAR.
The year 1496 is marked by various events external and internal.
1. _Three external changes._
In June, or some time before, Vernazza marries the beautiful
Bartolommea Ricci, of the distinguished family of that name. On
the 17th of June Giuliano sells his Palace in the Via St. Agnese.
And, probably at Midsummer, perhaps at Michaelmas, Catherine, forced
to do so by increasing physical infirmities, resigns her office of
Matron.[124]
2. _End of the extraordinary Fasts._
Catherine “was now no more able to have a care of the government of
the Hospital or of her own little house” (within its precincts) “owing
to her great bodily weakness. She would now find it necessary, after
Communion, to take some food to restore her bodily strength, and this
even if it was a fast day.” We thus get the beginning of a third
period with regard to such fasting powers. In the first, she had done
as all the world, but had been able to keep all the Church fasts and
abstinences. In the second, she had, during Lent and Advent, eaten
little or nothing, and had, during the remainder of the time, lived as
she had done before. And now, for the rest of her life, her eating and
fasting are entirely fitful and intermittent, and she has to abandon
all (at least systematic) attempts to keep even the ordinary Church
fasts and abstinences.
If we are determined to insist on the accuracy of the “twenty-three
Lents and twenty-two Advents” of her extraordinary fasts affirmed
already by MS. “A,” we shall have to understand this present inability
to fast as applying, till after Lent 1496, only to the times outside
of Lent and Advent, since this fasting period cannot be made to begin
earlier than Lent 1476. I take it that in this, as certainly in most
other cases, there was, in reality, a much more gradual transition than
the _Vita_ accounts would lead one to expect.
3. _She continues within the Hospital precincts. Her two maid-servants._
Catherine had ceased to be Matron, but she did not leave the ample
precincts of the Hospital; indeed she continued in the separate little
house, which she had, probably since 1490, been occupying with
Giuliano. But it will be better to describe her abode a little later
on, when we can be quite sure as to its identity.
She had now, as I think had been the case since soon after she had
left her Palace, two maids in her service: the widow and Franciscan
Tertiary, Benedetta Lombarda, who appears, already then as an old and
valued servant, in Giuliano’s will of October 1494, and who never left
Catherine till her death; and a younger, unmarried maid, either Mariola
Bastarda or a certain Antonietta. Argentina del Sale, too, will have
often, perhaps continually, been about Catherine, aiding her in various
ways; but she will not as yet have been living under the same roof with
her. As we shall find, this little perfervid and untrained intelligence
became the instrument, or at least the occasion, of the introduction of
the largest legendary incident into the ultimate _Vita_ of her mistress.
X. EVENTS OF 1497.
The next year, 1497, is marked by two events, of all but contradictory
import and effect.
1. _Birth of Tommasina (Battista) Vernazza._
On April 15 Vernazza’s first child, a daughter, is born; and Catherine
is her God-mother and holds her at the Font. Dottore Tommaso Moro, a
learned lawyer friend of Ettore, is the God-father, and the child is
given his name and is called Tommasina. What would Catherine have felt
or said had she foreseen the vicissitudes--they will occupy us in due
course--through which this, her fellow God-parent, was to pass, during
the storms of that Religious Revolution which were to break out so soon
after her death? She would, we may be sure, have at all events been
glad at the action and influence of her God-daughter towards and upon
her God-father, in those sad and most difficult times.
2. _Giuliano’s death._
And Giuliano was gravely ill ever since the beginning of the year,
if not before; and some time in August or September he died.[125] He
had been suffering long from a chronic and most painful illness; and
towards the end, “he became very impatient; and Catherine, fearful
lest he should lose his soul, withdrew into another chamber, and there
cried aloud for his salvation unto her tender Love, ever repeating
with tears and sighs these words alone: ‘O Love, I demand this soul of
Thee; I beg Thee, give it me, for indeed Thou canst do so.’ And having
persevered thus for about half-an-hour with many a plaint, she was
given at last an interior assurance of having been heard. And returning
to her husband, she found him all changed and peaceful in his ways,
and giving clear indications, both by words and signs, that he was
fully resigned to the will of God.” And “some time after his death she
said to a spiritual son of hers,” no doubt Vernazza: “‘My son, Messer
Giuliano has gone; and you know well that he was of a somewhat wayward
nature, whence I suffered much mental pain. But my tender Love, before
that he passed from this Life, certified me of his salvation.’ And
Catherine, having spoken these words, showed signs of regret at having
uttered them; and he was discreet and did not answer this remark of
hers, but turned the conversation to other topics.”[126] At all events
this conversation is thoroughly authentic, and Catherine’s reserve,
and her regret at having somewhat broken through her usual restraint,
are profoundly characteristic: the contributors to and redactors of
her Life have been increasingly blind, or even opposed, to all such
beautifully spontaneous and human little shynesses and regrets for
momentary indiscretions.
3. _Giuliano’s Will._
Giuliano had, by his Will of the 20th October 1494, ordered his body
to be buried in the Hospital Church; and this was now carried out by
Catherine. A vault of some dimensions must have been made or bought,
since later both she herself and Argentina del Sale declared their wish
to be buried in Giuliano’s “monument.” Perhaps the wish of the latter
was carried out.
But Giuliano had left two far more important and difficult matters to
the management of Catherine,--matters which, indeed, were respectively
full of pain and of anxiety for her,--Thobia, and his share in the
Island of Scios. As to Thobia, he had left £500 to the Protectors of
the Hospital, among which were reckoned £200 which he had already paid
them through his late mother, Thobia Adorna, for the keep of this
daughter of his, and had warmly recommended her to their kind care; and
had arranged, in case they refused this responsibility, that Thobia
(who must by now have been quite twenty-six years of age) should be
regularly paid the interest on this money. He also left to Catherine,
for payment to “a certain person in Religion,”--possibly a member of
a Third Order, and whose identity is carefully concealed, but who
cannot fail to be Thobia’s mother--“£150, in repayment of the same sum,
borrowed from her by himself and the said Catherine,”--money which this
poor mother will have spent on the child’s keep, up to the time when
Giuliano told his story to Catherine.
As to his two _carati_ (shares) in the lands of the Island of Scios,
farmed by the Genoese Merchant Company “Maona,” he desires that,
if sold, his cousins Agostino and Giovanni Adorno shall be able to
buy these _carati_ for a lower price than would be required of any
other purchaser. There are also elaborate conditions and alternatives
attached to a legacy of £2,000 to his unmarried nephew Giovanni
Adorno, with a view to his marrying and having legitimate children: an
anxiety which of itself would show how sincere had been Giuliano’s own
conversion, and which was evidently not far-fetched, since in this very
Will he leaves £125 to a natural sister of his, Catherine, daughter of
his father Jacobo, for the boarding (no doubt during the latter years
of her life) of his late mother, Thobia Adorna.
Giuliano had also left Catherine herself £1,000,--a return of her
marriage dowry, and £100 from himself; and in addition “all garments,
trinkets, gold, silver, cash, furniture, and articles of vertu, which
might be found either in his dwelling-place or elsewhere.” And he
does so because he “knows and recognizes that the said Catherine, his
beloved wife and heiress, has ever behaved herself well and laudably
towards himself,” and “wants to provide the means for her continuing
to lead, after his death, her quiet, peaceful, and spiritual mode of
life.” And he adds the condition that, “if the said Catherine were
to proceed to a second marriage (a thing which he does not think she
will ever do), then he deprives her of all the legacies and rights and
duties of heirship mentioned in this Will, and confers them upon the
honourable Office of the Misericordia of Genoa,”--a society with and
for which, as we have seen, Catherine had worked so much and so well.
Altogether Giuliano had left by this Will about £6,000 for Catherine
to allot and appropriate; and quite £4,000 of this sum-total demanded
careful and even anxious consideration, whilst £650 of it could not but
provoke painful memories and make a call upon all her generosity. And
by his Codicil of January 1497, he had given her still greater latitude
of action, by declaring that, as regarded his legacy to the Hospital,
Catherine should have full power and leave to abrogate or to modify
it, according to her will and pleasure.[127] Thus these documents
constitute an impressive proof of Giuliano’s full trust in the wisdom,
balance of mind and magnanimity of his wife, now herself already so
broken in health.
4. _Catherine’s execution of Giuliano’s Will._
It is nine months after Giuliano’s death, on May 19, 1498, that we can
watch and see how Catherine has been attempting to execute her trust,
and how her nature has responded to these various difficult calls
upon it, and to the claims of her own family. She first of all, then,
orders her body to be buried in the same grave with her husband, in the
Hospital Church; and that only the Friars and Clergy of the Hospital
shall be present at the funeral; and leaves £10 for her obsequies and
£50 for Masses for herself. She next leaves to the Priest Blasio Cicero
four shares of the Bank of St. George (about £200), of which he is to
pay £150 to a certain female Religious, in satisfaction for a certain
debt. And she abrogates Giuliano’s legacy to the Hospital, and, in its
place, herself leaves it four shares of St. George’s (at the time about
£200, but always tending to increase in value), in liquidation of the
£300 that remained unpaid from among the £500 of that legacy. She next
leaves to Benedetta Lombarda one share of Saint George’s, in addition
to the similar share left her by Giuliano; and to “Antonietta, dwelling
with Testatrix, £25, in case she shall live with her up to her death.”
As to the two _carati_, she leaves them to Giovanni Adorno, in lieu
of the money bequeathed to him by Giuliano. As to her own relations,
she leaves two shares of St. George’s apiece to her two nieces Maria
and Battista, the daughters of her eldest brother Jacobo, for their
marriage portions; and, if they all die before marriage, then all this
money is to go to their father. She leaves £10 to her Augustinian
Canoness sister Limbania; and institutes her three brothers Jacobo,
Giovanni and Lorenzo, and their heirs, her residuary legatees.
Here four things are noticeable. Catherine has herself undertaken the
expenses of Thobia’s keep; the apparent lessening on her part of the
sum originally apportioned for the purpose by Giuliano is doubtless
only apparent, and must proceed from the same cause which has produced
a similar apparent diminution in the amount of Giuliano’s legacy to
his nephew from £2,000 to £1,500. In the next place, this is the only
one out of the couple’s four Wills, in which the second maid is not
Mariola Bastarda, but a certain Antonietta. Catherine feels uncertain
as to whether Antonietta will persevere in her service to the end;
and we shall find that she has again disappeared in Catherine’s next
Will of 1506, and that Mariola has again taken up her old place. We
shall find that a story, of which the authenticity and significance
are most difficult to fix, attaches without doubt to one or the other
of these maids. In the third place, Catherine does not sell the two
_carati_, but leaves them, in lieu of the money bequeathed to him, to
Giovanni Adorno; no doubt from the feeling that thus, at her death,
this her share in the government and exploitation of the Greek island
would be in the hands of a man in the prime of life, who could help to
check malpractices. And lastly, she shows a generous forgiveness of
Giuliano, a delicate magnanimity towards Thobia and Thobia’s mother,
and a thoughtful affection for all her own near and grown-up relations,
by ordering her body to be buried in the same grave with Giuliano;
by herself undertaking the charges of Thobia’s keep, and appointing a
priest by name for handing over Giuliano’s legacy to the still unnamed
mother of Thobia; and by remembering her sister, although she had long
been provided for in her Convent, her three brothers, who were no doubt
indefinitely richer than herself, and especially her two marriageable
nieces. Altogether, of the £2,304 definitely accounted for in the
Will, she leaves £69 for her own funeral and for Masses for herself;
£400 for Thobia and her mother; £210 to her own relations; £125 to
servants; and £1,500 to her husband’s nephew. There is no trace here of
any indifference to the natural ties of kindred, or of an abstraction
of mind rendering her incapable of a careful consideration and firm
decision in matters of business: a point which we shall find to be of
much importance, later on.
5. _Ettore’s “Mandiletto”-work._
In this year, too, if not already in the previous one, Vernazza founded
the institution of the “Mandiletto.” Still a young man--for he was
now at most but twenty-eight--Ettore had been noticing, in his work
among the poor, how much misery of all kinds obtained in commercial,
money-making, hazard-loving Genoa, amongst persons who, even though
ill, refused to take refuge in the hospitals; and who, however poor
at present, had known better, even brilliant days, and were too proud
to beg, or even to accept alms from any one who could recognize them.
And hence he now organized a system for discovering and visiting such
persons in their own homes and for minimizing their pain in accepting
help, by arranging that the members of this little fraternity should
never visit such houses, except with some kind of little veil or
handkerchief (_fazzoletto_, _mandiletto_) applied to their faces.[128]
Catherine, who had helped the Uffizio della Misericordia so much, and
who herself so greatly disliked being noticed or even simply seen
whenever she was doing or suffering anything at all out of the common,
had no doubt, at least in a general way, inspired this beautifully
delicate means of preserving and sparing the bashfulness of the giver
and the dignity of the recipient. Throughout the remaining years of her
life she must have cared to hear Vernazza’s report as to the progress
of this work.
XI. BEGINNING OF HER THIRD, LAST PERIOD; END OF THE EXTRAORDINARY
FASTS; FIRST RELATIONS WITH DON MARABOTTO.
But it is in the next year, 1499, that we reach the actual beginning of
the third and last period of Catherine’s Convert life.
1. _End of the Fasts; transfer of the “carati.”_
Some of the events of this year are again predominantly external, or
but continuations or consequences of previous inclinations of her will.
It must have been at the end of the Lent of this spring-time that all
extraordinary fasting-power, of a kind that could be foreseen and
that more or less synchronized with the ecclesiastical season, left
her for good and all. And she had gone on feeling strongly her share
of responsibility for the government of that far-off island. Hence
she betook herself, on September 18 of this year, with the Notary
Battista Strata, who has drawn up nine out of the fourteen Legal Acts
of Giuliano and herself, to the great palace of the Cardinal Giuliano
della Rovere, who, four years later, became Pope Julius II. This palace
stood by the (now destroyed) Church of San Tommaso, and was at this
time the residence of Giovanni Adorno. And there, in the great Loggia
looking south, Catherine dictated the substance of an Act of Cession
then and there to her husband’s nephew of those two _carati_, which
weighed so heavily on her mind. Perhaps Giovanni was in poor health,
and Catherine was too eager to eschew her responsibility in the matter
to be willing to wait any longer.[129]
2. _Beginning of Catherine’s relations with Don Marabotto._
The chief event, however, from the point of view of her inner life,
and which gives us a second close and most important eyewitness for
her last period, was the beginning of her spiritual relations with Don
Marabotto.[130] “At the end of the twenty-five years during which she
had persevered the way of God without the means of any creature,” says
the _Vita_, “the Lord gave her a priest, to take care both of her soul
and of her body; a spiritual man and one of holy life, to whom God gave
light and grace to understand His operations within her. He had been
appointed Rector of the Hospital; and hence was in a position to hear
her Confession, say Mass for her, and give her Holy Communion according
to her convenience.”[131] Now the rare and profound isolation and
independence of her middle period render this turning to and finding
of human help specially significant; the numerous sayings addressed
to her Confessor to be found throughout the _Vita_ were all, with the
sole exception of those contained in the Conversion-scene, spoken to
Marabotto and transmitted by him to us;[132] and probably at least half
of the narrative of her Life and well-nigh all her Passion are due to
Don Marabotto’s pen. It is then important, and it is possible to get a
fairly clear idea as to the sort of man he was.
3. _Don Marabotto’s family and character; Catherine’s attitude towards
him._
Don Cattaneo came from a stock even more ancient and distinguished
than that of Vernazza. A Marabotto had had a lawsuit with the Bishop
of Genoa in 1128; Roggiero Marabotto had lent money to the King of
Sardinia in 1164; Martino Marabotto had been Ambassador to Rome,
Florence, and Lucca in 1256; Pelagio of that name had been Notary to
the Mint in 1435; Giorgio, a Doctor of Medicine in 1424; Ambrosio,
Lieutenant-Governor of Corsica in 1459. And the family, like the
Fieschi, had always been Guelph: Federico Marabotto had armed nine
galleys against the Ghibellines and had had a narrow escape from the
latter, during a dark night of 1330; and Antonio and Domenico were
known Guelph leaders in 1450 and 1452. Indeed the latter was Procurator
to the Fieschi family in 1443, and thus anticipated, by sixty years
and on a larger scale, Don Cattaneo’s management of Catherine Fiesca’s
modest affairs.[133]
Don Cattaneo himself we find ever gentle, patient, devoted and
full of unquestioning reverence towards Catherine; most valuably
accurate and detailed in his reproduction of things, in proportion
to their tangibleness; naïf and without humour, thoroughly matter of
fact, readily identifying the physical with the spiritual, and thus
often, unconsciously, all but succeeding in depriving Catherine’s
spirit, for us who have so largely to see her with his eyes, of much
of its specially characteristic transcendence and of its equally
characteristic ethical and spiritual immanence. Such a mind would
appear better fitted to follow,--at a respectful distance,--than to
lead such a spirit, as Catherine’s; and, indeed, to be more apt to help
her as a man of business than as a man of God. As a matter of fact,
however, he was quite evidently of very great help and consolation,
even in purely spiritual matters, to Catherine, during these last
eleven years of her life. Not as though there were any instances
of his initiating, stimulating, or modifying any of her ideals or
doctrines: she entirely remains, in purely spiritual matters, her
own old self, and continues to grow completely along the lines of
her previous development. And again he did attend, with an all but
unbroken assiduity, to matters not directly belonging to his province
_qua_ priest,--to her much-tried, ever-shifting bodily health, and,
probably some three or four years later on, to her financial affairs,
which latter were still of some variety and complication, owing to her
generous anxiety to do much for others, with but little of her own. But
between these two opposite extremes of possible help or influence lay
another middle level, in which his aid was considerable. For “whenever
God worked anything within her, which impressioned her much either in
soul or body, she would confer about it all with her Confessor; and he,
with the grace and light of God, understood well-nigh all, and would
give her answers which seemed to show that he himself felt the very
thing that she was feeling herself.” “And she would say, that even
simply to have him by, gave her great comfort, because they understood
each other, even by just looking each other in the face without
speaking.”[134] Marabotto’s Direction consists, then, in giving her the
human support of human understanding and sympathy, and, no doubt, in
reminding her, in times of darkness, of the lights and truths received
and communicated by her in times of consolation. Never does Marabotto
see, or think he sees, as far or as clearly as she sees, when she sees
at all; and it is the light derived by him from herself at one time,
which he administers to her soul at another.
4. _Catherine’s first Confession to Don Cattaneo._
The general tone and character of her first Confession to him are
described to us, no doubt from his own contemporary record. “She said:
‘Father, I know not where I am, either as to my soul or as to my body.
I should like to confess, but I cannot perceive any offence committed
by me.’” “And as to the sins which she mentioned,” adds Marabotto, “she
was not allowed to see them as so many sins, thought or said or done by
herself. But her state of soul was like unto that of a small boy, who
would have committed some slight offence in simple ignorance; and who,
if some one told him: You have done evil, would at these words suddenly
change colour and blush, and yet not because he has now an experimental
knowledge of evil.” “And many a time she would say to her Confessor:
‘I do not want to neglect Confession, and yet I do not know to whom to
give the blame of my sins; I want to accuse myself, and cannot manage
it.’ And yet, with all this, she made all the acts appropriate to
Confession.”[135]
We shall see, indeed, how keen, right up to the end, was her sense of
her frailty and of her general and natural inclination to evil. And her
teaching as to numerous positive and active imperfections remaining
in the soul, in every soul, up to the very end, is so clear and
constant, and so admittedly derived from her own experience, that we
can explain the above only by the supplementary part of her doctrine
(also derived from her own experience), which insists that some greatly
advanced souls do not, at the time of committing them, as yet see these
their imperfections, and that, by the time they have so far further
advanced as to see these imperfections, they are no more inclined to
commit them. In this way, then, there would be no fully formal sin or
deliberate imperfection to confess.
XII. HER CONVERSATIONS WITH HER DISCIPLES; “CATERINA SERAFINA.” DON
MARABOTTO AND THE POSSESSED MAID.
1. _Pure Love and Heaven._
It is probably during the next two years of her life, that occurred the
beautiful scene and conversation,--so typical of her relations with her
disciples during this first part of her last period (1499 to 1501),
which we can think of as her spiritual Indian summer, her Aftermath.
The scene has been recorded for us by her chief interlocutor, Vernazza.
Probably Bartolommea, Ettore’s wife, was present, and possibly also
Don Marabotto. “This blessed soul,” he writes, “all surrounded though
she was by the deep and peaceful ocean of her Love, God, desired
nevertheless to express in words, to her spiritual children, the
sentiments that were within her. And many a time she would say to them:
‘O would that I could tell what my heart feels!’ And her children
would say: ‘O Mother, tell us something of it.’ And she would answer:
‘I cannot find words appropriate to so great a love. But this I can
say with truth, that if of what my heart feels but one drop were
to fall into Hell, Hell itself would altogether turn into Eternal
Life.’”[136] “And one of these her spiritual children, an interior soul
(_un Religioso_),”--Vernazza, present on this occasion,--“dismayed at
what she was saying, replied: ‘Mother, I do not understand this; if
it were possible, I would gladly understand it better.’ But Catherine
answered: ‘My son, I find it impossible to put it otherwise.’ Then he,
eager to understand further, said: ‘Mother, supposing we gave your word
some interpretation, and that this corresponded to what is in your
mind, would you tell us if it was so?’ ‘Willingly, dear son,’ rejoined
Catherine, with evident pleasure.”
“And the disciple continued: ‘The matter might perhaps stand in this
wise.’ And he then explained how that the love which she was feeling
united her, by participation, with the goodness of God, so that she
no more distinguished herself from God. Now Hell stands for the very
opposite, since all the spirits therein are in rebellion against God.
If then it were possible for them to receive even a little drop of such
union, it would deprive them of all rebellion against God, and would
so unite them with Love, with God Himself, as to make them be in Life
Eternal. For Hell is everywhere where there is such rebellion; and Life
Eternal, wheresoever there is such union. And the Mother, hearing this,
appeared to be in a state of interior jubilation; whence with beaming
face she answered: ‘O dear son, truly the matter stands as you have
said; and hearing you speak, I feel it really is so. But my mind and
tongue are so immersed in this Love, that I cannot myself either say or
think these or other reasons.’ And the Disciple then said: ‘O Mother,
could you not ask your Love, God, for some of these little drops of
union for your sons?’ She answered, and with increased joyousness: ‘I
see this tender Love to be so full of condescension to these my sons,
that for them I can ask nothing of It, and can only present them before
His sight.’”[137]
I sincerely know not where to look for a doctrine of grander depth
and breadth, of more vibrating aliveness; for one more directly the
result of life, or leading more directly to it, than are those few
half-utterances and delicately strong indications of an overflowing
interior plenitude and radiant, all-conquering peace.
And even one such scene is sufficient to make us feel that the
following passage of the _Dialogo_ is, in its substance and tone,
profoundly true to facts: “This soul remained henceforth” (in this
third period) “many a time in company with its many spiritual friends,
discoursing of the Divine Love, in such wise that they felt as though
in Paradise, both collectively, and each one in his own particular way.
How delightful were these colloquies! He who spoke and he who listened,
each one fed on spiritual food of a delicious kind; and because the
time flew so swiftly, they never could attain satiety, but, all on fire
within them, they would remain there, unable at last to speak, unable
to depart, as though in ecstasy.”[138]
2. _“Caterina Serafina”._
Five times the _Vita_ compares her countenance, which, when she was
deeply moved, had a flushed, luminous and transparent appearance, to
that of an Angel or Cherub or Seraph;[139] and it even gives a story,
which purports to explain how she came to be called the latter. And
though this anecdote may be little more than a literary dramatization
of this popular appellation of Catherine; and although, even if the
scene be historical, Catherine has no kind of active share in bringing
it about; yet the passage is, in any case, of some real interest, since
it testifies to and typifies Catherine’s abundance of moral and mental
sanity and strong, serene restorative influence over unbalanced or
tempted souls, and this at a time when she herself had already been in
delicate health for about five years.
The story is interesting also in that it shows how strikingly like
the superficial psycho-physical symptoms of persons described as
possessed by an evil spirit were, and were thought to be, to those
of ecstasy, hence to Catherine’s own. Thus when an attack seized
this “spiritual daughter of Catherine,--a woman of large mind (_alto
intelleto_), who lived and died in virginity, and under the same
roof with Catherine” (no doubt Catherine’s second, unmarried servant
Mariola Bastarda is meant, and each must have had experience of the
other’s powers and wants from or before 1490 till 1497, and again
from 1500 onwards),--“she would become greatly agitated and be thrown
to the ground. The evil spirit would enter into her mind, and would
not allow her to think of divine things. And she would thus be as one
beside herself, all submerged in that malign and diabolic will.”--And
similarly we are told that Catherine would “throw herself to the
ground, altogether beside herself,” “immersed in a sea,”--in this
case, “of the deepest peace”; and “she would writhe as though she were
a serpent.”[140]
Yet this superficial likeness between these two states,--a likeness
apparent already in the similar double series of phenomena described
in St. Paul’s Epistles and in the Acts of the Apostles,--serves,
here also, but to bring out in fuller relief the profound underlying
spiritual and moral difference between the two conditions of soul.
For it is precisely in Catherine’s company that, when insufferable
to her own self, the afflicted Mariola would recover her peace and
self-possession, so that “even a silent look up to Catherine’s face
would help to bring relief.”[141]
It is in 1500, soon after Mariola’s return to her mistress (I take the
maid’s state of health to have occasioned her absence from Catherine
for two years or so), that this spiritual daughter is represented as
declaring in the first stage of one of these attacks,--or rather “the
unclean spirit” possessing her is said to have exclaimed to Catherine
“We are both of us thy slaves, because of that pure love which thou
possessest in thy heart”; and “full of rage at having made this
admission, he threw himself on the ground, and writhed with the feet.”
And then when,--all this is supposed to take place in the presence of
both Catherine and Don Marabotto,--the possessed one has stood up, the
Confessor forces the spirit step by step to speak out and to declare
successively that Catherine is “Caterina,” “Adorna or Fiesca,” and
“Caterina Serafina,” the latter being uttered amidst great torment.[142]
XIII. CATHERINE’S SYMPATHY WITH ANIMAL- AND PLANT-LIFE: HER LOVE OF THE
OPEN AIR. HER DEEP SELF-KNOWLEDGE AS TO THE HEALTHINESS OR MORBIDNESS
OF HER PSYCHO-PHYSICAL STATES.
1. _Increase of suffering and of range of sympathy._
It is indeed in this last period of her life that we can most clearly
see a deeply attractive mixture of personal suffering and of tender
sympathy with even the humblest of all things that live. And this is
doubtless not simply due to the much fuller evidence possessed by us
for these last years, but is quite as much owing to the actual increase
of these twin things within herself. “She was most compassionate
towards all creatures; so that, if an animal were killed or a tree
cut down, she could hardly bear to see them lose that being which
God had given them.”[143] And a beautiful communion of spirit can
now be traced even between plant-life and herself; and an innocent
self-diversion from a too exciting concentration, and help towards a
patient keeping or a bracing reconquering of calmness, is now found by
her, Franciscan-like, in the open air and amidst the restful flowers
and trees. Thus “at times she would seem to have her mind in a mill;
and as if this mill were indeed grinding her, soul and body”; and then
“she would walk up and down in the garden, and would address the plants
and trees and say: ‘Are not you also creatures created by my God? Are
not you, too, obedient to Him?’”--even though, I think she meant to
say, your life moves on so instinctive, calm, and freely expansive in
the large, liberal air, as I feel it to do, by its very contrast to my
own eager, crowded life, struggling in vain for a sustained perfection
of equipoise and for an even momentary adequacy of self-expression.
“And doing thus, she would gradually be comforted.”[144]
Indeed she would, in still intenser moods, use plants and other
creatures of God in a more violent fashion. But this is now no more
done as of old, for direct purposes of mortification; but, at one
time, from an unreflective transport of delight, delight which itself
seems ever to impel noble natures to seek to mix some suffering with
it; and, at another time, for the purpose of producing strong physical
impressios, counter-stimulations and escapes from a too great intensity
of interior feeling. “She would at times, when in the garden, seize
hold of the thorn-covered twigs of the rose-bushes with both her hands;
and would not feel any pain whilst thus doing it in a transport of
mind. She would also bite her hands and burn them, and this in order to
divert, if possible, her interior oppression.”[145]
2. _She alone keeps the sense of the truly spiritual, in the midst of
her psycho-physical states._
Indeed nothing is more characteristic of her psychic state, during
these years, than the ever-increasing intensity, shiftingness and
close interrelation between the physical and mental. But we shall find
that, whereas those who surround her, Confessor, Doctors, Disciples,
Attendants, all, in various degrees and ways, increasingly insist
upon and persist in finding direct proofs of the supernatural in the
purely physical phenomena of her state even when taken separately,
and indeed more and more in exact proportion to their non-spiritual
character: Catherine herself, although no doubt not above the medical
or psychical knowledge of her time, remains admirably centred in the
truly spiritual, and continually awake to the necessity of interior
spiritual selection amongst and assimilation and transformation of all
such psycho-physical impressions and conditions. Even in the midst
of the extreme weaknesses of her last illness we shall see her only
quite exceptionally, and ever for but a few instants, without this
consciousness of the deep yet delicate difference in ethical value and
helpfulness between the various psycho-physical things experienced by
herself, and of the requirements, duties and perceptions of her own
spirit with regard to them.
And this attitude is all the more remarkable because, to the outer
difficulty arising from the persistent, far more immediate, and
apparently more directly religious, view of all her little world
about her, came two peculiarities working in the same direction from
within her own self. There was the old constitutional keenness and
concentration of her highly nervous physical and psychical temperament,
and the rarely high pitch and swift pace of her whole inner life, which
must, at all times, have rendered suspense of judgment and detachment
with regard to her own sensations and quasi-physical impressions
specially difficult. And there was now the new intensity and closeness
of interaction between soul and body, which must have made such lofty
detachment from all but spiritual realities a matter of the rarest
grace and of the most heroic self-conquest.
3. _Catherine’s health does not break up completely till 1507._
The _Vita_, indeed, as we now have it, tells us that “about nine years
before her death,” hence in 1501, “an infirmity came upon her, which
neither her attendants nor the doctors knew how to identify”; and that
“there was confusion, not on her own part, but on the part of those
who served her.”[146] But this whole Chapter XLVII (pp. 127-132) of
the present _Vita_, which opens out thus, is wanting in MSS. “A” and
“B”; and is composed of documents which appear, in a fuller and more
primitive form and in their right chronological place, in the next
three chapters (pp. 132-160), chapters without doubt predominantly
due to Marabotto; and of the documents making up the present Chapter
XXXVIII (pp. 98, 99), which are earlier again, in both contents and
composition, and are very certainly the work of Vernazza. And this
means that, though the present Chapter XLVII claims to give a general
account of her condition during 1501-1510, it does not, as a matter of
fact, give us anything but details belonging without doubt to 1507-1510.
The manner in which this late compiler insists upon the directly
spiritual, indeed supernatural, character of even the clearly secondary
and physical phenomena of her state, make it highly probable that,
having once exaggerated the quality, he readily snatched at any
indications (possibly a slip of the pen in some MS., writing 1501
instead of 1507; we have a similar slip in MS. “A” which on p. 193
twice writes 1506 for 1509), which favoured an early date for the
beginning of her last illness. Certainly the legal documents at our
disposal show her to us still variously interested and active, right up
to 1507.
It will, then, be better first to describe this activity up to 1507,
and to take even the general questions concerning her illness in
connection with her last four years, 1507-1510.
XIV. CATHERINE’S SOCIAL JOYS AND SORROWS, 1501-1507.
1. _Birth of Ettore’s last two daughters._
It will have been during these years 1501 to 1507, unless indeed
already between 1497 and 1501, that Vernazza’s second and third
daughters were born; and if Catherine had stood God-mother to his
eldest child, Tommasina, it is inconceivable that she should not
have cared for Tommasina’s sisters, Catetta and Ginevrina. Certainly
their father, Catherine’s closest friend and disciple, gave detailed
attention, right up to the end of his strenuous life, to all three
children; and made most thoughtful particular provision, in his still
extant remarkable Will of 1517, for the youngest, Ginevrina, who at
that time was the only one not yet settled in life.[147] Thus Vernazza
knew how to combine all this detailed thought for his own children
with the spacious public spirit of which his Dispositions are a still
extant, most impressive monument; and Catherine, who was his deepest
inspirer, clearly led the way here, right up to the last four years of
her life. For we have already seen how she managed to conjoin, in a
fashion similar to Ettore’s, a universalist love for Love Transcendent,
with a particularism of attachment to individual souls, in which that
Love is immanent.
2. _Deaths of Limbania, Jacobo, and Giovanni._
And if she had joy over souls coming into the world, she had sorrow
over souls leaving it. For in the single year 1502 she lost her only
sister, Limbania, and her two elder brothers Jacopo and Giovanni. It
is true that the _Vita_ says: “There died several of her brothers and
sisters; but, owing to the great union which she had with the tender
will of God, she felt no pain, as though they had not been of her
own blood.”[148] But then we have already often found how subject to
caution and rebate are all such general, absolute statements; this
passage in particular is, by its vagueness and ambiguity (she had but
one sister of her own), stamped as late and more or less secondary;
and we shall trace, later on, a similar even more extensive _a priori_
modification of her authentic image in the _Dialogo_. Certainly her
Wills show no kind of indifference to her own relations. In that of
1498 she specially and carefully remembered these very three relations;
and in proportion as these two brothers’ children grow up and at all
require her help, Catherine specially refers to and plans for them,--so
for Jacobo’s eldest daughter Maria, in view of getting her married
(Wills of 1498, 1503, 1506, 1509); and for Giovanni’s three sons (Wills
of 1503, 1506, 1509). Jacobo’s second daughter seems also to have died
at this time, as she no more appears after the Will of 1498. We shall
see how exactly the same affectionate interest is shown by her towards
her still remaining brother and his two sons.[149]
3. _The Triptych “Maestà.”_
And she evidently still went on increasing the number of the objects
of her interest and affection, and the degree of her attachment to
such objects as she already loved. For in her Codicil of the next
year, January 1503, she gives a careful description of a picture
now belonging to herself, “a ‘Majesty,’ representing the Virgin
Mary with Saint Joseph, and the Lord Jesus at their feet, with her”
(Fieschi-Adorni) “coat-of-arms painted within and without.” The
picture evidently represented the Adoration of the Infant Jesus, and
was painted on wood,--a triptych: with Catherine’s arms painted both
inside and outside the two wings. She again describes it thus fully in
her Wills of 1506 and 1509, leaving it, on all those occasions, to a
certain Christofero de Clavaro (Christofer of Chiavari?). It is then
quite clear both that this picture had been specially painted by some
one for Catherine, and that Catherine, for some reason or reasons,
greatly treasured it. Who then was the painter and what was the reason?
I think both are not difficult to find.
We have seen how Catherine’s much-loved cousin, the widowed Tommasina
Fiesca, had in 1497 moved into the Monastero Nuovo in the Aquasola
quarter,--close to Catherine’s abode; so that the cousins will have
met constantly from that time forward. We have also seen that this
distinguished artist painted many a “Pietà” (the dead Christ on
His Mother’s lap, possibly with Angels on each side), and executed
a piece of needlework again representative of a group,--this time
God the Father with many Angels above, and Christ below. Indeed
Federico Alizeri has succeeded in rediscovering one of her works, a
representation of Christ crowned with thorns and surrounded by the
Instruments and Mysteries of His Passion, painted in fine outline upon
sheepskin mounted on a wood-panel.[150] And we have seen how much
Catherine had, as a child, been affected by a “Pietà,” and shall find
her, even after this date, still affected by a religious picture. There
can then be no reasonable doubt that Suor Tommasina was the painter
and giver of this picture,--again a group, a “Maestà,” instead of the
usual “Pietà.”
And the facts of Catherine caring to possess, to preserve, and to
transmit something thus specially appropriated to herself, with her
family arms upon a religious picture, are all deeply significant
touches, and quite unlike what all the secondary, and even some of the
primary, parts of the _Vita_ would lead one to expect.
4. _Increasing care for Thobia._
And this same Codicil shows us how her care, and no doubt her genuine
affection, for Thobia was growing. For she now leaves her the income
on two shares of the Bank of St. George (no doubt only a slight gift,
about £2 10_s._ a year; but Catherine possesses but very little that
she is free to leave as she likes, the claims upon her are very many,
and the young woman is already well provided for, considering her
social station), her better silk gown, a skirt, and various veils. The
poor girl died in 1504 or 1505, for in Catherine’s Will of 1506 she
appears as “the late Thobia.” She must have been about thirty years old
at the time.
5. _Argentina del Sale; story of Marco del Sale’s death._
But in lieu of poor Thobia, Catherine was now given by Providence a
new lowly object of affection and interest. For it was doubtless in
the late spring of 1505 that occurred the incident, of which we have
the beautifully simple and naïf record in Chapter XLVI of the _Vita_;
a record certainly based upon information supplied by Argentina, but
which I take to be the literary work of Vernazza, and to be more or
less contemporary with the events described. A humble young friend
or acquaintance of Catherine’s, who had perhaps already been her
occasional little day-servant, one Argentina de Ripalta, had now been
away from her and married, for a year, to a poor navvy working in the
Molo (Quay) quarter of the town; and this her husband, Marco del Sale,
was now dangerously ill, indeed he was dying of a cancer in the face.
And, having tried every kind of remedy, and seeing himself incurable,
and being thus in great and hopeless pain, Marco had lost all patience
and was as one beside himself. And then Argentina bethought herself of
Catherine, and came to the Hospital, and begged her to come and see her
husband, and pray to God for him.
And Catherine was at once at Argentina’s disposal, and straightway went
off with her. And having come into Marco’s room, she greatly comforted
him with her few but homely and fervent words. Then starting off again
in company with Argentina, Catherine entered, near to the house and
still close to the sea, into the little Church of Santa Maria delle
Grazie la Vecchia,--so called to distinguish it from the more recent
Chapel of the Augustinianesses, which bore the same general title,--and
there, kneeling in a corner, Catherine prayed for Marco. The little
seamen’s Church is still in use, with its many mementoes of four
centuries and more of ships foundered and of ships safely come to port.
And having here finished her prayer, Catherine returned with Argentina
to the Hospital. There Argentina left her, and returned to Marco, and
found him so changed that from a Devil he seemed turned into an Angel.
And with joyous tender feeling he asked: “O Argentina, come, tell me
who is that holy soul that you brought me?” But Argentina answered:
“Why, that is Madonna Caterinetta Adorna, a woman of most perfect
life.” And the sick man replied: “I beg of thee, by the love of God, to
take care to bring her here a second time to me.”
And so the next day Argentina returned to the Hospital and told all to
Catherine. And Catherine again promptly came back with Argentina. But
when Catherine had entered the room and approached the bed, Marco threw
his arms round her, and wept for a long space of time. And then, still
weeping, but with great relief, he said to her: “Madonna, the reason
why I wished you to come is, first to thank you for the kindness you
have shown me; and next to ask a favour of you, which I beg you not to
refuse me. For when you had left this room, Our Lord Jesus Christ came
to me visibly and in the form in which He appeared to the Magdalen in
the garden, and gave me His most holy blessing, and pardoned me all my
sins, and told me that I should prepare for death, because that I shall
go to Him on Ascension-Day. Hence I pray you, most tender Mother, deign
to accept Argentina as your spiritual daughter, and to keep her with
you constantly. And thou, Argentina, I pray thee, be content with this
plan.” They both gladly declared themselves ready and content.
When Catherine had gone away, Marco sent for a certain Augustinian
Friar of the Monastery of the Consolation, and carefully confessed his
sins and received Holy Communion; and then ordered all his worldly
affairs with a notary and with his relations. And he did all this in
spite of them all, who thought that his intense pain had driven him
off his head, and who kept saying: “Take comfort, Marco, soon you will
be well again; there is no occasion as yet for you to attend to these
things.”
And the Eve of the Ascension having come round, he again sent for the
same Confessor, and again confessed and communicated, and got him this
time to add Extreme Unction and the Recommendation of the Dying, and
all this with great composure and devotion. But as the night came on,
he said to the Friar: “Return to your Monastery; and when the time
comes, I will give you notice.” And then, alone with Argentina, he
took his crucifix in his hand, and turning towards his wife he said:
“Argentina, see, I leave thee Him for thy husband; prepare thyself to
suffer, for I declare to thee that suffering is in store for thee.”
This did not fail to come about, for she suffered later on, both
mentally and physically. And for the rest of the night he continued to
comfort her, and to encourage her to give herself to God and to accept
suffering as the ladder for mounting up to Heaven. Then when the dawn
had come he said: “Argentina, abide with God; the hour has come.” And
having finished these words, he expired; and his spirit straightway
went to the window of the cell of his Confessor, and tapping against
the pane said: “Ecce homo.” But the Friar hearing this, at once knew
that Marco had passed to his Lord.
And as soon as Marco’s body had been buried, Catherine took Argentina
to live with her as her spiritual daughter, and thus kept her promise.
And since she loved this daughter much, she was wont to take her with
her when she went out. And hence one day, when once more passing by
the little Church on the little square by the Quay, she and her young
daughter again went in and prayed. And on coming out, Catherine said to
Argentina: “This is the place, where grace was gained in prayer for thy
husband.”[151]
6. _Catherine’s social interests in 1506._
And in the following year, 1506, we still find Catherine full of
interest and activity of the most varied kind. On March the 13th and
16th Catherine was again busy for the Hospital, by receiving the
Foundlings and the various articles and monies anonymously deposited
there for their keep. And these can hardly have been altogether
exceptional acts, even for this period of her life.[152] And on the
21st of May she made her third Will, which is interesting for various
reasons. For it is in this document that we first hear of the deaths
of her two elder brothers and of Thobia, and (by implication) of that
of her sister Limbania and of her second niece Battista. And we can
once more trace here the continuity of her interests and attachments.
Her elder niece Maria is again provided with a marriage dowry; her
brother Lorenzo remains (now sole) residuary legatee; Thobia’s mother
gets her legacy compounded for an immediate settlement and payment; the
maids Benedetta and Mariola have their legacies somewhat increased;
the “Maestà” is again carefully described and allotted; and she again
orders her body to be buried alongside of that of her husband.[153]
Indeed fresh interests appear here. For the three sons of her second
brother and the eldest son of her third brother are now grown up; and
so she makes these four nephews her residuary legatees, should her
brother Lorenzo die before herself. Don Marabotto has now been her
Confessor and Chaplain for seven, and her Almoner for three years; and
so she leaves him the income of eight shares of St. George’s for his
lifetime, which, at 4 per cent. would make £16 a year,--the capital to
go, at Marabotto’s death, to her heirs. And Argentina del Sale has been
with her for just about a year; and so she leaves her various articles
of personal linen and bedding.[154]
But, above all, the place of this Will’s redaction is new amongst
the memorials of her life, and directly indicative of a still
further enlargement of her influence and interests. For if of the
fourteen legal documents drawn up for, and in the presence of,
Giuliano or herself, eleven were composed in the small house within
the great Hospital of the Pammatone, and only two others,--the
Marriage-Settlement, and the Deed of Transfer in favour of Giovanni
Adorno,--had hitherto been written elsewhere, this Will was executed in
the Refuge for Incurables, in the Portorio quarter, in the evening of
the day mentioned, in the presence of three weavers and one dyer,--two
trades strongly represented in this poor and populous quarter. Now
the choice of this place is deeply suggestive, because it became the
chief care and final home of Ettore Vernazza’s later years. Indeed it
is certain that, on the death of his wife, Vernazza came and lived
in the midst of these poor Incurables; and that this residence here
of Catherine’s closest friend did not begin later than three years
from this date--hence still during Catherine’s lifetime, in 1509. His
far-reaching Wills of 1512 and 1517 are both dated from this Refuge,
of which he was, by then, manager and chief supporter; and it is there
that he died his heroic death in 1524. Hence it is certain that now
already Vernazza must have been deeply interested in this fine, but
at that time still languishing, work (its fixed income did not as
yet amount to fully £400 a year), and he must often have been there;
possibly he had even already a room of his own in the house.
There can, in any case, be no doubt, that in the choice of this place
for the drawing-up of this Will, we have an indication, all the more
interesting because entirely incidental, of the wide and ever-widening
range, and of the entirely solid, indeed heroic character of
Catherine’s interest and influence. It also shows us that she was still
able to get about, although this Refuge, now the Spedale dei Chronici,
is, no doubt, not far away from her Pammatone home. If she could still
go there, she no doubt still could and did go to her cousin Suor
Tommasina’s Convent, which was certainly no further off. And I surmise
that many a spiritual colloquy will have taken place, with Catherine
as chief interlocutor, and Suor Tommasina and Ettore Vernazza as chief
questioners and listeners, in the parlour of San Domenico and in that
of the Refuge respectively.
CHAPTER V
CATHERINE’S LAST FOUR YEARS, 1506 TO 1510--SKETCH OF HER CHARACTER,
DOCTRINE, AND SPIRIT
I. CATHERINE’S EXTERNAL INTERESTS AND ACTIVITIES UP TO MAY 1510.
OCCASIONAL SLIGHT DEVIATIONS FROM HER OLD BALANCE. IMMENSELY CLOSE
INTERCONNECTION OF HER WHOLE MENTAL AND PSYCHO-PHYSICAL NATURE.
IMPRESSIONS AS CONNECTED WITH THE FIVE SENSES.
1. _Indications of external interests._
Even during the next four years, up to May 1510, we still find
various most authentic and clear indications of external interests
and activities in Catherine’s life. Thus, on the 21st June 1507, the
Protectors of the Hospital address a letter to Don Giacobo Carenzio
(who had, as they tell him, been elected Master--_Rettore_--already
fifteen months previously), urging him to come and take up his post;
and Catherine, who, as we shall see, was later on variously helped
by this Priest, and who cared so much for the Hospital, cannot have
remained indifferent to that first election and to this present
reminder.
Again on the 6th December 1507, the Protectors, Lorenzo Spinola,
Manfredo Fornari, and Emmanuele Fiesco, met in Catherine’s room, and
decided, no doubt with her advice and co-operation, to allow another
widow-lady and devotee of the Hospital, Brigidina, wife of the late
Giacomo Castagneto, to settle within its precincts.[155] Then on
27th November 1508 she makes a Codicil, leaving an additional £25 to
Mariola, and a further article of dress to Argentina; and declaring
that she is “entirely content” with Don Marabotto’s administration of
her monies and charities. Don Cattaneo has then now become her Almoner,
and her charitable activity continues large. The document is drawn up
by Ettore Vernazza, an unimpeachable witness to Marabotto’s rectitude
and exactness.[156]
Indeed as late down as 18th March 1509 her long Will of that date shows
an admirable persistence of her old attachment for and interest in her
surviving brother, niece (the provision for Maria’s possible marriage
is particularly careful and detailed), and nephews (the youngest of
the latter, Giovanni, is omitted, no doubt because he had now become a
Cardinal, with a corresponding income); in Don Marabotto, who retains
the same little pension; in her three maids Benedetta, Mariola, and
Argentina, all of whose legacies get somewhat increased; and in the
fortunes of the Hospital and of Thobia’s mother (she repeats her
account of what she has already done for them).[157]
2. _Occasional imperfection of judgment._
Yet now at last we can find symptoms of the final break-up of her
health, and of an occasional slight or momentary deviation from, or
diminution of, her old completeness of balance in both judgment,
taste, and feeling,--although even now this occurs only in matters of
relatively secondary importance, and but heightens the impressiveness
of the still unbroken front which she maintains, in all her fully
deliberate acts, with regard to all essential matters. Indeed, it
is not difficult to feel, even where one cannot directly trace, in
all such acts and matters, a still further deepening of the heroic
watchfulness and childlike spontaneity, and of the humility and tender
_naïveté_ and creatureliness, of her general tone and attitude.
3. _Close-knittedness of her psycho-physical organism: her spiritual
utilization of this._
But before recounting the few instances in which we can trace an
indication of partly physical depression, or of some lessening of
mental alertness or volitional power in secondary matters, or of slight
passing unwilled _maladif_ impressions, let us attempt a somewhat
methodic description of the extreme sensitiveness and immensely close
interconnection of her whole psycho-physical nature, and of the general
modifications, both in quality and in quantity, which these impressions
were wont to go through; and all this, just now, on occasion of
incidents closely similar to those already experienced in her past life.
It would indeed be altogether mistaken to class all this sensitiveness
as necessarily but a form of illness; for the great majority, and all
the most characteristic, of her apparently physical pains and troubles,
are but varieties and heightenings of the always unusually swift and
profound impressionableness of her whole psycho-physical organism. With
the sole exception of that attack of pestilential fever (probably in
the year 1493), I can nowhere, right up to three days before her death,
find any trace in her life of illnesses or disturbances of any but a
psycho-physical, nerve-functional type.
Indeed her psychic self is throughout so impressionable, and the mind
is, ever since her Conversion, so active, dominant, and absorbed in
the actual and attempted apprehension of the great realities which,
though invisible, require for their vivid apprehension an imaginative
pictorial embodiment: that we shall have, in a later chapter, to ask
ourselves the question whether it was not the mind, or the imagination
at the mind’s bidding, which thus affected the psycho-physical life,
rather than the psycho-physical life which, primarily independent
of the former, offered itself as but so much raw, still unrelated
material, to the fashioning, transforming mind. Especially will it be
necessary to consider carefully the influence upon her mind, and upon
the chronicler’s accounts of her state, which may have been exercised
by the writings of the Areopagite and of Jacopone. It will then become
clear that these authors have undoubtedly contributed to the form in
which these truths and realities were, if not actually apprehended by
Catherine, at least described by her disciples.
Yet even this point remains, in Catherine’s case, (and indeed in that
of all the great Saints,) of no real spiritual or moral importance,
since all these great and generous souls persist in ever using these
psycho-physical things, whether they be projections or “givennesses,”
as but so many instruments and materials for the apprehension,
illustration, acquisition, and purification of spiritual truth and of
the spirit’s own fulness and depth. And Catherine’s persistence in this
attitude of utilization and transcendence of what the natural man so
continuously tends to make his direct aim and final limit continues
practically unbroken to the end. I will group these psychic impressions
according to the five senses.
4. _Impressions connected with the sense of touch._
The earliest, and up to the end the most marked and general, of all
such unusual impressions appears to have been one connected with the
sense of touch,--that feeling of mostly interior, but later on also
of exterior, warmth, indeed often of intense heat and burning, which
comes to her, the first as though sunshine were bathing her within or
without, the second sometimes as though a great fire were enveloping
her, and sometimes as though a living flame were piercing her within.
Already in 1473, on occasion of her Conversion, we find unmistakable
indications of such sensations; they are, however, of a predominantly
pleasurable kind. And I take it that during her great lonely
middle-period they will, in so much as present, have been of a similar
nature. But later on, from after 1499 onwards, these sensations and
attacks become increasingly painful,[158] and are specially described,
and variously alluded to, under the terms of _operation_, _assault_,
_siege_. When specially keen and concentrated, and accompanied by some
piercing psycho-spiritual perception, they appear under the terms of
_arrow_, _wound_; and the perception itself bears then the name of
_ray_ or _spark_ (of divine love).[159]
Now we lookers-on can, of course, with more or less ease, mentally
separate, in a general way, the latter, the spiritual apprehension,
creation and content, from the former, the psycho-physical occasion,
material and form; although it is certainly difficult, and probably
impossible, to decide, at least in any one case, how far it is her
mental activity that occasions her psycho-physical condition, or how
far it is the latter which occasions the former. But what actually and
demonstrably happened in Catherine’s case, was something incomparably
beyond the range to which such psycho-physical considerations apply.
For to her, psychically, a keenly sentient; rationally, a deeply
thinking, feeling, and willing creature,--these experiences, howsoever
classable, were most real, and, in course of time, more and more
penetrating and painful; and they were, to her own consciousness,
entirely prior to any interpretation or utilization of them. Hence,
for the present at all events, we had better take these states as they
presented themselves to her immediate and ordinary consciousness. And
this very same immensely sentient soul was so firmly centred, deep down
below and beyond the psycho-physical, in the Moral and Spiritual, that
these experiences were welcomed and actively used but as so many means
and materials for ethical purification and character-building, and for
the analogical apprehension and illustration of spiritual truths.
Thus it is that these sensations of burning which, during her years
of health, were themselves so pleasurable and peaceful, helped, as
we shall find when we come to consider her doctrine, to suggest and
illustrate for her the joys and health-giving influence of the presence
of God, both here and in Paradise, and of the soul’s apprehension of
God, as light for the understanding and warmth for the affections and
the will. And when, with her failing health, these sensations turned
into painful, in part seemingly physical attacks,--attacks which,
however, left the mind in an increased and ever-increasing peace and
contentment,--they again helped her to gain and develop her doctrine
concerning Purgatory.
In both cases her teaching gained thus a vividness of quasi-directly
sensible experience, of something in a manner actually seen and
felt, since it was built up out of suggestions derived from direct
sensations and psycho-physical states. And yet in both cases not all
such sensations, of themselves quite valueless and uninstructive from
an ethical and religious point of view, could have helped towards
anything of spiritual significance, had they not been sifted, taken
up, organized and transformed in and into a large and deep spiritual
experience and personality. There is absolutely nothing automatic or
necessary in the crowning, ethically significant stages of this whole
process, however rapid and instinctive and effortless, and simply of
a piece with the psycho-physical occasions, these utilizations and
grace-impelled and grace-informed creations may appear. We shall,
in proof of this, soon see how physical and literal and spiritually
insignificant remained, during the last four months of her life,
the apprehensions of her disciples as to these heats and piercing
sensations: these good, indeed devoted, people seem incapable of
measuring spiritual love by anything higher than thermometer-readings
or other physical tangibilities. And we shall also have to record one
or two momentary instances when this heat-feeling and apprehension
clearly assumed a _maladif_ character in Catherine herself.
5. _Impressions connected with taste and smell._
The unusual sense-perceptions which were the next to be aroused
were apparently those of taste and smell: although the one
certain indication I can find of such an unusual psycho-physical
taste-and-smell impression, of a pleasurable and not clearly _maladif_
character, is not earlier than 1499.[160] It came to her in connection
with the one great devotion of her whole convert life,--the Holy
Eucharist. “Having on one occasion received Holy Communion, so much
odour and sweetness came to her, that she seemed to be in Paradise.
Whence, feeling this, she straightway turned towards her Love and
said: ‘O Love, dost Thou perhaps intend to draw me to Thyself with
these savours? I want them not, since I want nothing but Thee
alone, and all of Thee.’”[161] Here, then, she turns away from and
transcends, precisely as St. John of the Cross was soon to insist so
strongly that we should do, the sensible and immediate, and reaches
on to the spiritual, ultimate, and personal. And similarly some such
psycho-physical experience seems presupposed in her declaration: “If
a Consecrated Host and unconsecrated ones were to be given to me,
I should distinguish the former from the latter as I do wine from
water.”[162] Yet her biographer can truthfully insist upon love being
the original cause of such recognition: “She said this, because the
Consecrated Host sent forth a certain ray of love which pierced her
heart.” And she herself gives a still more spiritual parallel instance
and explanation of such recognition: “If I were to be shown the Court
of Heaven, with all its members robed in one and the same manner, in
suchwise that there would, so far, be no perceptible difference between
God and the Angels: the love which I have in my heart would still
recognize God, as readily as the dog recognizes his master.” This love
indeed would move out to Him even more swiftly and easily, because
“love, which is God Himself, finds in an instant, without any means,
its own end and ultimate repose.”[163]
Clearly _maladif_ over-sensitiveness and shiftingness of the senses of
taste and scent will appear presently, during the last months of her
life.
6. _Hearing and Sight._
The most important and mental of the senses, hearing and sight, appear,
on the contrary, with little or nothing particularly unusual about
them, throughout her life.
For as to her sense of hearing, the inner voices already described as
heard by her at different times, cannot fairly be classed under this
or any other sense-perception, healthy or otherwise; since they appear
to have been most vivid and clear thoughts presented to her mind,
with in each case the consciousness that they were the suggestions of
Mind,--of a Spirit other than her own. They appear to have always been
described by herself as “words spoken to the mind,” “words as it were
heard.”[164] Traces of any _maladif_ affection of this sense will be
difficult or impossible to find, even during her last illness.
And as to sight, always so closely akin to mental processes, anything
at all really exceptional cannot, I think, be found in her life so far
at all. For her evidently great impressionableness to certain religious
pictures,--so as a child, in regard to the “Pietà,” and now again
apparently with the “Maestà,”--and to certain sights of nature, cannot
fairly be considered abnormal. And as to Visions, the only one recorded
so far, that of the Bleeding Christ, was primarily a mentally mediated
experience: “the Lord showed Himself to her in the spirit,” says the
account, no doubt in full accordance with her own analysis of such
experiences.[165] Some few disturbances of this sense will, however,
appear during the course of her last illness.
II. MORE OR LESS _MALADIF_ EXPERIENCES AND ACTIONS.
The amplest proof of the deep and delicate impressionableness of her
nature is probably, however, to be found in that profound melancholy,
that positive disgust with everything within her and without, and that
strong desire for death which we found to have possessed her during
the three months previous to her Conversion in March 1473. For we
should note that that melancholy did not directly spring from spiritual
motives or considerations: it was previous to all definite sorrow for
sin and to all full and willed sense of things religious and eternal.
Indeed, with the appearance of the religious standards and certitudes,
that crushing universal feeling of melancholy and of positive disgust
breaks up, and yields to contrasted joys and sorrows, and to a buoyant
energy in the very midst and through the very means of suffering and
of sacrifice. Thus the dawn of her spiritual re-birth was indeed dark
and oppressive; but this oppression did not directly proceed from any
clear consciousness of the Perfect and Eternal which arose within her
only as part and parcel of this explicit Conversion. The oppression
simply indicated, of itself, a nature so sensitive and claimful, as to
require, in order to achieve any degree of contentment, a spiritual,
regenerative, re-interpretative power capable of responding to and
matching the deepest realities of life. That nature was thus full of
the need of such realities and of such contact with them, but was
without the power of producing, or of adequately responding to, such
realities,--or indeed of imaginatively forecasting them. And similarly
in 1507, the dawn of her painful, joyful-sorrowful birthday to eternity
was again dark and oppressive and productive of an intense desire for
death, a desire which had, apparently, been entirely absent from her
soul ever since 1473. Here again this oppression was not directly
religious or moral, but, taken in itself, was simply psycho-physical.
Indeed this oppression marks the beginning of the special limitations,
difficulties, and slightly deflecting influences now introduced into
her life by henceforth steadily increasing positive illness. I propose,
then, to begin with this opening depression of hers, and next to go
through the main incidents of her remaining life, as far as possible,
in strictly chronological order. I will group all this around six main
facts and dates.
1. _Desire for death, 1507._
“In the year 1507 she on one occasion was present at the recitation
of the Offices for the Dead. And a desire to die came upon her. And
she said: ‘O Love, I desire nothing but Thee, and Thee in Thine own
manner: but, if it pleases Thee, allow me at least to go and see others
die and be buried, in order that I may see in others that great good,
which it does not please Thee should as yet be in myself.’ And her Love
consented to this; and consequently, for a certain space of time, she
went to see die and be buried all those who died in the Hospital. And
as, later on, her union with this her tender Love increased, her desire
for death disappeared little by little.”[166]
She is, then, still active, and moves about in the spacious Hospital
and in the adjoining Church. And this desire, as it gradually
disappeared, will, doubtless, not have left mere blanks in her
consciousness, or have reduced the sum-total of her feelings; but, with
that diminution, some of her old tenderness for and interest in others,
will have reappeared. And again we see how no one set of feelings,
one “psychosis,” ever simply repeats itself, in even one and the same
soul: for Catherine’s positive disgust with all things, which prepared
and accompanied her desire for death in 1473, is absent from the
otherwise similar desire of 1507. In both cases there is the same sheer
“givenness” and isolation of the feeling. _Then_, she did not desire
death to escape temptation or sin; _now_, she does not desire it,
directly and within her emotional nature, in order to get to God: in
each case the feeling stands simply by itself, and is not immediately
connected with religion at all. And finally, this incident, and its
later equivalent repetitions in November 1509 and September 1510, prove
once again on what a veritable bed of Procrustes those determined
_a-priorists_, the Redactors of the _Vita_, have placed, pulled about
and mutilated, as far as in them lay, the immensely spontaneous and
rich personality of Catherine, in their determination to find her ever
all-perfect, and perfect after their own fixed pattern. For it proves
to demonstration, either that Catherine continued liable to human
imperfections, or that not all desires are imperfect. And both these
things are true, beyond the possibility of doubt.
2. _The scent-impression from Don Cattaneo’s hand._
And next we get an instance of clearly abnormal sense-perception,
which is deeply interesting because of the vivid, first-hand form in
which the fact has come down to us, and still more on account of its
impressive illustration of the two possible mental attitudes towards
such matters. It will have occurred in 1508; and Don Marabotto is, in
any case, the other interlocutor in the scene, and its chronicler.
And if there is undoubtedly a somewhat ludicrous _naïveté_ about his
attitude at the time of the occurrence, there is also a striking
simplicity and self-oblivion in the perfectly objective manner in
which he chronicles the scene in all its bearings, and Catherine’s
marked superiority to himself. It is this complete directness and
simplicity of motive which, on the side of character, will have bound
these otherwise strangely diverse souls together; and which rendered
Don Marabotto, even simply as a character, not unworthy of his close
intimacy with Catherine.
The abnormality here concerns the sense of smell alone; the impression
here lasts a considerable time: and now she acquiesces in it, but only
for the purpose of moving through it, as a mere means. “Having been
infirm for many days, Catherine one day took the hand of her Confessor
and smelt it: and its odour penetrated right to her heart,” so that
“for many days this perfume restored and nourished her, body and soul.”
Don Marabotto then asks her what kind of thing this odour is that she
is smelling. And she tells him that it is an odour so penetrating and
sweet, as to seem capable of bringing the dead to life; that God had
sent it to her, to strengthen her soul and body, now that these were
so much oppressed; and hence “since God grants me this odour, I am
determined to derive strength from it, as long as He shall please that
I shall do so.” But Marabotto, “thinking that he must surely be able
to perceive what was being transmitted by himself, went smelling his
own hand, but to no effect.” And Catherine gently rebuked his action by
declaring: “The things which depend entirely upon God’s own free gift,
He does not give to those that seek them. Indeed He gives such things
at all, only in cases of great necessity, and as an occasion of great
spiritual profit.”[167]
The impression and consolation are here still connected with the
Holy Eucharist: for the hand which she smells is no doubt the right
one,--the hand which was wont daily to consecrate in her presence and
daily to communicate her. The declaration as to the odour’s power to
raise the dead to life has occurred already in connection with the
Holy Eucharist, and will have been in part suggested to her by such
Johannine passages as “I am the … Life,” “I am the Living Bread,” “he
that eateth this Bread shall live,” shall be made to live, “for ever.”
And although the odour is here the prominent impression, and “savours”
are wanting, yet “sweetness” still occurs, probably as a sort of
sensation of tasting.--Marabotto’s mind has in it, on this occasion,
two plausible assumptions, each strengthening the other; and Catherine
controverts both. He evidently thinks: “Catherine’s states are all most
valuable, hence real, hence objective: if then she says she smells this
or that, others will be able to do so too.” And: “What a man transmits,
that he can himself experience: hence, on this ground also, I should
be able to smell this perfume.”--And Catherine’s mind evidently also
contains two very different convictions: the first, that experiences,
even when thus but semi-spiritual, are, for all their reality, not
directly transferable from soul to soul; and the second, that all such
sensible and semi-sensible experiences, whether normal or exceptional,
are all but means at the disposal of the free-willing spirit, means
which become limits and obstacles as soon as they are treated as ends.
Thus if this experience points to a certain abnormality of condition
in the peripheral, psycho-physical regions of the soul, Catherine’s
attitude towards it, and towards the whole question occasioned by
it, has got a massive depth of sanity about it, perhaps unattainable
by, certainly untested in, the always and simply, even peripherally,
healthy soul.
3. _Shifting of her burial-place._
And in her Will of March 1509 we find traces of a certain weakening of
her former ample business capacity, and of her vigilance, perseverance,
and balance, in spite of friendly pressure or criticism, with regard
to matters of practical import. For, as to her general incapacity for
business, the Will contains a clause exempting Marabotto from all
future challenge of his administration of her monies, up to the date
of the making of this Will. And this clause finds its explanation in
the admission of the _Vita_, with regard to her life during these
last years, that, owing to the mysterious and shifting nature of her
infirmity, “there was confusion in governing her,” “confusion not
on her own part, but on that of those who served her,”[168] words
which will grow still clearer in our account of her last four months.
For this state of her health must have rendered the administration
of her affairs by another both necessary and difficult. And as to
the diminution of her vigilance and perseverance in matters of not
directly spiritual or moral import, we have here, for the first time,
a departure from her resolution, emphatically expressed in the Wills
and Codicil of 1498, 1503, 1506, of being buried beside her husband.
She now orders herself to be buried in the Church of San Nicolò in
Boschetto, and that so much is to be spent on the funeral as shall seem
fit to Don Marabotto.
Three points should here be borne in mind. For one thing, Catherine
had a long-standing affection for that beautifully situated
Pilgrimage-Church, partly no doubt from associations dating back to
her summer _villegiatura_ days at the neighbouring Prà, and partly,
probably, from memories connected with her sister Limbania, since, as
we have already seen, Limbania’s Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie
was the joint foundation of the two Genoese Monasteries of San Teodoro
fuore le Mura and of San Nicolò in Boschetto. Limbania had died in
that Convent in 1502, and Catherine had, in her Codicil of 1503, left
a small sum for mortuary Masses for herself to the Monastery of San
Nicolò.
But, next, it was doubtless the growing conviction as to her sanctity
amongst her immediate friends, and their desire to keep her grave
and remains, as an eventual place and object of veneration, distinct
from any others, perhaps specially from those of her husband, whose
defective reputation might otherwise damage or delay the growth of such
a cultus of his wife, which was the determining cause of this change
in the place of sepulture. These friends were able to prevail, no
doubt because her interest and determination in such matters had become
weakened by ill-health of now thirteen years’ duration. And they will
have fixed upon this place some four English miles away, partly because
it happened to be one she loved, but also because thus no question of
separating her remains from those of Giuliano would formally arise.
Her later Codicil will prove the presence of both these motives, and
Catherine’s unconsciousness as to the situation, and the vagueness of
her acquiescence.
And, finally, we must note that, if this action of her _entourage_
offends our present-day tastes and susceptibilities, it was yet
thoroughly in accordance with a quite hoary tradition and feeling in
such matters, and was in no sense an idea special to, or originated
by, this group of persons; and again, that the four Protectors of the
Hospital (the trustees and executors of the Will), her sole surviving
brother Lorenzo (the residuary legatee), and above all her closest,
great-souled friend Vernazza (one of the six witnesses), are all
parties to the pious stratagem, and share its responsibility with
Marabatto.
4. _The “scintilla”-experience; spiritual refreshment derived from a
picture._
We have next an important group of experiences and convictions in
November 1509. “On the 11th November 1509, there came upon her an
insupportable fire of infinite love; and she declared that there had
been shown to her one single spark (scintilla) of Pure Love, and that
this had been but for a short moment; and that, had it lasted even a
little longer, she would have expired because of its great force. She
could hardly eat, nor speak so as to be heard, in consequence of this
penetrating wound of love that she had received in her heart.”[169]
Few events of her life have left such profound traces, so many
echoes and waves and wavelets as it were, throughout both her
authentic sayings and the various secondary and tertiary imitations,
re-castings, and expansions of her original account as has this
scintilla-experience. I will here translate the nine varying
impressions and exclamations which, proceeding from different minds
and different dates, have, all but one, been worked up by the _Vita_
into a single paragraph, which, by its very multitude of flickerings
as to meaning and of experimentations as to form, gives us a striking
picture of the deep and many-sided influence of this single event, so
short in its clock-time duration. “This creature, all lost in her own
self, found her true self in one instant in God.” “Although she reputed
herself to be very poor, yet she remained rich in the divine love.”
“She, knowing the grace and operation to be all from God, remained lost
in herself, and living only in God.” “She gave her free-will to God,
and God then restored it to her.” “She gave her free-will to God, and
God thereupon worked with its means.” “O the great wonder, to see a
man established in the midst of so many miseries, and yet God having
so great a care of him! All tongues are incapable of expressing it,
all intellects of understanding it.” “That man becomes foolish in the
eyes of the world, to whom Thou, O Lord God, dost manifest even but the
slightest spark of Thine unspeakable Love.” “Thou, O God, desirest to
exalt man, and to make him as though another God, by means of love.”
Of later date or type: “In God she saw all the operations, by means of
which He had caused her to merit (in the past).” And of still later,
clearly secondary, character: “God showed her in one instant the
succession of His (future) operation, as though she would have to die
of a great martyrdom.”[170]
And this great experience of hers led on to a scene which, whilst
emphasizing the psycho-physical effect, occasion or concomitant of
such spiritual experiences, also gives us the strongest instance of
her impressionableness to pictures in particular. “Finding herself
in such ardour, she felt herself compelled to turn to a figure of the
Woman of Samaria at the well with her Lord; and in her extreme distress
Catherine addressed Him thus: ‘O Lord, I pray Thee, give me a little
drop of this water, which of old Thou didst give to the Samaritan
woman, since I can no more bear so great a fire.’ And suddenly, in
that instant, there was given her a little drop of that divine water;
and by it she was refreshed within and without, and she had rest for
some appreciable time.”[171] But, above all, this experience and its
precursor were, if not the actual beginning, at least the culminating
point in the experiences or projections which led to or articulated
her doctrine on Purgatory. In a later chapter I hope to trace the
connection between those experiences and this doctrine. Here we must
add two other vivid interior experiences and convictions of hers which
are placed by the _Vita_, no doubt rightly, in direct succession to,
and in more or less connection with, the great “scintilla”-operation,
although neither of them appears amongst the images and conceptions
which make up the _Trattato del Purgatorio_.
“One day” (she recounted this herself) “she appeared to herself to
abide suspended in mid-air. And the spiritual part wanted to attach
itself to heaven; but her other part wished to attach itself to earth:
yet neither the one nor the other managed to become possessed of its
object, and simply abode thus in mid-air, without achieving its desire.
And after abiding thus for a long time, the part which was drawing her
to heaven seemed to her to be gaining the upper hand (over the other
part), and, little by little, the spiritual part forcibly drew her
upwards, so that at every moment she saw herself moving further and
further away from earth. And although this at first seemed to be a
strange thing to the part that was being drawn, and this part was ill
content to be thus forced; yet when it had been so far removed, as no
more to be able to see the earth, then it began to lose its earthly
instinct and affection, and to perceive and to relish the things which
were relished by the spiritual part. And this spiritual part never
ceased from drawing it heavenward. And so at last these two parts came
to a common accord.”[172] And again on another occasion: “The soul is
so desirous of departing from the body to unite itself with God, that
its body appears to it a veritable Purgatory, which keeps it distant
from its true object.”[173]
This group of experiences straightway enforces some important spiritual
laws. For one thing, this scintilla-experience, since her Conversion
the deepest of her life, is clearly also the richest and most
complex,--witness the numerous, mutually supplementary or critical,
attempts at analysis furnished by even her immediate companions. And
this experience is only simple in the sense in which white light, which
combines all the prismatic colours, or a living healthy human body,
composed of numberless constituents, is simple.
And next, nothing indicates that this experience was of a character
essentially different from that of her older contemplations; and
everything appears to show that it was, substantially, a grace
addressed to, and an act performed by, her spiritual nature,--her
intelligence and free will, God’s Spirit stimulating and sustaining
hers in a quite exceptional degree, and hence less than ever weakening
or supplanting this her spirit’s action. It was as much a gift of
herself by herself to God, as if it had not been a pure grace from Him;
and yet her very power and wish and determination to give herself,
were rendered possible and became actual through that pure prevenient,
accompanying and subsequent gift of God.
Again, it is certain that either there was no clear mental scheme,
reasoning, or picture during the experience, or that, if there was,
it consisted of a spacial simultaneity rather than of a temporal
succession, and that it showed her, if her own soul at all, then that
soul in its most universally human, typical aspects and relations.
In no case was there anything historical or prophetical, strictly
biographical about it.
And then we have, even though she could give no kind of definite
account of it, the most solid reasons for accepting this experience as
genuine, wholesome, and valuable. For she evidently fully believed in
it herself; and we shall see how clearly and readily she continued,
even after this experience, to distinguish between wholesome and
mental, and _maladif_ and simply psychic, states of abstraction.
Again it became the occasion and material of most deep and fruitful
spiritual doctrine; whereas nothing is more empty and unsuggestive
than are the bare, brute “facts” of all merely nervous or hysterical
hallucinations. It also demonstrably strengthened her will for the
last deep sufferings and sacrifices yet to be gone through, and no
doubt added a fresh stimulus to her already profound influence over
Vernazza, and pricked him onwards on his career of the most solid,
heroic philanthropy and self-sacrifice. And yet we can see that her
psycho-physical organism is now functionally weak and ill. For great
physical exhaustion now follows upon an experience substantially the
same as those which used to strengthen her so markedly even in physical
respects.
As to the scene with the picture, we again get a case not unlike the
odour of Marabotto’s hand, in so much as here too the experience hovers
between the mental and physical, and there is a sensible impression as
from a physical substance with reference to a Person,--this taste of
a “divine water” moving here on to Christ, to God, the Living Water,
as that smell of sweetness moves on to the “Living Bread,” Christ, and
God. It is, unfortunately, impossible to identify that picture, which
may well have been a fresco-painting in some building or passage of the
Hospital, since destroyed, or on some extant wall, white-washed since
those days. The vivid picturings of the soul in mid-air, and of the
soul in the purgatory of its body, will be considered in connection
with her psycho-physical states and her doctrine.
But before leaving this November experience, we must give two
significant conversations held by her with Vernazza at the time, and
which have been no doubt handed down to us by himself. “One day,
speaking of this” (the scintilla-) “event with a spiritual person
(_Religioso_) she called it ‘a giddiness’ (_vertigine_). But that
person said to her: ‘Mother, I beg of you that you will yourself
select a person who may happen to suit your mind (_soddisfaccia alla
mente vestra_), and will narrate to this person the graces which God
has granted to you, so that, when you come to die, these graces may
not remain hidden and unknown, and an opportunity for God’s praise
and glory may not thus be lost.’ And she then answered that she was
entirely willing (_ben contenta_), if this be pleasing to her tender
Love; and that, in that case, she would not choose another person than
himself, although she was convinced that it was impossible to describe
even a small fragment of such interior experiences as occurred between
God and her soul; and that as to exterior things, few or none had taken
place in her case.” Here again we have evidence as to her habit of
making light of and transcending all psycho-physical phenomena, however
striking and mysterious; and we get a positive authorization conferred
by herself upon Vernazza, such as is claimed by no other contributor to
the _Vita_.
And “speaking with him some days later, she said: ‘Son, I have had a
certain prick of conscience, of which I will tell you. The other day,
when you told me that I might possibly remain dead some day during one
of those giddinesses, there seemed to arise in me, at that moment, a
feeling of joy, a profound aspiration which said: ”O, if that hour
would but come!“ And then this feeling suddenly ceased. Now I declare
to you, that I do not wish that in this matter there should be any
glimpse (scintilla) of a desire of my own for earth or heaven, or for
any other created thing; but that I wish to leave all things to the
disposition of God.’ Then this person answered, that there was no
occasion for her to have a prick of conscience, because, although joy
had awaked in her mind, and a sudden exclamation had occurred there,
at the mention of the word ‘death,’ yet that nothing of this had
proceeded from the will, nor had it been endorsed by the reason; but
that it had proceeded solely from the instinct of the pleasure-loving
soul (_anima_), which ever, according to its nature, tends to such an
end. And how the proof that this was a correct account, lay in this,
that her prick of conscience had not really penetrated to the depths of
her heart, but had remained on the surface, at the same slight depth
at which the movement of joy had remained. And she confessed that the
matter really stood thus, and remained satisfied.”[174]
Here three points are of interest. I take her impulse of deep longing
to die in one of those trances, to have arisen, not simply from joy
at the thought of dying, but from joy at the prospect of dying of
joy,--of dying with the joy fixed in that moment in the soul for
ever. For heaven itself appears here not as a synonym for God, but as
a creature, as the summing up of infinite and endless consolation of
all right kinds, spiritual and psycho-physical. And it is this that
makes her scruple thoroughly understandable, and but one more instance
of her virile fight with all direct attachment to the consequences and
concomitants of devotedness.--And next we should note her deep trust
in the spiritual experience and wisdom of Vernazza, the layman and
lawyer, some twenty-five years her junior; and her asking his advice
on a matter which we would readily suppose her to reserve for Don
Marabotto, who by now had been her Confessor and Spiritual Adviser for
many years.--And lastly, the depth and delicacy of Vernazza’s analysis
are most striking, with their clear perception of the various levels
and degrees of true selfhood and volition within the human soul: she
had really had neither a full will, nor a deliberate wish, nor indeed
any penetrating, spontaneous reproach of conscience; she had, in fact,
been suffering from a scruple, and he was required, and was able, to
make her see that this had been the case.
5. _Catherine’s sense of intense cold, and her attitude towards Don
Marabotto._
And in December 1509 and January 1510 we come across a group of
experiences and actions, in some respects different from, and
supplementary of, the set just concluded. For “in the month of December
she suffered from great cold,”--I take this cold to have been, at least
partially, special to her state, and not to have proceeded primarily
from the winter temperature,--“but she paid no attention to it.” “And
behold one night there came so great an attack (_assalto_) upon her,
that she could not conceal it. There was a great heaving of the body,
much bile was evacuated, and the nose bled. And she then sent for her
Confessor, and said to him: ‘Father, it seems to me that I must die,
because of the many weakenings of various sorts (_accidenti_) that have
happened to me.’” “And this attack (_assalto_) lasted for about three
hours,” “her body trembling like a leaf.” “And then her body became
quiet again, but was now so broken and weak that it was necessary to
give her minced chicken to revive her; and a good many days had to pass
before she returned to her (latter-day) vigour.”[175]
And “on the 10th of January 1510, she appeared determined to see her
Confessor no more, either as to help and comfort for her soul or as
to her bodily health. It seemed to her that he was too indulgent to
herself, in her sayings and doings. But the fact was, that he saw it
to be necessary that she should do all that her instinct prompted her
to say or do; and it would indeed have been well-nigh impossible to
force her to act against these interior movements of hers. Yet since
she was herself in cause, she did not acknowledge such necessities
(_ordinazioni_); rather these actions of hers appeared to her but as
so many disordered doings, and she went forcing herself to try and
not give trouble to those who were good enough to put up with her
(_chi la comportava_).--And when night came, she locked herself up
alone into a separate room, refusing food or conversation or comfort
from any one. But after a while she had to come out, with a view
to rendering a certain service, and her Confessor managed to slip
into the room unobserved and to hide himself there. And she, having
returned and locked herself in, and thinking herself quite alone,
said with a sobbing voice to her Lord: ‘O Lord, what wouldest Thou
have me do further in this world? I neither see nor hear, nor eat
nor sleep; I do not know what I do or what I say. I feel as though I
were a dead thing. There is no creature that understands me; I find
myself lonely, unknown, poor, naked, strange, and different from the
rest of the world; and hence I know not any more how to live with (my
fellow-) creatures upon earth.’ These and such-like words she spoke
so piteously, that her Confessor could bear it no longer; and he
discovered himself, and came up to and spoke to her. And God gave him
grace, so that she remained comforted in mind and body by his words,
and was in fair health for a good many days after.”[176]
Nevertheless “her Confessor, since his continual intercourse and close
familiarity with Catherine gave occasion to murmurs on the part of
some who did not fully understand his special work and its necessity,
left her and was absent for three days” (probably shortly after the
scene just related), “for the purpose of testing that work of his,
and seeing whether it was indeed all from God, and thus to escape
all scruple in the matter. But when, three days later, he returned
to her house and had learnt and considered the various accidents and
incidents which had occurred meanwhile, he was so entirely satisfied
with the evidence afforded by experiment, that he lost all scruple in
the matter, and indeed regretted having made the trial, because of the
great distress which she had suffered from it.” It will have been on
this occasion that she said to him: “I seem to see that God has given
to you this one care of myself, and hence that you should not attend to
anything else. For now I can no longer support alone so many exterior
and interior oppressions (_assedi_). When you leave me, I go lamenting
about the house, saying that you are cruel and do not understand my
extreme necessity; for if you did, you would pay greater attention to
it.”[177]
And it will have been later on again, in February and March, that she
intimated, during two of her violent attacks (on the first occasion by
signs, on the second by words), her impression that she would succumb,
and her wish to receive Extreme Unction. But Don Marabotto correctly
judged that she would safely get through these seizures, and the
anointing was put off for the present.[178]
This group is again interesting. For it gives us evidence as to
how dependent this character and career of the rarest loneliness
and independence had now become upon human help and sympathy; and
lets us see how illness had now introduced an excessive suddenness,
absoluteness, and shiftingness into her feelings and minor actions,
and an occasional slight querulousness into her remarks. It shows us
her old social, altruistic instincts and standard still at work within
her; for she still suffers from the consciousness, whenever she is
thrown back upon herself, of being different from other people; she
still longs to attend to the wants of others, regrets the trouble
she gives them, and feels grateful for the services they render; and
she still busies herself, in the reduced measure now possible to
her, with services of her own to others,--a “certain service,” which
she had to render, had sufficed to break through her self-imposed
seclusion. It lets us see how watchful against and suspicious of
self, and of what could flatter and indulge it, she still remained;
and how independent her judgment continued, even with regard to her
Confessor. And this her judgment we shall have good reason to hold to
have been remarkably well-grounded, in so far as this, that had only
Marabotto possessed a deeper insight into her psycho-physical state
and less of a determination to treat all her states and impulses as
equally solid and spiritual, or at least as equally to be yielded to,
he could have helped her more; and she would then, thus helped, have
been able, even now, fully to resist or to give way, in proportion to
the healthiness or the morbidness of the attack. And finally we see
how truly serviceable and necessary, and indeed repeatedly right where
her own estimate was wrong, was the help and sympathy and judgment
of her Confessor; and how difficult, entirely unselfish, and devoted
was his action and attitude. It is interesting to note that Catherine
was probably always right in her instinct as to matters directly
affecting herself, where the will came in, or could be made to come
in; and that she was wrong only in such a point of mere physical fact
and determinism as whether or not, and how long, her physical strength
would hold out.
6. _Events from January to May 1510._
I will here try and put together, in their actual succession from
January to May 1510, the chief psycho-physical phenomena and their
parallel utilizations, together with such mental and spiritual
experiences and actions as seem to have been only quite indirectly,
or not all, occasioned by her state of health. In a later chapter I
propose to study all this health matter in some detail. Here I would
simply warn the reader against treating, with certainly most of her
chroniclers, these psycho-physical phenomena as separately and directly
spiritual or miraculous or ethically significant. Found alone, they
would now, on the contrary, directly suggest simply nervous disorder of
some kind or other, a thing which, in itself, is always an evil. Their
interest and spiritual importance arises for us entirely from their
predominantly mental qualities; from their appearance in a person of
such powerful mind and large and efficient character; and from their
splendidly ethico-religious utilization by that same person.
On one day “she had an impression (‘wound,’ _ferita_) which was so
great, that she lost her speech and sight, and abode in this manner
some three hours. She made signs with her hands, of feeling as it were
red-hot pincers attacking her heart and other interior parts. But for
all this, she did not lose her full consciousness (_intelletto_).”
This was the second occasion on which she indicated her wish to be
anointed.[179] On another day “it was impossible to keep her in bed:
she seemed like a creature placed in a great flame of fire, and it was
impossible to touch her skin, because of the acute pain which she felt
from any such touch.”[180]
A little later on “she abode in so great a peace and interior
contentment that she was” in all respects “considerably relieved and
reinvigorated (_ristorata_). But she did not long remain in this
condition. For very soon she was in a state of interior nudity and
aridity, and she prayed: ‘Never hitherto, O my Lord, have I asked
Thee for anything for myself: now I pray Thee with all my might, that
Thou mayest not will to separate me from Thee. Thou well knowest, O
Lord, that I could not bear this.’ And to her disciples she said, in
connection with this desolation: ‘If a man were to take a soul from
Paradise, how do you think such a soul would feel? You might give it
all the pleasures in the world, and as much more as you can imagine:
and yet all would be but Hell, because of the memory of that divine
union’ (formerly possessed and now lost).”[181]
Again a little later on “she had another attack (_assalto_), when all
her body trembled, especially her right shoulder. It was impossible
to move her from her bed; she did not eat, drank next to nothing, and
did not sleep.”[182] On another day, “she had another attack,”--this
was the occasion of her third indication of a wish to receive Extreme
Unction,--“a spasm in the throat and mouth, so that she could not
speak, nor open her eyes, nor keep her breath except with extreme
difficulty.” “They applied cupping-glasses, with a view to aiding
her to find her breath and to regain speech, yet these helped but
little.”[183] For another day we are told that “in her flesh were
certain concavities, as though it were dough, and the thumb had been
pressed into it. And she called out in a loud voice, because of the
great pain.”[184]
On another day “her pains made her call out as loudly as she could,
and she dragged herself about on her bed. And those that stood by were
dumfounded, at seeing a body, which appeared to be healthy, in such
a tormented state. And then she would laugh, speak as one in health,
and say to the others, not to be sorrowful on her account, since she
was very contented. And this “set of attacks” lasted four days; she
then had a little rest; and, after this, those attacks returned as
before.”[185]
This group is in so far particularly difficult, as we have to try and
decide whether, and if so how far, these pains of hers were primarily
psychical, and, in some way and degree, originally, and by force
of long habits of concentrated religious thinking and picturing,
suggested, or at least stimulated, by the mind itself; or whether these
pains were primarily physical, although evidently only functional and
preponderantly nervous. For on the answer to that question depends,
if not our selection from amongst, at least our interpretation of,
the largely contradictory, successively “doctored,” and more or less
violently schematized evidence, of which the above passages give the
most characteristic and primitive parts. If it was the mind itself
which, unconsciously to its owner, suggested these pains, then we can
and must accept, as quite contemporary and indeed fully exact, those
passages which make her peace and even sensible consolation arise
during the same moments as, and in exact proportion to, the presence
of the pains. If, on the other hand, the pains arose independently
of the subconscious mind, and were merely mastered by the conscious
intelligence and will, then it seems reasonable to assume that we
have here, as is certainly the case in other matters and places in
the _Vita_, an ideal foreshortening, juxtaposition, and unification
of what, in the actual experience, occurred more lengthily and
successively.
It is certainly remarkable in this connection, that, whereas we have
had a clearly marked case of mental, spiritual desolation, outside of
one of these attacks, it is at least very difficult to find anything
certainly of the kind during one of them; indeed the juxtaposition of,
not simply profound spiritual peace, but of sensible, also psychic
or quasi-psychic, consolation with those pains, is so constant and
apparently spontaneous, that secondary, or at least schematic and _a
priori_, reporting seems to have been at work rather in the passages
which affirm the excessiveness of those pains, than in those which
insist that those pains were, so to speak, _not_ pains. All her own
authentic sayings leave the impression of immense psycho-spiritual
sensitiveness, of much actual mental and emotional suffering as well as
joy, but not, I think, of purely physical suffering. “I find so much
contentment on the part of my spirit and so much peace in my mind, that
tongue could not tell nor reason comprehend it; but on the part of my
humanity” (her psycho-physical organism) “all my pains are, so to say,
not pains,” she says, shortly after a particularly violent attack,
with four “accidents.” And a contributor declares that the joy and the
torment ever arose together. It is true that another passage says that,
during such attacks, “her disciples, seeing her suffer so much, desired
that she should expire, so as no more to have to see her in such great
and continuous torment”; but then this desire of theirs was evidently
rather a sympathetic feeling than a deliberate judgment, for, once
she has got over the attack, all this desire of theirs disappears as
rapidly as it had come.[186]
III. CATHERINE’S HISTORY FROM MAY TO SEPTEMBER 9, 1510.
1. _Catherine and the Physicians._
It is at the end of the preceding months that we are told how
“the Physician” (possibly the Hospital House-Surgeon) “attempted
to administer medicine to her. But it gave rise to such repeated
‘accidents’ (vomitings), that she all but died of it, and remained very
weak.”[187]
“And four months before she died,” hence in mid-May, “many physicians
were called together. And they saw and examined the patient, but
failed to find any trace of bodily infirmity, in spite of the care
and attention bestowed by them on the case. And she declared her
conviction that her infirmity was not of a kind requiring physicians
or bodily physic. But on the physicians persevering and ordering
her, she obediently took all that they prescribed, although with
great difficulty and to her hurt. Until at last those same physicians
concluded that there was no remedy within the art of medicine
applicable to the case, and that the infirmity was supernatural.”[188]
“But now there supervened, on his return from England, an excellent
Genoese physician, Maestro Giovan Battista Boerio, who, for many
years, had been in the service of the English King, Henry VII. And
Boerio visited Catherine, and warned her to beware of giving scandal
by refusing medical treatment. And she, in return, assured him that it
grieved her much if she scandalized any one; and that she was prepared
to use any remedy for her ailment, if such could be found.” And indeed
“joy arose within her, at the hope of being cured by him. But in the
following night much” psycho-physical “pain and trouble came upon her,”
and “she then reproved her natural self (_umanità_), saying: ‘Thou
sufferest this, because thou didst rejoice without (just) cause.’” Yet
after about three weeks’ trial of every kind of remedy, a trial which
left her as it found her, Boerio abandoned the task, but “henceforward
held Catherine in esteem and reverence, calling her ‘Mother,’ and often
visiting her.”[189]
Here we have an interesting group of facts. For one thing, we know how
King Henry “had for years been visited by regular fits of the gout;
his strength visibly wasted away, and every spring the most serious
apprehensions were entertained of his life.” “He had also pains in the
chest and difficulty of respiration.” And, “in the spring of 1509 the
King sank under the violence of the disease.”[190] And thus Boerio
will, a year after the death of his royal master, have been called
in to the sick-bed of the Viceroy’s daughter, not simply as a court
physician or as a generally skilful doctor, but as a man known to have
had long experience of a case which prima facie was not all unlike
Catherine’s.
Then it is impossible not to feel throughout these and other passages
of the _Vita_ which are concerned with physicians, a curious
combination of contradictory feelings. There is reproof of the doctors’
presumption in venturing to begin by treating her illness as though
it were a simply natural one; and there is the proud pleasure at thus
getting, through the breakdown of this their presumptuous undertaking,
professional testimony to the supernatural character of her infirmity.
And the two motives lead to the self-contradictory over-emphasizing
both of the Physicians’ moral worth and finality of testimony at the
end of each experience, and of their rationalistic rashness in being
willing to try again, a rashness assumed to be apparent to every one
but themselves before each new attempt. For they must be represented
as worthy and skilful men; else what value has their testimony? And
their action must be intrinsically foolish from the outset; else what
becomes of the transparently and separately supernatural character of
her illness?[191]
And then we can still see fairly clearly that Catherine does not share
the views of practically all her attendants, and of certainly all the
later contributors to and revisers of the _Vita_. For even now the book
still leaves intact the passages which show her as hoping to be cured
by Boerio, and as then condemning herself for having rejoiced without
cause,--evidently, without supernatural justification; as prepared
to believe that the physicians might be able to find an appropriate
remedy, and as willingly trying the remedies they actually offer her;
and as indeed declaring her doubt whether any physic would do her
any good, yet nowhere announcing a conviction as to the directly and
separately supernatural character of her illness. “Her attendants,”
says the obviously most authentic continuation of the passage
concerning the cupping-glasses given further back, “let these attacks
come and go, with as little damage as possible. Her body had to be and
was sustained without the aid of medicine, and solely by means of great
care and great vigilance.”[192]
2. _Catherine and Don Carenzio, Argentina, and Ettore Vernazza._
It will have been the end of June, or the beginning of July, when
these medical experiments ceased. But before them (on March 11 and
twice in April), and again three times during them (in May and June),
monies were paid, in Catherine’s name, by Don Giacomo Carenzio, now
resident as Rettore in the Hospital, in the matter of the granting
of Indulgences to the Church attached to the Hospital. And although
this affair, occurring thus so late on in her illness, in which we
have already found her not always to have dominated the plans of her
attendants, cannot well be pressed as necessarily characteristic of
her, yet I take it to be quite likely that she still took some active
part in the matter.[193]
Catherine certainly still attended to business, even two months later;
for, on August 3, Vernazza drew up a Codicil in her presence “in the
bedroom of Argentina del Sale,” says the document itself. Since the
Inventory, still extant, of the things found in Catherine’s rooms at
the time of her death, gives a list of the bedclothes of only two beds,
and these two beds are then both in the same room, and the one bed is
Catherine’s, and the other is that of the _famiglia_ (the servant)
Argentina: it is clear that, for at least the last six weeks of her
life, Catherine had only one person sleeping in her little house with
her, and that this person was the navvy Marco’s little widow. I take
it, with Vallebona, that the room was really Catherine’s ordinary
bedroom; but that, as Argentina now slept there as regularly as her
mistress herself, Catherine preferred, whether from humility or
affection (the latter motive seems the more probable), to think of the
room as belonging to Argentina.[194]
For some reason unknown to us, Vernazza, Catherine’s closest friend,
must have left Genoa soon after drawing up this Codicil. For he did not
draw up or witness her final Codicil of September 12, although, when in
Genoa at all, he now lived close by, and although this final Codicil
but gave effect to the plan regarding her sepulture which underlay the
change introduced into the Will of March 1509, a Will which had been
witnessed by himself. And, as we shall see, he was absent, indeed far
away (_lontano_), from her death-bed, some six weeks after the date at
which we have now arrived. I think we can only explain this departure
by assuming that already now, before his inspirer’s death, his zeal and
activity had expanded beyond the limits of the Genoese Republic; and
that, dying as she already was, and devoted to her as he ever remained,
he nevertheless (since there was now so little that he could hope to
do for her own person, and there was so much to do elsewhere in the
way of developing and applying her spirit and teachings) now rode off
to Venice or to Rome, as we know him to have done, so often and for so
long, during the fourteen remaining years of his life. And we have in
this a fact peculiarly characteristic of these two expansive souls,--of
the influence of the one, the frail woman, dying in her little
sick-room, and of the execution of her world-embracing aspirations by
the other, the strong man, battling, often at the risk of his very
life, for the poor and oppressed, outside, on the great trysting-field
of men’s passions and requirements.
3. _Psycho-physical condition and its utilization, August 10 to 27._
But Catherine, lying in her sick-room, suffered on August 10 from one
of her great burnings. “And next day, whilst her body was still in pain
and trouble, God drew her mind upwards to Himself. And she fixed her
eyes on the ceiling, and remained thus almost immovable for an hour,
and spoke not but laughed joyously. And when she had returned to her
more ordinary consciousness, she said this one thing only: ‘O Lord, do
with me whatsoever Thou wilt.’”[195]
On August 15, she, “when about to communicate, addressed many
beautiful words to the Blessed Sacrament, so that every one present
was moved to tears.”[196] During the following day and night she
suffered so greatly, that “all considered she would certainly die. She
asked,”--this was the third or even fourth time,--“for Extreme Unction,
and” this time “it was given her, and she received it with great
devotion.”
“On the day following,” the 17th, “she was in a state of jubilation
of heart (_giubilo di cuore_), which manifested itself exteriorly in
merry laughter. And, having been asked as to the cause, she said that
she had seen various most beautiful, merry, and joyous countenances, so
that she had been unable to refrain from laughing. And this impression
continued throughout several days, during which she appeared to be
improved in health.”[197] But on August 22 or 23, “she again had a
day of much heat and trouble. She remained maimed (paralyzed) in her
right hand and in one finger of the left hand. And then she remained as
though dead for about sixteen hours.”[198]
In the night of the 23rd or 24th (Feast of St. Bartholomew) she had “a
great attack in mind and body; and being unable to speak, she made the
sign of the Cross upon her heart. And, later on, she was understood to
have been molested by a diabolical temptation.”[199]
On the 25th “she was in great weakness. And she caused her windows to
be opened, so as to be able to see the sky. And, as the night came
on, she had many candles lit; and she chanted, as well as she could,
the ‘Veni, Creator Spiritus.’ And when she had finished she fixed her
eyes upon the sky, and remained thus an hour and a half, making many
gestures with her hands and eyes. And when she had resumed her ordinary
consciousness (_quando fù ritornata in sè_), she said repeatedly:
‘Let us go’; and then added: ‘No more earth, no more earth.’ And her
body remained greatly shaken from this contemplation (_vista_).” And
on August 27 “she saw herself as though bereft of her body and of its
animating soul, and her spirit alone in God above. And after this she
addressed those present and said: ‘Let only those come in who may be
necessary.’”[200]
This particular group is specially interesting. For it shows us
Catherine’s love of the large and expansive, of the spiritually simple
and interior, and of the supernatural and transcendent in her look-out
into the open; in her vivid apprehension of her spirit bereft of all
things except the Supreme Spirit, that spirit’s native element and
home; and in her gaze into the starlit Italian August sky above. And it
gives us indications, elsewhere so rare in her life, of her attachment
to the visible, audible, tangible vehicles and expressions of religion,
as so many helps and occasions of its immanence in our minds and
hearts, in her signing her heart with the sign of the Cross, her having
the candles lit and her chanting a definite traditional Church hymn,
and in her fourth demand of Extreme Unction and devout reception of
it. It is also noticeable how vivid and yet how undefined are her
impressions of those countenances, since neither she herself anywhere,
nor even her chroniclers in this place, explicitly identify them with
Angels; and how still more general and indefinite remains the “diabolic
temptation,” since in this case, only when it was over, was she
“understood” to have been thus tempted. Indeed any directly diabolical
temptation would be profoundly uncharacteristic of her special call
and way: all through the records of her life and teaching it is the
selfish, claimful Self that she fears “more than a demon,” “worse than
the devil”; she is, in a very true sense, too busy watching, fighting,
ignoring, supplanting Self, and ever putting, keeping, and replacing
God, Love, in Self’s stead, to give or find occasion for what, in this
her immensely strenuous inner life, would have been a remoter conflict.
4. _Persistent self-knowledge and excessive impressionableness._
The _Vita_ next gives us five most vivid but undated paragraphs as to
her health. I will take them together with such other dated occurrences
as will bring us down to September 10.
There is first a characteristic general fact, and a probably often
repeated remark of Catherine’s. “At times she would have no pulse,
and at other times she would have a good one; often she would seem to
sleep; and from this state she would awake, at one time completely
herself again, and at other times so limp, oppressed, and shattered
as to be unable to move. And those that attended on her did not know
how to distinguish one state from the other. And hence, on coming to,
she would sometimes say, ‘Why did you let me remain in this quietude,
from which I have almost died?’”[201] Thus Catherine’s attendants
are helplessly at sea concerning her psycho-physical condition, and
they identify, and directly supernaturalize, each and all of her
successive and simultaneous states. But Catherine herself remains
clearly conscious of different levels and values in these states: of
normal, grace-impelled, freely-willed, strength-bringing contemplations
and quietudes; and of sickly, weakening, more or less hysterical,
lassitudes and failures. And she is thus aware of the deep difference
between the two sets of states, that are externally so similar, at
the very time of experiencing the one or the other of them; and is
conscious, at the same time, both of being unable, by her own unaided
will, to give effect, from within, to this her own knowledge, and of
being able and willing, indeed anxious, to follow the lead and the
pressure of wisely discriminating will-acts, proceeding from without,
and, as it were, meeting her own wishes half-way, and thus turning them
into effective willings. She herself has still the knowledge, but, now
she is ill, she has no more the power. They have the power, but not the
knowledge. And she knows all this, through God’s illumination working
in and upon her own long and rich experiences, sound good sense, severe
self-detachment, close self-observation, and incorruptible veracity of
mind; and she knows it in spite of, and in direct opposition to, the
far more flattering misconceptions, and entirely well-meant and sincere
opinions (representative of the traditional and contemporary consensus
of view on these obscure matters) of the servants, lawyers, physicians,
relatives, and priests about her. The incident is closely parallel to
her scruple as to Marabotto’s spoiling her; and one more similar detail
will be mentioned later on.
But next, we get now abundant evidence that she was ill indeed. There
is the rapidly shifting fancifulness of the senses of taste and smell,
together with an ever-increasing difficulty of swallowing. “She would,
at times, be so thirsty as to feel capable of drinking all the water of
the sea, and yet she could not, as a matter of fact, manage to swallow
even one little drop of water.” “Seeing on one occasion a melon, and
conceiving a great desire to eat it, she had it given to her. But
hardly had she a piece of it in her mouth, but she rejected it with
great disgust.” “She often bathed her mouth with water, and then
suddenly she would reject it.” “To-day the smell of wine would please
her, and she would bathe her hands and face in it, with great relish;
and to-morrow she would dislike it so much, as to be unable any longer
to see or smell it in her room.”[202] And, in strict conformity with
this detail, I find an entry in the Hospital account-book for this
time, of money disbursed to the account of Catherine, for a cask of
wine for her use.[203]
Yet her biographers are evidently only stating the simple truth
when they declare that she continued to receive Holy Communion with
ease and safety; for not only are there three quite unsuspicious
passages, descriptive of her receptions of It, under most difficult
circumstances; but we find, on counting up the incidental and bare
mentions of her Communions, that, during the fourteen days from
September 2 to 15, her death-day, she communicated ten times, and one
or two further Communions may have been accidentally omitted.
There is, again, an occasional abnormal sensitiveness to colours,
and their mental connotations, at least in connection with red.
“On September 2, a Physician, a friend of hers,”--no doubt Maestro
Boerio,--“came to visit her, robed in his Doctor’s ‘scarlet,’” as was
no doubt the custom when visiting patients of quality. “And she bore
this sight for a little, so as not to hurt his feelings. But when
she could bear it no longer, she said to him: ‘Sir, I can no further
bear the sight of this gown of yours, because of what it represents
(suggests) to me.’ The Physician departed at once and returned clad
in another,” a black “gown.” The Chronicler, probably Boerio’s
priest-son, is no doubt substantially right in interpreting this as
meaning that the scarlet suggested to her a seraph aflame with divine
love. Yet I find, from the inventory of her final possessions, that
she possessed, and doubtless used, among her bedclothes a vermilion
silk coverlet and a vermilion blanket,--an undoubted indication
of her love for this colour.[204] These two vicissitudes of her
colour-affection no doubt mutually supplement and explain each other:
when not over-impressionable and not already stimulated to the full
of her capacity, this colour would suggest her central doctrine and
experience, and would be pleasurable; when over-impressionable and
already stimulated as much as, then and there, she could bear and
utilize, the colour would but strain and disturb her.
And, finally, there are sensations and impressions of extreme heat and
cold, and excessive sensibility or insensibility in tactual matters.
“At one time she was cold; and at another, burning hot.” “On one day,”
early in September, “she suffered great cold in her right arm, followed
by acute pain”; and on September 7, “her body felt all on fire; and,
since it seemed to her as though the whole world were aflame, she asked
whether this were the case, and had her windows opened, so as to be
reassured as to the real facts.”[205]
“At times she would be sensitive to such a degree, that it was
impossible to touch her sheets or a hair of her head; she would,
if this were done, cry out as though she had been grievously
wounded.”[206] The temporary paralysis and anaesthetic conditions have
been already described.
5. _Three spiritually significant events, September 4-9._
We can next consider together three spiritually significant incidents
which occurred during these penultimate days of hers.
“On September 4 she lay there in her bed, in great pain, her arms
stretched out in suchwise that she appeared like a body nailed to a
cross; as she was within, so did she appear without.” Here, then,
she finds a certain attraction and help in an external, quasi-ritual
attitude and act; for this attitude, however spontaneous and but
subconscious, was doubtless not simply accidental or the mere result
of pain. It is, with the Pietà-picture of her childhood and the
Conversion-vision of the Bleeding Christ, one of the only three direct
references to the Passion which I can find throughout her whole
life and teaching. This little act gave occasion to the “Spiritual
Stigmata”-legend, which is inserted here, in two paragraphs, by the
_Vita_, on the alleged, and I think actual, authority of the credulous
and long-lived Argentina. The legend is wanting in all the MSS.; its
late genesis and growth is clearly traceable.[207]
“On September 5, some time after her Communion, she suddenly had a
sight (_vista_) of herself, as dead and lying in a truckle-bed, with
many Religious, robed in black, around her. And she rejoiced greatly
at this sight. But afterwards, having a prick of conscience because of
this rejoicing, she confessed it to her Confessor.”[208] Here we have
once more a particular desire within Catherine’s soul, and a scruple
consequent upon it; and all this but ten days before her death.
And on the 9th, after Communion, there was “suddenly shown her a sight
of her (spiritual) miseries; and this gave great annoyance (_noia_) to
her mind. And, as soon as she was able to tell (confess) them, she did
so; and the sight then departed from her.”[209] Here, then, we have
clear testimony to imperfections perceived by herself as still within
her, and to her Confession of them as such; things characteristic
of her third as against her second period, but which most of the
contributors to the _Vita_ try hard to obscure even here.
IV. THE LAST SIX DAYS OF CATHERINE’S LIFE, SEPTEMBER 10-15.
And now the events of real significance which occurred during the last
six days of her life can be grouped under six heads.
1. _A great consultation of Physicians, September 10._
On the 10th there occurred a second, and last, great consultation of
Physicians. The number is this time given--they were ten: “of whom
several are still alive,” writes the final Redactor of the printed
_Vita_ of 1551. And, in this case, they did not prescribe any remedies;
but “examining her and inspecting everything with great diligence,
they finally concluded that such a case was (must be) a supernatural
and divine thing, since neither the pulse, nor any of the secretions,
nor any other symptom, showed any trace of any infirmity. They were
astounded, and departed recommending themselves to her prayers.” “When
she was not oppressed or tormented by her attacks (_accidenti_), she
seemed well; when she was being stifled by them (_suffocata_), she
seemed dead: and again, suddenly, the opposite condition would be seen.
And hence it was most clearly understood, that all this operation was
produced (_ordinata_) by the divine goodness itself.”[210]
Here we have a clear exposition of the two sets of phenomena which
specially impressed her _entourage_, and of the reasoning by which
these appearances were turned into direct proofs of the Metaphysical,
indeed of the Supernatural. There are three assumptions at work here.
What exceeds the knowledge of the Physicians of any one period, can be
safely held to exceed not only human knowledge throughout all coming
ages, but the powers of nature itself. All purely natural illness is
either simply physical or simply mental, and always shows traces
of a simply physical or of a simply mental kind. And all purely
natural illness is either slow in its transitions, or, at least, not
sudden in its transitions back and up to apparent health. And these
assumptions must have lain in those minds as part and parcel of their
hereditary furniture, in so far as they did not energize and aspire,
and did not, by moving out and up into the regions of Action and of
the Spiritual, of the Dynamic and of Love, transcend all that is
mechanically transmissible, and, with it, all that was bound to change
and be proved inadequate in the knowledge of their time. It was their
very religion which, with its strong predisposition and determination
to find immediate, independent, tangible, medically certified proofs
for an exceptional, indeed exclusive action of God, kept these
Physicians thus, even religiously, tied down in and by the Contingent
and Transitory. And it was her very religion which, by its grandly
ethico-spiritual Transcendence, kept Catherine above and outside the
very possibility of growing obsolete or old. We now see, with even
painful clearness, how inadequate, indeed how directly suggestive
of the contrary, were those Physicians’ and Redactors’ treasured
proofs. For neither the absence of all symptoms of physical or of
clearly mental disease, nor the presence of an astounding frequency,
abruptness, and completeness of change in the psycho-physical actions
and functions of the living person, nor, above all, the conjunction of
these two peculiarities, are for us now, taken by themselves, anything
but indications of nervous, hysterical derangement. It is in spite of
these things, or at least only on occasion of them, that Catherine
is great. Indeed one fails to see how, in any case, such purely
psycho-physical phenomenal data could, of themselves and directly, ever
compel any such metaphysical and spiritual conclusions. And, be it
noted, only in proportion as men abandon such impossible enterprises,
do they become sufficiently detached from these phenomena to be able
accurately to gauge their nature. These attendants who build so much
on these phenomena, do not see them as they are; Catherine, who builds
nothing on them, and who simply uses them as fresh means and occasions
of ethico-spiritual growth, sees them, to an astonishing extent, as
they really are.
2. _The final Codicil, September 12._
On the 12th, “she communicated as usual, but tasted no other food,
and after this she remained a very long time without speaking. And
after they had been bathing her mouth for some time, she exclaimed,
‘I am suffocating’ (_io affogo_). She said this because a little drop
of water had trickled into her throat, and she could not gulp it
down.” And in the evening the Notary Saccheri drew up in her presence,
with her nephew Francesco Fiesco and the maid Argentina del Sale as
two of the seven witnesses, a last Codicil, in which she, “although
languishing in body, yet possessed of her faculties (_in sua sana
memoria esistente_), ordained that her body should be buried in such
a place and Church as should be ordained by Don Jacobo Carenzio, the
present Rector of the Hospital, and Don Cattaneo Marabotto.” And “at
ten o’clock at night she complained of a very great heat (fire), and
then ejected from the mouth much black blood. And black spots appeared
all over her body, with very severe suffering. And her sight became so
weak that she could barely distinguish one person from the other.”[211]
Here at last we can plainly see the object which had moved her
friends, eighteen months before, to get her to fix upon San Nicolò in
Boschetto as her burial-place. They now, when she is at the point of
death, and in the last moment of fairly lucid mind, get her finally
to declare,--not that she is to be buried in the Hospital Church
apart from her husband, though this is what they themselves intend
to do, but simply that her grave is to be wheresoever Dons Marabotto
and Carenzio shall decide. It is interesting to note to how late a
date her friends thought it wise to postpone such a move, and in how
indirect and roundabout a fashion they had to attain their end. Yet it
is again plain that the whole scheme was willed and executed by her
family and friends unanimously; for, if Vernazza had been a witness
to the previous Will, so was Francesco Fiesco now a witness to this
Codicil.--We should also note that, if the difficulty in swallowing
of the early day is still entirely in keeping with her life-long
psycho-physical peculiarities, the attack at night is the first in her
life when the blood lost is described as of bad quality and where
spots appear on her person, indeed where any symptom of definite
illness is recorded. But now at last it is evident that downright
physical mischief is at work.
3. _Symptoms of organic lesion and delirium, September 13._
Before dawn “on the 13th, she evacuated much blood of a bad quality and
great heat, so that she remained even weaker than before. Nevertheless
she again communicated at her usual hour.” And later on “she fixed her
gaze immovably upon the ceiling, and made many gestures with her mouth
and hands. The bystanders asked her what it was that she was seeing,
and she said: ‘Drive away that beast that wants to eat…,’ and the
remainder of the words could not be made out.”[212]
Here two points are of pathetic interest. This great heat of her
blood was considered, no doubt from the first by at least some of
her attendants, and then later on more and more by the Redactors, as
so directly marvellous, spiritually significant, and confirmatory of
sayings of her own as to her interior ardours, that three various
though parallel anecdotes and proofs as to the intensity of its heat
are solemnly printed here by the _Vita_, only the first of which
appears in the MSS. Purely secondary, physical matters are thus, with a
short-sighted good faith and admiration, eagerly utilized to naturalize
and obscure a soaringly spiritual personality. Truly, she was not
simply mistaken as to her isolation: she too had the privilege to share
some of the piercing loneliness of Christ.
And next, we have here her last coherent utterance; and the care and
fearless honesty with which it has been chronicled and printed as
such--and as the concluding words of a chapter (Chapter L), up to at
least the fourth edition, Venice 1601--are truly admirable. The words,
“that wants to eat,” appear in MSS. “A” and “B,” and are, I think,
authentic. They may mean that the beast was looking about for some
unspecified food, or that it was wanting to devour her (the former is,
I think, the more likely meaning, for there is no indication of fright,
and _devorare_ would, in the latter case, be the more natural word). We
have, in any case, a quasi-physical, distinctly _maladif_ impression;
one which, as regards at least its apparently sensible embodiment, was
the simple projection of her own mind. And indeed there is nothing
to show that she had any consciousness of any spiritual significance
about it. It has got all the opaque, uninteresting character of mere,
given, unrelated, and unsuggestive fact, which all such purely nervous
projections always have; and stands thus in complete and instructive
contrast to her finely suggestive and transparent, spiritually
significant _Viste_, which contributed so largely to the volitional
stimulation and moral and religious witness and truth of her life.
4. _Catherine’s death, dawn of September 15, 1510._
During the early night hours of “the 14th, she again lost much blood,
and she weakened much in her speech. Yet she once more, and it was
the last time, communicated as usual. And throughout this day she lay
there, with her pulse so slight as to be unfindable.” And “many devoted
friends were present.”
And as the subsequent night ceased to be Saturday and became Sunday,
the 15th, “she was asked whether she wished to communicate. But she
then pointed with her right index-finger towards the sky.” And her
friends understood that she wished to indicate by this that she had to
go and communicate in heaven. “And at this moment, this blessed soul
gently expired, in great peace and tranquillity, and flew to her tender
and much desired Love.”[213]
Here three points are of interest. Catherine undoubtedly died at, or
shortly before, dawn on the 15th September, as is clearly required by
the older account on page 160_c_ of the _Vita_. Yet a second account,
sufficiently early to appear in all the MSS., is given on page 161_c_,
according to which she died on the 14th. The reason of this latter
pragmatic “correction” is obvious: the 15th is but the Octave of the
Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, the 14th is the Feast of the Exaltation
of the Cross. The temptation to find a final, strikingly appropriate
synchronism, when, to do so, her death need only be pushed back some
six hours at most, was too great to be resisted to the end; and an
untrained, enthusiastic, imaginative mind like Argentina’s would,
probably from the very first, have almost unconsciously helped to
establish, or perhaps she single-handedly fixed, this date.
And next, the “many friends” present will no doubt have included her
sole surviving brother Lorenzo and his son Francesco, who, only three
days before, had witnessed her Codicil; one or other of the four
“Protectors” of the Hospital; Don Carenzio, the Rector; and Argentina
del Sale. But Vernazza, as we already know, was far away; and, as we
shall find in a moment, Mariola, and, above all, Marabotto, though both
in Genoa, were both absent from her death-bed. Now it is certain that
the absence of Marabotto cannot have been accidental, for death had
evidently been recognized by all to be imminent, ever since the 12th
at least; and he himself would certainly not have put anything in the
world before attending Catherine at the moment of her death. Nor, as
we shall find, was he ill just now. Yet we must, I think, suppose him
to have been (at least off and on) about her person, during the 12th,
up to the drawing up of the Codicil, which directly concerns himself
together with Carenzio. His own name appears second, no doubt because,
as the document itself mentions, Carenzio and not he is now Rector of
the Hospital in which the document is being drawn up. Marabotto will
have withdrawn after the attack on that night which left Catherine
hardly capable of any further distinguishing one person from another;
and he will have retired because Carenzio, from some little jealousy
or feeling of punctilio, cared to claim the right, as Rector, alone
to attend her at the last; or for some other slight reason such as
this. In any case, there is here one more indication of a certain
friction and rivalry amongst her attendants and chroniclers, which,
however painful, will help us in our study of the peculiarities of her
biography. There is, however, nothing to show that Marabotto’s final
withdrawal took place at the instigation, or even with the knowledge,
of Catherine; and the cause of that withdrawal can certainly not have
been a grave one.
And finally, there appeared eventually, at earliest in the fifth
edition, 1615, but possibly not till the sixth, in 1645, or even later,
a gloss which effectually prevents her “unedifying” remark of the 13th
from being her last utterance. After the words, “and at this moment,
this blessed soul,” there then appears the clause: “saying: ‘Into Thy
hands, O Lord, I commend my Spirit.’” The passage occurs in the late
and entirely secondary MS. “F,” which contains also other demonstrably
legendary “embellishments.”
5. _Intimations of her death vouchsafed to friends._
The _Vita_ gives an account of seven intimations or apparitions,
vouchsafed at the moment of her death to as many chosen friends and
disciples,--so many communications of her passage and instant complete
union with God. Although no names are given, it is easy to identify the
first six persons as Argentina del Sale, “a spiritual daughter of hers,
present at her death”; Mariola Bastarda, “another spiritual daughter of
hers, who had an evil spirit upon her (_il demonio adosso_)”; Maestro
Boerio, “a physician, her devotee”; Ettore Vernazza, “a very spiritual
man and her devotee”; Tommasa Fiesca, “a holy Religious woman, most
devoted to her”; and Benedetta Lombarda, “another Religious woman, who
had been a member of her household (_sua famigliare_).” The seventh
and last, “a nun” (_una monaca_), is so little characterized, as to
be incapable of certain identification: possibly Battista Vernazza is
meant, who, though but thirteen years old, was already an Augustinian
Novice.[214]
The order in which the first six names appear is evidently determined
partly by the degree of physical proximity to Catherine--Argentina by
her bedside, comes before Boerio in another house in Genoa, and Boerio
comes before Vernazza, since the latter is far away (_lontano_); partly
by sex--Boerio and Vernazza, though simple laymen, appear before the
three Religious women; and partly by the abnormal spiritual condition,
and consequent increase in the value of the testimony, of the souls
concerned--Mariola the Possessed comes first among all those not
actually present at the death. Even this order, and still more the form
of all these little notices, show plainly that the stress is laid, not
so much on the intimation of the death, as on that of the immediate
entrance into glory. Note that there is no reference anywhere to Don
Carenzio, certainly as much present at the death as Argentina; nor,
within this particular list, to Don Marabotto, as certainly absent as
Ettore Vernazza.
It is disappointing to find that, whereas such intimations, or at least
communications as to death at the moment of its occurrence, belong
to the best authenticated of the more mysterious human experiences,
and although we would expect to find some such unmistakably vivid and
first-hand accounts at this point in the life of one so spiritually
great and so deeply loved as was Catherine, the accounts are all,
with the possible exception of that concerning Boerio, very general
and colourless. As to Boerio we are told: “A Physician, her devotee,
was asleep, but awoke at the moment of her passing, and heard a voice
which said to him: ‘Abide with God; I am now going to Paradise.’ And
he called his wife and said to her: ‘Madonna Caterina has died at this
moment’; and this turned out to have been the case.”[215]
Two insipid, vague, and gossipy fragments concerning Don Marabotto
strive to make up for his absence from the list of the seven recipients
of synchronizing intimations. “Her Confessor during that night (14th to
15th) and throughout the following day (15th), had no notice whatever
concerning her.” This is told as if it had been something spiritually
remarkable, whereas it was evidently but strangely unkind on the part
of the other friends of Catherine. “The next day (16th) he attempted
to say a Mass for the Dead for the soul of Catherine.” He evidently
had been told on the evening of the 15th, or quite early on the 16th,
for there is here no claim to any supernatural intimation. “And he
found himself unable to pray for her in particular. And again on the
following day, whilst saying a Mass in honour of several Martyrs, his
mind was suddenly, from the Introit onwards, fixed upon Catherine’s
spiritual martyrdom, so that his abundant weeping made it difficult for
him to finish his Mass.”[216] There is, as so often with Marabotto,
something slightly comical, and yet respectable, because thoroughly
genuine, loyal, and truthful, about this his eager desire to experience
something unusual, the careful registration of something quite
commonplace, and the wistful attempt to make it out extraordinary after
all.
6. _Alleged miraculous condition of Catherine’s skin and heart._
There remain two more medical details, which are, however, of some
significance in connection with the spirit of her _entourage_.
Her skin is declared to have been, after death, of a yellow colour
throughout. Indeed in various places of the _Vita_ yellow or red colour
is noted in connection with her person, but generally as localized
about the region of the heart. But the accounts vary, indeed contradict
each other, so much, that I shrink from finally adopting any one
account.[217]
The action of her heart was often laborious or even acutely painful:
“At the last, owing to the great fire of pure and penetrating love,
that burnt within her heart, the skin over it became so tender as to be
unable to be touched. It seemed as though she had a wound right through
her heart. And she often held her hand over it; and it would pant like
a pair of bellows, on one day more than on another.”[218] And how
often had not Catherine spoken of the wondrous things, the spiritual
joys and sufferings, that she felt within her heart! And so some of
her materializing biographers, probably some of her attendants before
them, doubt not that “if only her (physical) heart had been examined
after death, some marvellous sign would have been found upon it.”[219]
We even find a report that “this holy soul, several months before her
death, left an order that, after her death, her body should be opened
and her heart examined, because they would find it all consumed (burnt
up) by love. Nevertheless her friends did not dare to do so.”[220] This
sheer legend will have been due to Argentina, and will have become
articulate long after the first deposition of Catherine’s remains.
There is certainly no other, indeed no kind of authentic, evidence of
any such wish or hesitation on the part of any one at the time. It is
sad to note how rapidly and easily, all but inevitably, the vivid,
spiritual ideas and experiences of Catherine were thus materialized and
spoilt.
V. SKETCH OF CATHERINE’S SPIRITUAL CHARACTER AND SIGNIFICANCE.
Before proceeding further to what is really still a necessary part
and elucidation of Catherine’s spiritual character and special
significance,--her doctrine and the posthumous effect, extension,
and application of her life and teaching upon and by means of her
greatest disciples,--it may be well to pause a little, and to try and
give, as far as the largely fragmentary and vague evidence permits, a
short and vivid picture and summary, in part retrospective and in part
prospective, of the special type, meaning and importance of Catherine’s
personality and spiritual attitude, and of the interrelation of the
two. In so doing I propose to move, as far as possible, from the
psycho-physical and temperamental peculiarities and determinisms
of her case, up to the spiritual characteristics and ethical
self-determinations; and to try and note everywhere what she was not as
definitely as what she was. For only thus shall we have some adequate
apprehension of the “beggarly elements” which she found, and of the
spiritual organism and centre of far-reaching influence which she left.
And only thus too will it be possible to see at all clearly the cost,
the limitations, and the special functions, temporary and permanent, of
her particular kind of soul and sanctity.
1. _Her special temperament._
It is clear then, first, that in her we have to do with a highly
nervous, delicately poised, immensely sensitive and impressionable
psycho-physical organism and temperament. It was a temperament which,
had it been unmatched by a mind and will at least its equals; had
these latter not found, or been found by, a definite, rich, and
supernaturally powerful, historical, and institutional religion; and
had not the mind and will, with this religious help, been kept in
constant operation upon it, would have spelt, if not moral ruin, at
least life-long ineffectualness. Yet, as a matter of fact, not only
did this temperament not dominate her, with the apparently rare and
incomplete exceptions of some but semi-voluntary, short impressions
and acts during the last months of her life; but it became one of the
chief instruments and materials of her life’s work and worth. Only
together with such a mind and will, is such a temperament not a grave
drawback; and even with them it is an obvious danger, and requires
their constant careful checking and active shaping.
And this temperament involved an unusually large subconscious life. All
souls have some amount of this life, but many have it but slight and
shallow: she had it of a quite extraordinary degree and depth. A coral
reef, growing up from, and just peering above, a hundred fathom-deep
ocean, would be an appropriate picture of the large predominance of
subconsciousness in this spacious soul. And even this circumstance
alone would cause her spiritual lights and fully conscious experiences
to come abruptly, and in the form of quasi-physical seizures and
surprises. Continuous, and possibly long, incubations of ideas and
feelings would thus be taking place in the subconscious region, and
these feelings and ideas would then, when fully ripe, or on some slight
stimulation from the conscious region or directly from the outer world,
make sudden irruptions into that full consciousness. Nor would such
natural suddenness of full consciousness really militate against the
claim to supernaturalness of the ideas and feelings thus revealed. For
they would still be most rightly conceived as the work of God’s Spirit
in and through the action of her own spirit: not their causation and
their source, but simply the suddenness of their revelation and the
channel of their outlet would lose in supernaturalness.
And hers was a soul with habitually large fields of consciousness.
Apparently from her conversion onwards, and certainly during the last
fourteen years of her life, the moments or days of narrow fields
were, till quite the last weeks or even days, comparatively rare;
and their narrowness was evidently always felt as most painful and
oppressive. And the interior occupation was so intense; the several
fields succeeded each other with such an apparent automatism and
quality of even physical seizure; and they were either so entrancing
by their largeness or so depressing by their narrowness: that to souls
not in tune with hers, she must, in the former moods, have appeared as
egoistic, as (in a sense) too much of a man, as one absorbed in great
but purely general, super-personal ideas which were making her forget
both her own and her fellow-creature’s minor wants; and, in the latter
moods, as downrightly egotistic, as (in a way) too much of a woman, as
one engrossed in her own purely individual, small and fanciful troubles
and trials. Yet the “Egoism” is not dominant during her middle period,
since it is certain that her charitable and administrative activities,
and close affective interest in the daily, physical and emotional lot
and demands of the poor and lowly, were most real and considerable.
And, in her third period, it was this very “Egoism” which, as we shall
see, was the form and means of the interior apprehension and exterior
elaboration of her most original and suggestive doctrines, and became
the occasion for her stimulation of other intensely active souls on
to great nation-wide enterprises of the most practical, permanent,
and heroic kind. And the “Egotistic” moods are unapparent before the
last two years or less of her life; and they then are clearly but
the occasional, involuntary suspensions or partial yieldings of her
normally iron will,--rare checks and intermittences which, with little
or no preventible faultiness on her own part, give us pathetically
vivid glimpses of what that normal life of hers cost her to achieve
and to maintain, and of what she would have been, if bereft of God’s
generosity ever awakening, deepening, and operating through her own.
All this sensitiveness, subconsciousness, spaciousness, variety, and
suddenness of apprehension and feeling; all this largely chaotic,
mutually conflicting, raw material of her spiritual life, even if it
had existed alongside of but feeble and inert powers of organization
and transformation, would not have failed to produce considerable
suffering; although, in such a case, that suffering would have
remained largely inarticulate, and would have left the soul checked
and counterchecked by various tyrannous passions and fancies. The soul
would thus have been less efficient and persuasive than the least
subconscious and sensitive specimens of average and “common-sense”
humanity. But, in her case, all this unusually turbulent raw material
was in unusually close contiguity to powers of mind and of will of a
rare breadth and strength. And this very closeness of apposition and
width of contrast, and this great strength of mind and will, made
all that disordered multiplicity, distraction, and dispersion of her
clamorous, many-headed, many-hearted nature, a tyranny impossible and
unnecessary to bear. And yet to achieve the actual escape from such a
tyranny, the mastering of such a rabble, and the harmonization of such
a chaos, meant a constant and immense effort, a practically unbroken
grace-getting and self-giving, an ever-growing heroism and indeed
sanctity, and, with and through all these things, a corresponding
expansion and virile joy. It can thus be said, in all simple truth,
that she became a saint because she had to; that she became it,
to prevent herself going to pieces: she literally had to save, and
actually did save, the fruitful life of reason and of love, by
ceaselessly fighting her immensely sensitive, absolute, and claimful
self.
2. _Catherine and Marriage._
Catherine’s mind was without humour or wit; and this was, of course, a
serious drawback. And her temperament was of so excessive a mentality,
as to amount to something more or less abnormal. For not only is there
no trace about her, at any time, of moral vulgarity of any kind, or of
any tendency to it; and this is, of course, a grand strength; but she
seems at all times to have been greatly lacking in that quite innocent
and normal sensuousness, which appears to form a necessary element of
the complete human personality. It is true that in the anecdotes of
her impulsive and yet reverent affection for the pestiferous woman and
the cancerous workman, with the finely self-oblivious sympathy which
moves her to kiss the mouth of the first, and long to remain with her
arms around the neck of the other, there is the beautiful tenderness
and daring of a great positive purity, of the purity of flame and not
of snow. And her love of her servants, Argentina in particular, and
of poor Thobia, is exquisitely true and constant. Yet even all this
can hardly be classed with the element referred to, with that love of
children and of women as the bearers of them, that instinct of union
with all that is pure and fruitful in the normal life of sex, such as
is so beautifully present throughout St. Luke’s Gospel, but which is,
at least relatively, absent from St. John’s.
Possibly her unhappy and childless marriage determined the
non-development or the mortification of any tendencies to such a
temper. But the absence referred to was more probably caused by her
congenital psychical temperament and state themselves; and, if so,
it would point to her as a person hardly intended for marriage, and
as one who, through no fault of her own, could not satisfy the less
purely mental of the perfectly licit requirements which make up the
many-levelled wants of a normal, or at least ordinary, man’s and
husband’s nature. Pompilia’s dying words, in Browning’s “Ring and the
Book,” would, probably at any time after her premature involuntary
marriage, have found an appropriate place upon Catherine’s lips, had
she ever thought it loyal or kind to utter them: “‘In heaven there is
neither marriage nor giving in marriage.’ How like Jesus Christ to say
that!”
Yet it is at least as difficult to think of her as really intended for
the cloister. That early wish of hers to join a religious community,
sincere and keen as it no doubt was at the time, evidently faded
away completely, probably already before her conversion thirteen
years later, and certainly before her widowhood. Perhaps she would
have been best suited, throughout her adult years, to the life of an
unmarried woman living in the world,--to the kind of life which she
actually led during her widowhood, with such changes in it as her
earlier, robuster health would have involved for those earlier years.
She would thus, throughout her life, have divided her energies, in
various degrees and combinations, between attention to the multiform,
practical, physico-emotional wants of the poor; the give and take of
stimulation and enlightenment to and from some few large-hearted,
heroically operative friends; and, as source and centre of all such
actual achievements and of indefinitely greater possibilities, indeed
as a life already largely eternal and creative,--contemplative prayer
of various degrees and kinds. But such a life, if it would have left
out much disappointment and suffering, and not for herself alone, yet
would also have been without the special occasions and incentives to
her sudden conversion and long patience and detailed magnanimity. Her
life, in appearing on the surface as less of a failure, would at bottom
have been less of a spiritual success.
Indeed the failures and fragmentarinesses of her life, even if and
where more than merely apparent to us or even to herself, helped and
still help to give a poignant forcefulness to her example and teaching.
There is nothing pre- or post-arranged, nothing artificial or stagey,
nothing, in the deliberate occupations of her convert life, that is
simply brooding about this woman: when she thinks or prays, she does
so; when she acts, she acts; when she suffers, she suffers; and there
is an end of it. The infinitely winning qualities of a simple veracity;
of a successive livingness, because ever operative occupation with the
actual real moment, and not with the after-shadow of the past nor with
the fore-shadow of the future; and, through all this, of a healthy
creatureliness are thus spread over all she does,--over her virtues,
which are never reflected as such within her own pure mind, and over
her very weaknesses and failings which, summed up in their source, her
false self, are ever being acknowledged, feared, and fought, with a
heroism not less massive because its methods are so wisely indirect.
3. _Catherine and Friendship and the Poor._
It is plain that Catherine’s temperament was naturally a profoundly
sad one, although her acutest attacks of melancholy were generally
succeeded by some unusually great expansion, illumination or
consolidation of soul. She had, to adopt a term of recent psychology,
a very low “difference-threshold”: easily and swiftly would her
consciousness be affected by every kind of irritant: even a slight
stimulation would at once produce pain, anxiety, or oppression of mind
or soul. She was thus evidently made for a few life-long friends,
for such as would deserve the privilege of giving much sympathy and
patience, and of getting back helps and stimulations indefinitely
greater both in quality and kind; and was not fitted for many
acquaintances of the ordinary kind, with their hurry of disjointed,
hand-to-mouth, half-awake thinking, feeling, and doing.
And it is very noticeable that her friendships and attachments of
all kinds were of a steadiness and perseverance to which there are
no real exceptions. To Giuliano, markedly inferior in nature though
he evidently was to her, and positively unfaithful during the early
years of their long, ill-assorted marriage, she remained faithful even
during those first years which she herself never ceased to condemn as
her pre-conversion period; she behaved with true magnanimity towards
himself and Thobia and Thobia’s mother; and she even evinced a certain
affective attachment to him and to his memory. And it would hardly
be fair to quote the change in the dispositions as to her place of
burial in proof of a change in her dispositions towards him. She whose
affectionate interest in Thobia is shown, by irrefragable documentary
proof, to have persevered, indeed increased, to the end of the poor
young woman’s life, will not have changed in her feelings towards her
own dead husband. Towards her brothers and sister, her nephews and
nieces, her numerous Wills and Codicils show that she entertained a
constant and operative affection.
These same documents prove that her affection and gratitude towards
Don Marabotto were equally sincere and provident. It is true that she
twice broke off relations with him, although only for a day and three
days respectively; and, at the last, this devoted friend of the last
eleven years of her life was no more about her. Yet we have remarked
that those two former absences were but caused by reasonable fears of
getting spoilt by him; and that the final absence was no doubt in no
way her doing. And perhaps the most impressive of all her attachments
were that to the Hospital, as representative of the sick poor whom
she had served, so actively and at such cost to self, for twenty-five
years and more,--all her legal dispositions and her very domicile for
the last thirty years of her life proclaim the permanent prominence of
this interest; and her affection towards her servants, since nothing
could be more considerate, thoughtful, equable, and persevering than
her care and love for Benedetta, Mariola, and Argentina. Here again I
cannot find any certain exceptions: for we know nothing of the history
of the servant Antoinetta except that, even on the one occasion of her
mention, it appeared already doubtful whether the girl herself would
care to remain with her mistress to the end.
There is but one apparent, and indeed a startling, exception to this
unbroken continuity of affection. Ettore Vernazza, certainly the
greatest and closest, the most docile and the most influential, of
her disciples, he to whom we owe the transmission of the larger and
the most precious part of her teaching and spirit, and who, as will
be seen, became, after her death even more than before it, and more
and more right up to his own heroic end, the living reproduction and
extension of the very deepest and greatest experiences and influences
of her life: Vernazza appears nowhere in her Wills, except as, on one
occasion, the actual drawer of the document, and, on another, as a
witness. And he was far away, and clearly not accidentally, at the time
of her death. I take it to be quite certain that we have here not an
exception, at the point of her fullest sympathy, to that gratitude and
permanence of feeling which obtained demonstrably in the other, lesser
cases; but that this silence and this departure are to be explained,
the former entirely, and the latter in part, by the special character
as much of Ettore as of Catherine, and by the special form which their
friendship assumed in consequence. I shall return to this point in my
chapter on Vernazza.
4. _Her Absorptions and Ecstatic States._
Catherine’s states of absorption in prayer, such as we find ever since
her conversion, were transparently real and sincere, and were so swift
and spontaneous as to appear quasi-involuntary. They were evidently,
together with, and largely on occasion of, her reception of the Holy
Eucharist, the chief means and the ordinary form of the accessions of
strength and growth to her spiritual life.
Possibly throughout the four years of the first period of her convert
life, certainly and increasingly throughout the twenty-two years of the
second, middle period, these absorptions occurred frequently, indeed
daily; they were long, and lasted up to six hours at a stretch; and
they were apparently timed by herself, and never rendered her incapable
of hearing or attending to any call to acts of duty or of charity, and
of breaking off then and there. And throughout these years she seems
to have known but one kind of absorption, this primarily spiritual
one, which appears to have been a particularly deep Prayer of Quiet;
and she appears to have always been, if exercised, yet also profoundly
sustained and strengthened, by it, even physically, for the large
activity and numerous trials and sufferings awaiting her on her return
to her ordinary life. And these were the years during which she lived
with no mediate guidance.
During the last eleven, perhaps even thirteen years of her life, first
one, and then, considerably later, a second change occurs in these
respects. First these profound, healthy, and fruitful absorptions, and
the power to occasion or effect, to bear or endorse them, diminish
greatly, though apparently gradually, in length, regularity, and
efficiency; indeed they do so almost as markedly as does the capacity
for external work, their former complement and correlative. The
spiritual life now breaks up into a greater variety of shorter and
more fitful incidents and manifestations. The sympathy of friends,
the sustaining counsel of priests, and the communication on her part
of many spiritual thoughts and experiences take, in large part, the
place of those long spells of the Prayer of Quiet or of Union, and
still more of that external activity which are both now becoming more
and more impossible to her. And next,--though not, as far as our
evidence goes, before the last six months or so of her life,--there
arises a second series of absorptions, externally closely similar, yet
internally profoundly different. These latter absorptions are primarily
psychical and involuntary, indeed psychopathic. And she herself shows
and declares her knowledge of this their pathological character, her
ability to distinguish them from their healthy rivals, her inability
to throw them off unaided, her wish that others should rouse her from
them, and her power to accept and second such initiation coming to her
from a will-centre other than her own.
Now her attendants and biographers, possibly all of them and even
during her lifetime, considered and called those healthy absorptions
“ecstasies”; and though we have clear evidence of her ever having
shrunk from so naming them herself, and though, here as everywhere, she
habitually turned away from considering the form and psycho-physical
concomitants of her spiritual experiences, and concentrated her
attention on their content and ethico-religious truth and power, there
seems to be no special reason for quarrelling with their application
of this term. Yet it is of great importance to observe that none of
her teaching can with propriety be called directly Pneumatic. For I
can find nothing that even purports to have been spoken in a state
of trance, nor anything authentic that claims to convey, during
her times of ordinary consciousness, anything learnt during those
states of absorption other than what, in a lesser degree, is probably
experienced, during at least some rare moments, by all souls that have
attained to the so-called Prayer of Quiet. It is quite clear, I think,
that in all these authentic passages, the states of absorption are
treated substantially as times when the conscious region of her soul,
a region always relatively shallow, sinks down into the ever-present
deep regions of subconsciousness; and hence as experiences which can
only be described indirectly,--in their effects, as traced by and in
the conscious soul, after its rising up again, from this immersion in
subconsciousness, to its more ordinary condition of so-called “full
consciousness,” _i.e._ as full a consciousness as is normal, for this
particular soul, in the majority of moments as are not devoted to
physical sleep.
But if apparently none of Catherine’s contemplations are derived
directly from things learnt during these times of absorption; those
contemplations are, none the less, all indirectly influenced, in
the most powerful and multiform manner, by these absorptions. For
these absorptions constituted the moments of the soul’s feeding and
harmonization, and they enriched and concentrated it, for the service
of its fellows, the occasion of further self-enlargement. And these
absorptions, with their combination of experienced fruitfulness and
undeniable obscurity, for the very soul that has passed through them,
when this soul has returned to ordinary consciousness, give to all,
even to the most lucid of her sayings, a beautiful margin of mist and
mystery, a never-ceasing sense of the incomprehensibility, and yet of
the soul’s capacity for an intellectual adumbration, of the realities
and truths in which our whole spiritual life is rooted,--realities and
truths which she is thus, without even a touch of inconsistency, ever
struggling to apprehend and to communicate a little less inadequately
than before.
5. _Catherine’s teaching._
Catherine’s teaching, as we have it, is, at first sight, strangely
abstract and impersonal. God nowhere appears in it, at least in so
many words, either as Father, or as Friend, or as Bridegroom of the
soul. This comes no doubt, in part, from the circumstance that she
had never known the joys of maternity, and had never, for one moment,
experienced the soul-entrancing power of full conjugal union. It comes,
perhaps, even more, from her somewhat abnormal temperament, the (in
some respects) exclusive mentality which we have already noted. But it
certainly springs at its deepest from one of the central requirements
and experiences of her spiritual life; and must be interpreted by the
place and the function which this apparently abstract teaching occupies
within this large experimental life of hers which stimulates, utilizes,
and transcends it all. For here again we are brought back to her rare
thirst, her imperious need, for unification; to the fact that she was a
living, closely knit, ever-increasing spiritual organism, if there ever
was one.
This unification tended, in its reasoned, theoretic presentation, even
to overshoot the mark: for it would be impossible to press those of
her sayings in which her true self appears as literally God, or her
state of quiet as a complete motionlessness or even immovability.
Yet in practice this unification ever remained admirably balanced
and fruitful, since, in and for her actual life, it was being ever
conceived and applied as but a whole-hearted, constantly renewed,
continuously necessary, costing and yet enriching, endeavour to
harmonize and integrate the ever-increasing elements and explications
of her nature and experience. And even on the two points mentioned,
her theory gives an admirably vivid presentment of the prima facie
impression produced by its deepest experiences upon every devoted soul.
And on other points her theory is, even as such, admirably sober,
closely knit, and stimulating. For, as to the cause of Evil, she ever
restricts herself to finding it in her own nature, and to fighting it
there: hence the personality of Evil, though nowhere denied, yet rarely
if ever concerns her, and never does so directly in her strenuous and
practical life. Yet, on the other hand, this fight takes, with her, the
form not primarily of a conflict with this or that particular fault,
these several conflicts then summing themselves up into a more or less
interconnected warfare; but it makes straight for the very root-centre
of all the particular faults, and, by constantly checking and starving
that, suppresses these. And hence the Positive, Radical character of
Evil is, in practice, continuously emphasized by her.
Yet this root-centre of Evil within her was most certainly not
conceived by her as a merely general and abstract false self or
self-seeking. Her biographers, mostly over-anxious to prove the
innocence of her nature, even at the expense of the heroism of her life
and of the reasonableness and truthfulness of her statements, are no
doubt responsible for the constant air of would-be devout and amiable
(!) exaggeration which she wears on all this self-fighting side of
her. Yet we have, I think, but to take the simplest and most authentic
of the rival accounts,--those which give us the smallest quantity
of self-denunciation, and we can understand the quality of this
self-blame, and can fix its special, entirely concrete and pressing,
occasion and object. For considering the immense claimfulness, the
cruel jealousy, the tyrannous fancifulness, the brooding inventiveness,
the at last incurable absoluteness of the weak and bad side and
tendency of a temperament and natural character such as hers, had
it been allowed to have its way, there is, I think, nothing really
excessive or morbid, nothing that is not most healthy and humble,
and hence sensible and admirably self-cognitive and truthful, about
this heroic strenuousness, this ever-watchful, courageous fear of
self, and those declarations of hers that this false self was as bad
as any devil. To such a temperament and _attrait_ as hers only one
master could be deliberately taken, or could be long borne, as centre
of the soul: God _or_ Self;--not two: God _and_ Self. And hence all
practice on even tolerance of, as it were, separate compartments of
the soul; all “a little of this, and not too much of that” spirit; all
“making the best of both worlds” temper; all treatment of religion as
a means to other ends, or as so much uninterpreted inheritance and
dead furniture or fixed and frozen possession of the mind, or as a
respectable concomitant and condiment or tolerable parasite to other
interests: all such things must have been more really impossible to her
than would have been the lapse into self-sufficiency and self-idolatry,
and the attempt to find happiness in such a downward unification.
And the one true divine root-centre of her individual soul is ever,
at the same time, experienced and conceived as present, in various
degrees and ways, simply everywhere, and in everything. All the world
of spirits is thus linked together; and a certain slightest remnant
of a union exists even between Heaven and Hell, between the lost and
the saved. For there is no absolute or really infinite Evil existent
anywhere; whilst everywhere there are some traces of and communications
from the Absolute Good, the Source and Creator of the substantial
being of all things that are. And to possess even God, and all of
God, herself alone exclusively, would have been to her, we can say it
boldly, a truly intolerable state, if this state were conceived as
accompanied by any consciousness of the existence of other rational
creatures entirely excluded from any and every degree or kind of such
possession. It is, on the contrary, the apprehension of how she, as
but one of the countless creatures of God, is allowed to share in the
effluence of the one Light and Life and Love, an effluence which,
identical in essential character everywhere, is not entirely absent
anywhere: it is the abounding consciousness of this universal bond and
brotherhood, this complete freedom from all sectarian exclusiveness and
from all exhaustive appropriation of God, the Sun of the Universe, by
any or all of the just or unjust, upon all of whom He shines: it is all
this that constitutes her element of unity, saneness, and breadth, the
one half of her faith, and the greater part of her spiritual joy.
And the other half of her faith constitutes her element of difference,
multiplicity and depth, and is itself made up of two distinct
convictions. No two creatures have been created by God with the same
capacities; and, although they are each called by Him to possess Him
to the full of their respective capability, they will necessarily,
even if they all be fully faithful to their call, possess Him in
indefinitely and innumerably various degrees and ways. And, so far,
there is still nothing but joy in her soul. Indeed we can say that the
previous element of unity and breadth calls for this second element
of diversity and depth; and that only in and with the other can each
element attain to its own full development and significance, and thus
the two together can constitute a living whole.
But the second conviction as to difference is a sombre and saddening
one. For she holds further that the diversity is not only one of
degrees of goodness and a universal fulness of variously sized living
vessels of life and joy; but that there is also a diversity in the
degree of self-making or self-marring on the part of the free-willing,
self-determining creatures of God. Here too she still, it is true,
finds the omnipresent divine Goodness at work, and in a double fashion
and degree. The self-marring of some, probably, in her view, of most
souls, gets slowly and blissfully albeit painfully unmade by the
voluntary acceptance, on the part of these souls, of the suffering
rightly attaching, in a quite determinist manner, to all direct,
deliberate, and detached pleasure-seeking of the false self. And this
is Purgatory, which is essentially the same whether thus willed and
suffered in this world or in the next. And the self-marring of other,
probably the minority of, sinful souls, though no longer capable of
any essential unmaking, is yet in so far overruled by the divine
Goodness (which, here as everywhere, is greater than the creature’s
badness), that even here there ever remains a certain residue of
moral goodness, and that a certain mitigation of the suffering which
necessarily accompanies the remaining and indeed preponderant evil is
mercifully effected by God. And this is Hell, which is essentially
the same, whether thus, as to its pain, not willed but suffered here
or hereafter. Thus she neither holds an _Apocatastasis_, a Final
Restitution of all things,--what might be called a Universal Purgatory,
nor a Gradual Mitigation of the sufferings of the lost; but the
eventual complete purgation and restitution applies only to some,
though probably to most, souls, and the mitigation of this suffering,
in the case of the lost, is not gradual but instantaneous.
Here again, then, we find her thirst for unification strikingly at
work. For she discovers one single divine Goodness as active and
efficient throughout the universe; and she everywhere finds spiritual
pain to consist in the discordance felt by the rational creature
between its actual contingent condition and its own indestructible
ideal, and such pain to be everywhere automatically consequent upon
deliberate acts of self-will. Hence the suffering is nowhere separately
willed or separately sent by God; and, in all cases of restoration,
the suffering, in proportion as it is freely willed by the sufferer,
is ever medicinal and curative and never vindictive. It is these
considerations which make her able to endure this sombre side of
reality.
Now it is all this second set of beliefs, all this faith in diversity,
multiplicity, and depth, which prevents any touch of real Pantheism
or Indifferentism from defacing the breadth of her outlook, and
effectually neutralizes any tendency to a sheer Optimism or Monism.
She loves God’s Light and Love so much, that she is indefatigable in
seeking, and constantly happy in finding, and incapable of not loving,
even the merest glimpses of it, everywhere. And yet, precisely on that
same account, everywhere the central passion of her soul is given
to fostering the further growth of this Light and Love, to already
loving it even more as it will or may be than as it already is, and
thus deeply loving it already, in order that it may be still more
lovable by and by. And thus the universality, and what we may call
the particularity, of God’s self-communication and of the creature’s
response, are equally preserved, and in suchwise that each safeguards,
supplements, and stimulates the other. And thus her grace-stimulated
craving, both for indefinite expansion and breadth and for indefinite
concentration and depth, is met and nourished by this width and
distance, this clarity and dimness of outlook on to the rich and
awe-inspiring greatness of God and of His world of souls.
And union with this one Centre is, for all rational free-willing
creatures, to be achieved, at any one and at every moment, by the
whole-hearted willing and doing, by the full endorsing, of some one
thing,--some one unique state and duty offered to the soul in that
one unique moment. Thus life gets apparently broken up into so many
successive steps and degrees of work, each to be attended to as though
it were the first and last; and as so much special material and
occasion for the practice of unification, ostensibly in the matter
supplied and for the moment which supplies it, but really in the soul
to which it is offered and for the totality of its life. Her soul
is, even if taken at any one moment, and still more, of course, if
considered in its successive history, overflowing with various acts,
with (as it were) so many numberless waves and wavelets, currents
and cross-currents of volition; and the warp and woof of her life’s
weaving is really close-knit with numberless threads of single
willings, preceded and succeeded by single perceptions, conceptions,
and feelings of the soul. Yet the very fulness of this flow and the
closeness of this weaving, their great and ever-increasing orderliness
and spontaneity, such as we can and must conceive them to have been
present during the majority of the moments of her convert and waking
life, tended, during such times, to obliterate any clear consciousness
of their different constituents, and to produce the impression of
one single state, even one single act. And this very action, even
inasmuch as thus felt to be simple and one, is furthermore experienced
psychically as a surprise and seizure from without, rather than as a
self-determination from within. And this psychic peculiarity is taken
by her as but the occasion and emotional, quasi-sensible picturing of
the ever-present and ever-growing experience and conviction that all
right human action, the very self-donation of the creature, is the
Creator’s best gift, and that the very act of her own mind and heart,
in all its complete inalienableness and spontaneity, is yet, in the
last resort, but an illumination and stimulation coming from beyond the
reaches of her own mind and will, from the mind and will of God. And
thus Ethics are englobed by Religion, Having by Doing, and Doing by
Being: yet not so that, in her fullest life, any of the higher things
suppress the lower, but so that each stimulates the very things that it
transcends.
6. _Catherine’s literary obligations. Her corrections of the
Neo-Platonist positions._
We shall trace further on how largely and spontaneously she has, from
out of the many different possible types and forms of spirituality,
chosen out, assimilated and further explicated certain Platonic and
especially certain Neo-Platonic conceptions. We shall be unable to
suggest any likely intermediary, or to assume with certainty a direct
derivation, for these conceptions from Plato, or indeed from Plotinus
or Proclus; and shall nevertheless be obliged to postulate some now
untraceable communication, on some most important points, between Plato
and herself. Besides this, she derives one Platonic conception from the
Book of Wisdom and a corresponding passage in St. Paul; and a certain
general Platonic tone and imagery from the Joannine Gospel and First
Epistle. Her Neo-Platonism, on the contrary, she derives, massively
and all but pure, through two of the Pseudo-Dionysian books and her
dearly loved Franciscan Mystic Poet, Jacopone da Todi. It is indeed
to the Pauline, Joannine, Dionysian, and Jacopone writings that she
owes, with the exception of a certain group of Platonic conceptions,
practically all that she did not directly derive from her own psychical
and spiritual experiences.
Now her assimilation of this particular strain of doctrine has
remained but partial and theoretical with respect to those parts of
Dionysian Neo-Platonism which were not borne out by the facts of her
own Christian experience; but it has extended even to her emotional
attitude and practice, in cases where the doctrine was borne out by
these facts.
Thus we shall find that she often speaks theoretically of Evil as
simply negative, as the varyingly great absence of Good. Yet, in
practice and in her autobiographical picturings, she fights her bad
self, to the very last, as a truly positive force. The force of God
is everywhere conceived as indefinitely greater, as, indeed, alone
infinite; yet the force of Evil is practically experienced and pictured
as real and positive also, in its kind and degree.
Again, she often speaks as though her spiritual life had, at some one
particular moment, simply arrived at its final culmination, and had
attained God and perfection with complete finality,--such, at least, as
this particular soul of hers can achieve. Yet, very shortly after, we
find her unmistakably in renewed movement and conflict, and observe her
mind to be now fully aware of that past “perfection” having been but
imperfect, because that act or state is now seen from a height higher
than that former level: hence that “perfection” was perfect, at most,
in relation to its helps and opportunities in and for its own special
moment.
Again, it is at times as though she conceived her body to be a sheer
clog and prison-house to the soul, and as though the soul’s weakness
and sinfulness were essentially due to its union with the flesh. But
here especially her later commentators have amplified and systematized
her teaching almost beyond recognition; the authentic sayings of this
kind, though too strong to be pressed, are few, and belong exclusively
to the last stages of her illness; and, above all, these declarations
are checked and entirely eclipsed by her normal and constant view as
to the specific nature of Moral Evil. For this Evil consists, for her,
essentially in the self-idolatry, the claimful self-centredness of
the natural man, ever tending, in a thousand mostly roundabout ways,
to make means and ends, centre and circumference, Sun and Planet
change places, and to put some more or less subtle wilfulness and
pleasure-seeking in the place of Duty, Happiness, and God. Few, even
amongst the Saints, can have realized and exemplified more profoundly
the indelible difference between pleasure and happiness, between
the false and the true self; and few have more keenly, patiently
felt and taught that the soul’s true life is, even eventually, not a
keeping or a getting what the lower instincts crave: but that, on the
contrary, a whole world of pleasures which, however base and short
and misery-productive, can be intensely and irreplaceably pleasurable
while they last, has successively to be sacrificed, for good and all;
and that what is retained has gradually to proceed from other motives,
to be grouped around other centres, and be ever only a part and a
servant, and never a master or the whole. The gulf between every kind
of Auto-centricism and the Theo-centric life, between mere Eudaemonism
and Religion, could not be found anywhere more constant or profound.
Again, it is at times as though the absence or suppression of even
the noblest of human fellow-feelings and of particular parental and
friendly, attachments, and not their purification and deepening,
multiplication and harmonization, were the end and aim of perfection.
But little or nothing of this belongs, I think, to any deliberate and
enduring theory of hers, still less to her full and normal practice;
and the impression of such inhumanity is, in so far as it is derived
from authentic documents, entirely caused by and restricted to her
early convert reaction, and her late over-strained or worn-out
psycho-physical condition.
Again, it is sometimes as though she believed indeed in an
energizing and progress of the soul, yet held this progress to be,
after conversion, an absolutely unbroken, equable, necessary and
automatic increase in perfection; and that such a soul’s last state
is, necessarily and in all respects, better than were its previous
stages.--The Redactors of her life most undoubtedly think this.
Because, for instance, she was Matron from 1490 to 1496, and could no
more fill the post from 1496 to 1510:--therefore “not to give part of
her activity to such external work was more perfect than to give it,”
is the argument that underlies their scheme for these two periods.--Yet
I can find nothing in her teaching to show that she held any such
view. She was, indeed, ever too much absorbed, by the experiences and
duties of her successive moments, to find even the leisure of mind
requisite for the manufacture of so doctrinaire a system. And indeed
there is nothing in the conception of sanctity, or in that of a gradual
and general increase in generosity and purity of the saintly soul’s
dispositions and intentions, which requires us to hold that such a
soul’s last state and efficiency is, in every respect, better than the
first. For the range and volume of the efficiency, wisdom, balance,
appropriateness of even our goodness is not determined by our will and
the graces given to our will alone. Physical and psychical health and
strength, illness and weakness; helps and hindrances from friends and
foes; the changing influences and limitations of growing age; and the
ever-shifting combinations of all these and of similar things,--things
and combinations which are all but indirectly attainable by our wills
in any way: all this is ever as truly at work upon us as our wills and
God’s spiritual graces are in operation directly within ourselves. And
if Catherine’s richness, breadth and balance of soul are, considering
her special and successive health and circumstances, remarkable up
to the very end, and probably actually grew to some extent with the
growing obstacles, yet those qualities hardly grew or could grow _pari
passu_ with these obstacles. The manifold efficiency and the unity in
multiplicity were distinctly greater before 1496 than after. And thus
the Saints too join their lowlier brethren in paying the pathetic debt
of our common mortality. They too can be called upon to survive the
culmination of their many-sided power, and to retain perpetual youth
only as regards their intention and the central ideas and the spiritual
substance of their soul.
Once more she seems as though, to make up for this apparent suppression
of the element of time, unduly to press the category of space, at least
in her contemplations. We shall see how often in these contemplations
God Himself, and the soul, or at least its various states, appear as
places; so that the whole spiritual life and world come thus to look
rather like an atomic co-ordination, a projection on to space and a
static mechanism, than an interpenetrative subordination, a production
in time or at least in duration, and a dynamic organism.--Yet it will
be found that all this imagery is consciously, though no doubt quite
naturally, used only _as_ imagery, and that it is thus used both
because it was spontaneously presented to her mind by her psychic
peculiarities and because it readily adapted itself as a vehicle to
express one of the deepest experiences and convictions of her spirit.
For her psychic peculiarities involved, on the one hand, a curiously
rapid and complete change and difference of states of consciousness,
and, on the other hand, a remarkable absence (or at least dimness) of
consciousness as to this transition itself, which, however abrupt,
was of course as truly a part of her inner life as were the several
completed states and outlooks. Now the apparently static element and
harmony in any one of these states could, of course, be at all clearly
presented in no other form than that of a spacial image; whereas the
changing element in all these states seems to have accumulated chiefly
in the subconscious region, to have at last suddenly burst into the
conscious sphere, and to have there effected the change too rapidly to
permit of, or at least to require, the presentation of this element
as such, a presentation which could only have taken the form of a
consciousness of time or of duration. From all this it follows that, to
her immediate psychic consciousness, each of her successive experiences
presented itself as ever one spacial picture, as one “place.”
And the imagery, thus quasi-automatically presented to her, could
not fail to be gladly used and emphasized by her to express the
deepest experiences of her spiritual life. For it was the element of
simultaneity, of organic interpenetration, of the God-like _Totum
Simul_, which chiefly impressed her in these deepest moments. And hence
the soul is conceived by her as, in its essence, eternal rather than an
as immortal--as, in its highest reaches and moments, outside of time
and not as simply wholly within it; and as, on such occasions, vividly
though indirectly conscious of the fact. Heaven itself is thought
of not as eventually succeeding, with its own endless succession,
to the finite succession of these our fleeting earthly days; but as
already forming the usually obscure, yet ever immensely operative,
background, groundwork, measure and centre of our being, now and here
as truly as there and then. And hence again, Heaven, Purgatory, and
Hell are for her three distinct states of the soul, already effected
in their essence here below, and experienced as what they are, in part
and occasionally here, and fully and continuously hereafter. Thus
the fundamental cleavage in the soul’s life is not between things
successive,--between the Now and the Then, and at the point of death;
but between things simultaneous, between the This and the That, and at
the point of sin and of self-seeking.
And finally, she seems at times to speak Greek-wise, as though
the soul’s life consisted essentially, or even exclusively, in an
intellection, a static contemplation. Yet we have already seen how
robust and constant is her ethical dualism, how essentially, here
below at least, happiness consists for her in a right affection and
attachment, in the continuous detaching of the true self from the false
self, and the attaching of the true self unto God. And we should note
how that intellection itself is conceived as ever accompanied by a
keen sense of its inferiority to the Reality apprehended, and as both
the result and the condition and the means of love and of an increase
of love. And again we should note that this sense of inferiority
does not succeed the intellection, as the result of any reasoning on
the disparity between the finite and Infinite, but accompanies that
intellection itself, and corresponds to the surplusage of her feelings
over her mental seeings, and of her experience over her knowledge. And
we should add the fact that, in the most emphatic of her sayings, she
makes the essence of Heaven to consist in the union of the finite with
the Infinite Will; and that this doctrine alone would seem readily to
harmonize with her favourite teaching as to Heaven beginning here below.
7. _Her attitude towards Historical and Institutional Religion._
If the Platonic and Neo-Platonic elements appear, at first sight,
as massive and even excessive constituents of Catherine’s doctrine,
Historical and Institutional Christianity seems, on a cursory survey,
to contribute strangely little even to her practice. Not one of her
ordinary contemplations is directly occupied with any scene from Our
Lord’s life. The picture of the “Pietà,” so impressive to her in her
nursery-days; the great Conversion-Vision of the Bleeding Christ; and
the slighter cases of the signing of herself with the sign of the Cross
and of her lying with outstretched arms, which occurred during the
last stage of her illness, are the sole indications of any immediate
occupation with the Passion; whilst the two cases of the Triptych
“Maestà” and the painting representative of Our Lord at the well,
(cases which indicate an attraction to the Infancy and to at least one
incident of the Public Life,) complete the list of all direct attention
to any incidents of Our Lord’s earthly existence. As to occupation with
or invocation of the Saints, inclusive of the Blessed Virgin, I can
find but one instance, the invocation of St. Benedict, two days before
her Conversion. We have seen, as to Sacramental Confession, how little
there can have been of it, throughout the long middle period of her
Convert Life; and how she was, during this time, simply without any
priestly guidance. And she never was a Tertiary, nor did she belong to
any Confraternity, nor did she attempt to gain Indulgences, nor did she
practise popular devotions, such as the Rosary or Scapular.
Nor could these facts be quite fairly met, except to a certain
relatively small extent with regard to Confession, by insistence upon
the changing character of the Church’s discipline, if we thus mean
to assert that she did not, in these matters, act exceptionally with
regard to the practice and theory of fervent souls of her own time.
For, on all the points mentioned, the ordinary fervent practice was
already, and had been for centuries, different; and, in the matter of
priestly guidance, her chroniclers have not failed to transmit to us
the wonders and murmurs of more than one contemporary.
Yet here again the prima facie impression is but very incompletely
borne out by a closer study.
For first, none of these historical and institutional elements are ever
formally excluded, or attacked, or slighted. Indeed, in the matter of
Indulgences, we have seen how she arranged or allowed that monies of
her own should be spent in procuring certain facilities for gaining
them by others.
And next, special practices, more than equivalent in their irksomeness,
are throughout made to take the place of ordinary practices, in so
far and for so long as these latter are abstained from. An unusually
severe ascetical penitential time, and then the rarest watchfulness and
continuous self-renouncement, take thus, for a considerable period, the
place of the sacramental forms of Penance.
And thirdly, if there is an unusual rarity in Confession there is an
almost as rare frequency of Communion; and authentic anecdotes show us
how she scandalized some good souls as truly-by this frequency as by
that rarity. Indeed throughout her convert life, an ardent devotion
to the Holy Eucharist forms the very centre of her daily life; during
probably thirty-five years she only quite exceptionally misses daily
Communion; and she has the deepest attraction to the Mass, and a holy
envy of priests for their close relation to the Blessed Sacrament.
And though there are no contemplations of hers directly occupied with
the Holy Eucharist, yet we shall find this experience and doctrine
to have profoundly shaped and coloured teachings and apprehensions
which, at first sight, are quite disconnected with It. We can already
see how all-inclusive a symbol and stimulation of her other special
attractions and conceptions this central devotion could not fail to
be. She found here the Infinite first condescending to the finite; so
that the finite may then rise towards the Infinite; the soul’s life,
a hunger and a satisfaction of that hunger, through the taste of
feeling rather than through the sight of reason; God giving Himself
through such apparently slight vehicles, in such short moments, and
under such bewilderingly humble veils; and our poor _a priori_ notions
and _a posteriori_ analyses thus proved inadequate to the living soul
and the living God.--Extreme Unction also was highly esteemed: she
spontaneously demanded it some four times and finally received it with
great fervour. Church hymns too--witness the “Veni, Creator,” chanted
on her death-bed--and liturgical lights are spontaneously used.
And lastly, her practice in the matter of Confession and of priestly
advice became, during her last thirteen years identical in frequency
with that of her devout contemporaries; and thus her life ended with
the practice, on all the chief points, of the average, ordinary
devotional acts and habits of her time. And this final practice of the
ordinary means, together with her life-long dislike of singularity and
of notice; her humble misgivings in the midst of her most peaceful
originalities, and the utter absence of any tendency to think her way,
inasmuch as it was at all singular, the only way or even the best
way, except just now and here for her own self alone; her complete
freedom from the spirit of comparing self with others, of dividing
off the sheep from the goats, or of having some short, sure, and
universal means or test for holiness: all this shows us plainly how
Catholic and unsectarian, how truly free, not only from slavish fear
and pusillanimous conformity, but also from all enthralment to merely
subjective fancies, from all solipsism or conceit was her strong soul.
8. _Three stages of the Spiritual Life; Catherine represents the third._
It has been well said that there are three stages of the spiritual
life, and three corresponding classes of souls.
There are the souls that are characterized, even to the end of
their earthly lives, by that, more or less complete, naturalistic
Individualism, with which we all in various degrees begin. Catherine’s
own time and country were full of such thoroughly Individualistic,
unmoral or even anti-moral men, who, however gifted and cultivated as
artists, scholars, philosophers, and statesmen, must yet be counted as
essentially childish and as clever animals rather than as spiritual
men. And she herself had, during the five years which had preceded her
conversion, tended, on the surface of her being, towards something of
this kind.
Next come the souls that have recognized and have accepted Duty and
Obligation, that are now striving to serve God as God, and that are
attempting, with a preponderant sincerity, to live the common and
universal life of the Spirit. These of necessity tend to suspect, or
even to suppress and sacrifice, whatever appears to be peculiar to
themselves, as so much individualistic subjectivity and insidious high
treason to the objective law of Him who made their souls, and who now
bids them save those souls at any cost. The large majority of the souls
that were striving to serve God in Catherine’s times belonged, as souls
belong in these our days, and will necessarily and rightly belong up to
the end, to this second, universalistic, uniformative type and class.
And Catherine herself evidently belonged prominently to this type and
class, during her first four convert years.
And there are, finally, an ever relatively small number of souls that
are called, and a still smaller number that attain, to a state in which
the Universality, Obligation, Uniformity, and Objectivity, of the
second stage and class, take the form of a Spiritual Individuality,
Liberty, Variety, and Subjectivity: Personality in the fullest sense
of the term has now appeared. And this fullest Spiritual Personality
is the profoundest opposite and foe of its naturalistic counterfeit,
of those spontaneous animal liberalisms which reigned, all but
unrecognized as such because all but uncontrasted by the true ideal and
test of life, prior to that prostration before absolute obligation,
that poignant sense of weakness and impurity, and that gain of strength
and purity from beyond its furthest reaches, experienced by the soul at
its conversion.
Yet that merely subjective, liberalistic Individualism of the first
stage can only be kept out, even at the third stage, by retaining
within the soul all the essential characteristics of the second
stage,--by a continuous passing and re-passing under the Caudine Forks
of the willed defeat of wayward, self-pleasing wilfulness, and of the
deliberate acceptance of an objective system of ideas and experiences
as interiorly binding upon the self. For if the second stage excludes
the first, the third stage does not exclude the second. Yet now all
this, in these rare souls, leads up to and produces a living reality
bafflingly simple in its paradoxical, mysterious richness. For now
the universality, obligation, and objectivity of the Law become and
appear greater, not less, because incarnated in an eminently unique and
unreproduceable, in a fully personal form. And at this stage only do we
find a full persuasiveness.
Catherine attained unmistakably, after her four years of special
penitence, to this rare third stage. For not only is she essentially
as individual and unique as if she were not universal and uniform; and
essentially as universal and uniform as if she were not individual: but
she is indefinitely more truly original and subjective, because of her
voluntary boundness and objectivity. Indeed she is solidly and really
free and personal, because the continuous renunciation and expulsion
of all naturalistic individuality remains, to the very end, one of the
essential functions of her soul.
From all this it is clear how easy it would be to misread the lesson
of her manifold life, and to turn such examples as hers from a help
into a hindrance. For her melancholy temperament, her peculiar psychic
health, her final external inefficiency: all this is too striking
not to tempt the admiration, perhaps even, the hopeless and ruinous
imitation, of such crude and inexperienced souls as know not how to
distinguish between the merely given materials and untransferable
determinisms of each separate soul’s psychical and temperamental native
outfit, and the free, grace-inspired and grace-aided use made by each
soul of these its, more or less unique, occasions and materials.
Those materials were, of themselves, of no moral worth, and lent
themselves only in part with any ease to the upbuilding and realization
of her spirit’s ideal. And it is only this, her wise and heroic use
of her materials,--though this also, of course, is not directly
transferable,--that represents the spiritually valuable constituent of
the life.
Similarly with the form, and the psychic occasions or accompaniments
of her very prayer and spiritual absorptions, and with some of the
constituents of her doctrine, if taken as speculative and analytic and
final, rather than as psychological and descriptive and preliminary.
These things again could easily be misused. For the former are largely
quite special and, in themselves, morally indifferent peculiarities,
transformed and utilized by quite special graces and life-long
spiritual heroisms. And the latter, we shall find, were never intended
to be systematic, complete or ultimate; and indeed they owe their
true force and value to their being the occasional, spontaneous and
immediate expressions and adumbrations of an experience indefinitely
richer and more ultimate than themselves.
And finally, it would of course be absurd to take the limitations of
her activity and interests, even if we were to restrict ourselves to
those common to all the stages of her life, as necessarily admirable,
or as universally inevitable. For there is, in the very nature of
things, no equation between her one soul, however rich and stimulating,
or even all the souls of her class and school, or of her age or
country, on the one hand, and the totality of religious experience,
and its means and incorporations, on the other hand, even if, by
totality, we but mean that part of it already achieved and accepted by
grace-impelled mankind.
9. _The lessons of Catherine’s life._
And yet Catherine’s life and teaching will be found full of suggestion
and stimulation, if they are taken in their interpenetration, and if
due regard is paid to their fragmentary registration, to the necessary
distinction between what, amongst all these facts, was mere means,
occasion, and temporal setting, and what amongst them was aim and
end, utilization and abiding import, and to the fact that all this
experience is but one out of the indefinitely many applications,
extensions, and mutually corrective and supplementary exemplifications
of the spirit and life of Christ, as it lives itself out throughout
the temperaments, races and ages of mankind. Above all it can teach
us, I think, with a rare completeness, wherein lies the secret of
a persuasive holiness. For Catherine lets us see, with unusual
clearness, how this winningness lies in the pathetically dramatic
spectacle and appeal presented by a life engaged in an ever-increasing
ethical and spiritual energizing,--whether in a slow shifting and
pushing of its actual centre, down and in from the circumference of
the soul to its true centre, and from this true centre enlarging
and reorganizing its whole ever-expanding being again and again; or
in an apparently sudden finding itself placed, and loyally placing
itself, in this true centre, and then from there prosecuting and
maintaining the organization and transformation of its varyingly
peripheral life, a life treated at one time as central and complete.
And this persuasiveness can here be discovered to be greater or
less in proportion to the thoroughness and continuousness of this
centralization and purification; to the degree in which this issues in
a new, spontaneously acting ethico-spiritual personality; and to the
closeness and costingness of the connection between those means and
this result. Such a soul will be persuasive because of its ever seeking
and finding a purifying intermediacy, a river of death, to all its
merely naturalistic self-seeking.
And it is this nobly ascetic requirement and search and end which no
doubt explain what, at first sight, is strange, both in its presence
and in its attractiveness, in her own case and more or less in that of
all the mature and complete Saints,--I mean, the large predominance of
an apparently Pantheistic element in her life, the strong emphasis laid
upon an apparent Thing-Conception of God and of the human spirit.
It was clearly not alone because of the Neo-Platonist element and
influence of the books she chiefly used that she, in true Greek
fashion, finds and allows so large a place for conceptions of
things, for images derived from the natural elements, and for mental
abstractions, in her religious experiences and teachings: God appearing
in them predominantly as Sun, Light, Fire, Air, Ocean; Beauty, Truth,
Love, Goodness. For, after all, other elements could be found in these
very books, and other writings were known to her besides these books:
hence this her preference for just these elements still demands an
explanation.
Nor was it ultimately because, nervously high-pitched and strained
as she was by nature, she even physically craved and required an
immense expansion for this her excessive natural concentration. She
thus evidently longed first to move through, and to bathe and rest and
spread out her psychic self, in an ample region, in an enduring state
of quasi-unconsciousness, in an (as it were) innocently animal or even
simply vegetative objectivity, indeed in an apparent bare element and
mere Thing, before, thus rested, braced, and as it were now healthily
reconcentrated, she more directly met the Infinite Concentration and
Determination, the Personal Spirit, God. For, after all, hers was so
heroic a spirit, and so self-distrustful, indeed self-suspecting, a
heart, that a mere psychic affinity or requirement would have failed so
permanently and deliberately to captivate her mind.
Nor, finally, was it ultimately because her domestic sorrows or
inexperiences, or even her very psychic peculiarities and apparent
lack of all even innocent sensuousness, left the images of Bride and
Bridegroom, of Parent and Child, perhaps even of Friend, respectively
painful, empty, or pale to her consciousness. For, even so, she could
and did care, with a beautiful affectiveness of her own, for her
brothers and sister, for Vernazza, her “spiritual son,” and for many a
humble toiler or domestic. And indeed her whole tendency is ultimately
to find God’s special home, the only one of His dwelling-places which
we men really know, in the human heart of hearts.
The ultimate and determining reason was no doubt her deep spiritual
experience and conviction (as vivid as ever was the psychic tendency
which gave it form and additional emotional edge and momentum) that
she must continuously first quench and drown her feverish immediacy,
her clamorous, claimful false self, and must lose herself, as a merely
natural Individual, in the river and ocean of the Thing, of Law, of
that apparently ruthless Determinism which fronts life everywhere,
before she could find herself again as a Person, in union with and in
presence of an infinite Spirit and Personality.
Thus Greek Fate is here retained, but it is transformed through being
transplaced. For Fate has here ceased to be ultimate and above the very
gods, the poor gods who were so predominantly the mere projections of
man’s Individualism: Fate is here intermediate and a way to God--the
great God, the source and ideal of all Personality. And indeed this
Fate is not, ultimately, simply separate from God; it is indeed
omnipresent, but everywhere only as the preliminary and subaltern,
expression, for us men, of the Divine Freedom that lies hidden and
operating behind it. And we men attain to some of this Freedom only by
the inclusion within our spiritual life of that Fate-passage and of our
actual constant passing through it, on and on.
10. _Three points where Catherine is comparatively original; and a
fourth point where she is practically unique._
In the general tendency and form of her inner life and conviction
Catherine has, of course, substantially nothing but what she shares
with all the Mystics, in proportion as these retain Law, Ethics, and
Personality; and she has much that forms part of the convictions of
all Christians, indeed of all Theists. Yet in the degree and precise
manner of her elaboration and application of those things, and again in
the circumstances of their documentary transmission, Catherine will, I
think, be found in three points comparatively original, and in a fourth
point practically unique.
First she has, as we have seen, not only a strikingly persistent
attitude of transcendence and detachment with regard to her
psycho-physical state in general (this is indeed an attitude common
to all ethically sound and fruitful Mystics: witness in particular
St. John of the Cross); but she has also a most remarkable faculty
and activity of discrimination between her own healthy and morbid
states. Even this latter power she probably shares, in various degrees,
with all such ethical-minded Mystics as nevertheless suffered from
a partially _maladif_ psycho-physical condition: witness especially
St. Teresa.--Yet contemporary documentary evidence, for not only such
actual variations between healthy and unhealthy states, but also for
the Mystic’s knowledge of and witness to the existence of both and
to the difference between the two, is necessarily rare. I know of no
evidence more vivid and final, although of much that is larger in
amount, than the evidence furnished by Catherine’s _Vita_.
And next she has both a constant, deep sense that religion never
consists simply in ends but in means as well, and never ceases to use
and practise the latter; and a concomitant keen apprehension of the
difference between means and ends, and ever illustrates this sense
of difference by the striking variety and liberty of the practical
attitude which she is successively moved to take, and actually does
take, towards this or that of the Institutional helps of the Church.
Here again she but exemplifies a principle which underlies the
practice of all the Saints, in proportion to their maturity and full
normality. And indeed our Lord Himself, the Model and the King of
Saints, when asked which was the greatest of the Commandments, did
not answer that He could not and would not tell, since to distinguish
at all between greater and lesser Commandments would be liberalism;
but, on the contrary, fully endorsed and canonized such a distinction
and discrimination, by actually pointing out two Commandments as
the greatest, and by declaring that from them depended all the law
and the prophets. Hence to organize, and more and more to find and
give their right, relative place and influence to all the different
things practised and believed, is as important as is the corresponding
practice and acceptance of all these different things. Yet, here again,
full evidence both for such fidelity and docility and for such variety
and liberty of soul, with regard to the means of religion, is rare:
the records of the modern Saints mostly give us but the docility;
those of the Fathers of the desert generally give us but the liberty:
Catherine’s _Vita_ gives us both.
And thirdly, she is, amongst formally canonized Saints, a rare example
of a contemplative and mystic who, from first to last, leads at the
same time the common life of marriage and of widowhood in the world.
Here again any misapprehension of the importance or significance of
this fact would readily lead to folly. For it is undeniable that it has
been the monastic life which, in however great variations of degree,
form and lasting success, has furnished Christendom at large with an
impersonation of self-renunciation sufficiently isolated, massive
and continuous, to be deeply impressive upon the sluggish spiritual
apprehension of the average man. And indeed self-renunciation is so
universally necessary and so universally difficult; upon its presence
and activity religion, and all and every kind of rational human life
depend so largely; without its tonic presence they are so necessarily
but a dilettantism, a delusion or an hypocrisy: that to body it forth
for all men must ever remain an honour and a duty specially incumbent
upon some kind of Monasticism. For it is but right, and indeed alone
respectful, to the Spirit of God, so manifold and mysterious in its
gifts and inspirations, that every degree and kind of healthy and
heroic self-renunciation should be practised and embodied; and that
special honour should attach to its most massive manifestations.
Yet our general knowledge of poor, rarely balanced human nature
and our detailed historical experience respectively anticipate and
demonstrate how easy it is, on this point also, to confound the means
with the end, and a part with the whole. And by such confusion either
self-renunciation, that very salt of all truly human existence, gets
actually stapled up in one corner of the wide world and of multiform
life; or this apparent stapling becomes but a pedantic pretence and
would-be monopoly, the salt meanwhile losing all its savour. And these
two abuses and errors easily coalesce and reinforce each other. The
fact is that the total work and duty of collective humanity,--the
production of a maximum of true recollection, rest and detachment,
effected in and through a maximum of right dispersion, action, and
attachment; above all a maximum of ethico-spiritual transformation of
the world and, in and through such work, of each single worker,--is
too high for any single soul, or even class or vocation, to hope to
exhaust. Only by all and each joining hands and supplementing each
other can all these numberless degrees and kinds of call and goodness,
together, slowly, throughout the ages, get nearer and nearer to that
inexhaustible ideal which lies so deep and ineradicable within the
heart of each and all. And thus will the two fundamental movements of
the soul, as it were its expiration and its inspiration, the going
out to gather and the coming home to garner, be kept up, in various
degrees, by every human soul, and each soul and vocation will as keenly
feel the need of supplementation, as it will apprehend the beauty and
importance of the special contribution it is called to make to the
whole, a whole, here as everywhere, greater than any of its parts,
although requiring them each and all.--Now Catherine suggests and
illustrates such a doctrine with rare impressiveness: for the pure and
efficient love of God and man, the one end and measure for us all, ever
consciously dominates all and every means within her admirably balanced
and unified mind; and the renunciative element is, under mostly quite
ordinary exterior forms, as complete and constant as it could be found
anywhere.
And lastly, her doctrine contains one conviction, or group of
convictions, as original as, in such matters, one can expect to find.
We get here the soul’s voluntary plunge into Purgatory, its seeking
and finding relief, from the now painful pleasure of sin, in the now
joy-producing pain of purification; and the soul’s discovery and
acquisition, if and when in predominantly good dispositions, of its
ever-fuller peace and bliss, because its ever-increasing harmonization,
in freely willing the suffering intrinsically consequent upon its
own past evil pleasures and the resulting present imperfections of
its will. And this cycle of facts and laws here springs from, and
begins with, the soul’s life Here and Now, and is held to extend (on
the ever-present assumption of the substantial persistence of the
spirit’s fundamental spiritual properties and laws) to the soul’s life
Then and There. Thus these two lives differ with her rather in extent
and intensity than in kind. I think that, taken just thus, and with
this degree of explicitness, this group of convictions is practically
unique. We shall study and illustrate this particular cycle of doctrine
in full detail. But it is indeed time now to move on to a more
systematic and general account of her teaching.
CHAPTER VI
CATHERINE’S DOCTRINE
The attentive reader will no doubt have perceived how great have been
the difficulties at every step taken, in the previous chapters, towards
a critically clear and solid account of Catherine’s life. He will,
then, be quite prepared again to find difficulties, though largely of
another order, in the task that now lies before us,--the attempt at a
clear and authentic reproduction of her teaching.
1. _Four difficulties in the utilization of the sources._
The sources are, it is true, at first sight, fairly
abundant,--altogether about one hundred of the two hundred and eighty
pages of the _Vita ed Opere_. But four peculiarities render their
utilization a matter of much labour and caution.
For one thing, they certainly include no piece written by herself,
and probably none written down before 1497. Catherine’s memory can no
doubt be trusted, and with it much of the oldest version of those great
turning-points of her inner life which occurred long before that date,
and which she thus, later on, communicated to her two closest friends.
Yet hers was a mind so constantly absorbed in present experiences and
in self-renewal as to be all but incapable of dwelling, in any detail,
upon her past experiences or judgments.
And next, within and for this her “doctrinal,” her “widowed” and
“suffering” period, we are perplexed by the total absence of logical
or indeed of any other order in the presentation of these discourses
and contemplations. We have either to do without any order at all, or
to construct one for ourselves,--which latter course of itself already
means a reconstruction of the book.
But far more delicate is the task presented by the third
peculiarity,--the fact, demonstrated both by the internal evidence
and analysis and by the external evidence of the MSS., of the
bewildering variety of forms and connections in which one and the same
doctrine, sometimes an obviously unique saying, will appear. Six,
ten, even twelve or more variants are the rule, not the exception.
And I am specially thinking, under this heading, of _contemporary
variations_--that is, variations of form that can reasonably be
attributed either to her own initiative at work under differences
of mood and of starting-point; or to the variety of the minds who
apprehended and registered this teaching at the time of its delivery;
or to both influences simultaneously. In the first case we get, say,
her doctrine as to man’s weakness and sinfulness, in two moments of
depression and consolation respectively, registered by one and the same
disciple,--say, by Vernazza or by Marabotto. In the second case we get
some such two sayings as rendered the one by Vernazza and the other by
Marabotto severally. And in the third case we get both the depressed
and the joyful original sayings, as they have passed through the minds
of both Vernazza and Marabotto.
And lastly, we get another class, _redactional variations_; and these
it is often as difficult as it is always necessary to detect. I mean
the parallel passages, evolved in course of time by her attendants or
constructed by successive redactors, more or less on the model of, but
also with more or less of departure from, her own authentic sayings:
blurred, partly inaccurate echoes, as it were, of her own living voice.
These will generally have grown up but semi-consciously, or at least
have arisen from simple motives of her glorification or of literary
filling-in or rounding-off. For we must not forget the forty years
which passed between her death and the _Vita_.
I am thinking here too of the _theological limitations and
corrections_, introduced into the older text in the form of definite
counter-statements, which we shall find to be especially visible in
the _Trattato_; and of the, doubtless preponderatingly unconscious,
modifications of an analogous kind which determined the composition
of the _Dialogo_, and are traceable throughout that whole long work.
For here again we have to remember how, between her living teachings,
so ardent and familiar, so entirely from within and unoccupied with
the world without, which reached up to 1510, and even the earliest
MS. redaction of the contemporary jotting down of those sayings
which we still possess,--that of 1547,--runs the great upheaval of
the Protestant Reformation, beginning with Luther’s Theses of 1517.
Catherine’s own fellow God-parent to Vernazza’s eldest daughter, the
Doctor of Laws Tommaso Moro, had meanwhile become a Calvinist (1537),
and then had returned to the Catholic Obedience in 1539, first under
this his God-daughter’s influence. No wonder that what, under the
magic suasion of her living personality, in times as yet free from
the controversial and polemical tone and temper, and through and for
her friends already won to and comprehensive of her teachings, had
been certainly registered, and perhaps for a while transmitted, in
its own pristine, winningly daring and unguarded, form, would, with
her old friends dead and a new generation grown up and engrossed in
attack and defence of various points of the Catholic position, be felt
to require tempering and safeguarding, rewriting and controversial
utilization. Hence we get three successive steps. The theological
counter-statements in the _Trattato_, probably introduced between
1524 and 1530. The controversial point and utilization attempted in
the very title of the _Vita_ which promises, “una utile e cattolica
dimostrazione e declarazione del Purgatorio,” and in the Preface, which
declares the book to contain things “specially necessary in these our
turbulent times,” touches which go back probably to 1536, perhaps even
to 1524-1530. And the composition of the entire _Dialogo_, hardly begun
before 1546.[221]
It is interesting to note how neither for the approbation of the first
edition in 1551 (by the Dominican Fra Geronimo of Genoa), nor during
the examination by the Congregation of Rites and the final approbation
by Pope Innocent XI, 1677-1683, was any additional correction required
or (as far as I know) even suggested. The latter point is particularly
striking; for we have thus the very Pope who, in 1687, condemned
Molinos’ teaching, solemnly approving Catherine’s doctrine four years
before, after a seven years’ examination.
2. _Catholic principles concerning the teaching of Canonized Saints._
Now it is a well-known principle of Catholic theology, propounded
with classic clearness and finality by Pope Benedict XIV, in his
standard work _On the Beatification and Canonization of the Servants
of God_, that such an approbation of their sayings or writings binds
neither the Church nor her individual members to more than the two
points, which are alone necessary with respect to the possibility
and advisability of the future Beatification and Canonization of the
author of the sayings or writings in question. The Church and her
individual members are thus bound only to hold the perfect orthodoxy
and Catholic piety of such a saintly writer’s intentions, and again the
(at least interpretative) orthodoxy of these his writings, and their
spiritual usefulness for some class or classes of souls. But every
kind and degree of respectful but deliberate criticism and of dissent
is allowed, if only based upon solid reasons and combined with a full
acceptance of those two points.
And indeed it is plain that heroism in action and suffering is one
thing, and philosophical genius, training and balance is another;
and even, again, that deep and delicate experiences on the one hand,
and the power of their at all adequate analysis and psychological
description, are two things and not one. Still, it is also evident
that in proportion as a Saint’s doctrine is, professedly or at all
events actually, based upon or occasioned by his own experience will
it rightly demand a double measure of respectful study. For, in such
a case, we can be sure not only of the saintly intentions of the
teacher, but also of his doctrines being an attempt, however partially
successful, at expressing certain first-hand, unusually deep and vivid
experiences of the religious life, experiences which, taken in their
substance and totality, constitute the very essence of his sanctity.
Now this is manifestly the case with Catherine. And hence she furnishes
us with those very conditions of fruitful discussion, so difficult
to get in religious matters. On the one hand, her undoubted sanctity
and the personal experimental basis of her doctrine gain for her our
willingness, indeed determination, first of all patiently to study and
assimilate and sympathetically to reconstruct her special spiritual
world from her own inner starting- and growing-point, and all this,
at this first stage, without any question as to the completeness or
final truth and value of the intellectual analyses and syntheses of
these experiences elaborated by herself. And, on the other hand, we
find ourselves driven, at our second stage, to examine the literary
sources and philosophical and theological implications of this her
teaching--if pressed; and to make various respectful, but firm and
free distinctions and reservations, with regard to these sources
and affinities. For here, in these her analyses and syntheses, a
special quality of her own temperament is ever at work, and causes
her to express, as best she can, a concentration of a whole host of
the strongest feelings concerning just the one point of that one
moment’s experience, with a momentary complete exclusion of all the
rest. Here, again, her dependence, for her categories of thought and
general language, imagery and scheme of doctrine, upon Fra Jacopone da
Todi and upon the Pseudo-Dionysian writings is readily traceable,--the
latter, compositions which we have only now succeeded in tracing, with
final completeness and precision, to their predominantly Neo-Platonist
source. And here we cannot but carefully consider the impressive series
of Church pronouncements which have occurred since Catherine spoke and
her devotees wrote. All these matters shall be carefully studied in the
second volume.
3. _The fortunate circumstances of Catherine’s teaching._
It was a rare combination of numerous special circumstances,--several
of them unique,--which rendered possible the retention and indeed
solemn approbation of the difficult and daring doctrine and language
not rarely to be met with in the _Vita_ (in contradistinction to the
so-called _Opere_).
For one thing, the originator, the subject-matter and form, above
all the school of her doctrine, all combined to secure it the
largest possible amount of liberty and sympathetic interpretation.
The originator, the soul from whom the doctrine had proceeded, had
not herself written down one word of it; but she had spoken it all,
warm from the very heart which loved and lived it: the cold and
chilling process of deliberate composition had but little part in
the whole matter, and that part was not hers. The subject-matter was
not primarily dogmatic, and not at all political or legal; it dealt
not with theological systems or visible institutions, but with the
experiences of single souls: and at all times a great latitude has been
allowed in such subject-matter, when proceeding, as here, from some
saintly soul as the direct expression of its own experience. The form
was not systematic, and aimed at no completeness; all was incidentally
addressed to a few devoted disciples, in short monologues or homely
conversations. The title _Trattato_, given later on to the collection
of her detached thoughts on Purgatory, is thoroughly misleading; her
whole spirit and form were precisely not that of the treatise. And
the school to which she so obviously belonged was probably her chief
protection. Indeed, the doctrinally difficult passages are, in a true
sense, the least personal of her sayings: we shall find all their
doctrinal presuppositions,--as to the immobility, indefectibility,
deification of the soul; the possession by the soul of God without
means or measure; and the like,--to go back to the writings which,
purporting to be by the Areopagite Dionysius, the Convert of St. Paul,
but composed in reality between A.D. 490-520, so profoundly influenced
all mystical thinking and expression for one thousand years and more of
the Church’s life.
And again, the period during which the corpus of Catherine’s doctrine
was in process of formation was specially favourable to such large
toleration. For if she died in 1510, ten years before the outbreak of
the Protestant Reformation, with its inevitable reaction, her chief
chronicler, the saintly philanthropist Vernazza, did not die, a true
martyr to that boundless love of souls which he had derived from
his great-souled friend, till 1524; and her Confessor Marabotto did
not depart till 1528. Thus her doctrine would remain substantially
untouched and treasured up till some twenty years after her death, and
thirteen years after the great upheaval.
We have already noted that (somewhere about 1528, and on to 1551)
her teaching _did_ meet with some opposition. It will be interesting
to study (in the Appendix) how the objection arose and was met. Here
it must suffice to point out that, whereas Catherine’s Purgatorial
doctrine is free from any final difficulty on the score of orthodoxy,
it is just that doctrine which was hedged in and glossed before all
the rest; and that whereas other parts of her teaching, in the form
given in the _Vita_, are full of such difficulty, they remain strangely
unmodified to this very day. It will appear that the _Dialogo_ was in
part composed to perform an office towards those doctrinal chapters of
the _Vita_, similar to that performed by the glosses in and towards the
text of the _Trattato_. Hence the glosses of the _Trattato_ will have,
in the following collection of sayings, to be removed from my text, and
the statements of the _Dialogo_ will have to be ignored in my text.
These glosses or re-statements shall be considered later on, whenever
these additions or substitutions are of sufficient interest.
4. _The theological order of presentation adopted._
Then again, it is far from easy to settle upon the right order and
method of presentation. The more closely we study the chapters in
question the more do we find that the strange discomfort and disgust,
engendered by any lengthy reading of them, proceeds from the curiously
infelicitous manner of their composition. These chapters, in so much as
they supply genuine materials, consist of a large number of detached,
usually short sayings, of every kind of tone and mood, occasion and
mental and emotional context and connotation, and yet all concerning
but a few great central realities and truths. These sayings in
themselves do not at all represent links in a chain of reasoning; they
are numberless variations on some few fundamental experiences of the
soul. Hence they require to be given in loose co-ordination, or in free
grouping around some great central truth; somewhat like what is done,
with such marked felicity, for Our Lord’s own sayings, which also are
occasional and freely various, by the oldest of our Gospels, St. Mark.
“And,” “and again,” can be used to join these recurrent similitudes,
aspirations, emotional reflections; not “because” nor “therefore,”
still less “firstly,” “secondly,” “thirdly,” as the Redactors have
been so fond of doing. Hence the reader in the _Vita_ feels himself
in a constant state of abortive motion, and is ever being promised a
precision which usually ends in vagueness.
Let us then group these parallel sayings around some few great central
truths or dispositions. But what is the order of these great centres
to be? Here again a difficulty occurs, and this time from the very
nature of the doctrine concerned. For the special characteristic of her
teaching, a teaching so largely derived both from her own intensely
unitive character and (through the Dionysian writings, Proclus and
Plotinus) from Plato himself, is precisely an infinitely close-woven
organization, in which part vibrates in sympathy with part, in which
each point carries with it the whole, and in which each one idea
and feeling passes, as it were, right through, and colours and is
coloured by all the rest. It would be almost as satisfactory to turn
the impassioned discourse of Diotima in the Symposium into a series
of numbered propositions, as here to try and detach any one feeling
or idea from out of the living network of its fellows, in and through
which it is, and gets and gives, its special self.
The historical order (_i.e._ the order in which, successively, each
doctrine grew up and dominated her thinking) is, alas! as we have seen,
out of the question.--The psychological order (_i.e._ the order in
which the doctrines, such as we have them, would reproduce themselves
within her own mind during that last period of her life, 1496-1510)
would doubtless throw most light upon the special characteristics of
her spirituality, and upon the hidden springs of her doctrine. But it
is far too difficult, and must remain too largely hypothetical, to be
even distantly aimed at here and now: some such attempt will be made
in a later chapter, with the help of the materials first collected and
grouped here in a more conventional way.--The theological order (_i.e._
the order in which these doctrines would appear if made to find their
places in an ordinary manual of scholastic theology) is the one that
I shall here endeavour to follow as far as possible. For thus I can
start with a scheme so thoroughly familiar as nowhere itself to require
any explanation; and I can thus help to bring out, from the first, the
characteristic peculiarities of the mystical position generally, and of
her own variety of it in particular.
I will then take here, successively, her teachings as to God in
Himself, and Creation; Sin, Redemption, and Sanctification; and the
Last Things. But I do so quite loosely, for I shall try nowhere to
break off any bridge that she herself has thrown across from one
subject to the other, and shall be satisfied if I can succeed in
grouping her doctrine even approximately within those three divisions,
according to the predominance of this or that point of her teaching.
And, for this, I shall not shrink from a repeated utilization of
one and the same text, when (as happens so often) it looks in many
directions, and becomes fully clear only in juxtaposition with various
parts of her teaching.
5. _Literary sources of Catherine’s teaching._
We have evidence, as regards literary influences, that Catherine
fed her mind on three books or sets of books: the Bible, the
Pseudo-Dionysian Treatises, and the _Lode_ of Jacopone da Todi.
The allusions to passages of Scripture are continual, but mostly of
a swiftly passing, combinatory, allegorizing kind. Direct quotations
and attempts at penetrating the objective sense of particular passages
are rare, for most of the direct quotations are clearly due to her
historians, not to herself; yet they exist and put her direct study of
Scripture beyond all doubt. Her favourite Bible books were evidently
Isaiah and the Psalms, and the Pauline and Joannine writings. Some
touches (remarkably few for a mystic) are derived from the Canticle of
Canticles, and many less obvious ones from the Synoptic Gospels; but
there are no certain traces, I think, of any other Old Testament books,
nor, in the Pauline group, of any passage from the Pastoral Epistles.
The evidence for her direct knowledge and use of Dionysius is, it
is true, but circumstantial. But the following three facts seem,
conjoined as they are in her case, sufficient to prove this knowledge.
(i) We have already seen how her cousin and close spiritual friend,
Suor Tommasa, wrote a devotional treatise on Denys the Areopagite,
presumably before Catherine’s death, since Tommasa was sixty-two years
of age in that year 1510; it would be strange indeed if Catherine did
not, even if but from this quarter, get to know some of the Dionysian
writings, perhaps even whilst they could still only be read in MS.
form. (ii) Marsilio Ficino published in Florence, in 1492, his Latin
translation of the _Mystical Theology_ and of the _Divine Names_, with
a copious commentary; and the book, dedicated to Giovanni de’ Medici,
Archbishop of Florence and future Pope Leo X, found its way at once to
all the larger centres of life, learning and devotion in Italy. Thus
Catherine lived still eighteen years after the publication of this, the
first printed, edition of any part of Denys (original or translation);
even if she did not know these writings before, it seems again very
unlikely that she would not get to know them now. (iii) There are, it
is true, no direct quotations from Denys, nor does his name appear
in the _Vita ed Opere_, except in that account of Suor Tommasa. But
numerous sayings of Catherine bear, as we shall see later on, so
striking a resemblance to passages in those two books of Denys, that
it is difficult to explain them by merely mediate infiltration; and
that those sayings ultimately, as to their literary occasion, go back
to the Areopagite, is incontestable. I quote Denys from the usually
careful translation of the Rev. John Parker: _The Works of Dionysius
the Areopagite_, Pt. I, London, Oxford, 1897, with certain corrections
of my own.
The proofs for her knowledge and love of Jacopone da Todi’s Italian
“Praises” is, on the other hand, direct and explicit. The _Vita_,
p. 37, makes her say: “Listen to what Fra Jacopone says in one of
his _Lode_, beginning: ‘O amor di povertade,’” and then gives her
word-for-word commentary on verse 23 of this his _Loda_ LVIII. Words
from this same verse are again quoted by her on p. 62; the opening line
of this _Loda_ is put into her mouth on p. 83; and another verse, the
sixth, is quoted by her, as by the Blessed Jacopone, on p. 92. I have
been able to find many other sayings of hers which are hardly less
directly suggested by the great Umbrian than these. Here, again, she
probably knew the _Lode_ in MS. form, before they appeared in print in
1490; but will in any case have known them in this their printed form.
I have carefully studied in this, the first printed edition (Florence:
Bonaccorsi), all the _Lode_ bearing upon subjects and doctrines dear
to Catherine. They are twenty in all, from among the hundred and two
numbers of that collection.[222]
6. _The Psycho-physical Occasions or Reflexes of her Doctrine. Her
special reaction under and use of her literary sources shall be
examined in a later chapter._
The psycho-physical occasions or reflexes of her various teachings, as
far as the interconnection can be traced with probability, shall also
be studied in the second volume. But already here I would have the
reader clearly to understand, that nowhere are such psycho-physical
conditions and experiences to be considered the _causes_ of her
doctrine, as though the lower produced the higher, and as though the
spiritual were the automatic resultant and necessary precipitate of
certain accidental, involuntary conditions in time and space. For
everywhere such conditions can only, at best, be accepted as the
occasions or materials for the development or illustration of some
spiritual doctrine, or, contrariwise, as the psychic effects and
embodiments of some vividly realized invisible truth or law; whilst
this spiritual teaching itself is derived from far other and deeper
causes,--the interaction of her own experience and free spiritual
powers and of God’s grace, and the conflict of these with her own
passions, the whole helped or hindered by the world without.
I. GOD AS CREATIVE LOVE. THE CREATURE’S TRUE AND FALSE SELF; TRUE AND
FALSE LOVE.
1. _Creation, an overflow of Goodness._
First, then, we will take the sayings about Creation, and the original,
substantially indelible character of all created beings. “I saw a
sight which satisfied me much. I was shown the Living Fountain of
Goodness, which was (as yet) all within Itself alone, without any kind
of participation. And next I saw that It began to participate with the
creature, and made that very beautiful company of Angels, in order that
this company might enjoy His ineffable glory, without asking any other
return from the Angels than that they should recognize themselves to be
creatures created by His supreme goodness.… And hence, when they were
clothed in sin by their pride and disobedience, God suddenly subtracted
from them the participation of His goodness.… Yet He did not subtract
it all, for in that case they would have remained still more malign
than they (actually) are, and they would have had Hell infinite in
pain, as they now have it in time.” … “When we ourselves shall depart
from this life,--supposing we are in mortal sin,--then God would
subtract from us His goodness and would leave us in our own selves,
yet not altogether, since He wills that in every place there should
be found His goodness accompanied by His justice. And if any creature
could be found that did not participate in His goodness, that creature
would be as malignant as God is good.”[223]
2. _Natural conformity between God and all rational creatures._
From her sayings as to Creation and Pure Love, Creation’s cause, we
come to those as to the Natural Conformity between God and Rational
Creatures; His constant care for the human soul; and the consequent
law of imitative love incumbent upon us. “I see God to have so great
a conformity with the rational creature, that if the Devil himself
could but rid himself of those garments of sin, in that instant God
would unite Himself to him, and would make him into that which he, the
Devil, attempted to achieve by his own power. So too with regard to
man: lift off sin from his shoulders, and then allow the good God to
act,--God who seems to have nothing else to do than to unite Himself
to us.”--“It appears to me, indeed, that God has no other business
than myself.”--“If man could but see the care which God takes of the
soul, he would be struck with stupor within himself.”--“I see that God
stands all ready to give us all the aids necessary for our salvation,
and that He attends to our actions solely for our good. And, on the
contrary, I see man occupied with things that are opposed to his true
self and of no value. And at the time of death God will say to him:
‘What was there that I could do for thee, O man, that I did not do?’
And man himself will then see this clearly.”--“When God created man,
He did not put Himself in motion for any other reason than His pure
love alone. And hence, in the same way as Love Itself, for the welfare
of the loved soul, does not fail in the accomplishment of anything,
whatever may be the advantage or disadvantage that may accrue from
thence to the Lover, so also must the love of the loved soul return
to the Lover, with those same forms and modes with which it came from
Him. And then such love as this, which has no regard for aught but love
itself, cannot be in fear of anything.”[224]
3. _Relations between Love, God; love of our true self; and false
self-love._
We can take next her teachings as to the relations between the love
of God, love of our true self, and false self-love. “The love of God
is our true self-love, the love characteristic of and directed to our
true selves, since these selves of ours were created by and for Love
Itself. The love, on the other hand, of every other thing deserves to
be called self-hatred, since it deprives us of our true self-love,
which is God. Hence ‘Him love, Who loveth thee,’ that is, Love, God;
and ‘him leave who doth not love thee,’ that is, all other things, from
God downwards.”[225]
“God so loves the soul, and is so ready to give it His graces, that,
when He is impeded by some sin, then men say: ‘Thou hast offended God,’
that is, thou hast driven away God from thee, Who, with so much love,
was desiring to do thee good. And men say this, although it is really
man who then suffers the damage and who offends his own true self. But
because God loves us more than we love our own selves, and gives more
care to our true utility than we do ourselves, therefore does He get
designated as the one who is offended. And, indeed, if God could be the
recipient of suffering, it would be when, by sin, He is driven away
by and from us.” “This corrupt expression: ‘Thou hast offended God.’”
“Thou couldst discover, (O soul,) that God is continually willing
whatsoever our true selves are wishing; He is ever aiming at nothing
but at our own true spiritual advantage.”[226]
Hence happiness and joy, different from all mere pleasure, ever
accompany this reconquest of our true self-love and this our
re-donation of it to its true source. “Man was created for the end
of possessing happiness. And having deviated from this his end, he
has formed for himself a false, selfish self, which in all things
struggles against the soul’s true happiness.” “This divine love is our
proper and true love.” “Man can truly know, by continual experience,
that the love of God is our repose, our joy, and our life; and that
(false) self-love is but constant weariness, sadness, and a (living)
death of our true selves, both in this world and in the next.” “All
sufferings, displeasures, and pains are caused by attachment to the
false self. And although adversities many a time seem to us to be
unreasonable, because of certain considerations which we believe to be
true and indeed quite evident; yet the fact remains that it is our own
imperfection which is preventing us from seeing the truth, and this it
is which causes us to feel pains, suffering, and displeasure.” “O Love!
if others feel an obligation to observe Thy commandments, I, on my
part, freely will to have them all ten, because they are all delightful
and full of love.… This is a point which is understandable only to him
who himself experiences it; for in truth the divine precepts, although
they are contrary to our sensuality, are nevertheless according to our
own spirit which, of its very nature, is ever longing to be free from
all bodily sensations, so as to be able to unite itself to God through
love.”[227]
4. _The true self instinctively hungers after God._
The sayings as to the close correspondence between the true self and
God lead us on easily to those about the true self’s instinctive
recognition of God, and its hunger for the possession, for the
_interiorization_ of God. “If I were to see the whole court of heaven
all robed in one and the same manner, so that there would be no
apparent difference between God and the Angels: even then the love
which I have in my heart would recognize God, in the same manner as
does a dog his master. Love knows how, without means, to discover its
End and ultimate Repose.” “If a consecrated Host were to be given me
together with other non-consecrated ones I would, I think, distinguish
It by the taste, as wine from water.”--“When she saw the Sacrament upon
the Altar in the hand of the priest, she would exclaim within herself
(as it were, addressing the priest): ‘O swiftly, swiftly speed It to
the heart, since It is the heart’s own food.’”[228]
5. _Superiority of interior graces over exterior manifestations. No
good within herself apart from divine grace._
Catherine’s hunger for the interiorization of all the external helps
of religion, even, indeed specially, of the Holy Eucharist Itself,
leads us on to her statements as to the superiority of interior
graces and dispositions over all exterior manifestations and sensible
consolations, and as to the nature of acts produced by the false self
or apart from the grace of God. “If we would esteem the operations of
God” as they truly deserve, “we should attend more to things interior
than to exterior ones.… The true light makes me see and understand that
we must not look to what proceedeth from God to aid us in some special
necessity and for His glory, but that we must look solely to the pure
love with which He performs His work with regard to us. When the soul
perceives how direct and pure are the operations of love, and that this
love is not intent upon any benefit that we could confer upon It, then
indeed the soul also desires, in its turn, to love with a pure love,
and from the motive of the divine love alone.”[229]
“This not-eating of mine is an operation of God, independent of my
will, hence I can in nowise glory in it; nor should we marvel at it,
for to Him such an operation is as nothing.”--And to her Confessor
Don Marabotto she says reprovingly, when he too wanted to smell the
strange, strengthening odour which she smelt on his hand: “Such things
as God alone can give” (_i.e._ states and conditions in the production
of which the soul does not co-operate) “He does not give to him who
seeks them; indeed, He gives them only on occasion of great need, and
in order that we may draw great spiritual profit from them.”[230]
“If I do anything that is evil, I do it myself alone, nor can I
attribute the blame to the Devil or to any other creature but only to
my own self-will, sensuality, and other such malign movements. And if
all the Angels were to declare that there was any good in me, I would
refuse to believe them, because I clearly recognize how that all good
is in God alone, and that in me, without divine grace, there is nothing
but deficiency.”--“I would not that, to my separate self, even one
single meritorious act should ever be attributed, even though I could
at the same time be certified of no more falling from henceforward and
of being saved; because such an attribution would be to me as though
a Hell.” “Rather would I remain in danger of eternal damnation than
be saved by, and see, such an act of the separate self.” “The one sole
thing in myself in which I glory is that I see in myself nothing in
which I can glory.”
“Yet it is necessary that we should labour and exercise ourselves,
since divine grace does not give life nor render pleasing unto God
except that which the soul has worked; and without work on our part
grace refuses to save.”--“We must never wish anything other than what
happens from moment to moment, all the while, however, exercising
ourselves in goodness. And to refuse to exercise oneself in goodness,
and to insist upon simply awaiting what God might send, would be simply
to tempt God.”[231]
6. _God is Pure Love, Grace, Peace, and the Soul’s True Self._
The passages concerning the close relations between man’s pure love
and instinct for God, and Pure Love, God Himself, easily lead us on
to those in which Pure Love, Peace, Grace, the True Self, indeed the
Essence of all things are positively identified with God. “Hearing
herself called” to any office of her state or of charity, “she would,”
even though apparently absorbed in ecstatic prayer, “arise at once,
and go without any contention of mind. And she acted thus, because she
fled all self-seeking as though it were the devil. And she felt at such
times as though she could best express her feelings by means of the
glorious Apostle’s words: ‘Who then shall separate me from the love of
_God_?’ and the remainder of the great passage. And she would say: ‘I
seem to see how that immovable mind of St. Paul extended much further
than he was able to express in words; since Pure Love is God Himself:
who then shall be able to separate Him from Himself?’” Elsewhere and
on other occasions we find her declaring: “Love is God Himself”; “Pure
Love is no other than God”; “the Divine love is the very God, infused
by His own immense Goodness into our hearts.”[232]
She also declares that: “Grace is God”; that “Peace is God,”--“wouldest
thou that I show thee what thing God is? Peace,--that peace which no
man finds, who departs from Him.” And further still: “The proper centre
of every one is God Himself”; “my _Me_ is God, nor do I recognize any
other _Me_, except my God Himself;” “my Being is God, not by simple
participation but by a true transformation of my Being.” “God is my
Being, my _Me_, my Strength, my Beatitude, my Good, my Delight.” Indeed
“the glorious God is the whole essence of things both visible and
invisible.”[233]
All these startling statements are but so many expressions of one of
the most characteristic moods and attitudes of her mind and heart. For
in her vehemence of love and thirst for unification she would exclaim:
“I will have nothing to do with a love that would be _for_ God or _in_
God; this is a love which pure love cannot bear: since pure love is
(simply) God Himself”; “I cannot abide to see that word _for_, and that
word _in_, since they denote to my mind a something that can stand
between God and myself.”[234]
All this doctrine would be summed up by her in certain favourite
expressions. “She was wont often to pronounce these words: ‘Sweetness
of God, Fulness of God, Goodness of God, Purity of God’”; and at a
later time “she had continually on her lips the term ‘(clear) Fulness’”
(Self-adequation, _nettezza_).[235]
II. SIN, PURIFICATION, ILLUMINATION.
1. _The soul’s continuous imperfection. Self-love and Pure Love, their
contradictory characters. Every man capable of Pure Love._
Catherine’s extreme sensitiveness is no doubt a chief cause of the
peculiar form in which she experiences her sinfulness and faults
and their actually slow purification, as expressed in those of her
sayings which refer to the growth of love and to the continuous
imperfections of the soul. “From the time when I began to love Him,
that love has never failed me”; “indeed it has continually grown unto
its consummation in the depths of my heart.” This growth takes place
only step by step; and is in reality never complete, and never without
certain imperfections. “The creature is incapable of knowing anything
but what God gives it from day to day. If it could know (beforehand)
the successive degrees that God intends to give it, it would never
be quieted.” “When from time to time I would advert to the matter,
it seemed to me that my love was complete; but later, as time went
on and as my sight grew clearer, I became aware that I had had many
imperfections.… I did not recognize them at first, because God-Love was
determined to achieve the whole only little by little, for the sake of
preserving my physical life, and so as to keep my behaviour tolerable
for those with whom I lived. For otherwise, with such other insight,
so many excessive acts would ensue, as to make one insupportable to
oneself and to others.” “Every day I feel that the motes are being
removed, which this Pure Love casts out (_cava fuori_). Man cannot see
these imperfections; indeed, since, if he saw these motes, he could
not bear the sight, God ever lets him see the work he has achieved, as
though no imperfections remained in it. But all the time God does not
cease from continuing to remove them.” “From time to time, I feel that
many instincts are being consumed within me, which before had appeared
to be good and perfect; but when once they have been consumed, I
understand that they were bad and imperfect.… These things are clearly
visible in the mirror of truth, that is of Pure Love, where everything
is seen crooked which before appeared straight.”[236]
And yet the slowness of this purification is, in the last resort,
caused, if not by the incomplete purity of her love, at least by the
deep-rootedness and evasive character of the wrong self-love that has
to be extirpated. “This our self-will is so subtle and so deeply rooted
within our own selves, and defends itself with so many reasons, that,
when we cannot manage to carry it out in one way, we carry it out in
another. We do our own wills under many covers (pretexts),--of charity,
of necessity, of justice, of perfection.” But pure love sees through
all these covers: “I saw this love to have so open and so pure an eye,
its sight to be so subtle and its seeing so far-reaching, that I stood
astounded.” “True love wills to stand naked, without any kind of cover,
in heaven and on earth, since it has not anything shameful to conceal.”
And “this naked love ever sees the truth; whilst self-love can neither
see it nor believe in it.” “Pure love loves God without any _for_ (any
further motive).”[237]
And man, every man, is capable of this pure love and of the truth which
such love sees: “I see every one to be capable of my tender Love.”
“Truth being, by its very nature, communicable to all, cannot be the
exclusive property of any one.”[238]
2. _Exactingness of Pure Love._
The next group of sayings deals with the purity of Love, and the
severity with which this purity progressively eliminates all selfish
motives and attachments, whilst itself becoming increasingly its
own exceeding great beatitude. “Pure Love loves God without why or
wherefore (_perchè_)” “Since Love took over the care of everything,
I have not taken care of anything, nor have I been able to work with
my intellect, memory and will, any more than if I had never had
them. Indeed every day I feel myself more occupied in Him, and with
greater fire.” “I had given the keys of the house to Love, with ample
permission to do all that was necessary, and determined to have no
consideration for soul or body, but to see that, of all that the law of
pure love required, there should not be wanting the slightest particle
(_minimo chè_). And I stood so occupied in contemplating this work of
Love, that if He had cast me, body and soul, into hell, hell itself
would have appeared to me all love and consolation.”[239]
Yet the corresponding, increasing constraint of the false self is most
real. “I find myself every day more restricted, as if a man were
(first) confined within the walls of a city, then in a house with an
ample garden, then in a house without a garden, then in a hall, then in
a room, then in an ante-room, then in the cellar of the house with but
little light, then in a prison without any light at all; and then his
hands were tied and his feet were in the stocks, and then his eyes were
bandaged, and then he would not be given anything to eat, and then no
one would be able to speak to him; and then, to crown all, every hope
were taken from him of issuing thence as long as life lasted. Nor would
any other comfort remain to such an one, than the knowledge that it was
God who was doing all this, through love with great mercy; an insight
which would give him great contentment. And yet this contentment does
not diminish the pain or the oppression.”[240]
3. _Blinding effect of all self-seeking. The gradual transformation of
the soul._
There is next a group of sayings as to the immense, blinding and
staining effect of even slight self-seekings, and as to how God
gradually transforms the soul. “God and Sin, however slight, cannot
live peaceably side by side (_stare insieme_). Since some little thing
that you may have in your eye does not let you see the sun, we can make
a comparison between God and the sun, and then between intellectual
vision and that of the bodily eye.” “After considering things as they
truly are, I find myself constrained to live without self.” “Since the
time when God has given the light to the soul, it can no more desire
to operate by means of that part of itself which is ever staining
all things and rendering turbid the clear water of God’s grace. The
soul then offers and remits itself entirely to Him, so that it can no
more operate except to the degree and in the manner willed by tender
Love Himself; and henceforth it does not produce works except such
as are pure, full and sincere; and these are the works that please
God-Love.”[241]
“I will not name myself either for good or for evil, lest this my
(selfish) part should esteem itself to be something.” “Being determined
to join myself unto God, I am in every manner bound to be the enemy
of His enemies; and since I find nothing that is more His enemy than
is self in me, I am constrained to hate this part of me more than any
other thing; indeed, because of the contrariety that subsists between
it and the spirit, I am determined to separate it from all the goods of
this world and of the next, and to esteem it no more than if it were
not.”[242]
“When she saw others bewailing their evil inclinations, and forcing
themselves greatly to resist them, and yet the more they struggled to
produce a remedy for their defects, the more did they commit them,
she would say to them: ‘You have subjects for lamentation (_tu hai li
guai_) and bewail them, and I too would be having and bewailing them;
you do evil and bewail it, and I should be doing and be bewailing it
as you do, if God Almighty were not holding me. You cannot defend
yourself, nor can I defend myself. Hence it is necessary that we
renounce the care of ourselves unto Him, Who can defend this our true
self; and He will then do that which we cannot do.’”[243]
“As to the annihilating of man, which has to be made in God, she spoke
thus: ‘Take a bread, and eat it. When you have eaten it, its substance
goes to nourish the body, and the rest is eliminated, because nature
cannot use it at all, and indeed, if nature were to retain it, the
body would die. Now, if that bread were to say to you: “Why dost thou
remove me from my being? if I could, I would defend myself to conserve
myself, an action natural to every creature”: you would answer: “Bread,
thy being was ordained for a support for my body, a body which is of
more worth than thou; and hence thou oughtest to be more contented with
thine end than with thy being. Live for thine end, and thou wilt not
care about thy being, but thou wilt exclaim (to the body): ‘Swiftly,
swiftly draw me forth from my being, and put me within the operation
of that end of mine, for which I was created.’” … The soul, by the
operation of God, eliminates from the body all the superfluities and
evil habits acquired by sin, and retains within itself the purified
body, which body thenceforth performs its operations by means of
these purified senses.… And, when the soul has consumed all the evil
inclinations of the body, God consumes all the imperfections of the
soul.’”[244]
In each particular instance, the process was wont to be as follows:
“When her selfish part saw itself tracked down by Love, Catherine
would turn to Him and say: ‘Even though it pain sense, content Thy
will: despoil me of this spoil and clothe me with Love full, pure and
sincere.’”[245]
4. _Suddenness and gratuitousness of God’s light; the obstacles to its
operation._
We get next a set of apparently contrary sayings, concerning the
suddenness of God’s illumination; how the degree of this light cannot
be determined by man; and what are, nevertheless, the conditions under
which it will not act. In some cases, “the soul is made to know in an
instant, by means of a new light above itself, all that God desires it
to know, and this with so much certainty that it would be impossible to
make the soul believe otherwise. Nor is more shown it than is necessary
for leading it to greater perfection.” “This light is not sought by
man, but God gives it unto man when He chooses; neither does the man
himself know how he knows the thing that he is made to know. And if
perchance man were determined to seek to know a little further than he
has been made to know, he would achieve nothing, but would remain like
unto a stone, without any capacity.”[246]
And she would pray: “Be Thou my understanding; (thus) shall I know that
which it may please Thee that I should know. Nor will I henceforth
weary myself with seeking; but I will abide in peace with Thine
understanding, which shall wholly occupy my mind.” “If a man would see
properly in spiritual matters, let him pluck out the eyes of his own
presumption.” “He who gazes too much upon the sun’s orb, makes himself
blind; even thus, I think, does pride blind many, who want to know too
much.” “When God finds a soul that does not move, He operates within it
in His own manner, and puts His hand to greater things. He takes from
this soul the key of His treasures which He had given to it, so that it
might be able to enjoy them; and gives to this same soul the care of
His presence, which entirely absorbs it.”[247]
5. _God’s way of winning souls and raising them towards pure love. The
fruits of full trust._
The next group can be made up of passages descriptive of the dealings
adopted by God with a view to first winning souls as He finds them,
and then raising them above mercenary hope or slavish fear; and of the
childlike fearlessness inspired by perfect trust in God. As to the
winning them, she says: “The selfishness of man is so contrary to God
and rebellious against Him, that God Himself cannot induce the soul
to do His will, except by certain stratagems (_lusinghe_): promising
it things greater than those left, and giving it, even in this life,
a certain consoling relish (_gusto_). And this He does, because He
perceives the soul to love things visible so much, that it would never
leave one, unless it saw four.”[248]
And, as to God’s raising of the soul, she propounds the deep doctrine,
which only apparently contradicts the divine method just enunciated,
as to the necessary dimness of the soul’s light with regard to
the intrinsic consequences of its own acts, a dimness necessary,
because alone truly purificatory, for the time that runs between its
conversion, when, since it is still weak, it requires to see, and its
condition of relative purity, when, since it is now strong, it can
safely be again allowed to see.“ If a man were to see that which, in
return for his good deeds, he will have in the life to come, he would
cease to occupy himself with anything but heavenly things. But God,
desiring that faith should have its merit, and that man should not do
good from the motive of selfishness, gives him that knowledge little
by little, though always sufficiently for the degree of faith of which
the man is then capable. And God ends by leading him to so great a
light as to things that are above, that faith seems to have no further
place.--On the other hand, if man knew that which hereafter he will
have to suffer if he die in the miserable state of sin, I feel sure
that, for fear of it, he would let himself be killed rather than commit
one single sin. But God, unwilling as He is that man should avoid doing
evil from the motive of fear, does not allow him to see so terrifying a
spectacle, although He shows it in part to such souls as are so clothed
and occupied by His pure love that fear can no more enter in.”[249]
And as to the full trust of pure love, we have the following: “God let
her hear interiorly: ‘I do not want thee henceforward to turn thine
eyes except towards Love; and here I would have thee stay and not to
move, whatever happens to thee or to others, within or without’; ‘he
who trusts in Me, should not doubt about himself.’”[250]
And this Love gives of itself so fully to those that give themselves
fully to It, that when asked by such souls to impetrate some grace
for them she would say: “I see this tender Love to be so courteously
attentive to these my spiritual children, that I cannot ask of It
anything for them, but can only present them before His face.” In other
cases, as in those of beginners when sick and dying, she would be
“drawn to pray for” a soul, and would “impetrate” some special “grace
for it.” “Lord, give me this soul,” she would at times pray aloud, “I
beg Thee to give it me, for indeed Thou canst do so.” And “when she was
drawn to pray for something, she would be told in her mind: ‘Command,
for love is free to do so.’”[251]
III. THE THREE CATEGORIES AND THE TWO WAYS.
The next set of sayings so eminently constitutes the aggregation, if
not the system, of categories under and with which Catherine habitually
sees her types and pictures, and thinks and feels her experiences of
divine things, that it will require careful discrimination and grouping.
1. _The Three Categories: “In” Concentration; “Out” Liberation; “Over,”
Elevation._
There is, first, the great category of _in_, _within_, _down into_;
that is, recollection, concentration. “The love which I have within
my heart.” “Since I began to love It, never again has that Love
diminished; indeed It has ever grown to Its own fulness, within my
innermost heart.” Hence she would say to those who dwelt in admiration
of her psycho-physical peculiarities: “If you but had experience
(_sapeste_) of another thing which I feel within me!” And again,“If
we would esteem (aright) the operations of God, we must attend more
to interior than to exterior things.” And, with regard to the Holy
Eucharist, she would whisper, when seeing at Mass the Priest about to
communicate: “O swiftly, swiftly speed It down to the heart, since it
is the heart’s own food ”; and she would declare, with regard to her
own Communion: “In the same instant in which I had It in my mouth, I
felt It in my heart.”[252]
There is, next, the category of _out_, _outside_, _outwards_; that is,
liberation, ecstasy. “The soul which came out from God pure and full
has a natural instinct to return to God as full and pure (as it came).”
“The soul finds itself bound to a body entirely contrary to its own
nature, and hence expects with desire its separation from the body.”
“God grants the grace, to some persons, of making their bodies into
a Purgatory (already) in this world.” “When God has led the soul on
to its last stage (_passo_), the soul is so full of desire to depart
from the body to unite itself with God, that its body appears to it a
Purgatory, keeping it far apart from its (true) object.” “The prison,
in which I seem to be, is the world; the chain is the body”; “to noble
(_gentili_) souls, death is the end of an obscure prison; to the
remainder, it is a trouble,--to such, that is, as have fixed all their
care upon what is but so much dung (_fango_).” And, whilst strenuously
mortifying the body, she would answer its resistances, as though so
many audible complainings, and say: “If the body is dying, well, let
it die; if the body cannot bear the load, well, leave the body in the
lurch (O soul).”[253]
And all this imprisonment is felt as equivalent to being outside of
the soul’s true home. “I seem to myself to be in this world like those
who are out of their home, and who have left all their friends and
relations, and who find themselves in a foreign land; and who, having
accomplished the business on which they came, stand ready to depart and
to return home,--home, where they ever are with heart and mind, having
indeed so ardent a love of their country (_patria_), that one day spent
in getting there would appear to them to last a year.”[254]
And this feeling of outsideness, seen here with regard to the relations
of the soul to the body and to the world, we find again with regard to
sanctity and the soul. In this latter case also the greater is felt to
be (as it were) entrapped, and contained only very partially within the
lesser; and as though this greater could and did exist, in its full
reality, only outside of the lesser. “I can no more say ‘blessed’ to
any saint, taken in himself, because I feel it to be an inappropriate
(_deforme_) word”; “I see how all the sanctity which the saints
have, is outside of them and all in God.” Indeed she sums this up in
the saying: “I see that anything perfect is entirely outside of the
creature; and that a thing is entirely imperfect, when the creature can
at all contain it.” Hence “the Blessed possess (_hanno_) blessedness,
and yet they do not possess it. For they possess it, only in so far
as they are annihilated in their own selves and are clothed with God;
and they do not possess it, in so far as they remain (_si trovano_) in
their particular (_proprio_) being, so as to be able to say: ‘_I_ am
blessed.’”[255]
There is, in the third place, the category of _over_, _above_,
_upwards_; that is elevation, sublimation. We will begin with cases
where it is conjoined with the previous categories, and will move on
into more and more pure aboveness. “I am so placed and submerged in His
immense love, that I seem as though in the sea entirely under water,
and could on no side touch, see, or feel anything but water.” And “if
the sea were the food of love, there would exist no man nor woman that
would not go and drown himself (_affogasse_) in it; and he who was
dwelling far from this sea, would engage in nothing else but in walking
to get to it and to immerse himself within it.”[256] The soul here
feels the water on every side of it, yet evidently chiefly above it,
for it has had to plunge in, to get _under_ the water.
“Listen to what Fra Jacopone says in one of his Lauds, which begins,
‘O Love of Poverty.’ He says: ‘That which appears to thee (to be), is
not; so high above is that which _is_. (True) elevation (_superbia_)
is in heaven; earthy lowness (_umiltà_) leads to the soul’s own
destruction.’ He says then: ‘That which appears to thee,’ that is, all
things visible, ‘are not,’ and have not true being in them: ‘so high’
and great ‘is He who _is_,’ that is, God, in whom is all true being.
‘Elevation is in heaven,’ that is, true loftiness and greatness is
in heaven and not on earth; ‘earthy lowness leads to the soul’s own
destruction,’ that is, affection placed in these created things, which
are low and vile, since they have not in them true being, produces
this result.”--“I feel,” she says in explanation of what and how she
knows, “a first thing above the intellect; and above this thing I feel
another one and a greater; and above this other one, another, still
more great; and so up and up does one thing go above the other, each
thing ever greater (than its predecessors), that I conclude it to be
impossible to express even a spark (scintilla) as to It” (the highest
and greatest of the whole series, God). Here it is interesting still to
trace the influence of the same passage of Jacopone (again referred to
in this place by the _Vita_), and to see why she introduced “greatness”
alongside of “loftiness” into her previous paraphrase.[257]
Now this vivid impression of a strong upward movement, combined with
the feeling of being in and under something, gives the following image,
used by her during her last illness: “I can no longer manage to live
on in this life, because I feel as though I were in it like cork under
water.” And this “above,” unlike to “outside,” is accompanied by the
image, not of clothing but of nakedness; the clothes are left below.
“This vehement love said to her, on one occasion: ‘What art thou
thinking of doing? I want thee all for myself. I want to strip thee
naked, naked. The higher up thou shalt go, however great a perfection
thou mayest have, the higher will I ever stand above thee, to ruin all
thy perfections’”--this, of course, inasmuch as she is still imperfect
and falls short of the higher and higher perfections to which her soul
is being led.[258]
And as to man’s faculties, she says: “As the intellect reaches higher
(_supera_) than speech, so does love reach higher than intellect.”
And again, as a universal law: “When pure love speaks, it ever speaks
above nature; and all the things which it does and thinks and feels are
always above nature.”[259]
2. _The Two Ways: the Negative Way, God’s Transcendence; the Positive
Way, God’s Immanence._
Now these three categories of within and inward, outside and outward,
above and upward position and movement, can lead, and do actually lead
in Catherine’s case, to two separate lines of thought and feeling. And
these lines are each too much a necessary logical conclusion from the
constant working of these categories, and they are each again far too
much, and even apart from these categories, expressive of two rival but
complementary experiences, for either of them to be able to suppress
or even modify the other. Each has its turn in the rich, free play
of Catherine’s life. I will take the negative line first, and then
the positive, so as to finish up with affirmation, which will thus,
as in her actual experience and practice, be all the deeper and more
substantial, because it has passed, and is ever re-passing, through a
process of limitation and purification.
First, then, if grace and God are only within, _and_ only without,
_and_ only above, she will and does experience contradiction and
paradox in all attempts at explaining reality; she will thus find
things to be obscure instead of clear; and she will end by affirming
the unutterableness, the unthinkableness of God, indeed of all reality.
“I see without eyes, I understand without understanding, I feel without
feeling, and I taste without taste.” “When the creature is purified,
it sees the True; and such a sight is not a sight.” “The sight of how
it is God” who sends the soul its purifying trials “gives the soul
a great contentment; and yet this contentment does not diminish the
pain.” Still, “pure love cannot suffer; nor can it understand what is
meant by pain or torment.” “The sun, which at first seemed so clear
to me, now seems obscure; what used to seem sweet to me, now seems
bitter: because all beauties and all sweetnesses that have an admixture
of the creature are corrupt and spoilt.” “As to Love, only this can
we understand about It, that It is incomprehensible to the mind.” “So
long as a person can still talk of things divine, and can relish,
understand, remember and desire them, he has not yet come to port.” For
indeed “all that can be said about God is not God, but only certain
smallest fragments which fall from (His) table.”[260]
And yet those experiences of God’s presence as, apparently, in a
special manner within us, and without us, and above us, also lead, by
means of another connection of ideas, to another, to a positive result.
For those experiences can lead us to dwell, not upon the difference of
the “places,” but upon the apparent fact that He is in a “place” of
some sort, in space somewhere, the exact point of which is still to
find; and, by thus bringing home to the mind this underlying paradox
of the whole position, they can help to make the soul shrink away from
this false clarity, and to fall back upon the deep, dim, true view of
God as existing, for our apprehension, in certain states of soul alone,
states which have all along been symbolized for us by these different
“places” and “positions.” And thus what before was a paradox and
mystery _qua_ space, because at the same time within and without, and
because not found by the soul “within” unless through getting “without”
itself, becomes now a paradox and mystery _qua_ state, because the soul
at one and the same time attains to its own happiness and loses it,
indeed attains happiness only through deliberately sacrificing it. And
we thus come to the great central secret of all life and love, revealed
to us in its fulness in the divine paradox of our Lord’s life and
teaching.
God, then, first seems to be in a place, indeed to be a place. “I see
all good to be in one only place, that is God.” “The spirit can find no
place except God, for its repose.”[261]
If God be in a place, we cannot well conceive of Him as other than
outside of and above the soul, which itself, even God being in a
place, will be in a place also. “God has created the soul pure and
full, with a certain God-ward instinct, which brings happiness in its
train (_istinto beatifico_).” And “the nearer the soul approaches” (is
joined, _si accosta_) “to God, the more does the instinct attain to
its perfection.” Here the instinct within pushes the soul “onwards,
outwards, upwards.” And the nearer the soul gets to God in front,
outside and above of it, the happier it becomes: because, the more it
satisfies this its instinct, the less it suffers from the distance from
God, and the more does it enjoy His proximity.[262]
This approach is next conceived of as increasingly conveying a
knowledge to the soul of God’s desire for union with it; but such
an approach can only be effected by means of much fight against and
through the intervening ranks of the common enemies of the two friends;
and, as we have already seen, chief amongst these enemies is the soul’s
false self. “The nearer man approaches to (_si accosta_) God, the more
he knows that God desires to unite Himself with us.” “Being determined
to approach God, I am constrained to be the enemy of His enemies.”[263]
And then, that “place” in which God was pictured as being, is found
to be a state, a disposition of the soul. Now as long as the dominant
tendency was to think God with clearness, and hence to picture Him as
in space, that same tendency would, naturally enough, represent this
place He was in as outside and above the soul. For if He is in space,
He is pictured as extended, and hence as stretching further than, and
outside of, the soul, which itself also is conceived as spacially
extended; and if He is in a particular part of space, that part can
only, for a geocentric apprehension of the world, be thought of as
the upper part of space. But in proportion as the picture of physical
extension and position gives way to its prompting cause, and the latter
is expressed, as far as possible, unpictorially and less clearly, but
more simply as what it is, viz. a spiritual intention and disposition,
she is still driven indeed, in order to retain some clearness of
speech, to continue to speak as of a place and of a spacial movement,
but she has now no longer three categories but only one, viz. _within_
and _inwards_. For a physical quantity can be and move in different
places and directions in space; but a spiritual quality can only be
experienced within the substance of the spirit. “God created the soul
pure and full, with a certain beatific instinct of Himself” (_i.e._
of His actual presence). And hence, “in proportion as it (again)
approaches to the conditions of its original creation, this beatific
instinct ever increasingly discovers itself and grows stronger and
stronger.”[264]
And God being thus not without, nor indeed in space at all, she can
love Him everywhere: indeed the _what_ she is now constitutes the
_where_ she is; in a camp she can love God as dearly as in a convent,
and heaven itself is already within her soul, so that only a change in
the soul’s dispositions could constitute hell for that soul, even in
hell itself. “O Love,” she exclaims, after the scene with the Friar,
who had attempted to prove to her that his state of life rendered him
more free and apt to love God, “who then shall impede me from loving
Thee? Even if I were in the midst of a camp of soldiers, I could not
be impeded from loving Thee.” She had, during the interview, explained
her meaning: “If I believed that your religious habit would give me
but one additional glimpse” (spark, scintilla) “of love, I would
without doubt take it from you by force, were I not allowed to have
it otherwise. That you may be meriting more than myself, I readily
concede, I am not seeking after that; let those things be yours. But
that I cannot love Him as much as you can do, you will never succeed
in making me even understand.” “I stood so occupied in seeing the work
of Love (within my soul), that if it had thrown me with soul and body
into hell, hell itself would have appeared to me to be nothing but love
and consolation.” And, on another occasion, she says to her disciples:
“If, of that which this heart of mine is feeling, one drop were to fall
into hell, hell itself would become all life eternal”; and she accepts
with jubilation this interpretation of her words, on the part of one
of them (no doubt Vernazza): “Hell exists in every place where there
is rebellion against Love, God; but Life Eternal, in every place where
there is union with that same Love, God.”[265]
And she now cannot but pray to possess all this love,--love being now
pictured as a food, as a light, or as water, bringing life to the soul.
“O tender Love, if I thought that but one glimpse of Thee were to be
wanting to me, truly and indeed I could not live.” “Love, I want Thee,
the whole of Thee.” “Never can love grow quiet, until it has arrived at
its ultimate perfection.” And, in gaining all God, she gains all other
things besides: “O my God, all mine, everything is mine; because all
that belongs to God seems all to belong to me.”[266]
But if she loves all God, she can, on the other hand, love only Him:
how, then, is she to manage to love her neighbour? “Thou commandest me
to love my neighbour,” she complains to her Love, “and yet I cannot
love anything but Thee, nor can I admit anything else and mix it up
with Thee. How, then, shall I act?” And she received the interior
answer: “He who loves me, loves all that I love.”[267]
But soon her love, as generous as it is strong, becomes uneasy as
to its usual consequences,--the consolations, purely spiritual or
predominantly psychical or even more or less physical, which come in
its train. And even though she is made to understand that at least the
first are necessarily bound up with love, in exact proportion to its
generosity, she is determined, to the last, to love for love itself,
and not for love’s consequences, battling thus to keep her spirituality
free from the slightest, subtlest self-seeking. “This soul said to its
Love: ‘Can it really be, O tender Love, that Thou art destined never to
be loved without consolation or the hope of some advantage in heaven or
on earth” accruing to Thy lover?’” “And she received the answer, that
such an union could not exist without a great peace and contentment of
the soul.” And yet she continues to affirm: “Conscience, in its purity,
cannot bear anything but God alone; of all the rest, it cannot suffer
the least trifle.”[268]
And she practices and illustrates this doctrine in detail. “One day,
after Communion, God gave her so great a consolation that she remained
in ecstasy. When she had returned to her usual state, she prayed: ‘O
Love, I do not wish to follow Thee for the sake of these delights, but
solely from the motive of true love.’” On another similar occasion she
prays: “I do not want that which proceedeth from Thee; I want Thyself
alone, O tender Love.” And again, “on one occasion, after Communion,
there came to her so much odour and so much sweetness that she seemed
to herself to be in Paradise. But instantly she turned towards her
Lord and said: ‘O Love, art Thou perhaps intending to draw me to Thee
by means of these sensible consolations (_sapori_)? I want them not; I
want nothing except Thee alone.’”[269]
IV. THE OTHER WORLDS.
We have now gone through Catherine’s contemplations and conceptions as
regards the soul’s relations with its true Life and Love, here and now,
on this side the veil. We have, in conclusion, to try and reproduce
and illustrate her teaching as to these relations on the other side of
death.
1. _No absolute break in the spirit’s life at the body’s death._
Now here especially is it necessary ever to bear in mind her own
presupposition, which runs throughout and sustains all her doctrine.
For she is sure, beyond ever even raising a question concerning the
point, that her soul and God, her two great realities and experiences,
remain substantially the same behind the veil as before it, and hence
that the most fundamental and universal of the soul’s experiences
_here_ can safely be trusted to obtain _there_ also. Hence, too, only
such points in the Beyond are dwelt on as she can thus experimentally
forecast; but these few points are, on the other hand, developed with
an extraordinary vividness and fearless, rich variety of illustration.
And it is abundantly clear that this assumption of the essential unity
and continuity of the soul’s life here and hereafter, is itself already
a doctrine, and a most important one. We will then take it as such, and
begin with it as the first of her teachings as to the Beyond.
“This holy soul,” says the highly authoritative prologue to the
_Trattato_, in close conformity with her constant assumptions and
declarations, “finding herself, whilst still in the flesh, placed in
the Purgatory of God’s burning love,--a love which consumed (burnt,
_abbrucciava_) and purified her from whatever she had to purify, in
order that, on passing out of this life, she might enter at once
into the immediate presence (_cospetto_) of her tender Love, God:
understood, by means of this furnace of love, how the souls of the
faithful abide in the place of Purgatory, to purge themselves of every
stain of sin that, in this life, had been left unpurged. And as she,
placed in the loving Purgatory of the divine fire, abode united to the
divine Love, and content with all that It wrought within her, so she
understood it to be with the souls in Purgatory.”[270]
2. _Hell._
The details of her doctrine as to the Beyond we can group under three
heads: the unique, momentary experience and solitary, instantaneous act
of the soul, at its passing hence and beginning its purgation there;
the particular dispositions, joys and sufferings of the soul during
the process of purification, as well as the cause and manner of the
cessation of that process; and (generally treated by her as a simple
contrast to this her direct and favourite purgatorial contemplation)
the particular dispositions, sufferings, and alleviations of lost
souls. Since her teachings on the last-named subject are more of an
incidental character, I shall take them first, and make them serve,
as they do with her, as a foil to her doctrine of the Intermediate
State: whilst her conception of Heaven, already indicated throughout
her descriptions of Pure Love, is too much of a universal implication,
and too little a special department of her teaching, to be capable of
presentation here.
As to the cause of Hell, she says: “It is the will’s opposition to
the Will of God which causes guilt; and as long as this evil will
continues, so long does the guilt continue. For those, then, who have
departed this life with an evil will there is no remission of the
guilt, neither can there be, because there can be no more change of
will.” “In passing out of this life, the soul is established for good
or evil, according to its deliberate purpose at the time; as it is
written, ‘where I shall find thee,’ that is, at the hour of death,
with a will either determined to sin, or sorry for sin and penitent,
‘there will I judge thee.’” Or, in a more characteristic form: “There
is no doubt that our spirit was created to love and enjoy: and it is
this that it goes seeking in all things. But it never finds satiety in
things of time; and yet it goes on hoping, on and on, to be at last
able to find it. And this experience it is that helps me to understand
what kind of a thing is Hell. For I see that man, by love, makes
himself one single thing with God, and finds there every good; and, on
the other hand, that when he is bereft of love, he remains full of as
many woes as are the blessings he would have been capable of, had he
not been so mad.”[271]
And yet, and this is her own beautiful contribution to the traditional
doctrine on this terrible and mysterious subject, neither are the
sufferings of the lost infinite in amount, nor is their will entirely
malign. And both these alleviations evidently exist from the first:
I can find no trace anywhere in her teaching of a gradual mitigation
of either the punishment or the guilt. Indeed, although she always
teaches the mitigation of the suffering, it is only occasionally that
she teaches the persistence of some moral good. Thus her ordinary
teaching is: “Those who are found, at the moment of death, with a will
determined to sin, have with them an infinite degree of guilt, and the
punishment is without end”; “the sweet goodness of God sheds the rays
of His mercy even into Hell: since He might most justly have given to
the souls there a far greater punishment than He has.” “At death God
exercises His justice, yet not without mercy; since even in Hell the
soul does not suffer as much as it deserves.” But occasionally she
goes further afield, and insists on the presence there, not only of
some mercy in the punishment, but also of some good in the will. “When
we shall have departed from this life in a state of sin, God will
withdraw from us His goodness, and will leave us to ourselves, and yet
not altogether: since He wills that in every place His goodness shall
be found and not His justice alone. And if a creature could be found
that did not, to some degree, participate in the divine goodness, that
creature would be, one might say, as malignant as God is good.”[272]
There can be no doubt, as we shall see further on, that this latter is
her full doctrine and is alone entirely consistent with her general
principles.
Certain details of her Hell doctrine which appear in immediate contrast
to, or in harmony with, some special points of her Purgatorial
teaching, had better appear in connection with the latter.
3. _Purgatory; the initial experience and act._
Let us now take, in all but complete contrast to this doctrine as
to Hell, what she has to say about Purgatory. And here we have
first to deal with the initial experience and act, both of them
unique and momentary, of the soul destined for Purgatory. As to that
experience, only one description has been preserved for us. “Once,
and once only, do the souls (that are still liable to, and capable
of, purgation) perceive the cause of (their) Purgatory that they bear
within themselves,--namely in passing out of this life: then, but
never again after that: otherwise self would come in (_vi saria una
proprietà_).”[273]
And this unique and momentary experience is straightway followed by
as unique and momentary an act, free and full, on the part of the
experiencing soul. Catherine has described this act in every kind of
mood, and from the various points of view, already drawn out by us, of
her doctrine, so that we have here again a most impressive and vivid
summing-up and pictorial representation of all her central teaching.
“The soul thus seeing” (its own imperfection) and, “that it
cannot, because of the impediment” (of this imperfection) “attain
(_accostarsi_) to its end, which is God; and that the impediment cannot
be removed (_levato_) from it, except by means of Purgatory, swiftly
and of its own accord (_volontieri_) casts itself into it.”[274] Here
we have the continuation of the outward movement: the soul is here
absolutely impeded in that, now immensely swift, movement, and is
brought to a dead stop, as though by something hard on the soul’s own
surface, which acts as a barrier between itself and God; it is offered
the chance of escaping from this intolerable suffering into the lesser
one of dissolving this hard obstacle in the ocean of the purifying
fire: and straightway plunges into the latter.
“If the soul could find another Purgatory above the actual one,
it would, so as more rapidly to remove from itself so important
(_tanto_) an impediment, instantly cast itself into it, because of the
impetuosity of that love which exists between God and the soul and
tends to conform the soul to God.”[275] Here we have an extension of
the same picturing, interesting because the addition of an upwards to
the outwards introduces a conflict between the image (which evidently,
for the soul’s plunge, requires Purgatory to lie beneath the soul), and
the doctrine (which, taking Purgatory as the means between earth and
heaven, cannot, if any spacial picturing be retained at all, but place
Heaven at the top of the picture, and Purgatory higher up than the soul
which is coming thither from earth). The deep plunge has become a high
jump.
“I see the divine essence to be of such purity, that the soul which
should have within it the least mote (_minimo chè_) of imperfection,
would rather cast itself into a thousand hells, than find itself with
that imperfection in the presence of God.”[276] Here the sense of
touch, of hardness, of a barrier which is checking motion, has given
way to the sense of sight, of stain, of a painful contrast to an
all-pure Presence; and the whole picture is now devoid of motion. We
thus have a transition to the immanental picturing, with its inward
movement or look.
“The soul which, when separated from the body, does not find itself in
that cleanness (_nettezza_) in which it was created, seeing in itself
the stain, and that this stain cannot be purged out except by means
of Purgatory, swiftly and of its own accord casts itself in; and if
it did not find this ordination apt to purge that stain, in that very
moment there would be spontaneously generated (_si generebbe_) within
itself a Hell worse than Purgatory.”[277] Here we have again reached
her immanental conception, where the soul’s concern is with conditions
within itself, and where its joys and sorrows are within. Its trouble
is, in this case, the sense of contrast, between its own original,
still potential, indeed still actual though now only far down,
hidden and buried, true self, and its active, obvious, superficial,
false self. In so far as there is any movement before the plunge, it
is an inward, introspective one; the soul as a whole is, for that
previous moment, not conceived as in motion, but a movement of her
self-observing part or power takes place within her from the surface
to the centre; and only then, after her rapid journey from this her
surface-being to those her fundamental ineradicable requirements, and
after the consequent intolerably painful contrast and conflict within
herself, does she cast herself, with swift wholeheartedness, with all
she is and has, into the purifying place and state.
And, in full harmony with this immanental conception, the greater
suffering which would arise did she abide with this sight of herself
and yet without any moral change is described as springing up
spontaneously within herself. “The soul, seeing Purgatory to have been
ordained for the very purpose of purging away its stains, casts itself
in, and seems to find a great compassion (on the part of God) in being
allowed (able) to do so.” This appears to be only a variety of the
immanental view just given.[278]
4. _Purgatory: the subsequent process._
We have finally to give her doctrine as to the particular dispositions,
joys, and sufferings of the soul during the process of its purgation,
and as to the cause and manner of the cessation of that process.
As to the dispositions, they are generally the same as those which
impelled the soul to put itself in this place or condition. Only
whereas then, during that initial moment, they took the form of a
single act, an initiation of a new condition, now they assume the shape
of a continuous state. Then the will freely tied itself; now it gladly
though painfully abides by its decision and its consequences. Then the
will found the relief and distraction of full, epoch-making action;
now it has but to will and work out the consequences involved in that
generous, all-inclusive self-determination. The range and nature of
this, its continuous action will thus be largely the very reserve of
those of that momentary act. “The souls that are in Purgatory are
incapable of choosing otherwise than to be in that place, nor can
they any more turn their regard (_si voltare_) towards themselves,
and say: ‘I have committed such and such sins, for which I deserve to
tarry here’; nor can they say, ‘Would that I had not done them, that
now I might go to Paradise’; nor yet say, ‘_That_ soul is going out
before me’; nor, ‘I shall go out before _him_.’ They are so completely
satisfied that He should be doing all that pleases Him, and in the way
it pleases Him, that they are incapable of thinking of themselves.”
Indeed they are unable even to see themselves, at least directly, for
“these souls do not see anything, even themselves in themselves or by
means of themselves, but they (only) see themselves in God.” Indeed we
have already seen that to do, or to be able to do, otherwise, would now
“let self come in (_sarebbe una proprietà_).”[279]
And the joys and sufferings, and the original, earthly cause of the
latter, are described as follows. “The souls in Purgatory have their
(active) will conformed in all things to the will of God; and hence
they remain there, content as far as regards their will.” “As far as
their will is concerned, these souls cannot find the pain to be pain,
so completely are they satisfied with the ordinance of God, so entirely
is their (active) will one with it in pure charity. On the other hand,
they suffer a torment so extreme, that no tongue could describe it,
no intellect could form the least idea of it, if God had not made
it known by special grace.” And indeed she says: “I shall cease to
marvel at finding that Purgatory is” in its way as “horrible as Hell.
For the one is made for punishing, the other for purging: hence both
are made for sin, sin which itself is so horrible and which requires
that its punishment and purgation should be conformable to its own
horribleness.” For in Purgatory too there still exist certain remains
of imperfect, sinful habits in the will. “The souls in Purgatory think
much more of the opposition which they discover in themselves to the
will of God,” than they do of their pain. And yet, being here with
their actual will fully at one with God’s purifying action (an action
directed against these remains of passive opposition), “I do not
believe it would be possible to find any joy comparable to that of a
soul in Purgatory, except the joy of the Blessed in Paradise.”[280]
Now the sufferings of the soul are represented either as found by it,
under the form of an obstacle to itself, whilst in motion to attain to
God, a motion which in some passages is outward, in others inward; or
as coming to it, whilst spacially at rest. Only in the latter case is
there a further attempt at pictorially elucidating the nature of the
obstacle and the cessation of the suffering. It is fairly clear that
it is the latter set of passages which most fully suits her general
teaching and even imagery. For, as to the imagery: after that one
movement in which the soul determines its own place, we want it to
abide there, without any further motion. And, as to doctrine: more and
more as the soul’s history is unfolded, should God’s action within it
appear as dominating and informing the soul’s action towards God, and
should change of disposition supplant change of place.
First, then, let us take the clearer but less final conception,
and see the soul in movement, in a struggle for outward motion.
“Because the souls that are in Purgatory have an impediment between
God and themselves, and because the instinct which draws the soul
on to its ultimate end is unable as yet to attain to its fulfilment
(_perfezione_), an extreme fire springs up from thence (within them),
a fire similar to that of Hell.” We have here an application and
continuation of the transcendental imagery, so that the impediment is
outside or on the surface of the soul, and God is outside and above
this again: but the whole picture here, at least as regards the fire,
is obscure and tentative.[281]
Or the soul is still conceived as in movement, but the motion is
downwards from its own surface to its own centre, a centre where
resides its Peace, God Himself. “When a soul approaches more and more
to that state of original purity and innocence in which it had been
created, the instinct of God, bringing happiness in its train (_istinto
beatifico_), reveals itself and increases on and on, with such an
impetuousness of fire that any obstacle seems intolerable.”[282]
Here we have the immanental picturing, the soul moving down, under
the influence of its instinct for God, to ever fuller masses of
this instinct present within the soul’s own centre. But the extreme
abstractness and confusion of the language, which mixes up motion,
different depths of the soul, and various dispositions of spirit, and
which represents the soul as capable of approaching a state which has
ceased to exist, cast doubts on the authenticity of this passage.
In both these sets where the soul is in motion, we hear only of an
impediment in general and without further description; and, in both
cases, the fire springs up because of this impediment, whereas, as we
shall see, in the self-consistent form of her teaching the Fire, God,
is always present: the impediment simply renders this Fire painful, and
that is all.
And next we can take the soul as spacially stationary, and as in
process of qualitative change. Here we get clear and detailed pictures,
both of what is given to the soul and of what is taken away from it.
The images of the positive gain constitute the beautiful sixth chapter
of the _Trattato_. But its present elaborate text requires to be broken
up into three or four variants of one and the same simile, which are
probably all authentic. I give them separately.
“If in the whole world there existed but one loaf of bread to satisfy
the hunger of every creature: in such a case, if the creature had not
that one bread, it could not satisfy its hunger, and hence it would
remain in intolerable pain.”[283] Note how, so far, the nature of the
possession of the bread is not specified, it is simply “had”; and how
the pain seems to remain stationary.
“Man having by nature an instinct to eat: if he does not eat, his
hunger increases continually, since his instinct to eat never fails
him.”[284] Here all is clearer: man now takes the place of the creature
in general; the possession is specified as an eating; the pain is a
hunger; and this hunger is an ever-increasing one.
“If in all the world there were but one loaf of bread, and if only
through seeing it could the creature be satisfied: the nearer that
creature were to approach it (without seeing it and yet knowing
that only the said bread could satisfy it), the more ardently
would its natural desire for the bread be aroused within it (_si
accenderebbe_),--that bread in which all its contentment is centred
(_consiste_).”[285] Here the image for the nature of the appropriation
has been shifted from the least noble of the senses, taste and touch,
to the noblest, sight: there is still a longing, but it is a longing to
see, to exercise and satiate fully the intellectual faculties. And yet
the satiety is evidently conceived not as extending to these faculties
alone, but as including the whole soul and spirit, since bread would
otherwise cease to be the symbol here, and would have been replaced by
light. Note too the subtle complication introduced by the presentation,
in addition to the idea of an increase of hunger owing to lapse of
time, of the suggestion that the increase is caused by a change in the
spacial relations between the hungering creature and its food, and by
an ever-increasing approach of that creature to this food.
“And if the soul were certain of never seeing the bread, at that moment
it would have within it a perfect Hell, and become like the damned, who
are cut off from all hope of ever seeing God, the true Bread. The souls
in Purgatory, on the other hand, hope to see that Bread, and to satiate
themselves to the full therewith; whence they suffer hunger as great as
will be the degree to which they will (eventually) satiate themselves
with the true Bread, God, our Love.”[286] Here it is noticeable how the
specific troubles of Hell and Purgatory are directly described, whereas
the corresponding joys of Heaven are only incidentally indicated; and
how the full sight is not preceded by a partial sight, but simply
by a longing for this full sight, so that, if we were to press the
application of this image, the soul in Purgatory would not see God at
all. And yet, as we have seen above, souls there see, though not their
particular sins, yet their general sinful habits; for what are the
“impediment,” the “imperfection,” the “stain,” which they go on feeling
and seeing, but these habits? And they see themselves, though not in
themselves, yet in God. But, if so, do they not see God?
The answer will doubtless be that, just as they do not see their sins
any more in their specific particularity, but only feel in themselves
a dull, dead remainder of opposition and imperfection, so also they do
not, after the initial moment of action and till quite the end of their
suffering, see God clearly,--as clearly as they do when the process is
at an end. During one instant at death they had seen (as in a picture)
their sins and God, each in their own utterly contrasted concrete
particularity; and this had been the specific cause of their piercing
pain and swift plunge. And then came the period of comparative dimness
and dulness, a sort of general subconsciousness, when their habits of
sin, and God, were felt rather than seen, the former as it were in
front of the latter, but both more vaguely, and yet (and this was the
unspeakable alleviation) now in a state of change and transformation.
For the former, the blots and blurrs, and the sense of contrariety are
fading gradually out of the outlook and consciousness; and the latter,
the light and life, the joy and harmony of the soul, and God, are
looming clearer, nearer, and larger, on and on. And even this initial
feeling, this general perception, this semi-sight and growing sight of
God, is blissful beyond expression; for “every little glimpse that can
be gained of God exceeds every pain and every joy that man can conceive
without it.”[287]
The imagery illustrative of what is taken from the soul, and how it is
taken, is two-fold, and follows in the one case a more transcendental,
in the other case a more immanental, conception, although in each case
God is represented as in motion, and the soul as abiding in the same
place and simply changing its qualitative condition under the influence
of that increasing approach of God and penetration by Him.
The illustration for the more transcendental view is taken from the
sun’s light and fire’s heat and a covering. It is, as a matter of fact,
made up of three sayings: one more vague and subtle, and two more clear
and vivid, sayings. “The joy of a soul in Purgatory goes on increasing
day by day, owing to the inflowing of God into the soul, an inflowing
which increases in proportion as it consumes the impediment to its
own inflowing.”--God’s action upon the imperfect soul is as the sun’s
action upon “a covered object. The object cannot respond to the rays
of the sun which beat upon it (_reverberazione del sole_), not because
the sun ceases to shine,--for it shines without intermission,--but
because the covering intervenes (_opposizione_). Let the covering
be consumed away, and again the object will be exposed to the sun
and will answer to the rays in proportion as the work of destruction
advances.”--Now “Sin is the covering of the soul; and in Purgatory
this covering is gradually consumed by the fire; and the more it is
consumed, the more does the soul correspond and discover itself to the
divine ray. And thus the one (the ray) increases, and the other (the
sin) decreases, till the time (necessary for the completion of the
process) is over.”[288]
It is clear that we have here three parallel passages, each with its
own characteristic image, all illustrative of an identical doctrine:
namely, the persistent sameness of God’s action, viewed in itself, and
of the soul’s reaction, in its essential, central laws, needs, and
aspirations; and the accidental, superficial, intrinsically abnormal,
inhibitory modification effected by sin in that action of God and in
the corresponding reaction of the soul.--The first, dimmer and deeper
saying speaks of an inflowing of God, with her usual combination of
fire-and-water images. We seem here again to have the ocean of the
divine fire, Itself pressing in upon the soul within It, yet here with
pain and oppression, in so far as the soul resists or is unassimilated
to It; and with peace and sustaining power, in so far as the soul
opens out to, and is or becomes similar to, It. We hear only of an
“impediment” in general, perhaps because the influx which beats against
it is imaged as taking place from every side at once.--The second
saying, the most vivid of the three, speaks of sun-light, and of how,
whilst this sun-light itself remains one and the same, its effect
differs upon one and the same object, according as that object is
covered or uncovered. Here we get a “covering,” since the shining is
naturally imaged as coming from one side, from above, only. But here
also it is the same sun which, at one time, does not profit, and, at
another time, gives a renewed life to one and the same object; and it
is clear, that either Catherine here abstracts altogether from the
question as to what consumes the covering, or that she assumes that
this consumption is effected by the sun itself.--The third saying is
the least simple, and is indeed somewhat suspicious in its actual form.
Yet here again we have certainly only one agent, in this case fire,
which again, as in the case of the influx and of the sun-light, remains
identical in itself, but varies in its effects, according as it does
or does not meet with an obstacle. The ray here is a ray primarily
of heat and not of light, but which is felt by the soul at first as
painful, destructive flame, and at last as peaceful, life-giving warmth.
Now, amongst these three parallel sayings, it is that concerning
the inflowing, which leads us gently on to the more immanental
imagery--that of fire and dross. And this image is again given us in a
number of closely parallel variants which now constitute one formally
consecutive paragraph,--the third of Chapter X of the _Trattato_.
“Gold, when once it has been (fully) purified, can be no further
consumed by the action of fire, however great it be; since fire does
not, strictly speaking, consume gold, but only the dross which the gold
may chance to contain. So also with regard to the soul. God holds it
so long in the furnace, until every imperfection is consumed away. And
when it is (thus) purified, it becomes impassible; so that if, thus
purified, it were to be kept in the fire, it would feel no pain; rather
would such a fire be to it a fire of Divine Love, burning on without
opposition, like the fire of life eternal.”[289] Here the imperfection
lies no more, as a covering, on the surface, nor does the purifying
light or fire simply destroy that covering and then affect the bare
surface; but the imperfection is mixed up with the soul, throughout
the soul’s entire depth, and the purification reaches correspondingly
throughout the soul’s entire substance. Yet, as with the covering and
the covered object, so here with the dross and the impure gold, sin
is conceived of as a substance alien to that of the soul. And, so
far, God appears distinct from the fire: He applies it, as does the
goldsmith his fire to the gold. But already there is an indication
of some mysterious relation between the fire of Purgatory and that
of Heaven. For if the very point of the description seems, at first
sight, to be the miraculous character of the reward attached, more
or less arbitrarily, to the soul’s perfect purification, a character
indicated by the fact that now not even fire can further hurt the
soul, yet it remains certain that, the more perfect the soul, the more
must it perceive and experience all things according to their real and
intrinsic nature.
Another conclusion to the same simile is: “Even so does the divine
fire act upon the soul: it consumes in the soul every imperfection.
And, when the soul is thus purified, it abides all in God, without any
foreign substance (_alcuna cosa_) within itself.”[290] Here God and
the fire are clearly one and the same. And the soul does not leave the
fire, nor is any question raised as to what would happen were it to be
put back into it; but the soul remains where it was, in the Fire, and
the Fire remains what it was, God. Only the foreign substance has been
burnt out of the soul, and hence the same Fire that pained it then,
delights it now. Here too, however, God and the soul are two different
substances; and indeed this Fire-and-Gold simile, strictly speaking,
excludes any identification of them.
“The soul, when purified, abides entirely in God; its being is
God.”[291] Here we have the teaching as to the identity of her true
self with God, which we have already found further back. But the soul’s
purification and union with God which there we found illustrated by
the simile, so appropriate to this teaching, of the absorption of food
into the living body, we find indicated here by the much less apt
comparison of the transformation of gold by fire. For in this latter
case, the gold remains a substance distinct from the fire, whereas
the doctrine requires a simile such as a great pure fire expelling
all impurity from a small, impure fire, and then itself continuing
to live on, with this small fire absorbed into itself. But we shall
see later on, why, besides the intrinsic difficulty of finding an at
all appropriate simile for so metaphysical a doctrine, the imagery
always becomes so ambiguous at this point. We shall show that a
confluence of antagonistic doctrines, and some consequent hesitation
in the very teaching itself, contribute to keep the images in this
uncertain state. However, the possibly glossorial importation of this
most authentic teaching of hers into this place and simile only helps
to confirm the identity of the Fire with God, and the non-moving of
the soul, throughout this group of texts. For the gold abides in the
fire, as the soul abides in God; and the identification which is thus
established of the painful with the joyous fire, and of both with God,
is what will have suggested the introduction in this place of the
further identification of the soul with God. And it is the continued
abiding of the identical soul, a soul which has not moved spacially
but has changed qualitatively, in the identical fire, God, which has
helped to suggest the insertion in this place of the doctrine that the
soul, in its true essence, is identical with God. God, in this final
identification, would be the gold, the pure gold of the soul; and this
pure gold itself would generate a fire for the consumption of all
impurity, in proportion as such impurity gained ground within it. And,
in proportion as this consumption takes place, does the fire sink, and
leave nothing but the pure gold, the fire’s cause, essence, and end. In
any case, we have here one more most authentic and emphatic enforcement
of the teaching that the place of Purgatory is really a state; that its
painfulness is intrinsic; and that it is caused by the partial discord
between spirit and Spirit, and is ended by the final complete concord
between both.
CHAPTER VII
CATHERINE’S REMAINS AND CULTUS; THE FATE OF HER TWO PRIEST FRIENDS AND
OF HER DOMESTICS; AND THE REMAINING HISTORY OF ETTORE VERNAZZA
INTRODUCTORY.
I now propose to attempt, in these last two biographical chapters,
to give, first, an account of the fate of Catherine’s remains and
possessions; and, next, of the vicissitudes in the lives of her
companions and immediate disciples. I shall thus range from the day
of her death on Sunday, September 15, 1510, up to 1551, the year of
the publication of the _Vita e Dottrina_; indeed, in the instance of
one particular disciple, up to 1587. And I shall do so, partly as a
further contribution to the knowledge of her own character and even
of her doctrine, this finest expression of what she spiritually was,
and of her influence upon her immediate little world; and partly in
preparation for the study of the influence of this _entourage_ back
upon the apprehension and presentation of her figure, upon the growth
of her “Legend,” and upon the contemporary and gradual, simultaneous
and successive, upbuilding of that complex structure, her “Life.” This
latter inquiry is probably too technical to interest the majority of
readers, and will be found relegated to the Appendix at the end of this
volume.
I shall group all the facts, alluded to above, under five heads: her
burial, and the events immediately surrounding it; the different
removals of the remains, and the chief stages of her Official Cultus;
the fate of her two priest friends and advisers, and of her domestics;
the remaining history of her closest friend Ettore Vernazza; and
finally the long career, rich in autobiographical annotations, of
Ettore’s daughter, Catherine’s God-child, Tommasina (Battista)
Vernazza. We shall thus first finish up what is predominantly the
story of things, and of the more external, even although the most
splendid and authoritative, appreciation and authentication of her
holiness; and shall only then go back to what is (almost exclusively)
an interior history of souls, and one which will materially contribute
to our apprehension of Catherine’s special character and influence
and to a vivid perception of the advantages, strength, limits, and
difficulties of that particular kind of religion and of its attestation
and transmission. Ettore’s and Battista’s stories, however, are so full
that I must give three entire sections to Ettore, and one whole chapter
to Battista.
I. THE BURIAL AND THE EVENTS IMMEDIATELY SURROUNDING IT. SEPTEMBER 15
TO DECEMBER 10, 1510.
1. _The Burial, September 16._
We have seen how, in the evening of Thursday, September 12, the already
dying Catherine had, in a Codicil, declared that she desired to be
buried wheresoever the priests Jacobo Carenzio and Cattaneo Marabotto
should decide. She died in the early morning of Sunday, the 15th; and
already on the next day, with the rapidity which, in such matters,
continues characteristic of southern countries, the burial took place.
First, Dons Jacobo Carenzio and Cattaneo Marabotto declared, in a
written document, that “knowing the late Donna Caterinetta to have
ordained that her body should be buried in such a place as they
themselves might ordain: they, in consequence, willed and ordained that
her said body be buried in the Church of the Hospital.”[292] And next,
the funeral took place with a certain amount of pomp: for authentic
copies are still extant of the expenses incurred,--among other things
for wax candles, including three white-wax flambeaux, amounting in
all to over one hundred pounds weight of wax.[293] The evidently
highly emaciated, and hence naturally flexible, body had been enclosed
in a “fine coffin of wood,” and was now, at this first deposition,
put in “a resting-place (_deposito_) against one of the walls” of
the Church. There can be no doubt that this first resting-place
was not the monument of her husband Giuliano, although the latter
was still visible and readily accessible for a considerable time
after,--certainly up to 1522, and probably down to 1537.[294]
2. _Catherine’s possessions at the time of her death._
And next, on Tuesday the 17th, an Inventory was drawn up of the things
possessed by Catherine at the moment of her death, for the use of the
Hospital “Protectors,” the Trustees and Executors of her Will. An
authentic copy of it is still extant, and furnishes first-hand evidence
for the presence, up to the very last, and amongst the tangible objects
and small possessions in daily use, of memorials and expressions of
the three great stages of her life, and of the (in part successive and
past, in part simultaneous and still present) layers, or as it were
concentric rings, of her character. We thus get a vivid presentation
of that variety in unity and unity in variety, which is of the very
essence of the fully living soul; and we also see how incapable of
being otherwise than caricatured, if expressed in but a few hyperbolic
words, was even her spirit of poverty and of mortification, in this
her last stage, which, in some sense and degree, still retained and
summed up, and in other ways added a special touch of a large freedom
to, all the various previous stages of her life.
The list gives the things according to the rooms in which they stood,
beginning with her own death-room, and, here, with her own bed. In this
“_the_ room” (_camera_) there are “a down coverlet” and “two large
mattresses”; “three” (other) “coverlets, one of vermilion silk” and
“two of” some simpler “white” material; “two blankets, one vermilion,
the other white”; “five-and-a-half pairs of sheets”; and “a pillow”:
all this for Catherine’s bed. And these clothes, together with those of
the bed of the “famiglia” (the maid Argentina), constitute, together
with the two bedsteads, absolutely all the chattels present in this
“bedroom” (_camera_).
“In the” adjoining “room with the blue wall-hangings and the”
intervening “curtain,” there were: “three stuff gowns, one black and
the other Franciscan-colour,” _i.e._ grey; “two silk gowns”; “two
jackets, one” of which was again “of grey stuff, without a lining”;
seven other garments, “one being of black silk”; a very small amount
of body-linen; “three table-cloths and twenty-one towels”; “two silver
cups and saucers” and “six silver spoons”; “eight pewter candlesticks”;
“one casserole”; “four wooden basins”; “a kettle”; and a few other poor
odds-and-ends, for kitchen and sick-room use; and a three-legged table
and one or two other articles of simple furniture.
And finally “a closet” (_recamera_) is mentioned, with a press in it.
It is noticeable that here, again, no printed book or manuscript of
any kind is mentioned: but it is clear that she herself had, some
time after her Will of March 18, 1509, given away her dearly prized
“Maestà”-triptych to Christoforo di Chiavaro, for this picture nowhere
occurs in this list; and something of the same kind may have occurred
with one or two books.
But if we group these things somewhat differently, we at once get a
vivid conception of the precise, and hence complex, sense in which
she can be said to have died very poor; and we get clear indications
of the three stages of her life. For the silver service is a survival
from her pre-conversion, worldly-wealthy days; the pewter candlesticks,
and the rough, sparse furniture, belong to her directly penitential
first-conversion period and mood; and the soft, warm, gay-coloured
coverlets and apparel of rich material are no doubt predominantly
characteristic of her last years when, largely under Don Marabotto’s
wise advice, she allowed herself a greater freedom in matters of
external mortification, and readily accepted bodily attentions and
comforts, reserving now the fulness of her attention to matters of
interior disposition and purification. She thus attained, by means of
and after all those previous forms of mortification, to a perfected,
evangelical liberty, in which the death to self was, if somewhat
different, yet even more penetrative than before.
In the evening of this day, the Protectors of the Hospital formally
renew their acceptance of the office of Trustees and Executors, imposed
on them by Catherine’s Will of March 18 of the previous year.[295]
3. _Distribution of Catherine’s chattels._
And thirdly, there are the various sellings, re-sellings, and
distributions of her humble little collection of things, which take
place with the slow multiplicity of steps, dear to all corporations.
Workmen get paid, on November 22, for carrying her property on to the
market-place, for the sale. On the same day Argentina receives “such
things left to her in Catherine’s Will as Catherine had not herself
already given to her maid.” And, on December 10, the remainder of
that property, which had evidently been bought in by the Hospital on
that November day, is finally re-valued, bought, and divided up by
and between the Protectors, who take most of the large furniture;
Marabotto, who buys ten things (a pair of fire-irons, a wardrobe, and
a gilt article amongst them); her brother Lorenzo, who acquires four
things (amongst them “a woman’s work-box?--_capsetina a domina_”); and
the Rector, Don Carenzio, who becomes possessed of the down coverlet
and of a piece of vermilion cloth.[296]
Here the absence of all buying by or for Vernazza or a representative
of his is noticeable. He was evidently still far away, busy in putting
his and his dead Saint-friend’s large ideas into practice; and his
three daughters, the eldest of whom was but thirteen, were being
brought up in two Convents.
The fate of Catherine’s little house is too closely bound up with that
of one of her friends for its history to be easily severable from his.
It stands over to the third section.
II. THE DIFFERENT REMOVALS OF THE REMAINS, AND THE CHIEF STAGES OF HER
OFFICIAL CULTUS.
1. _Opening of the “Deposito.” Successive “translations.”_
Catherine’s remains were left “for about eighteen months” in their
first resting-place, (_deposito_) by one of the walls of the “Hospital
Church.” But then “it was found that the spot was damp, owing to a
conduit of water running under the wall. And the resting-place was
broken up, and the coffin was opened: and the holy body was found
entire from head to foot, without any kind of lesion.” “And so great a
concourse of people took place, to see the body, that the remains were
left exposed indeed for eight days; but, owing to a part of them having
been abstracted,” apparently at the opening of the coffin, “they were
exhibited shut off (from the crowd) in a side-chapel, where they could
be seen but not touched.” “And after this, the remains were deposited
high up, in a sepulchre of marble, in the Church of the Hospital.”[297]
The interest of this removal consists in three sets of facts, the last
set being of capital importance among the determining causes of her
cultus and eventual canonization. For one thing, we still have the
accounts of the expenses incurred in connection with it, the Hospital
repaying, to two ladies (one of them Donna Franchetta, the wife of
Giuliano’s cousin Agostino Adorno) and to Don Marabotto, the sums
expended by them upon this translation and sepulchre: Marabotto’s
expenses being in part for “causing the stone for the sepulchre to be
brought.” These accounts are put down in the Hospital Cartulary under
July 10, nearly twenty-two months after the first deposition; but the
expenses may well have been incurred by those three friends, three or
four months before. We thus find two ladies (a relative and a friend),
and Don Marabotto, to the fore; but no mention of Carenzio, although
the latter was at the time, as we shall see, still Rector of the
Hospital and living in Catherine’s little house there.
And secondly, it is on this occasion that mention is made of the
picture which I have more or less identified with the portrait
reproduced in this volume. There are two highly ambiguous entries
concerning it. “To account of the Sepulture of the late Donna
Caterinetta Adorna, for divers expenses incurred by Don Cattaneo
Marabotto: to wit, for a picture, and for causing the stone for the
sepulture to be brought, £7 10_s._”; “the Maintenance Committee
(_fabrica_) of the Hospital, for a picture erected in the Church of the
Hospital, above the Altar: to the credit of Don Cattaneo Marabotto,
£9 7_s._”[298] Now I take it that only one interpretation is at all a
probable one, viz. that both these entries, in the comfortably slipshod
way in which most of these accounts were kept, refer somehow to one and
the same picture; and that this picture was a portrait of Catherine.
For it is certain that the second account refers in some way to
Catherine and to this first transference of her remains; it is highly
unlikely that two pictures of herself would be produced and paid for,
on one and the same occasion; and it is most improbable that Marabotto
would care, on occasion of all this popular enthusiasm for his deceased
friend and penitent, to spend money on a picture representative of some
figure other than her own.
The reader will note that the portrait which I thus connect with this
picture has not, as yet, got any nimbus, an absence hardly possible
in any much later picture.[299] And I take it that the picture was
placed above an altar, possibly even _the_ Altar (the High Altar) of
the Church, not only because _that_ was the most honorific place, but
also a little because the sepulchre had been placed too high up for the
relatively small picture to be sufficiently visible if attached to the
monument itself.
And thirdly, we have here, in this week-long public veneration of the
remains, and in this erection of her picture over one of the Church
Altars, the first unmistakable beginnings of a popular cultus. For the
evidences and expressions of devotion to her, which I have recorded
at the time of her death, were all restricted to the circle of her
personal friends, and her first deposition remained, apparently, free
from any popular concourse or commotion. The series of cures attributed
to her intercession does not begin till this opening of the _deposito_.
Certainly the first, and possibly the first four, of these cases, as
given by Padre Maineri (1737), occurred in connection with this first
opening.[300] And it is certain that, if the (greater or lesser)
incorruption of the body was possibly nothing even physically so very
remarkable, given all the circumstances;[301] and if this fact left
the question of her sanctity intrinsically entirely where it found
the matter: yet the incorruption it was that gave the first, and, as
it turned out, an abiding impulse to the popular devotion. Indeed,
as we shall see later on, it is highly improbable that, but for this
condition of the body, a cultus would ever have arisen sufficiently
popular and permanent to lead on to her Beatification and Canonization.
But as things now stood, the movement had been set going, and it
continued on and on.
The remaining translations were: a second one, into “an honourable
sepulchre lower down,” still before 1551, and already mentioned in
the first edition of the _Vita_ of that year; a third, in 1593, when
the remains were placed in their present position, but in a marble
monument, up in the choir, above the Church entrance; and a fourth and
fifth, in 1642 and 1694, when the body was placed, for the first and
second time, in shrines having glass sides, so that the relics could
be seen: that of 1694 is the one in which the remains still repose.
And in 1709, Cardinal Lorenzo Fiesco being Archbishop of Genoa, the
body was reclothed, on June 13, by ladies, amongst whom was a Maria
B. Fiesca.[302] We thus see how unbroken was, in this case, the
authentication of the remains, and how fresh remained, most naturally,
the interest taken in their cultus by Catherine’s most powerful family.
2. _Motives operating for Catherine’s Canonization._
It is indeed clear that Catherine’s greatness,--what made her a large,
rich mind and saintly spirit,--is one thing; and that Catherine’s
popularity,--what occasioned the official recognition of that
greatness,--is another thing. Her mind and teaching, her character and
special grace and _attrait_, were of rare width and penetration; in
part, they were strikingly original through just this their depth of
psychological and spiritual self-consistency and closeness of touch
with the soul’s actual life. And these points had profoundly impressed
a very small group of friends. And again, her work among the poor and
sick had been long, varied, and utterly devoted. And here she had been
widely appreciated. Yet these, the two lives which, between them,
constituted all her sanctity and significance, had, the former nothing,
and the latter but little and only mediately, to do with the forces
which led on eventually to her formal canonization.
The motives for putting Rome in motion for this her canonization were,
no doubt, predominantly three. There was the popular devotion, which
apparently was first aroused, and was then instantly turned into
a downright cultus, by the discovery, in May or June 1512, of the
incorruption of her remains; and which from thenceforward continued
and grew, in connection with these relics and with the physical cures
and ameliorations attributed to the touch of the dead body, or of
its integuments, or even of the oil of the lamp which evidently soon
(presumably on occasion of that first outburst of devotion) was kept
lit before Catherine’s resting-place.[303] There was next the gratitude
of the Hospital authorities to Catherine for her life-work amongst
them; and their most natural and laudable wish to utilize her sanctity
and its recognition for the benefit of the ever-continuous and pressing
necessities of their vast institution and its Church. And finally,
there was the feeling of clanship and the active interest taken in the
matter by the (all but regal) family of the Fieschi, backed, as they
were, by the Republic of Genoa and various other sovereign bodies and
persons.
The combination of these three things proved sufficiently powerful to
take the place of certain ordinary incentives which were wanting, and
even to overcome certain unusual difficulties which were undoubtedly
present, in the case. Certain incentives were lacking. For there was,
in this instance, no Religious Order to put forward and to work, with
all the continuous, unresting, unhasting momentum of an institution,
for a saintly subject of its own, a subject whose glorification would
bring honour and profit to the body from which she sprang, and an
accession of popularity to the special object and work of that Order.
And certain obstacles were present. For few characters, interior
ideals and explicit teachings, could be found more _sui generis_, more
profoundly, even daringly original and all re-constitutive, and less
immediately understandable and copyable, than are these of Catherine.
But the enthusiasm and self-interest of the populace, of a charitable
institution, and of a powerful family, replaced what was thus lacking
and overcame what was thus operative; and the directly visible and
universally understandable part of her life and example, was allowed to
outweigh any objection that could be urged on the ground of the less
obvious and more difficult, far more original and profound, sides of
her special personality and piety.
And a matter which further helped on the canonization was that when
Pope Urban VIII, in 1625, published his Bull forbidding thenceforth,
under grave penalties, that any one, “even though he have died with the
reputation of extraordinary Christian perfection, be called ‘Blessed’
or ‘Saint,’ until he has first been declared to be such, and to merit
religious worship, by the Holy Roman See”; and ordaining that the same
rule should be practised concerning persons already deceased, who were
currently recognized as saints: he excepted, with regard to this second
class, those who, “during an immemorial course of time” previous to the
publication of this Bull, had been venerated as saints by the people,
without opposition or complaint on the part of the Church authorities.
For this “time immemorial” was considered by theologians to amount, as
a minimum, to a hundred years. And since religious worship had begun
to be paid to her certainly not later than 1512, and the title “Beata”
had already then been publicly given to her, Catherine continued, even
after Pope Urban’s Bull, to be invoked and venerated as “Blessed,” with
the knowledge, though without any positive and express approbation, of
the Roman Church.[304]
3. _Canonization, 1737._
But the devotees of Catherine, naturally enough, were not content
with less than a formal approbation, and, as usual, the obtaining of
the latter was a very long and elaborate affair. At the beginning of
1630 a petition was sent in to Cardinal Cesarini in Rome; who, after
much examination, gave his opinion on May 24, 1636. There the matter
again rested for twenty-four years.--But in 1670 the very active
and able Florentine, Cardinal Azzolini, (the same whose interesting
correspondence with that undisciplined and wayward, but thoroughly
sincere and much-maligned woman, Queen Christina of Sweden, has been
recently published,) became the “Ponente,” the Advocate, for the
cause.[305] The Cardinal wrote in 1672 to Archbishop Spinola of Genoa
for his opinion; and the latter, after much further examination,
declared that the cultus of Catherine, having existed for over a
century before Pope Urban’s Bull, she ought, in accordance with the
tenor of that Bull, to be maintained in possession of that same cultus.
The Congregation of Rites approved of this sentence on March 30, 1675,
and Clement X, the now eighty-five years old Altieri Pope, gave it his
assent. Thus Catherine had a full official recognition as “Beata.”
Next came the examination of her doctrine and “writings,” from
1676 onwards, culminating in their approbation, for purposes of
Canonization, by Pope Innocent XI (Odescalchi) in 1683. It is this
investigation which, with some of the discussions concerning her
virtues, adds considerably to our materials and means for judging of
her teaching. I have already touched on these discussions; and they
will occupy us again in the second volume.
And then, in 1682, Cardinal Azzolini, supported by King Louis XIV of
France and the King of Spain, again presses Rome,--this time with a
view to reaching Canonization. And on Cardinal Azzolini dying, Cardinal
Imperiali became second “Ponente” of the cause. In 1690 the City of
Genoa obtained leave from the Congregation of Rites for the recitation
of the Office and for the Celebration of the Mass of the Common of
Widows, in honour of Blessed Catherine; in 1733 an Office and a Mass
proper to herself were approved; and in 1734 her eulogy was inserted in
the Roman Martyrology, under date of March 22 (her conversion-day): “At
Genoa, the Blessed Catherine, widow, distinguished by her contempt of
the world and love of God.”
But meanwhile the long process as to the heroic degree of her virtues
had issued in the Report of the Commission in 1716; and in the
affirmative decree of the Congregation of Rites, confirmed by Clement
XII (Corsini) in 1733.
And, before the conclusion of this investigation of her virtues, the
examination of the miracles ascribed to her intercession had been
begun in Genoa in 1730, by a deputation consisting of the Archbishop
De-Franchi and two Bishops, sitting in the Archiepiscopal Palace;
and six miracles were, in 1736, approved as valid, from amongst the
numerous cases alleged to have occurred in 1730. And then three from
amongst these six miracles were finally approved by Rome, on April 5,
1737, as efficient towards Canonization.
And at last, on April 30 of the same year, Feast of St. Catherine of
Siena, Pope Clement, “in order that the faithful of Christ may, in
Blessed Catherine, have a perfect example of all the virtues, and
especially of the love of God and of their neighbour; and that a
new honour and ornament may shine forth for the Republic of Genoa;
orders the present Decree for the Canonization of the said Blessed
Catherine,--a Canonization which has still to be carried out,--to be
expedited and published.”--And on May 18 following, on the Feast of
the Holy Trinity, the same Pope performed, in the Basilica of St.
John Lateran, the function of the Canonization of Blessed Catherine,
together with that of three other Beati: the two Frenchmen, Vincent
de Paul, Founder of the Congregation of the Mission (the Lazarists)
(1576-1660), and Jean François Regis, a Jesuit Mission-Preacher in
the Huguenot parts of France (1597-1640); and the Italian Giuliana
Falconieri, Foundress of the Third Order of Servites (1270-1341).[306]
It was now, on this canonization-day, over two hundred and sixteen
years since Catherine Fiesca Adorna, that keen and ardent spirit, had
flown to God, her Love. We must return to those earlier times.
III. THE FATE OF CATHERINE’S PRIEST FRIENDS.
_Introductory._
In thus reverting to the period which immediately succeeded Catherine’s
death, and to the predominantly obscure and humble persons who had
directly known her well, we bid adieu, indeed, to things massive,
fixed, and final: yet we exchange the description of what, after all,
was but an authoritative declaration of accomplished facts, for the
study of that alone directly soul-stirring thing, the picture and
drama of living, energizing human souls; of how these souls were being
influenced by a greater one than themselves; and again of how these,
thus influenced, lesser minds and hearts transmitted, developed, and
coloured the tradition of the life to which they owed so much.
Now the effect, or at least the record of the effect, of the conception
of Catherine formed by her two Priest friends and by her domestics
back upon her transmitted image and upon the growth of her Legend, is,
apart from the indications in the _Vita_ already given or still to be
considered, upon the whole, but slight. Still, as we shall eventually
find, the few facts as to the subsequent lives of these persons, which
shall now be given, are of very distinct use in appraising their
respective shares in the gradual constitution of the _Vita e Dottrina_.
1. _Don Carenzio, 1510-1513._
I take Don Jacopo Carenzio first, since he was the Priest in actual
attendance upon Catherine at the last, and because he now, no doubt
immediately after the funeral or at latest on the day of the removal of
her chattels to the market-place, became possessed, as we shall see, of
Catherine’s little house. He was thus the one who alone could continue
and augment a cultus as strictly local as even Argentina’s had been,
during those weeks, perhaps months, of sole night-charge of her dying
mistress in these very rooms.
The identification of the building is complete. For as far back as
October 6, 1497, not long after Giuliano’s death,--he was still alive
on July 14,--the Protectors of the Hospital referred to their “grant
to Catherine, during her lifetime, of the enjoyment and use of a
house with a greenhouse, forming part of the Hospital.” And in this
greenhouse she, on the evening of Sunday, March 18, 1509, had, in the
presence of Vernazza and four other witnesses, dictated her Fourth Will
to Battista Strata. It was, then, of a size sufficient to render it
worth mentioning, and it was evidently closed in. Now there is a legal
instrument, dated Saturday, August, 30, 1511, drawn up at a meeting
held by the four “Protectors,” “in the chief (sitting-) room of the
Residence of the Rector, in which the late Donna Caterinetta was wont
to live.” And in this they declare that, “seeing that the Reverend Don
Jacopo Carenzio, the Rector, is about to go to his home at Diano, for
the purpose of carrying out a matter of the greatest importance to
himself, and is shortly to return from thence, and that he wishes to
persevere throughout his life in the said office of Rector; and since
they desire that he should willingly hasten his return, and should be
able to persevere with full confidence, and should not, as long as
he lives, be moved from this room together with the whole building
contiguous with it, to the room which, with its appurtenant building,
is at present in the course of erection as the official residence of
the Rector; they have altogether conceded to the above-named Reverend
Jacopo, Rector, present and accepting, the said room together with the
whole building belonging to this room, for him to hold and inhabit
throughout his life, together with the greenhouse.”[307]
Here three points are of interest. Don Carenzio is, then, a native
of the little Diano Castello on the Western Riviera hillside, some
fifty English miles from Genoa and some twenty short of San Remo;
and must have belonged to some humble family in that insignificant
little place. His origin is thus in marked contrast to Marabotto’s,
and still more to Vernazza’s. And next, it is clear that the house
and greenhouse inhabited and used by Don Carenzio till his death are
identical with those tenanted by Catherine, ever since at least the
death of Giuliano. And thirdly, it is equally clear that this house was
in no part identical with the two rooms still shown as the Saint’s. For
these latter are high up from the ground; do not now form, and probably
never formed, part of a disconnected house; and they no doubt stand on
another site. The little house will have been demolished at latest in
1780, when the present great quadrangle was built.[308]
Now here, in these rooms full of the memory of Catherine, Don Carenzio
will, not unreasonably, have hoped to live during many years. For it is
not likely that he was older than, or indeed as old as, Don Marabotto,
since he was now occupying that same office of Rector which Marabotto
had held some six years previously. And yet Marabotto did not die till
eighteen years later, whereas Carenzio’s death came soon. For his
funeral took place on January 7, 1513, for which day there is an entry
in the Hospital Cartulary for the cost of twenty-three pounds-weight
of wax candles,--less than one-fourth the amount used at Catherine’s
obsequies; and for that of the Priest’s vestments in which the body was
robed and buried.[309]
It seems unlikely that Carenzio was not buried in the Hospital Church,
seeing that he died whilst, apparently, still _ex-officio_ Rector of
the Hospital. But, if he was interred there, his monument, like that
of Giuliano, was cut off and buried away in and with the Church end
in 1537, or was covered up in some restoration; for there is no trace
of it either in the Church itself or in any book treating of the
sepulchral monuments of Genoa.
It is remarkable also that, though he had been the one priest present
at Catherine’s death, and had tenanted Catherine’s own rooms throughout
the two years and two or three months since her death, and had,
alongside of Marabotto, been appointed by Catherine herself as the
person to determine the place of her sepulture: his name nowhere occurs
in connection with the plan for the opening of her _deposito_ some
eighteen months after her death; nor with the execution of that plan;
nor with any of the consequent initiations of a public cultus. It is
impossible to doubt that we have here some little counter jealousy and
return exclusion, a sort of answer by Marabotto to his, Marabotto’s,
own enforced absence from the death-chamber and his twenty-four hours’
ignorance of his Penitent’s death, which we had to note in its proper
place. Poor little human frailties which may have appeared less petty
and more completely excusable at close quarters than they look at this
distance of time! I take it that, if there was a deliberate exclusion
of Carenzio, the ceremony of opening the resting-place will have been
timed to tally with some absence of the Rector,--say, on another visit
to his native Diano.
2. _Don Marabotto, 1510-1528._
As to Don Cattaneo Marabotto, I have not been able to discover much. We
have already seen how he bought ten of Catherine’s chattels on December
10, after her death. On July 7, 1511, he pays over to Catherine’s old
servant, the maid Maria (Mariola Bastarda), her late mistress’s little
legacy, in a form to be described presently.
But the most important facts concerning him--apart from his share in
the _Vita_, which shall be considered at length hereafter--are the
following three. There is, first, the fact (already dwelt upon) that
he, and apparently he alone, initiated, or at least led and directed,
the plan of opening the _deposito_, exposing the body, giving it a
marble sarcophagus, and erecting a picture over an altar in the Church
to Catherine. And next, that “still in 1523 Argentina del Sale was his
servant,”--she had evidently then, on Catherine’s death in 1510, become
his attendant.[310] And thirdly, that he did not die till 1528.[311]
There seems to be but little doubt that he was, at least slightly,
Catherine’s junior. Yet already on his first intercourse with her,
he, the Rector of the Hospital, must have been a fully mature man. I
suppose him to have been born somewhere about 1450; in which case he
will have been about seventy-eight at the time of his death.
In any case, he lived long enough to see and hear much of a kind to
console and strengthen his devotion to Catherine and his faith in the
self-rejuvenating powers of the Church, and much of a nature to dismay
and alarm the gentle, peaceable old man. For there were the opening of
the coffin; the incorruption; the popular concourse and enthusiasm;
the graces and the cures of May to July 1512. And there were Luther’s
ninety-five Theses nailed to the University Church of Wittenberg, on
the Eve of All-Saints, 1517; and Pope Leo X’s condemnation of forty
of them in 1520, and amongst them three Theses which concerned the
doctrine of Purgatory, one of which must have seemed strangely like
one of Catherine’s own contentions. And there were the books of Henry
VIII of England and of Erasmus against Luther, in 1522, 1524, and in
Italy the foundation of the Capuchin Order in 1527; there were, too,
the Peasants’ War and Luther’s marriage in Germany in 1525, and, in
1527, the sacking of Rome by the Imperial troops. And through all this
world-wide, epoch-making turmoil and conflict we think of him, probably
not simply from our lack of documents, as leading a quiet, obscure,
somewhat narrow existence; yet one redeemed from real insignificance by
his silent watchfulness and action, and still more by his writing, in
honour of his large-souled Penitent, ever so sincerely felt by him as
indefinitely greater than himself.
I do not know where he was buried. It was not, however, in the Hospital
Church; for in that case there would have been some entry in the books
of the expenses incurred in connection with his funeral.
IV. THE FATE OF CATHERINE’S THREE MAID-SERVANTS.
As to Catherine’s three maid-servants the facts that can still be
traced are as follow.
1. _Benedetta._
The widow and Franciscan Tertiary Benedetta Lombarda, although her
name had continued to appear in the documents from Giuliano’s Will in
1496 down to Catherine’s last will of March 1509, disappears after
this latter date entirely from sight. Since both Mariola and Argentina
reappear in the Hospital books, (although Mariola had, like Benedetta,
ceased to serve Catherine at the last), it looks as though Benedetta
had died between the Will of March 1509 and Catherine’s death in
September 1510. Yet it is possible that Catherine herself handed over
to Benedetta her little share in the former’s money and chattels; and
that Benedetta is no more mentioned after her mistress’s death because,
unlike Mariola and Argentina, she did not continue to live in and
belong to the Hospital, whose accounts alone are our extant sources of
information for the other two servants.
2. _Mariola._
But as to Mariola and Argentina, and their lives after 1510, we do
know something. Mariola (Maria) Bastarda had, on leaving Catherine’s
service, (probably only some weeks, but possibly some months before
her mistress’s death), become one of the servants, or under-nurses
(_filia_), of the Hospital; and, on July 7 of the following year (1511)
she was clothed a Novice in the Convent of Bridgettines in Genoa, with
the money left to her in Catherine’s Will.[312]
The latter fact is interesting as showing how purposely vague and
ambiguous, and how little capable of being pressed, are at least
some of the statements of the _Vita_, if taken as they stand and
prior to any distinction of documents and of their varying degrees
of trustworthiness. For there we read, after the scene where the
evil spirit within the maid declares Catherine’s true surname to be
“Serafina”: “this possessed person (_spiritata_) was endowed with a
lofty intelligence, and lived to the end in virginity.” Who would
readily guess that we have here to do with little Mariola? The passage
is, I think, in part modelled upon Acts xxi, 9: “And he” (Philip the
Evangelist, one of the seven Deacons) “had four daughters virgins,
who did prophesy.” Even so then did Catherine, the teacher, have “a
spiritual daughter,” a virgin, who “prophesied,” divined and announced,
the true character of her mistress.--“We believe,” continues the
_Vita_, “that the Lord had given her this spirit to keep her humble.
She finished her life in a holy manner.” Who would guess that this
meant profession as a Nun? The point is, I take it, kept vague in part
to make the insertion of the words which follow possible. “Nor did the
evil spirit ever depart from her, till well-nigh the very end, when she
was about to die.” It is evident that this cannot be pressed: and that
either the attacks continued to the end, but were rare and slight; or
that they were serious and frequent, but ceased a considerable time
before her death. For, though we do not know when she died, we have no
right to assume, in evidently still so young a person, that death came
soon.
3. _Argentina._
And Argentina appears in several documents. So in an entry of the
Hospital Cartulary for November 22, 1510, as to the value of the things
then handed over to her in accordance with Catherine’s Will. So again
in three legal documents drawn up for her and in her presence,--a Will
of October 1514, a Codicil of some later (unspecified) date, and a
second Will of January 15, 1522. In the Codicil she doubles the little
sum she had left to the Hospital in 1514; and in the last document
she declares her wish to be buried “in the Church of the Annunciata,
in the monument (vault) of the late Giuliano Adorno, or in such other
as may seem good to …”; and leaves moneys “for Masses to be said for
her soul, by two of the Brethren of the Monastery of San Nicolò in
Boschetto.”[313]
This group of papers is interesting. For we see from it how even an
obscure little serving-woman was wont, in Italy, the classic country
of Law and Lawyers, and during these claimful, pushing times, to have
Wills and Codicils drawn up for her. We perceive, too, how proud and
fond Argentina remained of her former avocation of servant to Giuliano,
since only he and not his Saint-wife lay in that vault; and how,
nevertheless, an uncertainty possesses her mind as to whether this
can or will be carried out--no doubt owing to the fact that the vault
had not received the remains of his wife, and had not indeed probably
been opened again at all since his death, twenty-five years before.
And we can note how Argentina, together with, and no doubt at least in
part because, of her late mistress, has an affection for the Monastery
and Pilgrimage Church of San Nicolò, on that wooded hill, so near to
Catherine’s former villa.
And Argentina appears finally in that list of conclusions (already
referred to in Marabotto’s case) as continuing to live in the
Hospital; and as still living in it in 1523; and, similarly, as
continuing in the capacity of servant to Don Marabotto. I have already
pointed out the difficulties inherent in this statement, but believe it
to be correct. Yet it would be of considerable importance if we could
reach lower down, and could fix the exact death-date of poor Marco del
Sale’s ardent-minded, imaginative little widow. Since she was doubtless
considerably, I think quite twenty years, younger than Marabotto, and
since even the latter lived on, we know, till 1528, six years after
this Will, there was nothing, in the matter of actual age, to prevent
her living on up to 1550 or beyond. And circumstances connected with
the growth of Catherine’s legend seem to point, as we shall find, to
Argentina having died in any case after Marabotto, and probably not
before 1547. Similarly, Catherine herself did not die till twenty-six
years after her first Will (1484-1510).
V. THE TWO VERNAZZAS: THEIR DEBT TO CATHERINE, AND CATHERINE’S DEBT TO
THEM.
We now move on from these four figures which, seen against the
living background of those strenuous times, appear indeed small and
contracted; and which, in relation to Catherine, appear rather as
a mere memory and mechanical continuation of her limitations, and
specially of the phenomenal accidents and relative monotony of her
sick-room period, than as a rich and vigorous, because truly personal,
expansion and re-application of her many-sided action, breadth and
warmth, and human practicality, during the times of her fullest
self-expression. Such a new facing of the new problems, with a strength
both old and new, enkindled indeed at her light and warmth, and yet
developed also from the vigorously fresh centres of other deep hearts
and virile minds and wills, we must now attempt to picture, in the
case of the two greatest of Catherine’s disciples, Ettore Vernazza and
his eldest daughter Battista. And yet if, in the former four cases,
while the results of this influence appeared few and insignificant, the
actual fact and source of this influence were plain beyond all cavil:
in these latter two instances we have, indeed, a rich crop of thoughts
and acts, of wisdom and of heroism, but then it is mostly impossible
to sort out what is here the direct and unmistakable outcome of
Catherine’s influence.
The great, open, spiritual and even temporal, battlefield, if not
of Europe at least of Italy; the abuses and tyrannies, but also the
necessity and the power for good, of governments; and the strenuous,
tragic, and transformatory conflicts of single wills within their own
soul’s world, and again with other wills, both single and combined: all
this lies spread out here like a map before us, seen from the bracing
heights of time. There is nothing here, at least in the Ettore’s case,
that the most intolerantly robust, or even the most hysterically
would-be strong, mind could suspect of sickliness. And yet, if
undoubtedly much of all this fruitful virility in Catherine’s closest
friend, and in Catherine’s God-daughter, proceeds from Catherine
herself, it nevertheless springs up and grows within them, not as an
avowed, nor probably, for the most part, even as conscious, imitation
or reminiscence.
Thus here again we get an impressive instance of one profound sense
in which the grain of wheat of any great and wholesome influence must
die. For only if and when broken up, selected from, and assimilated to
and within, another mind’s and heart’s life and system, can that older
living organism, which yet was, in the first instance, so moving just
because of its unique organization round a centre possible only to
that one other soul, truly and permanently develop and enrich a living
centre not its own. And so in this case too: Catherine’s influence is
all the more real in Ettore and Battista, because the latter are in
no sense simple copies of the former. She has lived on in them, at
the cost of becoming in part ignored, in part absorbed, by them: and
continues to influence them through certain elements of her life that
have been assimilated, and through the reinterpreted image of that
life’s historic reality, an image which is ever reinviting them to do
and to be, _mutatis mutandis_, what she herself had done and been.
But, indeed, (even apart from all direct influence exercised by
Catherine’s personality upon them, or by them upon Catherine’s legend),
these two lives are interesting as further authentic illustrations of
Catherine’s school and spirit, and, indeed, of the mystical element of
religion in general.
I shall first take the father, devoting three sections to him.
VI. ETTORE VERNAZZA’S LIFE, FROM 1509 TO 1512.
_Introductory._
We possess, if few, yet quite first-rate materials for the
reconstruction of the remaining part of Vernazza’s life. For there are
his own testamentary provisions as to the disposition of his property,
(as elaborate and vividly characteristic as Mr. Cecil Rhodes’s), drawn
up in 1512 and 1517, and occupying twelve closely-printed octavo pages;
and there is a long, homely, and admirably realistic description of his
life and character, written by Battista, not, it is true, till 1581,
when she was eighty-four years of age, and nearly sixty years after her
father’s death, but which is, there is no reason to doubt, perfectly
truthful, generally accurate, and all the more moving, in that the
living man and his large-hearted heroism were thus continuing to touch
and inspire his daughter, at the very moment of her writing, with a
finely restrained emotion, of deeds and personalities witnessed, by
her own eyes and spirit, over half a century before. I shall take the
several documents, not each as they stand but piecemeal, according to
the dates of the events recorded or of the legal act performed.
1. _Ettore’s married life; and thought of the monastic state._
“My Father and Mother,” writes Battista, “lived together” from 1496
to 1509 “in the greatest peace, since they wished each other every
kind of good; so that I do not remember ever having heard one word of
dissension pass between them.--And although my Mother was a beautiful
and attractive young woman, and was loved by persons deserving of
esteem, yet she would stay at home, alone, with her children. And my
Father acted similarly, except when he was obliged to go out on some
business. Otherwise I do not remember having ever noticed either of
them going out to some late party (_veglià_), as is the custom in
Genoa.”--And she tells how “he was so abstemious” in the matter of
food, “that he was wont strictly to limit the amount of bread that
he ate. But my Mother, noticing this, had the breads baked very
substantial.”
“And when my Mother died” in the spring of 1509, “my Father thought of
becoming a Lateran (Augustinian) Canon. But, on asking the advice of
Padre Riccordo da Lucca,” (I take it, himself a Lateran Canon,) “who
was just then preaching in Genoa with very great fervour, the latter
did not encourage him to carry out his intention, observing, as he
did, my Father’s inclination for founding works of charity.” And her
father proved docile. Indeed she says of him generally that “he greatly
mortified his self-will, and for this reason had put himself under
obedience to a priest, who had the reputation of being exceptionally
devoted (_molto buono_), and obeyed him as though he had been the very
voice of God.” “And my Father then gave up his own house, and went to
live in rooms which had been got ready for him in the Hospital for
Incurables, of which he was one of the Managers and indeed one of the
first _Builders_. And here he always lived, when he was in Genoa; here
he died; and this institution he made his heir.”[314]
Here it is interesting to note the similarities and differences
between this union, so happy and thus blessed with three children, and
Catherine’s marriage, so unhappy and childless; between his thought
of a religious vocation after his marriage was over, and Catherine’s
before hers was begun; and between his fifteen years of residence in
the midst of the incurable poor at the _Chronici_, and Catherine’s
similar, though earlier and longer, life surrounded by the sick poor
at the _Pammatone_. There is some likeness, too, in the matter of
corporal mortification; although, with Vernazza, it is less acute,
but is apparently kept up throughout his life, whilst with Catherine
the active bodily mortifications are very prominent whilst they last,
but are kept up thus for but a few years. As to obedience, we have
here, for Vernazza, a more authoritative account than are any of the
general statements on the same point with regard to Catherine; but in
Catherine’s case many concrete instances give us a definite idea as to
the character and limits of this docility, whereas all such instances
are, in Vernazza’s case, restricted to the above incident alone. Yet
this one example of his obedience shows how largely conceived, how
simply divinatory and stimulative of his own deepest (although as
yet but half-born) ideals, how ancillary to his own grace-impelled
self-determination, and hence how truly liberating, were this direction
and docility. The Venerable Cardinal de Berulle’s determination of
Descartes to a philosophical career, and St. Philip Neri deciding
Cardinal Baronius to write his entirely open-minded, indeed severe,
_Ecclesiastical Annals_, would doubtless be true parallels to this
particular relationship.
2. _Ettore’s great Will of 1512._
We have already seen that Ettore was away from Genoa from about
September 10, 1510, onwards, and that he was far away at the time of
Catherine’s death. He may well have been away most of the year 1511,
nor is there indeed any indication that he was in Genoa at the opening
of Catherine’s _deposito_ in May to July 1512. But he was certainly
there in October 1512, for on the 16th of that month he drew up a
munificent and far-sighted deed of gift, of one hundred shares of the
Bank of St. George, to various charitable and public purposes.
Vernazza had already previously provided for his three daughters;
and now orders that the interest of these other shares (a capital
amounting, at the time, to the value of some £10,400) should, for the
first nine years, be used by the “Protectors” of the Incurables for the
benefit of that Institution, which thus occupies the first place in his
solicitudes.
And then these shares should be allowed to multiply, by means of their
accumulated interests and of the reinvestments of the latter, till they
had reached the number of five hundred shares; and then, if and when
an epidemic arose and the citizens fled from the city, the income of
these shares for three years should be given to the Board of Health,
for the use of those suffering from the epidemic. And when the shares
had become two thousand, a commodious Lazaretto-house should be bought
or built, with the income of not more than ten years. And after this,
when the shares had become six thousand, one half or more of their
interest should go towards the keep and nursing of the patients in this
Lazaretto.
After these three stages devoted to the victims of the Plague, he
determines the point at which the interest of the moneys shall be
applied successively to providing marriage portions for honest poor
girls of Genoa and of his home villages of Vernazza, Arvenza, and
Cogoleto, preference being always given to the large clan of Vernazzi;
to providing means for honest poor girls desiring to enter Convents
that keep their Rule (_monasteria observantiae_), up to £100 each, with
a similar preference as in the previous case.
And then he attends to the poor in general. To providing extra pay
for the Notaries and Clerks of the “Uffizio della Misericordia,” “on
condition that they devote all their time to the interests of the poor
exclusively; and that they make diligent inquiry as to the means of the
poor and their several characters, and find out whether they are in
real want or not, and draw up a book in which all the poor, individuals
and families, shall be inscribed clearly and by name,--in each case
with a note indicating whether they belong to the first, second, or
third degree of necessitousness.” To paying two Physicians and two
Surgeons, for otherwise entirely gratuitous service of the sick poor
alone, and doubling this pay during the prevalence of an epidemic,
“but strictly enforcing the loss, in salary, of double the amount of
any moneys they can be proved to have accepted from their patients.”
All this, together with these four Doctors’ names, to be annually
proclaimed in the streets by the town-crier. To paying a Dispenser and
instituting a Dispensary, exclusively for the sick poor and entirely
gratuitous, up to £2,000 a year for the latter. To appointing two
Advocates and two Solicitors, for the exclusive and gratuitous service
of the poor, in any and all cases of law-suits and molestations. The
same proclamation as with the Doctors, to be made in this matter also.
And to maintaining foundling boys and girls of Genoa, under provisions
which are carefully laid down.
And then he turns to the three Institutions and their like with which
he, as notary, as father and as philanthropist, has been specially
identified. He fixes the point when two lectures in Philosophy or
Theology, one by a Dominican and another by a Franciscan, are to be
instituted, for every working day, in the Chapel of the Notaries of
Genoa; when one free meal a month is to be provided for eight monastic
and charitable institutions, amongst which are the Franciscans of
the SS. Annunziata, the Benedictines of San Nicolò in Boschetto,
the Canonesses of S. Maria delle Grazie, and the Hospital for
Incurables,--“but the expenses are not to exceed £600 a year” (about
six guineas each meal)--“nor is money to be given, but the eatables
themselves are to be bought for, and given to, the institutions”; and
when a Superintendent (_Sindaco_) of the Incurables is to be appointed,
with £100 pay a year.
And then he comes back to the poor in general; and thinks also,
(somewhat like unto his and Catherine’s ideal, St. Paul as “a citizen
of no mean city,”) of the external appearance and utility of his native
town of Genoa. The point is fixed when they are to “pay for the poor
their hardest imposts, especially those on food”; and when they are to
“repair, decorate, and enlarge the Cathedral Church of San Lorenzo,”
and to “build a harbour-mole, improve the harbour, and attend to the
decoration and look of the town (_ornamentis civitatis_), according to
their discretion.”
And he then finishes up with a characteristic reversion to efficacious
solicitude for his clan, by marriage benefits for his young kinswomen
in the future and by thought for his ancestors and predecessors in
the past; and with a no less characteristic divinatory greatness of
mind, by the creation of a kind of People’s College or Working-man’s
University, which appears here curiously wedged in between the thoughts
for his clan in the future and in the past. For he determines the
points when the Protectors shall again provide for marrying honest poor
girls of his three home villages, and for comforts for the prisoners at
Christmas and Easter; when they are to “buy a large and well-situated
house, and therein organize a public course of studies, with four
Doctors of Law, four very learned Physicians, and two Masters of
Grammar and Rhetoric, who shall, all ten, be each bound to deliver one
lecture on every working day, and to devote all the rest of their time
to the interests of the poor”; and when finally they are to provide for
“Masses for his ancestors and predecessors,”--Masses for himself and
immediate belongings having been already, no doubt, provided for in his
previous Will, since we find such provisions repeated in his last Will,
to be given later on.[315]
We thus get here a persistent preoccupation with the most manifold
interests of the poor; a shrewd knowledge of men, and careful
provisions calculated to rouse their indolence and to check their
self-seeking; an utterly unsentimental, realistic, Charity-Organization
sort of spirit shown in the insistence upon a careful and complete
knowledge of the real degree and kind of want, and of the precise means
appropriate for helping the various kinds of poor; a high estimate of
knowledge, which he desires to offer to all, according to their various
capacities and needs; and lastly, an entire freedom from pietism, for
he thinks of, and provides for, harbour-works and the beautifying of
the town. There is a large, open-air, operative, sanely optimistic and
statesmanlike spirit about it all.
And if all this is in full keeping with, and but expands and
supplements, the tenacious realism of a born organizer and
administrator: the soaring idealism and universalism of his
saint-friend Catherine’s stimulation, and his and her joint experiences
and interests, are also directly suggested to us. For there is the
special stress laid on the plague-stricken, whom they had tended
together in 1493; the interest in physicians and in drugs for the
poor, an interest in which she must have preceded him by twenty years
or more; and the repeated preoccupation with the marrying of poor
young women, and, next after it, with the convent-dowries of girls in
socially similar circumstances, in each case especially of kinswomen
of his own. This preoccupation was no doubt occasioned chiefly by
the thought of his own most happy marriage and of his own children,
the two elder now already well settled as Nuns, but the third still
possibly to be married; yet we are also vividly reminded of Catherine’s
own repeated occupation with the marrying of relatives of her own,
and Limbania’s and her own early entrance, and wish to enter, into
the Religious state. And then his benefactions include Catherine’s
Hospital Church, her favourite Boschetto Church, and that Convent of
the Grazie, the scene of her own conversion and the home of her sister
Limbania, as well as of his daughters Battista and Daniela. But indeed
the whole character of the outlook, in its successive absorption in,
each time, just _one_ particular task; in its occupation with succour
in proportion to the divinely ordained and ready-found bonds and ties
of nature, bonds and ties so dear to the omnipresent God; and in its,
nevertheless, in nowise restricting itself to this interest, but moving
on and on, distance appearing beyond distance, with love and welcome
for all the heroisms and helplessnesses: is all marked with Catherine’s
imperial spirit of boundless self-donation.
VII. ETTORE IN ROME AND NAPLES; HIS SECOND WILL; HIS WORK IN THE
GENOESE PRISONS.
1. _Ettore in Rome._
And perhaps already in 1513, but, if so, not before March of that year
(the date of Pope Leo’s accession), Vernazza was in Rome,--hardly, I
think, for the first time. And Battista again tells us, in her long
letter of 1581, how that “the incurables in Rome”--which was then, at
the beginning of Giovanni de’ Medici’s (Leo X’s) reign, the brilliant
centre of the Renaissance at its zenith--“were left to lie in baskets,
moaning” for alms, “in the Churches. It was piteous to see them thus
forsaken and badly cared for.”
Now there is good reason to think that Vernazza had known the Pope
when, as Cardinal de’ Medici, he had, in 1500, stayed for some time in
Genoa, in the house of his married sister, Donna Maddalena Cibò. And
so Vernazza now presented himself before the Pope, “and said to him:
‘You, Holiness, have a fine work in hand, in patronizing the Arts and
Letters: but you cannot leave this Rome of yours saddened by so piteous
a spectacle.’” And the Pope thanked him, and begged him to accept the
charge of founding and undertaking the government of the Arch-Hospital.
And the two “Cardinals, Caraffa,” the vigorous and devoted, but harshly
austere Neapolitan, who was, later on, joint-founder of the Theatines
and then Pope Paul IV, “and Sauli,” the Genoese, “helped him in his
work. Indeed the latter said to him: ‘If you require money, come to
me.’”
And this Roman work of Vernazza straightway put forth two offshoots,
far away. For “Caraffa founded in Venice a hospital on the model of
the one in Rome.” And “there happened to be in Rome” at this time “a
certain Bartholommeo Stella, a rich and very generous (_molto galante_)
young man. And Vernazza saw him and gained such an influence with him
as to end by sending him to Brescia, to promote there also these fruits
of Christian faith.”
And in Rome itself “Leo X gave Vernazza practical proofs of his
gratitude, and set him forth on his return journey with demonstrations
of great honour (_magnifiche demonstrazioni_). And the Arch-Hospital
having been thus set going and Vernazza being back in Genoa, Leo X
addressed a Brief to him, informing him that his Hospital in Rome was
in a state of confusion (_andava sossopra_); ‘I think’ (adds Battista)
‘because its Governors wanted each to be above the other.’ And he
returned to Rome, and quieted all controversy.”[316] I take this second
Roman journey to have been not before 1515; but it may have occurred
any time before 1522, the year of Pope Leo’s death.
This group of facts shows Vernazza’s directness and independence of
observation, his initiative and energy, and his courage and respectful
liberty of speech, qualities which are all reminiscent of Catherine’s
scene with the Friar; the rapidity with which a necessary work,
which has been delayed for centuries, and which has required the
whole-hearted vigour of a rare personality to call it into being, grows
and multiplies, when once it is in existence; and the manner in which
the petty, sterilizing ambitions of men can be efficiently checked only
by a combination of strength of will, administrative ability, gentle
tact and complete disinterestedness,--a combination which again reminds
one of Catherine, the successful Rettora.
2. _Ettore in Naples._
It will have been after this second visit to Rome that Vernazza first
went to Naples. And there again “he formed a Hospital,” in this case
“at the risk of his life; for some evil-wishers there wanted to
kill him, being unable to bear the idea that a ‘foreigner’ should
have anything to do with the affairs of the city (_ordinasse quella
città_). Once the ‘Ave Maria’ had sounded, he did not again issue
from his lodging during that day. And yet” even among such untoward
circumstances, “he managed not to leave Naples before having, with
God’s help, achieved his object,--of providing his much-loved poor with
such an institution ready to their hand.”
It was in Naples, too, evidently at the beginning of this very visit,
that another generous idea and institution of his first occurred to
him, or at least was first put into execution. The whole occurrence
reveals a curious mixture of the most divers qualities and, indeed,
requires in part to be excused, on the ground of numerous external
difficulties which stood in the way of an excellent work, and of the
finessing methods evidently deemed, even by good people, to be quite
allowable for attaining a good end, in this age of violence, suspicion
and intrigue. “A certain Religious, Padre Callisto of Piacenza, was
preaching at that time in Naples. Vernazza went to him and said:
‘Father, these Neapolitans are a haughty people, and refuse to bend so
low as to found hospitals. But during last night the thought came to me
that if a person refuses to mount ten steps--it is still possible to
get him to go up fifteen; and when such a person had done the latter,
he would find that he had unconsciously mounted the ten as well. Now I
cannot discover a more humiliating act than the accompanying of those
who have been condemned to death, on their way to execution; and in
this city they are led to the gallows with their minds in a state of
desperation and without any one to comfort them. Well, then, do this.
Preach to the people and tell them that the very first men of Naples
have been to see you, with a view to founding a society for escorting
these unhappy persons; and say to them: “Let him who cares to enter
this society, come to me, to be inscribed on the rolls in a secrecy so
complete that even a husband shall be unable to tell his wife.”’ And
Padre Callisto, after hearing these words, did, devoted man that he
was, his very best, and with such good effect that many went to have
themselves inscribed. “But many of those Neapolitan nobles reproved
him, saying: ‘Perchance you think yourself still in your Lombardy! We
are nobles, and we refuse to form an escort for these culprits.’ And
he would answer: ‘If your Lordship does not care to go, do not go. It
was the very first men of Naples who sought me out, for the purpose of
instituting this society.’ And thus it was actually founded, and indeed
became very numerous and much honoured; and those unhappy men received
much comfort. And later on, this same society proceeded to found the
Hospital.”[317]
There is one repulsive feature in this story. For if the declaration
that the very first men of the city had visited the preacher was a
statement that damaged no one; which but anticipated what actually
occurred soon after; and was the means for the effecting of two works,
profoundly useful to all concerned in them and which could not,
otherwise, at that time and place, have been carried out at all: yet
it was a clear untruth. But all the rest, how admirable it is! Moral,
and indeed physical courage; cool-headed, humorous, manly because
unflinching, and yet quite uncynical and hopeful, knowledge of the
petty perversities of the human heart; and entirely devoted, slow
excogitation, concentration of will, and toughly resisting perseverance
in a work of the purest philanthropy: all this and much else is visibly
present.
3. _Ettore’s Will of 1517._
It may well have been after his return from this journey that Vernazza
drew up the Will which we still possess, dated 7th November 1517,
and which is interesting in several respects.[318] For one thing, he
orders his body to be buried in the Church of the SS. Annunziata,--the
Hospital Church, and leaves a legacy for Masses “to the Friars of the
Annunziata of Genoa.”[319] And he leaves a similar bequest to the
Benedictines of San Nicolò in Boschetto. It is clear that he wanted to
be buried in the same Hospital Church as Catherine, and had a devotion
similar to hers for the Pilgrimage Church upon the hill.
Secondly, there are careful records and provisions concerning his
three children. As to his two eldest, Tommasa (Battista) and Catetta
(Daniela), he simply looks back and “declares that he gave to his
two daughters that are in the Monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie,
to them or to the said Monastery, three thousand Genoese pounds from
his own property, and two hundred pounds in addition,--(the latter)
spent upon their rooms, habits, and other requisites.” And that “these
sums are to be counted as taking the place of dowries which would
have accrued to them” (in case of marriage). But as to the youngest,
Ginevrina, he looks both back and forwards. “The same Testator is well
aware that he placed the said Ginevrina in the Monastery of Saint
Andrew,[320] that she might grow up with good morals and in the fear of
God, since Testator was unable to keep her by him, having very often
been obliged, for the transaction of business in favour of the poor
and for other charitable works, to proceed to Rome and other places;
and that there existed written directions (of his) in the hands of the
Nuns, as to Ginevrina being free, in due time and at the proper age, to
choose either to serve God (in Religion), or to marry according to the
social rank of the Testator.” And he confirms a legacy of £500, already
promised by him to Ginevrina “as appears from a certain document signed
by the Abbess of the said Monastery of Saint Andrew”: this money
being no doubt in addition to another sum already paid by him to the
Convent; and the whole is evidently intended to pay for Ginevrina’s
keep, if necessary for life, in case she neither entered Religion nor
married. “In case of her becoming a Nun and making her Profession in
the said Monastery, he leaves her £100, for the adapting and furnishing
of one room for her use; nor can these £100 be spent otherwise.” And
if she chooses to wed, the Protectors of the Incurables, his Executors
and Heirs, “are to marry her to some young man of good reputation and
behaviour, apt at managing his own affairs and at earning money,--all
this as perfectly as possible, according to the judgment of the said
Protectors.” If she thus marries with their consent, she is to have
£3,000 for her dowry; but if she marries without it, she is to have
only £1,500.
Here we note Ettore’s high esteem for business capabilities: they are
to be required of his possible son-in-law, as one of the conditions for
gaining the full dowry; and the curiously unmodern certainty with which
he assumes that his still quite young daughter will desire, should she
become a Nun, to do so at Sant’ Andrea, and, should she neither wed
nor enter Religion, is sure to care to live on for life in this one
convent. As a matter of fact Ginevrina, who was evidently very happy at
Sant’ Andrea, took the veil there, still during her father’s lifetime,
hence within seven years of this date, as Sister Maria Archangela.[321]
And thirdly, we get the striking provision that “any member of the
Society of Priests and Laymen” who administer the Hospital for
Incurables, “shall have the use of the furniture of the Testator (there
remaining), on condition that such member live in this Hospital or in
that of the Pammatone (hard by), and not otherwise.” He thus comes back
here, once again, to one of the deepest convictions of his life: that
only by actually living amongst and with the poor, poor yourself; only
by doing the work which the right hand finds to do, with such might
and thoroughness that both hands, indeed the whole man, body and soul,
are drawn into, and are, as it were, coloured by it: that only by such
fraternal-paternal sympathetic identification with its object can such
service really rise above the dreary perfunctoriness and the ghastly
optimism of mere officialism, and have the fruitfulness begotten only
by life directly touching life. And here Catherine’s spirit and
example, her long life in the very midst of the great Hospital close at
hand, are once more fully apparent.
4. _Ettore in the Genoese prisons._
And, about this time, Vernazza introduced into Genoa the practice and
Society which he had first founded in Naples. It was carried out,
here also, in the profoundest secrecy. His “Company of St. John the
Baptist Beheaded” consisted of himself and three companions: Salvage,
Lomellino, and Grimaldo. The Lomellini now owned Giuliano’s former
Palace in the Via S. Agnese, and the Grimaldi were one of the great
Guelph families of Genoa. These four “took a house with a garden, in
an out-of-the-way position; and there they started their association.
And ever after, when the members met, they always prayed for these
their four founders; and always, my Father being dead, began with his
name: ‘Dominus Hector de Vernatia requiescat in pace.’” “I once,” adds
Battista, “asked the priest who was their Confessor: ‘What matters do
they discuss, when they are thus assembled?’ But he answered: ‘I may
not tell’; and put on a particular expression and said: ‘The Hospital
for Incurables has only ten thousand lire, and it spends twenty-six
thousand. And the _Giuseppine_ and the _Convertite_’ (two other
favourite good works of Vernazza) ‘have also to be provided for!’”[322]
Evidently the subject-matter of all this elaborate secrecy consisted
in plans and means for aiding the condemned (often enough innocent
or but politically guilty persons) and benefiting the poor; and the
privacy was an imperious necessity in those harsh, turbulent and
suspicious times. It was Vernazza’s own Roman patron and collaborator,
the Neapolitan Cardinal Caraffa, who later on, as Pope, imprisoned
for two years (1557-1559), in the Castle of St. Angelo, the great and
saintly Cardinal Morone, on ungrounded suspicion of heresy; and it was
his other patron and most intimate fellow-worker, the Genoese Cardinal
Sauli, who, later on, was himself tortured and put to death, the victim
of political hatred and suspicion, in his own native city.
And now, (conversely from 1461, when a Fregoso Doge had driven out an
Adorno,) an Adorno Doge had just driven out and exiled a Fregoso, and
had executed Paolo da Novi. And Vernazza “knew well a close friend of
this Doge Adorno, one who indeed had helped him to his dignity. And
yet afterwards they became mortal enemies, and the Doge condemned his
former close friend to death. Now this man having been,” continues
Battista, “attended by some one all night, who tried to comfort him
and bring him to patience, the poor prisoner somehow derived no
consolation from his attendant’s endeavours, but went on repeating:
‘When I remember all that I have done for him…!’ And it was impossible
to quiet him. Then he who was spending the wakeful night with him,
having noted that all his words had been hitherto of no avail, inspired
by God, took another way and said: ‘Indeed and indeed you are right,’
and made himself infirm with the infirm, and echoed all that the
prisoner said, making it appear as though he himself, in a similar
case, would be likely to act identically. And then, and only then,
the condemned man began to feel relief, and started the telling of
his own trouble. And when his companion had agreed to all his points,
and at last noticed that the prisoner had thoroughly ventilated all
his grievance, he said: ‘Indeed, my dear brother, you do not merit
this death; but reflect whether, before these occurrences, you did not
perform some action which merited it.’ Then the latter reconsidered
his case, and said at last: ‘Yes,--I killed a man.’ And his companion
replied: ‘Behold, my brother, the true cause of your death’; and added
other most appropriate words with such good effect that the man became
profoundly contrite and died in the very best dispositions of soul.”
“Now I think,” comments Battista, “that the companion was a member of
the Society of St. John Baptist, and was, indeed, my Father himself;
since my Father told me the story too much in vivid detail (_troppo per
sottile_) for him to have been only a reporter. I believe that, to this
hour, this society is carrying on the same kind of work.”[323]
Here again we have the same irrepressible, humorously resourceful,
tenderly shrewd and world-experienced service of God, in and
through His image, in any and every fellow-man; the same breadth
in thoroughness; the same universality working itself out, and
achieving its substance and self-consciousness, in the particular,
as we saw at work in Naples. And this activity, all but its humour,
recalls the soaring, world-embracing spirit of Catherine absorbed in
self-identification with the pestiferous woman’s dying aspirations and
with the cancer-disfigured navvy’s preoccupations for his little wife.
VIII. ETTORE AGAIN IN NAPLES; HIS DEATH IN GENOA; PECULIARITIES OF HIS
POSTHUMOUS FAME.
1. _Naples and the Signora Lunga._
It must have been before this prison experience, for Ottaviano
Fregoso was still Doge, that Vernazza was again in Naples, and that a
thoroughly characteristic, romantic little episode occurred, which not
all her seventy-one years of convent life, and the sixty years that had
elapsed since its happening, prevent Battista from recounting with a
delightfully entire sympathy.
Here in Naples, then, “he joined hands with a certain rich lady,
called the Signora Lunga, for the purpose of procuring as many things
as possible” for the institutions which he himself had founded or
occasioned. This lady, a Spaniard, had been the wife (she was now
the widow) of Giovanni Lungo or Longo, President of the Sacred
Council.[324] “They went together from house to house, begging for
mattresses” for the Hospital. “And this lady now withdrew from the
world at large, and lived in that Hospital, and governed and ruled it;
and combined with this the execution of other works of mercy. And she
had so great a devotion for my Father, that she was wont to say to
him: ‘If you were to tell me to cut and wound my own person, indeed I
would straightway do it.’ But on Fregoso writing and pressing him to
return to Genoa, Vernazza wrote back, that if he, the Doge, promised
to be favourable to him, and to help him in a good work which he had
in his mind, he, Vernazza, would come at once. And the Doge wrote back
that he would do all that Vernazza wished. And then, one morning early”
(no doubt at dawn), “not wishing that the Signora Lunga should see him
depart, he got into the saddle. And she, by good chance, saw him, and
asked him: ‘Where are you going?’ And he struck his spurs into his
mule: ‘To Genoa,’ he cried; and flew away; and never saw the Signora
Lunga any more.”[325]
Something fresh and bracing breathes and beats here still. We
have here the same man who, devoted in every good and filial way
to Catherine, had yet left her, no doubt then also on an errand of
large-hearted mercy, even in those last days of her life; who now,
once again, breaks suddenly away; and who does so again at the call of
souls entirely without conventional claims upon him, and who are quite
unable to repay him with anything that merely drifting nature ever can
hold dear. But here the relation is evidently not that of a man towards
a woman much older than himself, and of the spiritual discipleship
of a relatively inexperienced soul towards one already far advanced
in sanctity: it is clearly one of at least parity of age,--perhaps,
indeed, the woman was the younger of the two,--and of largely equal
companionship, which would presumably, unchecked, have easily led on
to an entirely honourable and happy marriage. And thus, once again,
his devotedness had to live and thrive on concrete, untransferable
renouncements and sacrifices claimed by his true self in that unique
moment and situation: and this too although he will have been at
least tempted wistfully to try and delude himself with the monstrous
superstition of an automatic sanctity, a merely theoretic and yet
somehow real heroism.
2. _The Plague and Ettore’s death in Genoa, June 1524._
“And, arrived in Genoa,” Vernazza “revealed the secret of his heart
to the Doge, and his Lordship gave him seven thousand lire and the
Privilege,”--the latter being necessary, “since no one cared to
have the Lazaretto” (for this was Vernazza’s project) “in proximity
to their villas,” and hence the Government had to insist upon its
foundation upon the least inconvenient of the various possible sites.
And Vernazza in consequence “began to construct a great building for
the poor victims of the Plague, and presented it with an endowment of
one hundred shares of St. George’s, leaving them to multiply, so that
at his death they had increased by eleven shares; and now” (in 1581)
“they have reached a great number of thousands of pounds.” And after
continuing with an account of his further Bank dispositions, and of
his early attempts to help the poor (already given by us), Battista
finishes up this part of her account by declaring: “he was wont to go
about saying, with conviction and great confidence, that he hoped all
things from God; and that, whenever he put his hand to anything, God
put the yeast into that paste.”[326]
And her mention of the Lazaretto then leads her on to the final, still
vivid and yet self-restrained, account of her father’s death. “The
Plague being very severe (_calda_) in Genoa,”--it was past mid-June
1524,--“he came to visit me, and said to me: ‘What do you think I had
better do? I am determined in no manner to forsake the poor. Do you
think I had better go about on horseback or on foot? In which way do
you think I would be safest from infection?’ ‘Oh, Father,’ I said,
‘here we are coming to the Feast of the Baptist, and are at the highest
of the heat; and you are determined to go amongst them?’ And he: ‘And
is it my fate, to hear such things from you? How truly happy should I
be, if I were to die for the poor!’ Then I, seeing so much fortitude
in that holy soul, said to him: ‘Father, go.’ But he was not content
with looking after the Lazaretto: I think that he scoured the country
far and wide. And hence he caught the infection. And on the” (Eve of)
“the Feast of the Nativity of St. John Baptist,” June 23, “he confessed
and communicated. And in three days he quietly fell asleep in the
Lord.”[327]
Surely rarely has so noble a finish been so nobly told! And two things
in particular are deserving of special notice. First, there is here
again that characteristic combination of quiet reflective common-sense
and self-oblivious devotedness. Who could anticipate that the man
who so carefully weighed the respective risks of different methods
of visiting the sick, would, at the same time, be full of a glad
willingness, indeed desire, to die for them? Yet not only does this
rich soul exhibit such a living paradox, with an apparent ease and
spontaneity, but it is this very extraordinary variety in unity that is
an operative cause and element both of the greatness of the act and of
its appealingness.
And secondly, it is, I think, not far-fetched to find in this heroic
death-ride, if not a direct or even a conscious effect, yet at all
events an impressive illustration of, and practical parallel to,
Catherine’s teaching as to Heaven being already present everywhere
where pure love energizes, and to her picture of the soul’s glad
Purgatorial plunge. We know that it was Vernazza himself who, say in
1497, drew forth from her that teaching; and we shall find that it
was predominantly he who so carefully registered for us in writing
those numerous, vivid picturings of the soul’s joyously voluntary
self-dedication to suffering and apparent death. And whether at the
moment fully conscious of this or not, his act of some twenty years
later illustrates and embodies that teaching; and that teaching again
universalizes and brings home to us this action. High on horseback he
goes forth, the strong, sound-bodied, whole-hearted man, deliberately
sure of finding and of bringing Heaven, wheresoever pure love may be
wanted and may joyously appear: joyously fruitful, amidst the very
ghastliness of death. And he is rapidly brought low, first on to his
bed of sickness, and in a few days into the grave. Indeed he himself
had, by his own act, gladly accepted, we may say willed, all this: he
himself had cast himself down and away into that deep common fosse,
amongst the many thousands of his ever-obscure and now disfigured
friends and fellow-dead.
3. _His posthumous fame; its unlikeness to Catherine’s celebrity._
For so it was indeed. Instead of burial in the Pammatone Church, under
the same roof with his saintly inspirer, the poor pestilential body was
buried away, amongst the whole army of others who, like himself, had
died of the Plague, without a stone or token of any kind, to mark where
this simple hero lay. Nor was it till 1633, over a century later, that
a statue was erected to him at his Lazaretto. For the bust in the rooms
of his “Compagnia del Mandiletto” is hardly older; and the hideous
gaunt plaster statue in the Albergo dei Poveri is no doubt much younger
still.
Only in 1867, on June 23, the anniversary of the day on which he
prepared himself to die, was a memorial erected to him which is truly
worthy of the man. Santo Varni’s more than life-size marble statue,
which represents Vernazza seated, a strongly built man still in his
years of vigour, with a head and countenance striking because of
their lofty brow, powerful chin, spiritual, mobile lips, large, keen,
far-outward-looking eyes; and with thoroughly individual, operative
yet sensitive hands, the left extended open, as though to give and
ever again to give, and the right reposing upon the case containing
the Chart of the Hospital’s foundation: stands, a striking symbol,
in the vestibule of the Hospital for Incurables which he founded,
where for fifteen years he lived, and where he died.[328] One would
be glad to think that the likeness of this admirable work of art
reposed upon grounds more direct than one or other of the very late
and unworthy representations that preceded it; the authentic portrait
of his daughter Battista,[329] who may, after all, have been unlike
him in looks; and the sympathetic imagination of a great artist. It
was Vernazza himself who prevented any contemporary representation of
his own features. For Battista tells us, in her letter of 1581, “he
also mortified himself in any inclination to honour. Thus, as is well
known, when the Lazaretto had been erected, and he was asked to have
his portrait painted to be placed there, he answered: ‘I do not want
smoke,’ and refused to act as he was bidden.”[330]
Now here we cannot but find a contrast between Catherine and Ettore;
yet it only concerns their posthumous earthly fate and fame. A picture
of Catherine was, no doubt, no more painted in her lifetime with her
knowledge than was a portrait of Ettore. Yet we know that, in her case,
a picture was painted, if not secretly during her lifetime, in any case
by some eyewitness, and not more than eighteen months after her death;
and a popular religious Cultus to her sprang up and grew, on occasion
of that early opening of her coffin. But Ettore has to wait over a
century for his first artistic embodiment, and of religious Cultus
there was never any question.[331] Whence this difference? Have we any
kind of reason for suspecting Ettore’s heroism, indeed sanctity of life
and death? Was he indeed clearly much the lesser in the Kingdom of God
than was his friend?
The question, it will be noted, does not imply any criticism of
the Church’s wise requirement of a previous Cultus, as one of the
conditions for the introduction of any and every Process; still less
is there any disposition to call in question the choice of Catherine
for saintly honours, a choice which this whole book would hope to
demonstrate as particularly courageous, wise and indeed providential.
The point raised concerns simply the psychology of popular devotion,
and the human reason why, given that one was certainly a Saint and the
other was presumably another one, there is this marked contrast in the
posthumous history of these two lives.
Now if the question be taken thus, the answer can hardly be doubtful.
Certainly not because of her profoundly original doctrine, by which
Catherine is speculatively more interesting and humanly more complete
than Vernazza, was Catherine prized and preferred to Vernazza by the
crowd. Nor did they single her out precisely because of her works
and long life of mercy, for Vernazza’s labours of this kind no doubt
exceeded Catherine’s, both in their variety and in their visible
extension. But it was the psycho-physical peculiarities of the life
of Catherine, and the more or less complete incorruption of the body:
these two things, neither of which has any necessary connection with
that faithful and heroic use of free-will and that spirit and grace
of God in which the whole substance of sanctity consists, which, each
leading on and back to and strengthening the impression and tradition
of the other, determined the outbreak and onflow of popular devotion
in the one case, and the absence of which prevented the growth of any
such cultus in the other. And thus we have here one more instance of
the pathetic irony of fate, or rather one of those many mysterious
operations of the divine will which, under the ebb and flow of
influences that seem merely human and deteriorative, works in history
for the slow upward-raising of our poor kind.
When the well-known ecstatic Augustinian Nun, Anne Catharine Emmerich,
died at Dülmen, in Westphalia, on February 6, 1824, her remains also
were not long allowed to rest undisturbed in the grave. Already in
mid-March the poetess Luise Hensel, who had much loved and venerated
her, caused the grave to be opened quite privately, in hopes of
finding the body still incorrupt, and of once more being able to gaze
on that striking countenance. And a few days later, on March 21 and
22, the grave and coffin were again, this time officially, opened. In
both cases the body was found still incorrupt, and two pale red spots
appeared on the cheeks. But when, on October 6, 1858, the grave was
opened a third and last time, nothing was found of the coffin but
one nail, and the body was now represented only by so many separate
bones.[332] Now when, some twenty years ago, I visited Dülmen in the
company of a distinguished Münster Priest, the latter told me, as we
stood together by the grave-side, that this discovery had greatly
checked the survivals or beginnings of any such local and popular
cultus as had been expected and hoped for by Anne Catharine’s, mostly
distant or foreign, admirers.
Similar cases it would be easy to multiply; and they all point to the
great advantage, probably to the actually determining incentive, which
accrued to the Cultus of Catherine, in that her body continued more
or less incorrupt, and thus added a sensible marvel after death to
the sensible marvels of her fasts and ecstasies during life. Whereas
Catharine Emmerich’s analogous psycho-physical condition during
life was not thus reinforced by an unusual physical condition after
death. And Ettore, again, had evidently nothing physically, or even
psycho-physically, abnormal about him, either in life or in death.
CHAPTER VIII
BATTISTA VERNAZZA’S LIFE
INTRODUCTORY.
We have, in the characters described in the previous Chapter, dwelt
upon figures remarkably unlike Catherine, on her psycho-physical side.
Yet it would be only too easy for us now-a-days, by dwelling too much
upon the foregoing contrast, to grow actually unfair to Catherine’s
kind of temperament and health, and to her mode of apprehending
truth and of attaining sanctity. We might thus come to overlook or
to underestimate the important fact that certain psycho-physical,
neural peculiarities or states most certainly constitute the general
antecedents, concomitants or consequences (probably, indeed, one of the
necessary though secondary conditions), not indeed of sanctity, but of
at least some forms of the contemplative gift, habit, and attainment.
We might, too, forget that neither this contemplative gift itself, nor
even those neural peculiarities, are at all incompatible with great
practical shrewdness and an unusually large external activity; indeed
that such rare and costly contemplative picturings and symbolizations
of the Unseen are, when true and deep, means and helps for the
contemplative, in his own life and often still more in his influence
upon others, towards a great recollection and concentration, which
would not only turn the soul away from the dispersion and feverishness
that sets in towards the close of external action, but would also bring
it back renewed to such outward-moving, joyful-humble creativeness, as
wholesome recollection itself requires. For without such contact with
the material and the opposition of external action, recollection grows
gradually empty; and without recollection, external action rapidly
becomes soul-dispersive. Hence it is plain, that the true significance
and living system of any such deep soul may be on too large a scale not
to require, for its due exhibition, that we survey it in connection
with some other supplementary life,--like unto some Gobelin design or
cloth-pattern, so large as to require two contiguous walls or two human
figures to show its totality by means of their combination.
Now Vernazza the father, who throughout his life possessed the
most robust and normal health, can fairly be taken as Catherine’s
supplementary figure, for the years when ill-health was limiting her
normal range of energies, on their operatively outgoing, philanthropic
side; and is thus a living protest against isolating Saints’ lives from
their complementary extensions and effects. But Battista, his daughter,
gives us, in her own person and up to the end of her life, an example
of the combination and stimulating interaction of the Contemplative
and the Practical, the Transcendent and the Immanental, the heroically
normal and Universal and the tenderly Personal, indeed the more or less
psycho-physically peculiar. Catherine was the greater, more original,
and more winning Contemplative, and Ettore was more massively Practical
than was Battista. Yet Battista possessed both gifts, from early
times up to the end, apparently unclouded and unbroken by any kind of
incapacitation.
I. BATTISTA’S LIFE, FROM APRIL 1497 TO JUNE 1510.
We have already seen how Ettore’s eldest child was born on April 15,
1497, and was held at the font by Catherine, receiving, however,
the name of Tommasa, after the God-father, the celebrated Doctor of
Law, Tommaso Moro. Giuliano was still alive, but already gravely
ill. Nothing could well prove more clearly Vernazza’s closeness of
friendship for the Adorna and for Moro than his making them thus his
first-born’s God-parents. And Moro’s subsequent history makes this, his
intimate collocation and spiritual affinity with Catherine a matter
suggestive of much reflection.
With her beautiful young mother still alive and living at home with
her, Tommasa, a child of precocious intelligence, took to writing
verse of various kinds, as early as at ten years of age. Vallebona
quotes, from Semeria’s _Secoli Christiani della Liguria_, ten short
lines written by her at that age, and which he apparently holds to have
been addressed to her God-mother. They are, however, too vague and
hyperbolical for one to be sure as to whom they are dedicated; her own
mother or the Blessed Virgin would, I think, fit the case respectively
as well as, or better than, Catherine. The “short days” prophesied
for herself by the little girl, were destined to amount to ninety
years![333]
On her mother dying, some time in 1508 or 1509,--Bartolommea can
hardly have been more than thirty-two years of age, and Ettore some
six years older,--Vernazza decided, as we know, against continuing an
establishment of his own and keeping his three daughters with him. It
is certain from his Wills that he had no near female relative whom he
could have asked to come and help, or to take, the children; and clear
that he was determined not to marry again, so as to remain completely
free for his philanthropic work. And hence he was driven to the
alternative of boarding the girls in the two convents that we know.
And already on June 24, 1510, on the feast of her father’s favourite
Saint and prison-work Patron, Tommasa received the habit of an
Augustinian Canoness of the Lateran, and changed her name to Battista.
Catherine had still not quite twelve weeks to live, and may well have
been deeply interested in her God-daughter’s taking of the veil in
that very Convent and at the very age where and when she herself had,
half-a-century before, desired to receive it.[334] We cannot but feel
that the Superiors were wise who, at that earlier date, had found
thirteen too young an age for even an Italian, so early physically
mature, and a Catherine, so little suited for marriage, to take even
this first and revocable step in the Religious life; and we would
doubtless have experienced some uneasiness at the time when Tommasa
was somehow allowed to take this identical step at the very same age.
Yet we have, as we shall see, full and absolutely conclusive, because
first-hand, evidence, that every one concerned in the case acted with
true insight. Rarely indeed can a woman have been more emphatically in
her right place, than Battista during her seventy-seven years at Santa
Maria delle Grazie. And this complete and comfortable appropriateness
of vocation no doubt helped her large, balanced, virile mind to feel,
with the Church, that such a vocation is but one amongst the numberless
forms of even heroic devotedness, a devotedness of which the essence is
interior and is capable of being exercised, and which requires to be
represented in every honest circumstance and calling of God’s great,
many-coloured world.
Of Catetta’s further history, beyond her reception of the veil in the
same Convent, under the name of Daniela, some time before November
1517, and of Ginevrina’s later lot, beyond her becoming a Cistercian
Nun, under the name of Maria Archangela, at Sant’ Andrea, some time
between 1517 and 1524, I have been unable to discover anything. But
as to Battista, I wish to dwell upon three characteristic episodes of
her long life; they all three throw much light both upon Catherine and
(still more) upon the whole question of Mysticism.
II. BATTISTA AND HER GOD-FATHER, TOMMASO MORO.
The first episode illustrates the rigoristic side of the
pre-Reformation Catholic temper and teaching, and the terrible
complications, perplexities and pitfalls of those strenuous, confusing
times. For we must now move on fifteen further years from that
interview with her father, a few days before his death, in June 1524,
to reach this event, the first fresh one in Battista’s life of which we
have a record.
1. _The early stages of Lutheranism and Calvinism._
The Religious Revolution had now well nigh reached its culmination.
Battista’s father had only lived to see what may rightly be termed
the first step in the Teutonic stage and element of the movement, a
stage which, in spite of its political and social, indeed religious,
violences and fanaticisms,--and even these came mostly after Vernazza’s
death,--retained, if in large part illogically yet with great practical
advantage, a considerable portion of the old Catholic convictions
and spiritual attitude. Luther had indeed, as we saw, published his
Theses in 1517, and Pope Leo X had condemned nearly one-half of them
in 1520 in his Bull of Excommunication. And Melanchthon, the mild and
deeply learned, had also broken with the Old Church, and had begun, in
1521, the publication of his _Loci_. But an earnest Catholic (in this
case a Teutonic) Reformer had become Pope, in the person of Adrian
Dedel of Utrecht (Hadrian VI), in 1522, 1523. And in the very year of
Ettore’s heroic death, Erasmus, proving, under the stress of the times,
substantially true to the Old Faith, was writing against Luther; whilst
in Italy, Vernazza’s old patron, Cardinal Caraffa, was helping to found
the Theatine Order.
But within the next fifteen years matters move on and further. For
first the Teutonic stage of the Revolution takes its second step, and
hardens, and formally and permanently organizes itself; whilst its
socially anarchical effects reach their zenith. For there are the
Peasants’ War and Luther’s marriage in 1525; and the capture and the
sack of Rome by the Imperial (largely Lutheran) troops in 1527; and the
Revolutionists’ assumption of the name of “Protestants,” at the Diet
of Speyer, in 1529. And, on the Roman Church’s part, the Capuchins are
founded in 1525, and the Barnabites in 1530. And this whole Teutonic
stage of the Revolution can be taken as closed, for the time, by the
terrible Saturnalia of the Anabaptists at Münster, 1533-1535; the
executions of the Catholic Humanists, Bishop Fisher and Chancellor
More, in England, 1535; and Erasmus’s death in 1536.
And the second element and stage, the Romanic Revolution, was now fully
and independently at work, with its indefinitely greater coldness and
logical completeness, and its systematic antagonism to the Old Faith.
And if the Saxon Mystical-minded Peasant-monk, Luther, stood at the
head and in the centre of the first movement, the Picardese bourgeois
lawyer and Humanist, Calvin, stands now at the head of this second
movement. Born in 1509, he flees, now an avowed Protestant, in 1535 to
Basle; and in the spring of 1536 publishes his _Institutio Religionis
Christianae_, which was destined to remain his chief work.
Now it was in the summer of that year that Calvin went to stay at the
Court of Renée de Valois, daughter of the French King Louis XII, and
Duchess of Ferrara, who had already been gained over to the cause of
the Lutheran Reformers; and who was now influenced, by her grim,
relentless guest, to move still further away from the Old Church. And
though the Roman Inquisition succeeded in forcing Calvin to leave
Italy, after not many weeks’ stay: yet the cases of Vittoria Colonna,
Bernardino Occhino, and of our Tommaso Moro, show us all plainly,
though each differently, how complex and difficult, how obscure and
full of pitfalls, was the situation for even permanently loyal and
indeed saintly, and still more for simply earnest and eager, souls.
For Vittoria Colonna, that truly saint-like daughter of the Church,
not only stays, during the following year, with the Duchess Renée at
Ferrara, and indeed stands God-mother to her daughter Eleonora (born
June 19, 1537), the child that, later on, became the friend of the poet
Tasso: but Vittoria is the close friend and confidante of that most
zealous preacher, that restless, ardent, absolute-minded Bernardino
Occhino, who, born in Siena in 1487, had joined the Franciscan
Reform, the later Capuchins, in 1534, and indeed, in 1539, became
their General. It is to Vittoria indeed that, on his deciding not to
obey the summons to Rome, there to defend himself against the (no
doubt, in part, unfair) attacks upon his teaching, he, in the night
of August 22, 1542, before his flight and abandonment of his Order
and of the Church, writes his still extant sad and saddening letter
of self-exculpation.[335] But this latter catastrophe was not to take
place till three years after the date at which I would now linger.
2. _Moro becomes a Calvinist: probable causes of this step._
It must, I think, have been through some influence emanating from the
not very far away Ferrara, that the Genoese Tommaso Moro was, just
about this time, carried away into Calvinism. We must not forget that,
deplorable as was such an aberration, there were two excuses for him,
which would apply no doubt, in varying degrees, to many others even of
those who were, at this time, permanently lost to the Church.
For one thing the views held, and allowably held, during two or three
generations, on points of Grace and Free-will, of Predestination and
the corruption of the natural man, by even those whom the Church
eventually raised to her Altars, were, as a matter of fact, less
removed from the Protestant Reformers’ positions, than were probably
any views (with the exception of the extreme Jansenist position) which
have prevailed in the Catholic Church since the Protestant Reformation.
St. Catherine, Moro’s fellow God-parent, had expressed herself, in
certain moods, in so rigoristic a sense on these deep matters, as to
invite the comment of the Bollandist Sticker that these passages are
_caute legenda_.[336] Yet Catherine, in speaking thus, simply resembled
probably all her really earnest contemporaries--witness the great Paris
Chancellor Jean Gerson, some time before, and the devoted Cardinals
Contarini and Morone and Vittoria Colonna, a little after Catherine’s
own zenith.[337]
Again, the practical, moral abuses were most real and often very
pressing; and whilst the numerous attempts at Reform extending now
over a century (the Council of Constance had assembled in 1414) had
emphasized this fact, they had also plainly shown, by their practical
abortiveness, how very difficult the attainment of such a universally
desired Reform persisted in appearing, if there was to be no final
breach with Rome.
And the fullest consequences of such a breach could not be present
to the experience, or even to the imagination, of the first who made
it, as they are to us, or even as they were after the second step of
the Romanic Revolution had been taken by Lelio Socino, the Sienese
and his nephew Fausto Socino, the founders of Socinianism, who died
respectively in 1562 and 1604,--the former shortly after Occhino had
died, in 1560, miserably alone and out of the Catholic Roman Church.
3. _Battista’s letter to Moro, September 1537; its effect._
Now it was on September 10, 1537, that his Augustinian God-daughter
wrote, to her now Calvinist God-father, a letter which occupies five
pages of print in the fifth, a handsome octavo, edition of her works
published in Genoa in 1755. Though the earliest of all her extant,
or at least of her printed, letters, it is evidently an answer to a
communication of his, in which he had urged certain objections against
the Roman Church. And that communication must have been provoked by
a first letter from herself--a letter which, though probably less
theologically interesting and learned, will have been more uniformly
touching than the one preserved. Yet if that first note had clearly
succeeded in getting him to state his case, this second letter also,
we shall see, completely attained its still more important object.
Moro had insisted that the Roman Church followed merely human
inventions in the matter of (1) Fasting; (2) Confession; (3) the Real
Presence; (4) Public Prayer and Psalmody; (5) Vows; and (6) Extreme
Unction.--The order is curious, but is evidently not hers but his.
Extreme Unction stands in the obvious position--at the end. The vows
of Religion immediately precede it, probably because, at this time,
they typified something not only irrevocable but sepulchral to this
ardent Calvinist. Public Prayer and Psalmody would naturally precede
these vows, as an appropriate link between the life of the cloister,
so largely given to the Divine Office, and the Real Presence, its
celebration being and requiring the most marked of all the exhibitions
of Public Prayer. Confession would stand before the Real Presence,
as being actually practised before the reception of Communion.
And Fasting, finally, would precede Confession, and would, most
characteristically, head the whole list, because the completest and
most universally binding of all Fasts is that which is antecedent to
Holy Communion; and because, in beginning thus, Moro can start his
attack on the Church by the criticism of something that is obviously
and avowedly external.
The tone of Battista’s answer is interesting throughout, for a double
reason. There is in it a successful, very difficult combination of
filial respect and of lofty reproof; and there runs through all the
argumentation a sort of legal hard-headedness, entirely in its place
on the lips of the lawyer’s daughter in dealing with her lawyer
correspondent. I give her answers to his second and fifth objections,
since the former is interesting as touching on the point of the
obligation and frequency of Sacramental Confession, which has occupied
us much in her God-mother’s life; and the latter gives a vivid insight
into Battista’s own deeply genuine and happy vocation.
As to Confession, she writes: “You hold one opinion, and the Church
holds another; and to this Church it has not appeared good to constrain
us to confess ourselves in public, nor always to manifest our whole
interior to any and every man who may reprehend us. In this latter case
we should have been left without any protection. You grudge obeying her
once a year; how then would you carry out the other plan? Certainly
the said Church would have but little authority if she could not lay
down ordinances, according to her own judgment, concerning the mode (of
administration and reception) of the Sacraments already ordained by
Christ.”
As to Vows, she finishes up by declaring: “According to my humble
judgment, that thing cannot be called slavery which a soul elects for
itself, by an act of free choice alone, and with a supreme desire. And
in this matter you really can trust me, since here I am, living under
the very test of experience, and yet I have no consciousness of being
bound to any obligation: so little indeed that, if I had full licence
from God to do all those things of which I have deprived myself by my
vows, I would do neither more nor less than what I now am actually
doing; indeed no taste for anything beyond these latter things arises
within me. How then do you come to give the name of servitude to that
which gets embraced thus with supreme delight? Perchance you will say
‘not every one is thus disposed.’ My dear Sir: he who does not find
this inclination within him, let him not execute it. Neither Christ nor
His Church constrain any one in this matter.”[338]
The effect of this homely and sensible, straightforward and firm,
first-hand witness to a strong soul’s full daily life of faith and
self-expansion in and for Christ in His extension, the Old Church, was
evidently decisive, perhaps immediate. It is at least certain that
Tommaso Moro came back to the Roman obedience; that he became and died
a Priest and Religious; and that his return is universally attributed
to the instrumentality of this letter.[339]
III. BATTISTA’S _COLLOQUIES_, NOVEMBER 1554 TO ASCENSION-DAY 1555.
Yet her letters form but a small part of the literary output of this
many-sided woman. Her printed writings fill six stout volumes, in
all some 2,400 octavo pages, and fall into four chief divisions. The
independent verses consist only of four “Canticles of Divine Love,”
twelve “Spiritual Canticles,” and five “Sonnets.” Yet even the second
division, which alone fills quite five out of the six volumes, and
consists of Spiritual Discourses or Dissertations, contains much
verse, since the Discourse (which invariably takes its title and
starting-point from some, originally or interpretatively, Mystical
Biblical text) usually finishes up with a chapter of eight verses,
in which she sums up metrically the doctrine which she has just
expounded in finely balanced and stately prose. Mostly proceeding
from some Pauline, or, more often still, some Joannine text, these
writings evince throughout a fine Christian-Platonist breadth of
outlook and concentration and expansion of devotional feeling, and
have much of that unfading freshness which appertains to the universal
experiences of religion, wherever these are experienced deeply and
anew and are communicated largely in the form and tone of their actual
experimentation. These Discourses would also, of course, furnish all
but endless parallels and illustrations to Catherine’s teachings.
Yet it is the last two divisions of Battista’s writings which are
the most entirely characteristic and suggestive--her _Colloquies_
and her _Letters_. As to the seventy-five pages of letters, I have
already given extracts from two, of the years 1581 and 1589, and shall
presently give portions of two others, of the years 1575 and 1576. But
in this section I want to translate and comment upon a considerable
portion of her _Colloquies_, so interesting for various reasons, all
directly connected with the subject of this book. These contemporary
annotations occupy only eleven pages of print, but they constitute, I
think, one of the most instructive first-hand documents of mystical and
religious psychology in existence, and have nowhere, as yet, received
any of the comparative and analytic study they so richly deserve.
It is but right to remember throughout, that even all her other
writings (including the Discourses which are so general and, in a
manner, quite public in their tone) were, with the sole exception of
her Sonnets, none of them printed with her knowledge and consent. A
certain Secular Priest, Gaspare Scotto, did indeed print some at least
of the Discourses, without her knowledge, during her long lifetime; but
the _Colloquies_ were certainly never meant for any eyes other than her
own, and were doubtless not printed, or indeed known, until after her
death. I suppose them to have first appeared in the collected edition
of her works, published in 1602, fifteen years after her demise.
Now these _Colloquies_ belong to three periods. The first set is timed
vaguely _una volta_; and the third is also but approximately fixed;
but the second, by far the longest and most important series, is, at
its main turning-points, dated with absolute precision. And since its
authenticity, the identity of the chronicler with the experiencing
person, and the complete contemporaneousness of the record, are all
beyond cavil or question (the majority of the entries were evidently
put down by her on the very day, often probably within the hour, of the
cessation of the experience thus chronicled)--the document can serve as
a simply first-hand illustration of, and commentary on, the analogous
experiences of Battista’s God-mother, experiences which, in the latter
case, were nowhere recorded by their subject, nor indeed by others till
probably, in some cases, a considerable time after their occurrence.
And if here again there can be no difficulty, for any sincere and
consistent believer, in holding that we have to do with enlightenments
of the mind and stimulations of the affections and will, proceeding
as truly from God as they led back to Him: we cannot but, here again,
find plentiful indications of the antecedent material, and of the
co-operation, response, and special colour furnished throughout by the
human subject’s special sex and age, race and period, temperament,
training, and reading. Not all the latter conditions put together would
explain even half of the total experience; yet had these conditions
been different, the total experience would have differed, not indeed in
its fundamental contents, yet in its special forms and applications. As
matters stand, these latter are often strikingly like those manifested
in the teaching of Catherine, Battista’s fellow-Genoese. I will now
take the nine most interesting days of this series,[340] stopping after
certain of them to point out parallels and peculiarities.
1. _Experience of November 17, 1554._
“On (Saturday) November 17, 1554” (Battista was now fifty-seven and a
half years old), “having, before Holy Communion, a great desire to
die to all things, I prayed with all my heart that God, in the most
perfect manner possible, would slay me and unite me with Himself.
And in so doing I renounced into His hands all myself and everything
existing under heaven, whilst electing God anew as my only Love, my
only Solace, my only Comfort, and my All. And I refused to accept
every consolation arising from such interiorness, however holy the
latter might be, except inasmuch as the consolation arises whilst the
interior is distinctly occupied with God, and does not turn its gaze
upon itself or upon any (other) belovèd object. Even if I could enjoy
all this, quite justly, till the day of judgment, I renounce it all.
Nothing pleases me, except my God. And if I were assured, which God
forbid, of going (to abide) under Lucifer, still would I will, neither
more nor less than my God alone. And it would be grievous to me to
embrace, even for one single hour, anything else but Him.--After this
Communion I remained with a most intense impression of renouncing,
with regard to all things and to all moments, all myself and every
other thing that is lower than Thee; and with a determination to keep
Forty Days of silence, depriving myself during them, as far as my
own will and inclination went, even of such reasoning as turned on
religious subjects.--And acting thus, by means of Thy grace alone, I
arrived, in my inner heart, at having no other actions left, except
those of adoring Thee and praying for all men. Whence it happened that
I experienced the most quiet and consoling week that, possibly, I have
ever had, up to this hour, in all my life.”
It is clear that even the first part of this week’s experience was
not written down later than at the end of that week; indeed it reads
more as if written down on at least two, and perhaps three, occasions.
We have here many close parallels to Catherine: to her exclamation
of “God is my Being … my Delight”; to the Divine Voice heard by her,
“I do not wish thee henceforth to turn thine eyes to right or left”;
to the question asked, and the interior answer heard, by her, as to
“love and union not being able to exist without a great contentment
of soul”; to her assertions that “the attribution to her own separate
self of even one single meritorious act, would be to her as though a
Hell,” and that “she would rather remain in eternal condemnation than
be saved by such an act of the separate self”; to her Love saying
within her, “that He wanted her to keep the Forty Days in His Company
in the Desert”; and to her declaration that she could not pray for
Vernazza and his fellow-disciples separately, but could only “present
them” collectively “in His presence.” And in Battista’s phrase of
“going under Lucifer,” we have again, if we take it together with the
renunciation of “all things lower than God,” an illustration of those
sayings of Catherine which I have grouped under the special category of
“up” and “above.”[341]
And note, in Battista’s record, how the contradiction, which appears
between her affirmation of having love for God alone, and the admission
that she loved herself and other things (since she is determined not
to let her mental gaze rest upon these latter beloved objects), is
more apparent than real. For the former love is the direct and central
object of her fully deliberate and free endeavours; the latter is
instinctive, continuous, inevitable, but, inasmuch as it now still
remains actively willed at all, it is but the consequential and
peripheral object of that willing. As in all deep religion there is
here an heroic willing at work to effect a genuine displacement of the
centre and object of interest; the system from being instinctively
man-centred, becomes a freely willed God-centredness.
2. _Experience of November 25, 1554._
“On Sunday” (November 25), “the Feast of St. Catherine” (Virgin Martyr
of Alexandria) “was being celebrated. And I communicated with new
emotion. And when I received the Host, I willed Thee, my God, alone;
renouncing all the rest into Thy hands: I but desired to die and unite
myself with Thee. And I felt within me those colloquies of Thine own
extreme love; and Thou didst say unto me, O my Joy, ‘The thing that
thou seekest is (already) produced eternally in My Divine Mind. Thou
desirest to feed on mutability, and I desire to feed thee on eternity.’
And I do not remember in what connection Thou didst say,‘ Ego ero
merces tua magna nimis’ (Gen. xv, 1).”
Here, on her God-mother’s Saint’s day, we find that act of pure love
at the moment of Holy Communion so dear to Catherine also; and we get
here, as in the previous group (but here, even on occasion of the Holy
Eucharist), prayer and aspiration directed to God pure and simple, or
to God conceived as Love and Joy, precisely as in the Fiesca’s ordinary
practice.[342] And the inner voice, if it says deeply mystical things,
also directly quotes Scripture in Latin, whilst the scrupulous care of
Battista, in registering her oblivion of the precise context in which
this quotation appeared, is interestingly characteristic of her nature
and experience.
3. _Experience of December (9?), 1554._
“On Sunday” (December 9?) “I communicated; and I experienced within
myself the most tender colloquies of Thy Majesty, which said to me,
‘The time will come when thou must be so occupied with Me--with My
Divinity, My Infinity, My Glory--that, even if thou shouldst so wish,
thou wouldest be unable to break off this preoccupation. I have elected
thee from amongst thousands. I want to make thee My very Self.’ … Then
Thou saidst unto me, ‘I do not want thee to merit, but to return the
love which I ever bear thee.’”[343]
Here we have parallels to Catherine’s practice and declarations in
Battista’s ever-growing occupation with God; in her, at first sight,
strongly pantheistic, because apparently substantial, identification
of her true self with God; and in her doctrine that God desires not
that we should merit, but that we should, by purely loving, make Him a
return of His own pure love. And, as but an apparent contrast, note how
here it is God Who chooses out Battista’s soul from amongst thousands;
whilst, with Catherine, we have herself instinctively choosing out
God, even were He, _per impossible_, like to one of the whole Court of
Heaven (the angels, “whose number is thousands of thousands,” Apoc. v,
11). For the difference consists, at bottom, only in the fact that each
dwells, in these special instances, upon the other half of the complete
mystic circle of the divine and human intercourse. The same complete
scheme is, in reality, experienced and proclaimed both by the widow
and the nun,--indeed God’s prevenient election of the soul, and His
special attention to it, is even more strongly emphasized by the older
woman: “It appears to me, indeed, that God has no other business than
myself.”[344]
Remark, too, how here again an unmistakable text of Scripture appears
as part of the words heard by Battista. But since it is a composite
quotation--“I have elected thee,” coming from Isa. xliii, 10; xliv, 1;
xlviii, 10; and “elected among thousands,” coming from Cant. v, 10,
where the elect is (as with Catherine) the Bridegroom, and not (as with
Battista) the Bride,--therefore, no doubt, it does not appear in Latin
or with any reference.
4. _Experience of December 16, 1554._
“The following Sunday” (December 16) “I communicated with a
greater desire for Union than usual, and with a more detailed sight
concerning it. And after this communion I prayed in such a state of
Union,--without any means either of thoughts or of anything else that
could be made to intervene, remaining naked in Thy bosom as I have
been from eternity. And whilst praying thus, I felt that certain words
were being spoken within me, the gist of which (_la sentenza_) seems
to me to have been, that my prayer did not reach to the reality of
Union itself. So that there then came to my mind that which Paul says,
Rom. viii (26), that ‘we do not know how to pray _sicut oportet_.’ And
Thou saidst to me that, above all understanding of mine, Thou wouldest
produce the effect; indeed the thing is already effected continuously
in Thy divine mind. And Thou saidst to me, my only Love, that Thou
didst will to make me Thyself; and that Thou wast all mine, with all
that Thou hadst and with all Paradise; and that I was all Thine. That I
should leave all, or rather the nothing; and that (then) Thou wouldst
give me the all. And that Thou hadst given me this name--at which words
I heard within me ‘dedi te in lucem gentium’--not without good reason.
And it seemed then, as though I had an inclination for nothing except
the purest Union, without any means, in accordance with that detailed
sight which Thou hadst given me. So then I said to Thee: ‘These other
things, give them to whom Thou wilt; give me but this most pure Union
with Thee, free from every means.’”
Here we again have numerous parallels. Battista’s state of Union,
without any means that could be made to intervene, compares readily
with Catherine’s declaration: “I cannot abide to see that word ‘for’
(God) and ‘in’ (God), since they denote to my mind something that can
stand between God and myself.” Battista’s description, “remaining naked
in Thy bosom, as I have been from eternity,” resembles Catherine’s
sayings: “True love wills to stand naked. This naked love sees the
truth”; “the soul in that state of cleanness in which it was created”;
“the angels and man, when disobedient, were clothed in sin”; and the
words heard by her: “I want thee naked, naked.” The answer granted to
Battista, that “possessing her Lord, her only Love, she possessed at
the same time all Paradise,” recalls Catherine’s declaration that “if
of what her heart felt but one drop were to fall into Hell, Hell itself
would become Eternal Life.” And Battista’s prayer, “these other things,
give them to whom Thou wilt; give me but this most pure Union with
Thee,” is substantially like Catherine’s answer to the Friar, “that
you should merit more than myself--I leave that in your hands; but that
I cannot love Him as much as you, is a thing that you will never by any
means get me to understand.”[345]
And we get here two further interesting particularities as to such
“locutions.” In this case Battista only “feels,” at the time of their
occurrence, that certain words are being spoken within her (once before
she has used that remarkably general term, instead of the more obvious
and specific “hear”); and she possesses, on coming (evidently soon
after) to write them down, a but approximate remembrance of them, and
a certainty as to their substance alone. And then we find here the
interesting case of two different simultaneous locutions: one voice
referring to the name which our Lord had given her, and another, at
this point, quoting the text, “dedi te in lucem gentium.” The text,
in this full form, occurs in Isaiah xlix, 6, and is there spoken by
God to His servant Israel, v. 3; but part of it, expanded to “a light
to the revelation of the Gentiles,” is, in Luke ii, 32, quoted by
Simeon of Christ. We thus, in this place, get three different, yet
simultaneous, levels of consciousness within Battista’s soul: her own
(more or less ordinary) consciousness and “voice” recognized by her own
self, as such; another, deeper, extraordinary consciousness and “voice”
proceeding, according to her apprehension, from our Lord’s presence
and action within her; and finally a third, deepest consciousness and
“voice” taken, I presume, to be directly communicated by God Himself.
It is to be noted that, though interior “locutions” seem to have been
fairly frequent with Catherine, there is no case on record in her life
of more than two levels of consciousness, two “voices,” at one and the
same moment, her own and Love’s.
5. _Experience of December 23, 24, 1554._
“The following night” (December 23 to 24), “I woke up and found
impressed upon my mind (the words): ‘comedite bonum,’ Isaiah lv
(2). And this impression remained with me (throughout the day),--an
impression of eating God, and of inviting all others to the same
Divine food.--In the evening,--it was the Vigil of the Nativity,--I
had a sight of how, God Himself having taken our nature, and having
done so as the Infinite one, the very greatest virtue must be diffused
throughout this same (human) nature: a truth which he knew who says:
‘Plena est omnis terra gloria eius,’ Isaiah vi (3). If by one man sin
entered into all, by a God-man how much good has not entered into us
all? Romans v, 15-19. If God has made Himself Flesh, what virtue is
there which He has denied to this same flesh?--And in the night of
the Nativity, after Matins, I had a sight of that extreme, eternal
and incomprehensible Love, which, unable to abide within Itself, had
become ecstatic into the thing It loved, and had indeed, by means of
Its Almighty power, become that very thing. Whence it is that, seeing
Thy Majesty gone forth out of Thyself and become me, I was determined,
in virtue of that self-same love, to go forth from myself and, in every
manner, make myself into Thy very Self. And Thou, my God, didst say
that Thou hadst descended to the same degree as that to which Thou
wantedst man to ascend.”
Here Battista’s “impression of eating God, and of inviting all
others to the same Divine food” is substantially identical with
Catherine’s doctrine as to the “One Bread, God,” and “all creatures
hungering for this One Bread.” Battista’s sight of “God being diffused
throughout human nature,” is analogous to Catherine’s teaching as to
no creature existing that does not, in some measure, participate in
His goodness,--although, with characteristic difference, Battista
dwells on the ennoblement of that nature through the Incarnation of
God, and Catherine insists upon the nobility contemporaneous with, and
intrinsic to, Man’s original Creation. And Battista’s determination to
go forth from herself is identical, in substance, with all the sayings
of Catherine which I have grouped under the “outside” “outwards”
category.[346]
And note how, in this group, Battista mentally sees, instead of
interiorly hearing, the truth of the Incarnation of the Infinite, and
of the consequent ennobling of our whole nature; how this sight then
suggests to her mind a definite text (recognized by herself as such),
and then an amplification of another text (not perhaps identified by
her as such at all): and how the transition from that sight to these
texts is so smooth and rapid that it is practically impossible to mark
off precisely where she held the simply given experience to end, and
her own action and comment to begin. The fact of the matter no doubt is
that, in both cases, though very possibly in different degrees, there
was divine and human action indistinguishably co-operant throughout.
And mark again how her “vista”--“of that extreme, eternal, and
incomprehensible Love which had become ‘ecstatic’ into the Thing it
loves”; her consequent determination to “go forth from herself,”
and the voice which told her that He wanted her “to ascend in the
same degree as He had descended”: all goes back, for its literary
suggestion, to the Dionysian “Divine Names”: “Divine Love is ecstatic,
not permitting any to be lovers of themselves but of those beloved. The
very Author of all things, through an overflow of His loving goodness,
becomes ‘out of Himself,’ and is led down from the eminence above
all, to being in all.” “He is at once moving and conducting Power to
Himself, as it were a sort of everlasting circle.” “Let us restore all
loves back to the one and enfolded Love and Father of them all.”[347]
Not the less truly did Battista’s mental lights and voluntary
determinations come from God, because they consisted, for the most
part, in a vivid realization and acceptation, in and for her particular
case, on this Christmas night in 1554, of spiritual facts and truths
which had been slowly and successively revealed, experienced, and
formulated as far back as the Hebrew Prophets and the Greek Plato, and
above all by our Lord, and in St. Paul’s writings and the Gospel of
St. John. These truths were none the less hers, because they had been
successively experienced and proclaimed, so long ago by others; and
their suggestion and realization to and in her, were as truly the work
of God in her own case as they were in that of those others.
6. _Experience of December 27, 1554._
“This morning” (December 27), “which is the Feast of the Evangelist
John, when I awoke, I suddenly heard the words being spoken within my
mind: ‘To-day I am determined to divide thy soul from thy spirit’--and
later on, when the Host was being elevated at Mass and I was praying
about this matter, I had a sight or Thou didst say unto me--I cannot
remember precisely which it was,--enough, it appeared to me that
as, when the soul is divided from the body, the soul, in so far as
immortal, flies to its destined place, and the entire body remains
dead: so also, when the almighty hand of God makes a similar division
of the soul from the spirit, the former, the animal part (of man),
remains dead, but the spirit, (truly) free (at last), flies to its
natural place, which is God, the Living Fountain.”
Here we are at once reminded of Catherine’s experience of “Love
once speaking within her mind”; of her sayings which dwell on the
separation of the soul from the body, and on the flight of the spirit
to its natural place, God; and of her sight of “the living Fountain”
of Goodness.[348] But Battista’s psychology is entirely clear and
self-consistent, as to the precise extension of, and the precise
distinction between, the terms “spirito” and “anima”; whereas, in the
authentic sayings of Catherine, “anima” is used sometimes as inclusive
of, and sometimes in contradistinction to, “spirito.” We shall see how
it is only the later systematizing _Dialogo_-writer who brings perfect
consistency, and a scheme identical with Battista’s, into Catherine’s
terminology. Yet in Catherine’s image of the assimilation of bread by
man, in illustration of the assimilation of man’s nature by God, we
find Battista’s two stages of the divisional process. For there the
body is first purified up to the actual level of the soul, and then the
soul itself is purified perfectly, its animal part being eliminated or
dominated by the spiritual part.[349]
It is interesting, too, to note how Battista cannot decide here whether
this interpretation of the short sentence she had heard was mentally
seen or interiorly heard by her; indeed, she is sure only that, whilst
she was praying to understand the meaning of that sentence, the meaning
thus sought appeared to her, by some means or other, to be so and so.
It is then abundantly clear from this, that the difference between an
interior sight and an interior voice, and again between either of these
and the admittedly normal workings of her own mind, was, at times, so
delicate, as either not to be clear to her own consciousness, even at
the very time of the experience; or, at least, to fade away from her
memory before she came to chronicle the experience.
7. _Experience of January 6, 1555._
“On the Feast of the Epiphany” (January 6, 1555), “before Communion,
I felt ineffable and most tender colloquies, and greatly I rejoiced
because of them. For I had caused Masses to be said and prayers to be
prayed, by various persons during many days, with the intention that,
if these colloquies were not from Thee, I might no more experience
them; but that, if they were Thine, they might be produced within me
more clearly and more efficaciously. And seeing that I now felt them
more than usual, and in a more admirable manner, I had and have a firm
hope that they were Thine. Whence it happened that (having, on that
same blessed day, to go up to receive Thee in the Sacrament), I felt
Thy Majesty more than once calling me within me, ‘Come, since I want
to devour thee entirely.’ … It seems to me that ‘entirely’ was one of
the words, but I have no firm remembrance of this. But I know well that
Thou saidst several times, ‘Come, since I want to devour thee.’ … To
me it seemed that I merited rather to go under Lucifer, than into the
Infinite Light (_Luce_).”
We get here a number of interesting parallels and contrasts to
Catherine’s teaching and practice. God’s devouring of the soul; God
pictured as Light; souls conceived as higher up or lower down in
space, according to their degree of goodness or of badness; even the
pleasure in a play upon words: all this finds its close counterpart
in Catherine.[350] But far more important is the difference in the
subject-matter of their scruples and in their respective attitudes
towards psychically unusual experiences. In Catherine’s case there
is no record of anxieties concerning other things than her degree
of detachment and her administrative responsibilities; indeed her
whole practice and teaching, continuously bent as they were upon the
ethico-spiritual truth and upon the practical application of her
unusual experiences, make it morally certain that her anxieties never
turned upon these forms and means themselves. She was, as it were,
too much occupied with the content of the cup, ever to be actively
perplexed as to the cup itself. Battista, on the contrary, seems to
have been quite free from scruples of Catherine’s melancholic type;
but did not, evidently, always soar as highly as her God-mother above
all anxious occupation with the form of her experiences. And, indeed,
if, in this instance, it was evidently the form of her experiences
which perplexed her, it was also the renewed and heightened experience
of this peculiar form which reassured her.--Yet the very fact of
such a perplexity, and again the moderation with which, even at the
end of it all, she but “hopes that it all comes from God,” shows a
healthy reluctance to trust too readily or too much to such tests and
indications. It would probably not be unfair to put her attitude
towards such things midway between Don Marabotto’s readiness of belief
and Catherine’s soaring ethico-spiritual transcendence.
It is noticeable too that, if the inner voice is more distinct than
before, Battista’s anxious care for accuracy is also, if possible, more
on the alert than ever: witness her remarks as to the word “all.”
8. _Experience of the Second Sunday in Lent, 1555._
“On the second Sunday (in Lent), having communicated, I felt Thine
ineffable reasonings; but, since I did not write them down at once, I
do not any more venture to write them down, having in great part lost
the memory of them. But this I remember, that the words were like those
which the Bridegroom says to the Bride in the Canticle (of Canticles).”
Here the difference between this form of apprehension and that of
ordinary vivid thinking is so faintly distinct, that she can only
declare that she “felt” (without deciding between hearing, seeing, or
any other of the more definite senses) “reasonings” (without being
sure of their “explicitation” in words or images); and she herself
recognized at the time, and later on remembers that contemporary
recognition of, their likeness to the texts of the Canticle of
Canticles. It is evidently the profound reluctance, cultivated by her
for half a century or more, to treat the deepest acts of the soul as
other than directly and exclusively the acts of God in that soul, which
makes her not see and admit here the large co-operation of her own mind.
Remark also a characteristic difference from Catherine, in that the
latter’s teaching is, we have already seen, entirely free from any
influences characteristic of the Song of Songs.
9. _Experience of Ascension Day, 1555._
“On the Lord’s Ascension Day Thou didst say to me, O my Love, that, up
to this point, I had walked by Faith, but that now Thou wast determined
to give me direct assurance (_certezza_); and that there was no
occasion for me to go on writing down Thy words, since I should read
them in my own experience. And on my asking what Thou wouldst operate
within me, Thou didst affirm to me that I should ever possess Thee in
my heart.”--“Another time I felt that I was being told: ‘I generate My
Son, having an infinite Cognition of Myself; similarly I generate thee,
by infusing into thee that same cognition. But (this) My Cognition is
without measure; and thine shall be according to that measure which
I shall, by My goodness, be impelled to give thee, in suchwise that
of this cognition and of thine intellect there shall be effected one
identical thing; so that I shall place My Word, My Concept, which I
possess within Myself, in thee, according to the capacity for it which
I shall deign to give thee; and so that, again, thy spirit shall be a
son within My Son, or rather one only son with Him: and thus will I
have generated thee.’ Hence, O Lord, according to this Thy showing,
those are generated by Thee, who, united by grace to Thy Majesty,
repose in Thy Paternal Bosom, together with Thine only Begotten. But
He is by nature one sole substance with Thee--He whom Thou art ever
ineffably generating; and we are united with Thee, through reposing in
Thy bosom by simple grace and by a singular privilege of Thy love; and
in so far as we thus abide there in Thee, Thou generatest us in more
and more light and ardour. Hence then Thou generatest him who abides in
Thee.”
We have here, in the last locution of this series, the most complicated
and seemingly original of them all. Yet here we can still find
parallels to Catherine: in the addressing of God as “my Love”; in
the fact that the locution proceeds from, and its interpretation is
submitted, not to our Lord, but to God, to Him who indeed generates His
Son without measure and directly, yet all other souls also, though in
measure and by and through His Son; and in the declaration that now she
should have a kind of direct assurance in lieu of Faith.[351]
And here especially we can trace the large Neo-Platonist (Dionysian)
element in Battista’s Mysticism. There is the first, perfect circle,
God’s perfect cognition of Himself, a cognition which produces a
fresh (though co-eternal) centre of cognition, which latter in return
perfectly cognizes Him who perfectly cognized it. And then there is
a derivative imperfect circle--since that perfect cognizedness and
cognizing, which is God’s Son, can only be imperfectly imparted to the
souls of creatures: yet again we have a circle for the very thing which
is cognized by God is, in this instance also, the same which cognizes
Him. And lastly, this distance between the perfect and imperfect
circles is, as far as possible, overcome by an attempted and momentary
identification of the perfectly cognized and cognizing circle, Christ,
with the perfectly cognized but imperfectly cognizing one, every human
soul in its potentiality and divinely intended end.
And this large Platonist scheme of a progression of Ideas appears
here coloured and Christianized, by means of four scriptural texts in
particular: Ps. cix, 31, “in the brightness (splendours) of the saints,
from the womb, before the day star (Lucifer) I begot thee”; John i,
18, “the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father”; xiii,
23, “there was leaning on Jesus’ bosom one of His disciples whom Jesus
loved”; and Luke xvi, 23, “the rich man beheld Abraham from afar, and
Lazarus in his bosom.” The first two passages give her the eternal and
continuous generation and abiding of the Son by and in the Father;
and the last two suggest a similar abiding and (interpretatively)
generation, together with that Son, of the faithful soul, in and by
God, continuously and for ever.
Note, too, the double meaning, so characteristic of mystical
utterances, contained in the sentence, “I generate My Son, having
an infinite Cognition of Myself”; which indicates both the mode of
generation (“by means of an infinite cognition”), and the nature of the
generated one (“who has an infinite cognition”). And by this literary
device, the intense close-knitness of the perfect circle is strikingly
adumbrated.
And remark how Battista finishes up this soaring flight by an
interpretation of a perfect sobriety. Indeed it is this moderation and
good sense along with so immense an Idealism and intense Interiority
which, together, constitute her noblest characteristic and should make
us overlook the comparative absence of spontaneous charm and tender
freshness, which cannot but strike us if we allow ourselves to contrast
the piety of Battista with that of Catherine.
IV. SOME FURTHER LETTERS OF BATTISTA, 1575 TO 1581.
Before the experiences and confidences of an almost painful privacy
and emotional intensity, which require, in part, a considerable amount
of patient interpretation from us, if they are to move and touch
us, we found and dwelt upon a moral attitude and a document full of
immediately understandable heroism and virile common-sense: the scene
with her father before his death-ride, and the letter to Dottore Moro.
And, somewhat similarly, three further documents succeed to these
intermediate confidences, documents full of love and esteem for the
externally ordinary vocation of the vast majority of us all, of a large
undaunted outlook, and of a shrewd and persevering public spirit.
The apparent mental contraction and subjectivity we have just passed
through with her is but the recollective movement, the, as it were,
drawing itself together for the spring of action on the part of an
already large and expansive soul, and leads on and out to fresh and
still larger horizons, and, indeed, effects them.
1. _Letter to Donna Anguisola, 1575._
We have first a letter of June 10, 1575 (Battista was now seventy-eight
years of age, and had been a Religious for sixty-five years) addressed
to a widowed noblewoman with young children--the Illustrious Lady
Andronica Anguisola.[352] The reader will note the transition,
evidently quite natural and spontaneous in the writer, from a soaring
Mysticism, full of Pauline, Joannine, and Dionysian forms, and of deep,
personally experimental content, to the most practical and shrewd,
wisely unflinching, homely heroism. There are few documents, I think,
which show with an equal impressiveness how startlingly direct and
immediate can be and is the application of such, apparently, purely
transcendental, serene contemplations and affections to the struggling,
clamorous world of our human passions, circumstances, difficulties, and
duties: and how only that transcendence and this immanence, taken and
working thus together, give to the soul a height without inflation, and
a concrete particularity without pettiness. I shall break up the long
letter into three sections, omitting only two, relatively commonplace,
passages in the middle and at the end; and shall again point out
certain parallels and peculiarities at the end of each section.
(1) _Opening of the letter._
“Most Honoured Madam in the Crucified,
“‘I have come to place (cast) fire upon the earth, and what will I
but that it be enkindled’ (Luke xii, 49). By these most divine words
we can understand, in part, to what a supreme degree such a most happy
fire is of importance, since the Eternal Word came down from Heaven to
kindle it in His so dearly-loved rational earth. And this great effect
could not but follow, since the Paternal goodness willed to communicate
to our misery the ardour which He possesses eternally in His Heart.
And what else is this communication to us of His infinite love than
the planting within our minds of His own intrinsic, incomprehensible
delights? His Majesty, in His infinite courtesy, takes His delights
in abiding with the children of men (Prov. viii, 31). But He desires
that these delights should proceed from both sides, so that, as He
takes these delights in us, by His own intrinsic natural goodness, He
similarly wills that we, by means of that same goodness which is poured
into us by that fire which Christ places upon our earth,--as Paul
demonstrates when he says (Rom. v, 5), ‘The charity of God is poured
forth in our hearts by the Holy Ghost who is given to us,’--He wills, I
say, that, set in motion by the immense potency of this infused fire,
we should place, in return, all our delights in His Majesty; and then,
to speak according to our human fashion, His unmeasured love attains
to its intent. In this correspondence lie hidden away delights beyond
all comprehension, considering that it is His own goodness that comes
down (into us), as He demonstrates when he says, ‘We will come to him,
and will make our abode with him’ (John xiv, 23); and that He raises us
up beyond all measure in suchwise that, of the Increate Heart and of
the created one, there is made, by the operation of Him who says, ‘The
Father who is in Me, worketh’ (John x, 38; v, 17), a single most secret
and inestimable union.”
Here, again, we find close parallels to Catherine in “His own
intrinsic incomprehensible delights,” “His infinite courtesy,” “the
immense virtue of this infused fire,” and “to speak according to
our human fashion.” And the whole general conception of a mutual
and corresponding action and circle between God and the soul, the
whole movement beginning in and by God, and leading back and ending
in Him, is here, once more, the common property of Battista and her
God-mother.[353] Yet “The Crucified,” with which the whole letter
opens, and “His Heart,” the “Increate Heart,” applied directly to God
Himself, are expressions we should seek in vain in Catherine. The
historical Christ, and a most legitimate anthropomorphism, find here
a place, indeed a prominence, which they have not there. And note the
sobriety with which Battista insists on the analogical character of
all this speculation, for she “speaks” only “according to our human
fashion”; and the allegorizing involved in the “His dearly-loved
rational earth,” the earth that souls dwell on having here become
simply identical with those souls themselves. And especially remark the
mystically characteristic doubleness of meaning, and the conception of
the substantiality of the divine indwelling, involved in the phrase,
“His own intrinsic, incomprehensible delights.” For this phrase means
both “the delight which, for our minds, is intrinsically bound up with
the thought of God,” and the “delight which He himself takes in His
indwelling whilst abiding within us”; and the latter idea involves
a belief in the soul’s delight in Him being but a sympathetic echo
and answer to His delight in this His own indwelling, a delight thus
actually in operation within the human soul.
Mark, too, how her opening her letter with a formally announced text
is but an instance of her life-long literary form of composition--the
homily; how saturated is the whole with (evidently first-hand)
scriptural meditation; and how wise and like her own father is her
treatment of this soul, so near to delusion in the very intemperance of
her search after perfection. A warning note of a claim about to be made
upon her correspondent’s effective self-immolation has been struck,
from the first, by the words, “the Crucified”; and yet this note is
first followed by a paragraph sufficiently soaring to satisfy even the
most lofty moods of the Signora Andronica.
(2) _Central part of the letter._
“I have taken up my pen from a desire that you may be wholly and
entirely devoted to the Lord, with a whole-hearted abandonment. I do
not mean that you should abandon the care of your children: on the
contrary, I wish that you may give the greatest care to them, both
within and without. For the within, by desiring heart-wholly that
they may be joined (cleave) to God, with all they are; and for the
without, by helping them studiously to avoid everything that leads
to sin.” She then gives the examples of SS. Felicitas and Monica,
and of St. Louis of France, and proceeds: “Now note, dear Madam, how
great is the fruit of good government on the part of parents. Indeed,
according to the little light which God deigns to give me, this alone
appears to me necessary--that your Ladyship should observe the counsel
of St. Paul, where he says (Eph. iv, 1) ‘that we should walk worthily
in the vocation in which we are called.’ Now _you_ are called to the
government of your children. Hence I pray you to study how to act,
that you may be able to render a good account of it to God. You will
remember how our Christ, on the point of going to His death, renders
an account to His eternal Father concerning those whom His Father had
given into His charge, saying, ‘of them whom Thou hast given Me (in
charge), I have not lost one’ (John xviii, 9).
“Consider, my very dear Friend, how that our great God, being
infinitely perfect, or, in better terms, perfection itself, we cannot
either add to or detract from His glory even the slightest point, as
the Prophet saw who said (Ps. ci, 13), ‘Thou, O Lord, art ever the
same’ (endurest for ever), ‘unchangeable and invariable.’ All that we
can do for Him, is to come in aid to His dear images, to His beloved
children, as the Lord shows in Matt, xxv, 40, ‘that which ye shall do
unto one of these My least, ye shall have done it unto Me.’--I know
well that you desire to withdraw yourself from all the cares of the
world, in order to be able to occupy yourself entirely with God. But
do you not know that ‘Charity seeketh not the things that are her own’
(1 Cor. xiii, 5), that is, her own utility? That desire which your
Ladyship has for herself, let her have it equally for her children.
Are we not obliged to love our neighbours as ourselves? (Matt. xix,
19). And hence, how much more our children! That step in perfection,
of entirely abandoning all things, your Ladyship cannot take, without
great damage to your neighbour,--damage, I mean, to souls. Remember how
full of perils is the period of youth; I beg of you, with all possible
insistence, for God’s sake, to have a greater care of these young souls
than of yourself, since the necessity is greater.”
Here, again, there are parallels to the God-mother: in the love of
that intensely unifying term, “si accostino,” “cleave to,” “be joined
to,” of St. Paul, so dear to Catherine also; in the love of all souls,
as God’s dear images, but specially of those bound to us by blood, so
marked in Catherine’s testamentary dispositions, as distinct from the
descriptions, possibly even from the surface-appearances, of her last
nine years; and in the greater care to be given to others than to our
own selves, when their necessity is greater than ours, so heroically
practised by Catherine in the case of the Plague.[354] The chief
difference, here again, is the prominence given by Battista to the
Historic Christ, by her quotation of the words of St. Matthew,--words
which, though so obviously applicable to Catherine’s work and
duties, nowhere occur throughout Catherine’s own contemplations or
discourses.--Note again the ambiguity of the “within and without” in
connection with the care to be bestowed, since the words are intended
to cover respectively both Donna Anguisola’s intention and exterior
action, and her children’s interior dispositions and visible acts.
(3) _Conclusion of the letter._
“But pray indeed to His Majesty that He may give you grace so great
as to enable you to abandon all things interiorly. Here is the point
in which all perfection consists. And I will pray to Him for this, in
union with yourself. I most certainly desire, for my part, that your
generous heart may have no other delight but God. And do you convert
that human consolation which men are wont to take in their children,
into a great desire that they may cleave to God; that they may not
offend Him, and that they may bear His Majesty in their hearts. And
when those things have been actually effected, do you then take the
greatest delight in them, whilst mortifying that merely human pleasure
which men take in the mutable prosperity of their children, in the most
pleasing consolation which arises from their company, and in such-like
things. And, from such a course of action, various advantages will
follow. First, you will, I think, be thus doing what is most pleasing
to God; next, you will be most useful to your neighbour; and lastly,
your Ladyship will have carried off a great victory over your own self.”
Here we can trace two close parallels to special points of Catherine’s
practice and teaching. In the doctrine that the point of all perfection
consists in the interior abandonment of all things, we get but a
re-statement of Catherine’s teaching as to God’s love being practicable
everywhere; and in the advice to practise interior mortification in
the matter of resting in the consolation of her children’s company, we
have not only a parallel to Catherine’s early and transitory convert
practice, but also an application to human intercourse of Catherine’s,
and indeed also Battista’s, continuous and ever-growing practice of
detachment from sensible consolations in the soul’s intercourse with
God.[355]
We can hardly doubt that this letter was as effectual in keeping
Donna Anguisola within the limits of family duties, as the letter of
forty-six years before had been in bringing back Dottore Moro to the
world-wide spiritual family of the Ancient Church.
2. _Letter to Padre Collino, 1576._
And we have next a letter, written in 1576, when she was seventy-nine,
to that Father Serafino Collino at Cremona, to whom, five years later,
she was to write the truly classical account of her father, which has
been the main source of our study of that heroic figure.
And indeed already in this letter she preludes, as it were, to that
outburst of filial praise, by first dwelling here upon the effects
of her father’s life as they were maturing visibly around her. “A
very spiritual, wise, and noble person,” writes Battista, “has been
visiting me; and in the course of talk she asked me, ‘Well, and what
did you think of the great miracles that God has been working during
these times of acute conflict, in this our city--miracles such as no
one ever heard of throughout the course of ancient Roman history or
in connection with any other warfare?’ And I, knowing well that this
person has three Doctors of Theology living continuously in her house,
guessed that these men must have carefully scrutinized and examined
the whole matter. So I simply asked, ‘What miracles do you mean?’ And
she answered me, ‘The city has been for so long a time in arms, a prey
to the good and to the wicked, to the wise and to the mad, and has
been affording the greatest possible opportunity for acts contrary to
justice. And yet, throughout the city within the walls, no one has ever
been offended,--no man, in his person; no woman, in her honour; and no
man or woman, in their possessions.’”
And then Battista comments on her visitor’s declaration. “As to their
persons, all men went about in the city with swords drawn and erect,
and spoke injurious words to those of the opposite party. And it really
seems as though their hands were tied, for they used their tongues
indeed but not their hands; not one drop of blood has been spilt.
Within the city two homicides were, no doubt, committed during this
time, because of a difference on a point of honour; but none on account
of party spirit. Similarly outside of Genoa the son of Signer Antonio
d’Oria was killed--not by the opposite party, but by another nobleman
like himself,--they had come to words. As to female honour, the women
went and came to visit each other, and frequented Mass, whether they
belonged to one party or to the other; and the greater number of
gentlewomen went out of Genoa, accompanied by their daughters, passing
through the very midst of the city, and going down the wharf to get on
board their boats; and yet never was any discourtesy shown to any one
of them. Similarly, with regard to possessions: quantities of these
were sent out of Genoa; great masses of them were deposited in the
Monasteries--and yet never even a trifle was ever taken. On this latter
point we of this Convent can bear direct witness. For although so much
property and money was brought to the Monastery delle Grazie, that
it became difficult to move about the house because of the quantity
of cases and stray boxes deposited there, nevertheless not even to
the poor carriers who brought them was the slightest violence done,
although they had to pass through all those drawn and raised swords;
nor was a single word said to us Nuns, who appeared in the gateway to
receive the goods.”[356]
Now the well-informed lawyer, Professore Morro, thinks that all this
was the direct result of Ettore Vernazza’s far-sighted and devoted
philanthropy. And he is no doubt right. For we still possess the
entries, in the Cartulary of St. George, of the great works carried
out by that powerful Banking Body, in conformity with and by means of
Ettore’s directions and moneys, amongst Genoa’s teeming poor and sick
and ignorant, in the years 1531 and 1553.[357] Indeed even the printed
documents bring the administration of this great, ever-growing fund
down to the year 1708.
And the points that here concern the character of Battista are this
her omnipresent and yet bashful pride in her large-hearted father; her
virile joy in the public good; her immensely sane and direct tastes
as to the city’s improvement; and her glad finding of a miracle in
things thus readily verifiable, universal, interior, and yet profoundly
operative in the visible work-a-day life of man. There is something
strikingly modern in this severely social, and already more or less
statistical, way of testing improvement, an improvement which is found
here, not in any vaguely assumed increase of impulsive or perfunctory
almsgiving in the one class, or of dependence and passivity in the
other, but in the closely scrutinized proofs of a remarkable growth in
general self-respect, self-maintenance, public spirit and sense of
social interdependence, on the part of all parties and classes.
And in the daughter’s judgment concerning all this it is again easy
to trace a likeness to her father, with his careful regulations for a
great Register of the Poor, and his provisions for harbour-works and
the embellishment of the city. But Catherine’s spirit is also present,
with its emphatic insistence upon God’s love as practicable everywhere,
and upon truth as, of its very nature, public-spirited and meant for
all.[358]
3. _Second letter to Padre Collino, 1581._
And five years later still (she was now eighty-four) Battista writes
her long account of her father’s life, which we studied in connection
with him, but which would well deserve a detailed analysis from the
standpoint of the daughter’s dispositions, so keen and large, so
tender, true and immensely operative, long after most men have died, or
are living on in a selfish second childhood.
V. BATTISTA’S DEATH, 1587.
And then at last, six years afterwards, at four o’clock in the
afternoon of May 9, 1587, Pope Sixtus V being Pope and Mary Stuart
having but six months still to live, Battista died in her Convent,
fully three generations old. During her last years she had been
allowed to communicate daily, and had thus, at the end, added one more
trait of resemblance to her God-mother, who, as we know, had, for
some thirty-five years of her life, found her greatest strength and
consolation in this the simplest, most central and deepest of all the
Christian devotions and means of Grace.[359]
One hundred and forty years had now passed since the birth of
Catherine, and seventy-seven since her death. It is indeed time that we
should, having accumulated so much material, proceed in the next volume
to an examination and exposition of the underlying spiritual facts and
laws specially brought home to us by the group of lives we have been
studying, and of which the central figure was that, for us, largely
elusive but immensely suggestive, many-sided and yet rarely beautiful,
soul and influence, which the Church venerates as St. Catherine of
Genoa.
CONCLUSION
WHEREIN LIES THE SECRET OF SPIRITUAL PERSUASIVENESS
But let us first conclude this volume by attempting an answer, however
preliminary and general, to the definite question with which it opened
out.
I. THE QUESTION.
We asked there, how any deeper, will-moving intercommunication can even
be possible amongst men? For the mere possession of, and appeal to,
the elementary forms of abstract thinking, which seem to be our only
certain common material, instrument and measure of persuasion, appear
never, of themselves, to move the will, or indeed the feelings; whereas
all that is endowed with such directly will-moving power appears, not
only as specifically concrete and as hopelessly boxed up within the
four corners of our mutually exclusive individualities, but also as
vitiated, even for each several owner, by an essentially fitful and
fanciful subjectivity.
II. THE ANSWER.
Now I think that even the survey of the three great lives, and of those
four minor ones, which has been just attempted, forcibly suggests, both
positively and negatively, at least the general outlines of the true
answer to this pressing question.
1. Only a life sufficiently large and alive to take up and retain,
within its own experimental range, at least some of the poignant
question and conflict, as well as of the peace-bringing solution and
calm: hence a life dramatic with a humble and homely heroism which, in
rightful contact with and in rightful renunciation of the Particular
and Fleeting, ever seeks and finds the Omnipresent and Eternal;
and which again deepens and incarnates (for its own experience and
apprehension and for the stimulation of other souls) this Transcendence
in its own thus gradually purified Particular: only such a life can be
largely persuasive, at least for us Westerns and in our times.
We would thus have an attempt, ever renewed, ever widening, ever
deepening, at the formation of, as it were, a concrete, living,
breathing image of the Abiding and the One; of Law, Love, and Duty;
of God: an image formed out of the seemingly shifting, shrinking
flux, and the apparently shapeless mass of our actual, bewildering
human manyfold; our flesh and sweat, and tears and blood, our joy
and laughter, our passions and petty revolts, our weariness and
isolations. Attend primarily to minimizing or eliminating all such
friction and pain; to being clear, materially simple and static, a
fixed Thing, rather than vivid, formally unified, and dynamic, a
growing Personality: or again, let the friction be so great, or the
courage and fidelity so small, as to lead to the break-up of all
genuine recollection and harmonization; and, in the former case,
such a character or outlook may be considered “safe” or “correct” or
“sensible”; and, in the latter, the character and outlook will not be
consolidated at all, or will be breaking up: but in neither case will
the life be persuasive. For to be truly winning, the soul’s life must
become and must keep itself full and true.
2. Now it is simply false that man can, even for his own self alone,
hold spiritual reality, even from the first, in a simply passive,
purely dependent, entirely automatic and painless fashion; or that he
can, even at the last, possess it in a full, continuous and effortless
harmony and simultaneousness.
God no doubt holds all Truth and Reality as one great Here and Now, or
rather He possesses them entirely outside of space and time; nor can we
attribute to Him directly any interior conflict, effort, or suffering.
And, again, we ourselves too possess within our minds an element
and an apprehension of the Abiding and the Simultaneous; and their
rudiments operate within us, if all-diffusively yet most powerfully,
from the very first. Indeed the continuous increase in definiteness
and influence of that element and of its apprehension here, and the
indefinite expansion and continuously conscious possession of this
same element hereafter, are respectively the highest aim and fullest
achievement of our spiritual life. And finally, the further the soul
advances, the more it sees and realizes the profound truth, that all it
does and is, is somehow given to it; and hence that, inasmuch as it is
permanent at all, it is grounded upon, environed, supported, penetrated
and nourished by Him who is its origin and its end. Here all the soul’s
actions tend to coalesce to simply being, and this being, in so far as
there and then acceptable to the conscience, comes more and more to be
felt and considered as the simple effect of the one direct action of
God alone.
And yet as to God, some kind and degree of Incarnational doctrine is
necessary, and is indeed (in varyingly perfect or imperfect forms) the
common property of all higher religion; and Christians have learnt
to think the profound thought, of God Himself being in a mysterious
closeness to even our most secret perplexities and inarticulate
pain.--And by ourselves, poor weaklings, that vast, continuous
Simultaneity and Harmony of God can only be more and more nearly
approached, if, upon our mostly shadowy, and (when at all clear) our
short-lived consciousness of an inchoate simultaneity and harmony of
our own, we work an orderly successiveness, and attempt a Melody: an
humble, creaturely imitation of the Eternal, Spaceless Creator, under
the deliberately accepted conditions and doubly refracting media
of time and space. Real temptation, true piercing conflict, heavy
darkness, and bewildering perplexity; the constant encountering (as
a necessary condition and occasion of all growth) of numberless and
multiform remoter risks of failing and of falling: all this forms an
essential part of this painful-joyous probation and virile, because
necessarily costing and largely gradual, self-constitution of man’s
free-willing spirit.
And the place and function, in all this spiritual growth-in-conflict,
of Science, both in its most determinist and apparently
most anti-spiritual mood, and in its subtler though no less
destructive-seeming attitudes, will turn out, we shall find,--now
that our generation is getting to know Science’s special scope and
implications,--to be of simply irreplaceable value and potency.
And though, in the other life, our earthly pain and temptation
are to be no more, we may be sure that, even there, the essential
characteristics of our nature will not be reversed. Hence we may
be able, later on in this book, to hazard some not all-ungrounded
conjecture as to the possible substitute and form in Heaven for
what is essentially noble and creaturely in our sufferings and
self-renunciations here on earth.
And lastly, though God’s action in all things in general, and in
our individual soul in particular, be more and more recognized as
all-pervasive in proportion as the soul advances: yet this action will
have to be conceived as operating in and through and with our own; as
in each case finding, in one sense, its very matter, in another, its
very form, in our own free-willings. For Spirit and spirit, God and the
creature, are not two material bodies, of which one can only be where
the other is not: but, on the contrary, as regards our own spirit,
God’s Spirit ever works in closest penetration and stimulation of our
own; just as, in return, we cannot find God’s Spirit simply separate
from our own spirit within ourselves. Our spirit clothes and expresses
His; His Spirit first creates and then sustains and stimulates our own.
The two, as regards the inner life of the human soul, rise and sink
together. But more as to this too hereafter.
3. We shall indeed, throughout the next volume, have ample
opportunities for noting how numerous, definite, far-reaching and at
all times operative, even though still but partially unfolded, are
the evidences for, and the consequences and applications of, such a
fundamental conception, as they are furnished and required by all
deeper human life; hence, above all, by Religion; and in Religion,
again, specially by its ever largely elusive, yet ever profoundly
important, constituent, the Mystical Element.
APPENDIX TO PART II
CHRONOLOGICAL ACCOUNT AND CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE MATERIALS FOR THE
RE-CONSTITUTION OF SAINT CATHERINE’S LIFE AND TEACHING.
INTRODUCTION.
The following laborious study of the growth and upbuilding of the Life
and Legend of St. Catherine is a study worth the making. For this study
will bring out fully the test and reasons which have guided the process
of documentary selection and estimation adopted throughout the second
part of this book, indicating thus the precise degree of reliability
pertaining to my narrative. But especially will it furnish a detailed,
and peculiarly instructive, example of what, with numberless
differences in degree, kind, and importance, can be traced throughout
the history of the transmission of the image and influence of great
religious personalities and teachers. These continuously recurring
phenomena can be taken as, together, constituting the general forms and
laws which regulate the growth of all religious devotional biography.
I.
These general laws appear to be as follows.
1. _Three Laws._
There is the law of _contemporary, simultaneous, spontaneous variation
of apprehension_. Vernazza and Marabotto, writing down, at the time of
their occurrence or communication, certain facts and sayings with an
equal self-oblivion, sincerity, and truthfulness, give us apprehensions
which, in great part objectively valuable, are, nevertheless, more
or less differing pictures of one and the same fact or saying, or
different selections from amongst the moods and manifestations of one
living personality observed by them.--There is the law of _posterior,
successive, reflective variation of elaboration_. The Dominican
Censor and Battista Vernazza, re-thinking Catherine and her teaching,
in other times and away from her direct influence, necessarily see
her differently again: they are, as it were, spiritual grandchildren,
who rather themselves absorb her and re-state her to their generation
than they are themselves absorbed by her.--And there is the law of
_conservation_, _juxtaposition_, and _identification_. First the
Redactor of the Book of 1528-1530, and lastly the Redactor of that
of 1551--probably, both times, Battista--with, in between, in 1547,
the Redactor who attempted a quadripartite reschematizing of the
_Life_--could not but try and soften the variations produced by the two
other laws.
2. _The third law tends to confuse the operation of the other two._
And note how it is precisely this third law and stage which largely
tends to make the effects of the two other laws into causes of
vagueness, confusion, and scepticism. For instead of conceiving
the unity and identity of the subject-matter (a deep spiritual
personality) as essentially inexhaustible, and as requiring, for its
least inadequate apprehension, precisely both those simultaneous and
spontaneous, and those successive and reflective experiences and
reproductions of it, as furnished by the two other laws, this stage
tends to confuse the identity of the apprehended subject-matter with
a sameness in the apprehension of it; and, whilst thus robbing that
subject-matter of its richness and movement, to introduce an element of
arrangement and timidity into the originally quite _naïf_, and hence
directly impressive, evidences of the observers. Yet the instinct
and object of this third law is as legitimate and elementary as are
those of the other two, since a real unity and utilization of all the
preceding variety is as necessary as the variety to be thus integrated,
and since the other two laws show a similar variety of actuation
throughout religious literature.
3. _Examples._
We find (to move in Church History back from St. Catherine) these three
tendencies at work in the constitution of the Life and Legend of St.
Francis of Assisi, A.D. 1181(?)-1226, traced for us now, with so much
sympathy and acumen by M. Paul Sabatier and the Bollandists. We get
them again in the case of St. Thomas of Canterbury, A.D. 1118-1171,
especially in that of his Death and Miracles, so carefully studied in
Dr. Edwin Abbot’s remarkable book (1898). And, once more, in those
Merovingian Saints, the great Martin of Tours in their midst, at the
end of the fourth century, whose Lives have been so interestingly
described by Bernouilli (1900). And we find them, with especial
clearness, in the growth of the Life of St. Anthony, about A.D.
250-356, as contained in Palladius’s _Historia Monachorum_, now that
Abbot Cuthbert Butler has given us his admirable analysis and edition
of that deeply instructive compiler (1898, 1904).
If we take the Bible, we find (on moving here in a contrary direction)
these laws again at work in the elucidation and elaboration of the
great figure of Moses and of his world-historic life-work. For if
here we get but little that can claim to be by his pen, or even,
as literature, to be contemporaneous with him (since the earliest
Corpus of Laws, the Book of the Covenant, reaches probably only in
its substance back to him), yet here, too, the earliest consecutive
descriptions of his life, by the Jahvist and Elohist writers, give
us two different, though probably more or less simultaneous, largely
_naïve_, accounts and impressions of his life and work. And these
simultaneous variations are followed, later on, by the successive,
increasingly reflective variations and developments of Deuteronomy
and of the Priestly Code. And lastly, these documents get constituted
(in probably two great stages), by Redactional work, into the great
composite History and Legislation of our present last four Books
of Moses.--So again with David. We have the David of some few of
the Psalms; the David of the Books of Samuel, in a double series of
most vivid and spontaneous, more or less simultaneous but somewhat
differing, accounts; the David of the greater part of the Psalter,
the result of a long process of devout successive reflection and
re-interpretation; and the David of the Books of Chronicles, where
pragmatic systematization reaches its height.--And so too with the
Maccabean Heroes, whose history appears, apprehended with varying
degrees of contemporary, simultaneous, spontaneous vividness, and of
subsequent, successive, reflective pragmatism, in the documents and
redactional settings of the First and Second Books of Maccabees.--And
the growth indicated in these three cases covered respectively some
eight hundred, seven hundred, and one hundred years.
But it is, of course, in the New Testament that the interest and
importance of these laws reaches its height. If here we once more
move backwards, the case of St. Paul (martyred A.D. 64) furnishes us
with parallel contemporary accounts of the spontaneous type, in his
own Epistles and in the six “We”-passages by the eyewitness St. Luke
in the Acts of the Apostles; whilst the remaining account in the Acts
is doubtless by a later, more reflective and pragmatic, writer.--And
in the apprehension and interpretation of Our Lord’s inexhaustible
life, character, teaching, and work, we find very plainly the three
tendencies and stages. We get the contemporary, simultaneous,
spontaneous stage, in the cases of the Aramaic annotations of
the Apostle Levi-Matthew, which we still possess, translated and
incorporated both in the larger and later book, our canonical Greek St.
Matthew, and in the corresponding parts of our St. Luke; and in the
reminiscences of another eyewitness, presumably St. Peter, given us by
a disciple in what is still the substance of our Canonical St. Mark. We
get the posterior, successive, increasingly reflective or contemplative
stage, chiefly in the two great types furnished, first by the Pauline,
and then by the Joannine writings. And we get the juxtaposing,
unifying, largely identifying stage and law operating above all in
the, partly successive, Canonization of the New Testament _Corpus_.
And these three stages can be taken as having their downward limits in
about A.D. 30, 100, 200; so that here we cover a period of some hundred
and seventy years.
4. _Three different attitudes possible._
And, in all these and countless other cases, we can take up three
different attitudes: the impoverishing, sectarian, “purity” attitude;
the destructive, sceptical, “identity” attitude; or the fruitful, truly
Catholic “approximation” and “development” attitude. The first attitude
assumes (ever in part unconsciously) the possibility and necessity of
a purely objective apprehension of Personality, of such a Personality
being a static entity, both in itself and in its effects upon, and
its apprehendedness by, other souls, and of the earliest among the
observations concerning such a Personality ever giving us such a
purely objective, exhaustive picture and experience, or at least the
nearest approach (in all respects) to such an exhaustive objectivity.
The third attitude would so understand the admitted identity of the
Personality observed as practically to identify also the simultaneous
and successive observers and observations, and to eliminate all variety
and growth in that spirit’s own inner life and in its apprehension
by other minds. Only the second attitude would, by recognizing both
the constant, necessary presence of a subjective element in all these
simultaneous and successive apprehensions, and the indefinite richness
and many-sided apprehensibleness of all great spiritual Personalities,
welcome and draw out all the difference in unity of these many
“reactions,” as so many means, for a growing soul, towards a growing
knowledge of that life and character, whose very greatness is, in part,
measurable by the depth, variety, and persistence of these several
effects, pictures, and embodiments of itself in different races, times,
and souls.
Let us, then, betake ourselves to a systematic examination of one
example of these world-wide three laws: the trouble taken will be well
spent.
II.
Had I found room to print my notes in justification of the text
adopted by me, the reader would have gained some idea of the exceeding
complexity of the materials furnished by the printed _Vita e Dottrina_.
Indeed the original Preface to that book (1551) finds it necessary to
conclude with the words “we therefore” (because of the book’s utility,
indeed necessity, “in these turbulent times”) “beg the devout reader
not to be disturbed” (_stomacharsi_ now changed to _meravigliarsi_)
“if he finds here matters which appear to be out of their proper
order” (_non ben ordinate_), “and which are sometimes repeated; since
attention has been given, neither to much precision” (_distinzione_),
“nor to the order of events, nor to elegance of form, but only to that
truth and simplicity with which its facts and discourses were gathered
by devout spiritual persons” (“her Confessor and a Spiritual Son of
hers”) “from the very lips of that Seraphic Woman.” Both the praise
and the blame of this pregnant sentence will appear to be most fully
deserved.
In our Second Part we have, in imitation of all experience in life
itself, been thrown _in medias res_, and have thus gained some general
idea and curiosity as to the sources of our knowledge; in this Appendix
we will now, without repeating details already given, take this
evidence, as much as possible, in its chronological order. And at each
stage I shall attempt so to analyze the evidence of that stage, as
to be able to use it as a check and test of the evidence of the next
stage.--We shall, however, have to bear in mind that this method has
necessarily, at each earlier stage, somewhat to beg the question; for,
in order to make its meaning everywhere sufficiently clear, it has from
the first to assume a confidence of tone, which can be justified only
by the whole argument, and which therefore has its logical place only
at the very end.
This Appendix shall consist of two Divisions, of seven stages and eight
sections respectively. The first Division gives the dated Documents,
or such as can readily be restricted to within certain years; and the
second Division analyses the remaining, undated Corpus and attempts to
fix its origin and value.
FIRST DIVISION: ACCOUNT AND ANALYSIS OF THE DOCUMENTS PREVIOUS,
AND IMMEDIATELY SUBSEQUENT TO, THE “VITA E DOTTRINA” WITH THE
“DICCHIARAZIONE.”
I. FIRST STAGE, 1456 TO SEPTEMBER 12, 1510, ALL LEGAL.
The documents of the first stage are all legal papers, and entirely
contemporary and authentic. They have to furnish the skeleton which
receives its clothing of flesh from the other documents. I shall here
describe only those not described in Part II, and shall refer back to
that Part for those already described there.
1. _Deed of 1456._
There is, first, a deed of August 27, 1456. From amongst the shares
belonging to Pomera (formerly) wife to (the late) Bartolommeo de Auria
(Doria), but now (Sister) Isabella, in the convent of St. David; at the
instance of Andrea de Auria, her only son, her heir, and of Francesca,
the mother of Catherine, daughter of Jacobo de Fiesco: two shares of
the Bank of St. George (£200) are set apart, for the benefit of the
said Catherine, for her marriage, if she marries according to her
Mother’s advice.[360] Note how early (Catherine is not yet nine years
old) her mother, Francischetta (so a note to the copy of this document,
no doubt correctly, calls her, and suspects Pomera to have been
her sister), is thinking of Catherine’s marriage; and how, although
Catherine’s father is still alive, nothing is said as to his consent,
perhaps simply because, this money coming from a maternal aunt and
cousin, only the mother’s wishes are considered to be important here.
2. _Catherine’s Marriage Settlement, January 1463._
There is, next, Catherine’s marriage settlement, made “at Genoa, in
the quarter of St. Laurence, to wit in the sitting-room (_caminata_)
of the residence of Francisca, formerly wife to the late Don Jacobo
de Fiescho,” “with the public street in front, the house of Urbano de
Negro at its right, and that of Sebastiano de Negro at its left and
back”; “in the evening of Thursday, January 13, 1463”; between Giuliano
Adorno, son of the late Don Jacobo, on the one hand, and Francisca,
mother of Caterinetta and Jacobo and Giovanni de Fiesco, brothers of
the same. Giuliano thereby pledges himself to give Catherine on their
marriage, £1,000, and he “mortgages to her,” up to this amount, “a
certain house of his own, situate in Genoa in the quarter of St. Agnes,
with the public street in front, the house of Baldassare Adorno at the
right hand” (it belonged before this to Don Georgio Adorno), “and on
the other hand the public street.” And Francesca, Jacobo, and Giovanni
promise to pay Giuliano, in bare money and in wedding outfit for
Catherine, £400 on completion of the marriage, and another £400 in the
course of the following two years; and they mortgage to him, up to this
amount, the house in which the settlement is being made. Giuliano is to
be free to live with his wife and her family in this same house, for
these first two years after his marriage, without any payment.
At this date, then, Giuliano is already fatherless, and Catherine’s
brother Lorenzo is still too young to have any legal voice in the
matter. Although Catherine is, after the first two years, not
guaranteed anything beyond £1,000 capital, or say £40 a year income,
her outfit is a handsome one.
3. _Catherine’s first Will, June 1484._
Then there is Catherine’s first Will, June 23, 1484, after twenty-one
years of marriage. She is “lying” although “fully herself in mind,
intellect, and memory,” yet “languid in body and weighted down by
bodily infirmity, in the room, her residence, in the women’s quarters
of the Hospital of the Pammatone,” which “she has inhabited for a
considerable time (_jamdiu_).” “And knowing herself to be without
children, and without hope of future offspring,” she leaves the
life-interest in her marriage-dowry of £1,000 to her husband, Giuliano;
bids divide up, at his death, the bulk of this capital between the
Hospital and her eldest brother Jacobo (£300 to each), and her two
younger brothers Giovanni and Lorenzo (£150 to each); and orders her
body to be buried in the Hospital Church.[361]
Ten years, then, after her Conversion, Catherine had already been
living for a considerable time within the Hospital. They do not as
yet occupy a separate building, or even a set of rooms within the
Hospital; and, though both live within it, they evidently occupy
separate rooms in different parts of the great complex of buildings;
for the room here mentioned is simply Catherine’s (_camera residentiae
testatricis_, where _residentiae_ must be a descriptive and not a
partitive genitive), and forms part and parcel of the women’s wards
(_in domibus mulierum_). Her absence of hope as to offspring evidently
arises primarily from the life of continence she is leading. Yet this
latter determination is clearly not caused by any specific knowledge
of her husband’s past infidelity: for Thobia must have been now some
ten years old, yet there is no kind of mention of her; whilst, later
on, Catherine never fails to remember her, with one exception to
be presently explained. There is no mention of nephews and nieces,
doubtless because her brothers were, as yet, either unmarried or
childless, or, at least, daughterless. She is fairly well off, for
besides this possession of £1,000 she gets her room and board free,
and Giuliano has still some property of his own more considerable than
hers. And the share left by her to relations is large--£600--as over
against £300 to a public charity (the Hospital), and £100, presumably,
for the funeral, minor charities, and Masses. If she says nothing, as
yet, as to burial in the same grave with her husband, this is doubtless
because she herself appears now to be the one likely to die first.
4. _Giuliano’s Will, October 1494._
There is, fourthly, the first and last Will, October 20, 1494, of
“the Reverend Sir, Brother Giuliano Adorno, professing the Third
Order of St. Francis, under the care of the Friars Minor Observants,”
already described on pages 151, 152. The will is drawn up in the
“sitting-room” (_caminata_) of the “habitation” of the Testator. Now
the Notary, Battista Strata, in a foot-note to a first draft of an
(unfinished) Will of Catherine, writes: “On the day on which I drew up
Don Giuliano’s”; which words (owing to a multiplicity of converging
indications) can only refer to this Will of October 2, 1494. And
in this draft Catherine leaves legacies to the servants Benedetta
(Lombarda) and Mariola Bastarda, as “abiding with, and dwelling in the
house with, Testatrix.” It is clear then that, by now, Catherine and
Giuliano are living under the same roof, in a distinct house within the
hospital precincts, with two personal attendants for their common use.
They will have moved, out of their separate single rooms, into this
house, upon Catherine becoming Matron, in 1490. In this draft there
appear also, for the first time, her brother Jacobo’s two daughters
(£100 each); and her sister, the Augustinianess Limbania (£10).
5. _Four minor documents, 1496-1497._
There are, next, certain minor documents of 1496-1497, which modify
points of previous Wills and clear up details of her life. Thus,
on June 17, 1496 Catherine signs a deed of consent to the sale of
the Palace in the S. Agnese (Adorni) quarter.--On January 10, 1496,
Giuliano, “sane in mind although languid in body,” orders, in a
Codicil, that Catherine shall carry out, according to the directions
of a certain Friar Minor, a vow made by himself to St. Anthony of
Padua; notes that the Palace has been sold; and declares that she is
to be free to annul, amend or diminish, according to her own judgment,
his legacy of £500 to the Hospital.[362] And, in the Cartulary of the
Bank of St. George, Catherine’s name appears as an Investor: on July
14, 1497 as “wife of Giuliano Adorno”; but on October 6 as “wife and
testamentary heiress of the late Giuliano Adorno.”[363] These entries
were considered on page 149 note. On the second occasion she orders
that the Bank shall, after her death, annually pay over the interest
of the fourteen shares (£1,400), now bought by her, to the Hospital of
the Pammatone, in return for “the enjoyment and usufruct of a house and
a greenhouse (_viridario_) of (within) the said Hospital,” which had
been conceded to her for her lifetime. The sum (about £56 a year) thus
ceded by her is a handsome one, as she had, by now, well earned the use
of this house by her constant labours for the Hospital, including her
matronship from 1490 to 1496. I take it that she was again thinking of
Thobia; so that this relatively large sum would cover at least part of
the Hospital’s expenses incurred for this poor girl.
6. _Catherine’s second Will, May 1498._
This has been studied on pages 152-154.
7. _Deed of Cession, September 18, 1499; and Codicil of January 1503._
These have been studied on pages 155, and 168, 169.
8. _Third Will, May 21, 1506; and Codicil of November 1508._
These have been described on pages 172-174; and 175, 176.
9. _Fourth and last Will, March 18, 1509; and two last Codicils, August
3 and September 12, 1510._
These have been described on pages 185-187; 202, 203; and 212-214,
respectively.
We have thus described all the fifteen documents which alone still
bear dates within the range of Catherine’s lifetime, and whose
contemporaneousness is above all challenge. They all have the pedantic,
at first sight unmoving, indeed repulsive, form of legal documents.
Yet the substance of quite ten of them undoubtedly proceeds from
Catherine; and they all give us a most precious, precise certainty
with regard to many cardinal points of locality, date, sequence, and
self-determination in her life. True, neither the day, nor even the
month, of her Birth or Baptism; nor the year of her Conversion; nor
the date of the beginning of her Daily Communions; nor the facts
as to the rarity or frequency of her Confessions; nor the day or
month of Giuliano’s death, have been recoverable by any contemporary
attestations. But on other points we thus possess a series of
absolutely reliable documents, ranging from 1456 to 1510, whose
testimony nothing can be allowed to shake.
II. SECOND STAGE: FIVE FURTHER OFFICIAL AND LEGAL DOCUMENTS, 1511-1526;
AND FOUR MORTUARY DATES, 1524-1587.
And this first stage of the evidence is followed by a second, as dry
and legal, and as absolutely reliable, as the other; yet which still
does not refer to any chronicle or notes of her life, (as either
already extant or as in process of registration or radaction), but only
to the fate of her remains and to certain turning-points in the lives
of her disciples and eyewitnesses. I note here only those documents
which fix for us the dates of the beginning of her Cultus, and which
give us the latest contemporary proof for those persons being still
alive.
1. We get thus the Hospital Account for the Moneys spent on the
Religious Clothing of the Maid-Servant Mariola Bastarda, July 7, 1511;
the entry in the Hospital Cartulary of the expenses incurred for the
transport of stone and for a picture, in connection with the first
opening of Catherine’s Deposito, July 10, 1512; the account, in the
same book, concerning the funeral of Don Jacobo Carenzio, who had died
occupying Catherine’s little house within the Hospital precincts, on
January 7, 1513; a Will of the little widow-attendant Argentina del
Sale, of January 15, 1522; and the Will of Don Cattaneo Marabotto,
still “in good bodily and mental health,” May 11, 1526,--a document
drawn up in his dwelling-place, the house belonging to his friends, the
Salvagii.[364]
2. And to this group we can add four further dates, the first and
last two of which are completely certain. Ettore Vernazza died on
June 26 or 27, 1524; the year is fixed by the great plague epidemic
which carried him off, and the month and day, by his daughter’s
letter. Cattaneo Marabotto died, there is no reason to doubt, in 1528.
Catherine’s Dominican cousin and close friend, Suor Tommasa Fiesca,
died, eighty-six years of age, in 1534. And Battista Vernazza died,
aged ninety, on May 9, 1587.[365]
Hence, up to eighteen years after her death, the two closest of
Catherine’s confidants were alive; whilst one who had known her, and
had been thirteen at the time of Catherine’s death, was still alive
seventy-seven years after that event.
III. THIRD STAGE: BISHOP GIUSTINIANO’S ACCOUNT OF CATHERINE’S LIFE,
REMAINS, AND BIOGRAPHY, 1537.
Our third stage is in strikingly manifold contrast to the other two.
It is represented by but one single, largely vague and rhetorical, but
human and directly psychological, document; and is the first that tells
us of a Life.
1. _The text._
Monsignore Agostino Giustiniano, Bishop of Nibio, published his
_Castigatissimi Annali … della Republica di Genova_, in Genoa, in
1537. There, on p. 223, he tells us that he was born (of socially
distinguished parents) in that city in 1470. And under the date of 1510
(p. 266) he writes: “And in the month of September, it pleased God to
draw to Himself Madonna Catarinetta Adorna, who was daughter of Giacobo
di Flisco, Vice-Roy of Naples for King René, and wife to Giuliano
Adorno, with whom she lived many years in marital chastity. And her
life, after the Divine goodness had touched her heart in the years
of her youth, was all charity, love, meekness, benignity, patience,
incredible abstinence, and a mirror of every virtue, so that she can be
compared to St. Catherine of Siena. And all the city has participated
in, and has perceived, the odour of the virtues of this holy matron,
who, when rapt in the spirit, spoke, amongst other matters, of the
state of the souls that are in Purgatory, things excellent and rare
and worthy of being attended to by such persons as have a taste for
the religious and spiritual life. Her body is deposited in the Oratory
of the larger Hospital, and offers a spectacle no less admirable than
venerable, appearing (_come che sia_) all entire with its flesh, so
that she looks alive,--as though she had been placed there to-day; and
yet full twenty-five years have passed since she began to lie there
dead. The great consciousness of God, the special virtues, the saintly
deeds, accompanied by an immense love, which were manifested by this
venerable matron, would furnish matter well worthy of being recorded
here. Yet we shall pass them over, for the sake of brevity; especially
since a book worthy of respect (_un digno libro_) has been composed,
concerning these things exclusively, by persons worthy of confidence
(_digne di fede_).”
2. _Its testimony._
Now this is a statement which we have every reason to trust. For Bishop
Giustiniano, himself a native of Genoa, forty years of age at the
time of Catherine’s death, was a man of education, of solid character,
and of social position; who, throughout his long book, is uniformly
truthful and generally accurate; and who had here no conceivable reason
for inventing or seriously misstating the few facts alleged by him.
These facts, as regards the matter in hand, are three: that she spoke
of various (evidently various spiritual) matters, and, amongst these,
of the state of the souls in Purgatory; that a Book was extant at the
end of 1535, which concerned itself exclusively with Catherine; and
that persons worthy of trust had produced this Book.
(1) Giustiniano knows of no writings of hers: she had not written, but
had only “spoken excellent and rare things,” and she had done so “when
rapt in the spirit.” The exaggeration here (for when in ecstasy, she
spoke nothing, or but a few broken words at most) is interesting, since
it probably grew up as an explanation of, and consolation for, her not
having herself written anything; since during the ecstasy she would be
incapable of anything but speech, and out of the ecstasy she would not
remember the sights and sounds perceived during the trance. And yet,
thus, what had to be written down by others, whilst she was in ecstasy,
would be more precious, because more immediately “inspired,” than what
she herself could have thought, remembered, and written down, in her
ordinary psycho-physical condition.
(2) The Book, in existence at the end of 1535, not only contained
sayings concerning the state of the souls in Purgatory, but must have
contained these sayings already collected together in a separate
chapter or division. For her sayings concerning this matter by no
means form the larger, or the most immediately striking, part of her
authentic teaching, taken as a whole; and only if already collected
into a more or less separate _corpus_ would they have been singled
out in this manner.--But, if this reasoning is sound and proves
the existence of the _Trattato_, already more or less separate as
at present, similar reasoning will prove the non-existence of the
_Dialogo_. For the _Trattato_, even in its present length, fills but
fifteen large-print octavo pages; while the _Dialogo_ fills ninety. It
is practically inconceivable that the latter document, which can never
have existed otherwise than more or less separately, should have been
overlooked here, where another, so much shorter, and at first sight
less authoritative, is dwelt on with emphasis.
(3) More than one hand had participated in the production of the Book.
It is characteristic of the rhetorically loose phraseology of the times
that the word “composto” is so used as to leave it quite uncertain
whether several original contributors of materials and but one Redactor
who constituted these materials into a Book are meant, or whether a
succession of Redactors is already implied.
3. _Surviving eyewitnesses._
Certainly by this time the three chief eyewitnesses of her later
earthly existence, Carenzio, Vernazza, and Marabotto were all dead,
since respectively twenty-two, eleven, and seven years. Tommasa Fiesca
had died in the previous year. Only Mariola Bastarda and Argentina del
Sale, her old maid-servants, were probably still alive, from among
the circle of Catherine’s constant companions; and Battista Vernazza,
who was but thirteen when her God-mother died, had still fifty-two
years to live. Yet we have to come still later down amongst extant
documents before we can get any further evidence, whether external
or internal, as to which of these persons, or who else (probably or
certainly) wrote down the original contemporary notes; and as to who
constituted these notes, (on one or on successive occasions) into this
“Giustiniano-book,” as I shall call the manuscript “Vita e Dottrina,”
extant in 1535.
IV. FOURTH STAGE: THE TWO OLDEST EXTANT MANUSCRIPTS OF THE “VITA E
DOTTRINA” WITH THE “DICCHIARAZIONE.”
The fourth stage of evidence is, as to its contents, the most
important of all: but it is, as we shall see, twelve years younger: it
belongs to the years 1547, 1548. It consists of two Manuscripts, the
duodecimo-volume B. 1. 29 of the University Library; and the square
octavo-volume of the Archives of the Cathedral Chapter, both in Genoa.
Here, at last, we are face to face with an actual _Life_ of our Saint.
I have carefully collated them both upon the ninth Genoese Edition of
the _Vita ed Opere_, Genova, Sordi Muti: the first MS., throughout, and
the second one, sufficiently to make sure of its entire dependence upon
the first. I have named them MS. A and MS. B respectively.
1. MANUSCRIPT A.
1. _Its date and scribe._
Manuscript A is very interesting. It opens out as follows: “Jesus. Here
beginneth the book in which is contained the admirable life and holy
conversation of Madonna Catherinetta Adorna.… This book was begun and
written at the request of her Magnificent Ladyship, the Lady Orientina,
Consort to the most magnificent and generous, illustrious Lord Adam
Centurione, when she was being vexed by a grave and well-nigh incurable
infirmity, during now already thirteen months, by a Religious of the
Observance … on the 7th of October of the year fifteen hundred and
forty-seven.”--And Catherine’s Life concludes with the words: “_Laus
Deo semper._ This book was written at the request of the Consort, of
happy memory, of the … Lord Adam Centurione, who lay vexed by a most
grave infirmity, during now two years. Many a time she would sit and
find consolation, in her most painful torments, by reading of the
burnings (_incendii_) which were suffered, for so long a time, by this
holy woman.… At the thirteenth hour of the fourth of February God took
her to Himself. She, a few days before she passed away, begged me with
tears, in the presence of the Magnificent Lady, the Lady Ginetta, her
most beloved daughter, to finish that which I had undertaken to produce
for her own self. And so it will be of use to the latter, and will help
her to bear her pains and travails, which may the Lord alleviate, by
giving her good patience.”--After this follow thirty pages; containing
an Italian version of St. Bernard’s Sermon on the death of his Brother
Gerard, (Chapter XXVI of his _Sermons on the Canticle of Canticles_).
And the whole concludes with the words: “Finished in the year Fifteen
hundred and forty-eight, on the thirteenth of February.”
We have here, then, very precise dates: this _Life_ was written between
October 7, 1547, and February 4-13, 1548, by a Franciscan Observant,
first for the wife, and then for the daughter, of a Doge of Genoa.
2. _Comparison with the Printed “Life.”_
Now the whole forty-two chapters of this _Life_, together with the
Sermon, are engrossed throughout, in a careful and upright uncial
script. On close comparison with the Printed _Life_ the differences
turn out to consist, either of vocabulary and dialect, of a simply
formal kind; or of additions and variations in the subject-matter,
of an exceedingly trite and would-be edifying character; or of a
very few additional passages of genuine importance; or of divisions,
transpositions, and _lacunae_--the latter mostly of a significant and
primitive kind; or, finally, of one highly interesting change, effected
in his own copy, by the copyist himself.
(i) _Vocabulary._
The Observant’s vocabulary is a curious mixture of downright (late)
Latin, old French, and modern Italian. So “pagura” (_paura_); “in
si” (_se_, Fr. _soi_); “despecto” (_dispetto_); “alchuna,” “anchora”
(_alcuna_, _ancora_); “lingeriare” (_ligare_, Fr. _lier_); “summissa”
(_sommessa_, Fr. _soumise_); “una fiata” (_una volta_, Fr. _une fois_);
“dido” (_digito_, o. Fr. _doight_).[366] Some of these and such-like
forms no doubt stood in his Prototype. Thus, whilst he simply copies,
he writes--“pecto” and “licet”; when he makes up sentences of his
own, he writes “petto” and “abenchè.” And his single Chapter XIII
has, on two pages, “per il che”; but, on its last two pages, it has
the elsewhere universal “perochè” (_perchè_).--Yet his language is,
upon the whole, so uniform, whilst his sources (as we shall see) are
so varied; and again his uniform language is in such marked contrast
to Giustiniano’s educated Genoese Italian of 1535, and to that of the
Printed _Vita_ of 1551: that much of it, even where he is copying the
substance of his Prototype, must be his own.
(ii) _Worthless additions and variations, of two kinds._
The additions and variations are mostly of two kinds. They are either
of a directly edificatory character. So the three pages descriptive of
the devotion of the crowd, on occasion of the opening of the coffin,
in the spring of 1512; the very general statement as to the miracles
that occurred on that occasion; and, further back, the expansion (by
this Franciscan scribe) of Catherine’s comments on (the Franciscan)
Jacopone da Todi’s “la superbia in cielo c’è.”[367] And in one place,
to produce edification by a sense of contrast, he adopts a touch of
(doubtless legendary) gossip against Giuliano, for the heading of his
Chapter XXIV runs: “How she comported herself towards her husband, who
was very contrary to her temperament; and concerning her indefatigable
patience in bearing with him, and even with the beatings which he gave
her”;[368]--where the end marked off by me is no doubt the Observant’s
own addition,--possibly, as we shall see, on the authority of Argentina
del Sale.--Or these additions are introduced to minimize or ward off
scandal. So when, after expanding the parallel between the conversions
of St. Paul and Catherine, he adds: ‘“For He spoke, and they were
(re-)made’ (Ps. xxxii, 9). But we must not curiously seek for the
reason of this action”; and then proves his point by three further
Biblical texts. So too when, after giving an abbreviated account of
the contrast between Thommasina’s and Catherine’s rate of spiritual
advancement, he again adds some Bible text and some moralizing of
his own. And so again where, after reproducing the passage as to her
being linked to God with a thread of gold, he expatiates, once more
in Scriptural words, on the presence of filial fear and the absence
of all servile fear within her. And so where, after following his
Prototype (as still preserved in the Printed _Life_), and declaring
his belief that it is reasonable and licit to believe her soul to have
entered Heaven immediately after death, he continues: “Hence he who
does believe this, does not lose in merit” (_non demerita_; an obvious
litotes for “merits”), “and he who believes it not, does not offend.”
In all these cases the Biblical texts appear in the Vulgate Latin.[369]
There can be no doubt that it is this slight recasting of the language,
and this insertion of trite and timid moralizing of his own, which,
together with the careful engrossing of his copy throughout, and its
occasional pretty decoration and illumination, permitted the Observant
to talk (although, even thus, in a manner most misleading for our
present habits of language) of having “written this Book.”
(iii) _Two genuine dates and accounts._
Yet, even amongst the passages which appear in his MS. as additional
to the later texts, are two evidently genuine and suggestive dates and
accounts. There is a description of Catherine’s great attack of “fire
at her heart,” more full and primitive, and more definitely dated than
any one of its many variants and echoes to be found in the Printed
_Life_: the slip in the date (he writes November 11, 1506, when his
own age-indications, and the position of the anecdote, clearly require
1509) will have had something to do with the strangely uncertain
position of this episode in the Printed _Life_.[370]--And further
back, in opening out the beautiful story of Marco and Argentina, he
writes: “There being in the quarter of the Quay (_contrada del Molo_)
one Marco del Sale, suffering from a cancer in the nose, who, fourteen
months before his infirmity, had taken to wife a virtuous young woman
named Argentina, spiritual daughter of Madonna Catherinetta, as is said
above.”[371] This very precise distance of time, between that humble
wedding and the poor navvy’s illness, will have been derived by the
Observant from Argentina herself, probably still living at the time of
his writing, even now hardly sixty years old.--Hence his long-winded
addition, as to the mediation of the “spiritual daughter” (certainly
Argentina), in the matter of our knowledge of Catherine’s prayer for
the dying Giuliano,[372] may also have been derived from that gossipy
little woman.
(iv) _Divisions and transpositions._
As to the divisions and transpositions, the chief of these consist in
the first six chapters of the Printed _Vita_ appearing here broken up
into (the first) ten chapters; in the MS. Chapters XI to XVI being
gradually caught up by the Printed series,--indeed the MS. Chapter XVI
corresponds to Chapters XVI to XVIII of the published book; in the
Chapters XVII to XIX of the MS. corresponding to Chapters XX and XXI
of the Print; and Chapters XX, XXI, and XXII of the MS., corresponding
respectively to Chapters XXIV, XXV, and XXVII of the Print. Then for
three Chapters follows considerable variation: the MS. Chapters XXIII,
XXIV, and XXV hold the positions respectively of the Printed Chapters
XXXVII, XLV and XLVI there. And then again there is likeness for three
Chapters--MS. Chapters XXVI to XXVIII corresponding to Printed Chapters
XXVIII and XXIX there. And once more three MS. Chapters (XXIX to
XXXI), quite different in sequence to anything there, are followed by
two Chapters (XXXII and XXXIII) corresponding to the Printed Chapters
XXIX and XXX. Four more MS. Chapters (XXXIV to XXXVII), without any
match, as to order, in the Printed book, are followed by two Chapters
(XXXVIII and XXXIX), corresponding, respectively, to the beginning
and end of Chapter XXXI there; and by Chapter XL, identical with the
opening of Chapter XL and with Chapter XLI there. And, above all,
Chapter XLI here, corresponds to the _Dicchiarazione_ (_Trattato_)
there; and is followed here by a final Chapter (XLII), made up of a
bewilderingly different succession of paragraphs,--paragraphs which, in
the Printed _Life_, stand in Chapters XLIX; XVII; and XLVIII to LII.
And, whereas the first forty Chapters of this MS. average six or seven
pages in length, Chapters XLI and XLII are respectively forty-five and
forty-eight pages long.
(v) _Lacunae._
These transpositions would alone suffice to show how complicated is the
textual history of the _Vita_: we may have to consider some of them
later on. But it is the _lacunae_ which are especially interesting.
One of these is quite certainly right, as against the printed text.
Paragraphs 23 to 25 of Chapter L of the Print are wanting here. Those
pages give an entirely fantastic, and formally vague, account of a
supposed interior stigmatization of Catherine, and of a preposterous
elongation of one of her arms,--both “facts” based explicitly upon
the authority of Argentina.[373] And the circumstance of the scribe
being a disciple of the stigmatized St. Francis, and the probability
that Argentina was still accessible, conjoin to render the absence of
these paragraphs from this MS. simply decisive against their historical
character.--The longest of all the omissions, that of the _Dialogo_,
must, even more, be explained on the ground of its non-existence at
this time, or, at least, of its not being known to the Scribe, or
again, of its having as yet no kind of authority. For not only does he
make no use of, or allusion to this, very long, and (were it primitive)
simply supreme document, but, as we shall find, quite a number of his
facts contradict the _Dialogo’s_ version of them; and we shall soon see
that, had he known and esteemed the document, he would not have allowed
such a defiance of it to remain without correction.
Over against these two non-appearances of spurious or secondary matter,
we have to set three omissions of highly valuable material. The two
interconnected, obviously entirely historical, paragraphs concerning
Maestro Boerio,--his attempt to cure Catherine, and the excessive
impression made upon her by his scarlet robes,[374]--are both wanting
here. But we shall see that they were probably not incorporated in any
_Vita_, till the preparation of the Printed _Life_ of 1551.--Matters
stand differently with respect to the third omission,--the
beautifully vivid, inimitably daring and characteristic, Chapter
XIX, containing Catherine’s dialogue with the Friar, who, according
to the well-informed Parpera, was a Franciscan Observant.[375] It is
impossible to hold that this, most historical and well-preserved,
story did not stand in the Observant’s Prototype, or that it was
otherwise unknown to him; its omission is doubtless deliberate and
“prudential.”--An interesting instance of demonstrable omission on his
part, is indeed furnished also by his version of the beautiful story
of Suor Tommasa’s life: his abbreviation of it is so obvious and yet
so unintelligent, that only a reference to the full account, which lay
certainly before him and is still preserved in the Printed _Life_,
makes any satisfactory sense of what he has retained.[376]
3. _Modification from a tripartite scheme to a quatripartite one._
But the most interesting of all the differences between this MS. A of
1547 and the Printed _Life_ of 1551 is another group of omissions,
connected, as these are, with the one single modification introduced
into his own text by the Scribe himself. The whole of the matter
corresponding to the Printed _Life’s_ Chapter XLIV (all but the first
seven lines) and that corresponding to the first three paragraphs of
its Chapter XLIX, which treat consecutively, and with an inimitable
vividness and a daring, unreflective truthfulness, of her most
unusual self-revelations to her Confessor Don Marabotto,[377] is
omitted--possibly, again, in part at least, from fear of scandal; but
more probably because, even at this time, this (the most private and
consecutive) contribution to the _Life_, still existed separately,
perhaps from all, and presumably from most, copies of the _Vita_
then in circulation. And such a copy will have been the Observant’s
Prototype.--Only when he had finished copying out his manuscript, will
he have discovered that, if he would take any, even though silent,
account of that contribution, which, by now, will have become known to
him, he must, at all costs, break up and seriously modify one of his
chapters. We have already studied the treble, most solemn affirmation,
by Catherine and her Confessor themselves, in that Printed Chapter
XLIV, as to her twenty-five years of spiritual loneliness and guidance
by God alone;[378] and we have seen that (since we cannot place her
Conversion before 1474, nor the beginning of her later practice of
Confession after 1499) we are forced (if we take her words in their
obvious sense, as applying to Confession as well as to Direction, and
assume her First Convert-Period, the penitential time, to have been
accompanied throughout by repeated Confessions) to make this first
Period very short.
Now the volume of 1547, 1548, consists throughout of paper, all but
the first three leaves and the tenth leaf, which are of parchment.
The first leaf remains blank; the second contains the Observant’s
Preface on its obverse; the third holds, on its two sides, the first
two pages of the _Vita_. That Preface was certainly written before all
the rest, or at least certainly during the lifetime of Donna Orientina
Centurione, _i.e._ before February 4, 1548; nor does anything in those
first two (parchment and paper) pages of text suggest that they are an
insertion subsequent to the following (paper) pages. At first, then,
the copy will have consisted of three parchment leaves, and then of
nothing but paper leaves; and the Observant will have made the last of
these parchment leaves the sole and opening parchment leaf of the text
of the Book.
But matters stand differently with the tenth leaf, pp. 19, 20 of
the MS., which begins with the words “bisogna, sono apparecchiata
a confessar”--“(if) necessary, I am prepared to confess my sins in
public” (Catherine’s words, on occasion of her Conversion); and ends
with “(abru) savano insino al core. Poi fù tirata al Petto”--“Love,
with those penetrating rays of its own, which burnt her, even to the
heart. She was then drawn to the Breast” (narrative words which, in the
scheme of her _Life_ that follows upon the Conversion-story, mark the
transition from one of this scheme’s stages to another).
Now here we have clear indications that these two parchment pages
hold a modified text. For that last parchment-leaf word “Petto” is
picked up, on the paper continuation, by “Pecto,” the ordinary form of
the Observant’s Prototype: see his page 81. And the whole book (all
but this parchment leaf and its highly restricted effects), still
attributes _four years_ to her First Convert-Period, her Penitential,
Purgative Stage.
Indeed, this solitary parchment leaf itself still allows us to trace,
(as though the leaf were a Palimpsest), both this, the original,
length of that Period, and the fact of that Period having then been
the first of three, and not, as now, of four such periods.--For this
leaf, in finishing up the manuscript’s fourth chapter, the history
of her Conversion,[379]--declares that “this sight (of her sins) and
this contrition (for them) lasted _fourteen months_, during which she
went on confessing herself, continually increasing her self-accusation
(_aggravando la colpa_); after the passing of which months, all sadness
was lifted from her, nor did she have any memory of her sins,--as
though she had cast them into the depths of the sea.” And then, in
the opening of the fifth chapter,[380] the scheme and conspectus of
her Convert Life runs as follows. She is first “drawn to the feet
of Christ” and abides there “_one year_ until she had satisfied her
conscience by Contrition, Confession, and Satisfaction.”--“She next
felt herself drawn, with St. John, to repose on the Breast of her
Loving Lord.… _The sight of the sins committed by her against God would
come to her_, so that she would be, as it were, wild (_arrabbiava_)
with grief, and would lick the ground with her tongue; and in this wise
she appeared to derive relief for her tempestuous feelings (_affannato
cuore_). And she abode thus for _three years_, during which she was,
as it were, wild with grief and love, with those penetrating rays of
its own, which burned her to the very heart.[381] She was then drawn
to the Breast”--which last parchment-leaf word is taken up by the
next, ordinary paper-leaf: “Breast; and here she was shown the Heart
of Christ.… And she abode _many years_ with this impression of His
burning Heart.--And then she was drawn (still) further up, that is, to
the Mouth; and there she was found worthy of being kissed by the true
Solomon.… And she no more (directly) recognized her human acts, whether
they had been done well or evilly; but she saw all in God.”[382]
We see here how the original four years of her First Period, which are
still retained elsewhere by the Printed _Vita_,[383] have been broken
up by the scribe of this Manuscript into two shorter (first and second)
Periods, of fourteen months (one year), and three years respectively;
how the copyist, both in his first apportionment of length to his new
First Period, “fourteen months,” and in his second assignment, now
of one year (since he has to divide up the original Four years so as
to get them again by addition, “_one_ year” and “_three_ years”),
leaves us two curious echoes of the “Four” of his Prototype; how his
amended description of his new second Period is still largely the old
Penitential description, for she still sees her sins (a sight which
is here an anachronism), and she is still prostrate on the ground (a
prostration which exactly suits the Feet, but in no way the Breast of
Christ); how the Observant has been half-hearted and clumsy, for he has
now left two successive Breast-Periods, hardly differentiated from each
other; and how he was able to shift (though not to change) the original
single Breast-Period (now his second Breast-Period), because of its
conveniently vague time-note of “many years.” All this laborious, yet
timid, incomplete and ineffectual change, thus forced upon an evidently
long-established, toughly resisting composition, can only have taken
place under some severe pressure of evidence; and the root-causes of
the change are somehow connected with the question as to the duration,
in her life, of the perception and Confession of her sins. For the
Confession of her sins, which (in the old scheme) extended over four
years, is now restricted to fourteen months or one year; and if
contemplative and restful love are now anticipated (from the original
second Period) in the new second Period of three years, yet an intense
sight of her particular sins, piercing contrition for them, and a
complete prostration on the ground, are all indeed retained, from the
original Feet-Period, for this new second Period, but Confession has
disappeared from these three years.
Now we have precisely such absolutely constraining evidence in
Marabotto’s treble chronicle of Catherine’s own words, with regard to
the twenty-five years during which she was led by God’s spirit alone.
It is clear then that the most important of Marabotto’s notes did not
exist incorporated with, or at least had not originally formed part of,
and did not dominate, the scheme of the _Vita_ which the Observant had
before him; and that, upon his later knowledge of, or pondering over
them, he understood Catherine’s words to have applied, not simply to
Direction but to (at least at all habitual) Confession as well.
2. MANUSCRIPT B.
1. _Its very primitive heading._
Manuscript B starts indeed with a heading demonstrably older than that
of MS. A. For its “De la Mirabile Conversione et Vita de la q(uondam)
donna Catherinetta Adorna” is more primitive, because of its “the
late,” which indicates a time of writing not yet far removed from the
date of her death; its “Donna,” less honorific than the “Madonna” of
the other MSS.; and, above all, its giving “Conversione” before “Vita,”
instead of “Conversatione” after “Vita,” since thus we are assured of
“Conversione” being no slip of the pen for “Conversatione,”--Conversion
coming necessarily before, and holy Conversation coming after, in
consequence of, an admirable life.--And this title will originally have
headed a booklet containing simply the story of her Conversion and
early Convert life, say, up to the end of Chapter VI of the Printed
_Vita_, p. 17_b_; or, since even the “et Vita” of this title reads like
a later addition, only up to the end of the present printed Chapter
II, p. 6_c_. I think there is no doubt that we have here the original
heading of a tract put together on occasion of the first public Cultus,
in the summer of 1512.
2. _Body of MS. B dependent upon MS. A._
But the body of MS. B is demonstrably later than, indeed dependent
upon, MS. A; for here the scribe silently adopts the modification,
effected by the writer of MS. A in his own text, with regard to
doubling the Breast-Period; and yet, even here, we have still the
Observant’s “Petto” for the first period, and the “Pecto” of the
Observant’s Prototype for the second period.[384] “Come” now appears
throughout, in lieu of MS. A’s “Como.” And Giuliano’s name is omitted
(all but once, in Catherine’s mouth) in the Husband-Chapter.[385]
3. _Order, division, numeration of the Chapters._
The order, division, and numeration of the Chapters is identical with
those of MS. A, all but that Chapter XXXIX of MS. A (equivalent to the
unimportant pp. 82_b_-83_a_ of Chapter XXXI in the Printed _Life_)
is here omitted. No Chapter numbered XXXIX appears here, but, after a
small break behind Chapter XXXVIII, the _Trattato_ follows, as Chapter
XL.
4. _Laceration at end of Manuscript._
And this Chapter XL is abruptly broken off in the midst of a
penultimate paragraph: “et per gratia li sono monstrati et” are the
last words. The authentication of the MS., appended immediately after
this rough ending, shows this laceration to be at least as old as 1672.
Nor is it a case of some complete set or sets of leaves being lost,
since one leaf has had to be torn off, from the still remaining other
half-sheet.[386] The last part, no doubt, contained the end of the
_Trattato_ and the Passion-Chapter; and will, like its Prototype, MS.
A, have been without a trace of the _Dialogo_. Indeed I suspect that it
was the latter circumstance which, when once this elaborate composition
had come to be prized, gave rise to the, surely deliberate, destruction
of the evidence for its absence here. MS. A will, in that case, have
been saved from a similar fate, by its special appropriation to a
powerful family; by its superior, uncial kind of script; and, above
all, by its important contemporary date and dedication at the end.
V. FIFTH STAGE: MANUSCRIPT C.
Our next, deeply interesting stage, is represented by one single MS.
in the University Library, Genoa,--catalogued as B. VII 17. It is a
careful copy, made throughout by the Protonotary Angelo Luigi Giovo,
and subscribed by himself on April 20, 1671, of, as he there says,
“Another ancient MS. received from the Signora ----, Matron of the
Great Hospital, who declared that she had herself received it from
the Nuns of the Madonna delle Grazie; and which is believed, with
great probability, to be the MS. copied by Ettore Vernazza and sent to
the Venerable Donna Battista, his daughter. The book, in view of the
antiquity of the paper, of the character of the binding of the copy,
and of the other peculiarities, has been judged by experts to belong
to the above-mentioned Period.” The reader will soon see why I place
(not necessarily the execution, but the text of) the MS. thus copied
by Giovo, before the printing of the _Vita_ in 1551, and will thus be
helped to a decision as to the “greatly probable” attribution to Ettore
Vernazza.
1. _Differences in text of MS. C from MSS. A and B._
Giovo’s Copy (my MS. C) follows, up to the end of its Chapter XLI
(the _Trattato_), the division, number, and sequence of the chapters,
and the peculiarities of the text, of MS. A, with an all but unbroken
closeness: even the slip, of 1506 (for 1509), in the date of the
great attack of “fire at heart,” reappears here as it stands there
(fol. 33_v_ of MS. C, compared with p. 193 of MS. A). But the “Petto”
and “Pecto,” of respectively the first and second Breast-Periods
in MSS. A and B, read here, in both cases, as simply “Petto” (MS.
C, fol. 3).--There is but one at all remarkable addition in this,
the _Vita_-part of the MS. In the account of the refusal to accept
Catherine on the part of the Nuns of the very Convent where, as we
shall see, the Prototype copied by Giovo was no doubt written, there
occur the new words: “Although her Confessor was instant with them
(to take her), knowing her, as he did, better than the Nuns knew her”
(MS. C, fol. 1_v_).--And, in concluding further on (on its fol. 71_v
seq._) with the Passion-Chapter, as this stands in MS. A (Chapter
XLII), a Chapter which here (for a reason to be given in a minute)
is not numbered, the MS. still follows closely (although now with a
few generally unimportant additions, omissions, and transpositions of
paragraphs), the matter, order, and literary form of MS. A.--Only one,
formally slight, but materially significant, difference exists here
between Giovo’s text and the Printed _Life_. The Printed _Life_, p.
142_b_, reads: “After this, she felt a hard nail at heart”; to this MS.
C adds (fol. 72_r_) “so that she seemed nailed to the Cross.” Neither
set of words occurs in MSS. A and B. MS. C here gives us something
unlike Catherine’s, but very like Battista’s, special spirit.
2. _The great addition: the “Dialogo,” Part First._
(1) _The “Dialogo” originally no longer._
But it is in the pages intermediate between the _Trattato_ and the
Passion (foll. 53_v_ to 71_v_), that lies the interest of this MS. For
here we get, for the first time, the _Dialogo_, although, as yet, only
its eventual First Part (pp. 185-225 in the Printed _Life_). Chapter
XLI (the _Trattato_) has just finished, by only six lines short of its
printed form, with the words “because that occupation with Himself
which God gives to the soul, slight though it be, keeps the soul so
occupied, that it exceeds everything, nor can the soul esteem anything
else.” And immediately next there come (53_v_) the title-words: “Here
follows a certain beautiful Allegory (_Figura_) which this holy soul
institutes (_fà_) concerning the Soul and the Body.”--The eventual
division into (17) chapters is still absent, and the work seems, at
this time, to have been planned to be no longer than it is here. For
it concludes with the emphatic climax: “Now the Spirit, having come
to hold this creature in this manner, declared: ‘I am determined
henceforth no more to call her a human creature, because I see her
(to be) all in God, without any (mere) humanity.’” For these words
simply re-cast the last words of the scheme of her entire life, given
by the _Vita_: “She said: ‘I live no more, but Christ lives in me.’
Hence she could no more recognize the quality of her human acts, in
themselves--whether they were good or evil; but she saw all in God”
(Pr. L., p. 6_c_).
(2) _The “Dialogo’s” two stages, each comprising two steps, and their
suggestions in the “Vita.”_
Now the _Dialogo_, as here given, consists of two chief stages, and
each stage contains two steps.
Chapters I to VI give the first stage--the history of a soul in a state
of moral and spiritual decline and contraction: all this, in the form
of a Dialogue between the Soul, the Body, and Self-Love.--Throughout
this first stage Self-Love holds dominion. But, during the first step,
the Soul (although it already distinguishes, with regard to what it
intends to practise, between simply avoiding grave sin and striving
after perfection) still continues fairly determined not to commit sin,
and still leads the Body. During the second step, on the contrary, even
this simple avoidance of grave sin has ceased, for now the Body leads
the Soul. Thus first the Soul, and then the Body, each leads the other
during one step, for “one week.”--These two steps or weeks stand for
the two lustres of Catherine’s pre-Conversion-Period, for the lukewarm,
and then the positively dissipated, lustre respectively. Chapters I
to III give the first week, equivalent to the first five years of her
married life, 1463 to 1468; and Chapters IV to VI give the second week,
and correspond to the second five years, 1468 to 1473.[387]
Chapters VII to XXI describe the second stage, that of Conversion and
Transformation, which (notwithstanding its appearance of instantaneous
and complete attainment of its end) is here presented as, in reality,
by far the longer and the more difficult, although the alone fruitful
and happy one. Chapters VII to XIII describe the first step. Chapters
VII to IX give us the Soul’s longing for Light; the spark of Pure Love
shown to it, on its conversion-day; and a long address by the Soul to
the Body and Self-Love, and the answers of these two.[388] In this
address the Soul for the first time speaks of “_the Spirit_.”[389]
Chapter X makes the Soul for the first time address “_the Lord_,” “O
Signore,” on the one hand: and her “_Humanity_” “O Umanità,” on the
other.[390] In Chapters XI and XII the Soul stands alone, face to face
with the Lord, who appears to it in two successive visions,--first as
Christ alive and walking along all stained with blood from head to
foot; and, on a later occasion, as Christ evidently motionless and
presumably dead, with His five fountain-wounds, which are sending drops
of burning blood towards mankind. And these two visions, so carefully
kept apart, doubtless typify the two periods of Catherine’s Convert
life,--the two steps of her second stage: the moving, scourged and
cross-bearing Christ stands for the active penance of the first four
years or fourteen months; and the motionless, crucified Christ stands
for the passive purification of the rest of her life.[391] Chapter XIII
has no dialogue, but describes her active penances and good works, and
mentions the Soul, Humanity, and the Spirit.[392]
And then, up to the end, in Chapters XIV to XXI, which give us
the second step, the dialogue reappears, but now no more between
the three _Dramatis Personae_ (Soul, Body, and Self-Love) of the
pre-Conversion-Period; but between the two interlocutors of the
post-conversion time (the Spirit and Humanity).[393] And there is here
but one sporadic mention, an invocation, of “the Lord” (p. 214_c_).
Thus only after its Conversion does the Soul itself become aware of,
or does it name, either the Spirit or its “Humanity”; and only after
the two successive Christ-Visions do these two new experiences and
conceptions entirely replace the three old ones of Soul, Body, and
Self-Love. In a word, we have here, carefully carried through, the
scheme, so clearly enunciated by Battista Vernazza in 1554, of the two
successive divisions effected by God in Man, during the process of
Man’s purification: first, the separation (division) of the Soul from
the Body; and then the separation (division) of the Spirit from the
Soul.[394] And, in strict accordance with this scheme, the Soul here
becomes conscious of being, in its upper reaches, Spirit, only on the
day that it has broken away from the domination of the downward-tending
Body, and of Self-Love. And once the Soul has thus affirmed the
Spirit and denied the Body, the “Body” and the “Soul” cease to be
directly mentioned; the one term “Humanity” now takes the Soul’s and
the Body’s place. For now the Soul, in so far as it has still not
completely identified itself with the Spirit, does not any more attach
itself directly to the Body and the Body’s pleasures,--to, as it
were, the upper fringe of the Body,--but to the sensible-spiritual
consolations which are the necessary concomitants and consequences of
the Soul’s affirmation and acceptance of the Spirit,--hence, as it
were, to the lower fringe of the Spirit. “I would have thee know,” the
Spirit now says to Catherine, “that I fear much more an attachment
to the spiritual than to the bodily taste and feeling. Man goes his
way ‘feeding’ his spiritual sensuality upon the things which proceed
from God, and yet these things are a very poison for the Pure Love of
God.”[395]
3. _The “Dialogo” intensifies or softens certain narratives and sayings
given by the “Vita.”_
Now these interesting forty pages of the first _Dialogo_ derive (with
the sole exception of three little touches) their entire historical
materials from the _Vita e Dottrina_, and, indeed, from but those
parts of this _corpus_ which already appear in MSS. A and B, and in
the previous pages of MS. C itself. But all these materials have been
re-thought, re-pictured, re-arranged throughout, by a new, powerful,
and experienced mind, a mind dominated by certain very definite,
schematic conceptions as to the constitution of the human personality,
the nature of holiness, and the laws of its growth, and which is
determined to find or form concrete examples of these conceptions, in
and from the life of Catherine.
(1) _Cases of intensifying._
There are, first, five cases of the intensifying of authentic
_Vita_-accounts, intensifications necessary, or at least ancillary, to
the scheme underlying the whole _Dialogo_-composition.
As to the pre-conversion sinfulness, during her second “week,”
Catherine’s soul is made to say: “In a short time I was enveloped in
sin; and, abiding in that snare, I lost the grace (of God) and remained
blind and heavy, and from spiritual I became all earthly.”[396] Yet
there is no evidence that Catherine, even at that time, ever committed
grave sin; nor does there exist an authentic saying of hers which,
however intense its expressions of contrition, conveys an impression
really equivalent to this passage.--As to the form of her contrition,
“so greatly was this soul alienated (from her own self) and submerged
in the sight of the offence of God, that she no longer seemed a
rational creature, but a terrified animal.”[397] Yet the earlier
accounts, which certainly do not minimize here, keep well within
the limits of normal, though intense, human feeling and expression
of feeling.--As to the forcible means taken by her to overcome her
fastidiousness in the matter of cleanliness and in the sense of taste,
“she would put the impurities into her mouth, as though they had been
precious pearls.”[398] Yet the original versions, drastic enough in
all conscience, nowhere imply that there was any such relish, even
of a merely apparent kind.--As to her post-conversion poverty, the
Spirit says to her: “Thou shalt work to provide for thy living,” and
the narrative declares: “The Spirit made her so poor, that she would
have been unable to live, had not God provided for her by the means
of alms.”[399] Yet we know from her wills that (though the Hospital
authorities gave her free lodging, and perhaps, at first, free board as
well) she retained, up to the last, an appreciable little income, and
herself conferred many an alms out of these her own means.
Nevertheless, in each of these cases, the _Dialogo_ exaggeration is
suggested by some phrase or word in the _Vita_ which has been taken
up into the new context and medium of this other mind, and has come
to mean something curiously (though often in form but slightly)
different from that older account.--Thus, in this fourth instance,
the _Vita_-accounts had said: “nel _principio_ di sua conversione,
molto si _esercitò_.” “Viveva ancora molto _sottomessa ad ogni
creatura_.” “Quantunque ella fosse in tutto dedicata ed occupata
negli _esercizii_ di esso Spedale, nondimeno mai volle godere ne
usare una minima cosa di quello per _viver suo_; ma, per quel poco
che abbisognava, si serviva della _povera_ sostanza sua: onde ben si
scorgeva che il suo dolce Amore era quello il quale operava in lei
ogni cosa per vera unione.” “Si _esercitò_ nelle opere pie, cercando i
_poveri_, essendo condotta delle Donne della Misericordia, e le davano
danari ed altre _provvisioni_.”[400] The _Dialogo_-writer has worked
all this up as follows: “Io (lo Spirito) ti avviso _primieramente_
voler io che tu pruovi che cosa sia esser ubbidiente, acciò tu
divenghi umile e _soggetta ad ogni creatura_; ed acciochè ti possi
_esercitare_, lavorerai per provedere al _viver tuo_.” “Primieramente
la fece tanto _povera_, che non avrebbe potuto vivere, se Dio non
l’avvesse _provveduta_ per via di limosine. Poi quando le Signore della
Misericordia l’addimandavano per andare a’poveri … ella sempre con loro
andava.”[401] I have italicized the words taken over by the _Dialogo_.
Thus her own poor substance (_i.e._ her own modest income), and the
money given to her by the _Misericordia_-ladies for distribution among
the poor, becomes a substance, alms and money, given to herself as to a
poor person.
The fifth case concerns the affections. In the _Vita_-proper nothing
is more characteristic of Catherine, up to the spring of 1509, than
her swift and deep affective sympathy, and the fearless forms of its
manifestation. True, Catherine “would” (certainly up to 1490, perhaps
more or less up to 1496) “abide at times,” up to six hours on end,
“as though dead.” But, “on hearing herself called, she would suddenly
arise and betake herself, in answer, to whatever was required of her,
however small a service this might be.” And indeed “she served the
sick with most fervent affection:” thus she attended throughout a week
upon a poor pestiferous woman; and at the end, “unable further to
contain herself, kissed” the dying woman “upon the mouth with great
affection of heart, and so caught the pestilential fever, and well-nigh
died of it.”[402]--Then, too, there is the _Vita’s_ quite general,
indeterminate remark, “she (Catherine) felt no pain at the deaths of
her (two elder) brothers and of her sisters” (the latter should be
“sister,” unless, perhaps, a sister-in-law is included) in 1502.[403]
But her extant wills have shown us how actively thoughtful she
remained, even in 1506 and 1509, for her brother, nephews and nieces,
and humble retainers; and the deeply affectionate scenes with Marco
and Argentina occurred between 1503 and 1506. Marco, the poor navvy,
was dying “of a cancer in the face,” and Catherine, at Argentina’s
asking, “as though with prompt obedience, betook herself to him”; and
he “threw his arms round Catherine’s neck, and, pressing her with sobs,
seemed unable to have done with weeping.[404] And then, still weeping,
with great tenderness he besought Catherine to adopt his wife as her
spiritual daughter,” and Catherine did so, and “loved this spiritual
daughter much.”[405]--Only in the very late actions, the change as to
her burial-place (Will of March 1509), and the exclusion of all her
attendants on January 10, and of most of them on and after August 27,
1510,[406] are there indications of any absence or renunciation of
tender and spontaneous human affection.
But here again the _Dialogo_ both closely presses and profoundly
changes the original accounts. For here the Spirit declares to her: “in
these exercises” of work among the poor, “I shall keep thee … as though
thou wast dead. I will not allow thee to make friends with any one,
nor that thou shouldst have any particular affection for any relative;
but I want thee to love all men, and this without affection, both poor
and rich, both friends and relatives. I do not want thee, in thine
interior, to know one person from the other, nor would I have thee go
to any one from motives of friendship; it will suffice to go when thou
art called.” And thus “she went, when the _Misericordia_-ladies asked
her to go into dwellings that would have frightened away all ordinary
mortals. But she, on the contrary, deliberately touched these sick
(_voleva toccarli_), for the purpose of giving them some refreshment
to soul and body.”[407]--Note how skilfully the call, and the going
at the call, the affection and its spontaneous manifestations in the
original accounts, have been altered and crossed by the _Dialogue’s_
re-statement.--Here again we are strongly reminded of Battista, in
her letter to the Signora Andronica in 1575, encouraging her to
“abandon all things,” her children included, “interiorly,” and “to
mortify the most pleasing consolation which arises from the children’s
company.” Indeed, already in 1554, Battista has, in one of her own
_Colloquies_, refused to accept every avoidable consolation arising
from her pure election by God.[408] Only by such a reference of these
_Dialogo_-passages to Battista, the many-sided, the ever-affectionate
daughter and public-spirited woman, can we come to see them in a wider
context; indeed only thus can they cease to be profoundly repulsive.
(2) _Cases of softening._
There are two instances of the softening of (doubtless authentic)
doctrinal sayings given by the _Vita_-proper. Her evidently impulsive
exclamation: “I would not have grace or mercy, but justice and
vengeance exercised against the malefactor,”--has here become: “She did
not attach any importance to her sins, on the ground of the punishment
awaiting them, but solely because they had been enacted against the
infinite goodness of God.”--And her bold declaration: “If any creature
could be found which did not participate in the divine goodness, that
creature would be as malignant as God is good,” here reads: “The soul
bereft of the Divine love becomes _well-nigh_ as malignant as the
Divine love is good and delightful. I say ‘well-nigh,’ for God shows
it a little mercy.”[409] The proclamation of some moral good even in
lost souls, is thus weakened to an admission of some consolation in the
latter.
4. _Re-statement of the Conversion-experiences of March 1474._
But it is in the matters of Catherine’s Conversion in the
Convent-Chapel, on March 22, 1474, and of the Vision of the Bleeding
Christ in the Palazzo Adorno, soon after, that the _Dialogo’s_
transformation of the _Vita_-accounts reaches its highest interest.
I give it here as the chief of many such re-statements which I have
carefully analyzed.
_Vita_-proper, _Vita_ (_Dialogo_), pp. 199_c_,
pp. 4_a_-5_b_. 200_c_, 202_c_, 208_c_, 209_a_,
_b_. 209_c_, 210_a_, 211_a_, _b_.
Subitocchè se gli fù inginocchiata Quando Iddio vuole purgare
innanzi, receve una un anima … le manda il
ferita al cuore d’immenso suo divino lume, facendola
amore di Dio, con una vista vedere una scintilla di quel
così chiara delle sue miserie puro amore con quale ci ama
e diffetti, e della bontà di Dio … essendo noi nemici per
che ne fù per cascare in terra. molte offese che gli abbiamo
Onde … restò quasi fuor di fatte.… E le fà vedere quel
sè: e perciò internamente affocato amore.… Tutto
gridava con ardente amore: questo fù dimostrato da Dio
“Non più mondo, non più peccati.” in un instante, coll’ operazione
Ed in quel punto.… sua purissima.… Questo
… Per la viva fiamma d’infocato raggio d’amore fù quello che
amore il dolce Iddio ferì quell’ anima in un istante
impresse in quell’ anima … … che la fece restare in
tutta la perfezione.… quel punto quasi fuori di sè.…
Vedeva ancora le offese che Le fù ancora mostrato … quanti
gli aveva fatte; e perciò gridava: erano tutti i suoi diffetti
“O amore mai più, mai … in modo che sommerse
più, peccati.” Se le accese poi sè stessa con tal
un odio di sè medesima, che dispregio che avrebbe detto
non si poteva sopportare, e i suoi peccati pubbliccamente
diceva: “O amore, se bisogna, per tutta la città, nè altro
sono apparecchiata di confessare poteva dire se non: “O Signore
i miei peccati in pubblico.” mai più mondo, nè peccati.”
Ma volendo il Signore accendere Stando l’anima in questa
intrinsecamente più quasi disperazione di sè
l’amor suo in quest’ anima, ed medesima … vedendosi un
insieme il dolore dei suoi carico da disperato alle spalle,
peccati, se le mostrò in ispirito … era come una cosa insensata
colla Croce in spalla, piovendo ed attonita fuori di sè.…
tutto sangue, per modo che la Essendo un giorno in casa,
casa le pareva tutta piena di le apparve in vista interiore
rivoli di quel sangue, il quale il Signor Nostro Gesù
vedeva essere tutto sparso per Christo, tutto insanguinato
amore: il che le accese nel da capo a’ piedi, in modo che
cuore tanto fuoco, che ne pareva che da quel corpo
usciva fuor di sè, e pareva piovesse sangue per tutta la
una cosa insensata per tanto terra dove andava; e le fù
amore e dolore che ne sentiva. detta in occulto questa parola:
“vedi tu questo sangue? tutto
è sparso per amor tuo, e per
soddisfazione de’ tuoi peccati.”
In queste parole le fù data
una gran ferita d’amore verso
esso Signor nostro Gesù
Christo, con una confidenza
tale, che disparve quella prima
vista tanto disperata e si
rallegrò un poco in esso
Signore.…
Questa vista le fù tanto Le fù mostrata un altra
penetrativa che vista maggior di quella, e
tanto più grande che con
lingua non si potrebbe dire
… le fù infuso un raggio
d’amore nel cuore.… Gridava
e sospirava molto più e
le pareva sempre vedere (e senza comparazione che della
cogli occhi corporali) prima vista, la quale fù dell’
esser maligno di sè stessa.
Questo raggio d’amore le fù
il suo Amore tutto insanguinato lasciato impresso con quelle
e confitto in Croce. cinque fontane di Christo, le
quali mandavano goccie
d’affuoccato sangue di acceso
amore verso dell’ uomo.
Hence _D._ gives but one exclamation as to “world” and “sins,” and
constructs this out of the two (mutually differing) exclamations of the
same kind given by _V._, the second of which now stands in _V._ after
the Bleeding-Christ episode. Whilst spacing all out, _D._ keeps to the
order and context of _V.’s_ paragraphs. And _D._ utilizes the curious,
silent change from the moving Christ to the affixed Christ in _V.’s_
account of the single vision in the Palace, so as to constitute two
perfectly distinct visions. The Cross of both these doublets of _V._,
(the “Croce” which, in the first part of _V.’s_ single account, is
“in spalla,” on His shoulder; and the Cross which, in the second part
of the same account, He is nailed to), has, in _D._, disappeared from
both separate visions. And yet the Cross hovers about the first vision,
here transformed into a “carico alle spalle,” a load upon Catherine’s
shoulders,--an oppression on her mind; and is presupposed in the second
vision, since those “five fountains sending forth burning blood” are,
of course, the wounds of Christ, whilst He hangs affixed to the Cross
as described in _V.’s_ second part. And the “Signore piovendo tutto
sangue,” and the “rivoli di sangue, sparso per amore, il che accese
nel cuore tanto fuoco,” of _V._, have, in _D._, become “quelle cinque
fontane di Christo, le quali mandavano goccie d’affuocato sangue e
di acceso amore.”--This fountain-imagery is derived from numerous
authentic sayings and “viste” of Catherine as to the “living Fount
(_fonte_) of the divine goodness,” or “of infinite love,” and “the
clear waters coming from the divine fount.” The very word “fountain”
(_fontana_) occurs in one of _V.’s_ descriptive passages; and the idea
appears in Catherine’s address to Our Lord at the well (_pozzo_) of
Samaria, and in her thereupon receiving refreshment of soul, by the
gift of “a little drop (_gocciola_)” of that divine water.[410] And the
fountains are here made to proceed from a ray of love; and this again
comes from numerous authentic sayings of hers: in one case the “raggio
d’amore” appears split up into several rays: “raggi … affocati di
divino amore.”[411]
5. _Three new authentic details._
And yet these remarkable forty pages furnish us with three fresh
statements or implications of detail, respectively too precise, vivid
and verisimilar and too little obvious, to be easily attributable to
any but a new and authentic source of information. There is the vividly
precise information that, during Catherine’s actively penitential
period, “the love of God, wishing that she should lose all relish in
what she ate, made her always carry some epatic aloes and pounded
agaric about with her; and whenever she suspected that one kind of
her food was about to give her more pleasure than another, she would
furtively put a little of that most bitter compound upon it, before
eating it.” There is the formal declaration that “she also went to the
poor of San Lazaro.” And there is the statement, already noticed, that,
after her conversion, she had “to work to provide for her living,” and
“that she would have been unable to live, unless God had provided for
her by way of alms.”[412]
Now the first statement should be compared with Battista Vernazza’s,
similarly precise, pharmaceutical detail as to the cassia used by her
father in doctoring the poor in 1493, recorded by Battista, nearly
ninety years later, in 1581:[413] Battista would, then, have been
quite capable of remembering and recording that aloes-and-agaric
detail some seventy years after the event. As to the second statement,
I have already given the various solid reasons which point to
Catherine’s co-operation with Battista’s father in his work amongst
the Pestiferous, as far back as the year 1493.[414] And as to the
third statement (in apparently direct conflict with the declaration
in the _Vita_-proper, that, although entirely devoted to the service
of the Hospital, she never would enjoy or use the slightest thing
belonging to it for her own living[415]) the Wills prove to us that,
however exaggerated be the language of _D._, it, and not _V._, is here
substantially in the right. For, though she could have afforded to
live in modest style, on her own little income, she did, as a matter
of fact, hold her little house rent-free from the Hospital, in return
for her services to it. Here also Battista would have known the precise
facts from her father, who had himself drawn up or witnessed three
documents referring to these matters.
6. _Battista Vernazza, the author of this first “Dialogo.”_
The reader will by now be concluding with me, that all these
peculiarities of the _Dialogo_ point to one person as its author:
Battista Vernazza. And all its other circumstances and characteristics
make for the same conclusion.
(1) _Particular circumstances._
There is the place. For the original of MS. C., in which appear the
first traces, (this whole first part), of _D._, came from Battista’s
own Convent; and thus a document which, in its later narrative part,
contained, as we shall find, so much primary matter due to Vernazza
the father, and so much secondary composition and arrangement due to
Vernazza the daughter; and which, in its dialogue part, gave much
original literary work due to a Vernazza: would easily (no doubt soon
after Battista’s death), come to be considered as the work and the
copying of Ettore Vernazza alone. And there is the date. For if this
first part was written in 1548, 1549, Battista would have been fifty
or fifty-two years old. And we have already considered writings of
hers, written, with equal subtlety of psychological distinctions and
even greater vigour of style, in 1554, 1555, and even in 1575, at
seventy-eight and eighty-four years of age.[416]
There is, too, the form, so curiously schematic and abstract, and,
in part, far-fetched, yet based upon a minute, most ingenious use
of scriptural texts. Thus those two “weeks,” (symbols for the two,
respectively lukewarm and sinful, lustres), are no doubt suggested
by the “seventy weeks” which “the man Gabriel” declares to Daniel
“shall be shortened upon the Jewish people, that transgression may
be finished, and everlasting justice may be brought and vision may
be fulfilled”;[417] and by Jacob’s twice seven years of servitude
under Laban, and by Laban’s words “make up the week of days of this
match.”[418] We thus get Catherine’s two weeks (of years) of servitude
to sin, and her two successive “matches” or alliances, entered into
between her soul and body under the influence of self-love. We found a
similar minute ingenuity in Battista’s use of Scripture in 1554.[419]
And there is a complex, abstract, astonishingly self-consistent
psychology running through the whole, and one simply identical with the
psychology treated by Battista as more or less a point of revelation to
herself in 1554. And, partly as effect or as cause of that psychology,
the _Dialogo_ has a painfully great, at times downrightly repulsive,
insistence upon detachment from emotional feeling, both in intercourse
with fellow-creatures, and in spiritual commerce with God, that is
simply identical, in its parallelism, range, depth, and doctrinal
setting, with the position which Battista takes up in her _Colloquii_
of 1554.[420]
Again we get here a prominent and persistent occupation with the
historic Christ and His passion, that are as unlike Catherine’s as
they are identical with Battista’s spiritual trend. For, during her
Conversion-Vision, Catherine here sees that “burning love which Our
Lord Jesus Christ manifested when upon earth, from His Incarnation up
to His Ascension”; and this corresponds precisely with Battista’s sight
(_vista_), in 1554, of “the Infinite Love manifested unto men, in
and by the life of Christ, at the Nativity and at the Ascension.” And
the Christ-Vision here becomes two separate apparitions; that of the
Crucified Christ is declared “greater than” that of the Walking Christ;
and there is an insistence upon “those five Fountains,” an image
derived indeed from Catherine’s “living fountain of Goodness, which
participated with the creature,” but which, in Catherine, is conceived
in connection with God and metaphysically, and here is transferred to
the historic and crucified Christ, in close keeping with Battista’s
whole emphatic Christo-centrism.[421]
And, finally, we find here certain daring anthropomorphisms without
any full parallel in Catherine’s sayings, but entirely matched by
expressions of Battista. God is here not as, in Catherine’s manner,
Himself an irradiating Love, but is “ever standing with burning rays
of love in His hand, to inflame and penetrate the hearts of men,” a
combination of the Thing-imagery dear to Catherine (for Love is here
still a luminous, burning substance), and of the human, Personal
picturing prominent with Battista (for God here has a hand, in which
He holds that substance). This latter picturing (probably in 1550) is
not unlike the more spiritual anthropomorphism of “the Increate Heart”
of God, used by Battista in 1575 a passage already exceeded here, in
the _Dialogo_, by the words, “God showed her the love with which He had
suffered”--words which, if pressed, would introduce suffering into the
divine nature Itself.[422]
(2) _General considerations._
All these cumulative reasons of detail will be indefinitely fortified
by what I shall have to say as to the character of the subsequent
parts of the _Dialogo_, and in proof of these parts and the first
instalment being by one and the same author. But, meanwhile, we can
press this further general consideration, that only a person with
considerable traditional authority in matters concerning Catherine, and
yet a person, not a direct eyewitness or full contemporary, hence an
individual without any additional information, and unhampered by the
(otherwise necessary) regard for the sensitiveness of still living
contributors to the original biography, can possibly have written such
a document. For this production, when it first appears complete, in
the first Printed _Vita_ of 1551, will there occupy quite one third
of the whole book; and yet, whilst incorporating practically all,
and only all, the material of those other two-thirds (the _Trattato_
alone excepted), it gives to everything a fresh grouping and setting,
colour and atmosphere, drift and character. Only a remarkable, powerful
mind; a writer skilled in mystical subjects; one with leisure for
such a careful composition; one, too, sufficiently in sympathy with
Catherine to be attracted to, and helped through, the difficult task;
a person living now, thirty-eight years after Catherine’s death, in
an environment of a kind to preserve her memory green: all these
conditions must, more or less, have met and been realized in the
writer of this curious, forcible book.--And Battista, the God-daughter
of the heroine of the work, and the eldest, devoted daughter of the
chief contributor to the already extant biography; a Contemplative
with a deep interest in, and much practical experience of, the kind of
spirituality to be portrayed and the sort of literature required; a
Nun, during thirty-eight years, in the very Convent where Catherine’s
sister (one of its foundresses) had lived and died, and where Catherine
herself had desired to live and where her Conversion had taken place;
a woman who was but thirteen at the time when Catherine died, after
nine years of much suffering and seclusion, and who, even now but
fifty-one years of age, had outlived all the close friends and original
chief biographers of Catherine by thirty-five, twenty-four, and twenty
years: Battista, and Battista alone, united in her own person all these
necessary conditions. And it will have been the sensitively original
and strongly synthetic cast of Battista’s mind which made the strangely
fragmentary, repetitive, contradictory, static, and yet abrupt and
unharmonized multiplicity of the _Vita_ both irritating as it stood,
and yet (with its considerable elements of unmistakably first-hand
portraiture of a rarely large and lofty mind and character) profoundly
stimulative to a re-thinking, re-feeling, re-stating of the whole,--at
least, up to the zenith of that Soul’s perfection.
But our next stage will make all this clearer still.
VI. SIXTH STAGE: FIRST PRINTED EDITION OF THE
“VITA-DOTTRINA-DICCHIARAZIONE,” 1551; EXAMINATION OF ALL IT POSSESSES
IN ADDITION TO MSS. A, B AND C, APART FROM THE “DIALOGO.”
At last we reach the publication of the _Life_, in Genoa, in
1551.[423] A printing-press had not been established in Genoa till
1536 (by Bellone); hence the _Life_ appeared only fifteen years
after the earliest date possible for its publication,--other cities
not being, as yet, sufficiently interested in Catherine to think of
such an undertaking.--Only further on shall I attempt some analysis,
estimation, and attribution of that _corpus_ of earlier and earliest
constituents of the Book, which, although frequently referred to at our
last two stages, had there to remain unanalyzed. In these remaining two
stages I intend to treat only, first of the Introductory parts of the
Book, special to its printed form, and then of the Second “Chapter” of
the _Dialogo_ (its present Second and Third Parts).
Here then we have to deal with the matter which, amongst our extant
documents, appears for the first time in the Printed _Vita_ of
1551, and first with that part of it which is there devoted to the
publication of the Book. This part of the matter consists, in the
order of its place in the Book, of the Title with its Picture; the
Approbation; the Preface; and the Subscription.
1. _Title-page._
The Title-page has: “Book of the Admirable Life and Holy Doctrine of
the Blessed Catarinetta of Genoa, in which is contained a Useful and
Catholic Demonstration and Declaration of Purgatory.” And underneath
appears a picture of Our Lord Crucified, and Blessed Catherine on her
knees before Him, and crowned with a Diadem; with the text: “I confess
to Thee, Father, Lord of Heaven and Earth, that Thou hast hid these
things from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them unto little
ones” (Matt. xi).
Note here, in the Title, the correct and most attractive baptismal
form of her Christian name, Catarinetta, which appears here for the
last time, either in the Title, the Heading, or the Subscription of
her _Life_; and the disappearance, which is final, of her family name
Adorna, which had figured in the titles of all the MSS. Thus “La
miranda vita e sancta conversation di Madonna Catherinetta Adorna,” the
older heading of MS. A, which will have been that of the Giustiniano
book (a heading which itself had succeeded to “De la Miranda
Conversione di quondam Donna Catherinetta Adorna” of the booklet of
1512, still preserved in MS. B), has here become “La vita mirabile e
dottrina santa de la Beata Catarinetta da Genoa.”--And note how, for
the first time, mention is made in the title of what has hitherto been
but a long Chapter of the _Vita_; and how what in the MSS. had, in that
Chapter’s heading, claimed but to be a matter of devotional experience
(“How, by comparison of the divine fire, which she felt in her heart
and which purified her soul, she saw interiorly and understood how
the Souls abide in Purgatory”), has here been given, some thirty
years after the Papal condemnation of Luther’s theses on Purgatory, a
controversial point,--it is now “a Useful and Catholic Demonstration
and Declaration of Purgatory.” We have here an attitude of mind
inevitably different from Catherine’s pure positiveness.--And remark,
too, the continued non-indication of the _Dialogo_, although this is
now present, like the “Dimostrazione,” as a distinct document in the
Book: the Dialogue is evidently still too new to be able to modify the
old title-page, and to appear there alongside of a composition which,
though but one-sixth of its own length, is now some thirty and more
years old.
In the Picture Catherine wears a diadem, a compromise between an
indication of her noble birth and a hint of the nimbus which they
shrink from giving to her unequivocally. And she is kneeling before the
Christ Crucified,--evidently an attitude chosen as specially typical
of her whole life and doctrine, because of the passages in the _Vita_:
“She ever seemed to see her Love affixed to the Cross”; “she was next
drawn to the side of the Crucified”; “she appeared in very truth as a
body affixed to a Cross,” with the dependent account of her “interior
stigmatization,”--“she received a new wound at her heart, so that she
might feel within herself the wound in the side of her tender Love”;
and the amplifications of some of these passages in the _Dialogo_.[424]
Yet only the first three passages occur in the MSS.; and the first
two are carefully restricted there to her first Conversion-Period
(of four years at most), whilst the third passage refers to a (quite
unusual) bodily posture, assumed by her on one single occasion during
her last illness, an attitude which remained uninterpreted by herself.
The fact is that the precise contrary of what this picture suggests is
one of the chief characteristics of Catherine, for she is habitually
absorbed in contemplations remarkably lacking in historical imagery and
setting. And the _Dialogo_ parallels and variants which, as we have
seen, so largely increase this historical element, and especially this
occupation with Christ Crucified, are characteristic, not of Catherine
but of Battista. The picture is, no doubt, the consequence of this
increasing emphasis laid, in her successive _Vitae_, upon a side of
religion all but entirely absent from the middle and last periods of
Catherine’s actual life; and fully expresses Battista’s feeling, who,
just as she addressed her whole long letter of 1575 in Donna Anguisola,
“in the Crucified,” will have seen to it that the whole book concerning
her own God-mother was placed at the feet of the Crucifix.
2. _The Approbation._
The Latin Approbation runs: “I, Fra Geronimo of Genoa of the Order of
Preachers, Apostolic Inquisitor into Heretical Pravity throughout the
whole Dominion of Genoa, assent to this Book being committed to print,
for the consolation and instruction of spiritual persons. Witness
this my autograph.” The points of interest in connection with this
Approbation will appear, as we proceed, to consist in the reasons why
such theological “corrections” as were actually introduced into the
doctrinal parts of the _Vitae_ had all been made long before this date,
probably none of them later than 1530; and why they were, throughout,
practically restricted to her very sober and correct Purgatorial
teaching, and left her other, far more daring, sayings more or less
untouched. I can find no traces of any theological changes introduced,
for this edition of 1551, into the _Vita-Dicchiarazione_ sections;
but we shall see how three points and tendencies of the _Vita_-proper
have been indirectly criticised and “corrected” by means of their
re-statement in the _Dialogo_, which was certainly finished, and
possibly begun, with a view to its appearance in the company of the
_Vita_ and the _Dicchiarazione_.
3. _The Preface._
The Preface consists of seven full and balanced, dignified and
self-restrained, thoroughly well-informed and yet, in part,
deliberately obscure and illusive, sentences. It still excludes the
idea of any literary authorship on the part of Catherine: “Madonna
Caterinetta, of whose admirable Conversion, Life, and Doctrine,
together with her many privileges and particular graces, we shall
write.… Here, in her Life and Holy Doctrine is to be found.…” Not
Catherine writes, but “we,” _i.e._ the final Redactor, or all the
Contributors together with him; and not her Writings are to be found
here, but her “Doctrine” only. Indeed, it all “has been collected with
truth and simplicity by two devout spiritual persons, from the very
lips of the Seraphic Woman herself.” More would quite evidently have
been claimed, if more had been true.
And it contains two or three evident additions to its original text,
made for this publication in view of the entire _Dialogo’s_ first
appearance here; additions which contain an expression which may well
have occasioned or helped on the legend of “Catherine, an Author,”
a legend which was sure to spring up at the first opportunity and
provocation. The fifth sentence reads at present as follows: “Sono in
questo libro [dignissimi suoi trattati dell’ amor di Dio e dell’ amor
proprio] una bellisima e chiarissima dimostrazione del Purgatorio, e
in che modo vi stiano dentro le anime contentissime, [e un bel dialogo
dell’ Anima con il Corpo e Amor poprio, dal quale ne seguita un amoroso
colloquio dell’ Anima con il suo Signore] ed altre dignissime cose da
sapere, veramente tutte di eccellentissima speculazione ed utilità [e
massime in questi turbolenti tempi necessarie].”[425]
Now even the last set of bracketed words seems an addition, and points
to the existence of the body of this Preface at a period prior to
“questi turbolenti tempi,” times that I take to be 1536-1537, when
Battista’s God-father Moro lapsed into Calvinism. Ever since 1520,
when Luther’s Purgatory doctrines were condemned, these writings
would have been held, if not “necessary,” at least “of most excellent
utility.”--There is, any way, no doubt as to the two previous sets
being insertions. For note, if they be retained, the slovenly
repetition, by the first set, of “dignissimi” in the midst of a most
finished composition; the extraordinary use of the word “Trattati,”
to signify either Chapter XXV (which bears the title “Dell’ Amor
Proprio e del Divino Amore,” and is a collection of sayings pronounced
on at least three different occasions), or Chapters XXV and XXVI,--in
either case, Chapters which are no more significant or authentic than
any other of the doctrinal chapters. And remark, in the second set,
the curiously mild praise for the _Dialogo_ contained in the one
positive “un bel,” wedged in between the two superlatives lavished on
the “Dimostrazione” and the two superlatives given to the remaining
doctrinal parts of the Book. The object of that first “Trattati”
insertion is evidently to pick out some one or other of the already
ancient Chapters of the _Vita_, which have some special likeness to the
subject-matter and title of the _Dialogo_, so as to prevent the latter
from looking too suspiciously different from the rest of the doctrine
traditionally ascribed to Catherine.
I take this Preface to have existed, without these additions, in the
“worthy book” described by Giustiniano in 1536. But as that careful
writer insists upon the precise length of time, because it had been
considerable, during which Catherine’s body had lain incorrupt, and
says nothing about the antiquity of the book, a point he would hardly
have failed to urge had he been able to do so, I hesitate to push this
Book, and this its Preface, further back than 1530, a very probable
date for the first (at least complete) fusion of Vernazza’s and
Marabotto’s separate contributions, since these two chief disciples
would then have been dead six and two years respectively, and the
culmination of Protestant “turbulence” in Calvin’s open revolt and
Moro’s defection would not be taking place for another five and
six years respectively.--Catherine indeed appears here no more as
the “quondam Donna Catarinetta” of MS. B, but still as “Madonna
Catherinetta, figliuola di M. Giacomo della nobilissima casa Fiesca,
maritata a M. Giuliano Adorno,” a designation distinctly earlier
than the “Beata Catarinetta di Genoa” of the Title. And the Book,
its substance, is declared to have been “collected by two spiritual
persons (_Religiosi_), her devotees, from the very lips of the Seraphic
Woman herself.” This passage, it is true, now reads “Raccolto dai
divoti religiosi (suo Confessore e un figliuolo suo spirituale).” But,
where the Preface is above the suspicion of having been touched up, a
“cioê” introduces such a bracket; the rhythm of this sentence, in the
midst of this otherwise exquisite Preface, is woefully imperfect; and
the evidently deliberate ambiguity of “divoti religiosi” is rendered
all but nugatory by the considerable clearness of the bracketed
information. The clause will originally have read, “Da due religiosi
sui divoti,” for this obviates all three objections. But, in this
deliberately mysterious form, it must have been written when both were
dead, and yet when the death of the last was still recent; and this
again brings us to a date soon after Marabotto’s death in 1528.
Who wrote this Preface? Much in it points to Battista. So the use
of “cioè,” so characteristic of her _Colloquies_ and _Letters_ and
also of the _Dialogo_; and the phrase “divote persone,” recurring
in the _Dialogo_;[426] and the doctrinal tone of “l’amoroso Signor
Nostro, sitibondo della salute delle sue razionali creature,” “il suo
consolatorio spirito,” “la perfetta e consummata unione possibile ai
viatori,” and “quasi non più fide, ma già certezza,” all closely like
passages in her _Colloquies_ and in her Letter to Donna Anguisola.
The mysteriousness and equality of designation, applied to both
Ettore and Don Cattaneo, would come with a special naturalness from
Battista, spontaneously anxious to place her heroic father’s sanctity
and intimacy with Catherine on a level with those of Catherine’s
priest-friend and Confessor Marabotto. And, if written in 1530,
Battista would at the time have been a formed writer,--a woman of
thirty-three years of age.--There are, no doubt, certain differences.
The _Dialogo_ nowhere has such an “ancorchè … niente (non) dimeno”
clause. “Un Serafino,” “essa Serafica Donna” of this Preface, are,
in strictness, unmatched in Battista’s, otherwise even intenser,
writings. “La perfetta e consummata unione possibile ai viatori” is
a more ordinary and technical phrase than I can find elsewhere in
Battista’s writings. Above all, the general style and rhythm is here,
somehow, a little different from that of those other writings.--Still,
these differences are explicable by the writer of the Preface finding
himself largely bound by the existing _Vita_-materials, and by their
very niceties of expression. The Author of the Preface is certainly
identical with the Redactor of the first (tripartite) _Vita e
Dottrina_; and this Redactor, we shall find, must be Battista. The
insertions in the Preface, containing the praise of the _Dialogo_,
are certainly the work of another hand.--Upon the whole, then, we
can safely attribute the Preface, in its original form, to Battista
Vernazza.
4. _The Subscription._
The subscription to the _Vita_-proper, in this first Edition, runs:
“Here ends the life of the noble Matron, Catarinetta Adorna”; which
thus still retains (like the Preface, but against the Title) the warmly
human and precise, domestic and familiar designation of the first
heading of MS. A.
VII. SEVENTH STAGE: THE SECOND “CHAPTER” OF THE “DIALOGO,” WHICH
APPEARS FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THE PRINTED “VITA,” 1551.
1. _Three remarks concerning the two Parts of this “Chapter.”_
(1) The additions to the _Dialogo_ which appear here for the first
time, and which amount to its present Parts Second and Third, are given
in this First Edition as one single, the Second, “Chapter,” following
upon the older part here designated “Chapter First.” In the Fourth
Edition, 1601, this division of the _Dialogo_ is formally announced on
the Title-page: “With a Dialogue, divided into two Chapters, between
the Soul, the Body, and Self Love; and (the Soul and) the Lord.” I
do not know precisely when those two “Chapters” were replaced by the
present Three Parts, and when these Parts were divided up into the
present Chapters; it was, in any case, after the sixth edition (1645).
(2) These last two Parts seem to have been written, from the first,
with a view to eventual division into two. For though the whole of this
Second Chapter is not much longer than the First Chapter (forty-seven
and a half pages, against forty), it yet divides up very well at about
half-way, since the first half here ends with a piece of moralizing
narrative, applied to the whole earthly existence: “The more valiant
a man is at the beginning, the greater martyrdom should he expect at
the end … nor does God cease to make provision … up to that Man’s
death.”[427]
(3) This whole “Chapter” Second is by the same author as “Chapter”
First; in this Second, even more than in that First “Chapter,” there
are no historical materials other than those still present, more or
less untouched, in the _Vita_-proper; and yet these materials have
again been modified, in their sequence and setting, their tone and
pitch, their drift and meaning, and all this throughout by the same
powerful and experienced, often deep and touching, but also, in great
part, painfully abstract and straining, absolute-minded and excessive
writer.
2. _General indications of identity of authorship for “Chapters” First
and Second._
(1) “Chapter” First had, we know, concluded with a paraphrase of the
last stage in the scheme of Catherine’s spiritual growth as given
in the _Vita_-proper, and had thus reached the _ne plus ultra_ of
perfection for any creature, either here or in the world to come.
“And now the Spirit said: ‘I am determined no further to call her
a human creature, since I now see her (to be) all in God, without
any Humanity’”: a statement which may well (like the corresponding
Spiritual-Kiss stage in the _Vita’s_ scheme)[428] have been intended,
at the time of its composition, both to describe directly her great
middle years, 1474-1499, and to sum up generally her later life,
1499-1510.--But no such hyperbolic language, when thus applied to man
as we know him, or as we can even conceive him here below, can, of
course, be kept up. And thus here in the _Dialogo_ (as previously in
the corresponding place in the _Vita_-proper), what had originally been
the conclusion of a self-contained account of her Conversion, became,
owing to the desire of utilizing much extant material which directly
described her years of physical break-up, but one chapter in the story
of her total life. Hence we now find, both in the _Vita_-proper and the
_Dialogo_, an instructive anti-climax, in an attempted description (the
_Dialogo_ gives this in its “Chapter” Second) of her successive states
from 1497 to her death in 1510, states and changes which, were we to
take the concluding words of the _Vita_-scheme and of the _Dialogo’s_
“Chapter” First at all strictly, would, in great part, be impossible.
(2) In the _Dialogo’s_ First “Chapter” we found a remarkably free,
deliberately pragmatic handling of the _Vita_-materials, in the making
two different visions on two separate occasions (the Vision of the
blood-stained Moving Christ, and the Vision of the blood-pouring
Fixed Christ) out of the one, curiously composite, Moving-Fixed
Christ-Vision of the _Vita_; and this doubling introduced, into that
First Part, a special kind of obscurity, a sort of eddying, circular,
repetitive movement and practical fixedness. Similarly we find here,
in the Second “Chapter,” the one description of her resumption of
Confession, given by the _Vita_-proper, is made into two accounts,
accounts still further separated from each other here than the two
visions were separated from each other there. For the first ten and a
half Chapters, pages 226_b_ to 242_b_, give us her history from 1497
to 1501. And, amongst these, Chapter First to Third cover the years
1497 to 1499; and at the end of Chapter Third, page 232_b_, we get
an account of how “she began to confess her sins” (necessarily, at
this period, to Marabotto) “with such Contrition, that it appeared a
marvellous thing”--a description which has been taken from the story
of her First Conversion-Period, but which is made to do duty here, at
the date of her beginning to confess, in a very different manner, to
Don Marabotto, twenty-five years after those Conversion-Confessions.
Yet only at the beginning of the second half of Chapter Tenth (p.
242_c_) do we hear, (wedged in between two passages, pp. 242_b_,
243_b_, which are re-castings of descriptions of a scene which occurred
on January 10, 1510, _Vita_, pp. 139_a_-140_c_) of God giving her
the help of a “Religioso,” “suo Confessore,” _i.e._ Marabotto (p.
242_c_). This is followed, not two pages later on (p. 244_b_), by a
description of the experience of the “Scintilla” on August 11, 1510
(_Vita_, p. 148_b_), and by an allusion to her death on September 15,
1510 (p. 245_c_).--This doubling was no doubt effected for the purpose
of introducing as much variety as possible into what is, anyhow, a
monotonous narrative; of being thus able to produce a more ordinary
and “correct” account of her dispositions and acts, on occasion of
the resumption of her Confessions in 1499, than could be given by the
direct utilization of Marabotto’s description of them; and of thus,
by these two narratives in lieu of that single one, giving greater
place and prominence to the practice of Confession than this practice
actually occupied in her real life.
3. _Closer examination of the earlier portion of “Chapter” Second._
A closer examination of the whole Second “Chapter” of the _Dialogo_
fully substantiates this conclusion, and brings out other interesting
points. Let us take the eleven Chapters of the present Part Second.
(1) The first two Chapters describe her condition when “the Soul
could no more correspond to the sensations of the Body,--the Body
remained, as it were, without its natural being, and dwelt confused and
stunned, without knowing where it was or what it should do or say” (pp.
226_c_, 227_a_). And then the Soul begins to address “the Lord” (p.
229_a_). And on p. 230_b_ we hear, for the first time, of its “sweet
and cruel Purgatory.” And Chapter Third tells of the Soul’s painful
prison-life, and of vomitings, emaciation, and occasional inability
to move (pp. 230_b_-232_a_).--Now Purgatory, prison-house and these
psycho-physical conditions do not appear, in the _Vita_-proper, till
“nine years before her death,” and, indeed, in great part only within
the last year of her life.[429] Indeed it is only the characteristic
intensity with which the _Dialogo_ here describes the fresh access of
Contrition, and the resumption of frequent Confession for evidently new
offences (a description entirely inappropriate to this late stage of
her life), that makes it difficult to realize that these three Chapters
are dealing with 1497 to 1499. And the exaggeration here exactly
corresponds to the exaggeration, in Part (“Chapter”) First, of her
earlier sinfulness, and her first Conversion and Contrition.
(2) Chapter Fourth then gives a short description of another “ray of
love”; and then apostrophizes, in seven “oh” and “che” sentences,
such a state of soul (pp. 232_c_-233_c_). Chapter Fifth contains one
question and answer exchanged between the Soul and the Lord, and then
three narrative-exclamatory paragraphs (pp. 233_c_-235_a_). Chapter
Sixth gives two explanations by the Lord of the Soul’s sufferings,
interrupted by the Soul’s thanks and acceptance (pp. 235_b_-237_a_).
And then Chapter Seventh describes a lull in the Soul’s battles and
trials (pp. 237_a_-238_a_). And this lull is followed, in Chapter
Eighth, by a declaration from the Lord that she has now been led up to
the door of Love but has not yet entered in (pp. 238_a_-239_a_); and,
in Chapter Ninth, by a dialogue (for the first time in the entire work)
between the Spirit and the Soul, the former being now determined to
separate itself from the latter; and, at the end of this same Chapter,
by a description of this, now more or less achieved, separation (pp.
239_a_-241_a_; 241_b_).--These conflicts and dialogues between the
Spirit and the Soul, are closely like the conflicts and dialogues
between the Spirit and “Humanity” in Part First.[430] Yet there, the
historical materials are derived chiefly from the _Vita_-proper, pp.
20_a_-21_b_, 96_b_-97_c_ (which give an account of her work from 1473
to 1497); whilst here they come exclusively from pp. 133_b_-138_b_ of
the _Vita_-proper (which tell her experiences from November 11 to the
end of December 1509).
(3) And the last two Chapters, Tenth and Eleventh, are particularly
difficult and self-destructive, obscure and disappointing. The Tenth
(to be fully analyzed presently), is difficult, because it starts
with fragments of _Vita_-information which, in the _Vita_, rightly
refer, in large part, to the beginning of the last ten years of her
life, and even to 1499 in particular,--hence to a period long anterior
to all that has been described in the _Dialogo_ ever since Chapter
Third of this Part. And these fragments are here made to lead up
to a re-statement of the scene of January 10, 1510, when she shut
herself off from every one, but when Marabotto managed to overhear her
soliloquy (pp. 241_c_-244_a_ compared with pp. 139_b_, 113_c_.) And the
Eleventh Chapter is obscure and disappointing, because, after giving
the “scintilla”-incident of August 11, 1510, and a final short dialogue
between the “Lord” and her “Humanity” (again a combination of _Dramatis
Personae_ which has occurred nowhere else), it finishes, not with any
description or even affirmation of her earthly end, but simply with an
account as to the necessity of Purgation, and, in particular, with the
words “a martyrdom which never ceases until death” (pp. 244_a_-245_c_).
4. _Closer examination of later portion of “Chapter” Second._
Part Third, on the contrary, is peculiar in this, that its Dialogue
passes exclusively between but two interlocutors, the Soul and the
Lord: it thus brings back the whole composition to its opening form of
strict duologue,--although there the speakers had been the (unpurified)
Soul and the Body. The present thirteen Chapters constitute, in
substance, a single, all but unbroken, disquisition on God’s love for
the Soul, and on the Soul’s growth in the love of God; although the
form alternates between Chapters of questions and answers, and Chapters
of rapturous descriptions and apostrophizings of Love.
(1) Chapters First and Second consist of such questions and answers,
and conclude with an, abruptly introduced, account of her former
spiritual conversations with her friends, which (though based upon the
beautiful document in the _Vita_-proper, pp. 94_b_-95_c_, and upon
the fragment there, p. 97_b_, and though the narrative here has a
certain noble warmth of its own) is given here merely as a something
to be transcended, and which, by now, had been actually left far
behind. Thus, as in Parts First and Second the _Dialogo_ had given a
characteristically rigoristic, indeed exaggerating, account of her
Conversation and her later Purification respectively, so here again
this curious book is more severe than are the authentic accounts on
which it otherwise relies.
(2) Chapter Third gives a question and answer as to the
comprehensibility of this love. The answer incorporates Catherine’s
description of her soul as, so to speak, under water in an ocean of
peace; and interestingly turns the “scintilla,” the “spark of love,”
into a “stilla,” a “drop,” suggested, no doubt, by the “goccia,” “the
drop of love,” which figured so prominently in Catherine’s great
conversation with her spiritual children.[431]--Chapters Fourth to
Sixth open out with a page where the Lord declares how the pure and
love-absorbed Soul alone holds Love (p. 253); and consist, for the
rest, of exclamatory descriptions of this love, the soul proffering
first ten “O Amore” apostrophes (pp. 253_c_-258_b_), then one “O Amore
puro” address (pp. 259_c_, 260_a_). And the tenth of those apostrophes
introduces a characteristic sentence from the _Vita_-proper: “the
Soul,--if bereft of charity,--when it is separated from the Body,
would, rather than present itself thus before that (Divine) cleanness
and simplicity, cast itself into Hell.”[432]--And Chapter Seventh then
makes the Lord ask the Soul to tell him some of the words which it
addresses to Love; the Soul does so, and the Lord approves of them (pp.
260_b_-261_b_).
(3) And then Chapter Eighth begins a narrative piece (pp.
261_c_-263_c_); but which, after a transitional, exclamatory paragraph
(p. 263_c_), arrives at three short questions and answers. The first
two questions and answers are by the Soul and the Lord respectively;
the third question and answer are respectively by the Lord and the Soul
(pp. 264_a_, _b_). We shall presently see that, in this set of short
sentences, we have reached the culmination of the whole _Dialogo_, and
that, in astonishingly explicit daring, they exceed any and all of
Catherine’s authentic sayings.
(4) Chapter Ninth then gives a narrative description of the apparently
empty and abandoned condition of the advanced Soul, and, for this
purpose carefully utilizes (whilst completely altering the meaning and
context of) Marabotto’s description of Catherine’s first Confession to
him. And in its last paragraph it again (but here with less change)
incorporates other passages of that descriptive Chapter.[433] Then
comes Chapter Tenth, with a short question and answer between the
Lord and the Soul, the latter partly in verse (p. 267_a_). And this
is followed by two descriptive paragraphs, how that this soul “seemed
to mount above Paradise itself”; “this heart is transformed into a
tabernacle of God”; and “such souls, were they but known, would be
adored upon earth” (pp. 267_b_, _c_; 268_a_).
(5) This description is followed by a long rapturous suspension of the
dialogue form, since here the Writer himself addresses successively,
in three “O” paragraphs, the “soul, heart, and mind”; “Love”; and “the
Spirit naked and invisible.” And, after a little exclamation as to
the inadequacy of all words (this also is introduced by an “O”), he
similarly invokes (in three other “O” paragraphs), “my tender Lord”;
the “infinite Good”; and “the Lord” (pp. 268_b_-269_c_).--The present,
most unskilful, division makes Chapter Eleventh begin with these last
three of the seven “O’s.” And after the seventh “O” paragraph and a
descriptive passage, still addressed to “the Lord,” composed of five
“Thou” sentences, follows another short interruption,--apologizing
for the delay in the narrative and the inadequacy of the words used.
And then two “Oimè,” and one “O terra, terra” paragraph finish up
the Writer’s exclamations, and bring us back to the interrupted
dialogue-form (pp. 269_c_-271_b_). Here again a violent division has
been effected in the text by Chapter Twelfth being made to exclude the
first, but to include, the second “Oimè” (p. 271_a_). And this Chapter,
after finishing the “Terra-terra” paragraph, and, with it, the whole
digression, re-opens the dialogue with a curious, serpentine, all
but unbroken series of seven questions of the Soul and answers of the
Lord, in which each successive question picks up the previous answer
and point reached, and tries to reach a deeper one. “What is Thine
Operation within man? A Moving of the heart of man. And this Movement?
A Grace. And this Grace? A Ray of Love. And this Ray of Love? An Arrow.
And this Arrow? A Glimpse (Scintilla) of love. And this Glimpse? An
Inspiration.” And at this point, description is declared to be unable
to proceed further (pp. 271_b_-272_c_.)
(6) And then Chapter Thirteenth finishes up the whole by two questions
and descriptive answers. The first question and answer passes between
the Writer’s own mind and his heart, and thus again constitutes a break
in the dialogue; and the second question and answer occurs between the
Lord and the Soul. The first answer dwells upon personal experience,
as the sole means of some real apprehension of Love; and the second
answer concludes the whole book with a majestic paraphrase of
Catherine’s doctrine as to the immanental, inevitable, self-determined,
and self-endorsed character of the Soul’s joys and sufferings, here
and hereafter, on Earth, in Purgatory, indeed in Hell itself (pp.
273_a_-275_a_). Such passages as these make up for much of the often
painfully intense, abstract, schematic, rigoristic, and too exclusively
transcendental character of this remarkable book, and explain its
fascination for a mind of such rare experience and breadth as was that
of Friedrich Schlegel. I shall presently group together the finest
sayings peculiar to the work.
VIII. SEVENTH STAGE CONTINUED: MINUTE ANALYSIS OF ONE PASSAGE FROM THE
SECOND “CHAPTER.”
But I must still give for this last “Chapter,” as I did for the First
“Chapter,” a synoptic demonstration, by means of one example among
many, of the strange manner in which the _Dialogo_-writer combines the
most detailed dependence on the materials of the _Vita_-proper with the
most sovereign independence concerning the chronology, context, and
drift of those same materials.--And again I choose an originally unique
occurrence and description, so as to eliminate all possibility of an
explanation by an original multiplicity of facts and accounts.
_Catherine as “Garzonzello” or “Figliuolino.”_
_Dialogo_ (_Vita_), p. _Vita_-proper, pp.--
266_a_, _b_, _c_.
Il corpo, essendo costretto 117_b_. Non potendosi
seguire l’anima, resta per quel sopportare, per non aver più
tempo quasi senz’ anima, operazione nè sentimenti dell’
senza umano conforto, anima, col corpo tutto debole.…
… e non si sà nè si può 117_c_. “Io non so dove mi
aiutare. sia.”
Però è di bisogno che dagli 127_a_. Quali la servivano
altri sia aiutato, ovvero restavano stupefatti, non sapendo
occultamente da Dio gli sia che farle.
provveduto, altrimenti restarebbe 120_a_. … provveduto tal
quella creatura abbandonata bisogno, a lui non restava di
essa provisione memoria
alcuna.
121_a_. Perseverò molti anni
con bisogno che il Confessore
le stasse d’ appresso, per
sostentare l’umanità.
117_c_. Dei peccati che diceva
non le erano lasciato vedere
come peccati che avesse …
come un figliuolino, il quale, fatti, ma come d’un garzonzello,
non avendo i suoi bisogni, il quale da giovinetto fà
altro riparo non ha se non di qualche cosa di cui è ignorante,
piangere tanto che gli sieno il quale, essendogli
dati. detto “tu hai fatto male” per
questa parola muta subito di
colore e diventa rosso, ma non
già perchè conosce il male.
Non è dunque meraviglia, 119_c_. “Non posso più sopportare
se a simili creature Iddio tanti assedi esteriori
provvede di particolari persone ed interiori; per questo mi
che le aiutino, e per ha Iddio provveduto del
mezzo loro sia alle necessità vostro mezzo … quando da
dell’ anima e del’ corpo sovvenuto, mè siete partito, vò lamentadomi
altrimenti non potriano per la casa.”
vivere.
120_a_. era di bisogno che il
Confessore non si partisse da
lei.… Dio, sempre glieli
Vedi come il nostro Signor dava … tutti i sussidi all
Gesù Christo lasciò _a_ San anima e al corpo … per
Giovanni [al]la sua diletta mezzo di lui, al quale in quell’
Madre in particolar cura; e instante provedeva di lume
così fece ai suoi discepoli e fà e di parole convenienti alla di
sempre all’ altre sue divote lei necessità.
persone; di modo che l’uno 121_b_. Questa tutto divina
soccorre l’altro, così all’anima … operazione. Il Confessore
come al corpo, con quella era legato col vincolo del
unione divina. divino amore.
E perchè in generale le 117_b_. Dio gli diede lume e
persone non conoscono queste grazia di consoscere quell’
operazioni, nè hanno insieme operazione.
quella unione, perciò a simili 120_b_. E perchè quella continua
cure bisognano particolari persone, conversazione e stretta
colle quali Iddio operi famigliarità facevano alcuni
colla sua grazia e lume. mormorare, non intendendo
l’opera e la necessità.…
Chi vide queste creature e 117_b_. … col corpo tutto
non le intende, gli sono più senza vigore, quasi derelitto
presto d’ ammirazione che in se medesimo.
di edificazione, dunque non
giudicare, se non vuoi errare
… resta l’umanità senza
vigore ed abandonata quasi
come morta.
The _Dialogo_-writer having, as we saw, combined, for the purpose
of describing Catherine’s latter-day habits, _V.’s_ account of her
unusually peaceful dispositions of soul, obtaining in 1499, with
_V.’s_ account of her Penance and Confessions in 1473: now utilizes
here Marabotto’s account of her Confessions to him from 1499 onwards
(an account which the writer had rejected there), for an entirely
different purpose and context than those developed by the Confessor
himself. For, in the _Vita_-proper account, it is in connection with
the Confession of her sins that we get the highly original and curious
“garzonzello” parallel; and Catherine’s lamentations do not there occur
in any relation to this parallel, but they arise only when Marabotto is
not at hand to comfort her. In the _Dialogo_-version it is simply in
relation to this requirement of his presence and to its postponement,
that Catherine behaves like a “figliuolino,” and cries till she gets
what she wants. And yet there is not the slightest doubt that it is
really the “Garzonzello” Confession-passage which (left unutilized by
the writer in his account of the Contrition and Confessions of her
last period, _Dialogo_, pp. 231_c_-232_b_, no doubt because of the
difficulty and apparent temerity of the facts and doctrines implied),
has here been used after all, but with all its originality and daring
carefully eliminated from it. For nowhere else, in the _Vita_-proper,
does a “Garzonzello”-passage or language, or anything like them, occur;
nowhere else again, in the _Dialogo_ does a “figliuolino”-passage or
wording, or anything really resembling them, appear; and these two,
respectively unique and very peculiar, passages, both occur at one and
the same stage of her life, and in connection with one and the same
couple of persons.
IX. SEVENTH STAGE CONCLUDED: CHARACTER AND AUTHORSHIP OF THIS SECOND
“CHAPTER.”
Let us take these two points simultaneously, and move, from the more
formal and literary qualities, through indications of the more or less
external life-circumstances of the author, on to the writer’s special
views and aims in psychology and spirituality.
1. _The writer’s power._
The following passages, all more or less peculiar to the _Dialogo_,
suffice, I think, to prove his power.
At the beginning of these, her last nine years, the Lord explains to
Catherine the means by which Love may be known: “My love can be better
known by means of interior experience than in any other way; if man
is to acquire it, Love must snatch man from man himself, since it is
man himself who is his own chief impediment,”[434]--a passage that
recalls Thackeray’s _Arthur Pendennis, his Friends and his Greatest
Enemy_--namely, his own self.
These years are, a little later, described in language no doubt
suggested, probably through some Patristic passage, by Plato, the
harmonious. “This soul now abode like a musical instrument which, as
long as it remains furnished with chords, gives forth sweet sounds;
but which, bereft of them, is silent. Thus she too, in the past, by
means of the sentiments of soul and body, was wont to render so sweet a
harmony, that every one who heard it rejoiced in it; but now, alienated
from those sentiments, as it were without” psychic “chords, she
remained entirely bare and mute.”[435]
And we are told of “words which the heart alone speaks to the soul
alone”[436]--a passage which recalls Pascal’s saying, “The heart has
reasons which Reason does not know.”
Amongst the rapturous addresses we find, “O Spirit naked and invisible!
No man can hold thee (here below), because of thy very nakedness! Thy
dwelling-place is in Heaven, even whilst, joined to the body, thou
happenest still to tarry upon earth! Thou dost not know thine own self,
nor art thou known by others in this world. All thy friends and (true)
relatives are in Heaven, recognized by thee alone, through an interior
instinct infused by the Spirit of God.”[437] An apostrophe which, in
part, strongly recalls Henry Vaughan’s poem, “They are all gone into a
world of light, and I alone am lingering here.”
The final address in this series of apostrophes to Love, God, contains
the sentences: “O Lord, how great is Thy loving care, both by day and
by night, for man who knows not even his own self, and far less Thee,
O Lord. Thou art that great and high God, of whom we cannot speak or
think, because of the ineffable super-eminence of Thy Greatness, Power,
Wisdom, and Goodness infinite. Thou labourest in man and for man with
Thy Love, and in return Thou willest that the whole man should act for
Love, and this because, without Love, nothing good can be produced.
Thou workest solely for man’s true utility; and Thou willest that man
should operate solely for Thine honour, and not for his own (separate)
utility.”[438] A passage strongly coloured by Dionysian ideas.
And yet the writer continues to think and to write, but says: “These
words of mine are like ink: for ink is black and of an evil odour; and
yet, by its means, many ideas are apprehended, which otherwise would be
ignored altogether.”[439] Here we have an image, based as it is upon a
vivid sensible perception of a chemical compound, which reminds one of
the epatic-agaric passage in “Chapter” First of the _Dialogo_, and of
the reference to cassia in Battista’s letter of 1581.[440]
And the whole Book finishes up with two impressive passages. The
first, as to the means of knowing Love, is as Pauline as is most of
the remaining doctrine of the _Dialogo_: “Not by means of external
signs, nor even by martyrdoms, can this love be comprehended. Only he
who actually experiences it can understand something of it.”[441] And
the second concludes all with a forcible and comprehensive paraphrase
of Catherine’s central doctrine,--as to the Soul’s condition and
action, revealed at the moment of death: “Every man bears within his
own self the sentence of his own judgment, pronounced indeed by God,
yet each man himself ratifies it, in and for his own case and self.
There is no place totally bereft of God’s mercy. The very souls in Hell
itself would suffer a greater Hell outside of it than they do within
it.”[442]--We have had repeated proofs of how great were Battista’s
gifts and experience in such-like eloquent writing, from the earlier
_Dialogo_-Chapter, and from her _Colloquies_ and _Letters_.
2. _Indications of special knowledge._
I am compelled to pass over the emotional rhythm, and the mystical
ambiguity and paradox, that appear, in identical forms, in Battista’s
avowed writings and here. But we must briefly dwell upon some special
sources of interest in Catherine, and of certain knowledge of a
peculiar kind, traceable in the writer of this second “Chapter”; both
sets of passages clearly point to Battista as their author.
(1) There is the deeply-felt description of Catherine’s conversation
with her disciples: “This soul would many times abide with her
spiritual friends, discoursing of the Divine Love, in suchwise that
it appeared to them all as though they were in Paradise. And indeed,
what delightful colloquies took place! Both he who spoke and he who
listened, one and all would get nourished by spiritual food, of a
sweet and delectable kind. And, because the time sped so quickly,
they could not attain to satiety; but they would abide so enkindled
and inflamed, that they knew not what more to say. And yet they could
not depart, and would seem as though in an ecstasy. Oh! what loving
repasts, what delightful food, what sweet viands, what a gracious
union, what a divine companionship!”[443]--Now it is true that the
writer has here certainly utilized four pregnantly descriptive lines in
the _Vita_-proper, and the fine account there, undoubtedly by Ettore
Vernazza, as regards these conversations.[444] Yet one readily feels,
at the moved and moving tone of the re-telling here, that the writer
was specially impelled to dwell with a tender, living sympathy upon
those meetings of forty years ago. Now Battista must, of course, again
and again, have heard from her Father’s own lips, during those fourteen
years that he lived on after Catherine’s great soul had gone to God, of
these unforgettable talks, in which he himself had played so large a
part, as questioner, interpreter, and chronicler.
(2) And the other set of passages points, even more definitely, to the
same daughter and father. Catherine’s “humanity,” being threatened by
the Spirit with various future sufferings, asks to be told the precise
offence, charge (_la causa_), which will bring so great a martyrdom
with it, without hope of any help. But “she was answered that this
grace,” of knowing exactly what and why she should suffer, “would be
accorded to her in due time, as happens with men condemned to death,
who, by hearing read aloud to them the precise sentence pronounced
upon their specific misdeeds, support with a greater peace of mind
their ignominious death.”--And: “Since I am forsaken on all sides,”
Catherine says to God, “give me at least, O Lord, some person that
may be able to understand and comfort me, amidst the torments that I
see coming upon me--as men are wont to do for those who are condemned
to death, so that the latter may not despair.”--And the natural man
in such advanced souls is described as suspended in mid-air, “like
unto one who is hung, and who touches not the ground with his feet,
but abides in the air, attached to the cord which has caused his
death.”[445] Ettore’s life-long, detailed interest in, and experience
of, prisoners and condemned men, whom he, the Founder of the Society
of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, so loved to attend and help
throughout their last night and at the scaffold, speak here through
the devoted daughter who, countless times, must have listened to that
father’s prison-experiences, which we found her describing, still
most vividly, in 1581, thirty years after the publication of these
_Dialogo_-passages.[446]
3. _Schematic, intensely abstract psychology._
At this spiritual stage “there was, as it were, a chain. God, Spirit,
draws to Himself the Spirit of man, and there this Spirit abides
completely occupied. The Soul, which cannot abide without the Spirit,
follows the Spirit, and is there kept occupied. And the Body, which
is subject to the Soul, thus prevented from possessing its natural
sensations and its natural sustenance, remains, as it were, forsaken
and outside of its natural being.”--“God at times allowed the Spirit
to correspond with the Soul, and the Soul with the Body.… But when God
withdrew that Spirit into Himself, all the rest (the Soul) followed
after it; and hence the Body remained like dead.” The two dividings,
first of the Soul from the Body, and then of the Soul from the Spirit,
so much emphasized in those other documents,[447] is thus carried
through in this “Chapter” also.
4. _Rigorism._
We find here the same exaggeration as to Catherine’s faults and
contrition, and the same rigoristic doctrine as in “Chapter” First,
although, here also, counterbalanced by a noble tenderness of heart.
Thus her but semi-conscious attachment to, and self-attribution of,
spiritual consolations, is here magnified into a grave sin. “How can I
act, so as to make satisfaction for this sin, which is so great and so
subtle?” her soul asks God, concerning but semi-conscious attachment
to spiritual consolations. And of her social affections, as manifested
in her great colloquies with her friends, Catherine now says, “All
other loves” than the direct love of God “now appear to me as worse
than sheer self-loves.”--“She began to confess her sins with so great
a contrition that it appeared a wonderful thing,” we are told of
Catherine, in 1499-1510; yet we know, from the unimpeachable testimony
of Don Marabotto himself, that “the wonderful thing” about these latter
Confessions was precisely the absence of that former keen sense of, and
sorrow for, specific sins.[448]
5. _Pronounced Christo-centrism and daring Anthropomorphism._
We get, again, the predominance of the Personal conceptions and
imagery over those of Thing or Law, and the same greater attention
to the historical element of religion, that characterize Battista’s
writings and “Chapter First” of the _Dialogo_, as against Catherine’s
authentic sayings.
Catherine’s energetic repudiation of “the corrupt expression, ‘You have
offended God,’” is replaced by God saying to Catherine, “Know that I
cannot be offended by man, except when he raises an obstacle to the
work which I have ordained for his good.”[449] Catherine has angrily
declared that the term could never be correctly used; the _Dialogo_
explains how special and metaphorical is its correct use.
The Lord declares here: “I descend with a fine thread of gold, which is
My secret love, and to this thread is bound a hook, which seizes the
heart of men. I hold this thread in My hand and ever draw it towards
Myself.” The hook and hand are additions to her authentic declaration,
“She seemed to herself to have in her heart a continuous ray of Love
… a thread of gold, as to which she had no fear that it would ever
break.”[450]--We get here the Wedding-feast imagery that is entirely
wanting in Catherine’s authentic sayings. “There is no shorter way
to salvation than (the owning of) this delightful wedding-garment
of charity”[451] A garment, generally in a bad sense, is quite
Catherinian; a wedding-garment is exclusively Battistan.--And the
parallel between St. John’s care of the Blessed Virgin, and Marabotto’s
attendance upon Catherine[452] is quite foreign to Catherine’s mind.
And the whole _Dialogo_ culminates in a double, daring yet graduated,
anthropomorphic picturing of the deification of the perfect soul,
interestingly different from Catherine’s favourite Ocean and Fire
similes, and from her description of the Soul as respectively submerged
in, and transformed by, this infinite and all-penetrating living
Ocean-Fire, God. The Soul asks what is the name which the Lord gives to
perfect souls; and the Lord answers (in Latin, as ever with Battista)
with the text of Ps. lxxxi, 6: “I have said, ye are Gods, and all of
you sons of the Most High”; a text which still leaves us with separate
human personalities face to face with the distinct Spirit-Person, God.
And then, to the Lord’s question, as to what the Soul declares its
heart to be, the Soul answers (this climax has been carefully led up
to all along): “I say that it is my God, wounded by love,--in Whom
I live joyful and contented.”--For, as in Battista’s own _Colloquy_
of December 10, 1554, we get three simultaneous “voices” at different
depths of her consciousness, so here, in this composition of 1550,
Catherine hears simultaneously within herself three voices--of the
Lord, of her own soul, and of her own heart. And Catherine can here
declare that now her heart is God, and God wounded by Love; for
Battista can write in 1576 that, in the perfect state, “of the Increate
Heart and of the created heart there is made a single, most secret
and inestimable union,”[453] and that Increate Heart appears here as
wounded, because God is ever, in Battista’s mind, explicitly identified
with Christ, and Christ’s Passion is ever in her thoughts. Catherine
identifies her true self with God, and God with Love; and conceives
her own heart as filled with love and inflamed and pierced by it; but
nowhere figures God with a Heart, or that Heart as wounded, for she has
little or nothing of Battista’s anthropomorphic tendency in regard to
God, or of her historical picturings with regard to Christ.
The entire _Dialogo_ then is the work of Battista Vernazza; and we
have to eliminate it, all but completely, from the means and materials
directly available for the constitution of Catherine’s life and
doctrine. The next Division will now attempt to deal finally with
the chief of these means--the _Dimostrazione_ (_Trattato_) and the
_Vita_-proper.
SECOND DIVISION: ANALYSIS, ASSIGNATION, AND APPRAISEMENT OF THE
“VITA-DOTTRINA-DICCHIARAZIONE” CORPUS, IN EIGHT SECTIONS.
We now find ourselves in face of the most difficult, and the alone
directly important, _corpus_ of documents concerning Catherine’s inner
life: the _Vita e Dottrina_, together with the _Dicchiarazione_ or
_Trattato_. It will be best to begin with this _Trattato_, and only
after a careful study of this little book, which, as we know, contains
the most original and valuable part of Catherine’s teaching, to finish
up with an examination of the, now separate, Life and (other) Doctrine.
I. THE “DICCHIARAZIONE”: THE TWO STAGES OF ITS EXISTENCE.
1. _The “Dicchiarazione,” from the first a booklet by itself._
All the Manuscripts give the _Dicchiarazione_ (_Trattato_)
substantially as we have it at present, although ever as but a Chapter
of the _Vita e Dottrina_, and not, as yet, itself divided up in any
way. Even the last Editions of the Printed _Vita_ still retain a
reference to this old arrangement: “The soul purifies itself, as do the
souls in Purgatory, according to the process described in the Chapter
appropriated to this matter.”[454]
Yet the very length of this “Chapter,” then as now, and the solemn
introductory paragraph, both point to its having, at first, formed a
booklet by itself. Thus the longest of the other doctrinal Chapters of
MS. A (Chapters XV, XVI, XX, and XL) are respectively 29, 22, 19, and
17½ pages long; whilst the _Trattato_-Chapter XLII runs to 46 pages.
Only the Narrative-Chapter XLI, the Passion, is of an exactly equal
length; but we shall find that this Chapter also existed, originally,
in part at least, as a separate document. And the introduction to
Chapter XLII is unparalleled by anything in such a position. “This
holy Soul, whilst yet in the flesh, finding herself placed in the
purgatory of God’s burning love, which consumed and purified her from
whatever she had to purify, in order that, in passing out of this life,
she might enter at once into the immediate presence of her tender
Love,--God: understood, by means of this fire of love, how the souls
of the faithful abide in the place of Purgatory to purge away every
stain of sin that, in this life, they had not yet purged.” I have here
omitted (after “understood”) “in her soul,” as marring the rhythm; and
(before “stain of sin”) “rust and,” since the whole group of words
appears in MS. A as “ogni rubigine di macchia di peccato,” requiring
the suppression of at least one of the first two nouns: we shall find
that “rubigine” is secondary.
I have also omitted, from what I hold was the first form of this
Introduction, the present second sentence and comparison: “And as
she, placed in the loving purgatory of the divine fire, abode united
to this Divine Love, and content with all that He wrought within her:
so she understood the state of the Souls that are in Purgatory.” For
all the circumstances and dispositions of this contentment have already
been anticipated in the “How the Souls abide in Purgatory” of the
first sentence.--We can still show, I think, when and why this second
sentence was added. Let us get at the reason slowly.
2. _Three differences between the first seven and the last ten
Chapters._
The first seven of the present seventeen Chapters of the
_Dicchiarazione_ (_Dic._) are indeed like, but also unlike, the last
ten Chapters, in three important matters.[455]
(1) All the seventeen Chapters are full of ideas, even of special words
and peculiar groups of words, appearing also in various places of the
_Vita_-proper. Yet the last ten Chapters alone have, in addition, four
complete paragraphs standing, as such, in the _Vita_-proper. The two
paragraphs of Chapter Eight, and the first paragraph of Chapter Nine,
of the _Dicchiarazione_ (“Più ancora dico che io veggio”--“se fosse
possibile,” _Vita_, pp. 175_c_-176_c_), are identical with paragraphs
four and five of Chapter Thirty of the _Vita_-proper (“E perciò diceva:
io veggio”--“se fosse possibile,” _Vita_, pp. 78_c_, 79_a_).
_Dic._’s text still keeps two primitive readings: “Gate” of Paradise,
in a first saying, unassimilated to the plural “arms” of God in the
second saying; against _V.’s_ assimilation, “gates” and “arms.” Again
“stain” and “stains,” alongside of “imperfection”; against _V.’s_
treble “imperfection.” But in all else _V._ is clearly the older text:
thus “His company” (against “His glory”); “un minimo chè” (against “un
minimo brusculo”); “appear before God” (against “find himself in the
presence of the Divine Majesty”); “purge” (against “lift away”); and
other points.
But if this general priority of the _V._-text be admitted, then this
part of _Dic._ must have been constituted at a time when these parts
of _V.’s_ text were already so definitely fixed in themselves, and so
firmly worked into their present contexts, that the Redactor of this
part of _Dic._ dared not take them simply away from their old home, and
did not modify them so as to conform with the glosses traceable in the
earlier Chapters of _Dic._ (note here, in Ch. VIII, the absence of the
“rubigine” present in the earlier Chapters). And this means that this
part of _Dic._ was constituted when this part of _V._ was no more new,
and _Dic.’s_ own earlier chapters had been fixed for some time.
(2) All the _Dicchiarazione_ Chapters are based on the assumption of a
true analogy, indeed a continuity, between the soul’s purgation, Here
and There. But only the last ten Chapters give passages (three whole
Chapters) treating exclusively of this-world sufferings, and an address
to souls that, in this world, run the risk not simply of Purgatory but
of Hell hereafter.
Thus Chapter Eleven (_Vita_, pp. 178_b_-179_a_) is now indeed
superscribed, “Of the desire of the souls in Purgatory to be quite free
from the stains of their sins”; and contains the clause “non che possa
guardare il Purgatorio siccome un Purgatorio” (179_a_). But all the
chapter-headings are recent, and the heading here is quite inaccurate,
for throughout the account (with the probable exception of the clause
quoted, which is a gloss) the soul is simply in this world, as on pp.
23_b_, 49_b_, 61_b_, 106_a_, 114_c_ of the _Vita_, which readily calls
such this-world sufferings a “Purgatory,” 128_b_, 136_c_, 137_a_. Here,
however, much of the form (_e.g._ “to contaminate,” “to occasion”), and
some of the doctrine (the resurrection effected by Baptism) is alien to
Catherine’s habits. The Chapter is, then, made up, about equally, of
genuine sayings referring exclusively to this-world purgations, and of
redactional amplifications of a systematizing and sacramental kind.
Chapter Twelve (_Vita_, p. 179_b_, _c_) is now subscribed, “How
suffering conjoins itself with joy in Purgatory,” and concludes with
“Thus the souls in Purgatory experience.…” Yet here too the body of
the text nowhere directly refers to, or consciously implies, the
other-world Purgatory; for its last clause, “ma questa contentezza non
toglie scintilla di pena,” requires freeing from the gloss, “alle Anime
che sono in Purgatorio,” which now stands between “contentezza” and
“non.”
Chapter Seventeen (_Vita_, pp. 182_c_-184_c_) now indeed opens with an
explicit reference by Catherine of “this purgative form that I feel it
in my mind, especially since the last two years” to the souls in “the
true Purgatory”; but this reference and the five last words of this
long Chapter, “e il Purgatorio lo purifica,” are clear glosses, since
Catherine is here exclusively occupied with the purgative character
of her this-world sufferings, and not with any likeness of them to
the other-world Purgatory. And indeed, since considerations about
the other-world Purgatory first occur, in any certainly authentic
_Vita_-passages, only after the great “ray”-experience of November 11,
1509 (the experience stands on p. 133_b_, where the MSS. give the date;
the considerations appear only on pp. 136_b_-137_a_, 144_b_, 146_b_),
the “last two years” here must mean that already three years or so
before her death she had come to dwell much on the purifying function
of her sufferings. Only during the last ten months does she seem to
have dwelt upon these sufferings as illustrating the purgations of the
other life.
And finally, Chapter Fifteen (_Vita_, p. 181_b_, _c_) is headed now:
“Reproofs addressed by the souls in Purgatory to worldly persons.”
But the text still begins with “a desire comes over me (Catherine)
to cry out so as to strike fear into every man on earth,” and deals
throughout with her this-life fears for such persons, not with respect
to Purgatory, but with regard to Hell.
(3) Even the first seven _Dicchiarazione_ Chapters we shall find to
contain short theological glosses. But only in the last ten Chapters
can we find extensive passages incompatible with Catherine’s authentic
teaching, or at least quite unlike her undoubted utterances.
Chapter Thirteen (_Vita_, p. 180_a_, _b_) is now entitled: “How the
souls in Purgatory are no longer in a state to merit; and how they
regard the charity exercised in the world for them.” Yet this very
_Dicchiarazione’s_ utterly authentic opening sayings (_Vita_, pp.
169_c_, 170_a_, _b_) eliminate clearly the second question: such souls
do not and cannot regard such charity at all. And though Catherine
(who put the question of merit, even as to the soul’s this-world
action, so emphatically behind that of love)[456] never considers
merit in connection with Purgatory, yet she conceives the souls in
Purgatory as purifying themselves of certain passive habitual defects,
by one initial free election of the condition of suffering, and by
then continually willing the painful condition,--volitional acts and
dispositions that are usually held to imply merit.
The first paragraph then opens with: “If the souls in Purgatory could
purge themselves with contrition, in one instant they would pay all
their debt.” Yet there is no such dilemma in Catherine’s authentic
thought as “instant purgation through contrition, of a necessarily
perfect kind,” or “no purgation through such contrition”; for
throughout the first seven Chapters purgation takes place through love
and general contrition, in a thorough but gradual, seemingly slow,
manner, and this not because God prevents the soul’s self-purification
by what would be the normal means, but, contrariwise, because He does
not interfere with the intrinsic, normally necessary interconnection of
sin and suffering, sorrow, self-renunciation, love and joy.
The second paragraph runs: “Of the payment not one penny is remitted to
those souls.…” This imagery of the payment of something as external to
the payer as is money, in view of so external a change as getting out
of prison, can hardly be Catherine’s, at least not as the deliberate
expression of her purgatorial conception. The last paragraph reads:
“They are henceforth incapable of seeing except [so much as] God’s
will[s] … they can no more turn [with any attachment] to see the alms
given for their intention by those that are living upon earth [except
within the (general) apprehension of that all-just balance of the
divine will], leaving God to do as He pleases in all things [God, who
pays Himself as it pleases His infinite goodness]. And if they could
turn to see those alms [outside of the divine will], this would be an
act of self-love (_proprietà_)…” (180_b_). We have here a substantially
authentic saying, but the bracketed words are certain glosses,
introducing the utterly un-Catherinian ideas and images of the souls
being allowed to see what is being done for them, of God’s balance, and
of His paying Himself.
Chapter Fifteen’s last paragraph (_Vita_, p. 181_c_), which warns
the soul that “the (kind of) Confession and Contrition necessary for
such a Plenary Indulgence (as shall instantly purify it from all sin)
is a thing most difficult to gain,” is also quite unlike Catherine’s
preoccupations, tone, and teaching.
3. _Remaining passages of the last ten Chapters not accounted for by
the three peculiarities just detailed._
The three last paragraphs of Chapter Nine (_Vita_, pp. 176_c_-177_b_)
and the very similar short Chapter Fourteen (_ibid._ pp. 180_c_,
181_a_) are more painfully composite and more repeatedly worked over
than, I think, even the most tormented passages of the first seven
Chapters.
We thus are left with but four paragraphs, the last two of Chapter
Ten (_Vita_, pp. 178_a_, _b_) and the two of Chapter Sixteen (pp.
181_c_-182_b_). These two sets form two couples of illustrative
descriptions of the Purgatorial process; and, in each set, the first
paragraph is easier to read but is less authentic than the second,
very composite, much-glossed paragraph. The second paragraph of the
first set reads: “L’oro quando è purificato [per sino a ventiquattro
caratti] non si consuma poi più, per fuoco che tu gli possi dare;
perchè non si può consumare se non la sua imperfezione. Così | fâ
il divin fuoco | dell’ anima: Dio la tiene tanto al fuoco, che le
consuma ogni imperfezione [e la conduce alla perfezione di ventiquattro
caratti, ognuna però in suo grado]. E quando è purificata, resta tutta
| in Dio [senz’ alcuna cosa]| in sè stessa; ed il suo essere è Dio |
[il quale quando ha condotta a sè] l’anima così purificata [allora
l’anima] resta impassibile [perchè più non le resta da consumare] e se
pure, così purificata, fosse tenuta al fuoco, non le saria penoso, anzi
le saria fuoco di divino amore, come vita eterna, senza contrarietà.”
The bracketed words are all more or less certain glosses. But there
is here, besides, a conflation (indicated by vertical lines) of two
applications of the gold-dross-fire simile: “Così dell’ anima: Dio la
tiene … imperfezione. E quando è purificata, resta tutta in Dio; e se
pure, così purificata, fosse tenuta …”; and “così fà il divin fuoco
dell’ anima, che le consuma ogni imperfezione; e quando è purificata
resta in sè stessa, ed il suo essere è Dio.” Both applications
are probably authentic; the latter is too daringly simple and too
delicately consistent with Catherine’s surest purgatorial conceptions
not to be genuine.
The second paragraph of the second set contains the important passage:
“Perchè sono in grazia l’intendono e capiscono | Dio | così come
sono, secondo la loro capacità; [e perciò a quel] le da un gran
contento, il quale non manca mai; anzi lo và loro accrescendo tanto,
quanto più si approssimano a Dio.” This seems a conflation of two
authentic sentences: “Perchè--grazia, l’intendono e capiscono così come
sono--capacità;” and “perchè--grazia, Dio le da un gran contento--a
Dio.” And the paragraph concludes with: “Ognì poca vista che si possa
avere di Dio, eccede ogni [pena ed ogni] gaudio che l’uomo può capire,
[e benchè la eccede, non leva loro però una scintilla di gaudio o di
pena];” where the brackets indicate glosses, since the sight of God is
directly ever a source of joy.
4. _“Dic.” 1 and “Dic.” 2 referred to, respectively, by the first and
second sentences of the Dicchiarazione’s present Introduction._
Now the result reached by our analysis of the _Dicchiarazione’s_ last
ten Chapters, viz. that this group (with the possible exception of the
two sets of similes in Chapters Ten and Sixteen and much of Chapter
Seventeen), was constituted under different, later circumstances than
was that of the first seven Chapters, is borne out, indeed required,
by the present Narrative-paragraph that introduces all the seventeen
Chapters. For the two sentences of this paragraph are similar in form
but different in matter. In the first sentence the soul is “placed in
Purgatory” in order that, “passing from this life, it may be presented
in the sight of its tender Love, God”; Purgatory is “a place”; and the
souls are in that place “to purge away every stain of sin.” And this
corresponds exactly to Chapters Four, Six, and Seven respectively,
which deal with the diverse souls that “have passed from this life” (p.
172_c_); with the sight or non-sight of “God, our Love” possessed by
them (p. 174_c_); and with God and Hell as “places,” and of the soul’s
purgatorial plunge “so as to join God” (p. 175_c_). In the second
sentence, the soul, “placed in the loving Purgatory of the divine
fire, stands united to the divine Love and content with all that It
operates within her,” and Purgatory is not called a “place.” And this
corresponds precisely with Chapter Twelve (p. 179_b_), “as though a man
stood in a great fire … the love of God gives him a contentment.…”
The second sentence, a pale, at first sight redundant, double of the
first, will, then, have been added to the first sentence, when the
second set of chapters was added to the first set.
II. THE EARLIER “DICCHIARAZIONE,” AND ITS THEOLOGICAL GLOSSES.
I will here analyse such paragraphs of these first seven chapters, as
most fully illustrate the astonishing complexity of the whole, and as,
between them, furnish all the theological “corrections” to be found in
this earliest _Dicchiarazione_.
1. _The two Sayings-paragraphs of Chapter First_ (“_Vita_,” pp. 169_c_,
170_a_, _c_.).
I print these sayings (here now broken up) in parallel columns and in
the order of their present position. Columns first and third (numbered
together as I) will turn out to contain original sayings, and column
second (numbered II) will appear as but a Redactor’s re-statement,
which (a sort of link between the two sets) first paraphrases the
set that has just preceded, and then restates the set that will
immediately follow. The arabic numbers indicate the several sayings,
in their original and secondary forms (the numbers of the latter being
bracketed): thus II (1), (2), (3), stands for the secondary versions of
I 1, 2, 3, respectively. I double-bracket the additions (theological
glosses) of the Printed text, and I single-bracket two MS. clauses
which are clearly a gloss.
I 1 II (1) I
Le Anime che Non _possono avere_
sono nel Purgatorio alcuna memoria
_non possono _propria_ neppure d’
avere_ altra elezione _altri_, nè in _bene_
che di essere in nè in _male_ [[dacui
esso luogo; [e ricevano maggior
questo è per _ordinazione afflizione del suo
di Dio_, il quale ordinario]]; ma hanno
ha fatto questo tanto contento
giustamente;] _nè_ di essere nell’
si _possono_ più voltare _ordinazione di Dio_,
verso _sè stesse_, e che adoperi tutto
nè dire: “io ho quello che gli piace
fatto tali peccati, e come gli piace,
per i quali merito che di _sè medesime_
di _star qui_”; non ne possono
nè possono dire pensare [[con maggiore
“non vorrei averli lor pena.]]
fatti, perchè _anderei_
ora _in Paradiso_”;
nè dire ancora
“_quello_ ne esce più
presto di mè,” ovvero
“_io_ nè usciro più
presto di _lui_.”
(2) e solamente 2. La causa del
_veggiono_ l’operazione Purgatorio che hanno
della divina in loro, _veggiono_
bontà, la quale ha una sol volta
tanta misericordia nel passare di
dell’ uomo per condurlo questa vita, e poi
a sè, che di mai più, imperocchè
pena o di bene vi saria una
che possa accadere _proprietà_.
in _proprietà_, non se
ne può vedere.
(3) e se’l potessero 3. Essendo dunque
vedere, non sarebbero in carità, e da
in _carità pura_. quella _non potendo_
Non _possono_ più deviare con
vedere che siano _attual diffetto_, non
in quelle pene possono più volere
per i loro peccati, se non il puro volere
e _non possono_ aver della _pura
quella vista nella carità_.
mente: imperocchè
vi sarebbe una
_imperfezione attiva_.
(4) la quale non [4. ed essendo in
può essere in esso quel fuoco del
luogo, perchè non Purgatorio, sono nell’
vi si può attualmente ordinazione divina
peccare. (la quale è carità
pura), e non possono
più in alcuna cosa
da quella deviare,
perchè sono
privati così di
attualmente peccare
come sono di
attualmente meritare.]
Here the middle sayings are sufficiently recent to have in II (1)
imitated the secondary “ordinazione di Dio” clause present in I 1.
And the two theological “corrections,” still absent from MSS. A and
B, both appear among these middle sayings; they attempt to explain
the non-attention of the souls to all particular things, as a
non-remembrance of such things as would add to their distress.
2. _The first two paragraphs of Chapter Second_ (pp. 170_c_-171_b_).
Originally single sentences have here been repeatedly broken up and
scattered about amongst other similarly broken-up passages: we can
still trace the motive for this procedure. I first print them as
they stand, double-bracketing, at the end, the interestingly obvious
theological “correction” that immediately follows a most authentic,
directly contrary, statement.
“Non credo che si possa trovare contentezza da comparare a quella di
un’ anima del Purgatorio, eccetto quella de’ Santi di Paradiso: ed
ogni giorno questa contentezza cresce per l’influsso di Dio in esse
anime, il quale và crescendo, siccome si và consumando l’impedimento
dell’ influsso. La ruggine del peccato è l’impedimento, e il fuoco và
consumando la ruggine: e così l’anima sempre più si và discuoprendo al
divino influsso. Siccome una cosa coperta non può corrispondere alla
riverberazione del sole, non per diffetto del sole, che di continuo
luce, ma per l’opposizione della copertura: così sè si consumerà la
copertura, si discoprirà la cosa al sole, e tanto più corrisponderà
alla riverberazione, quanto la copertura più si andrà consumando.
“Così la ruggine (cioè il peccato) è la copertura dell’ anima, e nel
Purgatorio si và consumando per il fuoco: e quanto più si consuma,
tanto sempre più corrisponde al vero sole Iddio: però tanto cresce la
contentezza, quanto manca la ruggine e si discopre al divin raggio: e
così l’uno cresce e l’altro manca, finchè sia finito il tempo. [[Non
manca però la pena, ma solo il tempo di stare in essa pena.]]”
Here the last (double-bracketed) sentence is a deliberate theological
correction, for it formally contradicts the precise point and
necessary consequences of the whole preceding, most authentic,
specially characteristic doctrine.--In that preceding part three
parallel illustrative similes (between the intact general statement
and the equally untouched general conclusion) have been broken
up, and dovetailed into each other, in a most bewildering manner;
and this from a (possibly but semi-conscious) desire to obscure a
characteristic feature of her teaching. I shall now give these five
sentences in English, and will disentangle the three middle ones from
each other.--The general statement: “I do not think that a contentment
could be found comparable to that of a soul in Purgatory, except that
of the Saints in Paradise; and every day this contentment is on the
increase.”--The three images descriptive of the cause and mode of this
increase, arranged according to the increasing materiality of their
picturings. (1) “The influx of God into the soul goes increasing, in
proportion as it consumes the impediment to that influx, and as the
soul opens itself out more and more to the influx.” (2) “As an object,
if covered up, cannot correspond to the beating of the sun upon it, not
through any defect in the sun, which indeed shines on continuously, but
because of the opposition of the covering, (so that) if this covering
be consumed, the object will open itself out to the sun: even so does
the soul in Purgatory more and more correspond with the true sun, God,
when its covering, sin, gets consumed.” (3) “Rust is an impediment to
fire, and fire goes consuming rust more and more: so does the rust,
that is the sin, of the souls in Purgatory, get consumed by the fire;
and their contentment grows in proportion as the rust diminishes and as
the soul uncovers itself to the divine ray (of fire).”--The conclusion,
which perhaps applies grammatically only to the last image, but which,
as to the sense, most certainly refers to all three pictures. “And
thus does the one (the influx, sun-light, fire-ray) increase, and does
the other (the impediment, covering, rust) decrease, until the time
(necessary for the whole process) be accomplished.”--The three images
are in no case supplementary, but each is complete and parallel to the
other two. As the fire that meets with the obstacle of the rust is the
same fire as that which removes the rust, so is it in all three cases:
in each case God, and His direct presence and action, are the “influx,”
“sun-light,” “fire-ray”; in each case a sinful, morally imperfect,
habit of the soul is the “impediment,” “covering,” “rust”; and in each
case the suffering as well as the joy, and the changing relations
between the two, proceed exclusively from the differing relations of
but two forces: the soul and God. It is only the peculiar, Redactional
dovetailing of the fragments of these three parallel similes which now
conveys the impression that the divine sun-light and fire-ray reaches
the uncovered soul in proportion as the soul’s covering and rust is
destroyed by material fire; and to convey this very impression, was,
no doubt, the motive of this dovetailing. The authentic passage on p.
178b, tells how the same divine fire which, at first, pains because
it has still to purify the soul, increasingly fills the soul with joy
in proportion as it can penetrate the soul unopposed: a doctrine also
explicitly taught by Catherine, in her dialogue with Vernazza as to the
effect of a drop of Love were it to fall into Hell (pp. 94_c_, 95_b_).
3. _Third paragraph of Chapter Third._
The much-tormented Chapter Third has, at the opening of its third
paragraph (p. 172_b_), an interesting theological “correction.” The
complete passage now reads: “E perchè le anime che sono nel Purgatorio
[[sono senza colpa di peccato perciò non]] hanno impedimento tra Dio
e loro, [[salvo che quella pena, la quale le ha ritardate, che]]
l’istinto non ha potuto avere la sua perfezione: e vedendo per certezza
quanto importi ogni minimo impedimento, ed essere per necessità di
giustizia ritardato esso instinto: di qui nasce un estremo fuoco.” The
bracketed words are two interdependent glosses. For though in some
other, possibly authentic, passages the souls in Purgatory “non hanno
colpa di peccato,” this most certainly applies only to mortal sin or a
still active, formal affirmation of venial sin; since the very _raison
d’être_ of Purgatory is “the rust of sin,” pp. 169_b_, 170_c_, 171_b_,
173_c_, 181_a_; “the stain of sin,” pp. 169_b_, 171_c_, 176_b_; “a mote
of imperfection,” p. 176_a_; “a stain of imperfection,” p. 176_b_; “a
passive defect,” p. 170_b_; “opposition to the will of God,” p. 177_b_;
an “impediment of sin,” 177_b_. And the _Vita_-proper says quite
plainly: “Both Purgatory and Hell are made for Sin: Hell to punish
and Purgatory to purge it” (p. 64_b_).--And this gloss is in strict
conformity with the glosses that affirm static suffering: in both cases
all change is excluded from the soul in Purgatory, since this Purgatory
is neither intrinsically necessary nor amelioratively operative within
the soul.
4. _First paragraph of Chapter Fourth._
Chapter Fourth is comparatively easy, but probably largely secondary,
because uncharacteristic of her teaching. Yet it contains a
“correction” deserving of notice. I give the two sentences which prove
both points. “Quei dell’ Inferno … hanno seco la colpa infinitamente,
e la pena [non però tanta, quanta meritano; ma pur quella] che hanno è
senza fine. Ma quei del Purgatorio hanno solamente la pena, perciocchè
la colpa fù cancellata nel punto della morte … e così essa pena è
finita, e và sempre mancando [[quanto al tempo, come s’è detto]]” (p.
173_a_).--The double-bracketed passage, directly referring to the
gloss on p. 171_b_, is, like the latter, a theological “correction.”
But also the single-bracketed words are a gloss, since they disturb
both grammar and rhythm of the passage, and introduce a point foreign
to the argument which is being conducted in this place.--Indeed, even
the remaining parts of these sentences are misleading, since Catherine
held no such simple and absolute distinction as infinite guilt in the
one case, and apparently no moral imperfection in the other. For of
the lost she says: “If any creature could be found which did in nowise
participate in the divine goodness, that creature would be as malignant
as God is good” (p. 33_b_); and as to the souls in Purgatory, they are
imperfect in precise proportion as they do and can suffer.
5. _First two sentences of Chapter Fifth._
Here we find the strongest instance of the strange clumsiness
characteristic of the theological “corrections.” I give the sentences
as they now stand, simply numbering the sentences thus amalgamated, and
bracketing at once the undoubted glosses.
(1) “Le Anime del Purgatorio hanno in tutto conforme la loro volontà
a quella di Dio; e però corrisponde loro colla sua bontà, e restano
contente quanto alia volontà, e purificate d’ogni lor peccato quanto
alla colpa. [[Restando così quelle Anime purificate, come quando Dio le
creò]]
(2) “e per essere passate di questa vita malcontente e confessate di
tutti i loro peccati commessi. … [Iddio subito perdona loro la colpa e]
non resta se non la ruggine del peccato, del quale poi si purificano
nel fuoco, mediante la pena; [e così]
(3) “purificate d’ogni colpa, unite a Dio per volontà [[veggiono
chiaramente Dio, secondo il grado che fà lor conoscere, e]] veggiono
[ancora] quanto importi la fruizione di Dio, e che l’anime sono state
create a questo fine.” (Pp. 173_c_, 174_a_.)
According to Catherine’s unvarying authentic teaching, souls go to
Purgatory precisely because they are _not_ already “pure as when God
created them,” and they there do _not_ “clearly see God.” Indeed, the
second sentence here distinctly states, that “there” still “remains” in
them “the rust of sin,” from which they “there” purify themselves. And
the two “veggiono” conclusions of the third sentence contradict each
other: for if they see clearly how much the fruition of God matters to
them, then they do not as yet possess that full fruition, _i.e._ they
do not as yet clearly see God.
These glosses are made entirely intolerable by a third Redactional
sentence here, which announces “an example,” or figure, of the doctrine
here conveyed, and then proceeds to do so in the beautiful Chapter
Sixth. For Chapter Sixth gives us the simile of the One Bread, “the
bare sight of which would satiate all creatures”; and the division of
all souls into those “in Purgatory,” which “have the hope of seeing the
Bread”; those in Hell, which “are bereft of all hope of ever being able
to see the Bread”; and, by implication, those in Heaven, that see and
satiate themselves with the Bread. And “the nearer a man were to get
to the Bread, without being able to see it, the more would the natural
desire for this Bread be enkindled”; “not having it, he would abide in
intolerable pain” (p. 174_b, c_).
III. FIVE CONCLUSIONS CONCERNING THE HISTORY OF THE “DICCHIARAZIONE.”
1. The authentic sayings, collected throughout the Seventeen Chapters,
all belong, at earliest, to the last nine, and indeed probably to
the last two or three, years of Catherine’s life.--At the latter
date Vernazza had been her close friend for twelve, and Marabotto,
her Confessor for eight years. To one or the other, or to both, we
undoubtedly owe the first writing down of this, originally small,
nucleus of authentic sayings,--probably in (many cases) on the very
day when Catherine uttered one or several of these thoughts.--The
One-Bread-Simile Chapter, and one or two other passages, contain
slightly varying doublets of the same saying, the registration of one
of which may well be by Vernazza, and the registration of the other
by Marabotto, each of these two auditors getting, perhaps, addressed
by Catherine in a slightly different form, or himself looking out for
that part or context of a saying which specially appealed to him, or
slightly, and probably quite unconsciously, giving to the identical
declaration a somewhat differing characteristic “colour” of his own.
Vernazza is, however, doubtless the first chronicler of the majority of
these sayings, in 1508-1510.
2. These sayings must have been collected together in a first shorter
_Dicchiarazione_ (equivalent to the greater part of the present first
seven chapters and possibly one or two other passages), not long after
her death, probably simultaneously with, but separately from, a short
“Conversione” account. The first public Cultus in May-July, 1512,
giving rise as it did to a painter’s picture of her, cannot have failed
to suscitate some such manuscript booklets. This short _Dicchiarazione_
will already have had the first sentence of the present introduction
prefixed to it, and this sentence, so like and yet somewhat unlike
Battista’s writings (Battista who was as yet only fifteen), will have
been written by Ettore. These Chapters already, I think, contained
the “colpa di peccato” and other technically theological passages,
probably introduced by Marabotto; but the Chapters will as yet
have been free from the theological “corrections,” which still come
away too easily from the rest of the text (in contradistinction to
the difficulty in the analysis of its other, much more resistant
components) not to be considerably younger than these latter.
3. The “corrections” insist upon three doctrines, in each case in
demonstrable contradiction with Catherine’s authentic teaching:
the complete absence of all guilt, sin, imperfection, even though
merely passive and habitual, in the soul, even in its first moment in
Purgatory; the simply vindictive, not curative, hence static, nature
of the suffering throughout the soul’s prison time, right up to this
time’s sudden cessation; and this soul’s clear vision of God from first
to last. Thus no increase or extension of purity, no work of love, is
effected in or by the soul during, or by means of, its Purgatory.--Now
Pope Leo the Tenth, in his Bull _Exsurge Domine_ of May 16, 1520,
against Luther, reprobated four propositions concerning Purgatory;
and the second part of the second of these propositions declares:
“It is not proved, by any reasons or by any texts of Scripture, that
the souls in Purgatory are out of a state capable of merit or of an
increase of Charity.”[457] The Censure of this doctrine must have
seemed to menace Catherine’s teaching on this same point. For she
nowhere indeed declares these souls to be capable of meriting, nor does
she teach that there is any increase in the intensity of their love;
yet by the one free act of self-determination to Purgatory, and by the
gradual extension of this determination of active love throughout all
the regions and degrees of the passive will and habitual dispositions
of the soul, her teaching must, to an at all nervous theologian,
have seemed, at the time, to come perilously near to the admission,
respectively, of merit and of an increase of love in the Beyond. And
the degree in which the fight with nascent Protestantism was raging
precisely around such Purgatorial questions, and the solemnity of the
Pope’s condemnation, at this early stage of Catherine’s Cultus and
reputation, must have combined to render the introduction of these
disfiguring glosses an apparent necessity.--I take them to have been
introduced soon after Vernazza’s death in 1524, hence some twelve years
after the constitution of these seven Chapters; presumably by the
Inquisitor to the Republic of Genoa for the time being.
4. The addition of the last ten Chapters to the first seven Chapters,
and of the second sentence to the Introduction, will have occurred some
time after the constitution of the _Vita_-proper, say, in 1531 or 1532;
but, in any case, was not due to Vernazza or Marabotto. And the glosses
will have been introduced into these ten Chapters quasi-automatically,
and simply as a consequence to the very deliberate “corrections” of
those previous seven Chapters; for now Catherine’s reputation had had
another twelve years in which to grow, and the Bull had been studied
for another twelve years.--But no such glosses were introduced into the
_Vita_-proper, either as to this, or indeed, perhaps, any other point.
For this _Vita_ treated only quite incidentally of the other-world
Purgatory; and this, in those times specially delicate, subject-matter
had received every precautionary attention in the _Dicchiarazione_
professedly devoted to it. And other, intrinsically more important
points, even though treated here with great boldness, were felt to
remain as open as before.
But we must now get on to this _Vita_-proper.
IV. THE “VITA”-PROPER, ITS DIVISIONS AND PARTS, AND CHIEF SECONDARY AND
AUTHENTIC CONSTITUENTS.
1. _The three great divisions, and their clearly secondary parts._
The _Vita_-proper, as we now have it in print, falls into three great
Divisions, of respectively two, four, and two parts each. The first and
last Divisions hold by far the greater amount of the primary material;
whereas the middle Division only gives us here and there chapters or
paragraphs of admirable freshness and beauty.
The eight opening Narrative Chapters, pp. 1_b_ to 21_b_, and the next
nine Chapters of Discourses, pp. 21_b_ to 50_c_, form the two parts
of the first Division, each part being more or less complete and
homogeneous within itself; and yet they are together in marked contrast
to most of the materials of the following Division. It is within the
limits of this first Division, and probably even of its first part,
that must subsist the materials, predominantly derived from Ettore
Vernazza, of that first “Conversione”-booklet of 1512.
The second Division opens out with the most important Narrative
Chapter Nineteenth, pp. 51_a_-53_c_; but the remaining seven Chapters
of this its first part (pp. 53_c_-70_a_), contain very little which
is not findable elsewhere in a more primary form. Then follow, as a
second part, seven Chapters of a bewildering variety of form: three
are largely Narrative and important (Chapters XXVII to XXIX, pp.
70_b_-77_b_); the next (Chapter XXX, pp. 77_b_-79_a_) gives Discourses,
only in part authentic; the next again (Chapter XXXI, pp. 79_b_-83_c_)
is chiefly Narrative and important; Chapter XXXII, pp. 83_c_-88_b_,
is now one long Discourse which incorporates some short but important
authentic sayings; and Chapters XXXIII to XXXV (pp. 88_c_-96_b_) are,
the first, a Narrative; the last two, Discourses; and, in all three
cases, preponderatingly secondary and negligible. Then a third part
consists of a largely Narrative Chapter of delightful authenticity
and freshness (Chapter XXXVI, pp. 94_b_-96_b_); a tryingly composite
but valuable Narrative Chapter (Chapter XXXVII, pp. 96_b_-97_c_);
and an important Narrative Chapter with dates (Chapter XXXVIII, pp.
98_a_-100_a_). And, as a fourth part, we get a group of three Chapters,
of which the first and last contain highly original matter (Chapters
XXXIX-XLI, pp. 100_a_-103_b_, 106_a_-111_b_), but of which the middle
one (Chapter XL, pp. 103_c_-105_c_) can safely be neglected. Ettore’s
chroniclings are again strongly represented in this Division.
And the last Division consists, in its first part, of five important
Narrative Chapters. (Chapters XLII-XLVI, pp. 111_c_-126_c_), clearly by
various hands, and of markedly manifold tone and emotional pitch. And
the second part consists of the six Chapters concerning her Passion,
Death, and Cultus (Chapters XLVII-LII, pp. 127_a_-166_a_), of which
we can safely neglect Chapter XLVII, pp. 127_a_-131_c_ (wanting in
the MSS., and a mere collection of passages still present, in a more
primitive form and connection, in other parts of the _Vita_); and pp.
161_c_-166_a_ (which treat of events subsequent to Catherine’s death).
This last Division gives the most important of the communications that
can with certainty be attributed to Marabotto. And as Division First’s
first part, Catherine’s Conversion, will have existed very early in
a separate form, and its second part will have, if added later, been
thus added very soon; so this Third Division’s second part, Catherine’s
Passion, will early have existed separately; and to this will have been
prefixed, still in early times, the Narrative Chapters XLII, XLIII,
XLV, and XLVI of the first part, all dealing with matters occurring
from 1496 onwards.
2. _Five main additions of the Printed Vita as against the extant MSS._
We have now reduced the bulk of the _Vita_-proper by 34½ pages, but
the remaining 132 pages are capable of further reduction. For the
Printed _Vita_, as compared with the MSS., contains, besides the
already rejected Chapter XLVII, five main additions.
The first addition (in the order of the Printed Vita) is the
beautifully vivid and daring, certainly historical scene between
Catherine and the Friar (Chapter XIX, pp. 51_a_-53_b_), a record
doubtless due to Ettore Vernazza, and which will have been omitted
by the Franciscan Scribe of MS. A from scruples with regard to the
doctrine implied.
The second is Chapter XLIV, omitted from p. 117_b_ to p.
121_b_,--Catherine’s declarations as to her lonely middle period and
the account of her Confessions to Don Marabotto, undoubtedly here
recorded by this Priest; matter again which the Franciscan Friar might
well consider dangerously daring, but which, we have seen, had not yet
been incorporated with the Franciscan’s Prototype, perhaps indeed not
with any copy of the then extant _Vita_.
The third is the fourth paragraph of Chapter XLVIII, p. 133_b_, giving
a new and beautiful description of the “Scintilla” experienced by
Catherine on November 11, 1509. It is of late composition, and Battista
Vernazza is no doubt its author.
The fourth consists of three new paragraphs to Chapter XLIX,
descriptive of Maestro Boerio’s three-weeks’ attempt at curing her,
sometime in May-July 1510 (pp. 146_c_-147_c_), and of evidently the
same Physician’s visit in his scarlet robes on September 2 (p. 154_b_).
Both passages, of transparent authenticity and still but little
enlarged, will have been contributed by this Physician’s Priest-son
Giovanni Boerio, who, dying in his seventies, in 1561,[458] must
himself have been twenty at the time of his Father’s attendance, and
may well have had his Father’s contemporary notes before him when
composing these interestingly vivid contributions.
And the fifth brings three new paragraphs for the events of September
4, 1510 (Chapter L, pp. 155_b_-156_a_), already referred to here, on
pp. 209, 210.
The MSS. read: “On the following day [4th September], being in great
pain and torment, she extended her arms in suchwise as to appear
in truth a body fixed to a cross; so that, according as she was
interiorly, so also did she show in her exterior, and she said--”[459]
Hereupon follows a long prayer so obviously modelled throughout upon
Our Lord’s High-Priestly prayer (John xvii, 1-26), and so elaborately
reflective, that it cannot but most distantly represent anything spoken
now by her who had been so interjectional in her remarks ever since
August 16 (pp. 149_b_-155_b_).--Now the Printed _Vita_ introduces
between “… exterior,” and “and she said,” the following account:
“Whence, it appears to me, we should indeed believe that the spiritual
stigmata were impressed in that body which was so afflicted and
excruciated by her Love; and although they did not appear exteriorly,
they nevertheless could easily be recognized through the Passion which
she felt; and that she suffered in her body that pain which her Love
had suffered on the Cross: as we read of the Apostle (Gal. vi [17])
who bore the stigmata of Our Lord Jesus Christ, not indeed exteriorly
but interiorly, through the great love and desire which he felt within
himself for his Lord.”
“In proof that this holy woman bore the stigmata interiorly, a large
silver cup was ordered to be brought in, which had a very high-standing
saucer”; the cup was “full of cold water, for refreshing her hands, in
the palms of which, because of the great fire that burned within her,
she felt intolerable pain. And on putting her hands into it, the water
became so boiling that the cup and the very saucer were greatly heated.
She also sustained great heat and much pain at her feet, and hence she
kept them uncovered; and at her head she similarly suffered great heat
with many pains.”
Argentina is then quoted as having seen how “one of” Catherine’s “arms
lengthened itself out by more than half a palm beyond its usual length;
yet she never said one word as to whence such great pains proceeded.
It is true that, on one occasion, before her last infirmity, she
predicted that she would have to suffer a great malady, which would not
be natural but different from other infirmities, and that she would
die of it; and that, before her death, she would have within herself
(_in sè_) the Stigmata and the Mysteries of the Passion: and this the
aforesaid Argentina revealed later on to many persons.
“Now this Beata being thus, with her arms extended, in pains so great
that she could not move.…” And then follows the “said” with the long
prayer, as given in the MSS.[460] Stigmatization is thus attributed,
but in two degrees and of two kinds. “Spiritual Stigmata,” like St.
Paul, who had them “through the great love and desire which he felt
within himself for his Lord”: this is the conception of the writer of
the first paragraph, doubtless Battista Vernazza. “Stigmata impressed
within her body,” intense interior physical pain, proved to be such by
the intense interior physical heat, and this heat proved by the insides
of Catherine’s hands causing cold water to boil: this was no doubt
Argentina’s view--at least as time went on. And note the interesting
combination of both views effected by the Redactor in the clauses “the
spiritual stigmata were impressed in her body,” “through the Passion
which she felt,” and “she bore the stigmata interiorly.”
V. AGE AND AUTHORSHIP OF THE LITERATURE RETAINED.
The next points to consider, in detail, are the authorship and
antiquity of the literature retained by us.
1. _Indications concerning Ettore Vernazza._
The indications to be found within the _Vita_ begin at pp. 98_c_,
99_a_, where, after six lines concerning “several ecstasies” which
occurred in one particular year and which Catherine herself had called
“giddiness” (_vertigine_), we are told: “One day that she was talking
with a Religious, that Religious said to her: ‘Mother, I beg you, for
the glory and honour of God, to elect some person that would satisfy
your mind, and to narrate to this person the graces which God has
granted to you, so that, when you die, these graces may not remain
… unknown, and the praise and glory due for them to God may not be
wanting.’ And then this Soul answered that she was quite willing (_ben
contenta_), if this were pleasing to her tender Love; and that, in
that case, she would elect no other person than himself.” “And then,
speaking on another occasion with the said Religious, she began to
narrate to him her Conversion. And she acted similarly later on, as
well as she could, with regard to many other things, which have been
faithfully collected and put into the present book” (_Vita_, pp. 98_c_,
99_a_). The Preface, we know, mentions “two Religious, her devotees,
her Confessor and a Spiritual son of hers, by whom the (matter of
the) book has been collected from the very lips of the Seraphic
Woman herself” (_Vita_, p. viii_c_): and we know, beyond all cavil,
that these two men were Cattaneo Marabotto, the Priest, and Ettore
Vernazza, the Lawyer. The passage just given, _Vita_, pp. 98_c_, 99_a_,
unmistakably refers to one of these two; and the address of “Mother,”
and the answer of “Son,” which occurs here immediately after the words
translated (p. 99_b_), fit only Vernazza.
Now the opening words of the first two, closely interconnected,
paragraphs of that Chapter XXXVIII (_Vita_, p. 98_a_, _b_) are: “In
the year 1507”; the first words of the next two paragraphs, which also
belong together, are: “It happened in a certain year.” The subjects and
sequences of those two sets correspond pretty closely; and the second
set is in simple juxtaposition to the first set. Yet the sets differ:
the first contains a definite date but no allusion to any interlocutor,
and Catherine moves about and overcomes her scruples by intercourse
with God alone; the second is without a date but refers repeatedly to a
witness, and Catherine is physically quiescent and solicits spiritual
help from a disciple. Each set is, in its own way, equally vivid and
peculiar: they can hardly be doublet narratives of the same event.--The
second set, then, gives a later stage of her health and dispositions;
and the “ecstasies,” “giddinesses,” which left her “half dead,” must
refer to the “assault” of November 11, 1509, which left many other,
similarly deep, impressions and definite records. The penultimate
paragraph of the Printed _Vita_ (p. 165_c_) reads in the MSS.: “Now
those who saw and observed these wonderful operations _during fifteen
years_;” and this (since Marabotto did not become Catherine’s Confessor
nor presumably know her, at least intimately, till 1499) must refer
specially to Vernazza, Thus 1495 marks the beginning of his intimacy
with Catherine; in 1497 he could ask Catherine to stand God-mother
to his first child; and the _Vita_ gives, pp. 122_c_, 123_a_, “what
she said after her husband’s death,” hence in the autumn of 1497, “to
a spiritual son of hers,” who is certainly Vernazza, “concerning the
character of Messer Giuliano.”--The conversation of November 1509 is,
then, not the starting-point of Vernazza’s observations, or even of his
registrations, but only the date from when Catherine began deliberately
to tell him about her past history.--All this gives us the following
canon: whatever in the _Vita_ is attributable to Vernazza can, if its
subject-matter is posterior to 1495, have been observed and written
down by him, then and there, as it occurred; if its subject-matter is
prior to 1495, then we have what, at best, is derived from Catherine’s
memory and communication to him. And there exists no earlier trained
and reliable witness of Catherine’s spiritual dispositions and sayings
than Vernazza from this date onwards.
Two beautiful scenes and compositions have undoubtedly been directly
witnessed and contemporaneously chronicled by Vernazza,--the
conversation about Love and Hell, with Ettore as the chief interlocutor
after Catherine herself (_Vita_, pp. 94_b_,-95_c_), between July 1495
and 1502; and the Scene with the Friar, which it is best to put back
to the end of 1495 or the beginning of 1496, since it is more natural
to take her words, “if the world or a husband,” as referring to a
still living husband.--We can also, I think, attribute to the same
intermediary the authentic central part of the analogous discourse as
to “that corrupt expression: you have offended God,” Chapter XXXIX,
pp. 100_c_-101_b_.--And it is Ettore again through whom, doubtless, we
derive all but everything that is authentic in the _Dicchiarazione_, as
we have already found.
Vernazza’s contributions to the second category, _i.e._ reminiscences
of Catherine brought to paper by him, are also very important and more
numerous; but they are, I think, generally worked up with parallel
accounts due to Marabotto, as we shall presently note.
2. _Indications of Marabotto._
The _locus classicus_ concerning Don Cattaneo appears in the _Vita_ in
Chapter XLIV, p. 117_b_, of which long and most important Chapter (pp.
116_c_-121_b_) only the first seven lines occur in the MSS. The passage
(omitting a highly glossed bracketed clause and a parallel, secondary
half-sentence) runs: “After this, ( ), the Lord gave her a Priest
(_Prete_) to have a care of her soul and body. [ ] He was elected
Rector of the Hospital in which she abode, and he was wont to hear her
Confessions, to say Mass for her, and to give her Communion, as often
as she liked. This Priest (_Sacerdote_), at the request of various
spiritual persons devoted to this Beata, has written a considerable
part (_buona parte_) of this work, having many times tempted her on
and incited her to tell him of the singular graces which God had given
her and had effected within her [; especially since (_massime che_)
this Religious, owing to long experience and intercourse, knew and
understood particularly well (_molto bene_) the sequence of her life].”
This introductory authentication is followed by the highly reliable
and important matters described in my Chapter IV,--her manner of
Confession; the incident of the perfume from Marabotto’s hand; her
solemn declaration as to her twenty-five years of complete interior
loneliness with God; and the murmurs of some of her friends as to the
closeness of their intimacy, and his consequent absence from her for
three days. All this (pp. 117_b_-121_b_) was certainly written down by
Marabotto himself, at the time, in substantially its present form.
Although this whole series now opens out with “la prima volta che si
volle confessare a questo Religioso” (p. 117_c_), the words “a questo
Religioso” are doubtless an addition of the Redactor. For everywhere
else Marabotto is always “il Confessore” or “suo Confessore,” whilst
“un Religioso” is reserved for Vernazza: and wherever she uses any
specific appellation to the Confessore,--a thing which is quite
exceptional,--she says “Padre”; whilst where she does so to the
Religioso, she says “Figliuolo.”[461] And, wherever the Confessore
addresses her, there is never any specific address; whereas the
Religioso constantly addresses her as “Madre.”[462]
As to “Confessore,” we get one mentioned as Confessor to the Convent of
S. Maria delle Grazie in 1460, p. 2_b_ the same or another Confessor
of the same Convent in 1473, p. 4_a_, _c_, is called “buon Religioso.”
Both these men, or this one man, heard Catherine’s Confessions at those
dates. But, a most important point: all the other Confessore-passages
throughout the book refer to after 1499, and to Marabotto alone. For
this is a list of them all. On p. 7_c_: here she is “so gravely ill,
as to be unable to eat,” a thing belonging to the times after 1499.
(In events of an obviously earlier date,--her fervent Communions,--pp.
8_a_, _c_, we get not “Confessore” but simply “Sacerdote.”) On p.
10_c_: here “to test her, he commanded her to eat,” an action of which
the results are described on pp. 117_b_, 119_c_. On page 108_b_: but
here her fasting is liable to damage her health, which points to after
1501. On p. 113_b_: but here the Confessore remains her sole aid, as
in the accounts referring to Marabotto in January 1510 and shortly
before, pp. 120_a_, 121_b_; 120_b_, 139_a_-_c_. On p. 115_b_: but here
the possessed “spiritual daughter” is certainly Mariola Bastarda, who
did not live with Catherine till after Giuliano’s death in 1497. On
pp. 117_b_-121_b_: the Confessore is throughout avowedly Marabotto,
and a treble indication here forces us to date his Confessorship from
not before 1499. The remaining “Confessore”-references,--pp. 130_a_,
138_c_, 139_a_, _b_, _c_; 140_b_, _c_; 143_c_, 156_c_, 157_b_,--are all
explicitly subsequent to 1501 and pertinent to Marabotto alone.
Now there is no good reason for doubting Marabotto’s original, and
still largely unmodified, authorship of all the above passages in which
he himself occurs. Only as to the scene with the possessed Mariola,
Chapter XLIII, pp. 115_a_-_c_, have I long hesitated to attribute
something so insignificant in substance, and yet so pompous in form, to
Marabotto, either as action or as composition. Yet I have ended, for
the reasons given in my Chapter IV, by thinking that, after all, this
scene does go back, more or less, to him.
3. _References to other witnesses._
There are but few other references to witnesses in the _Vita_. On p.
124_a_, in the account of Suor Tommasa Fiesca, there are “the Nuns
of her first and second Monastery”--San Silvestro and the Monastero
Nuovo,--and “secular persons, her familiar and devoted friends.” I
take this admirably vivid and _naïve_ account, pp. 123_b_-124_b_
(which exists in the MSS. without this sentence and Tommasa’s
death-date, 1534), to rest upon Suor Tommasa’s own reminiscences of
her heaven-storming cousin, but to be the composition of Battista
Vernazza.--And on p. 158_c_ “several of the ten Physicians,” who
assembled by Catherine’s bedside on September 10, 1510, “are still
alive in this year (1551),” but the very vague account of their
examination is no doubt due to a non-medical pen.
VI. ANALYSIS OF THE CONVERSION-NARRATIVES.
Let us now take the first of the four Narrative Passages in which
the largest or clearest conflations of original documents and of
subsequent glosses are traceable: the Conversion-Scene and subsequent
Apparition, March 1473; the “Scintilla”-Experience, November 11,
1509; the Temptation of August 23, 1510; and her Death on September
14, 1510. Roman and Arabic numerals indicate the probable provenances
from different contributors, and from different narratives of each
contributor, respectively; square brackets indicate glosses; and E,
C, and B stand respectively for the handiwork of Ettore Vernazza, of
Cattaneo Marabotto, and of Battista Vernazza.
THE TWO CONVERSION-SCENES, pp. 4_a_-5_c_.
(_a_) _In the Chapel._
I. 1. Il giorno dopo la Festa di San Benedetto [ad istanza di sua
sorella monaca] andò Caterina [per confessarsi d’] al Confessore di
esso Monistero, benchè non fosse disposta a confessarsi: ma la sorella
le disse, “almanco vattegli a raccommandare, perchè è buon religioso”;
ed, in verità era un uomo santo. 2. Subitochè se gli fù inginocchiata
innanzi, ricevè una ferita al cuore d’immenso amore di Dio, con una
vista così chiara delle sue miserie e diffetti e della bontà di Dio,
che nè fù quasi per cascare in terra.
II. 1. Onde per quei sentimenti d’immenso amore e delle offese fatte
al suo dolce Iddio, fù talmente tirata [per affetto purgato] fuor
delle miserie del mondo, che restò quasi fuor di sè; I. 3. e [perciò]
internamente gridava con ardente amore: “non più mondo, non più
peccati.” Ed in quel punto, se ella avesse avuto mille mondi, tutti gli
avrebbe gettati via.
III. Per la viva fiamma del infocato amore che essa sentiva, il dolce
Iddio impresse in quell’ anima, e le infuse, in un subito, tutta la
perfezione per grazia: onde la purgò di tutti gli affetti terreni, la
illuminò col suo divin lume, facendola vedere coll’ occhio interiore la
sua dolce bontà, e finalmente in tutto la unì, mutò e trasformò in sè,
per vera unione di buona volontà, accendendola da ogni parte col suo
vivo amore.
[Stando la Santa per quella dolce ferita quasi alienata da’ sensi
innanzi al confessore e senza poter parlare]
I. 4. Nè avvedendosi il Confessore del fatto, per caso fù chiamato e
levasi. Dappoichè assai presto fù retornato, non potendo ella appena
parlare per l’intrinseco dolore ed immenso amore, allo meglio che
potè gli disse: “Padre, se vi piacesse, lascerei volontieri questa
Confessione per un’ altra volta”: e così fù fatto. 5. Si parti dunque
Caterina e retornata a casa [si sentì così accesa e ferita di tanto
amor di Dio, a lei interiormente mostrato colla vista delle sue
miserie, che pareva fuors di sè] ed entrata in una camera la più
segreta che potè, ivi molto pianse [e sospirò con gran fuoco].
[In quel punto fù istrutta intrinsecamente dell’ orazione, ma la sua
lingua] I. 6. non poteva dir altro salvo questo: “O Amore, può essere
che mi abbi chiamata [con tanto amore] e fattomi conoscere in un punto
quello che colla lingua non posso esprimere?” II. 2. Le sue parole in
tutti quei giorni altro non erano che sospiri, e così grandi che era
cosa mirabile: ed aveva una si estrema contrizione [di cuore] per le
offese fatte a tanta bontà, che se non fosse stata miracolosamente
sostenuta, sarebbe spirata e crepatole il cuore.
(_b_) _In the Palace._
I. 7. (?) [Ma volendo] il Signore [accendere più intrinsecamente l’amor
suo in quest’ anima ed insieme il dolore dei suoi peccati,] se le
mostrò in ispirito colla Croce in spalla, piovendo tutto sangue, [per
modo che la casa le pareva tutta piena di rivoli di quel sangue,] il
quale vedea essere tutto sparso per amore: il che le accese nel cuore
tanto fuoco, che nè usciva fuor di sè [e pareva una cosa insensata per
lo tanto amore e dolore che ne sentiva.]
II. 3. (?) [Questa vista le fù tanto penetrativa, che] le pareva sempre
vedere (e cogli occhi corporali) il suo Amore tutto insanguinato
e confitto in Croce; e perciò gridava: “O Amore, mai più, mai più
peccati.” I. 8 (?) Se le accese poi un odio di sè medesima, che non si
poteva sopportare, e diceva: “O Amore, se bisogna, sono apparechiata di
confessare i miei peccati in pubblico.”
I. 9. Dopo questo fece la sua [generale] Confessione con tanta
contrizione e tali stimoli, che le passavano l’anima [. E benchè]
Iddio [in quel punto che le diede la dolce ed amorosa ferita, le
avesse perdonato tutti i suoi peccati, abbrucciandoli col fuoco del
suo immenso amore; nondimeno volendo soddisfare alla giustizia, la
fece passare per la via della soddisfazione] disponendo che questa
contrizione [lume e conversione] durasse [ro] circa quatt_r_o [dici]
_anni_, in capo a quali [, poichè ella ebbe soddisfatto, le fù levata
della mente la predetta vista in forma tale che] mai più non vide
neppure una minima scintilla dei suoi peccati, come se tutti fossero
stati gettati nel profondo del mare.
There is a striking parallelism of sights, sayings, and their
sequences, between the dated events in the Convent-Chapel, and the
undated ones in the Palace, divided off by the passage II 2, with its
vague “all these days.” Both sets have a “Vista,”--partly of “offese
fatte”; have next “and hence she cried ‘no more sin’”; and the first
concludes with a wish, expressed to the Confessor, to put off her
Confession, and the second with an exclamation, addressed to God, of
her readiness for even a public Confession.--This Christ-Vision, or
any other Passion-scene, is nowhere implied or referred to in all her
recorded post-Conversion sayings and doings; the legendary instinct, we
know, developed, from this single adult occupation with the Passion,
the “interior stigmatization” story; and in the Palace Narrative itself
there has been, in any case, _some_ uncertainty, shifting, or doubling
of the tradition as to that figured vision,--for the actual vision
cannot have represented Christ both as walking and carrying His Cross,
_and_ as motionless and hanging upon it. Are the two sets, then, but
two variant records of one sole event, and is the second but the result
of an early determination to find more of an historical, pictorial
element in Catherine’s spiritual experiences than had actually been
present in it?
Yet strong reasons operate on the other side. We have one, and only
one, absolutely certain detail from her childhood, the presence, in
her bedroom, of a Pietà (_Vita_, pp. 1_c_, 2_a_); yet nowhere, in her
subsequent actions and sayings, is there the slightest allusion to this
picture-scene which had so deeply moved her childhood.--And the most
vivid and characteristic details of the two Conversion-experiences are
delicately different in each set.
The first set, (_a_), consists of three documents. Document I 1,
2; 3; 4-6 continues the story of Catherine’s relations with the
“monistero” of the Madonna delle Grazie, and of her prayer on the eve
of St. Benedict’s day, told on pp. 2_b_-3_c_; is most vivid, precise,
and homely; and is doubtless the work of E. Document II 1, 2 is a
colourless parallel to I 2, 6; yet in I 2 she sees her own miseries, in
II 1 she is drawn out of the miseries of the world: II is thus probably
an ancient doublet, and, if so, then part of some annotations by C.
And document III is obviously from yet another, later, hand,--that
which produced the originally tripartite scheme of Catherine’s Convert
life (pp. 5_c_-_bc_), for the three “la” (her, Catherine) after “onde”
of III require but three stages of perfecting; whilst now the printed
text attempts (by italicizing “unì” and “transformò”) to produce four
stages, in keeping with the following, now quadripartite scheme. The
second set, (_b_), begins as though nothing had yet happened or as if,
at least, the past event had been but a step towards something greater.
Yet precisely such series of apparent anti-climaxes occur demonstrably
elsewhere in her life.--The account of II 3 (?) is irreconcilably
different from that of I 7 (?): for there Christ is moving, carrying
His Cross and raining blood upon objects not Himself, here He is
motionless, probably dead, affixed to the Cross, and His blood has
merely stained His own body; there she sees “in the spirit,” here
“with bodily eyes”; there, for some minutes, here continuously; there,
followed by speechless ecstasy, here, by penitential exclamations. And
this II 3 (?) is not a later stage of the vision given in I 7 (?), as
though, dissolving-view-like, the Moving Christ had shaded off into
a Fixed Christ, (although Catherine’s Viste give us such changes,
_e.g._ that of the Divine Fountain’s successive self-communications,
_Vita_, pp. 32c, 33a). For the very Redactor treats the second “Vista”
as simply identical with the first; and Battista, we saw, so entirely
realizes the contradiction between the two accounts, as to make two
quite distinct events out of them (_Dialogo_, pp. 209_b_, 211_a_,
_b_).--This second account can hardly be a gloss, for Battista already
found and respected it when at work on the Giustiniani-book of 1529
or 1530, and was thus powerfully influenced by it when composing
her _Dialogo_ in about 1547. Indeed, this II 3 (?) has been the
starting-point of all the stigmatization-glosses elsewhere, and can
hardly be a gloss itself.--If all this be so, then either Catherine
herself told the Christ-Vision to one disciple in two different ways;
or told it to two companions, to each in a different way; or told the
story so vaguely, or with such rich vividness and ambiguity, as to be
differently understood by these two different hearers. Only one of the
two latter alternatives would cover the facts, since no one writer
could remain unaware of the contradiction between these two accounts.
Hence we here require two writers, both considerably prior to Battista
and much respected by her; only E and C answer to these tests; and, in
that case, the Living Christ, seen in the Spirit, comes to us through
E, and the Dead Christ, seen with the bodily eyes, reaches us through
C.--And then comes I 8, of clearly first-hand authority, and belonging,
I think, to E’s account.
I 9, concluding the _Vita’s_ Conversion-story, must evidently contain
some words, originally belonging to document I, concerning her
Confession, since I has already twice (I 4, I 8) referred to such a
coming Confession. And such words are here: “Dopo questo--l’anima”;
“Iddio disponendo-circa quattro _anni_” (this is the original text
here); and a vivid description of her suddenly ceasing to see her
particular sins.
VII. THE SAYINGS-PASSAGES: THREE TESTS FOR DISCRIMINATING AUTHENTIC
FROM SECONDARY SAYINGS.
As to the Sayings, it is obviously more difficult to decide as to
their provenance, authenticity, and date of enunciation and literary
fixation. Yet three tests have proved solidly helpful towards gaining a
respectably large collection of texts which can, with high historical
probability or even certainty, be reasoned from as truly Catherine’s,
even in their form.
1. _Rhythm._
There is the test of rhythm and rhyme, since the _Vita_ describes her
“wont” of “making rhymed sayings in her joy,” and gives irrefragable
proofs of her deep love of Jacopone’s poetry.[463] The still obviously
rhymed or rhythmical sayings all answer to the other tests of
genuineness; and many sayings now turned, by successive Redactors,
into more or less sheer prose, can still be restored to their original
poetic form. All these rhythmic, rhymed sayings have an utterly
_naïve_, expansive tone, markedly different from the high-pitched
redactional rhetoric in which they are now embedded, or again from
Battista’s far more literary poetry: hence they cannot spring from this
strong and busy intellect.--Thus she hears her Love say: “Chi di Mè |
si fida, || di sè | non dubita”; possibly simply quoting, she says to
her soul, “ama chi t’ama, | e chi non t’ama lascia”; and she sums up
her life’s ideal as, “s’io mangio o bevo, | s’io [] taccio o parlo,
| dormo o veglio; | s’io son in chiesa, in casa, in piazza: | s’io
son inferma | o sana: | s’io muojo o non muojo: || ogni ora di vita
mia, | tutto voglio che sia, | Dio e prossimo: || non vorrei potere ne
volere, | fare, parlare nè pensare | eccetto tutto Dio.||”[464]--And
there are her repetitive utterances, beginning with “non più mondo, non
più peccati,” on March 22, 1472, and finishing with “andiàmo, non più
terra, non più terra,” of August 25, 1510.[465]
2. _Simplicity._
The second test requires the sayings to be short and simple, and to
be followed, in the present text, by carefully clausulated doublets,
or to be themselves now glossed and expanded. Such sayings occur
specially in Chapters I to VIII; XVIII and XIX; XXVII to XXIX; XXXVI to
XXXVIII; XLIV to XLVI; and in Chapter L. All these Chapters are largely
narrative; can in great part be traced to Vernazza or Marabotto; and
yield sayings readily attributable to her first Conversion-Period
(which she doubtless recounted to those Friends), or to 1495-1510, the
years of her intercourse with those intimates.
3. _Originality._
And the third test consists of a daring originality, which, often
softened and counteracted by the successive Redactors, precludes all
idea of sayings expressive of it proceeding from any one of less
authority than herself. These sayings again are all short; they too
occur, all but exclusively, in the Chapters indicated and in the
_Dicchiarazione_; they are all referable to the years 1495-1510, and to
the registration first of Vernazza, and, later on, of Marabotto.
Very few of the sayings grouped together by me in my Chapter VI but
satisfy at least two of these three tests.
VIII. CONCLUSION. AT LEAST SIX STAGES IN THE UPBUILDING OF THE COMPLETE
BOOK OF 1551. THE SLIGHT CHANGES INTRODUCED SINCE THEN. FIRST CLAIMS TO
AUTHORSHIP FOR CATHERINE.
1. _The Stages._
It would appear, then, from the preceding analyses, that the successive
stages in the composition and redaction of the _Vita-Dicchiarazione_
complex of documents cannot have been fewer than the following:--
(i) Description and Registration, (1) first by Vernazza (1495-1510),
(2) then also by Marabotto (1499-1510), more or less on the day of
their occurrence and utterance, of Catherine’s actions, psycho-physical
condition, and sayings expressive of her present spiritual experiences;
and of her deliberate reminiscences concerning her past, especially
her early Convert life. And similar contemporary Annotations, of much
lesser volume, by (3) Suor Tommasa Fiesca, (4) Maestro Boerio, and (5)
Don Giacomo Carenzio--the latter two, only since May 1510.
(ii) Redaction, probably in connection with the first public Cultus in
the summer or autumn of 1512, of (1) a short _Conversione_-booklet, by
Vernazza, perhaps already with slight contributions by Marabotto; (2)
a short _Dicchiarazione_-booklet, also by Vernazza, probably as yet
without the theological “corrections”; and (3) a short Passion-account,
by Marabotto, with additions by Carenzio and, in substance,
contributions by Argentina.
(iii) Redaction, after the death of the last of the two chief friends
(Marabotto, in 1528), by Battista Vernazza, in 1529 or 1530, of a
tripartite _Vita_, made up chiefly of II (1) and II (3), and a longer
_Dicchiarazione_, now with the theological glosses,--these latter
presumably from the pen of Fra Gaspar Toleto, O.P., the Inquisitor for
the Republic of Genoa, or his successor, Fra Geronimo da Genova.
(iv) Partial change of the tripartite scheme of the _Vita-Dottrina_ to
a quadripartite one, early in 1548.
(v) Composition by Battista Vernazza of (1) the _Dialogo_, “Chapter”
I alone, 1549; and then (2) of “Chapter” II (the present Parts II and
III), in 1550.
(vi) Final Redaction of the text of the Printed
_Vita-Dicchiarazione-Dialogo_, by means of all the preceding Documents,
of which I (4) and possibly the Confession-descriptions of I (2) are
now incorporated in the complete _Vita_ for the first time; and, with
the help of gossipy reminiscences of Argentina, possibly only now
reduced to writing--in 1550, 1551. This final Redactor would again be
Battista Vernazza.
2. _The Changes._
Now from 1551 onwards this whole _corpus_ has remained stationary,
with the exception of purely formal modifications, such as one synonym
for another; of, since 1737, her designation, on the title-page and
in some other places, as “Santa Caterina da Genova,” and, throughout
the text, as “Caterina” (only the Ancient Preface still retains the
strictly correct “Caterinetta,” _Vita_, p. viii); and of two other,
more important changes.
The first important change is the insertion (later than the fourth
edition, Venice, 1601) at her death-moment,--between “e in quel punto”
(after raising her forefinger heavenwards) “quest’ anima beata” and
“con una gran pace … spirò,”--of the words: “dicendo: In manus tuas
commendo spiritum meum.” This, intrinsically appropriate, last saying
prevented henceforth her last, directly recorded, words from being
something so little beautiful or characteristic as the “cacciate via
questa bestia” with which all the MSS., and all the editions till at
least 1601, had the fine courage to conclude the series of her sayings.
And the second change is a modification in the titles of the Book and
of its several parts, of significance as indicating the growth of the
legend attributing literary composition to her. The First Printed
Edition (1551) has: “Book of the admirable Life and holy Doctrine of
the Blessed Caterinetta of Genoa, in which is contained a useful and
Catholic Demonstration and Declaration” (Elucidation) “of Purgatory”;
and in the body of the Book this “Demonstrazione” appears as _Trattato
del Purgatorio_, after the _Vita_-proper. But though the complete
_Dialogo_ appears here, behind the _Trattato_ and divided into two
“Chapters,” no mention is made of it on the title-page.--The Second
Edition, Florence, 1568, adds to the title: “with a Dialogue between
the Soul and the Body, composed by the same,” thus attributing,
apparently, full literary authorship by Catherine to precisely that
document with which she has least of all to do.--The Fourth Edition,
Venice, 1601, simply adds, after “Dialogue,” “divided into two
Chapters”; and the Fifth, 1615, modifies this to “three Chapters,
between the Soul, (and) the Body; Humanity, (and) Self-love; the Spirit
and the Lord God, composed by the Beata herself.”
The first French translation, Paris, 1598, puts the _Dialogue_ before
the _Treatise_, and still attributes Catherine’s direct authorship to
the _Dialogue_ alone. But the first Latin translation, Freiburg in
Breisgau, 1626, has “Life and Doctrine of Blessed Catherine Adorna …
(and) the two excellent Treatises of the same: 1. Dialogue between
the Soul and the Body; 2. Concerning Purgatory.” Here both works are
attributed to her, in exactly the same degree; but that degree is not
clearly specified.[466]
I do not know how soon after the Sixth Edition, Naples, 1645, which
is still without it, the quite unambiguous title of the Thirteenth
Edition, Genoa, of about 1880: “Vita ed Opere di S. Caterina da
Genova,” was adopted, nor how soon the present Second Title-page to
the _Trattato_ and _Dialogo_--“Works of St. Catherine”--was inserted.
Yet even here the old correct name for the whole Book still appears as
the heading on p. 1: _Vita e Dottrina_, although now, owing to that
Second Title-page, “Doctrine” only covers the Doctrinal Chapters of the
_Vita_-proper.
Thus not till 1568 was anything claimed as a composition of Catherine’s
pen, and then only the _Dialogue_; and not till 1626 was the _Treatise_
put into the same category as the _Dialogue_. Pope Clement XII, in
his Bull of Canonization in 1737, declares the _Dialogue_ to be her
composition, whilst nothing is said concerning the _Treatise_, although
the Bull itself most wisely follows the account of the _Vita_-proper,
and softens down or ignores the different version of the _Dialogue_, in
the two crucial cases of Catherine’s Vision of the Bleeding Christ and
of the degree of her poverty.[467]
FOOTNOTES
[1] The remainder of this section is for the most part expressed in the
words of Prof. Edouard Zeller’s standard _Philosophie der Griechen_. I
have used the German text.
[2] _Rep._ VII, 518_b_.
[3] _Phaedo_, 67_c_, 64, 69_c_.
[4] _Theaetetus_, 168_a_.
[5] _Parmenides_, 134_c_.
[6] _Theaetetus_, 176_a_.
[7] Luke ix, 51-56; Matt. xxvi, 51, 52; Mark x, 13-16; ix, 30-32.
[8] I have been much helped throughout the remainder of this section
by many of the groupings and discussions of texts in Prof. H. J.
Holtzmann’s _Lehrbuch der N. T. Theologie_, 2 vols., 1897. Inge’s
_Christian Mysticism_, 1899, has also, in its pp. 44-74, furnished me
with some useful hints.
[9] Matt. vi, 26, 28; Mark iv, 27, 28; Matt. xiv, 32; xvi, 2, 3.
[10] Matt. v, 17; vi, 1, 2, 5, 16; v, 23.
[11] Mark v, 25-29; vi, 56.
[12] Mark vi, 12, 13; i, 9, 10; Matt. iii, 13-19; Mark xiv, 22-25;
Matt. xxvi, 26-29; Luke xxii, 15-19.
[13] Matt. v. 3, 8; xi, 25, 26, 28-30; Mark viii, 34, 35; Matt. xvi,
24, 25; x, 38, 39; Luke ix, 23, 24; xiv, 27; xvii, 33; Mark vii, 14, 15.
[14] Mark ix, 35, 36; x, 15; x, 14.
[15] Mark xii, 24-27; Matt. xxii, 29-33; Luke xx, 34-38.
[16] 1 Cor. xv, 3-8; xi, 23-26.
[17] Acts ii, 1-13; ix, 1-9; xxii, 3-11; xxvi, 9-18; 1 Cor. xii; xiv; 2
Cor. xii, 1-9.
[18] 1 Cor. i, 18, 22-25; ii, 14, 15.
[19] Col. i, 26; ii. 2; iv, 3, 4.
[20] 1 Cor. ii, 6; iii, 1.
[21] 1 Cor. ii, 10, 11.
[22] Eph. iii, 5; Rom. vi, 6, 8; viii, 11.
[23] Col. i, 15-17; Eph. i, 10; Col. iii, 11; 1 Cor. x, 4; Col. i, 15,
17; iii, 11; Eph. iv, 13; Gal. ii, 20; iv, 19; 2 Cor. iii, 18.
[24] John i, 14; 1 John i, 1; John v, 28, 29.
[25] 1 John i, 5; iv, 8; John iv, 24; iii, 16; vi, 44; xvii, 18.
[26] John xvii, 24; viii, 58; i, 3, 10; i, 9; 1 John i, 2; John i, 11;
xiv, 6; x, 7-9; vi, 35; xv, 1.
[27] John iii, 3, 5; 1 John v, 10; John vii, 17; iii, 21.
[28] 1 John iii, 2, 5; v, 6.
[29] John ii, 23, 24; iii, 2; iv, 39, 42; xiv, 11; xx, 29.
[30] John iii, 36; v, 24; 1 John iii, 14; v, 20.
[31] John xiv. 20, 21.
[32] I have been much helped in this section by Prof. R. Eucken’s
admirably discriminating, vivid book, _Die Lebensanschauungen der
grossen Denker_, in its first and fourth editions, 1890, 1902.
[33] I have been much helped, towards what follows here, by pages 51 to
128 in M. Maurice Blondel’s great book, _l’Action_, 1893.
[34] I have found much help towards formulating the following
experiences and convictions in Professor William James’s striking
paper, “Reflex Action and Theism,” in _The Will to Believe_, pp.
111-114, 1897.
[35] I have been much helped towards the general contents of the next
four sections by that profoundly thoughtful little book, Fechner’s _Die
drei Motive und Gründe des Glaubens_, 1863, and by the large and rich
conception elaborated by Cardinal Newman in his Preface to _The Via
Media_, 1877, Vol. I, pp. xv-xciv.
[36] See, for this point, the admirably clear analysis in J.
Volkelt’s _Kant’s Erkenntnisstheorie_, 1879, pp. 160-234. This book
is probably the most conclusive demonstration extant of the profound
self-contradictions running through Kant’s Epistemology.
[37] _Works of St. John of the Cross_, translated by David Lewis, Vol.
I, ed. 1889, p. 298.
[38] _Ibid._ Vol. II, ed. 1890, pp. 541, 542.
[39] _Œuvres de Fénelon_, Paris, Lebel, Vol. IX, 1828, pp. 632, 652,
668.
[40] _Tractatus de Gratia et Libero Arbitrio_, cap. xiv, § 47.
[41] _Summa c. Gentiles_, 1-3, c. 70, _in fine_.
[42] For the recent instances, see Walter Elliott’s _Life of Father
Hecker_, New York, 1894, p. 369; _The Treatise on Purgatory_, by St.
Catherine of Genoa, with a Preface by Cardinal Manning, 1858, 1880,
19--; F. W. Faber’s _All for Jesus_, ch. ix, sections iii-v; Aubrey de
Vere’s _Legends and Records of the Church and the Empire_, 1898, pp.
355, 356; George Tyrrell’s _Hard Sayings_, 1898, pp. 111-130.
[43] I have done my best to recover the day, or at least the month, but
in vain. The baptismal register of her Parish Church (the Duomo) is, as
regards that time, destroyed or lost.
[44] Not a shadow of reasonable doubt is possible as to the
authenticity of these relics. Buried as she was in the Church of the
Hospital of Pammatone, which latter she had first simply served,
and then directed and inhabited, during thirty-seven years, her
resting-place remained a centre of unbroken devotion up to her
Beatification and Canonization, when the relics were removed but a few
yards upwards, and placed in their glass shrine above and behind the
altar in the Chapel of the Tribune--the Deposito di S. Caterina--where
they have rested ever since. The special character of the brow and of
the hands is still plainly recognizable. Of the four or five portraits
mentioned by Vallebona, not one can be traced back to her lifetime.
In the _Manuale Cartularii_ of the Pammatone Hospital, under date
of 10th July 1512 (p. 62), (I quote from an authentic copy which I
found among various documents copied out by the protonotary P. Angelo
Giovo, and prefixed to his MS. Latin life of the Saint preserved in
the _Biblioteca della Missione Urbana_, Genoa, No. 30, 8, 140,) there
is an entry of money (7 lire 10 soldi, equivalent to about £7 10_s_.)
paid by the administrators of the Hospital to Don Cattaneo Marabotto,
her Confessor and Executor: “Ratio sepulturae q(uondam) D(ominae)
Catarinettae Adurnae pro diversis expensis factis p(er) D(ominum)
Cattaneum Marabottum, videlicet _pro pictura_ et apportari facere
lapides ipsius sepulturae.” The payment must have been either for
expressly painting a picture, or for buying one already painted. We
would, however, expect, in the former case, for the entry, in analogy
with its final clause, to run: “pro pingi facere picturam.” In the
latter case, we are almost forced to think of the picture as painted
by some friend or disciple of the Saint, not for herself or for her
relations or friends (for in that case it would hardly have been
sold, but would have been left or given to the Hospital), but for his
own consolation, or in hopes of its being eventually bought for the
Hospital (and this may well have been done during her lifetime). In any
case, this entry attests that a portrait of the Saint was in existence
at the Hospital not two years after her death, and which was approved
of by one of her closest friends. I take it that that portrait was
placed on her sepulchral monument erected to her in January 1512 in the
Hospital Church. If still extant, at least in a copy, that original or
copy is, presumably, at the Hospital still.
Now there are but three pictures at the Hospital which claim to be
portraits of her and are not, avowedly, copies. (1) The large oil
painting of her standing figure, in the room adjoining the closet now
shown as the place where she died, is clearly a late, quite lifeless
composition. (2) The portrait-head in the Superioress’s room has been
carefully examined for me by a trained portrait painter, who reports
that the picture consists of a skilful ancient foundation now largely
hidden under much clumsy repainting. (3) The picture reproduced at
the head of this first volume, now in the sacristy of the _Santissima
Annunziata in Portorio_ (the Hospital Church), is clearly the work
of one hand alone. It is without the somewhat disagreeable look
present in the previous portrait, a look doubtless introduced there
by the unskilful restoration. If then the sacristy picture is a copy
of the Superioress’s picture, it will have been copied before the
latter picture was thus repainted. This sacristy picture now hangs
in an old-fashioned white-and-gold wooden frame with “Santa Catarina
da Genova” in raised letters carved out upon it, a carving which is
evidently contemporary with the frame’s make. The frame thus cannot be
older than 1737, the year of Catherine’s canonization. But the portrait
is without trace of a nimbus and carefully reproduces the very peculiar
features of a particular face, head, and neck.
The original painting, thus still more or less before us in these
two pictures, was evidently by no mean artist, and strikes a good
connoisseur as of the school of Leonardo da Vinci (died 1519). There
were several good painters of this school resident in Genoa about
this time: Carlo da Milano, Luca da Novara, Vinzenzo da Brescia,
and Giovanni Mazone di Alessandria. In the very year of her death,
and still more two years later, she was publicly and spontaneously
venerated as Blessed, and this Cultus continued unbroken up to the
Bull of Urban VIII, of 1625. Hence the further back we place one or
both of these portraits, the more naturally can we explain the absence
of the nimbus. Everything conspires, then, to prove that one of these
portraits goes back, in some way, to the picture painted for or bought
by Marabotto, and which adorned her monument from 1512 to 1593.
I have striven hard but in vain to find some scrap of Catherine’s
handwriting. The late Mr. Hartwell Grisell of Oxford, and the Cavaliere
Azzolini dei Manfredi of Rome, both of them life-long collectors of
Saints’ autographs, have kindly assured me that they have never come
across a word even purporting to be in her handwriting. The fourteen
wills and codicils made in her favour or by herself are all, according
to the universal custom of the time and country, written throughout
in a rapid, cursive hand by the lawyer himself alone, with certain
slight signs (crosses or lines) for further identification of his
authorship, but with no signature of any kind. There is no shadow of a
true tradition as to any of her sayings or thinkings having ever been
written down by herself. And the business books of the Hospital, kept,
at least in part, by Catherine from 1490 to 1496, when she was its
matron, have long ago been destroyed by fire.
[45] See _Opere Spirituale della Ven. B. Vernazza_, Genova, 1755, 6
vols., Vol. I, p. 3.
[46] _Op. cit._ p. 45.
[47] Although the Church and Monastery belonged, as Catherine’s Will
of 1509 puts it, to “the Order of St. Benedict of the Congregation of
Saint Justina in Padua”--a Congregation founded from Monte Cassino
between 861 and 874--yet the community were evidently closely bound up
with the Augustinian Canons Regular of the Lateran, or at all events
with the foundation of the Convent of Augustinian Canonesses at Santa
Maria delle Grazie. For the concession of Pope Nicolas V for the latter
Convent is addressed to his “Beloved sons of Saint Theodore of Genoa”
(Augustinian Canons) “and of Saint Nicolas in Boschetto.” And this
close connection with, and action for, a Church and Convent so dearly
loved by Catherine, will have necessarily been one of the causes of her
affection for the Benedictine country-side Church.
[48] This evidently most authentic anecdote stands in the _Vita_, p.
3, in a doubly disconcerting context. Her prayers, always elsewhere
recorded together with their effects, are here abruptly left, without
any indication of their sequel; and the prayer for a _three months’
illness_ is followed by an attempted explanation of it--that she had
gone through _three months_ of mental _affliction_. I take it that some
other continuation has been suppressed, or, at least, that the present
explanation owes its “three months” to a quaint determination to find
at least a retrospective correspondence between her prayer and the
happenings of her life.
[49] _Vita_, p. 4, first two paragraphs. I hope to show in the Appendix
that we owe their getting on to paper to Ettore Vernazza, and that he
derived their contents from Catherine herself, some time after 1495.
[50] _Ibid._ p. 4. § 3.
[51] _Vita_, p. 4, § 3; p. 5, § 1.
[52] _Ibid._ p. 5, §§ 2, 3. I have, together with the Bull of
Canonization, deliberately omitted the first two sentences of § 3,
which (with their representation of Our Lord as appearing not alive
with the Cross, but dead on it, and with their repetition here of the
exclamation as to “no more sins” of her conversion-moment) form an
interesting doublet, with a complex and eventful history attaching to
it. See Appendix to this volume.
[53] _Vita_, p. 5_c_.
[54] _Vita_, p. 5_c_.
[55] _Vita_, pp. 5_c_, 6,--as they appear in MS. “A.” This matter of
these periods has given me much trouble, since there are two rival
traditions concerning them to be found, really unreconciled, within the
oldest documents of the _Vita_. The point is fully discussed in the
Appendix.
[56] _Ibid._ cc. ix-xli, pp. 21_c_-111_c_.
[57] _Vita_, p. 7_a_.
[58] I take the above to have been the actual course of events, for the
following reasons. (1) The text just given talks of “the desire for
Holy Communion” having been given to her on that day in 1473, and of
this desire “never failing her throughout the remainder of her life”;
but it does not say, that the desire for _daily_ Communion was given
to her then, or that such a desire was continuously satisfied from the
first. (2) On page 18_b_ we have: “For about two years she had this
desire for death, and this desire continued within her, up to when she
began to communicate daily.” This passage, (which does not occur, here
or with this Communion notation, in the MSS.,) originally without doubt
referred to her later desire for death, carefully described by Vernazza
(pp. 98_a_, _b_; 99_b_, _c_) as occurring in 1507--a description in the
midst of which now occurs an account of certain death-like swoons which
attacked her in 1509 (pp. 98_c_, and 133_b_; this latter experience is
given in the MSS. as occurring in November 1509). Still this passage
points to a tradition, or early inference, that the beginning of the
daily communions did not synchronize with her conversion nor indeed
with any other very marked date, but took place not many years after
her return to fervour. (3) It is impossible to assume that she did
not communicate at all during these first fourteen months, since
there is no evidence that, even before her conversion, she had ever
abstained from Holy Communion altogether, and since two Eastertides
with their strict obligation recurred twice within this period. And if
she did communicate repeatedly within this time, then this Lady-Day,
three days after her conversion, would be a most natural occasion for
one of these communions. And the desire and not its gratification
would be mentioned, because the writer characteristically wants her
conversion to be followed by something absolutely unintermittent, and
such unintermittence attached, for the present, not to her communions
themselves, but only to her desire for them.
[59] _Vita_, pp. 8, 9. A MS. list of conclusions concerning various
points of her life, which is contained in the volume _Documenti su
S. Caterina da Genova_, in the University Library of Genoa, declares
this interdict to have lasted ten days, and in the year 1489. This
information is probably correct.
[60] _Ibid._ pp. 8, 9.
[61] _Vita_, p. 7_b_.
[62] I have been unable to discover more than one case illustrative of
the practice of that time and town. The Venerable Battista Vernazza, an
Augustinian Canoness from 1510 to 1587, was not allowed daily Communion
till the last years of her life. _Opere_, Genoa, 1755, Vol. I, p. 21.
[63] _Vita_, p. 116_c_. This passage opens a chapter full of the
most authentic information, derived directly from Don Marabotto, her
Confessor and close friend from 1499 onwards. I have, in her saying,
read “Amore” for the “Signore” of the text of the _Vita_: my reasons
will appear later on.
[64] _Vita_, pp. 119_c_, 116_c_, 117_b_.
[65] _Ibid._ p. 16_b_.
[66] _Vita_, p. 6.
[67] _Ibid._ p. 140_b_, _c_.
[68] See here, ch. v, § ii, 2 and 5.
[69] Denzinger’s _Enchiridion Definitionum_, ed. 1888, No. 363.
[70] _Summa Theologica_, III, supplem. quaest. 6, art. 3.
[71] Denzinger, _op. cit._ No. 780; _Summa Theologica_, III, supplem.
quaest. 6, art. 3.
[72] Antonii Ballerini, _Opus Theologicum Morale_, ed. Palmieri, S.J.,
Prato, 1892, Vol. V, pp. 576-597. The large variations in the earlier
practice of Penitence and Confession are admirably described in Abbé
Boudhinon’s articles, “Sur l’Histoire de la Pénitence,” in the _Revue
d’Histoire et de Littérature Religieuses_, 1897, pp. 306-344, 496-524.
[73] The reason for this lies in the emphatic, repeated conviction
of R. 1, based, no doubt, upon the authentic documents (probably
Vernazza’s memoranda) that he has incorporated, (a conviction which
appears wherever his scheme was not tampered with by R. 2,) that her
great penitential period lasted four years (so still on pp. 12_b_,
13_b_ twice, 14_c_; and originally, no doubt, on p. 6_a_, and probably
on p. 5_c_, where now we read “a little over a year,” and “about
fourteen months” respectively). For not all the subsequent doctoring,
that shall be traced later on as having been applied by R. 2 to some
of the refractory passages, succeeds in making it likely that these
penitential exercises outlasted the complete disappearance from
her sight of her sins, which we have already quoted from the last
likely passage. And it is equally improbable that formal and repeated
Confession should not have formed part and parcel of the whole of this
penitential time. On the other hand, “her Confessor,” on p. 7_7_,
and “the spiritual physician” on p. 8_a_, indeed all other mentions
of a Confessor throughout the Life subsequent to her first convert
Confession, will be shown in the Appendix to apply exclusively to Don
Marabotto, and to the last eleven years of her life.
[74] _Vita_, p. 56_b_, _c_. Her words as printed there are: “Io non
vorrei grazia ne misericordia [nella presente vita] ma giustizia e
vendetta del malfattore.” But the words I have bracketed are certainly
a gloss; for she is speaking here out of the fulness of her feeling,
without the intrusion of reflection. And as regards temporal punishment
in the other life, and the soul’s attitude towards it there, she says
in the _Trattato_, p. 180_b_: “Know for certain, that of the payment
required from those souls (in Purgatory), there is not remitted even
the least farthing, this having been thus established by the divine
justice.… Those souls have no more any personal choice, and can no more
will anything but what God wills.”
[75] _Dialogo_, pp. 203_a_, 208_b_.
[76] From the authenticated copies of the entries in the Cartulary,
prefixed to the MS. Life of the Saint in the _Biblioteca della Missione
Urbana_, Genoa, Nos. 30, 8, 14; and from careful copies of the still
extant original Wills made for me by Dre. Ferretto, of the Archivio di
Stato, Genova.
[77] Benedicti XIV, _De servorum Dei Beatificatione et Beatorum
Canonisatione_, ed. Padua, 1743, Vol. II, p. 239_a_.
[78] _Vita_, pp. 56_c_; 3_c_; 95_c_; 124_c_, 125_b_; 122_b_.
[79] I have followed here, for my _terminus a quo_, Vallebona rather
than the Bollandists (who prefer 1474 for the date of her conversion),
because the ten years required between her marriage in January 1463
and her conversion, have fully elapsed by March 1473, and because the
earlier we place her conversion, the larger is the number of lonely
convert years that we can find room for, and the more nearly accurate
her own allegation of twenty-five years of such loneliness becomes.
If we follow the chronology given in the text we get a thoroughly
understandable sequence: Catherine’s conversion, March 1473; Giuliano’s
bankruptcy, summer of that year; his conversion under the joint
influence of her zeal and of his misfortune; the decision of the couple
to settle in the midst of the poor and suffering, whom they were now
determined to serve, and the execution of this decision, between
Michaelmas and Christmas of the same year.
[80] Vallebona, p. 55.
[81] Lived 1550-1614, worked heroically amongst the poor and
pestilential sick, founded the Order of the Fathers of a Good Death,
and was himself at Genoa, already gravely ill, in 1613.
[82] Vallebona, pp. 55, 56, shows, from Giuliano’s still extant will
of 1497, how this income from his property in the Island of Scios
alone amounted to about 30,000 modern Italian lire. We shall study the
instructive growth of legend in the matter of Catherine’s “poverty”
later on.
[83] _Vita_, p. 122_b_.
[84] Vallebona, pp. 106, 108.
[85] An interesting legendary development in the _Dialogo_ of this very
straightforward account of the _Vita_ will occupy us later on.
[86] _Vita_, pp. 20, 21.
[87] _Ibid._ p. 12.
[88] See an interesting article: “De Suor Tommasina Fieschi,” by F.
Alizeri, in _Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria_, Genova, 1868,
pp. 403-415.
[89] The choice of subjects may possibly betray the influence of
Catherine--of the Pietà which Catherine had so much loved as a child,
and of her special devotion to the Holy Eucharist. But the particular
form of the latter is in Tommasina unlike Catherine: had Catherine
painted that symbolical picture, it would have referred to the moment,
not Consecration, but of Communion.
[90] _Vita_, pp. 123, 124. Suor Tommasa did not die till 1534, over
86 years of age. I have been unable to discover her baptismal and her
married names. We shall give some further details about Catherine’s
probable relations with her, as writer and as painter.
[91] _Vita_, pp. 12, 13.
[92] _Ibid._ pp. 5, 6, 14.
[93] _Ibid._ p. 13.
[94] _Vita_, p. 6_a_.
[95] _Ibid._ 14_b_. I have introduced into my account a note of
gradualness which is presented by no single (even authentic) document
of the _Vita_, but which any attempt at harmonizing those documents
imperatively requires. For there is, on the one hand, the repeated
insistence upon her four years of particular penances for her own
particular sins; and the vivid account of the final complete withdrawal
of all sight of those sins and of all desire for those penances
(_Ibid._ pp. 12_b_, 13_c_; 14_b_, 5_c_). And there is, on the other
hand, the, apparently, equally authentic saying, as to her performing
her penances, before the end of those years, without any particular
object in view (_Ibid._ p. 14_b_). The only unforced harmonization is
then to assume that a period, in which the sight of her particular sins
had been at first all but unintermittent and then still predominant,
had shaded off into another period, in which this sight occurred in
ever fewer moments, until at last, at the end of four years, a day came
on which it ceased altogether.
[96] The only possible dates are 1475 or 1476. For the change referred
to takes place “some appreciable time (_alquanto tempo_) after her
conversion” (_Vita_, p. 10_a_); and yet it must be early enough to
allow of twenty-three Lents and Advents between the beginning of the
change up to its end. And this end came at latest in 1501 (p. 127_a_),
but probably in 1499, the year in which Don Marabotto became her
Confessor. The Lent of 1496 (what remained of it on Lady-Day of that
year) seems to me the more likely of the two possible starting-points.
[97] _Vita_, p. 10_a_.
[98] _Ibid._ p. 11_a_.
[99] _Ibid._ p. 10_b_.
[100] _Vita_, p. 8_a_.
[101] See below, next page.
[102] MS. “A,” p. 24, title to chapter vii; _Vita_, p. 10_a_.
Twenty-five Lents are too many, because: (1) it is impossible to
interpret the “alquanto tempo dopo la sua conversione,” when these
fasts began (_Ibid._ p. 10_a_), as less than two years; and (2) it is
impossible to bring her resignation of the Matronship of the Hospital
lower down than the autumn of 1497, a resignation which the _Ibid._ (p.
96) tells us took place in consequence of her “great bodily weakness,”
which forced her to “take some food after Holy Communion to restore her
bodily forces, even though it were a fast day.” This allows for at most
twenty-three Lents and twenty-two Advents.
[103] _Ibid._ p. 11_b_.
[104] _Vita_, p. 11_c_. I take the last section of this chapter (pp.
11, 12) to be a later, exaggerating doublet to this account.
[105] _Ibid._ p. 11_b_.
[106] _Ibid._ p. 14_b_, 5_c_.
[107] _Vita_, p. 16_b_.
[108] _Ibid._ pp. 23_a_, 49_a_.
[109] _Ibid._ p. 15_b_.
[110] _Vita_, pp. 15_c_, 97_a_, 15_c_.
[111] _Ibid._ pp. 15_c_, 16_a_, 47_b_.
[112] _Ibid._ p. 17_b_.
[113] I translate _Frate predicatore_ thus, because the generally
well-informed Parpera (in his _Vita_ of the Saint, 1681) identifies
him with Padre Domenico de Ponzo, an Observant Franciscan and zealous
preacher. Boll. p. 161 D. In other places, also, the _Vita_ makes use
of purely popular and misleading designations:--p. 117_b_ “questo
Religioso” is Don Marabotto, Secular Priest; pp. 94_c_, 95_a_, _c_,
98_c_, 99_b_, “Religioso” is Vernazza, layman; p. 123_b_, “Sorelle” is
a Sister and Sisters-in-law. Even the final Redactor in the Preface,
p. viii_c_, calls the Secular-Priest Marabotto and the Layman-Lawyer
Vernazza, “divoti religiosi.”
[114] _Vita_, pp. 51, 52. I take this episode to have occurred whilst
the pair were still living out of the Hospital, because of the _giunta
in casa_, which could hardly be applied to their two little rooms in
the latter, whilst this sensitiveness to the opinion of others in
this matter of love appears psychologically to be more likely during
the early years of her convert life than from 1490 onwards, when,
as Matron, she occupied a separate little house within the Hospital
precincts (hence _sua casa_ in _Vita_, p. 96_b_).
[115] I shall give reasons in due course for holding that the rooms
still shown in the Hospital as Catherine’s are different from any ever
occupied by herself, and that the little house within the Hospital
grounds, in which she died in 1510, and into which she (and Giuliano)
probably moved in 1490, has long ceased to exist.
[116] _Vita_, p. 20_b_. This characteristic fact has been “explained
away” in the _Dialogo_. See Appendix.
[117] _Vita_, p. 20_c_.
[118] _Ibid._ p. 21_c_. All the books and papers of the Hospital
referring to these years up to her death, were long ago destroyed
by fire. I have, however, no doubt as to the, at least substantial,
accuracy of the above account. For ten wills and assignments, drawn
up, by various lawyers, in her presence, by her desire and at her
dictation,--nine of them during the years of her weakness and
illness,--are still extant, have been carefully copied out for me, and
will be analyzed further on. They are all, except on one minor point,
admirably precise, detailed, and wise.
[119] _Vita_, p. 21_b_.
[120] The above paragraph is based, with Vallebona, _op. cit._ pp.
67-72, upon the assumption that Catherine took the kind of share
described in the labours of this time; since it is practically
unthinkable that she should not have acted as is here supposed, given
the combination of the following facts, which are all beyond dispute.
(1) The fully reliable Giustiniani in his _Annali_ describes, under the
date of 1493, the incidents of the Pestilence as given above; tells us
how well, nevertheless, the sick and poor were looked after by those
who, from amongst the educated classes, remained amongst them; and
affirms that the Borgo di San Germano, identical with the Acquasola
quarter, was assigned to those stricken by the Pestilence. (2) Agostino
Adorno, Giuliano’s cousin, was Doge of Genoa during this year. And the
friendly terms on which the cousins were at this time are proved by
Giuliano’s Will of the following year (October 1494). (3) Catherine had
already been Matron of the Hospital for two years and more, and was
to continue to be so for another three years. She certainly did not
absent herself from her post at this time. And her Hospital directly
abutted against the Acquasola quarter. (4) The details furnished by
all the sources conjointly with regard to her six years’ Headship of
the Hospital, are so extraordinarily scanty, that we must not too much
wonder at the all but complete dearth of any allusion to a work which
cannot have lasted longer than as many months. (5) The _Dialogo_, p.
222_b_, says: “She would go, too,” (_i.e._ besides visiting the sick
and poor in their own houses,) “to the poor of San Lazzaro, in which
place she would find the greatest possible calamity.” This clearly
refers to some special (Lazar-, Leper-) Refuge, and the term can
certainly cover aid given to the pest-stricken. And we shall see that
the record here is derived from the writer’s father, Ettore Vernazza,
the heroic lover of the pest-stricken poor.
I have, in my text, assumed that the _Vita_ gives us an anecdote
relative to her visiting the pestiferous sick of Acquasola. But to do
this, I have had (_a_) to take “pestiferous fever” as equivalent to
“Pestilence,” and to assume that it was not an isolated precursory case
of the coming general visitation; (_b_) to omit, in the _Vita’s_ text,
“nell’ ospedale,” as an indication where the sick woman was; and “allo
stesso servizio (dell’ ospedale),” as descriptive of where Catherine
went back to: the anecdote may well originally have been without
indication of the place in which the infection came to reduce her to
death’s door.
[121] _Inaugurazione della Statua d’Ettore Vernazza_ (1863), Genova,
Sordo-Muti, 1867. Most of my facts concerning Ettore and his daughters
are taken from this _brochure_, with its careful biographical Discourse
by Avvocato Professore Giuseppe Morro (pp. 5-31), and its ample
collection of admirable wills and financial decisions (pp. 61-94).
[122] Quoted _ibid._ p. 21. It is absolutely certain that these words
refer to the pestilence of 1493, since the epidemic did not again visit
Genoa till 1503, when Vernazza must have been over thirty years of
age. And Battista’s silence as to any meeting between her Father and
Catherine must not be pressed, since she nowhere mentions Catherine,
and yet we know for certain how close and long was the intimacy between
them.
[123] The words of the _Vita_, p. 105_c_, that those who wrote this
Life “saw and experienced these wonderful operations for _many years_,”
are given in MS. “A” as “during _fifteen consecutive_ years (per
quindici continui anni),” p. 366. All points to her having got to know
Don Marabotto later than at this time and than Vernazza, yet only the
one or the other of these two men can be meant; hence Vernazza must
be intended here. But I have nowhere in the _Vita_ been able to trace
passages that could with probability be both attributed to Vernazza,
and dated before the years 1498-1499.
[124] The precise date of Vernazza’s marriage is unknown. But since his
eldest child was born on April 15, 1497, it cannot have taken place
later than June 1496. The date of the sale of the Palazzo is derived
from Catherine’s act of consent to the sale, preserved in the Archivio
di Stato; a copy lies before me. The date of her resignation is derived
from the _Vita_, p. 96_b_, which says she did so “quando fù di anni
circa cinquanta.” This “circa” must no doubt here, as so often (as,
_e.g._, on p. 97_b_, where “circa sessanta-tre” refers to November
1509, when she was sixty-two), be interpreted as “nearly fifty”: she
was really forty-nine.
[125] The date of Tommasina’s birth comes from _Ritratti ed Elogi di
Liguri Illustri_, Genova, Ponthenier; the date of the beginning of
Giuliano’s illness from his Codicil of January 10, 1497, in which
he declares himself as “languishing” and “infirm in body”; and the
approximate date of his death from two entries in the Cartulary of
the Bank of St. George, as to investments made by Catherine (copies
in _Documenti su S. Caterina da Genova_, University Library, Genoa,
B. VII, 31), of which the first, on July 14, 1497, gives her name
as “Catterinetta, filia Jacobi di Fiesco et uxor Juliani Adorni”;
and the second, on October 6, 1497, describes her as “uxor et heres
testamentaria quondam fratris Juliani Adorni.”
[126] _Vita_, pp. 122_b_, _c_, 123_a_. I have preserved the descriptive
account of Catherine’s prayer and of its effect, although it may
possibly be but a later dramatized interpretation of the undoubtedly
authentic report of her declaration made to Vernazza.--The immediate
cause of Giuliano’s pain and impatience is given by _Vita_, p. 122_b_,
as “una gran passione d’urina”; Vallebona, p. 73, declares the malady
to have been a “cestite cronica” (tape-worm). I have omitted a short
dialogue which is given, after her remark to Vernazza, as having
occurred between her friends and herself, concerning her liberation
from much oppression, and her own indifference to all except the will
of God, because her answer is given in _oratio obliqua_, and is quite
colourless and general; the passage is doubtless of no historical
value: there never lived a less conventional, vapidly moralizing soul
than hers.
[127] I work from careful copies specially made for me direct from the
originals, by Dre. Augusto Ferretto, of the Archivio di Stato in Genoa.
[128] _Inaugurazione_, pp. 12, 13.
[129] I work again from a copy made by Dre. Ferretto from the original
in the Archivio di Stato, Genoa.
[130] Marabotto’s help in business matters cannot, on any large scale,
have begun till considerably later than his spiritual help. For
whereas her Codicil of 1503 nowhere mentions Marabotto, her Will of
1506 leaves him, as we shall see, a little legacy; her Will of 1509
protects him against all harassing inquisition into the details of
his administration of her affairs; and her Codicil of 1510 mentions
only him and Don Carenzio. And it is incredible that business help
should have been given throughout four years, and should have failed
to gain any recognition in a document which commemorates so many
lesser services. Marabotto was Rector in 1504 (I owe this date to
the kindness of the Rev. Padre Vincenzo Celesia, author of the MS.
_Storia dell’ Ospedale di Pammatone in Genova_, 1897); he was no more
Rector in September 1509, but Don Jacobo Carenzio then held this post
(Catherine’s Codicil of that date). Indeed already in March 1509
Marabotto seems not to have been Rector (Catherine’s Will of that date
mentions him repeatedly, but nowhere as Rector). I take the Offices
of _Rettore_ (Master), and of _Rettora_ (Matron), to have never been
exercised simultaneously: but that, at any one time, there was always
only a Rettore or a Rettora presiding over the whole Hospital. The
Office of Rettora was abolished altogether in 1730 (_Storia dell’
Ospedale_, p. 1135).
[131] _Vita_, p. 117_b_.
[132] The Appendix will show that the “Religioso,” the “dolce
figliuolo,” of pp. 94, 95, and the “Religioso, figliuolo,” of pp. 98,
99, must be Ettore Vernazza, and not Cattaneo Marabotto.
[133] I take all these facts from F. Federici’s careful MS. work,
_Famiglie Nobili di Genova_, _sub verbo_ Marabotto.
[134] _Vita_, p. 118, _a_, _b_. The first of these two passages
is followed, in the same section, by two other slightly different
accounts. The third of these is no doubt authentic, but refers to a
still later period: it shall be given in its proper place. These two
authentic accounts are (as is often the case in the _Vita_) joined
together by a vague and yet absolute, unauthentic account, which
declares that she told him all things (apparently on all occasions): a
statement untrue of any time in her life.
[135] _Vita_, pp. 117_c_, 118_a_.
[136] _Vita_, p. 94_c_. The three lines which follow in the printed
_Vita_ are wanting in MS. “A” of 1547, p. 235, and are a disfiguring
gloss of R 2.
[137] _Vita_, pp. 94, 95.
[138] _Vita_, p. 97_b_; 250, _a_, _b_.
[139] Angel, 50_b_; Cherub, 16_a_, 97_b_; Seraph, 130_b_.
[140] _Vita_, pp. 47_b_, 50_a_, 72_b_.
[141] _Ibid._ p. 115_b_.
[142] _Ibid._ p. 115_b_. There are three passages in the _Vita_
referring to cases of possession. (_a_) Page 39_b_ makes Catherine, in
finishing up a discourse as to Evil being essentially but a Privation
of Love, refer to a “Religioso” and to a “Spiritato,” and how the
latter, “costretto” by the former to tell him what he was, “answered
with great force: ‘I am that unhappy wretch bereft of love.’ And he
(the evil spirit) said so with a voice so piteous and penetrating,
that it moved me (Catherine) through and through with compassion.” The
Possessed One is here a man. In MS “A” (p. 92) the story is still quite
loosely co-ordinated with her speech; it was originally no doubt an
independent anecdote; and was, possibly after a good many intermediary
literary fixations, introduced into this place and connection by R 1
or R 2. (_b_) Page 115_a_, _b_, gives the story reproduced in the text
above. The Possessed One is here a woman; and here the entire passage
formally claims directly to reproduce an actual scene from Catherine’s
life. (_c_) Page 162_a_ gives an anecdote of a “figliuola spirituale”
of Catherine, who had “il demonio adosso”; and tells how, at the
time of her Mistress’s death, the “spirito” within her, “costretto,”
declared that he had seen Catherine unite herself with God,--and all
this with “tormento,” so that “pareva a sè intollerabile.” This passage
clearly refers to the same person as that of passage _b_.
As to the historicity of the event described in the text, we must
distinguish between the general fact of Catherine’s moral and psychic
ascendency over Mariola, a fact as entirely beyond dispute as it
is valuable and characteristic; and the occurrence of the scene as
given above. As to the latter, the question of its value is of course
distinct from that of its occurrence. Its supposed evidential worth is
_nil_, since Mariola had been intimate with and devoted to Catherine
for probably a good ten years at least. But the scene may nevertheless
have actually occurred. It is true that the partly parallel case of
the “Spiritato” shows how easily such a dramatization of doctrine or
transference of experience can occur. And Denys the Areopagite and
Jacopone da Todi are full of this comparison of the soul arrived at
a state of union to an Angel, Cherub or Seraph; and these writers
have greatly influenced not only Catherine’s authentic teaching, but
also the successive amplifications and modifications of her life and
sayings. And again we shall prove that certain legendary matters were
inserted in the _Vita_ at a late date--between 1545 and 1551. But these
passages all claim to be based upon evidence supplied by Argentina del
Sale; and they were evidently not accepted by Marabotto (1528); the
literary form of these legends differs much from that of our passage;
and if the former are still absent from MSS. “A” and “B,” the latter
is already present in both. And we have such entirely first-hand proof
for the curiously naïf, formal, exteriorizing character of Marabotto’s
mind, as to leave it always possible that he did bring about a little
scene of the sort here described. If so, Marabotto’s rôle in it will
have been prompted, in part, by a wish still further to increase
Catherine’s hold upon Mariola’s mind.
[143] _Vita_, p. 112_a_.
[144] _Vita_, p. 72_b_.
[145] _Ibid._ p. 113_b_. I take these two motives alone to have
operated throughout such actions of hers during this last period.
The additional motive attributed to her (_Ibid._ pp. 129_c_, 130_a_,
and 134_a_), where she is represented as applying a lighted candle
or live coal to her bare arm, for the purpose of testing whether her
interior spiritual fire or this exterior material one is the greater,
is entirely unlike Catherine’s spirit. It belongs to the demonstrably
legendary and disfiguring interpretations which shall be studied
further on. The sentence on p. 134_a_, in which she herself is made to
declare this motive, is most certainly a worthless gloss.
[146] _Vita_, p. 127_a_.
[147] It is remarkable how tough-lived has been the legend which makes
Vernazza have an only child. Not only Father Sticken (_Acta Sanctorum_,
September, Vol. V, pp. 123-195) has it in 1752, but even Vallebona,
in his _Perla dei Fieschi_, still repeats it in 1887. And yet the
_Inaugurazione_ pamphlet had appeared in Genoa in 1867, giving on pp.
13, 14, 72, 73 the fullest proofs as to the reality of these two other
children.
[148] _Vita_, p. 123_b_.
[149] I get the date of 1502 for those three deaths from Angelo L.
Giovo’s MS. _Vita_ of the Saint in the _Biblioteca della Missione
Urbana_ (Part I, ch. iii). All three names are prominent in the Will of
1498; in the Codicil of 1503, Jacobo and Giovanni are both styled “the
late,” and her brother Lorenzo has become the sole residuary legatee.
Limbania appears nowhere after the Will of 1498.
[150] _Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria_, Genova, 1868, p.
411 (with plate). The article is dated 1871.
[151] _Vita_, pp. 124_b_-126. I get Argentina’s maiden name from a Will
of hers of the year 1522, of which a copy exists in the MS. volume
_Documenti relativi a S. Caterina da Genova_, in the Genoa University
Library, B. VII, 31. I have taken Argentina to have previously known,
perhaps even to have served, Catherine, because of her surprise at
Marco’s ignorance as to the identity of his visitor; and I have treated
such possible service as but slight, because in Giuliano’s Will of 1494
and in Catherine’s Will and Codicil of 1498 and 1503, legacies are left
to the two maids Benedetta and Mariola, but not a word appears as yet
as to Argentina. The date as to the year I derive from the following
facts:--(1) Catherine, as soon as Marco is buried, carries out her
promise to him, and receives Argentina into her house: so the _Vita_,
pp. 126_c_, 125_c_. (2) Whereas in the Codicil of 1503 there is still
no trace of Argentina, in the Will of 1506 she appears, and receives
legacies of personal linen, etc. These gifts are somewhat increased in
the Will of 1509. Argentina has evidently not been long in Catherine’s
service at the time of the drawing up of the Will of 1506. (3) The
Protonotary Angelo L. Giovo (MS. _Vita_ of the Saint of the _Biblioteca
della Missione Urbana_ Part I, ch. iii) puts down the date of Marco’s
death as 1495. Although this is evidently wrong, I think it wise to
keep at least one of his numbers, which I do by fixing upon 1505.
[152] _Documenti su S. Caterina da Genova_, University of Genoa
Library, gives a note by Angelo L. Giovo, based on the Book of the
Acts of the Protectors of the Hospital: “1506, Marzo, 16mo. Si vede
che detta Catarinetta Adorna haveva cura dell’ Hospitale, ricevendo li
figli esposti e li pegni per essi.”
[153] From Dre. Ferretto’s copy of the original in the Archivio di
Stato.
[154] The clause in this Will which says, “And Testatrix, knowing that
the said Giuliano her husband, left to a certain female Religious £150:
Therefore she herewith annuls the said legacy, in virtue of the power
given her for this purpose,” reads, at first sight, like a harsh,
unjust act. But it follows upon a similar annulation of the legacy to
the Hospital; and we may be quite sure that Catherine, who had now
loved and served this Institution for thirty-three years, would not
treat it unjustly. And in the Will of 1509 Catherine explains that the
former legacy has been annulled, “in consideration of the satisfaction
or settlement (_solutio_) already effected by Testatrix herself with
regard to the said legacy.”
[155] _Documenti_: extracts by Giovo from “Acts of the Protectors.”
[156] From Dre. Ferretto’s copy of the original in the Archivio di
Stato, Genoa.
[157] From Dre. Ferretto’s careful copy of the original in the Archivio
di Stato, Genoa.
[158] In the printed _Vita_ a passage occurs on p. 10_b_, describing
the interior heat which accompanied her great fasts (1476-1499). But
the passage is wanting in the MSS., and is no doubt only a gloss to
explain how, at those times, she came to drink water mixed with vinegar.
[159] “Operazione”: _Vita_, pp. 106_c_, 117_b_, 121_b_, 143_b_,
148_b_, 149_c_. “Assalto”: pp. 138_b_, _c_ (3); 139_a_; 143, _b_, _c_
(3); 144_a_ (2); 148_a_. “Assedio”: p. 118_b_. “Saetta”: pp. 141_a_,
145_a_. “Ferita”: p. 141_a_, _c_ (2). “Raggio”: pp. 133_b_, 157_c_.
“Scintilla”: pp. 132_a_, 148_b_. The “ferita” occurs already (as
a “dolce ferita”) in the account of her Conversion, pp. 4, 5; and
“saetta,” “ferita,” “raggio” and “scintilla,” appear very often in her
own sayings.
[160] The passage in _Vita_, p. 10_b_, which declares that she “felt”
(tasted) something sweet within her, upon drinking that salt and sour
water during her long fasts, is wanting in the MSS., and is itself
an interesting attempt to materialize her saying, on p. 11_b_, as to
the “other thing” (_i.e._ the love of God), that she was “feeling”
(tasting) within herself.
[161] _Vita_, p. 8_a_.
[162] _Ibid._ p. 9_b_. The present conclusion of the sentence, and all
the parallels throughout the rest of the page, show plainly that the
sentence originally read as I have given it.
[163] _Vita_, p. 9_b_.
[164] _Ibid._ p. 16_b_.
[165] _Ibid._ p. 5_b_.
[166] _Vita_, p. 98, _a_, _b_. This is the first of three incidents,
given in chronological order, all referring to her desire for death,
which make up Chapter XXXVIII of the printed _Vita_. The last two are,
beyond all doubt, conversations with Vernazza; and this first incident
is also probably transmitted to us by him.--I have in my translation
left out the numerous glosses by which the various Redactors have
desperately attempted to eviscerate this story, attempts based on the
double conviction, that Catherine was already absolutely perfect, and
that “every desire is imperfect” (p. 100_a_). These changes will be
studied later on.
[167] _Vita_, pp. 118, _b_, _c_, 119_b_, 119_a_. This vivid and simple
dialogue is followed (p. 119_b_) by a clearly secondary parallel
discourse of Catherine. Only the descriptive end of this latter
paragraph is no doubt authentic, and has been incorporated in the above
translation.
[168] _Vita_, p. 127_a_.
[169] I translate the above from the oldest account of the event, given
by MS. “A,” p. 193, at the opening of its Chapter XXIX (the number is
accidentally omitted), which is headed: “How in the year 1506, on the
11th of November, there came upon her so great a burning in the heart,
that she wondered at her not expiring.” This 1506, repeated in the
opening line of the chapter itself, is an undoubted slip; for she is
said to be 63 years old (and she was in her 63rd year in 1509), and the
place occupied by the corresponding paragraph in the printed _Vita_,
p. 133_b_ (within a year of her death, p. 132_b_, and some time before
December 1509, p. 138_b_), again clearly marks the date as 1509.
[170] _Vita_, p. 132_a_, _b_. The first eight sentences have been in
part fused by R 1 into fewer larger periods. The last sentence is
wanting in MSS. “A”and “B”; although clearly formed upon the model and
with the material of the previous sentences, it appears in the printed
_Vita_ as referring to an “altra vista” (see p. 133_b_).
[171] _Vita_, p. 135_a_. I have, in Catherine’s speech, omitted a final
clause, “which burns me entirely within and without,” because it is not
necessary to the sense, and violates the rhythm, which is ever present
in all Catherine’s authentic sayings.
[172] _Ibid._ pp. 135_c_, 136_a_. I have omitted two glosses introduced
by “cioè,” “that is”; and three short amplifications, which introduce a
direct conflict between the two parts. There is, within this particular
picture and scene, no direct conflict, but, at first, a complete
contrariety of aim.
[173] _Vita_, p. 136_c_. This is one out of four or five parallel
sayings which are accumulated here. They shall be examined later on.
[174] _Vita_, pp. 98_c_, 99_a_; 99_b_, _c_. I have, in the first
conversation, omitted the introductory attribution of her use of
the word “giddiness” to humility; and, in the second, suppressed
the conclusion which repeatedly declares that never again did any
such desire arise within her. For both clauses have got a vague and
secondary form, and the second is in direct contradiction with the
facts.
[175] _Vita_, 138_c_.
[176] _Vita_, pp. 139_b_, 140_b_, _c_. I have omitted the evidently
derivative, transcendentally reflective, second of the three paragraphs
in which this story now appears; the explanatory glosses of the same
tone as that paragraph; a redundant sentence in Catherine’s speech;
and the evidently late and schematic designation of “assalto” for the
entire incident, which is, surely, nothing of the sort.
[177] _Vita_, pp. 120_b_; 119_c_, 120_a_. The sequence and date assumed
above I think to be, all things considered, the most likely among the
possible alternatives. As to her remarks to Marabotto, they appear in
the _Vita_ before his three days’ absence. But the interior evidence
seems strongly in favour of my inversion of that (evidently, in any
case, very loose and quite unemphasized) order.
[178] _Ibid._ pp. 141_c_, 143_c_.
[179] _Vita_, p. 141_c_.
[180] _Ibid._ 142_a_. MSS. “A” and “B” open out their chapter on her
last illness with the statement that it was (only) four months before
her death that she took to her bed. I take it that from the end of
January 1510 onwards, she was often in bed, yet still sometimes out of
it; but that from mid-May to the end she no more left it.
[181] _Ibid._ p. 142_b_, _c_. I have, in her prayer, omitted the first
seven words of the present text: “(Già sono trentacinque anni in
circa, che) giammai, Signor mio …” For she would hardly inform God of
the approximate number of years of her convert life; the double “già”
points to a gloss; and such a gloss would almost irresistibly find
its way into this place, so as to mitigate the absoluteness of the
statement.
[182] _Ibid._ p. 143_b_. I have omitted the words: “which (the right
shoulder) appeared as though severed from the body; and similarly one
rib seemed severed from the others …” They have precisely the same
“colour,” and no doubt proceed from the same contributor, as the longer
passage relative to her supposed stigmatization, absent from all the
MSS., but given in the printed _Vita_ on the authority of Argentina.
[183] _Vita_, pp. 143_c_, 71_c_. The second passage, though occurring
in an early chapter of the _Vita_, undoubtedly belongs to these final
months and fits well into this particular day.
[184] _Ibid._ p. 144_a_. I have accepted this passage, because of its
great vividness. But pp. 139_b_-145_b_ of the printed _Vita_ do not
exist in the MSS.
[185] _Ibid._ p. 145_b_. On pp. 145_c_, 146_a_, she is said to have,
during this time, seen many visions of Angels, to have laughed in their
company, and to have herself recounted this after these occurrences.
She is similarly declared to have seen Evil Spirits (_i Demoni_), but
only with slight fear. And these passages occur also in the MSS.--But
they stand so entirely outside of any context or attribution to any
definite days; such general assertions prove, throughout the _Vita_,
to be so little trustworthy; and they are such vague and colourless
doubles of similar, but definitely dated and characterized, reports
to be accepted in their place a little lower down, that I cannot but
reject them here.
[186] _Vita_, pp. 144_b_; 145_c_.
[187] _Ibid._ p. 145_c_.
[188] _Ibid._ p. 146_b_.
[189] _Vita_, pp. 146_c_-147_c_.
[190] Lingard’s _History of England_, ed. 1855, Vol. IV, p. 166; James
Gairdner, _Henry VII_, London, 1889, p. 208.
[191] The five passages of the _Vita_ concerning Physicians (pp. 71_c_,
72_a_; 145_c_, 146_b_; 146_c_-147_c_; 158_c_, 159_a_) all bear very
clear marks of successive additions, glosses, and re-castings,--always
in the direction indicated above.
The entire Boerio-episode (pp. 146_c_-147_c_), is wanting in all the
MSS. It is, however, most plainly authentic. I believe both the episode
and a further passage concerning Boerio to have been furnished by
Boerio’s son, a Secular Priest, who died a septuagenarian in 1561;
his monument still exists in the Church of the Santa Annunciata, at
Sturla, near Genoa. See the _Biografia Medica Ligure_, by Dottore G.
B. Pescetto, Genova, 1846, Vol. I, p. 104.--There are some suspicious
symptoms connected with that first consultation of Physicians: Boerio’s
interviews read as though they had not been quite recently preceded
by such an activity--and it is possible that we have here an account
produced by a retrogressive doubling of the undoubtedly authentic
consultation of the 10th of September, to be described presently.
Still, there is nothing intrinsically improbable in the account itself.
I have, then, allowed both consultations to stand.
[192] _Vita_, p. 72_a_.
[193] Copies of these six entries in the _Manuale Cartularii_ of the
Hospital exist attached to the MS. _Vita_ in the _Biblioteca della
Missione Urbana_.
[194] From the copy of the original Codicil in the Archivio di Stato,
made for me by Dre. Ferretto. The Inventory exists attached to the MS.
_Vita_ just mentioned.
[195] _Vita_, p. 148_b_. It is remarkable that, since January 10,
this is the first date given by the _Vita_; that a series of dated
days then extends onwards to August 28 (pp. 148_a_-152_a_); that
then a gap occurs, filled in with a general but authentic account
(pp. 152_b_-153_c_), evidently by another hand, the same writer who
gave us the (also dateless) account from mid-January to mid-May (pp.
141_b_-145_b_); and that the dated chronicle is finally carried on from
September 2 to the end, September 15 (pp. 153_c_-161_a_). If I am right
as to the oneness of authorship as regards these two undated parts,
then they are either not by Vernazza; or if they are, then Vernazza
must have been about Catherine till September 2.
Now the _Vita_, p. 120_b_, tells us how Marabotto on one occasion left
her “for three days,” at a time when she was already suffering much
from “accidenti.” It is evident, that this absence fits in admirably
with the gap already mentioned. Hence these dateless accounts can
hardly be by Marabotto; and indeed their whole tone and point of view
are unlike his. They might be by Carenzio: we shall see how strikingly
objective and precise are the oldest constituents of the report as to
the last three days of her life, during which, or at least at the end
of which, Marabotto was as certainly absent as was Vernazza. There
is, however, I think, some difference of tone between this latter
report, and those dateless passages; whereas those passages are
strikingly similar, in form and tone, to the oldest constituents of the
_Trattato_, which are undoubtedly the literary work of Vernazza.
The probabilities then are, that these dateless accounts are by
Vernazza; and that he left Genoa on September 1 or 2.
[196] _Vita_, p. 148_c_. “Disse molte belle parole al santo Sacramento
[e ai circonstanti, con tanto fervore e pietà,] che ognuno ne piangeva
per divozione.” I have omitted the bracketed words, as a disfiguring
gloss.
[197] _Vita_, p. 149_b_. I have neglected the numerous glosses to this
account, and have read “several” instead of “seven” days, since she
was again in great distress on August 22, or 23 at latest (_Ibid._ p.
149_c_).
[198] _Ibid._ p. 149_c_. I have here omitted an evidently later
insertion and transition between that highly localized paralysis and
the death-like sickness of the whole of her; and have made the latter
come on after the former, for how otherwise could any one know about
that paralysis?
[199] _Ibid._ p. 150_b_. This fact and passage have occasioned an
interesting succession of obvious accretions and re-statements.
[200] _Ibid._ p. 151_a_, _b_. I have in the text followed the MSS.
as against the printed _Vita_, and have omitted a long clause, which
attempts to find the explanation of these words of hers in a subsequent
permanent change of attitude towards all those from whom she asked or
received a service.
[201] _Vita_, p. 153_b_.
[202] _Vita_, pp. 150_a_, 154_b_, 127_c_, 153_c_.
[203] A copy of this entry exists, in the Priest Giovo’s handwriting,
in the collection of Documents prefixed to the MS. _Vita_ of St.
Catherine, in the _Biblioteca della Missione Urbana_, Genoa.
[204] _Vita_, p. 154_b_, and the Inventory among the documents in the
_Vita_, volume of the _Biblioteca della Missione_.
[205] _Vita_, pp. 153_a_, 155_a_; 157_c_, 158_a_. For this 7th
September three heat-and-light impressions are given: (1) “A ray of
divine love”; (2) “a vision of fiery stairs”; and (3) this apprehension
of the whole world on fire. Perhaps the first also is authentic; the
last is certainly so. The middle one seems to be secondary, and to have
slipped in to form a transition and link between the other two accounts.
[206] _Ibid._ p. 153_a_.
[207] _Vita_, p. 155_b_, _c_. A third paragraph, pp. 155_c_, 156_a_
(equally wanting in all the MSS. and claiming to be based on the
authority of Argentina), follows here, and tells how the latter
saw one of her mistress’s arms grow over half a palm in additional
length, during the following night; and again how Catherine had told
her, Argentina, that she, Catherine, “would before her death bear
the stigmata and mysteries of the Passion in her own person.” These
“facts” are thoroughly characteristic of the source from which they
are no doubt derived.--A fourth paragraph, p. 156_b_, _c_, has also
been omitted by me, although it occurs also in the MSS. It contains a
long prayer put into Catherine’s mouth, and modelled on our Lord’s High
Priestly Prayer in John xvii, 1-13. It is far too long, elaborate, and
uncharacteristic to be authentic.
[208] _Ibid._ p. 156_c_.
[209] _Ibid._ p. 158_b_. I have here omitted, after “miseries,” the
clause “through which she had passed.” For during her middle period she
seems indeed not to have seen her faults till after she herself had
got beyond them: yet that particular dispensation was then vouchsafed
her because of the excessive pain which the sight of still present
imperfections would have caused her; and it is that peculiarity which
explains the extreme rarity or absence of Confession during that time.
But now we have both the pain and the Confession: and I cannot find
any instances, as in this case, of (evidently keen) annoyance, or
of Confession, with respect to past and overcome imperfections.--I
have also omitted a sentence after “departed from her”: “not that
they were matters of any importance, but every slightest defect was
intolerable to her.” For this is to judge the Saint by another standard
than that of her own conscience, and to make her sanctity consist
of scrupulosity.--And I have dropped a further notice for the same
day,--a “vista” vouchsafed to her of “a pure and perfect mind, into
which only the memory of divine things can still enter,” with her
corresponding laugh and exclamation: “O, to find oneself in this degree
(of perfection) at the time of death!” For, beautiful as it is, this
clause but reproduces, in the softened form of a general and joyous
aspiration, what the previous anecdote had given as a particular and
depressing consciousness. And the previous anecdote was evidently
offensive to both Redactors.
[210] _Vita_, pp. 158_c_, 159_a_, _b_.
[211] _Vita_, p. 159_c_. The Codicil I give from Dre. Ferretto’s copy
of the original in the Archivio di Stato, Genoa. I have, in the _Vita_
passage, omitted a sentence which now stands between the drop-of-water
incident, and that of the attack at night, which declares: “All this
day she remained without speaking, without ever opening her eyes or
eating or drinking”; for it would be difficult, if we retain it, to
find room for the drawing up of the Codicil, which certainly took place
before the attack.
[212] _Vita_, p. 160_a_.
[213] _Vita_, pp. 169_c_, 161_a_.
[214] _Vita_, pp. 161_c_-163_a_.
[215] _Vita_, p. 162_b_.
[216] _Ibid._ pp. 163_b_-164_a_.
[217] _Ibid._ p. 153_a_ (end of August or beginning of September 1510),
“through the intense heat of this fire of love she became yellow all
over, like the colour of saffron”; p. 161_b_, (“after death) that
yellow colour was spread over her whole body, which at first had only
been around the region of the heart”; p. 164_c_ (on opening her coffin
in the autumn of 1511), “the skin which corresponded to the heart was
still red in sign of the ardent love which she had harboured in it, the
rest of the body was yellow.”
[218] _Vita_, pp. 17_c_, 18_a_, (97_c_).
[219] _Ibid._ p. 129_b_, (165_c_). In both places there is an explicit
reference to Saint Ignatius (of Antioch), “whose heart, when examined
after his martyrdom, was found to have written upon it, in letters of
gold, the sweet name of Jesus.” Perhaps also two lines of Jacopone da
Todi had some influence here. In _Loda_ LXXXVIII, v. 11, he says of the
perfected soul: “The heart annihilates itself, undone (melted down)
as though it were wax, and finds itself, after this act, bearing the
figure (the seal-impression) of Christ Himself.”
[220] _Ibid._ p. 165_c_.
[221] These and similar matters will be found carefully studied in the
Appendix.
[222] _Lode_ III, XIII, XXXIII, XXXV, XLV, LVIII (_a_) and (_b_),
LXXIII, LXXV (_a_) and (_b_), LXXVII, LXXIX, LXXXI, LXXXIII, LXXXV,
LXXXVIII, LXXXIX, LXXXX, LXXXXVII, LXXXXIX.
[223] _Vita_, pp. 32_c_, 33_a_, _b_. I must refer the reader, once for
all, to the Appendix, for the explanation of the methods used in the
selection and the emendation of the texts presented in this chapter.
[224] _Vita_, pp. 29_c_; 91_c_; 30_b_; 55_c_, 56_a_; 61_a_.
[225] _Ibid._ p. 76_c_.
[226] _Ibid._ pp. 101_b_; 101_a_; 79_c_.
[227] _Vita_, pp. 36_b_; 80_c_, 81_a_; 74_b_.
[228] _Ibid._ pp. 9_b_; _ibid._, 8_c_.
[229] _Vita_, p. 11_c_.
[230] _Ibid._ p. 11_b_.
[231] _Vita_, pp. 22_b_; 25_c_; 26_b_.--105_c_.--25_c_, 26_a_, 80_b_.
[232] _Ibid._ pp. 15_c_, 16_a_.--9_b_; 53_b_; 67_c_.
[233] _Vita_, pp. 26_b_; 50_b_.--36_b_; 36_c_.--36_b_.
[234] _Ibid._ p. 48_b_.
[235] _Ibid._ pp. 23_c_; 27_a_. The fact of “Nettezza” remaining
at last her only term for the perfection of God shows plainly how
comprehensive, definite, and characteristic must have been the
meaning she attached to the word. The history of this conception no
doubt begins with Plato’s “the Same”; and this, through Plotinus and
Victorinus Afer’s Latin translation of him, reappears as “the Idipsum,
the Self-Same,” as one of the names of God in St. Augustine; a term
which in Dionysius (largely based as he is upon Plotinus’s disciple
Proclus) occurs continually, and can there be still everywhere
translated as “Identity” or “Self-Identity” (so also Parker). But with
Catherine the idea seems to have been approximated more to that of
Purity, although I take it that, with her, “Purità” means the absence
of all excess (of anything foreign to the true nature of God’s or
the soul’s essence); and “Netezza,” the absence of all defect, in
the shape of any failure fully to actualize all the possibilities
of this same true nature. I have had to resign myself, as the least
inadequate suggestions of the rich meaning of “Netezza” and “Netto,”
to alternating between the sadly general terms “fulness” and “full,”
and the pedantic-sounding “self-adequation,” with here and there “clear
fulness.”
[236] _Vita_, pp. 15_b_, 22_c_; 23_b_; 49_a_; 69_a_.
[237] _Vita_, pp. 31_c_, 32_a_.--66_a_, 66_b_, 87_c_, 107_a_.
[238] _Ibid._ pp. 75_b_, 66_b_.
[239] _Ibid._ pp. 87_c_, 106_a_, 106_c_.
[240] _Vita_, p. 114_a_.
[241] _Ibid._ 28_c_, 29_a_, 29_b_.
[242] _Ibid._ pp. 42_b_, 43_c_.
[243] _Vita_, p. 42_a_.
[244] _Ibid._ pp. 83_c_, 84_a_, 86_b_, 87_a_.
[245] _Ibid._ p. 108_b_.
[246] _Vita_, pp. 81_b_.
[247] _Ibid._ pp. 81_c_; 82_a_; 103_b_.
[248] _Ibid._ p. 31_b_.
[249] _Vita_ p. 54_b_, _c_.
[250] _Ibid._ pp. 52_c_, 53_a_.
[251] _Ibid._ pp. 95_c_, 125_a_; 122_c_; 76_a_.
[252] _Vita_, pp. 9_b_, 15_b_; 11_b_, 8_c_; 155_a_.
[253] _Vita_, pp. 136_b_, 183_c_; 19_b_, 107_b_.
[254] _Ibid._ p. 113_c_.
[255] _Ibid._ pp. 24_b_, 23_b_, 24_b_.
[256] _Vita_, pp. 59_c_, 76_c_, 77_a_.
[257] _Ibid._ p. 37_a_.
[258] _Vita_, pp. 94_a_; 109_b_.
[259] _Ibid._ pp. 87_c_, 53_b_.
[260] _Vita_, pp. 23_c_, 24_a_, 23_c_, 22_c_, 61_c_; 77_b_.
[261] _Ibid._ pp. 34_c_; 175_c_.
[262] _Vita_, pp. 171_c_, 172_a_.
[263] _Ibid._ pp. 30_a_, 29_c_; 43_c_.
[264] _Ibid._ pp. 171_c_, 172_a_.
[265] _Vita_, pp. 52_a_; 51_b_; 106_c_.-94_c_; 95_b_.
[266] _Ibid._ pp. 23_a_; 24_a_.
[267] _Vita_, p. 60_c_.
[268] _Ibid._ pp. 76_b_; 27_a_.
[269] _Ibid._ pp. 8_a_; 15_b_.--8_c_.
[270] _Vita_ (_Trattato_), p. 169_b_. See also _Vita_, Preface, p.
viii_b_; and p. 144_b_.
[271] _Vita_, pp. 172_c_; _ibid._--38_b_, _c_; 39_a_.
[272] _Vita_, pp. 173_a_.--173_b_.--33_b_.
[273] _Ibid._ (_Trattato_), pp. 170_b_ (169_c_).
[274] _Vita_ (_T._), p. 175_b_.
[275] _Ibid._ (_T._), p. 177_b_.
[276] _Ibid._ (_T._), p. 176_a_; _Vita_ proper, p. 78_c_.
[277] _Vita_ (_T._), p. 175_a_ (see p. 169_b_).
[278] _Ibid._ (_T._), p. 176_a_.
[279] _Vita_ (_T._), pp. 169_c_, 170_a_.--182_b._
[280] _Vita_ (_T._), pp. 173_c_, 174_a_; 171_b_.--64_b_;
177_b_.--170_c_.
[281] _Ibid._ (_T._), p. 172_b_.
[282] _Vita_ (_T._), p. 172_a_.
[283] _Ibid._ (_T._), p. 174_b_.
[284] _Ibid._
[285] _Vita_ (_T._), p. 174_b_.
[286] _Ibid._
[287] _Vita_ (_T._), p. 182_b_.
[288] _Vita_ (_T._), p. 170_c_.
[289] _Vita_ (_T._), p. 178_b_.
[290] _Vita_ (_T._), p. 178_b_.
[291] _Ibid._
[292] A copy of this document exists prefixed to the MS. _Vita_ of the
_Biblioteca delta Missione Urbana_.
[293] Copy in the same volume.
[294] _Vita_, p. 164_b_. This first coffin is still extant: it stands
now, empty in a glass case, in the smaller of the two rooms shown
in the Hospital as her last dwelling-place. Twice over the _Vita_
talks of a “deposito,” although directly only in connection with
its opening “about eighteen months later,” _i.e._ not before March
1512. Now Argentina del Sale declares, in a Will of the year 1522 (a
copy, in Giovo’s handwriting, exists in the volume of the _Biblioteca
della Missione_), that she desires to be buried “in the Church of
the Annunciata, in the monument of the late Giuliano Adorno.” Thus
Giuliano’s grave was still generally known and fully accessible
twelve years after Catherine’s death; and it was a “monumento,” not a
“deposito.” I have been completely baffled in all my attempts to trace
the eventual fate of that monument, or even its precise site, or the
precise date of its disappearance. I can but offer two alternative
conjectures. (1) It stood in the choir-end of the Church. If so, it
will have been covered up, promiscuously with many another vault and
mortuary slab, when, in 1537, this end was cut off, for the purpose of
widening the bastion which still runs behind it and above it, outside.
(2) The “monument” was a slab on the floor of the nave or of some
side-chapel. The present flooring of all the former, and of a large
part of the Chapels, is relatively new; and it is (all but certainly)
superimposed upon the old flooring or at least upon the old sepulchral
slabs, since not one inscription remains visible in the nave. And if
Giuliano’s “monument” lay there, it will still be extant, hidden away
under the present flooring.--In either case it remains remarkable that
the slight trouble was not taken to shift nave-wards, or to raise to
the newer nave- or chapel-flooring, the “monument” of Catherine’s own
husband. There are certainly monuments still visible in the Church
older than 1497. It is impossible to resist the conclusion that some
occasion was gladly seized for _not_ moving or raising this monument,
and for thus letting the saintly wife appear entirely alone in the
Hospital Church, unattended by any memorial of her very imperfect
husband.
[295] The Inventory and this Acceptance both exist, in copy, in the MS.
_Vita_ of the _Biblioteca della Missione_. I owe a careful copy of the
former to the kindness of Don Giacomo C. Grasso, the Librarian.
[296] From the documents in the MS. _Vita_ of the _Biblioteca della
Missione_.
[297] _Vita_, pp. 164_b_, _c_, 165_c_. Great and repeated stress is
laid here, with unattractively realistic proofs and details, upon the
damage done by the damp to the coffin and grave-clothes, and upon the
contrasting spotlessness of the body.
[298] MS. _Vita_ of the _Biblioteca della Missione_.
[299] Even the little engraving of the title-page of the first edition
of the _Vita_ (1551), which shows Catherine kneeling before a crucifix,
represents her, not indeed with a nimbus, but with a diadem upon her
head.
[300] Reprinted in _Vita_, p. 282_b_.
[301] A little Prayer-book marker picture, which will, I think, have
been first engraved in 1737, when the body was, as indeed it is to this
hour, considered quite incorrupt, already gives the large paper rose
which has lain ever since in the place of the mouth and nose, which
have perished long ago. But I have been unable to test the claim to
incorruption further back than this.
[302] _Vita_, pp. 165_c_, 27_b_, 277_a_. In this last passage Maria
Fiesca makes a declaration as to the partial fleshiness and elasticity
of the body, _e.g._ of the right shoulder; and as to its extraordinary
weight.
[303] All three classes of cases are represented in Padre Maineri’s
account, reproduced in the _Vita_, p. 282_b_, _c_.
[304] Maineri, in _Vita_, p. 278, _b_, _c_. The first edition of the
_Vita_ calls her “Beata” on its title-page. MS. “A,” of 1547, 1548, has
simply “Madonna Catherineta Adorna” on the Franciscan copyist’s own
title, and “Beata” on the title copied by him from the MS. used by him.
[305] There is evidence that the many-sided Queen took an interest in
Catherine, in the Oratorian G. Parpera’s very careful _Beata Caterina
di Genova Illustrata_, Genova, 1682. But the Index of her Latin (and
Italian) MSS. in the Vatican Library contains no indication of any MS.
“Life” or “Doctrine” possessed by Christina.
[306] The main facts and dates of these paragraphs devoted to the
various Processes are derived from Padre Maineri’s very clear account,
first published in 1737, and reprinted at the end of the _Vita_, pp.
278-282.
[307] Copy in MS. _Vita_ in the _Biblioteca della Missione_.
[308] So Padre Celesia, _op. cit._ p. 1121.
[309] Copy in the MS. _Vita_ of the _Biblioteca della Missione_.
[310] From twenty-two conclusions concerning Catherine and her circle,
constituting one of the papers in the volume, _Documenti_, etc., of
the University Library. They were evidently written after 1675 and
before 1737 (Catherine is “Beata” throughout), but are, wherever I have
been able to test them, as a rule completely right, and never entirely
wrong. It is certainly somewhat strange that Argentina should, as is
there stated, have “continued in the said Hospital, and was living
in it still in 1523,” and should have “similarly continued to be the
servant of the Priest Cattaneo (Marabotto).” Still, she may have slept
at the Hospital and worked at Marabotto’s. I had thought of concluding
from this that Marabotto had been given Catherine’s house in the
Hospital, after Don Carenzio’s death there. But the apparently complete
absence of any mention of Marabotto in the Hospital books, after July
1512, makes me shrink from doing so.
[311] I am proud of this important discovery, since even Giovo had to
leave a blank for this date in his Chapter IV of Part I of his MS.
_Vita_, in the _Biblioteca della Missione_, written in 1675. I found
the date amongst some notes and copies, in a sprawly handwriting, not
Giovo’s, but the same which copied out the entry as to Carenzio’s
funeral expenses. It is true that in Marabotto’s case this writer
gives no proof or document; yet there is no reason for distrusting his
assertion.
[312] Copy from Hospital Cartulary in MS. _Vita_ of the _Biblioteca
della Missione Urbana_: “1511, 7 Julii: Hereditas quondam Caterinetae
Adurnae, pro Maria, olim famula ipsius et filia Hospitalis, pro legato
facto dictae Mariae per dictam q(uondam) Caterinetam, £50.--Maria
praedicta pro D. P. Cattaneo Marabotto, qui habuit curam guarnimentorum
ipsius Mariae, dedicatae in Monasterio Sanctae Brigidae, £50.”--I take
these two successive entries to refer to two successive stages of the
same transaction, and to but one and the same sum.
[313] From the documents given in the MS. _Vita_ of the _Biblioteca
della Missione Urbana_.
[314] My quotations from this letter are all taken from Giuseppe
Morro’s careful address on Vernazza, published in _Inaugurazione della
Statua d’Ettore Vernazza_, Genova, 1867, pp. 5-31. It stands _in
extenso_ in the fine edition of his daughter’s works: _Opere Spirituale
della Ven. Madre Donna Battista Vernazza_, 6 vols., Genoa, 1755; Vol.
VI, Letter XXV.
[315] The document is given in fall, and carefully analyzed, in
_Inaugurazione_, etc., pp. 61-70.
[316] Battista’s letter, as quoted in _Inaugurazione_, p. 16.
[317] _Inaugurazione_, pp. 17, 18.
[318] Printed in _Inaugurazione_, pp. 71-73.
[319] The present, second and much larger and detached SS. Annunziata,
on the square of that name, was not built (for the Capuchins) till
1587. In Giuliano’s and Catherine’s Wills of 1494, 1498, and 1506, the
Hospital Church occurs indifferently as “Church of the Annunciation
of the Order of Friars Minor of the Observance” with and without the
addition of “adjoining the Hospital,” or “adjoining the Hospital of
Pammatone.”
[320] This was a Cistercian Convent, founded in the twelfth
century, outside one of the Genoese gates. Only its Chapel survived
the destruction of the Convent at the time of the Revolutionary
secularization. And even this Chapel was in January 1903 in process of
demolition, to make room for the new Via Venti Settembre.
[321] The three daughters’ names in Religion all occur in a document of
the Bank of St. George printed in _Inaugurazione_, p. 79.
[322] _Inaugurazione_, p. 18, quoting Battista’s letter of 1581.
[323] _Inaugurazione_, pp. 19, 20.
[324] I derive this particular from Professore G. Morro’s
_Inaugurazione_, p. 20.
[325] _Inaugurazione_, p. 20.
[326] _Inaugurazione_, p. 21.
[327] _Inaugurazione_, pp. 21, 22. Battista’s account would lead one
to place that last Communion on the Feast itself; but the various
inscriptions erected by the most careful Committee of 1867, shows that
it occurred really on the Eve. See _Inaugurazione_, pp. 37; 39, 40. One
more instance of a slight displacement of date effected by a (no doubt
unconscious) desire to find a full synchronism between the Feast of the
Baptist and the final Communion of one so devoted to that Saint. The
Committee evidently shrank from interpreting her “three days after”: it
may evidently mean either the 26th or the 27th.
[328] As to the older monuments, see _Inaugurazione_, p. 5. An
excellent photograph of Varni’s statue forms the title-picture to this
publication.
[329] An engraving of this (now lost) portrait exists in _Ritratti ed
Elogii di Liguri Illustri_, Genova, Ponthonier, and appears reproduced
here as the Frontispiece to Vol. II.
[330] _Inaugurazione_, p. 26.
[331] Even such a rhetorical apostrophe as occurs in the peroration
of Dottore Morro’s speech (_Inaugurazione_, p. 30): “Thou worthy of
incense and of altars, as was that Catherine Fieschi, whose friend and
confidant and spiritual son thou wast, and who was God-mother to thy
own first-born,” stands, I think, alone.
[332] Schmöger: _Leben der gottseligen Anna Katharina Emmerich_,
Freiburg, 1867, 1870, Vol. II, pp. 892, 898, 900.
[333] Vallebona, _op. cit._ p. 83: “Santissima mia Diva, | questo mio
cor ricevi: | che quando al sole apriva | le luci a giorni brevi, |
infin d’allor fei voto, | con animo devoto, | non mai, madre adorata,
| esser da Te sviata.” “My most holy Protectress” and “adored Mother”
may apply to Catherine. But I have had to punctuate so as to make
“che” = “perchè,” as in Jacopone throughout: so that we now have not
a declaration of time, as to when she, the Protectress, accepted
Tommasa’s heart (which might well have been at Baptism); but a prayer
that this Mother may accept her heart, in view of the fact that she,
Tommasa, had, from her first opening of her eyes to life (surely, on
coming to some degree of reason), vowed never to be parted from this
Mother. And thus the application to Catherine remains possible but
becomes uncertain.
[334] I feel obliged to put the matter in this hypothetical form
because of the several undeniable indications of Catherine’s loss of
interest in many, perhaps most, events and occurrences, since, at
latest, the beginning of 1509.
[335] See the admirably vivid account of, and wisely-balanced judgment
concerning, these events, in the Catholic Alfred von Reumont’s little
book, _Vittoria Colonna_, Freiburg, 1881, pp. 117-152; 194-215.
[336] _Acta Sanctorum_, Vol. VI, pp. 192-196.
[337] For Gerson’s “Rigorism,” see J. B. Schwab’s admirable monograph,
_Johannes Gerson_, Regensburg, 1858; and for Contarini’s, Morone’s, and
the Colonna’s views, see Reumont’s _Vittoria Colonna_.
[338] _Opere_, Vol. VI, p. 192.
[339] See the Preface to the _Opere_, Vol. I, p. 10.
[340] _Opere_, ed. Genoa, 1755, Vol. V, pp. 218-227.
[341] See here, pp. 265, 266; 272; 280; 264, 265; 135; 160, 274-276.
[342] See here, pp. 116; 117, 266.
[343] The last clause here is very obscure in the original: “non voglio
meritare te, ma rimeritare lo amore che ti porto”; but I take the above
translation to render correctly the substantial meaning.
[344] See here, pp. 265; 262, 263, 261.
[345] See here, pp. 266, 268; 285; 261; 275, 159, 141.
[346] See here, pp. 260, 261, 273, 274.
[347] Ch iv, §§ xiii, xiv, xvi (Parker, pp. 48-50).
[348] See here, pp. 138; 277; 260.
[349] See here, p. 270.
[350] See here, pp. 270; 290; 275, 270.
[351] See here, pp. 138, 139; 265, 260; 272.
[352] _Opere_, ed. 1755, Vol. VI, pp. 247, 248.
[353] See here, pp. 263, 266, 280; 272, 275; 292; 277, 262.
[354] See here, pp. 284; 166-174; 143-145.
[355] See here, pp. 140, 141; 131, 116.
[356] _Inaugurazione_, pp. 26, 27.
[357] _Ibid._ pp. 74, 75, 77, 78. _Ibid._ p. 94.
[358] Here, pp. 319, 320; 140, 141, 268.
[359] Date of death: _Ritratti ed Elogii di Liguri Illustri_,
Genova, Ponthenier (Elogio della Ven. Battista Vernazza). Communion:
_Opere della Ven. B. Vernazza_, ed. cit., Vol. I, p. 21. The
portrait-frontispiece of the second volume of this work is a faithful
facsimile of the portrait (a lithograph by F. Scotto) published among
the _Ritratti_, between 1823 and 1830. The original picture, which will
have hung in the convent of S. Marie delle Grazie, I have not been able
to trace. The portrait now in possession of the Nuns of the convent of
S. Maria in Passione, the successors of those Canonesses, is a quite
conventional, inauthentic likeness.
[360] “A(nno) 1456, 27 Augti, ex Locis Pomerae uxore Bartolomaei de
Auria et a de modo Isabellae dedicatae in monasterio S. David, ad
instantiam Andreae Auria, unici ejus filii ex heredis, et Franciscae
matris Catherinetae filiae Jacobi de Flisco, Loci duo in ratione dictae
Catherinetae per ejus maritare et (si) dictae Franciscae fecerit
consilio.” From parchment-bound small folio vol.: _Documenti su S.
Catherina da Genova MSS._, in R. University Library, Genoa.
[361] From Dre. Ferretto’s copy of original in the Archivio di Stato
Genoa.
[362] The originals of both deeds are in the Archivio di Stato, Genoa,
Atti del Not. Battista Strata, folie 39, parte II, and 96 (parte III).
[363] Copies of these two entries, in the MS. volume “Documenti …
Caterina da Genova,” University Library, Genoa, B VII 31.
[364] The first four documents exist, copied, in the _Vita_ of the
_Biblioteca della Missione Urbana_; the last is in the Archivio di
Stato, and has been copied out plain for me by Dre. Ferretto.
[365] Ettore Vernazza: _Inaugurazione_, pp. 21, 22; 39, 40. Cattaneo
Marrabotto: Don Giovo’s declaration among the “Conclusions” (in his
own handwriting) attached to the MS. _Vita_ of St. Catherine in the
_Biblioteca della Missione Urbana_, Genoa. Tommasa Fiesca: Fed.
Alizieri, in _Atti della Società di Storia Patria_, Vol. VIII, Genoa,
1868, p. 408. Battista Vernazza, _Opere Spirituali della Ven. B.
Vernazza_, Genoa, ed. 1775, Vol. I, Preface.
[366] MS. A, pp. 3; 367; 368-398; 399.
[367] _Ibid._ pp. 361-363; 364; 87, 88.
[368] MS. A, p. 160.
[369] _Ibid._ pp. 134; 168; 198-200; 329; in contrast respectively with
pp. 62; 124; 76; 161 of the Printed _Life_.
[370] MS. A, p. 193, which appears, in a somewhat modified form, in the
Pr. L., p. 97_c_; and, with further transformations, on pp. 139_a_;
139_c_; 140_a_; 140_b_ of the same.
[371] _Ibid._ p. 169, compared with Pr. L., p. 124_c_.
[372] _Ibid._ p. 163, compared with Pr. L., p. 122_c_.
[373] Pr. L., pp. 155_b_-156_a_.
[374] Pr. L., pp. 146_c_-147_c_; 154_b_.
[375] Pr. L., pp. 51_a_-53_b_.
[376] MS. A, p. 168, compared with Pr. L. pp. 123_b_-124_b_.
[377] Pr. L. pp. 116_c_-121_b_; 139_a_-140_c_. Retained lines: MS. p.
40 = Pr. L., p. 116_c_.
[378] Pr. L., p. 119_c_.
[379] MS. ch. iv = Pr. L., ch. ii, pp. 4_a_-5_c_.
[380] MS. ch. v = Pr. L., ch. ii, pp. 5_c_-6_c_.
[381] I purposely leave this sentence in its tell-tale clumsiness of
form.
[382] This corresponds, as to its substance, to Pr. L., pp. 5_c_-6_c_.
[383] Pr. L., p. 14_c_.
[384] MS. B. fol. 2_r_ et _v_.
[385] _Ibid._ fol. 19_r_ et _v_.
[386] MS. B: the break, on fol. 30_r_; the abrupt ending, on bottom of
fol. 33_v_.
[387] Hence _Dialogo_ (Pr. L.) pp. 185_c_-190_c_ is an expansion of the
_Vita_-proper (Pr. L.) p. 31; and _Dialogo_ pp. 191_a_-198_a_ is an
expansion of _Vita_-proper p. 33.
[388] Hence _Dialogo_ (Pr. L.) pp. 198_b_-206_b_ corresponds to
_Vita_-proper pp. 4_a_-5_a_.
[389] P. 205_c_.
[390] Pp. 206_c_, 207_b_.
[391] _Dialogo_ pp. 207_c_-212_a_ is thus equivalent to _Vita_-proper
p. 5_b_.
[392] _Dialogo_, pp. 212_b_-212_c_ is hence equivalent to _Vita_-proper
pp. 12_b_-13_c_.
[393] _Dialogo_ pp. 213_c_-225_c_ thus corresponds to _Vita_-proper pp.
9_b_, 15_b_; 13_c_, 14_a_; 20_a_, 21_a_; 123_b_; 13_b_; 96_b_-97_a_.
[394] See here, pp. 353, 354.
[395] _Dialogo_, pp. 215_c_, 216_a_.
[396] _Dialogo_, p. 197_a_.
[397] _Ibid._ p. 209_b_.
[398] _Ibid._ p. 223_c_.
[399] _Ibid._ p. 221_c_.
[400] _Dialogo_, pp. 20_a_, 13_c_, 21_a_, 20_a_.
[401] _Ibid._ pp. 220_c_, 222_c_.
[402] _Ibid._ p. 21_b_.
[403] _Dialogo_, p. 123_b_.
[404] From MS. A, p. 174: “Li buttò le braccie al collo, e,
stringendola con singulti, non si poteva saziar di piangere.” The
Printed _Vita_, p. 125_b_, has only: “La abbracciò piangendo, per lungo
spazio di tempo.”
[405] See here, pp. 169-171.
[406] See here, pp. 185, 186; 194; 205.
[407] _Ibid._ pp. 221, 222_a_.
[408] See here, pp. 363; 346, 347.
[409] _Ibid._ pp. 56_b_, 203_a_; 33_b_, 202_b_.
[410] _Vita_, pp. 32_c_, 26_c_, 58_a_, 48_a_, 135_a_.
[411] _Ibid._ pp. 76_a_, 157_c_; 103_b_.
[412] _Vita_, pp. 212_c_, 213_a_; 222_b_; 220_c_, 221_c_.
[413] See here, p. 146.
[414] See here, pp. 145, 146.
[415] _Vita_, p. 21_a_.
[416] See here, pp. 344-358; 359-364.
[417] Dan. ix, 24.
[418] Gen. xxix, 20; xxx, 27.
[419] See here, pp. 351, 355.
[420] Compare, as to human intercourse, _Dialogo_ p. 221_b_,
with Battista’s advice, given here p. 363; and, as to spiritual
consolations, _Dialogo_ pp. 215_c_, 216_a_, with Battista’s
_Colloquies_, here pp. 346, 347.
[421] Catherine, Pr. _Vita_, p. 209_c_; Battista, in one of the
_Colloquii_ given in the _Opere_, _loc. cit._, but not otherwise
reproduced here; Catherine, Pr. _Vita_, pp. 209_c_, 211_c_, 211_b_, 32;
Battista, here, pp. 359, 360.
[422] Catherine, Pr. _Vita_, p. 97_b_; Battista, Pr. _Vita_, p. 201_b_;
here, p. 360; and _Dialogo_, p. 211_a_.
[423] I have not succeeded in finding a copy of this rare book: the
six chief libraries of Genoa; the Ambrosian Library, Milan; and the
Vatican and Angelica Libraries, Rome, are certainly without it. My
general description, and my special reproduction of one passage, of
it are taken from a series of very careful accounts of the successive
early editions of the book, preserved among the Documents relative
to the Process of Catherine’s Beatification of 1630-1675, in the
Archiepiscopal Archives, Genoa.
[424] _Vita_, pp. 5_b_, 6_b_, 155_b_-156_a_; 211_b_, 264_b_.
[425] _Vita_, pp. vii_c_, viii_a_; viii_b_.
[426] _Colloquies_, _Opere_, Vol. V, p. 219. _Letters_, _ibid._ Vol.
VI, p. 24. _Dialogo_, pp. 187_b_, 215_b_, 220_c_, 223_b_, 237_c_,
247_b_, 248_c_, 273_b_. _Dialogo_, p. 266_b_.
[427] _Vita_: Chapter Second, pp. 226_a_-275_a_. Part Second, pp.
226_a_-245_c_; Part Third, pp. 246_a_-275_a_. The moralizing narrative:
last sentence, p. 245_c_.
[428] _Dialogo_ p. 225_c_, paraphrase of _Vita_ p. 6_c_.
[429] “Nine years before her death,” _Vita_, p. 127_a_; “one year
before she passed away,” p. 132_b_; Purgatory, pp. 128_c_, 129_a_;
136_c_, 144_b_; “Prison of the Body,” p. 137_a_; emaciation, pp.
144_a_, 160_b_; vomitings, pp. 127_c_, 138_c_, 160_a_, _b_; inability
to move, pp. 128_a_, 137_b_.
[430] _Vita_, pp. 227_a_-241_b_; 213_c_-225_c_.
[431] The “scintilla,” “stilla,” and “immersion in the sweetness of
Love”: _Dialogo_, p. 252_a_, _b_, _c_. In the Vita-proper “scintilla”
is but once (and in a doubtful passage) so used, p. 148_b_; in the
other passages “non una minima scintilla” means there “not a glimpse”
of this or that, pp. 5_c_, 62_a_. “Stilla” of Blessedness, p. 119_c_;
“goccia” of Love, pp. 94_b_-95_c_; “gocciola” of spiritual water
(refreshment), p. 135_b_. “Ocean” and immersion therein, pp. 59_b_,
60_b_.
[432] _Vita_, pp. 78_c_, 79_a_.
[433] Thus _Vita_ (_Dialogo_), p. 266_a_ = _Vita_ (proper), p. 117_b_,
_c_; and _Vita_ (_Dialogo_), p. 266_c_ = _Vita_ (proper), pp. 120_b_,
117_b_.
[434] _Dialogo_, p. 234_b_.
[435] _Dialogo_, p. 241_b_.
[436] _Ibid._ p. 260_b_.
[437] _Vita_, p. 268_c_.
[438] _Ibid._ p. 269_c_.
[439] _Ibid._ p. 270_b_.
[440] _Dialogo_, p. 212_c_; and here, p. 146.
[441] _Ibid._ p. 273_a_.
[442] _Ibid._ p. 275_a_.
[443] _Dialogo_, p. 250_b_.
[444] _Vita_, p. 97_b_: “This creature would appear with a countenance
like unto a Cherub; she gave great consolation to every one who gazed
upon her, and those who visited her knew not how to depart from her.”
And pp. 94_b_-95_c_. See here, pp. 159-161.
[445] _Ibid._ pp. 231_a_; 242_b_; 248_c_; 249_a_.
[446] See here, pp. 327-329.
[447] See here, pp. 353, 354.
[448] _Dialogo_, pp. 242_b_; 221_b_; 232b; _Vita_-proper, 117_c_,
118_a_.
[449] _Vita_-proper, pp. 101_b_; _Dialogo_, 247_b_.
[450] _Dialogo_, p. 248_c_; _Vita_-proper, 76_a_.
[451] _Dialogo_, p. 259_c_.
[452] _Ibid._ 266_b_.
[453] _Dialogo_, p. 264_b_; and here, pp. 349-351, 360.
[454] _Vita_, p. 144_c_.
[455] First seven Chapters: _Vita_, pp. 169_b_-75_c_. Last ten
chapters: _Ibid._ pp. 175_c_-184_c_.
[456] See here, pp. 140, 141.
[457] Denzinger, _Enchiridion Definitionum_, ed. 1888, p. 178, No. 38:
“Animae in Purgatorio non sunt securae de earum salute saltem omnes;
nec probatum est, ullis aut rationibus aut Scripturis, ipsas esse extra
statum merendi aut augendae charitatis.”
[458] His Epitaph, in the Church of the Annunciation, at Sturla,
just outside Genoa, is given in full in Pescetto’s _Biografia Medica
Ligure_, Genova, 1846, p. 104.
[459] MS. A, p. 348 = Pr. L., 155_b_, 156_b_.
[460] Pr. _Vita_, pp. 155_b_, _c_, 156_a_.
[461] _Padre_: pp. 117_b_, 118_b_; _Figliuolo_, pp. 99_b_; 94_b_, _c_,
95_a_, _b_; 122_c_.
[462] _Madre_, pp. 98_c_; 94_b_, _c_, 95_a_, _b_ (twice).
[463] _Vita_, pp. 50_b_, 37_a_-38_a_; 61_c_, 62_a_; 83_a_; 92_a_.
[464] _Vita_, pp. 53_a_, 76_c_, 73_a_.
[465] _Vita_, pp. 4_b_, 151_b_.
[466] I derive all these titles from the Documents in the Curia
Arcivescovile of Genoa already referred to. The Editions 1568, 1601, I
have examined in the Ambrosian Library, Milan.
[467] The Bull is given in full by Fr. Sticker: _Acta Sanctorum_,
Sept., Vol. V, ed. 1866, pp. 181 F-188 A. See there, p. 183 B, E. In
the former passage the double description is rightly attributed to
the same event; and the contradiction between them is ably eliminated
by the Bull’s words: “She seemed to herself to behold the image of
the suffering Saviour” (instead of _Vita_, p. 5_b_, “affixed to the
Cross”); and, in the latter passage, the description of her poverty is
kept free from the extravagances of the _Dialogo_, pp. 220_c_, 221_c_.
END OF VOL. I
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