← catalogue

Letters of Catherine Benincasa

by Saint of Siena Catherine · English · Gutenberg #7403 · 626,397 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Letters of Catherine Benincasa
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Letters of Catherine Benincasa

Author: Saint of Siena Catherine

Translator: Vida Dutton Scudder


        
Release date: February 1, 2005 [eBook #7403]
                Most recently updated: December 30, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7403

Credits: Anne Soulard, Charles Franks, Robert Shimmin, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LETTERS OF CATHERINE BENINCASA ***




Anne Soulard, Charles Franks, Robert Shimmin, and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team



LETTERS OF CATHERINE BENINCASA




[Illustration: _The Ecstasy of St. Catherine
Detail from Bazzis Fresco_]




SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA
AS SEEN IN HER LETTERS

TRANSLATED & EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION BY
VIDA D. SCUDDER




TABLE OF CONTENTS


Table of Persons Addressed
St. Catherine of Siena as seen in her letters
Chief Events in the life of St. Catherine
Brief Outline of Contemporary Public Events
To Monna Alessa dei Saracini
To Benincasa her brother, when he was in Florence
To the Venerable Religious, Brother Antonio of Nizza
To Monna Agnese, who was the wife of Messer Orso Malavolti
To Sister Eugenia, her niece at the Convent of St. Agnes of Montepulciano
To Nanna, daughter of Benincasa, a little maid, her niece
Letters on the Consecrated Life
    To Brother William of England
    To Daniella of Orvieto, clothed with the Habit of St. Dominic
    To Monna Agnese, wife of Francesco, a tailor of Florence
Letters in response to certain criticisms
    To Monna Orsa, wife of Bartolo Usimbardi, and to Monna Agnese
    To a Religious man in Florence, who was shocked at her Ascetic
    Practices
To Brother Bartolomeo Dominici
To Brother Matteo di Francesco Tolomei
To a Mantellata of Saint Dominic, called Catarina di Scetto
To Neri di Landoccio dei Pagliaresi
To Monna Giovanna and her other daughters in Siena
To Messer John, the Soldier of Fortune
To Monna Colomba in Lucca
To Brother Raimondo of Capua, of the Order of the Preachers
To Gregory XI
To Gregory XI
To Gregory XI
To Brother Raimondo of Capua, at Avignon
To Catarina of the Hospital, and Giovanna di Capo
To Sister Daniella of Orvieto
To Brother Raimondo of Capua, and to Master John III
To Sister Bartolomea della Seta
To Gregory XI
To the King of France
Letters to Florence
    To the Eight of War chosen by the Commune of Florence
    To Buonaccorso di Lapo: written when the Saint was at Avignon
To Gregory XI
To Monna Lapa, her mother, before she returned from Avignon
To Monna Giovanna di Corrado Maconi
To Messer Ristoro Canigiani
To the Anziani and Consuls and Gonfalonieri of Bologna
To Nicholas of Osimo
To Misser Lorenzo del Pino of Bologna, Doctor in Decretals
Letters written from Rocca D'Orcia
    To Monna Lapa, her mother, and to Monna Cecca
    To Monna Catarina of the Hospital, and to Giovanna di Capo
    To Monna Alessa, clothed with the Habit of Saint Dominic
To Gregory XI
To Raimondo of Capua
To Urban VI
To her spiritual children in Siena
    To Brother William and to Messer Matteo of the Misericordia
    To Sano di Maco, and to all her other sons in Siena
To Brother Raimondo of Capua
To Urban VI
To Don Giovanni of the Cells of Vallombrosa
Letters announcing peace
    To Monna Alessa, when the Saint was at Florence
    To Sano di Maco, and to the other sons in Christ
To three Italian Cardinals
To Giovanna, Queen of Naples
To Sister Daniella of Orvieto
To Stefano Maconi
To certain holy hermits who had been invited to Rome by the Pope
    To Brother William of England, and to Brother Antonio of Nizza
    To Brother Andrea of Lucca, Brother Baldo, and Brother Lando
    To Brother Antonio of Nizza
To Queen Giovanna of Naples
To Brother Raimondo of the Preaching Order, when he was in Genoa
To Urban VI
Letters describing the experience preceding death
    To Master Raimondo of Capua
    To Master Raimondo of Capua, of the Order of the Preachers




TABLE OF PERSONS ADDRESSED


Agnese, Monna, di Francesco
Andrea, Brother, of Lucca
Antonio, Brother, of Nizza

Baldo, Brother
Bartolomea, Sister, della Seta
Bartolomeo, Brother, Dominici
Benincasa, Benincasa
Benincasa, Eugenia
Benincasa, Monna Lapa
Benincasa, Nanna
Bologna, Anziani of

Capo, Giovanna di
Canigiani, Ristoro
Cardinals, Three Italian
Catarina, of the Hospital
Cecca, Monna
Colomba, Monna, of Lucca

Daniella, Sister, of Orvieto

France, the King of
Florence, Letters to

Giovanna, Queen of Naples
Giovanni, Don, of the Cells of Vallombrosa
Gregory XI.

John, Messer, Soldier of Fortune
John III., Master

Lando, Brother
Lapo, Buonaccorso di

Maco, Sano di
Maconi, Monna Giovanna di Corrado
Maconi, Stefano
Malavolti, Monna Agnese
Matteo, Messer, of the Misericordia

Osimo, Nicholas of

Pagliaresi, Neri di Landoccio dei
Pino, Lorenzo del

Raimondo, Brother, of Capua
Religious, A, in Florence

Saracini, Monna Alessa dei
Scetto, Catarina di

Tolomei, Brother Matteo di

Urban VI., Pope
Usimbardi, Monna Orsa

War, the Eight of
William, Brother, of England




LETTERS OF CATHERINE BENINCASA




ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA AS SEEN IN HER LETTERS


I

The letters of Catherine Benincasa, commonly known as St. Catherine of
Siena, have become an Italian classic; yet perhaps the first thing in them
to strike a reader is their unliterary character. He only will value them
who cares to overhear the impetuous outpourings of the heart and mind of
an unlettered daughter of the people, who was also, as it happened, a
genius and a saint. Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, the other great writers of
the Trecento, are all in one way or another intent on choice expression;
Catherine is intent solely on driving home what she has to say. Her
letters were talked rather than written. She learned to write only three
years before her death, and even after this time was in the habit of
dictating her correspondence, sometimes two or three letters at a time, to
the noble youths who served her as secretaries.

The modern listener to this eager talk may perhaps at first feel wearied.
Suffocated by words, repelled by frequent crudity and confusion of
metaphor, he may even be inclined to call the thought childish and the
tone overwrought. But let him persevere. Let him read these letters as
chapters in an autobiography, noting purpose and circumstance, and reading
between the lines, as he may easily do, the experience of the writer.
Before long the very accents of a living woman will reach his ears. He
will hear her voice, now eagerly pleading with friend or wrong-doer, now
brooding tender as a mother-bird over some fledgling soul, now broken with
sobs as she mourns over the sins of Church and world, and again chanting
high prophecy of restoration and renewal, or telling in awestruck
undertone sacred mysteries of the interior life. Dante's Angel of Purity
welcomes wayfarers upon the Pilgrim Mount "in voce assai più che la
nostra, viva." The saintly voice, like the angelic, is more living than
our own. These letters are charged with a vitality so intense that across
the centuries it draws us into the author's presence.

Imagination is inclined to see the canonized saints as a row of solemn
figures, standing in dull monotony of worshipful gesture, like Virgins and
Confessors in an early mosaic. Yet, as a matter of fact, people who have
been canonized were to their contemporaries the most striking
personalities among men and women striving for righteousness. They were
all, to be sure, very good; but goodness, despite a curious prejudice to
the contrary, admits more variety in type than wickedness, and produces
more interesting characters. Catherine Benincasa was probably the most
remarkable woman of the fourteenth century, and her letters are the
precious personal record of her inner as of her outer life. With all their
transparent simplicity and mediaeval quaintness, with all the occasional
plebeian crudity of their phrasing, they reveal a nature at once so many-
sided and so exalted that the sensitive reader can but echo the judgment
of her countrymen, who see in the dyer's daughter of Siena one of the most
significant authors of a great age.


II

As is the case with many great letter-writers, though not with all,
Catherine reveals herself largely through her relations with others. Some
of her letters, indeed, are elaborate religious or political treatises,
and seem at first sight to have little personal colouring; yet even these
yield their full content of spiritual beauty and wisdom only when one
knows the circumstances that called them forth and the persons to whom
they were addressed. A mere glance at the index to her correspondence
shows how widely she was in touch with her time. She was a woman of
personal charm and of sympathies passionately wide, and she gathered
around her friends and disciples from every social group in Italy, not to
speak of many connections formed with people in other lands. She wrote to
prisoners and outcasts; to great nobles and plain business men; to
physicians, lawyers, soldiers of fortune; to kings and queens and
cardinals and popes; to recluses pursuing the Beatific Vision, and to men
and women of the world plunged in the lusts of the flesh and governed by
the pride of life. The society of the fourteenth century passes in review
as we turn the pages.

Catherine wrote to all these people in the same simple spirit. With one
and all she was at home, for all were to her, by no merely formal phrase,
"dearest brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus." One knows not whether to
be more struck by the outspoken fearlessness of the woman or by her great
adaptability. She could handle with plain directness the crudest sins of
her age; she could also treat with subtle insight the most elusive phases
of spiritual experience. No greater distance can be imagined than that
which separates the young Dominican with her eyes full of visions from a
man like Sir John Hawkwood, reckless free-lance, selling his sword with
light-hearted zeal to the highest bidder, and battening on the disorder of
the times. Catherine writes to him with gentlest assumption of fellowship,
seizes on his natural passions and tastes, and seeks to sanctify the
military life of his affections. With her sister nuns the method changes.
She gives free play to her delicate fancy, drawing her metaphors from the
beauty of nature, from tender, homely things, from the gentle arts and
instincts of womanhood. Does she speak to Pope Gregory, the timid? Her
words are a trumpet-call. To the harsh Urban, his successor? With finest
tact she urges self-restraint and a policy of moderation. Temperaments of
every type are to be met in her pages--a sensitive poet, troubled by
"confusion of thought" deepening into melancholia; a harum-scarum boy, in
whose sunny joyousness she discerns the germ of supernatural grace;
vehement sinners, fearful saints, religious recluses deceived by self-
righteousness, and men of affairs devoutly faithful to sober duty.
Catherine enters into every consciousness. As a rule we associate with
very pure and spiritual women, even if not cloistered, a certain deficient
sense of reality. We cherish them, and shield them from harsh contact with
the world, lest the fine flower of their delicacy be withered. But no one
seems to have felt in this way about Catherine. Her "love for souls" was
no cold electric illumination such as we sometimes feel the phrase to
imply, but a warm understanding tenderness for actual men and women. It
would be hard to exaggerate her knowledge of the world and of human
hearts.

Yet sometimes Catherine appears to us austere and exacting; unsparing in
condemnation, and unrelenting in her demands on those she loves. Many of
her letters are in a strain of exhortation that rises into rebuke. The
impression at first is unpleasant. We are tempted to feel this unfailing
candour captious; to resent the note of authority, equally clear whether
she write to Pope or Cardinal; to suspect Catherine, in a word, of
assuming that very judicial attitude which she constantly deprecates as
unbecoming to us poor mortals. And perhaps the very frequency of her plea
for tolerance and forbearance suggests a conscious weakness. Like most
brilliant and ardent people, she was probably by nature of a critical and
impatient disposition; she was, moreover, a plebeian. At times, when she
is quite sure that men are on the side of the devil, she allows her
instinctive frankness full scope; it must be allowed that the result is
astounding. Yet even as we catch our breath we realise that her remarks
were probably justified. It is hard for us moderns to remember how crudely
hideous were the sins which she faced. In these days, when we are all
reduced to one apparent level of moral respectability, and great
saintliness and dramatic guilt are alike seldom conspicuous, we forget the
violent contrasts of the middle ages. Pure "Religious," striving after the
exalted perfection enjoined by the Counsels, moved habitually among moral
atrocities, and bold vigour of speech was a practical duty. Catherine
handled without evasion the grossest evils of her time, and the spell
which she exercised by simple force of direct dealing was nothing less
than extraordinary.

It is easy to see why Catherine's plain speaking was not resented. She
rarely begins with rebuke. The note of humility is first struck; she is
always "servant and slave of the servants of Jesus Christ." Thence she
frequently passes into fervent meditation on some special theme: the
exceeding wonder of the Divine Love, the duty of prayer, the nature of
obedience. We are lifted above the world into a region of heavenly light
and sweetness, when suddenly--a blow from the shoulder!--a startling sense
of return to earth. From the contemplation of the beauty of holiness,
Catherine has swiftly turned us to face the opposing sin. "Thou art the
man!" A few trenchant sentences, charged with pain, and the soul which has
been raised to celestial places awakes to see in itself the contradiction
of all that is so lovely. Into the region of darkness Catherine goes with
it. It is not "thou" but "we" who have sinned. She holds that sinful heart
so near her own that the beatings are confounded; her words now and again
express a shuddering personal remorse for sins of which she could have had
no personal knowledge. Her sense of unity with her fellow-men lies deeper
than any theory of brotherhood; she feels herself in sober truth guilty of
the sins of her brothers: her experience illustrates the profound truth
that only purity can know perfect penitence.

Catherine is then saved from any touch of Pharisaism by her remarkable
identification of herself with the person to whom she writes. But to
understand her attitude we must go further. For she never pauses in
reprobation of evil. Full of conviction that the soul needs only to
recognise its sin to hate and escape it for ever, she passes swiftly on to
impassioned appeal. Her words breathe a confidence in men that never fails
even when she is writing to the most hardened. She succeeded to a rare
degree in the difficult conciliation of uncompromising hatred toward sin
with unstrained fellowship with the sinner, and invincible trust in his
responsiveness to the appeal of virtue. When we consider the times in
which she lived, this large and touching trustfulness becomes to our eyes
a victory of faith. That it was no mere instinct, but an attitude
resolutely adopted and maintained, is evident from her frequent
discussions of charity and tolerance, some of which will be found in these
selections. She constantly urges her disciples to put the highest possible
construction on their neighbours' actions; nor is any phase of her
teaching more constantly repeated than the beautiful application of the
text: "In My Father's House are many mansions," to enjoin recognition of
the varieties in temperament and character and practice which may coexist
in the House of God.

Catherine had learned a hard lesson. She saw in human beings not their
achievements, but their possibilities. Therefore she quickened repentance
by a positive method, not by morbid analysis of evil, not by lurid
pictures of the consequences of sin, but by filling the soul with glowing
visions of that holiness which to see is to long for. She never despaired
of quickening in even the most degraded that flame of "holy desire" which
is the earnest of true holiness to be. We find her impatient of mint and
cummin, of over-anxious self-scrutiny. "Strive that your holy desires
increase," she writes to a correspondent; "and let all these other things
alone." "I, Catherine--write to you--with desire": so open all her
letters. Holy Desire! It is not only the watchword of her teaching: it is
also the true key to her personality.


III

We have dwelt on Catherine, the friend and guide of souls; but it is
Catherine the mystic, Catherine the friend of God, before whom the ages
bend in reverence. The final value of her letters lies in their
revelation, not of her dealings with other souls, but of God's dealings
with her own.

But in presence of the record of these deep experiences, silence is better
than words: is, indeed, for most of us the only possible attitude. The
letters that follow must speak for themselves. The clarity of mind which
Catherine always preserved, even in moments of highest exaltation, and her
loving eagerness to share her most sacred experiences with those dear to
her, have given her a power of expression that has produced pages of
unsurpassed interest and value, alike for the psychologist and for the
believer. Moreover--and this we well may note--her letters enable us to
apprehend with singularly happy intimacy, the natural character and
disposition of her whom these high things befell. In the very cadence of
their impetuous phrasing, in their swift dramatic changes, in their
marvellous blending of sweetness and virility, they show us the woman.
Some of them, especially those to her family and friends, are of almost
childlike simplicity and homely charm; others, among the most famous of
their kind, deal with mystical, or if we choose so to put it, with
supernatural experience: in all alike, we feel a heart akin to our own,
though larger and more tender.

The central fact in Catherine's nature was her rapt and absolute
perception of the Love of God, as the supreme reality in the universe.
This Love, as manifested in creation, in redemption, and in the sacrament
of the Altar, is the theme of her constant meditations. One little phrase,
charged with a lyric poignancy, sings itself again and again, enlightening
her more sober prose: "For nails would not have held God-and-Man fast to
the Cross, had love not held Him there." Her conceptions are positive, not
negative, and joyous adoration is the substance of her faith.

But the letters show us that this faith was not won nor kept without sharp
struggle. We have in them no presentation of a calm spirit, established on
tranquil heights of unchanging vision, above our "mortal moral strife."
Catherine is, as we can see, a woman of many moods--very sensitive, very
loving. She shows a touching dependence on those she loves, and an
inveterate habit of idealising them, which leads to frequent disillusion.
She is extremely eager and intense about little things as well as great;
hers is a truly feminine seriousness over the detail of living. She is
keenly and humanly interested in life on this earth, differing in this
respect from some canonized persons who seem always to be enduring it
_faute de mieux_. And, as happens to all sensitive people who refuse to
seclude themselves in dreams, life went hard with her. Hers was a frail
and suffering body, and a tossed and troubled spirit; wounded in the house
of her friends, beset by problem, shaken with doubt and fear by the
spectacle presented to her by the world and the Church of Christ. The
letters tell us how these, her sorrows and temptations, were not separated
from the life of faith, but a true portion of it: how she carried them
into the Divine Presence, and what high reassurance awaited her there.
Ordinary mortals are inclined to think that supernatural experience
removes the saints to a perplexing distance. In Catherine's case, however,
we become aware as we study the record that it brings her nearer us. For
these experiences, far from being independent of her outer life, are in
closest relation with it; even the highest and most mysterious, even those
in which the symbolism seems most remote from the modern mind, can be
translated by the psychologist without difficulty into modern terms. They
spring from the problems of her active life; they bring her renewed
strength and wisdom for her practical duties. An age, which like our own
places peculiar emphasis and value on the type of sanctity which promptly
expresses itself through the deed, should feel for Catherine Benincasa an
especial honour. She is one of the purest of Contemplatives; she knows,
what we to-day too often forget, that the task is impossible without the
vision. But it follows directly upon the vision, and this great mediaeval
mystic is one of the most efficient characters of her age.


IV

Catherine's soaring imagination lifted her above the circle of purely
personal interests, and made her a force of which history is cognisant in
the public affairs of her day. She is one of a very small number of women
who have exerted the influence of a statesman by virtue, not of feminine
attractions, but of conviction and intellectual power. It is impossible to
understand her letters without some recognition of the public drama of the
time.

Two great ideals of unity--one Roman, one Christian in origin--had
possessed the middle ages. In the strength of them the wandering barbaric
hordes had been reduced to order, and Western Europe had been trained into
some perception of human fellowship. Of these two unifying forces, the
imperialistic ideal was moribund in Catherine's time: not even a Dante,
born fifty years after his true date, could have held to it. Remained the
ideal of the Church universal, and to this last hope of a peaceful
commonwealth that should include all humanity, the idealists clung in
desperation.

But alas for the faith of idealists when fact gives theory the lie! What
at this time was the unity of mankind in the Church but a formal
hypothesis? The keystone of her all-embracing arch was the Papacy. But the
Pope no longer sat heir of the Caesars in the seat of the Apostles; for
seventy years he had been a practical dependant of the French king, living
in pleasant Provence. Neither the scorn of Dante, nor the eloquence of
Petrarch, nor the warnings of holy men, had prevailed on the popes to
return to Italy, and make an end of the crying scandal which was the
evident contradiction of the Christian dream. Meantime, the city of the
Caesars lay waste and wild; the clergy was corrupt almost past belief; the
dreaded Turk was gathering his forces, a menace to Christendom itself. The
times were indeed evil, and the "servants of God," of whom then, as now,
there were no inconsiderable number, withdrew for the most part into
spiritual or literal seclusion, and in the quietude of cloister or forest
cell busied themselves with the concerns of their own souls.

Not so Catherine Benincasa. She had known that temptation and conquered
it. After her reception as a Dominican Tertiary, she had possessed the
extraordinary resolution to live for three years the recluse life, not in
the guarded peace of a convent, but in her own room at home, in the noisy
and overcrowded house where a goodly number of her twenty-four brothers
and sisters were apparently still living. And these had been years of
inestimable preciousness; but they came to an end at the command of God,
speaking through the constraining impulse of her love for men. From the
mystical retirement in which she had long lived alone with her Beloved,
she emerged into the world. And the remarkable fact is that in no respect
did she blench from the situation as she found it. She "faced life
steadily and faced it whole." A Europe ravaged by dissensions lay before
her; a Church which gave the lie to its lofty theories, no less by the
hateful worldliness of its prelates than by its indifferent abandonment of
the Seat of Peter. Above this sorry spectacle the mind of Catherine soared
straight into an upper region, where only the greatest minds of the day
were her comrades. Her fellow-citizens were unable to entertain the idea
even of civic peace within the limits of their own town; but patriotic
devotion to all Italy fired her great heart. More than this--her instinct
for solidarity forced her to dwell in the thought of a world-embracing
brotherhood. Her hopes were centred, not like Dante's in the Emperor the
heir of the Caesars, but in the Pope the heir of Christ. Despite the
corruption from which she recoiled with horror, despite the Babylonian
captivity at Avignon, she saw in the Catholic Church that image of a pure
universal fellowship which the noblest Catholics of all ages have
cherished. To the service of the Church, therefore, her life was
dedicated; it was to her the Holy House of Reconciliation, wherein all
nations should dwell in unity; and only by submission to its authority
could the woes of Italy be healed.

Catherine's letters on public affairs--historical documents of recognised
importance--give us her practical programme. It was formed in the light of
that faith which she always describes as "the eye of the mind." She was
called during her brief years of political activity to meet three chief
issues: the absence of the Pope from Italy; the rebellion of the Tuscan
cities, headed by Florence, against his authority; and at a later time the
great Schism, which broke forth under Urban VI. During her last five years
she was absorbed in ecclesiastical affairs. In certain of her immediate
aims she succeeded, in others she failed. It would be hard to say whether
her success or her failure involved the greater tragedy. For behind all
these aims was a larger ideal that was not to be realised--the dream,
entertained as passionately by Catherine Benincasa as by Savonarola or by
Luther, of thorough Church-reform. Catherine at Avignon, pleading this
great cause in the frivolous culture and dainty pomp of the place;
Catherine at Rome, defending to her last breath the legal rights of a Pope
whom she could hardly have honoured, and whose claims she saw defended by
extremely doubtful means--is a figure as pathetic as heroic. Few sorrows
are keener than to work with all one's energies to attain a visible end
for the sake of a spiritual result, and, attaining that end, to find the
result as far as ever. This sorrow was Catherine's. The external successes
which she won--considerable enough to secure her a place in history--
availed nothing to forward the greater aim for which she worked. Gregory
XI., under her magnetic inspiration, gathered strength, indeed, to make a
personal sacrifice and to return to Rome, but he was of no calibre to
attempt radical reform, and his residence in Italy did nothing to right
the crying abuses that were breaking Christian hearts. His successor, on
the other hand, did really initiate the reform of the clergy, but so
drastic and unwise were his methods that the result was terrible and
disconcerting--the development of a situation of which only the Catholic
idealist could discern the full irony; no less than Schism, the rending of
the Seamless Robe of Christ.

With failing hopes and increasing experience of the complexity of human
struggle, Catherine clung to her aim until the end. There was no touch of
pusillanimity in her heroic spirit. As with deep respect we follow the
Letters of the last two years, and note their unflagging alertness and
vigour, their steady tone of devotion and self-control, we realise that to
tragedy her spirit was dedicate. Her energy of mind was constantly on the
increase. Still, it is true, she wrote to disciples near and far long,
tender letters of spiritual counsel--analyses of the religious life
tranquilly penetrating as those of an earlier time. But her political
correspondence grew in bulk. It is tense, nervous, virile. It breathes a
vibrating passion, a solemn force, that are the index of a breaking heart.
Not for one moment did Catherine relax her energies. From 1376, when she
went to Avignon, she led, with one or two brief intermissions only, the
life of a busy woman of affairs. But within this outer life of strenuous
and, as a rule, thwarted activities, another life went on--a life in which
failure could not be, since through failure is wrought redemption.

From the days of her stigmatization, which occurred in 1375 at Pisa,
Catherine had been convinced that in some special sense she was to share
in the Passion of Christ, and offer herself a sacrifice for the sins of
Holy Church. Now this conception deepened till it became all-absorbing. In
full consciousness of failing vital powers, in expectation of her
approaching death, she offered her sufferings of mind and body as an
expiation for the sins around her. By word of mouth and by letters of
heartbroken intensity she summoned all dear to her to join in this holy
offering. Catherine's faith is alien to these latter days. Yet the
psychical unity of the race is becoming matter not only of emotional
intuition, but established scientific fact: and no modern sociologist, no
psychologist who realizes how unknown in origin and how intimate in
interpenetration are the forces that control our destiny, can afford to
scoff at her. She had longed inexpressibly for outward martyrdom. This was
not for her, yet none the less really did she lay down her life on the
Altar of Sacrifice. The evils of the time, and above all of the Church,
had generated a sense of unbearable sin in her pure spirit; her constant
instinct to identify herself with the guilt of others found in this final
offering an august climax and fulfilment.

During the last months of her life--months of excruciating physical
sufferings, vividly described for us by her contemporaries--the woman's
rectitude and wisdom, her swift tender sympathies, were still, as ever, at
the disposal of all who sought them. With unswerving energy she still
laboured for the cause of truth. When we consider the conditions,
spiritual and physical, of those last months, we read with amazement the
able, clearly conceived, practical letters which she was despatching to
the many European potentates whom she was endeavouring to hold true to the
cause of Urban. But her spirit in the meantime dwelt in the region of the
Eternal, where the dolorous struggle of the times appeared, indeed, but
appeared in its essential significance as seen by angelic intelligences.
The awe-struck letters to Fra Raimondo, her Confessor, with which this
selection closes, are an accurate transcript of her inner experience. They
constitute, surely, a precious heritage of the Church for which her life
was given. Catherine Benincasa died heartbroken; yet in the depths of her
consciousness was joy, for God had revealed to her that His Bride the
Church, "which brings life to men," "holds in herself such life that no
man can kill her." "Sweetest My daughter, thou seest how she has soiled
her face with impurity and self-love, and grown puffed up by the pride and
avarice of those who feed at her bosom. But take thy tears and sweats,
drawing them from the fountain of My divine charity, and cleanse her face.
For I promise thee that her beauty shall not be restored to her by the
sword, nor by cruelty nor war, but by peace, and by humble continual
prayer, tears, and sweats poured forth from the grieving desires of My
servants. So thy desire shall be fulfilled in long abiding, and My
Providence shall in no wise fail."


V

Psychologically, as in point of time, St. Catherine stands between St.
Francis and St. Teresa. Her writings are of the middle ages, not of the
renascence, but they express the twilight of the mediaeval day. They
reveal the struggles and the spiritual achievement of a woman who lived in
the last age of an undivided Christendom, and whose whole life was
absorbed in the special problems of her time. These problems, however, are
in the deepest sense perpetual, and her attitude toward them is suggestive
still.

It has been claimed that Catherine, a century and a half later, would have
been a Protestant. Such hypotheses are always futile to discuss; but the
view hardly commends itself to the careful student of her writings. It is
suggested, naturally enough, by her denunciations of the corruptions of
the Church, denunciations as sweeping and penetrating as were ever uttered
by Luther; by her amazingly sharp and outspoken criticism of the popes;
and by her constant plea for reform. The pungency of all these elements in
her writings is felt by the most casual reader. But it must never be
forgotten that honest and vigorous criticism of the Church Visible is, in
the mind of the Catholic philosopher, entirely consistent with loyalty to
the sacerdotal theory. There is a noble idealism that breaks in fine
impatience with tradition, and audaciously seeks new symbols wherein to
suggest for a season the eternal and imageless truth. But perhaps yet
nobler in the sight of God--surely more conformed to His methods in nature
and history--is that other idealism which patiently bows to the yoke of
the actual, and endures the agony of keeping true at once to the heavenly
vision and to the imperfect earthly form. Iconoclastic zeal against
outworn or corrupt institutions fires our facile enthusiasm. Let us
recognize also the spiritual passion that suffers unflinchingly the
disparity between the sign and the thing signified, and devotes its
energies, not to discarding, but to restoring and purifying that sign.
Such passion was Catherine's. The most distinctive trait in the woman's
character was her power to cling to an ideal verity with unfaltering
faithfulness, even when the whole aspect of life and society around her
seemed to give that verity the lie. To imagine her without faith in the
visible Church and the God-given authority of the Vicar of Christ is to
imagine another woman. Catherine of Siena's place in the history of minds
is with Savonarola, not with Luther.

Catherine confronted a humanity at enmity with itself, a Church conformed
to the image of this world. Her external policy proved helpless to right
these evils. The return of the Popes from Avignon resulted neither in the
pacification of Christendom nor in the reform of the Church. The Great
Schism, of which she saw the beginning, undermined the idea of Christian
unity till the thought of the Saint of Siena was in natural sequence
followed by the thought of Luther. Outwardly her life was spent in
labouring for a hopeless cause, discredited by the subsequent movement of
history. But the material tragedy was a spiritual triumph, not only
through the victory of faith in her own soul, but through the value of the
witness which she bore. Neither of the great conceptions of unity which
possessed the middle ages was identical with the modern democratic
conception; yet both, and in particular that of the Church, pointed in
this direction. That ideal of world-embracing brotherhood to which men
have been slowly awakening throughout the Christian centuries was the
dominant ideal of Catherine's mind. She hoped for the attainment of such a
brotherhood through the instrument of an organized Christendom, reduced to
peace and unity under one God-appointed Head. History, as some of us
think, has rejected the noble dream. We seem to see that the undying hope
of the human spirit--a society shaped by justice and love--is never likely
to be gained along the lines of the centralization of ecclesiastical
power. But if our idea of the means has changed, the same end still shines
before us. The vision of human fellowship in the Name of Christ, for which
Catherine lived and died, remains the one hope for the healing of the
nations.




CHIEF EVENTS IN THE LIFE OF SAINT CATHERINE

[Processor's note: this timeline and the one that follows appeared in the
opposite order in the 1905 edition on which this etext is based. Their
order has been reversed to correctly reflect the order in which they
appear in the table of contents.]


1347. On March 25th, Catherine, and a twin-sister who dies at once, are
born in the Strada dell' Oca, near the fountain of Fontebranda, Siena. She
is the youngest of the twenty-five children of Jacopo Benincasa, a dyer,
and Lapa, his wife.

1353-4. As a child, Catherine is peculiarly joyous and charming. When six
years old she beholds the vision of Christ, arrayed in priestly robes,
above the Church of St. Dominic. She is inspired by a longing to imitate
the life of the Fathers of the desert, and begins to practise many
penances. At the age of seven she makes the vow of virginity. She is drawn
to the Order of St. Dominic by the zeal of its founder for the salvation
of souls.

1359-1363. Her ascetic practices meet with sharp opposition at home. She
is urged to array herself beautifully and to marry, is denied a private
chamber, and forced to perform the menial work of the household, etc. In
time, however, her perseverance wins the consent of her father and family
to her desires.

1363-1364. She is vested with the black and white habit of Saint Dominic,
becoming one of the Mantellate, or Dominican tertiaries, devout women who
lived under religious rule in their own homes.

1364-1367. She leads in her own room at home the life of a religious
recluse, speaking only to her Confessor. She is absorbed in mystical
experiences and religious meditation. During this time she learns to read.
The period closes with her espousals to Christ, on the last day of
Carnival, 1367.

1367-1370. In obedience to the commands of God, and impelled by her love
of men, she returns gradually to family and social life. From this time
dates her special devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. She joyfully devotes
herself to household labours, and to a life of ministration to the sick
and needy. In 1368 her father dies, and the Revolution puts an end to the
prosperity of the Benincasa family, which is now broken up. Catherine
seems to have retained to the end the care of Monna Lapa. In 1370 she dies
mystically and returns to life, having received the command to go abroad
into the world to save souls.

1370-1374. Her reputation and influence increase. A group of disciples
gathers around her. Her correspondence gradually becomes extensive, and
she becomes known as a peacemaker. At the same time, her ecstasies and
unusual mode of life excite criticism and suspicion. In May, 1374, she
visits Florence, perhaps summoned thither to answer charges made against
her by certain in the Order. She returns to Siena to minister to the
plague-stricken. She meets at this time Fra Raimondo of Capua, her
Confessor and biographer. Her gradual induction into public affairs is
accompanied by growing sorrow over the corruptions of the Church.

1375. At the invitation of Pietro Gambacorta, Catherine visits Pisa. Her
object is to prevent Pisa and Lucca from joining the League of Tuscan
cities against the Pope. She meets the Ambassador from the Queen of
Cyprus, and zealously undertakes to further the cause of a Crusade. On
April 1st she receives the Stigmata in the Church of Santa Cristina; but
the marks, at her request, remain invisible. She prophesies the Great
Schism. A brief visit to Lucca.

1376. Catherine receives Stefano Maconi as a disciple, and at his instance
reconciles the feud between the Maconi and the Tolomei. She attempts by
correspondence to reconcile Pope Gregory XI. and the Florentines. On April
1st the Divine Commission to bear the olive to both disputants is given
her in a vision. In May, at the request of the Florentines, she goes to
Florence. Sent as their representative to Avignon, she reaches that city
on June 18th. Gregory entrusts her with the negotiations for peace. The
Florentine ambassadors, however, delay their coming, and when they come
refuse to ratify her powers. Thwarted in this direction, she devotes all
her efforts to persuading the Pope to return to Rome, and triumphing over
all obstacles, succeeds. She leaves for home on September 13th, but is
retained for a month in Genoa, at the house of Madonna Orietta Scotta.
After a short visit at Pisa, she reaches Siena in December or January.

1377. Catherine converts the castle of Belcaro, conveyed to her by its
owner, into a monastery. She visits the Salimbeni in their feudal castle
at Rocca D'Orcia, for the purpose of healing their family feuds. While
here she learns miraculously to write. She also visits Sant' Antimo and
Montepulciano.

1378. Gregory, in failing health, perhaps regretting his return, becomes
alienated from Catherine. He sends her, however, to Florence, where she
stays in a house built for her by Niccolò Soderini, at the foot of the
hill of St. George. She succeeds in causing the Interdict to be respected,
but almost loses her life in a popular tumult, and keenly regrets not
having won the crown of martyrdom. After the death of Gregory, and the
establishment of the longed-for peace by Pope Urban, Catherine returns to
Siena, where she devotes herself to composing her "Dialogue." After the
outbreak of the Schism, Urban, whom she had known at Avignon, summons her
to Rome. She reluctantly obeys, and takes up her abode in that city on
November 28th, accompanied by a large group of disciples, her "Famiglia,"
who live together, subsisting on alms. From this time Catherine devotes
her whole powers to the cause of Urban. She is his trusted adviser, and
seeks earnestly to curb his impatient temper on the one hand, and to keep
the sovereigns of Europe faithful to him on the other. She writes on his
behalf to the Kings of France and Hungary, to Queen Giovanna of Naples, to
the magistrates of Italian cities, to the Italian cardinals who have
joined the Schism, and to others. Fra Raimondo, despatched to France, to
her grief and exaltation, evades his mission through timidity, to her
bitter disappointment, but does not return to Rome till after her death.
Catherine's health, always fragile, gives way under her unremitting
labours and her great sorrows.

1380. Catherine succeeds in quieting the revolt of the Romans against
Urban. She dedicates herself as a sacrificial victim, in expiation of the
sins of the Church and of the Roman people. In vision at St. Peter's, on
Sexagesima Sunday, the burden of the Ship of the Church descends upon her
shoulders. Her physical sufferings increase, and on April 30th she dies,
in the presence of her disciples.




BRIEF TABLE OF CONTEMPORARY PUBLIC EVENTS


1368-1369. Political Revolution in Siena. The compromise government of the
Riformatori is established. The Emperor Charles V. is summoned to the city
by the party worsted in the Revolution, joined by certain nobles. He
arrives in January, '69, but is forced to withdraw by a popular rising.
The nobles are excluded from the chief power and ravaged by feuds among
themselves.

1372. Gregory XI. declares war against Bernabo Visconti of Milan, and
takes into his pay the English free-lance, Sir John Hawkwood. Peter
d'Estaing, appointed Legate of Bologna, makes truce with Bernabo. The
latter, however, continues secretly to incite Tuscany to rebel against the
Pope, inflaming the indignation of the Tuscans at the arbitrary policy of
the Papal Legates, and in particular of the Nuncio, Gerard du Puy, who is
supporting the claims of those turbulent nobles, the Salimbeni in Siena.
Catherine is in correspondence with both d'Estaing and Du Puy. On April
22nd, Gregory, in full consistory, announces his intention of returning to
Rome.

1373. Italy is devastated by petty strife: "It seems as if a planet
reigned at this time which produced in the world the following effects:
That the Brothers of St. Austin killed their Provincial at Sant' Antonio
with a knife; and in Siena was much fighting. At Assisi the Brothers Minor
fought, and killed fourteen with a knife. And those of the Rose fought,
and drove six away. Also, those of Certosa had great dissensions, and
their General came and changed them all about. So all Religious everywhere
seemed to have strife and dissension among themselves. And every Religious
of whatever rule was oppressed and insulted by the world. So with brothers
according to the flesh--cousins, wives, relatives, and neighbours. It
seems that there were divisions all over the whole world. In Siena,
loyalty was neither proposed nor observed, gentlemen did not show it among
themselves nor outside, nor did the Nine among themselves or with outside
persons, nor did the Twelve. The people did not agree with their own
leader, nor exactly with any one else. Thus all the world was a place of
shadows."--_Chronicle of Neri di Donato_.

A Crusade publicly proclaimed by the Pope.

1374. Plague and famine lay Tuscany waste. William of Noellet, the Papal
Legate, refuses to allow corn to be imported into Tuscany from the Papal
States. Hawkwood, probably at his instigation, ravages the country, and
even threatens the city of Florence. Florence, enraged, rebels against the
Pope, and appoints from the ranks of the Ghibellines a new body of
Magistrates, known as the Eight of War. Meantime, Cione de' Salimbeni is
raiding the country around Siena. The roads through the Maremma are
insecure for peaceable folk, and the peasants are driven to take refuge in
the plague-stricken town.

1375. Eighty Italian cities join a League, headed by Florence, against the
Pope, with the watchword, "Fling off the foreign yoke."

1376. Gregory despatches ambassadors to the Eight of War, who scorn his
proposals. Florence incites Bologna to revolt, and the Legate flees. The
Papal Nuncio is flayed alive in the streets of Florence. The city is
placed under an Interdict. Envoys are despatched to Avignon, who set forth
eloquently, but to no avail, the grievances of the city. War is declared
against Florence by the Pope, and Count Robert of Geneva, with an army of
free-lances, is sent into Italy. Count Robert, laying waste the territory
of Bologna, summons Hawkwood to his aid, and perpetrates the hideous
massacre of Cesena. Catherine, sent to Avignon, fails to procure peace.
Gregory, swayed by her representations, returns to Italy, and reaches
Rome, after a difficult journey, on January 17th, 1377.

1378. Gregory, exhausted and disappointed by the continued discords in
Italy, dies in March. The Archbishop of Bari, known as Urban VI., is
appointed his successor. In July, peace is made with Florence, and the
Interdict upon the city is raised. The harsh measures of Urban in dealing
with the clergy arouse violent antagonism. In June, the Cardinals begin to
circulate rumours challenging the validity of the election, and on
September 20th they formally announce that the election was invalid,
having been forced on them by fear, and appoint as Pope the Cardinal
Robert of Geneva, who takes the name of Clement VII.

1379-1380. The Great Schism divides Europe. England remains faithful to
Urban: France and Naples, after wavering, declare for Clement. War rages
between the two Popes. The schismatic forces gain possession of the Castle
of Saint Angelo at Rome, but are driven out by the forces of Urban, who in
gratitude marches barefoot in solemn procession from Santa Maria in
Trastevere, to St. Peter's. The city, however, later revolts against
Urban, but is reconciled to him, partly through the efforts of Catherine.
Queen Giovanna of Naples, having conspired against Urban's life, is
excommunicated.




LETTERS




TO MONNA ALESSA DEI SARACINI


The young widow of noble family to whom this letter was written was the
most cherished among Catherine's women friends. She seems, as often
happens with the chosen companion of a fervent and powerful nature, to
have been a person simple, lovable, and quietly wise. Having after her
husband's death assumed the habit of St. Dominic, she distributed her
possessions to the poor by Catherine's advice, but she evidently retained
her home in Siena. This became a constant refuge for the saint from the
overcrowded Benincasa household, and the scene of more than one charming
episode in her life as told by the legend. For the Mantellate, or
tertiaries of St. Dominic, were not cloistered, nor did they take the
monastic vows; they simply lived in their own homes a life of special
devotion.

To Alessa, Catherine left on her deathbed the care of her spiritual
family. This intimate little letter dates from an early period in their
friendship. In its homely, practical wisdom, as in the gentle loftiness of
its tone, it shows the watchful and loving care with which Catherine
entered into the details of the daily life of those whom she sought to
lead with her in the way of salvation. The tests she proposes are as
penetrating to-day as they were then.


In the Name of Jesus Christ crucified and of sweet Mary:

Dearest daughter in Christ sweet Jesus: I Catherine, thy poor unworthy
mother, want thee to attain that perfection for which God has chosen thee.
It seems to me that one wishing so to attain should walk with and not
without moderation. And yet every work of ours ought to be done both
without and with moderation: it befits us to love God without moderation,
putting to that love neither limit nor measure nor rule, but loving Him
immeasurably. And if thou wish to reach the perfection of love, it befits
thee to set thy life in order. Let thy first rule be to flee the
conversation of every human being, in so far as it is simply conversation,
except as deeds of charity may demand; but to love people very much, and
talk with few of them. And know how to talk in moderation even with those
whom thou lovest with spiritual love; reflect that if thou didst not do
this, thou wouldst place a limit before perceiving it to that limitless
love which thou oughtest to bear to God, by placing the finite creature
between you: for the love which thou shouldst place in God thou wouldst
place in the creature, loving it without moderation; and this would hinder
thy perfection. Therefore thou shouldst love it spiritually, in a
disciplined way.

Be a vase, which thou fillest at the source and at the source dost drink
from. Although thou hadst drawn thy love from God, who is the Source of
living water, didst thou not drink it continually in Him thy vase would
remain empty. And this shall be the sign to thee that thou dost not drink
wholly in God: when thou sufferest from that which thou lovest, either by
some talk thou didst hold, or because thou wast deprived of some
consolation thou wast used to receiving, or for some other accidental
cause. If thou sufferest, then, from this or anything else except wrong
against God, it is a clear sign to thee that this love is still imperfect,
and drawn far from the Source. What way is there, then, to make the
imperfect perfect? This way: to correct and chastise the movements of thy
heart with true self-knowledge, and with hatred and distaste for thy
imperfection, that thou art such a peasant as to give to the creature that
love which ought to be given wholly to God, loving the creature without
moderation, and God moderately. For love toward God should be without
measure, and that for the creature should be measured by that for God, and
not by the measure of one's own consolations, either spiritual or
temporal. So do, then, that thou lovest everything in God, and correct
every inordinate affection.

Make two homes for thyself, my daughter. One actual home in thy cell, that
thou go not running about into many places, unless for necessity, or for
obedience to the prioress, or for charity's sake; and another spiritual
home, which thou art to carry with thee always--the cell of true self-
knowledge, where thou shalt find within thyself knowledge of the goodness
of God. These are two cells in one, and when abiding in the one it behoves
thee to abide in the other, for otherwise the soul would fall into either
confusion or presumption. For didst thou rest in knowledge of thyself,
confusion of mind would fall on thee; and didst thou abide in the
knowledge of God alone, thou wouldst fall into presumption. The two, then,
must be built together and made one same thing; if thou dost this, thou
wilt attain perfection. For from self-knowledge thou wilt gain hatred of
thine own fleshliness, and through hate thou wilt become a judge, and sit
upon the seat of thy conscience, and pass judgment; and thou wilt not let
a fault go without giving sentence on it.

From such knowledge flows the stream of humility; which never seizes on
mere report, nor takes offence at anything, but bears every insult, every
loss of consolation, and every sorrow, from whatever direction they may
come, patiently, with joy. Shames appear glory, and great persecutions
refreshment; and it rejoices in all, seeing itself punished for that
perverse law of self-will in its members which for ever rebels against
God; and it sees itself conformed with Christ Jesus crucified, the way and
the doctrine of truth.

In the knowledge of God thou shalt find the fire of divine charity. Where
shalt thou rejoice? Upon the Cross, with the Spotless Lamb, seeking His
honour and the salvation of souls, through continual, humble prayer. Now
herein is all our perfection. There are many other things also, but this
is the chief, from which we receive so much light that we cannot err in
the lesser works that follow.

Rejoice, my daughter, to conform thee to the shame of Christ. And watch
over the impulse of the tongue, that the tongue may not always respond to
the impulse of the heart; but digest what is in thy heart, with hatred and
distaste for thyself. Do thou be the least of the least, subject in
humility and patience to every creature through God; not making excuses,
but saying: the fault is mine. Thus are vices conquered in thy soul and in
the soul of him to whom thou shouldest so speak: through the virtue of
humility.

Order thy time: the night to vigil, when thou hast paid the debt of sleep
to thy body; and the morning in church with sweet prayer; do not spend it
in chatting until the appointed hour. Let nothing except necessity, or
obedience, or charity, as I said, draw thee away from this or anything
else. After the hour of eating, recollect thyself a little, and then do
something with thy hands, as thou mayest need. At the hour of vespers, do
thou go and keep quiet; and as much as the Holy Spirit enjoins on thee,
that do. Then go back and take care of thy old mother without negligence,
and provide what she needs; be thine this burden. More when I return. So
do that thou mayest fulfil my desire. I say no more. Remain in the holy
and sweet grace of God. Sweet Jesus, Jesus Love.




TO BENINCASA HER BROTHER
WHEN HE WAS IN FLORENCE


One questions whether Catherine's brother would have relished the
admonitions of his saintly sister, had he known what we learn through her
biographer: that, feeling the temporal prosperity of her family to be a
snare to them, she had earnestly prayed that they might fall into poverty.
The petition was promptly granted: worldly losses, and the departure of
two of the brothers for Florence, followed upon the Sienese Revolution of
1368. Apparently, family misunderstandings accompanied these
readjustments. In the first of the present letters Catherine takes her
elder brother to task for neglect of his mother, Monna Lapa. We do not
know the effect of her remarks, but we do know that in the large family of
twenty-four, no one except Catherine herself--first recluse, and later
busy woman of affairs as she was--seems to have carried the
responsibility for the mother's welfare. The mother lived for the most
part with her great daughter, except when public interests took Catherine
away from home--occasions to which poor Monna Lapa was never reconciled.

In the second of these notes, Catherine comforts her brother very sweetly,
probably for the loss of his wealth. But if we may judge from the nature
of the reflections addressed to him, the spiritual instruction by which
Benincasa was capable of profiting was extremely elementary in character.


In the Name of Jesus Christ crucified and of sweet Mary:

Dearest brother in Christ Jesus: I Catherine, a useless servant, comfort
and bless thee and invite thee to a sweet and most holy patience, for
without patience we could not please God. So I beg you, in order that you
may receive the fruit of your tribulations, that you assume the armour of
patience. And should it seem very hard to you to endure your many
troubles, bear in memory three things, that you may endure more patiently.
First, I want you to think of the shortness of your time, for on one day
you are not certain of the morrow. We may truly say that we do not feel
past trouble, nor that which is to come, but only the moment of time at
which we are. Surely, then, we ought to endure patiently, since the time
is so short. The second thing is, for you to consider the fruit which
follows our troubles. For St. Paul says there is no comparison between our
troubles and the fruit and reward of supernal glory. The third is, for you
to consider the loss which results to those who endure in wrath and
impatience; for loss follows this here, and eternal punishment to the
soul.

Therefore I beg you, dearest brother, to endure in all patience. And I
would not have it escape your mind that you should correct you of your
ingratitude, and your ignoring of the duty you owe your mother, to which
you are held by the commandment of God. I have seen your ingratitude
multiply so that you have not even paid her the due of help that you owe:
to be sure, I have an excuse for you in this, because you could not; but
if you had been able, I do not know that you would have done it, since you
have left her in scarcity even of words. Oh, ingratitude! Have you not
considered the sorrow of her labour, nor the milk that she drew from her
breast, nor the many troubles that she has had, over you and all the
others? And should you say to me that she has had no compassion on us, I
say that it is not so; for she has had so much on you and the other that
it costs her dear. But suppose it were true--you are under obligation to
her, not she to you. She did not take her flesh from you, but gave you
hers. I beg you to correct this fault and others, and to pardon my
ignorance. For did I not love your soul, I would not say to you what I do.
Remember your confession, you and all your family. I say no more to you.
Remain in the holy and sweet grace of God. Sweet Jesus, Jesus Love.


In the Name of Jesus Christ crucified and of sweet Mary:

Dearest and most beloved brother in Christ Jesus: I Catherine, servant and
slave of the servants of Jesus Christ, comfort you in the Precious Blood
of the Son of God: with desire to see you wholly in accord with the Will
of God, and transformed thereby; knowing that this is a sweet and holy
yoke which makes all bitterness turn into sweetness. Every great burden
becomes light beneath this most holy yoke of the sweet will of God,
without which thou couldst not please God, but wouldst know a foretaste of
Hell. Comfort you, comfort you, dearest brother, and do not faint beneath
this chastisement of God; but trust that when human help fails, divine
help is near. God will provide for you. Reflect that Job lost his
possessions and his sons and his health: his wife remained to him for a
perpetual scourge; and then, when God had tested his patience, He restored
everything to him double, and at the end eternal life. Patient Job never
was perturbed, but would say, always exercising the virtue of holy
patience, "God gave them to me, God has taken them from me; the Name of
God be blessed." So I want you to do, dearest brother: be a lover of
virtue, with holy patience, often using confession, which will as often
help you to endure your afflictions. And I tell you, God will show His
benignity and mercy, and will reward you for every affliction which you
shall have borne for His love. Remain in the holy and sweet grace of God.
Sweet Jesus, Jesus Love.




TO THE VENERABLE RELIGIOUS, BROTHER ANTONIO OF NIZZA,
OF THE ORDER OF THE HERMIT BROTHERS OF SAINT AUGUSTINE
AT THE WOOD OF THE LAKE


It is in her letters to persons leading the dedicated life that one can
most clearly study Catherine's own inner experience. When warning and
consoling them, she is speaking to herself. This obscure girl had a way of
writing to the great of this earth--and indeed to the very Fathers of
Christendom--with the straightforward simplicity of a teacher instructing
childish minds in the evident rudiments of virtue. Often the sanctified
common sense of her letters to dignitaries is the most noticeable thing
about them. But when she turns to a holy hermit, the tone changes. The
commonplaces of the moral life are assumed or left behind; she speaks to a
soul that has presumably already brought its will into accord with the
divine will in regard to all outward happenings, and she takes calmly for
granted that this is a light and little thing. We proceed to the analysis
of temptations more subtle and more alluring. Catherine has few superiors
among religious thinkers in the power to trace self-will to its remotest
lairs, in the deeper reaches of personality. In letters to such
correspondents as Frate Antonio she often gives us, as here, precious
records of her intercourse with her Lord.


In the Name of Jesus Christ crucified and of sweet Mary:

To you, most beloved and dearest father and brother in Christ Jesus: I
Catherine, servant and slave of the servants of Jesus Christ, write and
commend me in the Precious Blood of the Son of God, with desire to see you
kindled and inflamed in the furnace of divine charity and your own self-
will--the will that robs us of all life--consumed therein. Let us open our
eyes, dearest brother, for we have two wills--one of the senses, which
seeks the things of sense, and the other the self-will of the spirit,
which, under aspect and colour of virtue, holds firm to its own way. And
this is clear when it wants to choose places and seasons and consolations
to suit itself, and says: "Thus I wish in order to possess God more
fully." This is a great cheat, and an illusion of the devil; for not being
able to deceive the servants of God through their first will--since the
servants of God have already mortified it so far as the things of sense
go--the devil catches their second will on the sly with things of the
spirit. So many a time the soul receives consolation, and then later feels
itself deprived thereof by God; and another experience will harrow it,
which will give less consolation and more fruit. Then the soul, which is
inspired by what gives sweetness, suffers when deprived of it, and feels
annoyance. And why annoyance? Because it does not want to be deprived; for
it says, "I seem to love God more in this way than in that. From the one I
feel that I bear some fruit, and from the other I perceive no fruit at
all, except pain and ofttimes many conflicts; and so I seem to wrong God."
Son and brother in Christ Jesus, I say that this soul is deceived by its
self-will. For it would not be deprived of sweetness; with this bait the
devil catches it. Frequently men lose time in longing for time to suit
themselves, for they do not employ what they have otherwise than in
suffering and gloominess.

Once our sweet Saviour said to a very dear daughter of His, "Dost thou
know how those people act who want to fulfil My will in consolation and in
sweetness and joy? When they are deprived of these things, they wish to
depart from My will, thinking to do well and to avoid offence; but false
sensuality lurks in them, and to escape pains it falls into offence
without perceiving it. But if the soul were wise and had the light of My
will within, it would look to the fruit and not to the sweetness. What is
the fruit of the soul? Hatred of itself and love of Me. This hate and love
are the issue of self-knowledge; then the soul knows its faulty self to be
nothing, and it sees in itself My goodness, which keeps its will good; and
it sees what a person I have made it, in order that it may serve Me in
greater perfection, and judges that I have made it for the best, and for
its own greatest good. Such a man as this, dearest daughter, does not wish
for time to suit himself, because he has learned humility; knowing his
infirmity, he does not trust in his own wish, but is faithful to Me. He
clothes him in My highest and eternal will, because he sees that I neither
give nor take away, save for your sanctification; and he sees that love
alone impels Me to give you sweetness and to take it from you. For this
cause he cannot grieve over any consolation that might be taken from him
within or without, by demon or fellow-creature--because he sees that, were
this not for his good, I should not permit it. Therefore this man rejoices
because he has light within and without, and is so illumined that when the
devil approaches his mind with shadows to confuse him, saying, 'This is
for thy sins,' he replies like a person who shrinks not from suffering,
saying, 'Thanks be to my Creator, who has remembered me in the time of
shadows, punishing me by pain in finite time. Great is this love, which
will not punish me in the infinite future.' Oh, what tranquillity of mind
has this soul, because it has freed itself from the self-will which brings
storm! But not thus does he whose self-will is lively within, seeking
things after his own way! For he seems to think that he knows what he
needs better than I. Many a time he says, 'It seems to me that I am
wronging God in this: free me from wrong, and let what He wills be done.'
This is a sign that you are freed from wrong, when you see in yourself
goodwill not to want to wrong God, and displeasure with sin; thence ought
you to take hope. Although all external activities and inward consolations
should fail, let goodwill to please God ever remain firm. Upon this rock
is founded grace. If thou sayest, I do not seem to have it, I say that
this is false, for if thou hadst it not, thou wouldst not fear to wrong
God. But it is the devil who makes things look so, in order that the soul
may fall into confusion and disordered sadness, and hold firm its self-
will, by wanting consolations, times and seasons in its own way. Do not
believe him, dearest daughter, but let your soul be always ready to endure
sufferings in howsoever God may inflict them. Otherwise you would do like
a man who stands on the threshold with a light in his hand, who reaches
his hand out and casts light outside, and within it is dark. Such is a man
who is already united in outward things with the will of God, despising
the world; but within, his spiritual self-will is living still, veiled in
the colour of virtue." Thus spoke God to that servant of His spoken of
above.

Therefore I said that I wished and desired that your will should be
absorbed and transformed in Him, while we hold ourselves always ready to
bear pains and toils howsoever God chooses to send them to us. So we shall
be freed from darkness and abide in light. Amen. Praised be Jesus Christ
crucified and sweet Mary.




TO MONNA AGNESE
WHO WAS THE WIFE OF MESSER ORSO MALAVOLTI


Catherine is well aware that the world can be as true a school of holiness
as the forest cell. She writes to the noble lady, Monna Agnese Malavolti,
in much the same strain as to Frate Antonio. The danger of spiritual self-
will forms indeed one of those recurring themes which pervade her letters
like the motifs of Wagnerian music--ever the same, yet woven into ever-
new harmonies.

But the general subject of this letter is the "Santissima Pazienza," which
is still frequently invoked by the common folk of Siena: and Catherine's
analysis searches deep. Patience could hardly have been one of the virtues
most native to the woman's valiant spirit, and one feels in her keen and
solemn meditations that she had herself known the bitter and corroding
power of the sin "that burns and does not consume," and that "makes the
soul unendurable to itself." It is with convincing fervour and fulness
that she presents impatience as the permanent condition of the lost. The
little discussion of impatience in human relations, and of the "proud
humility" resorted to by a soul ravaged by a sense of neglect, has also a
very personal note. But it is still more clear in the letter that
Catherine's had become the disciplined nature which can "endure a restless
mind with more reverence than a tranquil one," if such be the will of God,
and which has entered deeply into the joy that awaits the meek.

Monna Agnese must have stood in special need of these touching
exhortations: she was a woman sorrowfully tried. Her son had been beheaded
in 1372, in punishment for heinous sin; and now her only daughter had
died. "For the which thing," writes Catherine, with one of her own
inimitable phrases, "I am deeply content, with a holy compassion."


In the Name of Jesus Christ crucified and of sweet Mary:

Dearest daughter in Christ sweet Jesus: I Catherine, servant and slave of
the servants of Jesus Christ, write to you in His Precious Blood, with the
desire to see you established in true patience, since I consider that
without patience we cannot please God. For just as impatience gives much
pleasure to the devil and to one's own lower nature, and revels in nothing
but anger when it misses what the lower nature wants, so it is very
displeasing to God. It is because anger and impatience are the very pith
and sap of pride that they please the devil so much. Impatience loses the
fruit of its labour, deprives the soul of God; it begins by knowing a
foretaste of hell, and later it brings men to eternal damnation: for in
hell the evil perverted will burns with anger, hate and impatience. It
burns and does not consume, but is evermore renewed--that is, it never
grows less, and therefore I say, it does not consume. It has indeed
parched and consumed grace in the souls of the lost, but as I said it has
not consumed their being, and so their punishment lasts eternally. The
saints say that the damned ask for death and cannot have it, because the
soul never dies. It dies to be sure to grace, by mortal sin; but it does
not die to existence. There is no sin nor wrong that gives a man such a
foretaste of hell in this life as anger and impatience. It is hated by
God, it holds its neighbour in aversion, and has neither knowledge nor
desire to bear and forbear with its faults. And whatever is said or done
to it, it at once empoisons, and its impulses blow about like a leaf in
the wind. It becomes unendurable to itself, for perverted will is always
gnawing at it, and it craves what it cannot have; it is discordant with
the will of God and with the rational part of its own soul. And all this
comes from the tree of Pride, from which oozes out the sap of anger and
impatience. The man becomes an incarnate demon, and it is much worse to
fight with these visible demons than with the invisible. Surely, then,
every reasonable being ought to flee this sin.

But note, that there are two sources of impatience. There is a common kind
of impatience, felt by ordinary men in the world, which befalls them on
account of the inordinate love they have for themselves and for temporal
things, which they love apart from God; so that to have them they do not
mind losing their soul, and putting it into the hands of the devils. This
is beyond help, unless a man recognizes himself, how he has wronged God,
and cuts down that tree of Pride with the sword of true humility, which
produces charity in the soul. For there is a tree of Love, whose pith is
patience and goodwill toward one's neighbour. For, just as impatience
shows more clearly than any other sin that the soul is deprived of God--
because it is at once evident that since the pith is there, the tree of
Pride must be there--so patience shows better and more perfectly than any
other virtue, that God is in the soul by grace. Patience, I say, deep
within the tree of Love, that for love of its Creator disdains the world,
and loves insults whencesoever they come.

I was saying that anger and impatience were of two kinds, one general and
one special. We have spoken of the common kind. Now I talk of the more
particular, of the impatience of those who have already despised the
world, and who wish to be servants of Christ crucified in their own way;
that is, in so far as they shall find joy and consolation in Him. This is
because spiritual self-will is not dead in them: therefore they
imperiously demand from God that He should give them consolations and
tribulations in their own way, and not in His; and so they become
impatient, when they get the contrary of what their spiritual self-will
wants. This is a little offshoot from Pride, sprouting from real Pride, as
a tree sends out a little tree by its side, which looks separated from it,
but nevertheless it gets the substance from which it springs from the same
tree. So is self-will in the soul which chooses to serve God in its own
way; and when that way fails it suffers, and its suffering makes it
impatient, and it is unendurable to itself, and takes no pleasure in
serving God or its neighbour. Nay, if any one came to it for comfort or
help it would give him nothing but reproaches, and would not know how to
be tolerant to his need. All this results from the sensitive spiritual
self-will that grows from the tree of Pride which was cut down, but not
uprooted. It is cut down when the soul uplifts its desire above the world,
and fastens it on God, but has fastened there imperfectly; the root of
Pride was left, and therefore it sent up an offshoot by its side, and
shows itself in spiritual things. So, if it misses consolations from God,
and its mind stays dry and sterile, it at once becomes disturbed and
depressed, and, under colour of virtue--because it thinks itself deprived
of God--it begins to complain, and lays down the law to God. But were it
truly humble and had true hate and knowledge of itself, it would deem
itself unworthy of the visitation of God to its soul, and worthy of the
pain that it suffers, in being deprived, not of God's grace in the soul,
but of its consolations. It suffers, then, because it has to work in its
chains; yes, spiritual self-will suffers under the delusion that it is
wronging God, while the trouble is really with its own lower nature.

Therefore the humble soul, which has freely uprooted with eager love the
root of Pride, has annulled its own will, seeking ever the honour of God
and the salvation of souls. It does not mind sufferings, but endures a
restless mind with more reverence than a quiet one; having a holy
respectful knowledge that God gives and grants this to it for its good,
that it may rise from imperfection to perfection. That is the way to make
it attain perfection, for it recognizes better thereby its own defects and
the grace of God, which it finds within, in the goodwill that God has
given it to hate its mortal sin. Also, by meditating on its defects and
faults, old and new, it has conceived hatred for itself, and love for the
Highest Eternal Will of God. Therefore it bears these things with
reverence, and is content to endure inwardly and outwardly, in whatever
way God grants it. Provided that it can be filled and clothed with the
sweetness of the will of God, it rejoices in everything; and the more it
sees itself deprived of the thing it loves, whether the consolations of
God, as I said, or of its fellows, the more gladsome it grows. For many a
time it happens that the soul loves spiritually; but if it does not find
the consolation or satisfaction from the beloved that it would like, or if
it suspects that more love or satisfaction is given to another than to
itself, it falls into suffering, into depression of mind, into criticism
of its neighbour and false judgment, passing judgment on the mind and
intention of the servants of God, and especially on those from whom it
suffers. Thence it becomes impatient, and thinks what it should not think,
and says with its tongue what it should not say. In such suffering as
this, it likes to resort to a proud humility, which has the aspect of
humility, but is really an offshoot of Pride, springing up beside it--
saying to itself: "I will not pay these people any more attention, or
trouble myself any more about them. I will keep entirely to myself; I do
not wish to hurt either myself or them." And it abases itself with a
perverted scorn. Now it ought to perceive that this is scorn, by the
impulse to judge that it feels in its heart, and by the complaints of its
tongue. It ought not then to do so; for in this fashion it will never get
rid of the root of Pride, nor cut off the little son at the side, which
hinders the soul from attaining the perfection at which it has aimed. But
it ought to kneel at the table of the Most Holy Cross, to receive the food
of the honour of God and the salvation of souls, with a free heart, with
holy hatred of itself, with passionate desire: seeking to gain virtue by
suffering and sweat, and not by private consolations either from God or
its fellows; following the footsteps and the teaching of Christ Crucified,
saying to itself with sharp rebuke: "Thou shouldst not, my soul, thou that
art a member, travel by another road than thy Head. An unfit thing it is
that limbs should remain delicate beneath a thorn-crowned Head." If such
habits became fixed, through one's own frailty, or the wiles of the devil,
or the many impulses that shake the heart like winds, then the soul ought
to ascend the seat of its conscience, and reason with itself, and let
nothing pass without punishment and chastisement, hatred and distaste for
itself. So the root shall be pulled up, and by displeasure against itself
the soul will drive out displeasure against its neighbour, grieving more
over the unregulated instincts of its own heart and thoughts than over the
suffering it could receive from its fellows, or any insult or annoyance
they could inflict on it.

This is the sweet and holy fashion observed by those who are wholly
inspired of Christ; for in this wise they have uprooted perverted pride,
and that marrow of impatience of which we said above that it was very
pleasing to the devil, because it is the beginning and occasion of every
sin; and on the contrary that as it is very pleasing to the devil, so it
is very displeasing to God. Pride displeases Him and humility pleases Him.
So greatly did the virtue of humility please Him in Mary that He was
constrained to give her the Word His Only-Begotten Son and she was the
sweet mother who gave Him to us. Know well, that until Mary showed by her
spoken words her humility and pure will, when she said: "Ecce Ancilla
Domini, be it done unto me according to Thy word"--the Son of God was not
incarnate in her; but when she had said this, she conceived within herself
that sweet and Spotless Lamb--the Sweet Primal Truth showing thereby how
excellent is this little virtue, and how much the soul receives that
offers and presents its will in humility to its Creator. So then--in the
time of labours and persecutions, of insults and injuries inflicted by
one's neighbour, of mental conflicts and deprivation of spiritual
consolations, by the Creator or the creature, (by the Creator in His
gentleness, when He withdraws the feeling of the mind, so that it does not
seem as if God were in the soul, so many are its pains and conflicts--and
by fellow-creatures, in conversation or amusement, or when the soul thinks
that it loves more than it is loved)--in all these things, I say that the
soul perfected by humility says: "My Lord, behold Thy handmaid: be it done
unto me according to Thy word, and not according to what I want with my
senses." So it sheds the fragrance of patience, around the Creator and its
fellow-creature and itself. It has peace and quiet in its mind, and it has
found peace in warfare, because it has driven far from it its self-will
founded in pride, and has conceived divine grace in its soul. And it bears
in its mind's breast Christ crucified, and rejoices in the Wounds of
Christ crucified, and seeks to know naught but Christ crucified; and its
bed is the Cross of Christ crucified. There it annuls its own will, and
becomes humble and obedient.

For there is no obedience without humility, nor humility without charity.
This is shown by the Word, for in obedience to His Father and in humility,
He ran to the shameful death of the Cross, nailing and binding Him with
the nails and bands of charity, and enduring in such patience that no cry
of complaint was heard from Him. For nails were not enough to hold God-
and-Man nailed and fastened on the Cross had Love not held Him there. This
I say that the soul feels; therefore it will not joy otherwise than with
Christ crucified. For could it attain to virtue and escape Hell and have
eternal life, without sufferings, and have in the world consolations
spiritual and temporal, it would not wish them; but it desires rather to
suffer, enduring even unto death, than to have eternal life in any other
way: only let it conform itself with Christ crucified, and clothe it with
His shames and pains. It has found the table of the Spotless Lamb.

Oh, glorious virtue! Who would not give himself to death a thousand times,
and endure any suffering through desire to win thee? Thou art a queen, who
dost possess the entire world; thou dost inhabit the enduring life; for
while the soul that is arrayed in thee is yet mortal, thou makest it abide
by force of love with those who are immortal. Since, then, this virtue is
so excellent and pleasing to God and useful to us and saving to our
neighbour, arise, dearest daughter, from the sleep of negligence and
ignorance, casting to earth the weakness and frailty of thy heart, that it
feel no suffering nor impatience over anything that God permits to us, so
that we may not fall either into the common kind of impatience, or into
the special kind, as we were saying before, but serve our sweet Saviour
manfully, with liberty of heart and true perfect patience. If we do
otherwise, we shall lose grace by the first sort of impatience, and by the
second we shall hinder our state of perfection; and you would not attain
that to which God has called you.

It seems that God is calling you to great perfection. And I perceive it by
this, that He takes away from you every tie that might hinder it in you.
For as I have heard, it seems that He has called to Himself your daughter,
who was your last tie with the outer world. For which thing I am deeply
content, with a holy compassion, that God should have set you free, and
taken her from her labours. Now then, I want that you should wholly
destroy your own will, that it may cling to nothing but Christ crucified.
In this way you will fulfil His will and my desire. Therefore, not knowing
any other way in which you could fulfil it, I said to you that I desired
to see you established in true and holy patience, because without this we
cannot reach our sweet goal. I say no more. Remain in the holy and sweet
grace of God. Sweet Jesus, Jesus Love.




TO SISTER EUGENIA, HER NIECE
AT THE CONVENT OF SAINT AGNES OF MONTEPULCIANO


Two nieces, daughters of Bartolo Benincasa, were nuns in the Convent of
Montepulciano. To one of them the following letter is addressed. One can
read between the lines a lively solicitude. Never cloistered herself,
Catherine had a close intimacy with cloisters, and knew their best and
worst. She held in hearty and loyal respect the opportunities which they
offered for leading an exalted life; to this Convent of St. Agnes she was
peculiarly attached. At the same time, she was well aware, as other
letters beside the present show, that even the best of cloisters afforded
at this time scant shelter to young girls from emotional temptation, gross
or fine. Her warnings to her niece have the authoritative tone of anxiety.
Let us hope that Eugenia took them to heart; and that, leading the
disciplined life of Catherine's desire, she became not unworthy to receive
and apprehend in its full beauty the penetrating meditation on Prayer
which forms the second part of the letter. The thoughts of this
meditation, like many others in Catherine's letters, will be found
amplified in her Dialogue--a colloquy between God and her soul, composed
and dictated in trance during the year 1378. The following quotation
illustrates an interesting passage of the letter:--

"In this way, vocal prayer can be useful to the soul and do Me pleasure,
and from imperfect vocal prayer it can advance by persevering practice to
perfect mental prayer. But if it aims simply to complete its number (of
paternosters), or if it gave up mental prayer for the sake of vocal, it
would never arrive at perfection. Sometimes, when a soul has made a
resolution to say a certain number of prayers, I may visit its mind, now
in one way, now in another: at one time with the light of self-knowledge
and contrition over its lightness, at another, with the largesse of My
charity; at another, by putting before its mind, in diverse manner as may
please Me, and as that soul may have craved, the Presence of My Truth. And
the soul will be so ignorant that it will turn from My Visitation, in
order to complete its number, from a conscientious scruple against giving
up what it began. It ought not to do thus, for this would be a wile of the
devil. But at once, when it feels its mind ready for My Visitation, in any
way, as I said, it should abandon the vocal prayer. Then, when the mental
has passed, if there is time it can resume the other, which it had planned
to say. But if there is not time it must not care nor be troubled or
bewildered."


In the Name of Jesus Christ crucified and of sweet Mary:

Dearest daughter in Christ sweet Jesus: I Catherine, servant and slave of
the servants of Jesus Christ, write to thee in His precious Blood, with
desire to see thee taste the food of angels, since thou art made for no
other end; and that thou mightest taste it, God bought thee with the Blood
of His Only-Begotten Son. But reflect, dearest daughter, that this food is
not taken upon earth, but on high, and therefore the Son of God chose to
be lifted up upon the wood of the Most Holy Cross, in order that we might
receive this food upon this table on high. But thou wilt say to me: What
is this food of angels? I reply to thee: it is the desire of God, which
draws to itself the desire that is in the depths of the soul, and they
make one thing together.

This is a food which while we are pilgrims in this life, draws to itself
the fragrance of true and sincere virtues, which are prepared by the fire
of divine charity, and received upon the table of the cross. That is,
virtue is won by pain and weariness, casting down one's own fleshly
nature;--the kingdom of one's soul which is called Heaven (_cielo_)
because it hides (_cela_) God within it by patience, is seized with force
and violence. This is the food that makes the soul angelic, and therefore
it is called the food of angels; and also because the soul, separated from
the body, tastes God in His essential Being. He satisfies the soul in such
wise that she longs for no other thing nor can desire aught but what may
help her more perfectly to keep and increase this food, so that she holds
in hate what is contrary to it. Therefore, like a prudent person, she
looks with the light of most holy faith, which is in the eye of the mind,
and beholds what is harmful and what is useful to her. And as she has
seen, so she loves and condemns--holding, I say, her own fleshly nature
and all the vices which proceed from it, bound beneath the feet of her
affections. She flees all causes that may incline her to vice or hinder
her perfection. So she annuls her self-will, which is the cause of all
evil, and subjects it to the yoke of holy obedience, not only to the Order
and its chief, but to every least creature through God. She flees all
glory and human indulgence, and glories only in the shames and sorrows of
Christ crucified: insults, outrage, ridicule, injuries, are milk to her;
she joys in them, to be conformed with the Bridegroom, Christ crucified.
She renounces conversation with fellow-beings, because she sees that they
often intervene between us and our Creator, and she flees to the actual
and to the mental cell.

To this I summon thee and the others: and I command thee, dearest daughter
mine, that thou abide for ever in the cell of self-knowledge, where we
find the angelic food of the eager desire of God toward us; and in the
actual cell, with vigil and humble faithful continual prayer, divesting
thy heart and mind of every creature, and clothing them with Christ
crucified. Otherwise thou wouldst eat upon the earth, and there I have
already said to thee, one should not eat. Reflect that thy Bridegroom,
Christ sweet Jesus, wishes naught between thee and Him, and is very
jealous. So as soon as He saw that thou didst love any thing apart from
Him, He would go from thee, and thou wouldst be made worthy to eat the
food of beasts. And wouldst thou not truly be a beast, and food for
beasts, didst thou leave the Creator for the creature, and infinite good
for finite and transitory things that pass like the winds, light for
darkness, life for death, Him who clothes thee in the sun of justice with
the clasp of obedience, and pearls of living faith, firm hope, and perfect
charity, for him who robs thee of them? And wouldst thou not be foolish
indeed to depart from Him who gives thee perfect purity--so that the
closer thou dost cling to Him, the more the flower of thy virginity is
refined--for those who many a time and oft shed a stench of impurity,
defiling mind and body? God avert them from thee by His infinite mercy!

And in order that no such thing may ever happen to thee, be on thy guard:
let not thy misfortune be such as to enter into any private conversation,
with monk or layman. For if I were to know or hear it, even if I were much
farther away than I am, I would give thee such a discipline that it would
stay in thy memory all thy whole life; never mind who may be by. Beware
neither to give nor receive, except in case of need, helping every one in
common within and without. Be steadfast and mature in thyself. Serve the
sisters tenderly, with all vigilance, especially those whom thou seest in
need. When guests pass by and ask for thee at the gratings, abide in thy
peace and do not go--but let them say to the prioress what they wanted to
say to thee, unless she commands thee to go on thy obedience. Then, hold
thy head bowed, and be as savage as a hedgehog. Keep in thy mind the
manners which that glorious virgin Saint Agnes made her daughters observe.
Go to confession and tell thy need; and when thou hast received thy
penance, run. Beware, moreover, that thy confessors be not from the men
who have brought thee up. And do not wonder because I talk so; for many a
time thou mayest have heard me say, and it is the truth, that the talk of
so-called pious men and women, full of depraved expressions, ruins the
souls and the habits and practices of Religious. Beware that thou bind thy
heart to none but Christ crucified; for the hour would come when thou
wouldst wish to set it free and couldst not, which would be very hard for
thee. I say that the soul which has tasted of the food of angels has seen
in the light that this and the other things we were speaking of are an
obstacle between itself and its food, and therefore flees them with the
greatest zeal. I say that it loves and seeks what may increase and
preserve it. And because it has seen that this food is better enjoyed by
means of prayer offered in self-knowledge, therefore it exercises itself
therein continually by all the ways in which it can hold closer to God.

Prayer is of three sorts. The one is perpetual: it is the holy perpetual
desire, which prays in the sight of God, whatever thou art doing; for this
desire directs all thy works, spiritual and corporal, to His honour, and
therefore it is called perpetual. Of this it seems that Saint Paul the
glorious was talking when he said: Pray without ceasing. The other kind is
vocal prayer, when the offices or other prayers are said aloud. This is
ordained to reach the third--that is, mental prayer: your soul reaches
this when it uses vocal prayer in prudence and humility, so that while the
tongue speaks the heart is not far from God. But one must exert one's self
to hold and establish one's heart in the force of divine charity. And
whenever one felt one's mind to be visited by God, so that it was drawn to
think of its Creator in any wise, it ought to abandon vocal prayer, and to
fix its mind with the force of love upon that wherein it sees God visit
it; then, if it has time, when this has ceased, it ought to take up the
vocal prayer again, in order that the mind may always stay full and not
empty. And although many conflicts of diverse kinds should abound in
prayer, and darkness of mind with much confusion, the devil making the
soul feel that her prayer was not pleasing to God--nevertheless, she ought
not to give up on account of those conflicts and shadows, but to abide
firm in fortitude and long perseverance, considering that the devil so
does to draw her away from prayer the mother, and God permits it to test
the fortitude and constancy of that soul. Also, in order that by those
conflicts and shadows she may know herself not to be, and in the goodwill
which she feels preserved within her may know the goodness of God, Who is
Giver and Preserver of good and holy wills: such wills as are not
vouchsafed to all who want them.

By this means she attains to the third and last--mental prayer, in which
she receives the reward for the labours she underwent in her imperfect
vocal prayer. Then she tastes the milk of faithful prayer. She rises above
herself--that is, above the gross impulses of the senses--and with angelic
mind unites herself with God by force of love, and sees and knows with the
light of thought, and clothes herself with truth. She is made the sister
of angels; she abides with her Bridegroom on the table of crucified
desire, rejoicing to seek the honour of God and the salvation of souls;
since well she sees that for this the Eternal Bridegroom ran to the
shameful death of the Cross, and thus fulfilled obedience to the Father,
and our salvation. This prayer is surely a mother, who conceives virtues
by the love of God, and brings them forth in the love of the neighbour.
Where dost thou show love, faith, and hope, and humility? In prayer. For
thou wouldst never take pains to seek the thing which thou didst not love;
but he who loves would ever be one with what he loves--that is, God. By
means of prayer thou askest of Him thy necessity; for knowing thyself--the
knowledge on which true prayer is founded--thou seest thyself to have
great need. Thou feelest thyself surrounded by thine enemies--by the world
with its insults and its recalling of vain pleasures, by the devil with
his many temptations, by the flesh with its great rebellion and struggle
against the spirit. And thou seest that in thyself thou art not; not
being, thou canst not help thyself; and therefore thou dost hasten in
faith to Him who is, who can and will help thee in thine every need, and
thou dost hopefully ask and await His aid. Thus ought prayer to be made,
if thou wishest to have that which thou awaitest. Never shall any just
thing be denied thee which thou askest in this wise from the Divine
Goodness; but if thou dost in other wise, little fruit shalt thou receive.
Where shalt thou feel grief in thy conscience? In prayer. Where shalt thou
divest thee of the self-love which makes thee impatient in the time of
insults and of other pains, and shalt clothe thee in the divine love which
shall make thee patient, and shalt glory in the Cross of Christ crucified?
In prayer. Where shalt thou breathe the perfume of virginity and the
hunger for martyrdom, holding thee ready to give thy life for the honour
of God and the salvation of souls? In this sweet mother, prayer. This will
make thee an observer of thy Rule: it will seal in thy heart and mind
three solemn vows which thou didst make at thy profession, leaving there
the imprint of the desire to observe them until death. This releases thee
from conversation with fellow-creatures, and gives thee converse with thy
Creator; it fills the vessel of thy heart with the Blood of the Humble
Lamb, and crowns it with flame, because with flame of love that Blood was
shed.

The soul receives and tastes this mother Prayer more or less perfectly,
according as it nourishes itself with the food of angels--that is, with
holy and true desire for God, raising itself on high, as I said, to
receive it upon the table of the most sweet Cross. Therefore I said to
thee that I desired to see thee nourished with angelic food, because I see
not that in otherwise thou couldst be a true bride of Christ crucified,
consecrated to Him in holy religion. So do that I may see thee a jewel
precious in the sight of God. And do not go about wasting thy time. Bathe
and drown thee in the sweet Blood of thy Bridegroom. I say no more. Remain
in the holy and sweet grace of God. Sweet Jesus, Jesus Love.




TO NANNA, DAUGHTER OF BENINCASA
A LITTLE MAID, HER NIECE, IN FLORENCE


This tender and playful little letter, with its childlike simplicity of
fancy and gentle authority of tone, encourages us to believe that
Catherine appreciated the full advantages of being an aunt. We have other
indications that the many spiritual ties which held her as she grew older
never weakened the bond of any natural affection. Indeed, Catherine re-
created each natural bond, when possible, as a spiritual bond, an
achievement none too common. Doubtless, many children grew up around her
in the large Benincasa household. We know that at the time of the plague,
in 1374, Lapa was bringing up eleven grandchildren in her own house. Of
these, eight fell victims to the pestilence, and we have a glimpse of
Catherine burying them with her own hands, and saying as she laid them to
rest one by one, "This one, at least, I shall not lose." Of the little
Nanna to whom this letter was written we know nothing, except that she was
the child of the elder brother, who, as we have already seen, had moved to
Florence.


In the Name of Jesus Christ crucified and of sweet Mary:

Dearest daughter in Christ sweet Jesus: I Catherine, servant and slave of
the servants of Jesus Christ, write to thee in His precious Blood, with
desire to see thee a real bride of Christ crucified, running away from
everything which might hinder thee from possessing this sweet and glorious
Bridegroom. But thou couldst not do this if thou wert not among those wise
virgins consecrated to Christ who had lamps with oil in them, and light
was within. See, then, if thou wishest to be a bride of Christ, thou must
have lamp, and oil, and light. Dost thou know what this means, daughter
mine? By the lamp is meant our heart, because a heart ought to be made
like a lamp. Thou seest that a lamp is wide above and narrow below, and so
the heart is made, to signify that we ought always to keep it wide above,
through holy thoughts and holy imaginations and continual prayer; always
holding in memory the blessings of God, and chiefly the blessing of the
Blood by which we are bought. For Blessed Christ, my daughter, did not buy
us with gold or silver or pearls or other precious stones; nay, He bought
us with His precious Blood. So one wants never to forget so great a
blessing, but always to hold it before one's eyes, in holy and sweet
gratitude, seeing how immeasurably God loves us: who did not shrink from
giving His only begotten Son to the opprobrious death of the Cross, to
give us the life of grace.

I said that a lamp is narrow below, and so is our heart: to signify that
the heart ought to be narrow toward these earthly things--that is, it must
not desire nor love them extravagantly, nor hunger for more than God wills
to give us; but ever thank Him, seeing how sweetly He provides for us so
that we never lack anything.

Now in this way, our heart will really be a lamp. But reflect, daughter
mine, that this would not be enough were there no oil within. By oil is
meant that sweet little virtue, profound humility: for it is fitting that
the bride of Christ be humble and gentle and patient; and she will be as
humble as she is patient, and as patient as she is humble. But we cannot
attain this virtue of humility except by true knowledge of ourselves,
knowing our misery and frailty, and that we by ourselves can do no good
deed, nor escape any conflict or pain; for if we have a bodily infirmity,
or a pain or conflict in our minds, we cannot escape it or remove it--for
if we could we should escape from it swiftly. So it is quite true that we
in ourselves are nothing other than infamy, misery, stench, frailty, and
sins; wherefore, we ought always to abide low and humble. But to abide
wholly in such knowledge of one's self would not be good, because the soul
would fall into weariness and confusion; and from confusion it would fall
into despair: so the devil would like nothing better than to make us fall
into confusion, to drive us afterward to despair. We ought, then, to abide
in the knowledge of the goodness of God in Himself, perceiving that He has
created us in His image and likeness, and re-created us in grace by the
Blood of His only-begotten Son, the sweet incarnate Lord; and reflecting
how continually the goodness of God works in us. But see, that to abide
entirely in this knowledge of God would not be good, because the soul
would fall into presumption and pride. So it befits us to have one mixed
with the other--that is, to abide in the holy knowledge of the goodness of
God, and also in the knowledge of ourselves: and so we shall be humble,
patient, and gentle, and in this way we shall have oil in our lamp.

Now, then, we must have light--otherwise it would not be enough. This
light has to be the light of most holy faith. But the saints say that
faith without works is dead, so our faith might be neither living nor
holy, but dead. Therefore we need to exert ourselves virtuously all the
time, and leave our childishness and vanities, and not behave any longer
like worldly girls, but like faithful brides consecrated to Christ
crucified; in this way we shall have a lamp, and oil, and light.

The Gospel says that these wise virgins were five. So I tell thee that
there must be five in each of us--otherwise we shall not enter the wedding
feast of eternal life.

By these five it is meant that we must subject and mortify our five bodily
senses, in such wise that we may never offend with them, taking through
them or some of them unregulated pleasure or delight. In this way we shall
be five, when we have subdued our five senses.

But think that that sweet Bridegroom Christ is more jealous of His brides
than I could tell thee! Therefore if He should see that thou didst love
anyone more than Him, He would be angry with thee at once. And if thou
didst not correct thyself, the door would not be open to thee, to the
wedding feast which Christ the Lamb without spot holds for all His
faithful: but we should be driven away like bad women, as those five
foolish virgins were, who, glorying only and vainly in the integrity and
virginity of their body, lost the virginity of their soul, through the
corruption of the five senses, because they did not carry the oil of
humility with them, so that their lamps went out. Therefore it was said to
them: "Go hence to buy oil." By this oil is meant in this place the
flatteries and praises of men; since all the flatterers and praisers of
the world sell this oil. As if it were said to them: "You have not wanted
to buy eternal life with your virginity and your good works; no, you have
wanted to buy the praises of men, and to have the praises of men you have
wrought. Go now and buy praises, for you will not enter here." Therefore,
daughter mine, beware of the praises of men; and do not want praise for
any work that thou mayest do, for the door of eternal life would not be
open to thee later.

So, reflecting that this was the best way, I said that I desired to see
thee a real bride of Christ crucified; and so I beg and command thee that
thou try hard to be. I say no more to thee. Remain in the holy and sweet
grace of God. Sweet Jesus, Jesus Love.




LETTERS ON THE CONSECRATED LIFE


Catherine is known in history as one of the great ascetics of the Church;
these letters show her intimate attitude toward the mortification of the
flesh. She was a woman called of God and her natural powers, constantly to
assume the dangerous duty of convincing men of their sin; these letters
give us her conception of the safeguards needed in the performance of that
duty.

Both letters were written to Religious. Father William Flete was an
Englishman, who, passing through Italy in his youth, became fascinated
with the land, and spent the rest of his life in a hermit's cell in the
Forest of Lecceto. The annals of the time throw some entertaining side-
lights on his figure. Famous for his austerities and for the sanctity of
his life, he was also a very impatient and somewhat intolerant person,
given to carping criticism of his brother hermits. Catherine, in writing
to him, analyses mercilessly the dangers of the ascetic life; one feels
that not much self-righteousness could be left in a man after reading her
trenchant phrases. Soon, however, she lifts him with her to the ardent
contemplation of the perfect life; it is in words of singular beauty that
she describes the attitude of generous loving-kindness, uncritical, humble
and glad, with which the true servant of God considers all sorts and
conditions of men: "Such a man rejoices in every type that he sees,
saying: Thanks be to Thee, Eternal Father, that Thou hast many mansions in
Thy house.... He rejoices more in the differences among men than he would
in seeing them all walk in the same way; for so he sees more manifest the
greatness of the goodness of God. He gets from everything the fragrance of
roses."

In the letter to Sister Daniella, Catherine develops these ideas further.
Of this "great servant of God" nothing is known except what Catherine's
letters to her show. Something may be inferred from the fact that she is
one of the few people to whom the greater woman writes as to a spititual
equal. She repeats to Daniella the letter to Father William--such
warnings, indeed, being needed by all persons leading the consecrated
life--and then goes on, in the remainder of the letter as here given, to
discuss those farther reaches of perfection in which charity has done its
perfect work. Two things she wishes herself and Daniella to observe: the
first is abstinence from critical thoughts. Let us not "judge the minds of
our fellow-creatures, which are for God alone to judge." It is the key to
her own method in her great cure of souls which she here gives us: "When
it seems that God shows us the faults of others, keep on the safer side--
for it may be that thy judgment is false. On thy lips let silence abide.
And any vice which thou mayest ascribe to others, do thou ascribe at once
to them and to thyself, in true humility. If that vice really exists in a
person, he will correct himself better, seeing himself so gently
understood, and will say of his own accord the thing which thou wouldst
have said to him."--The other point which Catherine urges on Daniella is
the secondary importance of that life of mortification to which she firmly
believes that they have both been called. "Good is penance and maceration
of the body; but do not present these to me as a rule for every one. If
either for ourselves or others, we made penance our foundation ... we
should be ignorant, and should fall into a critical attitude, and become
weary and very bitter: for we should strive to give a finished work to
God, Who is Infinite Love, and demands from us only infinite desire."
Surely, in this last thought Catherine has attained in a flash to sublime
spiritual insight.

The Saints knew all about telepathy long before Societies of Psychical
Research grew eager over the matter. It might surprise some modern
psychologists to read the tranquil passage in which Catherine, assuming as
a matter of course that any servant of God engaged in intercessory prayer
has a mystical and direct knowledge of the condition of those she prays
for, proceeds to warn Daniella as intelligently as any modern could do,
though in different terms, as to the limitations within which this kind of
knowledge can be trusted.

The little note with which this group closes is not written to a great
recluse, but to a tailor's wife. With the simple, Catherine showed herself
simple; but Monna Agnese is to lead the consecrated life no less than
Sister Daniella. Catherine's plain directions to the one about her daily
living evince the same mental clarity and sobriety as her exhortations to
the other, and discriminate in much the same way between the excitement of
religious practices and true consecration.




TO BROTHER WILLIAM OF ENGLAND
OF THE HERMIT BROTHERS OF ST. AUGUSTINE


In the Name of Jesus Christ crucified and of sweet Mary:

Dearest son in Christ sweet Jesus: I Catherine, servant and slave of the
servants of Jesus Christ, write to you in His precious Blood, with desire
to see you in true light. For without light we shall not be able to walk
in the way of truth, but shall walk in shadows. Two lights are necessary.
First, we must be illumined to know the transitory things of the world,
which all pass like the wind. But these are not rightly known if we do not
know our own frailty, how inclined it is, from the perverse law which is
bound up with our members, to rebel against its Creator. This light is
necessary to every rational creature, in whatever state it may be, if it
wishes to have divine grace, and to share in the blessing of the Blood of
the Spotless Lamb. This is the common light, that everybody in general
ought to have, for whoever has it not is in a state of condemnation. This
is the reason; that, not having light, he is not in a state of grace; for
one who does not know the evil of wrong, nor who is cause of it, cannot
avoid it nor hate the cause. So he who does not know good, and virtue the
cause of good, cannot love nor desire that good.

The soul must not stay content because it has arrived at gaining the
general light; nay, it ought to go on with all zeal to the perfect light.
For since men are at first imperfect rather than perfect, they should
advance in light to perfection. Two kinds of perfect people walk in this
perfect light. There are some who give themselves to castigating their
body perfectly, doing very great harsh penance; and that the flesh may not
rebel against the reason, they have placed all their desire rather on
mortifying their body than on slaying their self-will. These people feed
at the table of penitence and are good and perfect; but unless they have a
great humility and conform themselves not wholly to judge according to the
will of God and not according to that of men, they often wrong their
perfection, making themselves judges of those who do not walk in the same
way in which they do.

This happens to them because they have put more thought and desire on
mortifying their body than on slaying their self-will. Such men as these
always want to choose times and places and mental consolations to suit
themselves; also, worldly tribulations, and their battles with the devil;
saying, through self-deceit, beguiled by their own will--which is called
spiritual self-will--"I should like this consolation, and not these
assaults or battles with the devil; not for my own sake, but to please
God, and possess Him more fully, because I seem to possess Him better in
this way than in that." Many a time, in such a way as this, the soul falls
into suffering and weariness, and becomes unendurable to itself through
them, and thus wrongs its state of perfection. The odour of pride clings
to it, and this it does not perceive. For, were it truly humble and not
presumptuous, it would see well that the Sweet Primal Truth gives
conditions, time and place, and consolation and tribulation, according as
is needful to our perfection, and to fulfil in the soul the perfection to
which it is chosen. It would see that everything is given through love,
and therefore with love.

All things ought to be received with reverence, as is done by the second
class of people, who abide in this sweet and glorious light, who are
perfect in whatever condition they are, and, in so far as God permits
them, hold everything in due reverence, esteeming themselves worthy of
sufferings and scandals in the world, and of missing their consolations.
As they hold themselves worthy of sufferings, so they hold themselves
unworthy of the reward which follows suffering. These have known and
tasted in the light the eternal will of God, which wishes naught but our
good, and that we be sanctified in Him, therefore giving His gifts. When
the soul has known this will, it is arrayed therein, and cares for nothing
save to see in what wise it can grow, and preserve its condition perfect,
for glory and praise of the Name of God. Therefore, it opens the eye of
the mind upon its object, Christ crucified, who is rule and way and
doctrine for perfect and imperfect: and sees the loving Lamb, Who gives it
the doctrine of perfection, which seeing it loves.

Perfection is this: that the Word, the Son of God, fed at the table of
holy desire for the honour of God and for our salvation; and with this
desire ran with great zeal to the shameful death of the Cross, avoiding
neither toil nor labour, not drawing back for the ingratitude and
ignorance of us men who did not recognize His benefits, nor for the
persecution of the Jews, nor for mockery or insults or criticism of the
people, but underwent them all, like our captain and true knight, who was
come to teach us His way and rule and doctrine, opening the door with the
keys of His precious Blood, shed with ardent love and hatred against sin.
As says this sweet, loving Word, "Behold, I have made you a way, and
opened the door with My blood. Be you then not negligent to follow it, and
do not sit yourselves down in self-love, ignorantly failing to know the
Way, and presumptuously wishing to choose it after your own fashion, and
not after Mine who made it. Rise up then, and follow Me: for no one can go
to the Father but by Me. I am the Way and the Door."

Then the soul, enamoured and tormented with love, runs to the table of
holy desire, and sees not itself in itself, seeking private consolation,
spiritual or temporal, but, as one who has wholly destroyed his own will
in this light and knowledge, refuses no toil from whatever side it comes.
Nay, in suffering, in pain, in many assaults from the devil and criticisms
from men, it seeks upon the table of the Cross the food of the honour of
God and the salvation of men. And it seeks no reward, from God or from
fellow-creatures; such men serve God, not for their own joy, and the
neighbour not for their own will or profit, but from pure love. They lose
themselves, divesting them of the old man, their fleshly desires, and
array them in the new man, Christ sweet Jesus, following Him manfully.
These are they who feed at the table of holy desire, and have more zeal
for slaying their self-will than for slaying and mortifying the body. They
have mortified the body, to be sure, but not as a chief aim, but as the
tool which it is, to help in slaying self-will; for one's chief aim ought
to be and is to slay the will; that it may seek and wish naught save to
follow Christ crucified, seeking the honour and glory of His Name, and the
salvation of souls. Such men abide ever in peace and quiet; there are none
who can offend them, because they have cast away the thing that gives
offence--that is, self-will. All the persecutions which the world and the
devil can inflict run away beneath their feet; they stand in the water,
made fast to the twigs of eager desire, and are not submerged. Such a man
as this rejoices in everything; he does not make himself a judge of the
servants of God, nor of any rational creature; nay, he rejoices in every
condition and every type that he sees, saying, "Thanks be to Thee, eternal
Father, that Thou hast many mansions in Thy House." And he rejoices more
in the different kinds of men that he sees than he would do in seeing them
all walk in the same way, for so he sees the greatness of God's goodness
more manifest. He joys in everything, and gets from it the fragrance of
roses. And even as to a thing which he may expressly see to be sin, he
does not pose as a judge, but regards it rather with holy true compassion,
saying, "To-day it is thy turn, and to-morrow mine, unless it be for
divine grace which preserves me."

Oh, holy minds, who feed at the table of holy desire, who have attained in
great light to nourish you with holy food, clothed with the sweet raiment
of the Lamb, His love and charity! You do not lose time in accepting false
judgments, either of the servants of God or of the servants of the world;
you do not take offence at any criticism, either against yourselves or
others. Your love toward God and your neighbour is governed well, and not
ungoverned. And because it is governed, such men as these, dearest son,
never take offence at those whom they love; for appearances are dead to
them, and they have submitted themselves not to be guided by men, but only
by the Holy Spirit. See then, these enjoy in this life the pledge of life
eternal.

I wish you and the other ignorant sons to reach this light, for I see that
this perfection is lacking to you and to others. For were it not lacking
to you, you would not have fallen into such criticism and offence and
false judgment, as to say and believe that another man was guided and
mastered by the will of the creature and not of the Creator. My soul and
my heart grieve to see you wrong the perfection to which God has called
you, under pretence of love and odour of virtue. Nevertheless, these are
the tares which the devil has sowed in the field of the Lord; he has done
this to choke the seed of holy desire and doctrine sowed in your fields.
Will then to do so no more, since God has of grace given you great lights;
the first, to despise the world; the second, to mortify the body; the
third, to seek the honour of God. Do not wrong this perfection with
spiritual self-will, but rise from the table of penance and attain the
table of the desire of God, where the soul is wholly dead to its own will,
nourishing itself without suffering on the honour of God and the salvation
of souls, growing in perfection and not wronging it.

Therefore, considering that this condition cannot be had without light,
and seeing that you had it not, I said that I desired and desire to see
you in true and perfect light. Thus I pray you, by the love of Christ
crucified--you and Brother Antonio and all the others--that you struggle
to win it, so that you may be numbered among the perfect and not among the
imperfect. I say no more. Remain in the holy and sweet grace of God. I
commend me to all of you. Bathe you in the Blood of Christ crucified.
Sweet Jesus, Jesus Love.




TO DANIELLA OF ORVIETO
CLOTHED WITH THE HABIT OF ST. DOMINIC


Thou seest, then, that such men enjoy in this life the pledge of life
eternal. They receive, not the payment, but the pledge--not waiting to
receive it till the enduring life, where is life without death, satiety
without disgust, and hunger without pain. For far is the pain of hunger,
since they have completely what they desire; and far is the disgust of
satiety, since that is the Food of Life without any lack. It is true that
in this life one begins to enjoy the pledge, in this way, that the soul
begins to be an-hungered for the food of the honour of God and the
salvation of souls. As it is an-hungered, so it feeds thereon; yes, the
soul nourishes itself on charity for the neighbour, for whom it has a
hungry desire. That is a food which never satisfies those nourished on it.
It never satiates, and therefore hunger lasts for ever. As a pledge is a
beginning of surety given to a man, through which he expects to receive
payment (not that the pledge is perfect in itself, but it gives assurance
through one's trust, that fulfilment will come), so the soul enamoured of
Christ, which has already received in this life the pledge of love for God
and its neighbour, is not perfect in itself, but awaits the perfection of
the life immortal. I say that this pledge is not perfect--that is, the
soul which enjoys it has not yet reached such perfection as not to feel
sufferings, in itself or others: in itself, from the wrong it does to God,
through the perverse law which is bound into our members; and in others,
from the wrong of the neighbour. It is, to be sure, perfect in grace, but
it has not the perfection of the saints, who are in the eternal life, as I
said; since their desires are free from suffering and ours are not. Dost
thou know how it is with the true servant of God, who nourishes him at the
table of holy desire? He is blessèd and grieving, as was the Son of God
upon the wood of the Most Holy Cross: for the flesh of Christ was grieved
and tortured, and the soul was blessèd, through its union with the Divine
Nature. So, through the union of our desire with God, ought we to be
blessed, and clothed with His sweet will; and grieving, through compassion
for our neighbour, casting from us sensuous joys and comforts and
mortifying our flesh.

But listen, daughter and dearest sister. I have spoken to thee and me in
general, but now I shall speak to thee and me in particular. I want us to
do two special things, in order that ignorance may not hinder our
perfection, to which God calls us; that the devil, under cloak of virtue
and love of the neighbour, may not nourish the root of presumption within
our soul. For from this we shall fall into false judgments; seeming to
ourselves to judge aright, we shall judge crookedly: often, if we followed
our own impressions, the devil would make us see many truths to lead us
into falsehood; and this, because we make ourselves judges of the minds of
our fellow-creatures, which are for God alone to judge.

This is one of the two things from which I wish that we should free
ourselves completely. But I want the lesson to be learned reasonably. This
is the reasonable way: if God expressly, not only once or twice, but more
often, reveals the fault of a neighbour to our mind, we ought never to
tell it in particular to the person whom it concerns, but to correct in
common the vices of all those whom it befalls us to judge, and to implant
virtues, tenderly and benignly. Severity in the benignity, as may be
needed. And should it seem that God showed us repeatedly the faults of
another, yet unless there were, as I said, a special revelation, keep on
the safer side, that we may escape the deceit and malice of the devil; for
he would catch us with this hook of desire. On thy lips, then, let silence
abide, and holy talk of virtues, and disdain of vice. And any vice that it
may seem to thee to recognize in others, do thou ascribe at once to them
and to thyself, using ever a true humility. If that vice really exists in
any such person, he will correct himself better, seeing himself so gently
understood, and will say that to thee which thou wouldest have said to
him. And thou wilt be safe, and wilt close the way to the devil, who will
be unable to deceive us or to hinder the perfection of thy soul. Know that
we ought not to trust in any appearances, but to put them behind our
backs, and abide only in the perception and knowledge of ourselves. And if
it ever happened that we were praying particularly for some fellow-
creatures, and in prayer we saw some light of grace in one of those for
whom we were praying, and none in another, who was also a servant of God--
but thou didst seem to see him with his mind abased and sterile--do not
therefore assume to judge that there is grave fault or lack in him, for it
might be that thy opinion was false. For it happens sometimes that when
one is praying for the same person, one occasion will find him in such
light and holy desire before God that the soul will seem to fatten on his
welfare; and on another occasion thou shalt find him when his soul seems
so far from God, and full of shadows and temptations, that it is toil to
whoso prays for him to hold him in God's presence. This may happen
sometimes through a fault of him for whom one is praying, but more often
it is due not to a fault, but to God's having withdrawn Himself from this
soul--that is, He has withdrawn Himself as to any feeling of sweetness and
consolation, though not as to grace. So the soul will have stayed sterile,
dry, and full of pain--which God makes that soul which is praying for it
perceive. And God does this in mercy to that soul which receives the
prayer, that thou mayest aid Him to scatter the cloud. So thou seest,
sweet my sister, how ignorant and worthy of rebuke our opinion would be,
if simply from these appearances we judged that there was vice in this
soul. Therefore, if God showed it to us so troubled and darkened, when we
have already seen that it was not deprived of grace, but only of the
sweetness of feeling God's presence--I beg thee, then, thee and me and
every servant of God, that we apply us to knowing ourselves perfectly,
that we may more perfectly know the goodness of God; so that, illumined,
we may abandon judging our neighbour, and adopt true compassion, hungering
to proclaim virtues and reprove sin in both ourselves and them, in the way
we spoke of before.

We have spoken of one thing, but now I tell thee of the other, which I beg
that we rebuke in ourselves: if sometimes the devil or our own very evil
construction of matters tormented us by making us want to send or see all
the servants of God walking in the same way that we are walking in
ourselves. For it frequently happens that a soul which sees itself advance
by way of great penance, would like to send all people by that same way;
and if it sees that they do not walk there, it is displeased and shocked,
feeling that they are not doing right: while sometimes it will happen that
the man is doing better and being more virtuous than his critic, although
he does not do as much penance. For perfection does not consist in
macerating or killing the body, but in killing our perverse self-will. And
in this way, of the will destroyed, submitted to the sweet Will of God, we
ought indeed to desire all men to walk. Good is penance and the maceration
of the body; but do not show me these as a rule for every one, since all
bodies are not alike, and also since it often happens that a penance begun
has to be given up from many accidents that may occur. If, then, we made
ourselves or others build on penance as a foundation, it might come to
nothing, and be so imperfect that consolation and virtue would fail the
soul; for, deprived of the thing which it loved and had made of prime
importance, it would seem to be deprived of God, and so would fall into
weariness and very great sadness and bitterness, and would lose in the
bitterness the activity and fervent prayer to which it was accustomed. So
thou seest what evil would follow from making penance alone one's chief
concern: we should be ignorant, and should fall into a critical attitude,
and become weary and very bitter; we should strive to give only a finished
work to God, who is Infinite Good that demands from us infinite desire. We
ought, then, to build our foundation on killing and destroying our own
perverse will; with that will submitted to the will of God, we shall
devote sweet, hungry, infinite desire to the honour of God and the
salvation of souls. Thus shall we feed at the table of that holy desire
which never takes offence either at itself or at its neighbour, but
rejoices and finds fruit in everything. Miserable woman that I am, I mourn
that I never followed this true doctrine; nay, I have done the contrary,
and therefore I feel that I have often fallen into irritation and a
judicial attitude toward my neighbour. Wherefore I pray thee, by the love
of Christ Crucified, that for this and for my every other infirmity,
healing may be found; so that thou and I may begin to-day to walk in the
way of truth, enlightened to build our true foundation on holy desire, and
not trusting in appearances and impressions; so that we may not lightly
neglect ourselves and judge the faults of our neighbours, unless by way of
compassion or general rebuke.

This we shall do if we nourish us at the table of holy desire: otherwise
we cannot. For from desire we have light, and light gives us desire; so
one nourishes the other. Therefore I said that I desired to see thee in
the true light. I say no more. Remain in the holy and sweet grace of God.
Sweet Jesus, Jesus Love.




TO MONNA AGNESE
WIFE OF FRANCESCO, A TAILOR OF FLORENCE


In the Name of Jesus Christ crucified and of sweet Mary:

Dearest daughter in Christ sweet Jesus: I Catherine, servant and slave of
the servants of Jesus Christ, write to thee in His precious Blood, with
desire to see thee clothed in true and perfect humility--for that is a
little virtue which makes us great in the sweet sight of God. This is the
virtue which constrained and inclined God to make His most sweet Son
incarnate in the Womb of Mary. It is as exalted as the proud are humbled;
it shines in the sight of God and men; it binds the hands of the wicked,
it unites the soul with God, it purifies and laves away the soil of our
sin, and calls on God to show us mercy. I will then, sweetest daughter,
that thou strive to embrace this glorious virtue, so that thou mayest pass
over the stormy sea of this world free from storm and peril.

Now comfort thee in this sweet and sincere virtue, and bathe thee in the
Blood of Christ crucified. And when thou canst empty thy time for prayer,
I pray thee to do it. And love tenderly every rational being. Then, I beg
and command thee not to fast, except, when thou canst, on the days
commanded by Holy Church. And when thou dost not feel strong enough to
fast then, do not observe them. At other times, do not fast, except when
thou feelest able, on Saturday. When this heat is over, fast on the days
of Holy Mary, if thou canst, and no more. And drink something beside water
every day. Labour hard to increase thy holy desire, and let these other
things alone for the future. Do not be anxious or depressed over us, for
we are all well. When it shall please the Divine Goodness, we shall see
one another again. I say no more to thee. Remain in the holy and sweet
grace of God. Comfort my sweet daughters, Ursula and Ginevra. Sweet Jesus,
Jesus Love.




LETTERS IN RESPONSE TO CERTAIN CRITICISMS


Catherine had ample opportunity to suffer from those keenly critical
instincts of the respectable which she reproved in the last group of
letters. Her life was full of eager unconventionalities that drew down on
her the frequent distrust of her co-religionists and fellow-townsmen. We
cannot tell what special cause had excited the indignation of the loyal
friends to whom the following note is written; but we may enjoy the spirit
of fresh and pure humility in which Catherine gives them the difficult
injunction to acquiesce in any criticism made upon her.

The very matters which were later to be considered as proofs of her
sanctity, were during her lifetime grounds of suspicion. Some unknown,
exercised in his mind over the reports of her extraordinary abstinence,
took evidently what would to-day appear the somewhat impertinent course of
writing her a letter of remonstrance. Catherine's inability or reluctance
to eat as much as others was one of the most interesting marvels of her
life to her simple contemporaries. It is clear, that partly from the
extreme mortification which according to mediaeval custom she inflicted on
her flesh from childhood, her condition became at an early age thoroughly
abnormal. Salads and water were practically her only diet; the curious are
referred to the copious details furnished by her biographers. Meantime,
the present letter shows how reasonable was her own attitude in the
matter. It shows also with what gentle dignity she received criticism. The
little touch at the end--"I pray you not to be light in judging, if you
are not surely illumined in the sight of God"--is the only hint at a
natural impulse of resentment: unless one reads, as it is tempting to do,
a delicate irony in the opening portion of the letter.




TO MONNA ORSA
WIFE OF BARTOLO USIMBARDI
AND TO MONNA AGNESE
WIFE OF FRANCESCO DI PIPINO TAILOR OF FLORENCE


In the Name of Jesus Christ crucified and of sweet Mary:

Dearest daughter in Christ sweet Jesus: I Catherine, servant and slave of
the servants of Jesus Christ, write to you in His precious Blood: with
desire to see you persevere in holy desire, so that you may never look
back. For otherwise you would not receive your reward, and would
transgress the word of the Saviour, which says that we are not to turn
back to look at the furrow. Be persevering, then, and contemplate not what
is done, but what you have to do. And what have we to do? To turn our
affections constantly back toward God, despising the world with all its
joys, and loving virtue, bearing with true patience what the divine
goodness permits us; considering that whatever He gives is given for our
good that we may be sanctified in Him. We shall find in the Blood that the
truth is thus. So we ought to fill our memory with this glorious Blood,
which shows us so sweet a truth, that we may never be without the
recollection of it. Thus I want you to do, dearest daughters: that in this
life you shall persevere until death, and at the close of your life shall
receive the Eternal Vision of God. I say no more here.

I reprove thee, dearest my sweet daughter, because thou hast not kept in
mind what I told thee--not to answer anyone who should say to thee
anything about myself that seemed to thee less than good. Now I do not
wish thee to do so any more, but I wish both of you to reply to anyone who
narrated my faults to you in this wise--that they are not telling so many
that a great many more might not be told. Tell them to be moved by
compassion within their hearts in the sight of God, as they appear to be
by their tongues--and to pray the Divine Goodness earnestly for me, that
It will correct my life. Then say to them that it is the Highest Judge who
will punish my every fault, and reward every labour that shall be borne
for His Name. As to Monna Paula, I do not wish thee to be in the least
indignant with her: but think that she is acting like a good mother, who
wants to test her daughter to see whether she has virtue or not. I confess
truthfully that I have found little success in myself; but I have hope in
my Creator, who will make me correct myself and change my way of life.
Comfort you, and give yourselves no more pain; for we shall find ourselves
united in the fire of divine Charity, a union that shall be taken from us
neither by demon nor by creature. I say no more to you. Remain in the holy
and sweet grace of God. Sweet Jesus, Jesus Love.




TO A RELIGIOUS MAN IN FLORENCE
WHO WAS SHOCKED AT HER ASCETIC PRACTICES


In the Name of Jesus Christ crucified and of sweet Mary:

Dearest and most beloved father in Christ sweet Jesus: I Catherine, a
useless servant of Jesus Christ, commend me to you: with the desire to see
us united and transformed in that sweet, eternal and pure Truth which
destroys in us all falsity and lying. I thank you cordially, dearest
father, for the holy zeal and jealousy which you have toward my soul: in
that you are apparently very anxious over what you hear of my life. I am
certain that nothing affects you except desire for the honour of God and
for my salvation, which makes you fear the assaults and illusions of
devils. As to your special fear, father, concerning my behaviour about
eating, I am not surprised; for I assure you, that not only do you fear,
but I myself tremble, for fear of devilish wiles. Were it not that I trust
in the goodness of God, and distrust myself, knowing that in myself I can
have no confidence. For you sent, asking me whether or no I believed that
I might be deceived, saying that if I did not believe so, that was a wile
of the devil. I answer you, that not only about this, which is above the
nature of the body, but about all my other activities also, I am always
afraid, on account of my frailty and the astuteness of the devil, and
think that I may be deceived; for I am perfectly well aware that the devil
lost beatitude, but not wisdom, with which wisdom, as I said, I recognized
that he might deceive me. But then I turn me, and lean against the Tree of
the Most Holy Cross of Christ crucified, and there will I fasten me; and I
do not doubt that if I shall be nailed and held with Him by love and with
profound humility, the devils will have no power against me--not through
my virtue, but through the virtue of Christ crucified.

You sent me word to pray God particularly that I might eat. I tell you, my
father, and I say it in the sight of God, that in all ways within my power
I have always forced myself once or twice a day to take food. And I have
prayed constantly, and do pray God and shall pray Him, that in this matter
of eating He will give me grace to live like other creatures, if it is His
will--for it is mine. I tell you, that often enough, when I have done what
I could, I enter within myself, to recognize my infirmity, and God, who by
most special grace has made me correct the sin of gluttony. I grieve much
that I have not corrected that miserable fault of mine through love. I for
myself do not know what other remedy to adopt, except that I beg you to
pray that Highest Eternal Truth, that He give me grace, if it is more for
His honour and the salvation of my soul, to enable me to take food if it
please Him. And I am sure that the goodness of God will not despise your
prayers. I beg you that if you see any remedy you will write me of it; and
provided it be for the honour of God, I will accept it willingly. Also I
beg you not to be light in judging, if you are not clearly illumined in
the sight of God. I say no more to you. Remain in the holy and sweet grace
of God. Sweet Jesus, Jesus Love.




TO BROTHER BARTOLOMEO DOMINICI
OF THE ORDER OF THE PREACHERS WHEN HE WAS BIBLE READER AT FLORENCE


Belief in the wrath to come is sufficiently real to Catherine, and the
current demonology of her day slips readily from her tongue. These things
she accepted as she found them. But the atmosphere in which her spirit
breathes is the perception of the love of God. The spiritual history of
the race, from the creation to the coming of the Spirit and the perpetual
support of the soul in the Sacrament of the Altar, is to her a revelation
of the One encompassing Love, poured forth in fresh measure and under new
forms at each stage in the movement of human destiny.

And so, in this little letter, she invites us to enter with her the
"peaceful and profound sea" found in the words "God is Love." Elsewhere,
both in her Dialogue and in a letter to one Brother Matteo Tolomei, she
analyses with keen insight the relations which redeemed humanity can bear
to the Loving God; she tells us how the servant, obedient through fear,
may become the friend, obedient through gratitude and desire for spiritual
blessings; and how these lower loves, through the operation of the Holy
Spirit, may be transformed into the love of the son, who seeks God for His
own sake, "with nothing between." And how shall human love, when it has
reached this point, reflect the love of Him who "needs not man's work nor
His own gifts?" How become, not merely receptive, but active and creative?
Catherine gives the simple Christian answer: "God has loved us without
being loved, but we love Him because we are loved.... We cannot be of any
profit to Him, nor love Him with this first love. Yet God demands of us,
that as He has loved us without any second thoughts, so He should be loved
by us. In what way can we do this, then, since He demands it of us and we
cannot give it to Him? I tell you: through a means which He has
established by which we can love Him freely, and without the least regard
to any profit of ours: we can be useful, not to Him, which is impossible,
but to our neighbour.... To show the love we have to Him, we ought to
serve and love every rational creature.... Every virtue receives life from
love, and love is gained in love, that is, by raising the eye of our mind
to behold how much we are beloved of God. Seeing ourselves loved, we
cannot do otherwise than love.... So thou seest that we conceive virtues
through God and bring them to the birth for our neighbour."

Thus do Catherine's loftiest meditations end on the practical note. Her
fundamental thought, here as elsewhere, is strikingly akin to the thought
of St. Bernard. Love yourself not for your own sake, but for God! she
constantly repeats. To the same effect, Bernard describes at length the
progress of the soul till it reaches the highest stage, in which self-love
is so lost that even gratitude is left behind, and man loves himself and
God for the sake of God alone.


In the Name of Jesus Christ crucified and of sweet Mary:

To you, most beloved and dear father, through reverence of the most sweet
Sacrament, and son in Christ Jesus: I Catherine, servant and slave of the
servants of Jesus Christ, write and send comfort in His precious Blood,
with desire to see you kindled, on fire, and consumed in His most ardent
charity, since I know that he who is on fire and consumed with this
charity sees not himself. This, then, I will that you do. I summon you to
enter through this most ardent charity, a sea that is peaceful and
profound. This I have just now found anew--not that the sea is new, but
that it is new to me in the feeling of my soul--in that word, God is Love.
And in this word, as the mirror reflects the face of man, and the sun its
light upon the earth, so it is reflected in my soul, that all His works
whatsoever are Love alone, for they are not wrought of anything save love.
Therefore He says, "I God am Love." From this a light is thrown on the
unsearchable mystery of the Incarnate Word, who by force of love was given
with such humility that it confounds my pride, and teaches us not to
regard His works, but the burning devotion of the Word given to us. He
says that we should do as he who loves: who, when his friend comes with a
present, looks not at the hands for the gift which he brings, but opens
the eye of love, and regards his heart and affection. So He wills that we
should do, when the Highest eternal goodness of God, sweet above all
things, visits our soul. It visits us then with measureless benefits. Let
memory act swiftly to receive the intention in the divine charity: and let
the will arise with most ardent desire, and receive and behold the
sacrificed Heart of sweet and good Jesus the Giver: and thus you shall
find you kindled and clothed with fire, and with the gift of the Blood of
the Son of God; and you shall be free from all pain and disease. This it
was which took away the pain of the holy disciples, when it behoved them
to leave Mary and one another, and gladly they endured that separation, to
sow the word of God. Run then, run, run.

Concerning the affairs of Benincasa, I cannot reply unless I am at Siena.
Thank Messer Nicolao for the charity which he has shown for them. Alessa
and I and Cecca, poor women, commend ourselves to you a thousand thousand
times. May God be ever in your soul, amen. Jesus, Jesus.

Catherine, servant of the servants of God.




TO BROTHER MATTEO DI FRANCESCO TOLOMEI
OF THE ORDER OF THE PREACHERS


In the Name of Jesus Christ crucified and of sweet Mary:

Dearest son in Christ sweet Jesus: I Catherine, servant and slave of the
servants of Jesus Christ, write to you in His precious Blood, with desire
to see you seek God in truth, not through the intervention of your own
fleshliness or of any other creature, for we cannot please God through any
intervening means. God gave us the Word, His Only-Begotten Son, without
regard to His own profit. This is true, that we cannot be of any profit to
Him; but the reverse is not the case, because, although we do not serve
God for our profit, nevertheless we profit just the same. To Him belongs
the flower of honour, and to us the fruit of profit. He has loved us
without being loved, and we love because we are loved: He loves us of
grace, and we Him of duty, because we are bound to love Him. We cannot be
of any profit to God just as we cannot love Him of grace, without duty.
For we are bound to Him, and not He to us, because before He was loved, He
loved us, and therefore created us in His Image and Likeness. There it is,
then: we cannot be of any profit to Him, nor love Him with this first
love. Yet I say that God demands of us, that as He has loved us without
any second thoughts, so He should be loved by us. In what way can we do
this, then, since He demands it of us, and we cannot give it Him? I tell
you: through a means which He has established, by which we can love Him
freely, and without the least regard to any profit of ours; that is, we
can be useful, not to Him, which is impossible, but to our neighbour. Now
by this means we can obey what He demands of us for the glory and praise
of His Name; to show the love that we have for Him, we ought to serve and
love every rational creature, and extend our charity to good and bad, to
every kind of people, as much to one who does us ill service and
criticises us as to one who serves us. For God is no respecter of persons,
but of holy desires, and His charity extends over just men and sinners.

One man, to be sure, He loves as a son, and one as a friend, and another
as a servant, and another as a person who has departed from Him, for whose
return He longs--these last are the wicked sinners who are deprived of
grace. But wherein does the Highest Father show His love to these? In
lending them time, and in time He gives them many opportunities, either to
repent of their sins, taking from them place and power to do as much ill
as they would, or He has many other ways to make them hate vice and love
virtue, the love of which takes away the wish to sin. And so, through the
time which God gave them in love, from foes they are made friends, and
have grace and are fit to become the Father's heirs.

He loves as sons those who serve Him in truth without any servile fear,
who have annulled and killed their self-will, and are through God obedient
till death to every rational creature: no mercenaries they, who serve Him
for their own profit, but sons; and they despise consolations and joy in
tribulations, and seek only in what way they can conform them to Christ
crucified, and nourish them on His shames and labours and sorrows. Such
men seek not God nor serve Him for sweetness or consolation, spiritual or
temporal, which they receive from God or the fellow-creature; they seek
not God for their own sakes, nor the neighbour, but God for God, inasmuch
as He is worthy of being loved, and themselves for God, for the glory and
praise of His Name; and they serve their neighbour for God, being of what
profit they may to Him. These men follow the footsteps of the Father,
rejoicing wholly in charity toward their neighbour, loving the servants of
God through the love with which they love their Creator; and they love
imperfect men through love that they should reach perfection, devoting to
them holy desire and continual prayers. They love wicked men, who lie in
the death of mortal sin, because they are rational beings, created by God,
and bought by the same Blood as they, wherefore they mourn over their
condemnation, and to rescue them would give themselves to bodily death. As
to the persecutors and slanderers and judges who take offence at them,
they love these both because they are creatures of God, as I said, and
also because they are the means and cause of testing their virtue, and
helping them reach perfection--especially as to that royal virtue
patience, a sweet virtue, which is never offended or disturbed, nor cast
down by any contrary wind or any molesting of men. Such men are those who
seek God with nothing between, and love Him truly as dear and lawful sons;
and He loves them as a true father, and shows them the secret of His
charity, to make them heirs of His eternal kingdom, wherefore they run,
refreshed by the Blood of Christ, kindled by the fire of divine charity,
by which they are perfectly illumined. Such men do not run in the path of
virtue after their own fashion, nay, but after the fashion of Christ
crucified, following in His steps. Were it possible for them to serve God
and win virtue without labour, they would not wish it. These men do not
act like the second kinds of men, the friend and the servant, for the
service of these last has some ulterior thought. Sometimes it has regard
to the man's own profit; one can reach great friendship in this way, when
he knows his need, and his benefactor, who, as he sees, can and will help
him. Yet first he was a servant, for he knew his own wrong-doing, on which
followed punishment; so from the fear of punishment he drives out his sin,
and lovingly embraces virtue, serving his Lord, whom he has wronged; and
he begins to draw hope from His benignity, considering that He wills not
the death of a sinner, but that he be converted and live. If the man abode
in fear alone, it would not suffice to give him life, nor would he attain
to the perfect favour of his Lord; but he would be a mercenary servant.
Nor ought he to remain only in the love of the fruit and the consolation
which he might receive from his Lord, after he has been made a friend; for
this kind of love would not be strong, but would fail when it was deprived
of sweetness or consolation and joy of mind, or else when some contrary
wind struck it, of persecution or temptation from the devil; then at once
it would fail under temptations of the devil or vexations of the flesh. So
it would fall into confusion through being deprived of mental consolation;
and in the persecutions and insults wrought against it by fellow-
creatures, it would fall into impatience.

So you see, that this kind of love is not strong. Nay, he who loves with
this love does as St. Peter, who before the Passion loved Christ tenderly;
but he was not strong, therefore he failed in the time of the Cross: but
then, after the coming of the Holy Spirit, he separated him from the love
of sweetness, and lost fear, and reached a love strong, and tried in the
fire of many tribulations. Thence, having reached the love of a son, he
bore all such with true patience--nay, ran under them in great gladness,
as he had been going to a marriage feast and not to torment. This was
because he had been made a son. But had Peter remained absorbed in the
sweetness and the fear which he felt in the Passion and after the Passion
of Christ, he would not have reached such perfection as to be a son and
champion of Holy Church, a lover and seeker of souls. But note the way
that Peter took, and the other disciples, to gain power to lose their
servile fear and love of consolations, and to receive the Holy Spirit, as
had been promised them by the Sweet Primal Truth. Therefore says the
Scripture that they shut them in the house, and stayed there in vigil and
continual prayers; they stayed ten days, and then came the Holy Spirit.

Now this is the teaching which we and every rational creature ought to
receive; to shut ourselves into the house, and remain in vigil and
continual prayer: to stay ten days, and then we shall receive the
plenitude of the Holy Spirit. Who, when He was come, illumined them with
truth; and they saw the secret of the immeasurable love of the Word, with
the will of the Father, who willed naught but our sanctification. This has
been shown us by the Blood of that sweet and enamoured Word: who was
restored to His disciples, when the plenitude of the Holy Spirit came. He
came with the power of the Father, the wisdom of the Son, the mercy and
clemency of the Holy Spirit; so the truth of Christ is fulfilled, which He
spake to His disciples: I shall go and shall return to you. Then did He
return, because the Holy Spirit could not come without the Son and the
Father, because He was one thing with them. Thus He came, as I said, with
the power that is assigned to the Father, and the wisdom that is assigned
to the Son, and the benevolence and love that is assigned to the Holy
Spirit. Well did the Apostles show it, for suddenly through love they lost
their fear. So in true wisdom they knew the truth, and went with great
power against the infidels; they threw idols to the ground and drove out
devils. This was not with the power of the world, nor with bodily
fortitude, but with strength of spirit and the power of God, which they
had received through Divine grace. Now thus it will happen to those who
have arisen from the filth of mortal sin and the misery of this world, and
begin to taste the Highest Good and enamour themselves of His sweetness.
But as I have said, by remaining in fear alone, one would not escape hell;
but would do like the thief, who does not steal, because he is afraid of
the gallows; but he would not abstain from stealing if he did not expect
to be punished. It is just such a case when one loves God for the
sweetness of it; that is, one would not be strong and perfect, but weak
and imperfect.

The way to arrive at perfection is that of the disciples, as I said. That
is, as Peter and the others shut themselves into the house, so those have
done and should do who have attained the love of the Father, who are sons.
Those who wish to reach this state should enter the house, and shut
themselves in; that is, the house of the knowledge of themselves, which is
the cell that the soul should inhabit. Within this cell another cell is
found, that of the knowledge of the goodness of God in Himself. So from
knowledge of self the soul draws true humility, with holy hatred of the
wrong which it has done to its Creator, and by this it attains to true and
holy patience. And from the knowledge of God, which it finds in itself, it
wins the virtue of most ardent charity: whence it draws holy and loving
desires. In this wise it finds vigil and continual prayer--that is, while
it abides enclosed in so sweet and glorious a thing as is the knowledge of
itself and of God. It keeps vigil, I say, not only with the eye of the
body, but with the eye of the soul; that is, the eye of the intellect
never sees itself closed, but remains opened upon its Object and ineffable
Love, Christ crucified: and there it finds love, and its own guilt. For
that guilt, Christ gave us His Blood. Then the soul uplifts itself with
deepest devotion, to love what God loves and to hate what He hates. And it
directs all its works in God, and does everything to the glory and praise
of His Name. This is the continual prayer of which Paul says, "Pray
without ceasing." Now this is the way to rise from being only a servant
and a friend--that is, from servile fear and from tender love of one's own
consolation--and to arrive at being a true servant, true friend, true son.
For when one is truly made a son, he does not therefore lose being a
servant and true friend; but is a servant and friend in truth, without any
regard to himself, or to anything except pleasing God alone.

We said that they abode ten days, and then came the Holy Spirit. So the
soul, which wishes to arrive at this perfection, must observe ten days,
that is the ten commandments of the law. And with the legal commandments
it will observe the Counsels; for they are bound together, and the one
cannot be observed without the other. True, those who are in the world
must observe the Counsels mentally, through holy desire, and those who are
freed from the world must observe them both mentally and actually. Thus,
if the soul receives the abundance of the Holy Spirit, with true wisdom of
true and perfect light and knowledge, and with fortitude and power to make
it strong in every battle, it becomes mighty chiefly against itself,
lording it over its own fleshly nature. But all this you could not do if
you went roaming about, in much conversation, keeping far from the cell,
and neglecting the choir. Whence, considering this, I said to you when you
left me that you should study to flee conversation and to visit the cell,
and not to abandon the choir or the refectory (so far as might be possible
to you), and to keep vigil with humble prayer: and thus to fulfil my
desire, when I told you that I desired to see you seek God in truth,
without anything between. I say no more to you. Remain in the holy and
sweet grace of God. Sweet Jesus, Jesus Love.




TO A MANTELLATA OF SAINT DOMINIC CALLED CATARINA DI SCETTO


In the Name of Jesus Christ crucified and of sweet Mary:

My dearest sister and daughter in Christ sweet Jesus. I Catherine, servant
and slave of the servants of Jesus Christ, write to thee in His precious
Blood, with desire to see thee a true servant and bride of Christ
crucified. Servants we ought to be, because we are bought with His blood.
But I do not see that we can be of any profit to Him by our service; we
ought, then, to be of profit to our neighbour, because he is the means by
which we test and gain virtue. Thou knowest that every virtue receives
life from love; and love is gained in love, that is, by raising the eye of
our mind to behold how much we are beloved of God. Seeing ourselves loved,
we cannot do otherwise than love; loving Him, we shall embrace virtue
through the force of love, and shall hate vice and spurn it.

So thou seest that we conceive virtues through God, and bring them to the
birth for our neighbour. Thou knowest well that for the necessity of thy
neighbour thou bringest forth the child charity that is within thy soul,
and patience in the wrongs which thou receivest from him. Thou givest him
prayer, particularly to those who have done thee wrong. And thus we ought
to do; if men are untrue to us, we ought to be true to them, and
faithfully to seek their salvation; loving them of grace, and not by
barter. That is, do thou beware not to love thy neighbour for thine own
profit; for that would not be faithful love, and thou wouldst not respond
to the love which God bears thee. For as God has loved thee of grace, so
He wills that since thou canst not return this love to Him, thou return it
to thy neighbour, loving him of grace and not by barter, as I said.
Neither if thou art wronged, nor if thou shouldst see love toward thee, or
thy joy or profit lessened, must thou lessen or stint love toward thy
neighbour; but love him tenderly, bearing and enduring his faults; and
beholding with great consolation and reverence the servants of God.

Beware lest thou do like mad and foolish people who want to set themselves
to investigate and judge the deeds and habits of the servants of God. He
who does this is entirely worthy of severe rebuke. Know that it would not
be different from setting a law and rule to the Holy Spirit if we wished
to make the servants of God all walk in our own way--a thing which could
never be done. Let the soul inclined to this kind of judgment think that
the root of pride is not yet out, nor true charity toward the neighbour
planted--that is, the loving him by grace and not by barter. Then let us
love the servants of God, and not judge them. Nay, it befits us to love in
general every rational creature: those who are outside of grace we must
love with grief and bitterness over their fault, because they wrong God
and their own soul. Thus thou shalt be in accord with that sweet enamoured
Paul, who mourns with those who mourn, and joys with those who joy; thus
thou shalt mourn with those who are in mournful state, through desire for
the honour of God and for their salvation; and thou shalt joy with the
servants of God who rejoice, possessing God through loving tenderness.

Thou seest, then, that through charity to God we conceive virtues, and
through charity toward our neighbours they are brought to the birth. Being
thus--loving thy neighbour sincerely, without any falsity of love or
heart, freely, without any regard to thine own profit, spiritual or
temporal--thou shalt be a true servant, and respond by means of thy
neighbour to the love which thy Creator bears thee; thou shalt be a
faithful, not a faithless bride. Then does the bride fail in faith to her
bridegroom, when she gives to another creature the faith which she ought
to give to him. Thou art a bride, for Christ in His circumcision showed
that He would wed the human race. Thou, beholding love so ineffable,
shouldst love Him without any means that might be apart from God. Thus art
thou made the servant of thy neighbour, serving him in all things to the
measure of thy power. Verily thou art the bride of Christ, and shouldst be
the servant of thy neighbour. If thou art a faithful bride, since we can
neither be of profit nor of service to God by the love which we bear Him,
we ought, as I said, to serve our neighbour with true and heartfelt love.
In no other way nor wise can we serve Him. Therefore I said to thee that I
desired to see thee the true servant and bride of Christ crucified. I say
no more. Remain in the holy and sweet grace of God. Sweet Jesus, Jesus
Love.




LETTERS TO NERI DI LANDOCCIO DEI PAGLIARESI


Neri di Landoccio dei Pagliaresi is one of the attractive group of
Catherine's secretaries, which included also Stefano Maconi and Barduccio
Canigiani. There is something very charming, wholly Italian and mediaeval,
in the thought of the three highly-born and gently-bred young Tuscans,
who, without leaving the world or taking religious vows, attached
themselves with a pure and passionate devotion to the person of the Beata
Populana, dedicated their time and powers to her service, caught the fire
of her ideals, and after her death followed her wishes for their future.
The faces that appear a little later in such pictures as Botticelli's
"Adoration of the Magi," help us to understand the type of these young
men.

Of the three secretaries, Neri was the first to enter Catherine's service.
It was he who introduced to her most of the people who later became her
disciples, and many letters yet extant from one and another show that he
was devotedly loved by the little group. He was of a sensitive, subtle,
and despondent temperament--a reader of Dante, himself a poet, a man given
to self-torment, and, as his later life showed, with a tendency to
melancholia. He must have possessed tact, force, and probably charm, for
Catherine more than once sent him on important embassies--once as
harbinger of her own coming to Pope Gregory at Avignon, and again, at a
later time, to the corrupt and brilliant court of Queen Giovanna at
Naples. In obedience to the dying wish of his spiritual mother--who
probably well understood his needs--he became a hermit after her death.

Catherine writes to this fine but fearful soul with an exquisite
tenderness. "Confusion of mind," with its inhibiting sadness and
helplessness, is of all evils in the world the one most abhorrent to her
clear, decisive, intuitive nature. Against this, his besetting danger, she
seeks with all her customary vigour to protect her beloved disciple. The
love rather than the wrath of God was, as we have seen, ever the chief
burden of Catherine's teaching. Never did she dwell on it more earnestly
than here, as with searching insight into the unfathomable depths of the
Divine mercy, she writes firmly: "His truth is this, that He created us to
give us life eternal." Her words must have brought reassurance to any
darkened vision, while her practical counsels were never more adapted to
individual need than in these peculiarly gentle letters, written to one
whose temptations and spiritual perils were far different from her own.


In the Name of Jesus Christ crucified and of sweet Mary:

Dearest son in Christ sweet Jesus. I Catherine, servant and slave of the
servants of Jesus Christ, write to thee in His precious Blood: with desire
to see thee in the true light, that in the light may be known the truth of
thy Creator. His truth is this, that He created us to give us life
eternal. But because man rebelled against God, this truth was not
fulfilled, and therefore He descended to the greatest depths to which
descent is possible, when Deity assumed the vesture of our humanity. So we
see in this glorious light that God has been made man, and this He has
done to fulfil His truth in us: and He has shown this to us verily by the
Blood of the Loving Word, inasmuch that what we held by faith is proved to
us with the price of that Blood. The creature that has reason in itself
cannot deny that this is so.

I will, then, that thy confusion be consumed and vanish in the hope of the
Blood, and in the fire of the immeasurable Love of God; and that nothing
remain but the true knowledge of thyself, in which thou shalt humble thee
and grow, and nourish light in thy soul. Is not He more ready to pardon
than we to sin? And is not He the Physician and we the sick, the Bearer of
our iniquities? And does not He hold confusion of mind as worse than all
other faults? Yes, truly. Then, dearest son, open the eye of thine
intellect in the light of most holy faith, and behold how much thou art
beloved of God. And from beholding His love, and the ignorance and
coldness of thy heart, do not fall into confusion; but let the flame of
holy desire increase, with true knowledge and humility, as I said. And the
more thou seest that thou hast not responded to such great favours as thy
Creator has shown thee, humble thyself the more, and say with holy
resolution: "What I have not done to-day, I will do now." Thou knowest
that confusion is wholly discordant with the doctrine which has always
been given thee. It is a leprosy that dries up soul and body, and holds
them in continual affliction, and binds the arms of holy desire, and does
not let one do what one would; and it makes the soul unendurable to
itself, disposing the mind to conflicts and varying fantasies; it robs the
soul of supernatural light, and darkens its natural light. So one falls
into great faithlessness, because one does not know the truth of God, in
which He has created us--that is, that He created us in truth to give us
life eternal. Then with living faith, with holy desire, and with hope in
the Blood of Christ, let the devil of confusion be defeated.

I say no more. Remain in the holy and sweet grace of God. I pray Him to
give thee His sweet benediction. Sweet Jesus, Jesus Love.


In the Name of Jesus Christ crucified and of sweet Mary:

Dearest and sweetest son in Christ sweet Jesus. I Catherine, servant and
slave of the servants of Jesus Christ, write to thee in His precious
Blood: with desire to see in thee the light of most holy faith, in order
that thou mayest never be shocked by anything that may happen to thee; but
may thy mind be pacified concerning all the mysteries of God, as thou
beholdest the ineffable love which moved Him to draw forth from Himself
reasonable creatures, and to give us His image and likeness, and to buy us
with the Blood of the humble and spotless Lamb. Thus doing, thou wilt hold
all that happens to thee in due reverence, and in true humility thou wilt
deny mere appearances, when sometimes through the illusion of the devil
things seem to thee to get out of their right proportion, through thy many
mental occupations and sweet physical torments. I say no more. Remain in
the holy and sweet grace of God. May Christ the Blessed give thee His
eternal benediction. Sweet Jesus, Jesus Love.


In the Name of Jesus Christ crucified and of sweet Mary:

Dearest and sweetest son in Christ sweet Jesus. I Catherine, servant and
slave of the servants of Jesus Christ, write to thee in His precious
Blood: with desire to see thee ever grow from virtue to virtue, till I
behold thee return to that sea of peace where thou shalt never have any
fear of being separated from God. For the foul perverse law that fights
against the Spirit shall be left on earth, and shall have rendered its due
thereto. I will, sweet my son, that while thou livest in this life thou
exert thee to live dead to all self-will, and in such death thou shalt win
virtue. Thus living, thou shalt resign to earth the law of perverse
desire. So thou shalt not fear lest God permit in thy case what He
permitted in that other, nor shalt thou suffer, because for a little while
the human part of thee is separated from me and from the rest of the
family. Comfort thee, and may that which Truth says abide in thy mind--
that not one person shall be lost out of His hands. I say out of His
hands, because all things are His. And I know that thou understandest me
without many words. I say no more. Remain in the holy and sweet grace of
God. Sweet Jesus, Jesus Love.




TO MONNA GIOVANNA AND HER OTHER DAUGHTERS IN SIENA


"Teach us, O Lord, and enable us to live the life of saints and angels!"
cried Cardinal Newman. There is a lovely parallel to Catherine's prayer in
the Paternoster of Dante's blessed souls in Purgatory:

  "Come del suo voler gli angeli tuoi
  Fan sacrificio a te, cantando osanna,
  Cosi facciano gli uomini de' suoi."

From the gentle thoughts on non-resistance with which this letter opens,
Catherine turns with transition as fine as sudden to the splendid figure
of the holy soul as a horse without bridle, running most swiftly "from
grace to grace, from virtue to virtue." One is accustomed by Plato--not to
speak of Browning in "The Two Poets of Croisic"--to the image of the soul
as a charioteer. Catherine's metaphor is less familiar but not less
forceful. The will, to her, is only free when pure: impure and sinful
desires, far from being the sign of liberty, are the bit and bridle that
hinder its fiery course toward God. The same thought, less vividly put, is
found in a modern theologian--Dr. Moberly. "The real consummation of
either moral or immoral character," he writes, "would exclude the
ambiguity which was offered as the criterion of free will.... Full power
to sin is not the key to freedom. On the contrary, all inherent power to
do wrong is a direct infringement of the reality of free-will.... Free-
will is not the independence of the creature, but rather his self-
realisation in perfect dependence. Freedom is self-identity with
goodness."


In the Name of Jesus Christ crucified and of sweet Mary:

Dearest and most beloved daughters in Christ sweet Jesus: I Catherine,
servant and slave of the servants of Jesus Christ, and your mother in
Christ, write to you and comfort you in the Precious Blood of the Son of
God, who was a gentle Lamb, spotless and slain not by power of nails or
lance, but by power of love and measureless charity which He felt and
still feels to His creatures. Oh, charity unspeakable of our God! Thou
hast taught me, Love most sweet, and hast shown me, not by words alone--
for Thou sayest that Thou dost not delight in many words--but by deeds,
in which Thou sayest that Thou dost delight, and which Thou dost demand
from Thy servants. And what hast Thou taught me, O Love Uncreate? Thou
hast taught me that I should bear, patiently like a lamb, not only harsh
words, but even blows harsh and hard and injury and loss. And with this
Thou dost will that I be innocent and spotless, harmful to no one of my
neighbours and brethren; not only in case of those who do not persecute
us, but in that of those who injure us; Thou dost will that we pray for
them as for special friends who give us a good and great gain. And Thou
dost will that we be patient and meek not only in injuries and temporal
losses, but universally, in everything that may be contrary to my will: as
Thou didst not will Thine own will to be done in anything, but the will of
Thy Father. How then shall we lift up our head against the goodness of
God, wishing that our perverted wills should be fulfilled? How shall we
not will that the will of God be fulfilled?

O Jesus, Most Sweet Love, make Thy will to be fulfilled in us ever, as in
Heaven by Thy Angels and saints! Dearest my daughter in Christ, this is
the meekness which our sweet Saviour wants to find in us: that we, with
hearts wholly peaceful and tranquil, be content with everything which He
plans and does concerning us, and wish neither times nor seasons in our
own way, but in His alone. Then the soul, so divested of its every wish
and clothed with the will of God, is very pleasing to God. Like an
unbridled horse, it runs most swiftly from grace to grace, from virtue to
virtue; for it has no bridle that holds or prevents it from running, since
it has severed from itself every inordinate appetite and impulse of its
own self-will, which are bands and bridles that do not allow the souls of
spiritual men to run.

The affairs of the Crusade are going constantly better and better, and the
honour of God is increasing every day. Increase constantly in virtue, and
furnish the ship of your soul, for our time draws near. Comfort and bless
Francesca, from Jesus Christ and me; and tell her to be zealous that I may
find her increased in virtue when I shall return. Bless and comfort all my
sons in Christ. Now this very day the ambassador of the Queen of Cyprus
came and talked to me. He is going to the Holy Father, Christ on earth, to
urge him concerning the affairs of the holy Crusade. And, moreover, the
Holy Father has sent to Genoa to urge them concerning the same thing.

Our sweet Saviour give you His eternal benediction! Remain in the holy and
sweet grace of God. Sweet Jesus, Jesus Love.




TO MESSER JOHN
THE SOLDIER OF FORTUNE AND HEAD OF THE COMPANY
THAT CAME IN THE TIME OF FAMINE


 _Which letter is one of credentials, certifying that he may put faith in
all things said to him by Fra Raimondo of Capua. Wherefore the said Fra
Raimondo went to the said Messer John, and the other captains, to induce
them to go over and fight against the infidels should it happen that
others should go. And before leaving he had from them and from Messer John
a promise on the sacrament that they would go, and they signed it with
their hands and sealed it with their seals._

 So runs the old heading to this letter. It is piquant to contemplate
Catherine writing to that picturesque gentleman, Sir John Hawkwood. Her
attitude of friendly and almost sisterly sympathy with the audacious free-
lance appears in her unwonted addition of the word "glory" to her usual
formula, "The honour of God and the salvation of souls," in the last
sentence. We are told that the letter and Fra Raimondo produced a real
impression, and that Hawkwood not only vowed himself to the Crusade, but
that, no Crusade occurring, he from this time bore arms only in regular
warfare. He who follows the Englishman's subsequent career may perhaps
wonder a little what "regular warfare" meant to his mind. Yet let us
remember to his credit that Hawkwood protested against the massacre of
Cesena--nor was this the only occasion on which his nature flashed for a
moment a chivalrous light. May his bones rest in peace in the Duomo of
Florence, that city to the gates of which he brought terror and dismay,
but which bore him no grudge, and at the end decreed him splendid
funerals, and sepulchre among her honoured sons!


In the Name of Jesus Christ crucified and of sweet Mary:

To you, most beloved and dear brothers in Christ Jesus: I Catherine,
servant and slave of the servants of Jesus Christ, write in His precious
Blood: with desire to see you a true son and knight of Christ, in such
wise that you may desire to give your life a thousand times, if need were,
in service of sweet and good Jesus. This is a gift which would pay off all
our sins, which we have committed against our Saviour. Dearest and
sweetest brother in Christ Jesus, it would be a great thing now if you
would withdraw a little into yourself, and consider, and reflect how great
are the pains and anguish which you have endured by being in the service
and pay of the devil. Now my soul desires that you should change your way
of life, and take the pay and the cross of Christ crucified, you and all
your followers and companions; so that you may be Christ's company, to
march against the infidel dogs who possess our Holy Place, where rested
the Sweet Primal Truth and bore death and pains for us. I beg you, then,
gently in Christ Jesus, that since God and also our Holy Father have
ordered a crusade against the infidels, and you take such pleasure in war
and fighting, you should not make war against Christians any more--for
this is a wrong to God; but go against the infidels! For it is a great
cruelty that we who are Christians, and members bound in the Body of Holy
Church, should persecute one another. We are not to do so; but to rise
with perfect zeal, and to uplift ourselves above every evil thought.

I marvel much that you, having, as I heard, promised to be willing to go
to die for Christ in this holy crusade, are wanting to make war in these
parts. This is not that holy disposition which God demands from you if you
are to go to so holy and venerable a place. It seems to me that you ought
now, at this present time, to dispose you to virtue, until the time shall
come for us and the others who shall be ready to give their lives for
Christ: and thus you shall show that you are a manly and true knight.

There is coming to you this father and son of mine, Brother Raimondo, who
brings you this letter. Trust in what he tells you; because he is a true,
faithful servant of God, and will advise you and say to you nothing except
what will be to the honour of God and the safety and glory of your soul. I
say no more. I beg you, dearest brother, to keep in memory the shortness
of your time. Remain in the holy and sweet grace of God. Sweet Jesus,
Jesus Love.




TO MONNA COLOMBA IN LUCCA


Let us hope that the frivolous Monna Colomba listened to Catherine's
gentle but very explicit exhortations and turned away from her levities.
If she had a sense of humour--and it is a not uncommon possession of
light-minded elderly widows--she must have been lovingly entertained at
the pale virgin's identification of herself with those who "walk in the
way of luxuries and pleasures," and "set themselves up as an example of
sin and vanity." But Catherine's use of the first person in this
connection, strained though it may appear, is more than a figure of
speech, to soften the severity of her rebuke. We learn from the legend
that till the end of her life she never ceased to repent, bitterly and
with tears, for having at the age of twelve allowed an older sister to
dress her prettily, and blanch her hair after the fashion of the day. The
reason for this terrible lapse, as she told her confessor, was simply a
delight in beautiful things--but she always looked back on it with horror.

The application of the finding of Christ in the Temple, in this letter, is
curious, but not devoid of grace.


In the Name of Jesus Christ crucified and of sweet Mary:

To you, dearest sister and daughter in Christ sweet Jesus: I Catherine,
servant and slave of the servants of Jesus Christ, write in His precious
Blood, with desire that I might see you a fruitful field, receiving the
seed of the Word of God, and bringing forth fruit for yourself and others.
I want to see you, who are now getting to be an old woman, and who are
free from worldly ties, a mirror of virtue to younger women, who are still
bound to the world by the tie of their husbands.

Alas, alas, I perceive that we are unfruitful ground, for we are letting
the Word of God be smothered by the inordinate affections and desires of
the world, and are walking in the way of its luxuries and pleasures,
studying to please our fellow-beings rather than our Creator. And there is
a more wretched thing yet, for our own evil-doing is not enough for us;
where we ought to be an example of virtue and modesty, we set ourselves up
as an example of sin and vanity. And as the devil was not willing to fall
alone, but wanted a large company with him, so we are enticing other
people to those same vanities and amusements that we indulge in ourselves.
You ought to withdraw, by love of virtue and your salvation, from vain
diversions and worldly weddings--for they do not suit your condition--and
try to keep others away, who would like to be there. But you talk bad
talk, and entice young women, who are wanting to withdraw from going to
these things through love of virtue, because they see that it is wronging
God. I do not wonder, then, if no fruit appears, since the seed is
smothered as I said. Perhaps you would find some excuse in saying,
"Still, I have to condescend to my friends and relatives by doing this, so
that they will not be annoyed and irritated with me." So fear and
perverted self-indulgence sap our life, and often kill us; rob us of the
perfection to which God chose and calls us. This excuse is not acceptable
to God; for we ought not to condescend to people in a matter which wrongs
God and our own soul; nor to love or serve them, except in those matters
which come from God and befit our condition.

Oh me, miserable! Was it our relatives or friends or any fellow-being who
bought us? No; Christ crucified alone was the Lamb who with love
unsearchable sacrificed His Body, making Him our Purification and Healing,
our Food and Raiment, and the Bed where we can rest. He had no regard to
love of self nor fleshly joy, but abased Himself in pain, enduring shames
and insults, seeking the honour of the Father and our salvation. It ill
befits that we poor miserable men should hold by another way than that
held by the Sweet Primal Truth.

You know that God is not found in luxuries and pleasures. We perceive that
when Our Saviour was lost in the Temple, going to the Feast, Mary could
not find Him among friends or relatives, but found Him in the Temple
disputing with the doctors. And this He did to give us an example--for He
is our Rule, and the Way we should follow. Notice that it says that He was
lost when going to the Feast. Know, most beloved sister, that, as was
said, God is not found at feasts or balls or games or weddings or places
of recreation. Nay, going there is a very sure means of losing Him, and
falling into many sins and faults, and inordinate frivolous self-
indulgence. Since this is the reason that has made us lose God by grace,
is there any way to find Him again? Yes; to accompany Mary. Let us seek
Him with her, in bitterness and pain and distaste for the fault committed
against our Creator, to condescend to the will of men. It befits us then
to go to the Temple, and there He is found. Let our hearts, our minds, and
desires be lifted up with this Company of Bitterness, and let us go to the
Temple of our soul, and there we shall know ourselves. Then the soul,
recognizing itself not to be, will recognize the goodness of God towards
it, who is He who is. Then the will shall be uplifted with zeal, and shall
love what God loves and hate what God hates. Then, as it enters into
reason with itself, it will rebuke the memory which has held in itself the
gaieties and pleasures of the world, and has nor held nor retained the
favours and gifts and great benefits of God, who has given Himself to us
with so great fire of love. It will rebuke the mind, which has given
itself to understand the will of fellow-creatures, and the shows and
observances of the world, rather than the will of its Creator, and
therefore will and fleshly love have turned them to love and desire those
gross things of sense, which pass like the wind. The soul should not do
thus, but should note and know the will of God, which seeks and wants
naught but our sanctification, and has therefore given us life.

God has not set you free from the world, for you are smothered and drowned
in the world by your affections and inordinate desires. Now, have you more
than one soul? No. If you had two, you might give one to God and the other
to the world. Nor have you more than one body, and this gets tired over
every little thing.

Be a dispenser to the poor of your temporal substance. Submit you to the
yoke of holy and true obedience. Kill, kill your own will, that it may not
be so tied to your relatives, and mortify your body, and do not so pamper
it in delicate ways. Despise yourself, and have in regard neither rank nor
riches, for virtue is the only thing that makes us gentlefolk, and the
riches of this life are the worst of poverty when possessed with
inordinate love apart from God. Recall to memory what the glorious Jerome
said about this, which one can never repeat often enough, forbidding that
widows should abound in daintiness, or keep their face anointed, or their
garments choice or delicate. Nor should their conversation be with vain or
dissolute young women, but in the cell: they should do like the turtle-
dove, who, when her companion has died, mourns for ever, and keeps to
herself, and wants no other company. Limit your intercourse, dearest and
most beloved Sister, to Christ crucified; set your affection and desire on
following Him by the way of shame and true humility, in gentleness,
binding you to the Lamb with the bands of charity.

This my soul desires, that you may be a true daughter, and a bride
consecrated to Christ, and a fruitful field, not sterile, but full of the
sweet fruits of true virtues. Hasten, hasten, for time is short and the
road is long. And if you gave all you have in the world, time would not
pause for you from running its course. I say no more. Remain in the holy
and sweet grace of God. Pardon me if I have said too many words, for the
love and zeal that I have for your salvation have made me say them. Know
that I would far rather do something for you than merely talk. May God
fill you with His most sweet Favour. Sweet Jesus, Jesus Love.




TO BROTHER RAIMONDO OF CAPUA
OF THE ORDER OF THE PREACHERS


The following is one of the famous letters of the world. The record in art
and literature of the scene which it depicts has carried knowledge of
Catherine to many who otherwise would have but the vaguest idea of her
personality. The letter has been frequently translated, but most of the
translators have avoided the opening and closing paragraphs, with their
amazing, confused, and to our modern taste almost shocking metaphors.
Surely, however, we want the whole just as Catherine poured it out; full
of intense excitement, her emotions clearer than her ideas, lifted into a
region where taste and logic have no meaning, and using, to convey the
inexpressible feelings quickened by the events she describes, homeliest
figures of speech, such as her commercial surroundings naturally suggest
to her. For the matter of that, modern congregations sing with no
distress:

  "Jesus let me still abide
  In Thy heart and Wounded Side."

The reiteration of the figure of the Blood is here psychologically
inevitable. Catherine writes still quivering from close contact with the
victim of a mediaeval execution.

A young gentleman from Perugia, Niccolo Tuldo by name, had been condemned
to death for speaking critically of the Sienese Government. It does not
appear that he was a serious political conspirator, but simply a young man
whose aristocratic sympathies led him thoughtlessly to the use of haughty
or bitter speech. But a _parvenu_ Government is always sensitive. We hear
of a man at this time being condemned and executed because he had not
invited one of the Riformatori to a feast!

Death was lightly inflicted in those days: probably it was no more lightly
suffered than in our own. We have vivid accounts of the incredulity with
which Niccolo Tuldo received his sentence--incredulity leading to horror,
to rage, to rebellion, to black despair. Then Catherine went to him; her
own words tell the rest. As one reads of the wonderful effect of her
soothing presence, as one sees the terrified youth becoming quiet and
subdued, clinging wistfully to the spiritual strength of this frail woman,
and catching at the end not only her spirit of calm submission, but even
something of her exaltation, one is irresistibly reminded of another
scene--George Eliot's marvellous description in "Adam Bede" of Dinah's
ministry to Hetty in the prison. But this scene is real, that only
imagined; and here no third person, but the consoler herself, reveals the
meaning of the experience to her own spirit.

In bringing Niccolo Tuldo to so illumined an end that he recognized the
judgment-place as holy, and died in full accord with the will of God,
Catherine achieved a great marvel which only Christianity can compass: she
lifted one of those seemingly purposeless and cruel accidents of destiny
which stagger faith, into unity with the organic work of the world's
redemption.


In the Name of Jesus Christ crucified and of sweet Mary:

Most beloved and dearest father and dear my son in Christ Jesus: I
Catherine, servant and slave of the servants of Jesus Christ, write to
you, commending myself to you in the precious Blood of the Son of God;
with desire to see you inflamed and drowned in that His sweetest Blood,
which is blended with the fire of His most ardent charity. This my soul
desires, to see you therein, you and Nanni and Jacopo my son. I see no
other remedy by which we may reach those chief virtues which are necessary
to us. Sweetest father, your soul, which has made itself food for me--(and
no moment of time passes that I do not receive this food at the table of
the sweet Lamb slain with such ardent love)--your soul, I say, would not
attain the little virtue, true humility, were it not drowned in the Blood.
This virtue shall be born from hate, and hate from love. Thus the soul is
born with very perfect purity, as iron issues purified from the furnace.

I will, then, that you lock you in the open side of the Son of God, which
is an open treasure-house, full of fragrance, even so that sin itself
there becomes fragrant. There rests the sweet Bride on the bed of fire and
blood. There is seen and shown the secret of the heart of the Son of God.
Oh, flowing Source, which givest to drink and excitest every loving
desire, and givest gladness, and enlightenest every mind and fillest every
memory which fixes itself thereon! so that naught else can be held or
meant or loved, save this sweet and good Jesus! Blood and fire,
immeasurable Love! Since my soul shall be blessed in seeing you thus
drowned, I will that you do as he who draws up water with a bucket, and
pours it over something else; thus do you pour the water of holy desire on
the head of your brothers, who are our members, bound to us in the body of
the sweet Bride. And beware, lest through illusion of the devils--who I
know have given you trouble, and will give you--or through the saying of
some fellow-creature, you should ever draw back: but persevere always in
the hour when things look most cold, until we may see blood shed with
sweet and enamoured desires.

Up, up, sweetest my father! and let us sleep no more! For I hear such news
that I wish no more bed of repose or worldly state. I have just received a
Head in my hands, which was to me of such sweetness as heart cannot think,
nor tongue say, nor eye see, nor the ears hear. The will of God went on
through the other mysteries wrought before; of which I do not tell, for it
would be too long. I went to visit him whom you know: whence he received
such comfort and consolation that he confessed, and prepared himself very
well. And he made me promise by the love of God that when the time of the
sentence should come, I would be with him. So I promised, and did. Then in
the morning, before the bell rang, I went to him: and he received great
consolation. I led him to hear Mass, and he received the Holy Communion,
which he had never before received. His will was accorded and submitted to
the will of God; and only one fear was left, that of not being strong at
the moment. But the measureless and glowing goodness of God deceived him,
creating in him such affection and love in the desire of God that he did
not know how to abide without Him, and said: "Stay with me, and do not
abandon me. So it shall not be otherwise than well with me. And I die
content." And he held his head upon my breast. I heard then the rejoicing,
and breathed the fragrance of his blood; and it was not without the
fragrance of mine, which I desire to shed for the sweet Bridegroom Jesus.
And, desire waxing in my soul, feeling his fear, I said: "Comfort thee,
sweet my brother; since we shall soon arrive at the Wedding Feast. Thou
shalt go there bathed in the sweet Blood of the Son of God, with the sweet
Name of Jesus, which I will never to leave thy memory. And I await thee at
the place of justice." Now think, father and son, his heart then lost all
fear, and his face changed from sorrow to gladness; and he rejoiced, he
exulted, and said: "Whence comes such grace to me, that the sweetness of
my soul will await me at the holy place of justice?" See, that he had come
to so much light that he called the place of justice holy! And he said: "I
shall go wholly joyous, and strong, and it will seem to me a thousand
years before I arrive, thinking that you are awaiting me there." And he
said words so sweet as to break one's heart, of the goodness of God.

I waited for him then at the place of justice; and waited there with
constant prayer, in the presence of Mary and of Catherine, Virgin and
martyr. But before I attained, I prostrated me, and stretched my neck upon
the block; but my desire did not come there, for I had too full
consciousness of myself. Then up! I prayed, I constrained her, I cried
"Mary!" for I wished this grace, that at the moment of death she should
give him a light and a peace in his heart, and then I should see him reach
his goal. Then my soul became so full that although a multitude of people
were there, I could see no human creature, for the sweet promise made to
me.

Then he came, like a gentle lamb; and seeing me, he began to smile, and
wanted me to make the sign of the Cross. When he had received the sign, I
said: "Down! To the Bridal, sweetest my brother! For soon shalt thou be in
the enduring life." He prostrated him with great gentleness, and I
stretched out his neck; and bowed me down, and recalled to him the Blood
of the Lamb. His lips said naught save Jesus! and, Catherine! And so
saying, I received his head in my hands, closing my eyes in the Divine
Goodness, and saying, "I will!"

Then was seen God-and-Man, as might the clearness of the sun be seen. And
He stood wounded, and received the blood; in that blood a fire of holy
desire, given and hidden in the soul by grace. He received it in the fire
of His divine charity. When He had received his blood and his desire, He
also received his soul, which He put into the open treasure-house of His
Side, full of mercy; the primal Truth showing that by grace and mercy
alone He received it, and not for any other work. Oh, how sweet and
unspeakable it was to see the goodness of God! with what sweetness and
love He awaited that soul departed from the body! He turned the eye of
mercy toward her, when she came to enter within His Side, bathed in blood
which availed through the Blood of the Son of God. Thus received by God
through power--powerful is He to do! the Son also, Wisdom the Word
Incarnate, gave him and made him share the crucified love with which He
received painful and shameful death through the obedience which he showed
to the Father, for the good of the human race. And the hands of the Holy
Spirit locked him within.

But he made a gesture sweet enough to draw a thousand hearts. And I do not
wonder, for already he tasted the divine sweetness. He turned as does the
Bride when she has reached the threshold of her bridegroom, who turns back
her head and her look, bowing to those who have accompanied her, and with
the gesture she gives signs of thanks.

When he was at rest, my soul rested in peace and in quiet, in so great
fragrance of blood that I could not bear to remove the blood which had
fallen on me from him.

Ah me, miserable! I will say no more. I stayed on the earth with the
greatest envy. And it seems to me that the first new stone is already in
place. Therefore do not wonder if I impose upon you nothing save to see
yourselves drowned in the blood and flame poured from the side of the Son
of God. Now then, no more negligence, sweetest my sons, since the blood is
beginning to flow, and to receive the life. Sweet Jesus, Jesus Love.




TO GREGORY XI


This is the first letter to Gregory which has come down to us; it may or
may not have been the first which Catherine wrote him. That she had had
relations with him earlier seems fairly certain. As early as 1372 we find
her writing to Gerard du Puy, a relative of the Pope and Papal Legate in
Tuscany. This letter is evidently a reply, and contains passages which she
apparently expected du Puy to share with Gregory. Perhaps Gregory had made
approaches to her through his cousin. There was nothing unlikely at that
time in such action on the part of a great churchman, who, man of the
world though he was, retained a sincere reverence for humble men and
women.

Be this as it may, Catherine in her letter to Gerard du Puy writes
concerning the condition of the Church in the strain of indignant sorrow
which she was to hold till her death: "In reply to the first of the three
things you ask me, I will say that I believe that our sweet Christ on
earth should do away entirely with two things which ravage the Bride of
Christ. The first is the over-great tenderness and care for relatives,
which ought to be entirely mortified. The other is that over-great good
nature which is founded on too great mercy.... Christ holds three vices as
especially evil--impurity, avarice, and swollen pride, which reign in the
Bride of Christ among the prelates, who care for nothing but luxuries and
honours and vast riches. A strong justice is needed to correct them, for
too great pity is the greatest cruelty. As to the other question, I say:
When I told you that you should toil for Holy Church, I was not thinking
only of the labours you should assume about temporal things, but chiefly
that you and the Holy Father ought to toil and do what you can to get rid
of the wolfish shepherds who care for nothing but eating and fine palaces
and big horses. Oh me, that which Christ won upon the wood of the Cross is
spent with harlots! I beg that if you were to die for it, you tell the
Holy Father to put an end to such iniquities. And

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/7403