SOURCE: "Catherine's Literary Work," in Saint Catherine of Siena: A Study in the Religion, Literature and History of the Fourteenth Century in Italy, J. M. Dent and Company and E. P. Dutton and Company, 1907, pp. 353-850.

[In the excerpt that follows, Gardner places Catherine of Siena's literary work within the context of Christian mysticism as well as within more mainstream theology.]

"Anco vi prego che il Libro e ogni scrittura la quale trovaste di me, voi e frate Bartolomeo e frate Tomaso e il Maestro, ve le rechiate per le mani; e fatene quello che vedete che sia piu onore di Dio, con missere Tomaso insieme: nel quale io trovava alcuna recreazione."—St. Catherine to Fra Raimondo, Letter 373 (102).

At the end of her life, Catherine took thought for the written word that she was leaving behind her, still to speak with her voice after she had passed away. We have seen her, in her last letter, commend her works to Fra Raimondo and her other literary executors: il Libro e ogni scrittura la quale trovaste di me. The literary value of these remains is probably the last thing of which the Saint, "this blessed virgin and mother of thousands of souls," as Barduccio calls her, would have thought; she was not, in any normal sense of the words, a "woman of letters"; but, nevertheless, her spiritual and mystical writings rank among the classics of the language of her beloved native land, and hold, indeed, a position of unique importance in the literature of the fourteenth century.

It was in the brief interval between her leaving Florence and her going to Rome, a few months of comparative peace which she passed at Siena in the late summer and early autumn of 1378, that Catherine had completed her wonderful book: the Dialogo, or Trattato della Divina Provvidenza, also known as the Libro della Divina Dottrina.

"When the peace had been announced," writes Fra Raimondo,

she returned to her own home, and set herself with fresh diligence to the composition of a certain book, which, inspired by the supreme Spirit, she dictated in her vernacular. She had besought her secretaries (who were wont to write the letters which she despatched in all directions) attentively to observe everything when, according to her custom, she was rapt out of her corporeal senses, and carefully to write down whatever she then dictated. This they did heedfully, and compiled a book full of high and most salutary doctrines, which had been revealed to her by the Lord and were dictated by her, by word of mouth, in the vernacular speech.¹

In her last letter, Catherine simply refers to it as il libro nel quale io trovava alcuna recreazione, "the book in which I found some recreation"; and, although her friends and disciples thus describe her as dictating it to her secretaries while "rapt in singular excess and abstraction of mind," it is not clear that she herself would have made any claims of supernatural authority for it, or have regarded it as anything more than the pious meditations of a spirit "athirst with very great desire for the honour of God and the salvation of souls," one who (in her own characteristic phrase) "was dwelling in the cell of knowledge of self, in order better to know the goodness of God."

The book is concerned with the whole spiritual life of man, in the form of a prolonged dialogue, or series of dialogues, between the eternal Father and the impassioned human soul, who is here clearly Catherine herself. It seems to be properly divided into six treatises or Trattati: an Introduction (cap. I to cap. 8), the Trattato della Discrezione (cap. 9 to cap. 64), the Trattato dell' Orazione (cap. 65 to cap. 86), the Trattato delle Lagrime (cap. 87 to cap. 134), the Trattato della Divina Provvidenza (cap. 135 to cap. 153), and the Trattato dell' Obbedienza (cap. 154 to cap. 167).² It opens with a striking passage on what we may call the essence of mysticism, the possibility of the union of the soul with God in love:—

When a soul lifts herself up, athirst with very great desire for the honour of God and the salvation of souls, she exercises herself for a while in habitual virtue, and dwells in the cell of knowledge of self, in order better to know the goodness of God; for love follows knowledge and when she loves, she seeks to follow and to ciothe' herselt with the truth. But in no way does the creature taste and become illumined by this truth as much as by means of humble and continuous prayer, based on knowledge of self and of God; for prayer, exercising the soul in this way, unites her to God, as she follows the steps of Christ crucified; and thus, by desire and affection and union of love, she is transformed into Him. This it seems that Christ meant when He said: If a man love Me, he will keep My words; and again: He that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him and will manifest Myself to him, and he will be one with Me and I with him. And in many places we find similar words, by which we can see that it is true that, by affection of love, the soul becomes another He.³

The rest of the book is practically an expansion of the revelation that Catherine had in a vision, after receiving Holy Communion on a feast of the Blessed Virgin, in the autumn of the previous year; a revelation which, in a more partial form, she had already set forth in a letter to Fra Raimondo.⁴ It is, as it were, a gathering together of the spiritual teachings scattered through her letters. On the whole, it reads somewhat less ecstatically, as though written with more deliberation than the letters, and is in parts drawn out to considerable length, and sometimes moves slowly. The effect is that of a mysterious voice from the cloud, talking on in a great silence; and the result is monotonous, because the listener's attention becomes overstrained. Here and there, it is almost a relief when the Divine Voice ceases, and Catherine herself takes up the word. At other times, however, we feel that we have almost passed behind the veil that shields the Holy of Holies, and that we are, in very truth, hearing Catherine's rendering into finite words of the ineffable things which she has learned by intuition in that half hour during which there is silence in Heaven. The importance of the Dialogo in the history of Italian literature has never been fully realized. In a language which is singularly poor in mystical works (though so rich in almost every other field of thought), it stands with the Divina Commedia as one of the two supreme attempts to express the eternal in the symbolism of a day, to paint the union of the soul with the suprasensible while still imprisoned in the flesh. The whole of Catherine's life is the realization of the end of Dante's poem: "to remove those living in this life from the state of misery, and to lead them to the state of felicity"; and the mysticism of Catherine's book is as practical and altruistic as that of Dante's, when he declares to Can Grande that the whole Commedia "was undertaken not for speculation, but for work. For albeit in some parts or passages it is treated in speculative fashion, this is not for the sake of speculation, but for the sake of work."⁵ Thus Catherine, in the preliminary chapters of the Dialogo, "wishing more virilely to know and follow the truth," makes her first petition to the eternal Father for herself, only because "the soul cannot perform any true service to her neighbour by teaching, example, or prayer, unless she first serves herself by acquiring and possessing virtue." By the infinite desire that proceeds from love, the soul can make reparation to God for her neighbour's sins, as well as for her own. Even as charity gives life to all the virtues, so all the vices have their root in self-love, and both are realized in action by means of others. "There can be no perfect virtue, none that bears fruit, unless it be exercised by means of our neighbour."⁶

For virtue to be perfect, it must be exercised with discretion, which discretion is nought else than a true knowledge that the soul should have of herself and of Me, and in this knowledge it has its root." Discretion, which springs from charity and is nurtured in the soil of humility, should be the lamp of the whole spiritual life, directing all the powers of the soul to serve God and to love her neighbour, offering up the life of the body for the salvation of his soul, and her temporal substance for the welfare of his body. The face of the Church, the Spouse of Christ, has grown like that of one smitten with leprosy, through the impurity, the self-love, the pride and avarice of her ministers, "those who feed at her breasts"; but by the prayers, desires, tears, and labours of God's servants, her beauty will be restored to her, for the humanity of the Word still stands as the bridge between earth and Heaven.

This figure of the Word as the bridge from time to eternity, the road to which has been broken by the fall of Adam, is worked out at length, Catherine laying stress upon the doctrine that "the eternal Truth has created us without ourselves, but will not save us without ourselves." The bridge has three steps or grades: the Feet that were nailed to the Cross; the Side, that was pierced to reveal the ineffable love of the Heart; the Mouth, where the bitterness of gall and vinegar is turned to peace. On the bridge (Catherine's imagery suddenly changing form) is the garden of the Church, to minister the bread of life and the blood that is drink, in order that the pilgrims may not faint by the way. These three steps also represent the three powers of the soul: will, memory, and understanding; as likewise the three states of the soul in God's service, by which she passes from servile fear and mercenary obedience to true fidelity and friendship, and, lastly, to perfect filial love.…

To this state of perfection in love, the soul comes by perseverance in holy prayer, offered up continually in the house of knowledge of self and of God, inebriated with the blood, clad in the fire of divine charity, fed on the sacramental food. Vocal prayer is but the preparation for mental prayer, in which God visits the soul, and the affection of charity is in itself a perpetual prayer. Souls that love God less for His own sake than for the consolation that they find in Him are easily deceived. When that consolation fails them, they think they offend God; and, for fear of losing their own peace, they do not succour their neighbour in his need, not realizing that "every vocal or mental exercise is ordained by Me, that the soul may practise it to come to perfect charity towards Me and towards her neighbour, and to preserve her in that charity."⁸ Such souls are deluded by spiritual self-love, and are easily deceived by false visions that come from the devil. But the soul who has attained to perfect love, and who truly knows herself, does not consider the gifts and graces of her divine Friend, but the charity with which He gives them. Without leaving the cell of self-knowledge, she goes forth in God's name, prepared to endure sufferings, and to put into practice for the service of her neighbour the virtues that she has conceived in her mystical habitation. Thus the soul attains a fourth state, of perfect union in God: "for there is no love of Me without love of man, and no love of man without love of Me, for the one love cannot be separated from the other."⁹

In this state of perfect union, the Saints receive such strength that they not merely bear with patience, but long with panting desire to endure suffering for the glory of God's name. With St. Paul, such as these bear in their bodies the marks of Christ: "that is, the crucified love that they have glows out in their bodies, and they reveal it by despising themselves, and by delighting in insults, enduring troubles and pains from whatever side and in whatever way I concede them." Perfectly dead to their own will, they are never deprived of the presence of God even in feeling: "I continually reside by grace and by feeling in their souls; and whenever they wish to unite their mind with Me through affection of love, they can do so; for their desire has attained to such complete union, through love's affection, that nothing can separate them from Me."¹⁰ But although such souls ever possess God by grace, and realize His presence in feeling, they cannot be uninterruptedly united to Him as long as they are fettered to the body.…

Such souls yearn to be delivered from the body, but are perfectly resigned to the will of God, rejoicing in being allowed to suffer for His honour. Their union with Him, thus temporarily interrupted, is ever renewed with increased intimacy: "I ever return with increase of grace and with more perfect union, ever revealing Myself to them anew, with a more lofty knowledge of My truth."¹² It is for such souls as these, with their prayers and sweat and tears, to wash the face of Christ's Spouse, the Church: "for which reason I showed her to thee in the guise of a damosel, whose face was all made filthy, as though of one smitten with leprosy, by the sins of her ministers and of all the Christian community who feed at her breast."

A frightful picture of the corruption of the clergy follows, in the Trattato delle Lagrime, after Catherine has touched at some length upon "the infinite variety of tears," and the way of coming to perfect purity. The dignity of the priesthood, and the ineffable mystery of the Sacrament which they have to administer, require a greater purity in the ministers of the Church than in any other creature. They are God's anointed, His Christs, with power over the Lord's sacramental body that even the Angels have not, and He considers all injuries done to them as inflicted upon Himself, as persecution of His blood. But, in contrast with Peter himself, Sylvester, Gregory, Augustine, Jerome, Thomas Aquinas, and the other holy ecclesiastics of olden time, we are shown the modern priests and prelates, whose lives are founded in self-love, and who perform the office of devils. Avarice, lust, and pride are the masters that they serve. The table of the Cross is deserted for the sake of the tavern; the poor are left destitute, while the substance of the Church is squandered upon harlots. Nay, more, the leprosy of unnatural vice, the sin from which even the devils flee in horror because of their angelical nature, has contaminated their minds and bodies. The priests celebrate Mass after a night of sin, and often their mistresses and children join the congregation; others use the Blessed Sacrament of the altar to make love-charms to seduce the little sheep of their flock, or persuade them to commit fornication under pretext of delivering them from diabolical possession. Some priests, realizing their own sinful state sufficiently to fear God's judgments, only pretend to consecrate when they say Mass, and thereby lead the people into idolatry by making them worship as the body of Christ what is no more than a piece of bread. The prelates connive at infamous monks corrupting the nuns in the monasteries under their charge. Ministers of the Church have become usurers; benefices and prelacies are bought and sold, while the poor are left to die of hunger. Spiritual things are abandoned, while the rulers of the Church usurp temporal power and secular government.¹³ It is only possible here to touch very slightly upon the contents of these terrible chapters; but the student of the religious life of the fourteenth century is compelled to face the fact that in them we have the testimony of Boccaccio's Decameron confirmed by the burning words of a great saint, who does not shrink from putting them into the mouth of God Himself.

From this Catherine turns to the contemplation of the Divine Providence, shown in the creation of man in God's image and likeness, with memory, understanding, and will, for the Beatific Vision; in his redemption by means of the Incarnation; and in the institution of the Blessed Sacrament for his spiritual sustenance. As an instance of this Providence, in a particular case, we have a somewhat mysterious allusion to one whose soul was saved by a violent death.

I would have thee know that, to save him from the eternal damnation which thou seest he had incurred, I allowed this to happen, in order that by his blood he might have life in the blood of My only-begotten Son. For I had not forgotten the reverence and love which he bore to Mary, the most sweet Mother of My only-begotten Son, to whom it is given by My goodness, for reverence of the Word, that whoso holds her in due reverence, be he a just man or a sinner, shall never be taken or devoured by the infernal demon. She is as a bait set by My goodness to take all rational creatures.¹⁴

Catherine's own miraculous communions, when her Divine Bridegroom intervened to give her the food of Angels which the priests would fain have denied her, show God's providential dealings with souls that hunger for the sweet Sacrament.¹⁵ There are three states of the human soul: those of mortal sin, imperfect love, and perfect charity; and in each God's Providence acts in diverse ways to draw her to Himself.

One of the means He uses to draw the imperfect from their imperfection is an absorbing devotion for a fellow-creature, the amor amicitiae of which the Angelical Doctor writes, the kind of love of which Dante had given the supreme exposition in the Vita Nuova. By such a love, the soul is exercised in virtue and raised above herself; the heart is stripped of all sensitive passion and disordered affection. By the perfection of this love can be measured the perfection of the soul's love of God. When one who loves in this way sees himself deprived of the delight he used to have in familiar intercourse with the person loved, and sees that person now more intimately associated with another than with himself, the very pain that he feels will teach him to know himself, and will spur him on to hatred of his own selfishness and to love of virtue. He will humbly repute himself unworthy of the desired consolation, and will be assured that the virtue, for which he should chiefly love that person, is not diminished in his regard. This love will have taught him to desire to bear all suffering for the glory of God.¹⁶ For tribulation is the test of true charity, and, with those who have come to the perfect state, God uses the means of suffering and persecution to preserve and augment their perfection. Goaded on by their hunger for the salvation of souls, forgetting themselves, they knock, night and day, at the gate of Divine Mercy. For the more man loses himself, the more he finds God. This truth they read in the sweet and glorious book of the Word, and bring forth the fruit of patience. Although, with St. Paul, they have received the doctrine of truth in the abyss of the Godhead, they have likewise received the thorn in the flesh, to keep them in self-knowledge and humility, and to make them compassionate towards the weaknesses and frailty of others. The anguish that they endure, in seeing the sins that are done against God, purges them from all personal sorrows; and God suffers Himself to be constrained by their panting desires, to have mercy upon the world, and by their endurance to reform His Church: "Verily, such as these can be called another Christ crucified, My only-begotten Son; for they have taken upon themselves the office of Him who came as mediator to end the war, and to reconcile man with Me in peace, by much endurance even unto the shameful death of the Cross."¹⁷

The whole being of such a saint is attuned to mystical music, and has become one sweet harmony, in which all the powers of the soul and all the members of the body play their parts. This spiritual melody was first heard from the Cross, and those that followed have learnt it from that Master.

My infinite Providence has given them the instruments, and has shown them the way in which to play upon them. And whatever I give and permit in this life is to enable them to increase the power of these instruments; if they will only know it, and not obscure the light by which they see, with the cloud of self-love and their own pleasure and opinion.¹⁸

Inebriated with trust in the Divine Providence, these souls embrace the doctrine of voluntary poverty, choosing Lady Poverty, the Queen, as their bride, with whom they become mistresses of all spiritual wealth:—

Then that soul, as though inebriated and enamoured of true and holy Poverty, passing out of herself into the supreme eternal Greatness, and transformed in the abyss of the sovereign inestimable Providence (in such wise that, while still in the vessel of the body, she saw herself out of the body by the overshadowing and rapture of the fire of Its charity), kept the eye of her understanding fixed upon the Divine Majesty, saying to the supreme and eternal Father: 'O eternal Father, 0 fire and abyss of Charity, 0 eternal Beauty, 0 eternal Goodness, O eternal Clemency, 0 hope and refuge of sinners, O inestimable Bounty, 0 eternal and infinite Bliss! Thou that art mad with love, hast Thou any need of Thy creature? Yea, it seemeth to me that Thou dost act as though Thou couldst not live without her, albeit Thou art the life from which all things have life and without which nothing lives. Why, then, art Thou thus mad? Thou art mad, because Thou art enamoured of what Thou hast made. Within Thyself Thou didst take delight in her, and, as drunk with desire of her salvation, Thou dost seek her when she flies from Thee; she shuns Thee, and Thou drawest near her. Nearer to her Thou couldst not come than to clothe Thyself with her humanity. What then shall I say? I will do as one that is tongue-tied, and say: Ah, Ah; for there is nought else I can say, since finite speech cannot express the affection of the soul which desires Thee infinitely. Methinks I can say with Paul: Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which I have beheld. I have seen the hidden things of God. My soul, thou hast tasted and seen the abyss of the sovereign and eternal Providence."¹⁹

Obedience is the special virtue that ruled Catherine's spiritual life, even as poverty had informed that of St. Francis and the realization of justice had been the inspiration of that of Dante. She treats it as the key which the Father put into the hand of the Word to unlock the gate of eternal life, and which the Word left with His vicar at the Ascension. All the faith is founded upon it. Each soul receives it into her hand at baptism, and must fasten it, with the cord of detachment, to the girdle of resignation to the will of God. Like poverty, obedience is a bride of souls, a queen enthroned above the tempests of the world. Besides the general obedience to which all are bound, there is the special obedience of the religious life, shown in its perfection in the ideals with which Benedict, Francis, and Dominic founded their orders. The chapter dealing with the Franciscans and Dominicans, the sublime ideals of their two patriarchs who based their rules on poverty and learning, respectively, and the degeneration of their followers, is thoroughly Dantesque in spirit and in expression. Catherine has, however, worse things to record against the friars of her own order than those which the divine poet puts upon the lips of the Angelical Doctor; even the vow of chastity is continually broken, and the light of science perverted by them to darkness. The days of Thomas Aquinas, whom Catherine ever names with profound admiration and marked personal love (he was one of the saints with whom she used to speak in her visions), and of Peter Martyr, whose career appealed to the sterner side of her character, have passed away.²⁰ The resemblance at times between Catherine's phraseology, as well as her thought, in the Dialogo as in the Letters, with that of Dante, is not likely to be entirely fortuitous. Although she never mentions the poet, and assuredly had never read the Divina Commedia, she must frequently have heard his lines quoted by her followers. Neri di Landoccio, at least, appears to have been a Dante student.²¹ It would be pleasant to think of such passages as the mystical espousals of St. Francis with Poverty, the praises of St. Dominic, or St. Bernard's invocation to the Blessed Virgin, being read aloud in Catherine's circle, and Saint and secretaries alike being fired by the music of him who had fought the same battle for righteousness more than half a century before.

From the consideration of her own order, Catherine turns to the religious life in general, the excellence of its ideals, the disastrous results when these are corrupted or neglected. The perfect religious, il vero obbediente, he who has humbled himself like a little child to enter into the kingdom of Heaven, is contrasted with the unfaithful and disobedient monk or friar, "who stays in the bark of his order with such great pain to himself and to others, that in this life he tastes the pledge of hell." Midway between the two types is that of the average religious, neither perfect nor corrupt, but luke-warm in his profession, ever in danger of falling, but still with the power of joining the truly obedient in their holy race. After a glowing eulogy of the virtue of obedience, illustrated by the miracles that the saints of old have wrought by its power, and a recapitulation of the whole book, Catherine ends with the impassioned eloquence of what may be called her universal prayer:—

Thanks, thanks be to Thee, eternal Father, for Thou hast not despised me, Thy creature, nor turned Thy face from me, nor contemned my desires. Thou that art light, hast not considered my darkness; Thou that art life, hast not considered my death; nor hast Thou, the physician, turned from my grievous maladies. Thou art eternal purity, and I am full of the mire of many miseries; Thou art infinite, and I am finite; Thou art wisdom, and I am foolishness; for all these and other infinite evils and defects that are in me, Thy wisdom, Thy goodness, Thy clemency, and Thy infinite blessedness has not despised me; but in Thy light Thou hast given me light, in Thy wisdom I have known the truth, in Thy clemency I have found Thy charity and the love of my neighbour. Who has constrained Thee to this? Not my virtues, but Thy charity alone. May this same love constrain Thee to illumine the eye of my understanding in the light of faith, in order that I may know and comprehend the truth Thou hast revealed to me. Grant that my memory may be capable of retaining Thy benefits, that my will may burn in the fire of Thy charity, and that fire make my body pour forth blood; so that with that blood, given for love of the blood, and with the key of obedience, I may unlock the gate of Heaven. This same grace I crave of Thee for every rational creature, in general and in particular, and for the mystical body of Holy Church. I confess and do not deny that Thou didst love me before I was, and that Thou dost love me ineffably, as mad with love for Thy creature.

O eternal Trinity, O Godhead, Thou that, by Thy divine nature, didst make the price of the blood of Thy Son avail! Thou, eternal Trinity, art a sea so deep, that the more I enter therein, the more I find, and, the more I find, the more I seek of Thee. Thou art the food that never satiates; for, when the soul is satiated in Thine abyss, it is not satiated, but it ever continues to hunger and thirst for Thee, eternal Trinity, desiring to behold Thee with the light of Thy light. As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so does my soul desire to issue from the prison of the darksome body, and behold Thee in truth. 0 how long shall Thy face be hidden from my eyes? 0 eternal Trinity, fire and abyss of charity, dissolve henceforth the cloud of my body; the knowledge that Thou hast given me of Thyself, in Thy truth, constrains me to desire to leave the heaviness of my body, and to give my life for the glory and praise of Thy name; because I have tasted and seen, with the light of the understanding in Thy light, Thy abyss, eternal Trinity, and the beauty of Thy creature. Contemplating myself in Thee, I see that I am Thy image; Thou, eternal Father, hast given me of Thy power, and of Thy wisdom in the understanding, which wisdom is assigned to Thy only-begotten Son; the Holy Spirit, which proceeds from Thee and from Thy Son, has given me the will, whereby I am made able to love. Thou, eternal Trinity, art the Maker, and I he work of Thy hands; I have known, by Thy recreation of me in the blood of Thy Son, that Thou art enamoured of the beauty of what Thou hast made.

O abyss, O eternal Godhead, O deep sea! And what more couldest Thou give me, than give Thyself? Thou art fire that ever burnest and art not consumed; Thou art fire that consumest all self-love in the soul by Thy heat; Thou art fire that destroyest all coldness; Thou dost illumine, and by Thy light Thou hast made me know Thy truth. Thou art that light above all light, with which light Thou givest supernatural light to the eye of the understanding, in such abundance and perfection that Thou dost clarify the light of faith; in which faith I see that my soul has life, and in this light she receives Thee, the Light. In the light of faith, I acquire wisdom, in the wisdom of the Word, Thy Son. In the light of faith, I am strong, constant, and persevering. In the light of faith, I hope; it will not let me faint on the road. This light teaches me the way, and, without this light, I should walk in darkness; and, therefore, I besought Thee, eternal Father, to illumine me with the light of most holy faith. Verily, this light is a sea, for it nourishes the soul in Thee, sea of peace, eternal Trinity; the water of this sea is never stormy, and, therefore, the soul has no fear, because she knows the truth; it is ever clear and reveals things hidden; and thus, where the most abundant light of Thy faith abounds, it, as it were, makes the soul certain about what she believes. It is a mirror, as Thou, eternal Trinity, dost make me know; for, gazing into this mirror, holding it with the hand of love, it shows me myself in Thee, who am Thy creature, and Thee in me, by the union which Thou didst make of the Godhead with our humanity. In this light it reveals Thee to me, and I know Thee, supreme and infinite Good, good above all good, blissful good, incomprehensible good, inestimable good; Beauty above all beauty; Wisdom above all wisdom. Yea, Thou art very Wisdom; Thou, the food of Angels, hast given Thyself to men with fire of love; Thou, the raiment that coverest up my nakedness, dost feed the famished in Thy sweetness; sweet Thou art, without any bitterness.

O eternal Trinity, in Thy light which Thou didst give me, receiving it with the light of most holy faith, I have known (for Thou makest it plain to me by many and wondrous revelations) the way of great perfection, in order that I may serve Thee with light and not with darkness; that I may be a mirror of good and holy life, and thus rise up from my own miserable life; for, through my sins, I have ever served Thee in darkness; I have not known Thy truth, and, therefore, have not loved it. Why did I not know Thee? Because I did not see Thee with the glorious light of most holy faith, for the cloud of self-love darkened the eye of my understanding; and Thou, eternal Trinity, with Thy light didst dissolve that darkness. And who shall reach Thy height, to render Thee thanks for so measureless a gift, and such great benefits as Thou hast granted me, the doctrine of truth which Thou hast given me, which is a special grace beyond the general grace which Thou dost give to other creatures! Thou wishest to condescend to my necessity, and to that of other creatures who will look into it as into a mirror. Do Thou, Lord, answer for me; Thou Thyself hast given, do Thou Thyself answer and make satisfaction, infusing a light of grace into me, in order that with that light I may give Thee thanks. Robe, robe me with Thyself, eternal Truth, so that I may run this mortal life with true obedience and with the light of most holy faith, with which light it seemeth that Thou dost inebriate my soul anew.²² …

The simple, but profound philosophy underlying all Catherine's writings is the same that, put into practice, armed her to pass unsubdued and unshaken through the great game of the world.

Love is the one supreme and all-important, all-embracing, all-enduring, limitless and boundless thing. In a famous passage of the Purgatorio, Dante had shown how Creator and every creature is moved by love; how, in rational beings, love is the seed of every virtue and of every vice, because love's natural tendency to good is the material upon which Free Will works for bliss or bane.⁴² But Catherine goes a step further than this. Not only God, but man, in a sense, is love. "Think," she writes,

that the first raiment that we had was love; for we are created to the image and likeness of God only by love, and, therefore, man cannot be without love, for he is made of nought else than very love; for all that he has, according to the soul and according to the body, he has by love. The father and mother have given being to their child, that is, of the substance of their flesh (by means of the grace of God), only by love.⁴³

And in another place:

The soul cannot live without love, but must always love something, because she was created through love. Affection moves the understanding, as it were saying: I want to love, for the food wherewith I am fed is love. Then the understanding, feeling itself awakened by affection, rises as though it said: If thou wouldst love, I will give thee what thou canst love.⁴⁴

Love nurtures the virtues like children at its breast; it robes the soul with its own beauty, because it transforms the beloved and makes her one with the lover.⁴⁵

Love harmonizes the three powers of our soul, and binds them together. The will moves the understanding to see, when it wishes to love; when the understanding perceives that the will would fain love, if it is a rational will, it places before it as object the ineffable love of the eternal Father, who has given us the Word, His own Son, and the obedience and humility of the Son, who endured torments, injuries, mockeries, and insults with meekness and with such great love. And thus the will, with ineffable love, follows what the eye of the understanding has beheld; and, with its strong hand, it stores up in the memory the treasure that it draws from this love.⁴⁶

Then, since the supreme act of Divine Love is seen in the Sacrifice of Calvary, and again in the mystical outpouring of Pentecost, Love's symbols for Catherine are blood and fire—but, above all, blood, and sometimes this finds startling expression. She calls her letters written in blood. Those to whom they are addressed are bidden drink blood, clothe themselves in blood, be transformed and set on fire with blood; they are inebriated with blood; their will, their understanding, and their memory are filled with blood; they are drowned beneath the tide of blood. "Drown yourself in the blood of Christ crucified," she writes to Fra Raimondo,

and bathe yourself in the blood; inebriate yourself with the blood, satiate yourself with the blood, and clothe yourself with the blood. If you have been unfaithful,. baptise yourself again in the blood; if the demon has darkened the eye of your understanding, wash it with the blood; if you have fallen into ingratitude for gifts which you have not acknowledged, be grateful in the blood; if you have been an unworthy pastor, and without the rod of justice tempered with prudence and mercy, draw it from the blood; with the eye of understanding, see it in the blood, and take it with the hand of love, and grasp it with panting desire. Dissolve your tepidity in the heat of the blood, and cast off your darkness in the light of the blood. I wish to robe myself anew in blood, and to strip myself of every raiment which I have worn up to now. I crave for blood; in the blood have I satisfied and shall satisfy my soul. I was deceived when I sought her among creatures; so am I fain, in time of solicitude, to meet companions in the blood. Thus shall I find the blood and creatures, and I shall drink their affection and love in the blood.⁴⁷

And Catherine carries this into actual life; the blood that splashes the streets and palaces of the Italian cities in the fierce faction-fights, the blood that is poured out upon the scaffold at the Sienese place of execution, fires her imagination and seems shed by Love itself. The sight and smell of blood have no horror for her. We find the fullest realization of this in one of the most beautiful and famous of her letters, that to Fra Raimondo describing the end of the young noble of Perugia, Niccolò di Toldo, unjustly doomed to die by the government of Siena:—

I went to visit him of whom you know, whereby he received such great comfort and consolation that he confessed, and disposed himself right well; and he made me promise by the love of God that, when the time of execution came, I would be with him; and so I promised and did. Then in the morning, before the bell tolled, I went to him, and he received great consolation; I brought him to hear Mass, and he received the holy Communion, which he had never received since the first. That will of his was harmonized with and subjected to the will of God, and there only remained a fear of not being strong at the last moment; but the measureless and inflamed goodness of God forestalled him, endowing him with so much affection and love in the desire of God, that he could not stay without Him, and he said to me: 'Stay with me, and do not abandon me, so shall I fare not otherwise than well, and I shall die content'; and he leaned his head upon my breast. Then I exulted, and seemed to smell his blood, and mine too, which I desire to shed for the sweet Spouse Jesus, and, as the desire increased in my soul and I felt his fear, I said: 'Take heart, sweet brother mine, for soon shall we come to the nuptials; thou wilt fare thither bathed in the sweet blood of the Son of God, with the sweet name of Jesus, which I wish may never leave thy memory, and I shall be waiting for thee at the place of execution.' Now think, father and son, how his heart lost all fear, and his face was transformed from sadness to joy, and he rejoiced, exulted, and said: 'Whence comes such grace to me, that the sweetness of my soul should await me at the holy place of execution?' See, he had reached such light that he called the place of execution holy, and he said: 'I shall go all joyous and strong, and it will seem to me a thousand years till I come thither, when I think that you are awaiting me there'; and he spoke so sweetly of God's goodness, that one might scarce sustain it. I awaited him, then, at the place of execution; and I stayed there, waiting, with continual prayer, in the presence of Mary and of Catherine, Virgin and Martyr. But, before he arrived, I placed myself down, and stretched out my neck on the block; but nothing was done to me, for I was full of love of myself; then I prayed and insisted, and said to Mary that I wished for this grace, that she would give him true light and peace of heart at that moment, and then that I might see him return to his end. Then was my soul so full that, albeit a multitude of the people was there, I could not see a creature, by reason of the sweet promise made me. Then he came, like a meek lamb, and, seeing me, he began to laugh, and he would have me make the sign of the Cross over him; and, when he had received the sign, I said: 'Down! to the nuptials, sweet brother mine, for soon shalt thou be in eternal life.' He placed himself down with great meekness, and I stretched out his neck, and bent down over him, and reminded him of the blood of the Lamb. His mouth said nought save Jesus and Catherine; and, as he spoke thus, I received his head into my hands, closing my eyes in the Divine Goodness, and saying: I will.

Then to her ecstatic gaze the heavens seemed to open, and she saw the God made Man, in brightness like the sun, receive the victim's blood into His own open wounds, his desire into the fire of His divine charity, blood into blood, flame into flame, and the soul herself pass into His side, "bathed in his own blood, which availed as though it were the blood of the Son of God." But, as the soul thus entered and began to taste the divine sweetness,

she turned to me, even as the bride, when she has come to her bridegroom's door, turns back her eyes and her head to salute those who have accompanied her, and thereby to show signs of thanks. Then did my soul repose in peace and quiet, in such great odour of blood that I could not bear to free myself from the blood that had come upon me from him. Alas, miserable and wretched woman that I am, I will say no more; I remained on earth with the greatest envy.⁴⁸

Ordina quest' amore, O tu che m' ami, sang Jacopone da Todi: "Set this love in order, 0 thou that lovest Me." Following out this Franciscan line, Dante had based his Purgatorio (which symbolizes the whole life of man) upon the need of ordering love rightly. And it is the same with Catherine. "The soul," she says, "that loves disordinately becomes insupportable to herself." Only the Creator may be loved for Himself alone and without any measure. Too readily may a spiritual love for a creature become entirely sensual, if the eye is not kept fixed on the blood of Christ crucified.⁴⁹ And this love disordered grows up into the monster of self-love, amore proprio, which plays the same part in Catherine's doctrine as did the Lupa, the she-wolf of Avarice, in the Divina Commedia. "Self-love," she writes,

which takes away charity and love of our neighbour, is the source and foundation of every evil. All scandals, and hatred, and cruelty, and everything that is untoward, proceed from this perverse root of self-love; it has poisoned the entire world, and brought disease into the mystical body of Holy Church and the universal body of the Christian religion.⁵⁰

And she makes magnificent use of this doctrine in addressing the democratic rulers of the Italian republics. "You see, dearest brothers and lords," she writes to the Anziani and Consuls and Gonfalonieri of Bologna, "that self-love is what lays waste the city of the soul, and ravages and overturns earthly cities. I would have you know that nothing has wrought this division in the world save self-love, from which has risen and rises all injustice."⁵¹ Through self-love, she tells the Signoria of Florence, the virtue of justice has died out in monarchies and republics alike:

The legitimate sovereigns have become tyrants. The subjects of the Commune do not feed at its breast with justice nor fraternal charity; but each one, with falseness and lies, looks to his own private advantage, and not to the general weal. Each one is seeking the lordship for himself, and not the good state and administration of the city.⁵²

Similarly, it is to self-love alone that Catherine ascribed the war between the Tuscan communes and the Holy See, no less than the Great Schism itself; self-love had transformed Gregory's legates to ravening wolves, and Urban's cardinals to incarnate demons.

Man, therefore, must draw out the two-edged sword of love and hate, and slay this worm of sensuality with the hand of Free Will. He must utterly cast off servile fear. "Servile fear takes away all power from the soul. I think not that man has any cause to fear, for God has made him strong against every adversary."⁵³

No operation of the soul that fears with servile fear is perfect. In whatever state she be, in small things and in great, she falls short, and does not bring to perfection what she has begun. 0 how perilous is this fear! It cuts off the arms of holy desire; it blinds man, for it does not let him know or see the truth. This fear proceeds from the blindness of self-love; for, as soon as the rational creature loves itself with sensitive self-love, it straightway fears. And this is the cause for which it fears; it has set its love and hope upon a weak thing, that has no firmness in itself, nor any stability, but passes like the wind.⁵⁴

Whether he be in the cloister or in the world, man must enter the cell of self-knowledge, la cella del cognoscimento di noi, and abide therein. At its door he must set the watch-dog, conscience, to rouse the understanding with its voice: the dog whose food and drink are blood and fire.⁵⁵ Within that cell, he will know God and man; he will understand God's love, possess His truth, and freely let himself be guided by His will. The cell of self-knowledge is the stable in which the traveller through time to eternity must be born again. "Thou dost see this sweet and loving Word born in a stable, while Mary was journeying; to show to you, who are travellers, that you must ever be born again in the stable of knowledge of yourselves, where you will find Me born by grace within your souls."⁵⁶

In addition to the book and the letters, a certain number of prayers, twenty-six in all, have been preserved, which Catherine uttered on various occasions. One, the shortest, is said to be the first thing that she wrote with her own hand:—

O holy Spirit, come into my heart; by Thy power draw it to Thee, its God, and grant me love with fear. Guard me, Christ, from every evil thought; warm me and reinflame me with Thy most sweet love, so that every pain may seem light to me. My holy Father and my sweet Master, help me now in all my ministry. Christ Love, Christ Love, Amen.⁵⁷

The others are mystical outpourings, which were taken down at the time by the Saint's disciples, and repeat in similar or slightly varied forms the aspirations that breathe from her other writings. We have the same "sweet enragement of celestial love," the same impassioned contemplation of the sovereign mysteries of the faith, the same devotion to the Blessed Virgin, the same desire of offering up her own life for the salvation of souls and the reformation of the Church. It is, indeed, piteous to watch this exquisitely tender and angelical woman besieging Heaven with prayers for that grim and ruthless man whom she called her "sweet Christ on earth," imploring God to look upon his good will, to hide him under the wings of His mercy so that his enemies, the iniqui superbi, may not be able to injure him, to robe him with the purity of the faith, to give him light that all the world may follow him, to temper his "virile heart" with holy humility. In the striking prayer composed on the feast of the Circumcision, probably that of 1380, when those "admirable mysteries" began to work within her that finally delivered her from the world, we find Catherine including not only Urban, but those very schismatics whom she had addressed as incarnate demons, men worthy of a thousand deaths; now her only thought is for the salvation of their souls, and she beseeches the God of sovereign clemency to punish their sins upon her own body. The last of the series consists of the words she uttered when she regained consciousness on the Monday after Sexagesima, when her household were weeping for her as dead. It strikes the keynote of her passion, and seems, as it were, to sum up the aspirations of those weeks of prolonged suffering:—

O eternal God, O divine Craftsman, who hast made and formed the vessel of the body of Thy creature of the dust of the ground! 0 most sweet Love, Thou hast formed it of so vile a thing, and hast put therein so great a treasure as is the soul, which bears the image of Thee, eternal God. Thou, good Craftsman, my sweet Love, Thou art the potter who dost mar and make again; Thou dost shatter and mend this vessel, as pleases Thy goodness. To Thee, eternal Father, 1, wretched woman, offer anew my life for Thy sweet Spouse, that, as often as pleaseth Thy goodness, Thou mayest draw me from the body and restore me to the body, each time with greater pain than the other; if only I may see the reformation of this sweet Spouse, Thy holy Church. I demand this Spouse of Thee, eternal God. Also, I commend to Thee my most beloved children, and I beseech Thee, supreme and eternal Father, if it should please Thy mercy and goodness to draw me out of this vessel and make me no more return, not to leave them orphans, but visit them with Thy grace, and make them live as dead, with true and most perfect light; bind them together in the sweet bond of charity, that they may die of ardent desire in this sweet Spouse. And I beseech Thee, eternal Father, that not one of them may be taken out of my hands. Forgive us all our iniquities, and forgive me my great ignorance, and the great negligence that I have committed in Thy Church, in not having done what I might and should have done. I have sinned, Lord, be merciful unto me. I offer and commend my most beloved children to Thee, because they are my soul. And if it please Thy goodness to make me still stay in this vessel, do Thou, sovereign Physician, heal and sustain it, for it is all torn and rent. Grant, eternal Father, grant us Thy sweet benediction. Amen.

Notes

¹Legenda, Ill. i. 2 (§332). Cf. 111. iii. I (§§349, 350). In the Vatican MS., Cod. Barb. Lat. 4063, the book is entitled simply: "II libro facto per divina revelacione de la venerabile et admirabile vergine beata Katherina da Siena."

² The arrangement I adopt is a compromise between that of the manuscripts and early editions of the Italian text and that given by Fra Raimondo in his Latin version—a compromise which, as far as making the Trattato delle Lagrime a separate treatise, seems justified by Catherine's own reference to it in Letter 154 (63), as well as by internal evidence.

³ Cap. 1.

⁴ Letter 272 (90).

⁵Epist. X. 16.

⁶Dialogo, cap. 1-cap. 8, cap. 11. Cf. Letters 311 (203), 282 (39).…

⁸ Cap. 69.

⁹ Cap. 74.

¹⁰ Cap. 78.…

¹² This is worked out in cap. 83, cap. 84, of which the modern printed editions and translations contain only a mutilated version of what we find in the MSS. and in Fra Raimondo's Latin.

¹³ Cap. 121-cap. 130. Cf. Caesarius Heisterbacensis, Dialogus miraculorum (ed. Strange, Cologne, 1851), dist. IX. cap. 6; Revelationes S. Birgittae, 1. 49, IV. 133. An equally appalling picture is given, some years later, by Nicolas de Clemanges, in his De ruina Ecclesiae, cap. 15-cap. 23 (Opera, Leyden, 1613).

¹⁴ Cap. 139. Cf. the salvation of Buonconte da Montefeltro, Purg. v. 100-107. Catherine alludes to this case in similar words in Letter 272 (90). Probably, either Niccolò di Toldo or Trincio Trinci is the person meant.

¹⁵ Cap. 142. Cf. Legenda, II. xii. 4-14 (§§316-324).

¹⁶ Cap. 144.

¹⁷ Cap. 145, cap. 146.

¹⁸ Cap. 147.

¹⁹ Cap. 153. Catherine's treatment of holy Poverty, cap. 151, is thoroughly Franciscan. It is curious to notice how loosely she often quotes the Scriptures; Fra Raimondo usually corrects her in his Latin version.

²⁰ Cap. 158. Cf. Dante, Par. xi., xii., and xxii. 73-93. The encyclical letters issued by Fra Elias of Toulouse, as master-general of the order, in 1368, 1370, and 1376, strikingly confirm Catherine's testimony as to the corruption and degeneracy of the Dominicans at this time. "We have come to such a pass," he had written in 1376, "that whoso cares for the ceremonies of the Church is pointed out with the finger, and whoso keeps the rules of the order is reckoned by the others as of singular life." See Monumenta ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum historica, tom. v. pp. 306-312.

²¹ Cf. Lettere dei discepoli, 18. But Capecelatro, pp. 343, 344, following Ignazio Cantu, much overstates Catherine's possible knowledge of Dante.

²² Cap. 167, corrected by the Vatican MS., Cod. Barb. Lat. 4063, with which Fra Raimondo substantially agrees.…

⁴²Purg. xvii. and xviii.

⁴³ Appendix, Letter 1. Cf. Letter 196 (4).

⁴⁴Dialogo, cap. 51.

⁴⁵ Letter 108 (172).

⁴⁶ Letter 95 (308).

⁴⁷ Letter 102 (93).

⁴⁸ Letter 273 (97), corrected by the Harleian MS.

⁴⁹ Letter 76. Cf. the curiously interesting Letter 245 (122), "to a Genoese of the third order of St. Francis, who had engaged in a spiritual friendship with a woman, whereby he endured much travail." I find in the Casanatense MS. 292 that this tertiary was a certain Fra Gasparo.

⁵⁰Dialogo, cap. 7.

⁵¹ Letter 268 (200).

⁵² Letter 337 (199).

⁵³ Appendix, Letter I.

⁵⁴ Letter 242 (37), to the Bishop of Florence, Angelo Ricasoli, when he left the city to observe the interdict. Catherine had previously used the same words to Cardinal Pierre d'Estaing, Letter 11 (24).

⁵⁵ Cf. Letters 2 (50) and 114 (267).

⁵⁶Dialogo, cap. 151. Cf. Botticelli's allegorical picture of the Nativity in the National Gallery.

⁵⁷Orat. IV. A slightly different version of this prayer, in Latin, is given by Fra Tommaso Caffarini in the Processus, col. 1279, and in the Supplementum, MS. cit., f. 9.

Bibliography

Capecelatro, Alfonso. Storia di S. Caterina da Siena e del Papato del suo tempo. 4th edition. Siena, 1878.