{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_50205/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_50205","id":"gutenberg_50205","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/50205","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Biographies","Category: History - Religious","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Catherine, of Genoa, Saint, 1447-1510"],"text":"TRANSCRIBER\u2019S NOTE: Volume II is available as Project Gutenberg ebook\nnumber 50206.\n\n\n\n\n                         THE MYSTICAL ELEMENT\n                              OF RELIGION\n\n                        _All rights reserved._\n\n               [Illustration: _Walker & Boutall, ph, sc_\n\n           _St. Catherine of Genoa. (Caterina Fiesca Adorna.)_]\n\n                         THE MYSTICAL ELEMENT\n                        OF RELIGION AS STUDIED\n                         IN SAINT CATHERINE OF\n                         GENOA AND HER FRIENDS\n\n                     BY BARON FRIEDRICH VON H\u00dcGEL\n             MEMBER OF THE CAMBRIDGE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY\n\n                             VOLUME FIRST\n                     INTRODUCTION AND BIOGRAPHIES\n\n                       LONDON: J. M. DENT & CO.\n                     NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO.\n                                MCMVIII\n\n                     RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,\n                     BREAD STREET HILL, E.C., AND\n                           BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE\n\n\nThe following work embodies well-nigh all that the writer has been able\nto learn and to test, in the matter of religion, during now some thirty\nyears of adult life; and even the actual composition of the book has\noccupied a large part of his time, for seven years and more.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe precise object of the book naturally grew in range, depth and\nclearness, under the stress of the labour of its production. This\nobject will perhaps be best explained by means of a short description\nof the undertaking\u2019s origin and successive stages.\n\nBorn as I was in Italy, certain early impressions have never left me;\na vivid consciousness has been with me, almost from the first, of the\nmassively virile personalities, the spacious, trustful times of the\nearly, as yet truly Christian, Renaissance there, from Dante on to the\nFlorentine Platonists. And when, on growing up, I acquired strong and\ndefinite religious convictions, it was that ampler pre-Protestant,\nas yet neither Protestant nor anti-Protestant, but deeply positive\nand Catholic, world, with its already characteristically modern\noutlook and its hopeful and spontaneous application of religion to\nthe pressing problems of life and thought, which helped to strengthen\nand sustain me, when depressed and hemmed in by the types of devotion\nprevalent since then in Western Christendom. For those early modern\ntimes presented me with men of the same general instincts and outlook\nas my own, but environed by the priceless boon and starting-point\nof a still undivided Western Christendom; Protestantism, as such,\ncontinued to be felt as ever more or less unjust and sectarian; and the\nspecifically post-Tridentine type of Catholicism, with its regimental\nSeminarism, its predominantly controversial spirit, its suspiciousness\nand timidity, persisted, however inevitable some of it may be, in its\nfailure to win my love. Hence I had to continue the seeking and the\nfinding elsewhere, yet ever well within the great Roman Church, things\nmore intrinsically lovable. The wish some day to portray one of those\nlarge-souled pre-Protestant, post-Mediaeval Catholics, was thus early\nand has been long at work within me.\n\nAnd then came John Henry Newman\u2019s influence with his _Dream of\nGerontius_, and a deep attraction to St. Catherine of Genoa\u2019s doctrine\nof the soul\u2019s self-chosen, intrinsic purification; and much lingering\nabout the scenes of Caterinetta\u2019s life and labours, during more than\ntwenty stays in her terraced city that looks away so proudly to the\nsea. Such a delicately psychological, soaring, yet sober-minded\nEschatology, with its striking penetration and unfolding of the soul\u2019s\ncentral life and alternatives as they are already here and now, seemed\nto demand an ampler study than it had yet received, and to require a\nvivid presentation of the noble, strikingly original personality from\nwhom it sprang.\n\nAnd later still came the discovery of the apparently hopeless\ncomplication of the records of Catherine\u2019s life and doctrine, and how\nthese had never been seriously analyzed by any trained scholar, since\ntheir constitution into a book in 1552. Much critical work at Classical\nand Scriptural texts and documentary problems had, by now, whetted my\nappetite to try whether I could not at last bring stately order out of\nthis bewildering chaos, by perhaps discovering the authors, dates and\nintentions of the various texts and glosses thus dovetailed and pieced\ntogether into a very Joseph\u2019s coat of many colours, and by showing\nthe successive stages of this, most original and difficult, Saint\u2019s\nlife and legend. All this labour would, in any case, help to train\nmy own mind; and it would, if even moderately successful, offer one\nmore detailed example of the laws that govern such growths, and of the\ncritical method necessary for the tracing out of their operation.\n\nBut the strongest motive revealed itself, in its full force, later than\nall those other motives, and ended by permeating them all. The wish\narose to utilize, as fully as possible, this long, close contact with\na soul of most rare spiritual depth,--a soul that presents, with an\nextraordinary, provocative vividness, the greatness, helps, problems\nand dangers of the mystical spirit. I now wanted to try and get down to\nthe driving forces of this kind of religion, and to discover in what\nway such a keen sense of, and absorption in, the Infinite can still\nfind room for the Historical and Institutional elements of Religion,\nand, at the same time, for that noble concentration upon not directly\nreligious contingent facts and happenings, and upon laws of causation\nor of growth, which constitutes the scientific temper of mind and its\nspecific, irreplaceable duties and virtues. Thus, having begun to write\na biography of St. Catherine, with some philosophical elucidations,\nI have finished by writing an essay on the philosophy of Mysticism,\nillustrated by the life of Caterinetta Fiesca Adorna and her friends.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe book\u2019s chief peculiarities seem to spring inevitably from its\nfundamental standpoint: hence their frank enumeration may help towards\nthe more ready comprehension of the work.\n\nThe book has, throughout, a treble interest and spirit;\nhistorico-critical, philosophical, religious. The historico-critical\nconstituent may attract critical specialists; but will such specialists\ncare for the philosophy? The philosopher may be attracted by the\npsychological and speculative sections; but will the historical\nanalysis interest him at all? And the soul that is seeking spiritual\nfood and stimulation, will it not readily be wearied by the apparent\npettiness of all that criticism, and by the seemingly cold aloofness of\nall that speculation?--And yet it is the most certain of facts that the\nhuman soul is so made as to be unable to part, completely and finally,\nwith any one of these three great interests. Hence, I may surely hope\nthat this trinity of levels of truth and of life, which has so much\nhelped on the growth of my own mind and the constitution of my own\ncharacter, may, in however different a manner and degree, be found to\nhelp others also. This alternation and interstimulation between those\nthree forces and interests within the same soul, and within this soul\u2019s\never-deepening life, is, in any case, too fundamental a feature of this\nwhole outlook for any attempt at its elimination here.\n\nThen there is a look of repetition and of illogical anticipation about\nthe very structure of the book. For the philosophical First Part\nsays, in general, what the biographical Second Part says in detail;\nthis detail is, in reality, based upon the critical conclusions\narrived at in the Appendix, which follows the precise descriptions\nof the biography; and then the Third, once more a philosophical,\nPart returns, now fortified by the intervening close occupation\nwith concrete contingent matters, to the renewed consideration, and\ndeeper penetration and enforcement, of the general positions with\nwhich the whole work began.--Yet is not this circular method simply a\nfrank application, to the problems in hand, of the process actually\nlived through by us all in real life, wherever such life is truly\nfruitful? For, in real life, we ever start with certain general\nintellectual-emotive schemes and critical principles, as so many\ndraw-nets and receptacles for the capture and sorting out of reality\nand of our experience of it. We next are brought, by choice or by\nnecessity, into close contact with a certain limited number of concrete\nfacts and experiences. And we then use these facts and experiences\nto fill in, to confirm or to modify that, more or less tentative and\npredominantly inherited, indeed ever largely conventional, scheme\nwith which we began our quest. In all these cases of actual life,\nthis apparently long and roundabout, indeed back-before, process is,\nin reality, the short, because the only fully sincere and humble,\nspecifically human way in which to proceed. The order so often followed\nin \u201clearned\u201d and \u201cscientific\u201d books is, in spite of its appearance of\ngreater logic and conciseness, far longer; for the road thus covered\nhas to be travelled all over again, according to the circular method\njust described, if we would gain, not wind and shadow, but substance\nand spiritual food.\n\nThen again, there is everywhere a strong insistence upon History as\na Science, yet as a Science possessing throughout a method, type\nand aim quite special to itself and deeply different from those of\nPhysical Science; and an even greater stress upon the important, indeed\nirreplaceable function of both these kinds of Science, or of their\nequivalents, in the fullest spiritual life. Here the insistence upon\nHistory, as a Science, is still unusual in England; and the stress upon\nthe spiritually purifying power of these Sciences will still appear\nsomewhat fantastic everywhere.--Yet that conception of two branches\nof ordered human apprehension, research and knowledge, each (in its\ndelicate and clear contrastedness of method, test, end and result)\nlegitimate and inevitable, so that either of them is ruined if forced\ninto the categories of the other, has most certainly come to stay.\nAnd the attempt to discover the precise function and meaning of these\nseveral mental activities and of their ethical pre-requisites, within\nthe full and spiritual life of the soul, and in view of this life\u2019s\nconsolidation and growth, will, I believe, turn out to be of genuine\nreligious utility. For I hope to show how only one particular manner\nof conceiving and of practising those scientific activities and\nthis spiritual life and consolidation allows, indeed requires, the\nreligious passion,--the noblest and deepest passion given to man,--to\nbe itself enlisted on the side of that other noble, indestructible\nthing, severe scientific sincerity. This very sincerity would thus not\nempty or distract, but would, on the contrary, purify and deepen the\nsoul\u2019s spirituality; and hence this spirituality would continuously\nturn to that sincerity for help in purifying and deepening the soul.\nAnd, surely, until we have somehow attained to some such interaction,\nthe soul must perforce remain timid and weak; for without sincerity\neverywhere, we cannot possibly develop to their fullest the passion for\ntruth and righteousness even in religion itself.\n\nAnd then again a Catholic, one who would be a proudly devoted and\ngrateful son of the Roman Church, speaks and thinks throughout the\nfollowing pages. Yet it is his very Catholicism which makes him feel,\nwith a spontaneous and continuous keenness, that only if there are\nfragments, earlier stages and glimpses of truth and goodness extant\nwheresoever some little sincerity exists, can the Catholic Church\neven conceivably be right. For though Christianity and Catholicism be\nthe culmination and fullest norm of all religion, yet to be such they\nmust find something thus to crown and measure: various degrees of, or\npreparations for, their truth have existed long before they came, and\nexist still, far and wide, now that they have come. Otherwise, Marcion\nwould have been right, when he denied that the Old Testament proceeds\nfrom the same God as does the New; and three-fourths or more of the\nhuman race would not, to this very moment, be bereft, without fault\nof their own, of all knowledge of the Historic Christ and of every\nopportunity for definite incorporation into the Christian Church,\nsince we dare not think that God has left this large majority of His\nchildren without any and every glimpse and opportunity of religious\ntruth, moral goodness, and eternal hope. Yet such a recognition of some\nlight and love everywhere involves no trace of levelling down, or even\nof levelling up; it is, in itself, without a trace of Indifferentism.\nFor if some kinds or degrees of light are thus found everywhere, yet\nthis light is held to vary immensely in different times and places,\nfrom soul to soul, and from one religious stage, group or body to\nanother; the measure and culmination of this light is found in the\ndeepest Christian and Catholic light and holiness; and, over and above\nthe involuntary, sincere differences in degree, stage and kind, there\nare held to exist, also more or less everywhere, the differences caused\nby cowardice and opposition to the light,--cowardices and oppositions\nwhich are as certainly at work within the Christian and Catholic Church\nas they are amongst the most barbarous of Polytheists. I may well have\nfailed adequately to combine these twin truths; yet only in some such,\nthough more adequate apprehension and combination resides the hope for\nthe future of our poor storm-tossed human race,--in a deep fervour\nwithout fanaticism, and a generous sympathy without indifference.\n\nAnd lastly, a lay lover of religion speaks throughout, a man to\nwhom the very suspicion that such subjects should or could, on that\naccount, be foreign to him has ever been impossible. A deep interest\nin religion is evidently part of our very manhood, a thing previous\nto the Church, and which the Church now comes to develop and to save.\nYet such an interest is, in the long run, impossible, if the heart\nand will alone are allowed to be active in a matter so supremely\ngreat and which claims the entire man. \u201cWhere my heart lies, let my\nbrain lie also\u201d: man is not, however much we may try and behave as\nthough he were, a mere sum-total of so many separable water-tight\ncompartments; he can no more fruitfully delegate his brains and his\ninterest in the intellectual analysis and synthesis of religion, than\nhe can commission others to do his religious feeling and willing, his\nspiritual growth and combat, for him.--But this does not of itself\nimply an individualistic, hence one-sided, religion. For only in close\nunion with the accumulated and accumulating experiences, analyses and\nsyntheses of the human race in general, and with the supreme life and\nteaching of the Christian and Catholic Church in particular, will such\ngrowth in spiritual personality be possible on any large and fruitful\nscale: since nowhere, and nowhere less than in religion, does man\nachieve anything by himself alone, or for his own exclusive use and\nprofit.\n\nAnd such a layman\u2019s views, even when thus acquired and expressed with a\nconstant endeavour to be, and ever increasingly to become, a unit and\npart and parcel of that larger, Christian and Catholic whole, will ever\nremain, in themselves and in his valuation of them, unofficial, and, at\nbest, but so much material and stimulation for the kindly criticism and\ndiscriminating attention of his fellow-creatures and fellow-Christians\nand (should these views stand such informal, preliminary tests) for the\neventual utilization of the official Church. To this officiality ever\nremains the exclusive right and duty to formulate successively, for the\nChurch\u2019s successive periods, according as these become ripe for such\nformulations, the corporate, normative forms and expressions of the\nChurch\u2019s deepest consciousness and mind. Yet this officiality cannot\nand does not operate _in vacuo_, or by a direct recourse to extra-human\nsources of information. It sorts out, eliminates what is false and\npernicious, or sanctions and proclaims what is true and fruitful, and a\ndevelopment of her own life, teaching and commission, in the volunteer,\ntentative and preliminary work put forth by the Church\u2019s unofficial\nmembers.\n\nAnd just because both these movements are within, and necessary to,\none and the same complete Church, they can be and are different from\neach other. Hence the following book would condemn itself to pompous\nunreality were it to mimic official caution and emphasis, whilst ever\nunable to achieve official authority. It prefers to aim at a layman\u2019s\nspecial virtues and function: complete candour, courage, sensitiveness\nto the present and future, in their obscurer strivings towards the\ngood and true, as these have been in their substance already tested\nin the past, and in so far as such strivings can be forecasted by\nsympathy and hope. And I thus trust that the book may turn out to be as\ntruly Catholic in fact, as it has been Catholic in intention; I have\nstriven hard to furnish so continuous and copious a stream of actions\nand teachings of Christian saints and sages as everywhere to give the\nreader means of correcting or completing my own inferences; and I\nsincerely submit these my own conclusions to the test and judgment of\nmy fellow-Christians and of the Catholic Church.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nMy obligations to scholars, thinkers and great spiritual souls are far\ntoo numerous and great for any exhaustive recognition. Yet there are\ncertain works and persons to whom I am especially indebted; and these\nshall here be mentioned with most grateful thanks.\n\nIn my Biographical and Critical Part Second, I have had, in Genoa\nitself, the help of various scholars and friends. Signor Dottore\nRidolfo de Andreis first made me realize the importance of Vallebona\u2019s\nbooklet. Padre Giovanni Semeria, the Barnabite, put me in touch with\nthe right persons and documents. The Cavalli\u00e8re L. A. Cervetto, of the\nBiblioteca Civica, referred me to many useful works. The Librarian of\nthe Biblioteca della Missione Urbana copied out for me the inventory\nof St. Catherine\u2019s effects. And Signor Dottore Augusto Ferretto, of the\nArchivio di Stato, made admirably careful, explicitated copies for me,\nfrom the originals, so full of difficult abbreviations, of the long\nseries of legal documents which are the rock-bed on which my biography\nis built.\n\nThe courteous help of the Head Librarian of the Genoese University\nLibrary extended to beyond Genoa. For it was owing to his action,\nin conjunction with that of the Italian Ministry, of the English\nEmbassy in Rome, and of the British Museum Authorities, that the three\nmost important of the manuscripts of St. Catherine\u2019s life were most\ngenerously deposited for my use at the latter institution. I was thus\nenabled to study my chief sources at full leisure in London.\n\nThe Rev. Padre Calvino, Canon Regular of the Lateran, made many kind\nattempts to trace any possible compositions concerning St. Catherine\namong the Venerable Battista Vernazza\u2019s manuscripts, preserved by the\nspiritual descendants of Battista\u2019s Augustinian Canonesses in Genoa; it\nwas not his fault that nothing could be found.\n\nThe Society of Bollandists lent me, for a liberal length of time,\nvarious rare books. I shall indeed be proud if my Appendix wins their\napprobation, since it deals with subject-matters and methods in which\nthey are past-masters. Father Sticker\u2019s pages on St. Catherine, in\ntheir _Acta Sanctorum_ (1752), are certainly not satisfactory; they\nare, however, quite untypical of the Bollandists\u2019 best work, or even of\ntheir average performances.\n\nMy obligations in my Psychological and Philosophical Parts First and\nThird are still more numerous and far more difficult to trace. Indeed\nit is precisely where these obligations are the most far-reaching that\nI can least measure them, since the influence of the books and persons\nconcerned has become part of the texture of my own mind.\n\nBut among the great religious spirits or stimulating thinkers of\nClassical and Patristic times, I am conscious of profound obligations\nto Plato generally; to Aristotle on two points; to St. Paul; to\nPlotinus; to Clement of Alexandria; and to St. Augustine. And the\nAreopagite Literature has necessarily been continuously in my mind.\nAmong Mediaeval writers St. Thomas Aquinas has helped me greatly, in\nways both direct and indirect; Eckhart has, with the help of Father H.\nS. Denifle\u2019s investigations, furnished much food for reflection by his\nmost instructive doctrinal excesses; and the extraordinarily deep and\ndaring spirituality of Jacopone da Todi\u2019s poetry has been studied with\nthe greatest care.\n\nThe Renaissance times have given me Cardinal Nicolas of Coes, whose\ngreat Dialogue _de Idiota_ has helped me in various ways. And in the\nearly post-Reformation period I have carefully studied, and have been\nmuch influenced by, that many-sided, shrewdly wise book, St. Teresa\u2019s\nAutobiography. Yet it is St. John of the Cross, that massively virile\nContemplative, who has most deeply influenced me throughout this work.\nSt. Catherine is, I think, more like him, in her ultimate spirit, than\nany other Saint or spiritual writer known to me; she is certainly far\nmore like him than is St. Teresa.\n\nLater on, I have learnt much from F\u00e9nelon\u2019s Latin writings concerning\nPure Love, of 1710 and 1712; together with Abb\u00e9 Gosselin\u2019s admirably\nlucid _Analyse de la Controverse du Qui\u00e9tisme_, 1820, and the Jesuit\nFather Deharbe\u2019s solid and sober _die vollkommene Liebe Gottes_, 1856.\n\nAmong modern philosophers I have been especially occupied with, and\nvariously stimulated or warned by, Spinoza, with his deep religious\nintuition and aspiration, and his determinist system, so destructive\nbecause taken by him as ultimate; Leibniz, with his admirably\ncontinuous sense of the multiplicity in every living unity, of the\norganic character, the _inside_ of everything that fully exists, and\nof the depth and range of our subconscious mental and emotional life;\nKant, with his keen criticisms and searching analyses, his profound\nethical instincts, and his curious want of the specifically religious\nsense and insight; Schopenhauer, with his remarkable recognition of the\ntruth and greatness of the Ascetic element and ideal; Trendelenburg,\nwith his continuous requirement of an operative knowledge of the chief\nstages which any principle or category has passed through in human\nhistory, if we would judge this principle with any fruit; Kierkegaard,\nthat certainly one-sided, yet impressively tenacious re-discoverer\nand proclaimer of the poignant sense of the Transcendent essential to\nall deep religion, and especially to Christianity, religion\u2019s flower\nand crown; and Fechner, in his little-known book, so delightfully\nconvincing in its rich simplicity, _die drei Motive und Gr\u00fcnde des\nGlaubens_, 1863.\n\nOf quite recent or still living writers, two have been used by me\non a scale which would be unpardonable, had the matters treated\nby them been the direct subjects of my book. In Part First whole\npages of mine are marked by me as little but a _pr\u00e9cis_ of passages\nin Dr. Eduard Zeller\u2019s standard _Philosophy of the Greeks_. I have\nmyself much studied Heracleitus, Parmenides, Plato and Plotinus; and\nI have, also in the case of the other philosophers, always followed\nup and tested such passages of Zeller as I have here transcribed.\nBut I did not, for by far the most part, think it worth while, on\nthese largely quite general and practically uncontested matters, to\nconstruct fresh appreciations of my own, rather than to reproduce,\nwith due consideration and acknowledgments, the conclusions of such an\naccepted authority. And already in Part First, but especially in Part\nThird, I have utilized as largely, although here with still more of\npersonal knowledge and of careful re-examination, considerable sections\nof Professor H. J. Holtzmann\u2019s _Lehrbuch der Neutestamentlichen\nTheologie_, 1897--sections which happen to be, upon the whole, the\ndeepest and most solid in that great but often daring work. The\nsame Professor Holtzmann is, besides, a most suggestive religious\nphilosopher; and his penetrating though very difficult book _Richard\nRothe\u2019s Speculatives System_, 1899, has also been of considerable use.\n\nOther recent or contemporary German writers to whom I owe much, are\nErwin Rhode, in his exquisite great book, _Psyche_, 2nd ed., 1898;\nProfessor Johannes Volkelt, in his penetratingly critical _Kant\u2019s\nErkenntnisstheorie_, 1879; Professor Hugo M\u00fcnsterberg, in his largely\nplanned although too absolute _Grundz\u00fcge der Psychologie_, Vol. I.,\n1900; Professor Heinrich Rickert, in his admirably discriminating\n_Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung_, 1902; and also\ntwo friends whose keen care for religion never flags--Professors\nRudolf Eucken of Jena and Ernst Troeltsch of Heidelberg. Eucken\u2019s\n_Lebensanschauungen der grossen Denker_, 1st ed., 1890; _der Kampf\num einen geistigen Lebensinhalt_, 1896; and the earlier sections of\n_der Wahrheitsgehalt der Religion_, 1902, have greatly helped me.\nAnd Troeltsch\u2019s _Grund-probleme der Ethik_, 1902, has considerably\ninfluenced certain central conceptions of my book, notwithstanding the\ninvoluntary, rough injustice manifested by him, especially elsewhere,\ntowards the Roman Church.\n\nAmong present-day French writers, my book owes most to Professor\nMaurice Blondel\u2019s, partly obscure yet intensely alive and religiously\ndeep, work _L\u2019Action_, 1893; to Dr. Pierre Janet\u2019s carefully\nfirst-hand observations, as chronicled in his _Etat Mental des\nHyst\u00e9riques_, 1894; to Monsieur Emil Boutroux\u2019s very suggestive paper\n_Psychologie du Mysticisme_, 1902; to various pregnant articles of the\nAbb\u00e9 L. Laberthonni\u00e8re in the _Annales de Philosophie Chr\u00e9tienne_,\n1898-1906; and to M. Henri Bergson\u2019s delicately penetrating _Essai sur\nles Donn\u00e9es Imm\u00e9diates de la Conscience_, 2nd ed., 1898.\n\nAnd amongst living Englishmen, the work is most indebted to Professor\nA. S. Pringle-Pattison, especially to his eminently sane _Hegelianism\nand Personality_, 2nd ed., 1893; to Professor James Ward, in his\nstrenuous _Naturalism and Agnosticism_, 1st ed., 1899; to the Reverend\nGeorge Tyrrell\u2019s _Hard Sayings_, 1898, and _The Faith of the Millions_,\n2 vols., 1901, so full of insight into Mysticism; and, very especially,\nto Dr. Edward Caird, in his admirably wide and balanced survey, _The\nEvolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers_, 1904.\n\nBut further back than all the living writers and friends lies the\nstimulation and help of him who was later on to become Cardinal Newman.\nIt was he who first taught me to glory in my appurtenance to the\nCatholic and Roman Church, and to conceive this my inheritance in a\nlarge and historical manner, as a slow growth across the centuries,\nwith an innate affinity to, and eventual incorporation of, all the\ngood and true to be found mixed up with error and with evil in this\nchequered, difficult but rich world and life in which this living\norganism moves and expands. Yet the use to which all these helps have\nhere been put, has inevitably been my own doing: nowhere except in\ndirect quotations have I simply copied, and nowhere are these helpers\nresponsible for what here appears.\n\nAnd then there have been great souls, whom I cannot well name here, but\nwhom I would nevertheless refer to in reverent gratitude; souls that\nhave taught me that deepest of facts and of lessons,--the persistence,\nacross the centuries, within the wide range of the visible and indeed\nalso of the invisible Church, of that vivid sense of the finite and the\nInfinite, of that spacious joy and expansive freedom in self-donation\nto God, the prevenient, all-encompassing Spirit, of that massively\nspontaneous, elemental religion, of which Catherine is so noble an\nexample. Thus a world-renouncing, world-conquering, virile piety,\nhumble and daring, humane, tender and creatively strong, is at no time\nsimply dead, but it merely sleepeth; indeed it ever can be found,\nalive, open-eyed irresistible, hidden away here and there, throughout\nour earthly space and time.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIn matters directly connected with the publication of the work I have\nespecially to thank Messrs. Sciutto of Genoa, the photographers to\nwhom I owe the very successful photographs from which the plates that\nstand at the head of my volumes have been taken; Mr. Sidney E. Mayle,\npublisher, of Hampstead, for permission to use the photogravure of\nSt. Catherine\u2019s portrait which appeared as an illustration to a paper\nof mine, in his scholarly _Hampstead Annual_, 1898; Miss Maude Petre,\nwho helped me much towards achieving greater lucidity of style, by\ncarefully reading and criticizing all my proofs; and my publisher,\nwho has not shrunk from undertaking the publication of so long a work\non so very serious, abstruse-seeming a subject. Even so, I have had\nto suppress the notes to my chapter on \u201cCatherine\u2019s Teaching,\u201d which\nthroughout showed the critical reasons that had determined my choice of\nthe particular sayings, and the particular text of the sayings, adopted\nby me in the text; and have had to excise quite a third of my Appendix,\nwhich furnished the analysis of further, critically instructive texts\nof the _Vita e Dottrina_, the _Dicchiarazione_ and the _Dialogo_. If a\nnew edition is ever called for, this further material might be added,\nand would greatly increase the cogency of my argument.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe work that now at last I thus submit to the reader, is doubtless\nfull of defects; and I shall welcome any thoughtful criticism of any\nof its parts as a true kindness. Yet I would point out that all these\nparts aim at being but so many constituents of a whole, within which\nalone they gain their true significance and worth. Hence only by one\nwho has studied and pondered the book as a whole, will any of its parts\nbe criticized with fairness to that part\u2019s intention. To gain even but\na dozen of such readers would amply repay the labour of these many\nyears.\n\nI take it that the most original parts are Chapter Eight, with its\nanalysis of Battista Vernazza\u2019s interesting Diary; the Appendix, with\nits attempts at fixing the successive authors and intentions that\nhave built up the _Vita e Dottrina_; Chapter Nine, which attempts to\nassign to psycho-physical matters, as we now know them, their precise\nplace and function within the vast life-system, and according to the\npractical tests, of the great Mystical Saints; and Chapter Fifteen,\nwith its endeavour to picture that large Asceticism which alone\ncan effect, within the same soul, a fruitful co-habitation of, and\ninteraction between, Social Religion, the Scientific Habit of Mind, and\nthe Mystical Element of Religion.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nKirkegaard used to claim that he ever wrote _existentially_, pricked on\nby the exigencies of actual life, to attempt their expression in terms\nof that life, and in view of its further spiritual development. More\nthan ever the spiritual life appears now as supremely worth the having,\nand yet it seems to raise, or to find, the most formidable difficulties\nor even deadlocks. I can but hope that these pages may have so largely\nsprung from the exigencies of that life itself,--that they may have\ncaught so much of the spirit of the chief livers of the spiritual life,\nespecially of St. Catherine of Genoa and of St. John of the Cross, and,\nabove all, of the One Master and Measure of Christianity and of the\nChurch,--as to stimulate such life, its practice, love and study, in\ntheir readers, and may point them, spur them on, through and beyond all\nthat here has been attempted, missed or obscured, to fuller religious\ninsight, force and fruitfulness.\n\n                                                   FRIEDRICH VON H\u00dcGEL.\n\n_Kensington_, _Easter 1908._\n\n    \u201cGrant unto men, O God, to perceive in little things the\n    indications, common-seeming though they be, of things both\n    small and great.\u201d\n\n                    ST. AUGUSTINE, _Confessions_, Bk. XI, ch. xxiii, 1.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME\n\n\nThe frontispiece photogravure reproduces an oil-painting preserved\nin the sacristy of the Santissima Annunciata in Portorio, the Church\nof the Pammatone Hospital in Genoa. This painting is probably a copy\n(perhaps not older than 1737) of the portrait which hangs in the\nsuperioress\u2019s room in the same hospital, and which is presumably the\npicture referred to by documents as extant in 1512, eighteen months\nafter Catherine\u2019s death. The copy has been reproduced in preference to\nthe original, because the original has been considerably and clumsily\nrestored, whereas the copy gives us the older portrait as it existed\nbefore this restoration.\n\n\n                                                                     PAGE\n\n    PART I.--INTRODUCTION\n\n    CHAPTER I.--THE THREE CHIEF FORCES OF WESTERN\n    CIVILIZATION                                                     3-49\n\n    Introductory                                                     3-10\n\n    I. The First of the Three Forces: Hellenism, the Thirst\n    for Richness and Harmony                                        10-25\n\n    II. The Second of the Three Forces: Christianity, the Revelation\n    of Personality and Depth                                        25-39\n\n    III. The Third Force: Science, the Apprehension and Conception\n    of Brute Fact and Iron Law                                      39-48\n\n    IV. Summing up: Hellenism or Harmonization, Christianity\n    or Spiritual Experience, and Science or Acceptance\n    of a Preliminary Mechanism, all three necessary to\n    Man                                                            48, 49\n\n    CHAPTER II.--THE THREE ELEMENTS OF RELIGION                     50-82\n\n    Introductory                                                       50\n\n    I. The Three Elements, as they successively appear in the\n    Child, the Youth, and the Adult Man                             50-53\n\n    II. Each Element ever accompanied by some amount of the\n    other two. Difficulty of the Transition from one Stage\n    to the other                                                    53-55\n\n    III. Parallels to this Triad of Religious Elements              55-58\n\n    IV. Distribution of the Three Elements amongst Mankind\n    and throughout Human History                                    58-65\n\n    V. Causes operative in all Religion towards minimizing or\n    suppressing one or other Element, or towards denying\n    the need of any Multiplicity                                    65-70\n\n    VI. The Special Motives operating in each Element towards\n    the suppression of the other Elements                           70-77\n\n    VII. Three Final Objections to such a conception of Religion,\n    and their Answers                                               77-82\n\n    PART II.--BIOGRAPHICAL\n\n    CHAPTER III.--CATHERINE FIESCA ADORNA\u2019S LIFE, UP\n    TO HER CONVERSION; AND THE CHIEF PECULIARITIES\n    PREDOMINANT THROUGHOUT HER CONVERT YEARS.                      85-127\n\n    Introductory                                                   85, 86\n\n    I. Proposed Study of the Mystical-Volitional Element in\n    a Particular, Concrete Instance: St. Catherine of\n    Genoa                                                           86-90\n\n    II. The Materials and Aids towards such a Study                 90-93\n\n    III. Peculiarities of the Genoese Climate and Geographical\n    Position; of the Ligurian Character; and of the Times\n    into which Catherine was born. Her Family, Father\n    and Mother                                                      93-97\n\n    IV. Catherine\u2019s Life, up to the Preliminaries of her Conversion:\n    Autumn 1447 to Mid-March 1474                                  97-104\n\n    V. Her Conversion, with its immediate Preliminaries and\n    Consequences, March 1474                                      104-109\n\n    VI. The Two Conceptions concerning the Character and\n    _Rationale_ of her Penitential Period and of her whole\n    Convert Life. The Position adopted here                       109-113\n\n    VII. Catherine and the Holy Eucharist                         113-116\n\n    VIII. Catherine and Confession and Direction                  117-123\n\n    IX. Catherine and Indulgences                                 123-126\n\n    X. Peculiarities concerning the Invocation of Saints and\n    Intercessory Prayer                                          126, 127\n\n    CHAPTER IV.--CATHERINE\u2019S LIFE FROM 1473 TO 1506, AND\n    ITS MAIN CHANGES AND GROWTH                                   128-174\n\n    I. First Period of Catherine\u2019s Convert Life: Giuliano\u2019s\n    Bankruptcy and Conversion; their Work among the\n    Poor, March 1473 to May 1477                                  128-131\n\n    II. Catherine and Tommasa Fiesca: their Difference of\n    Character and _attrait_. Peculiarity of Catherine\u2019s Penitence\n    and Health during this Time                                   131-133\n\n    III. Change in the Temper of Catherine\u2019s Penitence, from\n    May 1474 onwards                                              133-135\n\n    IV. Catherine\u2019s Great Fasts                                   135-137\n\n    V. Second, Central Period of Catherine\u2019s Convert Life,\n    1477-1499: its Special Spiritual Features                     138-141\n\n    VI. Catherine and Giuliano move into the Hospital in 1479,\n    never again to quit it. She is Matron from 1490 to\n    1495                                                          141-143\n\n    VII. Catherine and the Plague. The Outbreak of 1493           143-145\n\n    VIII. Catherine and Ettore Vernazza, 1493-1495                145-147\n\n    IX. Catherine\u2019s Health breaks down, 1496; other Events of\n    the same Year                                                 147-149\n\n    X. Events of 1497                                             149-154\n\n    XI. Beginning of her Third, Last Period; End of the\n    Extraordinary Fasts; First Relations with Don Marabotto       155-159\n\n    XII. Her Conversations with her Disciples; \u201cCaterina Serafina.\u201d\n    Don Marabotto and the Possessed Maid                          159-162\n\n    XIII. Catherine\u2019s Sympathy with Animal-and Plant-Life: her\n    Love of the Open Air. Her Deep Self-knowledge as to\n    the Healthiness or Morbidness of her Psycho-physical\n    States                                                        163-166\n\n    XIV. Catherine\u2019s Social Joys and Sorrows, 1501-1507           166-174\n\n    CHAPTER V.--CATHERINE\u2019S LAST FOUR YEARS, 1506-1510.\n    SKETCH OF HER CHARACTER, DOCTRINE, AND\n    SPIRIT                                                        175-250\n\n    I. Catherine\u2019s External Interests and Activities up to May\n    1510. Occasional slight Deviations from her old Balance.\n    Immensely close Interconnection of her whole\n    Mental and Psycho-physical Nature. Impressions as\n    connected with the Five Senses                                175-181\n\n    II. More or less _Maladif_ Experiences and Actions            182-200\n\n    III. Catherine\u2019s History from May to September 9, 1510        200-211\n\n    IV. The Last Six Days of Catherine\u2019s Life, September 10-15    211-219\n\n    V. Sketch of Catherine\u2019s Spiritual Character and Significance 220-250\n\n    CHAPTER VI. CATHERINE\u2019S DOCTRINE                              251-294\n\n    Introductory                                                  251-260\n\n    I. God as Creative Love. The Creature\u2019s True and False\n    Self; True and False Love                                     260-266\n\n    I. Sin, Purification, Illumination                            266-272\n\n    III. The Three Categories and the Two Ways                    273-280\n\n    IV. The Other Worlds                                          281-294\n\n    CHAPTER VII.--CATHERINE\u2019S REMAINS AND CULTUS; THE\n    FATE OF HER TWO PRIEST FRIENDS AND OF HER\n    DOMESTICS; AND THE REMAINING HISTORY OF\n    ETTORE VERNAZZA                                               295-335\n\n    Introductory                                                 295, 296\n\n    I. The Burial and the Events immediately surrounding it.\n    September 15 to December 10, 1510                             296-300\n\n    II. The Different Removals of the Remains, and the Chief\n    Stages of her Official Cultus                                 300-306\n\n    III. The Fate of Catherine\u2019s Priest Friends                   307-311\n\n    IV. The Fate of Catherine\u2019s Three Maid-servants               311-314\n\n    V. The Two Vernazzas: their Debt to Catherine, and\n    Catherine\u2019s Debt to them                                     314, 315\n\n    VI. Ettore Vernazza\u2019s Life, from 1509 to 1512                 316-321\n\n    VII. Ettore in Rome and Naples; his Second Will; his\n    Work in the Genoese Prisons                                   321-329\n\n    VIII. Ettore again in Naples; his Death in Genoa, June 1524;\n    Peculiarities of his Posthumous Fame                          329-335\n\n    CHAPTER VIII.--BATTISTA VERNAZZA\u2019S LIFE                       336-367\n\n    Introductory                                                 336, 337\n\n    I. Battista\u2019s Life, from April 1497 to June 1510              337-339\n\n    II. Battista and her God-father, Tommaso Moro                 339-344\n\n    III. Battista\u2019s _Colloquies_, November 1554 to Ascension Day\n    1555                                                          344-358\n\n    IV. Some further Letters of Battista, 1575-1581               358-366\n\n    V. Battista\u2019s Death, May 1587                                366, 367\n\n    CONCLUSION TO VOLUME I\n\n    WHEREIN LIES THE SECRET OF SPIRITUAL PERSUASIVENESS           367-370\n\n    APPENDIX TO PART II\n\n    CHRONOLOGICAL ACCOUNT AND CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF\n    THE MATERIALS FOR THE RE-CONSTITUTION OF\n    SAINT CATHERINE\u2019S LIFE AND TEACHING                           371-466\n\n    Introduction: The Three Laws that govern the Growth of\n    Religious Biography; Complexity of the Materials for\n    Catherine\u2019s Life                                              371-376\n\n    FIRST DIVISION: ACCOUNT AND ANALYSIS OF THE DOCUMENTS\n    PREVIOUS, AND IMMEDIATELY SUBSEQUENT\n    TO, THE \u201cVITA E DOTTRINA\u201d WITH THE \u201cDICCHIARAZIONE,\u201d\n    IN SEVEN STAGES                                               376-433\n\n    I. First Stage: August 1456 to September 12, 1510, all\n    Legal                                                         376-380\n\n    II. Second Stage: Five further Official and Legal Documents,\n    1511-1526; and Four Mortuary Dates, 1524-1587                380, 381\n\n    III. Third Stage: Bishop Giustiniano\u2019s Account of Catherine\u2019s\n    Life, Remains, and Biography, 1537                            382-384\n\n    IV. Fourth Stage: The Two Oldest Extant Manuscripts of\n    the \u201cVita e Dottrina\u201d with the \u201cDicchiarazione.\u201d\n    Manuscript A (October 1547 to February 1548), and\n    Manuscript B                                                  384-395\n\n    V. Fifth Stage: Manuscript C (copy of a MSS. of 1550?),\n    first appearance of the \u201cDialogo,\u201d \u201cChapter\u201d First            395-410\n\n    VI. Sixth Stage: First Printed Edition of the\n    \u201cVita-Dottrina-Dicchiarazione,\u201d 1551; Examination of all it\n    possesses in addition to Manuscripts A, B, and C, apart\n    from the \u201cDialogo\u201d                                            411-417\n\n    VII. Seventh Stage: The Second \u201cChapter\u201d of the \u201cDialogo,\u201d\n    which appears for the first time in the Printed \u201cVita,\u201d\n    1551                                                          417-424\n\n    VIII. Seventh Stage continued: Minute Analysis of one Passage\n    from the Second \u201cChapter\u201d                                     424-427\n\n    IX. Seventh Stage concluded: Character and Authorship of\n    this Second \u201cChapter\u201d                                         427-433\n\n    SECOND DIVISION: ANALYSIS, ASSIGNATION, AND APPRAISEMENT\n    OF THE \u201cVITA-DOTTRINA-DICCHIARAZIONE\u201d\n    CORPUS, IN EIGHT SECTIONS                                     433-466\n\n    I. The \u201cDicchiarazione\u201d: the Two Stages of its Existence      434-440\n\n    II. The Earlier \u201cDicchiarazione,\u201d and its Theological\n    Glosses                                                       440-447\n\n    III. Five Conclusions concerning the History of the\n     \u201cDicchiarazione\u201d                                             447-449\n\n    IV. The \u201cVita\u201d-Proper, its Divisions and Parts, and its\n    Chief Secondary and Authentic Constituents                    449-453\n\n    V. Age and Authorship of the Literature retained              453-457\n\n    VI. Analysis of the Conversion-Narratives                     458-462\n\n    VII. The Sayings-Passages: Three Tests for discriminating\n    Authentic from Secondary Sayings                             462, 463\n\n    VIII. Conclusion: At least Six Stages in the Upbuilding of the\n    Complete Book of 1551. The Slight Changes introduced\n    since then. First Claims to Authorship for Catherine          463-466\n\n\n\n\n    \u201cHe is not far from every one of us; for in Him we live, and\n    move, and have our being.\u201d--Acts xvii, 27, 28.\n\n    \u201cWhere the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.\u201d--2\n    Corinthians iii, 17.\n\n\n\n\nTHE MYSTICAL ELEMENT OF RELIGION\n\n\n\n\nPART I\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nTHE THREE CHIEF FORCES OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION\n\n\nINTRODUCTORY.\n\n\n1. _An enigma of life: the Universal and Abiding does not move the\nwill; and what does move it is Individual and Evanescent._\n\nAmongst the apparent enigmas of life, amongst the seemingly most\nradical and abiding of interior antinomies and conflicts experienced\nby the human race and by individuals, there is one which everything\ntends to make us feel and see with an ever-increasing keenness and\nclearness. More and more we want a strong and interior, a lasting yet\nvoluntary bond of union between our own successive states of mind,\nand between what is abiding in ourselves and what is permanent within\nour fellow-men; and more and more we seem to see that mere Reasoning,\nLogic, Abstraction,--all that appears as the necessary instrument\nand expression of the Universal and Abiding,--does not move or win\nthe will, either in ourselves or in others; and that what does thus\nmove and win it, is Instinct, Intuition, Feeling, the Concrete and\nContingent, all that seems to be of its very nature individual and\nevanescent. Reasoning appears but capable, at best, of co-ordinating,\nunifying, explaining the material furnished to it by experience of all\nkinds; at worst, of explaining it away; at best, of stimulating the\npurveyance of a fresh supply of such experience; at worst, of stopping\nsuch purveyance as much as may be. And yet the Reasoning would appear\nto be the transferable part in the process, but not to move; and the\nexperience alone to have the moving power, but not to be transmissible.\n\n\n\n2. _Our personal experience as regards our own convictions._\n\nExperience indeed and its resultant feeling are always, in the first\ninstance, coloured and conditioned by every kind of individual\nmany-sided circumstances of time and place, of race and age and sex,\nof education and temperament, of antecedent and environment. And it\nis this very particular combination, just this one, so conditioned\nand combined, coming upon me just at this moment and on this spot,\njust at this stage of my reach or growth, at this turning of my way,\nthat carries with it this particular power to touch or startle, to\nstimulate or convince. It is just precisely through the but imperfectly\nanalyzable, indeed but dimly perceived, individual connotation of\ngeneral terms; it is by the fringe of feeling, woven out of the past\ndoings and impressions, workings and circumstances, physical, mental,\nmoral, of my race and family and of my own individual life; it is\nby the apparently slight, apparently far away, accompaniment of a\nperfectly individual music to the spoken or sung text of the common\nspeech of man, that I am, it would seem, really moved and won.\n\nAnd this fringe of feeling, this impression, is, strictly speaking, not\nmerely untransferable, but also unrepeatable; it is unique even for the\nsame mind: it never was before, it never will be again. Heraclitus, if\nwe understand that old Physicist in our own modern, deeply subjective,\nlargely sentimental way, would appear to be exactly right: you cannot\ntwice step into the same stream, since never for two moments do the\nwaters remain identical; you yourself cannot twice step the same man\ninto the same river, for you have meanwhile changed as truly as itself\nhas done, \u03a0\u03ac\u03bd\u03c4\u03b1 \u1fe5\u03b5\u1fd6: all things and states, outward and inward, appear\nindeed in flux: only each moment seems to bring, to each individual,\nfor that one moment, his power to move and to convince.\n\n\n3. _Our experience in our attempt to win others._\n\nAnd if we transmit this emotion or conviction to another mind, or if we\nseem to be able to trace such transmission when it has been actually\neffected in ourselves or in others, we shall find that, in proportion\nas one mind feeds, not forces, another, the particular bond and\norganization of the mental and emotional picture which cost us so much,\nmoved us so much, has, in each case, been snapped and broken up; the\nwhole has been again resolved into its constituent elements, and only\nsome of these elements have been taken up into the already existing\norganization of the other mind, or have joined together in that mind,\nto form there a combination which is really new. Even a simple scent or\nsound or sight comes charged to each of us with many but most differing\nconnotations, arousing or modifying or supplanting old or new ideas\nand impressions in the most subtle, complex, and individual manner.\nInsist upon another mind taking over the whole of this impression,\nand you will have rightly and necessarily aroused an immediate or\nremote hostility or revolt against the whole of what you bring. Hence\nhere too we are again perplexed by the initial enigma: the apparently\ninsurmountable individuality of all that affects us, and the equally\ninsurmountable non-affectingness of all that is clearly and certainly\ntransmissible from any one man to another.\n\n\n4. _This mysterious law appears to obtain in precise proportion to the\ndepth and importance of the truths and realities in view._\n\nAnd if we seem boxed up thus, each one away from our fellow, in all our\nreally moving and determining inclinations and impressions, judgments\nand affections, with regard to matters on which we feel we can afford\nto differ deeply and to be much alone; we appear to be more and not\nless so, in exact proportion as the importance of the subject-matter\nincreases. In moral and spiritual, in religious and fundamental\nmatters, we thirst more, not less, for identity of conviction and of\nfeeling; and we are, or seem to be, more, not less, profoundly and\nhopelessly at variance with each other than anywhere else.\n\nAnd more than this: the apparent reason of this isolation seems but to\naggravate the case, because here more than anywhere else imagination,\nfeeling, intuition seem indeed to play a predominant, determining part;\nand yet here more than anywhere else we feel such a predominance to\nbe fraught with every kind of danger. Thus here especially we feel as\nincapable of suppressing, indeed of doing without these forces, as of\nfrankly accepting, studying, and cultivating them. Now and then we\ntake alarm and are in a panic at any indication that these springs and\nconcomitants of life are at work within us; yet we persist in doing\nlittle or nothing to find sufficient and appropriate food and scope\nand exercise for the right development and hence the real purification\nof these elemental forces, forces which we can stunt but cannot kill.\nNothing, we most rightly feel, can be in greater or more subtle and\ndangerous opposition to manly morality or enlightened religion than\nthe seeking after or revelling in emotion; nothing, we most correctly\nsurmise, can equal the power of strong feeling or heated imagination to\ngive a hiding-place to superstition, sensuality, dreamy self-complacent\nindolence, arrogant revolt and fanaticism; nothing, even where such\nthings seem innocent, appears less apt than do these fierce and\nfitful, these wayward and fleeting feelings, these sublimities and\nexquisitenesses, to help on that sober and stable, consistent and\npersistent, laborious upbuilding of moral and religious character,\nwork, and evidence which alone are wanted more and more. Indeed, what\nwould seem better calculated than such emotion to strain the nerves,\nto inflame the imagination, to blunt common-sense and that salt of the\nearth, the saving sense of the ridiculous, to deaden the springs of\nresearch and critical observation, to bring us, under the incalculably\nsapping influences of physical abnormalities, close up to where sanity\nshades off into madness, and ethical elevation breaks down into\nmorbidness and depravity?\n\n\n5. _The experience of the human race: the two series of personalities,\nmovements, races._\n\nAnd the secular experience of the race would seem fully to bear\nout such suspicions. For have we not there a double series of\npersonalities, events, and movements far too long and widespread not\nto be conclusive? On the one hand, there are those that seem to spring\nfrom dimly lit or dark feeling, to arise,--as it were, hydra-like, to\nsting and madden, or mist-like, to benumb all life, and turn it into\nmere drift and dreaming,--from out of the obscure, undrained, swampy\nplaces of human ignorance and passion. On the other hand, there are\nthose that are formed and fashioned by clear, transparent thought; and\nthese flourish in the cultivated, well-drained plains of human science\nand strict demonstration.\n\nAmong the first series, you have the Pantheistic schools and\npersonalities of the decaying Roman Empire, Plotinus the Ecstatic, and\nJamblichus, and such other dreamers, straining up into the blue; the\nsomewhat similar, largely subterranean, Jewish and Christian sects\nand tendencies of the Middle Ages; the Anabaptist and other like\ngroups, individualistic, fantastic, in considerable part anomistic and\nrevolutionary, of the Reformation period; and such phenomena as the\nEternal-Gospel troubles and the Quietistic controversy in the Roman\nChurch. And above all, in the East, we have, from time immemorial,\nwhole races, (in the midst of a world crying aloud for help and\nre-fashioning, but which is left to stagnate and decay,) still dreaming\naway their lives in Buddhistic abstraction and indifference.\n\nAmong the second, the light, clear series, you have whole races,\nthe luminous, plastic, immensely active Greek, the strong-willed,\npractical, organizing Roman, and the Anglo-Saxon determined \u201cto stand\nno nonsense\u201d; you have an Aristotle, sober, systematic; one side at\nleast of the great Mediaeval Scholastic movement, culminating in\nSt. Thomas, so orderly and transparent; above all, modern Physical\nScience, first subjecting all phenomena to rigorous quantitative and\nmathematical analysis and equation, and then reacting upon philosophy\nas well, and insisting, there and everywhere, upon clearness, direct\ncomparableness, ready transferableness of ideas and their formulae, as\nthe sole tests of truth. Descartes; Kepler, Galileo; Hobbes, Spinoza\nare, in increasing degrees, still perhaps the most perfect types of\nthis clear and cool, this ultimately mathematical and Monistic tendency\nand position.\n\n\n6. _The dark, intuitive personalities and schools, apparently a mere\nstop-gap, transition, or reaction against the clear, discursive ones._\n\nAnd further, the personalities and schools of the interiorly\nexperimental, emotional kind seem to appear upon the scene but as\nstop-gaps or compensations for the other series, in periods of\ntransition or reaction, of uncertainty or decay. So at the break-up\nof the Roman Empire (Neo-Platonism); so at the end of the Patristic\nperiod and just before the official acceptance of Scholasticism (St.\nBernard); so during the foundering of the Mediaeval fabric of life and\nthought in the Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries\n(Pico, Paracelsus); so in the German Romanticism of sixty years\nago, as a reaction against the survivals of the eighteenth-century\nRationalism; so now again in our own day, more slightly, but not less\nreally, in a revival of spiritual philosophy. It looks then as though\nthe experimental-emotional strain could only thrive fitfully, on the\nmomentary check or ruin of the clear and \u201cscientific\u201d school; as\nthough it were a perhaps inevitable disease breaking in occasionally\nupon the normal health of the human mind. For the eventual result\nof the world\u2019s whole movement surely seems to be the reclamation of\never-increasing stretches of knowledge and theory from the dominion of\nvague, irresponsible, untestable feeling, and their incorporation in\nthe domain of that unbroken, universal determinism, of those clear and\nsimple, readily analyzable, verifiable, communicable, and applicable\nlaws which, more and more, are found to rule phenomena wheresoever we\nmay look.\n\n\n7. _This seems especially to apply to the Intuitive-Emotional element\nof Religion._\n\nAnd if the prima facie trend of centuries of thought and conflict\nappears to rule out of court even such a fringe of individual\nexperience and emotion as ever accompanies and stimulates all religion:\nthe verdict of history, indeed of any survey of contemporary life,\nif only this be sufficiently large, would seem fatal to any type\nof religion in which this individual experience and emotion would\nform religion\u2019s core and centre, as in the case of the specifically\nexperimental-emotional school generally, and of the Mystics in\nparticular.\n\nTo take some such survey, let us look, to begin with, outside of where\nCatholic discipline and unity somewhat obscure, at first sight, even\nthe legitimate and indeed the really existing diversities of school\nand tendency. In the Church\u2019s organism each divergence has ever been\nmore largely tempered and supplemented by the others; and since the\nReformation, indeed in part even more recently, owing to an entirely\nintelligible and in part inevitable, reaction, even most legitimate\nand persistent divergencies, which flourished in rich and enriching\nvariety throughout the Middle Ages, have largely ceased to appear in\nany obvious and distinct embodiments. Let us look then first to where\nsuch diversities grow unchecked, and indeed generally tend to excess\nand caricature. Let us take contemporary English Protestantism, and\nthen Foreign Protestantism in the large lines of its history. In both\ncases the experimental-emotional strain and group will seem to compare\nunfavourably with its competitors.\n\nFor if we look about us in England, we seem to have little difficulty\nin classing the tendencies within the Established Church under the\nheadings of High, Broad, and Low; indeed we can readily extend this\ntreble classification to all the various schools and bodies of English\nProtestantism. We can easily conceive of the greater portion of English\nNonconformity as but a prolongation and accentuation of the Evangelical\nschool in the Established Church: the readiness and ease with which\nthe former at certain moments unite and coalesce with the latter, show\nquite conclusively how close is the affinity between them. We almost\nas readily think of the Unitarian and Theistic bodies as prolongations\nand further sublimations of the Anglican Broad Church view, though\nhere, no doubt, the degrees and kinds of difference are more numerous\nand important. And if it would be hard to find an extension, still more\nan accentuation, of the Anglican High Church party amongst the English\nNonconformists, a strain largely identical with the sacerdotal current\nelsewhere has always existed in the Presbyterian churches. Nor must\nwe forget the powerful and constant, both repellent and attractive,\ninfluence exercised by Rome upon even those outside of her obedience.\nTo be quite philosophical, the survey ought to include all types of\nEnglish Christianity; and, in that case, the High Church position would\nrank rather as a dilution, as a variety, incomplete and inconsistent\nthough it be, of the type represented most strikingly and emphatically\nby Rome, than as a variant of the types having their centres at\nWittenberg and Geneva.\n\nAnd if we next turn to German Protestantism, especially to the\nsimultaneous variations of its short-lived, fluid, formative period,\nwe shall there too find this treble tendency. The Evangelical strain\nwill be represented here by the numerous Illuminist and Anabaptist\npersonalities, groups and movements to which Luther himself had\ngiven occasion, which but emphasized or caricatured his own earlier\nMysticism; but which, when they threatened, by their revolutionary,\ncommunistic fanaticism and violence, completely to discredit and ruin\nhis own movement, he suppressed with such ruthless and illogical\nseverity. And the Broad Church strain will here be found emphasized and\ncaricatured in Socinianism, and in such milder forms of Rationalism as\nprepared the way for it or followed in its wake. And finally, the High\nChurch strain is not so hard to discover in much of the doctrine and\nin some of the forms and externals of Orthodox, official Lutheranism.\nIndeed in foreign Protestantism generally,--in Zwinglianism, in\nCalvinism, and in its other bodies and sects, we can trace various\nforms of, and degrees of approximation to, one or other of these three\ntypes, the Historical, the Experimental, the Rational.\n\nNow looking at the scene of battle, for the moment quite generally,\nit would seem as though, of these three types and tendencies, the\nEmotional and Experimental had proved itself decidedly the weakest\nfor good, the strongest for evil of the three, and this both in the\npast and in the present, both in England and abroad. We have here in\nEngland, in the past, the Puritan excesses in Ireland, Scotland, and\nEngland itself; and later on and down to the present, the largely\ndreary and unlovely, narrow and unjust monotony of Evangelicalism. We\nhave there abroad, in the past, the Peasants\u2019 War and the Anabaptist\nSaturnalia at M\u00fcnster; and later on and down to the present, that\nPietism which has so often barred the way to a just appreciation of\nHistorical Christianity and to a candid acceptance of rational methods\nand results, and this without its being able to find any constructive\nor analytic working principle of its own. Both in England and in\nGermany, indeed throughout the cultivated West, only the Historical,\nTraditional school on the one hand, and the Rationalistic, Scientific\nschool on the other hand, seem to count at all: it is they which alone\nseem to gain ground, or at least to hold it, at the Universities and\namongst the thinking, ruling classes generally.\n\n\n8. _Yet this adverse judgment will appear largely misleading, if we\nstudy the matter more fully._\n\nAnd yet this first aspect of things will, I think, turn out to be\nlargely deceptive, to be but one side and one teaching of that\nnoble inheritance, that great output of life and experience, past\nand present, which is ready to our hand for ever-renewed study and\nassimilation in human history and society, and which, taken as\nit really is,--as the indefinite prolongation of our own little\nindividual direct experiences,--can alone help us to give to these\nlatter experiences a full, life-regulating value. Let us take then the\nforegoing objections, and let us do so as but so many starting-points\nand openings into our great subject. This preliminary discussion will\nbut prepare the ground and method for the following detailed study,\nand for the final positions of the whole book. Indeed even the book\u2019s\nopening question can be answered only by the whole book and at our\nlabour\u2019s end.\n\n\nI. THE FIRST OF THE THREE FORCES: HELLENISM, THE THIRST FOR RICHNESS\nAND HARMONY.\n\nWe revert then to the apparent interior antinomy from which we\nstarted,--the particular concrete experience which alone moves us and\nhelps to determine our will, but which, seemingly, is untransferable,\nindeed unrepeatable; and the general, abstract reasoning which _is_\nrepeatable, indeed transferable, but which does not move us or help\ndirectly to determine the will. And we here begin by the study of the\nantinomy, as this has been explicated for us by Hellenism, the earliest\nand widest of the three main mental, indeed spiritual, forces that are\noperative within each of us Westerns, on and on.\n\n\n1. _The antinomy in the pre-Socratics._\n\nHeraclitus appeared to us an impressive exponent of the former truth,\nof the apparent utter evanescence of these particular impressions\nand experiences, of the complete shiftingness of the very faculty\nwithin us and of the environment without us, by which and in which we\napprehend them. An ever-changing self in the midst of an ever-changing\nworld, basing its persuasiveness and persuadableness, indeed even its\nconscious identity with itself and its communion with others, upon the\never-changing resultants of all these changes: this would surely seem\nto be a house built not upon the sand but upon the quicksands.\n\nNow we have to remember that Parmenides had, already in early Greek\ntimes, been equally emphatic, perhaps equally impressive, on the other\nside of this very question,--on the impossibility of Becoming, of\nChange; and on the certainty and knowableness of the utter Oneness\nand Permanence of all Being.[1] All that really _is_, he maintained,\nexcludes all Becoming: the very notion of Being is incompatible with\nthat of Becoming: the first is utterly without the second. All real\nBecoming would be equivalent to the real existence of Non-Being. Hence\nall Multiplicity and Becoming is necessarily but apparent, and masks\nan underlying absolute Unity and Permanence, which can be reached by\nthe intellect alone. And this position of Parmenides was felt to be\nso strong, that all the subsequent Greek Physicists took their stand\nupon it: the four unchangeable elements of Empedocles, the Atoms of\nLeucippus and Democritus (atoms of eternally unchanging shape and\nsize, and of one absolutely uniform and unchanging quality) are but\nmodifications of the doctrine of Parmenides concerning the Oneness and\nUnchangeableness of Being.\n\nBut even Heraclitus himself is far removed from denying all Oneness,\nall Permanence. For, according to him, a permanent law of permutation\nruns through and expresses itself in the shiftingness of all things\nperceptible by sense; or rather one eternal physical substance, Fire,\nof ceaselessly active properties, is continually manifesting itself,\nin a regular succession of appearances, from fire to air, from air to\nwater, from water to earth, and then backwards up again to fire.\n\nAnd when once the Greeks begin to break away from all this\nHylozoism,--these systems which uniformly, from Thales to Democritus,\nattempt to explain all things by some one living or moving Matter,\nwithout the intervention of Spirit or of Mind,--Spirit appears in\nAnaxagoras as the One, and as present, everywhere and in varying\ndegrees, as the principle of the motion of that co-eternal matter\nwhich is here, on the contrary, conceived of as but apparently\nhomogeneous anywhere, and as really composed of an indefinite number\nand combination of qualitatively differing constituents.\n\nThus in all its schools, even before Socrates and Plato, Greek\nphilosophy clung to the One and the One\u2019s reality, however differently\nit conceived the nature of this Unity, and however much it may have\nvaried as to the nature and reality of the Many, or as to the relation\nand the bond subsisting between that Unity and this Multiplicity. Only\nat the end of this first period do the Sophists introduce, during a\nshort time marked by all the symptoms of transition, uncertainty,\nand revolution, the doctrine, of the unknowableness, indeed of the\nunreality, of the One, and with it of the exclusive reality of mere\nMultiplicity, of evanescent Appearances.\n\n\n\n2. _In Socrates._\n\nBut Socrates opens out the second and greatest period of Greek\nphilosophy, by reverting to, indeed by indefinitely deepening, the\ngeneral conviction that Oneness underlies Multiplicity. And he does\nso through the virtual discovery of, and a ceaseless insistence upon,\ntwo great new subject-matters of philosophy: Dialects and Ethics. It\nis true that in both these respects the Sophists had prepared the\nground: they had, before him and all around him, discussed everything\nfrom every then conceivable point of view; and they had, at the same\ntime, helped to withdraw man\u2019s attention from pure speculation about\nphysical nature to practical occupation with himself. But the Sophistic\nDialectic had ended in itself, in universal negation and scepticism;\nand the Sophistic Anthropology had, partly as cause, partly as effect\nof that scepticism, more and more completely narrowed and dragged down\nall human interest, capacity, and activity to a selfish, materialistic\nself-aggrandizement and a frank pleasure-seeking. Socrates indeed took\nover both these subjects; but he did so in a profoundly different\nspirit, and worked them into a thoroughly antagonistic view of\nknowledge and of life.\n\nSocrates begins, like the Sophists, with the Multiplicity of impression\nand opinion, which we find occasioned by one and the same question\nor fact; and like them he refuses to take the Physicists\u2019 short cut\nof immediate and direct occupation with things and substances, say\nthe elements. Slowly and laboriously he works his way, by the help of\nDialectics, (for these have now become a means and not an end,) around\nand through and into the various apprehensions, and, at last, out of\nand beyond them, to a satisfactory concept of each thing. And the very\nmeans taken to arrive at this concept, and the very test which is\napplied to the concept, when finally arrived at, for gauging the degree\nof its finality, both these things help to deepen profoundly the sense\nof a certain Multiplicity in all Oneness and of a certain Oneness in\nall Multiplicity. For the means he takes are a careful and (as far as\nmay be) exhaustive and impartial discussion and analysis of all the\ncompeting and conflicting notions and connotations occasioned by each\nmatter in dispute; and the test he applies to the final concept, in\nview of gauging the degree of its finality, is how far this concept\nreconciles and resolves within its higher unity all such various and\ncontrary aspects suggested by the thing, as have stood the brunt of\nthe previous discussion and have thereby proved themselves true and\nobjective.\n\nSocrates again, like the Sophists, turns his attention away from\nPhysics to Ethics; he drops speculation about external nature, and\nbusies himself with the interior life and development of man. But the\nworld in which Socrates\u2019 method necessarily conceives and places man,\nand the work and standard which he finds already latent in each man,\nfor that man to do and to endorse in himself and in the world, are\nboth entirely different from those of the Sophists, and occasion a\nstill further, indeed the greatest of all possible deepenings of the\napprehension of Oneness and of Multiplicity.\n\nFor the world of Socrates is a world in which Reality and Truth reign\nand are attainable by man; never does he even ask whether truth _is_\nor can be reached by us, but only what it is and where it lies and\nhow it can be attained. And since Socrates instinctively shares the\nprofoundly Greek conviction that Reality and Truth are necessarily\nnot only one but unchanging, he assumes throughout that, since Truth\nand Reality do exist, Oneness and unchanging Being must exist also.\nAnd thus the Oneness of Reality and the Multiplicity of Appearance\nare re-established by him in Greek philosophy. And their apprehension\nis indefinitely deepened and extended, since, whatever _is_ being\nknowable, and knowable only through Dialectics, and Dialectics having\nleft us with concepts each in a sense a one and a many, Life itself,\nReality and all Nature must, somehow and to some extent, be also a one\nand a many. And man according to Socrates is required, already as a\nsimple consequence of such convictions, to discover and acknowledge and\norganize the One and the Many in his own interior life and faculties.\nFor if his senses tell him of the Many, and his reason alone tells him\nof the One, and the Many are but appearances and the One alone is fully\nreal,--then it will be in and through his reason that he is and will be\ntruly man.\n\nThus immediately within himself does man have a continuous, uniquely\nvivid experience of the One and the Many, and of the necessity,\ndifficulty, and fruitfulness of their proper organization; and from\nhence he will reflect them back upon the outer world, adding thus\nindefinitely, by means of Ethics, to the delicacy and depth of\nhis apprehension of such Oneness and Multiplicity as, by means of\nDialectics, he has already found there. But further, he now thus\nbecomes conscious, for the first time at all adequately, of the\ndifference between his own body and his own mind. And here he has no\nmore a Oneness _and_ a Multiplicity, he is directly conscious of a\nOneness _in_ Multiplicity, of a ruling and organizing power of the mind\nin and over the body; and the One here is unseen and spiritual, and\nthe Many is here found to be an organism of forces and of functions\ndesigned, with profound wisdom, to correspond with and to subserve\nthe soul. And this Microcosm is readily taken as a key and an analogy\nwherewith to group and explain the appearances of the world without.\nMuch appears in that outer world as unreduced to system; but then\nsimilarly within us much is still in a state of chaos, of revolt. In\nthat world no one ruler can be directly perceived; but then similarly\nwithin us, the one ruling mind is perceptible only in its effects. And\nthis inner organization, ever required more than realized, is not a\nmatter of abstract speculation, of subtle induction, adjournable at\nwill; it is a clamorous consciousness, it is a fact that continually\nrequires acts to back it or to break it. Strengthen it, and you have\ninterior expansion and life; weaken it, and you bring on shrinkage and\ndeath. For the passions are there, active even if _we_ refuse to be\nactive, active against us and above us, if not under us and for us;\nand their submission to the reason, to effort, cannot fail, once our\nattention is fully turned that way, more than anything else to keep\nalive and to deepen our sense of the organization of all that lives, of\nthe presence of the One _and_ the Many, of the One _in_ the Many, in\nall that truly lives at all.\n\n\n3. _In Plato._\n\nNow this dialectical method and this ethical subject-matter get\napplied, investigated, and developed, with ever-increasing complexity\nand interaction, by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, the three spiritual\ngenerations of this, the greatest period of Greek Philosophy. And the\nmore penetrating the method becomes, and the more deeply it probes the\nsubject-matter, the more intense and extensive is found to be this\nUnity in Multiplicity both within man and without him.\n\nIn the teaching of Socrates both the method and the apprehension of\nUnity and Multiplicity are as yet, so to speak, in bud. Dialectics are\nhere still chiefly a Method, and hardly as yet a Metaphysic as well.\nThe soul here is as yet but simply one, and virtue is also simply one,\nand simply and directly identical with knowledge, and hence directly\nteachable: the very possibility that the will may not or indeed cannot\nfollow, necessarily, automatically, the clear perception of what is\nreally good for it, is one quite foreign to the mind of Socrates,\nindeed to all Greek thinkers up to the very end of the classical\nphilosophy.\n\nIn Plato the methods and the results are both, as it were, in\nflower. Dialectics have here become both a systematic method, and\na metaphysical system: not only are Ideas true, and the only means\nfor reaching truth, but they alone are true, they alone fully _are_,\nand exist as separate self-subsisting realities. And as in the world\nwithin, Goodness is, in this profoundly ethical system, seen and willed\nand striven for as supreme, so also in the world without, is the Idea\nof Goodness considered as existing supreme from all eternity, and as\nsomehow the Cause of all that truly _is_.\n\nIt is true that Plato nowhere succeeds in finding in his system\na fitting place for a Personal God: for, among other reasons,\nthe Platonic Ideas are all, from the lowest to the highest, but\nHypostasized Concepts of Kinds, and are hence, quite consistently,\nconsidered to be perfect and supreme, in precise proportion as they are\ngeneral. The highest Idea will thus of necessity be the most general,\nthe most devoid of all determination, and hence the least personal of\nthem all.\n\nIt is true also that in his Metaphysics generally he insists so much\nupon the complete severance and self-sufficingness of the Ideas as\nover against Appearances, that he prepares his own inevitable failure\nagain to bridge over the gulf that he himself has thus dug too deep\nand broad. Especially is his half-suggestion misleading, that the\ntransition to Phenomenal Multiplicity is but a further extension of\nthe Multiplicity already observable in the world of Ideas. For these\ntwo Multiplicities are evidently entirely different in kind. Each Idea\nis conceived as necessarily eternal, unchanging, complete and perfect\nin its own way; whereas each appearance is conceived as necessarily\ntemporal, changing, incomplete, and imperfect even in its own way.\n\nIt is true again, that, in Psychology, Plato breaks up the Soul\ninto the three parts of the Reason, the Irascible Passions, and the\nConcupiscible Passions, and that he discriminates between them even\nas to their place of residence in the body. And correspondingly\nhe distinguishes, in Ethics, the four Cardinal Virtues, Prudence,\nFortitude, Temperance, and Justice: he distributes the first three\nvirtues among the three parts of the soul, allotting ever one of these\nvirtues specially to one part; and makes Justice to be the general\nvirtue that sees to each part carrying out its own special work and\nvirtue, and respecting the work of the other two. And thus we seem to\nget away from the Oneness of the soul and the Oneness of virtue, as\nalready taught by Socrates.\n\nIt is finally true that not only does Matter remain unexplained and\ntreated as though in itself a mere nothing; but that it is considered,\nnevertheless, as somehow strong enough to hinder and hamper the Idea\nwhich really constitutes that Matter\u2019s sole reality. Hence also\nsprings Plato\u2019s saddening aloofness from and contempt for all trades\nand handicrafts, for all the homely tastes, joys, and sorrows at all\npeculiar to the toiling majority. And herein he but considerably\ndeepens and systematizes one of the weakest and most ruinous traditions\nof his class, age, and people, and falls far short of Socrates, with\nhis deep childlike love of homely wisdom and of technical skill and\nproductiveness. Indeed Matter is considered to be the one occasion\nof all sin, just as ignorance is considered to be the one true cause\nof sin. For although Plato throughout holds and proclaims free-will,\nin the definite sense of freedom of choice; and although he, in some\npassages, declares the ignorance which (according to him) is the\nnecessary condition of a wrong choice, to be itself voluntary and\nculpable and to spring from an avoidable attachment to the world of\nsense: yet he clings, nevertheless, to the Socratic position that all\nignorance and immorality are involuntary, that no man does or can act\nagainst what he sees to be for his own good.\n\nAll this would of itself suffice to show how and why the Platonic\nsystem has, as such, long ceased to live or to be capable of\nresuscitation. And yet even some of the apparent weaknesses just\nreferred to are nearly or even entirely strong points in his scheme. So\nwith his treble division of the Soul, if we but soften the distinction\nof actual parts into a difference of function or of object. For,\nalready in Plato\u2019s own judgment, these parts admit of and require a\nregular hierarchy of subordination: the Irascible part is the natural\nally, if properly tamed and broken in by the Reason, of this Reason\nagainst the Concupiscible part: it is the winged steed amongst the two\nhorses of the chariot of the soul, and the charioteer, the Reason,\nhas to see to it that this his winged steed flies not recklessly, but\nlends all its strength to keep its heavy, wingless, downwards-tending\nyoke-fellow from plunging them all into the deep and dark. Hence all\nthis really makes for a true, because rich and laborious, Unity in\nMultiplicity. The same applies to the scheme of the four Cardinal\nVirtues; for here also there is a balancing and interaction of forces\nand of duties, which together are well fitted to deepen and fruitfully\nto unify the soul.\n\nBut above all, there are four main conceptions which, with varying\ndegrees and kinds of clearness, consistency, and proof, run throughout\nthe Dialogues, and which not all the ever-increasing perception of the\ncomplexity of their implications, nor all the never-ending costingness\nof their reproduction, have long kept mankind from accepting and\nworking into their own inner life and into their outlook and labour\nupon the world without.\n\nThere is, first, the sense of the Universal nature of philosophy.\nPhilosophy is here not a science alongside of other sciences, nor\na sect existing with a view to the advantage of its members, nor a\nsubstitute for religion or science, art or action; but it stands\nfor the totality of all mental activity, the nearest approach to an\nadequate realization of the reasonable nature of man. Hence philosophy\nhas constant relations with all departments of human thought and\naction; or rather they all, with their several methods and ideals,\ncome to enrich and stimulate philosophy, whilst philosophy, in return,\nreacts upon them all, by clarifying and harmonizing them each with\nitself and each with all the others.\n\nThere is, next, the constant conviction of the reality of moral\naccountableness on the one hand, and of the strength of the passions\nand of the allurements of sense on the other, of the costing ethical\ncharacter of the search for light and truth, of the ceaseless necessity\nof a turning of the whole man, of conversion. \u201cAs the bodily eye\ncannot turn from darkness to light without the turning of the whole\nbody, so too when the eye of the soul is turned round, the whole soul\nmust be turned from the world of generation unto that of Being, and\nbecome able to endure the sight of Being, and of the brightest and\nbest part of Being, that is to say of the Good.\u201d[2] Hence Philosophy\nis a Redemption, a Liberation, a Separation of the soul from the\nbody, a Dying and seeking after death, a constant Purification and\nRecollection of the soul; and the four Cardinal Virtues are so many\npurifications;[3] and men who have once come to lay the blame of their\nown confusion and perplexity upon themselves, will hate themselves and\nescape from themselves into Philosophy, in order to become different\nand get rid of their former selves.[4]\n\nThere is, in the third place, the dominant consciousness of\nMultiplicity in Unity and of Unity in Multiplicity, and of the\nnecessity of the soul\u2019s ever moving from one to the other--moving out\nof itself and into the world of Multiplicity, of sense and exterior\nwork; and moving back into itself, into the world of Unity, of spirit\nand interior rest. Hence there is and ought to be a double movement\nof the soul. And this double action does not continue on the same\nplane, but the moving, oscillating soul is, according to the faithful\nthoroughness or cowardly slackness of these its movements, ever either\nmounting higher in truth and spirit, or falling lower away into the\nsensual and untruthful. For these its ascensions are \u201ceffortful,\u201d\npainful, gradual; they are never fully finished here below, and they\nnowhere attain to that absolute knowledge which is possessed by God\nalone.[5] \u201cWe ought,\u201d he tells us, \u201cto strive and fly as swiftly as\npossible from hence thither. And to fly thither is to become like God\u201d;\nbut he adds, \u201cas far as this is possible.\u201d[6]\n\nAnd there is, lastly, an unfailing faith in an unexhausted,\ninexhaustible, transcendent world of Beauty, Truth, and Goodness,\nwhich gives of itself, but never gives itself wholly, to that\nphenomenal world which exists only by participation in it; and in\na Supreme Goodness, felt and half conceived to be personal and\nself-communicative, as the cause of all that is anywhere beautiful and\none and good.\n\nThese four characteristics of Universality, Conversion, Unification,\nTranscendence, we find them together in Greek philosophy once, and once\nonly, namely in Plato. Twice again we have indeed a world-embracing,\nworld-moving scheme placed before us, and in each case two of these\nfour characteristics reappear in a deepened and developed form. For\nAristotle works out, more fully and satisfactorily than Plato, the\ncharacters of Universality and of Unification; especially does the\nlatter find a great improvement. And Plotinus insists, even more\nconstantly and movingly than Plato, upon Conversion as a necessary\nmeans, and upon Transcendence as a necessary characteristic of all\ntrue philosophy. But Aristotle has lost the Conversion from out of\nhis scheme, and also the Transcendence conceived as at the same time\nimmanent in the world; and Plotinus has lost the Universality, and the\nUnification conceived as a Unity in Multiplicity.\n\n\n4. _In Aristotle._\n\nAs to Aristotle, the improvements upon Plato are marked and many.\nThere is the doctrine of the non-existence of the General apart from\nthe Particular; the doctrine of Matter as not simple Non-Being, but\nas Not-yet-Being, the Possible, the Not-yet-Actual, which is waiting\nthe presence of the Form to give it the Actuality for which it is\ndestined, since Matter requires Form, and Form requires Matter; and\nthe doctrine, here first fully developed, of Motion, the Moved and the\nMoving.\n\nSince all Motion, Change, Natural Life spring from Form (and a\nparticular Form), working in and with Matter (a particular and\nappropriate Matter), the ultimate First Moving Cause must Itself be\nall-moving and all-unmoved, that is, it must be Pure Form. We thus get\nthe first at all adequate philosophical presentation of Theism: for\nthis Pure Form is then shown to be eternal, unchanging, all thought,\nself-thinking, and absolutely distinct from the world which it moves.\nIn all other real Beings the Form has, in various degrees, to contend\nwith the manifold impediments of Matter; and in proportion to the\nForm\u2019s success, does the resultant Being stand high in the scale of\nCreation. The plant, with its vegetative and plastic soul, stands\nlowest in the scale of organic life; next comes the animal, with its\nsensitive and motive soul; and highest stands man, with his rational\nand volitional soul. And each higher Being takes over, as the lower\npart of his own nature, the functions and powers of the lower Being;\nand hence, since all Beings constitute so many several parts of the\nworld\u2019s systematic whole, they are all deserving of the closest study.\nAnd Man, destined to be the highest constituent of this whole, can\nbecome so only by moving as much as may be out of his entanglement in\nthe lower, the passive functions of his soul, and identifying himself\nwith his true self, with that active power, that pure reason which,\nitself pure Form, finds its proper objects in the Forms of all things\nthat are.\n\nThus we get a system of a certain grand consistency and an impressively\nconstant re-application of certain fundamental ideas to every kind of\nsubject-matter. But the Platonic Dualism, though everywhere vigorously\nattacked, is yet nowhere fully overcome.\n\nFor in Metaphysics, Plato\u2019s \u201cOne alongside of the Many\u201d becomes with\nAristotle the \u201cOne throughout the Many\u201d: to the mind of the latter,\nthe Separate General, Pure Form as existing without Matter, is a mere\nabstraction; Matter without Form is a simple potentiality; Matter and\nForm together, and they only, constitute the Particular, and (in and\nby it) all actual and full Reality. And only Reality, in the highest\nand primary sense, can, according to him, form the highest and primary\nobject of Knowledge. Yet knowledge never refers to the Particular, but\nalways to the General; and, in the Particular, only to the General\nmanifested in it. And this is the case, not because, though the\nParticular is the fuller Reality, we can more easily reach the General\nwithin it; but, on the contrary, because, though we can more easily\nreach the Particular, the General alone is abiding and fully true and\nreally knowable.\n\nAgain, for Aristotle the Particular, which alone really exists, is\nconstituted a particular and really existent Being, in virtue of its\nparticipation in Matter; but it is constituted as abiding, true,\nand knowable, in virtue of its Form. The cause of its Reality is\nthus different from that of its Truth; the addition of the simple\nPotentiality of Matter has alone given Reality to the pure Actuality of\nForm.\n\nFinally, for Aristotle all Movement, as comprehensive of every kind of\nchange, being defined as the transition from Potentiality to Reality,\nas the determination of Matter by Form, can be called forth, in the\nlast resort, only by a pure Form which, though the cause of all Motion,\nis itself unmoved, is pure Thought and Speculation, a thinking of\nthinking,--God eternally thinking God and Himself alone. Yet this\nGod is, if thus safely distinguished from the world, yet hardly more\nPersonal than Spirit was in Anaxagoras, or the Idea of Good was in\nPlato. For not only does Aristotle refuse Him a body and all psychic\nlife, but with them he eliminates all Doing and all Producing, all\nEmotion and all Willing, indeed all Thinking except that of His own\nlonely Self-Contemplation. And yet the activity of the will is as\nessential to Personality as that of thinking; and thinking again we can\nconceive as personal only if conditioned by a diversity of objects and\na variety of mental states. And this God\u2019s relations with the world are\nstrangely few and still curiously materialistic. For He but sets the\nworld in motion, and has no special care for it or detailed rule over\nit; and since, of the three or four kinds of motion, spacial motion is\ndeclared to be the primary one, and its most perfect form to be the\ncircular, and since a circle moves quickest at its circumference, He is\nconceived as imparting to the world a spacial and a circular movement,\nand this, apparently, from a point in space, since He does so from\noutside. His transcendence is, so far, but a spacial one.\n\nIn Physics, Aristotle still constantly describes Nature as an\nharmonious, reasonable Being, an all-effecting force. There is here a\nmythical strain at work, and yet nowhere is a subject clearly defined\nto which these various qualities could be attributed.\n\nIn Anthropology again, the active soul, the rational and free-willing,\nthe immortal principle, is that which specially distinguishes and\nconstitutes Humanity, and which indeed is the Form of the lower\nsoul-powers and of the body as well. Yet it is these lower soul-powers,\nit is the passive, the vegetative and sensitive, the mortal soul-powers\nwhich, in and with the body, constitute this particular man, and only\nparticular men are really existent. Where and how then is this living\nman\u2019s Personality, his indelible consciousness of the unity of his\nnature, to arise and to be found in all this medley?\n\nAnd finally, in Ethics, Aristotle maintains and develops, it is true,\nthe great Socratic tradition of conceiving all virtue as active,\nand demands with Plato that the whole man should, as much as may\nbe, put himself into all his moral acts. Indeed Aristotle makes\nhere the great advance of definitely denying the Socratic doctrine\nthat virtue consists in knowledge, and of abolishing the Platonic\ndistinction between ordinary and philosophic virtue. All moral\nqualities are, according to him, matters of the will; and arise, in\nthe first instance, not through instruction, but through exercise and\neducation. But in place of Plato\u2019s grandly organic, though still too\nabstract scheme of the Cardinal Virtues, each of the three partial\nones pressing upwards and requiring and completing the others, and all\nthree bound together by the general fourth, we get a more detailed and\nexperimental, but only loosely co-ordinated enumeration and description\nof the virtuous habits, all of them so many means between two vicious\nextremes. The purificatory, recollective, self-fleeing, grandly\norganic, deeply religious tone and drift of Plato\u2019s philosophy, that\npriceless conviction that we must give all if we would gain all, has\ndisappeared.\n\nEverywhere then we get in Aristotle that noble Greek insistence, upon\nAction and Energy, upon Reason and Clearness, upon the General and\nUnification. But at all the chief turning-points we get a conflict\nbetween the General, which is alone supposed to be fully true, and the\nParticular, which is alone supposed to be fully real. And hence we are\nleft with an insufficient apprehension of the inexhaustibleness of\nall Reality, of its indefinite apprehensibleness but ever inadequate\napprehendedness. And above all, as both cause and effect of all this,\nwe find here only a slight and intermittent hold upon the great\nfact and force of Personality in both God and man. In a word, if in\nPlato the abstracting process went in general still further than\nin Aristotle: in Aristotle the supply of experimental material of\na spiritual kind which in Plato was ever enriching, supplementing\nand correcting the abstract reasoning and its results in matters of\nspirituality, is almost entirely in abeyance.\n\n\n5. _In Plotinus and Proclus._\n\nIn the third and last period of Greek Philosophy, we can pass by the\nStoic and Epicurean, and also the Sceptical schools. For, great as\nwas their practical importance and influence, these schools never\naimed at embracing the totality of life; no one of them ever, as a\nmatter of fact, cultivated more than one side of a purely individual\nself-education and peace-seeking. They reproduced and continued, on\na larger scale, those interesting three minor Socratic schools which\nthemselves had, even during the full times and universal systems of\nPlato and Aristotle, constituted as it were the backwaters away from\nthe main stream of Greek speculation. The Stoic system carries on the\nCynic school; the Epicurean, the Cyrenaic; and the Sceptical, the\nMegaric. Unity and Rest is monopolized by the Stoic, and Multiplicity\nand Movement by the Epicurean; whilst the Sceptic attempts to stand\napart from and above both. What Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, living\nin still many-sided and public-spirited times, had, in their lives and\nteaching, seen and practised together; now, in a period of spiritual\npoverty and self-seeking, is seen and practised by separate schools\nseparately, each in external conflict with the other.\n\nOnly the system of that great mystical soul, Plotinus, has, for our\npresent purposes, a claim on our close attention. Indeed this, the\nlast great attempt at synthesis of the ancient Greek mind, will have\nto occupy us in such detail throughout a great part of this book, that\nhere we can but briefly indicate its chief characteristics as regards\nthe One and the Many.\n\nIt is then clear that Plotinus is an even more intensely and\nexclusively religious spirit than is Plato himself. Some of his\ndescriptions of the soul\u2019s flight from the world of sense and of the\nsoul\u2019s substantial touch of God in ecstasy, and again his penetrating\napprehension of the timeless and spaceless characteristics of Spirit,\nhave never ceased, at least indirectly, to leaven, and to lend much of\ntheir form to, the deepest recollective aspirations of religious souls\nin Europe and Western Asia, for some fourteen centuries at least.\n\nYet this religious sense is here so exclusive, and it thirsts so\nvehemently for perfect unity and for an infinite Superiority and\nutter Self-sufficingness of God, that it readily allies itself\nwith, and reinforces by a massive enthusiasm and asceticism, the\nabstractive trend which, so strong at all times in Greek philosophy,\nwas at this period already, for other reasons, growing more intensely\nabstractive than ever. Under this double influence Plotinus reduces\nthe two great, deliberate, alternating movements of the soul,--its\nOutgoing to the Particular and Contingent, and its Incoming to the\nGeneral and Infinite, as they are taught by Plato,--to one only, that\nof Recollection and Abstraction, a movement ever up and away, from\nall Multiplicity, to the One alone. And he denies to this One all\nMultiplicity whatsoever,--hence all such conscious, volitional action\nupon the world as is involved in Plato\u2019s magnificent, though never\nworked out, intuition that it is love, (some energizing analogous to\nour thinking, loving and willing the existence, the self-realization\nand the happiness of other self-conscious beings,) which moves the\nGood, as it were, to go out from Itself, and to communicate Itself\nto others. Here, in Plotinus\u2019s scheme, Man begins indeed with\nsense-impressions and imaginative picturings, with discursive reasoning\nand intuitive reason, with feelings, volitions, and energizings\nof every kind. But the more he moves up, the more of all this he\nleaves utterly behind; till, in ecstasy, all will, love, thought,\nconsciousness, cease altogether. For man has thus been getting nearer\nand nearer, and more and more like, the One; and this One is just\nnothing besides sheer, pure Oneness,--it is neither Will, nor Love, nor\nThought, nor Self-consciousness, in any degree or sense of these words.\n\nPlotinus\u2019s scheme is thus indeed prompted by some of the deepest\nMystical aspirations. But whilst in its one deliberate movement--that\nof man up to God--it starts from convictions and requirements that are\ndeeply ethical, libertarian, spiritual, theistic: it will be shown, in\nits conception of the nature of the One and of this One\u2019s relations\ndown into the world, to be curiously naturalistic and determinist, and\nsubtly materialistic. Thus does Greek Philosophy end in an impressively\nall-devouring Abstraction, in an intense Realism destructive, step by\nstep, of precisely all that concrete, individual, personal Beauty,\nTruth, and Goodness, of all the spiritual, hence organic, interior,\nself-conscious reality, which had given occasion to this system.\nWe have now but so many hypostatized abstractions, each more pale\nand empty than the other, each ever more simply a mere category of\nthe human mind, indeed, but a category appropriate to Things and\nto Mathematico-Physical Laws, not to Spirit and to Ethico-Personal\nOrganisms. The system, in its ultimate upshot and trend, is thus\nprofoundly anti-Immanental, anti-Incarnational: a succession of\nincreasingly exalted and increasingly empty Transcendences, each of\nwhich is, as it were, open upwards but closed downwards, takes the\nplace of all deliberate operations and self-expressions of the Higher\nin and through the Lower, hence of all preveniences and condescensions\nof God.\n\nAnd in Proclus, practically the last non-Christian Greek Philosopher,\nall these intensely abstractive, naturalistic features get finally and\nfully systematized, whilst but intermittent traces remain of Plato\u2019s\nrichly manifold, organized activities and his at times strikingly\nincarnational conceptions; and only skeleton-schemes persist of those\nrapt recollective experiences of Plotinus which, derived in his case\nfrom direct experience, constitute him, among all Philosophers, as Dr.\nEdward Caird most aptly calls him, the \u201cMystic par excellence.\u201d\n\n\nII. THE SECOND OF THE THREE FORCES: CHRISTIANITY, THE REVELATION OF\nPERSONALITY AND DEPTH.\n\nNow the whole of this clear, conceptual, abstractive Greek method, in\nas far as it identified abstractions with realities, and names with\nthings, and reasoning with doing, suffering, and experience; and sought\nfor Unity outside of Multiplicity, for Rest outside of Energizing, for\nthe Highest outside of Personality and Character as these are developed\nand manifested in the permeation and elevation of the lower; has in\nso far been succeeded and superseded by two other great world-moving\nexperiences of the human race, experiences apparently even more\nantagonistic to each other than either appears to be to the Greek view:\nChristianity and Scientific Method.\n\n\n1. _The unique fulness and closeness of unity in multiplicity of our\nLord\u2019s life._\n\nAs to Christianity, it is really impossible to compare it directly\nwith Hellenism, without at once under-stating its originality. For\nits originality consists not so much in its single doctrines, or even\nin its teaching as a whole, and in the particular place each doctrine\noccupies in this teaching, as in its revelation, through the person\nand example of its Founder, of the altogether unsuspected depth and\ninexhaustibleness of human Personality, and of this Personality\u2019s\nsource and analogue in God, of the simplicity and yet difficulty and\nnever-endingness of the access of man to God, and of the ever-preceding\ncondescension of God to man. Hence if Christianity is thus throughout\nthe Revelation of Personality; and if Personality is ever a One in\nMany, (and more deeply One and more richly Many, in proportion to the\ngreatness of that spiritual reality): then we need not wonder at the\ndifficulty we find in pointing out any one particular doctrine as\nconstitutive of the unique originality of Christianity.\n\nFor a Person came, and lived and loved, and did and taught, and died\nand rose again, and lives on by His Power and His Spirit for ever\nwithin us and amongst us, so unspeakably rich and yet so simple, so\nsublime and yet so homely, so divinely above us precisely in being\nso divinely near,--that His character and teaching require, for an\never fuller yet never complete understanding, the varying study, and\ndifferent experiments and applications, embodiments and unrollings\nof all the races and civilizations, of all the individual and\ncorporate, the simultaneous and successive experiences of the human\nrace to the end of time. If there is nothing shifting or fitful or\nsimply changing about Him, there is everywhere energy and expansion,\nthought and emotion, effort and experience, joy and sorrow, loneliness\nand conflict, interior trial and triumph, exterior defeat and\nsupplantation: particular affections, particular humiliations, homely\nlabour, a homely heroism, greatness throughout in littleness. And in\nHim, for the first and last time, we find an insight so unique, a\nPersonality so strong and supreme, as to teach us, once for all, the\ntrue attitude towards suffering.\n\nNot one of the philosophers or systems before Him had effectually\nescaped falling either into Pessimism, seeing the end of life as\ntrouble and weariness, and seeking to escape from it into some\naloofness or some Nirvana; or into Optimism, ignoring or explaining\naway that suffering and trial which, as our first experience and as our\nlast, surround us on every side. But with Him, and alone with Him and\nthose who still learn and live from and by Him, there is the union of\nthe clearest, keenest sense of all the mysterious depth and breadth and\nlength and height of human sadness, suffering, and sin, _and_, in spite\nof this and through this and at the end of this, a note of conquest and\nof triumphant joy.\n\nAnd here, as elsewhere in Christianity, this is achieved not by some\nartificial, facile juxtaposition: but the soul is allowed to sob\nitself out; and all this its pain gets fully faced and willed, gets\ntaken up into the conscious life. Suffering thus becomes the highest\nform of action, a divinely potent means of satisfaction, recovery,\nand enlargement for the soul,--the soul with its mysteriously great\nconsciousness of pettiness and sin, and its immense capacity for joy in\nself-donation.\n\nAnd again, His moral and spiritual idealism, whilst indefinitely higher\nthan that of any of the philosophers or prophets before Him, has\nnothing strained or restless, nothing rootless or quietistic, nothing\nquerulous or disdainful, or of caste or sect about it: the humblest\nmanual labour, the simplest of the human relations, the universal\nelemental faculties of man as man, are all entered into and developed,\nare all hallowed in smallest detail, and step by step.\n\nAnd finally His teaching, His life, are all positive, all constructive,\nand come into conflict only with worldly indifference and bad faith.\nNo teacher before Him or since, but requires, if we would not be led\nastray by him, that we should make some allowances, in his character\nand doctrine, for certain inevitable reactions, and consequent\nnarrownesses and contrarinesses. Especially is this true of religious\nteachers and reformers, and generally in exact proportion to the\nintensity of their fervour. But in Him there is no reaction, no\nnegation, no fierceness, of a kind to deflect His teaching from its\nimmanent, self-consistent trend. His very Apostles can ask Him to call\ndown fire from heaven upon the unbelieving Samaritans; they can use\nthe sword against one of those come out to apprehend Him; and they\ncan attempt to keep the little ones from Him. But He rebukes them; He\norders Peter to put back the sword in its scabbard; and He bids the\nlittle ones to come unto Him, since of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.\nIndeed St. Mark\u2019s Gospel tells us how the disciples begged Him to\nforbid a man who did not follow them from casting out devils in His\nname; and how He refused to do so, and laid down the great universal\nrule of all-embracing generosity: \u201cHe that is not against us, is with\nus.\u201d[7]\n\n\n\n2. _This rich unity of life occasions three special presentations of\nit, the \u201cPetrine,\u201d \u201cPauline,\u201d \u201cJoannine.\u201d_\n\nNow it is this very reality and depth, and hence the rich Unity, the\ngrowth, variety, and manifold fruitfulness of His life and teaching,\nwhich explain, as a necessity and an advantage, that we should have\nthose successive pictures and conceptions of Him which already the New\nTestament presents. _Because_ Socrates was so great and impressive, we\nhave the two successive, remarkably divergent, portraits of him: the\nexternal, historical, by Xenophon; the internal, typical one, by Plato;\nand _that_ is all. _Because_ our Lord is so unspeakably greater, and\ncontinues, with inexhaustible freshness, to be the very life of the\nlives of Christians, we have three or four classical portraits of Him\nin the New Testament; and, in a certain true manner and degree, each\nsuccessive age, in a measure each single soul, forms, and has to form,\nits own picture of Him.\n\nWe can roughly classify these pictures under the three successive types\nof the \u201cPetrine,\u201d the \u201cPauline,\u201d and the \u201cJoannine,\u201d provided we do\nnot forget that the precise limits of the first of these divisions are\ndifficult to draw, and that there are growths and diversities of aspect\nto be found within the Pauline type. For the Petrine type will here be\nsought in the Synoptic Gospels, and in particular in those accounts\nand sayings there which appear to give us the closest reproduction\nof our Lord\u2019s very acts and words and of the impressions produced by\nthese upon the original witnesses. The Pauline type will embrace four\nmain stages or developments: that of the four or five of the earlier\nEpistles--the two to the Thessalonians and those to the Galatians,\nCorinthians, and Romans; that of the Epistles of the Captivity,\nColossians, Philippians, Ephesians; that of the Pastoral Epistles; and\nthat of the Epistle to the Hebrews. And even in the least diversified,\nthe Joannine type, there is the variation between the Gospel and\nEpistles on the one hand, and the Apocalypse on the other.\n\nBut taking these three types as each a unity, we shall hardly be guilty\nof an empty schematization, if the Petrine or Primitive-Apostolic\ngroup represents to us mainly the simplest statement of the external\nfacts, and specially of the traditional, the Jewish side of our Lord\u2019s\nteaching; and if the Pauline and Joannine groups each mainly represent\nto us, in various degrees and combinations, the two manners in which\nthe hidden significance of these facts, as intended for all men and for\nall time, can be penetrated, viz. by thought and speculation, and by\nfeeling and operative experience.\n\nOf course none of the three groups is without a large element common to\nit and to the other two: it is the same facts that are looked at and\nloved, by means of the same powers of the soul, and within the same\ngreat common principles and convictions. Only the precise antecedents,\npoint of view, temper of mind; the selection, presentation, and\ndegree of elaboration of the facts and of their spiritual meaning;\nthe preponderance of this or that mental activity; the reasons and\nconnections sought and seen, are often widely different in each,\nand produce a distinctiveness of impression which can be taken to\ncorrespond roughly to the three main powers of the soul: to the range\nof sense-perception and of memory; to that of reasoning; and to that\nof intuition, feeling, and will. If each group had _only_ that element\nwhich can be taken as being its predominant one, then any single group\nwould be of little value, and each group would imperatively require\never to be taken in conjunction with the other two. But, as a matter of\nfact, neither are the \u201cPetrine\u201d writings free from all reasoning and\nmystical affinities; nor are the \u201cPauline,\u201d free from the historic,\npositive spirit, or, still less, from the mystical habit; nor the\n\u201cJoannine\u201d free from the deepest teaching as to the necessity of\nexternal facts, or from some argument and appeals to reason. Hence each\ngroup, indeed each writing even singly, and still more all three groups\nif taken together, profoundly embody and proclaim, by the rich variety\nof their contents and spirit, the great principle and measure of all\nlife and truth: unity in and through variety, and steadfastness in and\nthrough growth.\n\nSpecially easy is it to find in all three types the two chief among\nthe three modalities of all advanced religion: the careful reverence\nfor the external facts of nature (so far as these are known), and\nfor social religious tradition and institutions; and the vivid\nconsciousness of the necessity and reality of internal experience and\nactuation, as the single spirit\u2019s search, response, and assimilation\nof the former.[8]\n\n\n3. _The \u201cPetrine\u201d attestations: their special message._\n\nThus the \u201cPetrine\u201d group gives us, as evidence for the observation and\nlove of the external world: \u201cBehold the birds of the air, how they sow\nnot, neither harvest nor gather into barns\u201d; \u201cStudy the lilies of the\nfield how they grow, they toil not, neither do they spin: yet I say\nunto you, that not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed as one of\nthese\u201d; \u201cThe seed sprouts and shoots up, whilst the man knows not; the\nearth beareth fruit of itself, first the stalk, then the ear, then the\nfull grain in the ear\u201d; \u201cWhen now the fig-tree\u2019s shoot grows tender and\nputteth forth leaves, you know that summer is nigh\u201d; and, \u201cWhen it is\nevening, you say: \u2018It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.\u2019 And in\nthe morning: \u2018It will be foul weather to-day, for the heaven is red and\nlowering.\u2019\u201d[9]\n\nAnd as to reverence for tradition we get: \u201cThink not that I have come\nto destroy the law or the prophets; I have come not to destroy but to\nfulfil.\u201d And this respect extends to existing religious practices:\n\u201cBeware,\u201d He says, \u201clest you do your justice before men, to be seen\nby them,\u201d but then describes the spirit in which they are to practice\ntheir \u201c_sedaka_,\u201d this \u201cjustice\u201d which they are to do, with its three\nquite traditional divisions of alms-deeds, prayer, fasting, the three\nEminent Good Works of Judaism. And again: \u201cIf thou offer thy gift upon\nthe altar,\u201d the doing so is in nowise criticised.[10]\n\nIndeed there is no shrinking from the manifestation, on the part of the\ncrowd, of new and even rude forms of trust in the visible and external:\n\u201cA woman who had been suffering from an issue of blood during twelve\nyears, \u2026 coming in the crowd behind Him, touched His garment, for she\nsaid: \u2018If I but touch His garments I shall be saved.\u2019 And straightway\nthe issue of blood was dried up\u201d; and the crowds generally \u201cput the\nsick in the open places, and begged Him that they might but touch the\nhem of His garment; and such as touched it were healed\u201d; and this \u201chem\u201d\nconsisted doubtless in the blue tassels, the Zizith, worn by every\nreligious Jew at the four corners of his cloak.[11]\n\nAnd the twelve Apostles, whom He sends out with special instructions,\n\u201cgoing forth preached that men should repent, and went casting out many\ndevils, and anointing many sick with oil and healing them.\u201d Indeed\nthere is, as the act preliminary to His public ministry, His baptism in\nthe Jordan; and there is, as introductory to His Passion, the supremely\nsolemn, visible, and audible act which crowns the Last Supper.[12]\n\nBut this same group of documents testifies also to a mystical, interior\nelement in Our Lord\u2019s temper and teaching. \u201cBlessed are the poor in\nspirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,\u201d \u201cBlessed are the clean\nof heart, for they shall see God,\u201d are Beatitudes which cannot be far\nfrom the _ipsissima verba_ of Our Lord. \u201cIn that hour Jesus answering\nsaid: \u2018I confess to Thee, Father, Lord of Heaven and earth, that Thou\nhast hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed\nthem unto babes: yea, Father, for this hath been well-pleasing before\nThee.\u2019 \u2026 \u2018Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I\nwill refresh you. Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am meek\nand humble of heart, and you shall find refreshment for your souls: for\nMy yoke is sweet and My burden is light.\u2019\u201d is deeply mystical passage\ndoubtless expresses with a vivid exactitude the unique spiritual\nimpression and renovation produced by Him within the souls of the first\ngenerations of His disciples. And the three Synoptists give us five\ntimes over the great fundamental mystical paradox: \u201cIf a man would\ncome after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow\nMe. For whosoever shall be determined to save his soul, shall lose it;\nbut whosoever shall lose his soul for My sake, shall find it.\u201d And the\ngreat law of interiority is recorded in St. Mark: \u201cListen unto Me, ye\nall, and understand: nothing that entereth from without into a man can\ndefile him, but only the things that proceed from a man are the things\nthat defile a man.\u201d[13]\n\nAnd we get in Mark the fundamental interior virtue of childlikeness,\nand the immanence of Christ in the childlike soul: \u201cIf anyone wish\nto be first, let him be the last of all men and all men\u2019s servant.\u201d\n\u201cAnd taking a little child He placed it in the midst of them; and\nhaving embraced it, He said unto them: \u2018Whosoever shall not receive\nthe kingdom of God as a little child, shall not enter therein.\u2019\u201d\n\u201cSuffer little children to come unto Me, for of such is the kingdom of\nheaven.\u201d[14]\n\nAnd the spirituality of the soul\u2019s life in heaven, and the eternal\n_Now_ of God, as the Living and Vivifying Present, are given in all\nthree Synoptists: \u201cIn the Resurrection they neither marry nor are\ngiven in marriage, but are as the angels in heaven. But concerning the\nresurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken by\nGod, saying, \u2018I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the\nGod of Jacob\u2019? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.\u201d[15]\n\n\n4. _The \u201cPauline\u201d group of writings: its special teaching._\n\nThe Pauline group furnishes by far the greater amount of the explicit\nreasoning to be found in the New Testament; where, _e.g._, does the\nNew Testament furnish a parallel to the long and intricate argument\nof chapters Third to Eleventh of the Epistle to the Romans, with\nits constant \u201ctherefores\u201d and \u201cbuts\u201d and \u201cnows\u201d? Yet this same\ngroup of writings also emphasizes strongly, though more rarely, the\nexternal-fact side of religion, and is deeply penetrated by the\nintuitive-emotional, the mystical spirit of Christianity.\n\nThe external, historical side is represented by the careful description\nand chronological arrangement observable in the account of six\nsuccessive apparitions of the Risen Christ; and by the reference\nback to the acts and words used in the Eucharistic act at the Last\nSupper.[16]\n\nYet throughout the writings of St. Paul and of his school, it is\nthe mystical, interior, experimental element that permeates the\nargumentative-speculative and the historical constituents. The chief\nmanifestations of this mystical spirit and conviction, which really\npenetrates and knits together the whole of the Pauline teaching, can\nperhaps best be taken in a logical order.\n\nFirst then it is St. Paul who, himself or through writers more or\nless dependent on him, gives us by far the most definite and detailed\npresentation of by far the most extraordinary experiences and events\nto be found in the New Testament outside of the Gospels themselves.\nFor the author of the Acts of the Apostles gives us the lengthy\ndescription of the Pentecostal Visitation, and, three times over,\nthat most vivid account of Our Lord\u2019s apparition to Saul on the way\nto Damascus. And St. Paul himself describes for us, at the closest\nfirst hand, the ecstatic states of the Christian communities in their\nearliest charismatic stage; he treats the apparition on the way to\nDamascus as truly objective and as on a complete par with the earlier\napparitions accorded to the chosen Apostles in the first days after\nthe Resurrection; and he gives us the solemn reference to his own\nexperience of rapture to the third Heaven.[17] We should, however,\nnote, in the next place, as the vital complement, indeed as the\nnecessary pre-requisite, to this conviction and to the effectiveness\nof these facts,--facts conceived and recorded as external, as temporal\nand local,--St. Paul\u2019s profound belief that all external evidences,\nwhether of human reasoning and philosophy or of visible miracle, fail\nto carry conviction without the presence of certain corresponding\nmoral and spiritual dispositions in those to whom they are addressed.\n\u201cThe word of the Cross,\u201d the very same preaching, \u201cis to those that\nare perishing foolishness, but to us that are being saved the power\nof God.\u201d And the external, taken alone, can so little convince, that\neven the seeking after the external, without requisite dispositions,\nwill but get us further away from its hidden function and meaning. \u201cThe\nJews ask for signs (miracles), and the Greeks seek wisdom (philosophy);\nbut we preach Christ crucified, who is to the Jews a stumbling-block,\nand to the Gentiles foolishness; but to those who are called, both\nJews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For\nthe foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is\nstronger than men.\u201d And the cause of this difference of interpretation\nis shown to lie in the various interior dispositions of the hearers:\n\u201cThe animal man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for\nthey are foolishness to him, and he is incapable of understanding\nthem, because they are spiritually discerned; but the spiritual man\ndiscerneth all things.\u201d[18]\n\nAnd yet this mystery of religion has to be externally offered, to be\npreached to us, and is preached to all men; it is intended by God to\nbe known by all, and hence it is He who stimulates men to external\npreaching and external hearing, as to one of the pre-requisites of its\nacceptance: \u201cThe mystery which was hidden from the ages has now been\nmade manifest\u201d; he desires the Colossians to be strengthened in \u201cthe\nknowledge of the mystery of God and Christ\u201d; and has to \u201cspeak the\nmystery of the Christ,\u201d to \u201cmake it manifest.\u201d[19]\n\nAnd since this preaching, to be effective, absolutely requires, as\nwe have seen, interior dispositions and interior illumination of the\nhearers, and since these things are different in different men, the\ndegrees of initiation into this identical mystery are to be carefully\nadapted to the interior state of those addressed. \u201cWe preach wisdom\namongst the perfect \u03c4\u03ad\u03bb\u03b5\u03b9\u03bf\u03b9,\u201d the technical term in the heathen Greek\nMysteries for those who had received the higher grades of initiation.\n\u201cI was not able to speak unto you as unto spiritual men, but (only) as\nunto fleshly ones, as unto infants in Christ. I have fed you with milk,\nnot strong food, for you were not yet able.\u201d[20]\n\nAnd since all good, hence also the external preaching, comes from God,\nstill more must this all-important interior apprehension of it come\nfrom Him. In a certain real sense the Spirit is thus organ as well as\nobject of this interior light. \u201cGod has revealed unto us the wisdom of\nGod through the Spirit; for the Spirit searcheth all things, even the\ndeep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, unless\nthe spirit of man that is in him? even so no man knoweth the things of\nGod, except the Spirit of God.\u201d[21]\n\nBut further, the mystery revealed in a unique degree and form in\nChrist\u2019s life, is really a universal spiritual-human law; the law of\nsuffering and sacrifice, as the one way to joy and possession, which\nhas existed, though veiled till now, since the foundation of the world.\n\u201cThe mystery of Christ, which in former generations was not made\nmanifest unto the sons of men, but has now been revealed to His holy\napostles and prophets in the spirit.\u201d And this law, which is Christ\u2019s\nlife, must reappear in the life of each one of us. \u201cWe have been\nburied together with Him through Baptism unto death, in order that, as\nChrist rose again from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we\nalso may walk in the newness of life\u201d; \u201cWe know that our old man has\nbeen crucified together with Him. But if we have died with Christ, we\nbelieve that we shall live with Him\u201d; \u201cIf the Spirit who raised Jesus\nfrom the dead dwelleth in you, He who raised Jesus from the dead will\nquicken your mortal bodies through His Spirit dwelling within you.\u201d[22]\n\nChrist\u2019s life can be thus the very law of all life, because \u201cHe is\nthe first-born of all creation, for in Him all things were created\nin heaven and on earth,\u201d \u201call things were created through Him\u201d; \u201cand\nHe is before all things, and in Him all things hold together\u201d; \u201call\nthings are summed up in Christ\u201d; \u201cChrist is all in all.\u201d So that in\nthe past, before His visible coming, the Jews in the desert \u201cdrank\nfrom the spiritual rock which followed them, and the rock was Christ.\u201d\nAnd as He Himself is the perfect image of God, so all things are, in\nvarying degrees, created in the image of Christ: \u201c(Christ) who is the\nimage of the living God\u201d; \u201call things were created unto Him.\u201d And\nsince man is, in his original and potential essence, in a very special\nsense \u201cthe image and glory of God,\u201d his perfecting will consist in a\npainful reconquest and development of this obscured and but potential\nessence, by becoming, as far as may be, another Christ, and living\nthrough the successive stages of Christ\u2019s earthly life. We are bidden\n\u201call attain unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of\nthe fulness of Christ,\u201d so that, in the end, we may be able to say\nwith the Apostle himself: \u201cI live no more in myself, but Christ lives\nin me\u201d; a consummation which appears so possible to St. Paul\u2019s mind,\nthat he eagerly, painfully longs for it: \u201cMy children, with whom I am\nagain in travail, until Christ be formed in you.\u201d And indeed \u201cwe all,\nwith unveiled face reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are\ntransformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the\nLord, the Spirit.\u201d[23]\n\nWe have then in St. Paul not only a deeply mystical element, but\nmysticism of the noblest, indeed the most daringly speculative,\nworld-embracing type.\n\n\n5. _The \u201cJoannine\u201d group: its characteristic truths._\n\nAnd finally the Joannine group furnishes us with an instance, as\nstrong as is conceivable within the wide pale of a healthy Christian\nspirit, of the predominance of an interior and intuitive, mystical,\nuniversalistic, spiritual and symbolic apprehension and interpretation\nboth of external fact and of explicit reasoning.\n\nThe Visible and Historical is indeed emphasized, with a full\nconsciousness of the contrasting Gnostic error, in the culminating\nsentence of the solemn Prologue of the Gospel, \u201cAnd the Word was made\nFlesh and tabernacled amongst us, and we saw His glory,\u201d and in the\nequally emphatic opening sentence of the First Epistle: \u201cThat which\nwas from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our\neyes, what we have beholden, and our hands have handled, \u2026 we announce\nunto you.\u201d Hence too the Historical, Temporal Last Judgment, with its\ncorporal resurrection, remains as certainly retained in this Gospel as\nin St. Matthew: \u201cThe hour cometh in which all those that are in the\nmonuments shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and those that have\ndone good shall come forth unto the resurrection of life, but those\nthat have worked evil, unto the resurrection of judgment.\u201d[24]\n\nAnd Reasoning of a peculiarly continuous, rhythmically recurrent\npattern, is as present and influential everywhere, as it is difficult\nto describe or even to trace. For it is here but the instrument and\nreflex of certain Mystical conceptions and doctrines, of a tendency\nto see, in everything particular and temporal, the Universal and\nEternal; to apprehend Unity, a changeless Here and Now, in all\nmultiplicity and succession, and hence to suppress explicit reasoning\nand clear distinctions, movement, growth, and change, as much as may\nbe, both in the method of presentation and in the facts presented. If\nthe Synoptists give us the successive, and write, unconsciously but\nspecially, under the category of Time: the Fourth Gospel consciously\npresents us with simultaneity, and works specially under the category\nof Space.\n\nThe Successive is here conceived as but the appearance of the\nSimultaneous, of the Eternal and Abiding. Hence the historical\ndevelopment in the earthly experiences, teachings, and successes of\nChrist is ignored: His Godhead, that which _is_, stands revealed\nfrom the first in the appearances of His earthly life. Hence too the\nvarious souls of other men are presented to us as far as possible under\none eternal and changeless aspect; they are types of various abiding\nvirtues and iniquities, rather than concrete, composite mortals.\n\nGod appears here specially as Light, as Love, and as Spirit. Yet these\nlargely thing-like attributions co-exist with personal qualities, and\nwith real, ethical relations between God and the world: \u201cGod so loved\nthe world, as that He gave His only begotten Son, in order that anyone\nwho believeth in Him may not perish, but may have everlasting life.\u201d\nThe Father \u201cdraws\u201d men, and \u201csends\u201d His Son into the world.[25]\n\nAnd this Son has eternally pre-existed with the Father; is the very\ninstrument and principle of the world\u2019s creation; and \u201cis the true\nLight that enlightened every man that cometh into the world.\u201d And this\nWord which, from the first, was already the Light of all men, became\nFlesh specially to manifest fully this its Life and Light. Indeed He is\nthe only Light, and Way, and Truth, and Life; the only Door; the Living\nBread; the true Vine.[26]\n\nThis Revelation and Salvation is indeed assimilated by individual souls\nand is received by them at a given moment, by a birth both new and from\nabove, and is followed by a new knowledge. But this knowledge is not\nabsolute nor unprogressive. Everywhere the Evangelist has indeed the\nverb \u03b3\u03b9\u03b3\u03bd\u03ce\u03c3\u03ba\u03c9, but nowhere the noun Gnosis; and the full meaning of the\nRevelation of the Father by the Son is to be only gradually revealed\nby the Holy Spirit. And this special new knowledge is not the cause\nbut the effect of an ethical act on the part of the human soul,--an\nact of full trust in the persons of God and of His Christ, and in the\nintimations of the moral conscience as reflections of the divine will\nand nature. \u201cIf any man willeth to do His will, he shall know of the\ndoctrine, whether it be from God, or whether I speak from myself\u201d; \u201cHe\nwho doeth the truth, cometh to the light.\u201d[27]\n\nAnd this trust, and the experimental knowledge which flows from it,\nlead to an interior conviction so strong as to make us practically\nindependent of external evidences. Hence in the First Epistle, this\n\u201cwe _know_\u201d is repeatedly emphasized: \u201cWe _know_, that, if He shall\nbe manifested, we shall be like Him\u201d; \u201cYou _know_, that He was made\nmanifest, that He might take away sins.\u201d And this knowledge is\ncommunicated by the Spirit of God to man\u2019s soul; the spirit bearing\nwitness, there within, to the truth of Christ\u2019s words, communicated\nfrom without. \u201cThe Spirit it is that beareth witness, for the Spirit\nis the Truth.\u201d[28]\n\nExternal signs (miracles), and a certain un-ethical assent given to\nthem and their implications, these things are, even at their best,\nbut preliminary, and, of themselves, insufficient. Hence Our Lord can\nfind \u201cmany who believed in His name, seeing His signs (miracles) which\nHe did\u201d; and yet could \u201cnot trust Himself to them.\u201d Nicodemus indeed\ncan come to Our Lord, moved by the argument that \u201cthou hast come a\nteacher from God, for no man can do the signs (miracles) that thou\ndoest, unless God be with him.\u201d But then Our Lord\u2019s whole conversation\nwith him renders clear how imperfect and ignorant Nicodemus is so\nfar,--he had come by night, his soul was still in darkness. So also\n\u201cmany Samaritans believed in Him, because of His sign,\u201d--His miraculous\nknowledge of her past history, shown to the Woman at the Well; but more\nof them believed because of His own words to them: \u201cWe ourselves have\n(now) heard, and we _know_ that this man is of a truth the Saviour of\nthe world.\u201d Hence He can Himself bid the Apostles, in intimation of\ntheir full and final privilege and duty, \u201cbelieve in Me\u201d (that is, My\nwords and the Spirit testifying within you to their Truth), \u201cthat I\nam in the Father, and the Father is in Me\u201d; and, only secondarily and\nfailing that fulness, \u201cbut if not, then believe, because of the very\nworks.\u201d And the whole Joannine doctrine as to the object and method of\nFaith is dramatically presented and summed up in the great culminating\nscene and saying of the Fourth Gospel: \u201cThomas\u201d (the Apostle who\nwould see a visible sign first, and would then build his Faith upon\nthat sight) \u201csaith to Him: \u2018My Lord and my God.\u2019 Jesus saith to him:\n\u2018Because thou hast seen Me, Thomas, thou hast believed; blessed are\nthey that have not seen, and have believed.\u2019\u201d[29]\n\nAnd this Faith and Knowledge arising thus, in its fulness, at most only\non occasion, and never because, of spacial and temporal signs, are\nconceived as a timeless, Eternal Life, and as one which is already,\nhere and now, an actual present possession. \u201cHe who believeth in the\nSon, hath eternal life\u201d; \u201cHe who heareth and believeth My word, hath\neternal life\u201d; \u201cWe know that we have passed from death unto life\u201d;\n\u201cWe know Him that is true, and we are in Him that is true, in His Son\nJesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.\u201d[30] There is then\na profound immanence of Christ in the believing soul, and of such a\nsoul in Christ; and this mutual immanence bears some likeness to the\nImmanence of the Father in Christ, and of Christ in the Father. \u201cIn\nthat day\u201d (when \u201cthe Father shall give you the Spirit of Truth\u201d) \u201cye\nshall know that I am in My Father, and you are in Me, and I in you.\u201d[31]\n\n\nIII. SCIENCE: THE APPREHENSION AND CONCEPTION OF BRUTE FACT AND IRON\nLAW.\n\nBut now, athwart both the Hellenic and the Christian factors of our\nlives, the first apparently so clear and complete and beautiful,\nthe latter, if largely dark and fragmentary, so deep and operative,\ncomes and cuts a third and last factor, that of Science, apparently\nmore peremptory and irresistible than either of its predecessors.[32]\nFor both the former factors would appear to melt into mid-air before\nthis last one. _They_ evidently cannot ignore _it_; _it_ apparently\ncan ignore _them_. If Metaphysics and Religion seem involved in a\nperpetual round of interminable questions, solved, at most and at\nbest, for but this man and for that, and with an evidence for their\ntruth which can be and is gainsaid by many, but cannot be demonstrated\nwith a peremptory clearness to any one: Science, on the other hand,\nwould appear to give us just this _terra firma_ of an easy, immediate,\nundeniable, continually growing, patently fruitful body of evidence and\nof fact.\n\nAnd not only can Metaphysics and Religion not ignore Science, in\nthe sense of denying or even overlooking its existence; they cannot\napparently, either of them, even begin or proceed or end without\nconstant reference, here frank and open, there tacit but none the\nless potent, to the enterprises, the methods, the conclusions of the\nSciences one and all, and this even in view of establishing their own\ncontentions. And more and more of the territory formerly assigned to\nMetaphysics or Religion seems in process of being conquered by Science:\nin Metaphysics, by experimental psychology, and by the simple history\nof the various philosophical systems, ideas, and technical terms,\nand of the local and temporal, racial and cultural antecedents and\nenvironments which gave rise to them; in Religion, by an analogous\nobservation and study of man in the past and present, of man studied\nfrom within and from without.\n\n\n1. _Three characteristics of this scientific spirit._\n\nNow this scientific spirit has hitherto, since its birth at the\nRenaissance, ever tended to the ever-increasing development of three\nmain characteristics, which are indeed but several aspects of one\nsingle aim and end. There was and is, for one thing, the passion\nfor Clearness, which finds its expression in the application of\nMathematics and of the Quantitative view and standard to all and every\nsubject-matter, in so far as the latter is conceived as being truly\nknowable at all. There was and is, for another, the great concept\nof Law, of an iron Necessity running through and expressing itself\nin all things, one great Determinism, before which all emotion and\nvolition, all concepts of Spontaneity and Liberty, of Personality\nand Spirit, either Human or Divine, melt away, as so many petty\nsubjective wilfulnesses of selfish, childish, \u201cprovincial\u201d man, bent\non fantastically humanizing this great, cold thing, the Universe, into\nsomething responsive to his own profoundly unimportant and objectively\nuninteresting sensations and demands. There was and is, for a third\nthing, a vigorous Monism, both in the means and in the end of this\nview. Our sources of information are _but one_,--the reasoning,\nreckoning Intellect, backed up by readily repeatable, directly\nverifiable Experiment. The resultant information is _but one_,--the\nUniverse within and without, a strict unbroken Mechanism.\n\nIf we look at the most characteristically modern elements of Descartes,\nand, above all, of Spinoza, we cannot fail to find throughout, as\nthe reaction of this Scientific spirit upon Philosophy, the passion\nfor those three things: for Clearness and ready Transferableness of\nideas; for one universal, undeniable Common Element and Measure for\nall knowledge of every degree and kind; and for Law, omnipresent and\ninexorable. That is, we have here a passion for Thing as over against,\nas above, Person; for the elimination of all wilfulness, even at the\ncost of will itself, of all indetermination, obscurity and chance, even\nat the cost of starving and drying up whole regions of our complex\nnature, whole sources of information, and of violently simplifying and\nimpoverishing the outlook on to reality both within us and without.\n\n\n\n2. _Fundamental motive of entire quest, deeply legitimate, indeed\nreligious: Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant._\n\nAnd yet how unjust would he be who failed to recognize, in the case of\nSpinoza especially, the noble, and at bottom deeply religious, motives\nand aspirations underlying such excesses; or the new problems and\nnecessities, the permanent growth and gain, which this long process of\nhuman thought has brought to Religion itself, especially in indirect\nand unintentional ways!\n\nFor as to the motives, it ought not to be difficult to any one who\nknows human history and human nature, to see how the all but complete\nestrangement from Nature and Physical Fact which, from Socrates\nonwards, with the but very partial exception of Aristotle, had, for\nwell-nigh two thousand years, preceded this reaction; how the treatment\nof Matter and the Visible as more or less synonymous with Non-Being and\nIrrationality, as a veil or even a wall, as a mere accident or even\na positive snare, lying everywhere between us and Reality, could not\nfail to require and produce a swing of the pendulum in the opposite\ndirection. And the feeling and the perception of how superficial and\nunreal, how oppressively confined, how intolerably fixed and ultimate,\nhow arrogant and cold and fruitless, such persistent neglect of the\nData of Sense had somehow, at last, rendered philosophy, gave now\npolemical edge to men\u2019s zealous study and discovery of _this_ world.\nThis study was perceived, even by the shallower thinkers, to be fair\nand rational and fruitful in itself; and it was found, by some few\ndeep spirits, to be a strangely potent means of purifying, enlarging,\n\u201cdeprovincializing\u201d man himself. The severe discipline of a rigorous\nstudy of man\u2019s lowly, physical conditions and environment, things\nhitherto so despised by him, was now at last to purify him of his own\nchildish immediacy of claim. The pettily selfish, shouting Individual\nwas to pass through the broad, still, purgatorial waters of a temporary\nsubmergence under the conceptions, as vivid as though they were direct\nexperiences, of ruthless Law, of Mechanism, of the Thing; so as to pass\nout, purified and enlarged, a Person, expressive of the Universal and\nObjective, of Order and of Law.\n\nIt is especially in Spinoza that this deeper, universally human and\nethical, indeed we can say religious, implication and ideal of the\nrigorously scientific spirit is present in all its noble intuition\nand aspiration, and that at the same time, alas, this deep truth is\nforced into a ruinously inappropriate method and formulation. For the\noriginal end of the entire quest, an end which is still emotionally\ndominant and which furnishes the hidden dialectic of the whole,--Man,\nhis nobility and interior purification and beatitude,--has here,\nintellectually, become but a means; Man, in the real logic of this\nsystem, is, hopelessly and finally, but a wheel in the huge mechanism\nof that _natura naturata_ which Spinoza\u2019s own richness and nobility of\ncharacter transcends with potent inconsistency. And this very system,\nwhich is so nobly human and Christian in its ethical tone and in its\ndemand of a Conversion of the whole man, in its requiring man to\nlose and sacrifice his petty self that he may gain his true self and\nbecome a genuine constituent of the Universe and Thought of God, is\nalso the very one which, by its ruthless Naturalism and Determinism of\nDoctrine and its universally Mathematical and Quantitative form and\nmethod, logically eliminates all such qualitative differentiation and\nconversion as impossible and futile.\n\nThe prima facie view of life as it presents itself to the clarifying,\nScientific Intellect, namely the omnipresence of the determinist\nmechanism, has never been more impressively felt and pictured than by\nSpinoza; the dispositions and happiness of the purified, disinterested\nsoul have rarely been experienced and described with more touching\nelevation and power. But there is no real transition, indeed no\npossibility of such, in his system, from that first aspect to this\nlatter state; for that first aspect, that apparent determinism, is for\nhis logic _not_ merely apparent or secondary, but the very truth of\ntruths, the very core and end of things.\n\nAnd this bondage of mind to matter, this enslavement of the master to\nthe servant, this narrow, doctrinaire intellectualism and determinism,\nis more hidden than cured in Leibniz, who, if he brings the immense\nimprovement because enrichment of a keen sense and love of the\nHistorical, loses, on the other hand, Spinoza\u2019s grandly Conversional\ntone and temper. A cheerful, easy, eminently sane but quite inadequate\nbustle of manifold interests; a ready, pleasant optimism; an endless\nlaboriousness of the reasoning faculty; all this, even though carried\nout on a scale unique since the days of Aristotle, is necessarily\nunequal to face and bear \u201cthe burthen of all this unintelligible\nworld.\u201d\n\nAnd yet here, in him who may not unfitly be called the last of the\nDogmatic Rationalists and Optimists, we have already those great\nperceptions which were destined more and more to burst the bonds of\nthis cold, clear, complete, confining outlook. For one thing, as\nalready stated, there is, alongside the love of the Material and\nMathematical, an almost equal love of the Historical and Human. There\nis, for another thing, the deep consciousness of the Individuality\nand Interiority of all real existences,--all that _is_ at all, has\nan inside to it. And, finally, in further enforcement of this latter\ndoctrine, there is the fruitful conception of Subconscious States of\nfeeling and of mind in all living things.\n\nYet it is only in Kant that,--with all his obscurities and numberless\ndemonstrable inconsistencies, with all his saddening impoverishment\nof the outlook in many ways,--we get, little conscious as he himself\nis of such a service, the deep modern explanation of the ancient\npre-scientific neglect and suspicion of natural research. Here we are\nled to see that the strictly Scientific view of Nature is necessarily\nquantitative, but that the strictly Ethical, Spiritual view of man is\nas necessarily qualitative; that the analysis of all natural phenomena\nbut leads to judgments as to what _is_, whereas the requirements of\nhuman action lead to judgments of what _ought to be_. Here the weak\npoint lies in the contrast, established by him and pushed to the degree\nof mutual exclusion, between Reason and Will. For the contrast which we\nfind in actual life is really between the deeper reason, ever closely\naccompanied by deep emotion, this reason and emotion occasioning, and\nstrengthened by, the action of the whole man,--and all this is not\ndirectly transferable; and the more superficial reasoning, having with\nit little or no emotion,--the action of but one human faculty,--and\nthis action is readily transferable.\n\n\n3. _Place and function of such science in the totality of man\u2019s life._\n\nThe mistake in the past would thus lie, not in the doctrine that the\nVisible cannot suffice for man and is not his mind\u2019s true home; nor in\nthe implication that the Visible cannot directly and of itself reveal\nto him the Spiritual world. The error would lie entirely in the double\nimplication or doctrine, that there is really nothing to be known about\nNature, or that what can be known of it can be attained by Metaphysical\nor Mystical methods; and again that strictly quantitative, severe\nscientific method and investigation can, even in the long run, be\nsafely neglected by the human soul, as far as its own spiritual health\nis concerned.\n\nWe take it then that mankind has, after endless testings and\nexperiences, reached the following conclusions. We encounter\neverywhere, both within us and without, both in the physical and\nmental world, in the first instance, a whole network of phenomena;\nand these phenomena are everywhere found to fall under certain laws,\nand to be penetrable by certain methods of research, these laws and\nmethods varying indeed in character and definiteness according to the\nsubject-matter to which they apply, but in each case affording to man\nsimply indefinite scope for discovery without, and for self-discipline\nwithin.\n\nAnd all this preliminary work and knowledge does not directly require\nreligion nor does it directly lead to it; indeed we shall spoil both\nthe knowledge itself, and its effect upon our souls and upon religion,\nif religion is here directly introduced. The phenomena of Astronomy and\nGeology, of Botany and Zoology, of human Physiology and Psychology, of\nPhilology and History are and ought to be, in the first instance, the\nsame for all men, whether the said men do or do not eventually give\nthem a _raison d\u2019\u00eatre_ and formal rational interest by discovering the\nmetaphysical and religious convictions and conclusions which underlie\nand alone give true unity to them and furnish a living link between the\nmind observing and the things observed. Various as are these phenomena,\naccording to the department of human knowledge to which they severally\nbelong, yet they each and all have to be, in the first instance,\ndiscovered and treated according to principles and methods immanent and\nspecial to that department.\n\nAnd the more rigorously this is accomplished, both by carrying\nout these principles and methods to their fullest extent, and by\nconscientiously respecting their limits of applicability and their\nprecise degree of truth and of range in the larger scheme of human\nactivity and conviction, the more will such science achieve three\ndeeply ethical, spiritually helpful results.\n\nSuch science will help to discipline, humble, purify the natural\neagerness and wilfulness, the cruder forms of anthropomorphism, of the\nhuman mind and heart. This turning to the visible will thus largely\ntake the place of that former turning away from it; for only since the\nVisible has been taken to represent laws, and, provisionally at least,\nrigorously mechanical laws characteristic of itself, can it be thus\nlooked upon as a means of spiritual purification.\n\nSuch science again will help to stimulate those other, deeper\nactivities of human nature, which have made possible, and have all\nalong preceded and accompanied, these more superficial ones; and this,\nalthough such science will doubtless tend to do the very opposite, if\nthe whole nature be allowed to become exclusively engrossed in this\none phenomenal direction. Still it remains true that perhaps never has\nman turned to the living God more happily and humbly, than when coming\nstraight away from such rigorous, disinterested phenomenal analysis, as\nlong as such analysis is felt to be both other than, and preliminary\nand secondary to, the deepest depths of the soul\u2019s life and of all\nultimate Reality.\n\nAnd finally, such science will correspondingly help to give depth and\nmystery, drama and pathos, a rich spirituality, to the whole experience\nand conception of the soul and of life, of the world and of God.\nInstead of a more or less abstract picture, where all is much on the\nsame plane, where all is either fixed and frozen, or all is in a state\nof feverish flux, we get an outlook, with foreground, middle distances,\nand background, each contrasting with, each partially obscuring,\npartially revealing, the other; but each doing so, with any freshness\nand fulness, only in and through the strongly willing, the fully active\nand gladly suffering, the praying, aspiring, and energizing spiritual\nPersonality, which thus both gives and gets its own true self ever more\nentirely and more deeply.\n\n\n4. _Science to be taken, throughout our life, in a double sense and\nway._\n\nIn such a conception of the place of Science, we have permanently\nto take Science, throughout life, in a double sense and way. In the\nfirst instance, Science is self-sufficing, its own end and its own\nlaw. In the second instance, which alone is ever final, Science is\nbut a part of a whole, but a function, a necessary yet preliminary\nfunction, of the whole of man; and it is but part, a necessary yet\npreliminary part, of his outlook. Crush out, or in any way mutilate or\ndeautonomize, this part, and all the rest will suffer. Sacrifice the\nrest to this part, either by starvation or attempted suppression, or by\nan impatient assimilation of this immense remainder to that smaller and\nmore superficial part, and the whole man suffers again, and much more\nseriously.\n\nAnd the danger, in both directions,--let us have the frankness to admit\nthe fact,--is constant and profound: even to see it continuously is\ndifficult; to guard against it with effect, most difficult indeed.\nFor to starve or to suspect, to cramp or to crush this phenomenal\napprehension and investigation, in the supposed interest of the\nulterior truths, must ever be a besetting temptation and weakness for\nthe religious instinct, wherever this instinct is strong and fixed, and\nhas not yet itself been put in the way of purification.\n\nFor Religion is ever, _qua_ religion, authoritative and absolute. What\nconstitutes religion is not simply to hold a view and to try and live\na life, with respect to the Unseen and the Deity, as possibly or even\ncertainly beautiful or true or good: but precisely that which is over\nand above this,--the holding this view and this life to proceed somehow\nfrom God Himself, so as to bind my innermost mind and conscience to\nunhesitating assent. Not simply that I think it, but that, in addition,\nI feel bound to think it, transforms a thought about God into a\nreligious act.\n\nNow this at once brings with it a double and most difficult problem.\nFor Religion thus becomes, by its very genius and in exact proportion\nto its reality, something so entirely _sui generis_, so claimful\nand supreme, that it at once exacts a two-fold submission, the one\nsimultaneous, the other successive; the first as it were in space, the\nsecond in time. The first regards the relations of religion to things\nnon-religious. It might be parodied by saying: \u201cSince religion is\ntrue and supreme, religion is all we require: all things else must be\nbent or broken to her sway.\u201d She has at the very least the right to a\nprimacy not of honour only, but of direct jurisdiction, over and within\nall activities and things. The second regards the form and concept of\nreligion itself. Since religion always appears both in a particular\nform at a particular time and place, _and_ as divine and hence\nauthoritative and eternal; and since the very strength and passion of\nreligion depend upon the vigorous presence and close union of these two\nelements: religion will ever tend either really to oppose all change\nwithin itself, or else to explain away its existence. Religion would\nthus appear doomed to be either vague and inoperative, or obscurantist\nand insincere.\n\nAnd it is equally clear that the other parts of man\u2019s nature and of his\noutlook cannot simply accept such a claim, nor could religion itself\nflourish at all if they could and did accept it. They cannot accept\nthe claim of religion to be immediately and simply all, for they are\nfully aware of being themselves something also. They cannot accept her\nclaim to dictate to them their own domestic laws, for they are fully\naware that they each, to live truly at all, require their own laws\nand their own, at least relative, autonomy. However much man may be\nsupremely and finally a religious animal, he is not _only_ that; but\nhe is a physical and sexual, a fighting and artistic, a domestic and\nsocial, a political and philosophical animal as well.\n\nNor can man, even simply _qua_ religious man, consent to a simple\nfinality in the experience and explication, in the apprehension and\napplication of religion, either in looking back into the past; or\nin believing and loving, suffering and acting in the present; or in\nforecasting the future, either of the race or of himself alone. For the\n_here and now_, the concrete \u201cimmediacy,\u201d the unique individuality of\nthe religious experience for _me_, in this room, on this very day, its\nfreshness, is as true and necessary a quality of living religion as any\nother whatsoever. And if all life sustains itself only by constant,\ncosting renovation and adaptation of itself to its environment, the\nreligious life, as the most intense and extensive of all lives, must\nsomehow be richest in such newness in oldness, such renovative,\nadaptive, assimilative power.\n\n\n5. _All this seen at work in man\u2019s actual history._\n\nNow it is deeply instructive to observe all this at work historically.\nFor here we find every variety of attitude towards this very point.\nThere are men of Religion who attempt to do without Science, and\nmen of Science who attempt to do without Religion. Or again, men of\nReligion attempt to _level up_,--to assimilate the principles and\nresults of the various sciences directly to religion, or at least to\nrule those scientific principles and results directly by religion.\nOr men of Science attempt to _level down_, to make religion into a\nmere philosophy or even a natural history. Yet we find also,--with\nso persistent a recurrence in all manner of places and times, as\nitself to suggest the inherent, essential, indestructible truth of the\nview,--another, a far more costing attitude. This attitude refuses\nall mutilation either of normal human nature or of its outlook, all\noppression of one part by the other; for it discovers that these\nvarious levels of life have been actually practised in conjunction by\nmany an individual in the past and in the present; and that, where they\nhave been practised within a large organization of faith and love,\nthey have ever led to a fuller reality and helpfulness both of the\nscience and of the religion concerned. Hence the mind thus informed\ncannot doubt the truth of this solution, however difficult at all times\nmay be its practice, and however little final at any time can be its\ndetailed intellectual analysis.\n\n\nIV. SUMMING UP: HELLENISM OR HARMONIZATION, CHRISTIANITY OR SPIRITUAL\nEXPERIENCE, AND SCIENCE OR ACCEPTANCE OF A PRELIMINARY MECHANISM, ALL\nTHREE NECESSARY TO MAN.\n\nTo sum up all this first chapter, we have got so far as this. We have\nseen that humanity has, so far, found and worked out three forces and\nconceptions of life, forces which are still variously operative in each\nof us, but which find their harmonious interaction in but few men,\ntheir full theoretical systematization in none.[33]\n\nThere is the ancient, Greek contribution, chiefly intellectual and\naesthetic, mostly cold and clear, quick and conclusive, with, upon\nthe whole, but a slight apprehension of personality and freedom, of\nconscience and of sin, and little or no sense of the difference and\nantagonism between these realities and simply Mathematical, Mechanical\nlaws and concepts. It is a view profoundly abstract, and, at bottom,\ndeterminist: the will follows the intellect necessarily, in exact\nproportion to the clearness of information of the former. And the\nstrength of this view, which was possible even to that gifted race\njust because of the restrictedness of its knowledge concerning the\nlength and breadth of nature and of history, and still more with regard\nto the depths of the human character and conscience, consists in its\nfreshness, completeness, and unity. And this ideal of an ultimate\nharmonization of our entire life and of its theory we must never lose,\nmore and more difficult though its even approximate realization has of\nnecessity become.\n\nThere is next the middle, Christian contribution, directly moral and\nreligious, deep and dim and tender, slow and far-reaching, immensely\ncostly, infinitely strong; with its discovery and exemplification of\nthe mysterious depth and range and complexity of human personality\nand freedom, of conscience and of sin; a view profoundly concrete\nand at bottom libertarian. The goodwill here first precedes, and then\noutstrips, and determines the information supplied by the intellect:\n\u201cBlessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God.\u201d And the\nstrength of this position consists in its being primarily not a view,\nbut a life, a spiritual, religious life, requiring, implying, indeed\nproclaiming, definite doctrines concerning God and man, and their\nrelations to each other, but never exhausted by these doctrines even\nin their collectivity, inexhaustible though these in their turn are by\ntheir union with the life of the spirit, their origin and end.\n\nThere is finally the modern, Scientific contribution, intensely\nimpersonal and determinist, directly neither metaphysical nor\nreligious, but more abstract even than the Greek view, in the\nmathematical constituent of its method, and more concrete in a sense\nthan Christianity itself, in the other, the sensible-experiment\nconstituent of its method. The most undeniable of abstractions, those\nof mathematics, (undeniable just because of their enunciation of\nnothing but certain simplest relations between objects, supposing\nthose objects to exist,) are here applied to the most undeniable of\nconcretions, the direct experiences of the senses. And this mysterious\nunion which, on the surface, is so utterly heterogeneous, is itself\nat all explicable only on mental, metaphysical assumptions and on the\nadmission of the reality and priority of Mind. It is a union that has\nturned out as unassailable in its own province, as it is incapable\nof suppressing or replacing the wider and deeper truths and lives\ndiscovered for us respectively by Hellenism and Christianity.\n\nOnly in the case that man could but reckon mathematically and observe\nwith his senses, or in the case that man were indeed provided with\nother faculties, but that he found Reality outside him and within him\nto be properly apprehensible by the mathematico-experimental process\nalone, could there be any serious question of such a final suppression\nof by far the greater and deeper portion of himself. Instead of any\nsuch deadlock the facts of these last four centuries bear out the\ncontention that neither can the religious life suppress or do without\nthe philosophical and the scientific, nor can either of these other two\nlives suppress or permanently do without its fellow or without religion.\n\nBut all this and its detailed practical application will, I trust,\nbecome much clearer as we proceed.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nTHE THREE ELEMENTS OF RELIGION\n\n\nINTRODUCTORY.\n\nWe have found then that all life and all truth are, for all their\nunity, deeply complex, for us men at all events; indeed that they\nare both in exact proportion to their reality. In this, our second\nchapter, I should like to show the complexity special to the deepest\nkind of life, to Religion; and to attempt some description of the\nworking harmonization of this complexity. If Religion turned out to\nbe simple, in the sense of being a monotone, a mere oneness, a whole\nwithout parts, it could not be true; and yet if Religion be left too\nmuch a mere multiplicity, a mere congeries of parts without a whole, it\ncannot be persuasive and fully operative. And the several constituents\nare there, whether we harbour, recognize, and discipline them or not;\nbut these constituents will but hinder or supplant each other, in\nproportion as they are not somehow each recognized in their proper\nplace and rank, and are not each allowed and required to supplement\nand to stimulate the other. And though no amount of talk or theory\ncan, otherwise than harmfully, take the place of life, yet observation\nand reflection can help us to see where and how life acts: what are\nthe causes, or at least the concomitants, of its inhibition and of\nits stimulation and propagation, and can thus supply us with aids to\naction, which action will then, in its turn, help to give experimental\nfulness and precision to what otherwise remains a more or less vague\nand empty scheme.\n\n\nI. THE THREE ELEMENTS, AS THEY SUCCESSIVELY APPEAR IN THE CHILD, THE\nYOUTH, AND THE ADULT MAN.\n\nNow if we will but look back upon our own religious life, we shall\nfind that, in degrees and in part in an order of succession varying\nindefinitely with each individual, three modalities, three modes of\napprehension and forms of appeal and of outlook, have been and are at\nwork within us and around.[34]\n\n\n1. _Sense and Memory, the Child\u2019s means of apprehending Religion._\n\nIn the doubtless overwhelming majority of cases, there came first,\nas far as we can reconstruct the history of our consciousness, the\nappeal to our infant senses of some external religious symbol or place,\nsome picture or statue, some cross or book, some movement of some\nattendant\u2019s hands and eyes. And this appeal would generally have been\nexternally interpreted to us by some particular men or women, a Mother,\nNurse, Father, Teacher, Cleric, who themselves would generally have\nbelonged to some more or less well-defined traditional, institutional\nreligion. And their appeal would be through my senses to my imaginative\nfaculty first, and then to my memory of that first appeal, and would\nrepresent the principle of authority in its simplest form.\n\nAll here as yet works quasi-automatically. The little child gets\nthese impressions long before itself can choose between, or even is\ndistinctly conscious of them; it believes whatever it sees and is told,\nequally, as so much fact, as something to build on. If you will, it\nbelieves these things to be true, but not in the sense of contrasting\nthem with error; the very possibility of the latter has not yet come\ninto sight. And at this stage the External, Authoritative, Historical,\nTraditional, Institutional side and function of Religion are everywhere\nevident. Cases like that of John Stuart Mill, of being left outside of\nall religious tradition, we may safely say, will ever remain exceptions\nto help prove the rule. The five senses then, perhaps that of touch\nfirst, and certainly that of sight most; the picturing and associative\npowers of the imagination; and the retentiveness of the memory, are\nthe side of human nature specially called forth. And the external,\nsensible, readily picturable facts and the picturing functions of\nreligion correspond to and feed this side, as readily as does the\nmother\u2019s milk correspond to and feed that same mother\u2019s infant.\nReligion is here, above all, a Fact and Thing.\n\n\n\n2. _Question and Argument, the Youth\u2019s mode of approaching Religion._\n\nBut soon there wakes up another activity and requirement of human\nnature, and another side of religion comes forth to meet it. Direct\nexperience, for one thing, brings home to the child that these\nsense-informations are not always trustworthy, or identical in its own\ncase and in that of others. And, again, the very impressiveness of this\nexternal religion stimulates indeed the sense of awe and of wonder, but\nit awakens curiosity as well. The time of trustful questioning, but\nstill of questioning, first others, then oneself, has come. The old\nimpressions get now more and more consciously sought out, and selected\nfrom among other conflicting ones; the facts seem to clamour for\nreasons to back them, against the other hostile facts and appearances,\nor at least against those men in books, if not in life, who dare to\nquestion or reject them. Affirmation is beginning to be consciously\nexclusive of its contrary: I begin to feel that _I_ hold _this_, and\nthat _you_ hold _that_; and that I cannot do both; and that I do the\nformer, and exclude and refuse the latter.\n\nHere it is the reasoning, argumentative, abstractive side of human\nnature that begins to come into play. Facts have now in my mind to\nbe related, to be bound to other facts, and men to men; the facts\nthemselves begin to stand for ideas or to have the latter in them\nor behind them. The measuring-rod seems to be over all things. And\nreligion answers this demand by clear and systematic arguments and\nconcatenations: this and this is now connected with that and that; this\nis true or this need not be false, because of that and that. Religion\nhere becomes Thought, System, a Philosophy.\n\n\n3. _Intuition, Feeling, and Volitional requirements and evidences, the\nMature Man\u2019s special approaches to Faith._\n\nBut yet a final activity of human nature has to come to its fullest,\nand to meet its response in a third side of Religion. For if in\nPhysiology and Psychology all action whatsoever is found to begin with\na sense-impression, to move through the central process of reflection,\nand to end in the final discharge of will and of action, the same final\nstage can be found in the religious life. Certain interior experiences,\ncertain deep-seated spiritual pleasures and pains, weaknesses and\npowers, helps and hindrances, are increasingly known and felt in and\nthrough interior and exterior action, and interior suffering, effort,\nand growth. For man is necessarily a creature of action, even more\nthan of sensation and of reflection; and in this action of part of\nhimself against other parts, of himself with or against other men,\nwith or against this or that external fact or condition, he grows and\ngradually comes to his real self, and gains certain experiences as to\nthe existence and nature and growth of this his own deeper personality.\n\nMan\u2019s emotional and volitional, his ethical and spiritual powers, are\nnow in ever fuller motion, and they are met and fed by the third side\nof religion, the Experimental and Mystical. Here religion is rather\nfelt than seen or reasoned about, is loved and lived rather than\nanalyzed, is action and power, rather than either external fact or\nintellectual verification.\n\n\nII. EACH ELEMENT EVER ACCOMPANIED BY SOME AMOUNT OF THE OTHER TWO.\nDIFFICULTY OF THE TRANSITIONS FROM ONE STAGE TO THE OTHER.\n\nNow these three sides of the human character, and corresponding three\nelements of Religion, are never, any one of them, without a trace\nor rudiment of the other two; and this joint presence of three such\ndisparate elements ever involves tension, of a fruitful or dangerous\nkind.[35]\n\n\n1. _Utility of this joint presence._\n\nIn the living human being indeed there never exists a mere apprehension\nof something external and sensible, without any interior elaboration,\nany interpretation by the head and heart. We can hardly allow, we\ncan certainly in nowise picture to ourselves, even an infant of a\nfew hours old, as working, and being worked upon, by nothing beyond\nthese sense-perceptions alone. Already some mental, abstractive,\nemotional-volitional reaction and interpretation is presumably at\nwork; and not many weeks or months pass before this is quite obviously\nthe case. And although, on the other hand, the impressions of the\nsenses, of the imagination and the memory are, normally, more numerous,\nfresh, and lasting in early than in later years, yet up to the end\nthey continue to take in some new impressions, and keep up their most\nnecessary functions of supplying materials, stimulants, and tests to\nthe other powers of the soul.\n\nThus, too, Religion is at all times more or less both traditional\nand individual; both external and internal; both institutional,\nrational, and volitional. It always answers more or less to the needs\nof authority and society; of reason and proof; of interior sustenance\nand purification. I believe because I am told, because it is true,\nbecause it answers to my deepest interior experiences and needs. And,\neverything else being equal, my faith will be at its richest and\ndeepest and strongest, in so far as all these three motives are most\nfully and characteristically operative within me, at one and the same\ntime, and towards one and the same ultimate result and end.\n\n\n\n2. _The two crises of the soul, when it adds Speculation to\nInstitutionalism, and Mysticism to both._\n\nNow all this is no fancy scheme, no petty or pretty artificial\narrangement: the danger and yet necessity of the presence of these\nthree forces, the conflicts and crises within and between them all,\nin each human soul, and between various men and races that typify or\nespouse one or the other force to the more or less complete exclusion\nof the other, help to form the deepest history, the truest tragedy or\ntriumph of the secret life of every one of us.\n\nThe transition from the child\u2019s religion, so simply na\u00efve and\nunselfconscious, so tied to time and place and particular persons and\nthings, so predominantly traditional and historical, institutional and\nexternal, to the right and normal type of a young man\u2019s religion, is\nas necessary as it is perilous. The transition is necessary. For all\nthe rest of him is growing,--body and soul are growing in clamorous\ncomplexity in every direction: how then can the deepest part of his\nnature, his religion, not require to grow and develop also? And how can\nit permeate and purify all the rest, how can it remain and increasingly\nbecome \u201cthe secret source of all his seeing,\u201d of his productiveness and\ncourage and unification, unless it continually equals and exceeds all\nother interests within the living man, by its own persistent vitality,\nits rich and infinite variety, its subtle, ever-fresh attraction and\ninexhaustible resourcefulness and power? But the crisis is perilous.\nFor he will be greatly tempted either to cling exclusively to his\nexisting, all but simply institutional, external position, and to fight\nor elude all approaches to its reasoned, intellectual apprehension\nand systematization; and in this case his religion will tend to\ncontract and shrivel up, and to become a something simply alongside\nof other things in his life. Or he will feel strongly pressed to let\nthe individually intellectual simply supplant the institutional, in\nwhich case his religion will grow hard and shallow, and will tend to\ndisappear altogether. In the former case he will, at best, assimilate\nhis religion to external law and order, to Economics and Politics;\nin the latter case he will, at best, assimilate it to Science and\nPhilosophy. In the first case, he will tend to superstition; in the\nsecond, to rationalism and indifference.\n\nBut even if he passes well through this first crisis, and has thus\nachieved the collaboration of these two religious forces, the external\nand the intellectual, his religion will still be incomplete and\nsemi-operative, because still not reaching to what is deepest and\nnearest to his will. A final transition, the addition of the third\nforce, that of the emotional-experimental life, must yet be safely\nachieved. And this again is perilous: for the two other forces will,\neven if single, still more if combined, tend to resist this third\nforce\u2019s full share of influence to the uttermost. To the external\nforce this emotional power will tend to appear as akin to revolution;\nto the intellectual side it will readily seem mere subjectivity and\nsentimentality ever verging on delusion. And the emotional-experimental\nforce will, in its turn, be tempted to sweep aside both the external,\nas so much oppressive ballast; and the intellectual, as so much\nhair-splitting or rationalism. And if it succeeds, a shifting\nsubjectivity, and all but incurable tyranny of mood and fancy, will\nresult,--fanaticism is in full sight.\n\n\nIII. PARALLELS TO THIS TRIAD OF RELIGIOUS ELEMENTS.\n\nIf we would find, applied to other matters, the actual operation and\nco-operation, at the earliest stage of man\u2019s life, of the identical\npowers under discussion, we can find them, by a careful analysis of our\nmeans and processes of knowledge, or of the stages of all reflex action.\n\n\n1. _The three constituents of Knowledge._\n\nEven the most elementary acquisition, indeed the very possibility,\nof any and all certitude and knowledge, is dependent for us upon the\ndue collaboration of the three elements or forces of our nature, the\nsensational, the rational, the ethico-mystical.[36]\n\nThere is, first, in the order of our consciousness and in the degree of\nits undeniableness, the element of our actual impressions, the flux of\nour consciousness as it apprehends particular sights and sounds, smells\nand tastes and touches; particular sensations of rest and movement,\npleasure and pain, memory, judgment, and volition, a flux, \u201cchangeless\nin its ceaseless change.\u201d We have so far found neither a true object\nfor thought, nor a subject which can think. And yet this element,\nand this alone, is the simply, passively received, the absolutely\nundeniable part of our experience,--we cannot deny it if we would. And\nagain, it is the absolutely necessary pre-requisite for our exercise or\nacquisition, indeed for our very consciousness, of the other two means\nor elements, without which there can be no real knowledge.\n\nFor there is, next in the logical order of the analysis of our\nconsciousness and in the degree of its undeniableness, the element\nof the various forms of necessary thought, in as much as these are\nexperienced by us as necessary. We can, with Aristotle, simply call\nthem the ten categories; or we can, with greater precision and\nextension, group them, so far with Kant, under the two main heads\nof the two pure \u201caesthetic\u201d Perceptions of time and space, on the\none hand; and of the various \u201canalytic\u201d Forms of judgment and of the\nCategories of Unity, Reality, Substance, Possibility, etc., on the\nother hand. Now it can be shown that it is only by means of this whole\nsecond element, only through the co-operation of these \u201cperceptions\u201d\nand forms of thought, that any kind even of dim feeling of ordered\nsuccession or of system, of unity or meaning, is found by our mind in\nthat first element. Only these two elements, found and taken together,\npresent us, in their interaction, with even the impression and\npossibility of something to reason _about_, and something _wherewith_\nto reason.\n\nThe second element then differs from the first in this, that whereas\nthe first presents its contents simply as actual and undeniable, yet\nwithout so far any necessity or significance: the second presents its\ncontents as both actual and necessary. By means of the first element\nI see a red rose, but without any feeling of more than the fact that a\nrose, or at least this one, _is_ red; it might quite as well be yellow\nor blue. By means of the second element, I think of a body of any kind,\nnot only as actually occupying some particular space and time, but as\n_necessarily_ doing so; I feel that I _must_ so think of it.\n\nAnd yet there is a third and last element necessary to give real\nvalue to the two previous ones. For only on the condition that I\nam willing to trust these intimations of necessity, to believe\nthat these necessities of my subjective thought are objective as\nwell, and correspond to the necessities of Being, can I reach the\ntrans-subjective, can I have any real knowledge and experience of\nanything whatsoever, either within me or without. The most elementary\nexperience, the humblest something to be granted as really existing\nand as to be reasoned from, is thus invariably and inevitably composed\nfor me of three elements, of which only the first two are directly\nexperienced by me at all. And the third element, the ethico-mystical,\nhas to be there, I have to trust and endorse the intimations of\nnecessity furnished by the second element, if anything is to come of\nthe whole movement.\n\nThus, here also, at the very source of all our certainty, of the worth\nattributable to the least or greatest of our thoughts and feelings\nand acts, we already find the three elements: indubitable sensation,\nclear thought, warm faith in and through action. And thus life here\nalready consists of multiplicity in unity; and what in it is absolutely\nindubitable, is of value only because it constitutes the indispensable\nstarting-point and stimulation for the apprehension and affirmation\nof realities not directly experienced, not absolutely undeniable, but\nwhich alone bear with them all the meaning, all the richness, all the\nreality and worth of life.\n\n\n\n2. _The three links in the chain of Reflex Action._\n\nWe can also find this same triad, perhaps more simply, if we look\nto Psychology, and that most assured and most far-reaching of all\nits results, the fact and analysis of Reflex Action. For we find\nhere that all the activities of specifically human life begin with a\nsense-impression, as the first, the one simply _given_ element; that\nthey move into and through a central process of mental abstraction and\nreflection, as the second element, contributed by the mind itself; and\nthat they end, as the third element, in the discharge of will and of\naction, in an act of free affirmation, expansion, and love.\n\nIn this endless chain composed of these groups of three links each,\nthe first link and the last link are obscure and mysterious: the\nfirst, as coming from without us, and as still below our own thought;\nthe third, as going out from us, and seen by us only in its external\nresults, never in its actual operation, nor in its effect upon our\nown central selves. Only the middle link is clear to us. And yet the\nmost mysterious part of the whole process, the effect of it all upon\nthe central self, is also the most certain and the most important\nresult of the whole movement, a movement which ever culminates in a\nmodification of the personality and which prepares this personality for\nthe next round of sense-perception, intellectual abstraction, ethical\naffirmation and volitional self-determination,--acts in which light and\nlove, fixed and free, hard and cold and warm, are so mysteriously, so\nuniversally, and yet so variously linked.\n\n\nIV. DISTRIBUTION OF THE THREE ELEMENTS AMONGST MANKIND AND THROUGHOUT\nHUMAN HISTORY.\n\nLet us now watch and see where and how the three elements of Religion\nappear among the periods of man\u2019s life, the human professions, and\nthe races of mankind; then how they succeed each other in history\ngenerally; and finally how they exist among the chief types and phases\nof the Oriental, Classical Graeco-Roman, and Judaeo-Christian religions.\n\n\n1. _The Elements: their distribution among man\u2019s various ages, sexes,\nprofessions, and races._\n\nWe have already noticed how children incline to the memory-side, to\nthe external, social type; and it is well they should do so, and\nthey should be wisely helped therein. Those passing through the\nstorm-and-stress period insist more upon the reason, the internal,\nintellectual type; and mature souls lay stress upon the feelings\nand the will, the internal, ethical type. So again, women generally\ntend either to an excess of the external, to superstition; or of the\nemotional, to fanaticism. Men, on the contrary, appear generally\nto incline to an excess of the intellectual, to rationalism and\nindifference.\n\nProfessions, too, both by the temperaments which they presuppose, and\nthe habits of mind which they foster, have various affinities. The\nfighting, administrative, legal and political sciences and services,\nreadily incline to the external and institutional; the medical,\nmathematical, natural science studies, to the internal-intellectual;\nthe poetical, artistic, humanitarian activities, to the\ninternal-emotional.\n\nAnd whole races have tended and will tend, upon the whole, to one or\nother of these three excesses: _e.g._ the Latin races, to Externalism\nand Superstition; the Teutonic races, to the two Interiorisms,\nRationalism and Fanaticism.\n\n\n\n2. _Co-existence and succession of the Three Elements in history\ngenerally._\n\nThe human race at large has evidently been passing, upon the whole,\nfrom the exterior to the interior, but with a constant tendency to\ndrop one function for another, instead of supplementing, stimulating,\npurifying each by means of the other two.\n\nIf we go back as far as any analyzable records will carry us, we\nfind that, in proportion as religion emerges from pure fetichism,\nit has ever combined with the apprehension of a Power conceived, at\nlast and at best, as of a Father in heaven, that of a Bond with its\nbrethren upon earth. Never has the sacrifice, the so-to-speak vertical\nrelation between the individual man and God, between the worshipper\nand the object of his worship, been without the sacrificial meal, the\ncommunion, the so-to-speak lateral, horizontal relations between man\nand his fellow-man, between the worshippers one and all. Never has\nreligion been purely and entirely individual; always has it been,\nas truly and necessarily, social and institutional, traditional and\nhistorical. And this traditional element, not all the religious genius\nin the world can ever escape or replace: it was there, surrounding\nand moulding the very pre-natal existence of each one of us; it will\nbe there, long after we have left the scene. We live and die its wise\nservants and stewards, or its blind slaves, or in futile, impoverishing\nrevolt against it: we never, for good or for evil, really get beyond\nits reach.\n\nAnd yet all this stream and environment of the traditional and social\ncould make no impression upon me whatsoever unless it were met by\ncertain secret sympathies, by certain imperious wants and energies\nwithin myself. If the contribution of tradition is _quantitatively_\nby far the most important, and might be compared to the contribution\nfurnished by the Vocabulary to the constitution of a definite,\nparticular language,--the contribution of the individual is,\n_qualitatively_ and for that individual, more important still,\nand might be compared to the contribution of the Grammar to the\nconstitution of that same language: for it is the Grammar which,\nthough incomparably less in amount than the Vocabulary, yet definitely\nconstitutes any and every language.\n\nAnd there is here no necessary conflict with the claim of Tradition.\nIt is true that all real, actual Religion is ever an act of submission\nto some fact or truth conceived as not only true but as obligatory, as\ncoming from God, and hence as beyond and above our purely subjective\nfancies, opinings, and wishes. But it is also true that, if I could\nnot mentally hear or see, I should be incapable of hearing or\nseeing anything of this kind or of any other; and that without some\nalready existing interior affinity with and mysterious capacity for\ndiscriminating between such intimations--as either corresponding to\nor as traversing my existing imperious needs and instincts--I could\nnot apprehend the former as coming from God. Without, then, such\nnon-fanciful, non-wilful, subjective capacities and dispositions,\nthere is for us not even the apprehension of the existence of such\nobjective realities: such capacities and dispositions are as necessary\npre-requisites to every act of faith, as sight is the absolute\npre-requisite for my discrimination between black and white. Hence as\nfar back as we can go, the traditional and social, the institutional\nside of religion was accompanied, in varying, and at first small or\nless perceptible degrees and forms, by intellectual and experimental\ninterpretation and response.\n\n\n3. _The Three Elements in the great Religions._\n\nEven the Greek religion, so largely naturalistic up to the very end,\nappears, in the centuries of its relative interiorization, as a\ntriad composed of a most ancient traditional cultus, a philosophy of\nreligion, and an experimental-ethical life; the latter element being\nreadily exemplified by the Demon of Socrates, and by the Eleusinian and\nOrphic Mysteries.\n\nIn India and Tibet, again, Brahmanism and Buddhism may be said to have\ndivided these three elements between them, the former representing as\ngreat an excess of the external as Buddhism does of abstruse reasoning\nand pessimistic emotion. Mahometanism, while combining, in very\nimperfect proportions, all three elements within itself, lays special\nstress upon the first, the external element; and though harbouring, for\ncenturies now and more or less everywhere, the third, the mystical\nelement, looks, in its strictly orthodox representatives, with\nsuspicion upon this mysticism.\n\nJudaism was slow in developing the second, the intellectual element;\nand the third, the mystical, is all but wholly absent till the Exilic\nperiod, and does not become a marked feature till still later on, and\nin writers under Hellenistic influence. It is in the Book of Wisdom,\nstill more in Philo, that we find all three sides almost equally\ndeveloped. And from the Hasmonean period onwards till the destruction\nof Jerusalem by Titus, we find a severe and ardent external,\ntraditional, authoritative school in the Pharisees; an accommodating\nand rationalizing school in the Sadducees; and, apart from both, more a\nsect than a school, the experimental, ascetical, and mystical body of\nthe Essenes.\n\nBut it is in Christianity, and throughout its various vicissitudes and\nschools, that we can most fully observe the presence, characteristics,\nand interaction of these three modalities. We have already seen how\nthe New Testament writings can be grouped, with little or no violence,\naccording to the predominance of one of these three moods, under the\nheads of the traditional, historic, external, the \u201cPetrine\u201d school; the\nreasoning, speculative-internal, the Pauline; and the experimental,\nmystical-internal, the Joannine school. And in the East, up to Clement\nof Alexandria, in the West up to St. Augustine, we find the prevalence\nof the first type. And next, in the East, in Clement and Origen, in\nSt. Gregory of Nyssa, in the Alexandrian and the Antiochene school\ngenerally, and in the West, in St. Augustine, we find predominantly a\ncombination of the second and third types. The Areopagitic writings of\nthe end of the fifth century still further emphasize and systematize\nthis Neo-Platonic form of mystical speculation, and become indeed\nthe great treasure-house from which above all the Mystics, but also\nlargely the Scholastics, throughout the Middle Ages, drew much of their\nliterary material.\n\nAnd those six or seven centuries of the Middle Ages are full of the\ncontrasts and conflicts between varying forms of Institutionalism,\nIntellectualism, and Mysticism. Especially clearly marked is the\nparallelism, interaction, and apparent indestructibleness of the\nScholastic and Mystical currents. Abelard and St. Bernard, St. Thomas\nof Aquin and the great Franciscan Doctors, above all the often\nlargely latent, yet really ceaseless conflict between Realism and\nNominalism, all can be rightly taken as caused by various combinations\nand degrees, insufficiencies or abnormalities in the action of the\nthree great powers of the human soul, and of the three corresponding\nroot-forms and functions of religion. And whereas, during the\nprevalence of Realism, affective, mystical religion is the concomitant\nand double of intellectual religion; during the later prevalence of\nNominalism, Mysticism becomes the ever-increasing supplement, and at\nlast, ever more largely, the substitute, for the methods of reasoning.\n\u201cDo penance and believe in the Gospel\u201d becomes now the favourite text,\neven in the mouth of Gerson (who died in 1429), the great Nominalist\nDoctor, the Chancellor of the then greatest intellectual centre\nupon earth, the University of Paris. A constant depreciation of all\ndialectics, indeed largely of human knowledge generally, appears even\nmore markedly in the pages of the gentle and otherwise moderate Thomas\nof Kempen (who died in 1471).\n\nAlthough the Humanist Renaissance was not long in carrying away many\nminds and hearts from all deeper consciousness and effort of a moral\nand religious sort, yet in so far as men retained and but further\ndeepened and enriched their religious outlook and life, the three\nold forms and modalities reappear, during the earlier stages of the\nmovement, in fresh forms and combinations. Perhaps the most truly\ncomprehensive and Christian representative of the new at its best, is\nCardinal Nicolas of Coes, the precursor of modern philosophy. For he\ncombines the fullest adhesion to, and life-long labour for, External\nInstitutional authority, with the keenest Intellectual, Speculative\nlife, and with the constant temper and practice of experimental and\nMystical piety. And a similar combination we find in Blessed Sir Thomas\nMore in England, who lays down his life in defence of Institutional\nReligion and of the authority of the visible Church and its earthly\nhead; who is a devoted lover of the New Learning, both Critical and\nPhilosophical; and who continuously cultivates the Interior Life. A\nlittle later on, we find the same combination in Cardinal Ximenes in\nSpain.\n\nBut it is under the stress and strain of the Reformation and\nCounter-Reformation movements that the depth and vitality of the three\ncurrents gets specially revealed. For in Germany, and in Continental\nProtestantism generally, we see (immediately after the very short\nfirst \u201cfluid\u201d stage of Luther\u2019s and Zwingli\u2019s attitude consequent upon\ntheir breach with Rome) the three currents in a largely separate\ncondition, and hence with startling distinctness. Luther, Calvin,\nZwingli, different as are their temperaments and both their earlier\nand their later Protestant attitudes and doctrines, all three soon\nfall back upon some form and fragmentary continuation, or even in\nits way intensification, of Institutional Religion,--driven to such\nconservatism by the iron necessity of real life and the irrepressible\nrequirements of human nature. They thus formed that heavy untransparent\nthing, orthodox Continental Protestantism. Laelius and Faustus Socinus\nattempt the construction of a purely Rationalistic Religion, and\ncapture and intensify the current of a clear, cold Deism, in which the\ncritical mind is to be supreme. And the Anabaptist and other scattered\nsects and individuals (the latter represented at their best by\nSebastian Frank) attempt, in their turn, to hold and develop a purely\ninterior, experimental, emotional-intuitive, ecstatic Religion, which\nis warm, indeed feverish and impulsive, and distrusts both the visible\nand institutional, and the rational and critical.\n\nIn England the same phenomenon recurs in a modified form. For in\nAnglicanism, the most characteristic of its parties, the High Church\nschool, represents predominantly the Historical, Institutional\nprinciple. The Latitudinarian school fights for the Rational, Critical,\nand Speculative element. The Evangelical school stands in close\nspiritual affinity to all but the Unitarian Nonconformists in England,\nand represents the Experimental, Mystical element. We readily think\nof Laud and Andrewes, Pusey and Keble as representatives of the first\nclass; of Arnold, Stanley, and Jowett as figures of the second class;\nof Thomas Scott, John Newton, and Charles Simeon as types of the third\nclass. _The Tracts for the Times_, _Essays and Reviews_, and (further\nback) Bunyan\u2019s Works, would roughly correspond to them in literature.\n\nAnd this trinity of tendency can also be traced in Catholicism. Whole\nReligious Orders and Congregations can be seen or felt to tend,\nupon the whole, to one or the other type. The Jesuits can be taken\nas predominantly making for the first type, for fact, authority,\nsubmission, obedience; the Dominicans for the second type, for thought,\na philosophico-speculative, intellectual religion; the Benedictines,\nin their noble Congregation of St. Maur, for a historico-critical\nintellectual type; the French Oratory, for a combination of both the\nspeculative (Malebranche) and the critical (Simon, Thomassin); and\nthe Franciscans, for the third, for action and experimental, affective\nspirituality.\n\nAnd yet none of these Orders but has had its individuals, and even\nwhole secondary periods, schools, and traditions, markedly typical of\nsome current other than that specially characteristic of the Order\nas a whole. There are the great Critics and Historians of the Jesuit\nOrder: the Spanish Maldonatus, the New Testament Scholar, admirable for\nhis time, and helpful and unexhausted still; the French Denys Petau,\nthe great historian of Christian Doctrine and of its development;\nthe Flemish Bollandists, with their unbroken tradition of thorough\ncritical method and incorruptible accuracy and impartiality. There are\nthe great Jesuit Mystics: the Spanish Venerable Balthazar Alvarez,\ndeclared by St. Teresa to be the holiest mystical soul she had ever\nknown; and the Frenchmen, Louis Lallemant and Jean Joseph Surin. There\nare those most attractive figures, combining the Scholar and the\nMystic: Blessed Edmund Campion, the Oxford Scholar and Elizabethan\nMartyr; and Jean Nicolas Grou, the French translator of Plato, who\ndied in exile in England in 1800. The Dominicans have, from the\nfirst, been really representative of external authority as well of\nthe speculative rational bent; and the mystical side has never been\nwanting to them, so amongst the early German Dominicans, Tauler and\nSuso, and many a Dominican female Saint. The Benedictines from the\nfirst produced great rulers; such striking types of external authority\nas the Pope-Saints, Gregory the Great and Gregory VII (Hildebrand), and\nthe great Benedictine Abbots and Bishops throughout the Middle Ages\nare rightly felt to represent one whole side of this great Order. And\nagain such great mystical figures as St. Hildegard of Bingen and the\ntwo Saints Gertrude are fully at home in that hospitable Family. And\nthe Franciscans have, in the Conventuals, developed representatives of\nthe external authority type; and in such great philosopher-theologians\nas Duns Scotus and Occam, a combination which has more of the\nintellectual, both speculative and critical, than of the simply\nascetical or even mystical type.\n\nAnd if we look for individual contrasts, we can often find them in\nclose temporal and local juxtaposition, as in France, in the time of\nLouis XIV, in the persons of Bossuet, Richard Simon, and F\u00e9nelon, so\nstrikingly typical of the special strengths and limitations of the\ninstitutional, rational, experimental types respectively. And yet the\nmost largely varied influence will necessarily proceed from characters\nwhich combine not only two of the types, as in our times Frederick\nFaber combined the external and experimental; but which hold them all\nthree, as with John Henry Newman in England or Antonio Rosmini in Italy.\n\n\nV. CAUSES OPERATIVE IN ALL RELIGION TOWARDS MINIMIZING OR SUPPRESSING\nONE OR OTHER ELEMENT, OR TOWARDS DENYING THE NEED OF ANY MULTIPLICITY.\n\nLet us end this chapter with some consideration of the causes and\nreasons that are ever tending to produce and to excuse the quiet\nelimination or forcible suppression of one or other of the elements\nthat constitute the full organism of religion, and even to minimize or\nto deny altogether the necessity of any such multiplicity.\n\n\n1. _The religious temper longs for simplification._\n\nTo take the last point first. How obvious and irresistible seems\nalways, to the specifically religious temper, the appeal to boundless\nsimplification. \u201cCan there be anything more sublimely, utterly simple\nthan religion?\u201d we all say and feel. In these regions, if anywhere, we\nlong and thirst to see and feel all things in one, to become ourselves\none, to find the One Thing necessary, the One God, and to be one\nwith Him for ever. Where is there room here, we feel even angrily,\nfor all these distinctions, all this balancing of divers faculties\nand parts? Is not all this but so much Aestheticism, some kind of\nsubtle Naturalism, a presumptuous attempting to build up bit by bit\nin practice, and to analyze part from part in theory, what can only\ncome straight from God Himself, and, coming from Him the One, cannot\nbut bear the impress of His own indistinguishable Unity? And can there\nbe anything more unforcedly, unanalyzably simple than all actual\nreligion,--and this in exact proportion to its greatness? Look at St.\nFrancis of Assisi, or St. John Baptist; look above all at the Christ,\nsupremely, uniquely great, just because of His sublime simplicity!\nLook at, feel, the presence and character of those countless souls\nthat bear, unknown even to themselves, some portion of this His\nimpress within themselves, forming thus a kind of indefinitely rich\nextension of His reign, of the kingdom of His childlikeness. Away then\nwith everything that at all threatens to break up a corresponding\nsimplicity in ourselves! Poverty of spirit, emptiness of heart, a\nconstant turning away from all distraction, from all multiplicity both\nof thought and of feeling, of action and of being; this, surely, is\nthe one and only necessity for the soul, at least in proportion to the\nheight of her spiritual call.\n\n\n\n2. _Yet every truly living Unity is constituted in Multiplicity._\n\nNow in all this there is a most subtle mixture of truth and of error.\nIt is profoundly true that all that _is_ at all, still more all\npersonality, and hence above all God, the Spirit of spirits is, just\nin that proportion, profoundly mysteriously One, with a Unity which\nall our best thinking can only distantly and analogously represent.\nAnd all religion will ever, in proportion as it is vigorous and pure,\nthirst after an ever-increasing Unification, will long to be one and\nto give itself to the One,--to follow naked the naked Jesus. Yet all\nthe history of human thought and all the actual experience of each\none of us prove that this Unity can be apprehended and developed, by\nand within our poor human selves, only in proportion as we carefully\npersist in stopping at the point where it can most thoroughly organize\nand harmonize the largest possible multiplicity of various facts and\nforces.\n\nNo doubt the living soul is not a whole made up of separate parts;\nstill less is God made up of parts. Yet we cannot apprehend this Unity\nof God except in multiplicity of some sort; nor can we ourselves become\nrightly one, except through being in a true sense many, and very many,\nas well. Indeed the Christian Faith insists that there is something\nmost real actually corresponding to this our conception of multiplicity\neven and especially in God Himself. For it as emphatically bids us\nthink of Him as in one sense a Trinity as in another a Unity. And it\nis one of the oldest and most universal of Christian approaches to\nthis mystery, to conceive it under the analogy of the three powers of\nthe soul. God the Father and Creator is conceived as corresponding to\nthe sense-perception and Imagination, to Memory-power; God the Son and\nRedeemer, as the Logos, to our reason; and God the Holy Spirit, as\ncorresponding to the effective-volitional force within us; and then we\nare bidden to remember that, as in ourselves these three powers are\nall united in One personality, so in God the three Persons are united\nin One substance and nature. Even the supremely and ineffably simple\nGodhead is not, then, a mere, undifferentiated One.\n\nAnd if we take the case of Our Lord, even when He is apprehended in the\nmost abstract of orthodox ways: we get either the duality of natures,\nGod and Man; or a trinity of offices, the Kingly, the Prophetic,\nand the Priestly,--these latter again corresponding roughly to the\nExternal, the Intellectual, and the Mystical element of the human soul.\nAnd even if we restrict ourselves to His Humanity, and as pictured in\nany one Gospel, nay in the earliest, simplest, and shortest, St. Mark,\nwe shall still come continually upon a rich multiplicity, variety, and\nplay of different exterior and interior apprehensions and activities,\nemotions and sufferings, all profoundly permeated by one great end and\naim, yet each differing from the other, and contributing a different\nshare to the one great result. The astonishment at the disciples\u2019\nslowness of comprehension, the flash of anger at Peter, the sad\nreproachfulness towards Judas, the love of the children, the sympathy\nwith women, the pity towards the fallen, the indignation against the\nPharisees, the rejoicing in the Father\u2019s revelation, the agony in the\nGarden, the desolation on the Cross, are all _different_ emotions. The\nperception of the beauty of the flowers of the field, of the habits\nof plants and of birds, of the varieties of the day\u2019s early and late\ncloud and sunshine, of the effects of storm and rain; and again of\nthe psychology of various classes of character, age, temperament,\nand avocation; and indeed of so much more, are all _different_\nobservations. The lonely recollection in the desert, the nights spent\nin prayer upon the mountains, the preaching from boats and on the\nlake-side, the long foot-journeyings, the many flights, the reading and\nexpounding in the Synagogues, the curing the sick and restoring them to\ntheir right mind, the driving the sellers from the Temple-court, and so\nmuch else, are all _different_ activities.\n\nAnd if we take what is or should be simplest in the spiritual life\nof the Christian, his intention and motive; and if we conceive this\naccording to the evidence of the practice of such Saints as have\nthemselves revealed to us the actual working of their souls, and of\nthe long and most valuable series of controversies and ecclesiastical\ndecisions in this delicate matter, we shall again find the greatest\npossible Multiplicity in the deepest possible Unity. For even in such\na Saint as St. John of the Cross, whose own analysis and theory of\nthe interior life would often seem all but directly and completely to\nexclude the element of multiplicity, it is necessary ever to interpret\nand supplement one part of his teaching by another, and to understand\nthe whole in the light of his actual, deliberate, habitual practice.\nThis latter will necessarily ever exceed his explicit teaching, both in\nits completeness and in its authority. Now if in his formal teaching\nhe never wearies of insisting upon detachment from all things, and\nupon the utmost simplification of the intentions of the soul, yet he\noccasionally fully states what is ever completing this doctrine in his\nown mind,--that this applies only to the means and not to the end, and\nto false and not to true multiplicity. \u201cThe spiritual man,\u201d he writes\nin one place, \u201chas greater joy and comfort in creatures, if he detaches\nhimself from them; and he can have no joy in them, if he considers them\nas his own.\u201d \u201cHe,\u201d as distinct from the unspiritual man, \u201crejoices in\ntheir truth,\u201d \u201cin their best conditions,\u201d \u201cin their substantial worth.\u201d\nHe \u201chas joy in all things.\u201d[37] A real multiplicity then exists in\nthings, and in our most purified apprehension of them; varied, rich\njoys related to this multiplicity are facts in the life of the Saints;\nand these varied joys may legitimately be dwelt on as incentives to\nholiness for oneself and others. \u201cAll that is wanting now,\u201d he writes\nto Donna Juana de Pedra\u00e7a, his penitent, \u201cis that I should forget\nyou. But consider how that is to be forgotten which is ever present\nto the soul.\u201d[38] An affection then, as pure as it was particular,\nwas ever in his heart, and fully accepted and willed and acknowledged\nto its immediate object, as entirely conformable to his own teaching.\nSt. Teresa, on the other hand, is a character of much greater natural\nvariety, and yet it is she who has left us that most instructive record\nof her temporary erroneous ideal of a false simplicity, in turning\naway, for a number of years, from the consideration of the Humanity of\nChrist. And a constant, keen interest in the actual larger happenings\nof her time, in the vicissitudes of the Church in her day, was stamped\nupon all her teaching, and remained with her up to the very end.\n\nPerhaps the most classic expression of the true Unity is that implied\nby St. Ignatius of Loyola, when he tells us that \u201cPeace is the\nsimplicity of order.\u201d For order as necessarily implies a multiplicity\nof things ordered as the unity of the supreme ordering principle.\nF\u00e9nelon, doubtless, at times, especially in parts of his condemned\n_Explication des Maximes des Saints_, too much excludes, or seems to\nexclude, the element of multiplicity in the soul\u2019s intention. Yet,\nboth before and after this book, some of the clearest and completest\nstatements in existence, as to the true unity and diversity to be\nfound in the most perfect life, are to be found among his writings. In\nhis Latin Epistle to Pope Clement XI he insists upon the irreducible\nelement of multiplicity in the motives of the very highest sanctity.\n\nFor he maintains first that, though \u201cin the specific act of Love, the\nchief of the theological virtues, it is possible to love the absolute\nperfection of God considered in Himself, without the addition of any\nmotive of the promised beatitude,\u201d yet that \u201cthis specific act of love,\nof its own nature, never excludes, and indeed most frequently includes,\nthis same motive of beatitude.\u201d He asserts next that though, \u201cin the\nhighest grade of perfection amongst souls here below, deliberate\nacts of simply natural love of ourselves, and even supernatural acts\nof hope which are not commanded by love mostly cease,\u201d yet that in\nthis \u201chabitual State of any and every most perfect soul upon earth,\nthe promised beatitude is desired, and there is no diminution of the\nexercise of the virtue of hope, indeed day by day there is an increase\nin this desire, from the specific motive of hope of this great good,\nwhich God Himself bids us all, without exception, to hope for.\u201d And he\ndeclares finally that \u201cthere is no state of perfection in which souls\nenjoy an uninterrupted contemplation, or in which the powers of the\nsoul are bound by an absolute incapacity for eliciting the discursive\nacts of Christian piety; nor is there a state in which they are\nexempted from following the laws of the Church, and executing all the\norders of superiors.\u201d[39]\n\nAll the variety, then, of the interested and of the disinterested; of\nhope and fear and sorrow; of gratitude and adoration and love; of the\nIntuitive and Discursive; of Recollection and external Action, is to be\nfound, in a deeper, richer, more multiple and varied and at the same\ntime a more unified unity, in the most perfect life; and all this in\nproportion to its approach to its own ideal and normality.\n\nIndeed the same multiplicity in unity is finely traced by St. Bernard,\nthe great contemplative, in every human act that partakes of grace\nat all. \u201cThat which was begun by Grace, gets accomplished alike by\nboth Grace and Free Will, so that they operate mixedly not separately,\nsimultaneously not successively, in each and all of their processes.\nThe acts are not in part Grace, in part Free Will; but the whole of\neach act is effected by both in an undivided operation.\u201d[40]\n\n\nVI. THE SPECIAL MOTIVES OPERATING IN EACH ELEMENT TOWARDS THE\nSUPPRESSION OF THE OTHER ELEMENTS.\n\nNow the elements of Multiplicity and Friction and of Unity and\nHarmonization, absolutely essential to all life, everywhere and always\ncost us much to keep and gain. But there are also, very special reasons\nwhy the three great constituents of religion should, each in its own\nway, tend continually to tempt the soul to retain only _it_, and hence\nto an impoverishing simplification. Let us try and see this tendency\nat work in the two chief constituents, as against each other, and in\ncombination against the third.\n\n\n1. _In the Historical and Institutional Element, as against all else._\n\nWe have seen how all religiousness is ever called into life by some\nalready existing religion. And this religion will consist in the\ncontinuous commemoration of some great religious facts of the past.\nIt will teach and represent some divine revelation as having been\nmade, in and through such and such a particular person, in such and\nsuch a particular place, at such and such a particular time; and\nsuch a revelation will claim acceptance and submission as divine\nand redemptive in and through the very form and manner in which it\nwas originally made. The very peculiarity, which will render the\nteaching distinctively religious, will hence be a certain real, or\nat least an at first apparent, externality to the mind and life of\nthe recipient, and a sense of even painful obligation answered by a\nwilling endorsement. All higher religion ever is thus personal and\nrevelational; and all such personal and revelational religion was\nnecessarily first manifested in unique conditions of space and time;\nand yet it claims, in as much as divine, to embrace all the endless\nconditions of other spaces and other times.\n\nAnd this combination of a clearly contingent constituent and of an\nimperiously absolute claim is not less, but more visible, as we rise\nin the scale of religions. The figure of Our Lord is far more clear\nand definite and richly individual than are the figures of the Buddha\nor of Mahomet. And at the same time Christianity has ever claimed for\nHim far more than Buddhism or Mahometanism have claimed for their\nrespective, somewhat shadowy founders. For the Buddha was conceived\nas but one amongst a whole series of similar revealers that were to\ncome; and Mahomet was but the final prophet of the one God. But Christ\nis offered to us as the unique Saviour, as the unique revelation of\nGod Himself. You are thus to take Him or leave Him. To distinguish and\ninterpret, analyze or theorize Him, to accept Him provisionally or\non conditions,--nothing of all this is distinctively religious. For,\nhere as everywhere else, the distinctive religious act is, as such, an\nunconditional surrender. Nowhere in life can we both give and keep at\nthe same time; and least of all here, at life\u2019s deepest sources.\n\nWith this acceptance then, in exact proportion as it is religious,\na double exclusiveness will apparently be set up. I have here found\nmy true life:--I will turn away then from all else, and will either\ndirectly fight, or will at least starve and stunt, all other competing\ninterests and activities--I will have here a (so to speak) _spacial_,\na _simultaneous_ exclusiveness. Religion will thus be conceived\nas a thing amongst other things, or as a force struggling amongst\nother forces; we have given our undivided heart to _it_,--hence the\nother things must go, as so many actual supernumeraries and possible\nsupplanters. Science and Literature, Art and Politics must all be\nstarved or cramped. Religion can safely reign, apparently, in a desert\nalone.\n\nBut again, Religion will be conceived, at the same time, as a thing\nfixed in itself, as given once for all, and to be defended against all\nchange and interpretation, against all novelty and discrimination.\nWe get thus a second, a (so to speak) _temporal_, _successive_\nexclusiveness. Religion will here be conceived as a thing to be kept\nliterally and materially identical with itself and hence as requiring\nto be defended against any kind of modification. Conceive it as a\npaste, and all yeast must be kept out; or as wine, and fermentation\nmust be carefully excluded. And indeed Religion here would thus become\na stone, even though a stone fallen from heaven, like one of those\nmeteorites worshipped in Pagan antiquity. And the two exclusivenesses,\njoined together, would give us a religion reduced to such a stone\nworshipped in a desert.\n\nNow the point to notice here is, that all this seems not to be an\nabuse, but to spring from the very essence of religion,--from two of\nits specific inalienable characteristics--those of externality and\nauthority. And although the extreme just described has never been\ncompletely realized in history, yet we can see various approximations\nto it in Mahometan Egypt, in Puritan Scotland, in Piagnone Florence, in\nSpain of the Inquisition. Religion would thus appear fated, by its very\nnature, to starve out all else, and its own self into the bargain.\n\nWhat will be the answer to, the escape from, all this, provided\nby religion itself? The answer and escape will be provided by the\nintrinsic nature of the human soul, and of the religious appeal\nmade to it. For if this appeal must be conceived by the soul, in\nexact proportion to the religiousness of both, as incomprehensible\nby it, as exceeding its present, and even its potential, powers of\ncomprehension; if again this appeal must demand a sacrifice of various\ninclinations felt at the time to be wrong or inferior; if it must come\nhome to the soul with a sense of constraining obligation, as an act\nof submission and of sacrifice which it ought and must make: yet it\nwill as necessarily be conceived, at the same time, and again in exact\nproportion to the religiousness both of the soul and of the appeal,\nas the expression of Mind, of Spirit, and the impression of another\nmind and spirit; as the manifestation of an infinite Personality,\nresponded and assented to by a personality, finite indeed yet capable\nof indefinite growth. And hence the fixity of the revelation and of the\nsoul\u2019s assent to it, will be as the fixity of a fountain-head, or as\nthe fixity of river-banks; or again as the fixity of a plant\u2019s growth,\nor of the gradual leavening of bread, or as that of the successive\nevolution and identity of the human body. The fixity, in a word, will\nbe conceived and found to be a fixity of orientation, a definiteness of\naffinities and of assimilative capacity.\n\nOnly full trust, only unconditional surrender suffice for religion. But\nthen religion excites and commands this in a person towards a Person;\na surrender to be achieved not in some thing, but in some one,--a some\none who _is_ at all, only in as much as he is living, loving, growing;\nand to be performed, not towards some thing, but towards Some One,\nWhose right, indeed Whose very power to claim me, consists precisely\nin that He is Himself absolutely, infinitely and actually, what I am\nbut derivatively, finitely and potentially.\n\nThus the very same act and reasons which completely bind me, do so only\nto true growth and to indefinite expansion. I shall, it is true, ever\ngo back and cling to the definite spacial and temporal manifestations\nof this infinite Spirit\u2019s personality, but I shall, by this same act,\nproclaim His eternal presentness and inexhaustible self-interpreting\nillumination. By the same act by which I believe in the revelation of\nthe workshop of Nazareth, of the Lake of Galilee, of Gethsemane and\nCalvary, I believe that this revelation is inexhaustible, and that its\ngradual analysis and theory, and above all its successive practical\napplication, experimentation, acceptance or rejection, and unfolding,\nconfer and call forth poignant dramatic freshness and inexhaustible\nuniqueness upon and within every human life, unto the end of time.\n\nAll this takes place through the present, the _hic et nunc_,\nco-operation of the living God and the living soul. And this\never-to-be reconquered, ever-costing and chequered, ever-\u201cdeepenable\u201d\ninterpretation, is as truly fresh as if it were a fresh revelation.\nFor all that comes from the living God, and is worked out by living\nsouls, is ever living and enlivening: there is no such thing as mere\nrepetition, or differentiation by mere number, place, and time, in this\nKingdom of Life, either as to God\u2019s action or the soul\u2019s. Infinite\nSpirit Himself, He creates an indefinite number of, at first largely\nbut potential, persons, no one of which is identical with any other,\nand provokes and supports an indefinite number of ever different\nsuccessive acts on the part of each and all of them, that so, through\nthe sum-total of such sources and streams of difference, the nearest\ncreaturely approach may be achieved to the ocean of His own infinite\nrichness.\n\n\n\n2. _In the Emotional and Volitional Element, as against the Historical\nand Institutional Element._\n\nNow the tendency of a soul, when once awake to this necessary freshness\nand interiority of feeling with regard to God\u2019s and her own action,\nwill again be towards an impoverishing oneness. It will now tend to\nshrink away from the External, Institutional altogether. For though it\ncannot but have experienced the fact that it was by contact with this\nExternal that, like unto Antaeus at his contact with Mother Earth, it\ngained its experience of the Internal, yet each such experience tends\nto obliterate the traces of its own occasion. Indeed the interior\nfeeling thus achieved tends, in the long run, to make the return to the\ncontact with the fact that occasioned, and to the act that produced\nit, a matter of effort and repugnance. It seems a case of \u201ca man\u2019s\nreturning to his mother\u2019s womb\u201d; and is indeed a new birth to a fuller\nlife, and hence humiliating, obscure, concentrated, effortful, a matter\nof trust and labour and pain and faith and love,--a true death of\nand adieu to the self of this moment, however advanced this self may\nseem,--a fully willed purifying pang. Only through such dark and narrow\nThermopylae passes can we issue on to the wide, sunlit plains. And both\nplain and sunshine can never last long at a time; and they will cease\naltogether, if they are not interrupted by this apparent shadow of the\nvalley of death, this concrete action, which invariably modifies not\nonly the soul\u2019s environment, but above all the soul itself.\n\nThus does a simply mental prayer readily feel, to the soul that\npossesses the habit of it, a complete substitute for all vocal prayer;\nand a generally prayerful habit of mind readily appears an improvement\nupon all conscious acts of prayer. Thus does a general, indeterminate\nconsciousness of Christ\u2019s spirit and presence, easily feel larger and\nwider, to him who has it, than the apparent contraction of mind and\nheart involved in devotion to Him pictured in the definite Gospel\nscenes or localized in His Eucharistic presence. Thus again does a\ngeneral disposition of regret for sin and of determination to do better\nreadily feel nobler, to him who has it, than the apparent materiality\nand peddling casuistry, the attempting the impossible, of fixing for\noneself the kind and degree of one\u2019s actual sins, and of determining\nupon definite, detailed reforms.\n\nYet, in all these cases, this feeling will rapidly lead the soul on\nto become unconsciously weak or feverish, unless the latter manfully\nescapes from this feeling\u2019s tyranny, and nobly bends under the yoke and\ncramps itself within the narrow limits of the life-giving concrete act.\nThe Church\u2019s insistence upon _some_ vocal prayer, upon _some_ definite,\ndifferentiated, specific acts of the various moral and theological\nvirtues, upon Sacramental practice throughout all the states and stages\nof the Christian life, is but a living commentary upon the difficulty\nand importance of the point under discussion. And History, as we have\nseen, confirms all this.\n\n\n3. _In the Emotional and Volitional, singly or in combination with the\nHistorical and Institutional, as against the Analytic and Speculative\nElement._\n\nBut just as the Institutional easily tends to a weakening both of\nthe Intellectual and of the Emotional, so does the Emotional readily\nturn against not only the Institutional but against the Intellectual\nas well. This latter hostility will take two forms. Inasmuch as the\nfeeling clings to historical facts and persons, it will instinctively\nelude or attempt to suppress all critical examination and analysis\nof these its supports. Inasmuch as it feeds upon its own emotion,\nwhich (as so much pure emotion) is, at any one of its stages, ever\nintensely one and intensely exclusive, it will instinctively fret under\nand oppose all that slow discrimination and mere approximation, that\ncollection of a few certainties, many probabilities, and innumerable\npossibilities, all that pother over a very little, which seem to make\nup the sum of all human knowledge. Such Emotion will thus tend to be\nhostile to Historical Criticism, and to all the Critical, Analytic\nstages and forms of Philosophy. It turns away instinctively from the\ncold manifold of thinking; and it shrinks spontaneously from the hard\nopaque of action and of the external. All this will again be found to\nbe borne out by history.\n\nA combination of Institutionalism and Experimentalism against\nIntellectualism, is another not infrequent abuse, and one which is\nnot hard to explain. For if external, definite facts and acts are\nfound to lead to certain internal, deep, all-embracing emotions and\nexperiences, the soul can to a certain extent live and thrive in and\nby a constant moving backwards and forwards between the Institution\nand the Emotion alone, and can thus constitute an ever-tightening bond\nand dialogue, increasingly exclusive of all else. For although the\nInstitution will, taken in itself, retain for the Emotion a certain\ndryness and hardness, yet the Emotion can and often will associate\nwith this Institution whatever that contact with it has been found to\nbring and to produce. And if the Institution feels hard and obscure,\nit is not, like the Thinking, cold and transparent. Just because the\nInstitution appears to the emotional nature as though further from its\nfeeling, and yet is experienced as a mysterious cause or occasion of\nthis feeling, the emotional nature is fairly, often passionately, ready\nto welcome what it can thus rest on and lean on, as something having a\ncomfortable fixity both of relation and of resistance. But with regard\nto Thinking, all this is different. For thought is sufficiently near\nto Feeling, necessarily to produce friction and competition of some\nsort, and seems, with its keen edge and endless mobility, to be the\nborn implacable foe of the dull, dead givenness of the Institutional,\nand of the equal givenness of any one Emotional mood. One of the\nspontaneous activities of the human soul, the Analytic and Speculative\nfaculty, seems habitually, instinctively to labour at depersonalizing\nall it touches, and thus continually both to undermine and discrown the\ndeeply personal work and world of the experimental forces of the soul.\nIndeed the thinking seems to be doing this necessarily, since by its\nvery essence it begins and ends with laws, qualities, functions, and\nparts,--with abstractions, which, at best, can be but skeletons and\nempty forms of the real and actual, and which, of themselves, ever tend\nto represent all Reality as something static, not dynamic, as a thing,\nnot as a person or Spirit.\n\nHere again the true solution will be found in an ever fuller\nconception of Personality, and of its primary place in the\nreligious life. For even the bare possibility of the truth of all\nreligion, especially of any one of the characteristic doctrines of\nChristianity, involves a group of personalist convictions. Here the\nhuman person begins more as a possibility than a reality. Here the\nmoral and spiritual character has to be built up slowly, painfully,\nlaboriously, throughout all the various stages and circumstances of\nlife, with their endless combinations of pleasure and pain, trouble\nand temptation, inner and outer help and hindrance, success and\nfailure. Here the simply Individual is transformed into the truly\nPersonal only by the successive sacrifice of the lower, of the merely\nanimal and impoverishingly selfish self, with the help of God\u2019s\nconstant prevenient, concomitant, and subsequent grace. And here this\nconstantly renewed dropping and opposing of the various lower selves,\nin proportion as they appear and become lower, to the soul\u2019s deepest\ninsight, in the growing light of its conscience and the increasing\nelevation of the moral personality, involves that constant death to\nself, that perpetual conversion, that unification and peace in and\nthrough a continuous inner self-estrangement and conflict, which is the\nvery breath and joy of the religious life.\n\nOnly if all this be so, to a quite unpicturable extent, can even the\nmost elementary Christianity be more than an amiable intruder, or a\nmorbid surplusage in the world. And at same time, if all this be so,\nthen all within us is in need of successive, never-ending purification\nand elaboration; and the God who has made man with a view to his\ngradually achieving, and conquering his real self, must have stored\nmeans and instruments, for the attainment of this man\u2019s true end,\nconstant readiness, within himself. Now our whole Intellectual nature\nis a great storehouse of one special class of such instruments. For it\nis clear that the moral and spiritual side of our nature will, more\nthan any other, constantly require three things: Rest, Expression,\nand Purification. And the intellectual activities will, if only they\nbe kept sufficiently vigorous and independent, alone be in a position\nsufficiently to supply some forms of these three needs. For they can\nrest the moral-spiritual activities, since they, the intellectual\nones, primarily neglect emotion, action, and persons, and are directly\noccupied with abstractions and with things. They can and should express\nthe results of those moral, spiritual activities, because the religious\nfacts and experiences require, like all other facts, to be constantly\nstated and re-stated by the intellect in terms fairly understandable by\nthe civilization and culture of the successive ages of the world. Above\nall, they can help to purify those moral-spiritual activities, owing\nto their interposing, by their very nature, a zone of abstraction,\nof cool, clear thinking, of seemingly adequate and exhaustive, but\nactually impoverishing and artificial concepts, and of apparently\nultimate, though really only phenomenal determinism, between the direct\ninformations of the senses, to which the Individual clings, and the\ninspirations of the moral and spiritual nature, which constitute the\nPerson. Thus this intellectual abstractive element is, if neither\nminimized in the life of the soul, nor allowed to be its sole element\nor its last, a sobering, purifying, mortifying, vivifying bath and fire.\n\n\nVII. THREE FINAL OBJECTIONS TO SUCH A CONCEPTION OF RELIGION, AND THEIR\nANSWERS.\n\nNow there are three obvious objections to such a conception: with their\nconsideration, this Introduction shall conclude.\n\n\n1. _This conception not excessively intellectual._\n\nDoes not, in the first place, such a view of life appear\npreposterously intellectual? What of the uneducated, of the toiling\nmillions? What of most women and of all children? Are then all\nthese, the overwhelming majority of mankind, the objects of Christ\u2019s\npredilection, the very types chosen by Himself of His spirit and\nof God\u2019s ideal for man, precluded from an essential element of\nreligion? Or are we, at the least, to hold that an ethical and\nspiritual advantage is necessarily attached, and this too for but\na small minority of mankind, to a simply intellectual function and\nactivity? If there was a thing specially antagonistic to Christ and\ncondemned by Him, it was the arrogance of the Schools of His day; if\nthere is a thing apparently absent from Christ\u2019s own life it is all\nphilosophizing: even to suggest its presence seems at once to disfigure\nand to lower Him. Is then Reasoning, the School, to be declared not\nonly necessary for some and for mankind at large, but necessary, in a\nsense, for all men and for the religious life itself?\n\nThe answer to all this appears not far to seek. The element which we\nhave named the intellectual, is but one of the faculties of every\nliving soul; and hence, in some degree and form, it is present and\noperative in every one of us. And there is probably no greater\ndifference between these degrees and forms, with regard to this\nelement, than there is between the degrees and forms found in the other\ntwo elements of religion. For this intellectual, determinist element\nwould be truly represented by every however simple mental attention to\n_things_ and their mechanism, their necessary laws and requirements.\nHence, the Venerable Anna Maria Taigi, the Roman working-man\u2019s wife,\nattending to the requirements and rules of good washing and of darning\nof clothes; St. Jean Batiste de la Salle, the Breton gentleman,\nstudying the psychology of school-children\u2019s minds, and adapting\nhis school system to it; St. Jerome labouring at his minute textual\ncriticism of manuscripts of all kinds; St. Anselm and St. Thomas\ntoiling at the construction of their dialectic systems,--all these,\namongst endless other cases, are but illustrations of the omnipresence\nand endless variety of this element, which is busy with the rules and\nprocesses that govern things.\n\nAnd it is impossible to see why, simply because of their superior\nintellectual gifts and development, men like Clement of Alexandria and\nOrigen, Cassian and Duns Scotus, Nicolas of Coes and Pascal, Rosmini\nand Newman, should count as necessarily less near to God and Christ,\nthan others with fewer of such gifts and opportunities. For it is\nnot as though such gifts were considered as ever _of themselves_\nconstituting any moral or spiritual worth. Nothing can be more certain\nthan that great mental powers can be accompanied by emptiness or\ndepravity of heart. The identical standard is to be applied to these\nas to all other gifts: they are not to be considered as substitutes,\nbut only as additional material and means for the moral and spiritual\nlife; and it is only inasmuch as they are actually so used, that they\ncan effectively help on sanctity itself. It is only contended here that\nsuch gifts do furnish additional means and materials for the devoted\nwill- and grace-moved soul, towards the richest and deepest spiritual\nlife. For the intellectual virtues are no mere empty name: candour,\nmoral courage, intellectual honesty, scrupulous accuracy, chivalrous\nfairness, endless docility to facts, disinterested collaboration,\nunconquerable hopefulness and perseverance, manly renunciation of\npopularity and easy honours, love of bracing labour and strengthening\nsolitude: these and many other cognate qualities bear upon them the\nimpress of God and of His Christ. And yet they all as surely find but a\nscanty field of development outside of the intellectual life, as they\nare not the only virtues or class of virtues, and as the other two\nelements each produce a quite unique group of virtues of their own and\nrequire other means and materials for their exercise.\n\n\n\n2. _Such a conception not Pelagian._\n\nBut, in the second place, is not such a view of life Pelagian at\nbottom? Have we not argued throughout, as if the religious life were to\nbe begun, and carried on, and achieved simply by a constant succession\nof efforts of our own; and as though it could be built up by us,\nlike to some work of art, by a careful, conscious balancing of part\nagainst part? Is not all this pure Naturalism? Is not religion a life,\nand hence an indivisible whole? And is not this life simply the gift\nof God, capable of being received, but not produced by us; of being\ndimly apprehended as present, but not of being clearly analyzed in its\nprocess of formation?\n\nHere again there is a true answer, I think. Simply all and every\none of our acts, our very physical existence and persistence, is\ndependent, at every moment and in every direction, upon the prevenient,\naccompanying and subsequent power and help of God; and still more is\nevery religious, every truly spiritual and supernatural act of the soul\nimpossible without the constant action of God\u2019s grace. Yet not only\ndoes all this not prevent the soul from consciously acting on her own\npart, and according to the laws of her own being; but God\u2019s grace acts\nin and through the medium of her acts, inasmuch as these are good: so\nthat the very same action which, seen as it were from without, is the\neffect of our own volition, is, seen as it were from within, the effect\nof God\u2019s grace. The more costly is our act of love or of sacrifice, the\nmore ethical and spiritual, and the more truly it is our own deepest\nself-expression, so much the more, at the same time, is this action a\nthing received as well as given, and that we have it to give, and that\nwe can and do give it, is itself a pure gift of God.\n\nWhat then is wanted, if we would really cover the facts of the case, is\nevidently not a conception which would minimize the human action, and\nwould represent the latter as shrinking, in proportion as God\u2019s action\nincreases; but one which, on the contrary, fully faces, and keeps a\nfirm hold of, the mysterious paradox which pervades all true life, and\nwhich shows us the human soul as self-active in proportion to God\u2019s\naction within it, according to St. Bernard\u2019s doctrine already quoted.\nGrace and the Will thus rise and fall, in their degree of action,\ntogether; and man will never be so fully active, so truly and intensely\nhimself, as when he is most possessed by God.\n\nAnd since man\u2019s action is thus in actual fact mysteriously double, it\nshould ever be so considered by him; and he should, as St. Ignatius\nof Loyola says, \u201cpray as if all depended on his prayer, and act as if\nall depended on his action.\u201d Hence all man\u2019s action, though really\nincapable of existing for an instant without the aid of God, and though\nnever exclusively his own, can be studied throughout, preliminarily as\nthough it were his exclusive production on its analyzable, human side.\nAnd man not only can, he ought to be as thoughtful and careful, as\nreasonably analytic and systematic about this study of his action as he\nwas careful and consistent in its production,--in both cases, whilst\npraying and believing as though it were all from God, he can and should\nbehave also as though this action were exclusively his own. As St.\nThomas admirably says: \u201cWe attribute one and the same effect both to\na natural cause and to a divine force, not in the sense of that effect\nproceeding in part from God, and in part from the human agent. But the\neffect proceeds entire from both, according to a different mode: just\nas, in music, the whole effect is attributed to the instrument, and the\nsame entire effect is referred to man as the principal agent.\u201d[41]\n\n\n3. _Such a conception not Epicurean._\n\nBut, in the last place, is not such a view of life Epicurean? Where\nis the Cross and Self-Renunciation? Is it not Christ Himself Who has\nbidden us cut off our right hand and pluck out our right eye, if they\noffend; Who has declared that he who hateth not his own father and\nmother for His sake is not worthy of Him; Who has asked, \u201cWhat doth\nit profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of\nhis own soul?\u201d and Who has pronounced a special woe upon the rich,\nand a special blessing upon the poor in spirit? Does not our view, on\nthe contrary, bid a man attend to his hands and eyes, rather than to\ntheir possible or even actual offending, euphemistically described\nhere as \u201cfriction\u201d; bid him love his father and mother, even though\nthis introduce a conflict into his affections; bid him take care to\ngain, as far as may be, the whole of his own possible interior and\nexterior world, as though this would of itself be equivalent to his\nsaving his soul; and thus bid him become rich and full and complex,\nan aesthete rather than a man of God? In a word, is not our position\na masked Paganism, a new Renaissance rather than the nobly stern old\nChristianity?\n\nNow here again a true answer is found in a clear intelligence of the\nactual implications of the position. For if the Intellectual action\nwere here taken as capable of alone, or in any degree directly, forming\nthe foundation of all our other life, so that on a mathematically\nclear and complete system, appealing to and requiring the abstractive\npowers alone, would, later on, be built, according to our own further\ndetermination, the Institutional and Experimental, or both or neither;\nthen such a position, if possible and actualized, would indeed save us\nthe simultaneous energizing of our whole complex nature, and would, so\nfar, well deserve the accusation of unduly facilitating life; it might\nbe taken as, at least, not beginning with the Cross. But here this is\nnot so. For from the first the External and the Mystical elements are\nheld to be at least as necessary and operative as the Intellectual\nelement; and it is impossible to see how the elimination of this\nlatter, and of the ever-expensive keeping it and its rivals each at\ntheir own work, could deepen the truly moral sufferings and sacrifices\nof the soul\u2019s life.\n\nIf again the Intellectual action were taken, as by Gnosticism of\nall sorts, as the eventual goal of the whole, so that the External\nand Mystical would end by being absorbed into the Intellectual, our\nKnowledge becoming coextensive with Reality itself, then we might\nagain, and with still deeper truth, be accused of eliminating the\nelement of effort and of sacrifice,--the Cross. But here, on the\ncontrary, not only the Intellectual alone does not begin the soul\u2019s\nlife or build up its conditions, but the Intellectual alone does not\nconclude and crown it. Eternally will different soul-functions conjoin\nin a common work, eternally will God and the souls of our fellows be\nfor us realities in diverse degrees outside and beyond of our own\napprehension of them, and eternally shall we apprehend them differently\nand to a different degree by our intelligence, by our affection, and by\nour volition. Hence, even in eternity itself we can, without exceeding\nthe limits of sober thinking and of psychological probability, find\na field for the exercise by our souls of something corresponding to\nthe joy and greatness of noble self-sacrifice here below. The loving\nsoul will there, in the very home of love, give itself wholly to and\nbe fulfilled by God, and yet the soul will possess an indefinitely\nheightened apprehension of the immense excess of this its love and act\nabove its knowledge, and of God Himself above both. And here again it\nis impossible to see how the elimination of the intellectual element,\nwhich becomes thus the very measure of the soul\u2019s own limitations, and\nof the exceeding greatness of its love and of its Lover, would make the\nconception more efficaciously humbling and Christian.\n\nBoth at the beginning, then, and throughout, and even at the end of\nthe soul\u2019s life, the intellectual element is necessary, and this above\nall for the planting fully and finally, in the very depths of the\npersonality, the Cross, the sole means to the soul\u2019s true Incoronation.\n\n\n\n\nPART II\n\nBIOGRAPHICAL\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nCATHERINE FIESCA ADORNA\u2019S LIFE, UP TO HER CONVERSION; AND THE CHIEF\nPECULIARITIES PREDOMINANT THROUGHOUT HER CONVERT YEARS\n\n\nINTRODUCTORY.\n\n_Each of the three Elements of Religion, again multiple. The two main\nfunctions of each._\n\nWe have so far considered religion as constituted, on its human\nside, by the interaction of three modalities,--the Historical, the\nIntellectual, the Experimental. But it is of course clear that each of\nthese is again, just because it is a living force, a Multiplicity in\nUnity. The first distinction we can find in each would break each up\ninto two parts.\n\nThe Historical modality readily gives us the function busy with the\nHistorical Person and the function occupied with the Historical Thing.\nThe former function will insist upon all the temporal and local\nsayings, doings, and happenings, that together make up the picture and\nmemory of the Prophet or Founder; the latter will transmit certain\nrites and symbols instituted or occasioned by him. And either the\nsuppression of these latter things, or the taking them apart from the\nperson from whom they issued and to whom they ever should lead back,\nwill turn out equally impoverishing: the very friction of this Thing,\ncoming from a Person, and leading to a Person, and operating within our\nown personality, will be found to help to make the latter truly such.\n\nThe Intellectual modality will as readily split up into the Analytic\nand the Synthetic. The former will busy itself with distinguishing\nand weighing, and with reducing everything as far as possible to its\nconstituent elements. The latter will attempt to reconstitute the\nliving whole, as far as may be, in such terms of clear reason. The\nformer will have more affinity with the discursive reason, the second\nwith the contemplative; the former with religious History, and the\napproaches to religious Philosophy,--Physiology and Experimental\nPsychology and the Theory of Knowledge; the latter with Religious\nPhilosophy proper,--the Metaphysics of Religion.\n\nThe Experimental modality, finally, will as readily break up into\nIntuitions and Feelings of every mental and moral kind, and Willings,\nthe determinations of which, close as they are to the feelings, are\nnot identical with them, but often exist more or less without or even\nagainst them.\n\nAnd this whole series of six movements exists only in Persons; it\nbegins with an at least incipient Person and ends in the fullest\nself-expression of Personality, the determination of the will. And\nThings--both external (Institutions) and internal (analytic and\nsynthetic Abstractions)--are but ever operative, necessary means\ntowards the firm constitution and expansion of that rich life of the\nliving soul within which the first apprehension and ordering of such\nthinkings and doings took their rise.\n\n\nI. PROPOSED STUDY OF THE MYSTICAL-VOLITIONAL ELEMENT IN A PARTICULAR,\nCONCRETE INSTANCE: ST. CATHERINE OF GENOA.\n\nNow it is the fact of the Multiplicity in Unity, to be found in each of\nthese modalities of religion, that makes it desirable to study each of\nthem, as far as may be, separately. And of these the deepest and most\nnear to our living selves, and hence also most far away from our clear\nanalysis, is the Experimental. It is this Element then that I propose\nto study in a particular concrete instance: St. Catherine of Genoa.\n\n\n1. _Disadvantages of such a method and of this particular instance._\n\nThe disadvantage arising from such a method of procedure is obvious: no\none life, even were it the richest and most completely knowable, can\nexhaust, can indeed do more than simply suggest, the true questions,\nlet alone the adequate answers. But such a biographical study can hope\nto arouse attention and interest in the living facts of religion, in\na manner in which no simple theory or generalization can do; and it\ncan stand out, in the midst of any such attempt at explanation, as an\nemphatic reminder, to both writer and reader, of the inexhaustible\nrichness and mystery, of the awe-inspiring and yet stimulating\nsurplusage which is ever furnished by reality over and above all our\nbest endeavours at commensurate presentation or analysis.\n\nAnd quite special disadvantages attach to the study of this particular\nSaint. Her character, for one thing, is distinctly wanting in humour,\nin that shrewd mother-wit which is so marked a feature in some of the\ngreat Spanish Mystics, in St. Teresa especially, but which is not\nquite absent even in the less varied and very austere St. John of\nthe Cross. There is, on the contrary, a certain monotony, a somewhat\nwearying vehemence, about our Genoese. Her experience, again, is\nwithout the dramatic vicissitudes of the reform of an Order or the\nfoundation of Monasteries, as with St. Teresa; or of contact and even\nconflict with the temporal and spiritual officiality of her time, as\nwith St. Catherine of Siena. Nor is her life lit up by the beautiful\nwarmth of happy, requited domestic affection, nor is it varied and\nextended by the rich possession of children of her own. And again\nher life is obscured and complicated, at least for our comprehension\nof it, by a nervous ill-health which it is impossible for us to care\nabout, in itself. And, finally, special difficulties attach to the\nunderstanding of her. Unlike St. Teresa, St. John of the Cross, and\nmany other Saints, she did not herself write one line of her so-called\n\u201cWritings\u201d; and yet it is these, mostly very abstruse and at times all\nbut insuperably difficult, \u201cWritings,\u201d records which did not attain\ntheir present form and bulk till a good forty years after her death,\nthat contain the most original part of her legacy to the Church.\n\n\n\n2. _The drawbacks of the instance outweighed by its rare combination of\ncharacteristics._\n\nYet all this is balanced if not exceeded by a rare and stimulating\ncombination of characteristics. The very ordinariness of her external\nlot,--a simple wife and widow, at no time belonging to any Religious\nOrder or Congregation; the apparently complete failure of her earthly\nlife, which gives occasion to the birth within her of the heavenly\none; the rich variety and contrasts of her princely birth and social\nposition, and the lowly, homely activity and usefulness of her forty\nyears of devotedness; the unusually perfect combination of a great\nexternal action and administrative capacity with a lofty contemplation;\nthe apparent suddenness and whole-hearted swiftness of her Conversion,\nsucceeded by the long years of interior conflict and painful growth,\nunhelped, practically unknown, by any one but God\u2019s inspiring\nSpirit, and these years again followed by a period of requiring and\npractising the ordinary mediate docilities; the strange nervous\nhealth of especially her later years, so carefully and truthfully\nrecorded for us, a psychic condition interesting if but for her own\nlofty superiority to attaching any direct importance or necessarily\nmiraculous meaning to it: all this, even if it were all, helps to give\nan extraordinary richness and instructiveness to her life.\n\nBut stimulating, transfiguring, embracing all this, appears her special\nspiritual apprehension and teaching, of a quite extraordinary depth,\nbreadth and balance, distinction and refinement. The central oneness\nof the soul\u2019s nature and sufferings and joys here and hereafter, and\nthe resultant psychological character and appeal, to be found in all\ntrue experience or forecasting of such things; the never-ceasing\ndifference between Spirit and Matter; the incomprehensibility, but\nindefinite apprehensibleness, for the clean of heart, of God and\nspiritual realities; the pure disinterestedness of His love for us,\nand the corresponding disinterestedness of all true love for Him; the\nuniversality of His light and love, and the excess of His mercy above\nHis justice; the innate affinity between every human soul and Him, and\nthe immanence of Himself within us; the absence of all arbitrary or\npreternatural action in the forces and realities constitutive of the\nspiritual world and life; the constant union of right suffering with\ndeep peace, and the final note of joy and of self-conquering triumph\nissuing from complete self-renunciation: all this and much more appears\nin her teaching with a spontaneity, breadth, and balance peculiarly its\nown.\n\n\n3. _Men who have been devoted to her spirit. Its vitality._\n\nNo wonder then that, from the contemporary circle of her devoted\nfriends and disciples onwards, Catherine should have attracted,\nthroughout the centuries and in many lands, a remarkable number of\ndeep minds and saintly characters. The ardent young Spaniard, St.\nAloysius Gonzaga, and the shrewd and solid Savoyard Bishop, St.\nFran\u00e7ois de Sales, love to quote and dwell upon her example and\nher doctrine. Mature theologians, such as Cardinal Bellarmine, the\nhard-headed controversialist; Cardinal Bona, the liturgical and\ndevotional writer; and Cardinal de Berulle, the mystical-minded founder\nof the French Oratory; and again, such varied types of devotedness\nas Madame Acarie, the foundress of the French Reformed Carmelites;\nthe Baron de Rent\u00e9, that noble Christian soldier; Bossuet, the hard\nand sensible; and F\u00e9nelon, the elastic and exquisite,--all love her\nwell. Such thoroughly representative ascetical writers again as the\nSpanish Jesuits Francisco Arias and Alfonzo Rodriguez; the French ones,\nSaint-Jure and Jean Joseph Surin; the Italian, Paolo Segneri; the\nPole, Lancisius; and the German, Drexel, all drew food and flame from\nher character and doctrine. Then at the beginning of the Nineteenth\nCentury, Friedrich von Schlegel, the penetrating, many-sided leader\nof the German Romantic school, translated her _Dialogue_. In our own\ntime Father Isaac Hecker, that striking German-American, loved her as a\ncombination of contemplation and external action; Father Faber strongly\nendorsed her conception of Purgatory; Cardinal Manning occasioned and\nprefaced an admirable translation of her _Treatise_; and Cardinal\nNewman has incorporated her Purgatorial teaching in the noblest of his\npoems, \u201cThe Dream of Gerontius.\u201d Indeed, General Charles Gordon also\ncan not unfairly be claimed as her unconscious disciple, since her\nteaching, embodied in Cardinal Newman\u2019s poem, was, besides the Bible\nand \u201cImitations,\u201d his one written source of strength and consolation,\nduring that noble Christian captain\u2019s heroic death-watch at Khartoum.\nAnd among quite recent or still living writers, Mr. Aubrey de Vere has\ngiven us a refined poetic paraphrase of her _Treatise_, and Father\nGeorge Tyrrell has developed its theme in one of his most striking\nEssays.[42]\n\nI too have, in my own way, long cared for her example and teaching,\nand for the great questions and solutions suggested by both. A dozen\ntimes and more have I visited and lingered over the chief scenes of her\nactivity; and the literary sources of all our knowledge of her life\nhave been dwelt upon by me for twenty years and more.\n\nI have but very few new details and combinations to offer, in so far\nas her external life is concerned. It is with regard to the growth of\nher historic image and the curious vicissitudes which I have been\nable to trace in the complication of her \u201cWritings\u201d; as to her spirit\nand teaching; and as to the place and function to be allotted in the\nreligious life to such realities and phenomena as those presented by\nher, that I hope to be able to contribute something of value. For\nalthough the substance and the primary phenomena of religion are\neternal, they appear in each soul with an individuality and freshness\npathetically unique; and their attempted analysis and apprehension, and\ntheir relations to the other departments of human life, necessarily\ngrow and vary. Indeed it would be truly sad, and would rightly tempt\nto disbelief in an overruling Providence and divine education of the\nhuman race, if the four centuries that intervene between our Saint and\nourselves had taught us little or nothing of value, in such matters\nof borderland and interpretation as nervous health, the psychology of\nreligion, and the distinguishing differences between Christian and\nNeo-Platonic Mysticism. Whole Sciences, indeed the Scientific, above\nall the Historic spirit itself, have arisen or have come to maturity\nsince her day. Hence the realities of her life, as of every religious\nlife, remain fresh indeed with the deathless vitality of love and\ngrace, and but very partially explicable still; and yet the highest\nintellectual honour of each successive period should be found in an\never-renewed attempt at an ever less inadequate apprehension and\nutilization of these highest and deepest manifestations of Authority,\nReason, and Experience,--of the Divine in our poor human life.\n\n\nII. THE MATERIALS AND AIDS TOWARDS SUCH A STUDY.\n\n\n1. _The \u201cVita e Dottrina,\u201d 1551._\n\nAll the biographies of St. Catherine, and all the editions or\ntranslations of her \u201cWorks,\u201d are based upon the _Vita e Dottrina_\npublished in Genoa, by Jacobo Genuti, in 1551. I work from the\nthirteenth Genoese edition, a reprint of that of 1847 (_Tipi dei\nSordo-Muti_). All our knowledge of her mental and physical condition,\nand of her spiritual doctrine, is practically restricted to this book,\nand indeed, as we shall see, to its first two parts, the \u201cVita\u201d and the\n\u201cTrattato.\u201d\n\nThe _Vita_ is, in its fundamental portions, the joint production of her\ndevoted disciples, Cattaneo Marabotto, a Secular Priest, her Confessor;\nand Ettore Vernazza, a Lawyer, her \u201cspiritual son.\u201d Its fifty-two\nchapters (166 octavo pages) are only in small part narrative; quite\nthirty-five of them are filled with discourses and contemplations of\nthe Saint, evidently, in the simpler of the many parallel versions\naccumulated here, taken down, at the time of the Saint\u2019s communication\nof them, with quite remarkable fidelity. But the whole suffers from the\ninclusion of much secondary, amplifying, repetitive matter; is badly\narranged; is kept, almost throughout, above all definite indications of\nthe precise successions, dates, and places; and is deficient in unity\nof view and literary organization. The result is, of necessity, largely\ninsipid and monotonous.\n\nThe first of the \u201cWorks\u201d is the _Treatise on Purgatory_, the seventeen\nchapters of which (17 pages) are again hard reading, owing to their\nevidently consisting of but a mosaic of detached, sometimes parallel\nsayings, spoken on various occasions and according to the experience\nand fulness of the moment, and without any reference to the previous\none. I shall show reason for holding that this little collection of\nsayings was originally shorter still (consisting probably of but the\nmatter which now makes up the first seven of its seventeen chapters);\nthat the original chronicler and first redactor of these sayings was\nVernazza; and that certain obvious and formal contradictions which\nappear in the present text must be theological glosses introduced some\ntime between 1520 (or rather 1526) and say 1530 (at latest 1547).\n\nThe second of the \u201cWorks,\u201d the _Spiritual Dialogue between the Soul,\nthe Body, Self-love, the Spirit, the Natural Man, and the Lord God_, is\ndivided into three parts, and fills forty-five chapters (120 pages).\nI hope to show conclusively that this _Dialogue_ was at first no\nlonger than its present Part I; that even this did not exist before\n1547; that the whole was written by one and the same person, some one\nwho had never (at least intimately) known the Saint, and who had no\nother direct material than our present _Vita_ and _Trattato_; that\nthis person was the Augustinian canoness, Battista Vernazza, Ettore\u2019s\neldest daughter; and that the whole has been written for the purpose\nof attempting some unification and systematization of what in the\n_Vita_ appeared to the writer as wanting in unity and in correctness\nof wording or of feeling. In this case we get a fairly continuous\nre-statement, in part a heightening, in part a minimizing of the\nhistorical facts of Catherine\u2019s life, which, just because we have thus\na pragmatic, theological transfiguration of the older materials,\ncaused by a penetrating admiration, and resulting in some true increase\nof insight into its subject-matter, forms a precious document for the\npsychology and the effect of such states of mind.\n\nThe Oratorian Giacinto Parpera\u2019s book: _B Caterina da Genova \u2026\nIllustrata_, Genova, 1682, gives, in its three parts, respectively the\nopinions of Saints and Theologians concerning the Saint; a systematic\nanalysis of her doctrine; and an explanation of certain terms and\ndeclarations more or less peculiar to her. It is decidedly learned and\nin parts still useful; but pompously rhetorical and full of \u201canatomia,\u201d\n_i.e._ much wearisome numbering and indefinite sub-division. The Jesuit\nPadre Maineri\u2019s _Vita de S. Caterina di Genova_, Genova, 1737,--written\non occasion of her canonization,--contains nothing new.\n\n\n\n2. _Later books on Catherine._\n\nA sensible discussion of difficult or obscure points connected with her\nlife occurs in the Bollandists\u2019 Life of the Saint, written by Father\nSticken in 1752 (_Acta Sanctorum_, September, Vol. V, ed. 1866, pp.\n123-195). But the greater part of the discussion is vitiated by the\nassumption of the independent value, indeed of Catherine herself being\nthe author, of the entirely secondary _Dialogo_; Sticken had not seen a\nsingle MS. life or document; and the most important part of her entire\npersonality, her doctrine, had, according to the general plan of the\nwork, to be passed over by him.\n\nI have also had before me Alban Butler\u2019s accurate compilation;\nMonseigneur Paul Fliche\u2019s disappointing book, which, though he declares\nthat he has consulted the MSS. Lives, is but a rhetorical amplification\nof the Life of 1551, with here and there a useful date or other detail\nadded by himself (Paris, 1881); and the Rev. Baring Gould\u2019s hasty and\nslipshod account, which completely ignores the \u201cWorks\u201d (_Lives of the\nSaints_, Vol. X, ed. 1898).\n\nBut by far the most important printed matter which has hitherto\nappeared since 1551, indeed the only one which contains anything at all\nsignificant that is not already in the _Vita ed Opere_, is Sebastiano\nVallebona\u2019s booklet, _La Perla dei Fieschi_, Genova, 2nd ed., 1887,\n109 pp. It publishes many a painstaking recovery and identification\nof various dates and sites, relationships, family documents and\ncontemporary events; and has helped me greatly in such matters.\n\n\n3. _The Manuscripts._\n\nIt is, however, to the careful analysis of the important still extant\nMS. material, that I owe far more than to all the printed matter\nsubsequent to 1551. And indeed I can say without exaggeration that this\nis the first serious attempt at a critical presentation of Catherine\u2019s\nLife and Teaching. A detailed account of my materials and method will\nbe given in the Appendix to this volume.\n\n\nIII. PECULIARITIES OF THE GENOESE CLIMATE AND GEOGRAPHICAL POSITION; OF\nTHE LIGURIAN CHARACTER; AND OF THE TIMES INTO WHICH CATHERINE WAS BORN.\nHER FAMILY, FATHER AND MOTHER.\n\nCatherine Fiesca was born in Genoa, towards the end of the year\n1447.[43] She thus belonged to a race and a time full indeed of\nviolence and conflict, intrigue and cruelty, excessive in all things;\nbut hence full too of courage and of daring, of boundlessly expansive\nenergies, and of throbbing life.\n\n\n1. _The Genoese country and character._\n\nLying at the foot of imposing mountain terraces, at the great central\nbend and chief natural harbour of the rocky, sun-baked, mountain-backed\nRiviera, Genoa formed, from early, pre-Roman days, the natural capital\nof this thin strip of territory which, eastward from Spezia and\nwestward from Nice, looks all along towards the sea, and towards the\nbroad blue sea alone. And the natural influences of the country seem\never to have been met and doubled by a fierce, explosive strain in the\ncharacters of the successive races that peopled this narrow, steep,\nhot sea-board. The ferocious, wild Ligurians gave the Romans trouble,\nright up to the end of their dominion; and the subsequent Lombard\ninvasion and subjugation did little to change their character. The keen\nrivals of Venice, in her trade and power in the East, and the mortal\nfoes of their competitor Pisa, so near to their own gates, the Genoese\ndid much for trade and commerce, but little for science and art, and\nwere feared and hated by the Tuscans, in their rich and fertile lands,\nand with their large and liberal culture. Sailors, adventurers,\nfree-booters; great merchants and carriers and bankers; conspirators\nand revolutionaries,--they have produced great admirals, such as Andrea\nDoria; great administrative and warlike Popes, in the persons of the\ntwo masterful, irascible della Roveres, from the twenty miles distant\nSavona,--Sixtus IV, and Michael Angelo\u2019s friend and patron, Julius II;\na great navigator, in Christopher Columbus; a fierce and fanatical, but\nlofty and utterly disinterested revolutionary, in Mazzini; and a brave,\nreckless condottiere in Garibaldi, born as far away as Nice, but whose\nmother came from the near Chiavari.\n\n\n\n2. _The times into which Catherine was born._\n\nAnd our Saint was born in the midst of singularly active, changeful,\nfar-outward-looking, swift-onward-moving times. Columbus had been born\nthe year before; Fust and Gutenberg were printing the first printed\nbooks three years later; Constantinople was taken by the Turks when she\nwas six years old.\n\nThe Mediaeval system was, at last, breaking up fast. That whole\nconception of life and polity of peoples had rendered services too\ngreat, indeed too unique, to civilization and religion; they had\nbeen for too long the faithful instrument, expression and result\nof a certain stage and aspect of human and Christian character and\ndevelopment, for this break-up not to have been slow, reluctant, and\nintermittent at first, notwithstanding the heavy blows levelled,\noften unconsciously, at the system from both within and without the\nChurch. Pope Boniface\u2019s Bull, _Unam Sanctam_, which stretched and\nstrained the Mediaeval conception to breaking-point (1302); the dreary\nblank and confusion of the seventy years of the Avignon exile of the\nPapacy (1309-1377); the thirty years\u2019 distraction of the great Papal\nSchism (1378-1409); the fierce revolts and tragic fates of Wycliffe\nand of Hus, in 1384 and 1415; the ineffectual Council of Constance\n(1414-1418),--all this had already taken place. And not even such\nsaintly figures as Tauler and Blessed Henry Suso in Germany, and\nSt. Catherine of Siena in Italy and France; or such nobly reforming\ncharacters as the French Chancellor Gerson, who had died eighteen years\nbefore our Saint\u2019s birth (1429); or the bold and spiritual German\nPhilosopher-Cardinal Nicolas of Coes, who died when she was seventeen\n(1464),--could achieve more than to announce and prepare the transition\nto a great modification of Christendom, and to indicate the eternal\nand necessary source from which it must spring, and the new temporal,\ncontingent form which it might take.\n\nBut the scandals, revolts, and repressions, on a scale and with results\nwhich turned Reform into Revolution, and broke up Western Europe into\nthose two hostile camps, which, towards the end of four centuries,\nwe see, alas! hostile still--these things were yet to come. Roderigo\nBorgia was to be Pope (1492-1503) only towards the end of her life. And\nonly after she had been seven years dead, was Luther to nail his theses\non the University-Church door at Wittenberg (1517), and more than a\ngeneration later were Mary Tudor in England and Philip II in Spain\n(1553-1598) to attempt, for the last time on so large a scale, the task\nof keeping and winning minds and souls, by ruthless physical repression.\n\nCatherine lived thus within a period which, in its depths, was already\nmodern, but not yet broken up into seemingly final, institutionalized\ninternecine antagonisms. And hence we can get in her a most restful\nand bracing pure affirmativeness, an entire absence of religious\ncontroversy, such as, of necessity, cannot be found in even such\npredominantly interior souls as the great Post-Reformation Spanish\nMystics. Her whole religion can grow and show itself as simply\npositive, and in rivalry and conflict with her own false self and with\nthat alone.\n\n\n3. _The Fieschi family._\n\nAnd the particular family from which she sprang, and the period of its\nhistory at which she appeared, each helped to bring right into her\nblood and immediate surroundings the more general conditions of her\nrace and time.\n\nThe Fieschi had indeed a long past story, securely traceable through\na good two centuries and a half before Catherine\u2019s birth. They sprang\nfrom the little seaside town of Lavagna, twenty English miles east\nof Genoa, where shipbuilding is still carried on. Here it was that\nSinibaldo de\u2019 Fieschi, the first of the two Popes of the family,\nInnocent IV (1243-1254), was born, whose whole Pontificate was one long\nvehement struggle with his former friend, the masterful and sceptical\nEmperor Frederic II of Germany. His nephew was Pope, under the title\nof Hadrian V, for but a few months (1276). It was from Pope Innocent\u2019s\nbrother Robert that St. Catherine was descended.\n\nThe Fieschi were the greatest of the great Guelph families of Genoa,\nsuch as the Grimaldi, Guarchi, and Montaldi. The great Doria family,\nwith the Spinola, Fregosi, and Adorni was as strongly Ghibelline. And\nthe endless, fierce conflict between these two factions, in Genoa\nitself and along both Rivieras, led to the calling in, and to the\ntemporary supremacy over Genoa, of the Dukes of Milan, the Counts of\nMontferrat, and of the Kings of Naples and of France. The Revolution\nof 1339, which put an end to the exclusive rule of the Nobles, and\nintroduced elective Doges or Dukes as life-long heads of the Republic,\nreally altered little or nothing of all this.\n\nIndeed the Fieschi had, just now at Catherine\u2019s birth, reached the\nfull height of their power and worldly splendour. For the two Popes\nof the family had already reigned two centuries before, and Cardinal\nLuca Fieschi lay buried in the Cathedral for over a hundred years;\nbut the Fieschi now possessed numerous fiefs in Liguria, Piedmont,\nLombardy, and even in the Kingdom of Naples; Nicol\u00f2 Fieschi, a cousin\nof the Saint, was, in Catherine\u2019s time, a prominent member of the\nCollege of Cardinals; and her own father was Viceroy of Naples to King\nRen\u00e9 of Anjou. There was indeed exactly a century yet to run, up to\nthe beginning of the downward course of the family,--the disastrous\nconspiracy of the Fieschi against the Dorias (1547), which forms the\nsubject of Schiller\u2019s well-known play.\n\nCatherine\u2019s father had been Viceroy of Naples to that Ren\u00e9 Duc of\nAnjou, Count of Provence, Duke of Lorraine, and titular King of Naples,\nwhose adventurous career and immensely popular character still stand\nout so vividly in history. The \u201croi d\u00e9bonnaire,\u201d the friend of the\nTroubadours and father of Margaret of Anjou, Consort to King Henry VI\nof England, figures life-like in Scott\u2019s _Anne of Geierstein_; and his\nstrikingly _bourgeois_ profile may still be seen, as part of the vivid\nportraiture of his kneeling figure which faces the corresponding one of\nhis Queen, upon the great contemporary triptyche picture, representing\nin its central division the Madonna and Child in the branches of a tree\n(in allusion to the Burning Bush and the Rod of Jesse), which hangs in\nthe choir of the cathedral of Aix, King Ren\u00e9\u2019s old wind-swept and now\nsleepy Proven\u00e7al capital. Since Charles I of Anjou (1265-1285), the\nAngevine Kings had made Naples the capital of their Kingdom; Duke Ren\u00e9\nwas the last of the Angevines to hold or seriously to claim it. He lost\nit in 1442 to the Spaniards; but still in 1459 he attempted, by means\nof a Genoese fleet, to repossess himself of his old kingdom, so that\nCatherine\u2019s father could, even up to the time of his death in 1462,\nretain the title of Vice-Roy of Naples. Her mother, Francesca di Negro,\nalso belonged to an ancient and noble Genoese family.\n\n\nIV. CATHERINE\u2019S LIFE, UP TO THE PRELIMINARIES OF HER CONVERSION: AUTUMN\n1447-MID-MARCH 1474.\n\n\n1. _The house where she was born; her brothers and sister._\n\nCatherine was born in one of the many palaces of the Fieschi, in the\none which stood in the Vico Filo, close to the dark grey limestone\nfa\u00e7ade of the Cathedral of San Lorenzo. The palace was hemmed in, on\nits two sides and at its back, by the houses of Urbano and Sebastiano\ndi Negri, and was demolished when the then Piazza dei Fieschi was\nenlarged and became the present Piazza di San Lorenzo. The house now\nfacing the Cathedral doorway occupies approximately the site of that\nold palace.\n\nShe was the youngest of five children. There were three sons: Giacomo,\nnamed after his father; and Lorenzo and Giovanni, no doubt named\nrespectively after the great Roman deacon, the titular saint of the\nCathedral, and who already appeared upon his gridiron, on the quaint\nMediaeval relief over its portal; and after the Baptist, whose reputed\nrelics lay there, in the great Chapel, rebuilt for them soon after\nthis time (1451-1496). Last came the two daughters: Limbania, named\nafter a beatified virgin and contemplative, a Genoese Augustinian Nun\nof the thirteenth century, and Catherine, christened and in all the\nlegal documents always called by this diminutive, presumably after St.\nCatherine of Alexandria, who had an altar in the Cathedral. And the\nCathedral was their Parish Church.\n\n\n\n2. _Catherine\u2019s physical appearance; her qualities and habits of body\nand of mind._\n\nIn this house, then, Catherine grew up and lived till she was sixteen.\nThe beautiful, tall figure; the noble oval face with its lofty brow,\nfinely formed nose, and powerful, indeed obstinate chin; the winning\ncountenance with its delicate complexion and curling, sensitive,\nspiritual mouth-line; deep grey-blue spiritual eyes; the long, tapering\nfingers; the massive dark brown or black hair; still more the quickly\nand intensely impressionable, nervous and extremely tense and active\nphysical and psychical organization; and then the very affectionate,\nardent, aspiring, impatient and absolute qualities and habits of her\nmind and heart and will,--all these things we are not merely told, we\ncan still see them and find them, in part, even in her remains, but\nmore fully in her portrait, and above all, in her numerous authentic\nutterances.[44]\n\n\n3. _The few certain details concerning her early years. Santa Maria\ndelle Grazie._\n\nWe have, as only too often in such older biographies, but very few\nprecise and characteristic details concerning her early years. She\nhad in her room a Piet\u00e0, a representation of the Dead Christ in His\nMother\u2019s arms, and we are told how deeply it affected her every time\nshe entered this room, and raised her eyes up to it. The other points\nmentioned, her early bodily penances, silence, and gift of prayer (the\nlatter said to have been communicated to her at twelve years of age),\nread suspiciously like simple assumptions made by her biographers,\nand in any case do not help to individualize her, in these years of\nuncertain, tentative, or as yet but little characteristic, forms of\ngoodness.\n\nBut from thirteen, for three years onwards, the young girl is very\ncertainly and deeply drawn to the Conventual life, as she sees it\npractised by her sister Limbania, who, true to the example of her\nown Genoese Augustinian Patron Saint, had become a member of the\nAugustinian Canonesses of our Lady of Graces, and now lived there happy\nand devoted in the midst of that very fervent and cultivated Community.\nLimbania was one of the nineteen Foundresses of this Convent, who,\non August 5, 1451, received the habit of Canonesses Regular of the\nLateran, from the hands of Padre Giovanni de\u2019 Gatti, at that time\nSuperior of S. Teodoro outside the walls of Genoa, a house of the same\nOrder. Among these Novices occur a Simonetta di Negro, no doubt a\ncousin of Catherine, and Nicola and Lucia da Nove, two sisters; these\nfacts will have helped Catherine to hope for admission together with\nher own sister Limbania.[45]\n\nThe Convent and its Chapel, both secularized, are still in existence,\nat a quarter of an hour\u2019s walk from Catherine\u2019s palace-home. Moving\nfrom here, along the Vico Chiabrera, up the Via dei Maruffi (now San\nBernardo), and across the latter, up one of the many steep, very\nnarrow little alleys, to the Piazza dei Embriaci, and again up by the\ntall, slim, grey tower of the Crusader Guilielmo Embriaco, we arrive\nat last at a level, all but deserted, sun-baked piazza, called, after\nits Church, Sta Maria in Passione. Face this Church, and the long,\ntall house on your left hand, covered with dim, faded frescoes, is\nLimbania\u2019s Convent, so loved by Catherine. The right door leads into\nthe Chapel, which Vallebona[46] found in 1887 in use as a wood-store,\nand which I saw in May 1900 turned into a music-hall: where the altar\nhad stood, were a dingy stage, and tawdry wings. The pompous frescoes\nand stuccos on the walls and ceiling are evidently of the seventeenth\ncentury or even later. The adjoining Convent still retains a small\nfigure of St. Augustine sculptured on a corbel on the vault of the\nfirst landing. The Byzantine, dark brown Madonna-and-Child picture,\nwhich Catherine so often prayed before in the Chapel, can still be\nseen, on the left-hand wall of the Chapel of St. Thomas Aquinas, in the\nChurch of S. Maria di Castello, which is close by, at a lower level\nthan the Piazza of the Convent.\n\n\n4. _Catherine\u2019s marriage. The Adorni family._\n\nThe Convent Chaplain was Catherine\u2019s Confessor, and through him she\nattempted to gain the permission of the Nuns to enter their Community.\nBut whilst they hesitated and put her off, on the very reasonable\nground of her unusual youth, her father died (end of 1461); and a\nparticular combination, from amongst the endless political rivalries\nand intrigues of Genoa, soon closed in upon the beautiful girl, member\nof the greatest of the Guelph families of that turbulent time. It was\na bad and sorry business, and one likes to think that the father,\nhad he lived, would not thus have sacrificed his daughter. For if in\nShakespeare\u2019s Romeo and Juliet we have two youthful lovers joining\nhands and hearts, in spite of the secular enmity of their respective\nhouses; here, alas! in real life, we have the contrary spectacle, the\ndeep because dreary tragedy of two great rival factions making--rather,\nhoping to make--peace, by the enforced union of two mutually\nindifferent and profoundly unsuited young people.\n\nNot but that socially the two were admirably matched. For Giuliano\nAdorno belonged to a family hardly inferior in antiquity and splendour\nto Catherine\u2019s own. Six different Adorni had been Doges of Genoa in\n1363, 1385, 1413, 1443, 1447, 1461; and the one of 1413 had been\nGiuliano\u2019s own grandfather. They were Lords of the Greek Island of\nChios (Scio), which they had helped to conquer for Genoa in 1349.\n\nAnd now the last Doge of the family, Prospero Adorno, had just been\ndriven from the Ducal throne by Paolo Campofregoso, the strong-willed\nrepresentative of the great rival, though also Ghibelline, family of\nthe Fregosi. Campofregoso was now both Duke and Archbishop of Genoa. By\nan alliance with the Fieschi, the most powerful of the Guelph families,\nthe Adorni could hope, in their turn, to oust the Fregosi, and to\nreinstate themselves at the head of the great Republic. The ideals,\nantipathies or indifference of a girl of sixteen were not allowed to\nstand in the way; and so the contract was signed on January 13, 1463.\n\nThe marriage was celebrated soon afterwards in the Cathedral of San\nLorenzo, in the Chapel of St. John the Baptist, since the Campanaro\nfamily, which had built it in 1299, and the Adorni, who had married\ninto and succeeded the Campanaro, were excepted from the rule\nprohibiting the access of women to this Chapel. Since Cardinal Giorgio\nFieschi had recently died, Bishop Napoleone Fieschi, of Albenga,\npresided at the ceremony.\n\n\n5. _Giuliano\u2019s character. Catherine\u2019s pre-conversion married life._\n\nGiuliano\u2019s father was dead; only his widowed mother, Tobia dei Franchi,\nremained. It was, however, with Catherine\u2019s mother, in the old Palazzo\nnear the Cathedral, that the young couple were to live, and actually\nstayed, during the first two years.\n\nGiuliano was young and rich; his two elder brothers occupied high\nnaval posts; his first cousin, Agostino Adorno, was a man of noble\ncharacter and great initiative; and a descendant of this cousin, also\nAgostino, was later on Beatified. But Giuliano himself did at first\nworse than nothing, and never did much throughout his life. A man of\nan undisciplined, wayward, impatient, and explosive temper; selfish\nand self-indulgent; a lover of obscure and useless, in one instance\ncriminal, squandering of his time, money, health, and affections, he\ndid not deserve the rare woman who had been sold to him; and would\npossibly indeed have managed to be a better man with a wife he had\nreally loved, or with one of a temperament and outlook more ordinary\nand nearer to his own. As it was, he was hardly ever at home, and,\naccording to his own later penitent admission and testamentary\nprovisions, he was, some time during the first ten years of his\nmarriage, gravely unfaithful to his wife.\n\nCatherine, on her part, spent the first five of these dreary years\nin sad and mournful loneliness, at first in her mother\u2019s house, and\nafterwards, at least in the winter-time, in Giuliano\u2019s own palace,\na building which stood exactly where now stands the Church of Saint\nPhilip Neri, in the Via Lomellina (at that time, Via Sant\u2019 Agnese), and\nnear the Piazza Annunziata. In the summer-time she would stay, mostly\nalone again, at Giuliano\u2019s country seat at Pr\u00e0 on the Western Riviera,\njust beyond Pegli, and six English miles from Genoa.\n\nThis latter property is still in existence, but was, some twenty years\nago, on the extinction of the male line of the Adorni, sold to the\nPiccardo family. The present moderate-sized house, standing close to\nthe high-road and sea-beach, although evidently rebuilt (probably\non a considerably smaller scale) since Catherine\u2019s time, no doubt\noccupies part at least of the old site. But the Chapel which, in the\nSaint\u2019s days, adjoined the house, was described by Vallebona (in 1887)\nas turned into a stable; and in April 1902 an elderly serving-man of\nthe Piccardo family showed me the precise spot, on a now level meadow\nexpanse closely adjoining the house, where he himself, some fifteen\nyears since, had helped to pull down this chapel-stable. He showed me\nthe (probably seventeenth-century) picture representing the scene of\nthe Saint\u2019s conversion, which had, at that time, been still in this\nbuilding, and which is now hung up in a small Confraternity-Chapel near\nby in Pr\u00e0.\n\nAs to money of her own, Catherine had, as we shall see later on, her\ndowry of \u00a31,000, to which Giuliano had contributed \u00a3200. But we have no\nevidence of any good works performed by her in this decade, although,\nas we shall find, it must have been during these summers that she, at\nleast occasionally, walked or rode over the wooded hill-path to the old\nBenedictine Pilgrimage Church and Monastery of San Nicol\u00f2 in Boschetto,\nthree or four English miles away. These buildings are now secularized\nand empty, but, even so, impressive still.[47]\n\nIt is but natural to suppose that she was as yet too little at one\nwith her true self, to be able to surmount her lot, or even seriously\nto attempt such a task, by escaping from the false self and from all\nattempts at finding happiness within the four corners of the demands of\nher most sensitive and absolute disposition. To learn to do things well\ntakes time,--and even if it be but the finding out that those things to\ndo are _there_, ready and requiring to be done; or the seeing that we\nare doing them badly. Hence above all does the learning to suffer well,\nthe turning pain into self-expansion and self-escape, as well as into\nfruitful action, require time, special graces, and unusual fidelity of\nsoul. And even the noblest nature will usually begin by thinking of\ngetting, rather than of giving; it will simply thirst to be loved, and\nto find its happiness in its own heart\u2019s perfect \u201ccomprehendedness.\u201d\n\nCatherine tried to find relief, first in one attitude on her life\u2019s sad\ncouch of mental suffering, and then in another; and neither brought\nher any alleviation. During the first five years she had hidden\nherself away, and had moped in solitude; the last five, she had given\nherself to worldly gaieties and feminine amusements, short, however,\nof all grave offence against the moral law. And at the end of these\nexperiences and experiments she, noble, deep nature that she was, found\nherself, of course, sadder than ever, with apparently no escape of any\nkind from out of the dull oppression, the living death of her existence\nand of herself.\n\n\nV. HER CONVERSION, WITH ITS IMMEDIATE PRELIMINARIES AND CONSEQUENCES,\nMARCH 1474.\n\n\n1. _Her prayer, March 20, 1474. Her conversion, March 22._\n\nFrom after Christmas-time in 1472, Catherine\u2019s affliction of mind had\nbecome peculiarly intense, and a profound aversion to all the things\nof this world made her fly anew from all human intercourse; and yet\nher own company had become insupportable to her, as nothing whatsoever\nattracted her will.\n\nAnd at the end of three months, on the 20th of March 1474--it was the\neve of the Feast of St. Benedict--she was praying in his little church\nstill standing close to the sea, at the western end of Genoa, not far\nbeyond Andrea Doria\u2019s Palace, built so soon after her death. And in her\nkeen distress she prayed: \u201cSt. Benedict, pray to God that He make me\nstay three months sick in bed.\u201d[48]\n\nAnd two days later, when Catherine was visiting her sister at her\nConvent, Limbania proposed to her, since she declared herself\nindisposed to go to confession (although the Feast of the Annunciation\nwas at hand), at least to go and recommend herself in the Chapel to the\nchaplain of the Convent, who was indeed a saintly Religious. And, at\nthe moment that she was on her knees before him, her heart was pierced\nby so sudden and immense a love of God, accompanied by so penetrating a\nsight of her miseries and sins and of His goodness, that she was near\nfalling to the ground. And in a transport of pure and all-purifying\nlove, she was drawn away from the miseries of the world; and, as it\nwere beside herself, she kept crying out within herself: \u201cNo more\nworld; no more sins!\u201d And at that moment she felt that, had she had in\nher possession a thousand worlds, she would have cast them all away.[49]\n\n\n\n2. _Views and truths concerning this Experience._\n\nOne of the various writers who have successively, and in great part\ndifferently, moralized upon the chief events of her life, dwells on\nthis great moment as achieving in her soul all the usually lengthy\nand successive effects of the purgative, illuminative, and unitive\nprogression, and as, in that one instant, bringing her soul to that\nhighest state of transformation, in which the will is wholly united\nto God.[50] But having regard to the fact, patent on every page of\nher biography and \u201cWorks,\u201d that, for the remaining thirty-seven years\nof her life, her interior history represents one continuous widening\nand deepening and moving onwards of efforts, trials and pains, of\nachievements and ideals--a fact actually schematized by another writer\n(who, as I shall show, is the penultimate Redactor of the Life) not\ntwo pages lower down--it is clear that we must be careful to conceive\nthis perfection as relative to her previous state or even to the final\ngoodness of many saintly souls. We must, in a word, try to realize\nvividly, and constantly to recall, certain complex truths, without\nwhich the very greatness of the experience here considered will but\nhelp to check or deflect our apprehension of the spiritual life.\n\nFor one thing, the deeper and the more unique the soul\u2019s experience,\nand the richer such experience is, the more entirely does all that\nthe soul is, and ever was, wake up and fuse itself in one indivisible\nact, in which much of the old is newly seen to be dross and is so far\nforth excluded; and in which the old that is retained reappears in a\nfresh context, a context which itself affects and is itself affected\nby all the other old and new ideas and feelings. It thus clearly bears\nthe stamp upon it of the profound difference between Time, conceived\nas a succession of moments of identical quantity and quality, each in\njuxtaposition and exterior to the other, mathematical time, such as\nour clocks register on the dials,--a conception really derived from\nspace-perception and exterior, measurable _things_--and Duration,\nwith its variously rapid succession of heterogeneous qualities, each\naffecting and colouring, each affected and coloured by, all the others,\nand all producing together a living harmony and organic unity, all\nwhich constitutes the essentially unpicturable experience of the\nliving _person_. Such a moment is thus incapable of adequate analysis,\nin exact proportion as it is fully expressive of the depths of the\npersonality and of its experience: for each element here, whilst,\nin its living context, an energy and a quality which at each moment\nmodifies and is modified by all the other elements, becomes, in an\nintellectual analysis, when each is separated from the others, a mere\ndead thing and a quantity.\n\nAnd secondly, such an experience is throughout as truly a work of pure\ngrace, a gift, as it is a work of pure energy, an act. And here again,\nthe grace and the energy, the gift and the act are not juxtaposed, but\nthroughout they stimulate and interpenetrate each other, with the most\nentirely unanalyzable, unpicturable completeness. It is indeed in exact\nproportion to the fulness of this interstimulation and penetration, to\nthe organic oneness of the act, that such an act is this one particular\nsoul\u2019s very own act and yet the living God\u2019s own fullest gift. Grace\ndoes not lie without, but within; it does not check or limit, but\nconstitutes the will\u2019s autonomy.\n\nAnd thirdly, it is an experience which leaves the soul different\nforever from what it was before; which purifies her perfectly, in and\nfor that moment, from all her stains of actual sin committed up to\nthat moment; and which materially strengthens her inclinations towards\ngood and weakens her tendencies towards evil. But the soul herself\nlives on; and she lives but in and through successive acts of all\nkinds. Hence it is not an act,--there is none such, here below at\nleast,--which takes or can take the place of fresh acts to be produced\nagain and again throughout her life, The soul has not, in any sense\nor any degree, been approximated to that utterly paradoxical thing,\na saintly automaton. She is not raised above the limitations and\nimperfections, the obscurities and conflicts, the failings and sins\nof humanity. She _could_ fall away and commit grave sin; she actually\n_does_ commit minor sins of frailty and surprise. Her interior efforts\nand experiences are now but on a larger, deeper scale, and on a higher\nplane, and take place from a new vantage-ground, a position which has,\nhowever, itself to be continually actively defended and reinforced.\nTemptation, trial, sorrow, pain; hope, fear, self-hatred, love and joy,\nwith ever-renewed and increased aspiration and effort, all variously\nchange and deepen their combinations and qualities, outlook and\nideals. But they do not for one moment cease. All things but grow in\ndepth and significance, in variety within unity, in interiority and\ninterpenetration.\n\nAnd finally, although conversions of the apparent suddenness and\nprofound depth and perseverance of the one here studied, are rightly\ntaken to be very special and rare graces of God, yet it would be but\nmisinterpreting and depreciating their true significance to make their\nsuddenness the direct proof and measure of their own supernaturalness\nor the standard by which to appraise the altitude of the goodness of\nother lives. God is as truly the source of gradual purification as of\nsudden conversion, and as truly the strength which guards and moves us\nstraight on, as that which regains and calls us back. Hence such acts\nas Catherine\u2019s should not be entirely separated off from those acts\nof love, contrition and self-dedication which occur, as so many free\ngraces of God in and with the free acts of man, more or less frequently\nin the secret lives of human beings throughout the world.\n\n\n3. _The Second Experience, in the Palace._\n\nCatherine then was kneeling on, in these great moments of her true\nself\u2019s self-discovery and self-determination, with her true Life\nnow at last felt so divinely near and yet still so divinely far:\nshe was kneeling on, oblivious of time and space, incapable of\nspeech--throughout a deep, rich age of growth, during but some minutes\nof poor clock-time--whilst the chaplain was called away by some little\nmomentary matter. And when he returned, she was just able to utter:\n\u201cFather, if you please, I should like to let this confession stand over\nto another time.\u201d And returning home, she was so on fire and wounded\nwith the love which God had interiorly manifested to her, that, as\nif beside herself, she went into the most private chamber she could\nfind, and there gave vent to her burning tears and sighs. And, all\ninstructed as she had suddenly become in prayer, her lips could only\nutter: \u201cO Love, can it be that Thou hast called me with so much love,\nand revealed to me, at one view, what no tongue can describe?\u201d And\nher contrition for her offences against such infinite goodness was so\ngreat, that, if she had not been specially supported, her heart would\nhave been broken, and she would have died.[51]\n\nAnd yet, though her biographer, no doubt rightly, represents her\nfeeling and dispositions as now at their uttermost,--they may well\nhave actually been so, at that moment for that moment,--they were\nnevertheless evidently capable of indefinite subsequent increase.\nIndeed it must have been on this same day, or on one of the next\nthree days, that, in one of the rooms of the palace in the Via S.\nAgnese,--(the approximate spot is marked in the Church of St. Philip\nby a fine picture representing the scene, hung over the altar of one\nof the left-hand-side chapels),--\u201cOur Lord, desiring to enkindle still\nmore profoundly His love in this soul, appeared to her in spirit with\nHis Cross upon His shoulder dripping with blood, so that the whole\nhouse seemed to be all full of rivulets of that Blood, which she saw\nto have been all shed because of love alone.\u201d \u201cAnd filled with disgust\nat herself, she exclaimed: \u2018O Love, if it be necessary, I am ready to\nconfess my sins in public.\u2019\u201d[52]\n\n\n4. _Two peculiarities of this Experience._\n\nHere two things are remarkable. This is, to begin with, her first and\nlast vision (_visione_), which I can find, in the sense of a picture\nproduced indeed \u201cin the spirit,\u201d but yet evidently apprehended with\na sense of apparently complete passivity in the perceiving mind\nand of objectivity as to the perceived thing, and remembered as\nsuch throughout her life. For the frequent subsequent \u201csights\u201d or\npicturings (_viste_) are avowedly only of the nature of profoundly\nvivid, purely mental, more or less consciously voluntary and subjective\ncontemplations and intuitions; whilst her only other \u201cvisions,\u201d those\nseen during the last stage of her last illness, seem indeed to have\nbeen of an even more sensible kind than this _visione_, but they were\nentirely fitful and left no permanent impression behind them.\n\nAnd again, this is the one only picture of any, even of a voluntary,\nmeditational kind, concerning the Passion, to be found throughout her\nlife; all her other contemplations and impressions of whatever kind are\nof other subjects.\n\n\n5. _Her general confession._\n\nIt was after these fundamental experiences that, once more in the\nChapel of the Augustinianesses, apparently four days later, on the 24th\nof March, \u201cshe made her general confession, with such contrition and\ncompunction as to pierce her soul.\u201d[53]\n\n\nVI. THE TWO CONCEPTIONS CONCERNING THE CHARACTER AND _RATIONALE_ OF HER\nPENITENTIAL PERIOD AND OF HER WHOLE CONVERT LIFE. THE POSITION ADOPTED\nHERE.\n\nAt this point of the Life two successive reporters or redactors\nintroduce, respectively, a general reflection on the character and\n_rationale_ of the period of penitence now immediately ensuing, and a\nscheme and forecast as to the stages in the ascensional movement of her\nentire convert life.\n\n\n1. _The older conception._\n\nThe first reporter,--evidently the same who, in connection with the\nConversion scene, had described her soul as, there and then, at the\nculmination of holiness,--here says: \u201cAnd although God, at the moment\nwhen,\u201d four days before, \u201cHe had given her that love and pain, had\nthere and then pardoned her all her sins, consuming them in the fire\nof His love; yet He, wishing her to satisfy the claims of justice,\nled her by the way of satisfaction, in such wise as to cause this\nspecial contrition, illumination, and conversion to last about fourteen\nmonths,\u201d and it is no doubt implied by him that frequent confession was\npractised throughout this time.[54]\n\nThus we get an impressive instance of the rich and complex experience\non which the Catholic doctrine is built, as to how, on the one hand,\npure and perfect love ever instantly obliterates all sin; how, on the\nother hand, such perfect love, in those who explicitly know and accept\nthe Church\u2019s claims, involves a determination to confess all such grave\nsins as may have been committed; and how, finally, such subsequent\nconfession is itself operative within the soul. For as between the soul\nand the body, so between the Mystical and Sacramental, there is a real\nand operative connection, though one which, however inadequately known\nby us, we know to be one not of simple identity or coextension.\n\nAnd the experiences and doctrines here specially considered appear\nto require the conception of contrition and pardon as but the\nnecessary expression and effect of true, operative love; and to demand\nthe conclusion that purification participates in the essentially\npositive nature of love, its cause. The removal of bodily impurity\nis a negative act, and, as such, is limited and unrepeatable; but\nspiritual purification would thus, as something positive, be capable of\nindefinite increase and repetition. And hence the deep philosophical\njustification of repeated contrition and confession for the same sins,\neven though already pardoned. We shall find that such a view is also\nto be found in St. Catherine\u2019s own doctrine, though there is nothing\nto show that the thought of this paragraph is derived from Catherine\nherself. I take it to proceed from Cattaneo Marabotto.\n\n\n\n2. _The later conception._\n\nThe second writer, the penultimate Redactor of the book as we now have\nit, finds three successive levels in her whole life\u2019s constant growth\nand upward movement, and discovers a type of each in some love-impelled\nfigure or scene of the Bible. And so the writer gets his periods\nsymbolized respectively by the two New Testament scenes of Christ\u2019s\nfeet, and the Penitent Magdalen drawn by Him to them, and of Christ\u2019s\nbreast, and the Beloved Disciple reposing peacefully upon it; and by\nthe Old Testament poetic picture, and its allegorical interpretation,\nof Christ\u2019s (the true Solomon\u2019s) mouth, and the Bride\u2019s kiss. And\nsome four years are assigned to the first period, \u201cmany\u201d years to the\nsecond, and her last years to the last: 1478 and 1499 would be the\napproximate dates dividing off these periods. We shall find this scheme\nto proceed from Battista Vernazza.\n\nTime-honoured though it be, this symbolism in no way fits Catherine\u2019s\ncase. For, excepting during the short first period, her direct and\nformal occupation with the Sacred Humanity is, throughout her convert\nlife, practically confined to the Eucharistic Presence; and again, her\nwords and contemplations are (as indeed the unhappiness of her marriage\nexperience would lead one to expect and as the whole temper of her mind\nand devotion require) quite remarkably free from all affinity to the\nCanticle of Canticles. And yet this, in so far inappropriate, framework\nhelps to emphasize the all-important fact of the constant growth and\ndeepening ever at work within her life.\n\nIndeed, the short, general characterization of each of these successive\nperiods which follows after each symbol here, is derived from passages\nof the _Vita_ which are doubtless based upon direct communication\nby herself. Thus the detailed sight of her own particular sins and\nof God\u2019s particular graces towards herself, characteristic of the\nrelatively short first period, is succeeded by the second, long and\nprofoundly lonely, period of an apparent union of the divine and of the\nhuman personalities, in which all distinct perception of her own acts\nappears to have usually been lost,--a union which can lead her to the\npoint of saying: \u201cI have no longer either soul or heart of my own; but\nmy soul and my heart are those of my Love.\u201d Yet in her third and last\nperiod, the consciousness of her own acts and of their differentiation\nis described as fully reappearing within her mind. For though we are\npresented here with a kind of immersion in the Divinity, in which she\nappears so to lose herself interiorly and exteriorly as to be able to\nsay with St. Paul: \u201cI live no longer, but Christ lives in me\u201d; and\nthough we are told that she was no longer able to discern between\nthe good and evil of her acts, by means of any direct examination of\nthem: yet her acts are now again perceived to be her own; to be some\nof them good and some of them faulty; and are seen, as several and\nas differing, by her own self, but \u201cin God.\u201d[55] So did the Lady of\nShallot, all turned away though she was from the world of sight, see in\nher mirror the different figures as, good and bad, they moved on their\nway, more truly and clearly than she had ever seen them formerly by any\ndirect perception.\n\n\n3. _Position adopted in this study concerning Catherine\u2019s spiritual\ngrowth._\n\nNow these periods of interior, experimental, mystical vicissitude\nand growth have also their corresponding variations of religious\nanalysis and speculation, and of external actions and events; and these\nvariations are not only the concomitants and expressions of the inner\ngrowth, but are also, in part, the subject-matter and occasion for\nthe next stage of mystical experience. And since Catherine\u2019s special\ncharacteristic consists precisely in the richness and variety of\nher life at any one moment, and in the successive, ever-accelerated\nenrichment which it achieves almost up to the end, any obliteration of\nthis successive growth, or any one-sided attention to any one aspect\nof her life during any one of its chief periods, will readily take all\nlife-likeness out of her portrait.\n\nYet to achieve anything like this comprehension is most difficult, if\nonly because it has to be attempted with the aid of materials which,\nwhere their registration is contemporary with the events chronicled,\nbelong, all but the legal documents, to the last fifteen years of\nher life; and because, even within this last period, they are rarely\nfurnished with any reference to their exact place within that period.\nThere is throughout the book a most natural and instructive, indeed\nin its way most legitimate and even necessary, insistence upon the\napparently complete independence and aloofness, the transcendence of\nher inner life. And this insistence goes so far that a self-sufficing\nEternity, a completely unchanging Here and Now, floating outside and\nabove even the necessary and normal affections, actions, and relations\nof human life and fellowship, seems, especially from after her\nconversion till up to the beginning of her physical incapacitation,[56]\nto have taken the place of the characteristically human struggle in\nand through time and space, with and through our fellow-creatures.\nAs in Leibniz we get a divinely pre-established harmony between the\ndispositions and the acts of the body and those of the soul, which\nappear indeed as though indestructibly interrelated, but which, in\nreality, operate throughout without one instant\u2019s direct interaction:\nso here, the external is not indeed represented as neglected by her,\nnor as anything but in complete harmony with her inner life, and as\nindeed inspired by God, yet her own mind and soul are but reluctantly\npermitted to appear as expressing themselves in it, as requiring and\naffected by it. She appears as having got outside of, and away from,\nall the visible and purely human, rather than deeper into and behind\nit; to have achieved the ignoring of it rather than its conversion and\ntransfiguration and its appointment to its own intrinsic place and\nfunction in the full economy of the soul\u2019s new life.\n\nAnd yet all this is, even in the minds of the authors, but one aspect\nof this complex life, and one which, taken alone, would at once do\ninjustice to its other aspect, the grand depth and range of its\nimmanental quality. And even in as much as the transcendental aspect\nis really attributable to the predominant trend of Catherine\u2019s own\ncharacter and teaching, it in no way invalidates the fact of the actual\nastonishing many-sidedness and balance of her life, especially before\nher last few years, but will be found to proceed essentially from\nher rare mode of achieving this many-sidedness and balance, or, more\nstrictly still, from her own feeling as to this mode, and her analysis\nand theory of it. We have no direct concern with this her reflection at\npresent: what she actually did and directly was, is all we would wish\nto try and sketch just now.\n\n\nVII. CATHERINE AND THE HOLY EUCHARIST.\n\n\n1. _A daily Communicant from May 1474 onwards._\n\nOn the following day, then, on the Feast of the Annunciation, 25th\nMarch, 1473, \u201cher Lord gave her the desire of Holy Communion, a\ndesire which never again failed her throughout the whole course of her\nremaining life. And He so disposed things that Communion was given her,\nwithout any care on her part; she was often summoned to receive it,\nwithout any asking, by priests inspired by God to give it to her.\u201d[57]\n\nAfter trying every possible interpretation of this most annoyingly\nobscure text by the light of three or four other passages, I have come\nto think it to mean that, on this Lady-Day, she, for the first time\nsince now ten years, received Holy Communion with a keen desire for\nits reception; and that this desire remained from this day forward\nunintermittently with her, till the end of her life: but that this\ndesire, which at first may not have been set upon daily Communion,\nbegan to be satisfied by a daily reception only some time in May 1474.\nIt is anyhow certain that from this latter date onwards she was a daily\ncommunicant up to September 13, 1510, the day before her death.[58] The\nexceptions were most rare,--I take it of an average of once or twice a\nyear,--and were always owing to some insuperable obstacle, mostly of\nill-health.\n\n\n\n2. _Her practice as regards the Holy Eucharist, throughout her Convert\nLife._\n\nSince Holy Communion was the great source and centre of her love and\nstrength, and the one partially external experience and practice which\nwas thus renewed day by day throughout her life, and in the spiritual\napprehension and effect of which we cannot trace any distinct periods,\nI shall dwell here, once for all, upon the characteristics of this\ndevotion of hers, which were at all special to herself.\n\nFor one thing, even her ardent love of Holy Communion did not suppress\na bashful dislike of being noticed or distinguished in the matter:\n\u201cAt the beginning of her conversion she had at times a feeling as of\nenvy towards Priests, because they communicated on as many days as\nthey would, without any one wondering at it.\u201d \u201cOnce when, for a few\ndays, the city was under an interdict, she went every morning a mile\u2019s\ndistance outside of the city walls, so as to communicate; and she\nthought that she would not be seen by any one.\u201d[59]\n\nNext, there is a most characteristic eagerness for interiorization, for\nturning the Holy Eucharist, perceived without, into the heart\u2019s food\nwithin; and a corresponding intensity of consciousness and tenderness\nat the moment of reception. \u201cWhen she saw the Sacrament on the altar in\nthe hands of the priests, she would say within herself: \u2018Now swiftly,\nswiftly convey it to the heart, since it is the heart\u2019s true food.\u2019\u201d\nAnd \u201cone night she dreamt that she would be unable to communicate\nduring the coming day, and waking up, she found that tears were\ndropping from her eyes, at which she wondered, since hers was a nature\nvery slow to weep.\u201d And \u201cwhen at Mass, she was often so occupied with\nher Lord interiorly, as not to hear one word of it; but when the time\nfor Communion arrived, at that instant she would become conscious of\nexterior things.\u201d And she would say: \u201cO Lord, it seems to me, that if\nI were dead, I should return to life to receive Thee; and that if an\nunconsecrated host were given to me, I should recognize it to be such\nby the mere taste alone, as one discerns water from wine.\u201d[60]\n\nAgain, her Communion practice bears upon it the stamp of a staunch\nvirility; of a constant emulation between her own generous turning-away\nfrom its sensible consolations and the divine action, which seems\nto have maintained these consolations throughout her life; and of a\ndetermination to abstain even from such deeply consoling Communions,\nif such abstention were the more perfect practice for her. \u201cOne day,\nwhen she had communicated, there came to her so much odour and so much\nsweetness, that she felt as though in Paradise. But turning at once\ntowards her Love she said: \u2018O Love, wouldest thou perchance draw me to\nThee with these savours (_sapori_)? I desire them not, since I desire\nbut Thee, and Thee whole and entire!\u2019\u201d And \u201cone day a holy Friar,\u201d--it\nwas probably the Observant Franciscan, Father Angelo of Chiavasso (near\nGenoa), beatified later on,--\u201csaid to her: \u2018You communicate every day:\nwhat kind of satisfaction do you derive from it?\u2019 And she answered\nhim simply, explaining to him all her desires and feelings. But he,\nto test the purity of her intention, said: \u2018There might possibly be\nsome imperfection in such very frequent Communion,\u2019 and then left her.\nAnd Catherine having heard this, fearing such imperfection, at once\nsuspended her Communions, but at the cost of great distress. And the\nFriar, hearing a few days later of how she cared more not to do wrong\nthan to have all the consolation and satisfaction of Communion, sent\nher word by all means to return to her daily Communions; and she did\nso.\u201d[61]\n\nAnd finally, her Communions produced effects direct and indirect,\nspiritual and psychical. The indirect, psycho-physical effects being\nvariable, and related to the varying conditions of her health, will\nbe noted as far as possible under the different periods of her life\nand, collectively, in the chapter on such psycho-physical questions.\nThe spiritual effects no doubt grew, but this growth we have no\nsufficient materials for pursuing in detail. Yet they have throughout\nthis peculiarity, that, central and all-permeating as this Eucharistic\ninfluence no doubt was, yet it nowhere takes the form of any specially\nEucharistic devotion or directly Eucharistic meditation or doctrine,\noutside of Holy Communion itself and of the immediate occupation with\n_it_. Some deep indirect effects on her general tone, imagery, and\nteaching will be studied in our second volume.\n\n\nVIII. CATHERINE AND CONFESSION AND DIRECTION.\n\n\n1. _Catherine arouses criticism in the matter of Direction._\n\nNow if Catherine occasioned some criticism and testing of her spirit by\nthe (for that period) very unusual frequency of her Communions,[62] it\nis equally on record that she aroused some surprise and apprehension,\nby the absence of all Direction, during the many years of the second\nperiod of her convert life. And if, in the matter of her daily\nCommunions, she had readily entered into the suggestion that there\nmight be imperfection in this her dearest habit, and yet had to\ncontinue along her unusual way, so too, in this matter of Direction,\nshe evidently was from the first ever ready to proceed in the ordinary\nmanner, and yet found herself compelled to follow a lonely course.\n\u201cIf she attempted to lean upon any one (_accostarsi ad alcuno_), Love\ninstantly caused her mental suffering so great that she was obliged to\ndesist, saying, \u2018O Love, I understand Thee.\u2019 And when she was told that\nit would be well, and more secure, if she were to put herself under\nobedience to another, and whilst she was in doubt as to what to do,\nher Lord answered her thus within her mind: \u2018Confide in Me, and doubt\nnot!\u2019\u201d[63] Such suggestions will have been made and such scruples will\nhave been suffered many a time, during the long years in which, in this\nmatter, her way was an extraordinary one.\n\n\n2. _The facts concerning Catherine\u2019s confessions. Catholic obligations._\n\nBut in this matter of Direction and Confession, the _Vita_, if we were\nto take its present constituents as of uniform value, is astonishingly\nvague, ambiguous, and contradictory. Let us take the facts, in the\norder of their certainty, moving from the quite certain to the less and\nless certain ones; and let us then try and appraise the upshot of the\nwhole examination.\n\nWe are then, first, absolutely certain that Catherine herself, not\nlater than 1499,--this date shall be justified later on,--said to Don\nMarabotto, (and that he then and there, or shortly afterwards, wrote\ndown,) the following words: \u201cI have persevered for twenty-five years in\nthe spiritual way, without the aid of any creature.\u201d And he, in this\nmatter which concerns his own Confessing and Directing of her during\nthe last eleven years of her life (1499-1510), twice over solemnly\nreaffirms and drives home the reality of the fact thus communicated\nto him by herself. \u201cShe was guided and taught interiorly by her\ntender Love alone, without the means of any [fellow-]creature, either\nReligious or Secular\u201d; \u201cshe was instructed and governed thus by God,\nfor about twenty-five years.\u201d[64] And conformably with this, we get the\nshort dialogue between herself and Love, as just given, and such words\nas the following, which she declared that Love itself spoke to her\nmind,--evidently during, and probably at the beginning, of these many\nyears: \u201cTake from the remainder of Scripture this one word \u2018Love,\u2019 with\nwhich thou shalt ever walk straight \u2026 enlightened, without error, and\n(all this) without guide or means provided by any other creature.\u201d[65]\n\nIn the next place, it is equally certain that, with all her biographers\ndown to this day (_e.g._ Monseigneur Fliche, pp. 350, 351), her words\nmust be understood to exclude at least all Direction from those\nyears. And it is, moreover, practically certain that at least the\nsecond Redactor (R. 2) of the _Vita_ understood her words to apply\nto Confession also. For whereas, in the older tripartite scheme of\nR. 1, the four years of Penance of her first period were filled by\nher labours for \u201csatisfying her conscience by means of contrition,\nconfession, and satisfaction,\u201d R. 2 breaks up those four years into\ntwo periods,--the first, of \u201ca little over a year\u201d; and the second,\nof (no doubt) three years,--and does so with a view to thus making\nroom for the \u201cabout twenty-five years\u201d of Catherine\u2019s affirmation.\nNow whereas R. 2 in his first period talks thus of Confession; in his\nsecond one, he talks twice of Contrition, and twice of Sorrow, but\nnowhere of Confession; and again, whereas in his third (R. 1\u2019s second)\nperiod \u201cmany\u201d (no doubt twenty-one) years, there is still no reference\nto Confession, indeed here not even to Sin or Contrition in general;\nin the fourth (R. 1\u2019s third) period (of eleven years), when she was\nbeing regularly confessed and directed by Marabotto, she, it is true,\n\u201cwas incapable of recognizing, by direct examination, the nature of\nher acts, whether they were good or bad,\u201d but still she was able to\nsee, and actually \u201csaw all things,\u201d hence also these acts and their\ndifference, \u201cin God.\u201d[66]\n\nThirdly, it is certain that some reasonable doubt can be entertained\nas to whether Catherine\u2019s words, solemnly emphatic though they are,\nwere not understood too literally by Marabotto and the second Redactor.\nNothing is, indeed, more obvious and striking throughout all the\nauthentic memorials of her, than the delightfully simple, grandly\nfearless veracity of her mind. She never speaks but according to the\nfulness of her conviction: like with all souls most near unto the\nchildlike Master, Christ, it can be said of her that \u201cone never knows\nwhat she is going to say next.\u201d And we shall find her insight into\nherself at any given moment, even with regard to such partly medical\nmatters as her psycho-physical condition, to be quite astonishing in\nits depth and delicacy. Yet the fact remains, that she was as truly\na person of intense and swiftly changing feelings, exaltations, and\ndepressions, as she was one of a rich balanced doctrine and of a quite\nheroic objectivity and healthy spiritual utilization of all such\nintensities. This very heroism and objectivity of hers, so constant\nand watchful in all her practical decisions and general doctrinal\nstatements, no doubt helped to make her feel both the need and the\nlicitness of giving full and truthful utterance also to the intense and\nswiftly passing feelings of her heart.\n\nOne such utterance is specially to the point. She had already been\nfor eleven years the much-helped penitent of that utterly devoted\npriest-friend Don Marabotto, when, in January 1510, he overheard her\n(the extant report of the scene is certainly his own and contemporary\nwith the event) saying to God, shut up alone, as she thought, in\none of her rooms: \u201cThere is no creature that understands me. I find\nmyself alone, unknown, poor, naked, a stranger and different from\nall the world.\u201d Yet this does not prevent her finding comfort and,\nindirectly, even physical improvement, in and from Marabotto\u2019s sympathy\nand words, when these are offered to her not many hours later on.[67]\nThe abnormally rapid and complete change of feeling depicted here, no\ndoubt occurred during the last eight months of her life, long after\nher health had begun to break up permanently; and cannot directly\nillustrate her frame of mind during the years 1474-1499, when she was\nin health and relatively strong. Still, she was clearly ever of a\nhigh-strung, intense temperament; and her health was already seriously\nimpaired when, in 1499, she spoke the words concerning the utter\nloneliness of that whole quarter of a century. And if the emphatic\nwords, spoken to God Himself in 1510, were compatible with confession,\nand, indeed, a certain kind of continuous direction, at the very time\nand during eleven years before they were spoken: her words uttered\nin 1499 to Marabotto, will have been compatible with at least some\nconfession during a period of years of which the first lay almost a\nwhole generation behind her. And we shall find at least two other cases\nin which Marabotto appears, on Catherine\u2019s own authority, as having\nclearly misunderstood the nature of some phenomena connected with\nherself.[68]\n\nYet for all this, the account which we shall have to give later on\nof the characteristics of her confessions to Marabotto,--an account\ndirectly derived from himself,--makes it practically impossible to\nassume that even simple confession was practised, at all or otherwise\nthan quite exceptionally, during those many years.\n\nNow we have, as a fourth point, to remember that although the Fourth\nCouncil of the Lateran, in the year 1215, had decreed that \u201cAll\nthe Faithful of either sex, after coming to years of discretion,\nare bound to confess all their sins at least once a year\u201d:[69] yet\nalready St. Thomas Aquinas had, in his Commentary on the Sentences of\nPeter Lombard, composed in 1252-1257, taught that, since the divine\ninstitution and obligation extends, strictly speaking, only to the\nconfession of mortal sins, \u201che that has not committed any mortal sins\nis not bound to confess venial sins, but it is sufficient for the\nfulfilling of the Church\u2019s precept, for him to present himself to the\npriest, and to declare himself free from the consciousness of mortal\nsin.\u201d[70] And nothing has changed, as to the nature and extent of\nthis obligation, since Catherine\u2019s time. The Council of Trent, the\ndecrees of which were confirmed by Pope Pius IV in 1564, more than\nhalf-a-century after her death, carefully explains that \u201c_all_ the\nsins\u201d of the decree of 1215 means all \u201c_mortal_ sins\u201d; and further\ndeclares that \u201cthe Church did not, by the Lateran Council, decree that\nthe faithful should confess,--a thing she knew to be instituted and\nnecessary by divine right,\u201d but had simply determined the circumstances\nand conditions under which this obligatory confession was to take\nplace.[71] And Father Antonio Ballerini, S.J. (_d._ 1881), gives us\nthe conclusions, identical with that of St. Thomas, of those great\nauthorities Francis Suarez (_d._ 1617), Cardinal John de Lugo (_d._\n1660), and Hermann Busenbaum (_d._ 1668),--all three, Jesuits like\nhimself,--and himself endorses their decision. Suarez indeed declares\nthis view to be the common opinion of Theologians.[72]\n\n\n3. _Probable course of Catherine\u2019s confession-practice._\n\nWith these four points before us, let us attempt to reconstruct some\noutline of what really happened in her own case, and try and show what\nconstituted the specifically Catholic quality of this her practice, so\nunusual in the middle and later ages of the Church. We shall, then, do\nwisely, I think, by considering that the \u201ctwenty-five years,\u201d alleged\nby her own self, were, as a strict matter of fact, not more than\ntwenty-one;[73] that during the four first convert years that preceded\nthis middle period, just as during the last eleven which succeeded it,\nshe had recourse to confession with the frequency considered normal\nin and for these times, in the case of a daily communicant living in\nthe world; but that, during the intervening period, she was allowed to\nsubstitute that simple occasional, perhaps only annual, presentation\nof herself and declaration to the priest in the place of confession\nproper, which we have seen to be considered, in a case of such a purity\nof soul as hers, as sufficient for fulfilling the Church\u2019s precept, by\na practical consensus of all the great casuist authorities. And thus we\nhave here again a memorable, and this time a long-persisting, instance\nof how the intrinsic and operative connection between the Individual\nand the Social, the Mystical and the Institutional elements of Religion\nis not a simple identity or coextension,--a point which we already\nfound exemplified during the first hours of her convert life.\n\nAnd the Catholic spirit in this her present course will consist in\nher full observance of all to which the Church strictly obliges; in\nher readiness at all times to walk in the ordinary way, and in her\nrepeated attempts, even during this second period, to do so; in her\nactually and fervently following the ordinary course whenever she\ncould, _i.e._ in the first and last period; and finally in her ever\nfaithfully obeying the promptings of God\u2019s Spirit which, by various\nconverging spiritual peculiarities, circumstances and means, showed,\nwith practical plainness, the kind and degree of extraordinary interior\nacts and habits which were to be, in large part, _her_ form of the\n\u201cMind of the Church.\u201d For it is indeed certain that the special\ncharacteristic of the Catholic mind is not, necessarily, universally\nand finally, the conception and practice of sanctity under the precise\nform of the devotional spirit and habits special to the particular part\nor period of the Church in which that individual Catholic\u2019s lot may be\ncast. What _is_ thus characteristic, is the continuous and sensitive\nconviction that there is something far-reaching and important beyond\nthe Church\u2019s bare precepts, for every soul that aims at sanctity, to\nfind out and to do; that this something (_sc._ the Church\u2019s mind) is,\nalways and for all, _presumably_, the most fervent form and degree of\nthe devotional temper and habits of the Church, as practised in that\ntime and country; and that it is for God Himself, if He so pleases, to\nindicate to the soul that He now wants its fervour to consist in an\nobservance of the Church\u2019s precepts and spirit under a form and with an\napplication partially different from the most fervent practice of the\nordinary devotions of that time and place, though this new observance\nwill be no less costing or heroically self-renouncing than the other.\nAnd this He does usually by slow, often simply cumulative and indirect,\nbut always solid, painful, and practically unmistakable, because\nunsought, means and experiences,--all these attained to well within the\nChurch. For the Church\u2019s life and spirit, which is but the extension\nof the spirit of Christ Himself, is, like all that truly lives at all,\nnot a sheer singleness, but has a mysterious unity in and by means of\nendless variety. Even at any one moment that spirit expresses itself in\nnumerous variations, by means of various races, rites, orders, schools,\nand individuals. And yet not the sum-total of all these simultaneously\npresent variations is ever as rich as is the sum-total of that spirit\u2019s\nsuccessive manifestations in the past. Nor once more can this latter\nsum be taken as anticipating all the developments and adaptations which\nthat ever-living spirit will first occasion and then sanction in His\nspecial organ, the Church. Catherine\u2019s particular, divinely impelled\nsubstitute for the ordinary devotional practice shall be described\nlater on.\n\n\nIX. CATHERINE AND INDULGENCES.\n\nA further peculiarity, somewhat analogous to the one just examined,\nseems to have characterized her devotional practice--in this case,\nthroughout her convert life. It had therefore, perhaps, best be\ndescribed in this place.\n\n\n1. _The assertions of the \u201cVita.\u201d_\n\nThree items of information are furnished by the _Vita_, on one and the\nsame half-page.\n\n(1) \u201cShe had such a hatred of self,\u201d says the _Vita_, \u201cthat she did not\nhesitate to pronounce this sentence: \u2018I would not have grace and mercy,\nbut justice and vengeance shown to the malefactor.\u2026\u2019\u201d\n\n(2) \u201cFor this reason it seemed that she did not even care to gain\nthe Plenary Indulgences. Not as though she did not hold them in great\nreverence and devotion, and did not consider them to be most useful and\nof great value. But she would have wished that her own self-seeking\npart (_la sua propria parte_) should rather be chastized and punished\nas it deserved, than to see it pardoned (_assoluta_), and, by means of\nsuch satisfaction, liberated in the sight of God.\u201d\n\n(3) \u201cShe saw the Offended One to be supremely good, and the offender\nquite the opposite. And hence she could not bear to see any part of\nherself which was not subjected to the divine justice, with a view to\nits being thoroughly chastized. And hence, so as not to give this part\nany hope of being liberated from the pains due to it, she abstained\nfrom the Plenary Indulgences and also from recommending herself to the\nintercessions of others, so as ever to be subject to every punishment\nand condemned as she deserved.\u201d[74]\n\n\n2. _Three points to be noted here._\n\nHere I would note three things.\n\nFor one thing, there can be no serious doubt as to the authenticity\nof the saying that opens out this group of communications and as to\nthe substantial accuracy of the two parallel, and (I think) mutually\nindependent, reports as to her practice: since the saying belongs to\nthe class of short declarations given in _oratio directa_, which we\nshall find to be remarkably reliable throughout the _Vita_; and the\nreports testify to something so unusual, so little sympathetic to the\nhagiographical mind, so much in keeping with the remainder of her\ndoctrine and practice, that we cannot believe them misinformed. The\nauthor of the _Dialogo_ evidently fully accepted these three passages,\nwhen, in about 1549, she paraphrases them thus: \u201cShe therefore made no\naccount of her sins, with respect to their punishment, but only because\nshe had acted against that Immense Goodness\u201d; \u201cShe found herself to be\nher who alone had committed all the evil, and alone she wanted to make\nsatisfaction, as far as ever she could, without the help of any other\nperson.\u201d[75]\n\nFor another thing, we have absolutely final contemporary documentary\nevidence of the importance attached by herself both to Indulgences,\nand the gaining of them (at least by other people), and to Masses and\nprayers for the Dead, inclusive of herself when she should be gone. For\nas to Indulgences, we have entries in the Cartulary of the Hospital\n(under the dates of March 11, April 10, May 29, and August 23, 1510) of\nvarious considerable sums, amounting in all to over \u00a3300, paid by the\nHospital, at the first date, for Catherine\u2019s nephew Francesco, at all\nthe other dates for herself, for the withdrawal of a suspension of the\nIndulgences attached to the Hospital Church, and for the transference,\nin that year, of the day appointed for their acquisition. Both these\nmatters were carried out in Rome by means of Catherine\u2019s second nephew,\nCardinal Giovanni Fiesco. This, it is true, is evidence that only\ncovers the last six months of her life.\n\nBut as to Masses and Prayers for her own soul after death, we have (1)\nher second Will, of May 19, 1498, where she leaves one share in the\nBank of St. George (\u00a3100) to the Observant Franciscans of the Hospital\nChurch, \u201cwho shall be bound to celebrate Masses and Divine Offices for\nthe soul of Testatrix\u201d; (2) her Codicil, of January 5, 1503, where she\nleaves (in addition) \u00a33 apiece to two Monasteries \u201cfor the celebration\nof Masses for her own soul\u201d; (3) her third Will, of May 18, 1506, which\nconfirms all this; and (4) her last Will, of March 18, 1509, where\nshe leaves \u00a33 each to three Monasteries, which are each to \u201ccelebrate\nthirty Masses for her soul,\u201d \u00a33 to a fourth Monastery for Prayers for\nher soul, and \u00a325 to the Franciscans of the Hospital Church for the\ncelebration of Masses to the same effect.[76]\n\nThe reader will at once perceive that these facts are fully compatible\nwith the attitude so emphatically ascribed to her in the _Vita_, only\nif we take these latter statements as expressive of certain intense,\nemotional moods; or of some relatively short penitential period; or of\nwhat she did and felt with regard to herself alone and for whilst she\nwas to live here below, not of what others should do for themselves at\nall times and for herself when she was gone.\n\nAnd finally, we know exactly how and why the doctrine and practice\ndescribed in those passages in the _Vita_ were accepted by the\nCongregation of Rites, as forming no obstacle to her canonization.\nPope Benedict XIV, in his great classical work on Beatification and\nCanonization, says, \u201cAfter I had ceased to hold the office of Promoter\nof the Faith,\u201d (the date will have been between 1728 and 1733,) \u201cI\nknow that a controversy arose as to the doctrine of a certain _Beata_,\nwith regard to the truth of which it was possible to have different\nopinions.\u201d And after giving this _Beata\u2019s_ doctrine and practice as\nthese are presented by Catherine\u2019s _Vita_, and citing the arguments\nused against their toleration, he proceeds: \u201cBut the Postulators\nanswered (1) that this _Beata_ had not omitted to gain Plenary\nIndulgences from any contempt for them, since her veneration for them\nwas demonstrated by most unambiguous documents\u201d (no doubt Cardinal\nFiesco\u2019s action, in her name and at her expense, in Rome in 1510, is\nmeant); \u201c(2) that it is the doctrine of very many theologians, that\nthose do not sin, who do not labour to gain Indulgences because they\ndesire to make satisfaction in their own persons in this world or\nto suffer in the next; (3) that we should not confound safety with\nperfection: it appears indeed to be safer to atone for one\u2019s fault both\nby one\u2019s own good works _and_ by Indulgences; but not more perfect,\nsupposing that a man abstains from Indulgences because his love of\nGod and his detestation of having offended Him are so great that he\ndesires to make satisfaction to Him, by bearing the whole of the\nmerited punishment; and (4) that examples are not wanting of perfect\nsouls, that have, for a while, desired to bear, even for the sins of\nothers, the pains of Hell itself, although without falling away from\nthe friendship and grace of God. And hence the Congregation of Sacred\nRites considered that this doctrine did not militate against the\nholiness of the said _Beata_ or against the approbation of her virtues\nas heroic.\u201d[77]\n\n\nX. PECULIARITIES CONCERNING THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS AND INTERCESSORY\nPRAYER.\n\nAnd a third and last peculiarity is particularly instructive as showing\nhow entirely an unusual, at first sight quietistic, practice is not\nrestricted, in her case, to specifically Catholic habits.\n\n\n1. _The facts._\n\nThis peculiarity has already appeared in part in the second of the two\naccounts as to her attitude towards Indulgences. \u201cShe abstained from\nrecommending herself to the intercession of others.\u201d And this is borne\nout, but (as we shall find) with certain unforeseeable restrictions, by\nthe rest of the _Vita_. As regards even the Saints, one only invocation\nof any one of them is on record,--that of St. Benedict in 1474, already\ngiven.\n\nAnd if she did not ask others for prayers for herself in her own\nlifetime, her own prayers for others were evidently rare, were\napparently always concerned with their spiritual welfare, and were\ngenerally produced only under some special interior impulsion. Hence\nwhen asked, in 1496 or later, by Vernazza, in the name of several of\nher spiritual children, to pray that God might grant them \u201csome little\ndrops of His Love,\u201d she answers that \u201cfor these I cannot ask anything\nfrom this tender Love; I can but present them in His presence.\u201d This\nis, no doubt, because she sees them to be already full of the love of\nGod. Whereas in 1495 the poor working man, Marco del Sale, is dying\nof a cancer in the face, and is in a state of wild impatience: so she\nprays most fervently for him. It is true that the _Vita_ adds that she\ndid so, \u201chaving had an interior movement to this effect. For she never\ncould turn to pray for a particular object, unless she had first felt\nherself called interiorly by her Love.\u201d Still, this did not prevent\nher, in 1497, from praying most fervently for patience for her husband,\n(who was dying from a painful complaint,) simply \u201cbecause she feared\nthat he might lose his soul,\u201d and without any other more peculiar\nincentive than this.[78]\n\n\n2. _The rich variety of her life._\n\nEvidently here again, as with the Confessions and Indulgences, her life\nand practice were indefinitely varied and spontaneous, and incomparably\nricher than the preconceptions and logic of at least some of her\nbiographers will admit, or indeed than many of her own fervent sayings,\nso vividly expressive of certain moments or sides of her career or\ncharacter, suggest or even seem to leave possible. But the underlying\nmeaning and ultimate harmonization of these apparent inconsistencies\nbetween her doctrine and her practice, we can only gradually hope to\nfind.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nCATHERINE\u2019S LIFE FROM 1473 TO 1506 AND ITS MAIN CHANGES AND GROWTH\n\n\nLet us now attempt, as far as the often scanty and obscure evidence\npermits, to give, in the following two chapters, some general account\nof the changes and growth observable in her external surroundings,\nher human intercourse and social occupation, her physical health and\npsychical mood, and above all of those inner experiences and spiritual\napprehensions of hers which dominated all the rest, during each of the\nthree main periods of her convert life. This general account will,\nI trust, suggest the main points for our later investigations, and\nwill show at once how largely artificial, though necessary, all such\ndividing into periods must be, in the case of so deeply unified and\ndiversified an inner life as Catherine\u2019s.\n\n\nI. FIRST PERIOD OF CATHERINE\u2019S CONVERT LIFE: GIULIANO\u2019S BANKRUPTCY AND\nCONVERSION; THEIR WORK AMONG THE POOR, MARCH 1473 TO MAY 1477.\n\n\n1. _Giuliano\u2019s affairs. Catherine\u2019s attitude._\n\nThe first six months of her first period (this latter we take to have\nextended from March 1473 to May 1477) were still spent in Giuliano\u2019s\nPalace of the Via Agnese and in his country mansion at Pr\u00e0.[79] But\nall was now swiftly changing, or already greatly changed, both around\nher and within. Anxiety, hope, grief, consolation--inasmuch as such\nfeelings could still for her cluster around events external to her\ndeepest spiritual life, and could make themselves at all separately\nfelt during this period of profound absorption in her new large life of\nlove and penance--must all have centred in her husband. For Giuliano\nhad by now got his affairs into such disorder as to be unable to keep\nup his great social position; and by the autumn of 1473 he had sold his\nmansion at Pr\u00e0, and had vacated and let his palace in Genoa itself.[80]\nHe was also by now a very sincere convert, in his own manner and\ndegree; and it was no doubt now that he told Catherine, although\nshe can hardly have failed to know already, of the existence of a\npoor little girl whom, with an apparently ominous indication of weak\nindulgence on the part of his widowed mother, he had called Tobia.\n\nWe shall be able to prove Catherine\u2019s grand magnanimity and true,\ncordial forgiveness--directly, no doubt only for and at a later\nperiod; but the documents will show that she knew all the decisive\ncircumstances long before, and there is no room for doubt that her\ndispositions had changed or grown as little as had her knowledge.\n\n\n2. _Life in the little house outside the Hospital._\n\nCatherine and Giuliano had now, in the autumn of 1473, moved into a\nhumble little house, in the midst of artisans, mostly dyers, and of the\npoor of various sorts, close to the Hospital of the Pammatone, even\nthen already a vast Institution. This dwelling is probably identical,\nas to the site, with the house still standing at the junction of the\nVia S. Giuseppe with the Via Balilla, and which bears on its front\na picture of Saints Catherine Adorna and Camillus of Lellis[81] at\nthe feet of the Madonna. Since the income remaining to them still\namounted, up to Giuliano\u2019s death in 1497, to the equivalent of some\n\u00a31,200 a year,[82] this self-abnegation and humble identification\nwith the lives of the toiling, nameless poor, must have been an act of\ndeliberate choice, and not one of any degree of necessity. It was never\nsuspended or revoked by either of them.\n\nThey now agreed together to a life of perpetual continence; and\nGiuliano became a Tertiary of the Order of St. Francis,[83] amongst\nthose attached to the Hospital-Church of the Santissima Annunciata in\nPortoria, itself served by Observant Franciscans. Their only little\nservant-maid, Benedetta Lombarda, was also a Franciscan Tertiary.\nBut Catherine herself now shows, in this matter of the Religious\nState, an interesting clearing-up of her own special way and form of\nsanctity. We saw how much the fervent but inexperienced girl of sixteen\nhad been moved and had longed to be an Augustinian nun; and now the\nsadly experienced wife of twenty-six, even in the midst of her first\nconvert days, and though surrounded at home, in Church, and in the\nHospital, by Religious of the popular and expansive type presented\nby the Franciscans, (a type which her own deep sympathy with, indeed\npenetration by, the teaching of the great Franciscan Mystic Jacopone\nda Todi, will show to have been closely akin to her own,) manifests no\nthought of becoming a Religious, even in the slight degree represented\nby the Third Order. And up to her death, thirty-seven years later,\nshe never wavers on this point. A highly characteristic scene and\ndeclaration illustrative of this attitude of hers will be given further\non.\n\nThe Hospital of Pammatone had been founded by Bartolommeo Bosco, one of\nthose large-hearted merchant princes of whom Genoa has had not a few,\nin 1424, in the street of that name; and only quite recently, in 1472,\nthe Friars of the adjoining Church of the Annunciata had agreed to the\nincorporation of their own infirmary for sick poor with Bosco\u2019s larger\ninstitution. Hence Catherine and Giuliano found 130 sick-beds always\noccupied by patients, and over 100 foundling girls, who were being\ntrained as silk-workers, all ready to their hands and service.[84]\nCatherine was besides gradually introduced to the poor of the district,\nby the _Donne della Misericordia_--ladies devoted to such works of\nmercy--and betook herself to her tasks with characteristic directness\nand thoroughness.[85] She must first, and once for all, completely\nmaster all squeamishness in this her lowly work. So she betook herself\nto cleansing their houses from the most disgusting filth; and she\nwould take home with her the garments of the poor, covered with dirt\nand vermin, and, having cleansed them thoroughly, would herself return\nthem to their owners. And yet nothing unclean was ever found upon\nherself. She also tended the sick in the Hospital and in their homes,\nwith the most fervent affection, speaking to them of spiritual things\nand ministering to their bodily wants, and never avoiding any form of\ndisease, however terrible.[86]\n\n\nII. CATHERINE AND TOMMASA FIESCA: THEIR DIFFERENCE OF CHARACTER AND\n_ATTRAIT_. PECULIARITY OF CATHERINE\u2019S PENITENCE AND HEALTH DURING THIS\nTIME.\n\n\n1. _Catherine\u2019s penances._\n\nAnd throughout this first period of four years, her penances were\ngreat. She wore a hair-shirt; she never touched either flesh-meat or\nfruit, whether fresh or dried; she lay at night on thorns. And by\nnature courteous and affable, she would do great violence to herself by\nconversing as little as possible with her relations when they visited\nher, and, as to anything further, paying heed neither to herself nor to\nthem; and she acted thus for the purpose of self-conquest; and if any\none was surprised at it, she took no notice.[87]\n\n\n2. _Catherine and Tommasina._\n\nBut one visitor must, even during this period, have been treated by her\nwith much of her natural spontaneity and ardent expansiveness. She was\na cousin of her own age, a Fiesca and a married woman like herself;\nlike herself, too, in the wish, just now awakened, to belong entirely\nto God, and in her ultimate complete conversion and ardent love of God.\nWe can attempt to describe her here, as throwing further light upon\nCatherine\u2019s idiosyncrasies, at this period in particular.\n\nTommasina was different from Catherine in the slow, tentative character\nof her first turning to God; and different, too, in the eventual form\nof her life; for, when later on a widow, she became first, in 1490,\nan Augustinian Canoness at Santa Maria delle Grazie; and then, in\n1497, a Dominican Nun at the Monastero Nuovo di San Domenico. This\nlatter convent she had been given to reform and became its Prioress.\nIn both houses she was known as Suor Tommasina (Fieschi).[88] She\nwas different again in that she there spent some of her time in\npainting many a religious picture, chiefly of the Piet\u00e0, and a highly\nsymbolical composition, illustrative of the moment of Consecration at\nMass.[89] She executed also in exquisitely fine needlework a piece\nwhich represented, above, God the Father surrounded by many Angels,\nand, below, Christ with other figures of Saints. Finally she occupied\nherself in writing and produced in original composition a treatise on\nthe Apocalypse, and another on Denys the Areopagite.\n\nAnd the future Suor Tommasa showed now some of that precious gift of\nhumour, denied to her otherwise greater cousin. For, no doubt with a\nbright twinkle in her eyes at the sight of Catherine\u2019s characteristic\nvehemence of onslaught, Tommasa would declare that Catherine was\npushing her and giving her no quarter; and that it would be a great\nhumiliation for herself if, after all said and done, she were to turn\nback. But any such feeling of even the possibility of such a relapse,\nwas amazing to Catherine, and she said: \u201cIf I were to turn back, I\nwould wish that my eyes might be put out, and that I should be treated\nwith every other kind of indignity.\u201d[90]\n\n\n3. _Peculiarity of Catherine\u2019s penitence._\n\nBut such intercourse as this must, during this first period, have been\nthe exception. For her dominant, closely interrelated characteristics\nwere now a continuous striving to do things contrary to her natural\nbias and an alert looking to do the will of others rather than her\nown. She moved about with her eyes bent upon the ground. Six hours a\nday were spent in prayer, and this although--perhaps just now in part\nbecause--the body greatly felt the strain: the strongly willing spirit\nhad dominated the weak flesh. Indeed, during this time she was so full\nof interior feeling and so occupied within herself, that she was unable\nto speak, except in a tone so low as to be barely audible; she seemed\ndead to all exterior things.[91]\n\nAnd these external circumstances and practices are all only the\nsetting, material, occasion and expression of this her first period\u2019s\nactively penitential spirit, when she was persistently pursued by the\ndetailed sight of her own particular inclinations, her own particular\nsins against God, and God\u2019s particular graces towards her own self.\nHer very acts of charity and of friendliness, her very prayers, get\nall restricted or prolonged, willed or suffered, as, at least in\npart, but so many occasions for a love-impelled, yet still reflective\nself-mastery and mortification. And it was no doubt during this time\nthat, when present one day at a sermon in which the conversion of the\nMagdalen was recounted, her heart seemed to whisper to her: \u201cIndeed I\nunderstand,\u201d so similar did her own conversion appear to her to that of\nthe Magdalen.[92]\n\n\n4. _Her physical health._\n\nAs to her physical health, the fire which she felt in her heart seemed\nto dry up and burn her interiorly. And so great a physical hunger would\npossess her, that she appeared insatiable; and so quickly did she\ndigest her food, that it looked as if she could have consumed iron. Yet\nshe had no inclination to other than ordinary food, and did not fail to\nkeep all the ordinary fasts and abstinences.[93]\n\n\nIII. CHANGE IN THE TEMPER OF CATHERINE\u2019S PENITENCE, FROM MAY 1474\nONWARDS.\n\nTime wears on, and Catherine is still in the same house, and with the\nsame health, and with the same companions and occupations, penances\nand prayers. But the interior dispositions and emotional promptings,\nand the mental apprehension of them all, are gradually changing and\nare growing wider and freer and less particularized. \u201cShe now began\nto experience a more affective way, so that she was often as though\nbeside herself; and\u201d though still \u201cmoved by a great interior thirst\nafter self-hatred, and by a penetrating contrition, she would often lie\nprostrate on the ground\u201d; she would do so, \u201chardly knowing what she was\ndoing, yet somehow gaining thus some relief for her heart,\u201d overflowing\nas it was with a boundless, profound, but now more and more general,\nsorrow and tender love.[94] The note of a spontaneous, expansive,\ninstinctive love is now growing in predominance in her prayer and human\nintercourse; and her very penances, though still performed, are now\noften practised from a general unreflective instinct of love-impelled\nself-hatred, without any conscious application to any particular\ninclinations or sins.\n\nFor as to her intercourse with others, she will probably already now\nhave practised many an act of that beautiful and characteristic,\nimpulsive, expansive tenderness, of which we shall have a good many\nexamples from the end of her second period. And as to the character\nof her mortifications, we hear the following: \u201cWhilst engaged on such\ngreat and numerous mortifications of all her senses, she was sometimes\nasked, \u2018Why are you doing this (particular) thing?\u2019 And she would\nanswer, \u2018I do not know, except that I feel myself interiorly drawn\nto do so, without any opposition from within. And I think that this\nis the will of God; but it is not His will, that I should propose to\nmyself any (particular) object in so doing.\u2019\u201d[95] I take it that, with\nthis growing intermittence in the sight of her particular sins, her\nConfessions, though still practised, will have become less frequent,\nand her Holy Communions more so.\n\n\nIV. CATHERINE\u2019S GREAT FASTS.\n\n\n1. _The assertions of the \u201cVita.\u201d_\n\nAnd a little later on, again on the Feast of the Annunciation (March\n25, 1476),[96] another change took place, a change primarily concerned\nwith her health, but one which brought out also the deep spirituality\nof her religion. On this day she experienced one of those interior\nlocutions, which are so well authenticated in the lives of so many\ninterior souls; and \u201cher Love said that He wanted her to keep the Forty\nDays, in His company in the Desert. And then she began to be unable\nto eat till Easter; on the three Easter Days she was able to eat; and\nafter these she again did not eat, till she had fulfilled as many days\nas are to be found in Lent.\u201d[97] Similarly with regard to Advent. \u201cUp\nto Martinmas\u201d (November 12) \u201cshe would eat like all the world; and then\nher fast would begin, and would continue up to Christmas-Day.\u201d Her\nsubsequent Lenten fasts are described as beginning with Quinquagesima\nMonday and ending on Easter Sunday morning.[98]\n\n\n2. _Substantial accuracy of these accounts. Three facts to be\nremembered._\n\nI take it that there can be no reasonable doubt as to the substantial\naccuracy of this account. But the following three facts must be borne\nin mind as regards the physical aspect of the matter.\n\nThe fast, for one thing, is not an absolute one. The account itself\ndeclares that she now and then drank a tumblerful of water, vinegar,\nand pounded rock-salt.[99] And to this must be added both the daily\nreception of wine--I suppose as much as a wineglassful--which was,\naccording to a Genoese custom of that time, received by her, as a kind\nof ablution, immediately after her Communion;[100] and such slight\namount of solid food as, when in company, she would force herself to\ntake and would sometimes, though rarely, manage to retain.[101]\n\nAgain, the fast varies partly, in different years, in the date of its\ninception; and partly it does not synchronize with the beginning of\nthe ecclesiastical fast. In the first year her Lenten fast begins on\nLady-Day, in the following years on Quinquagesima Sunday; her Advent\nfast begins throughout on Martinmas, November 12.\n\nAnd finally, the number of such fasts cannot be more than twenty-three\nLents and twenty-two Advents. The MS. of 1547 has preserved the\nright tradition of a difference in the numbers of the Lenten and\nAdvent fasts, but has raised the number of the former to a round,\nsymmetrical one. It gives twenty-five Lents and twenty-two Advents.\nThe printed _Vita_ of 1551 levels the numbers respectively down and\nup to twenty-three Lents and as many Advents.[102] Some further minor\nphysical points will be considered in a later chapter.\n\n\n3. _Effect of these Fasts, and her attitude towards them._\n\nBut two other matters are here of direct spiritual interest: the\neffect of these fasts on her spiritual efficiency, and her own\ntwo-fold attitude towards them. For we are told, again I think quite\nauthentically, that during these fasts she was more active in good\nworks, and felt more bright and strong in health, than usual;[103]\nanswering thus to one of the tests put forward by Pope Benedict XIV,\nfor discriminating supernatural, spiritually valuable fasts from\nsimply natural ones. But with him we can find our surest tests in\nwhat is altogether beyond the range of the physical and psychical:\nin her own moral estimate of all these matters. For one thing, there\nappears here again that noble shrinking from any singularity of this\nkind within herself, and from all notice on the part of others. \u201cThis\ninability to eat gave her many a scruple at first, ignorant as she\nwas as to its cause, and ever suspecting some delusion; and she would\nforce herself to eat, considering that nature required it. And though\nthis invariably produced vomiting, yet she would make the attempt\nagain and again.\u201d \u201cShe would go to table with the others, and would\nforce herself to eat and drink a little, so as to escape notice and\nesteem as much as possible.\u201d[104] And again here, as in all matters\nvisible and tangible, she shows an impressive loneliness in the midst\nof her more carnal-minded disciples. \u201cShe would say within herself,\nin astonishment\u201d at their stopping to wonder at things so much on the\nsurface: \u201cIf you but knew another thing, which I feel within myself!\u201d\nAnd she would declare: \u201cIf we would rightly estimate the operations\nof God, we should wonder more at interior than at exterior things.\nThis incapacity to eat is indeed an operation of God, but one in\nwhich my will has no part; hence I cannot glory in it. Nor is there\ncause for our wondering at it, since for God this is as though a mere\nnothing.\u201d[105]\n\n\n4. _The fasts form no part of her penitence._\n\nThese fasts, although beginning within her first period are not\ncharacteristic of it; and her biographers rightly put them into a\nchapter distinct from her penances, properly speaking. These penances\nwill have continued alongside of, and in between, these fasts for about\na year after the beginning of the latter. And then at last, at the\nend of this first period of four years, \u201call thought of such (active)\nmortifications was, in an instant, taken from her mind in such guise\nthat, even had she wished to carry out such mortifications, she would\nhave been unable.\u201d For \u201cthe sight of her sins was now taken from her\nmind, so that she henceforth did not catch a glimpse of them,--as\nthough they had all been cast into the depths of the sea.\u201d[106]\n\n\nV. SECOND, CENTRAL PERIOD OF CATHERINE\u2019S CONVERT LIFE, 1477-1499: ITS\nSPECIAL SPIRITUAL FEATURES.\n\nWe now come to the second, longest, and central period of her life,\n1477-1499. But though at first sight Chapters VI to XLII, and XLV\nof the _Vita_ would seem exclusively to treat of these twenty-two\nyears, examination proves this to be far from the case. If little or\nnothing from the first period is to be found there, very much from the\nthird is embedded in those pages. And this scantiness of information\nsprings from the simple fact that, during these twenty-two years,\nher inner life is led by herself alone, without any direct human aid\nof companionship; and her sufficient health, and the correspondingly\nlarge amount of external activity among the sick and poor, leave her\nbut little or no time for those conferences and discourses amongst\nfriends, of which her last period is full. This dearth of evidence is\nall the more to be regretted, since these central years represent the\nculmination of her balance and many-sided power.\n\n\n1. _Interior change._\n\nFor the first two years of this time she and Giuliano continued to\nlive in their small house of the Portoria quarter, very busy, both of\nthem, amongst the sick and poor, as well in the houses round about as\nin the Hospital. Indeed, externally, little or no change can have been\napparent. It was the interior change, the moving away from the actively\nand directly penitential state into one of expansive love and joy,\nwhich alone, as yet, marked a new period.\n\n\n2. _The Three Rules of Love. The Divine method of the soul\u2019s\npurification._\n\nSome time during these new beginnings it must have been that \u201cher Love\nonce said within her mind: \u2018Observe, little daughter, these three\nrules. Never say \u201cI will,\u201d or \u201cI will not.\u201d Never say \u201cmine,\u201d but ever\nsay \u201cour.\u201d Never excuse thyself, but be ever ready to accuse thyself.\u2019\u201d\nAnd another time He said: \u201cWhen thou sayest the \u2018Our Father,\u2019 take for\nthy foundation \u2018Thy Will be done.\u2019 In the Hail Mary, take \u2018Jesus.\u2019 In\nHoly Scripture take \u2018Love,\u2019 with which thou wilt ever go straightly,\nexactly, lightly, attentively, swiftly, enlightenedly, without error,\nwithout guide, and without the means of other creatures, since Love\nsuffices unto itself to do all things without fear or weariness, so\nthat martyrdom itself appears unto it a joy.\u201d[107]\n\nBut this her love, just because it is so real and from God, appears\nindeed to fill her at any given moment, yet it grows and shows\nher, at each fresh stage, both its own incompleteness and her own\nimperfection, in her and its former stages. \u201cAt any one moment the love\nof that moment seemed to me to have attained to its greatest possible\nperfection. But then, in the course of time, my spiritual sight having\nbecome clearer, I saw that it had had many imperfections.\u201d \u201cDay by day\nI perceive that motes have been removed, which this Pure Love casts\nout and eliminates. This work is done by God, and man is not aware of\nit at the time, and cannot then see these imperfections; indeed God\ncontinuously allows man to see his (momentary) operation as though it\nwere without imperfection, whilst all the time He, before Whom the\nheavens are not pure, is not ceasing from removing imperfections from\nhis soul.\u201d[108]\n\nAs ever throughout her life so now also, consolations are not the aim\nand end, but only the actual effects of her devotedness, and the ever\nfresh incentives to increased disinterestedness and self-surrender.\nAnd, with regard to these consolations, she again strove to escape all\nnotice. \u201cShe would at times have her mind so full of divine love, as to\nbe all but incapable of speaking; and would be in so great a transport\nof feeling as to be obliged to hide herself so as not to be seen.\nShe would lose the use of her senses and remain like one dead; and,\nto escape the occurrence of such things, she would force herself to\nremain in company as much as possible. And she would say to her Lord:\n\u2018I do not want that which proceedeth from Thee, but I want Thee alone,\nO tender Love.\u2019 But just because her love was so sincere and she fled\nfrom consolations, her Lord gave her of them all the more.\u201d[109]\n\n\n3. _Her Ecstasies._\n\nIf on one of the many occasions when she had hidden herself away in\nsome secret spot, she was ever discovered by any one, they would find\nher walking up and down, and seeming as though she would wish to do\nso without end; or they would come upon her with her face in her\nhands, prostrate on the ground, entranced, and with feelings beyond\ndescription or conception. \u201cThese ecstasies would almost always last\nthree or four hours; and if, on coming to herself, she spoke of the\nwonders she had seen, there was no one to understand her, and so she\nkept silence.\u201d \u201cAnd if called during one of these trances, she would\nnot hear, even though they did so loudly.\u201d[110]\n\nThis inattention would, however, occur only in case the call was simply\none of curiosity. For on other occasions \u201cshe would remain as though\ndead for six hours; but on being called to the doing of any duty,\nhowever trifling it might seem, she would instantly arise and respond\nand go about the doing of this her obligation. And she would thus leave\nall, without any kind of trouble, according to her wont of flying from\nself-will as though it were the devil. And coming thus forth from her\nhiding-place she would have her face flushed, so as to look like a\ncherub, and to seem to have upon her lips the \u2018who then shall separate\nme from the love of Christ?\u2019 of the glorious Apostle.\u201d And \u201con thus\narising from those trances, she seemed to feel stronger both in body\nand in soul,\u201d[111] as in the case of the fasting.\n\nEven in the midst of her work absorptions would occur like unto these\nin all but their length of duration: \u201cAt times her hands would sink,\nunable to go on, and weeping she would say, \u2018O my Love, I can no more\u2019;\nand would thus sit for a while with her senses alienated, as though\nshe had been dead. And this would occur oftener at one time than at\nanother, according to the varying fulness of experience present in that\npurified mind.\u201d[112]\n\n\n4. _Pure Love, independent of any particular state or form of life._\n\nAnd she was full of the conviction, and cared much for the formal\nacknowledgment on the part of others, that the possession and the\nincrease of the most perfect love is independent of any particular\nstate or form of life, and is directly dependent upon two things\nonly, the grace of God and the generosity of the human will. \u201cOne\nday a Friar and Preacher,[113] perhaps to test her or because of some\nmistaken notion, told her that he himself was better fitted for loving\nthan she, because he having entered Religion and renounced all things\nboth within and without, and she being married to the world as he was\nto Religion, he found himself more free to love God, and more acted\nupon by Him. And the Friar went on, and alleged many other reasons.\nBut when had spoken much and long, an ardent flame of pure love seized\nupon Catherine, and she sprang to her feet with such fervour as to\nappear beside herself, and she said: \u2018If I thought that your habit had\nthe power of gaining me one single additional spark of love, I should\nwithout fail take it from you by force, if I were not allowed to have\nit otherwise. That you should merit more than myself, is a matter that\nI concede and do not seek, I leave it in your hands; but that I cannot\nlove Him as much as you, is a thing that you will never by any means\nbe able to make me understand.\u2019 And she said this with such force\nand fervour, that all her hair came undone, and, falling down, was\nscattered upon her shoulders. And yet all the while this her vehement\nbearing was full of grace and dignity.--And when back at home, and\nalone with her Lord, she exclaimed: \u2018O Love, who shall impede me from\nloving Thee? Though I were, not only in the world as I am, but in a\ncamp of soldiers, I could not be impeded from loving Thee.\u2019\u201d[114]\n\nThere is probably no scene recorded for us, so completely\ncharacteristic of Catherine at her deepest: the breadth and the\nfulness, the self-oblivion and the dignity, the claimlessness and the\nspiritual power--all are there.\n\n\nVI. CATHERINE AND GIULIANO MOVE INTO THE HOSPITAL IN 1479, NEVER AGAIN\nTO QUIT IT. SHE IS MATRON FROM 1490 TO 1495.\n\nThe special character, both in form and content, of Catherine\u2019s\nspiritual life and doctrine will occupy us in Chapter VI. Here we\nhave as yet specially to busy ourselves with its external and social\noccasions and effects. And these effects were both large and constant;\nindeed they were on the increase up to 1497, two years before this\nsecond period comes to a close.\n\n\n1. _Catherine and Giuliano occupy two small rooms in the Hospital._\n\nFor in 1479 the couple shift their quarters from outside the Hospital\nto within that great building, and there, for eleven years, they\ntogether occupy two little rooms, living without pay and at their own\nexpense, but entirely devoted to the care of the poor sick and dying\nand of the orphans collected there.[115] Indeed Catherine never again\nlived outside the walls of the Hospital during the thirty-one years\nthat still remained to her on earth.\n\n\n2. _Catherine\u2019s double life here, 1479-1490._\n\nAnd here in these rooms, and for eleven years, she worked among\nthe sick, as but one of their many nurses. The spacious, high,\nwhite-washed, stone-flagged wards, with the great tall windows shedding\nfloods of glaring light or cheering sunshine, according to the season\nwithout and to the mood of the poor sick within, stand still as\nthey stood in Catherine\u2019s day. True, new wards have been added; the\nlay female Nurses of her time have been in part replaced by Nursing\nSisters, and the Observant Friars by Capuchins; much, very much has\nbeen discovered since, both as to man\u2019s body and as to the facts and\nfunctions of his mind; all things, and man\u2019s interpretation of all\nthings, seem as though irretrievably changed. And yet the mystery of\ndevoted love, its necessity, difficulty, and actual operative presence,\nas an occasional pang and aspiration in us all, as a visible, dominant\ninfluence in some of us, remain with and in us still unchanged, with\nall the freshness of an elemental force, indestructible, inexhaustible.\nThis devoted work of Catherine, this her serving of the sick \u201cwith\nthe most fervent affection, and immense solicitude,\u201d[116] had also\nthe remarkable circumstance about it that, \u201cnotwithstanding all\nthis her attentive,\u201d outward-looking \u201ccare, she never was without\nthe consciousness of her tender Love; nor again did she, because\nof this consciousness, fail in any practical matter concerning the\nHospital.\u201d[117]\n\n\n3. _Matron of the Hospital, 1490-1496._\n\nAnd this double life continued thus, and grew in depth and breadth. And\nat the end of fourteen years of such humble service, she was, in 1490,\nappointed Matron (_Rettora_) of the whole Institution, apparently the\nsame year as that in which her now widowed cousin Tommasina entered the\nAugustinian Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie. During the six years\nin which she held this office, she had much administrative business and\nresponsibility weighing upon her. Large sums of money passed through\nher hands, and she always managed to spend and to account for them with\nthe greatest care and success. Indeed \u201cher accounts were never found\nwrong by a single _danaro_ (farthing).\u201d[118]\n\n\nVII. CATHERINE AND THE PLAGUE. THE OUTBREAK OF 1493.\n\nIt must have been after she had thus shown a rare devotedness\nand talent in an ordinary Nurse\u2019s work, and had next, as Matron,\nmanifested, for some years, a remarkable administrative ability, that,\nin 1493, she rose, in both capacities, to the very height of heroism\nand efficiency.\n\n\n1. _Catherine\u2019s general activity._\n\nEarly in January of that year, quite exceptionally cold weather visited\nthe city: the harbour was frozen over; and early in the spring the\nPlague broke out so fiercely, and raged so long--till the end of\nAugust--that of those who remained in the stricken city, four-fifths\nsuccumbed to the terrible disease. Most of the rich and noble, all\nthose that did not occupy any official post, fled from the town. But\nCatherine not only remained at her post, but she it was no doubt\nwho organized, or helped to organize, the out-of-door ambulance and\nsemi-open-air wards which we know to have been instituted at this\njuncture on the largest scale. The great open space immediately at the\nback of and above the Hospital, where now still stretch the public\ngardens of the Acquasola, she managed to cover with rows of sailcloth\ntents, and appointed special Doctors (mostly Lombards), Nurses, and\nPriests and Franciscan Tertiaries, for the physical and spiritual care\nof their occupants. Throughout the weeks and months of the visitation\nshe was daily in their midst, superintending, ordering, stimulating,\nsteadying, consoling, strengthening this vast crowd of panic-stricken\npoor and severely strained workers.\n\n\n2. _The pestiferous woman._\n\nAnd \u201con one occasion, she found\u201d here, \u201ca very devout woman, a Tertiary\nof St. Francis, dying of\u201d this \u201cpestilential fever. The woman lay there\nin her agony, speechless for eight days. And Catherine constantly\nvisited her, and would say to her, \u2018Call Jesus.\u2019 Unable to articulate,\nthe woman would move her lips; and it was conjectured that she was\ncalling Him as well as she could. And Catherine, when she saw the\nwoman\u2019s mouth thus filled, as it were, with Jesus, could not restrain\nherself from kissing it with great and tender affection. And in this\nway she herself took this pestilential fever, and very nearly died of\nit. But, as soon as ever she had recovered, she was back again at her\nwork, with the same great attention and diligence.\u201d[119]\n\nHow much there is in this little scene! Beautiful, utterly\nself-oblivious impulsiveness; a sleepless sense of the omnipresence\nof Christ as Love, and of this Love filling all things that aspire\nand thirst after it, as spontaneously as the liberal air and the\noverflowing mother\u2019s breast fill and feed even the but slightly\naspiring or the painfully labouring lungs and the eager, helpless\ninfant mouth; swift, tender, warm, whole-hearted affection for this\noutwardly poor and disfigured, but inwardly rich and beautiful\nfellow-creature and twin-vessel of election; an underlying virile\nelasticity of perseverance and strenuous, cheerful, methodical\nlaboriousness; all these things are clearly there.\n\nOnly when everything had again returned to its normal condition did\nshe once more restrict herself to the administrative work of the\nHospital.[120]\n\n\nVIII. CATHERINE AND ETTORE VERNAZZA, 1493-1495.\n\nIt must have been during this epidemic of 1493 that Catherine first got\nto know, or at least first to work with, a man hardly less remarkable\nthan herself.\n\n\n1. _Ettore\u2019s family, marriage, and philanthropic work._\n\nThe Genoese notary Ettore Vernazza, Catherine\u2019s junior by some\ntwenty-three years, (as in the cases of his still greater\ncontemporaries and compatriots, Columbus, Pope Julius II, and Andrea\nDoria, the year of his birth remains uncertain, but is probably 1470,)\nwas a scion of the ancient house of Vernaccia, which derived its name\nfrom a wine-producing village on the Eastern Riviera. A Riccobono\nVernaccia had been Chancellor of Genoa, as far back as 1345. Ettore,\nthe first of the family to write his name Vernazza, was the son of\nthe Notary Pietro Vernaccia and of Battistina Spinola, his wife. A\nsister of his, Marietta, married into the Fieschi family.[121] And if\nCatherine really did go among the pestiferous sick, she can hardly\nhave failed to meet Ettore, now twenty-three years old. For his eldest\ndaughter, the Augustinian Canoness, the Venerable Battista Vernazza,\na most careful writer and one full of a life-long vivid remembrance\nof her father, in an account of Ettore, written by her in Genoa in\n1581 (she was born in 1497, four years after the event she describes),\ntells of \u201ca great compassion which he had conceived when still very\nyoung, at the time that the pestilence raged in Genoa, and when he used\nto go around to aid the poor, and when he found that, by means of a\npreparation of cassia, he could bring them back from (certain) death to\nlife.\u201d[122]\n\n\n2. _Ettore\u2019s character; Catherine\u2019s chief biographer._\n\nEttore was, and he kept and made himself, and rare graces fashioned\nhim ever increasingly into, a man of fine and keen, deep and\nworld-embracing mind and heart, of an overflowing, ceaseless activity,\nand of a will of steel. To him, the earliest and perhaps up to the\nend the most intimate, certainly the most perceptive, of Catherine\u2019s\ndisciples and chroniclers, we owe the transmission of many of the\nreminiscences of her conversion and early strivings (no doubt\nprimarily derived from her own self), and of probably more than half\nof such authentic sayings and discourses of hers, as were recorded\ncontemporaneously with their utterance. Indeed all that remains to us\nof written testimony, contemporaneous in this strict sense of the word,\nand that is other than legal documents, can, up to 1499, be safely\nattributed to him. And all such constituents of the now sadly mixed up,\nand most varyingly valuable, materials and successive layers of the\n_Vita ed Opere_ as can with probability be assigned to his composition,\nare characterized by a remarkable clearness and consistency, restraint\nand refinement, elasticity and freshness of spiritual apprehension\nand sympathy. Thus Ettore\u2019s influence back upon the formation of\nCatherine\u2019s literary image and of our entire, especially of our\nauthentic, conception of her, was predominant, and her influence\nupon his whole life was decisive; and hence his life can be rightly\ntaken as an indefinite extension and new application and necessary\nsupplementation of her own life and doctrine. I shall then, for both\nthese reasons, try and work up what we can recover concerning the\nsuccessive stages of his intercourse with Catherine and of the growth\nof his own life up to her death, into the corresponding vicissitudes of\nher remaining years.\n\nIt must have been two years later (1495) that Vernazza became her\ndisciple; and probably some two or three years still further on, that\nEttore began to keep (no doubt at first only quite occasional) records\nof her Sayings and Doings.[123]\n\n\nIX. CATHERINE\u2019S HEALTH BREAKS DOWN, 1496; OTHER EVENTS OF THE SAME YEAR.\n\nThe year 1496 is marked by various events external and internal.\n\n\n1. _Three external changes._\n\nIn June, or some time before, Vernazza marries the beautiful\nBartolommea Ricci, of the distinguished family of that name. On\nthe 17th of June Giuliano sells his Palace in the Via St. Agnese.\nAnd, probably at Midsummer, perhaps at Michaelmas, Catherine, forced\nto do so by increasing physical infirmities, resigns her office of\nMatron.[124]\n\n\n2. _End of the extraordinary Fasts._\n\nCatherine \u201cwas now no more able to have a care of the government of\nthe Hospital or of her own little house\u201d (within its precincts) \u201cowing\nto her great bodily weakness. She would now find it necessary, after\nCommunion, to take some food to restore her bodily strength, and this\neven if it was a fast day.\u201d We thus get the beginning of a third\nperiod with regard to such fasting powers. In the first, she had done\nas all the world, but had been able to keep all the Church fasts and\nabstinences. In the second, she had, during Lent and Advent, eaten\nlittle or nothing, and had, during the remainder of the time, lived as\nshe had done before. And now, for the rest of her life, her eating and\nfasting are entirely fitful and intermittent, and she has to abandon\nall (at least systematic) attempts to keep even the ordinary Church\nfasts and abstinences.\n\nIf we are determined to insist on the accuracy of the \u201ctwenty-three\nLents and twenty-two Advents\u201d of her extraordinary fasts affirmed\nalready by MS. \u201cA,\u201d we shall have to understand this present inability\nto fast as applying, till after Lent 1496, only to the times outside\nof Lent and Advent, since this fasting period cannot be made to begin\nearlier than Lent 1476. I take it that in this, as certainly in most\nother cases, there was, in reality, a much more gradual transition than\nthe _Vita_ accounts would lead one to expect.\n\n\n3. _She continues within the Hospital precincts. Her two maid-servants._\n\nCatherine had ceased to be Matron, but she did not leave the ample\nprecincts of the Hospital; indeed she continued in the separate little\nhouse, which she had, probably since 1490, been occupying with\nGiuliano. But it will be better to describe her abode a little later\non, when we can be quite sure as to its identity.\n\nShe had now, as I think had been the case since soon after she had\nleft her Palace, two maids in her service: the widow and Franciscan\nTertiary, Benedetta Lombarda, who appears, already then as an old and\nvalued servant, in Giuliano\u2019s will of October 1494, and who never left\nCatherine till her death; and a younger, unmarried maid, either Mariola\nBastarda or a certain Antonietta. Argentina del Sale, too, will have\noften, perhaps continually, been about Catherine, aiding her in various\nways; but she will not as yet have been living under the same roof with\nher. As we shall find, this little perfervid and untrained intelligence\nbecame the instrument, or at least the occasion, of the introduction of\nthe largest legendary incident into the ultimate _Vita_ of her mistress.\n\n\nX. EVENTS OF 1497.\n\nThe next year, 1497, is marked by two events, of all but contradictory\nimport and effect.\n\n\n1. _Birth of Tommasina (Battista) Vernazza._\n\nOn April 15 Vernazza\u2019s first child, a daughter, is born; and Catherine\nis her God-mother and holds her at the Font. Dottore Tommaso Moro, a\nlearned lawyer friend of Ettore, is the God-father, and the child is\ngiven his name and is called Tommasina. What would Catherine have felt\nor said had she foreseen the vicissitudes--they will occupy us in due\ncourse--through which this, her fellow God-parent, was to pass, during\nthe storms of that Religious Revolution which were to break out so soon\nafter her death? She would, we may be sure, have at all events been\nglad at the action and influence of her God-daughter towards and upon\nher God-father, in those sad and most difficult times.\n\n\n2. _Giuliano\u2019s death._\n\nAnd Giuliano was gravely ill ever since the beginning of the year,\nif not before; and some time in August or September he died.[125] He\nhad been suffering long from a chronic and most painful illness; and\ntowards the end, \u201che became very impatient; and Catherine, fearful\nlest he should lose his soul, withdrew into another chamber, and there\ncried aloud for his salvation unto her tender Love, ever repeating\nwith tears and sighs these words alone: \u2018O Love, I demand this soul of\nThee; I beg Thee, give it me, for indeed Thou canst do so.\u2019 And having\npersevered thus for about half-an-hour with many a plaint, she was\ngiven at last an interior assurance of having been heard. And returning\nto her husband, she found him all changed and peaceful in his ways,\nand giving clear indications, both by words and signs, that he was\nfully resigned to the will of God.\u201d And \u201csome time after his death she\nsaid to a spiritual son of hers,\u201d no doubt Vernazza: \u201c\u2018My son, Messer\nGiuliano has gone; and you know well that he was of a somewhat wayward\nnature, whence I suffered much mental pain. But my tender Love, before\nthat he passed from this Life, certified me of his salvation.\u2019 And\nCatherine, having spoken these words, showed signs of regret at having\nuttered them; and he was discreet and did not answer this remark of\nhers, but turned the conversation to other topics.\u201d[126] At all events\nthis conversation is thoroughly authentic, and Catherine\u2019s reserve,\nand her regret at having somewhat broken through her usual restraint,\nare profoundly characteristic: the contributors to and redactors of\nher Life have been increasingly blind, or even opposed, to all such\nbeautifully spontaneous and human little shynesses and regrets for\nmomentary indiscretions.\n\n\n3. _Giuliano\u2019s Will._\n\nGiuliano had, by his Will of the 20th October 1494, ordered his body\nto be buried in the Hospital Church; and this was now carried out by\nCatherine. A vault of some dimensions must have been made or bought,\nsince later both she herself and Argentina del Sale declared their wish\nto be buried in Giuliano\u2019s \u201cmonument.\u201d Perhaps the wish of the latter\nwas carried out.\n\nBut Giuliano had left two far more important and difficult matters to\nthe management of Catherine,--matters which, indeed, were respectively\nfull of pain and of anxiety for her,--Thobia, and his share in the\nIsland of Scios. As to Thobia, he had left \u00a3500 to the Protectors of\nthe Hospital, among which were reckoned \u00a3200 which he had already paid\nthem through his late mother, Thobia Adorna, for the keep of this\ndaughter of his, and had warmly recommended her to their kind care; and\nhad arranged, in case they refused this responsibility, that Thobia\n(who must by now have been quite twenty-six years of age) should be\nregularly paid the interest on this money. He also left to Catherine,\nfor payment to \u201ca certain person in Religion,\u201d--possibly a member of\na Third Order, and whose identity is carefully concealed, but who\ncannot fail to be Thobia\u2019s mother--\u201c\u00a3150, in repayment of the same sum,\nborrowed from her by himself and the said Catherine,\u201d--money which this\npoor mother will have spent on the child\u2019s keep, up to the time when\nGiuliano told his story to Catherine.\n\nAs to his two _carati_ (shares) in the lands of the Island of Scios,\nfarmed by the Genoese Merchant Company \u201cMaona,\u201d he desires that,\nif sold, his cousins Agostino and Giovanni Adorno shall be able to\nbuy these _carati_ for a lower price than would be required of any\nother purchaser. There are also elaborate conditions and alternatives\nattached to a legacy of \u00a32,000 to his unmarried nephew Giovanni\nAdorno, with a view to his marrying and having legitimate children: an\nanxiety which of itself would show how sincere had been Giuliano\u2019s own\nconversion, and which was evidently not far-fetched, since in this very\nWill he leaves \u00a3125 to a natural sister of his, Catherine, daughter of\nhis father Jacobo, for the boarding (no doubt during the latter years\nof her life) of his late mother, Thobia Adorna.\n\nGiuliano had also left Catherine herself \u00a31,000,--a return of her\nmarriage dowry, and \u00a3100 from himself; and in addition \u201call garments,\ntrinkets, gold, silver, cash, furniture, and articles of vertu, which\nmight be found either in his dwelling-place or elsewhere.\u201d And he\ndoes so because he \u201cknows and recognizes that the said Catherine, his\nbeloved wife and heiress, has ever behaved herself well and laudably\ntowards himself,\u201d and \u201cwants to provide the means for her continuing\nto lead, after his death, her quiet, peaceful, and spiritual mode of\nlife.\u201d And he adds the condition that, \u201cif the said Catherine were\nto proceed to a second marriage (a thing which he does not think she\nwill ever do), then he deprives her of all the legacies and rights and\nduties of heirship mentioned in this Will, and confers them upon the\nhonourable Office of the Misericordia of Genoa,\u201d--a society with and\nfor which, as we have seen, Catherine had worked so much and so well.\n\nAltogether Giuliano had left by this Will about \u00a36,000 for Catherine\nto allot and appropriate; and quite \u00a34,000 of this sum-total demanded\ncareful and even anxious consideration, whilst \u00a3650 of it could not but\nprovoke painful memories and make a call upon all her generosity. And\nby his Codicil of January 1497, he had given her still greater latitude\nof action, by declaring that, as regarded his legacy to the Hospital,\nCatherine should have full power and leave to abrogate or to modify\nit, according to her will and pleasure.[127] Thus these documents\nconstitute an impressive proof of Giuliano\u2019s full trust in the wisdom,\nbalance of mind and magnanimity of his wife, now herself already so\nbroken in health.\n\n\n4. _Catherine\u2019s execution of Giuliano\u2019s Will._\n\nIt is nine months after Giuliano\u2019s death, on May 19, 1498, that we can\nwatch and see how Catherine has been attempting to execute her trust,\nand how her nature has responded to these various difficult calls\nupon it, and to the claims of her own family. She first of all, then,\norders her body to be buried in the same grave with her husband, in the\nHospital Church; and that only the Friars and Clergy of the Hospital\nshall be present at the funeral; and leaves \u00a310 for her obsequies and\n\u00a350 for Masses for herself. She next leaves to the Priest Blasio Cicero\nfour shares of the Bank of St. George (about \u00a3200), of which he is to\npay \u00a3150 to a certain female Religious, in satisfaction for a certain\ndebt. And she abrogates Giuliano\u2019s legacy to the Hospital, and, in its\nplace, herself leaves it four shares of St. George\u2019s (at the time about\n\u00a3200, but always tending to increase in value), in liquidation of the\n\u00a3300 that remained unpaid from among the \u00a3500 of that legacy. She next\nleaves to Benedetta Lombarda one share of Saint George\u2019s, in addition\nto the similar share left her by Giuliano; and to \u201cAntonietta, dwelling\nwith Testatrix, \u00a325, in case she shall live with her up to her death.\u201d\nAs to the two _carati_, she leaves them to Giovanni Adorno, in lieu\nof the money bequeathed to him by Giuliano. As to her own relations,\nshe leaves two shares of St. George\u2019s apiece to her two nieces Maria\nand Battista, the daughters of her eldest brother Jacobo, for their\nmarriage portions; and, if they all die before marriage, then all this\nmoney is to go to their father. She leaves \u00a310 to her Augustinian\nCanoness sister Limbania; and institutes her three brothers Jacobo,\nGiovanni and Lorenzo, and their heirs, her residuary legatees.\n\nHere four things are noticeable. Catherine has herself undertaken the\nexpenses of Thobia\u2019s keep; the apparent lessening on her part of the\nsum originally apportioned for the purpose by Giuliano is doubtless\nonly apparent, and must proceed from the same cause which has produced\na similar apparent diminution in the amount of Giuliano\u2019s legacy to\nhis nephew from \u00a32,000 to \u00a31,500. In the next place, this is the only\none out of the couple\u2019s four Wills, in which the second maid is not\nMariola Bastarda, but a certain Antonietta. Catherine feels uncertain\nas to whether Antonietta will persevere in her service to the end;\nand we shall find that she has again disappeared in Catherine\u2019s next\nWill of 1506, and that Mariola has again taken up her old place. We\nshall find that a story, of which the authenticity and significance\nare most difficult to fix, attaches without doubt to one or the other\nof these maids. In the third place, Catherine does not sell the two\n_carati_, but leaves them, in lieu of the money bequeathed to him, to\nGiovanni Adorno; no doubt from the feeling that thus, at her death,\nthis her share in the government and exploitation of the Greek island\nwould be in the hands of a man in the prime of life, who could help to\ncheck malpractices. And lastly, she shows a generous forgiveness of\nGiuliano, a delicate magnanimity towards Thobia and Thobia\u2019s mother,\nand a thoughtful affection for all her own near and grown-up relations,\nby ordering her body to be buried in the same grave with Giuliano;\nby herself undertaking the charges of Thobia\u2019s keep, and appointing a\npriest by name for handing over Giuliano\u2019s legacy to the still unnamed\nmother of Thobia; and by remembering her sister, although she had long\nbeen provided for in her Convent, her three brothers, who were no doubt\nindefinitely richer than herself, and especially her two marriageable\nnieces. Altogether, of the \u00a32,304 definitely accounted for in the\nWill, she leaves \u00a369 for her own funeral and for Masses for herself;\n\u00a3400 for Thobia and her mother; \u00a3210 to her own relations; \u00a3125 to\nservants; and \u00a31,500 to her husband\u2019s nephew. There is no trace here of\nany indifference to the natural ties of kindred, or of an abstraction\nof mind rendering her incapable of a careful consideration and firm\ndecision in matters of business: a point which we shall find to be of\nmuch importance, later on.\n\n\n5. _Ettore\u2019s \u201cMandiletto\u201d-work._\n\nIn this year, too, if not already in the previous one, Vernazza founded\nthe institution of the \u201cMandiletto.\u201d Still a young man--for he was\nnow at most but twenty-eight--Ettore had been noticing, in his work\namong the poor, how much misery of all kinds obtained in commercial,\nmoney-making, hazard-loving Genoa, amongst persons who, even though\nill, refused to take refuge in the hospitals; and who, however poor\nat present, had known better, even brilliant days, and were too proud\nto beg, or even to accept alms from any one who could recognize them.\nAnd hence he now organized a system for discovering and visiting such\npersons in their own homes and for minimizing their pain in accepting\nhelp, by arranging that the members of this little fraternity should\nnever visit such houses, except with some kind of little veil or\nhandkerchief (_fazzoletto_, _mandiletto_) applied to their faces.[128]\n\nCatherine, who had helped the Uffizio della Misericordia so much, and\nwho herself so greatly disliked being noticed or even simply seen\nwhenever she was doing or suffering anything at all out of the common,\nhad no doubt, at least in a general way, inspired this beautifully\ndelicate means of preserving and sparing the bashfulness of the giver\nand the dignity of the recipient. Throughout the remaining years of her\nlife she must have cared to hear Vernazza\u2019s report as to the progress\nof this work.\n\n\nXI. BEGINNING OF HER THIRD, LAST PERIOD; END OF THE EXTRAORDINARY\nFASTS; FIRST RELATIONS WITH DON MARABOTTO.\n\nBut it is in the next year, 1499, that we reach the actual beginning of\nthe third and last period of Catherine\u2019s Convert life.\n\n\n1. _End of the Fasts; transfer of the \u201ccarati.\u201d_\n\nSome of the events of this year are again predominantly external, or\nbut continuations or consequences of previous inclinations of her will.\nIt must have been at the end of the Lent of this spring-time that all\nextraordinary fasting-power, of a kind that could be foreseen and\nthat more or less synchronized with the ecclesiastical season, left\nher for good and all. And she had gone on feeling strongly her share\nof responsibility for the government of that far-off island. Hence\nshe betook herself, on September 18 of this year, with the Notary\nBattista Strata, who has drawn up nine out of the fourteen Legal Acts\nof Giuliano and herself, to the great palace of the Cardinal Giuliano\ndella Rovere, who, four years later, became Pope Julius II. This palace\nstood by the (now destroyed) Church of San Tommaso, and was at this\ntime the residence of Giovanni Adorno. And there, in the great Loggia\nlooking south, Catherine dictated the substance of an Act of Cession\nthen and there to her husband\u2019s nephew of those two _carati_, which\nweighed so heavily on her mind. Perhaps Giovanni was in poor health,\nand Catherine was too eager to eschew her responsibility in the matter\nto be willing to wait any longer.[129]\n\n\n2. _Beginning of Catherine\u2019s relations with Don Marabotto._\n\nThe chief event, however, from the point of view of her inner life,\nand which gives us a second close and most important eyewitness for\nher last period, was the beginning of her spiritual relations with Don\nMarabotto.[130] \u201cAt the end of the twenty-five years during which she\nhad persevered the way of God without the means of any creature,\u201d says\nthe _Vita_, \u201cthe Lord gave her a priest, to take care both of her soul\nand of her body; a spiritual man and one of holy life, to whom God gave\nlight and grace to understand His operations within her. He had been\nappointed Rector of the Hospital; and hence was in a position to hear\nher Confession, say Mass for her, and give her Holy Communion according\nto her convenience.\u201d[131] Now the rare and profound isolation and\nindependence of her middle period render this turning to and finding\nof human help specially significant; the numerous sayings addressed\nto her Confessor to be found throughout the _Vita_ were all, with the\nsole exception of those contained in the Conversion-scene, spoken to\nMarabotto and transmitted by him to us;[132] and probably at least half\nof the narrative of her Life and well-nigh all her Passion are due to\nDon Marabotto\u2019s pen. It is then important, and it is possible to get a\nfairly clear idea as to the sort of man he was.\n\n\n3. _Don Marabotto\u2019s family and character; Catherine\u2019s attitude towards\nhim._\n\nDon Cattaneo came from a stock even more ancient and distinguished\nthan that of Vernazza. A Marabotto had had a lawsuit with the Bishop\nof Genoa in 1128; Roggiero Marabotto had lent money to the King of\nSardinia in 1164; Martino Marabotto had been Ambassador to Rome,\nFlorence, and Lucca in 1256; Pelagio of that name had been Notary to\nthe Mint in 1435; Giorgio, a Doctor of Medicine in 1424; Ambrosio,\nLieutenant-Governor of Corsica in 1459. And the family, like the\nFieschi, had always been Guelph: Federico Marabotto had armed nine\ngalleys against the Ghibellines and had had a narrow escape from the\nlatter, during a dark night of 1330; and Antonio and Domenico were\nknown Guelph leaders in 1450 and 1452. Indeed the latter was Procurator\nto the Fieschi family in 1443, and thus anticipated, by sixty years\nand on a larger scale, Don Cattaneo\u2019s management of Catherine Fiesca\u2019s\nmodest affairs.[133]\n\nDon Cattaneo himself we find ever gentle, patient, devoted and\nfull of unquestioning reverence towards Catherine; most valuably\naccurate and detailed in his reproduction of things, in proportion\nto their tangibleness; na\u00eff and without humour, thoroughly matter of\nfact, readily identifying the physical with the spiritual, and thus\noften, unconsciously, all but succeeding in depriving Catherine\u2019s\nspirit, for us who have so largely to see her with his eyes, of much\nof its specially characteristic transcendence and of its equally\ncharacteristic ethical and spiritual immanence. Such a mind would\nappear better fitted to follow,--at a respectful distance,--than to\nlead such a spirit, as Catherine\u2019s; and, indeed, to be more apt to help\nher as a man of business than as a man of God. As a matter of fact,\nhowever, he was quite evidently of very great help and consolation,\neven in purely spiritual matters, to Catherine, during these last\neleven years of her life. Not as though there were any instances\nof his initiating, stimulating, or modifying any of her ideals or\ndoctrines: she entirely remains, in purely spiritual matters, her\nown old self, and continues to grow completely along the lines of\nher previous development. And again he did attend, with an all but\nunbroken assiduity, to matters not directly belonging to his province\n_qua_ priest,--to her much-tried, ever-shifting bodily health, and,\nprobably some three or four years later on, to her financial affairs,\nwhich latter were still of some variety and complication, owing to her\ngenerous anxiety to do much for others, with but little of her own. But\nbetween these two opposite extremes of possible help or influence lay\nanother middle level, in which his aid was considerable. For \u201cwhenever\nGod worked anything within her, which impressioned her much either in\nsoul or body, she would confer about it all with her Confessor; and he,\nwith the grace and light of God, understood well-nigh all, and would\ngive her answers which seemed to show that he himself felt the very\nthing that she was feeling herself.\u201d \u201cAnd she would say, that even\nsimply to have him by, gave her great comfort, because they understood\neach other, even by just looking each other in the face without\nspeaking.\u201d[134] Marabotto\u2019s Direction consists, then, in giving her the\nhuman support of human understanding and sympathy, and, no doubt, in\nreminding her, in times of darkness, of the lights and truths received\nand communicated by her in times of consolation. Never does Marabotto\nsee, or think he sees, as far or as clearly as she sees, when she sees\nat all; and it is the light derived by him from herself at one time,\nwhich he administers to her soul at another.\n\n\n4. _Catherine\u2019s first Confession to Don Cattaneo._\n\nThe general tone and character of her first Confession to him are\ndescribed to us, no doubt from his own contemporary record. \u201cShe said:\n\u2018Father, I know not where I am, either as to my soul or as to my body.\nI should like to confess, but I cannot perceive any offence committed\nby me.\u2019\u201d \u201cAnd as to the sins which she mentioned,\u201d adds Marabotto, \u201cshe\nwas not allowed to see them as so many sins, thought or said or done by\nherself. But her state of soul was like unto that of a small boy, who\nwould have committed some slight offence in simple ignorance; and who,\nif some one told him: You have done evil, would at these words suddenly\nchange colour and blush, and yet not because he has now an experimental\nknowledge of evil.\u201d \u201cAnd many a time she would say to her Confessor:\n\u2018I do not want to neglect Confession, and yet I do not know to whom to\ngive the blame of my sins; I want to accuse myself, and cannot manage\nit.\u2019 And yet, with all this, she made all the acts appropriate to\nConfession.\u201d[135]\n\nWe shall see, indeed, how keen, right up to the end, was her sense of\nher frailty and of her general and natural inclination to evil. And her\nteaching as to numerous positive and active imperfections remaining\nin the soul, in every soul, up to the very end, is so clear and\nconstant, and so admittedly derived from her own experience, that we\ncan explain the above only by the supplementary part of her doctrine\n(also derived from her own experience), which insists that some greatly\nadvanced souls do not, at the time of committing them, as yet see these\ntheir imperfections, and that, by the time they have so far further\nadvanced as to see these imperfections, they are no more inclined to\ncommit them. In this way, then, there would be no fully formal sin or\ndeliberate imperfection to confess.\n\n\nXII. HER CONVERSATIONS WITH HER DISCIPLES; \u201cCATERINA SERAFINA.\u201d DON\nMARABOTTO AND THE POSSESSED MAID.\n\n\n1. _Pure Love and Heaven._\n\nIt is probably during the next two years of her life, that occurred the\nbeautiful scene and conversation,--so typical of her relations with her\ndisciples during this first part of her last period (1499 to 1501),\nwhich we can think of as her spiritual Indian summer, her Aftermath.\nThe scene has been recorded for us by her chief interlocutor, Vernazza.\nProbably Bartolommea, Ettore\u2019s wife, was present, and possibly also\nDon Marabotto. \u201cThis blessed soul,\u201d he writes, \u201call surrounded though\nshe was by the deep and peaceful ocean of her Love, God, desired\nnevertheless to express in words, to her spiritual children, the\nsentiments that were within her. And many a time she would say to them:\n\u2018O would that I could tell what my heart feels!\u2019 And her children\nwould say: \u2018O Mother, tell us something of it.\u2019 And she would answer:\n\u2018I cannot find words appropriate to so great a love. But this I can\nsay with truth, that if of what my heart feels but one drop were\nto fall into Hell, Hell itself would altogether turn into Eternal\nLife.\u2019\u201d[136] \u201cAnd one of these her spiritual children, an interior soul\n(_un Religioso_),\u201d--Vernazza, present on this occasion,--\u201cdismayed at\nwhat she was saying, replied: \u2018Mother, I do not understand this; if\nit were possible, I would gladly understand it better.\u2019 But Catherine\nanswered: \u2018My son, I find it impossible to put it otherwise.\u2019 Then he,\neager to understand further, said: \u2018Mother, supposing we gave your word\nsome interpretation, and that this corresponded to what is in your\nmind, would you tell us if it was so?\u2019 \u2018Willingly, dear son,\u2019 rejoined\nCatherine, with evident pleasure.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd the disciple continued: \u2018The matter might perhaps stand in this\nwise.\u2019 And he then explained how that the love which she was feeling\nunited her, by participation, with the goodness of God, so that she\nno more distinguished herself from God. Now Hell stands for the very\nopposite, since all the spirits therein are in rebellion against God.\nIf then it were possible for them to receive even a little drop of such\nunion, it would deprive them of all rebellion against God, and would\nso unite them with Love, with God Himself, as to make them be in Life\nEternal. For Hell is everywhere where there is such rebellion; and Life\nEternal, wheresoever there is such union. And the Mother, hearing this,\nappeared to be in a state of interior jubilation; whence with beaming\nface she answered: \u2018O dear son, truly the matter stands as you have\nsaid; and hearing you speak, I feel it really is so. But my mind and\ntongue are so immersed in this Love, that I cannot myself either say or\nthink these or other reasons.\u2019 And the Disciple then said: \u2018O Mother,\ncould you not ask your Love, God, for some of these little drops of\nunion for your sons?\u2019 She answered, and with increased joyousness: \u2018I\nsee this tender Love to be so full of condescension to these my sons,\nthat for them I can ask nothing of It, and can only present them before\nHis sight.\u2019\u201d[137]\n\nI sincerely know not where to look for a doctrine of grander depth\nand breadth, of more vibrating aliveness; for one more directly the\nresult of life, or leading more directly to it, than are those few\nhalf-utterances and delicately strong indications of an overflowing\ninterior plenitude and radiant, all-conquering peace.\n\nAnd even one such scene is sufficient to make us feel that the\nfollowing passage of the _Dialogo_ is, in its substance and tone,\nprofoundly true to facts: \u201cThis soul remained henceforth\u201d (in this\nthird period) \u201cmany a time in company with its many spiritual friends,\ndiscoursing of the Divine Love, in such wise that they felt as though\nin Paradise, both collectively, and each one in his own particular way.\nHow delightful were these colloquies! He who spoke and he who listened,\neach one fed on spiritual food of a delicious kind; and because the\ntime flew so swiftly, they never could attain satiety, but, all on fire\nwithin them, they would remain there, unable at last to speak, unable\nto depart, as though in ecstasy.\u201d[138]\n\n\n2. _\u201cCaterina Serafina\u201d._\n\nFive times the _Vita_ compares her countenance, which, when she was\ndeeply moved, had a flushed, luminous and transparent appearance, to\nthat of an Angel or Cherub or Seraph;[139] and it even gives a story,\nwhich purports to explain how she came to be called the latter. And\nthough this anecdote may be little more than a literary dramatization\nof this popular appellation of Catherine; and although, even if the\nscene be historical, Catherine has no kind of active share in bringing\nit about; yet the passage is, in any case, of some real interest, since\nit testifies to and typifies Catherine\u2019s abundance of moral and mental\nsanity and strong, serene restorative influence over unbalanced or\ntempted souls, and this at a time when she herself had already been in\ndelicate health for about five years.\n\nThe story is interesting also in that it shows how strikingly like\nthe superficial psycho-physical symptoms of persons described as\npossessed by an evil spirit were, and were thought to be, to those\nof ecstasy, hence to Catherine\u2019s own. Thus when an attack seized\nthis \u201cspiritual daughter of Catherine,--a woman of large mind (_alto\nintelleto_), who lived and died in virginity, and under the same\nroof with Catherine\u201d (no doubt Catherine\u2019s second, unmarried servant\nMariola Bastarda is meant, and each must have had experience of the\nother\u2019s powers and wants from or before 1490 till 1497, and again\nfrom 1500 onwards),--\u201cshe would become greatly agitated and be thrown\nto the ground. The evil spirit would enter into her mind, and would\nnot allow her to think of divine things. And she would thus be as one\nbeside herself, all submerged in that malign and diabolic will.\u201d--And\nsimilarly we are told that Catherine would \u201cthrow herself to the\nground, altogether beside herself,\u201d \u201cimmersed in a sea,\u201d--in this\ncase, \u201cof the deepest peace\u201d; and \u201cshe would writhe as though she were\na serpent.\u201d[140]\n\nYet this superficial likeness between these two states,--a likeness\napparent already in the similar double series of phenomena described\nin St. Paul\u2019s Epistles and in the Acts of the Apostles,--serves,\nhere also, but to bring out in fuller relief the profound underlying\nspiritual and moral difference between the two conditions of soul.\nFor it is precisely in Catherine\u2019s company that, when insufferable\nto her own self, the afflicted Mariola would recover her peace and\nself-possession, so that \u201ceven a silent look up to Catherine\u2019s face\nwould help to bring relief.\u201d[141]\n\nIt is in 1500, soon after Mariola\u2019s return to her mistress (I take the\nmaid\u2019s state of health to have occasioned her absence from Catherine\nfor two years or so), that this spiritual daughter is represented as\ndeclaring in the first stage of one of these attacks,--or rather \u201cthe\nunclean spirit\u201d possessing her is said to have exclaimed to Catherine\n\u201cWe are both of us thy slaves, because of that pure love which thou\npossessest in thy heart\u201d; and \u201cfull of rage at having made this\nadmission, he threw himself on the ground, and writhed with the feet.\u201d\nAnd then when,--all this is supposed to take place in the presence of\nboth Catherine and Don Marabotto,--the possessed one has stood up, the\nConfessor forces the spirit step by step to speak out and to declare\nsuccessively that Catherine is \u201cCaterina,\u201d \u201cAdorna or Fiesca,\u201d and\n\u201cCaterina Serafina,\u201d the latter being uttered amidst great torment.[142]\n\n\nXIII. CATHERINE\u2019S SYMPATHY WITH ANIMAL- AND PLANT-LIFE: HER LOVE OF THE\nOPEN AIR. HER DEEP SELF-KNOWLEDGE AS TO THE HEALTHINESS OR MORBIDNESS\nOF HER PSYCHO-PHYSICAL STATES.\n\n\n1. _Increase of suffering and of range of sympathy._\n\nIt is indeed in this last period of her life that we can most clearly\nsee a deeply attractive mixture of personal suffering and of tender\nsympathy with even the humblest of all things that live. And this is\ndoubtless not simply due to the much fuller evidence possessed by us\nfor these last years, but is quite as much owing to the actual increase\nof these twin things within herself. \u201cShe was most compassionate\ntowards all creatures; so that, if an animal were killed or a tree\ncut down, she could hardly bear to see them lose that being which\nGod had given them.\u201d[143] And a beautiful communion of spirit can\nnow be traced even between plant-life and herself; and an innocent\nself-diversion from a too exciting concentration, and help towards a\npatient keeping or a bracing reconquering of calmness, is now found by\nher, Franciscan-like, in the open air and amidst the restful flowers\nand trees. Thus \u201cat times she would seem to have her mind in a mill;\nand as if this mill were indeed grinding her, soul and body\u201d; and then\n\u201cshe would walk up and down in the garden, and would address the plants\nand trees and say: \u2018Are not you also creatures created by my God? Are\nnot you, too, obedient to Him?\u2019\u201d--even though, I think she meant to\nsay, your life moves on so instinctive, calm, and freely expansive in\nthe large, liberal air, as I feel it to do, by its very contrast to my\nown eager, crowded life, struggling in vain for a sustained perfection\nof equipoise and for an even momentary adequacy of self-expression.\n\u201cAnd doing thus, she would gradually be comforted.\u201d[144]\n\nIndeed she would, in still intenser moods, use plants and other\ncreatures of God in a more violent fashion. But this is now no more\ndone as of old, for direct purposes of mortification; but, at one\ntime, from an unreflective transport of delight, delight which itself\nseems ever to impel noble natures to seek to mix some suffering with\nit; and, at another time, for the purpose of producing strong physical\nimpressios, counter-stimulations and escapes from a too great intensity\nof interior feeling. \u201cShe would at times, when in the garden, seize\nhold of the thorn-covered twigs of the rose-bushes with both her hands;\nand would not feel any pain whilst thus doing it in a transport of\nmind. She would also bite her hands and burn them, and this in order to\ndivert, if possible, her interior oppression.\u201d[145]\n\n\n2. _She alone keeps the sense of the truly spiritual, in the midst of\nher psycho-physical states._\n\nIndeed nothing is more characteristic of her psychic state, during\nthese years, than the ever-increasing intensity, shiftingness and\nclose interrelation between the physical and mental. But we shall find\nthat, whereas those who surround her, Confessor, Doctors, Disciples,\nAttendants, all, in various degrees and ways, increasingly insist\nupon and persist in finding direct proofs of the supernatural in the\npurely physical phenomena of her state even when taken separately,\nand indeed more and more in exact proportion to their non-spiritual\ncharacter: Catherine herself, although no doubt not above the medical\nor psychical knowledge of her time, remains admirably centred in the\ntruly spiritual, and continually awake to the necessity of interior\nspiritual selection amongst and assimilation and transformation of all\nsuch psycho-physical impressions and conditions. Even in the midst\nof the extreme weaknesses of her last illness we shall see her only\nquite exceptionally, and ever for but a few instants, without this\nconsciousness of the deep yet delicate difference in ethical value and\nhelpfulness between the various psycho-physical things experienced by\nherself, and of the requirements, duties and perceptions of her own\nspirit with regard to them.\n\nAnd this attitude is all the more remarkable because, to the outer\ndifficulty arising from the persistent, far more immediate, and\napparently more directly religious, view of all her little world\nabout her, came two peculiarities working in the same direction from\nwithin her own self. There was the old constitutional keenness and\nconcentration of her highly nervous physical and psychical temperament,\nand the rarely high pitch and swift pace of her whole inner life, which\nmust, at all times, have rendered suspense of judgment and detachment\nwith regard to her own sensations and quasi-physical impressions\nspecially difficult. And there was now the new intensity and closeness\nof interaction between soul and body, which must have made such lofty\ndetachment from all but spiritual realities a matter of the rarest\ngrace and of the most heroic self-conquest.\n\n\n3. _Catherine\u2019s health does not break up completely till 1507._\n\nThe _Vita_, indeed, as we now have it, tells us that \u201cabout nine years\nbefore her death,\u201d hence in 1501, \u201can infirmity came upon her, which\nneither her attendants nor the doctors knew how to identify\u201d; and that\n\u201cthere was confusion, not on her own part, but on the part of those\nwho served her.\u201d[146] But this whole Chapter XLVII (pp. 127-132) of\nthe present _Vita_, which opens out thus, is wanting in MSS. \u201cA\u201d and\n\u201cB\u201d; and is composed of documents which appear, in a fuller and more\nprimitive form and in their right chronological place, in the next\nthree chapters (pp. 132-160), chapters without doubt predominantly\ndue to Marabotto; and of the documents making up the present Chapter\nXXXVIII (pp. 98, 99), which are earlier again, in both contents and\ncomposition, and are very certainly the work of Vernazza. And this\nmeans that, though the present Chapter XLVII claims to give a general\naccount of her condition during 1501-1510, it does not, as a matter of\nfact, give us anything but details belonging without doubt to 1507-1510.\n\nThe manner in which this late compiler insists upon the directly\nspiritual, indeed supernatural, character of even the clearly secondary\nand physical phenomena of her state, make it highly probable that,\nhaving once exaggerated the quality, he readily snatched at any\nindications (possibly a slip of the pen in some MS., writing 1501\ninstead of 1507; we have a similar slip in MS. \u201cA\u201d which on p. 193\ntwice writes 1506 for 1509), which favoured an early date for the\nbeginning of her last illness. Certainly the legal documents at our\ndisposal show her to us still variously interested and active, right up\nto 1507.\n\nIt will, then, be better first to describe this activity up to 1507,\nand to take even the general questions concerning her illness in\nconnection with her last four years, 1507-1510.\n\n\nXIV. CATHERINE\u2019S SOCIAL JOYS AND SORROWS, 1501-1507.\n\n\n1. _Birth of Ettore\u2019s last two daughters._\n\nIt will have been during these years 1501 to 1507, unless indeed\nalready between 1497 and 1501, that Vernazza\u2019s second and third\ndaughters were born; and if Catherine had stood God-mother to his\neldest child, Tommasina, it is inconceivable that she should not\nhave cared for Tommasina\u2019s sisters, Catetta and Ginevrina. Certainly\ntheir father, Catherine\u2019s closest friend and disciple, gave detailed\nattention, right up to the end of his strenuous life, to all three\nchildren; and made most thoughtful particular provision, in his still\nextant remarkable Will of 1517, for the youngest, Ginevrina, who at\nthat time was the only one not yet settled in life.[147] Thus Vernazza\nknew how to combine all this detailed thought for his own children\nwith the spacious public spirit of which his Dispositions are a still\nextant, most impressive monument; and Catherine, who was his deepest\ninspirer, clearly led the way here, right up to the last four years of\nher life. For we have already seen how she managed to conjoin, in a\nfashion similar to Ettore\u2019s, a universalist love for Love Transcendent,\nwith a particularism of attachment to individual souls, in which that\nLove is immanent.\n\n\n2. _Deaths of Limbania, Jacobo, and Giovanni._\n\nAnd if she had joy over souls coming into the world, she had sorrow\nover souls leaving it. For in the single year 1502 she lost her only\nsister, Limbania, and her two elder brothers Jacopo and Giovanni. It\nis true that the _Vita_ says: \u201cThere died several of her brothers and\nsisters; but, owing to the great union which she had with the tender\nwill of God, she felt no pain, as though they had not been of her\nown blood.\u201d[148] But then we have already often found how subject to\ncaution and rebate are all such general, absolute statements; this\npassage in particular is, by its vagueness and ambiguity (she had but\none sister of her own), stamped as late and more or less secondary;\nand we shall trace, later on, a similar even more extensive _a priori_\nmodification of her authentic image in the _Dialogo_. Certainly her\nWills show no kind of indifference to her own relations. In that of\n1498 she specially and carefully remembered these very three relations;\nand in proportion as these two brothers\u2019 children grow up and at all\nrequire her help, Catherine specially refers to and plans for them,--so\nfor Jacobo\u2019s eldest daughter Maria, in view of getting her married\n(Wills of 1498, 1503, 1506, 1509); and for Giovanni\u2019s three sons (Wills\nof 1503, 1506, 1509). Jacobo\u2019s second daughter seems also to have died\nat this time, as she no more appears after the Will of 1498. We shall\nsee how exactly the same affectionate interest is shown by her towards\nher still remaining brother and his two sons.[149]\n\n\n3. _The Triptych \u201cMaest\u00e0.\u201d_\n\nAnd she evidently still went on increasing the number of the objects\nof her interest and affection, and the degree of her attachment to\nsuch objects as she already loved. For in her Codicil of the next\nyear, January 1503, she gives a careful description of a picture\nnow belonging to herself, \u201ca \u2018Majesty,\u2019 representing the Virgin\nMary with Saint Joseph, and the Lord Jesus at their feet, with her\u201d\n(Fieschi-Adorni) \u201ccoat-of-arms painted within and without.\u201d The\npicture evidently represented the Adoration of the Infant Jesus, and\nwas painted on wood,--a triptych: with Catherine\u2019s arms painted both\ninside and outside the two wings. She again describes it thus fully in\nher Wills of 1506 and 1509, leaving it, on all those occasions, to a\ncertain Christofero de Clavaro (Christofer of Chiavari?). It is then\nquite clear both that this picture had been specially painted by some\none for Catherine, and that Catherine, for some reason or reasons,\ngreatly treasured it. Who then was the painter and what was the reason?\nI think both are not difficult to find.\n\nWe have seen how Catherine\u2019s much-loved cousin, the widowed Tommasina\nFiesca, had in 1497 moved into the Monastero Nuovo in the Aquasola\nquarter,--close to Catherine\u2019s abode; so that the cousins will have\nmet constantly from that time forward. We have also seen that this\ndistinguished artist painted many a \u201cPiet\u00e0\u201d (the dead Christ on\nHis Mother\u2019s lap, possibly with Angels on each side), and executed\na piece of needlework again representative of a group,--this time\nGod the Father with many Angels above, and Christ below. Indeed\nFederico Alizeri has succeeded in rediscovering one of her works, a\nrepresentation of Christ crowned with thorns and surrounded by the\nInstruments and Mysteries of His Passion, painted in fine outline upon\nsheepskin mounted on a wood-panel.[150] And we have seen how much\nCatherine had, as a child, been affected by a \u201cPiet\u00e0,\u201d and shall find\nher, even after this date, still affected by a religious picture. There\ncan then be no reasonable doubt that Suor Tommasina was the painter\nand giver of this picture,--again a group, a \u201cMaest\u00e0,\u201d instead of the\nusual \u201cPiet\u00e0.\u201d\n\nAnd the facts of Catherine caring to possess, to preserve, and to\ntransmit something thus specially appropriated to herself, with her\nfamily arms upon a religious picture, are all deeply significant\ntouches, and quite unlike what all the secondary, and even some of the\nprimary, parts of the _Vita_ would lead one to expect.\n\n\n4. _Increasing care for Thobia._\n\nAnd this same Codicil shows us how her care, and no doubt her genuine\naffection, for Thobia was growing. For she now leaves her the income\non two shares of the Bank of St. George (no doubt only a slight gift,\nabout \u00a32 10_s._ a year; but Catherine possesses but very little that\nshe is free to leave as she likes, the claims upon her are very many,\nand the young woman is already well provided for, considering her\nsocial station), her better silk gown, a skirt, and various veils. The\npoor girl died in 1504 or 1505, for in Catherine\u2019s Will of 1506 she\nappears as \u201cthe late Thobia.\u201d She must have been about thirty years old\nat the time.\n\n\n5. _Argentina del Sale; story of Marco del Sale\u2019s death._\n\nBut in lieu of poor Thobia, Catherine was now given by Providence a\nnew lowly object of affection and interest. For it was doubtless in\nthe late spring of 1505 that occurred the incident, of which we have\nthe beautifully simple and na\u00eff record in Chapter XLVI of the _Vita_;\na record certainly based upon information supplied by Argentina, but\nwhich I take to be the literary work of Vernazza, and to be more or\nless contemporary with the events described. A humble young friend\nor acquaintance of Catherine\u2019s, who had perhaps already been her\noccasional little day-servant, one Argentina de Ripalta, had now been\naway from her and married, for a year, to a poor navvy working in the\nMolo (Quay) quarter of the town; and this her husband, Marco del Sale,\nwas now dangerously ill, indeed he was dying of a cancer in the face.\nAnd, having tried every kind of remedy, and seeing himself incurable,\nand being thus in great and hopeless pain, Marco had lost all patience\nand was as one beside himself. And then Argentina bethought herself of\nCatherine, and came to the Hospital, and begged her to come and see her\nhusband, and pray to God for him.\n\nAnd Catherine was at once at Argentina\u2019s disposal, and straightway went\noff with her. And having come into Marco\u2019s room, she greatly comforted\nhim with her few but homely and fervent words. Then starting off again\nin company with Argentina, Catherine entered, near to the house and\nstill close to the sea, into the little Church of Santa Maria delle\nGrazie la Vecchia,--so called to distinguish it from the more recent\nChapel of the Augustinianesses, which bore the same general title,--and\nthere, kneeling in a corner, Catherine prayed for Marco. The little\nseamen\u2019s Church is still in use, with its many mementoes of four\ncenturies and more of ships foundered and of ships safely come to port.\nAnd having here finished her prayer, Catherine returned with Argentina\nto the Hospital. There Argentina left her, and returned to Marco, and\nfound him so changed that from a Devil he seemed turned into an Angel.\nAnd with joyous tender feeling he asked: \u201cO Argentina, come, tell me\nwho is that holy soul that you brought me?\u201d But Argentina answered:\n\u201cWhy, that is Madonna Caterinetta Adorna, a woman of most perfect\nlife.\u201d And the sick man replied: \u201cI beg of thee, by the love of God, to\ntake care to bring her here a second time to me.\u201d\n\nAnd so the next day Argentina returned to the Hospital and told all to\nCatherine. And Catherine again promptly came back with Argentina. But\nwhen Catherine had entered the room and approached the bed, Marco threw\nhis arms round her, and wept for a long space of time. And then, still\nweeping, but with great relief, he said to her: \u201cMadonna, the reason\nwhy I wished you to come is, first to thank you for the kindness you\nhave shown me; and next to ask a favour of you, which I beg you not to\nrefuse me. For when you had left this room, Our Lord Jesus Christ came\nto me visibly and in the form in which He appeared to the Magdalen in\nthe garden, and gave me His most holy blessing, and pardoned me all my\nsins, and told me that I should prepare for death, because that I shall\ngo to Him on Ascension-Day. Hence I pray you, most tender Mother, deign\nto accept Argentina as your spiritual daughter, and to keep her with\nyou constantly. And thou, Argentina, I pray thee, be content with this\nplan.\u201d They both gladly declared themselves ready and content.\n\nWhen Catherine had gone away, Marco sent for a certain Augustinian\nFriar of the Monastery of the Consolation, and carefully confessed his\nsins and received Holy Communion; and then ordered all his worldly\naffairs with a notary and with his relations. And he did all this in\nspite of them all, who thought that his intense pain had driven him\noff his head, and who kept saying: \u201cTake comfort, Marco, soon you will\nbe well again; there is no occasion as yet for you to attend to these\nthings.\u201d\n\nAnd the Eve of the Ascension having come round, he again sent for the\nsame Confessor, and again confessed and communicated, and got him this\ntime to add Extreme Unction and the Recommendation of the Dying, and\nall this with great composure and devotion. But as the night came on,\nhe said to the Friar: \u201cReturn to your Monastery; and when the time\ncomes, I will give you notice.\u201d And then, alone with Argentina, he\ntook his crucifix in his hand, and turning towards his wife he said:\n\u201cArgentina, see, I leave thee Him for thy husband; prepare thyself to\nsuffer, for I declare to thee that suffering is in store for thee.\u201d\nThis did not fail to come about, for she suffered later on, both\nmentally and physically. And for the rest of the night he continued to\ncomfort her, and to encourage her to give herself to God and to accept\nsuffering as the ladder for mounting up to Heaven. Then when the dawn\nhad come he said: \u201cArgentina, abide with God; the hour has come.\u201d And\nhaving finished these words, he expired; and his spirit straightway\nwent to the window of the cell of his Confessor, and tapping against\nthe pane said: \u201cEcce homo.\u201d But the Friar hearing this, at once knew\nthat Marco had passed to his Lord.\n\nAnd as soon as Marco\u2019s body had been buried, Catherine took Argentina\nto live with her as her spiritual daughter, and thus kept her promise.\nAnd since she loved this daughter much, she was wont to take her with\nher when she went out. And hence one day, when once more passing by\nthe little Church on the little square by the Quay, she and her young\ndaughter again went in and prayed. And on coming out, Catherine said to\nArgentina: \u201cThis is the place, where grace was gained in prayer for thy\nhusband.\u201d[151]\n\n\n6. _Catherine\u2019s social interests in 1506._\n\nAnd in the following year, 1506, we still find Catherine full of\ninterest and activity of the most varied kind. On March the 13th and\n16th Catherine was again busy for the Hospital, by receiving the\nFoundlings and the various articles and monies anonymously deposited\nthere for their keep. And these can hardly have been altogether\nexceptional acts, even for this period of her life.[152] And on the\n21st of May she made her third Will, which is interesting for various\nreasons. For it is in this document that we first hear of the deaths\nof her two elder brothers and of Thobia, and (by implication) of that\nof her sister Limbania and of her second niece Battista. And we can\nonce more trace here the continuity of her interests and attachments.\nHer elder niece Maria is again provided with a marriage dowry; her\nbrother Lorenzo remains (now sole) residuary legatee; Thobia\u2019s mother\ngets her legacy compounded for an immediate settlement and payment; the\nmaids Benedetta and Mariola have their legacies somewhat increased;\nthe \u201cMaest\u00e0\u201d is again carefully described and allotted; and she again\norders her body to be buried alongside of that of her husband.[153]\nIndeed fresh interests appear here. For the three sons of her second\nbrother and the eldest son of her third brother are now grown up; and\nso she makes these four nephews her residuary legatees, should her\nbrother Lorenzo die before herself. Don Marabotto has now been her\nConfessor and Chaplain for seven, and her Almoner for three years; and\nso she leaves him the income of eight shares of St. George\u2019s for his\nlifetime, which, at 4 per cent. would make \u00a316 a year,--the capital to\ngo, at Marabotto\u2019s death, to her heirs. And Argentina del Sale has been\nwith her for just about a year; and so she leaves her various articles\nof personal linen and bedding.[154]\n\nBut, above all, the place of this Will\u2019s redaction is new amongst\nthe memorials of her life, and directly indicative of a still\nfurther enlargement of her influence and interests. For if of the\nfourteen legal documents drawn up for, and in the presence of,\nGiuliano or herself, eleven were composed in the small house within\nthe great Hospital of the Pammatone, and only two others,--the\nMarriage-Settlement, and the Deed of Transfer in favour of Giovanni\nAdorno,--had hitherto been written elsewhere, this Will was executed in\nthe Refuge for Incurables, in the Portorio quarter, in the evening of\nthe day mentioned, in the presence of three weavers and one dyer,--two\ntrades strongly represented in this poor and populous quarter. Now\nthe choice of this place is deeply suggestive, because it became the\nchief care and final home of Ettore Vernazza\u2019s later years. Indeed it\nis certain that, on the death of his wife, Vernazza came and lived\nin the midst of these poor Incurables; and that this residence here\nof Catherine\u2019s closest friend did not begin later than three years\nfrom this date--hence still during Catherine\u2019s lifetime, in 1509. His\nfar-reaching Wills of 1512 and 1517 are both dated from this Refuge,\nof which he was, by then, manager and chief supporter; and it is there\nthat he died his heroic death in 1524. Hence it is certain that now\nalready Vernazza must have been deeply interested in this fine, but\nat that time still languishing, work (its fixed income did not as\nyet amount to fully \u00a3400 a year), and he must often have been there;\npossibly he had even already a room of his own in the house.\n\nThere can, in any case, be no doubt, that in the choice of this place\nfor the drawing-up of this Will, we have an indication, all the more\ninteresting because entirely incidental, of the wide and ever-widening\nrange, and of the entirely solid, indeed heroic character of\nCatherine\u2019s interest and influence. It also shows us that she was still\nable to get about, although this Refuge, now the Spedale dei Chronici,\nis, no doubt, not far away from her Pammatone home. If she could still\ngo there, she no doubt still could and did go to her cousin Suor\nTommasina\u2019s Convent, which was certainly no further off. And I surmise\nthat many a spiritual colloquy will have taken place, with Catherine\nas chief interlocutor, and Suor Tommasina and Ettore Vernazza as chief\nquestioners and listeners, in the parlour of San Domenico and in that\nof the Refuge respectively.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nCATHERINE\u2019S LAST FOUR YEARS, 1506 TO 1510--SKETCH OF HER CHARACTER,\nDOCTRINE, AND SPIRIT\n\n\nI. CATHERINE\u2019S EXTERNAL INTERESTS AND ACTIVITIES UP TO MAY 1510.\nOCCASIONAL SLIGHT DEVIATIONS FROM HER OLD BALANCE. IMMENSELY CLOSE\nINTERCONNECTION OF HER WHOLE MENTAL AND PSYCHO-PHYSICAL NATURE.\nIMPRESSIONS AS CONNECTED WITH THE FIVE SENSES.\n\n\n1. _Indications of external interests._\n\nEven during the next four years, up to May 1510, we still find\nvarious most authentic and clear indications of external interests\nand activities in Catherine\u2019s life. Thus, on the 21st June 1507, the\nProtectors of the Hospital address a letter to Don Giacobo Carenzio\n(who had, as they tell him, been elected Master--_Rettore_--already\nfifteen months previously), urging him to come and take up his post;\nand Catherine, who, as we shall see, was later on variously helped\nby this Priest, and who cared so much for the Hospital, cannot have\nremained indifferent to that first election and to this present\nreminder.\n\nAgain on the 6th December 1507, the Protectors, Lorenzo Spinola,\nManfredo Fornari, and Emmanuele Fiesco, met in Catherine\u2019s room, and\ndecided, no doubt with her advice and co-operation, to allow another\nwidow-lady and devotee of the Hospital, Brigidina, wife of the late\nGiacomo Castagneto, to settle within its precincts.[155] Then on\n27th November 1508 she makes a Codicil, leaving an additional \u00a325 to\nMariola, and a further article of dress to Argentina; and declaring\nthat she is \u201centirely content\u201d with Don Marabotto\u2019s administration of\nher monies and charities. Don Cattaneo has then now become her Almoner,\nand her charitable activity continues large. The document is drawn up\nby Ettore Vernazza, an unimpeachable witness to Marabotto\u2019s rectitude\nand exactness.[156]\n\nIndeed as late down as 18th March 1509 her long Will of that date shows\nan admirable persistence of her old attachment for and interest in her\nsurviving brother, niece (the provision for Maria\u2019s possible marriage\nis particularly careful and detailed), and nephews (the youngest of\nthe latter, Giovanni, is omitted, no doubt because he had now become a\nCardinal, with a corresponding income); in Don Marabotto, who retains\nthe same little pension; in her three maids Benedetta, Mariola, and\nArgentina, all of whose legacies get somewhat increased; and in the\nfortunes of the Hospital and of Thobia\u2019s mother (she repeats her\naccount of what she has already done for them).[157]\n\n\n2. _Occasional imperfection of judgment._\n\nYet now at last we can find symptoms of the final break-up of her\nhealth, and of an occasional slight or momentary deviation from, or\ndiminution of, her old completeness of balance in both judgment,\ntaste, and feeling,--although even now this occurs only in matters of\nrelatively secondary importance, and but heightens the impressiveness\nof the still unbroken front which she maintains, in all her fully\ndeliberate acts, with regard to all essential matters. Indeed, it\nis not difficult to feel, even where one cannot directly trace, in\nall such acts and matters, a still further deepening of the heroic\nwatchfulness and childlike spontaneity, and of the humility and tender\n_na\u00efvet\u00e9_ and creatureliness, of her general tone and attitude.\n\n\n3. _Close-knittedness of her psycho-physical organism: her spiritual\nutilization of this._\n\nBut before recounting the few instances in which we can trace an\nindication of partly physical depression, or of some lessening of\nmental alertness or volitional power in secondary matters, or of slight\npassing unwilled _maladif_ impressions, let us attempt a somewhat\nmethodic description of the extreme sensitiveness and immensely close\ninterconnection of her whole psycho-physical nature, and of the general\nmodifications, both in quality and in quantity, which these impressions\nwere wont to go through; and all this, just now, on occasion of\nincidents closely similar to those already experienced in her past life.\n\nIt would indeed be altogether mistaken to class all this sensitiveness\nas necessarily but a form of illness; for the great majority, and all\nthe most characteristic, of her apparently physical pains and troubles,\nare but varieties and heightenings of the always unusually swift and\nprofound impressionableness of her whole psycho-physical organism. With\nthe sole exception of that attack of pestilential fever (probably in\nthe year 1493), I can nowhere, right up to three days before her death,\nfind any trace in her life of illnesses or disturbances of any but a\npsycho-physical, nerve-functional type.\n\nIndeed her psychic self is throughout so impressionable, and the mind\nis, ever since her Conversion, so active, dominant, and absorbed in\nthe actual and attempted apprehension of the great realities which,\nthough invisible, require for their vivid apprehension an imaginative\npictorial embodiment: that we shall have, in a later chapter, to ask\nourselves the question whether it was not the mind, or the imagination\nat the mind\u2019s bidding, which thus affected the psycho-physical life,\nrather than the psycho-physical life which, primarily independent\nof the former, offered itself as but so much raw, still unrelated\nmaterial, to the fashioning, transforming mind. Especially will it be\nnecessary to consider carefully the influence upon her mind, and upon\nthe chronicler\u2019s accounts of her state, which may have been exercised\nby the writings of the Areopagite and of Jacopone. It will then become\nclear that these authors have undoubtedly contributed to the form in\nwhich these truths and realities were, if not actually apprehended by\nCatherine, at least described by her disciples.\n\nYet even this point remains, in Catherine\u2019s case, (and indeed in that\nof all the great Saints,) of no real spiritual or moral importance,\nsince all these great and generous souls persist in ever using these\npsycho-physical things, whether they be projections or \u201cgivennesses,\u201d\nas but so many instruments and materials for the apprehension,\nillustration, acquisition, and purification of spiritual truth and of\nthe spirit\u2019s own fulness and depth. And Catherine\u2019s persistence in this\nattitude of utilization and transcendence of what the natural man so\ncontinuously tends to make his direct aim and final limit continues\npractically unbroken to the end. I will group these psychic impressions\naccording to the five senses.\n\n\n4. _Impressions connected with the sense of touch._\n\nThe earliest, and up to the end the most marked and general, of all\nsuch unusual impressions appears to have been one connected with the\nsense of touch,--that feeling of mostly interior, but later on also\nof exterior, warmth, indeed often of intense heat and burning, which\ncomes to her, the first as though sunshine were bathing her within or\nwithout, the second sometimes as though a great fire were enveloping\nher, and sometimes as though a living flame were piercing her within.\n\nAlready in 1473, on occasion of her Conversion, we find unmistakable\nindications of such sensations; they are, however, of a predominantly\npleasurable kind. And I take it that during her great lonely\nmiddle-period they will, in so much as present, have been of a similar\nnature. But later on, from after 1499 onwards, these sensations and\nattacks become increasingly painful,[158] and are specially described,\nand variously alluded to, under the terms of _operation_, _assault_,\n_siege_. When specially keen and concentrated, and accompanied by some\npiercing psycho-spiritual perception, they appear under the terms of\n_arrow_, _wound_; and the perception itself bears then the name of\n_ray_ or _spark_ (of divine love).[159]\n\nNow we lookers-on can, of course, with more or less ease, mentally\nseparate, in a general way, the latter, the spiritual apprehension,\ncreation and content, from the former, the psycho-physical occasion,\nmaterial and form; although it is certainly difficult, and probably\nimpossible, to decide, at least in any one case, how far it is her\nmental activity that occasions her psycho-physical condition, or how\nfar it is the latter which occasions the former. But what actually and\ndemonstrably happened in Catherine\u2019s case, was something incomparably\nbeyond the range to which such psycho-physical considerations apply.\nFor to her, psychically, a keenly sentient; rationally, a deeply\nthinking, feeling, and willing creature,--these experiences, howsoever\nclassable, were most real, and, in course of time, more and more\npenetrating and painful; and they were, to her own consciousness,\nentirely prior to any interpretation or utilization of them. Hence,\nfor the present at all events, we had better take these states as they\npresented themselves to her immediate and ordinary consciousness. And\nthis very same immensely sentient soul was so firmly centred, deep down\nbelow and beyond the psycho-physical, in the Moral and Spiritual, that\nthese experiences were welcomed and actively used but as so many means\nand materials for ethical purification and character-building, and for\nthe analogical apprehension and illustration of spiritual truths.\n\nThus it is that these sensations of burning which, during her years\nof health, were themselves so pleasurable and peaceful, helped, as\nwe shall find when we come to consider her doctrine, to suggest and\nillustrate for her the joys and health-giving influence of the presence\nof God, both here and in Paradise, and of the soul\u2019s apprehension of\nGod, as light for the understanding and warmth for the affections and\nthe will. And when, with her failing health, these sensations turned\ninto painful, in part seemingly physical attacks,--attacks which,\nhowever, left the mind in an increased and ever-increasing peace and\ncontentment,--they again helped her to gain and develop her doctrine\nconcerning Purgatory.\n\nIn both cases her teaching gained thus a vividness of quasi-directly\nsensible experience, of something in a manner actually seen and\nfelt, since it was built up out of suggestions derived from direct\nsensations and psycho-physical states. And yet in both cases not all\nsuch sensations, of themselves quite valueless and uninstructive from\nan ethical and religious point of view, could have helped towards\nanything of spiritual significance, had they not been sifted, taken\nup, organized and transformed in and into a large and deep spiritual\nexperience and personality. There is absolutely nothing automatic or\nnecessary in the crowning, ethically significant stages of this whole\nprocess, however rapid and instinctive and effortless, and simply of\na piece with the psycho-physical occasions, these utilizations and\ngrace-impelled and grace-informed creations may appear. We shall,\nin proof of this, soon see how physical and literal and spiritually\ninsignificant remained, during the last four months of her life,\nthe apprehensions of her disciples as to these heats and piercing\nsensations: these good, indeed devoted, people seem incapable of\nmeasuring spiritual love by anything higher than thermometer-readings\nor other physical tangibilities. And we shall also have to record one\nor two momentary instances when this heat-feeling and apprehension\nclearly assumed a _maladif_ character in Catherine herself.\n\n\n5. _Impressions connected with taste and smell._\n\nThe unusual sense-perceptions which were the next to be aroused\nwere apparently those of taste and smell: although the one\ncertain indication I can find of such an unusual psycho-physical\ntaste-and-smell impression, of a pleasurable and not clearly _maladif_\ncharacter, is not earlier than 1499.[160] It came to her in connection\nwith the one great devotion of her whole convert life,--the Holy\nEucharist. \u201cHaving on one occasion received Holy Communion, so much\nodour and sweetness came to her, that she seemed to be in Paradise.\nWhence, feeling this, she straightway turned towards her Love and\nsaid: \u2018O Love, dost Thou perhaps intend to draw me to Thyself with\nthese savours? I want them not, since I want nothing but Thee\nalone, and all of Thee.\u2019\u201d[161] Here, then, she turns away from and\ntranscends, precisely as St. John of the Cross was soon to insist so\nstrongly that we should do, the sensible and immediate, and reaches\non to the spiritual, ultimate, and personal. And similarly some such\npsycho-physical experience seems presupposed in her declaration: \u201cIf\na Consecrated Host and unconsecrated ones were to be given to me,\nI should distinguish the former from the latter as I do wine from\nwater.\u201d[162] Yet her biographer can truthfully insist upon love being\nthe original cause of such recognition: \u201cShe said this, because the\nConsecrated Host sent forth a certain ray of love which pierced her\nheart.\u201d And she herself gives a still more spiritual parallel instance\nand explanation of such recognition: \u201cIf I were to be shown the Court\nof Heaven, with all its members robed in one and the same manner, in\nsuchwise that there would, so far, be no perceptible difference between\nGod and the Angels: the love which I have in my heart would still\nrecognize God, as readily as the dog recognizes his master.\u201d This love\nindeed would move out to Him even more swiftly and easily, because\n\u201clove, which is God Himself, finds in an instant, without any means,\nits own end and ultimate repose.\u201d[163]\n\nClearly _maladif_ over-sensitiveness and shiftingness of the senses of\ntaste and scent will appear presently, during the last months of her\nlife.\n\n\n6. _Hearing and Sight._\n\nThe most important and mental of the senses, hearing and sight, appear,\non the contrary, with little or nothing particularly unusual about\nthem, throughout her life.\n\nFor as to her sense of hearing, the inner voices already described as\nheard by her at different times, cannot fairly be classed under this\nor any other sense-perception, healthy or otherwise; since they appear\nto have been most vivid and clear thoughts presented to her mind,\nwith in each case the consciousness that they were the suggestions of\nMind,--of a Spirit other than her own. They appear to have always been\ndescribed by herself as \u201cwords spoken to the mind,\u201d \u201cwords as it were\nheard.\u201d[164] Traces of any _maladif_ affection of this sense will be\ndifficult or impossible to find, even during her last illness.\n\nAnd as to sight, always so closely akin to mental processes, anything\nat all really exceptional cannot, I think, be found in her life so far\nat all. For her evidently great impressionableness to certain religious\npictures,--so as a child, in regard to the \u201cPiet\u00e0,\u201d and now again\napparently with the \u201cMaest\u00e0,\u201d--and to certain sights of nature, cannot\nfairly be considered abnormal. And as to Visions, the only one recorded\nso far, that of the Bleeding Christ, was primarily a mentally mediated\nexperience: \u201cthe Lord showed Himself to her in the spirit,\u201d says the\naccount, no doubt in full accordance with her own analysis of such\nexperiences.[165] Some few disturbances of this sense will, however,\nappear during the course of her last illness.\n\n\nII. MORE OR LESS _MALADIF_ EXPERIENCES AND ACTIONS.\n\nThe amplest proof of the deep and delicate impressionableness of her\nnature is probably, however, to be found in that profound melancholy,\nthat positive disgust with everything within her and without, and that\nstrong desire for death which we found to have possessed her during\nthe three months previous to her Conversion in March 1473. For we\nshould note that that melancholy did not directly spring from spiritual\nmotives or considerations: it was previous to all definite sorrow for\nsin and to all full and willed sense of things religious and eternal.\nIndeed, with the appearance of the religious standards and certitudes,\nthat crushing universal feeling of melancholy and of positive disgust\nbreaks up, and yields to contrasted joys and sorrows, and to a buoyant\nenergy in the very midst and through the very means of suffering and\nof sacrifice. Thus the dawn of her spiritual re-birth was indeed dark\nand oppressive; but this oppression did not directly proceed from any\nclear consciousness of the Perfect and Eternal which arose within her\nonly as part and parcel of this explicit Conversion. The oppression\nsimply indicated, of itself, a nature so sensitive and claimful, as to\nrequire, in order to achieve any degree of contentment, a spiritual,\nregenerative, re-interpretative power capable of responding to and\nmatching the deepest realities of life. That nature was thus full of\nthe need of such realities and of such contact with them, but was\nwithout the power of producing, or of adequately responding to, such\nrealities,--or indeed of imaginatively forecasting them. And similarly\nin 1507, the dawn of her painful, joyful-sorrowful birthday to eternity\nwas again dark and oppressive and productive of an intense desire for\ndeath, a desire which had, apparently, been entirely absent from her\nsoul ever since 1473. Here again this oppression was not directly\nreligious or moral, but, taken in itself, was simply psycho-physical.\nIndeed this oppression marks the beginning of the special limitations,\ndifficulties, and slightly deflecting influences now introduced into\nher life by henceforth steadily increasing positive illness. I propose,\nthen, to begin with this opening depression of hers, and next to go\nthrough the main incidents of her remaining life, as far as possible,\nin strictly chronological order. I will group all this around six main\nfacts and dates.\n\n\n1. _Desire for death, 1507._\n\n\u201cIn the year 1507 she on one occasion was present at the recitation\nof the Offices for the Dead. And a desire to die came upon her. And\nshe said: \u2018O Love, I desire nothing but Thee, and Thee in Thine own\nmanner: but, if it pleases Thee, allow me at least to go and see others\ndie and be buried, in order that I may see in others that great good,\nwhich it does not please Thee should as yet be in myself.\u2019 And her Love\nconsented to this; and consequently, for a certain space of time, she\nwent to see die and be buried all those who died in the Hospital. And\nas, later on, her union with this her tender Love increased, her desire\nfor death disappeared little by little.\u201d[166]\n\nShe is, then, still active, and moves about in the spacious Hospital\nand in the adjoining Church. And this desire, as it gradually\ndisappeared, will, doubtless, not have left mere blanks in her\nconsciousness, or have reduced the sum-total of her feelings; but, with\nthat diminution, some of her old tenderness for and interest in others,\nwill have reappeared. And again we see how no one set of feelings,\none \u201cpsychosis,\u201d ever simply repeats itself, in even one and the same\nsoul: for Catherine\u2019s positive disgust with all things, which prepared\nand accompanied her desire for death in 1473, is absent from the\notherwise similar desire of 1507. In both cases there is the same sheer\n\u201cgivenness\u201d and isolation of the feeling. _Then_, she did not desire\ndeath to escape temptation or sin; _now_, she does not desire it,\ndirectly and within her emotional nature, in order to get to God: in\neach case the feeling stands simply by itself, and is not immediately\nconnected with religion at all. And finally, this incident, and its\nlater equivalent repetitions in November 1509 and September 1510, prove\nonce again on what a veritable bed of Procrustes those determined\n_a-priorists_, the Redactors of the _Vita_, have placed, pulled about\nand mutilated, as far as in them lay, the immensely spontaneous and\nrich personality of Catherine, in their determination to find her ever\nall-perfect, and perfect after their own fixed pattern. For it proves\nto demonstration, either that Catherine continued liable to human\nimperfections, or that not all desires are imperfect. And both these\nthings are true, beyond the possibility of doubt.\n\n\n2. _The scent-impression from Don Cattaneo\u2019s hand._\n\nAnd next we get an instance of clearly abnormal sense-perception,\nwhich is deeply interesting because of the vivid, first-hand form in\nwhich the fact has come down to us, and still more on account of its\nimpressive illustration of the two possible mental attitudes towards\nsuch matters. It will have occurred in 1508; and Don Marabotto is, in\nany case, the other interlocutor in the scene, and its chronicler.\nAnd if there is undoubtedly a somewhat ludicrous _na\u00efvet\u00e9_ about his\nattitude at the time of the occurrence, there is also a striking\nsimplicity and self-oblivion in the perfectly objective manner in\nwhich he chronicles the scene in all its bearings, and Catherine\u2019s\nmarked superiority to himself. It is this complete directness and\nsimplicity of motive which, on the side of character, will have bound\nthese otherwise strangely diverse souls together; and which rendered\nDon Marabotto, even simply as a character, not unworthy of his close\nintimacy with Catherine.\n\nThe abnormality here concerns the sense of smell alone; the impression\nhere lasts a considerable time: and now she acquiesces in it, but only\nfor the purpose of moving through it, as a mere means. \u201cHaving been\ninfirm for many days, Catherine one day took the hand of her Confessor\nand smelt it: and its odour penetrated right to her heart,\u201d so that\n\u201cfor many days this perfume restored and nourished her, body and soul.\u201d\nDon Marabotto then asks her what kind of thing this odour is that she\nis smelling. And she tells him that it is an odour so penetrating and\nsweet, as to seem capable of bringing the dead to life; that God had\nsent it to her, to strengthen her soul and body, now that these were\nso much oppressed; and hence \u201csince God grants me this odour, I am\ndetermined to derive strength from it, as long as He shall please that\nI shall do so.\u201d But Marabotto, \u201cthinking that he must surely be able\nto perceive what was being transmitted by himself, went smelling his\nown hand, but to no effect.\u201d And Catherine gently rebuked his action by\ndeclaring: \u201cThe things which depend entirely upon God\u2019s own free gift,\nHe does not give to those that seek them. Indeed He gives such things\nat all, only in cases of great necessity, and as an occasion of great\nspiritual profit.\u201d[167]\n\nThe impression and consolation are here still connected with the\nHoly Eucharist: for the hand which she smells is no doubt the right\none,--the hand which was wont daily to consecrate in her presence and\ndaily to communicate her. The declaration as to the odour\u2019s power to\nraise the dead to life has occurred already in connection with the\nHoly Eucharist, and will have been in part suggested to her by such\nJohannine passages as \u201cI am the \u2026 Life,\u201d \u201cI am the Living Bread,\u201d \u201che\nthat eateth this Bread shall live,\u201d shall be made to live, \u201cfor ever.\u201d\nAnd although the odour is here the prominent impression, and \u201csavours\u201d\nare wanting, yet \u201csweetness\u201d still occurs, probably as a sort of\nsensation of tasting.--Marabotto\u2019s mind has in it, on this occasion,\ntwo plausible assumptions, each strengthening the other; and Catherine\ncontroverts both. He evidently thinks: \u201cCatherine\u2019s states are all most\nvaluable, hence real, hence objective: if then she says she smells this\nor that, others will be able to do so too.\u201d And: \u201cWhat a man transmits,\nthat he can himself experience: hence, on this ground also, I should\nbe able to smell this perfume.\u201d--And Catherine\u2019s mind evidently also\ncontains two very different convictions: the first, that experiences,\neven when thus but semi-spiritual, are, for all their reality, not\ndirectly transferable from soul to soul; and the second, that all such\nsensible and semi-sensible experiences, whether normal or exceptional,\nare all but means at the disposal of the free-willing spirit, means\nwhich become limits and obstacles as soon as they are treated as ends.\n\nThus if this experience points to a certain abnormality of condition\nin the peripheral, psycho-physical regions of the soul, Catherine\u2019s\nattitude towards it, and towards the whole question occasioned by\nit, has got a massive depth of sanity about it, perhaps unattainable\nby, certainly untested in, the always and simply, even peripherally,\nhealthy soul.\n\n\n3. _Shifting of her burial-place._\n\nAnd in her Will of March 1509 we find traces of a certain weakening of\nher former ample business capacity, and of her vigilance, perseverance,\nand balance, in spite of friendly pressure or criticism, with regard\nto matters of practical import. For, as to her general incapacity for\nbusiness, the Will contains a clause exempting Marabotto from all\nfuture challenge of his administration of her monies, up to the date\nof the making of this Will. And this clause finds its explanation in\nthe admission of the _Vita_, with regard to her life during these\nlast years, that, owing to the mysterious and shifting nature of her\ninfirmity, \u201cthere was confusion in governing her,\u201d \u201cconfusion not\non her own part, but on that of those who served her,\u201d[168] words\nwhich will grow still clearer in our account of her last four months.\nFor this state of her health must have rendered the administration\nof her affairs by another both necessary and difficult. And as to\nthe diminution of her vigilance and perseverance in matters of not\ndirectly spiritual or moral import, we have here, for the first time,\na departure from her resolution, emphatically expressed in the Wills\nand Codicil of 1498, 1503, 1506, of being buried beside her husband.\nShe now orders herself to be buried in the Church of San Nicol\u00f2 in\nBoschetto, and that so much is to be spent on the funeral as shall seem\nfit to Don Marabotto.\n\nThree points should here be borne in mind. For one thing, Catherine\nhad a long-standing affection for that beautifully situated\nPilgrimage-Church, partly no doubt from associations dating back to\nher summer _villegiatura_ days at the neighbouring Pr\u00e0, and partly,\nprobably, from memories connected with her sister Limbania, since, as\nwe have already seen, Limbania\u2019s Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie\nwas the joint foundation of the two Genoese Monasteries of San Teodoro\nfuore le Mura and of San Nicol\u00f2 in Boschetto. Limbania had died in\nthat Convent in 1502, and Catherine had, in her Codicil of 1503, left\na small sum for mortuary Masses for herself to the Monastery of San\nNicol\u00f2.\n\nBut, next, it was doubtless the growing conviction as to her sanctity\namongst her immediate friends, and their desire to keep her grave\nand remains, as an eventual place and object of veneration, distinct\nfrom any others, perhaps specially from those of her husband, whose\ndefective reputation might otherwise damage or delay the growth of such\na cultus of his wife, which was the determining cause of this change\nin the place of sepulture. These friends were able to prevail, no\ndoubt because her interest and determination in such matters had become\nweakened by ill-health of now thirteen years\u2019 duration. And they will\nhave fixed upon this place some four English miles away, partly because\nit happened to be one she loved, but also because thus no question of\nseparating her remains from those of Giuliano would formally arise.\nHer later Codicil will prove the presence of both these motives, and\nCatherine\u2019s unconsciousness as to the situation, and the vagueness of\nher acquiescence.\n\nAnd, finally, we must note that, if this action of her _entourage_\noffends our present-day tastes and susceptibilities, it was yet\nthoroughly in accordance with a quite hoary tradition and feeling in\nsuch matters, and was in no sense an idea special to, or originated\nby, this group of persons; and again, that the four Protectors of the\nHospital (the trustees and executors of the Will), her sole surviving\nbrother Lorenzo (the residuary legatee), and above all her closest,\ngreat-souled friend Vernazza (one of the six witnesses), are all\nparties to the pious stratagem, and share its responsibility with\nMarabatto.\n\n\n4. _The \u201cscintilla\u201d-experience; spiritual refreshment derived from a\npicture._\n\nWe have next an important group of experiences and convictions in\nNovember 1509. \u201cOn the 11th November 1509, there came upon her an\ninsupportable fire of infinite love; and she declared that there had\nbeen shown to her one single spark (scintilla) of Pure Love, and that\nthis had been but for a short moment; and that, had it lasted even a\nlittle longer, she would have expired because of its great force. She\ncould hardly eat, nor speak so as to be heard, in consequence of this\npenetrating wound of love that she had received in her heart.\u201d[169]\n\nFew events of her life have left such profound traces, so many\nechoes and waves and wavelets as it were, throughout both her\nauthentic sayings and the various secondary and tertiary imitations,\nre-castings, and expansions of her original account as has this\nscintilla-experience. I will here translate the nine varying\nimpressions and exclamations which, proceeding from different minds\nand different dates, have, all but one, been worked up by the _Vita_\ninto a single paragraph, which, by its very multitude of flickerings\nas to meaning and of experimentations as to form, gives us a striking\npicture of the deep and many-sided influence of this single event, so\nshort in its clock-time duration. \u201cThis creature, all lost in her own\nself, found her true self in one instant in God.\u201d \u201cAlthough she reputed\nherself to be very poor, yet she remained rich in the divine love.\u201d\n\u201cShe, knowing the grace and operation to be all from God, remained lost\nin herself, and living only in God.\u201d \u201cShe gave her free-will to God,\nand God then restored it to her.\u201d \u201cShe gave her free-will to God, and\nGod thereupon worked with its means.\u201d \u201cO the great wonder, to see a\nman established in the midst of so many miseries, and yet God having\nso great a care of him! All tongues are incapable of expressing it,\nall intellects of understanding it.\u201d \u201cThat man becomes foolish in the\neyes of the world, to whom Thou, O Lord God, dost manifest even but the\nslightest spark of Thine unspeakable Love.\u201d \u201cThou, O God, desirest to\nexalt man, and to make him as though another God, by means of love.\u201d\nOf later date or type: \u201cIn God she saw all the operations, by means of\nwhich He had caused her to merit (in the past).\u201d And of still later,\nclearly secondary, character: \u201cGod showed her in one instant the\nsuccession of His (future) operation, as though she would have to die\nof a great martyrdom.\u201d[170]\n\nAnd this great experience of hers led on to a scene which, whilst\nemphasizing the psycho-physical effect, occasion or concomitant of\nsuch spiritual experiences, also gives us the strongest instance of\nher impressionableness to pictures in particular. \u201cFinding herself\nin such ardour, she felt herself compelled to turn to a figure of the\nWoman of Samaria at the well with her Lord; and in her extreme distress\nCatherine addressed Him thus: \u2018O Lord, I pray Thee, give me a little\ndrop of this water, which of old Thou didst give to the Samaritan\nwoman, since I can no more bear so great a fire.\u2019 And suddenly, in\nthat instant, there was given her a little drop of that divine water;\nand by it she was refreshed within and without, and she had rest for\nsome appreciable time.\u201d[171] But, above all, this experience and its\nprecursor were, if not the actual beginning, at least the culminating\npoint in the experiences or projections which led to or articulated\nher doctrine on Purgatory. In a later chapter I hope to trace the\nconnection between those experiences and this doctrine. Here we must\nadd two other vivid interior experiences and convictions of hers which\nare placed by the _Vita_, no doubt rightly, in direct succession to,\nand in more or less connection with, the great \u201cscintilla\u201d-operation,\nalthough neither of them appears amongst the images and conceptions\nwhich make up the _Trattato del Purgatorio_.\n\n\u201cOne day\u201d (she recounted this herself) \u201cshe appeared to herself to\nabide suspended in mid-air. And the spiritual part wanted to attach\nitself to heaven; but her other part wished to attach itself to earth:\nyet neither the one nor the other managed to become possessed of its\nobject, and simply abode thus in mid-air, without achieving its desire.\nAnd after abiding thus for a long time, the part which was drawing her\nto heaven seemed to her to be gaining the upper hand (over the other\npart), and, little by little, the spiritual part forcibly drew her\nupwards, so that at every moment she saw herself moving further and\nfurther away from earth. And although this at first seemed to be a\nstrange thing to the part that was being drawn, and this part was ill\ncontent to be thus forced; yet when it had been so far removed, as no\nmore to be able to see the earth, then it began to lose its earthly\ninstinct and affection, and to perceive and to relish the things which\nwere relished by the spiritual part. And this spiritual part never\nceased from drawing it heavenward. And so at last these two parts came\nto a common accord.\u201d[172] And again on another occasion: \u201cThe soul is\nso desirous of departing from the body to unite itself with God, that\nits body appears to it a veritable Purgatory, which keeps it distant\nfrom its true object.\u201d[173]\n\nThis group of experiences straightway enforces some important spiritual\nlaws. For one thing, this scintilla-experience, since her Conversion\nthe deepest of her life, is clearly also the richest and most\ncomplex,--witness the numerous, mutually supplementary or critical,\nattempts at analysis furnished by even her immediate companions. And\nthis experience is only simple in the sense in which white light, which\ncombines all the prismatic colours, or a living healthy human body,\ncomposed of numberless constituents, is simple.\n\nAnd next, nothing indicates that this experience was of a character\nessentially different from that of her older contemplations; and\neverything appears to show that it was, substantially, a grace\naddressed to, and an act performed by, her spiritual nature,--her\nintelligence and free will, God\u2019s Spirit stimulating and sustaining\nhers in a quite exceptional degree, and hence less than ever weakening\nor supplanting this her spirit\u2019s action. It was as much a gift of\nherself by herself to God, as if it had not been a pure grace from Him;\nand yet her very power and wish and determination to give herself,\nwere rendered possible and became actual through that pure prevenient,\naccompanying and subsequent gift of God.\n\nAgain, it is certain that either there was no clear mental scheme,\nreasoning, or picture during the experience, or that, if there was,\nit consisted of a spacial simultaneity rather than of a temporal\nsuccession, and that it showed her, if her own soul at all, then that\nsoul in its most universally human, typical aspects and relations.\nIn no case was there anything historical or prophetical, strictly\nbiographical about it.\n\nAnd then we have, even though she could give no kind of definite\naccount of it, the most solid reasons for accepting this experience as\ngenuine, wholesome, and valuable. For she evidently fully believed in\nit herself; and we shall see how clearly and readily she continued,\neven after this experience, to distinguish between wholesome and\nmental, and _maladif_ and simply psychic, states of abstraction.\nAgain it became the occasion and material of most deep and fruitful\nspiritual doctrine; whereas nothing is more empty and unsuggestive\nthan are the bare, brute \u201cfacts\u201d of all merely nervous or hysterical\nhallucinations. It also demonstrably strengthened her will for the\nlast deep sufferings and sacrifices yet to be gone through, and no\ndoubt added a fresh stimulus to her already profound influence over\nVernazza, and pricked him onwards on his career of the most solid,\nheroic philanthropy and self-sacrifice. And yet we can see that her\npsycho-physical organism is now functionally weak and ill. For great\nphysical exhaustion now follows upon an experience substantially the\nsame as those which used to strengthen her so markedly even in physical\nrespects.\n\nAs to the scene with the picture, we again get a case not unlike the\nodour of Marabotto\u2019s hand, in so much as here too the experience hovers\nbetween the mental and physical, and there is a sensible impression as\nfrom a physical substance with reference to a Person,--this taste of\na \u201cdivine water\u201d moving here on to Christ, to God, the Living Water,\nas that smell of sweetness moves on to the \u201cLiving Bread,\u201d Christ, and\nGod. It is, unfortunately, impossible to identify that picture, which\nmay well have been a fresco-painting in some building or passage of the\nHospital, since destroyed, or on some extant wall, white-washed since\nthose days. The vivid picturings of the soul in mid-air, and of the\nsoul in the purgatory of its body, will be considered in connection\nwith her psycho-physical states and her doctrine.\n\nBut before leaving this November experience, we must give two\nsignificant conversations held by her with Vernazza at the time, and\nwhich have been no doubt handed down to us by himself. \u201cOne day,\nspeaking of this\u201d (the scintilla-) \u201cevent with a spiritual person\n(_Religioso_) she called it \u2018a giddiness\u2019 (_vertigine_). But that\nperson said to her: \u2018Mother, I beg of you that you will yourself\nselect a person who may happen to suit your mind (_soddisfaccia alla\nmente vestra_), and will narrate to this person the graces which God\nhas granted to you, so that, when you come to die, these graces may\nnot remain hidden and unknown, and an opportunity for God\u2019s praise\nand glory may not thus be lost.\u2019 And she then answered that she was\nentirely willing (_ben contenta_), if this be pleasing to her tender\nLove; and that, in that case, she would not choose another person than\nhimself, although she was convinced that it was impossible to describe\neven a small fragment of such interior experiences as occurred between\nGod and her soul; and that as to exterior things, few or none had taken\nplace in her case.\u201d Here again we have evidence as to her habit of\nmaking light of and transcending all psycho-physical phenomena, however\nstriking and mysterious; and we get a positive authorization conferred\nby herself upon Vernazza, such as is claimed by no other contributor to\nthe _Vita_.\n\nAnd \u201cspeaking with him some days later, she said: \u2018Son, I have had a\ncertain prick of conscience, of which I will tell you. The other day,\nwhen you told me that I might possibly remain dead some day during one\nof those giddinesses, there seemed to arise in me, at that moment, a\nfeeling of joy, a profound aspiration which said: \u201dO, if that hour\nwould but come!\u201c And then this feeling suddenly ceased. Now I declare\nto you, that I do not wish that in this matter there should be any\nglimpse (scintilla) of a desire of my own for earth or heaven, or for\nany other created thing; but that I wish to leave all things to the\ndisposition of God.\u2019 Then this person answered, that there was no\noccasion for her to have a prick of conscience, because, although joy\nhad awaked in her mind, and a sudden exclamation had occurred there,\nat the mention of the word \u2018death,\u2019 yet that nothing of this had\nproceeded from the will, nor had it been endorsed by the reason; but\nthat it had proceeded solely from the instinct of the pleasure-loving\nsoul (_anima_), which ever, according to its nature, tends to such an\nend. And how the proof that this was a correct account, lay in this,\nthat her prick of conscience had not really penetrated to the depths of\nher heart, but had remained on the surface, at the same slight depth\nat which the movement of joy had remained. And she confessed that the\nmatter really stood thus, and remained satisfied.\u201d[174]\n\nHere three points are of interest. I take her impulse of deep longing\nto die in one of those trances, to have arisen, not simply from joy\nat the thought of dying, but from joy at the prospect of dying of\njoy,--of dying with the joy fixed in that moment in the soul for\never. For heaven itself appears here not as a synonym for God, but as\na creature, as the summing up of infinite and endless consolation of\nall right kinds, spiritual and psycho-physical. And it is this that\nmakes her scruple thoroughly understandable, and but one more instance\nof her virile fight with all direct attachment to the consequences and\nconcomitants of devotedness.--And next we should note her deep trust\nin the spiritual experience and wisdom of Vernazza, the layman and\nlawyer, some twenty-five years her junior; and her asking his advice\non a matter which we would readily suppose her to reserve for Don\nMarabotto, who by now had been her Confessor and Spiritual Adviser for\nmany years.--And lastly, the depth and delicacy of Vernazza\u2019s analysis\nare most striking, with their clear perception of the various levels\nand degrees of true selfhood and volition within the human soul: she\nhad really had neither a full will, nor a deliberate wish, nor indeed\nany penetrating, spontaneous reproach of conscience; she had, in fact,\nbeen suffering from a scruple, and he was required, and was able, to\nmake her see that this had been the case.\n\n\n5. _Catherine\u2019s sense of intense cold, and her attitude towards Don\nMarabotto._\n\nAnd in December 1509 and January 1510 we come across a group of\nexperiences and actions, in some respects different from, and\nsupplementary of, the set just concluded. For \u201cin the month of December\nshe suffered from great cold,\u201d--I take this cold to have been, at least\npartially, special to her state, and not to have proceeded primarily\nfrom the winter temperature,--\u201cbut she paid no attention to it.\u201d \u201cAnd\nbehold one night there came so great an attack (_assalto_) upon her,\nthat she could not conceal it. There was a great heaving of the body,\nmuch bile was evacuated, and the nose bled. And she then sent for her\nConfessor, and said to him: \u2018Father, it seems to me that I must die,\nbecause of the many weakenings of various sorts (_accidenti_) that have\nhappened to me.\u2019\u201d \u201cAnd this attack (_assalto_) lasted for about three\nhours,\u201d \u201cher body trembling like a leaf.\u201d \u201cAnd then her body became\nquiet again, but was now so broken and weak that it was necessary to\ngive her minced chicken to revive her; and a good many days had to pass\nbefore she returned to her (latter-day) vigour.\u201d[175]\n\nAnd \u201con the 10th of January 1510, she appeared determined to see her\nConfessor no more, either as to help and comfort for her soul or as\nto her bodily health. It seemed to her that he was too indulgent to\nherself, in her sayings and doings. But the fact was, that he saw it\nto be necessary that she should do all that her instinct prompted her\nto say or do; and it would indeed have been well-nigh impossible to\nforce her to act against these interior movements of hers. Yet since\nshe was herself in cause, she did not acknowledge such necessities\n(_ordinazioni_); rather these actions of hers appeared to her but as\nso many disordered doings, and she went forcing herself to try and\nnot give trouble to those who were good enough to put up with her\n(_chi la comportava_).--And when night came, she locked herself up\nalone into a separate room, refusing food or conversation or comfort\nfrom any one. But after a while she had to come out, with a view\nto rendering a certain service, and her Confessor managed to slip\ninto the room unobserved and to hide himself there. And she, having\nreturned and locked herself in, and thinking herself quite alone,\nsaid with a sobbing voice to her Lord: \u2018O Lord, what wouldest Thou\nhave me do further in this world? I neither see nor hear, nor eat\nnor sleep; I do not know what I do or what I say. I feel as though I\nwere a dead thing. There is no creature that understands me; I find\nmyself lonely, unknown, poor, naked, strange, and different from the\nrest of the world; and hence I know not any more how to live with (my\nfellow-) creatures upon earth.\u2019 These and such-like words she spoke\nso piteously, that her Confessor could bear it no longer; and he\ndiscovered himself, and came up to and spoke to her. And God gave him\ngrace, so that she remained comforted in mind and body by his words,\nand was in fair health for a good many days after.\u201d[176]\n\nNevertheless \u201cher Confessor, since his continual intercourse and close\nfamiliarity with Catherine gave occasion to murmurs on the part of\nsome who did not fully understand his special work and its necessity,\nleft her and was absent for three days\u201d (probably shortly after the\nscene just related), \u201cfor the purpose of testing that work of his,\nand seeing whether it was indeed all from God, and thus to escape\nall scruple in the matter. But when, three days later, he returned\nto her house and had learnt and considered the various accidents and\nincidents which had occurred meanwhile, he was so entirely satisfied\nwith the evidence afforded by experiment, that he lost all scruple in\nthe matter, and indeed regretted having made the trial, because of the\ngreat distress which she had suffered from it.\u201d It will have been on\nthis occasion that she said to him: \u201cI seem to see that God has given\nto you this one care of myself, and hence that you should not attend to\nanything else. For now I can no longer support alone so many exterior\nand interior oppressions (_assedi_). When you leave me, I go lamenting\nabout the house, saying that you are cruel and do not understand my\nextreme necessity; for if you did, you would pay greater attention to\nit.\u201d[177]\n\nAnd it will have been later on again, in February and March, that she\nintimated, during two of her violent attacks (on the first occasion by\nsigns, on the second by words), her impression that she would succumb,\nand her wish to receive Extreme Unction. But Don Marabotto correctly\njudged that she would safely get through these seizures, and the\nanointing was put off for the present.[178]\n\nThis group is again interesting. For it gives us evidence as to\nhow dependent this character and career of the rarest loneliness\nand independence had now become upon human help and sympathy; and\nlets us see how illness had now introduced an excessive suddenness,\nabsoluteness, and shiftingness into her feelings and minor actions,\nand an occasional slight querulousness into her remarks. It shows us\nher old social, altruistic instincts and standard still at work within\nher; for she still suffers from the consciousness, whenever she is\nthrown back upon herself, of being different from other people; she\nstill longs to attend to the wants of others, regrets the trouble\nshe gives them, and feels grateful for the services they render; and\nshe still busies herself, in the reduced measure now possible to\nher, with services of her own to others,--a \u201ccertain service,\u201d which\nshe had to render, had sufficed to break through her self-imposed\nseclusion. It lets us see how watchful against and suspicious of\nself, and of what could flatter and indulge it, she still remained;\nand how independent her judgment continued, even with regard to her\nConfessor. And this her judgment we shall have good reason to hold to\nhave been remarkably well-grounded, in so far as this, that had only\nMarabotto possessed a deeper insight into her psycho-physical state\nand less of a determination to treat all her states and impulses as\nequally solid and spiritual, or at least as equally to be yielded to,\nhe could have helped her more; and she would then, thus helped, have\nbeen able, even now, fully to resist or to give way, in proportion to\nthe healthiness or the morbidness of the attack. And finally we see\nhow truly serviceable and necessary, and indeed repeatedly right where\nher own estimate was wrong, was the help and sympathy and judgment\nof her Confessor; and how difficult, entirely unselfish, and devoted\nwas his action and attitude. It is interesting to note that Catherine\nwas probably always right in her instinct as to matters directly\naffecting herself, where the will came in, or could be made to come\nin; and that she was wrong only in such a point of mere physical fact\nand determinism as whether or not, and how long, her physical strength\nwould hold out.\n\n\n6. _Events from January to May 1510._\n\nI will here try and put together, in their actual succession from\nJanuary to May 1510, the chief psycho-physical phenomena and their\nparallel utilizations, together with such mental and spiritual\nexperiences and actions as seem to have been only quite indirectly,\nor not all, occasioned by her state of health. In a later chapter I\npropose to study all this health matter in some detail. Here I would\nsimply warn the reader against treating, with certainly most of her\nchroniclers, these psycho-physical phenomena as separately and directly\nspiritual or miraculous or ethically significant. Found alone, they\nwould now, on the contrary, directly suggest simply nervous disorder of\nsome kind or other, a thing which, in itself, is always an evil. Their\ninterest and spiritual importance arises for us entirely from their\npredominantly mental qualities; from their appearance in a person of\nsuch powerful mind and large and efficient character; and from their\nsplendidly ethico-religious utilization by that same person.\n\nOn one day \u201cshe had an impression (\u2018wound,\u2019 _ferita_) which was so\ngreat, that she lost her speech and sight, and abode in this manner\nsome three hours. She made signs with her hands, of feeling as it were\nred-hot pincers attacking her heart and other interior parts. But for\nall this, she did not lose her full consciousness (_intelletto_).\u201d\nThis was the second occasion on which she indicated her wish to be\nanointed.[179] On another day \u201cit was impossible to keep her in bed:\nshe seemed like a creature placed in a great flame of fire, and it was\nimpossible to touch her skin, because of the acute pain which she felt\nfrom any such touch.\u201d[180]\n\nA little later on \u201cshe abode in so great a peace and interior\ncontentment that she was\u201d in all respects \u201cconsiderably relieved and\nreinvigorated (_ristorata_). But she did not long remain in this\ncondition. For very soon she was in a state of interior nudity and\naridity, and she prayed: \u2018Never hitherto, O my Lord, have I asked\nThee for anything for myself: now I pray Thee with all my might, that\nThou mayest not will to separate me from Thee. Thou well knowest, O\nLord, that I could not bear this.\u2019 And to her disciples she said, in\nconnection with this desolation: \u2018If a man were to take a soul from\nParadise, how do you think such a soul would feel? You might give it\nall the pleasures in the world, and as much more as you can imagine:\nand yet all would be but Hell, because of the memory of that divine\nunion\u2019 (formerly possessed and now lost).\u201d[181]\n\nAgain a little later on \u201cshe had another attack (_assalto_), when all\nher body trembled, especially her right shoulder. It was impossible\nto move her from her bed; she did not eat, drank next to nothing, and\ndid not sleep.\u201d[182] On another day, \u201cshe had another attack,\u201d--this\nwas the occasion of her third indication of a wish to receive Extreme\nUnction,--\u201ca spasm in the throat and mouth, so that she could not\nspeak, nor open her eyes, nor keep her breath except with extreme\ndifficulty.\u201d \u201cThey applied cupping-glasses, with a view to aiding\nher to find her breath and to regain speech, yet these helped but\nlittle.\u201d[183] For another day we are told that \u201cin her flesh were\ncertain concavities, as though it were dough, and the thumb had been\npressed into it. And she called out in a loud voice, because of the\ngreat pain.\u201d[184]\n\nOn another day \u201cher pains made her call out as loudly as she could,\nand she dragged herself about on her bed. And those that stood by were\ndumfounded, at seeing a body, which appeared to be healthy, in such\na tormented state. And then she would laugh, speak as one in health,\nand say to the others, not to be sorrowful on her account, since she\nwas very contented. And this \u201cset of attacks\u201d lasted four days; she\nthen had a little rest; and, after this, those attacks returned as\nbefore.\u201d[185]\n\nThis group is in so far particularly difficult, as we have to try and\ndecide whether, and if so how far, these pains of hers were primarily\npsychical, and, in some way and degree, originally, and by force\nof long habits of concentrated religious thinking and picturing,\nsuggested, or at least stimulated, by the mind itself; or whether these\npains were primarily physical, although evidently only functional and\npreponderantly nervous. For on the answer to that question depends,\nif not our selection from amongst, at least our interpretation of,\nthe largely contradictory, successively \u201cdoctored,\u201d and more or less\nviolently schematized evidence, of which the above passages give the\nmost characteristic and primitive parts. If it was the mind itself\nwhich, unconsciously to its owner, suggested these pains, then we can\nand must accept, as quite contemporary and indeed fully exact, those\npassages which make her peace and even sensible consolation arise\nduring the same moments as, and in exact proportion to, the presence\nof the pains. If, on the other hand, the pains arose independently\nof the subconscious mind, and were merely mastered by the conscious\nintelligence and will, then it seems reasonable to assume that we\nhave here, as is certainly the case in other matters and places in\nthe _Vita_, an ideal foreshortening, juxtaposition, and unification\nof what, in the actual experience, occurred more lengthily and\nsuccessively.\n\nIt is certainly remarkable in this connection, that, whereas we have\nhad a clearly marked case of mental, spiritual desolation, outside of\none of these attacks, it is at least very difficult to find anything\ncertainly of the kind during one of them; indeed the juxtaposition of,\nnot simply profound spiritual peace, but of sensible, also psychic\nor quasi-psychic, consolation with those pains, is so constant and\napparently spontaneous, that secondary, or at least schematic and _a\npriori_, reporting seems to have been at work rather in the passages\nwhich affirm the excessiveness of those pains, than in those which\ninsist that those pains were, so to speak, _not_ pains. All her own\nauthentic sayings leave the impression of immense psycho-spiritual\nsensitiveness, of much actual mental and emotional suffering as well as\njoy, but not, I think, of purely physical suffering. \u201cI find so much\ncontentment on the part of my spirit and so much peace in my mind, that\ntongue could not tell nor reason comprehend it; but on the part of my\nhumanity\u201d (her psycho-physical organism) \u201call my pains are, so to say,\nnot pains,\u201d she says, shortly after a particularly violent attack,\nwith four \u201caccidents.\u201d And a contributor declares that the joy and the\ntorment ever arose together. It is true that another passage says that,\nduring such attacks, \u201cher disciples, seeing her suffer so much, desired\nthat she should expire, so as no more to have to see her in such great\nand continuous torment\u201d; but then this desire of theirs was evidently\nrather a sympathetic feeling than a deliberate judgment, for, once\nshe has got over the attack, all this desire of theirs disappears as\nrapidly as it had come.[186]\n\n\nIII. CATHERINE\u2019S HISTORY FROM MAY TO SEPTEMBER 9, 1510.\n\n\n1. _Catherine and the Physicians._\n\nIt is at the end of the preceding months that we are told how\n\u201cthe Physician\u201d (possibly the Hospital House-Surgeon) \u201cattempted\nto administer medicine to her. But it gave rise to such repeated\n\u2018accidents\u2019 (vomitings), that she all but died of it, and remained very\nweak.\u201d[187]\n\n\u201cAnd four months before she died,\u201d hence in mid-May, \u201cmany physicians\nwere called together. And they saw and examined the patient, but\nfailed to find any trace of bodily infirmity, in spite of the care\nand attention bestowed by them on the case. And she declared her\nconviction that her infirmity was not of a kind requiring physicians\nor bodily physic. But on the physicians persevering and ordering\nher, she obediently took all that they prescribed, although with\ngreat difficulty and to her hurt. Until at last those same physicians\nconcluded that there was no remedy within the art of medicine\napplicable to the case, and that the infirmity was supernatural.\u201d[188]\n\n\u201cBut now there supervened, on his return from England, an excellent\nGenoese physician, Maestro Giovan Battista Boerio, who, for many\nyears, had been in the service of the English King, Henry VII. And\nBoerio visited Catherine, and warned her to beware of giving scandal\nby refusing medical treatment. And she, in return, assured him that it\ngrieved her much if she scandalized any one; and that she was prepared\nto use any remedy for her ailment, if such could be found.\u201d And indeed\n\u201cjoy arose within her, at the hope of being cured by him. But in the\nfollowing night much\u201d psycho-physical \u201cpain and trouble came upon her,\u201d\nand \u201cshe then reproved her natural self (_umanit\u00e0_), saying: \u2018Thou\nsufferest this, because thou didst rejoice without (just) cause.\u2019\u201d Yet\nafter about three weeks\u2019 trial of every kind of remedy, a trial which\nleft her as it found her, Boerio abandoned the task, but \u201chenceforward\nheld Catherine in esteem and reverence, calling her \u2018Mother,\u2019 and often\nvisiting her.\u201d[189]\n\nHere we have an interesting group of facts. For one thing, we know how\nKing Henry \u201chad for years been visited by regular fits of the gout;\nhis strength visibly wasted away, and every spring the most serious\napprehensions were entertained of his life.\u201d \u201cHe had also pains in the\nchest and difficulty of respiration.\u201d And, \u201cin the spring of 1509 the\nKing sank under the violence of the disease.\u201d[190] And thus Boerio\nwill, a year after the death of his royal master, have been called\nin to the sick-bed of the Viceroy\u2019s daughter, not simply as a court\nphysician or as a generally skilful doctor, but as a man known to have\nhad long experience of a case which prima facie was not all unlike\nCatherine\u2019s.\n\nThen it is impossible not to feel throughout these and other passages\nof the _Vita_ which are concerned with physicians, a curious\ncombination of contradictory feelings. There is reproof of the doctors\u2019\npresumption in venturing to begin by treating her illness as though\nit were a simply natural one; and there is the proud pleasure at thus\ngetting, through the breakdown of this their presumptuous undertaking,\nprofessional testimony to the supernatural character of her infirmity.\nAnd the two motives lead to the self-contradictory over-emphasizing\nboth of the Physicians\u2019 moral worth and finality of testimony at the\nend of each experience, and of their rationalistic rashness in being\nwilling to try again, a rashness assumed to be apparent to every one\nbut themselves before each new attempt. For they must be represented\nas worthy and skilful men; else what value has their testimony? And\ntheir action must be intrinsically foolish from the outset; else what\nbecomes of the transparently and separately supernatural character of\nher illness?[191]\n\nAnd then we can still see fairly clearly that Catherine does not share\nthe views of practically all her attendants, and of certainly all the\nlater contributors to and revisers of the _Vita_. For even now the book\nstill leaves intact the passages which show her as hoping to be cured\nby Boerio, and as then condemning herself for having rejoiced without\ncause,--evidently, without supernatural justification; as prepared\nto believe that the physicians might be able to find an appropriate\nremedy, and as willingly trying the remedies they actually offer her;\nand as indeed declaring her doubt whether any physic would do her\nany good, yet nowhere announcing a conviction as to the directly and\nseparately supernatural character of her illness. \u201cHer attendants,\u201d\nsays the obviously most authentic continuation of the passage\nconcerning the cupping-glasses given further back, \u201clet these attacks\ncome and go, with as little damage as possible. Her body had to be and\nwas sustained without the aid of medicine, and solely by means of great\ncare and great vigilance.\u201d[192]\n\n\n2. _Catherine and Don Carenzio, Argentina, and Ettore Vernazza._\n\nIt will have been the end of June, or the beginning of July, when\nthese medical experiments ceased. But before them (on March 11 and\ntwice in April), and again three times during them (in May and June),\nmonies were paid, in Catherine\u2019s name, by Don Giacomo Carenzio, now\nresident as Rettore in the Hospital, in the matter of the granting\nof Indulgences to the Church attached to the Hospital. And although\nthis affair, occurring thus so late on in her illness, in which we\nhave already found her not always to have dominated the plans of her\nattendants, cannot well be pressed as necessarily characteristic of\nher, yet I take it to be quite likely that she still took some active\npart in the matter.[193]\n\nCatherine certainly still attended to business, even two months later;\nfor, on August 3, Vernazza drew up a Codicil in her presence \u201cin the\nbedroom of Argentina del Sale,\u201d says the document itself. Since the\nInventory, still extant, of the things found in Catherine\u2019s rooms at\nthe time of her death, gives a list of the bedclothes of only two beds,\nand these two beds are then both in the same room, and the one bed is\nCatherine\u2019s, and the other is that of the _famiglia_ (the servant)\nArgentina: it is clear that, for at least the last six weeks of her\nlife, Catherine had only one person sleeping in her little house with\nher, and that this person was the navvy Marco\u2019s little widow. I take\nit, with Vallebona, that the room was really Catherine\u2019s ordinary\nbedroom; but that, as Argentina now slept there as regularly as her\nmistress herself, Catherine preferred, whether from humility or\naffection (the latter motive seems the more probable), to think of the\nroom as belonging to Argentina.[194]\n\nFor some reason unknown to us, Vernazza, Catherine\u2019s closest friend,\nmust have left Genoa soon after drawing up this Codicil. For he did not\ndraw up or witness her final Codicil of September 12, although, when in\nGenoa at all, he now lived close by, and although this final Codicil\nbut gave effect to the plan regarding her sepulture which underlay the\nchange introduced into the Will of March 1509, a Will which had been\nwitnessed by himself. And, as we shall see, he was absent, indeed far\naway (_lontano_), from her death-bed, some six weeks after the date at\nwhich we have now arrived. I think we can only explain this departure\nby assuming that already now, before his inspirer\u2019s death, his zeal and\nactivity had expanded beyond the limits of the Genoese Republic; and\nthat, dying as she already was, and devoted to her as he ever remained,\nhe nevertheless (since there was now so little that he could hope to\ndo for her own person, and there was so much to do elsewhere in the\nway of developing and applying her spirit and teachings) now rode off\nto Venice or to Rome, as we know him to have done, so often and for so\nlong, during the fourteen remaining years of his life. And we have in\nthis a fact peculiarly characteristic of these two expansive souls,--of\nthe influence of the one, the frail woman, dying in her little\nsick-room, and of the execution of her world-embracing aspirations by\nthe other, the strong man, battling, often at the risk of his very\nlife, for the poor and oppressed, outside, on the great trysting-field\nof men\u2019s passions and requirements.\n\n\n3. _Psycho-physical condition and its utilization, August 10 to 27._\n\nBut Catherine, lying in her sick-room, suffered on August 10 from one\nof her great burnings. \u201cAnd next day, whilst her body was still in pain\nand trouble, God drew her mind upwards to Himself. And she fixed her\neyes on the ceiling, and remained thus almost immovable for an hour,\nand spoke not but laughed joyously. And when she had returned to her\nmore ordinary consciousness, she said this one thing only: \u2018O Lord, do\nwith me whatsoever Thou wilt.\u2019\u201d[195]\n\nOn August 15, she, \u201cwhen about to communicate, addressed many\nbeautiful words to the Blessed Sacrament, so that every one present\nwas moved to tears.\u201d[196] During the following day and night she\nsuffered so greatly, that \u201call considered she would certainly die. She\nasked,\u201d--this was the third or even fourth time,--\u201cfor Extreme Unction,\nand\u201d this time \u201cit was given her, and she received it with great\ndevotion.\u201d\n\n\u201cOn the day following,\u201d the 17th, \u201cshe was in a state of jubilation\nof heart (_giubilo di cuore_), which manifested itself exteriorly in\nmerry laughter. And, having been asked as to the cause, she said that\nshe had seen various most beautiful, merry, and joyous countenances, so\nthat she had been unable to refrain from laughing. And this impression\ncontinued throughout several days, during which she appeared to be\nimproved in health.\u201d[197] But on August 22 or 23, \u201cshe again had a\nday of much heat and trouble. She remained maimed (paralyzed) in her\nright hand and in one finger of the left hand. And then she remained as\nthough dead for about sixteen hours.\u201d[198]\n\nIn the night of the 23rd or 24th (Feast of St. Bartholomew) she had \u201ca\ngreat attack in mind and body; and being unable to speak, she made the\nsign of the Cross upon her heart. And, later on, she was understood to\nhave been molested by a diabolical temptation.\u201d[199]\n\nOn the 25th \u201cshe was in great weakness. And she caused her windows to\nbe opened, so as to be able to see the sky. And, as the night came\non, she had many candles lit; and she chanted, as well as she could,\nthe \u2018Veni, Creator Spiritus.\u2019 And when she had finished she fixed her\neyes upon the sky, and remained thus an hour and a half, making many\ngestures with her hands and eyes. And when she had resumed her ordinary\nconsciousness (_quando f\u00f9 ritornata in s\u00e8_), she said repeatedly:\n\u2018Let us go\u2019; and then added: \u2018No more earth, no more earth.\u2019 And her\nbody remained greatly shaken from this contemplation (_vista_).\u201d And\non August 27 \u201cshe saw herself as though bereft of her body and of its\nanimating soul, and her spirit alone in God above. And after this she\naddressed those present and said: \u2018Let only those come in who may be\nnecessary.\u2019\u201d[200]\n\nThis particular group is specially interesting. For it shows us\nCatherine\u2019s love of the large and expansive, of the spiritually simple\nand interior, and of the supernatural and transcendent in her look-out\ninto the open; in her vivid apprehension of her spirit bereft of all\nthings except the Supreme Spirit, that spirit\u2019s native element and\nhome; and in her gaze into the starlit Italian August sky above. And it\ngives us indications, elsewhere so rare in her life, of her attachment\nto the visible, audible, tangible vehicles and expressions of religion,\nas so many helps and occasions of its immanence in our minds and\nhearts, in her signing her heart with the sign of the Cross, her having\nthe candles lit and her chanting a definite traditional Church hymn,\nand in her fourth demand of Extreme Unction and devout reception of\nit. It is also noticeable how vivid and yet how undefined are her\nimpressions of those countenances, since neither she herself anywhere,\nnor even her chroniclers in this place, explicitly identify them with\nAngels; and how still more general and indefinite remains the \u201cdiabolic\ntemptation,\u201d since in this case, only when it was over, was she\n\u201cunderstood\u201d to have been thus tempted. Indeed any directly diabolical\ntemptation would be profoundly uncharacteristic of her special call\nand way: all through the records of her life and teaching it is the\nselfish, claimful Self that she fears \u201cmore than a demon,\u201d \u201cworse than\nthe devil\u201d; she is, in a very true sense, too busy watching, fighting,\nignoring, supplanting Self, and ever putting, keeping, and replacing\nGod, Love, in Self\u2019s stead, to give or find occasion for what, in this\nher immensely strenuous inner life, would have been a remoter conflict.\n\n\n4. _Persistent self-knowledge and excessive impressionableness._\n\nThe _Vita_ next gives us five most vivid but undated paragraphs as to\nher health. I will take them together with such other dated occurrences\nas will bring us down to September 10.\n\nThere is first a characteristic general fact, and a probably often\nrepeated remark of Catherine\u2019s. \u201cAt times she would have no pulse,\nand at other times she would have a good one; often she would seem to\nsleep; and from this state she would awake, at one time completely\nherself again, and at other times so limp, oppressed, and shattered\nas to be unable to move. And those that attended on her did not know\nhow to distinguish one state from the other. And hence, on coming to,\nshe would sometimes say, \u2018Why did you let me remain in this quietude,\nfrom which I have almost died?\u2019\u201d[201] Thus Catherine\u2019s attendants\nare helplessly at sea concerning her psycho-physical condition, and\nthey identify, and directly supernaturalize, each and all of her\nsuccessive and simultaneous states. But Catherine herself remains\nclearly conscious of different levels and values in these states: of\nnormal, grace-impelled, freely-willed, strength-bringing contemplations\nand quietudes; and of sickly, weakening, more or less hysterical,\nlassitudes and failures. And she is thus aware of the deep difference\nbetween the two sets of states, that are externally so similar, at\nthe very time of experiencing the one or the other of them; and is\nconscious, at the same time, both of being unable, by her own unaided\nwill, to give effect, from within, to this her own knowledge, and of\nbeing able and willing, indeed anxious, to follow the lead and the\npressure of wisely discriminating will-acts, proceeding from without,\nand, as it were, meeting her own wishes half-way, and thus turning them\ninto effective willings. She herself has still the knowledge, but, now\nshe is ill, she has no more the power. They have the power, but not the\nknowledge. And she knows all this, through God\u2019s illumination working\nin and upon her own long and rich experiences, sound good sense, severe\nself-detachment, close self-observation, and incorruptible veracity of\nmind; and she knows it in spite of, and in direct opposition to, the\nfar more flattering misconceptions, and entirely well-meant and sincere\nopinions (representative of the traditional and contemporary consensus\nof view on these obscure matters) of the servants, lawyers, physicians,\nrelatives, and priests about her. The incident is closely parallel to\nher scruple as to Marabotto\u2019s spoiling her; and one more similar detail\nwill be mentioned later on.\n\nBut next, we get now abundant evidence that she was ill indeed. There\nis the rapidly shifting fancifulness of the senses of taste and smell,\ntogether with an ever-increasing difficulty of swallowing. \u201cShe would,\nat times, be so thirsty as to feel capable of drinking all the water of\nthe sea, and yet she could not, as a matter of fact, manage to swallow\neven one little drop of water.\u201d \u201cSeeing on one occasion a melon, and\nconceiving a great desire to eat it, she had it given to her. But\nhardly had she a piece of it in her mouth, but she rejected it with\ngreat disgust.\u201d \u201cShe often bathed her mouth with water, and then\nsuddenly she would reject it.\u201d \u201cTo-day the smell of wine would please\nher, and she would bathe her hands and face in it, with great relish;\nand to-morrow she would dislike it so much, as to be unable any longer\nto see or smell it in her room.\u201d[202] And, in strict conformity with\nthis detail, I find an entry in the Hospital account-book for this\ntime, of money disbursed to the account of Catherine, for a cask of\nwine for her use.[203]\n\nYet her biographers are evidently only stating the simple truth\nwhen they declare that she continued to receive Holy Communion with\nease and safety; for not only are there three quite unsuspicious\npassages, descriptive of her receptions of It, under most difficult\ncircumstances; but we find, on counting up the incidental and bare\nmentions of her Communions, that, during the fourteen days from\nSeptember 2 to 15, her death-day, she communicated ten times, and one\nor two further Communions may have been accidentally omitted.\n\nThere is, again, an occasional abnormal sensitiveness to colours,\nand their mental connotations, at least in connection with red.\n\u201cOn September 2, a Physician, a friend of hers,\u201d--no doubt Maestro\nBoerio,--\u201ccame to visit her, robed in his Doctor\u2019s \u2018scarlet,\u2019\u201d as was\nno doubt the custom when visiting patients of quality. \u201cAnd she bore\nthis sight for a little, so as not to hurt his feelings. But when\nshe could bear it no longer, she said to him: \u2018Sir, I can no further\nbear the sight of this gown of yours, because of what it represents\n(suggests) to me.\u2019 The Physician departed at once and returned clad\nin another,\u201d a black \u201cgown.\u201d The Chronicler, probably Boerio\u2019s\npriest-son, is no doubt substantially right in interpreting this as\nmeaning that the scarlet suggested to her a seraph aflame with divine\nlove. Yet I find, from the inventory of her final possessions, that\nshe possessed, and doubtless used, among her bedclothes a vermilion\nsilk coverlet and a vermilion blanket,--an undoubted indication\nof her love for this colour.[204] These two vicissitudes of her\ncolour-affection no doubt mutually supplement and explain each other:\nwhen not over-impressionable and not already stimulated to the full\nof her capacity, this colour would suggest her central doctrine and\nexperience, and would be pleasurable; when over-impressionable and\nalready stimulated as much as, then and there, she could bear and\nutilize, the colour would but strain and disturb her.\n\nAnd, finally, there are sensations and impressions of extreme heat and\ncold, and excessive sensibility or insensibility in tactual matters.\n\u201cAt one time she was cold; and at another, burning hot.\u201d \u201cOn one day,\u201d\nearly in September, \u201cshe suffered great cold in her right arm, followed\nby acute pain\u201d; and on September 7, \u201cher body felt all on fire; and,\nsince it seemed to her as though the whole world were aflame, she asked\nwhether this were the case, and had her windows opened, so as to be\nreassured as to the real facts.\u201d[205]\n\n\u201cAt times she would be sensitive to such a degree, that it was\nimpossible to touch her sheets or a hair of her head; she would,\nif this were done, cry out as though she had been grievously\nwounded.\u201d[206] The temporary paralysis and anaesthetic conditions have\nbeen already described.\n\n\n5. _Three spiritually significant events, September 4-9._\n\nWe can next consider together three spiritually significant incidents\nwhich occurred during these penultimate days of hers.\n\n\u201cOn September 4 she lay there in her bed, in great pain, her arms\nstretched out in suchwise that she appeared like a body nailed to a\ncross; as she was within, so did she appear without.\u201d Here, then,\nshe finds a certain attraction and help in an external, quasi-ritual\nattitude and act; for this attitude, however spontaneous and but\nsubconscious, was doubtless not simply accidental or the mere result\nof pain. It is, with the Piet\u00e0-picture of her childhood and the\nConversion-vision of the Bleeding Christ, one of the only three direct\nreferences to the Passion which I can find throughout her whole\nlife and teaching. This little act gave occasion to the \u201cSpiritual\nStigmata\u201d-legend, which is inserted here, in two paragraphs, by the\n_Vita_, on the alleged, and I think actual, authority of the credulous\nand long-lived Argentina. The legend is wanting in all the MSS.; its\nlate genesis and growth is clearly traceable.[207]\n\n\u201cOn September 5, some time after her Communion, she suddenly had a\nsight (_vista_) of herself, as dead and lying in a truckle-bed, with\nmany Religious, robed in black, around her. And she rejoiced greatly\nat this sight. But afterwards, having a prick of conscience because of\nthis rejoicing, she confessed it to her Confessor.\u201d[208] Here we have\nonce more a particular desire within Catherine\u2019s soul, and a scruple\nconsequent upon it; and all this but ten days before her death.\n\nAnd on the 9th, after Communion, there was \u201csuddenly shown her a sight\nof her (spiritual) miseries; and this gave great annoyance (_noia_) to\nher mind. And, as soon as she was able to tell (confess) them, she did\nso; and the sight then departed from her.\u201d[209] Here, then, we have\nclear testimony to imperfections perceived by herself as still within\nher, and to her Confession of them as such; things characteristic\nof her third as against her second period, but which most of the\ncontributors to the _Vita_ try hard to obscure even here.\n\n\nIV. THE LAST SIX DAYS OF CATHERINE\u2019S LIFE, SEPTEMBER 10-15.\n\nAnd now the events of real significance which occurred during the last\nsix days of her life can be grouped under six heads.\n\n\n1. _A great consultation of Physicians, September 10._\n\nOn the 10th there occurred a second, and last, great consultation of\nPhysicians. The number is this time given--they were ten: \u201cof whom\nseveral are still alive,\u201d writes the final Redactor of the printed\n_Vita_ of 1551. And, in this case, they did not prescribe any remedies;\nbut \u201cexamining her and inspecting everything with great diligence,\nthey finally concluded that such a case was (must be) a supernatural\nand divine thing, since neither the pulse, nor any of the secretions,\nnor any other symptom, showed any trace of any infirmity. They were\nastounded, and departed recommending themselves to her prayers.\u201d \u201cWhen\nshe was not oppressed or tormented by her attacks (_accidenti_), she\nseemed well; when she was being stifled by them (_suffocata_), she\nseemed dead: and again, suddenly, the opposite condition would be seen.\nAnd hence it was most clearly understood, that all this operation was\nproduced (_ordinata_) by the divine goodness itself.\u201d[210]\n\nHere we have a clear exposition of the two sets of phenomena which\nspecially impressed her _entourage_, and of the reasoning by which\nthese appearances were turned into direct proofs of the Metaphysical,\nindeed of the Supernatural. There are three assumptions at work here.\nWhat exceeds the knowledge of the Physicians of any one period, can be\nsafely held to exceed not only human knowledge throughout all coming\nages, but the powers of nature itself. All purely natural illness is\neither simply physical or simply mental, and always shows traces\nof a simply physical or of a simply mental kind. And all purely\nnatural illness is either slow in its transitions, or, at least, not\nsudden in its transitions back and up to apparent health. And these\nassumptions must have lain in those minds as part and parcel of their\nhereditary furniture, in so far as they did not energize and aspire,\nand did not, by moving out and up into the regions of Action and of\nthe Spiritual, of the Dynamic and of Love, transcend all that is\nmechanically transmissible, and, with it, all that was bound to change\nand be proved inadequate in the knowledge of their time. It was their\nvery religion which, with its strong predisposition and determination\nto find immediate, independent, tangible, medically certified proofs\nfor an exceptional, indeed exclusive action of God, kept these\nPhysicians thus, even religiously, tied down in and by the Contingent\nand Transitory. And it was her very religion which, by its grandly\nethico-spiritual Transcendence, kept Catherine above and outside the\nvery possibility of growing obsolete or old. We now see, with even\npainful clearness, how inadequate, indeed how directly suggestive\nof the contrary, were those Physicians\u2019 and Redactors\u2019 treasured\nproofs. For neither the absence of all symptoms of physical or of\nclearly mental disease, nor the presence of an astounding frequency,\nabruptness, and completeness of change in the psycho-physical actions\nand functions of the living person, nor, above all, the conjunction of\nthese two peculiarities, are for us now, taken by themselves, anything\nbut indications of nervous, hysterical derangement. It is in spite of\nthese things, or at least only on occasion of them, that Catherine\nis great. Indeed one fails to see how, in any case, such purely\npsycho-physical phenomenal data could, of themselves and directly, ever\ncompel any such metaphysical and spiritual conclusions. And, be it\nnoted, only in proportion as men abandon such impossible enterprises,\ndo they become sufficiently detached from these phenomena to be able\naccurately to gauge their nature. These attendants who build so much\non these phenomena, do not see them as they are; Catherine, who builds\nnothing on them, and who simply uses them as fresh means and occasions\nof ethico-spiritual growth, sees them, to an astonishing extent, as\nthey really are.\n\n\n2. _The final Codicil, September 12._\n\nOn the 12th, \u201cshe communicated as usual, but tasted no other food,\nand after this she remained a very long time without speaking. And\nafter they had been bathing her mouth for some time, she exclaimed,\n\u2018I am suffocating\u2019 (_io affogo_). She said this because a little drop\nof water had trickled into her throat, and she could not gulp it\ndown.\u201d And in the evening the Notary Saccheri drew up in her presence,\nwith her nephew Francesco Fiesco and the maid Argentina del Sale as\ntwo of the seven witnesses, a last Codicil, in which she, \u201calthough\nlanguishing in body, yet possessed of her faculties (_in sua sana\nmemoria esistente_), ordained that her body should be buried in such\na place and Church as should be ordained by Don Jacobo Carenzio, the\npresent Rector of the Hospital, and Don Cattaneo Marabotto.\u201d And \u201cat\nten o\u2019clock at night she complained of a very great heat (fire), and\nthen ejected from the mouth much black blood. And black spots appeared\nall over her body, with very severe suffering. And her sight became so\nweak that she could barely distinguish one person from the other.\u201d[211]\n\nHere at last we can plainly see the object which had moved her\nfriends, eighteen months before, to get her to fix upon San Nicol\u00f2 in\nBoschetto as her burial-place. They now, when she is at the point of\ndeath, and in the last moment of fairly lucid mind, get her finally\nto declare,--not that she is to be buried in the Hospital Church\napart from her husband, though this is what they themselves intend\nto do, but simply that her grave is to be wheresoever Dons Marabotto\nand Carenzio shall decide. It is interesting to note to how late a\ndate her friends thought it wise to postpone such a move, and in how\nindirect and roundabout a fashion they had to attain their end. Yet it\nis again plain that the whole scheme was willed and executed by her\nfamily and friends unanimously; for, if Vernazza had been a witness\nto the previous Will, so was Francesco Fiesco now a witness to this\nCodicil.--We should also note that, if the difficulty in swallowing\nof the early day is still entirely in keeping with her life-long\npsycho-physical peculiarities, the attack at night is the first in her\nlife when the blood lost is described as of bad quality and where\nspots appear on her person, indeed where any symptom of definite\nillness is recorded. But now at last it is evident that downright\nphysical mischief is at work.\n\n\n3. _Symptoms of organic lesion and delirium, September 13._\n\nBefore dawn \u201con the 13th, she evacuated much blood of a bad quality and\ngreat heat, so that she remained even weaker than before. Nevertheless\nshe again communicated at her usual hour.\u201d And later on \u201cshe fixed her\ngaze immovably upon the ceiling, and made many gestures with her mouth\nand hands. The bystanders asked her what it was that she was seeing,\nand she said: \u2018Drive away that beast that wants to eat\u2026,\u2019 and the\nremainder of the words could not be made out.\u201d[212]\n\nHere two points are of pathetic interest. This great heat of her\nblood was considered, no doubt from the first by at least some of\nher attendants, and then later on more and more by the Redactors, as\nso directly marvellous, spiritually significant, and confirmatory of\nsayings of her own as to her interior ardours, that three various\nthough parallel anecdotes and proofs as to the intensity of its heat\nare solemnly printed here by the _Vita_, only the first of which\nappears in the MSS. Purely secondary, physical matters are thus, with a\nshort-sighted good faith and admiration, eagerly utilized to naturalize\nand obscure a soaringly spiritual personality. Truly, she was not\nsimply mistaken as to her isolation: she too had the privilege to share\nsome of the piercing loneliness of Christ.\n\nAnd next, we have here her last coherent utterance; and the care and\nfearless honesty with which it has been chronicled and printed as\nsuch--and as the concluding words of a chapter (Chapter L), up to at\nleast the fourth edition, Venice 1601--are truly admirable. The words,\n\u201cthat wants to eat,\u201d appear in MSS. \u201cA\u201d and \u201cB,\u201d and are, I think,\nauthentic. They may mean that the beast was looking about for some\nunspecified food, or that it was wanting to devour her (the former is,\nI think, the more likely meaning, for there is no indication of fright,\nand _devorare_ would, in the latter case, be the more natural word). We\nhave, in any case, a quasi-physical, distinctly _maladif_ impression;\none which, as regards at least its apparently sensible embodiment, was\nthe simple projection of her own mind. And indeed there is nothing\nto show that she had any consciousness of any spiritual significance\nabout it. It has got all the opaque, uninteresting character of mere,\ngiven, unrelated, and unsuggestive fact, which all such purely nervous\nprojections always have; and stands thus in complete and instructive\ncontrast to her finely suggestive and transparent, spiritually\nsignificant _Viste_, which contributed so largely to the volitional\nstimulation and moral and religious witness and truth of her life.\n\n\n4. _Catherine\u2019s death, dawn of September 15, 1510._\n\nDuring the early night hours of \u201cthe 14th, she again lost much blood,\nand she weakened much in her speech. Yet she once more, and it was\nthe last time, communicated as usual. And throughout this day she lay\nthere, with her pulse so slight as to be unfindable.\u201d And \u201cmany devoted\nfriends were present.\u201d\n\nAnd as the subsequent night ceased to be Saturday and became Sunday,\nthe 15th, \u201cshe was asked whether she wished to communicate. But she\nthen pointed with her right index-finger towards the sky.\u201d And her\nfriends understood that she wished to indicate by this that she had to\ngo and communicate in heaven. \u201cAnd at this moment, this blessed soul\ngently expired, in great peace and tranquillity, and flew to her tender\nand much desired Love.\u201d[213]\n\nHere three points are of interest. Catherine undoubtedly died at, or\nshortly before, dawn on the 15th September, as is clearly required by\nthe older account on page 160_c_ of the _Vita_. Yet a second account,\nsufficiently early to appear in all the MSS., is given on page 161_c_,\naccording to which she died on the 14th. The reason of this latter\npragmatic \u201ccorrection\u201d is obvious: the 15th is but the Octave of the\nNativity of the Blessed Virgin, the 14th is the Feast of the Exaltation\nof the Cross. The temptation to find a final, strikingly appropriate\nsynchronism, when, to do so, her death need only be pushed back some\nsix hours at most, was too great to be resisted to the end; and an\nuntrained, enthusiastic, imaginative mind like Argentina\u2019s would,\nprobably from the very first, have almost unconsciously helped to\nestablish, or perhaps she single-handedly fixed, this date.\n\nAnd next, the \u201cmany friends\u201d present will no doubt have included her\nsole surviving brother Lorenzo and his son Francesco, who, only three\ndays before, had witnessed her Codicil; one or other of the four\n\u201cProtectors\u201d of the Hospital; Don Carenzio, the Rector; and Argentina\ndel Sale. But Vernazza, as we already know, was far away; and, as we\nshall find in a moment, Mariola, and, above all, Marabotto, though both\nin Genoa, were both absent from her death-bed. Now it is certain that\nthe absence of Marabotto cannot have been accidental, for death had\nevidently been recognized by all to be imminent, ever since the 12th\nat least; and he himself would certainly not have put anything in the\nworld before attending Catherine at the moment of her death. Nor, as\nwe shall find, was he ill just now. Yet we must, I think, suppose him\nto have been (at least off and on) about her person, during the 12th,\nup to the drawing up of the Codicil, which directly concerns himself\ntogether with Carenzio. His own name appears second, no doubt because,\nas the document itself mentions, Carenzio and not he is now Rector of\nthe Hospital in which the document is being drawn up. Marabotto will\nhave withdrawn after the attack on that night which left Catherine\nhardly capable of any further distinguishing one person from another;\nand he will have retired because Carenzio, from some little jealousy\nor feeling of punctilio, cared to claim the right, as Rector, alone\nto attend her at the last; or for some other slight reason such as\nthis. In any case, there is here one more indication of a certain\nfriction and rivalry amongst her attendants and chroniclers, which,\nhowever painful, will help us in our study of the peculiarities of her\nbiography. There is, however, nothing to show that Marabotto\u2019s final\nwithdrawal took place at the instigation, or even with the knowledge,\nof Catherine; and the cause of that withdrawal can certainly not have\nbeen a grave one.\n\nAnd finally, there appeared eventually, at earliest in the fifth\nedition, 1615, but possibly not till the sixth, in 1645, or even later,\na gloss which effectually prevents her \u201cunedifying\u201d remark of the 13th\nfrom being her last utterance. After the words, \u201cand at this moment,\nthis blessed soul,\u201d there then appears the clause: \u201csaying: \u2018Into Thy\nhands, O Lord, I commend my Spirit.\u2019\u201d The passage occurs in the late\nand entirely secondary MS. \u201cF,\u201d which contains also other demonstrably\nlegendary \u201cembellishments.\u201d\n\n\n5. _Intimations of her death vouchsafed to friends._\n\nThe _Vita_ gives an account of seven intimations or apparitions,\nvouchsafed at the moment of her death to as many chosen friends and\ndisciples,--so many communications of her passage and instant complete\nunion with God. Although no names are given, it is easy to identify the\nfirst six persons as Argentina del Sale, \u201ca spiritual daughter of hers,\npresent at her death\u201d; Mariola Bastarda, \u201canother spiritual daughter of\nhers, who had an evil spirit upon her (_il demonio adosso_)\u201d; Maestro\nBoerio, \u201ca physician, her devotee\u201d; Ettore Vernazza, \u201ca very spiritual\nman and her devotee\u201d; Tommasa Fiesca, \u201ca holy Religious woman, most\ndevoted to her\u201d; and Benedetta Lombarda, \u201canother Religious woman, who\nhad been a member of her household (_sua famigliare_).\u201d The seventh\nand last, \u201ca nun\u201d (_una monaca_), is so little characterized, as to\nbe incapable of certain identification: possibly Battista Vernazza is\nmeant, who, though but thirteen years old, was already an Augustinian\nNovice.[214]\n\nThe order in which the first six names appear is evidently determined\npartly by the degree of physical proximity to Catherine--Argentina by\nher bedside, comes before Boerio in another house in Genoa, and Boerio\ncomes before Vernazza, since the latter is far away (_lontano_); partly\nby sex--Boerio and Vernazza, though simple laymen, appear before the\nthree Religious women; and partly by the abnormal spiritual condition,\nand consequent increase in the value of the testimony, of the souls\nconcerned--Mariola the Possessed comes first among all those not\nactually present at the death. Even this order, and still more the form\nof all these little notices, show plainly that the stress is laid, not\nso much on the intimation of the death, as on that of the immediate\nentrance into glory. Note that there is no reference anywhere to Don\nCarenzio, certainly as much present at the death as Argentina; nor,\nwithin this particular list, to Don Marabotto, as certainly absent as\nEttore Vernazza.\n\nIt is disappointing to find that, whereas such intimations, or at least\ncommunications as to death at the moment of its occurrence, belong\nto the best authenticated of the more mysterious human experiences,\nand although we would expect to find some such unmistakably vivid and\nfirst-hand accounts at this point in the life of one so spiritually\ngreat and so deeply loved as was Catherine, the accounts are all,\nwith the possible exception of that concerning Boerio, very general\nand colourless. As to Boerio we are told: \u201cA Physician, her devotee,\nwas asleep, but awoke at the moment of her passing, and heard a voice\nwhich said to him: \u2018Abide with God; I am now going to Paradise.\u2019 And\nhe called his wife and said to her: \u2018Madonna Caterina has died at this\nmoment\u2019; and this turned out to have been the case.\u201d[215]\n\nTwo insipid, vague, and gossipy fragments concerning Don Marabotto\nstrive to make up for his absence from the list of the seven recipients\nof synchronizing intimations. \u201cHer Confessor during that night (14th to\n15th) and throughout the following day (15th), had no notice whatever\nconcerning her.\u201d This is told as if it had been something spiritually\nremarkable, whereas it was evidently but strangely unkind on the part\nof the other friends of Catherine. \u201cThe next day (16th) he attempted\nto say a Mass for the Dead for the soul of Catherine.\u201d He evidently\nhad been told on the evening of the 15th, or quite early on the 16th,\nfor there is here no claim to any supernatural intimation. \u201cAnd he\nfound himself unable to pray for her in particular. And again on the\nfollowing day, whilst saying a Mass in honour of several Martyrs, his\nmind was suddenly, from the Introit onwards, fixed upon Catherine\u2019s\nspiritual martyrdom, so that his abundant weeping made it difficult for\nhim to finish his Mass.\u201d[216] There is, as so often with Marabotto,\nsomething slightly comical, and yet respectable, because thoroughly\ngenuine, loyal, and truthful, about this his eager desire to experience\nsomething unusual, the careful registration of something quite\ncommonplace, and the wistful attempt to make it out extraordinary after\nall.\n\n\n6. _Alleged miraculous condition of Catherine\u2019s skin and heart._\n\nThere remain two more medical details, which are, however, of some\nsignificance in connection with the spirit of her _entourage_.\n\nHer skin is declared to have been, after death, of a yellow colour\nthroughout. Indeed in various places of the _Vita_ yellow or red colour\nis noted in connection with her person, but generally as localized\nabout the region of the heart. But the accounts vary, indeed contradict\neach other, so much, that I shrink from finally adopting any one\naccount.[217]\n\nThe action of her heart was often laborious or even acutely painful:\n\u201cAt the last, owing to the great fire of pure and penetrating love,\nthat burnt within her heart, the skin over it became so tender as to be\nunable to be touched. It seemed as though she had a wound right through\nher heart. And she often held her hand over it; and it would pant like\na pair of bellows, on one day more than on another.\u201d[218] And how\noften had not Catherine spoken of the wondrous things, the spiritual\njoys and sufferings, that she felt within her heart! And so some of\nher materializing biographers, probably some of her attendants before\nthem, doubt not that \u201cif only her (physical) heart had been examined\nafter death, some marvellous sign would have been found upon it.\u201d[219]\nWe even find a report that \u201cthis holy soul, several months before her\ndeath, left an order that, after her death, her body should be opened\nand her heart examined, because they would find it all consumed (burnt\nup) by love. Nevertheless her friends did not dare to do so.\u201d[220] This\nsheer legend will have been due to Argentina, and will have become\narticulate long after the first deposition of Catherine\u2019s remains.\nThere is certainly no other, indeed no kind of authentic, evidence of\nany such wish or hesitation on the part of any one at the time. It is\nsad to note how rapidly and easily, all but inevitably, the vivid,\nspiritual ideas and experiences of Catherine were thus materialized and\nspoilt.\n\n\nV. SKETCH OF CATHERINE\u2019S SPIRITUAL CHARACTER AND SIGNIFICANCE.\n\nBefore proceeding further to what is really still a necessary part\nand elucidation of Catherine\u2019s spiritual character and special\nsignificance,--her doctrine and the posthumous effect, extension,\nand application of her life and teaching upon and by means of her\ngreatest disciples,--it may be well to pause a little, and to try and\ngive, as far as the largely fragmentary and vague evidence permits, a\nshort and vivid picture and summary, in part retrospective and in part\nprospective, of the special type, meaning and importance of Catherine\u2019s\npersonality and spiritual attitude, and of the interrelation of the\ntwo. In so doing I propose to move, as far as possible, from the\npsycho-physical and temperamental peculiarities and determinisms\nof her case, up to the spiritual characteristics and ethical\nself-determinations; and to try and note everywhere what she was not as\ndefinitely as what she was. For only thus shall we have some adequate\napprehension of the \u201cbeggarly elements\u201d which she found, and of the\nspiritual organism and centre of far-reaching influence which she left.\nAnd only thus too will it be possible to see at all clearly the cost,\nthe limitations, and the special functions, temporary and permanent, of\nher particular kind of soul and sanctity.\n\n\n1. _Her special temperament._\n\nIt is clear then, first, that in her we have to do with a highly\nnervous, delicately poised, immensely sensitive and impressionable\npsycho-physical organism and temperament. It was a temperament which,\nhad it been unmatched by a mind and will at least its equals; had\nthese latter not found, or been found by, a definite, rich, and\nsupernaturally powerful, historical, and institutional religion; and\nhad not the mind and will, with this religious help, been kept in\nconstant operation upon it, would have spelt, if not moral ruin, at\nleast life-long ineffectualness. Yet, as a matter of fact, not only\ndid this temperament not dominate her, with the apparently rare and\nincomplete exceptions of some but semi-voluntary, short impressions\nand acts during the last months of her life; but it became one of the\nchief instruments and materials of her life\u2019s work and worth. Only\ntogether with such a mind and will, is such a temperament not a grave\ndrawback; and even with them it is an obvious danger, and requires\ntheir constant careful checking and active shaping.\n\nAnd this temperament involved an unusually large subconscious life. All\nsouls have some amount of this life, but many have it but slight and\nshallow: she had it of a quite extraordinary degree and depth. A coral\nreef, growing up from, and just peering above, a hundred fathom-deep\nocean, would be an appropriate picture of the large predominance of\nsubconsciousness in this spacious soul. And even this circumstance\nalone would cause her spiritual lights and fully conscious experiences\nto come abruptly, and in the form of quasi-physical seizures and\nsurprises. Continuous, and possibly long, incubations of ideas and\nfeelings would thus be taking place in the subconscious region, and\nthese feelings and ideas would then, when fully ripe, or on some slight\nstimulation from the conscious region or directly from the outer world,\nmake sudden irruptions into that full consciousness. Nor would such\nnatural suddenness of full consciousness really militate against the\nclaim to supernaturalness of the ideas and feelings thus revealed. For\nthey would still be most rightly conceived as the work of God\u2019s Spirit\nin and through the action of her own spirit: not their causation and\ntheir source, but simply the suddenness of their revelation and the\nchannel of their outlet would lose in supernaturalness.\n\nAnd hers was a soul with habitually large fields of consciousness.\nApparently from her conversion onwards, and certainly during the last\nfourteen years of her life, the moments or days of narrow fields\nwere, till quite the last weeks or even days, comparatively rare;\nand their narrowness was evidently always felt as most painful and\noppressive. And the interior occupation was so intense; the several\nfields succeeded each other with such an apparent automatism and\nquality of even physical seizure; and they were either so entrancing\nby their largeness or so depressing by their narrowness: that to souls\nnot in tune with hers, she must, in the former moods, have appeared as\negoistic, as (in a sense) too much of a man, as one absorbed in great\nbut purely general, super-personal ideas which were making her forget\nboth her own and her fellow-creature\u2019s minor wants; and, in the latter\nmoods, as downrightly egotistic, as (in a way) too much of a woman, as\none engrossed in her own purely individual, small and fanciful troubles\nand trials. Yet the \u201cEgoism\u201d is not dominant during her middle period,\nsince it is certain that her charitable and administrative activities,\nand close affective interest in the daily, physical and emotional lot\nand demands of the poor and lowly, were most real and considerable.\nAnd, in her third period, it was this very \u201cEgoism\u201d which, as we shall\nsee, was the form and means of the interior apprehension and exterior\nelaboration of her most original and suggestive doctrines, and became\nthe occasion for her stimulation of other intensely active souls on\nto great nation-wide enterprises of the most practical, permanent,\nand heroic kind. And the \u201cEgotistic\u201d moods are unapparent before the\nlast two years or less of her life; and they then are clearly but\nthe occasional, involuntary suspensions or partial yieldings of her\nnormally iron will,--rare checks and intermittences which, with little\nor no preventible faultiness on her own part, give us pathetically\nvivid glimpses of what that normal life of hers cost her to achieve\nand to maintain, and of what she would have been, if bereft of God\u2019s\ngenerosity ever awakening, deepening, and operating through her own.\n\nAll this sensitiveness, subconsciousness, spaciousness, variety, and\nsuddenness of apprehension and feeling; all this largely chaotic,\nmutually conflicting, raw material of her spiritual life, even if it\nhad existed alongside of but feeble and inert powers of organization\nand transformation, would not have failed to produce considerable\nsuffering; although, in such a case, that suffering would have\nremained largely inarticulate, and would have left the soul checked\nand counterchecked by various tyrannous passions and fancies. The soul\nwould thus have been less efficient and persuasive than the least\nsubconscious and sensitive specimens of average and \u201ccommon-sense\u201d\nhumanity. But, in her case, all this unusually turbulent raw material\nwas in unusually close contiguity to powers of mind and of will of a\nrare breadth and strength. And this very closeness of apposition and\nwidth of contrast, and this great strength of mind and will, made\nall that disordered multiplicity, distraction, and dispersion of her\nclamorous, many-headed, many-hearted nature, a tyranny impossible and\nunnecessary to bear. And yet to achieve the actual escape from such a\ntyranny, the mastering of such a rabble, and the harmonization of such\na chaos, meant a constant and immense effort, a practically unbroken\ngrace-getting and self-giving, an ever-growing heroism and indeed\nsanctity, and, with and through all these things, a corresponding\nexpansion and virile joy. It can thus be said, in all simple truth,\nthat she became a saint because she had to; that she became it,\nto prevent herself going to pieces: she literally had to save, and\nactually did save, the fruitful life of reason and of love, by\nceaselessly fighting her immensely sensitive, absolute, and claimful\nself.\n\n\n2. _Catherine and Marriage._\n\nCatherine\u2019s mind was without humour or wit; and this was, of course, a\nserious drawback. And her temperament was of so excessive a mentality,\nas to amount to something more or less abnormal. For not only is there\nno trace about her, at any time, of moral vulgarity of any kind, or of\nany tendency to it; and this is, of course, a grand strength; but she\nseems at all times to have been greatly lacking in that quite innocent\nand normal sensuousness, which appears to form a necessary element of\nthe complete human personality. It is true that in the anecdotes of\nher impulsive and yet reverent affection for the pestiferous woman and\nthe cancerous workman, with the finely self-oblivious sympathy which\nmoves her to kiss the mouth of the first, and long to remain with her\narms around the neck of the other, there is the beautiful tenderness\nand daring of a great positive purity, of the purity of flame and not\nof snow. And her love of her servants, Argentina in particular, and\nof poor Thobia, is exquisitely true and constant. Yet even all this\ncan hardly be classed with the element referred to, with that love of\nchildren and of women as the bearers of them, that instinct of union\nwith all that is pure and fruitful in the normal life of sex, such as\nis so beautifully present throughout St. Luke\u2019s Gospel, but which is,\nat least relatively, absent from St. John\u2019s.\n\nPossibly her unhappy and childless marriage determined the\nnon-development or the mortification of any tendencies to such a\ntemper. But the absence referred to was more probably caused by her\ncongenital psychical temperament and state themselves; and, if so,\nit would point to her as a person hardly intended for marriage, and\nas one who, through no fault of her own, could not satisfy the less\npurely mental of the perfectly licit requirements which make up the\nmany-levelled wants of a normal, or at least ordinary, man\u2019s and\nhusband\u2019s nature. Pompilia\u2019s dying words, in Browning\u2019s \u201cRing and the\nBook,\u201d would, probably at any time after her premature involuntary\nmarriage, have found an appropriate place upon Catherine\u2019s lips, had\nshe ever thought it loyal or kind to utter them: \u201c\u2018In heaven there is\nneither marriage nor giving in marriage.\u2019 How like Jesus Christ to say\nthat!\u201d\n\nYet it is at least as difficult to think of her as really intended for\nthe cloister. That early wish of hers to join a religious community,\nsincere and keen as it no doubt was at the time, evidently faded\naway completely, probably already before her conversion thirteen\nyears later, and certainly before her widowhood. Perhaps she would\nhave been best suited, throughout her adult years, to the life of an\nunmarried woman living in the world,--to the kind of life which she\nactually led during her widowhood, with such changes in it as her\nearlier, robuster health would have involved for those earlier years.\nShe would thus, throughout her life, have divided her energies, in\nvarious degrees and combinations, between attention to the multiform,\npractical, physico-emotional wants of the poor; the give and take of\nstimulation and enlightenment to and from some few large-hearted,\nheroically operative friends; and, as source and centre of all such\nactual achievements and of indefinitely greater possibilities, indeed\nas a life already largely eternal and creative,--contemplative prayer\nof various degrees and kinds. But such a life, if it would have left\nout much disappointment and suffering, and not for herself alone, yet\nwould also have been without the special occasions and incentives to\nher sudden conversion and long patience and detailed magnanimity. Her\nlife, in appearing on the surface as less of a failure, would at bottom\nhave been less of a spiritual success.\n\nIndeed the failures and fragmentarinesses of her life, even if and\nwhere more than merely apparent to us or even to herself, helped and\nstill help to give a poignant forcefulness to her example and teaching.\nThere is nothing pre- or post-arranged, nothing artificial or stagey,\nnothing, in the deliberate occupations of her convert life, that is\nsimply brooding about this woman: when she thinks or prays, she does\nso; when she acts, she acts; when she suffers, she suffers; and there\nis an end of it. The infinitely winning qualities of a simple veracity;\nof a successive livingness, because ever operative occupation with the\nactual real moment, and not with the after-shadow of the past nor with\nthe fore-shadow of the future; and, through all this, of a healthy\ncreatureliness are thus spread over all she does,--over her virtues,\nwhich are never reflected as such within her own pure mind, and over\nher very weaknesses and failings which, summed up in their source, her\nfalse self, are ever being acknowledged, feared, and fought, with a\nheroism not less massive because its methods are so wisely indirect.\n\n\n3. _Catherine and Friendship and the Poor._\n\nIt is plain that Catherine\u2019s temperament was naturally a profoundly\nsad one, although her acutest attacks of melancholy were generally\nsucceeded by some unusually great expansion, illumination or\nconsolidation of soul. She had, to adopt a term of recent psychology,\na very low \u201cdifference-threshold\u201d: easily and swiftly would her\nconsciousness be affected by every kind of irritant: even a slight\nstimulation would at once produce pain, anxiety, or oppression of mind\nor soul. She was thus evidently made for a few life-long friends,\nfor such as would deserve the privilege of giving much sympathy and\npatience, and of getting back helps and stimulations indefinitely\ngreater both in quality and kind; and was not fitted for many\nacquaintances of the ordinary kind, with their hurry of disjointed,\nhand-to-mouth, half-awake thinking, feeling, and doing.\n\nAnd it is very noticeable that her friendships and attachments of\nall kinds were of a steadiness and perseverance to which there are\nno real exceptions. To Giuliano, markedly inferior in nature though\nhe evidently was to her, and positively unfaithful during the early\nyears of their long, ill-assorted marriage, she remained faithful even\nduring those first years which she herself never ceased to condemn as\nher pre-conversion period; she behaved with true magnanimity towards\nhimself and Thobia and Thobia\u2019s mother; and she even evinced a certain\naffective attachment to him and to his memory. And it would hardly\nbe fair to quote the change in the dispositions as to her place of\nburial in proof of a change in her dispositions towards him. She whose\naffectionate interest in Thobia is shown, by irrefragable documentary\nproof, to have persevered, indeed increased, to the end of the poor\nyoung woman\u2019s life, will not have changed in her feelings towards her\nown dead husband. Towards her brothers and sister, her nephews and\nnieces, her numerous Wills and Codicils show that she entertained a\nconstant and operative affection.\n\nThese same documents prove that her affection and gratitude towards\nDon Marabotto were equally sincere and provident. It is true that she\ntwice broke off relations with him, although only for a day and three\ndays respectively; and, at the last, this devoted friend of the last\neleven years of her life was no more about her. Yet we have remarked\nthat those two former absences were but caused by reasonable fears of\ngetting spoilt by him; and that the final absence was no doubt in no\nway her doing. And perhaps the most impressive of all her attachments\nwere that to the Hospital, as representative of the sick poor whom\nshe had served, so actively and at such cost to self, for twenty-five\nyears and more,--all her legal dispositions and her very domicile for\nthe last thirty years of her life proclaim the permanent prominence of\nthis interest; and her affection towards her servants, since nothing\ncould be more considerate, thoughtful, equable, and persevering than\nher care and love for Benedetta, Mariola, and Argentina. Here again I\ncannot find any certain exceptions: for we know nothing of the history\nof the servant Antoinetta except that, even on the one occasion of her\nmention, it appeared already doubtful whether the girl herself would\ncare to remain with her mistress to the end.\n\nThere is but one apparent, and indeed a startling, exception to this\nunbroken continuity of affection. Ettore Vernazza, certainly the\ngreatest and closest, the most docile and the most influential, of\nher disciples, he to whom we owe the transmission of the larger and\nthe most precious part of her teaching and spirit, and who, as will\nbe seen, became, after her death even more than before it, and more\nand more right up to his own heroic end, the living reproduction and\nextension of the very deepest and greatest experiences and influences\nof her life: Vernazza appears nowhere in her Wills, except as, on one\noccasion, the actual drawer of the document, and, on another, as a\nwitness. And he was far away, and clearly not accidentally, at the time\nof her death. I take it to be quite certain that we have here not an\nexception, at the point of her fullest sympathy, to that gratitude and\npermanence of feeling which obtained demonstrably in the other, lesser\ncases; but that this silence and this departure are to be explained,\nthe former entirely, and the latter in part, by the special character\nas much of Ettore as of Catherine, and by the special form which their\nfriendship assumed in consequence. I shall return to this point in my\nchapter on Vernazza.\n\n\n4. _Her Absorptions and Ecstatic States._\n\nCatherine\u2019s states of absorption in prayer, such as we find ever since\nher conversion, were transparently real and sincere, and were so swift\nand spontaneous as to appear quasi-involuntary. They were evidently,\ntogether with, and largely on occasion of, her reception of the Holy\nEucharist, the chief means and the ordinary form of the accessions of\nstrength and growth to her spiritual life.\n\nPossibly throughout the four years of the first period of her convert\nlife, certainly and increasingly throughout the twenty-two years of the\nsecond, middle period, these absorptions occurred frequently, indeed\ndaily; they were long, and lasted up to six hours at a stretch; and\nthey were apparently timed by herself, and never rendered her incapable\nof hearing or attending to any call to acts of duty or of charity, and\nof breaking off then and there. And throughout these years she seems\nto have known but one kind of absorption, this primarily spiritual\none, which appears to have been a particularly deep Prayer of Quiet;\nand she appears to have always been, if exercised, yet also profoundly\nsustained and strengthened, by it, even physically, for the large\nactivity and numerous trials and sufferings awaiting her on her return\nto her ordinary life. And these were the years during which she lived\nwith no mediate guidance.\n\nDuring the last eleven, perhaps even thirteen years of her life, first\none, and then, considerably later, a second change occurs in these\nrespects. First these profound, healthy, and fruitful absorptions, and\nthe power to occasion or effect, to bear or endorse them, diminish\ngreatly, though apparently gradually, in length, regularity, and\nefficiency; indeed they do so almost as markedly as does the capacity\nfor external work, their former complement and correlative. The\nspiritual life now breaks up into a greater variety of shorter and\nmore fitful incidents and manifestations. The sympathy of friends,\nthe sustaining counsel of priests, and the communication on her part\nof many spiritual thoughts and experiences take, in large part, the\nplace of those long spells of the Prayer of Quiet or of Union, and\nstill more of that external activity which are both now becoming more\nand more impossible to her. And next,--though not, as far as our\nevidence goes, before the last six months or so of her life,--there\narises a second series of absorptions, externally closely similar, yet\ninternally profoundly different. These latter absorptions are primarily\npsychical and involuntary, indeed psychopathic. And she herself shows\nand declares her knowledge of this their pathological character, her\nability to distinguish them from their healthy rivals, her inability\nto throw them off unaided, her wish that others should rouse her from\nthem, and her power to accept and second such initiation coming to her\nfrom a will-centre other than her own.\n\nNow her attendants and biographers, possibly all of them and even\nduring her lifetime, considered and called those healthy absorptions\n\u201cecstasies\u201d; and though we have clear evidence of her ever having\nshrunk from so naming them herself, and though, here as everywhere, she\nhabitually turned away from considering the form and psycho-physical\nconcomitants of her spiritual experiences, and concentrated her\nattention on their content and ethico-religious truth and power, there\nseems to be no special reason for quarrelling with their application\nof this term. Yet it is of great importance to observe that none of\nher teaching can with propriety be called directly Pneumatic. For I\ncan find nothing that even purports to have been spoken in a state\nof trance, nor anything authentic that claims to convey, during\nher times of ordinary consciousness, anything learnt during those\nstates of absorption other than what, in a lesser degree, is probably\nexperienced, during at least some rare moments, by all souls that have\nattained to the so-called Prayer of Quiet. It is quite clear, I think,\nthat in all these authentic passages, the states of absorption are\ntreated substantially as times when the conscious region of her soul,\na region always relatively shallow, sinks down into the ever-present\ndeep regions of subconsciousness; and hence as experiences which can\nonly be described indirectly,--in their effects, as traced by and in\nthe conscious soul, after its rising up again, from this immersion in\nsubconsciousness, to its more ordinary condition of so-called \u201cfull\nconsciousness,\u201d _i.e._ as full a consciousness as is normal, for this\nparticular soul, in the majority of moments as are not devoted to\nphysical sleep.\n\nBut if apparently none of Catherine\u2019s contemplations are derived\ndirectly from things learnt during these times of absorption; those\ncontemplations are, none the less, all indirectly influenced, in\nthe most powerful and multiform manner, by these absorptions. For\nthese absorptions constituted the moments of the soul\u2019s feeding and\nharmonization, and they enriched and concentrated it, for the service\nof its fellows, the occasion of further self-enlargement. And these\nabsorptions, with their combination of experienced fruitfulness and\nundeniable obscurity, for the very soul that has passed through them,\nwhen this soul has returned to ordinary consciousness, give to all,\neven to the most lucid of her sayings, a beautiful margin of mist and\nmystery, a never-ceasing sense of the incomprehensibility, and yet of\nthe soul\u2019s capacity for an intellectual adumbration, of the realities\nand truths in which our whole spiritual life is rooted,--realities and\ntruths which she is thus, without even a touch of inconsistency, ever\nstruggling to apprehend and to communicate a little less inadequately\nthan before.\n\n\n5. _Catherine\u2019s teaching._\n\nCatherine\u2019s teaching, as we have it, is, at first sight, strangely\nabstract and impersonal. God nowhere appears in it, at least in so\nmany words, either as Father, or as Friend, or as Bridegroom of the\nsoul. This comes no doubt, in part, from the circumstance that she\nhad never known the joys of maternity, and had never, for one moment,\nexperienced the soul-entrancing power of full conjugal union. It comes,\nperhaps, even more, from her somewhat abnormal temperament, the (in\nsome respects) exclusive mentality which we have already noted. But it\ncertainly springs at its deepest from one of the central requirements\nand experiences of her spiritual life; and must be interpreted by the\nplace and the function which this apparently abstract teaching occupies\nwithin this large experimental life of hers which stimulates, utilizes,\nand transcends it all. For here again we are brought back to her rare\nthirst, her imperious need, for unification; to the fact that she was a\nliving, closely knit, ever-increasing spiritual organism, if there ever\nwas one.\n\nThis unification tended, in its reasoned, theoretic presentation, even\nto overshoot the mark: for it would be impossible to press those of\nher sayings in which her true self appears as literally God, or her\nstate of quiet as a complete motionlessness or even immovability.\nYet in practice this unification ever remained admirably balanced\nand fruitful, since, in and for her actual life, it was being ever\nconceived and applied as but a whole-hearted, constantly renewed,\ncontinuously necessary, costing and yet enriching, endeavour to\nharmonize and integrate the ever-increasing elements and explications\nof her nature and experience. And even on the two points mentioned,\nher theory gives an admirably vivid presentment of the prima facie\nimpression produced by its deepest experiences upon every devoted soul.\n\nAnd on other points her theory is, even as such, admirably sober,\nclosely knit, and stimulating. For, as to the cause of Evil, she ever\nrestricts herself to finding it in her own nature, and to fighting it\nthere: hence the personality of Evil, though nowhere denied, yet rarely\nif ever concerns her, and never does so directly in her strenuous and\npractical life. Yet, on the other hand, this fight takes, with her, the\nform not primarily of a conflict with this or that particular fault,\nthese several conflicts then summing themselves up into a more or less\ninterconnected warfare; but it makes straight for the very root-centre\nof all the particular faults, and, by constantly checking and starving\nthat, suppresses these. And hence the Positive, Radical character of\nEvil is, in practice, continuously emphasized by her.\n\nYet this root-centre of Evil within her was most certainly not\nconceived by her as a merely general and abstract false self or\nself-seeking. Her biographers, mostly over-anxious to prove the\ninnocence of her nature, even at the expense of the heroism of her life\nand of the reasonableness and truthfulness of her statements, are no\ndoubt responsible for the constant air of would-be devout and amiable\n(!) exaggeration which she wears on all this self-fighting side of\nher. Yet we have, I think, but to take the simplest and most authentic\nof the rival accounts,--those which give us the smallest quantity\nof self-denunciation, and we can understand the quality of this\nself-blame, and can fix its special, entirely concrete and pressing,\noccasion and object. For considering the immense claimfulness, the\ncruel jealousy, the tyrannous fancifulness, the brooding inventiveness,\nthe at last incurable absoluteness of the weak and bad side and\ntendency of a temperament and natural character such as hers, had\nit been allowed to have its way, there is, I think, nothing really\nexcessive or morbid, nothing that is not most healthy and humble,\nand hence sensible and admirably self-cognitive and truthful, about\nthis heroic strenuousness, this ever-watchful, courageous fear of\nself, and those declarations of hers that this false self was as bad\nas any devil. To such a temperament and _attrait_ as hers only one\nmaster could be deliberately taken, or could be long borne, as centre\nof the soul: God _or_ Self;--not two: God _and_ Self. And hence all\npractice on even tolerance of, as it were, separate compartments of\nthe soul; all \u201ca little of this, and not too much of that\u201d spirit; all\n\u201cmaking the best of both worlds\u201d temper; all treatment of religion as\na means to other ends, or as so much uninterpreted inheritance and\ndead furniture or fixed and frozen possession of the mind, or as a\nrespectable concomitant and condiment or tolerable parasite to other\ninterests: all such things must have been more really impossible to her\nthan would have been the lapse into self-sufficiency and self-idolatry,\nand the attempt to find happiness in such a downward unification.\n\nAnd the one true divine root-centre of her individual soul is ever,\nat the same time, experienced and conceived as present, in various\ndegrees and ways, simply everywhere, and in everything. All the world\nof spirits is thus linked together; and a certain slightest remnant\nof a union exists even between Heaven and Hell, between the lost and\nthe saved. For there is no absolute or really infinite Evil existent\nanywhere; whilst everywhere there are some traces of and communications\nfrom the Absolute Good, the Source and Creator of the substantial\nbeing of all things that are. And to possess even God, and all of\nGod, herself alone exclusively, would have been to her, we can say it\nboldly, a truly intolerable state, if this state were conceived as\naccompanied by any consciousness of the existence of other rational\ncreatures entirely excluded from any and every degree or kind of such\npossession. It is, on the contrary, the apprehension of how she, as\nbut one of the countless creatures of God, is allowed to share in the\neffluence of the one Light and Life and Love, an effluence which,\nidentical in essential character everywhere, is not entirely absent\nanywhere: it is the abounding consciousness of this universal bond and\nbrotherhood, this complete freedom from all sectarian exclusiveness and\nfrom all exhaustive appropriation of God, the Sun of the Universe, by\nany or all of the just or unjust, upon all of whom He shines: it is all\nthis that constitutes her element of unity, saneness, and breadth, the\none half of her faith, and the greater part of her spiritual joy.\n\nAnd the other half of her faith constitutes her element of difference,\nmultiplicity and depth, and is itself made up of two distinct\nconvictions. No two creatures have been created by God with the same\ncapacities; and, although they are each called by Him to possess Him\nto the full of their respective capability, they will necessarily,\neven if they all be fully faithful to their call, possess Him in\nindefinitely and innumerably various degrees and ways. And, so far,\nthere is still nothing but joy in her soul. Indeed we can say that the\nprevious element of unity and breadth calls for this second element\nof diversity and depth; and that only in and with the other can each\nelement attain to its own full development and significance, and thus\nthe two together can constitute a living whole.\n\nBut the second conviction as to difference is a sombre and saddening\none. For she holds further that the diversity is not only one of\ndegrees of goodness and a universal fulness of variously sized living\nvessels of life and joy; but that there is also a diversity in the\ndegree of self-making or self-marring on the part of the free-willing,\nself-determining creatures of God. Here too she still, it is true,\nfinds the omnipresent divine Goodness at work, and in a double fashion\nand degree. The self-marring of some, probably, in her view, of most\nsouls, gets slowly and blissfully albeit painfully unmade by the\nvoluntary acceptance, on the part of these souls, of the suffering\nrightly attaching, in a quite determinist manner, to all direct,\ndeliberate, and detached pleasure-seeking of the false self. And this\nis Purgatory, which is essentially the same whether thus willed and\nsuffered in this world or in the next. And the self-marring of other,\nprobably the minority of, sinful souls, though no longer capable of\nany essential unmaking, is yet in so far overruled by the divine\nGoodness (which, here as everywhere, is greater than the creature\u2019s\nbadness), that even here there ever remains a certain residue of\nmoral goodness, and that a certain mitigation of the suffering which\nnecessarily accompanies the remaining and indeed preponderant evil is\nmercifully effected by God. And this is Hell, which is essentially\nthe same, whether thus, as to its pain, not willed but suffered here\nor hereafter. Thus she neither holds an _Apocatastasis_, a Final\nRestitution of all things,--what might be called a Universal Purgatory,\nnor a Gradual Mitigation of the sufferings of the lost; but the\neventual complete purgation and restitution applies only to some,\nthough probably to most, souls, and the mitigation of this suffering,\nin the case of the lost, is not gradual but instantaneous.\n\nHere again, then, we find her thirst for unification strikingly at\nwork. For she discovers one single divine Goodness as active and\nefficient throughout the universe; and she everywhere finds spiritual\npain to consist in the discordance felt by the rational creature\nbetween its actual contingent condition and its own indestructible\nideal, and such pain to be everywhere automatically consequent upon\ndeliberate acts of self-will. Hence the suffering is nowhere separately\nwilled or separately sent by God; and, in all cases of restoration,\nthe suffering, in proportion as it is freely willed by the sufferer,\nis ever medicinal and curative and never vindictive. It is these\nconsiderations which make her able to endure this sombre side of\nreality.\n\nNow it is all this second set of beliefs, all this faith in diversity,\nmultiplicity, and depth, which prevents any touch of real Pantheism\nor Indifferentism from defacing the breadth of her outlook, and\neffectually neutralizes any tendency to a sheer Optimism or Monism.\nShe loves God\u2019s Light and Love so much, that she is indefatigable in\nseeking, and constantly happy in finding, and incapable of not loving,\neven the merest glimpses of it, everywhere. And yet, precisely on that\nsame account, everywhere the central passion of her soul is given\nto fostering the further growth of this Light and Love, to already\nloving it even more as it will or may be than as it already is, and\nthus deeply loving it already, in order that it may be still more\nlovable by and by. And thus the universality, and what we may call\nthe particularity, of God\u2019s self-communication and of the creature\u2019s\nresponse, are equally preserved, and in suchwise that each safeguards,\nsupplements, and stimulates the other. And thus her grace-stimulated\ncraving, both for indefinite expansion and breadth and for indefinite\nconcentration and depth, is met and nourished by this width and\ndistance, this clarity and dimness of outlook on to the rich and\nawe-inspiring greatness of God and of His world of souls.\n\nAnd union with this one Centre is, for all rational free-willing\ncreatures, to be achieved, at any one and at every moment, by the\nwhole-hearted willing and doing, by the full endorsing, of some one\nthing,--some one unique state and duty offered to the soul in that\none unique moment. Thus life gets apparently broken up into so many\nsuccessive steps and degrees of work, each to be attended to as though\nit were the first and last; and as so much special material and\noccasion for the practice of unification, ostensibly in the matter\nsupplied and for the moment which supplies it, but really in the soul\nto which it is offered and for the totality of its life. Her soul\nis, even if taken at any one moment, and still more, of course, if\nconsidered in its successive history, overflowing with various acts,\nwith (as it were) so many numberless waves and wavelets, currents\nand cross-currents of volition; and the warp and woof of her life\u2019s\nweaving is really close-knit with numberless threads of single\nwillings, preceded and succeeded by single perceptions, conceptions,\nand feelings of the soul. Yet the very fulness of this flow and the\ncloseness of this weaving, their great and ever-increasing orderliness\nand spontaneity, such as we can and must conceive them to have been\npresent during the majority of the moments of her convert and waking\nlife, tended, during such times, to obliterate any clear consciousness\nof their different constituents, and to produce the impression of\none single state, even one single act. And this very action, even\ninasmuch as thus felt to be simple and one, is furthermore experienced\npsychically as a surprise and seizure from without, rather than as a\nself-determination from within. And this psychic peculiarity is taken\nby her as but the occasion and emotional, quasi-sensible picturing of\nthe ever-present and ever-growing experience and conviction that all\nright human action, the very self-donation of the creature, is the\nCreator\u2019s best gift, and that the very act of her own mind and heart,\nin all its complete inalienableness and spontaneity, is yet, in the\nlast resort, but an illumination and stimulation coming from beyond the\nreaches of her own mind and will, from the mind and will of God. And\nthus Ethics are englobed by Religion, Having by Doing, and Doing by\nBeing: yet not so that, in her fullest life, any of the higher things\nsuppress the lower, but so that each stimulates the very things that it\ntranscends.\n\n\n6. _Catherine\u2019s literary obligations. Her corrections of the\nNeo-Platonist positions._\n\nWe shall trace further on how largely and spontaneously she has, from\nout of the many different possible types and forms of spirituality,\nchosen out, assimilated and further explicated certain Platonic and\nespecially certain Neo-Platonic conceptions. We shall be unable to\nsuggest any likely intermediary, or to assume with certainty a direct\nderivation, for these conceptions from Plato, or indeed from Plotinus\nor Proclus; and shall nevertheless be obliged to postulate some now\nuntraceable communication, on some most important points, between Plato\nand herself. Besides this, she derives one Platonic conception from the\nBook of Wisdom and a corresponding passage in St. Paul; and a certain\ngeneral Platonic tone and imagery from the Joannine Gospel and First\nEpistle. Her Neo-Platonism, on the contrary, she derives, massively\nand all but pure, through two of the Pseudo-Dionysian books and her\ndearly loved Franciscan Mystic Poet, Jacopone da Todi. It is indeed\nto the Pauline, Joannine, Dionysian, and Jacopone writings that she\nowes, with the exception of a certain group of Platonic conceptions,\npractically all that she did not directly derive from her own psychical\nand spiritual experiences.\n\nNow her assimilation of this particular strain of doctrine has\nremained but partial and theoretical with respect to those parts of\nDionysian Neo-Platonism which were not borne out by the facts of her\nown Christian experience; but it has extended even to her emotional\nattitude and practice, in cases where the doctrine was borne out by\nthese facts.\n\nThus we shall find that she often speaks theoretically of Evil as\nsimply negative, as the varyingly great absence of Good. Yet, in\npractice and in her autobiographical picturings, she fights her bad\nself, to the very last, as a truly positive force. The force of God\nis everywhere conceived as indefinitely greater, as, indeed, alone\ninfinite; yet the force of Evil is practically experienced and pictured\nas real and positive also, in its kind and degree.\n\nAgain, she often speaks as though her spiritual life had, at some one\nparticular moment, simply arrived at its final culmination, and had\nattained God and perfection with complete finality,--such, at least, as\nthis particular soul of hers can achieve. Yet, very shortly after, we\nfind her unmistakably in renewed movement and conflict, and observe her\nmind to be now fully aware of that past \u201cperfection\u201d having been but\nimperfect, because that act or state is now seen from a height higher\nthan that former level: hence that \u201cperfection\u201d was perfect, at most,\nin relation to its helps and opportunities in and for its own special\nmoment.\n\nAgain, it is at times as though she conceived her body to be a sheer\nclog and prison-house to the soul, and as though the soul\u2019s weakness\nand sinfulness were essentially due to its union with the flesh. But\nhere especially her later commentators have amplified and systematized\nher teaching almost beyond recognition; the authentic sayings of this\nkind, though too strong to be pressed, are few, and belong exclusively\nto the last stages of her illness; and, above all, these declarations\nare checked and entirely eclipsed by her normal and constant view as\nto the specific nature of Moral Evil. For this Evil consists, for her,\nessentially in the self-idolatry, the claimful self-centredness of\nthe natural man, ever tending, in a thousand mostly roundabout ways,\nto make means and ends, centre and circumference, Sun and Planet\nchange places, and to put some more or less subtle wilfulness and\npleasure-seeking in the place of Duty, Happiness, and God. Few, even\namongst the Saints, can have realized and exemplified more profoundly\nthe indelible difference between pleasure and happiness, between\nthe false and the true self; and few have more keenly, patiently\nfelt and taught that the soul\u2019s true life is, even eventually, not a\nkeeping or a getting what the lower instincts crave: but that, on the\ncontrary, a whole world of pleasures which, however base and short\nand misery-productive, can be intensely and irreplaceably pleasurable\nwhile they last, has successively to be sacrificed, for good and all;\nand that what is retained has gradually to proceed from other motives,\nto be grouped around other centres, and be ever only a part and a\nservant, and never a master or the whole. The gulf between every kind\nof Auto-centricism and the Theo-centric life, between mere Eudaemonism\nand Religion, could not be found anywhere more constant or profound.\n\nAgain, it is at times as though the absence or suppression of even\nthe noblest of human fellow-feelings and of particular parental and\nfriendly, attachments, and not their purification and deepening,\nmultiplication and harmonization, were the end and aim of perfection.\nBut little or nothing of this belongs, I think, to any deliberate and\nenduring theory of hers, still less to her full and normal practice;\nand the impression of such inhumanity is, in so far as it is derived\nfrom authentic documents, entirely caused by and restricted to her\nearly convert reaction, and her late over-strained or worn-out\npsycho-physical condition.\n\nAgain, it is sometimes as though she believed indeed in an\nenergizing and progress of the soul, yet held this progress to be,\nafter conversion, an absolutely unbroken, equable, necessary and\nautomatic increase in perfection; and that such a soul\u2019s last state\nis, necessarily and in all respects, better than were its previous\nstages.--The Redactors of her life most undoubtedly think this.\nBecause, for instance, she was Matron from 1490 to 1496, and could no\nmore fill the post from 1496 to 1510:--therefore \u201cnot to give part of\nher activity to such external work was more perfect than to give it,\u201d\nis the argument that underlies their scheme for these two periods.--Yet\nI can find nothing in her teaching to show that she held any such\nview. She was, indeed, ever too much absorbed, by the experiences and\nduties of her successive moments, to find even the leisure of mind\nrequisite for the manufacture of so doctrinaire a system. And indeed\nthere is nothing in the conception of sanctity, or in that of a gradual\nand general increase in generosity and purity of the saintly soul\u2019s\ndispositions and intentions, which requires us to hold that such a\nsoul\u2019s last state and efficiency is, in every respect, better than the\nfirst. For the range and volume of the efficiency, wisdom, balance,\nappropriateness of even our goodness is not determined by our will and\nthe graces given to our will alone. Physical and psychical health and\nstrength, illness and weakness; helps and hindrances from friends and\nfoes; the changing influences and limitations of growing age; and the\never-shifting combinations of all these and of similar things,--things\nand combinations which are all but indirectly attainable by our wills\nin any way: all this is ever as truly at work upon us as our wills and\nGod\u2019s spiritual graces are in operation directly within ourselves. And\nif Catherine\u2019s richness, breadth and balance of soul are, considering\nher special and successive health and circumstances, remarkable up\nto the very end, and probably actually grew to some extent with the\ngrowing obstacles, yet those qualities hardly grew or could grow _pari\npassu_ with these obstacles. The manifold efficiency and the unity in\nmultiplicity were distinctly greater before 1496 than after. And thus\nthe Saints too join their lowlier brethren in paying the pathetic debt\nof our common mortality. They too can be called upon to survive the\nculmination of their many-sided power, and to retain perpetual youth\nonly as regards their intention and the central ideas and the spiritual\nsubstance of their soul.\n\nOnce more she seems as though, to make up for this apparent suppression\nof the element of time, unduly to press the category of space, at least\nin her contemplations. We shall see how often in these contemplations\nGod Himself, and the soul, or at least its various states, appear as\nplaces; so that the whole spiritual life and world come thus to look\nrather like an atomic co-ordination, a projection on to space and a\nstatic mechanism, than an interpenetrative subordination, a production\nin time or at least in duration, and a dynamic organism.--Yet it will\nbe found that all this imagery is consciously, though no doubt quite\nnaturally, used only _as_ imagery, and that it is thus used both\nbecause it was spontaneously presented to her mind by her psychic\npeculiarities and because it readily adapted itself as a vehicle to\nexpress one of the deepest experiences and convictions of her spirit.\n\nFor her psychic peculiarities involved, on the one hand, a curiously\nrapid and complete change and difference of states of consciousness,\nand, on the other hand, a remarkable absence (or at least dimness) of\nconsciousness as to this transition itself, which, however abrupt,\nwas of course as truly a part of her inner life as were the several\ncompleted states and outlooks. Now the apparently static element and\nharmony in any one of these states could, of course, be at all clearly\npresented in no other form than that of a spacial image; whereas the\nchanging element in all these states seems to have accumulated chiefly\nin the subconscious region, to have at last suddenly burst into the\nconscious sphere, and to have there effected the change too rapidly to\npermit of, or at least to require, the presentation of this element\nas such, a presentation which could only have taken the form of a\nconsciousness of time or of duration. From all this it follows that, to\nher immediate psychic consciousness, each of her successive experiences\npresented itself as ever one spacial picture, as one \u201cplace.\u201d\n\nAnd the imagery, thus quasi-automatically presented to her, could\nnot fail to be gladly used and emphasized by her to express the\ndeepest experiences of her spiritual life. For it was the element of\nsimultaneity, of organic interpenetration, of the God-like _Totum\nSimul_, which chiefly impressed her in these deepest moments. And hence\nthe soul is conceived by her as, in its essence, eternal rather than an\nas immortal--as, in its highest reaches and moments, outside of time\nand not as simply wholly within it; and as, on such occasions, vividly\nthough indirectly conscious of the fact. Heaven itself is thought\nof not as eventually succeeding, with its own endless succession,\nto the finite succession of these our fleeting earthly days; but as\nalready forming the usually obscure, yet ever immensely operative,\nbackground, groundwork, measure and centre of our being, now and here\nas truly as there and then. And hence again, Heaven, Purgatory, and\nHell are for her three distinct states of the soul, already effected\nin their essence here below, and experienced as what they are, in part\nand occasionally here, and fully and continuously hereafter. Thus\nthe fundamental cleavage in the soul\u2019s life is not between things\nsuccessive,--between the Now and the Then, and at the point of death;\nbut between things simultaneous, between the This and the That, and at\nthe point of sin and of self-seeking.\n\nAnd finally, she seems at times to speak Greek-wise, as though\nthe soul\u2019s life consisted essentially, or even exclusively, in an\nintellection, a static contemplation. Yet we have already seen how\nrobust and constant is her ethical dualism, how essentially, here\nbelow at least, happiness consists for her in a right affection and\nattachment, in the continuous detaching of the true self from the false\nself, and the attaching of the true self unto God. And we should note\nhow that intellection itself is conceived as ever accompanied by a\nkeen sense of its inferiority to the Reality apprehended, and as both\nthe result and the condition and the means of love and of an increase\nof love. And again we should note that this sense of inferiority\ndoes not succeed the intellection, as the result of any reasoning on\nthe disparity between the finite and Infinite, but accompanies that\nintellection itself, and corresponds to the surplusage of her feelings\nover her mental seeings, and of her experience over her knowledge. And\nwe should add the fact that, in the most emphatic of her sayings, she\nmakes the essence of Heaven to consist in the union of the finite with\nthe Infinite Will; and that this doctrine alone would seem readily to\nharmonize with her favourite teaching as to Heaven beginning here below.\n\n\n7. _Her attitude towards Historical and Institutional Religion._\n\nIf the Platonic and Neo-Platonic elements appear, at first sight,\nas massive and even excessive constituents of Catherine\u2019s doctrine,\nHistorical and Institutional Christianity seems, on a cursory survey,\nto contribute strangely little even to her practice. Not one of her\nordinary contemplations is directly occupied with any scene from Our\nLord\u2019s life. The picture of the \u201cPiet\u00e0,\u201d so impressive to her in her\nnursery-days; the great Conversion-Vision of the Bleeding Christ; and\nthe slighter cases of the signing of herself with the sign of the Cross\nand of her lying with outstretched arms, which occurred during the\nlast stage of her illness, are the sole indications of any immediate\noccupation with the Passion; whilst the two cases of the Triptych\n\u201cMaest\u00e0\u201d and the painting representative of Our Lord at the well,\n(cases which indicate an attraction to the Infancy and to at least one\nincident of the Public Life,) complete the list of all direct attention\nto any incidents of Our Lord\u2019s earthly existence. As to occupation with\nor invocation of the Saints, inclusive of the Blessed Virgin, I can\nfind but one instance, the invocation of St. Benedict, two days before\nher Conversion. We have seen, as to Sacramental Confession, how little\nthere can have been of it, throughout the long middle period of her\nConvert Life; and how she was, during this time, simply without any\npriestly guidance. And she never was a Tertiary, nor did she belong to\nany Confraternity, nor did she attempt to gain Indulgences, nor did she\npractise popular devotions, such as the Rosary or Scapular.\n\nNor could these facts be quite fairly met, except to a certain\nrelatively small extent with regard to Confession, by insistence upon\nthe changing character of the Church\u2019s discipline, if we thus mean\nto assert that she did not, in these matters, act exceptionally with\nregard to the practice and theory of fervent souls of her own time.\nFor, on all the points mentioned, the ordinary fervent practice was\nalready, and had been for centuries, different; and, in the matter of\npriestly guidance, her chroniclers have not failed to transmit to us\nthe wonders and murmurs of more than one contemporary.\n\nYet here again the prima facie impression is but very incompletely\nborne out by a closer study.\n\nFor first, none of these historical and institutional elements are ever\nformally excluded, or attacked, or slighted. Indeed, in the matter of\nIndulgences, we have seen how she arranged or allowed that monies of\nher own should be spent in procuring certain facilities for gaining\nthem by others.\n\nAnd next, special practices, more than equivalent in their irksomeness,\nare throughout made to take the place of ordinary practices, in so\nfar and for so long as these latter are abstained from. An unusually\nsevere ascetical penitential time, and then the rarest watchfulness and\ncontinuous self-renouncement, take thus, for a considerable period, the\nplace of the sacramental forms of Penance.\n\nAnd thirdly, if there is an unusual rarity in Confession there is an\nalmost as rare frequency of Communion; and authentic anecdotes show us\nhow she scandalized some good souls as truly-by this frequency as by\nthat rarity. Indeed throughout her convert life, an ardent devotion\nto the Holy Eucharist forms the very centre of her daily life; during\nprobably thirty-five years she only quite exceptionally misses daily\nCommunion; and she has the deepest attraction to the Mass, and a holy\nenvy of priests for their close relation to the Blessed Sacrament.\nAnd though there are no contemplations of hers directly occupied with\nthe Holy Eucharist, yet we shall find this experience and doctrine\nto have profoundly shaped and coloured teachings and apprehensions\nwhich, at first sight, are quite disconnected with It. We can already\nsee how all-inclusive a symbol and stimulation of her other special\nattractions and conceptions this central devotion could not fail to\nbe. She found here the Infinite first condescending to the finite; so\nthat the finite may then rise towards the Infinite; the soul\u2019s life,\na hunger and a satisfaction of that hunger, through the taste of\nfeeling rather than through the sight of reason; God giving Himself\nthrough such apparently slight vehicles, in such short moments, and\nunder such bewilderingly humble veils; and our poor _a priori_ notions\nand _a posteriori_ analyses thus proved inadequate to the living soul\nand the living God.--Extreme Unction also was highly esteemed: she\nspontaneously demanded it some four times and finally received it with\ngreat fervour. Church hymns too--witness the \u201cVeni, Creator,\u201d chanted\non her death-bed--and liturgical lights are spontaneously used.\n\nAnd lastly, her practice in the matter of Confession and of priestly\nadvice became, during her last thirteen years identical in frequency\nwith that of her devout contemporaries; and thus her life ended with\nthe practice, on all the chief points, of the average, ordinary\ndevotional acts and habits of her time. And this final practice of the\nordinary means, together with her life-long dislike of singularity and\nof notice; her humble misgivings in the midst of her most peaceful\noriginalities, and the utter absence of any tendency to think her way,\ninasmuch as it was at all singular, the only way or even the best\nway, except just now and here for her own self alone; her complete\nfreedom from the spirit of comparing self with others, of dividing\noff the sheep from the goats, or of having some short, sure, and\nuniversal means or test for holiness: all this shows us plainly how\nCatholic and unsectarian, how truly free, not only from slavish fear\nand pusillanimous conformity, but also from all enthralment to merely\nsubjective fancies, from all solipsism or conceit was her strong soul.\n\n\n8. _Three stages of the Spiritual Life; Catherine represents the third._\n\nIt has been well said that there are three stages of the spiritual\nlife, and three corresponding classes of souls.\n\nThere are the souls that are characterized, even to the end of\ntheir earthly lives, by that, more or less complete, naturalistic\nIndividualism, with which we all in various degrees begin. Catherine\u2019s\nown time and country were full of such thoroughly Individualistic,\nunmoral or even anti-moral men, who, however gifted and cultivated as\nartists, scholars, philosophers, and statesmen, must yet be counted as\nessentially childish and as clever animals rather than as spiritual\nmen. And she herself had, during the five years which had preceded her\nconversion, tended, on the surface of her being, towards something of\nthis kind.\n\nNext come the souls that have recognized and have accepted Duty and\nObligation, that are now striving to serve God as God, and that are\nattempting, with a preponderant sincerity, to live the common and\nuniversal life of the Spirit. These of necessity tend to suspect, or\neven to suppress and sacrifice, whatever appears to be peculiar to\nthemselves, as so much individualistic subjectivity and insidious high\ntreason to the objective law of Him who made their souls, and who now\nbids them save those souls at any cost. The large majority of the souls\nthat were striving to serve God in Catherine\u2019s times belonged, as souls\nbelong in these our days, and will necessarily and rightly belong up to\nthe end, to this second, universalistic, uniformative type and class.\nAnd Catherine herself evidently belonged prominently to this type and\nclass, during her first four convert years.\n\nAnd there are, finally, an ever relatively small number of souls that\nare called, and a still smaller number that attain, to a state in which\nthe Universality, Obligation, Uniformity, and Objectivity, of the\nsecond stage and class, take the form of a Spiritual Individuality,\nLiberty, Variety, and Subjectivity: Personality in the fullest sense\nof the term has now appeared. And this fullest Spiritual Personality\nis the profoundest opposite and foe of its naturalistic counterfeit,\nof those spontaneous animal liberalisms which reigned, all but\nunrecognized as such because all but uncontrasted by the true ideal and\ntest of life, prior to that prostration before absolute obligation,\nthat poignant sense of weakness and impurity, and that gain of strength\nand purity from beyond its furthest reaches, experienced by the soul at\nits conversion.\n\nYet that merely subjective, liberalistic Individualism of the first\nstage can only be kept out, even at the third stage, by retaining\nwithin the soul all the essential characteristics of the second\nstage,--by a continuous passing and re-passing under the Caudine Forks\nof the willed defeat of wayward, self-pleasing wilfulness, and of the\ndeliberate acceptance of an objective system of ideas and experiences\nas interiorly binding upon the self. For if the second stage excludes\nthe first, the third stage does not exclude the second. Yet now all\nthis, in these rare souls, leads up to and produces a living reality\nbafflingly simple in its paradoxical, mysterious richness. For now\nthe universality, obligation, and objectivity of the Law become and\nappear greater, not less, because incarnated in an eminently unique and\nunreproduceable, in a fully personal form. And at this stage only do we\nfind a full persuasiveness.\n\nCatherine attained unmistakably, after her four years of special\npenitence, to this rare third stage. For not only is she essentially\nas individual and unique as if she were not universal and uniform; and\nessentially as universal and uniform as if she were not individual: but\nshe is indefinitely more truly original and subjective, because of her\nvoluntary boundness and objectivity. Indeed she is solidly and really\nfree and personal, because the continuous renunciation and expulsion\nof all naturalistic individuality remains, to the very end, one of the\nessential functions of her soul.\n\nFrom all this it is clear how easy it would be to misread the lesson\nof her manifold life, and to turn such examples as hers from a help\ninto a hindrance. For her melancholy temperament, her peculiar psychic\nhealth, her final external inefficiency: all this is too striking\nnot to tempt the admiration, perhaps even, the hopeless and ruinous\nimitation, of such crude and inexperienced souls as know not how to\ndistinguish between the merely given materials and untransferable\ndeterminisms of each separate soul\u2019s psychical and temperamental native\noutfit, and the free, grace-inspired and grace-aided use made by each\nsoul of these its, more or less unique, occasions and materials.\nThose materials were, of themselves, of no moral worth, and lent\nthemselves only in part with any ease to the upbuilding and realization\nof her spirit\u2019s ideal. And it is only this, her wise and heroic use\nof her materials,--though this also, of course, is not directly\ntransferable,--that represents the spiritually valuable constituent of\nthe life.\n\nSimilarly with the form, and the psychic occasions or accompaniments\nof her very prayer and spiritual absorptions, and with some of the\nconstituents of her doctrine, if taken as speculative and analytic and\nfinal, rather than as psychological and descriptive and preliminary.\nThese things again could easily be misused. For the former are largely\nquite special and, in themselves, morally indifferent peculiarities,\ntransformed and utilized by quite special graces and life-long\nspiritual heroisms. And the latter, we shall find, were never intended\nto be systematic, complete or ultimate; and indeed they owe their\ntrue force and value to their being the occasional, spontaneous and\nimmediate expressions and adumbrations of an experience indefinitely\nricher and more ultimate than themselves.\n\nAnd finally, it would of course be absurd to take the limitations of\nher activity and interests, even if we were to restrict ourselves to\nthose common to all the stages of her life, as necessarily admirable,\nor as universally inevitable. For there is, in the very nature of\nthings, no equation between her one soul, however rich and stimulating,\nor even all the souls of her class and school, or of her age or\ncountry, on the one hand, and the totality of religious experience,\nand its means and incorporations, on the other hand, even if, by\ntotality, we but mean that part of it already achieved and accepted by\ngrace-impelled mankind.\n\n\n9. _The lessons of Catherine\u2019s life._\n\nAnd yet Catherine\u2019s life and teaching will be found full of suggestion\nand stimulation, if they are taken in their interpenetration, and if\ndue regard is paid to their fragmentary registration, to the necessary\ndistinction between what, amongst all these facts, was mere means,\noccasion, and temporal setting, and what amongst them was aim and\nend, utilization and abiding import, and to the fact that all this\nexperience is but one out of the indefinitely many applications,\nextensions, and mutually corrective and supplementary exemplifications\nof the spirit and life of Christ, as it lives itself out throughout\nthe temperaments, races and ages of mankind. Above all it can teach\nus, I think, with a rare completeness, wherein lies the secret of\na persuasive holiness. For Catherine lets us see, with unusual\nclearness, how this winningness lies in the pathetically dramatic\nspectacle and appeal presented by a life engaged in an ever-increasing\nethical and spiritual energizing,--whether in a slow shifting and\npushing of its actual centre, down and in from the circumference of\nthe soul to its true centre, and from this true centre enlarging\nand reorganizing its whole ever-expanding being again and again; or\nin an apparently sudden finding itself placed, and loyally placing\nitself, in this true centre, and then from there prosecuting and\nmaintaining the organization and transformation of its varyingly\nperipheral life, a life treated at one time as central and complete.\nAnd this persuasiveness can here be discovered to be greater or\nless in proportion to the thoroughness and continuousness of this\ncentralization and purification; to the degree in which this issues in\na new, spontaneously acting ethico-spiritual personality; and to the\ncloseness and costingness of the connection between those means and\nthis result. Such a soul will be persuasive because of its ever seeking\nand finding a purifying intermediacy, a river of death, to all its\nmerely naturalistic self-seeking.\n\nAnd it is this nobly ascetic requirement and search and end which no\ndoubt explain what, at first sight, is strange, both in its presence\nand in its attractiveness, in her own case and more or less in that of\nall the mature and complete Saints,--I mean, the large predominance of\nan apparently Pantheistic element in her life, the strong emphasis laid\nupon an apparent Thing-Conception of God and of the human spirit.\n\nIt was clearly not alone because of the Neo-Platonist element and\ninfluence of the books she chiefly used that she, in true Greek\nfashion, finds and allows so large a place for conceptions of\nthings, for images derived from the natural elements, and for mental\nabstractions, in her religious experiences and teachings: God appearing\nin them predominantly as Sun, Light, Fire, Air, Ocean; Beauty, Truth,\nLove, Goodness. For, after all, other elements could be found in these\nvery books, and other writings were known to her besides these books:\nhence this her preference for just these elements still demands an\nexplanation.\n\nNor was it ultimately because, nervously high-pitched and strained\nas she was by nature, she even physically craved and required an\nimmense expansion for this her excessive natural concentration. She\nthus evidently longed first to move through, and to bathe and rest and\nspread out her psychic self, in an ample region, in an enduring state\nof quasi-unconsciousness, in an (as it were) innocently animal or even\nsimply vegetative objectivity, indeed in an apparent bare element and\nmere Thing, before, thus rested, braced, and as it were now healthily\nreconcentrated, she more directly met the Infinite Concentration and\nDetermination, the Personal Spirit, God. For, after all, hers was so\nheroic a spirit, and so self-distrustful, indeed self-suspecting, a\nheart, that a mere psychic affinity or requirement would have failed so\npermanently and deliberately to captivate her mind.\n\nNor, finally, was it ultimately because her domestic sorrows or\ninexperiences, or even her very psychic peculiarities and apparent\nlack of all even innocent sensuousness, left the images of Bride and\nBridegroom, of Parent and Child, perhaps even of Friend, respectively\npainful, empty, or pale to her consciousness. For, even so, she could\nand did care, with a beautiful affectiveness of her own, for her\nbrothers and sister, for Vernazza, her \u201cspiritual son,\u201d and for many a\nhumble toiler or domestic. And indeed her whole tendency is ultimately\nto find God\u2019s special home, the only one of His dwelling-places which\nwe men really know, in the human heart of hearts.\n\nThe ultimate and determining reason was no doubt her deep spiritual\nexperience and conviction (as vivid as ever was the psychic tendency\nwhich gave it form and additional emotional edge and momentum) that\nshe must continuously first quench and drown her feverish immediacy,\nher clamorous, claimful false self, and must lose herself, as a merely\nnatural Individual, in the river and ocean of the Thing, of Law, of\nthat apparently ruthless Determinism which fronts life everywhere,\nbefore she could find herself again as a Person, in union with and in\npresence of an infinite Spirit and Personality.\n\nThus Greek Fate is here retained, but it is transformed through being\ntransplaced. For Fate has here ceased to be ultimate and above the very\ngods, the poor gods who were so predominantly the mere projections of\nman\u2019s Individualism: Fate is here intermediate and a way to God--the\ngreat God, the source and ideal of all Personality. And indeed this\nFate is not, ultimately, simply separate from God; it is indeed\nomnipresent, but everywhere only as the preliminary and subaltern,\nexpression, for us men, of the Divine Freedom that lies hidden and\noperating behind it. And we men attain to some of this Freedom only by\nthe inclusion within our spiritual life of that Fate-passage and of our\nactual constant passing through it, on and on.\n\n\n10. _Three points where Catherine is comparatively original; and a\nfourth point where she is practically unique._\n\nIn the general tendency and form of her inner life and conviction\nCatherine has, of course, substantially nothing but what she shares\nwith all the Mystics, in proportion as these retain Law, Ethics, and\nPersonality; and she has much that forms part of the convictions of\nall Christians, indeed of all Theists. Yet in the degree and precise\nmanner of her elaboration and application of those things, and again in\nthe circumstances of their documentary transmission, Catherine will, I\nthink, be found in three points comparatively original, and in a fourth\npoint practically unique.\n\nFirst she has, as we have seen, not only a strikingly persistent\nattitude of transcendence and detachment with regard to her\npsycho-physical state in general (this is indeed an attitude common\nto all ethically sound and fruitful Mystics: witness in particular\nSt. John of the Cross); but she has also a most remarkable faculty\nand activity of discrimination between her own healthy and morbid\nstates. Even this latter power she probably shares, in various degrees,\nwith all such ethical-minded Mystics as nevertheless suffered from\na partially _maladif_ psycho-physical condition: witness especially\nSt. Teresa.--Yet contemporary documentary evidence, for not only such\nactual variations between healthy and unhealthy states, but also for\nthe Mystic\u2019s knowledge of and witness to the existence of both and\nto the difference between the two, is necessarily rare. I know of no\nevidence more vivid and final, although of much that is larger in\namount, than the evidence furnished by Catherine\u2019s _Vita_.\n\nAnd next she has both a constant, deep sense that religion never\nconsists simply in ends but in means as well, and never ceases to use\nand practise the latter; and a concomitant keen apprehension of the\ndifference between means and ends, and ever illustrates this sense\nof difference by the striking variety and liberty of the practical\nattitude which she is successively moved to take, and actually does\ntake, towards this or that of the Institutional helps of the Church.\nHere again she but exemplifies a principle which underlies the\npractice of all the Saints, in proportion to their maturity and full\nnormality. And indeed our Lord Himself, the Model and the King of\nSaints, when asked which was the greatest of the Commandments, did\nnot answer that He could not and would not tell, since to distinguish\nat all between greater and lesser Commandments would be liberalism;\nbut, on the contrary, fully endorsed and canonized such a distinction\nand discrimination, by actually pointing out two Commandments as\nthe greatest, and by declaring that from them depended all the law\nand the prophets. Hence to organize, and more and more to find and\ngive their right, relative place and influence to all the different\nthings practised and believed, is as important as is the corresponding\npractice and acceptance of all these different things. Yet, here again,\nfull evidence both for such fidelity and docility and for such variety\nand liberty of soul, with regard to the means of religion, is rare:\nthe records of the modern Saints mostly give us but the docility;\nthose of the Fathers of the desert generally give us but the liberty:\nCatherine\u2019s _Vita_ gives us both.\n\nAnd thirdly, she is, amongst formally canonized Saints, a rare example\nof a contemplative and mystic who, from first to last, leads at the\nsame time the common life of marriage and of widowhood in the world.\nHere again any misapprehension of the importance or significance of\nthis fact would readily lead to folly. For it is undeniable that it has\nbeen the monastic life which, in however great variations of degree,\nform and lasting success, has furnished Christendom at large with an\nimpersonation of self-renunciation sufficiently isolated, massive\nand continuous, to be deeply impressive upon the sluggish spiritual\napprehension of the average man. And indeed self-renunciation is so\nuniversally necessary and so universally difficult; upon its presence\nand activity religion, and all and every kind of rational human life\ndepend so largely; without its tonic presence they are so necessarily\nbut a dilettantism, a delusion or an hypocrisy: that to body it forth\nfor all men must ever remain an honour and a duty specially incumbent\nupon some kind of Monasticism. For it is but right, and indeed alone\nrespectful, to the Spirit of God, so manifold and mysterious in its\ngifts and inspirations, that every degree and kind of healthy and\nheroic self-renunciation should be practised and embodied; and that\nspecial honour should attach to its most massive manifestations.\n\nYet our general knowledge of poor, rarely balanced human nature\nand our detailed historical experience respectively anticipate and\ndemonstrate how easy it is, on this point also, to confound the means\nwith the end, and a part with the whole. And by such confusion either\nself-renunciation, that very salt of all truly human existence, gets\nactually stapled up in one corner of the wide world and of multiform\nlife; or this apparent stapling becomes but a pedantic pretence and\nwould-be monopoly, the salt meanwhile losing all its savour. And these\ntwo abuses and errors easily coalesce and reinforce each other. The\nfact is that the total work and duty of collective humanity,--the\nproduction of a maximum of true recollection, rest and detachment,\neffected in and through a maximum of right dispersion, action, and\nattachment; above all a maximum of ethico-spiritual transformation of\nthe world and, in and through such work, of each single worker,--is\ntoo high for any single soul, or even class or vocation, to hope to\nexhaust. Only by all and each joining hands and supplementing each\nother can all these numberless degrees and kinds of call and goodness,\ntogether, slowly, throughout the ages, get nearer and nearer to that\ninexhaustible ideal which lies so deep and ineradicable within the\nheart of each and all. And thus will the two fundamental movements of\nthe soul, as it were its expiration and its inspiration, the going\nout to gather and the coming home to garner, be kept up, in various\ndegrees, by every human soul, and each soul and vocation will as keenly\nfeel the need of supplementation, as it will apprehend the beauty and\nimportance of the special contribution it is called to make to the\nwhole, a whole, here as everywhere, greater than any of its parts,\nalthough requiring them each and all.--Now Catherine suggests and\nillustrates such a doctrine with rare impressiveness: for the pure and\nefficient love of God and man, the one end and measure for us all, ever\nconsciously dominates all and every means within her admirably balanced\nand unified mind; and the renunciative element is, under mostly quite\nordinary exterior forms, as complete and constant as it could be found\nanywhere.\n\nAnd lastly, her doctrine contains one conviction, or group of\nconvictions, as original as, in such matters, one can expect to find.\nWe get here the soul\u2019s voluntary plunge into Purgatory, its seeking\nand finding relief, from the now painful pleasure of sin, in the now\njoy-producing pain of purification; and the soul\u2019s discovery and\nacquisition, if and when in predominantly good dispositions, of its\never-fuller peace and bliss, because its ever-increasing harmonization,\nin freely willing the suffering intrinsically consequent upon its\nown past evil pleasures and the resulting present imperfections of\nits will. And this cycle of facts and laws here springs from, and\nbegins with, the soul\u2019s life Here and Now, and is held to extend (on\nthe ever-present assumption of the substantial persistence of the\nspirit\u2019s fundamental spiritual properties and laws) to the soul\u2019s life\nThen and There. Thus these two lives differ with her rather in extent\nand intensity than in kind. I think that, taken just thus, and with\nthis degree of explicitness, this group of convictions is practically\nunique. We shall study and illustrate this particular cycle of doctrine\nin full detail. But it is indeed time now to move on to a more\nsystematic and general account of her teaching.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nCATHERINE\u2019S DOCTRINE\n\n\nThe attentive reader will no doubt have perceived how great have been\nthe difficulties at every step taken, in the previous chapters, towards\na critically clear and solid account of Catherine\u2019s life. He will,\nthen, be quite prepared again to find difficulties, though largely of\nanother order, in the task that now lies before us,--the attempt at a\nclear and authentic reproduction of her teaching.\n\n\n1. _Four difficulties in the utilization of the sources._\n\nThe sources are, it is true, at first sight, fairly\nabundant,--altogether about one hundred of the two hundred and eighty\npages of the _Vita ed Opere_. But four peculiarities render their\nutilization a matter of much labour and caution.\n\nFor one thing, they certainly include no piece written by herself,\nand probably none written down before 1497. Catherine\u2019s memory can no\ndoubt be trusted, and with it much of the oldest version of those great\nturning-points of her inner life which occurred long before that date,\nand which she thus, later on, communicated to her two closest friends.\nYet hers was a mind so constantly absorbed in present experiences and\nin self-renewal as to be all but incapable of dwelling, in any detail,\nupon her past experiences or judgments.\n\nAnd next, within and for this her \u201cdoctrinal,\u201d her \u201cwidowed\u201d and\n\u201csuffering\u201d period, we are perplexed by the total absence of logical\nor indeed of any other order in the presentation of these discourses\nand contemplations. We have either to do without any order at all, or\nto construct one for ourselves,--which latter course of itself already\nmeans a reconstruction of the book.\n\nBut far more delicate is the task presented by the third\npeculiarity,--the fact, demonstrated both by the internal evidence\nand analysis and by the external evidence of the MSS., of the\nbewildering variety of forms and connections in which one and the same\ndoctrine, sometimes an obviously unique saying, will appear. Six,\nten, even twelve or more variants are the rule, not the exception.\nAnd I am specially thinking, under this heading, of _contemporary\nvariations_--that is, variations of form that can reasonably be\nattributed either to her own initiative at work under differences\nof mood and of starting-point; or to the variety of the minds who\napprehended and registered this teaching at the time of its delivery;\nor to both influences simultaneously. In the first case we get, say,\nher doctrine as to man\u2019s weakness and sinfulness, in two moments of\ndepression and consolation respectively, registered by one and the same\ndisciple,--say, by Vernazza or by Marabotto. In the second case we get\nsome such two sayings as rendered the one by Vernazza and the other by\nMarabotto severally. And in the third case we get both the depressed\nand the joyful original sayings, as they have passed through the minds\nof both Vernazza and Marabotto.\n\nAnd lastly, we get another class, _redactional variations_; and these\nit is often as difficult as it is always necessary to detect. I mean\nthe parallel passages, evolved in course of time by her attendants or\nconstructed by successive redactors, more or less on the model of, but\nalso with more or less of departure from, her own authentic sayings:\nblurred, partly inaccurate echoes, as it were, of her own living voice.\nThese will generally have grown up but semi-consciously, or at least\nhave arisen from simple motives of her glorification or of literary\nfilling-in or rounding-off. For we must not forget the forty years\nwhich passed between her death and the _Vita_.\n\nI am thinking here too of the _theological limitations and\ncorrections_, introduced into the older text in the form of definite\ncounter-statements, which we shall find to be especially visible in\nthe _Trattato_; and of the, doubtless preponderatingly unconscious,\nmodifications of an analogous kind which determined the composition\nof the _Dialogo_, and are traceable throughout that whole long work.\nFor here again we have to remember how, between her living teachings,\nso ardent and familiar, so entirely from within and unoccupied with\nthe world without, which reached up to 1510, and even the earliest\nMS. redaction of the contemporary jotting down of those sayings\nwhich we still possess,--that of 1547,--runs the great upheaval of\nthe Protestant Reformation, beginning with Luther\u2019s Theses of 1517.\nCatherine\u2019s own fellow God-parent to Vernazza\u2019s eldest daughter, the\nDoctor of Laws Tommaso Moro, had meanwhile become a Calvinist (1537),\nand then had returned to the Catholic Obedience in 1539, first under\nthis his God-daughter\u2019s influence. No wonder that what, under the\nmagic suasion of her living personality, in times as yet free from\nthe controversial and polemical tone and temper, and through and for\nher friends already won to and comprehensive of her teachings, had\nbeen certainly registered, and perhaps for a while transmitted, in\nits own pristine, winningly daring and unguarded, form, would, with\nher old friends dead and a new generation grown up and engrossed in\nattack and defence of various points of the Catholic position, be felt\nto require tempering and safeguarding, rewriting and controversial\nutilization. Hence we get three successive steps. The theological\ncounter-statements in the _Trattato_, probably introduced between\n1524 and 1530. The controversial point and utilization attempted in\nthe very title of the _Vita_ which promises, \u201cuna utile e cattolica\ndimostrazione e declarazione del Purgatorio,\u201d and in the Preface, which\ndeclares the book to contain things \u201cspecially necessary in these our\nturbulent times,\u201d touches which go back probably to 1536, perhaps even\nto 1524-1530. And the composition of the entire _Dialogo_, hardly begun\nbefore 1546.[221]\n\nIt is interesting to note how neither for the approbation of the first\nedition in 1551 (by the Dominican Fra Geronimo of Genoa), nor during\nthe examination by the Congregation of Rites and the final approbation\nby Pope Innocent XI, 1677-1683, was any additional correction required\nor (as far as I know) even suggested. The latter point is particularly\nstriking; for we have thus the very Pope who, in 1687, condemned\nMolinos\u2019 teaching, solemnly approving Catherine\u2019s doctrine four years\nbefore, after a seven years\u2019 examination.\n\n\n2. _Catholic principles concerning the teaching of Canonized Saints._\n\nNow it is a well-known principle of Catholic theology, propounded\nwith classic clearness and finality by Pope Benedict XIV, in his\nstandard work _On the Beatification and Canonization of the Servants\nof God_, that such an approbation of their sayings or writings binds\nneither the Church nor her individual members to more than the two\npoints, which are alone necessary with respect to the possibility\nand advisability of the future Beatification and Canonization of the\nauthor of the sayings or writings in question. The Church and her\nindividual members are thus bound only to hold the perfect orthodoxy\nand Catholic piety of such a saintly writer\u2019s intentions, and again the\n(at least interpretative) orthodoxy of these his writings, and their\nspiritual usefulness for some class or classes of souls. But every\nkind and degree of respectful but deliberate criticism and of dissent\nis allowed, if only based upon solid reasons and combined with a full\nacceptance of those two points.\n\nAnd indeed it is plain that heroism in action and suffering is one\nthing, and philosophical genius, training and balance is another;\nand even, again, that deep and delicate experiences on the one hand,\nand the power of their at all adequate analysis and psychological\ndescription, are two things and not one. Still, it is also evident\nthat in proportion as a Saint\u2019s doctrine is, professedly or at all\nevents actually, based upon or occasioned by his own experience will\nit rightly demand a double measure of respectful study. For, in such\na case, we can be sure not only of the saintly intentions of the\nteacher, but also of his doctrines being an attempt, however partially\nsuccessful, at expressing certain first-hand, unusually deep and vivid\nexperiences of the religious life, experiences which, taken in their\nsubstance and totality, constitute the very essence of his sanctity.\n\nNow this is manifestly the case with Catherine. And hence she furnishes\nus with those very conditions of fruitful discussion, so difficult\nto get in religious matters. On the one hand, her undoubted sanctity\nand the personal experimental basis of her doctrine gain for her our\nwillingness, indeed determination, first of all patiently to study and\nassimilate and sympathetically to reconstruct her special spiritual\nworld from her own inner starting- and growing-point, and all this,\nat this first stage, without any question as to the completeness or\nfinal truth and value of the intellectual analyses and syntheses of\nthese experiences elaborated by herself. And, on the other hand, we\nfind ourselves driven, at our second stage, to examine the literary\nsources and philosophical and theological implications of this her\nteaching--if pressed; and to make various respectful, but firm and\nfree distinctions and reservations, with regard to these sources\nand affinities. For here, in these her analyses and syntheses, a\nspecial quality of her own temperament is ever at work, and causes\nher to express, as best she can, a concentration of a whole host of\nthe strongest feelings concerning just the one point of that one\nmoment\u2019s experience, with a momentary complete exclusion of all the\nrest. Here, again, her dependence, for her categories of thought and\ngeneral language, imagery and scheme of doctrine, upon Fra Jacopone da\nTodi and upon the Pseudo-Dionysian writings is readily traceable,--the\nlatter, compositions which we have only now succeeded in tracing, with\nfinal completeness and precision, to their predominantly Neo-Platonist\nsource. And here we cannot but carefully consider the impressive series\nof Church pronouncements which have occurred since Catherine spoke and\nher devotees wrote. All these matters shall be carefully studied in the\nsecond volume.\n\n\n3. _The fortunate circumstances of Catherine\u2019s teaching._\n\nIt was a rare combination of numerous special circumstances,--several\nof them unique,--which rendered possible the retention and indeed\nsolemn approbation of the difficult and daring doctrine and language\nnot rarely to be met with in the _Vita_ (in contradistinction to the\nso-called _Opere_).\n\nFor one thing, the originator, the subject-matter and form, above\nall the school of her doctrine, all combined to secure it the\nlargest possible amount of liberty and sympathetic interpretation.\nThe originator, the soul from whom the doctrine had proceeded, had\nnot herself written down one word of it; but she had spoken it all,\nwarm from the very heart which loved and lived it: the cold and\nchilling process of deliberate composition had but little part in\nthe whole matter, and that part was not hers. The subject-matter was\nnot primarily dogmatic, and not at all political or legal; it dealt\nnot with theological systems or visible institutions, but with the\nexperiences of single souls: and at all times a great latitude has been\nallowed in such subject-matter, when proceeding, as here, from some\nsaintly soul as the direct expression of its own experience. The form\nwas not systematic, and aimed at no completeness; all was incidentally\naddressed to a few devoted disciples, in short monologues or homely\nconversations. The title _Trattato_, given later on to the collection\nof her detached thoughts on Purgatory, is thoroughly misleading; her\nwhole spirit and form were precisely not that of the treatise. And\nthe school to which she so obviously belonged was probably her chief\nprotection. Indeed, the doctrinally difficult passages are, in a true\nsense, the least personal of her sayings: we shall find all their\ndoctrinal presuppositions,--as to the immobility, indefectibility,\ndeification of the soul; the possession by the soul of God without\nmeans or measure; and the like,--to go back to the writings which,\npurporting to be by the Areopagite Dionysius, the Convert of St. Paul,\nbut composed in reality between A.D. 490-520, so profoundly influenced\nall mystical thinking and expression for one thousand years and more of\nthe Church\u2019s life.\n\nAnd again, the period during which the corpus of Catherine\u2019s doctrine\nwas in process of formation was specially favourable to such large\ntoleration. For if she died in 1510, ten years before the outbreak of\nthe Protestant Reformation, with its inevitable reaction, her chief\nchronicler, the saintly philanthropist Vernazza, did not die, a true\nmartyr to that boundless love of souls which he had derived from\nhis great-souled friend, till 1524; and her Confessor Marabotto did\nnot depart till 1528. Thus her doctrine would remain substantially\nuntouched and treasured up till some twenty years after her death, and\nthirteen years after the great upheaval.\n\nWe have already noted that (somewhere about 1528, and on to 1551)\nher teaching _did_ meet with some opposition. It will be interesting\nto study (in the Appendix) how the objection arose and was met. Here\nit must suffice to point out that, whereas Catherine\u2019s Purgatorial\ndoctrine is free from any final difficulty on the score of orthodoxy,\nit is just that doctrine which was hedged in and glossed before all\nthe rest; and that whereas other parts of her teaching, in the form\ngiven in the _Vita_, are full of such difficulty, they remain strangely\nunmodified to this very day. It will appear that the _Dialogo_ was in\npart composed to perform an office towards those doctrinal chapters of\nthe _Vita_, similar to that performed by the glosses in and towards the\ntext of the _Trattato_. Hence the glosses of the _Trattato_ will have,\nin the following collection of sayings, to be removed from my text, and\nthe statements of the _Dialogo_ will have to be ignored in my text.\nThese glosses or re-statements shall be considered later on, whenever\nthese additions or substitutions are of sufficient interest.\n\n\n4. _The theological order of presentation adopted._\n\nThen again, it is far from easy to settle upon the right order and\nmethod of presentation. The more closely we study the chapters in\nquestion the more do we find that the strange discomfort and disgust,\nengendered by any lengthy reading of them, proceeds from the curiously\ninfelicitous manner of their composition. These chapters, in so much as\nthey supply genuine materials, consist of a large number of detached,\nusually short sayings, of every kind of tone and mood, occasion and\nmental and emotional context and connotation, and yet all concerning\nbut a few great central realities and truths. These sayings in\nthemselves do not at all represent links in a chain of reasoning; they\nare numberless variations on some few fundamental experiences of the\nsoul. Hence they require to be given in loose co-ordination, or in free\ngrouping around some great central truth; somewhat like what is done,\nwith such marked felicity, for Our Lord\u2019s own sayings, which also are\noccasional and freely various, by the oldest of our Gospels, St. Mark.\n\u201cAnd,\u201d \u201cand again,\u201d can be used to join these recurrent similitudes,\naspirations, emotional reflections; not \u201cbecause\u201d nor \u201ctherefore,\u201d\nstill less \u201cfirstly,\u201d \u201csecondly,\u201d \u201cthirdly,\u201d as the Redactors have\nbeen so fond of doing. Hence the reader in the _Vita_ feels himself\nin a constant state of abortive motion, and is ever being promised a\nprecision which usually ends in vagueness.\n\nLet us then group these parallel sayings around some few great central\ntruths or dispositions. But what is the order of these great centres\nto be? Here again a difficulty occurs, and this time from the very\nnature of the doctrine concerned. For the special characteristic of her\nteaching, a teaching so largely derived both from her own intensely\nunitive character and (through the Dionysian writings, Proclus and\nPlotinus) from Plato himself, is precisely an infinitely close-woven\norganization, in which part vibrates in sympathy with part, in which\neach point carries with it the whole, and in which each one idea\nand feeling passes, as it were, right through, and colours and is\ncoloured by all the rest. It would be almost as satisfactory to turn\nthe impassioned discourse of Diotima in the Symposium into a series\nof numbered propositions, as here to try and detach any one feeling\nor idea from out of the living network of its fellows, in and through\nwhich it is, and gets and gives, its special self.\n\nThe historical order (_i.e._ the order in which, successively, each\ndoctrine grew up and dominated her thinking) is, alas! as we have seen,\nout of the question.--The psychological order (_i.e._ the order in\nwhich the doctrines, such as we have them, would reproduce themselves\nwithin her own mind during that last period of her life, 1496-1510)\nwould doubtless throw most light upon the special characteristics of\nher spirituality, and upon the hidden springs of her doctrine. But it\nis far too difficult, and must remain too largely hypothetical, to be\neven distantly aimed at here and now: some such attempt will be made\nin a later chapter, with the help of the materials first collected and\ngrouped here in a more conventional way.--The theological order (_i.e._\nthe order in which these doctrines would appear if made to find their\nplaces in an ordinary manual of scholastic theology) is the one that\nI shall here endeavour to follow as far as possible. For thus I can\nstart with a scheme so thoroughly familiar as nowhere itself to require\nany explanation; and I can thus help to bring out, from the first, the\ncharacteristic peculiarities of the mystical position generally, and of\nher own variety of it in particular.\n\nI will then take here, successively, her teachings as to God in\nHimself, and Creation; Sin, Redemption, and Sanctification; and the\nLast Things. But I do so quite loosely, for I shall try nowhere to\nbreak off any bridge that she herself has thrown across from one\nsubject to the other, and shall be satisfied if I can succeed in\ngrouping her doctrine even approximately within those three divisions,\naccording to the predominance of this or that point of her teaching.\nAnd, for this, I shall not shrink from a repeated utilization of\none and the same text, when (as happens so often) it looks in many\ndirections, and becomes fully clear only in juxtaposition with various\nparts of her teaching.\n\n\n5. _Literary sources of Catherine\u2019s teaching._\n\nWe have evidence, as regards literary influences, that Catherine\nfed her mind on three books or sets of books: the Bible, the\nPseudo-Dionysian Treatises, and the _Lode_ of Jacopone da Todi.\n\nThe allusions to passages of Scripture are continual, but mostly of\na swiftly passing, combinatory, allegorizing kind. Direct quotations\nand attempts at penetrating the objective sense of particular passages\nare rare, for most of the direct quotations are clearly due to her\nhistorians, not to herself; yet they exist and put her direct study of\nScripture beyond all doubt. Her favourite Bible books were evidently\nIsaiah and the Psalms, and the Pauline and Joannine writings. Some\ntouches (remarkably few for a mystic) are derived from the Canticle of\nCanticles, and many less obvious ones from the Synoptic Gospels; but\nthere are no certain traces, I think, of any other Old Testament books,\nnor, in the Pauline group, of any passage from the Pastoral Epistles.\n\nThe evidence for her direct knowledge and use of Dionysius is, it\nis true, but circumstantial. But the following three facts seem,\nconjoined as they are in her case, sufficient to prove this knowledge.\n(i) We have already seen how her cousin and close spiritual friend,\nSuor Tommasa, wrote a devotional treatise on Denys the Areopagite,\npresumably before Catherine\u2019s death, since Tommasa was sixty-two years\nof age in that year 1510; it would be strange indeed if Catherine did\nnot, even if but from this quarter, get to know some of the Dionysian\nwritings, perhaps even whilst they could still only be read in MS.\nform. (ii) Marsilio Ficino published in Florence, in 1492, his Latin\ntranslation of the _Mystical Theology_ and of the _Divine Names_, with\na copious commentary; and the book, dedicated to Giovanni de\u2019 Medici,\nArchbishop of Florence and future Pope Leo X, found its way at once to\nall the larger centres of life, learning and devotion in Italy. Thus\nCatherine lived still eighteen years after the publication of this, the\nfirst printed, edition of any part of Denys (original or translation);\neven if she did not know these writings before, it seems again very\nunlikely that she would not get to know them now. (iii) There are, it\nis true, no direct quotations from Denys, nor does his name appear\nin the _Vita ed Opere_, except in that account of Suor Tommasa. But\nnumerous sayings of Catherine bear, as we shall see later on, so\nstriking a resemblance to passages in those two books of Denys, that\nit is difficult to explain them by merely mediate infiltration; and\nthat those sayings ultimately, as to their literary occasion, go back\nto the Areopagite, is incontestable. I quote Denys from the usually\ncareful translation of the Rev. John Parker: _The Works of Dionysius\nthe Areopagite_, Pt. I, London, Oxford, 1897, with certain corrections\nof my own.\n\nThe proofs for her knowledge and love of Jacopone da Todi\u2019s Italian\n\u201cPraises\u201d is, on the other hand, direct and explicit. The _Vita_,\np. 37, makes her say: \u201cListen to what Fra Jacopone says in one of\nhis _Lode_, beginning: \u2018O amor di povertade,\u2019\u201d and then gives her\nword-for-word commentary on verse 23 of this his _Loda_ LVIII. Words\nfrom this same verse are again quoted by her on p. 62; the opening line\nof this _Loda_ is put into her mouth on p. 83; and another verse, the\nsixth, is quoted by her, as by the Blessed Jacopone, on p. 92. I have\nbeen able to find many other sayings of hers which are hardly less\ndirectly suggested by the great Umbrian than these. Here, again, she\nprobably knew the _Lode_ in MS. form, before they appeared in print in\n1490; but will in any case have known them in this their printed form.\nI have carefully studied in this, the first printed edition (Florence:\nBonaccorsi), all the _Lode_ bearing upon subjects and doctrines dear\nto Catherine. They are twenty in all, from among the hundred and two\nnumbers of that collection.[222]\n\n\n6. _The Psycho-physical Occasions or Reflexes of her Doctrine. Her\nspecial reaction under and use of her literary sources shall be\nexamined in a later chapter._\n\nThe psycho-physical occasions or reflexes of her various teachings, as\nfar as the interconnection can be traced with probability, shall also\nbe studied in the second volume. But already here I would have the\nreader clearly to understand, that nowhere are such psycho-physical\nconditions and experiences to be considered the _causes_ of her\ndoctrine, as though the lower produced the higher, and as though the\nspiritual were the automatic resultant and necessary precipitate of\ncertain accidental, involuntary conditions in time and space. For\neverywhere such conditions can only, at best, be accepted as the\noccasions or materials for the development or illustration of some\nspiritual doctrine, or, contrariwise, as the psychic effects and\nembodiments of some vividly realized invisible truth or law; whilst\nthis spiritual teaching itself is derived from far other and deeper\ncauses,--the interaction of her own experience and free spiritual\npowers and of God\u2019s grace, and the conflict of these with her own\npassions, the whole helped or hindered by the world without.\n\n\nI. GOD AS CREATIVE LOVE. THE CREATURE\u2019S TRUE AND FALSE SELF; TRUE AND\nFALSE LOVE.\n\n\n1. _Creation, an overflow of Goodness._\n\nFirst, then, we will take the sayings about Creation, and the original,\nsubstantially indelible character of all created beings. \u201cI saw a\nsight which satisfied me much. I was shown the Living Fountain of\nGoodness, which was (as yet) all within Itself alone, without any kind\nof participation. And next I saw that It began to participate with the\ncreature, and made that very beautiful company of Angels, in order that\nthis company might enjoy His ineffable glory, without asking any other\nreturn from the Angels than that they should recognize themselves to be\ncreatures created by His supreme goodness.\u2026 And hence, when they were\nclothed in sin by their pride and disobedience, God suddenly subtracted\nfrom them the participation of His goodness.\u2026 Yet He did not subtract\nit all, for in that case they would have remained still more malign\nthan they (actually) are, and they would have had Hell infinite in\npain, as they now have it in time.\u201d \u2026 \u201cWhen we ourselves shall depart\nfrom this life,--supposing we are in mortal sin,--then God would\nsubtract from us His goodness and would leave us in our own selves,\nyet not altogether, since He wills that in every place there should\nbe found His goodness accompanied by His justice. And if any creature\ncould be found that did not participate in His goodness, that creature\nwould be as malignant as God is good.\u201d[223]\n\n\n2. _Natural conformity between God and all rational creatures._\n\nFrom her sayings as to Creation and Pure Love, Creation\u2019s cause, we\ncome to those as to the Natural Conformity between God and Rational\nCreatures; His constant care for the human soul; and the consequent\nlaw of imitative love incumbent upon us. \u201cI see God to have so great\na conformity with the rational creature, that if the Devil himself\ncould but rid himself of those garments of sin, in that instant God\nwould unite Himself to him, and would make him into that which he, the\nDevil, attempted to achieve by his own power. So too with regard to\nman: lift off sin from his shoulders, and then allow the good God to\nact,--God who seems to have nothing else to do than to unite Himself\nto us.\u201d--\u201cIt appears to me, indeed, that God has no other business\nthan myself.\u201d--\u201cIf man could but see the care which God takes of the\nsoul, he would be struck with stupor within himself.\u201d--\u201cI see that God\nstands all ready to give us all the aids necessary for our salvation,\nand that He attends to our actions solely for our good. And, on the\ncontrary, I see man occupied with things that are opposed to his true\nself and of no value. And at the time of death God will say to him:\n\u2018What was there that I could do for thee, O man, that I did not do?\u2019\nAnd man himself will then see this clearly.\u201d--\u201cWhen God created man,\nHe did not put Himself in motion for any other reason than His pure\nlove alone. And hence, in the same way as Love Itself, for the welfare\nof the loved soul, does not fail in the accomplishment of anything,\nwhatever may be the advantage or disadvantage that may accrue from\nthence to the Lover, so also must the love of the loved soul return\nto the Lover, with those same forms and modes with which it came from\nHim. And then such love as this, which has no regard for aught but love\nitself, cannot be in fear of anything.\u201d[224]\n\n\n3. _Relations between Love, God; love of our true self; and false\nself-love._\n\nWe can take next her teachings as to the relations between the love\nof God, love of our true self, and false self-love. \u201cThe love of God\nis our true self-love, the love characteristic of and directed to our\ntrue selves, since these selves of ours were created by and for Love\nItself. The love, on the other hand, of every other thing deserves to\nbe called self-hatred, since it deprives us of our true self-love,\nwhich is God. Hence \u2018Him love, Who loveth thee,\u2019 that is, Love, God;\nand \u2018him leave who doth not love thee,\u2019 that is, all other things, from\nGod downwards.\u201d[225]\n\n\u201cGod so loves the soul, and is so ready to give it His graces, that,\nwhen He is impeded by some sin, then men say: \u2018Thou hast offended God,\u2019\nthat is, thou hast driven away God from thee, Who, with so much love,\nwas desiring to do thee good. And men say this, although it is really\nman who then suffers the damage and who offends his own true self. But\nbecause God loves us more than we love our own selves, and gives more\ncare to our true utility than we do ourselves, therefore does He get\ndesignated as the one who is offended. And, indeed, if God could be the\nrecipient of suffering, it would be when, by sin, He is driven away\nby and from us.\u201d \u201cThis corrupt expression: \u2018Thou hast offended God.\u2019\u201d\n\u201cThou couldst discover, (O soul,) that God is continually willing\nwhatsoever our true selves are wishing; He is ever aiming at nothing\nbut at our own true spiritual advantage.\u201d[226]\n\nHence happiness and joy, different from all mere pleasure, ever\naccompany this reconquest of our true self-love and this our\nre-donation of it to its true source. \u201cMan was created for the end\nof possessing happiness. And having deviated from this his end, he\nhas formed for himself a false, selfish self, which in all things\nstruggles against the soul\u2019s true happiness.\u201d \u201cThis divine love is our\nproper and true love.\u201d \u201cMan can truly know, by continual experience,\nthat the love of God is our repose, our joy, and our life; and that\n(false) self-love is but constant weariness, sadness, and a (living)\ndeath of our true selves, both in this world and in the next.\u201d \u201cAll\nsufferings, displeasures, and pains are caused by attachment to the\nfalse self. And although adversities many a time seem to us to be\nunreasonable, because of certain considerations which we believe to be\ntrue and indeed quite evident; yet the fact remains that it is our own\nimperfection which is preventing us from seeing the truth, and this it\nis which causes us to feel pains, suffering, and displeasure.\u201d \u201cO Love!\nif others feel an obligation to observe Thy commandments, I, on my\npart, freely will to have them all ten, because they are all delightful\nand full of love.\u2026 This is a point which is understandable only to him\nwho himself experiences it; for in truth the divine precepts, although\nthey are contrary to our sensuality, are nevertheless according to our\nown spirit which, of its very nature, is ever longing to be free from\nall bodily sensations, so as to be able to unite itself to God through\nlove.\u201d[227]\n\n\n4. _The true self instinctively hungers after God._\n\nThe sayings as to the close correspondence between the true self and\nGod lead us on easily to those about the true self\u2019s instinctive\nrecognition of God, and its hunger for the possession, for the\n_interiorization_ of God. \u201cIf I were to see the whole court of heaven\nall robed in one and the same manner, so that there would be no\napparent difference between God and the Angels: even then the love\nwhich I have in my heart would recognize God, in the same manner as\ndoes a dog his master. Love knows how, without means, to discover its\nEnd and ultimate Repose.\u201d \u201cIf a consecrated Host were to be given me\ntogether with other non-consecrated ones I would, I think, distinguish\nIt by the taste, as wine from water.\u201d--\u201cWhen she saw the Sacrament upon\nthe Altar in the hand of the priest, she would exclaim within herself\n(as it were, addressing the priest): \u2018O swiftly, swiftly speed It to\nthe heart, since It is the heart\u2019s own food.\u2019\u201d[228]\n\n\n5. _Superiority of interior graces over exterior manifestations. No\ngood within herself apart from divine grace._\n\nCatherine\u2019s hunger for the interiorization of all the external helps\nof religion, even, indeed specially, of the Holy Eucharist Itself,\nleads us on to her statements as to the superiority of interior\ngraces and dispositions over all exterior manifestations and sensible\nconsolations, and as to the nature of acts produced by the false self\nor apart from the grace of God. \u201cIf we would esteem the operations of\nGod\u201d as they truly deserve, \u201cwe should attend more to things interior\nthan to exterior ones.\u2026 The true light makes me see and understand that\nwe must not look to what proceedeth from God to aid us in some special\nnecessity and for His glory, but that we must look solely to the pure\nlove with which He performs His work with regard to us. When the soul\nperceives how direct and pure are the operations of love, and that this\nlove is not intent upon any benefit that we could confer upon It, then\nindeed the soul also desires, in its turn, to love with a pure love,\nand from the motive of the divine love alone.\u201d[229]\n\n\u201cThis not-eating of mine is an operation of God, independent of my\nwill, hence I can in nowise glory in it; nor should we marvel at it,\nfor to Him such an operation is as nothing.\u201d--And to her Confessor\nDon Marabotto she says reprovingly, when he too wanted to smell the\nstrange, strengthening odour which she smelt on his hand: \u201cSuch things\nas God alone can give\u201d (_i.e._ states and conditions in the production\nof which the soul does not co-operate) \u201cHe does not give to him who\nseeks them; indeed, He gives them only on occasion of great need, and\nin order that we may draw great spiritual profit from them.\u201d[230]\n\n\u201cIf I do anything that is evil, I do it myself alone, nor can I\nattribute the blame to the Devil or to any other creature but only to\nmy own self-will, sensuality, and other such malign movements. And if\nall the Angels were to declare that there was any good in me, I would\nrefuse to believe them, because I clearly recognize how that all good\nis in God alone, and that in me, without divine grace, there is nothing\nbut deficiency.\u201d--\u201cI would not that, to my separate self, even one\nsingle meritorious act should ever be attributed, even though I could\nat the same time be certified of no more falling from henceforward and\nof being saved; because such an attribution would be to me as though\na Hell.\u201d \u201cRather would I remain in danger of eternal damnation than\nbe saved by, and see, such an act of the separate self.\u201d \u201cThe one sole\nthing in myself in which I glory is that I see in myself nothing in\nwhich I can glory.\u201d\n\n\u201cYet it is necessary that we should labour and exercise ourselves,\nsince divine grace does not give life nor render pleasing unto God\nexcept that which the soul has worked; and without work on our part\ngrace refuses to save.\u201d--\u201cWe must never wish anything other than what\nhappens from moment to moment, all the while, however, exercising\nourselves in goodness. And to refuse to exercise oneself in goodness,\nand to insist upon simply awaiting what God might send, would be simply\nto tempt God.\u201d[231]\n\n\n6. _God is Pure Love, Grace, Peace, and the Soul\u2019s True Self._\n\nThe passages concerning the close relations between man\u2019s pure love\nand instinct for God, and Pure Love, God Himself, easily lead us on\nto those in which Pure Love, Peace, Grace, the True Self, indeed the\nEssence of all things are positively identified with God. \u201cHearing\nherself called\u201d to any office of her state or of charity, \u201cshe would,\u201d\neven though apparently absorbed in ecstatic prayer, \u201carise at once,\nand go without any contention of mind. And she acted thus, because she\nfled all self-seeking as though it were the devil. And she felt at such\ntimes as though she could best express her feelings by means of the\nglorious Apostle\u2019s words: \u2018Who then shall separate me from the love of\n_God_?\u2019 and the remainder of the great passage. And she would say: \u2018I\nseem to see how that immovable mind of St. Paul extended much further\nthan he was able to express in words; since Pure Love is God Himself:\nwho then shall be able to separate Him from Himself?\u2019\u201d Elsewhere and\non other occasions we find her declaring: \u201cLove is God Himself\u201d; \u201cPure\nLove is no other than God\u201d; \u201cthe Divine love is the very God, infused\nby His own immense Goodness into our hearts.\u201d[232]\n\nShe also declares that: \u201cGrace is God\u201d; that \u201cPeace is God,\u201d--\u201cwouldest\nthou that I show thee what thing God is? Peace,--that peace which no\nman finds, who departs from Him.\u201d And further still: \u201cThe proper centre\nof every one is God Himself\u201d; \u201cmy _Me_ is God, nor do I recognize any\nother _Me_, except my God Himself;\u201d \u201cmy Being is God, not by simple\nparticipation but by a true transformation of my Being.\u201d \u201cGod is my\nBeing, my _Me_, my Strength, my Beatitude, my Good, my Delight.\u201d Indeed\n\u201cthe glorious God is the whole essence of things both visible and\ninvisible.\u201d[233]\n\nAll these startling statements are but so many expressions of one of\nthe most characteristic moods and attitudes of her mind and heart. For\nin her vehemence of love and thirst for unification she would exclaim:\n\u201cI will have nothing to do with a love that would be _for_ God or _in_\nGod; this is a love which pure love cannot bear: since pure love is\n(simply) God Himself\u201d; \u201cI cannot abide to see that word _for_, and that\nword _in_, since they denote to my mind a something that can stand\nbetween God and myself.\u201d[234]\n\nAll this doctrine would be summed up by her in certain favourite\nexpressions. \u201cShe was wont often to pronounce these words: \u2018Sweetness\nof God, Fulness of God, Goodness of God, Purity of God\u2019\u201d; and at a\nlater time \u201cshe had continually on her lips the term \u2018(clear) Fulness\u2019\u201d\n(Self-adequation, _nettezza_).[235]\n\n\nII. SIN, PURIFICATION, ILLUMINATION.\n\n\n1. _The soul\u2019s continuous imperfection. Self-love and Pure Love, their\ncontradictory characters. Every man capable of Pure Love._\n\nCatherine\u2019s extreme sensitiveness is no doubt a chief cause of the\npeculiar form in which she experiences her sinfulness and faults\nand their actually slow purification, as expressed in those of her\nsayings which refer to the growth of love and to the continuous\nimperfections of the soul. \u201cFrom the time when I began to love Him,\nthat love has never failed me\u201d; \u201cindeed it has continually grown unto\nits consummation in the depths of my heart.\u201d This growth takes place\nonly step by step; and is in reality never complete, and never without\ncertain imperfections. \u201cThe creature is incapable of knowing anything\nbut what God gives it from day to day. If it could know (beforehand)\nthe successive degrees that God intends to give it, it would never\nbe quieted.\u201d \u201cWhen from time to time I would advert to the matter,\nit seemed to me that my love was complete; but later, as time went\non and as my sight grew clearer, I became aware that I had had many\nimperfections.\u2026 I did not recognize them at first, because God-Love was\ndetermined to achieve the whole only little by little, for the sake of\npreserving my physical life, and so as to keep my behaviour tolerable\nfor those with whom I lived. For otherwise, with such other insight,\nso many excessive acts would ensue, as to make one insupportable to\noneself and to others.\u201d \u201cEvery day I feel that the motes are being\nremoved, which this Pure Love casts out (_cava fuori_). Man cannot see\nthese imperfections; indeed, since, if he saw these motes, he could\nnot bear the sight, God ever lets him see the work he has achieved, as\nthough no imperfections remained in it. But all the time God does not\ncease from continuing to remove them.\u201d \u201cFrom time to time, I feel that\nmany instincts are being consumed within me, which before had appeared\nto be good and perfect; but when once they have been consumed, I\nunderstand that they were bad and imperfect.\u2026 These things are clearly\nvisible in the mirror of truth, that is of Pure Love, where everything\nis seen crooked which before appeared straight.\u201d[236]\n\nAnd yet the slowness of this purification is, in the last resort,\ncaused, if not by the incomplete purity of her love, at least by the\ndeep-rootedness and evasive character of the wrong self-love that has\nto be extirpated. \u201cThis our self-will is so subtle and so deeply rooted\nwithin our own selves, and defends itself with so many reasons, that,\nwhen we cannot manage to carry it out in one way, we carry it out in\nanother. We do our own wills under many covers (pretexts),--of charity,\nof necessity, of justice, of perfection.\u201d But pure love sees through\nall these covers: \u201cI saw this love to have so open and so pure an eye,\nits sight to be so subtle and its seeing so far-reaching, that I stood\nastounded.\u201d \u201cTrue love wills to stand naked, without any kind of cover,\nin heaven and on earth, since it has not anything shameful to conceal.\u201d\nAnd \u201cthis naked love ever sees the truth; whilst self-love can neither\nsee it nor believe in it.\u201d \u201cPure love loves God without any _for_ (any\nfurther motive).\u201d[237]\n\nAnd man, every man, is capable of this pure love and of the truth which\nsuch love sees: \u201cI see every one to be capable of my tender Love.\u201d\n\u201cTruth being, by its very nature, communicable to all, cannot be the\nexclusive property of any one.\u201d[238]\n\n\n2. _Exactingness of Pure Love._\n\nThe next group of sayings deals with the purity of Love, and the\nseverity with which this purity progressively eliminates all selfish\nmotives and attachments, whilst itself becoming increasingly its\nown exceeding great beatitude. \u201cPure Love loves God without why or\nwherefore (_perch\u00e8_)\u201d \u201cSince Love took over the care of everything,\nI have not taken care of anything, nor have I been able to work with\nmy intellect, memory and will, any more than if I had never had\nthem. Indeed every day I feel myself more occupied in Him, and with\ngreater fire.\u201d \u201cI had given the keys of the house to Love, with ample\npermission to do all that was necessary, and determined to have no\nconsideration for soul or body, but to see that, of all that the law of\npure love required, there should not be wanting the slightest particle\n(_minimo ch\u00e8_). And I stood so occupied in contemplating this work of\nLove, that if He had cast me, body and soul, into hell, hell itself\nwould have appeared to me all love and consolation.\u201d[239]\n\nYet the corresponding, increasing constraint of the false self is most\nreal. \u201cI find myself every day more restricted, as if a man were\n(first) confined within the walls of a city, then in a house with an\nample garden, then in a house without a garden, then in a hall, then in\na room, then in an ante-room, then in the cellar of the house with but\nlittle light, then in a prison without any light at all; and then his\nhands were tied and his feet were in the stocks, and then his eyes were\nbandaged, and then he would not be given anything to eat, and then no\none would be able to speak to him; and then, to crown all, every hope\nwere taken from him of issuing thence as long as life lasted. Nor would\nany other comfort remain to such an one, than the knowledge that it was\nGod who was doing all this, through love with great mercy; an insight\nwhich would give him great contentment. And yet this contentment does\nnot diminish the pain or the oppression.\u201d[240]\n\n\n3. _Blinding effect of all self-seeking. The gradual transformation of\nthe soul._\n\nThere is next a group of sayings as to the immense, blinding and\nstaining effect of even slight self-seekings, and as to how God\ngradually transforms the soul. \u201cGod and Sin, however slight, cannot\nlive peaceably side by side (_stare insieme_). Since some little thing\nthat you may have in your eye does not let you see the sun, we can make\na comparison between God and the sun, and then between intellectual\nvision and that of the bodily eye.\u201d \u201cAfter considering things as they\ntruly are, I find myself constrained to live without self.\u201d \u201cSince the\ntime when God has given the light to the soul, it can no more desire\nto operate by means of that part of itself which is ever staining\nall things and rendering turbid the clear water of God\u2019s grace. The\nsoul then offers and remits itself entirely to Him, so that it can no\nmore operate except to the degree and in the manner willed by tender\nLove Himself; and henceforth it does not produce works except such\nas are pure, full and sincere; and these are the works that please\nGod-Love.\u201d[241]\n\n\u201cI will not name myself either for good or for evil, lest this my\n(selfish) part should esteem itself to be something.\u201d \u201cBeing determined\nto join myself unto God, I am in every manner bound to be the enemy\nof His enemies; and since I find nothing that is more His enemy than\nis self in me, I am constrained to hate this part of me more than any\nother thing; indeed, because of the contrariety that subsists between\nit and the spirit, I am determined to separate it from all the goods of\nthis world and of the next, and to esteem it no more than if it were\nnot.\u201d[242]\n\n\u201cWhen she saw others bewailing their evil inclinations, and forcing\nthemselves greatly to resist them, and yet the more they struggled to\nproduce a remedy for their defects, the more did they commit them,\nshe would say to them: \u2018You have subjects for lamentation (_tu hai li\nguai_) and bewail them, and I too would be having and bewailing them;\nyou do evil and bewail it, and I should be doing and be bewailing it\nas you do, if God Almighty were not holding me. You cannot defend\nyourself, nor can I defend myself. Hence it is necessary that we\nrenounce the care of ourselves unto Him, Who can defend this our true\nself; and He will then do that which we cannot do.\u2019\u201d[243]\n\n\u201cAs to the annihilating of man, which has to be made in God, she spoke\nthus: \u2018Take a bread, and eat it. When you have eaten it, its substance\ngoes to nourish the body, and the rest is eliminated, because nature\ncannot use it at all, and indeed, if nature were to retain it, the\nbody would die. Now, if that bread were to say to you: \u201cWhy dost thou\nremove me from my being? if I could, I would defend myself to conserve\nmyself, an action natural to every creature\u201d: you would answer: \u201cBread,\nthy being was ordained for a support for my body, a body which is of\nmore worth than thou; and hence thou oughtest to be more contented with\nthine end than with thy being. Live for thine end, and thou wilt not\ncare about thy being, but thou wilt exclaim (to the body): \u2018Swiftly,\nswiftly draw me forth from my being, and put me within the operation\nof that end of mine, for which I was created.\u2019\u201d \u2026 The soul, by the\noperation of God, eliminates from the body all the superfluities and\nevil habits acquired by sin, and retains within itself the purified\nbody, which body thenceforth performs its operations by means of\nthese purified senses.\u2026 And, when the soul has consumed all the evil\ninclinations of the body, God consumes all the imperfections of the\nsoul.\u2019\u201d[244]\n\nIn each particular instance, the process was wont to be as follows:\n\u201cWhen her selfish part saw itself tracked down by Love, Catherine\nwould turn to Him and say: \u2018Even though it pain sense, content Thy\nwill: despoil me of this spoil and clothe me with Love full, pure and\nsincere.\u2019\u201d[245]\n\n\n4. _Suddenness and gratuitousness of God\u2019s light; the obstacles to its\noperation._\n\nWe get next a set of apparently contrary sayings, concerning the\nsuddenness of God\u2019s illumination; how the degree of this light cannot\nbe determined by man; and what are, nevertheless, the conditions under\nwhich it will not act. In some cases, \u201cthe soul is made to know in an\ninstant, by means of a new light above itself, all that God desires it\nto know, and this with so much certainty that it would be impossible to\nmake the soul believe otherwise. Nor is more shown it than is necessary\nfor leading it to greater perfection.\u201d \u201cThis light is not sought by\nman, but God gives it unto man when He chooses; neither does the man\nhimself know how he knows the thing that he is made to know. And if\nperchance man were determined to seek to know a little further than he\nhas been made to know, he would achieve nothing, but would remain like\nunto a stone, without any capacity.\u201d[246]\n\nAnd she would pray: \u201cBe Thou my understanding; (thus) shall I know that\nwhich it may please Thee that I should know. Nor will I henceforth\nweary myself with seeking; but I will abide in peace with Thine\nunderstanding, which shall wholly occupy my mind.\u201d \u201cIf a man would see\nproperly in spiritual matters, let him pluck out the eyes of his own\npresumption.\u201d \u201cHe who gazes too much upon the sun\u2019s orb, makes himself\nblind; even thus, I think, does pride blind many, who want to know too\nmuch.\u201d \u201cWhen God finds a soul that does not move, He operates within it\nin His own manner, and puts His hand to greater things. He takes from\nthis soul the key of His treasures which He had given to it, so that it\nmight be able to enjoy them; and gives to this same soul the care of\nHis presence, which entirely absorbs it.\u201d[247]\n\n\n5. _God\u2019s way of winning souls and raising them towards pure love. The\nfruits of full trust._\n\nThe next group can be made up of passages descriptive of the dealings\nadopted by God with a view to first winning souls as He finds them,\nand then raising them above mercenary hope or slavish fear; and of the\nchildlike fearlessness inspired by perfect trust in God. As to the\nwinning them, she says: \u201cThe selfishness of man is so contrary to God\nand rebellious against Him, that God Himself cannot induce the soul\nto do His will, except by certain stratagems (_lusinghe_): promising\nit things greater than those left, and giving it, even in this life,\na certain consoling relish (_gusto_). And this He does, because He\nperceives the soul to love things visible so much, that it would never\nleave one, unless it saw four.\u201d[248]\n\nAnd, as to God\u2019s raising of the soul, she propounds the deep doctrine,\nwhich only apparently contradicts the divine method just enunciated,\nas to the necessary dimness of the soul\u2019s light with regard to\nthe intrinsic consequences of its own acts, a dimness necessary,\nbecause alone truly purificatory, for the time that runs between its\nconversion, when, since it is still weak, it requires to see, and its\ncondition of relative purity, when, since it is now strong, it can\nsafely be again allowed to see.\u201c If a man were to see that which, in\nreturn for his good deeds, he will have in the life to come, he would\ncease to occupy himself with anything but heavenly things. But God,\ndesiring that faith should have its merit, and that man should not do\ngood from the motive of selfishness, gives him that knowledge little\nby little, though always sufficiently for the degree of faith of which\nthe man is then capable. And God ends by leading him to so great a\nlight as to things that are above, that faith seems to have no further\nplace.--On the other hand, if man knew that which hereafter he will\nhave to suffer if he die in the miserable state of sin, I feel sure\nthat, for fear of it, he would let himself be killed rather than commit\none single sin. But God, unwilling as He is that man should avoid doing\nevil from the motive of fear, does not allow him to see so terrifying a\nspectacle, although He shows it in part to such souls as are so clothed\nand occupied by His pure love that fear can no more enter in.\u201d[249]\n\nAnd as to the full trust of pure love, we have the following: \u201cGod let\nher hear interiorly: \u2018I do not want thee henceforward to turn thine\neyes except towards Love; and here I would have thee stay and not to\nmove, whatever happens to thee or to others, within or without\u2019; \u2018he\nwho trusts in Me, should not doubt about himself.\u2019\u201d[250]\n\nAnd this Love gives of itself so fully to those that give themselves\nfully to It, that when asked by such souls to impetrate some grace\nfor them she would say: \u201cI see this tender Love to be so courteously\nattentive to these my spiritual children, that I cannot ask of It\nanything for them, but can only present them before His face.\u201d In other\ncases, as in those of beginners when sick and dying, she would be\n\u201cdrawn to pray for\u201d a soul, and would \u201cimpetrate\u201d some special \u201cgrace\nfor it.\u201d \u201cLord, give me this soul,\u201d she would at times pray aloud, \u201cI\nbeg Thee to give it me, for indeed Thou canst do so.\u201d And \u201cwhen she was\ndrawn to pray for something, she would be told in her mind: \u2018Command,\nfor love is free to do so.\u2019\u201d[251]\n\n\nIII. THE THREE CATEGORIES AND THE TWO WAYS.\n\nThe next set of sayings so eminently constitutes the aggregation, if\nnot the system, of categories under and with which Catherine habitually\nsees her types and pictures, and thinks and feels her experiences of\ndivine things, that it will require careful discrimination and grouping.\n\n\n1. _The Three Categories: \u201cIn\u201d Concentration; \u201cOut\u201d Liberation; \u201cOver,\u201d\nElevation._\n\nThere is, first, the great category of _in_, _within_, _down into_;\nthat is, recollection, concentration. \u201cThe love which I have within\nmy heart.\u201d \u201cSince I began to love It, never again has that Love\ndiminished; indeed It has ever grown to Its own fulness, within my\ninnermost heart.\u201d Hence she would say to those who dwelt in admiration\nof her psycho-physical peculiarities: \u201cIf you but had experience\n(_sapeste_) of another thing which I feel within me!\u201d And again,\u201cIf\nwe would esteem (aright) the operations of God, we must attend more\nto interior than to exterior things.\u201d And, with regard to the Holy\nEucharist, she would whisper, when seeing at Mass the Priest about to\ncommunicate: \u201cO swiftly, swiftly speed It down to the heart, since it\nis the heart\u2019s own food \u201d; and she would declare, with regard to her\nown Communion: \u201cIn the same instant in which I had It in my mouth, I\nfelt It in my heart.\u201d[252]\n\nThere is, next, the category of _out_, _outside_, _outwards_; that is,\nliberation, ecstasy. \u201cThe soul which came out from God pure and full\nhas a natural instinct to return to God as full and pure (as it came).\u201d\n\u201cThe soul finds itself bound to a body entirely contrary to its own\nnature, and hence expects with desire its separation from the body.\u201d\n\u201cGod grants the grace, to some persons, of making their bodies into\na Purgatory (already) in this world.\u201d \u201cWhen God has led the soul on\nto its last stage (_passo_), the soul is so full of desire to depart\nfrom the body to unite itself with God, that its body appears to it a\nPurgatory, keeping it far apart from its (true) object.\u201d \u201cThe prison,\nin which I seem to be, is the world; the chain is the body\u201d; \u201cto noble\n(_gentili_) souls, death is the end of an obscure prison; to the\nremainder, it is a trouble,--to such, that is, as have fixed all their\ncare upon what is but so much dung (_fango_).\u201d And, whilst strenuously\nmortifying the body, she would answer its resistances, as though so\nmany audible complainings, and say: \u201cIf the body is dying, well, let\nit die; if the body cannot bear the load, well, leave the body in the\nlurch (O soul).\u201d[253]\n\nAnd all this imprisonment is felt as equivalent to being outside of\nthe soul\u2019s true home. \u201cI seem to myself to be in this world like those\nwho are out of their home, and who have left all their friends and\nrelations, and who find themselves in a foreign land; and who, having\naccomplished the business on which they came, stand ready to depart and\nto return home,--home, where they ever are with heart and mind, having\nindeed so ardent a love of their country (_patria_), that one day spent\nin getting there would appear to them to last a year.\u201d[254]\n\nAnd this feeling of outsideness, seen here with regard to the relations\nof the soul to the body and to the world, we find again with regard to\nsanctity and the soul. In this latter case also the greater is felt to\nbe (as it were) entrapped, and contained only very partially within the\nlesser; and as though this greater could and did exist, in its full\nreality, only outside of the lesser. \u201cI can no more say \u2018blessed\u2019 to\nany saint, taken in himself, because I feel it to be an inappropriate\n(_deforme_) word\u201d; \u201cI see how all the sanctity which the saints\nhave, is outside of them and all in God.\u201d Indeed she sums this up in\nthe saying: \u201cI see that anything perfect is entirely outside of the\ncreature; and that a thing is entirely imperfect, when the creature can\nat all contain it.\u201d Hence \u201cthe Blessed possess (_hanno_) blessedness,\nand yet they do not possess it. For they possess it, only in so far\nas they are annihilated in their own selves and are clothed with God;\nand they do not possess it, in so far as they remain (_si trovano_) in\ntheir particular (_proprio_) being, so as to be able to say: \u2018_I_ am\nblessed.\u2019\u201d[255]\n\nThere is, in the third place, the category of _over_, _above_,\n_upwards_; that is elevation, sublimation. We will begin with cases\nwhere it is conjoined with the previous categories, and will move on\ninto more and more pure aboveness. \u201cI am so placed and submerged in His\nimmense love, that I seem as though in the sea entirely under water,\nand could on no side touch, see, or feel anything but water.\u201d And \u201cif\nthe sea were the food of love, there would exist no man nor woman that\nwould not go and drown himself (_affogasse_) in it; and he who was\ndwelling far from this sea, would engage in nothing else but in walking\nto get to it and to immerse himself within it.\u201d[256] The soul here\nfeels the water on every side of it, yet evidently chiefly above it,\nfor it has had to plunge in, to get _under_ the water.\n\n\u201cListen to what Fra Jacopone says in one of his Lauds, which begins,\n\u2018O Love of Poverty.\u2019 He says: \u2018That which appears to thee (to be), is\nnot; so high above is that which _is_. (True) elevation (_superbia_)\nis in heaven; earthy lowness (_umilt\u00e0_) leads to the soul\u2019s own\ndestruction.\u2019 He says then: \u2018That which appears to thee,\u2019 that is, all\nthings visible, \u2018are not,\u2019 and have not true being in them: \u2018so high\u2019\nand great \u2018is He who _is_,\u2019 that is, God, in whom is all true being.\n\u2018Elevation is in heaven,\u2019 that is, true loftiness and greatness is\nin heaven and not on earth; \u2018earthy lowness leads to the soul\u2019s own\ndestruction,\u2019 that is, affection placed in these created things, which\nare low and vile, since they have not in them true being, produces\nthis result.\u201d--\u201cI feel,\u201d she says in explanation of what and how she\nknows, \u201ca first thing above the intellect; and above this thing I feel\nanother one and a greater; and above this other one, another, still\nmore great; and so up and up does one thing go above the other, each\nthing ever greater (than its predecessors), that I conclude it to be\nimpossible to express even a spark (scintilla) as to It\u201d (the highest\nand greatest of the whole series, God). Here it is interesting still to\ntrace the influence of the same passage of Jacopone (again referred to\nin this place by the _Vita_), and to see why she introduced \u201cgreatness\u201d\nalongside of \u201cloftiness\u201d into her previous paraphrase.[257]\n\nNow this vivid impression of a strong upward movement, combined with\nthe feeling of being in and under something, gives the following image,\nused by her during her last illness: \u201cI can no longer manage to live\non in this life, because I feel as though I were in it like cork under\nwater.\u201d And this \u201cabove,\u201d unlike to \u201coutside,\u201d is accompanied by the\nimage, not of clothing but of nakedness; the clothes are left below.\n\u201cThis vehement love said to her, on one occasion: \u2018What art thou\nthinking of doing? I want thee all for myself. I want to strip thee\nnaked, naked. The higher up thou shalt go, however great a perfection\nthou mayest have, the higher will I ever stand above thee, to ruin all\nthy perfections\u2019\u201d--this, of course, inasmuch as she is still imperfect\nand falls short of the higher and higher perfections to which her soul\nis being led.[258]\n\nAnd as to man\u2019s faculties, she says: \u201cAs the intellect reaches higher\n(_supera_) than speech, so does love reach higher than intellect.\u201d\nAnd again, as a universal law: \u201cWhen pure love speaks, it ever speaks\nabove nature; and all the things which it does and thinks and feels are\nalways above nature.\u201d[259]\n\n\n2. _The Two Ways: the Negative Way, God\u2019s Transcendence; the Positive\nWay, God\u2019s Immanence._\n\nNow these three categories of within and inward, outside and outward,\nabove and upward position and movement, can lead, and do actually lead\nin Catherine\u2019s case, to two separate lines of thought and feeling. And\nthese lines are each too much a necessary logical conclusion from the\nconstant working of these categories, and they are each again far too\nmuch, and even apart from these categories, expressive of two rival but\ncomplementary experiences, for either of them to be able to suppress\nor even modify the other. Each has its turn in the rich, free play\nof Catherine\u2019s life. I will take the negative line first, and then\nthe positive, so as to finish up with affirmation, which will thus,\nas in her actual experience and practice, be all the deeper and more\nsubstantial, because it has passed, and is ever re-passing, through a\nprocess of limitation and purification.\n\nFirst, then, if grace and God are only within, _and_ only without,\n_and_ only above, she will and does experience contradiction and\nparadox in all attempts at explaining reality; she will thus find\nthings to be obscure instead of clear; and she will end by affirming\nthe unutterableness, the unthinkableness of God, indeed of all reality.\n\u201cI see without eyes, I understand without understanding, I feel without\nfeeling, and I taste without taste.\u201d \u201cWhen the creature is purified,\nit sees the True; and such a sight is not a sight.\u201d \u201cThe sight of how\nit is God\u201d who sends the soul its purifying trials \u201cgives the soul\na great contentment; and yet this contentment does not diminish the\npain.\u201d Still, \u201cpure love cannot suffer; nor can it understand what is\nmeant by pain or torment.\u201d \u201cThe sun, which at first seemed so clear\nto me, now seems obscure; what used to seem sweet to me, now seems\nbitter: because all beauties and all sweetnesses that have an admixture\nof the creature are corrupt and spoilt.\u201d \u201cAs to Love, only this can\nwe understand about It, that It is incomprehensible to the mind.\u201d \u201cSo\nlong as a person can still talk of things divine, and can relish,\nunderstand, remember and desire them, he has not yet come to port.\u201d For\nindeed \u201call that can be said about God is not God, but only certain\nsmallest fragments which fall from (His) table.\u201d[260]\n\nAnd yet those experiences of God\u2019s presence as, apparently, in a\nspecial manner within us, and without us, and above us, also lead, by\nmeans of another connection of ideas, to another, to a positive result.\nFor those experiences can lead us to dwell, not upon the difference of\nthe \u201cplaces,\u201d but upon the apparent fact that He is in a \u201cplace\u201d of\nsome sort, in space somewhere, the exact point of which is still to\nfind; and, by thus bringing home to the mind this underlying paradox\nof the whole position, they can help to make the soul shrink away from\nthis false clarity, and to fall back upon the deep, dim, true view of\nGod as existing, for our apprehension, in certain states of soul alone,\nstates which have all along been symbolized for us by these different\n\u201cplaces\u201d and \u201cpositions.\u201d And thus what before was a paradox and\nmystery _qua_ space, because at the same time within and without, and\nbecause not found by the soul \u201cwithin\u201d unless through getting \u201cwithout\u201d\nitself, becomes now a paradox and mystery _qua_ state, because the soul\nat one and the same time attains to its own happiness and loses it,\nindeed attains happiness only through deliberately sacrificing it. And\nwe thus come to the great central secret of all life and love, revealed\nto us in its fulness in the divine paradox of our Lord\u2019s life and\nteaching.\n\nGod, then, first seems to be in a place, indeed to be a place. \u201cI see\nall good to be in one only place, that is God.\u201d \u201cThe spirit can find no\nplace except God, for its repose.\u201d[261]\n\nIf God be in a place, we cannot well conceive of Him as other than\noutside of and above the soul, which itself, even God being in a\nplace, will be in a place also. \u201cGod has created the soul pure and\nfull, with a certain God-ward instinct, which brings happiness in its\ntrain (_istinto beatifico_).\u201d And \u201cthe nearer the soul approaches\u201d (is\njoined, _si accosta_) \u201cto God, the more does the instinct attain to\nits perfection.\u201d Here the instinct within pushes the soul \u201conwards,\noutwards, upwards.\u201d And the nearer the soul gets to God in front,\noutside and above of it, the happier it becomes: because, the more it\nsatisfies this its instinct, the less it suffers from the distance from\nGod, and the more does it enjoy His proximity.[262]\n\nThis approach is next conceived of as increasingly conveying a\nknowledge to the soul of God\u2019s desire for union with it; but such\nan approach can only be effected by means of much fight against and\nthrough the intervening ranks of the common enemies of the two friends;\nand, as we have already seen, chief amongst these enemies is the soul\u2019s\nfalse self. \u201cThe nearer man approaches to (_si accosta_) God, the more\nhe knows that God desires to unite Himself with us.\u201d \u201cBeing determined\nto approach God, I am constrained to be the enemy of His enemies.\u201d[263]\n\nAnd then, that \u201cplace\u201d in which God was pictured as being, is found\nto be a state, a disposition of the soul. Now as long as the dominant\ntendency was to think God with clearness, and hence to picture Him as\nin space, that same tendency would, naturally enough, represent this\nplace He was in as outside and above the soul. For if He is in space,\nHe is pictured as extended, and hence as stretching further than, and\noutside of, the soul, which itself also is conceived as spacially\nextended; and if He is in a particular part of space, that part can\nonly, for a geocentric apprehension of the world, be thought of as\nthe upper part of space. But in proportion as the picture of physical\nextension and position gives way to its prompting cause, and the latter\nis expressed, as far as possible, unpictorially and less clearly, but\nmore simply as what it is, viz. a spiritual intention and disposition,\nshe is still driven indeed, in order to retain some clearness of\nspeech, to continue to speak as of a place and of a spacial movement,\nbut she has now no longer three categories but only one, viz. _within_\nand _inwards_. For a physical quantity can be and move in different\nplaces and directions in space; but a spiritual quality can only be\nexperienced within the substance of the spirit. \u201cGod created the soul\npure and full, with a certain beatific instinct of Himself\u201d (_i.e._\nof His actual presence). And hence, \u201cin proportion as it (again)\napproaches to the conditions of its original creation, this beatific\ninstinct ever increasingly discovers itself and grows stronger and\nstronger.\u201d[264]\n\nAnd God being thus not without, nor indeed in space at all, she can\nlove Him everywhere: indeed the _what_ she is now constitutes the\n_where_ she is; in a camp she can love God as dearly as in a convent,\nand heaven itself is already within her soul, so that only a change in\nthe soul\u2019s dispositions could constitute hell for that soul, even in\nhell itself. \u201cO Love,\u201d she exclaims, after the scene with the Friar,\nwho had attempted to prove to her that his state of life rendered him\nmore free and apt to love God, \u201cwho then shall impede me from loving\nThee? Even if I were in the midst of a camp of soldiers, I could not\nbe impeded from loving Thee.\u201d She had, during the interview, explained\nher meaning: \u201cIf I believed that your religious habit would give me\nbut one additional glimpse\u201d (spark, scintilla) \u201cof love, I would\nwithout doubt take it from you by force, were I not allowed to have\nit otherwise. That you may be meriting more than myself, I readily\nconcede, I am not seeking after that; let those things be yours. But\nthat I cannot love Him as much as you can do, you will never succeed\nin making me even understand.\u201d \u201cI stood so occupied in seeing the work\nof Love (within my soul), that if it had thrown me with soul and body\ninto hell, hell itself would have appeared to me to be nothing but love\nand consolation.\u201d And, on another occasion, she says to her disciples:\n\u201cIf, of that which this heart of mine is feeling, one drop were to fall\ninto hell, hell itself would become all life eternal\u201d; and she accepts\nwith jubilation this interpretation of her words, on the part of one\nof them (no doubt Vernazza): \u201cHell exists in every place where there\nis rebellion against Love, God; but Life Eternal, in every place where\nthere is union with that same Love, God.\u201d[265]\n\nAnd she now cannot but pray to possess all this love,--love being now\npictured as a food, as a light, or as water, bringing life to the soul.\n\u201cO tender Love, if I thought that but one glimpse of Thee were to be\nwanting to me, truly and indeed I could not live.\u201d \u201cLove, I want Thee,\nthe whole of Thee.\u201d \u201cNever can love grow quiet, until it has arrived at\nits ultimate perfection.\u201d And, in gaining all God, she gains all other\nthings besides: \u201cO my God, all mine, everything is mine; because all\nthat belongs to God seems all to belong to me.\u201d[266]\n\nBut if she loves all God, she can, on the other hand, love only Him:\nhow, then, is she to manage to love her neighbour? \u201cThou commandest me\nto love my neighbour,\u201d she complains to her Love, \u201cand yet I cannot\nlove anything but Thee, nor can I admit anything else and mix it up\nwith Thee. How, then, shall I act?\u201d And she received the interior\nanswer: \u201cHe who loves me, loves all that I love.\u201d[267]\n\nBut soon her love, as generous as it is strong, becomes uneasy as\nto its usual consequences,--the consolations, purely spiritual or\npredominantly psychical or even more or less physical, which come in\nits train. And even though she is made to understand that at least the\nfirst are necessarily bound up with love, in exact proportion to its\ngenerosity, she is determined, to the last, to love for love itself,\nand not for love\u2019s consequences, battling thus to keep her spirituality\nfree from the slightest, subtlest self-seeking. \u201cThis soul said to its\nLove: \u2018Can it really be, O tender Love, that Thou art destined never to\nbe loved without consolation or the hope of some advantage in heaven or\non earth\u201d accruing to Thy lover?\u2019\u201d \u201cAnd she received the answer, that\nsuch an union could not exist without a great peace and contentment of\nthe soul.\u201d And yet she continues to affirm: \u201cConscience, in its purity,\ncannot bear anything but God alone; of all the rest, it cannot suffer\nthe least trifle.\u201d[268]\n\nAnd she practices and illustrates this doctrine in detail. \u201cOne day,\nafter Communion, God gave her so great a consolation that she remained\nin ecstasy. When she had returned to her usual state, she prayed: \u2018O\nLove, I do not wish to follow Thee for the sake of these delights, but\nsolely from the motive of true love.\u2019\u201d On another similar occasion she\nprays: \u201cI do not want that which proceedeth from Thee; I want Thyself\nalone, O tender Love.\u201d And again, \u201con one occasion, after Communion,\nthere came to her so much odour and so much sweetness that she seemed\nto herself to be in Paradise. But instantly she turned towards her\nLord and said: \u2018O Love, art Thou perhaps intending to draw me to Thee\nby means of these sensible consolations (_sapori_)? I want them not; I\nwant nothing except Thee alone.\u2019\u201d[269]\n\n\nIV. THE OTHER WORLDS.\n\nWe have now gone through Catherine\u2019s contemplations and conceptions as\nregards the soul\u2019s relations with its true Life and Love, here and now,\non this side the veil. We have, in conclusion, to try and reproduce\nand illustrate her teaching as to these relations on the other side of\ndeath.\n\n\n1. _No absolute break in the spirit\u2019s life at the body\u2019s death._\n\nNow here especially is it necessary ever to bear in mind her own\npresupposition, which runs throughout and sustains all her doctrine.\nFor she is sure, beyond ever even raising a question concerning the\npoint, that her soul and God, her two great realities and experiences,\nremain substantially the same behind the veil as before it, and hence\nthat the most fundamental and universal of the soul\u2019s experiences\n_here_ can safely be trusted to obtain _there_ also. Hence, too, only\nsuch points in the Beyond are dwelt on as she can thus experimentally\nforecast; but these few points are, on the other hand, developed with\nan extraordinary vividness and fearless, rich variety of illustration.\nAnd it is abundantly clear that this assumption of the essential unity\nand continuity of the soul\u2019s life here and hereafter, is itself already\na doctrine, and a most important one. We will then take it as such, and\nbegin with it as the first of her teachings as to the Beyond.\n\n\u201cThis holy soul,\u201d says the highly authoritative prologue to the\n_Trattato_, in close conformity with her constant assumptions and\ndeclarations, \u201cfinding herself, whilst still in the flesh, placed in\nthe Purgatory of God\u2019s burning love,--a love which consumed (burnt,\n_abbrucciava_) and purified her from whatever she had to purify, in\norder that, on passing out of this life, she might enter at once\ninto the immediate presence (_cospetto_) of her tender Love, God:\nunderstood, by means of this furnace of love, how the souls of the\nfaithful abide in the place of Purgatory, to purge themselves of every\nstain of sin that, in this life, had been left unpurged. And as she,\nplaced in the loving Purgatory of the divine fire, abode united to the\ndivine Love, and content with all that It wrought within her, so she\nunderstood it to be with the souls in Purgatory.\u201d[270]\n\n\n2. _Hell._\n\nThe details of her doctrine as to the Beyond we can group under three\nheads: the unique, momentary experience and solitary, instantaneous act\nof the soul, at its passing hence and beginning its purgation there;\nthe particular dispositions, joys and sufferings of the soul during\nthe process of purification, as well as the cause and manner of the\ncessation of that process; and (generally treated by her as a simple\ncontrast to this her direct and favourite purgatorial contemplation)\nthe particular dispositions, sufferings, and alleviations of lost\nsouls. Since her teachings on the last-named subject are more of an\nincidental character, I shall take them first, and make them serve,\nas they do with her, as a foil to her doctrine of the Intermediate\nState: whilst her conception of Heaven, already indicated throughout\nher descriptions of Pure Love, is too much of a universal implication,\nand too little a special department of her teaching, to be capable of\npresentation here.\n\nAs to the cause of Hell, she says: \u201cIt is the will\u2019s opposition to\nthe Will of God which causes guilt; and as long as this evil will\ncontinues, so long does the guilt continue. For those, then, who have\ndeparted this life with an evil will there is no remission of the\nguilt, neither can there be, because there can be no more change of\nwill.\u201d \u201cIn passing out of this life, the soul is established for good\nor evil, according to its deliberate purpose at the time; as it is\nwritten, \u2018where I shall find thee,\u2019 that is, at the hour of death,\nwith a will either determined to sin, or sorry for sin and penitent,\n\u2018there will I judge thee.\u2019\u201d Or, in a more characteristic form: \u201cThere\nis no doubt that our spirit was created to love and enjoy: and it is\nthis that it goes seeking in all things. But it never finds satiety in\nthings of time; and yet it goes on hoping, on and on, to be at last\nable to find it. And this experience it is that helps me to understand\nwhat kind of a thing is Hell. For I see that man, by love, makes\nhimself one single thing with God, and finds there every good; and, on\nthe other hand, that when he is bereft of love, he remains full of as\nmany woes as are the blessings he would have been capable of, had he\nnot been so mad.\u201d[271]\n\nAnd yet, and this is her own beautiful contribution to the traditional\ndoctrine on this terrible and mysterious subject, neither are the\nsufferings of the lost infinite in amount, nor is their will entirely\nmalign. And both these alleviations evidently exist from the first:\nI can find no trace anywhere in her teaching of a gradual mitigation\nof either the punishment or the guilt. Indeed, although she always\nteaches the mitigation of the suffering, it is only occasionally that\nshe teaches the persistence of some moral good. Thus her ordinary\nteaching is: \u201cThose who are found, at the moment of death, with a will\ndetermined to sin, have with them an infinite degree of guilt, and the\npunishment is without end\u201d; \u201cthe sweet goodness of God sheds the rays\nof His mercy even into Hell: since He might most justly have given to\nthe souls there a far greater punishment than He has.\u201d \u201cAt death God\nexercises His justice, yet not without mercy; since even in Hell the\nsoul does not suffer as much as it deserves.\u201d But occasionally she\ngoes further afield, and insists on the presence there, not only of\nsome mercy in the punishment, but also of some good in the will. \u201cWhen\nwe shall have departed from this life in a state of sin, God will\nwithdraw from us His goodness, and will leave us to ourselves, and yet\nnot altogether: since He wills that in every place His goodness shall\nbe found and not His justice alone. And if a creature could be found\nthat did not, to some degree, participate in the divine goodness, that\ncreature would be, one might say, as malignant as God is good.\u201d[272]\nThere can be no doubt, as we shall see further on, that this latter is\nher full doctrine and is alone entirely consistent with her general\nprinciples.\n\nCertain details of her Hell doctrine which appear in immediate contrast\nto, or in harmony with, some special points of her Purgatorial\nteaching, had better appear in connection with the latter.\n\n\n3. _Purgatory; the initial experience and act._\n\nLet us now take, in all but complete contrast to this doctrine as\nto Hell, what she has to say about Purgatory. And here we have\nfirst to deal with the initial experience and act, both of them\nunique and momentary, of the soul destined for Purgatory. As to that\nexperience, only one description has been preserved for us. \u201cOnce,\nand once only, do the souls (that are still liable to, and capable\nof, purgation) perceive the cause of (their) Purgatory that they bear\nwithin themselves,--namely in passing out of this life: then, but\nnever again after that: otherwise self would come in (_vi saria una\npropriet\u00e0_).\u201d[273]\n\nAnd this unique and momentary experience is straightway followed by\nas unique and momentary an act, free and full, on the part of the\nexperiencing soul. Catherine has described this act in every kind of\nmood, and from the various points of view, already drawn out by us, of\nher doctrine, so that we have here again a most impressive and vivid\nsumming-up and pictorial representation of all her central teaching.\n\n\u201cThe soul thus seeing\u201d (its own imperfection) and, \u201cthat it\ncannot, because of the impediment\u201d (of this imperfection) \u201cattain\n(_accostarsi_) to its end, which is God; and that the impediment cannot\nbe removed (_levato_) from it, except by means of Purgatory, swiftly\nand of its own accord (_volontieri_) casts itself into it.\u201d[274] Here\nwe have the continuation of the outward movement: the soul is here\nabsolutely impeded in that, now immensely swift, movement, and is\nbrought to a dead stop, as though by something hard on the soul\u2019s own\nsurface, which acts as a barrier between itself and God; it is offered\nthe chance of escaping from this intolerable suffering into the lesser\none of dissolving this hard obstacle in the ocean of the purifying\nfire: and straightway plunges into the latter.\n\n\u201cIf the soul could find another Purgatory above the actual one,\nit would, so as more rapidly to remove from itself so important\n(_tanto_) an impediment, instantly cast itself into it, because of the\nimpetuosity of that love which exists between God and the soul and\ntends to conform the soul to God.\u201d[275] Here we have an extension of\nthe same picturing, interesting because the addition of an upwards to\nthe outwards introduces a conflict between the image (which evidently,\nfor the soul\u2019s plunge, requires Purgatory to lie beneath the soul), and\nthe doctrine (which, taking Purgatory as the means between earth and\nheaven, cannot, if any spacial picturing be retained at all, but place\nHeaven at the top of the picture, and Purgatory higher up than the soul\nwhich is coming thither from earth). The deep plunge has become a high\njump.\n\n\u201cI see the divine essence to be of such purity, that the soul which\nshould have within it the least mote (_minimo ch\u00e8_) of imperfection,\nwould rather cast itself into a thousand hells, than find itself with\nthat imperfection in the presence of God.\u201d[276] Here the sense of\ntouch, of hardness, of a barrier which is checking motion, has given\nway to the sense of sight, of stain, of a painful contrast to an\nall-pure Presence; and the whole picture is now devoid of motion. We\nthus have a transition to the immanental picturing, with its inward\nmovement or look.\n\n\u201cThe soul which, when separated from the body, does not find itself in\nthat cleanness (_nettezza_) in which it was created, seeing in itself\nthe stain, and that this stain cannot be purged out except by means\nof Purgatory, swiftly and of its own accord casts itself in; and if\nit did not find this ordination apt to purge that stain, in that very\nmoment there would be spontaneously generated (_si generebbe_) within\nitself a Hell worse than Purgatory.\u201d[277] Here we have again reached\nher immanental conception, where the soul\u2019s concern is with conditions\nwithin itself, and where its joys and sorrows are within. Its trouble\nis, in this case, the sense of contrast, between its own original,\nstill potential, indeed still actual though now only far down,\nhidden and buried, true self, and its active, obvious, superficial,\nfalse self. In so far as there is any movement before the plunge, it\nis an inward, introspective one; the soul as a whole is, for that\nprevious moment, not conceived as in motion, but a movement of her\nself-observing part or power takes place within her from the surface\nto the centre; and only then, after her rapid journey from this her\nsurface-being to those her fundamental ineradicable requirements, and\nafter the consequent intolerably painful contrast and conflict within\nherself, does she cast herself, with swift wholeheartedness, with all\nshe is and has, into the purifying place and state.\n\nAnd, in full harmony with this immanental conception, the greater\nsuffering which would arise did she abide with this sight of herself\nand yet without any moral change is described as springing up\nspontaneously within herself. \u201cThe soul, seeing Purgatory to have been\nordained for the very purpose of purging away its stains, casts itself\nin, and seems to find a great compassion (on the part of God) in being\nallowed (able) to do so.\u201d This appears to be only a variety of the\nimmanental view just given.[278]\n\n\n4. _Purgatory: the subsequent process._\n\nWe have finally to give her doctrine as to the particular dispositions,\njoys, and sufferings of the soul during the process of its purgation,\nand as to the cause and manner of the cessation of that process.\n\nAs to the dispositions, they are generally the same as those which\nimpelled the soul to put itself in this place or condition. Only\nwhereas then, during that initial moment, they took the form of a\nsingle act, an initiation of a new condition, now they assume the shape\nof a continuous state. Then the will freely tied itself; now it gladly\nthough painfully abides by its decision and its consequences. Then the\nwill found the relief and distraction of full, epoch-making action;\nnow it has but to will and work out the consequences involved in that\ngenerous, all-inclusive self-determination. The range and nature of\nthis, its continuous action will thus be largely the very reserve of\nthose of that momentary act. \u201cThe souls that are in Purgatory are\nincapable of choosing otherwise than to be in that place, nor can\nthey any more turn their regard (_si voltare_) towards themselves,\nand say: \u2018I have committed such and such sins, for which I deserve to\ntarry here\u2019; nor can they say, \u2018Would that I had not done them, that\nnow I might go to Paradise\u2019; nor yet say, \u2018_That_ soul is going out\nbefore me\u2019; nor, \u2018I shall go out before _him_.\u2019 They are so completely\nsatisfied that He should be doing all that pleases Him, and in the way\nit pleases Him, that they are incapable of thinking of themselves.\u201d\nIndeed they are unable even to see themselves, at least directly, for\n\u201cthese souls do not see anything, even themselves in themselves or by\nmeans of themselves, but they (only) see themselves in God.\u201d Indeed we\nhave already seen that to do, or to be able to do, otherwise, would now\n\u201clet self come in (_sarebbe una propriet\u00e0_).\u201d[279]\n\nAnd the joys and sufferings, and the original, earthly cause of the\nlatter, are described as follows. \u201cThe souls in Purgatory have their\n(active) will conformed in all things to the will of God; and hence\nthey remain there, content as far as regards their will.\u201d \u201cAs far as\ntheir will is concerned, these souls cannot find the pain to be pain,\nso completely are they satisfied with the ordinance of God, so entirely\nis their (active) will one with it in pure charity. On the other hand,\nthey suffer a torment so extreme, that no tongue could describe it,\nno intellect could form the least idea of it, if God had not made\nit known by special grace.\u201d And indeed she says: \u201cI shall cease to\nmarvel at finding that Purgatory is\u201d in its way as \u201chorrible as Hell.\nFor the one is made for punishing, the other for purging: hence both\nare made for sin, sin which itself is so horrible and which requires\nthat its punishment and purgation should be conformable to its own\nhorribleness.\u201d For in Purgatory too there still exist certain remains\nof imperfect, sinful habits in the will. \u201cThe souls in Purgatory think\nmuch more of the opposition which they discover in themselves to the\nwill of God,\u201d than they do of their pain. And yet, being here with\ntheir actual will fully at one with God\u2019s purifying action (an action\ndirected against these remains of passive opposition), \u201cI do not\nbelieve it would be possible to find any joy comparable to that of a\nsoul in Purgatory, except the joy of the Blessed in Paradise.\u201d[280]\n\nNow the sufferings of the soul are represented either as found by it,\nunder the form of an obstacle to itself, whilst in motion to attain to\nGod, a motion which in some passages is outward, in others inward; or\nas coming to it, whilst spacially at rest. Only in the latter case is\nthere a further attempt at pictorially elucidating the nature of the\nobstacle and the cessation of the suffering. It is fairly clear that\nit is the latter set of passages which most fully suits her general\nteaching and even imagery. For, as to the imagery: after that one\nmovement in which the soul determines its own place, we want it to\nabide there, without any further motion. And, as to doctrine: more and\nmore as the soul\u2019s history is unfolded, should God\u2019s action within it\nappear as dominating and informing the soul\u2019s action towards God, and\nshould change of disposition supplant change of place.\n\nFirst, then, let us take the clearer but less final conception,\nand see the soul in movement, in a struggle for outward motion.\n\u201cBecause the souls that are in Purgatory have an impediment between\nGod and themselves, and because the instinct which draws the soul\non to its ultimate end is unable as yet to attain to its fulfilment\n(_perfezione_), an extreme fire springs up from thence (within them),\na fire similar to that of Hell.\u201d We have here an application and\ncontinuation of the transcendental imagery, so that the impediment is\noutside or on the surface of the soul, and God is outside and above\nthis again: but the whole picture here, at least as regards the fire,\nis obscure and tentative.[281]\n\nOr the soul is still conceived as in movement, but the motion is\ndownwards from its own surface to its own centre, a centre where\nresides its Peace, God Himself. \u201cWhen a soul approaches more and more\nto that state of original purity and innocence in which it had been\ncreated, the instinct of God, bringing happiness in its train (_istinto\nbeatifico_), reveals itself and increases on and on, with such an\nimpetuousness of fire that any obstacle seems intolerable.\u201d[282]\nHere we have the immanental picturing, the soul moving down, under\nthe influence of its instinct for God, to ever fuller masses of\nthis instinct present within the soul\u2019s own centre. But the extreme\nabstractness and confusion of the language, which mixes up motion,\ndifferent depths of the soul, and various dispositions of spirit, and\nwhich represents the soul as capable of approaching a state which has\nceased to exist, cast doubts on the authenticity of this passage.\nIn both these sets where the soul is in motion, we hear only of an\nimpediment in general and without further description; and, in both\ncases, the fire springs up because of this impediment, whereas, as we\nshall see, in the self-consistent form of her teaching the Fire, God,\nis always present: the impediment simply renders this Fire painful, and\nthat is all.\n\nAnd next we can take the soul as spacially stationary, and as in\nprocess of qualitative change. Here we get clear and detailed pictures,\nboth of what is given to the soul and of what is taken away from it.\nThe images of the positive gain constitute the beautiful sixth chapter\nof the _Trattato_. But its present elaborate text requires to be broken\nup into three or four variants of one and the same simile, which are\nprobably all authentic. I give them separately.\n\n\u201cIf in the whole world there existed but one loaf of bread to satisfy\nthe hunger of every creature: in such a case, if the creature had not\nthat one bread, it could not satisfy its hunger, and hence it would\nremain in intolerable pain.\u201d[283] Note how, so far, the nature of the\npossession of the bread is not specified, it is simply \u201chad\u201d; and how\nthe pain seems to remain stationary.\n\n\u201cMan having by nature an instinct to eat: if he does not eat, his\nhunger increases continually, since his instinct to eat never fails\nhim.\u201d[284] Here all is clearer: man now takes the place of the creature\nin general; the possession is specified as an eating; the pain is a\nhunger; and this hunger is an ever-increasing one.\n\n\u201cIf in all the world there were but one loaf of bread, and if only\nthrough seeing it could the creature be satisfied: the nearer that\ncreature were to approach it (without seeing it and yet knowing\nthat only the said bread could satisfy it), the more ardently\nwould its natural desire for the bread be aroused within it (_si\naccenderebbe_),--that bread in which all its contentment is centred\n(_consiste_).\u201d[285] Here the image for the nature of the appropriation\nhas been shifted from the least noble of the senses, taste and touch,\nto the noblest, sight: there is still a longing, but it is a longing to\nsee, to exercise and satiate fully the intellectual faculties. And yet\nthe satiety is evidently conceived not as extending to these faculties\nalone, but as including the whole soul and spirit, since bread would\notherwise cease to be the symbol here, and would have been replaced by\nlight. Note too the subtle complication introduced by the presentation,\nin addition to the idea of an increase of hunger owing to lapse of\ntime, of the suggestion that the increase is caused by a change in the\nspacial relations between the hungering creature and its food, and by\nan ever-increasing approach of that creature to this food.\n\n\u201cAnd if the soul were certain of never seeing the bread, at that moment\nit would have within it a perfect Hell, and become like the damned, who\nare cut off from all hope of ever seeing God, the true Bread. The souls\nin Purgatory, on the other hand, hope to see that Bread, and to satiate\nthemselves to the full therewith; whence they suffer hunger as great as\nwill be the degree to which they will (eventually) satiate themselves\nwith the true Bread, God, our Love.\u201d[286] Here it is noticeable how the\nspecific troubles of Hell and Purgatory are directly described, whereas\nthe corresponding joys of Heaven are only incidentally indicated; and\nhow the full sight is not preceded by a partial sight, but simply\nby a longing for this full sight, so that, if we were to press the\napplication of this image, the soul in Purgatory would not see God at\nall. And yet, as we have seen above, souls there see, though not their\nparticular sins, yet their general sinful habits; for what are the\n\u201cimpediment,\u201d the \u201cimperfection,\u201d the \u201cstain,\u201d which they go on feeling\nand seeing, but these habits? And they see themselves, though not in\nthemselves, yet in God. But, if so, do they not see God?\n\nThe answer will doubtless be that, just as they do not see their sins\nany more in their specific particularity, but only feel in themselves\na dull, dead remainder of opposition and imperfection, so also they do\nnot, after the initial moment of action and till quite the end of their\nsuffering, see God clearly,--as clearly as they do when the process is\nat an end. During one instant at death they had seen (as in a picture)\ntheir sins and God, each in their own utterly contrasted concrete\nparticularity; and this had been the specific cause of their piercing\npain and swift plunge. And then came the period of comparative dimness\nand dulness, a sort of general subconsciousness, when their habits of\nsin, and God, were felt rather than seen, the former as it were in\nfront of the latter, but both more vaguely, and yet (and this was the\nunspeakable alleviation) now in a state of change and transformation.\nFor the former, the blots and blurrs, and the sense of contrariety are\nfading gradually out of the outlook and consciousness; and the latter,\nthe light and life, the joy and harmony of the soul, and God, are\nlooming clearer, nearer, and larger, on and on. And even this initial\nfeeling, this general perception, this semi-sight and growing sight of\nGod, is blissful beyond expression; for \u201cevery little glimpse that can\nbe gained of God exceeds every pain and every joy that man can conceive\nwithout it.\u201d[287]\n\nThe imagery illustrative of what is taken from the soul, and how it is\ntaken, is two-fold, and follows in the one case a more transcendental,\nin the other case a more immanental, conception, although in each case\nGod is represented as in motion, and the soul as abiding in the same\nplace and simply changing its qualitative condition under the influence\nof that increasing approach of God and penetration by Him.\n\nThe illustration for the more transcendental view is taken from the\nsun\u2019s light and fire\u2019s heat and a covering. It is, as a matter of fact,\nmade up of three sayings: one more vague and subtle, and two more clear\nand vivid, sayings. \u201cThe joy of a soul in Purgatory goes on increasing\nday by day, owing to the inflowing of God into the soul, an inflowing\nwhich increases in proportion as it consumes the impediment to its\nown inflowing.\u201d--God\u2019s action upon the imperfect soul is as the sun\u2019s\naction upon \u201ca covered object. The object cannot respond to the rays\nof the sun which beat upon it (_reverberazione del sole_), not because\nthe sun ceases to shine,--for it shines without intermission,--but\nbecause the covering intervenes (_opposizione_). Let the covering\nbe consumed away, and again the object will be exposed to the sun\nand will answer to the rays in proportion as the work of destruction\nadvances.\u201d--Now \u201cSin is the covering of the soul; and in Purgatory\nthis covering is gradually consumed by the fire; and the more it is\nconsumed, the more does the soul correspond and discover itself to the\ndivine ray. And thus the one (the ray) increases, and the other (the\nsin) decreases, till the time (necessary for the completion of the\nprocess) is over.\u201d[288]\n\nIt is clear that we have here three parallel passages, each with its\nown characteristic image, all illustrative of an identical doctrine:\nnamely, the persistent sameness of God\u2019s action, viewed in itself, and\nof the soul\u2019s reaction, in its essential, central laws, needs, and\naspirations; and the accidental, superficial, intrinsically abnormal,\ninhibitory modification effected by sin in that action of God and in\nthe corresponding reaction of the soul.--The first, dimmer and deeper\nsaying speaks of an inflowing of God, with her usual combination of\nfire-and-water images. We seem here again to have the ocean of the\ndivine fire, Itself pressing in upon the soul within It, yet here with\npain and oppression, in so far as the soul resists or is unassimilated\nto It; and with peace and sustaining power, in so far as the soul\nopens out to, and is or becomes similar to, It. We hear only of an\n\u201cimpediment\u201d in general, perhaps because the influx which beats against\nit is imaged as taking place from every side at once.--The second\nsaying, the most vivid of the three, speaks of sun-light, and of how,\nwhilst this sun-light itself remains one and the same, its effect\ndiffers upon one and the same object, according as that object is\ncovered or uncovered. Here we get a \u201ccovering,\u201d since the shining is\nnaturally imaged as coming from one side, from above, only. But here\nalso it is the same sun which, at one time, does not profit, and, at\nanother time, gives a renewed life to one and the same object; and it\nis clear, that either Catherine here abstracts altogether from the\nquestion as to what consumes the covering, or that she assumes that\nthis consumption is effected by the sun itself.--The third saying is\nthe least simple, and is indeed somewhat suspicious in its actual form.\nYet here again we have certainly only one agent, in this case fire,\nwhich again, as in the case of the influx and of the sun-light, remains\nidentical in itself, but varies in its effects, according as it does\nor does not meet with an obstacle. The ray here is a ray primarily\nof heat and not of light, but which is felt by the soul at first as\npainful, destructive flame, and at last as peaceful, life-giving warmth.\n\nNow, amongst these three parallel sayings, it is that concerning\nthe inflowing, which leads us gently on to the more immanental\nimagery--that of fire and dross. And this image is again given us in a\nnumber of closely parallel variants which now constitute one formally\nconsecutive paragraph,--the third of Chapter X of the _Trattato_.\n\u201cGold, when once it has been (fully) purified, can be no further\nconsumed by the action of fire, however great it be; since fire does\nnot, strictly speaking, consume gold, but only the dross which the gold\nmay chance to contain. So also with regard to the soul. God holds it\nso long in the furnace, until every imperfection is consumed away. And\nwhen it is (thus) purified, it becomes impassible; so that if, thus\npurified, it were to be kept in the fire, it would feel no pain; rather\nwould such a fire be to it a fire of Divine Love, burning on without\nopposition, like the fire of life eternal.\u201d[289] Here the imperfection\nlies no more, as a covering, on the surface, nor does the purifying\nlight or fire simply destroy that covering and then affect the bare\nsurface; but the imperfection is mixed up with the soul, throughout\nthe soul\u2019s entire depth, and the purification reaches correspondingly\nthroughout the soul\u2019s entire substance. Yet, as with the covering and\nthe covered object, so here with the dross and the impure gold, sin\nis conceived of as a substance alien to that of the soul. And, so\nfar, God appears distinct from the fire: He applies it, as does the\ngoldsmith his fire to the gold. But already there is an indication\nof some mysterious relation between the fire of Purgatory and that\nof Heaven. For if the very point of the description seems, at first\nsight, to be the miraculous character of the reward attached, more\nor less arbitrarily, to the soul\u2019s perfect purification, a character\nindicated by the fact that now not even fire can further hurt the\nsoul, yet it remains certain that, the more perfect the soul, the more\nmust it perceive and experience all things according to their real and\nintrinsic nature.\n\nAnother conclusion to the same simile is: \u201cEven so does the divine\nfire act upon the soul: it consumes in the soul every imperfection.\nAnd, when the soul is thus purified, it abides all in God, without any\nforeign substance (_alcuna cosa_) within itself.\u201d[290] Here God and\nthe fire are clearly one and the same. And the soul does not leave the\nfire, nor is any question raised as to what would happen were it to be\nput back into it; but the soul remains where it was, in the Fire, and\nthe Fire remains what it was, God. Only the foreign substance has been\nburnt out of the soul, and hence the same Fire that pained it then,\ndelights it now. Here too, however, God and the soul are two different\nsubstances; and indeed this Fire-and-Gold simile, strictly speaking,\nexcludes any identification of them.\n\n\u201cThe soul, when purified, abides entirely in God; its being is\nGod.\u201d[291] Here we have the teaching as to the identity of her true\nself with God, which we have already found further back. But the soul\u2019s\npurification and union with God which there we found illustrated by\nthe simile, so appropriate to this teaching, of the absorption of food\ninto the living body, we find indicated here by the much less apt\ncomparison of the transformation of gold by fire. For in this latter\ncase, the gold remains a substance distinct from the fire, whereas\nthe doctrine requires a simile such as a great pure fire expelling\nall impurity from a small, impure fire, and then itself continuing\nto live on, with this small fire absorbed into itself. But we shall\nsee later on, why, besides the intrinsic difficulty of finding an at\nall appropriate simile for so metaphysical a doctrine, the imagery\nalways becomes so ambiguous at this point. We shall show that a\nconfluence of antagonistic doctrines, and some consequent hesitation\nin the very teaching itself, contribute to keep the images in this\nuncertain state. However, the possibly glossorial importation of this\nmost authentic teaching of hers into this place and simile only helps\nto confirm the identity of the Fire with God, and the non-moving of\nthe soul, throughout this group of texts. For the gold abides in the\nfire, as the soul abides in God; and the identification which is thus\nestablished of the painful with the joyous fire, and of both with God,\nis what will have suggested the introduction in this place of the\nfurther identification of the soul with God. And it is the continued\nabiding of the identical soul, a soul which has not moved spacially\nbut has changed qualitatively, in the identical fire, God, which has\nhelped to suggest the insertion in this place of the doctrine that the\nsoul, in its true essence, is identical with God. God, in this final\nidentification, would be the gold, the pure gold of the soul; and this\npure gold itself would generate a fire for the consumption of all\nimpurity, in proportion as such impurity gained ground within it. And,\nin proportion as this consumption takes place, does the fire sink, and\nleave nothing but the pure gold, the fire\u2019s cause, essence, and end. In\nany case, we have here one more most authentic and emphatic enforcement\nof the teaching that the place of Purgatory is really a state; that its\npainfulness is intrinsic; and that it is caused by the partial discord\nbetween spirit and Spirit, and is ended by the final complete concord\nbetween both.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nCATHERINE\u2019S REMAINS AND CULTUS; THE FATE OF HER TWO PRIEST FRIENDS AND\nOF HER DOMESTICS; AND THE REMAINING HISTORY OF ETTORE VERNAZZA\n\n\nINTRODUCTORY.\n\nI now propose to attempt, in these last two biographical chapters,\nto give, first, an account of the fate of Catherine\u2019s remains and\npossessions; and, next, of the vicissitudes in the lives of her\ncompanions and immediate disciples. I shall thus range from the day\nof her death on Sunday, September 15, 1510, up to 1551, the year of\nthe publication of the _Vita e Dottrina_; indeed, in the instance of\none particular disciple, up to 1587. And I shall do so, partly as a\nfurther contribution to the knowledge of her own character and even\nof her doctrine, this finest expression of what she spiritually was,\nand of her influence upon her immediate little world; and partly in\npreparation for the study of the influence of this _entourage_ back\nupon the apprehension and presentation of her figure, upon the growth\nof her \u201cLegend,\u201d and upon the contemporary and gradual, simultaneous\nand successive, upbuilding of that complex structure, her \u201cLife.\u201d This\nlatter inquiry is probably too technical to interest the majority of\nreaders, and will be found relegated to the Appendix at the end of this\nvolume.\n\nI shall group all the facts, alluded to above, under five heads: her\nburial, and the events immediately surrounding it; the different\nremovals of the remains, and the chief stages of her Official Cultus;\nthe fate of her two priest friends and advisers, and of her domestics;\nthe remaining history of her closest friend Ettore Vernazza; and\nfinally the long career, rich in autobiographical annotations, of\nEttore\u2019s daughter, Catherine\u2019s God-child, Tommasina (Battista)\nVernazza. We shall thus first finish up what is predominantly the\nstory of things, and of the more external, even although the most\nsplendid and authoritative, appreciation and authentication of her\nholiness; and shall only then go back to what is (almost exclusively)\nan interior history of souls, and one which will materially contribute\nto our apprehension of Catherine\u2019s special character and influence\nand to a vivid perception of the advantages, strength, limits, and\ndifficulties of that particular kind of religion and of its attestation\nand transmission. Ettore\u2019s and Battista\u2019s stories, however, are so full\nthat I must give three entire sections to Ettore, and one whole chapter\nto Battista.\n\n\nI. THE BURIAL AND THE EVENTS IMMEDIATELY SURROUNDING IT. SEPTEMBER 15\nTO DECEMBER 10, 1510.\n\n\n1. _The Burial, September 16._\n\nWe have seen how, in the evening of Thursday, September 12, the already\ndying Catherine had, in a Codicil, declared that she desired to be\nburied wheresoever the priests Jacobo Carenzio and Cattaneo Marabotto\nshould decide. She died in the early morning of Sunday, the 15th; and\nalready on the next day, with the rapidity which, in such matters,\ncontinues characteristic of southern countries, the burial took place.\n\nFirst, Dons Jacobo Carenzio and Cattaneo Marabotto declared, in a\nwritten document, that \u201cknowing the late Donna Caterinetta to have\nordained that her body should be buried in such a place as they\nthemselves might ordain: they, in consequence, willed and ordained that\nher said body be buried in the Church of the Hospital.\u201d[292] And next,\nthe funeral took place with a certain amount of pomp: for authentic\ncopies are still extant of the expenses incurred,--among other things\nfor wax candles, including three white-wax flambeaux, amounting in\nall to over one hundred pounds weight of wax.[293] The evidently\nhighly emaciated, and hence naturally flexible, body had been enclosed\nin a \u201cfine coffin of wood,\u201d and was now, at this first deposition,\nput in \u201ca resting-place (_deposito_) against one of the walls\u201d of\nthe Church. There can be no doubt that this first resting-place\nwas not the monument of her husband Giuliano, although the latter\nwas still visible and readily accessible for a considerable time\nafter,--certainly up to 1522, and probably down to 1537.[294]\n\n\n2. _Catherine\u2019s possessions at the time of her death._\n\nAnd next, on Tuesday the 17th, an Inventory was drawn up of the things\npossessed by Catherine at the moment of her death, for the use of the\nHospital \u201cProtectors,\u201d the Trustees and Executors of her Will. An\nauthentic copy of it is still extant, and furnishes first-hand evidence\nfor the presence, up to the very last, and amongst the tangible objects\nand small possessions in daily use, of memorials and expressions of\nthe three great stages of her life, and of the (in part successive and\npast, in part simultaneous and still present) layers, or as it were\nconcentric rings, of her character. We thus get a vivid presentation\nof that variety in unity and unity in variety, which is of the very\nessence of the fully living soul; and we also see how incapable of\nbeing otherwise than caricatured, if expressed in but a few hyperbolic\nwords, was even her spirit of poverty and of mortification, in this\nher last stage, which, in some sense and degree, still retained and\nsummed up, and in other ways added a special touch of a large freedom\nto, all the various previous stages of her life.\n\nThe list gives the things according to the rooms in which they stood,\nbeginning with her own death-room, and, here, with her own bed. In this\n\u201c_the_ room\u201d (_camera_) there are \u201ca down coverlet\u201d and \u201ctwo large\nmattresses\u201d; \u201cthree\u201d (other) \u201ccoverlets, one of vermilion silk\u201d and\n\u201ctwo of\u201d some simpler \u201cwhite\u201d material; \u201ctwo blankets, one vermilion,\nthe other white\u201d; \u201cfive-and-a-half pairs of sheets\u201d; and \u201ca pillow\u201d:\nall this for Catherine\u2019s bed. And these clothes, together with those of\nthe bed of the \u201cfamiglia\u201d (the maid Argentina), constitute, together\nwith the two bedsteads, absolutely all the chattels present in this\n\u201cbedroom\u201d (_camera_).\n\n\u201cIn the\u201d adjoining \u201croom with the blue wall-hangings and the\u201d\nintervening \u201ccurtain,\u201d there were: \u201cthree stuff gowns, one black and\nthe other Franciscan-colour,\u201d _i.e._ grey; \u201ctwo silk gowns\u201d; \u201ctwo\njackets, one\u201d of which was again \u201cof grey stuff, without a lining\u201d;\nseven other garments, \u201cone being of black silk\u201d; a very small amount\nof body-linen; \u201cthree table-cloths and twenty-one towels\u201d; \u201ctwo silver\ncups and saucers\u201d and \u201csix silver spoons\u201d; \u201ceight pewter candlesticks\u201d;\n\u201cone casserole\u201d; \u201cfour wooden basins\u201d; \u201ca kettle\u201d; and a few other poor\nodds-and-ends, for kitchen and sick-room use; and a three-legged table\nand one or two other articles of simple furniture.\n\nAnd finally \u201ca closet\u201d (_recamera_) is mentioned, with a press in it.\n\nIt is noticeable that here, again, no printed book or manuscript of\nany kind is mentioned: but it is clear that she herself had, some\ntime after her Will of March 18, 1509, given away her dearly prized\n\u201cMaest\u00e0\u201d-triptych to Christoforo di Chiavaro, for this picture nowhere\noccurs in this list; and something of the same kind may have occurred\nwith one or two books.\n\nBut if we group these things somewhat differently, we at once get a\nvivid conception of the precise, and hence complex, sense in which\nshe can be said to have died very poor; and we get clear indications\nof the three stages of her life. For the silver service is a survival\nfrom her pre-conversion, worldly-wealthy days; the pewter candlesticks,\nand the rough, sparse furniture, belong to her directly penitential\nfirst-conversion period and mood; and the soft, warm, gay-coloured\ncoverlets and apparel of rich material are no doubt predominantly\ncharacteristic of her last years when, largely under Don Marabotto\u2019s\nwise advice, she allowed herself a greater freedom in matters of\nexternal mortification, and readily accepted bodily attentions and\ncomforts, reserving now the fulness of her attention to matters of\ninterior disposition and purification. She thus attained, by means of\nand after all those previous forms of mortification, to a perfected,\nevangelical liberty, in which the death to self was, if somewhat\ndifferent, yet even more penetrative than before.\n\nIn the evening of this day, the Protectors of the Hospital formally\nrenew their acceptance of the office of Trustees and Executors, imposed\non them by Catherine\u2019s Will of March 18 of the previous year.[295]\n\n\n3. _Distribution of Catherine\u2019s chattels._\n\nAnd thirdly, there are the various sellings, re-sellings, and\ndistributions of her humble little collection of things, which take\nplace with the slow multiplicity of steps, dear to all corporations.\nWorkmen get paid, on November 22, for carrying her property on to the\nmarket-place, for the sale. On the same day Argentina receives \u201csuch\nthings left to her in Catherine\u2019s Will as Catherine had not herself\nalready given to her maid.\u201d And, on December 10, the remainder of\nthat property, which had evidently been bought in by the Hospital on\nthat November day, is finally re-valued, bought, and divided up by\nand between the Protectors, who take most of the large furniture;\nMarabotto, who buys ten things (a pair of fire-irons, a wardrobe, and\na gilt article amongst them); her brother Lorenzo, who acquires four\nthings (amongst them \u201ca woman\u2019s work-box?--_capsetina a domina_\u201d); and\nthe Rector, Don Carenzio, who becomes possessed of the down coverlet\nand of a piece of vermilion cloth.[296]\n\nHere the absence of all buying by or for Vernazza or a representative\nof his is noticeable. He was evidently still far away, busy in putting\nhis and his dead Saint-friend\u2019s large ideas into practice; and his\nthree daughters, the eldest of whom was but thirteen, were being\nbrought up in two Convents.\n\nThe fate of Catherine\u2019s little house is too closely bound up with that\nof one of her friends for its history to be easily severable from his.\nIt stands over to the third section.\n\n\nII. THE DIFFERENT REMOVALS OF THE REMAINS, AND THE CHIEF STAGES OF HER\nOFFICIAL CULTUS.\n\n\n1. _Opening of the \u201cDeposito.\u201d Successive \u201ctranslations.\u201d_\n\nCatherine\u2019s remains were left \u201cfor about eighteen months\u201d in their\nfirst resting-place, (_deposito_) by one of the walls of the \u201cHospital\nChurch.\u201d But then \u201cit was found that the spot was damp, owing to a\nconduit of water running under the wall. And the resting-place was\nbroken up, and the coffin was opened: and the holy body was found\nentire from head to foot, without any kind of lesion.\u201d \u201cAnd so great a\nconcourse of people took place, to see the body, that the remains were\nleft exposed indeed for eight days; but, owing to a part of them having\nbeen abstracted,\u201d apparently at the opening of the coffin, \u201cthey were\nexhibited shut off (from the crowd) in a side-chapel, where they could\nbe seen but not touched.\u201d \u201cAnd after this, the remains were deposited\nhigh up, in a sepulchre of marble, in the Church of the Hospital.\u201d[297]\n\nThe interest of this removal consists in three sets of facts, the last\nset being of capital importance among the determining causes of her\ncultus and eventual canonization. For one thing, we still have the\naccounts of the expenses incurred in connection with it, the Hospital\nrepaying, to two ladies (one of them Donna Franchetta, the wife of\nGiuliano\u2019s cousin Agostino Adorno) and to Don Marabotto, the sums\nexpended by them upon this translation and sepulchre: Marabotto\u2019s\nexpenses being in part for \u201ccausing the stone for the sepulchre to be\nbrought.\u201d These accounts are put down in the Hospital Cartulary under\nJuly 10, nearly twenty-two months after the first deposition; but the\nexpenses may well have been incurred by those three friends, three or\nfour months before. We thus find two ladies (a relative and a friend),\nand Don Marabotto, to the fore; but no mention of Carenzio, although\nthe latter was at the time, as we shall see, still Rector of the\nHospital and living in Catherine\u2019s little house there.\n\nAnd secondly, it is on this occasion that mention is made of the\npicture which I have more or less identified with the portrait\nreproduced in this volume. There are two highly ambiguous entries\nconcerning it. \u201cTo account of the Sepulture of the late Donna\nCaterinetta Adorna, for divers expenses incurred by Don Cattaneo\nMarabotto: to wit, for a picture, and for causing the stone for the\nsepulture to be brought, \u00a37 10_s._\u201d; \u201cthe Maintenance Committee\n(_fabrica_) of the Hospital, for a picture erected in the Church of the\nHospital, above the Altar: to the credit of Don Cattaneo Marabotto,\n\u00a39 7_s._\u201d[298] Now I take it that only one interpretation is at all a\nprobable one, viz. that both these entries, in the comfortably slipshod\nway in which most of these accounts were kept, refer somehow to one and\nthe same picture; and that this picture was a portrait of Catherine.\nFor it is certain that the second account refers in some way to\nCatherine and to this first transference of her remains; it is highly\nunlikely that two pictures of herself would be produced and paid for,\non one and the same occasion; and it is most improbable that Marabotto\nwould care, on occasion of all this popular enthusiasm for his deceased\nfriend and penitent, to spend money on a picture representative of some\nfigure other than her own.\n\nThe reader will note that the portrait which I thus connect with this\npicture has not, as yet, got any nimbus, an absence hardly possible\nin any much later picture.[299] And I take it that the picture was\nplaced above an altar, possibly even _the_ Altar (the High Altar) of\nthe Church, not only because _that_ was the most honorific place, but\nalso a little because the sepulchre had been placed too high up for the\nrelatively small picture to be sufficiently visible if attached to the\nmonument itself.\n\nAnd thirdly, we have here, in this week-long public veneration of the\nremains, and in this erection of her picture over one of the Church\nAltars, the first unmistakable beginnings of a popular cultus. For the\nevidences and expressions of devotion to her, which I have recorded\nat the time of her death, were all restricted to the circle of her\npersonal friends, and her first deposition remained, apparently, free\nfrom any popular concourse or commotion. The series of cures attributed\nto her intercession does not begin till this opening of the _deposito_.\nCertainly the first, and possibly the first four, of these cases, as\ngiven by Padre Maineri (1737), occurred in connection with this first\nopening.[300] And it is certain that, if the (greater or lesser)\nincorruption of the body was possibly nothing even physically so very\nremarkable, given all the circumstances;[301] and if this fact left\nthe question of her sanctity intrinsically entirely where it found\nthe matter: yet the incorruption it was that gave the first, and, as\nit turned out, an abiding impulse to the popular devotion. Indeed,\nas we shall see later on, it is highly improbable that, but for this\ncondition of the body, a cultus would ever have arisen sufficiently\npopular and permanent to lead on to her Beatification and Canonization.\nBut as things now stood, the movement had been set going, and it\ncontinued on and on.\n\nThe remaining translations were: a second one, into \u201can honourable\nsepulchre lower down,\u201d still before 1551, and already mentioned in\nthe first edition of the _Vita_ of that year; a third, in 1593, when\nthe remains were placed in their present position, but in a marble\nmonument, up in the choir, above the Church entrance; and a fourth and\nfifth, in 1642 and 1694, when the body was placed, for the first and\nsecond time, in shrines having glass sides, so that the relics could\nbe seen: that of 1694 is the one in which the remains still repose.\nAnd in 1709, Cardinal Lorenzo Fiesco being Archbishop of Genoa, the\nbody was reclothed, on June 13, by ladies, amongst whom was a Maria\nB. Fiesca.[302] We thus see how unbroken was, in this case, the\nauthentication of the remains, and how fresh remained, most naturally,\nthe interest taken in their cultus by Catherine\u2019s most powerful family.\n\n\n2. _Motives operating for Catherine\u2019s Canonization._\n\nIt is indeed clear that Catherine\u2019s greatness,--what made her a large,\nrich mind and saintly spirit,--is one thing; and that Catherine\u2019s\npopularity,--what occasioned the official recognition of that\ngreatness,--is another thing. Her mind and teaching, her character and\nspecial grace and _attrait_, were of rare width and penetration; in\npart, they were strikingly original through just this their depth of\npsychological and spiritual self-consistency and closeness of touch\nwith the soul\u2019s actual life. And these points had profoundly impressed\na very small group of friends. And again, her work among the poor and\nsick had been long, varied, and utterly devoted. And here she had been\nwidely appreciated. Yet these, the two lives which, between them,\nconstituted all her sanctity and significance, had, the former nothing,\nand the latter but little and only mediately, to do with the forces\nwhich led on eventually to her formal canonization.\n\nThe motives for putting Rome in motion for this her canonization were,\nno doubt, predominantly three. There was the popular devotion, which\napparently was first aroused, and was then instantly turned into\na downright cultus, by the discovery, in May or June 1512, of the\nincorruption of her remains; and which from thenceforward continued\nand grew, in connection with these relics and with the physical cures\nand ameliorations attributed to the touch of the dead body, or of\nits integuments, or even of the oil of the lamp which evidently soon\n(presumably on occasion of that first outburst of devotion) was kept\nlit before Catherine\u2019s resting-place.[303] There was next the gratitude\nof the Hospital authorities to Catherine for her life-work amongst\nthem; and their most natural and laudable wish to utilize her sanctity\nand its recognition for the benefit of the ever-continuous and pressing\nnecessities of their vast institution and its Church. And finally,\nthere was the feeling of clanship and the active interest taken in the\nmatter by the (all but regal) family of the Fieschi, backed, as they\nwere, by the Republic of Genoa and various other sovereign bodies and\npersons.\n\nThe combination of these three things proved sufficiently powerful to\ntake the place of certain ordinary incentives which were wanting, and\neven to overcome certain unusual difficulties which were undoubtedly\npresent, in the case. Certain incentives were lacking. For there was,\nin this instance, no Religious Order to put forward and to work, with\nall the continuous, unresting, unhasting momentum of an institution,\nfor a saintly subject of its own, a subject whose glorification would\nbring honour and profit to the body from which she sprang, and an\naccession of popularity to the special object and work of that Order.\nAnd certain obstacles were present. For few characters, interior\nideals and explicit teachings, could be found more _sui generis_, more\nprofoundly, even daringly original and all re-constitutive, and less\nimmediately understandable and copyable, than are these of Catherine.\nBut the enthusiasm and self-interest of the populace, of a charitable\ninstitution, and of a powerful family, replaced what was thus lacking\nand overcame what was thus operative; and the directly visible and\nuniversally understandable part of her life and example, was allowed to\noutweigh any objection that could be urged on the ground of the less\nobvious and more difficult, far more original and profound, sides of\nher special personality and piety.\n\nAnd a matter which further helped on the canonization was that when\nPope Urban VIII, in 1625, published his Bull forbidding thenceforth,\nunder grave penalties, that any one, \u201ceven though he have died with the\nreputation of extraordinary Christian perfection, be called \u2018Blessed\u2019\nor \u2018Saint,\u2019 until he has first been declared to be such, and to merit\nreligious worship, by the Holy Roman See\u201d; and ordaining that the same\nrule should be practised concerning persons already deceased, who were\ncurrently recognized as saints: he excepted, with regard to this second\nclass, those who, \u201cduring an immemorial course of time\u201d previous to the\npublication of this Bull, had been venerated as saints by the people,\nwithout opposition or complaint on the part of the Church authorities.\nFor this \u201ctime immemorial\u201d was considered by theologians to amount, as\na minimum, to a hundred years. And since religious worship had begun\nto be paid to her certainly not later than 1512, and the title \u201cBeata\u201d\nhad already then been publicly given to her, Catherine continued, even\nafter Pope Urban\u2019s Bull, to be invoked and venerated as \u201cBlessed,\u201d with\nthe knowledge, though without any positive and express approbation, of\nthe Roman Church.[304]\n\n\n3. _Canonization, 1737._\n\nBut the devotees of Catherine, naturally enough, were not content\nwith less than a formal approbation, and, as usual, the obtaining of\nthe latter was a very long and elaborate affair. At the beginning of\n1630 a petition was sent in to Cardinal Cesarini in Rome; who, after\nmuch examination, gave his opinion on May 24, 1636. There the matter\nagain rested for twenty-four years.--But in 1670 the very active\nand able Florentine, Cardinal Azzolini, (the same whose interesting\ncorrespondence with that undisciplined and wayward, but thoroughly\nsincere and much-maligned woman, Queen Christina of Sweden, has been\nrecently published,) became the \u201cPonente,\u201d the Advocate, for the\ncause.[305] The Cardinal wrote in 1672 to Archbishop Spinola of Genoa\nfor his opinion; and the latter, after much further examination,\ndeclared that the cultus of Catherine, having existed for over a\ncentury before Pope Urban\u2019s Bull, she ought, in accordance with the\ntenor of that Bull, to be maintained in possession of that same cultus.\nThe Congregation of Rites approved of this sentence on March 30, 1675,\nand Clement X, the now eighty-five years old Altieri Pope, gave it his\nassent. Thus Catherine had a full official recognition as \u201cBeata.\u201d\n\nNext came the examination of her doctrine and \u201cwritings,\u201d from\n1676 onwards, culminating in their approbation, for purposes of\nCanonization, by Pope Innocent XI (Odescalchi) in 1683. It is this\ninvestigation which, with some of the discussions concerning her\nvirtues, adds considerably to our materials and means for judging of\nher teaching. I have already touched on these discussions; and they\nwill occupy us again in the second volume.\n\nAnd then, in 1682, Cardinal Azzolini, supported by King Louis XIV of\nFrance and the King of Spain, again presses Rome,--this time with a\nview to reaching Canonization. And on Cardinal Azzolini dying, Cardinal\nImperiali became second \u201cPonente\u201d of the cause. In 1690 the City of\nGenoa obtained leave from the Congregation of Rites for the recitation\nof the Office and for the Celebration of the Mass of the Common of\nWidows, in honour of Blessed Catherine; in 1733 an Office and a Mass\nproper to herself were approved; and in 1734 her eulogy was inserted in\nthe Roman Martyrology, under date of March 22 (her conversion-day): \u201cAt\nGenoa, the Blessed Catherine, widow, distinguished by her contempt of\nthe world and love of God.\u201d\n\nBut meanwhile the long process as to the heroic degree of her virtues\nhad issued in the Report of the Commission in 1716; and in the\naffirmative decree of the Congregation of Rites, confirmed by Clement\nXII (Corsini) in 1733.\n\nAnd, before the conclusion of this investigation of her virtues, the\nexamination of the miracles ascribed to her intercession had been\nbegun in Genoa in 1730, by a deputation consisting of the Archbishop\nDe-Franchi and two Bishops, sitting in the Archiepiscopal Palace;\nand six miracles were, in 1736, approved as valid, from amongst the\nnumerous cases alleged to have occurred in 1730. And then three from\namongst these six miracles were finally approved by Rome, on April 5,\n1737, as efficient towards Canonization.\n\nAnd at last, on April 30 of the same year, Feast of St. Catherine of\nSiena, Pope Clement, \u201cin order that the faithful of Christ may, in\nBlessed Catherine, have a perfect example of all the virtues, and\nespecially of the love of God and of their neighbour; and that a\nnew honour and ornament may shine forth for the Republic of Genoa;\norders the present Decree for the Canonization of the said Blessed\nCatherine,--a Canonization which has still to be carried out,--to be\nexpedited and published.\u201d--And on May 18 following, on the Feast of\nthe Holy Trinity, the same Pope performed, in the Basilica of St.\nJohn Lateran, the function of the Canonization of Blessed Catherine,\ntogether with that of three other Beati: the two Frenchmen, Vincent\nde Paul, Founder of the Congregation of the Mission (the Lazarists)\n(1576-1660), and Jean Fran\u00e7ois Regis, a Jesuit Mission-Preacher in\nthe Huguenot parts of France (1597-1640); and the Italian Giuliana\nFalconieri, Foundress of the Third Order of Servites (1270-1341).[306]\n\nIt was now, on this canonization-day, over two hundred and sixteen\nyears since Catherine Fiesca Adorna, that keen and ardent spirit, had\nflown to God, her Love. We must return to those earlier times.\n\n\nIII. THE FATE OF CATHERINE\u2019S PRIEST FRIENDS.\n\n_Introductory._\n\nIn thus reverting to the period which immediately succeeded Catherine\u2019s\ndeath, and to the predominantly obscure and humble persons who had\ndirectly known her well, we bid adieu, indeed, to things massive,\nfixed, and final: yet we exchange the description of what, after all,\nwas but an authoritative declaration of accomplished facts, for the\nstudy of that alone directly soul-stirring thing, the picture and\ndrama of living, energizing human souls; of how these souls were being\ninfluenced by a greater one than themselves; and again of how these,\nthus influenced, lesser minds and hearts transmitted, developed, and\ncoloured the tradition of the life to which they owed so much.\n\nNow the effect, or at least the record of the effect, of the conception\nof Catherine formed by her two Priest friends and by her domestics\nback upon her transmitted image and upon the growth of her Legend, is,\napart from the indications in the _Vita_ already given or still to be\nconsidered, upon the whole, but slight. Still, as we shall eventually\nfind, the few facts as to the subsequent lives of these persons, which\nshall now be given, are of very distinct use in appraising their\nrespective shares in the gradual constitution of the _Vita e Dottrina_.\n\n\n1. _Don Carenzio, 1510-1513._\n\nI take Don Jacopo Carenzio first, since he was the Priest in actual\nattendance upon Catherine at the last, and because he now, no doubt\nimmediately after the funeral or at latest on the day of the removal of\nher chattels to the market-place, became possessed, as we shall see, of\nCatherine\u2019s little house. He was thus the one who alone could continue\nand augment a cultus as strictly local as even Argentina\u2019s had been,\nduring those weeks, perhaps months, of sole night-charge of her dying\nmistress in these very rooms.\n\nThe identification of the building is complete. For as far back as\nOctober 6, 1497, not long after Giuliano\u2019s death,--he was still alive\non July 14,--the Protectors of the Hospital referred to their \u201cgrant\nto Catherine, during her lifetime, of the enjoyment and use of a\nhouse with a greenhouse, forming part of the Hospital.\u201d And in this\ngreenhouse she, on the evening of Sunday, March 18, 1509, had, in the\npresence of Vernazza and four other witnesses, dictated her Fourth Will\nto Battista Strata. It was, then, of a size sufficient to render it\nworth mentioning, and it was evidently closed in. Now there is a legal\ninstrument, dated Saturday, August, 30, 1511, drawn up at a meeting\nheld by the four \u201cProtectors,\u201d \u201cin the chief (sitting-) room of the\nResidence of the Rector, in which the late Donna Caterinetta was wont\nto live.\u201d And in this they declare that, \u201cseeing that the Reverend Don\nJacopo Carenzio, the Rector, is about to go to his home at Diano, for\nthe purpose of carrying out a matter of the greatest importance to\nhimself, and is shortly to return from thence, and that he wishes to\npersevere throughout his life in the said office of Rector; and since\nthey desire that he should willingly hasten his return, and should be\nable to persevere with full confidence, and should not, as long as\nhe lives, be moved from this room together with the whole building\ncontiguous with it, to the room which, with its appurtenant building,\nis at present in the course of erection as the official residence of\nthe Rector; they have altogether conceded to the above-named Reverend\nJacopo, Rector, present and accepting, the said room together with the\nwhole building belonging to this room, for him to hold and inhabit\nthroughout his life, together with the greenhouse.\u201d[307]\n\nHere three points are of interest. Don Carenzio is, then, a native\nof the little Diano Castello on the Western Riviera hillside, some\nfifty English miles from Genoa and some twenty short of San Remo;\nand must have belonged to some humble family in that insignificant\nlittle place. His origin is thus in marked contrast to Marabotto\u2019s,\nand still more to Vernazza\u2019s. And next, it is clear that the house\nand greenhouse inhabited and used by Don Carenzio till his death are\nidentical with those tenanted by Catherine, ever since at least the\ndeath of Giuliano. And thirdly, it is equally clear that this house was\nin no part identical with the two rooms still shown as the Saint\u2019s. For\nthese latter are high up from the ground; do not now form, and probably\nnever formed, part of a disconnected house; and they no doubt stand on\nanother site. The little house will have been demolished at latest in\n1780, when the present great quadrangle was built.[308]\n\nNow here, in these rooms full of the memory of Catherine, Don Carenzio\nwill, not unreasonably, have hoped to live during many years. For it is\nnot likely that he was older than, or indeed as old as, Don Marabotto,\nsince he was now occupying that same office of Rector which Marabotto\nhad held some six years previously. And yet Marabotto did not die till\neighteen years later, whereas Carenzio\u2019s death came soon. For his\nfuneral took place on January 7, 1513, for which day there is an entry\nin the Hospital Cartulary for the cost of twenty-three pounds-weight\nof wax candles,--less than one-fourth the amount used at Catherine\u2019s\nobsequies; and for that of the Priest\u2019s vestments in which the body was\nrobed and buried.[309]\n\nIt seems unlikely that Carenzio was not buried in the Hospital Church,\nseeing that he died whilst, apparently, still _ex-officio_ Rector of\nthe Hospital. But, if he was interred there, his monument, like that\nof Giuliano, was cut off and buried away in and with the Church end\nin 1537, or was covered up in some restoration; for there is no trace\nof it either in the Church itself or in any book treating of the\nsepulchral monuments of Genoa.\n\nIt is remarkable also that, though he had been the one priest present\nat Catherine\u2019s death, and had tenanted Catherine\u2019s own rooms throughout\nthe two years and two or three months since her death, and had,\nalongside of Marabotto, been appointed by Catherine herself as the\nperson to determine the place of her sepulture: his name nowhere occurs\nin connection with the plan for the opening of her _deposito_ some\neighteen months after her death; nor with the execution of that plan;\nnor with any of the consequent initiations of a public cultus. It is\nimpossible to doubt that we have here some little counter jealousy and\nreturn exclusion, a sort of answer by Marabotto to his, Marabotto\u2019s,\nown enforced absence from the death-chamber and his twenty-four hours\u2019\nignorance of his Penitent\u2019s death, which we had to note in its proper\nplace. Poor little human frailties which may have appeared less petty\nand more completely excusable at close quarters than they look at this\ndistance of time! I take it that, if there was a deliberate exclusion\nof Carenzio, the ceremony of opening the resting-place will have been\ntimed to tally with some absence of the Rector,--say, on another visit\nto his native Diano.\n\n\n2. _Don Marabotto, 1510-1528._\n\nAs to Don Cattaneo Marabotto, I have not been able to discover much. We\nhave already seen how he bought ten of Catherine\u2019s chattels on December\n10, after her death. On July 7, 1511, he pays over to Catherine\u2019s old\nservant, the maid Maria (Mariola Bastarda), her late mistress\u2019s little\nlegacy, in a form to be described presently.\n\nBut the most important facts concerning him--apart from his share in\nthe _Vita_, which shall be considered at length hereafter--are the\nfollowing three. There is, first, the fact (already dwelt upon) that\nhe, and apparently he alone, initiated, or at least led and directed,\nthe plan of opening the _deposito_, exposing the body, giving it a\nmarble sarcophagus, and erecting a picture over an altar in the Church\nto Catherine. And next, that \u201cstill in 1523 Argentina del Sale was his\nservant,\u201d--she had evidently then, on Catherine\u2019s death in 1510, become\nhis attendant.[310] And thirdly, that he did not die till 1528.[311]\n\nThere seems to be but little doubt that he was, at least slightly,\nCatherine\u2019s junior. Yet already on his first intercourse with her,\nhe, the Rector of the Hospital, must have been a fully mature man. I\nsuppose him to have been born somewhere about 1450; in which case he\nwill have been about seventy-eight at the time of his death.\n\nIn any case, he lived long enough to see and hear much of a kind to\nconsole and strengthen his devotion to Catherine and his faith in the\nself-rejuvenating powers of the Church, and much of a nature to dismay\nand alarm the gentle, peaceable old man. For there were the opening of\nthe coffin; the incorruption; the popular concourse and enthusiasm;\nthe graces and the cures of May to July 1512. And there were Luther\u2019s\nninety-five Theses nailed to the University Church of Wittenberg, on\nthe Eve of All-Saints, 1517; and Pope Leo X\u2019s condemnation of forty\nof them in 1520, and amongst them three Theses which concerned the\ndoctrine of Purgatory, one of which must have seemed strangely like\none of Catherine\u2019s own contentions. And there were the books of Henry\nVIII of England and of Erasmus against Luther, in 1522, 1524, and in\nItaly the foundation of the Capuchin Order in 1527; there were, too,\nthe Peasants\u2019 War and Luther\u2019s marriage in Germany in 1525, and, in\n1527, the sacking of Rome by the Imperial troops. And through all this\nworld-wide, epoch-making turmoil and conflict we think of him, probably\nnot simply from our lack of documents, as leading a quiet, obscure,\nsomewhat narrow existence; yet one redeemed from real insignificance by\nhis silent watchfulness and action, and still more by his writing, in\nhonour of his large-souled Penitent, ever so sincerely felt by him as\nindefinitely greater than himself.\n\nI do not know where he was buried. It was not, however, in the Hospital\nChurch; for in that case there would have been some entry in the books\nof the expenses incurred in connection with his funeral.\n\n\nIV. THE FATE OF CATHERINE\u2019S THREE MAID-SERVANTS.\n\nAs to Catherine\u2019s three maid-servants the facts that can still be\ntraced are as follow.\n\n\n1. _Benedetta._\n\nThe widow and Franciscan Tertiary Benedetta Lombarda, although her\nname had continued to appear in the documents from Giuliano\u2019s Will in\n1496 down to Catherine\u2019s last will of March 1509, disappears after\nthis latter date entirely from sight. Since both Mariola and Argentina\nreappear in the Hospital books, (although Mariola had, like Benedetta,\nceased to serve Catherine at the last), it looks as though Benedetta\nhad died between the Will of March 1509 and Catherine\u2019s death in\nSeptember 1510. Yet it is possible that Catherine herself handed over\nto Benedetta her little share in the former\u2019s money and chattels; and\nthat Benedetta is no more mentioned after her mistress\u2019s death because,\nunlike Mariola and Argentina, she did not continue to live in and\nbelong to the Hospital, whose accounts alone are our extant sources of\ninformation for the other two servants.\n\n\n2. _Mariola._\n\nBut as to Mariola and Argentina, and their lives after 1510, we do\nknow something. Mariola (Maria) Bastarda had, on leaving Catherine\u2019s\nservice, (probably only some weeks, but possibly some months before\nher mistress\u2019s death), become one of the servants, or under-nurses\n(_filia_), of the Hospital; and, on July 7 of the following year (1511)\nshe was clothed a Novice in the Convent of Bridgettines in Genoa, with\nthe money left to her in Catherine\u2019s Will.[312]\n\nThe latter fact is interesting as showing how purposely vague and\nambiguous, and how little capable of being pressed, are at least\nsome of the statements of the _Vita_, if taken as they stand and\nprior to any distinction of documents and of their varying degrees\nof trustworthiness. For there we read, after the scene where the\nevil spirit within the maid declares Catherine\u2019s true surname to be\n\u201cSerafina\u201d: \u201cthis possessed person (_spiritata_) was endowed with a\nlofty intelligence, and lived to the end in virginity.\u201d Who would\nreadily guess that we have here to do with little Mariola? The passage\nis, I think, in part modelled upon Acts xxi, 9: \u201cAnd he\u201d (Philip the\nEvangelist, one of the seven Deacons) \u201chad four daughters virgins,\nwho did prophesy.\u201d Even so then did Catherine, the teacher, have \u201ca\nspiritual daughter,\u201d a virgin, who \u201cprophesied,\u201d divined and announced,\nthe true character of her mistress.--\u201cWe believe,\u201d continues the\n_Vita_, \u201cthat the Lord had given her this spirit to keep her humble.\nShe finished her life in a holy manner.\u201d Who would guess that this\nmeant profession as a Nun? The point is, I take it, kept vague in part\nto make the insertion of the words which follow possible. \u201cNor did the\nevil spirit ever depart from her, till well-nigh the very end, when she\nwas about to die.\u201d It is evident that this cannot be pressed: and that\neither the attacks continued to the end, but were rare and slight; or\nthat they were serious and frequent, but ceased a considerable time\nbefore her death. For, though we do not know when she died, we have no\nright to assume, in evidently still so young a person, that death came\nsoon.\n\n\n3. _Argentina._\n\nAnd Argentina appears in several documents. So in an entry of the\nHospital Cartulary for November 22, 1510, as to the value of the things\nthen handed over to her in accordance with Catherine\u2019s Will. So again\nin three legal documents drawn up for her and in her presence,--a Will\nof October 1514, a Codicil of some later (unspecified) date, and a\nsecond Will of January 15, 1522. In the Codicil she doubles the little\nsum she had left to the Hospital in 1514; and in the last document\nshe declares her wish to be buried \u201cin the Church of the Annunciata,\nin the monument (vault) of the late Giuliano Adorno, or in such other\nas may seem good to \u2026\u201d; and leaves moneys \u201cfor Masses to be said for\nher soul, by two of the Brethren of the Monastery of San Nicol\u00f2 in\nBoschetto.\u201d[313]\n\nThis group of papers is interesting. For we see from it how even an\nobscure little serving-woman was wont, in Italy, the classic country\nof Law and Lawyers, and during these claimful, pushing times, to have\nWills and Codicils drawn up for her. We perceive, too, how proud and\nfond Argentina remained of her former avocation of servant to Giuliano,\nsince only he and not his Saint-wife lay in that vault; and how,\nnevertheless, an uncertainty possesses her mind as to whether this\ncan or will be carried out--no doubt owing to the fact that the vault\nhad not received the remains of his wife, and had not indeed probably\nbeen opened again at all since his death, twenty-five years before.\nAnd we can note how Argentina, together with, and no doubt at least in\npart because, of her late mistress, has an affection for the Monastery\nand Pilgrimage Church of San Nicol\u00f2, on that wooded hill, so near to\nCatherine\u2019s former villa.\n\nAnd Argentina appears finally in that list of conclusions (already\nreferred to in Marabotto\u2019s case) as continuing to live in the\nHospital; and as still living in it in 1523; and, similarly, as\ncontinuing in the capacity of servant to Don Marabotto. I have already\npointed out the difficulties inherent in this statement, but believe it\nto be correct. Yet it would be of considerable importance if we could\nreach lower down, and could fix the exact death-date of poor Marco del\nSale\u2019s ardent-minded, imaginative little widow. Since she was doubtless\nconsiderably, I think quite twenty years, younger than Marabotto, and\nsince even the latter lived on, we know, till 1528, six years after\nthis Will, there was nothing, in the matter of actual age, to prevent\nher living on up to 1550 or beyond. And circumstances connected with\nthe growth of Catherine\u2019s legend seem to point, as we shall find, to\nArgentina having died in any case after Marabotto, and probably not\nbefore 1547. Similarly, Catherine herself did not die till twenty-six\nyears after her first Will (1484-1510).\n\n\nV. THE TWO VERNAZZAS: THEIR DEBT TO CATHERINE, AND CATHERINE\u2019S DEBT TO\nTHEM.\n\nWe now move on from these four figures which, seen against the\nliving background of those strenuous times, appear indeed small and\ncontracted; and which, in relation to Catherine, appear rather as\na mere memory and mechanical continuation of her limitations, and\nspecially of the phenomenal accidents and relative monotony of her\nsick-room period, than as a rich and vigorous, because truly personal,\nexpansion and re-application of her many-sided action, breadth and\nwarmth, and human practicality, during the times of her fullest\nself-expression. Such a new facing of the new problems, with a strength\nboth old and new, enkindled indeed at her light and warmth, and yet\ndeveloped also from the vigorously fresh centres of other deep hearts\nand virile minds and wills, we must now attempt to picture, in the\ncase of the two greatest of Catherine\u2019s disciples, Ettore Vernazza and\nhis eldest daughter Battista. And yet if, in the former four cases,\nwhile the results of this influence appeared few and insignificant, the\nactual fact and source of this influence were plain beyond all cavil:\nin these latter two instances we have, indeed, a rich crop of thoughts\nand acts, of wisdom and of heroism, but then it is mostly impossible\nto sort out what is here the direct and unmistakable outcome of\nCatherine\u2019s influence.\n\nThe great, open, spiritual and even temporal, battlefield, if not\nof Europe at least of Italy; the abuses and tyrannies, but also the\nnecessity and the power for good, of governments; and the strenuous,\ntragic, and transformatory conflicts of single wills within their own\nsoul\u2019s world, and again with other wills, both single and combined: all\nthis lies spread out here like a map before us, seen from the bracing\nheights of time. There is nothing here, at least in the Ettore\u2019s case,\nthat the most intolerantly robust, or even the most hysterically\nwould-be strong, mind could suspect of sickliness. And yet, if\nundoubtedly much of all this fruitful virility in Catherine\u2019s closest\nfriend, and in Catherine\u2019s God-daughter, proceeds from Catherine\nherself, it nevertheless springs up and grows within them, not as an\navowed, nor probably, for the most part, even as conscious, imitation\nor reminiscence.\n\nThus here again we get an impressive instance of one profound sense\nin which the grain of wheat of any great and wholesome influence must\ndie. For only if and when broken up, selected from, and assimilated to\nand within, another mind\u2019s and heart\u2019s life and system, can that older\nliving organism, which yet was, in the first instance, so moving just\nbecause of its unique organization round a centre possible only to\nthat one other soul, truly and permanently develop and enrich a living\ncentre not its own. And so in this case too: Catherine\u2019s influence is\nall the more real in Ettore and Battista, because the latter are in\nno sense simple copies of the former. She has lived on in them, at\nthe cost of becoming in part ignored, in part absorbed, by them: and\ncontinues to influence them through certain elements of her life that\nhave been assimilated, and through the reinterpreted image of that\nlife\u2019s historic reality, an image which is ever reinviting them to do\nand to be, _mutatis mutandis_, what she herself had done and been.\n\nBut, indeed, (even apart from all direct influence exercised by\nCatherine\u2019s personality upon them, or by them upon Catherine\u2019s legend),\nthese two lives are interesting as further authentic illustrations of\nCatherine\u2019s school and spirit, and, indeed, of the mystical element of\nreligion in general.\n\nI shall first take the father, devoting three sections to him.\n\n\nVI. ETTORE VERNAZZA\u2019S LIFE, FROM 1509 TO 1512.\n\n_Introductory._\n\nWe possess, if few, yet quite first-rate materials for the\nreconstruction of the remaining part of Vernazza\u2019s life. For there are\nhis own testamentary provisions as to the disposition of his property,\n(as elaborate and vividly characteristic as Mr. Cecil Rhodes\u2019s), drawn\nup in 1512 and 1517, and occupying twelve closely-printed octavo pages;\nand there is a long, homely, and admirably realistic description of his\nlife and character, written by Battista, not, it is true, till 1581,\nwhen she was eighty-four years of age, and nearly sixty years after her\nfather\u2019s death, but which is, there is no reason to doubt, perfectly\ntruthful, generally accurate, and all the more moving, in that the\nliving man and his large-hearted heroism were thus continuing to touch\nand inspire his daughter, at the very moment of her writing, with a\nfinely restrained emotion, of deeds and personalities witnessed, by\nher own eyes and spirit, over half a century before. I shall take the\nseveral documents, not each as they stand but piecemeal, according to\nthe dates of the events recorded or of the legal act performed.\n\n\n1. _Ettore\u2019s married life; and thought of the monastic state._\n\n\u201cMy Father and Mother,\u201d writes Battista, \u201clived together\u201d from 1496\nto 1509 \u201cin the greatest peace, since they wished each other every\nkind of good; so that I do not remember ever having heard one word of\ndissension pass between them.--And although my Mother was a beautiful\nand attractive young woman, and was loved by persons deserving of\nesteem, yet she would stay at home, alone, with her children. And my\nFather acted similarly, except when he was obliged to go out on some\nbusiness. Otherwise I do not remember having ever noticed either of\nthem going out to some late party (_vegli\u00e0_), as is the custom in\nGenoa.\u201d--And she tells how \u201che was so abstemious\u201d in the matter of\nfood, \u201cthat he was wont strictly to limit the amount of bread that\nhe ate. But my Mother, noticing this, had the breads baked very\nsubstantial.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd when my Mother died\u201d in the spring of 1509, \u201cmy Father thought of\nbecoming a Lateran (Augustinian) Canon. But, on asking the advice of\nPadre Riccordo da Lucca,\u201d (I take it, himself a Lateran Canon,) \u201cwho\nwas just then preaching in Genoa with very great fervour, the latter\ndid not encourage him to carry out his intention, observing, as he\ndid, my Father\u2019s inclination for founding works of charity.\u201d And her\nfather proved docile. Indeed she says of him generally that \u201che greatly\nmortified his self-will, and for this reason had put himself under\nobedience to a priest, who had the reputation of being exceptionally\ndevoted (_molto buono_), and obeyed him as though he had been the very\nvoice of God.\u201d \u201cAnd my Father then gave up his own house, and went to\nlive in rooms which had been got ready for him in the Hospital for\nIncurables, of which he was one of the Managers and indeed one of the\nfirst _Builders_. And here he always lived, when he was in Genoa; here\nhe died; and this institution he made his heir.\u201d[314]\n\nHere it is interesting to note the similarities and differences\nbetween this union, so happy and thus blessed with three children, and\nCatherine\u2019s marriage, so unhappy and childless; between his thought\nof a religious vocation after his marriage was over, and Catherine\u2019s\nbefore hers was begun; and between his fifteen years of residence in\nthe midst of the incurable poor at the _Chronici_, and Catherine\u2019s\nsimilar, though earlier and longer, life surrounded by the sick poor\nat the _Pammatone_. There is some likeness, too, in the matter of\ncorporal mortification; although, with Vernazza, it is less acute,\nbut is apparently kept up throughout his life, whilst with Catherine\nthe active bodily mortifications are very prominent whilst they last,\nbut are kept up thus for but a few years. As to obedience, we have\nhere, for Vernazza, a more authoritative account than are any of the\ngeneral statements on the same point with regard to Catherine; but in\nCatherine\u2019s case many concrete instances give us a definite idea as to\nthe character and limits of this docility, whereas all such instances\nare, in Vernazza\u2019s case, restricted to the above incident alone. Yet\nthis one example of his obedience shows how largely conceived, how\nsimply divinatory and stimulative of his own deepest (although as\nyet but half-born) ideals, how ancillary to his own grace-impelled\nself-determination, and hence how truly liberating, were this direction\nand docility. The Venerable Cardinal de Berulle\u2019s determination of\nDescartes to a philosophical career, and St. Philip Neri deciding\nCardinal Baronius to write his entirely open-minded, indeed severe,\n_Ecclesiastical Annals_, would doubtless be true parallels to this\nparticular relationship.\n\n\n2. _Ettore\u2019s great Will of 1512._\n\nWe have already seen that Ettore was away from Genoa from about\nSeptember 10, 1510, onwards, and that he was far away at the time of\nCatherine\u2019s death. He may well have been away most of the year 1511,\nnor is there indeed any indication that he was in Genoa at the opening\nof Catherine\u2019s _deposito_ in May to July 1512. But he was certainly\nthere in October 1512, for on the 16th of that month he drew up a\nmunificent and far-sighted deed of gift, of one hundred shares of the\nBank of St. George, to various charitable and public purposes.\n\nVernazza had already previously provided for his three daughters;\nand now orders that the interest of these other shares (a capital\namounting, at the time, to the value of some \u00a310,400) should, for the\nfirst nine years, be used by the \u201cProtectors\u201d of the Incurables for the\nbenefit of that Institution, which thus occupies the first place in his\nsolicitudes.\n\nAnd then these shares should be allowed to multiply, by means of their\naccumulated interests and of the reinvestments of the latter, till they\nhad reached the number of five hundred shares; and then, if and when\nan epidemic arose and the citizens fled from the city, the income of\nthese shares for three years should be given to the Board of Health,\nfor the use of those suffering from the epidemic. And when the shares\nhad become two thousand, a commodious Lazaretto-house should be bought\nor built, with the income of not more than ten years. And after this,\nwhen the shares had become six thousand, one half or more of their\ninterest should go towards the keep and nursing of the patients in this\nLazaretto.\n\nAfter these three stages devoted to the victims of the Plague, he\ndetermines the point at which the interest of the moneys shall be\napplied successively to providing marriage portions for honest poor\ngirls of Genoa and of his home villages of Vernazza, Arvenza, and\nCogoleto, preference being always given to the large clan of Vernazzi;\nto providing means for honest poor girls desiring to enter Convents\nthat keep their Rule (_monasteria observantiae_), up to \u00a3100 each, with\na similar preference as in the previous case.\n\nAnd then he attends to the poor in general. To providing extra pay\nfor the Notaries and Clerks of the \u201cUffizio della Misericordia,\u201d \u201con\ncondition that they devote all their time to the interests of the poor\nexclusively; and that they make diligent inquiry as to the means of the\npoor and their several characters, and find out whether they are in\nreal want or not, and draw up a book in which all the poor, individuals\nand families, shall be inscribed clearly and by name,--in each case\nwith a note indicating whether they belong to the first, second, or\nthird degree of necessitousness.\u201d To paying two Physicians and two\nSurgeons, for otherwise entirely gratuitous service of the sick poor\nalone, and doubling this pay during the prevalence of an epidemic,\n\u201cbut strictly enforcing the loss, in salary, of double the amount of\nany moneys they can be proved to have accepted from their patients.\u201d\nAll this, together with these four Doctors\u2019 names, to be annually\nproclaimed in the streets by the town-crier. To paying a Dispenser and\ninstituting a Dispensary, exclusively for the sick poor and entirely\ngratuitous, up to \u00a32,000 a year for the latter. To appointing two\nAdvocates and two Solicitors, for the exclusive and gratuitous service\nof the poor, in any and all cases of law-suits and molestations. The\nsame proclamation as with the Doctors, to be made in this matter also.\nAnd to maintaining foundling boys and girls of Genoa, under provisions\nwhich are carefully laid down.\n\nAnd then he turns to the three Institutions and their like with which\nhe, as notary, as father and as philanthropist, has been specially\nidentified. He fixes the point when two lectures in Philosophy or\nTheology, one by a Dominican and another by a Franciscan, are to be\ninstituted, for every working day, in the Chapel of the Notaries of\nGenoa; when one free meal a month is to be provided for eight monastic\nand charitable institutions, amongst which are the Franciscans of\nthe SS. Annunziata, the Benedictines of San Nicol\u00f2 in Boschetto,\nthe Canonesses of S. Maria delle Grazie, and the Hospital for\nIncurables,--\u201cbut the expenses are not to exceed \u00a3600 a year\u201d (about\nsix guineas each meal)--\u201cnor is money to be given, but the eatables\nthemselves are to be bought for, and given to, the institutions\u201d; and\nwhen a Superintendent (_Sindaco_) of the Incurables is to be appointed,\nwith \u00a3100 pay a year.\n\nAnd then he comes back to the poor in general; and thinks also,\n(somewhat like unto his and Catherine\u2019s ideal, St. Paul as \u201ca citizen\nof no mean city,\u201d) of the external appearance and utility of his native\ntown of Genoa. The point is fixed when they are to \u201cpay for the poor\ntheir hardest imposts, especially those on food\u201d; and when they are to\n\u201crepair, decorate, and enlarge the Cathedral Church of San Lorenzo,\u201d\nand to \u201cbuild a harbour-mole, improve the harbour, and attend to the\ndecoration and look of the town (_ornamentis civitatis_), according to\ntheir discretion.\u201d\n\nAnd he then finishes up with a characteristic reversion to efficacious\nsolicitude for his clan, by marriage benefits for his young kinswomen\nin the future and by thought for his ancestors and predecessors in\nthe past; and with a no less characteristic divinatory greatness of\nmind, by the creation of a kind of People\u2019s College or Working-man\u2019s\nUniversity, which appears here curiously wedged in between the thoughts\nfor his clan in the future and in the past. For he determines the\npoints when the Protectors shall again provide for marrying honest poor\ngirls of his three home villages, and for comforts for the prisoners at\nChristmas and Easter; when they are to \u201cbuy a large and well-situated\nhouse, and therein organize a public course of studies, with four\nDoctors of Law, four very learned Physicians, and two Masters of\nGrammar and Rhetoric, who shall, all ten, be each bound to deliver one\nlecture on every working day, and to devote all the rest of their time\nto the interests of the poor\u201d; and when finally they are to provide for\n\u201cMasses for his ancestors and predecessors,\u201d--Masses for himself and\nimmediate belongings having been already, no doubt, provided for in his\nprevious Will, since we find such provisions repeated in his last Will,\nto be given later on.[315]\n\nWe thus get here a persistent preoccupation with the most manifold\ninterests of the poor; a shrewd knowledge of men, and careful\nprovisions calculated to rouse their indolence and to check their\nself-seeking; an utterly unsentimental, realistic, Charity-Organization\nsort of spirit shown in the insistence upon a careful and complete\nknowledge of the real degree and kind of want, and of the precise means\nappropriate for helping the various kinds of poor; a high estimate of\nknowledge, which he desires to offer to all, according to their various\ncapacities and needs; and lastly, an entire freedom from pietism, for\nhe thinks of, and provides for, harbour-works and the beautifying of\nthe town. There is a large, open-air, operative, sanely optimistic and\nstatesmanlike spirit about it all.\n\nAnd if all this is in full keeping with, and but expands and\nsupplements, the tenacious realism of a born organizer and\nadministrator: the soaring idealism and universalism of his\nsaint-friend Catherine\u2019s stimulation, and his and her joint experiences\nand interests, are also directly suggested to us. For there is the\nspecial stress laid on the plague-stricken, whom they had tended\ntogether in 1493; the interest in physicians and in drugs for the\npoor, an interest in which she must have preceded him by twenty years\nor more; and the repeated preoccupation with the marrying of poor\nyoung women, and, next after it, with the convent-dowries of girls in\nsocially similar circumstances, in each case especially of kinswomen\nof his own. This preoccupation was no doubt occasioned chiefly by\nthe thought of his own most happy marriage and of his own children,\nthe two elder now already well settled as Nuns, but the third still\npossibly to be married; yet we are also vividly reminded of Catherine\u2019s\nown repeated occupation with the marrying of relatives of her own,\nand Limbania\u2019s and her own early entrance, and wish to enter, into\nthe Religious state. And then his benefactions include Catherine\u2019s\nHospital Church, her favourite Boschetto Church, and that Convent of\nthe Grazie, the scene of her own conversion and the home of her sister\nLimbania, as well as of his daughters Battista and Daniela. But indeed\nthe whole character of the outlook, in its successive absorption in,\neach time, just _one_ particular task; in its occupation with succour\nin proportion to the divinely ordained and ready-found bonds and ties\nof nature, bonds and ties so dear to the omnipresent God; and in its,\nnevertheless, in nowise restricting itself to this interest, but moving\non and on, distance appearing beyond distance, with love and welcome\nfor all the heroisms and helplessnesses: is all marked with Catherine\u2019s\nimperial spirit of boundless self-donation.\n\n\nVII. ETTORE IN ROME AND NAPLES; HIS SECOND WILL; HIS WORK IN THE\nGENOESE PRISONS.\n\n\n1. _Ettore in Rome._\n\nAnd perhaps already in 1513, but, if so, not before March of that year\n(the date of Pope Leo\u2019s accession), Vernazza was in Rome,--hardly, I\nthink, for the first time. And Battista again tells us, in her long\nletter of 1581, how that \u201cthe incurables in Rome\u201d--which was then, at\nthe beginning of Giovanni de\u2019 Medici\u2019s (Leo X\u2019s) reign, the brilliant\ncentre of the Renaissance at its zenith--\u201cwere left to lie in baskets,\nmoaning\u201d for alms, \u201cin the Churches. It was piteous to see them thus\nforsaken and badly cared for.\u201d\n\nNow there is good reason to think that Vernazza had known the Pope\nwhen, as Cardinal de\u2019 Medici, he had, in 1500, stayed for some time in\nGenoa, in the house of his married sister, Donna Maddalena Cib\u00f2. And\nso Vernazza now presented himself before the Pope, \u201cand said to him:\n\u2018You, Holiness, have a fine work in hand, in patronizing the Arts and\nLetters: but you cannot leave this Rome of yours saddened by so piteous\na spectacle.\u2019\u201d And the Pope thanked him, and begged him to accept the\ncharge of founding and undertaking the government of the Arch-Hospital.\nAnd the two \u201cCardinals, Caraffa,\u201d the vigorous and devoted, but harshly\naustere Neapolitan, who was, later on, joint-founder of the Theatines\nand then Pope Paul IV, \u201cand Sauli,\u201d the Genoese, \u201chelped him in his\nwork. Indeed the latter said to him: \u2018If you require money, come to\nme.\u2019\u201d\n\nAnd this Roman work of Vernazza straightway put forth two offshoots,\nfar away. For \u201cCaraffa founded in Venice a hospital on the model of\nthe one in Rome.\u201d And \u201cthere happened to be in Rome\u201d at this time \u201ca\ncertain Bartholommeo Stella, a rich and very generous (_molto galante_)\nyoung man. And Vernazza saw him and gained such an influence with him\nas to end by sending him to Brescia, to promote there also these fruits\nof Christian faith.\u201d\n\nAnd in Rome itself \u201cLeo X gave Vernazza practical proofs of his\ngratitude, and set him forth on his return journey with demonstrations\nof great honour (_magnifiche demonstrazioni_). And the Arch-Hospital\nhaving been thus set going and Vernazza being back in Genoa, Leo X\naddressed a Brief to him, informing him that his Hospital in Rome was\nin a state of confusion (_andava sossopra_); \u2018I think\u2019 (adds Battista)\n\u2018because its Governors wanted each to be above the other.\u2019 And he\nreturned to Rome, and quieted all controversy.\u201d[316] I take this second\nRoman journey to have been not before 1515; but it may have occurred\nany time before 1522, the year of Pope Leo\u2019s death.\n\nThis group of facts shows Vernazza\u2019s directness and independence of\nobservation, his initiative and energy, and his courage and respectful\nliberty of speech, qualities which are all reminiscent of Catherine\u2019s\nscene with the Friar; the rapidity with which a necessary work,\nwhich has been delayed for centuries, and which has required the\nwhole-hearted vigour of a rare personality to call it into being, grows\nand multiplies, when once it is in existence; and the manner in which\nthe petty, sterilizing ambitions of men can be efficiently checked only\nby a combination of strength of will, administrative ability, gentle\ntact and complete disinterestedness,--a combination which again reminds\none of Catherine, the successful Rettora.\n\n\n2. _Ettore in Naples._\n\nIt will have been after this second visit to Rome that Vernazza first\nwent to Naples. And there again \u201che formed a Hospital,\u201d in this case\n\u201cat the risk of his life; for some evil-wishers there wanted to\nkill him, being unable to bear the idea that a \u2018foreigner\u2019 should\nhave anything to do with the affairs of the city (_ordinasse quella\ncitt\u00e0_). Once the \u2018Ave Maria\u2019 had sounded, he did not again issue\nfrom his lodging during that day. And yet\u201d even among such untoward\ncircumstances, \u201che managed not to leave Naples before having, with\nGod\u2019s help, achieved his object,--of providing his much-loved poor with\nsuch an institution ready to their hand.\u201d\n\nIt was in Naples, too, evidently at the beginning of this very visit,\nthat another generous idea and institution of his first occurred to\nhim, or at least was first put into execution. The whole occurrence\nreveals a curious mixture of the most divers qualities and, indeed,\nrequires in part to be excused, on the ground of numerous external\ndifficulties which stood in the way of an excellent work, and of the\nfinessing methods evidently deemed, even by good people, to be quite\nallowable for attaining a good end, in this age of violence, suspicion\nand intrigue. \u201cA certain Religious, Padre Callisto of Piacenza, was\npreaching at that time in Naples. Vernazza went to him and said:\n\u2018Father, these Neapolitans are a haughty people, and refuse to bend so\nlow as to found hospitals. But during last night the thought came to me\nthat if a person refuses to mount ten steps--it is still possible to\nget him to go up fifteen; and when such a person had done the latter,\nhe would find that he had unconsciously mounted the ten as well. Now I\ncannot discover a more humiliating act than the accompanying of those\nwho have been condemned to death, on their way to execution; and in\nthis city they are led to the gallows with their minds in a state of\ndesperation and without any one to comfort them. Well, then, do this.\nPreach to the people and tell them that the very first men of Naples\nhave been to see you, with a view to founding a society for escorting\nthese unhappy persons; and say to them: \u201cLet him who cares to enter\nthis society, come to me, to be inscribed on the rolls in a secrecy so\ncomplete that even a husband shall be unable to tell his wife.\u201d\u2019 And\nPadre Callisto, after hearing these words, did, devoted man that he\nwas, his very best, and with such good effect that many went to have\nthemselves inscribed. \u201cBut many of those Neapolitan nobles reproved\nhim, saying: \u2018Perchance you think yourself still in your Lombardy! We\nare nobles, and we refuse to form an escort for these culprits.\u2019 And\nhe would answer: \u2018If your Lordship does not care to go, do not go. It\nwas the very first men of Naples who sought me out, for the purpose of\ninstituting this society.\u2019 And thus it was actually founded, and indeed\nbecame very numerous and much honoured; and those unhappy men received\nmuch comfort. And later on, this same society proceeded to found the\nHospital.\u201d[317]\n\nThere is one repulsive feature in this story. For if the declaration\nthat the very first men of the city had visited the preacher was a\nstatement that damaged no one; which but anticipated what actually\noccurred soon after; and was the means for the effecting of two works,\nprofoundly useful to all concerned in them and which could not,\notherwise, at that time and place, have been carried out at all: yet\nit was a clear untruth. But all the rest, how admirable it is! Moral,\nand indeed physical courage; cool-headed, humorous, manly because\nunflinching, and yet quite uncynical and hopeful, knowledge of the\npetty perversities of the human heart; and entirely devoted, slow\nexcogitation, concentration of will, and toughly resisting perseverance\nin a work of the purest philanthropy: all this and much else is visibly\npresent.\n\n\n3. _Ettore\u2019s Will of 1517._\n\nIt may well have been after his return from this journey that Vernazza\ndrew up the Will which we still possess, dated 7th November 1517,\nand which is interesting in several respects.[318] For one thing, he\norders his body to be buried in the Church of the SS. Annunziata,--the\nHospital Church, and leaves a legacy for Masses \u201cto the Friars of the\nAnnunziata of Genoa.\u201d[319] And he leaves a similar bequest to the\nBenedictines of San Nicol\u00f2 in Boschetto. It is clear that he wanted to\nbe buried in the same Hospital Church as Catherine, and had a devotion\nsimilar to hers for the Pilgrimage Church upon the hill.\n\nSecondly, there are careful records and provisions concerning his\nthree children. As to his two eldest, Tommasa (Battista) and Catetta\n(Daniela), he simply looks back and \u201cdeclares that he gave to his\ntwo daughters that are in the Monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie,\nto them or to the said Monastery, three thousand Genoese pounds from\nhis own property, and two hundred pounds in addition,--(the latter)\nspent upon their rooms, habits, and other requisites.\u201d And that \u201cthese\nsums are to be counted as taking the place of dowries which would\nhave accrued to them\u201d (in case of marriage). But as to the youngest,\nGinevrina, he looks both back and forwards. \u201cThe same Testator is well\naware that he placed the said Ginevrina in the Monastery of Saint\nAndrew,[320] that she might grow up with good morals and in the fear of\nGod, since Testator was unable to keep her by him, having very often\nbeen obliged, for the transaction of business in favour of the poor\nand for other charitable works, to proceed to Rome and other places;\nand that there existed written directions (of his) in the hands of the\nNuns, as to Ginevrina being free, in due time and at the proper age, to\nchoose either to serve God (in Religion), or to marry according to the\nsocial rank of the Testator.\u201d And he confirms a legacy of \u00a3500, already\npromised by him to Ginevrina \u201cas appears from a certain document signed\nby the Abbess of the said Monastery of Saint Andrew\u201d: this money\nbeing no doubt in addition to another sum already paid by him to the\nConvent; and the whole is evidently intended to pay for Ginevrina\u2019s\nkeep, if necessary for life, in case she neither entered Religion nor\nmarried. \u201cIn case of her becoming a Nun and making her Profession in\nthe said Monastery, he leaves her \u00a3100, for the adapting and furnishing\nof one room for her use; nor can these \u00a3100 be spent otherwise.\u201d And\nif she chooses to wed, the Protectors of the Incurables, his Executors\nand Heirs, \u201care to marry her to some young man of good reputation and\nbehaviour, apt at managing his own affairs and at earning money,--all\nthis as perfectly as possible, according to the judgment of the said\nProtectors.\u201d If she thus marries with their consent, she is to have\n\u00a33,000 for her dowry; but if she marries without it, she is to have\nonly \u00a31,500.\n\nHere we note Ettore\u2019s high esteem for business capabilities: they are\nto be required of his possible son-in-law, as one of the conditions for\ngaining the full dowry; and the curiously unmodern certainty with which\nhe assumes that his still quite young daughter will desire, should she\nbecome a Nun, to do so at Sant\u2019 Andrea, and, should she neither wed\nnor enter Religion, is sure to care to live on for life in this one\nconvent. As a matter of fact Ginevrina, who was evidently very happy at\nSant\u2019 Andrea, took the veil there, still during her father\u2019s lifetime,\nhence within seven years of this date, as Sister Maria Archangela.[321]\n\nAnd thirdly, we get the striking provision that \u201cany member of the\nSociety of Priests and Laymen\u201d who administer the Hospital for\nIncurables, \u201cshall have the use of the furniture of the Testator (there\nremaining), on condition that such member live in this Hospital or in\nthat of the Pammatone (hard by), and not otherwise.\u201d He thus comes back\nhere, once again, to one of the deepest convictions of his life: that\nonly by actually living amongst and with the poor, poor yourself; only\nby doing the work which the right hand finds to do, with such might\nand thoroughness that both hands, indeed the whole man, body and soul,\nare drawn into, and are, as it were, coloured by it: that only by such\nfraternal-paternal sympathetic identification with its object can such\nservice really rise above the dreary perfunctoriness and the ghastly\noptimism of mere officialism, and have the fruitfulness begotten only\nby life directly touching life. And here Catherine\u2019s spirit and\nexample, her long life in the very midst of the great Hospital close at\nhand, are once more fully apparent.\n\n\n4. _Ettore in the Genoese prisons._\n\nAnd, about this time, Vernazza introduced into Genoa the practice and\nSociety which he had first founded in Naples. It was carried out,\nhere also, in the profoundest secrecy. His \u201cCompany of St. John the\nBaptist Beheaded\u201d consisted of himself and three companions: Salvage,\nLomellino, and Grimaldo. The Lomellini now owned Giuliano\u2019s former\nPalace in the Via S. Agnese, and the Grimaldi were one of the great\nGuelph families of Genoa. These four \u201ctook a house with a garden, in\nan out-of-the-way position; and there they started their association.\nAnd ever after, when the members met, they always prayed for these\ntheir four founders; and always, my Father being dead, began with his\nname: \u2018Dominus Hector de Vernatia requiescat in pace.\u2019\u201d \u201cI once,\u201d adds\nBattista, \u201casked the priest who was their Confessor: \u2018What matters do\nthey discuss, when they are thus assembled?\u2019 But he answered: \u2018I may\nnot tell\u2019; and put on a particular expression and said: \u2018The Hospital\nfor Incurables has only ten thousand lire, and it spends twenty-six\nthousand. And the _Giuseppine_ and the _Convertite_\u2019 (two other\nfavourite good works of Vernazza) \u2018have also to be provided for!\u2019\u201d[322]\nEvidently the subject-matter of all this elaborate secrecy consisted\nin plans and means for aiding the condemned (often enough innocent\nor but politically guilty persons) and benefiting the poor; and the\nprivacy was an imperious necessity in those harsh, turbulent and\nsuspicious times. It was Vernazza\u2019s own Roman patron and collaborator,\nthe Neapolitan Cardinal Caraffa, who later on, as Pope, imprisoned\nfor two years (1557-1559), in the Castle of St. Angelo, the great and\nsaintly Cardinal Morone, on ungrounded suspicion of heresy; and it was\nhis other patron and most intimate fellow-worker, the Genoese Cardinal\nSauli, who, later on, was himself tortured and put to death, the victim\nof political hatred and suspicion, in his own native city.\n\nAnd now, (conversely from 1461, when a Fregoso Doge had driven out an\nAdorno,) an Adorno Doge had just driven out and exiled a Fregoso, and\nhad executed Paolo da Novi. And Vernazza \u201cknew well a close friend of\nthis Doge Adorno, one who indeed had helped him to his dignity. And\nyet afterwards they became mortal enemies, and the Doge condemned his\nformer close friend to death. Now this man having been,\u201d continues\nBattista, \u201cattended by some one all night, who tried to comfort him\nand bring him to patience, the poor prisoner somehow derived no\nconsolation from his attendant\u2019s endeavours, but went on repeating:\n\u2018When I remember all that I have done for him\u2026!\u2019 And it was impossible\nto quiet him. Then he who was spending the wakeful night with him,\nhaving noted that all his words had been hitherto of no avail, inspired\nby God, took another way and said: \u2018Indeed and indeed you are right,\u2019\nand made himself infirm with the infirm, and echoed all that the\nprisoner said, making it appear as though he himself, in a similar\ncase, would be likely to act identically. And then, and only then,\nthe condemned man began to feel relief, and started the telling of\nhis own trouble. And when his companion had agreed to all his points,\nand at last noticed that the prisoner had thoroughly ventilated all\nhis grievance, he said: \u2018Indeed, my dear brother, you do not merit\nthis death; but reflect whether, before these occurrences, you did not\nperform some action which merited it.\u2019 Then the latter reconsidered\nhis case, and said at last: \u2018Yes,--I killed a man.\u2019 And his companion\nreplied: \u2018Behold, my brother, the true cause of your death\u2019; and added\nother most appropriate words with such good effect that the man became\nprofoundly contrite and died in the very best dispositions of soul.\u201d\n\u201cNow I think,\u201d comments Battista, \u201cthat the companion was a member of\nthe Society of St. John Baptist, and was, indeed, my Father himself;\nsince my Father told me the story too much in vivid detail (_troppo per\nsottile_) for him to have been only a reporter. I believe that, to this\nhour, this society is carrying on the same kind of work.\u201d[323]\n\nHere again we have the same irrepressible, humorously resourceful,\ntenderly shrewd and world-experienced service of God, in and\nthrough His image, in any and every fellow-man; the same breadth\nin thoroughness; the same universality working itself out, and\nachieving its substance and self-consciousness, in the particular,\nas we saw at work in Naples. And this activity, all but its humour,\nrecalls the soaring, world-embracing spirit of Catherine absorbed in\nself-identification with the pestiferous woman\u2019s dying aspirations and\nwith the cancer-disfigured navvy\u2019s preoccupations for his little wife.\n\n\nVIII. ETTORE AGAIN IN NAPLES; HIS DEATH IN GENOA; PECULIARITIES OF HIS\nPOSTHUMOUS FAME.\n\n\n1. _Naples and the Signora Lunga._\n\nIt must have been before this prison experience, for Ottaviano\nFregoso was still Doge, that Vernazza was again in Naples, and that a\nthoroughly characteristic, romantic little episode occurred, which not\nall her seventy-one years of convent life, and the sixty years that had\nelapsed since its happening, prevent Battista from recounting with a\ndelightfully entire sympathy.\n\nHere in Naples, then, \u201che joined hands with a certain rich lady,\ncalled the Signora Lunga, for the purpose of procuring as many things\nas possible\u201d for the institutions which he himself had founded or\noccasioned. This lady, a Spaniard, had been the wife (she was now\nthe widow) of Giovanni Lungo or Longo, President of the Sacred\nCouncil.[324] \u201cThey went together from house to house, begging for\nmattresses\u201d for the Hospital. \u201cAnd this lady now withdrew from the\nworld at large, and lived in that Hospital, and governed and ruled it;\nand combined with this the execution of other works of mercy. And she\nhad so great a devotion for my Father, that she was wont to say to\nhim: \u2018If you were to tell me to cut and wound my own person, indeed I\nwould straightway do it.\u2019 But on Fregoso writing and pressing him to\nreturn to Genoa, Vernazza wrote back, that if he, the Doge, promised\nto be favourable to him, and to help him in a good work which he had\nin his mind, he, Vernazza, would come at once. And the Doge wrote back\nthat he would do all that Vernazza wished. And then, one morning early\u201d\n(no doubt at dawn), \u201cnot wishing that the Signora Lunga should see him\ndepart, he got into the saddle. And she, by good chance, saw him, and\nasked him: \u2018Where are you going?\u2019 And he struck his spurs into his\nmule: \u2018To Genoa,\u2019 he cried; and flew away; and never saw the Signora\nLunga any more.\u201d[325]\n\nSomething fresh and bracing breathes and beats here still. We\nhave here the same man who, devoted in every good and filial way\nto Catherine, had yet left her, no doubt then also on an errand of\nlarge-hearted mercy, even in those last days of her life; who now,\nonce again, breaks suddenly away; and who does so again at the call of\nsouls entirely without conventional claims upon him, and who are quite\nunable to repay him with anything that merely drifting nature ever can\nhold dear. But here the relation is evidently not that of a man towards\na woman much older than himself, and of the spiritual discipleship\nof a relatively inexperienced soul towards one already far advanced\nin sanctity: it is clearly one of at least parity of age,--perhaps,\nindeed, the woman was the younger of the two,--and of largely equal\ncompanionship, which would presumably, unchecked, have easily led on\nto an entirely honourable and happy marriage. And thus, once again,\nhis devotedness had to live and thrive on concrete, untransferable\nrenouncements and sacrifices claimed by his true self in that unique\nmoment and situation: and this too although he will have been at\nleast tempted wistfully to try and delude himself with the monstrous\nsuperstition of an automatic sanctity, a merely theoretic and yet\nsomehow real heroism.\n\n\n2. _The Plague and Ettore\u2019s death in Genoa, June 1524._\n\n\u201cAnd, arrived in Genoa,\u201d Vernazza \u201crevealed the secret of his heart\nto the Doge, and his Lordship gave him seven thousand lire and the\nPrivilege,\u201d--the latter being necessary, \u201csince no one cared to\nhave the Lazaretto\u201d (for this was Vernazza\u2019s project) \u201cin proximity\nto their villas,\u201d and hence the Government had to insist upon its\nfoundation upon the least inconvenient of the various possible sites.\nAnd Vernazza in consequence \u201cbegan to construct a great building for\nthe poor victims of the Plague, and presented it with an endowment of\none hundred shares of St. George\u2019s, leaving them to multiply, so that\nat his death they had increased by eleven shares; and now\u201d (in 1581)\n\u201cthey have reached a great number of thousands of pounds.\u201d And after\ncontinuing with an account of his further Bank dispositions, and of\nhis early attempts to help the poor (already given by us), Battista\nfinishes up this part of her account by declaring: \u201che was wont to go\nabout saying, with conviction and great confidence, that he hoped all\nthings from God; and that, whenever he put his hand to anything, God\nput the yeast into that paste.\u201d[326]\n\nAnd her mention of the Lazaretto then leads her on to the final, still\nvivid and yet self-restrained, account of her father\u2019s death. \u201cThe\nPlague being very severe (_calda_) in Genoa,\u201d--it was past mid-June\n1524,--\u201che came to visit me, and said to me: \u2018What do you think I had\nbetter do? I am determined in no manner to forsake the poor. Do you\nthink I had better go about on horseback or on foot? In which way do\nyou think I would be safest from infection?\u2019 \u2018Oh, Father,\u2019 I said,\n\u2018here we are coming to the Feast of the Baptist, and are at the highest\nof the heat; and you are determined to go amongst them?\u2019 And he: \u2018And\nis it my fate, to hear such things from you? How truly happy should I\nbe, if I were to die for the poor!\u2019 Then I, seeing so much fortitude\nin that holy soul, said to him: \u2018Father, go.\u2019 But he was not content\nwith looking after the Lazaretto: I think that he scoured the country\nfar and wide. And hence he caught the infection. And on the\u201d (Eve of)\n\u201cthe Feast of the Nativity of St. John Baptist,\u201d June 23, \u201che confessed\nand communicated. And in three days he quietly fell asleep in the\nLord.\u201d[327]\n\nSurely rarely has so noble a finish been so nobly told! And two things\nin particular are deserving of special notice. First, there is here\nagain that characteristic combination of quiet reflective common-sense\nand self-oblivious devotedness. Who could anticipate that the man\nwho so carefully weighed the respective risks of different methods\nof visiting the sick, would, at the same time, be full of a glad\nwillingness, indeed desire, to die for them? Yet not only does this\nrich soul exhibit such a living paradox, with an apparent ease and\nspontaneity, but it is this very extraordinary variety in unity that is\nan operative cause and element both of the greatness of the act and of\nits appealingness.\n\nAnd secondly, it is, I think, not far-fetched to find in this heroic\ndeath-ride, if not a direct or even a conscious effect, yet at all\nevents an impressive illustration of, and practical parallel to,\nCatherine\u2019s teaching as to Heaven being already present everywhere\nwhere pure love energizes, and to her picture of the soul\u2019s glad\nPurgatorial plunge. We know that it was Vernazza himself who, say in\n1497, drew forth from her that teaching; and we shall find that it\nwas predominantly he who so carefully registered for us in writing\nthose numerous, vivid picturings of the soul\u2019s joyously voluntary\nself-dedication to suffering and apparent death. And whether at the\nmoment fully conscious of this or not, his act of some twenty years\nlater illustrates and embodies that teaching; and that teaching again\nuniversalizes and brings home to us this action. High on horseback he\ngoes forth, the strong, sound-bodied, whole-hearted man, deliberately\nsure of finding and of bringing Heaven, wheresoever pure love may be\nwanted and may joyously appear: joyously fruitful, amidst the very\nghastliness of death. And he is rapidly brought low, first on to his\nbed of sickness, and in a few days into the grave. Indeed he himself\nhad, by his own act, gladly accepted, we may say willed, all this: he\nhimself had cast himself down and away into that deep common fosse,\namongst the many thousands of his ever-obscure and now disfigured\nfriends and fellow-dead.\n\n\n3. _His posthumous fame; its unlikeness to Catherine\u2019s celebrity._\n\nFor so it was indeed. Instead of burial in the Pammatone Church, under\nthe same roof with his saintly inspirer, the poor pestilential body was\nburied away, amongst the whole army of others who, like himself, had\ndied of the Plague, without a stone or token of any kind, to mark where\nthis simple hero lay. Nor was it till 1633, over a century later, that\na statue was erected to him at his Lazaretto. For the bust in the rooms\nof his \u201cCompagnia del Mandiletto\u201d is hardly older; and the hideous\ngaunt plaster statue in the Albergo dei Poveri is no doubt much younger\nstill.\n\nOnly in 1867, on June 23, the anniversary of the day on which he\nprepared himself to die, was a memorial erected to him which is truly\nworthy of the man. Santo Varni\u2019s more than life-size marble statue,\nwhich represents Vernazza seated, a strongly built man still in his\nyears of vigour, with a head and countenance striking because of\ntheir lofty brow, powerful chin, spiritual, mobile lips, large, keen,\nfar-outward-looking eyes; and with thoroughly individual, operative\nyet sensitive hands, the left extended open, as though to give and\never again to give, and the right reposing upon the case containing\nthe Chart of the Hospital\u2019s foundation: stands, a striking symbol,\nin the vestibule of the Hospital for Incurables which he founded,\nwhere for fifteen years he lived, and where he died.[328] One would\nbe glad to think that the likeness of this admirable work of art\nreposed upon grounds more direct than one or other of the very late\nand unworthy representations that preceded it; the authentic portrait\nof his daughter Battista,[329] who may, after all, have been unlike\nhim in looks; and the sympathetic imagination of a great artist. It\nwas Vernazza himself who prevented any contemporary representation of\nhis own features. For Battista tells us, in her letter of 1581, \u201che\nalso mortified himself in any inclination to honour. Thus, as is well\nknown, when the Lazaretto had been erected, and he was asked to have\nhis portrait painted to be placed there, he answered: \u2018I do not want\nsmoke,\u2019 and refused to act as he was bidden.\u201d[330]\n\nNow here we cannot but find a contrast between Catherine and Ettore;\nyet it only concerns their posthumous earthly fate and fame. A picture\nof Catherine was, no doubt, no more painted in her lifetime with her\nknowledge than was a portrait of Ettore. Yet we know that, in her case,\na picture was painted, if not secretly during her lifetime, in any case\nby some eyewitness, and not more than eighteen months after her death;\nand a popular religious Cultus to her sprang up and grew, on occasion\nof that early opening of her coffin. But Ettore has to wait over a\ncentury for his first artistic embodiment, and of religious Cultus\nthere was never any question.[331] Whence this difference? Have we any\nkind of reason for suspecting Ettore\u2019s heroism, indeed sanctity of life\nand death? Was he indeed clearly much the lesser in the Kingdom of God\nthan was his friend?\n\nThe question, it will be noted, does not imply any criticism of\nthe Church\u2019s wise requirement of a previous Cultus, as one of the\nconditions for the introduction of any and every Process; still less\nis there any disposition to call in question the choice of Catherine\nfor saintly honours, a choice which this whole book would hope to\ndemonstrate as particularly courageous, wise and indeed providential.\nThe point raised concerns simply the psychology of popular devotion,\nand the human reason why, given that one was certainly a Saint and the\nother was presumably another one, there is this marked contrast in the\nposthumous history of these two lives.\n\nNow if the question be taken thus, the answer can hardly be doubtful.\nCertainly not because of her profoundly original doctrine, by which\nCatherine is speculatively more interesting and humanly more complete\nthan Vernazza, was Catherine prized and preferred to Vernazza by the\ncrowd. Nor did they single her out precisely because of her works\nand long life of mercy, for Vernazza\u2019s labours of this kind no doubt\nexceeded Catherine\u2019s, both in their variety and in their visible\nextension. But it was the psycho-physical peculiarities of the life\nof Catherine, and the more or less complete incorruption of the body:\nthese two things, neither of which has any necessary connection with\nthat faithful and heroic use of free-will and that spirit and grace\nof God in which the whole substance of sanctity consists, which, each\nleading on and back to and strengthening the impression and tradition\nof the other, determined the outbreak and onflow of popular devotion\nin the one case, and the absence of which prevented the growth of any\nsuch cultus in the other. And thus we have here one more instance of\nthe pathetic irony of fate, or rather one of those many mysterious\noperations of the divine will which, under the ebb and flow of\ninfluences that seem merely human and deteriorative, works in history\nfor the slow upward-raising of our poor kind.\n\nWhen the well-known ecstatic Augustinian Nun, Anne Catharine Emmerich,\ndied at D\u00fclmen, in Westphalia, on February 6, 1824, her remains also\nwere not long allowed to rest undisturbed in the grave. Already in\nmid-March the poetess Luise Hensel, who had much loved and venerated\nher, caused the grave to be opened quite privately, in hopes of\nfinding the body still incorrupt, and of once more being able to gaze\non that striking countenance. And a few days later, on March 21 and\n22, the grave and coffin were again, this time officially, opened. In\nboth cases the body was found still incorrupt, and two pale red spots\nappeared on the cheeks. But when, on October 6, 1858, the grave was\nopened a third and last time, nothing was found of the coffin but\none nail, and the body was now represented only by so many separate\nbones.[332] Now when, some twenty years ago, I visited D\u00fclmen in the\ncompany of a distinguished M\u00fcnster Priest, the latter told me, as we\nstood together by the grave-side, that this discovery had greatly\nchecked the survivals or beginnings of any such local and popular\ncultus as had been expected and hoped for by Anne Catharine\u2019s, mostly\ndistant or foreign, admirers.\n\nSimilar cases it would be easy to multiply; and they all point to the\ngreat advantage, probably to the actually determining incentive, which\naccrued to the Cultus of Catherine, in that her body continued more\nor less incorrupt, and thus added a sensible marvel after death to\nthe sensible marvels of her fasts and ecstasies during life. Whereas\nCatharine Emmerich\u2019s analogous psycho-physical condition during\nlife was not thus reinforced by an unusual physical condition after\ndeath. And Ettore, again, had evidently nothing physically, or even\npsycho-physically, abnormal about him, either in life or in death.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nBATTISTA VERNAZZA\u2019S LIFE\n\n\nINTRODUCTORY.\n\nWe have, in the characters described in the previous Chapter, dwelt\nupon figures remarkably unlike Catherine, on her psycho-physical side.\nYet it would be only too easy for us now-a-days, by dwelling too much\nupon the foregoing contrast, to grow actually unfair to Catherine\u2019s\nkind of temperament and health, and to her mode of apprehending\ntruth and of attaining sanctity. We might thus come to overlook or\nto underestimate the important fact that certain psycho-physical,\nneural peculiarities or states most certainly constitute the general\nantecedents, concomitants or consequences (probably, indeed, one of the\nnecessary though secondary conditions), not indeed of sanctity, but of\nat least some forms of the contemplative gift, habit, and attainment.\nWe might, too, forget that neither this contemplative gift itself, nor\neven those neural peculiarities, are at all incompatible with great\npractical shrewdness and an unusually large external activity; indeed\nthat such rare and costly contemplative picturings and symbolizations\nof the Unseen are, when true and deep, means and helps for the\ncontemplative, in his own life and often still more in his influence\nupon others, towards a great recollection and concentration, which\nwould not only turn the soul away from the dispersion and feverishness\nthat sets in towards the close of external action, but would also bring\nit back renewed to such outward-moving, joyful-humble creativeness, as\nwholesome recollection itself requires. For without such contact with\nthe material and the opposition of external action, recollection grows\ngradually empty; and without recollection, external action rapidly\nbecomes soul-dispersive. Hence it is plain, that the true significance\nand living system of any such deep soul may be on too large a scale not\nto require, for its due exhibition, that we survey it in connection\nwith some other supplementary life,--like unto some Gobelin design or\ncloth-pattern, so large as to require two contiguous walls or two human\nfigures to show its totality by means of their combination.\n\nNow Vernazza the father, who throughout his life possessed the\nmost robust and normal health, can fairly be taken as Catherine\u2019s\nsupplementary figure, for the years when ill-health was limiting her\nnormal range of energies, on their operatively outgoing, philanthropic\nside; and is thus a living protest against isolating Saints\u2019 lives from\ntheir complementary extensions and effects. But Battista, his daughter,\ngives us, in her own person and up to the end of her life, an example\nof the combination and stimulating interaction of the Contemplative\nand the Practical, the Transcendent and the Immanental, the heroically\nnormal and Universal and the tenderly Personal, indeed the more or less\npsycho-physically peculiar. Catherine was the greater, more original,\nand more winning Contemplative, and Ettore was more massively Practical\nthan was Battista. Yet Battista possessed both gifts, from early\ntimes up to the end, apparently unclouded and unbroken by any kind of\nincapacitation.\n\n\nI. BATTISTA\u2019S LIFE, FROM APRIL 1497 TO JUNE 1510.\n\nWe have already seen how Ettore\u2019s eldest child was born on April 15,\n1497, and was held at the font by Catherine, receiving, however,\nthe name of Tommasa, after the God-father, the celebrated Doctor of\nLaw, Tommaso Moro. Giuliano was still alive, but already gravely\nill. Nothing could well prove more clearly Vernazza\u2019s closeness of\nfriendship for the Adorna and for Moro than his making them thus his\nfirst-born\u2019s God-parents. And Moro\u2019s subsequent history makes this, his\nintimate collocation and spiritual affinity with Catherine a matter\nsuggestive of much reflection.\n\nWith her beautiful young mother still alive and living at home with\nher, Tommasa, a child of precocious intelligence, took to writing\nverse of various kinds, as early as at ten years of age. Vallebona\nquotes, from Semeria\u2019s _Secoli Christiani della Liguria_, ten short\nlines written by her at that age, and which he apparently holds to have\nbeen addressed to her God-mother. They are, however, too vague and\nhyperbolical for one to be sure as to whom they are dedicated; her own\nmother or the Blessed Virgin would, I think, fit the case respectively\nas well as, or better than, Catherine. The \u201cshort days\u201d prophesied\nfor herself by the little girl, were destined to amount to ninety\nyears![333]\n\nOn her mother dying, some time in 1508 or 1509,--Bartolommea can\nhardly have been more than thirty-two years of age, and Ettore some\nsix years older,--Vernazza decided, as we know, against continuing an\nestablishment of his own and keeping his three daughters with him. It\nis certain from his Wills that he had no near female relative whom he\ncould have asked to come and help, or to take, the children; and clear\nthat he was determined not to marry again, so as to remain completely\nfree for his philanthropic work. And hence he was driven to the\nalternative of boarding the girls in the two convents that we know.\n\nAnd already on June 24, 1510, on the feast of her father\u2019s favourite\nSaint and prison-work Patron, Tommasa received the habit of an\nAugustinian Canoness of the Lateran, and changed her name to Battista.\nCatherine had still not quite twelve weeks to live, and may well have\nbeen deeply interested in her God-daughter\u2019s taking of the veil in\nthat very Convent and at the very age where and when she herself had,\nhalf-a-century before, desired to receive it.[334] We cannot but feel\nthat the Superiors were wise who, at that earlier date, had found\nthirteen too young an age for even an Italian, so early physically\nmature, and a Catherine, so little suited for marriage, to take even\nthis first and revocable step in the Religious life; and we would\ndoubtless have experienced some uneasiness at the time when Tommasa\nwas somehow allowed to take this identical step at the very same age.\nYet we have, as we shall see, full and absolutely conclusive, because\nfirst-hand, evidence, that every one concerned in the case acted with\ntrue insight. Rarely indeed can a woman have been more emphatically in\nher right place, than Battista during her seventy-seven years at Santa\nMaria delle Grazie. And this complete and comfortable appropriateness\nof vocation no doubt helped her large, balanced, virile mind to feel,\nwith the Church, that such a vocation is but one amongst the numberless\nforms of even heroic devotedness, a devotedness of which the essence is\ninterior and is capable of being exercised, and which requires to be\nrepresented in every honest circumstance and calling of God\u2019s great,\nmany-coloured world.\n\nOf Catetta\u2019s further history, beyond her reception of the veil in the\nsame Convent, under the name of Daniela, some time before November\n1517, and of Ginevrina\u2019s later lot, beyond her becoming a Cistercian\nNun, under the name of Maria Archangela, at Sant\u2019 Andrea, some time\nbetween 1517 and 1524, I have been unable to discover anything. But\nas to Battista, I wish to dwell upon three characteristic episodes of\nher long life; they all three throw much light both upon Catherine and\n(still more) upon the whole question of Mysticism.\n\n\nII. BATTISTA AND HER GOD-FATHER, TOMMASO MORO.\n\nThe first episode illustrates the rigoristic side of the\npre-Reformation Catholic temper and teaching, and the terrible\ncomplications, perplexities and pitfalls of those strenuous, confusing\ntimes. For we must now move on fifteen further years from that\ninterview with her father, a few days before his death, in June 1524,\nto reach this event, the first fresh one in Battista\u2019s life of which we\nhave a record.\n\n\n1. _The early stages of Lutheranism and Calvinism._\n\nThe Religious Revolution had now well nigh reached its culmination.\nBattista\u2019s father had only lived to see what may rightly be termed\nthe first step in the Teutonic stage and element of the movement, a\nstage which, in spite of its political and social, indeed religious,\nviolences and fanaticisms,--and even these came mostly after Vernazza\u2019s\ndeath,--retained, if in large part illogically yet with great practical\nadvantage, a considerable portion of the old Catholic convictions\nand spiritual attitude. Luther had indeed, as we saw, published his\nTheses in 1517, and Pope Leo X had condemned nearly one-half of them\nin 1520 in his Bull of Excommunication. And Melanchthon, the mild and\ndeeply learned, had also broken with the Old Church, and had begun, in\n1521, the publication of his _Loci_. But an earnest Catholic (in this\ncase a Teutonic) Reformer had become Pope, in the person of Adrian\nDedel of Utrecht (Hadrian VI), in 1522, 1523. And in the very year of\nEttore\u2019s heroic death, Erasmus, proving, under the stress of the times,\nsubstantially true to the Old Faith, was writing against Luther; whilst\nin Italy, Vernazza\u2019s old patron, Cardinal Caraffa, was helping to found\nthe Theatine Order.\n\nBut within the next fifteen years matters move on and further. For\nfirst the Teutonic stage of the Revolution takes its second step, and\nhardens, and formally and permanently organizes itself; whilst its\nsocially anarchical effects reach their zenith. For there are the\nPeasants\u2019 War and Luther\u2019s marriage in 1525; and the capture and the\nsack of Rome by the Imperial (largely Lutheran) troops in 1527; and the\nRevolutionists\u2019 assumption of the name of \u201cProtestants,\u201d at the Diet\nof Speyer, in 1529. And, on the Roman Church\u2019s part, the Capuchins are\nfounded in 1525, and the Barnabites in 1530. And this whole Teutonic\nstage of the Revolution can be taken as closed, for the time, by the\nterrible Saturnalia of the Anabaptists at M\u00fcnster, 1533-1535; the\nexecutions of the Catholic Humanists, Bishop Fisher and Chancellor\nMore, in England, 1535; and Erasmus\u2019s death in 1536.\n\nAnd the second element and stage, the Romanic Revolution, was now fully\nand independently at work, with its indefinitely greater coldness and\nlogical completeness, and its systematic antagonism to the Old Faith.\nAnd if the Saxon Mystical-minded Peasant-monk, Luther, stood at the\nhead and in the centre of the first movement, the Picardese bourgeois\nlawyer and Humanist, Calvin, stands now at the head of this second\nmovement. Born in 1509, he flees, now an avowed Protestant, in 1535 to\nBasle; and in the spring of 1536 publishes his _Institutio Religionis\nChristianae_, which was destined to remain his chief work.\n\nNow it was in the summer of that year that Calvin went to stay at the\nCourt of Ren\u00e9e de Valois, daughter of the French King Louis XII, and\nDuchess of Ferrara, who had already been gained over to the cause of\nthe Lutheran Reformers; and who was now influenced, by her grim,\nrelentless guest, to move still further away from the Old Church. And\nthough the Roman Inquisition succeeded in forcing Calvin to leave\nItaly, after not many weeks\u2019 stay: yet the cases of Vittoria Colonna,\nBernardino Occhino, and of our Tommaso Moro, show us all plainly,\nthough each differently, how complex and difficult, how obscure and\nfull of pitfalls, was the situation for even permanently loyal and\nindeed saintly, and still more for simply earnest and eager, souls.\nFor Vittoria Colonna, that truly saint-like daughter of the Church,\nnot only stays, during the following year, with the Duchess Ren\u00e9e at\nFerrara, and indeed stands God-mother to her daughter Eleonora (born\nJune 19, 1537), the child that, later on, became the friend of the poet\nTasso: but Vittoria is the close friend and confidante of that most\nzealous preacher, that restless, ardent, absolute-minded Bernardino\nOcchino, who, born in Siena in 1487, had joined the Franciscan\nReform, the later Capuchins, in 1534, and indeed, in 1539, became\ntheir General. It is to Vittoria indeed that, on his deciding not to\nobey the summons to Rome, there to defend himself against the (no\ndoubt, in part, unfair) attacks upon his teaching, he, in the night\nof August 22, 1542, before his flight and abandonment of his Order\nand of the Church, writes his still extant sad and saddening letter\nof self-exculpation.[335] But this latter catastrophe was not to take\nplace till three years after the date at which I would now linger.\n\n\n2. _Moro becomes a Calvinist: probable causes of this step._\n\nIt must, I think, have been through some influence emanating from the\nnot very far away Ferrara, that the Genoese Tommaso Moro was, just\nabout this time, carried away into Calvinism. We must not forget that,\ndeplorable as was such an aberration, there were two excuses for him,\nwhich would apply no doubt, in varying degrees, to many others even of\nthose who were, at this time, permanently lost to the Church.\n\nFor one thing the views held, and allowably held, during two or three\ngenerations, on points of Grace and Free-will, of Predestination and\nthe corruption of the natural man, by even those whom the Church\neventually raised to her Altars, were, as a matter of fact, less\nremoved from the Protestant Reformers\u2019 positions, than were probably\nany views (with the exception of the extreme Jansenist position) which\nhave prevailed in the Catholic Church since the Protestant Reformation.\nSt. Catherine, Moro\u2019s fellow God-parent, had expressed herself, in\ncertain moods, in so rigoristic a sense on these deep matters, as to\ninvite the comment of the Bollandist Sticker that these passages are\n_caute legenda_.[336] Yet Catherine, in speaking thus, simply resembled\nprobably all her really earnest contemporaries--witness the great Paris\nChancellor Jean Gerson, some time before, and the devoted Cardinals\nContarini and Morone and Vittoria Colonna, a little after Catherine\u2019s\nown zenith.[337]\n\nAgain, the practical, moral abuses were most real and often very\npressing; and whilst the numerous attempts at Reform extending now\nover a century (the Council of Constance had assembled in 1414) had\nemphasized this fact, they had also plainly shown, by their practical\nabortiveness, how very difficult the attainment of such a universally\ndesired Reform persisted in appearing, if there was to be no final\nbreach with Rome.\n\nAnd the fullest consequences of such a breach could not be present\nto the experience, or even to the imagination, of the first who made\nit, as they are to us, or even as they were after the second step of\nthe Romanic Revolution had been taken by Lelio Socino, the Sienese\nand his nephew Fausto Socino, the founders of Socinianism, who died\nrespectively in 1562 and 1604,--the former shortly after Occhino had\ndied, in 1560, miserably alone and out of the Catholic Roman Church.\n\n\n3. _Battista\u2019s letter to Moro, September 1537; its effect._\n\nNow it was on September 10, 1537, that his Augustinian God-daughter\nwrote, to her now Calvinist God-father, a letter which occupies five\npages of print in the fifth, a handsome octavo, edition of her works\npublished in Genoa in 1755. Though the earliest of all her extant,\nor at least of her printed, letters, it is evidently an answer to a\ncommunication of his, in which he had urged certain objections against\nthe Roman Church. And that communication must have been provoked by\na first letter from herself--a letter which, though probably less\ntheologically interesting and learned, will have been more uniformly\ntouching than the one preserved. Yet if that first note had clearly\nsucceeded in getting him to state his case, this second letter also,\nwe shall see, completely attained its still more important object.\n\nMoro had insisted that the Roman Church followed merely human\ninventions in the matter of (1) Fasting; (2) Confession; (3) the Real\nPresence; (4) Public Prayer and Psalmody; (5) Vows; and (6) Extreme\nUnction.--The order is curious, but is evidently not hers but his.\nExtreme Unction stands in the obvious position--at the end. The vows\nof Religion immediately precede it, probably because, at this time,\nthey typified something not only irrevocable but sepulchral to this\nardent Calvinist. Public Prayer and Psalmody would naturally precede\nthese vows, as an appropriate link between the life of the cloister,\nso largely given to the Divine Office, and the Real Presence, its\ncelebration being and requiring the most marked of all the exhibitions\nof Public Prayer. Confession would stand before the Real Presence,\nas being actually practised before the reception of Communion.\nAnd Fasting, finally, would precede Confession, and would, most\ncharacteristically, head the whole list, because the completest and\nmost universally binding of all Fasts is that which is antecedent to\nHoly Communion; and because, in beginning thus, Moro can start his\nattack on the Church by the criticism of something that is obviously\nand avowedly external.\n\nThe tone of Battista\u2019s answer is interesting throughout, for a double\nreason. There is in it a successful, very difficult combination of\nfilial respect and of lofty reproof; and there runs through all the\nargumentation a sort of legal hard-headedness, entirely in its place\non the lips of the lawyer\u2019s daughter in dealing with her lawyer\ncorrespondent. I give her answers to his second and fifth objections,\nsince the former is interesting as touching on the point of the\nobligation and frequency of Sacramental Confession, which has occupied\nus much in her God-mother\u2019s life; and the latter gives a vivid insight\ninto Battista\u2019s own deeply genuine and happy vocation.\n\nAs to Confession, she writes: \u201cYou hold one opinion, and the Church\nholds another; and to this Church it has not appeared good to constrain\nus to confess ourselves in public, nor always to manifest our whole\ninterior to any and every man who may reprehend us. In this latter case\nwe should have been left without any protection. You grudge obeying her\nonce a year; how then would you carry out the other plan? Certainly\nthe said Church would have but little authority if she could not lay\ndown ordinances, according to her own judgment, concerning the mode (of\nadministration and reception) of the Sacraments already ordained by\nChrist.\u201d\n\nAs to Vows, she finishes up by declaring: \u201cAccording to my humble\njudgment, that thing cannot be called slavery which a soul elects for\nitself, by an act of free choice alone, and with a supreme desire. And\nin this matter you really can trust me, since here I am, living under\nthe very test of experience, and yet I have no consciousness of being\nbound to any obligation: so little indeed that, if I had full licence\nfrom God to do all those things of which I have deprived myself by my\nvows, I would do neither more nor less than what I now am actually\ndoing; indeed no taste for anything beyond these latter things arises\nwithin me. How then do you come to give the name of servitude to that\nwhich gets embraced thus with supreme delight? Perchance you will say\n\u2018not every one is thus disposed.\u2019 My dear Sir: he who does not find\nthis inclination within him, let him not execute it. Neither Christ nor\nHis Church constrain any one in this matter.\u201d[338]\n\nThe effect of this homely and sensible, straightforward and firm,\nfirst-hand witness to a strong soul\u2019s full daily life of faith and\nself-expansion in and for Christ in His extension, the Old Church, was\nevidently decisive, perhaps immediate. It is at least certain that\nTommaso Moro came back to the Roman obedience; that he became and died\na Priest and Religious; and that his return is universally attributed\nto the instrumentality of this letter.[339]\n\n\nIII. BATTISTA\u2019S _COLLOQUIES_, NOVEMBER 1554 TO ASCENSION-DAY 1555.\n\nYet her letters form but a small part of the literary output of this\nmany-sided woman. Her printed writings fill six stout volumes, in\nall some 2,400 octavo pages, and fall into four chief divisions. The\nindependent verses consist only of four \u201cCanticles of Divine Love,\u201d\ntwelve \u201cSpiritual Canticles,\u201d and five \u201cSonnets.\u201d Yet even the second\ndivision, which alone fills quite five out of the six volumes, and\nconsists of Spiritual Discourses or Dissertations, contains much\nverse, since the Discourse (which invariably takes its title and\nstarting-point from some, originally or interpretatively, Mystical\nBiblical text) usually finishes up with a chapter of eight verses,\nin which she sums up metrically the doctrine which she has just\nexpounded in finely balanced and stately prose. Mostly proceeding\nfrom some Pauline, or, more often still, some Joannine text, these\nwritings evince throughout a fine Christian-Platonist breadth of\noutlook and concentration and expansion of devotional feeling, and\nhave much of that unfading freshness which appertains to the universal\nexperiences of religion, wherever these are experienced deeply and\nanew and are communicated largely in the form and tone of their actual\nexperimentation. These Discourses would also, of course, furnish all\nbut endless parallels and illustrations to Catherine\u2019s teachings.\n\nYet it is the last two divisions of Battista\u2019s writings which are\nthe most entirely characteristic and suggestive--her _Colloquies_\nand her _Letters_. As to the seventy-five pages of letters, I have\nalready given extracts from two, of the years 1581 and 1589, and shall\npresently give portions of two others, of the years 1575 and 1576. But\nin this section I want to translate and comment upon a considerable\nportion of her _Colloquies_, so interesting for various reasons, all\ndirectly connected with the subject of this book. These contemporary\nannotations occupy only eleven pages of print, but they constitute, I\nthink, one of the most instructive first-hand documents of mystical and\nreligious psychology in existence, and have nowhere, as yet, received\nany of the comparative and analytic study they so richly deserve.\n\nIt is but right to remember throughout, that even all her other\nwritings (including the Discourses which are so general and, in a\nmanner, quite public in their tone) were, with the sole exception of\nher Sonnets, none of them printed with her knowledge and consent. A\ncertain Secular Priest, Gaspare Scotto, did indeed print some at least\nof the Discourses, without her knowledge, during her long lifetime; but\nthe _Colloquies_ were certainly never meant for any eyes other than her\nown, and were doubtless not printed, or indeed known, until after her\ndeath. I suppose them to have first appeared in the collected edition\nof her works, published in 1602, fifteen years after her demise.\n\nNow these _Colloquies_ belong to three periods. The first set is timed\nvaguely _una volta_; and the third is also but approximately fixed;\nbut the second, by far the longest and most important series, is, at\nits main turning-points, dated with absolute precision. And since its\nauthenticity, the identity of the chronicler with the experiencing\nperson, and the complete contemporaneousness of the record, are all\nbeyond cavil or question (the majority of the entries were evidently\nput down by her on the very day, often probably within the hour, of the\ncessation of the experience thus chronicled)--the document can serve as\na simply first-hand illustration of, and commentary on, the analogous\nexperiences of Battista\u2019s God-mother, experiences which, in the latter\ncase, were nowhere recorded by their subject, nor indeed by others till\nprobably, in some cases, a considerable time after their occurrence.\nAnd if here again there can be no difficulty, for any sincere and\nconsistent believer, in holding that we have to do with enlightenments\nof the mind and stimulations of the affections and will, proceeding\nas truly from God as they led back to Him: we cannot but, here again,\nfind plentiful indications of the antecedent material, and of the\nco-operation, response, and special colour furnished throughout by the\nhuman subject\u2019s special sex and age, race and period, temperament,\ntraining, and reading. Not all the latter conditions put together would\nexplain even half of the total experience; yet had these conditions\nbeen different, the total experience would have differed, not indeed in\nits fundamental contents, yet in its special forms and applications. As\nmatters stand, these latter are often strikingly like those manifested\nin the teaching of Catherine, Battista\u2019s fellow-Genoese. I will now\ntake the nine most interesting days of this series,[340] stopping after\ncertain of them to point out parallels and peculiarities.\n\n\n1. _Experience of November 17, 1554._\n\n\u201cOn (Saturday) November 17, 1554\u201d (Battista was now fifty-seven and a\nhalf years old), \u201chaving, before Holy Communion, a great desire to\ndie to all things, I prayed with all my heart that God, in the most\nperfect manner possible, would slay me and unite me with Himself.\nAnd in so doing I renounced into His hands all myself and everything\nexisting under heaven, whilst electing God anew as my only Love, my\nonly Solace, my only Comfort, and my All. And I refused to accept\nevery consolation arising from such interiorness, however holy the\nlatter might be, except inasmuch as the consolation arises whilst the\ninterior is distinctly occupied with God, and does not turn its gaze\nupon itself or upon any (other) belov\u00e8d object. Even if I could enjoy\nall this, quite justly, till the day of judgment, I renounce it all.\nNothing pleases me, except my God. And if I were assured, which God\nforbid, of going (to abide) under Lucifer, still would I will, neither\nmore nor less than my God alone. And it would be grievous to me to\nembrace, even for one single hour, anything else but Him.--After this\nCommunion I remained with a most intense impression of renouncing,\nwith regard to all things and to all moments, all myself and every\nother thing that is lower than Thee; and with a determination to keep\nForty Days of silence, depriving myself during them, as far as my\nown will and inclination went, even of such reasoning as turned on\nreligious subjects.--And acting thus, by means of Thy grace alone, I\narrived, in my inner heart, at having no other actions left, except\nthose of adoring Thee and praying for all men. Whence it happened that\nI experienced the most quiet and consoling week that, possibly, I have\never had, up to this hour, in all my life.\u201d\n\nIt is clear that even the first part of this week\u2019s experience was\nnot written down later than at the end of that week; indeed it reads\nmore as if written down on at least two, and perhaps three, occasions.\nWe have here many close parallels to Catherine: to her exclamation\nof \u201cGod is my Being \u2026 my Delight\u201d; to the Divine Voice heard by her,\n\u201cI do not wish thee henceforth to turn thine eyes to right or left\u201d;\nto the question asked, and the interior answer heard, by her, as to\n\u201clove and union not being able to exist without a great contentment\nof soul\u201d; to her assertions that \u201cthe attribution to her own separate\nself of even one single meritorious act, would be to her as though a\nHell,\u201d and that \u201cshe would rather remain in eternal condemnation than\nbe saved by such an act of the separate self\u201d; to her Love saying\nwithin her, \u201cthat He wanted her to keep the Forty Days in His Company\nin the Desert\u201d; and to her declaration that she could not pray for\nVernazza and his fellow-disciples separately, but could only \u201cpresent\nthem\u201d collectively \u201cin His presence.\u201d And in Battista\u2019s phrase of\n\u201cgoing under Lucifer,\u201d we have again, if we take it together with the\nrenunciation of \u201call things lower than God,\u201d an illustration of those\nsayings of Catherine which I have grouped under the special category of\n\u201cup\u201d and \u201cabove.\u201d[341]\n\nAnd note, in Battista\u2019s record, how the contradiction, which appears\nbetween her affirmation of having love for God alone, and the admission\nthat she loved herself and other things (since she is determined not\nto let her mental gaze rest upon these latter beloved objects), is\nmore apparent than real. For the former love is the direct and central\nobject of her fully deliberate and free endeavours; the latter is\ninstinctive, continuous, inevitable, but, inasmuch as it now still\nremains actively willed at all, it is but the consequential and\nperipheral object of that willing. As in all deep religion there is\nhere an heroic willing at work to effect a genuine displacement of the\ncentre and object of interest; the system from being instinctively\nman-centred, becomes a freely willed God-centredness.\n\n\n2. _Experience of November 25, 1554._\n\n\u201cOn Sunday\u201d (November 25), \u201cthe Feast of St. Catherine\u201d (Virgin Martyr\nof Alexandria) \u201cwas being celebrated. And I communicated with new\nemotion. And when I received the Host, I willed Thee, my God, alone;\nrenouncing all the rest into Thy hands: I but desired to die and unite\nmyself with Thee. And I felt within me those colloquies of Thine own\nextreme love; and Thou didst say unto me, O my Joy, \u2018The thing that\nthou seekest is (already) produced eternally in My Divine Mind. Thou\ndesirest to feed on mutability, and I desire to feed thee on eternity.\u2019\nAnd I do not remember in what connection Thou didst say,\u2018 Ego ero\nmerces tua magna nimis\u2019 (Gen. xv, 1).\u201d\n\nHere, on her God-mother\u2019s Saint\u2019s day, we find that act of pure love\nat the moment of Holy Communion so dear to Catherine also; and we get\nhere, as in the previous group (but here, even on occasion of the Holy\nEucharist), prayer and aspiration directed to God pure and simple, or\nto God conceived as Love and Joy, precisely as in the Fiesca\u2019s ordinary\npractice.[342] And the inner voice, if it says deeply mystical things,\nalso directly quotes Scripture in Latin, whilst the scrupulous care of\nBattista, in registering her oblivion of the precise context in which\nthis quotation appeared, is interestingly characteristic of her nature\nand experience.\n\n\n3. _Experience of December (9?), 1554._\n\n\u201cOn Sunday\u201d (December 9?) \u201cI communicated; and I experienced within\nmyself the most tender colloquies of Thy Majesty, which said to me,\n\u2018The time will come when thou must be so occupied with Me--with My\nDivinity, My Infinity, My Glory--that, even if thou shouldst so wish,\nthou wouldest be unable to break off this preoccupation. I have elected\nthee from amongst thousands. I want to make thee My very Self.\u2019 \u2026 Then\nThou saidst unto me, \u2018I do not want thee to merit, but to return the\nlove which I ever bear thee.\u2019\u201d[343]\n\nHere we have parallels to Catherine\u2019s practice and declarations in\nBattista\u2019s ever-growing occupation with God; in her, at first sight,\nstrongly pantheistic, because apparently substantial, identification\nof her true self with God; and in her doctrine that God desires not\nthat we should merit, but that we should, by purely loving, make Him a\nreturn of His own pure love. And, as but an apparent contrast, note how\nhere it is God Who chooses out Battista\u2019s soul from amongst thousands;\nwhilst, with Catherine, we have herself instinctively choosing out\nGod, even were He, _per impossible_, like to one of the whole Court of\nHeaven (the angels, \u201cwhose number is thousands of thousands,\u201d Apoc. v,\n11). For the difference consists, at bottom, only in the fact that each\ndwells, in these special instances, upon the other half of the complete\nmystic circle of the divine and human intercourse. The same complete\nscheme is, in reality, experienced and proclaimed both by the widow\nand the nun,--indeed God\u2019s prevenient election of the soul, and His\nspecial attention to it, is even more strongly emphasized by the older\nwoman: \u201cIt appears to me, indeed, that God has no other business than\nmyself.\u201d[344]\n\nRemark, too, how here again an unmistakable text of Scripture appears\nas part of the words heard by Battista. But since it is a composite\nquotation--\u201cI have elected thee,\u201d coming from Isa. xliii, 10; xliv, 1;\nxlviii, 10; and \u201celected among thousands,\u201d coming from Cant. v, 10,\nwhere the elect is (as with Catherine) the Bridegroom, and not (as with\nBattista) the Bride,--therefore, no doubt, it does not appear in Latin\nor with any reference.\n\n\n4. _Experience of December 16, 1554._\n\n\u201cThe following Sunday\u201d (December 16) \u201cI communicated with a\ngreater desire for Union than usual, and with a more detailed sight\nconcerning it. And after this communion I prayed in such a state of\nUnion,--without any means either of thoughts or of anything else that\ncould be made to intervene, remaining naked in Thy bosom as I have\nbeen from eternity. And whilst praying thus, I felt that certain words\nwere being spoken within me, the gist of which (_la sentenza_) seems\nto me to have been, that my prayer did not reach to the reality of\nUnion itself. So that there then came to my mind that which Paul says,\nRom. viii (26), that \u2018we do not know how to pray _sicut oportet_.\u2019 And\nThou saidst to me that, above all understanding of mine, Thou wouldest\nproduce the effect; indeed the thing is already effected continuously\nin Thy divine mind. And Thou saidst to me, my only Love, that Thou\ndidst will to make me Thyself; and that Thou wast all mine, with all\nthat Thou hadst and with all Paradise; and that I was all Thine. That I\nshould leave all, or rather the nothing; and that (then) Thou wouldst\ngive me the all. And that Thou hadst given me this name--at which words\nI heard within me \u2018dedi te in lucem gentium\u2019--not without good reason.\nAnd it seemed then, as though I had an inclination for nothing except\nthe purest Union, without any means, in accordance with that detailed\nsight which Thou hadst given me. So then I said to Thee: \u2018These other\nthings, give them to whom Thou wilt; give me but this most pure Union\nwith Thee, free from every means.\u2019\u201d\n\nHere we again have numerous parallels. Battista\u2019s state of Union,\nwithout any means that could be made to intervene, compares readily\nwith Catherine\u2019s declaration: \u201cI cannot abide to see that word \u2018for\u2019\n(God) and \u2018in\u2019 (God), since they denote to my mind something that can\nstand between God and myself.\u201d Battista\u2019s description, \u201cremaining naked\nin Thy bosom, as I have been from eternity,\u201d resembles Catherine\u2019s\nsayings: \u201cTrue love wills to stand naked. This naked love sees the\ntruth\u201d; \u201cthe soul in that state of cleanness in which it was created\u201d;\n\u201cthe angels and man, when disobedient, were clothed in sin\u201d; and the\nwords heard by her: \u201cI want thee naked, naked.\u201d The answer granted to\nBattista, that \u201cpossessing her Lord, her only Love, she possessed at\nthe same time all Paradise,\u201d recalls Catherine\u2019s declaration that \u201cif\nof what her heart felt but one drop were to fall into Hell, Hell itself\nwould become Eternal Life.\u201d And Battista\u2019s prayer, \u201cthese other things,\ngive them to whom Thou wilt; give me but this most pure Union with\nThee,\u201d is substantially like Catherine\u2019s answer to the Friar, \u201cthat\nyou should merit more than myself--I leave that in your hands; but that\nI cannot love Him as much as you, is a thing that you will never by any\nmeans get me to understand.\u201d[345]\n\nAnd we get here two further interesting particularities as to such\n\u201clocutions.\u201d In this case Battista only \u201cfeels,\u201d at the time of their\noccurrence, that certain words are being spoken within her (once before\nshe has used that remarkably general term, instead of the more obvious\nand specific \u201chear\u201d); and she possesses, on coming (evidently soon\nafter) to write them down, a but approximate remembrance of them, and\na certainty as to their substance alone. And then we find here the\ninteresting case of two different simultaneous locutions: one voice\nreferring to the name which our Lord had given her, and another, at\nthis point, quoting the text, \u201cdedi te in lucem gentium.\u201d The text,\nin this full form, occurs in Isaiah xlix, 6, and is there spoken by\nGod to His servant Israel, v. 3; but part of it, expanded to \u201ca light\nto the revelation of the Gentiles,\u201d is, in Luke ii, 32, quoted by\nSimeon of Christ. We thus, in this place, get three different, yet\nsimultaneous, levels of consciousness within Battista\u2019s soul: her own\n(more or less ordinary) consciousness and \u201cvoice\u201d recognized by her own\nself, as such; another, deeper, extraordinary consciousness and \u201cvoice\u201d\nproceeding, according to her apprehension, from our Lord\u2019s presence\nand action within her; and finally a third, deepest consciousness and\n\u201cvoice\u201d taken, I presume, to be directly communicated by God Himself.\nIt is to be noted that, though interior \u201clocutions\u201d seem to have been\nfairly frequent with Catherine, there is no case on record in her life\nof more than two levels of consciousness, two \u201cvoices,\u201d at one and the\nsame moment, her own and Love\u2019s.\n\n\n5. _Experience of December 23, 24, 1554._\n\n\u201cThe following night\u201d (December 23 to 24), \u201cI woke up and found\nimpressed upon my mind (the words): \u2018comedite bonum,\u2019 Isaiah lv\n(2). And this impression remained with me (throughout the day),--an\nimpression of eating God, and of inviting all others to the same\nDivine food.--In the evening,--it was the Vigil of the Nativity,--I\nhad a sight of how, God Himself having taken our nature, and having\ndone so as the Infinite one, the very greatest virtue must be diffused\nthroughout this same (human) nature: a truth which he knew who says:\n\u2018Plena est omnis terra gloria eius,\u2019 Isaiah vi (3). If by one man sin\nentered into all, by a God-man how much good has not entered into us\nall? Romans v, 15-19. If God has made Himself Flesh, what virtue is\nthere which He has denied to this same flesh?--And in the night of\nthe Nativity, after Matins, I had a sight of that extreme, eternal\nand incomprehensible Love, which, unable to abide within Itself, had\nbecome ecstatic into the thing It loved, and had indeed, by means of\nIts Almighty power, become that very thing. Whence it is that, seeing\nThy Majesty gone forth out of Thyself and become me, I was determined,\nin virtue of that self-same love, to go forth from myself and, in every\nmanner, make myself into Thy very Self. And Thou, my God, didst say\nthat Thou hadst descended to the same degree as that to which Thou\nwantedst man to ascend.\u201d\n\nHere Battista\u2019s \u201cimpression of eating God, and of inviting all\nothers to the same Divine food\u201d is substantially identical with\nCatherine\u2019s doctrine as to the \u201cOne Bread, God,\u201d and \u201call creatures\nhungering for this One Bread.\u201d Battista\u2019s sight of \u201cGod being diffused\nthroughout human nature,\u201d is analogous to Catherine\u2019s teaching as to\nno creature existing that does not, in some measure, participate in\nHis goodness,--although, with characteristic difference, Battista\ndwells on the ennoblement of that nature through the Incarnation of\nGod, and Catherine insists upon the nobility contemporaneous with, and\nintrinsic to, Man\u2019s original Creation. And Battista\u2019s determination to\ngo forth from herself is identical, in substance, with all the sayings\nof Catherine which I have grouped under the \u201coutside\u201d \u201coutwards\u201d\ncategory.[346]\n\nAnd note how, in this group, Battista mentally sees, instead of\ninteriorly hearing, the truth of the Incarnation of the Infinite, and\nof the consequent ennobling of our whole nature; how this sight then\nsuggests to her mind a definite text (recognized by herself as such),\nand then an amplification of another text (not perhaps identified by\nher as such at all): and how the transition from that sight to these\ntexts is so smooth and rapid that it is practically impossible to mark\noff precisely where she held the simply given experience to end, and\nher own action and comment to begin. The fact of the matter no doubt is\nthat, in both cases, though very possibly in different degrees, there\nwas divine and human action indistinguishably co-operant throughout.\n\nAnd mark again how her \u201cvista\u201d--\u201cof that extreme, eternal, and\nincomprehensible Love which had become \u2018ecstatic\u2019 into the Thing it\nloves\u201d; her consequent determination to \u201cgo forth from herself,\u201d\nand the voice which told her that He wanted her \u201cto ascend in the\nsame degree as He had descended\u201d: all goes back, for its literary\nsuggestion, to the Dionysian \u201cDivine Names\u201d: \u201cDivine Love is ecstatic,\nnot permitting any to be lovers of themselves but of those beloved. The\nvery Author of all things, through an overflow of His loving goodness,\nbecomes \u2018out of Himself,\u2019 and is led down from the eminence above\nall, to being in all.\u201d \u201cHe is at once moving and conducting Power to\nHimself, as it were a sort of everlasting circle.\u201d \u201cLet us restore all\nloves back to the one and enfolded Love and Father of them all.\u201d[347]\nNot the less truly did Battista\u2019s mental lights and voluntary\ndeterminations come from God, because they consisted, for the most\npart, in a vivid realization and acceptation, in and for her particular\ncase, on this Christmas night in 1554, of spiritual facts and truths\nwhich had been slowly and successively revealed, experienced, and\nformulated as far back as the Hebrew Prophets and the Greek Plato, and\nabove all by our Lord, and in St. Paul\u2019s writings and the Gospel of\nSt. John. These truths were none the less hers, because they had been\nsuccessively experienced and proclaimed, so long ago by others; and\ntheir suggestion and realization to and in her, were as truly the work\nof God in her own case as they were in that of those others.\n\n\n6. _Experience of December 27, 1554._\n\n\u201cThis morning\u201d (December 27), \u201cwhich is the Feast of the Evangelist\nJohn, when I awoke, I suddenly heard the words being spoken within my\nmind: \u2018To-day I am determined to divide thy soul from thy spirit\u2019--and\nlater on, when the Host was being elevated at Mass and I was praying\nabout this matter, I had a sight or Thou didst say unto me--I cannot\nremember precisely which it was,--enough, it appeared to me that\nas, when the soul is divided from the body, the soul, in so far as\nimmortal, flies to its destined place, and the entire body remains\ndead: so also, when the almighty hand of God makes a similar division\nof the soul from the spirit, the former, the animal part (of man),\nremains dead, but the spirit, (truly) free (at last), flies to its\nnatural place, which is God, the Living Fountain.\u201d\n\nHere we are at once reminded of Catherine\u2019s experience of \u201cLove\nonce speaking within her mind\u201d; of her sayings which dwell on the\nseparation of the soul from the body, and on the flight of the spirit\nto its natural place, God; and of her sight of \u201cthe living Fountain\u201d\nof Goodness.[348] But Battista\u2019s psychology is entirely clear and\nself-consistent, as to the precise extension of, and the precise\ndistinction between, the terms \u201cspirito\u201d and \u201canima\u201d; whereas, in the\nauthentic sayings of Catherine, \u201canima\u201d is used sometimes as inclusive\nof, and sometimes in contradistinction to, \u201cspirito.\u201d We shall see how\nit is only the later systematizing _Dialogo_-writer who brings perfect\nconsistency, and a scheme identical with Battista\u2019s, into Catherine\u2019s\nterminology. Yet in Catherine\u2019s image of the assimilation of bread by\nman, in illustration of the assimilation of man\u2019s nature by God, we\nfind Battista\u2019s two stages of the divisional process. For there the\nbody is first purified up to the actual level of the soul, and then the\nsoul itself is purified perfectly, its animal part being eliminated or\ndominated by the spiritual part.[349]\n\nIt is interesting, too, to note how Battista cannot decide here whether\nthis interpretation of the short sentence she had heard was mentally\nseen or interiorly heard by her; indeed, she is sure only that, whilst\nshe was praying to understand the meaning of that sentence, the meaning\nthus sought appeared to her, by some means or other, to be so and so.\nIt is then abundantly clear from this, that the difference between an\ninterior sight and an interior voice, and again between either of these\nand the admittedly normal workings of her own mind, was, at times, so\ndelicate, as either not to be clear to her own consciousness, even at\nthe very time of the experience; or, at least, to fade away from her\nmemory before she came to chronicle the experience.\n\n\n7. _Experience of January 6, 1555._\n\n\u201cOn the Feast of the Epiphany\u201d (January 6, 1555), \u201cbefore Communion,\nI felt ineffable and most tender colloquies, and greatly I rejoiced\nbecause of them. For I had caused Masses to be said and prayers to be\nprayed, by various persons during many days, with the intention that,\nif these colloquies were not from Thee, I might no more experience\nthem; but that, if they were Thine, they might be produced within me\nmore clearly and more efficaciously. And seeing that I now felt them\nmore than usual, and in a more admirable manner, I had and have a firm\nhope that they were Thine. Whence it happened that (having, on that\nsame blessed day, to go up to receive Thee in the Sacrament), I felt\nThy Majesty more than once calling me within me, \u2018Come, since I want\nto devour thee entirely.\u2019 \u2026 It seems to me that \u2018entirely\u2019 was one of\nthe words, but I have no firm remembrance of this. But I know well that\nThou saidst several times, \u2018Come, since I want to devour thee.\u2019 \u2026 To\nme it seemed that I merited rather to go under Lucifer, than into the\nInfinite Light (_Luce_).\u201d\n\nWe get here a number of interesting parallels and contrasts to\nCatherine\u2019s teaching and practice. God\u2019s devouring of the soul; God\npictured as Light; souls conceived as higher up or lower down in\nspace, according to their degree of goodness or of badness; even the\npleasure in a play upon words: all this finds its close counterpart\nin Catherine.[350] But far more important is the difference in the\nsubject-matter of their scruples and in their respective attitudes\ntowards psychically unusual experiences. In Catherine\u2019s case there\nis no record of anxieties concerning other things than her degree\nof detachment and her administrative responsibilities; indeed her\nwhole practice and teaching, continuously bent as they were upon the\nethico-spiritual truth and upon the practical application of her\nunusual experiences, make it morally certain that her anxieties never\nturned upon these forms and means themselves. She was, as it were,\ntoo much occupied with the content of the cup, ever to be actively\nperplexed as to the cup itself. Battista, on the contrary, seems to\nhave been quite free from scruples of Catherine\u2019s melancholic type;\nbut did not, evidently, always soar as highly as her God-mother above\nall anxious occupation with the form of her experiences. And, indeed,\nif, in this instance, it was evidently the form of her experiences\nwhich perplexed her, it was also the renewed and heightened experience\nof this peculiar form which reassured her.--Yet the very fact of\nsuch a perplexity, and again the moderation with which, even at the\nend of it all, she but \u201chopes that it all comes from God,\u201d shows a\nhealthy reluctance to trust too readily or too much to such tests and\nindications. It would probably not be unfair to put her attitude\ntowards such things midway between Don Marabotto\u2019s readiness of belief\nand Catherine\u2019s soaring ethico-spiritual transcendence.\n\nIt is noticeable too that, if the inner voice is more distinct than\nbefore, Battista\u2019s anxious care for accuracy is also, if possible, more\non the alert than ever: witness her remarks as to the word \u201call.\u201d\n\n\n8. _Experience of the Second Sunday in Lent, 1555._\n\n\u201cOn the second Sunday (in Lent), having communicated, I felt Thine\nineffable reasonings; but, since I did not write them down at once, I\ndo not any more venture to write them down, having in great part lost\nthe memory of them. But this I remember, that the words were like those\nwhich the Bridegroom says to the Bride in the Canticle (of Canticles).\u201d\n\nHere the difference between this form of apprehension and that of\nordinary vivid thinking is so faintly distinct, that she can only\ndeclare that she \u201cfelt\u201d (without deciding between hearing, seeing, or\nany other of the more definite senses) \u201creasonings\u201d (without being\nsure of their \u201cexplicitation\u201d in words or images); and she herself\nrecognized at the time, and later on remembers that contemporary\nrecognition of, their likeness to the texts of the Canticle of\nCanticles. It is evidently the profound reluctance, cultivated by her\nfor half a century or more, to treat the deepest acts of the soul as\nother than directly and exclusively the acts of God in that soul, which\nmakes her not see and admit here the large co-operation of her own mind.\n\nRemark also a characteristic difference from Catherine, in that the\nlatter\u2019s teaching is, we have already seen, entirely free from any\ninfluences characteristic of the Song of Songs.\n\n\n9. _Experience of Ascension Day, 1555._\n\n\u201cOn the Lord\u2019s Ascension Day Thou didst say to me, O my Love, that, up\nto this point, I had walked by Faith, but that now Thou wast determined\nto give me direct assurance (_certezza_); and that there was no\noccasion for me to go on writing down Thy words, since I should read\nthem in my own experience. And on my asking what Thou wouldst operate\nwithin me, Thou didst affirm to me that I should ever possess Thee in\nmy heart.\u201d--\u201cAnother time I felt that I was being told: \u2018I generate My\nSon, having an infinite Cognition of Myself; similarly I generate thee,\nby infusing into thee that same cognition. But (this) My Cognition is\nwithout measure; and thine shall be according to that measure which\nI shall, by My goodness, be impelled to give thee, in suchwise that\nof this cognition and of thine intellect there shall be effected one\nidentical thing; so that I shall place My Word, My Concept, which I\npossess within Myself, in thee, according to the capacity for it which\nI shall deign to give thee; and so that, again, thy spirit shall be a\nson within My Son, or rather one only son with Him: and thus will I\nhave generated thee.\u2019 Hence, O Lord, according to this Thy showing,\nthose are generated by Thee, who, united by grace to Thy Majesty,\nrepose in Thy Paternal Bosom, together with Thine only Begotten. But\nHe is by nature one sole substance with Thee--He whom Thou art ever\nineffably generating; and we are united with Thee, through reposing in\nThy bosom by simple grace and by a singular privilege of Thy love; and\nin so far as we thus abide there in Thee, Thou generatest us in more\nand more light and ardour. Hence then Thou generatest him who abides in\nThee.\u201d\n\nWe have here, in the last locution of this series, the most complicated\nand seemingly original of them all. Yet here we can still find\nparallels to Catherine: in the addressing of God as \u201cmy Love\u201d; in\nthe fact that the locution proceeds from, and its interpretation is\nsubmitted, not to our Lord, but to God, to Him who indeed generates His\nSon without measure and directly, yet all other souls also, though in\nmeasure and by and through His Son; and in the declaration that now she\nshould have a kind of direct assurance in lieu of Faith.[351]\n\nAnd here especially we can trace the large Neo-Platonist (Dionysian)\nelement in Battista\u2019s Mysticism. There is the first, perfect circle,\nGod\u2019s perfect cognition of Himself, a cognition which produces a\nfresh (though co-eternal) centre of cognition, which latter in return\nperfectly cognizes Him who perfectly cognized it. And then there is\na derivative imperfect circle--since that perfect cognizedness and\ncognizing, which is God\u2019s Son, can only be imperfectly imparted to the\nsouls of creatures: yet again we have a circle for the very thing which\nis cognized by God is, in this instance also, the same which cognizes\nHim. And lastly, this distance between the perfect and imperfect\ncircles is, as far as possible, overcome by an attempted and momentary\nidentification of the perfectly cognized and cognizing circle, Christ,\nwith the perfectly cognized but imperfectly cognizing one, every human\nsoul in its potentiality and divinely intended end.\n\nAnd this large Platonist scheme of a progression of Ideas appears\nhere coloured and Christianized, by means of four scriptural texts in\nparticular: Ps. cix, 31, \u201cin the brightness (splendours) of the saints,\nfrom the womb, before the day star (Lucifer) I begot thee\u201d; John i,\n18, \u201cthe only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father\u201d; xiii,\n23, \u201cthere was leaning on Jesus\u2019 bosom one of His disciples whom Jesus\nloved\u201d; and Luke xvi, 23, \u201cthe rich man beheld Abraham from afar, and\nLazarus in his bosom.\u201d The first two passages give her the eternal and\ncontinuous generation and abiding of the Son by and in the Father;\nand the last two suggest a similar abiding and (interpretatively)\ngeneration, together with that Son, of the faithful soul, in and by\nGod, continuously and for ever.\n\nNote, too, the double meaning, so characteristic of mystical\nutterances, contained in the sentence, \u201cI generate My Son, having\nan infinite Cognition of Myself\u201d; which indicates both the mode of\ngeneration (\u201cby means of an infinite cognition\u201d), and the nature of the\ngenerated one (\u201cwho has an infinite cognition\u201d). And by this literary\ndevice, the intense close-knitness of the perfect circle is strikingly\nadumbrated.\n\nAnd remark how Battista finishes up this soaring flight by an\ninterpretation of a perfect sobriety. Indeed it is this moderation and\ngood sense along with so immense an Idealism and intense Interiority\nwhich, together, constitute her noblest characteristic and should make\nus overlook the comparative absence of spontaneous charm and tender\nfreshness, which cannot but strike us if we allow ourselves to contrast\nthe piety of Battista with that of Catherine.\n\n\nIV. SOME FURTHER LETTERS OF BATTISTA, 1575 TO 1581.\n\nBefore the experiences and confidences of an almost painful privacy\nand emotional intensity, which require, in part, a considerable amount\nof patient interpretation from us, if they are to move and touch\nus, we found and dwelt upon a moral attitude and a document full of\nimmediately understandable heroism and virile common-sense: the scene\nwith her father before his death-ride, and the letter to Dottore Moro.\nAnd, somewhat similarly, three further documents succeed to these\nintermediate confidences, documents full of love and esteem for the\nexternally ordinary vocation of the vast majority of us all, of a large\nundaunted outlook, and of a shrewd and persevering public spirit.\nThe apparent mental contraction and subjectivity we have just passed\nthrough with her is but the recollective movement, the, as it were,\ndrawing itself together for the spring of action on the part of an\nalready large and expansive soul, and leads on and out to fresh and\nstill larger horizons, and, indeed, effects them.\n\n\n1. _Letter to Donna Anguisola, 1575._\n\nWe have first a letter of June 10, 1575 (Battista was now seventy-eight\nyears of age, and had been a Religious for sixty-five years) addressed\nto a widowed noblewoman with young children--the Illustrious Lady\nAndronica Anguisola.[352] The reader will note the transition,\nevidently quite natural and spontaneous in the writer, from a soaring\nMysticism, full of Pauline, Joannine, and Dionysian forms, and of deep,\npersonally experimental content, to the most practical and shrewd,\nwisely unflinching, homely heroism. There are few documents, I think,\nwhich show with an equal impressiveness how startlingly direct and\nimmediate can be and is the application of such, apparently, purely\ntranscendental, serene contemplations and affections to the struggling,\nclamorous world of our human passions, circumstances, difficulties, and\nduties: and how only that transcendence and this immanence, taken and\nworking thus together, give to the soul a height without inflation, and\na concrete particularity without pettiness. I shall break up the long\nletter into three sections, omitting only two, relatively commonplace,\npassages in the middle and at the end; and shall again point out\ncertain parallels and peculiarities at the end of each section.\n\n(1) _Opening of the letter._\n\n\u201cMost Honoured Madam in the Crucified,\n\n\u201c\u2018I have come to place (cast) fire upon the earth, and what will I\nbut that it be enkindled\u2019 (Luke xii, 49). By these most divine words\nwe can understand, in part, to what a supreme degree such a most happy\nfire is of importance, since the Eternal Word came down from Heaven to\nkindle it in His so dearly-loved rational earth. And this great effect\ncould not but follow, since the Paternal goodness willed to communicate\nto our misery the ardour which He possesses eternally in His Heart.\nAnd what else is this communication to us of His infinite love than\nthe planting within our minds of His own intrinsic, incomprehensible\ndelights? His Majesty, in His infinite courtesy, takes His delights\nin abiding with the children of men (Prov. viii, 31). But He desires\nthat these delights should proceed from both sides, so that, as He\ntakes these delights in us, by His own intrinsic natural goodness, He\nsimilarly wills that we, by means of that same goodness which is poured\ninto us by that fire which Christ places upon our earth,--as Paul\ndemonstrates when he says (Rom. v, 5), \u2018The charity of God is poured\nforth in our hearts by the Holy Ghost who is given to us,\u2019--He wills, I\nsay, that, set in motion by the immense potency of this infused fire,\nwe should place, in return, all our delights in His Majesty; and then,\nto speak according to our human fashion, His unmeasured love attains\nto its intent. In this correspondence lie hidden away delights beyond\nall comprehension, considering that it is His own goodness that comes\ndown (into us), as He demonstrates when he says, \u2018We will come to him,\nand will make our abode with him\u2019 (John xiv, 23); and that He raises us\nup beyond all measure in suchwise that, of the Increate Heart and of\nthe created one, there is made, by the operation of Him who says, \u2018The\nFather who is in Me, worketh\u2019 (John x, 38; v, 17), a single most secret\nand inestimable union.\u201d\n\nHere, again, we find close parallels to Catherine in \u201cHis own\nintrinsic incomprehensible delights,\u201d \u201cHis infinite courtesy,\u201d \u201cthe\nimmense virtue of this infused fire,\u201d and \u201cto speak according to\nour human fashion.\u201d And the whole general conception of a mutual\nand corresponding action and circle between God and the soul, the\nwhole movement beginning in and by God, and leading back and ending\nin Him, is here, once more, the common property of Battista and her\nGod-mother.[353] Yet \u201cThe Crucified,\u201d with which the whole letter\nopens, and \u201cHis Heart,\u201d the \u201cIncreate Heart,\u201d applied directly to God\nHimself, are expressions we should seek in vain in Catherine. The\nhistorical Christ, and a most legitimate anthropomorphism, find here\na place, indeed a prominence, which they have not there. And note the\nsobriety with which Battista insists on the analogical character of\nall this speculation, for she \u201cspeaks\u201d only \u201caccording to our human\nfashion\u201d; and the allegorizing involved in the \u201cHis dearly-loved\nrational earth,\u201d the earth that souls dwell on having here become\nsimply identical with those souls themselves. And especially remark the\nmystically characteristic doubleness of meaning, and the conception of\nthe substantiality of the divine indwelling, involved in the phrase,\n\u201cHis own intrinsic, incomprehensible delights.\u201d For this phrase means\nboth \u201cthe delight which, for our minds, is intrinsically bound up with\nthe thought of God,\u201d and the \u201cdelight which He himself takes in His\nindwelling whilst abiding within us\u201d; and the latter idea involves\na belief in the soul\u2019s delight in Him being but a sympathetic echo\nand answer to His delight in this His own indwelling, a delight thus\nactually in operation within the human soul.\n\nMark, too, how her opening her letter with a formally announced text\nis but an instance of her life-long literary form of composition--the\nhomily; how saturated is the whole with (evidently first-hand)\nscriptural meditation; and how wise and like her own father is her\ntreatment of this soul, so near to delusion in the very intemperance of\nher search after perfection. A warning note of a claim about to be made\nupon her correspondent\u2019s effective self-immolation has been struck,\nfrom the first, by the words, \u201cthe Crucified\u201d; and yet this note is\nfirst followed by a paragraph sufficiently soaring to satisfy even the\nmost lofty moods of the Signora Andronica.\n\n(2) _Central part of the letter._\n\n\u201cI have taken up my pen from a desire that you may be wholly and\nentirely devoted to the Lord, with a whole-hearted abandonment. I do\nnot mean that you should abandon the care of your children: on the\ncontrary, I wish that you may give the greatest care to them, both\nwithin and without. For the within, by desiring heart-wholly that\nthey may be joined (cleave) to God, with all they are; and for the\nwithout, by helping them studiously to avoid everything that leads\nto sin.\u201d She then gives the examples of SS. Felicitas and Monica,\nand of St. Louis of France, and proceeds: \u201cNow note, dear Madam, how\ngreat is the fruit of good government on the part of parents. Indeed,\naccording to the little light which God deigns to give me, this alone\nappears to me necessary--that your Ladyship should observe the counsel\nof St. Paul, where he says (Eph. iv, 1) \u2018that we should walk worthily\nin the vocation in which we are called.\u2019 Now _you_ are called to the\ngovernment of your children. Hence I pray you to study how to act,\nthat you may be able to render a good account of it to God. You will\nremember how our Christ, on the point of going to His death, renders\nan account to His eternal Father concerning those whom His Father had\ngiven into His charge, saying, \u2018of them whom Thou hast given Me (in\ncharge), I have not lost one\u2019 (John xviii, 9).\n\n\u201cConsider, my very dear Friend, how that our great God, being\ninfinitely perfect, or, in better terms, perfection itself, we cannot\neither add to or detract from His glory even the slightest point, as\nthe Prophet saw who said (Ps. ci, 13), \u2018Thou, O Lord, art ever the\nsame\u2019 (endurest for ever), \u2018unchangeable and invariable.\u2019 All that we\ncan do for Him, is to come in aid to His dear images, to His beloved\nchildren, as the Lord shows in Matt, xxv, 40, \u2018that which ye shall do\nunto one of these My least, ye shall have done it unto Me.\u2019--I know\nwell that you desire to withdraw yourself from all the cares of the\nworld, in order to be able to occupy yourself entirely with God. But\ndo you not know that \u2018Charity seeketh not the things that are her own\u2019\n(1 Cor. xiii, 5), that is, her own utility? That desire which your\nLadyship has for herself, let her have it equally for her children.\nAre we not obliged to love our neighbours as ourselves? (Matt. xix,\n19). And hence, how much more our children! That step in perfection,\nof entirely abandoning all things, your Ladyship cannot take, without\ngreat damage to your neighbour,--damage, I mean, to souls. Remember how\nfull of perils is the period of youth; I beg of you, with all possible\ninsistence, for God\u2019s sake, to have a greater care of these young souls\nthan of yourself, since the necessity is greater.\u201d\n\nHere, again, there are parallels to the God-mother: in the love of\nthat intensely unifying term, \u201csi accostino,\u201d \u201ccleave to,\u201d \u201cbe joined\nto,\u201d of St. Paul, so dear to Catherine also; in the love of all souls,\nas God\u2019s dear images, but specially of those bound to us by blood, so\nmarked in Catherine\u2019s testamentary dispositions, as distinct from the\ndescriptions, possibly even from the surface-appearances, of her last\nnine years; and in the greater care to be given to others than to our\nown selves, when their necessity is greater than ours, so heroically\npractised by Catherine in the case of the Plague.[354] The chief\ndifference, here again, is the prominence given by Battista to the\nHistoric Christ, by her quotation of the words of St. Matthew,--words\nwhich, though so obviously applicable to Catherine\u2019s work and\nduties, nowhere occur throughout Catherine\u2019s own contemplations or\ndiscourses.--Note again the ambiguity of the \u201cwithin and without\u201d in\nconnection with the care to be bestowed, since the words are intended\nto cover respectively both Donna Anguisola\u2019s intention and exterior\naction, and her children\u2019s interior dispositions and visible acts.\n\n(3) _Conclusion of the letter._\n\n\u201cBut pray indeed to His Majesty that He may give you grace so great\nas to enable you to abandon all things interiorly. Here is the point\nin which all perfection consists. And I will pray to Him for this, in\nunion with yourself. I most certainly desire, for my part, that your\ngenerous heart may have no other delight but God. And do you convert\nthat human consolation which men are wont to take in their children,\ninto a great desire that they may cleave to God; that they may not\noffend Him, and that they may bear His Majesty in their hearts. And\nwhen those things have been actually effected, do you then take the\ngreatest delight in them, whilst mortifying that merely human pleasure\nwhich men take in the mutable prosperity of their children, in the most\npleasing consolation which arises from their company, and in such-like\nthings. And, from such a course of action, various advantages will\nfollow. First, you will, I think, be thus doing what is most pleasing\nto God; next, you will be most useful to your neighbour; and lastly,\nyour Ladyship will have carried off a great victory over your own self.\u201d\n\nHere we can trace two close parallels to special points of Catherine\u2019s\npractice and teaching. In the doctrine that the point of all perfection\nconsists in the interior abandonment of all things, we get but a\nre-statement of Catherine\u2019s teaching as to God\u2019s love being practicable\neverywhere; and in the advice to practise interior mortification in\nthe matter of resting in the consolation of her children\u2019s company, we\nhave not only a parallel to Catherine\u2019s early and transitory convert\npractice, but also an application to human intercourse of Catherine\u2019s,\nand indeed also Battista\u2019s, continuous and ever-growing practice of\ndetachment from sensible consolations in the soul\u2019s intercourse with\nGod.[355]\n\nWe can hardly doubt that this letter was as effectual in keeping\nDonna Anguisola within the limits of family duties, as the letter of\nforty-six years before had been in bringing back Dottore Moro to the\nworld-wide spiritual family of the Ancient Church.\n\n\n2. _Letter to Padre Collino, 1576._\n\nAnd we have next a letter, written in 1576, when she was seventy-nine,\nto that Father Serafino Collino at Cremona, to whom, five years later,\nshe was to write the truly classical account of her father, which has\nbeen the main source of our study of that heroic figure.\n\nAnd indeed already in this letter she preludes, as it were, to that\noutburst of filial praise, by first dwelling here upon the effects\nof her father\u2019s life as they were maturing visibly around her. \u201cA\nvery spiritual, wise, and noble person,\u201d writes Battista, \u201chas been\nvisiting me; and in the course of talk she asked me, \u2018Well, and what\ndid you think of the great miracles that God has been working during\nthese times of acute conflict, in this our city--miracles such as no\none ever heard of throughout the course of ancient Roman history or\nin connection with any other warfare?\u2019 And I, knowing well that this\nperson has three Doctors of Theology living continuously in her house,\nguessed that these men must have carefully scrutinized and examined\nthe whole matter. So I simply asked, \u2018What miracles do you mean?\u2019 And\nshe answered me, \u2018The city has been for so long a time in arms, a prey\nto the good and to the wicked, to the wise and to the mad, and has\nbeen affording the greatest possible opportunity for acts contrary to\njustice. And yet, throughout the city within the walls, no one has ever\nbeen offended,--no man, in his person; no woman, in her honour; and no\nman or woman, in their possessions.\u2019\u201d\n\nAnd then Battista comments on her visitor\u2019s declaration. \u201cAs to their\npersons, all men went about in the city with swords drawn and erect,\nand spoke injurious words to those of the opposite party. And it really\nseems as though their hands were tied, for they used their tongues\nindeed but not their hands; not one drop of blood has been spilt.\nWithin the city two homicides were, no doubt, committed during this\ntime, because of a difference on a point of honour; but none on account\nof party spirit. Similarly outside of Genoa the son of Signer Antonio\nd\u2019Oria was killed--not by the opposite party, but by another nobleman\nlike himself,--they had come to words. As to female honour, the women\nwent and came to visit each other, and frequented Mass, whether they\nbelonged to one party or to the other; and the greater number of\ngentlewomen went out of Genoa, accompanied by their daughters, passing\nthrough the very midst of the city, and going down the wharf to get on\nboard their boats; and yet never was any discourtesy shown to any one\nof them. Similarly, with regard to possessions: quantities of these\nwere sent out of Genoa; great masses of them were deposited in the\nMonasteries--and yet never even a trifle was ever taken. On this latter\npoint we of this Convent can bear direct witness. For although so much\nproperty and money was brought to the Monastery delle Grazie, that\nit became difficult to move about the house because of the quantity\nof cases and stray boxes deposited there, nevertheless not even to\nthe poor carriers who brought them was the slightest violence done,\nalthough they had to pass through all those drawn and raised swords;\nnor was a single word said to us Nuns, who appeared in the gateway to\nreceive the goods.\u201d[356]\n\nNow the well-informed lawyer, Professore Morro, thinks that all this\nwas the direct result of Ettore Vernazza\u2019s far-sighted and devoted\nphilanthropy. And he is no doubt right. For we still possess the\nentries, in the Cartulary of St. George, of the great works carried\nout by that powerful Banking Body, in conformity with and by means of\nEttore\u2019s directions and moneys, amongst Genoa\u2019s teeming poor and sick\nand ignorant, in the years 1531 and 1553.[357] Indeed even the printed\ndocuments bring the administration of this great, ever-growing fund\ndown to the year 1708.\n\nAnd the points that here concern the character of Battista are this\nher omnipresent and yet bashful pride in her large-hearted father; her\nvirile joy in the public good; her immensely sane and direct tastes\nas to the city\u2019s improvement; and her glad finding of a miracle in\nthings thus readily verifiable, universal, interior, and yet profoundly\noperative in the visible work-a-day life of man. There is something\nstrikingly modern in this severely social, and already more or less\nstatistical, way of testing improvement, an improvement which is found\nhere, not in any vaguely assumed increase of impulsive or perfunctory\nalmsgiving in the one class, or of dependence and passivity in the\nother, but in the closely scrutinized proofs of a remarkable growth in\ngeneral self-respect, self-maintenance, public spirit and sense of\nsocial interdependence, on the part of all parties and classes.\n\nAnd in the daughter\u2019s judgment concerning all this it is again easy\nto trace a likeness to her father, with his careful regulations for a\ngreat Register of the Poor, and his provisions for harbour-works and\nthe embellishment of the city. But Catherine\u2019s spirit is also present,\nwith its emphatic insistence upon God\u2019s love as practicable everywhere,\nand upon truth as, of its very nature, public-spirited and meant for\nall.[358]\n\n\n3. _Second letter to Padre Collino, 1581._\n\nAnd five years later still (she was now eighty-four) Battista writes\nher long account of her father\u2019s life, which we studied in connection\nwith him, but which would well deserve a detailed analysis from the\nstandpoint of the daughter\u2019s dispositions, so keen and large, so\ntender, true and immensely operative, long after most men have died, or\nare living on in a selfish second childhood.\n\n\nV. BATTISTA\u2019S DEATH, 1587.\n\nAnd then at last, six years afterwards, at four o\u2019clock in the\nafternoon of May 9, 1587, Pope Sixtus V being Pope and Mary Stuart\nhaving but six months still to live, Battista died in her Convent,\nfully three generations old. During her last years she had been\nallowed to communicate daily, and had thus, at the end, added one more\ntrait of resemblance to her God-mother, who, as we know, had, for\nsome thirty-five years of her life, found her greatest strength and\nconsolation in this the simplest, most central and deepest of all the\nChristian devotions and means of Grace.[359]\n\nOne hundred and forty years had now passed since the birth of\nCatherine, and seventy-seven since her death. It is indeed time that we\nshould, having accumulated so much material, proceed in the next volume\nto an examination and exposition of the underlying spiritual facts and\nlaws specially brought home to us by the group of lives we have been\nstudying, and of which the central figure was that, for us, largely\nelusive but immensely suggestive, many-sided and yet rarely beautiful,\nsoul and influence, which the Church venerates as St. Catherine of\nGenoa.\n\n\n\n\nCONCLUSION\n\nWHEREIN LIES THE SECRET OF SPIRITUAL PERSUASIVENESS\n\n\nBut let us first conclude this volume by attempting an answer, however\npreliminary and general, to the definite question with which it opened\nout.\n\n\nI. THE QUESTION.\n\nWe asked there, how any deeper, will-moving intercommunication can even\nbe possible amongst men? For the mere possession of, and appeal to,\nthe elementary forms of abstract thinking, which seem to be our only\ncertain common material, instrument and measure of persuasion, appear\nnever, of themselves, to move the will, or indeed the feelings; whereas\nall that is endowed with such directly will-moving power appears, not\nonly as specifically concrete and as hopelessly boxed up within the\nfour corners of our mutually exclusive individualities, but also as\nvitiated, even for each several owner, by an essentially fitful and\nfanciful subjectivity.\n\n\nII. THE ANSWER.\n\nNow I think that even the survey of the three great lives, and of those\nfour minor ones, which has been just attempted, forcibly suggests, both\npositively and negatively, at least the general outlines of the true\nanswer to this pressing question.\n\n\n1. Only a life sufficiently large and alive to take up and retain,\nwithin its own experimental range, at least some of the poignant\nquestion and conflict, as well as of the peace-bringing solution and\ncalm: hence a life dramatic with a humble and homely heroism which, in\nrightful contact with and in rightful renunciation of the Particular\nand Fleeting, ever seeks and finds the Omnipresent and Eternal;\nand which again deepens and incarnates (for its own experience and\napprehension and for the stimulation of other souls) this Transcendence\nin its own thus gradually purified Particular: only such a life can be\nlargely persuasive, at least for us Westerns and in our times.\n\nWe would thus have an attempt, ever renewed, ever widening, ever\ndeepening, at the formation of, as it were, a concrete, living,\nbreathing image of the Abiding and the One; of Law, Love, and Duty;\nof God: an image formed out of the seemingly shifting, shrinking\nflux, and the apparently shapeless mass of our actual, bewildering\nhuman manyfold; our flesh and sweat, and tears and blood, our joy\nand laughter, our passions and petty revolts, our weariness and\nisolations. Attend primarily to minimizing or eliminating all such\nfriction and pain; to being clear, materially simple and static, a\nfixed Thing, rather than vivid, formally unified, and dynamic, a\ngrowing Personality: or again, let the friction be so great, or the\ncourage and fidelity so small, as to lead to the break-up of all\ngenuine recollection and harmonization; and, in the former case,\nsuch a character or outlook may be considered \u201csafe\u201d or \u201ccorrect\u201d or\n\u201csensible\u201d; and, in the latter, the character and outlook will not be\nconsolidated at all, or will be breaking up: but in neither case will\nthe life be persuasive. For to be truly winning, the soul\u2019s life must\nbecome and must keep itself full and true.\n\n\n2. Now it is simply false that man can, even for his own self alone,\nhold spiritual reality, even from the first, in a simply passive,\npurely dependent, entirely automatic and painless fashion; or that he\ncan, even at the last, possess it in a full, continuous and effortless\nharmony and simultaneousness.\n\nGod no doubt holds all Truth and Reality as one great Here and Now, or\nrather He possesses them entirely outside of space and time; nor can we\nattribute to Him directly any interior conflict, effort, or suffering.\nAnd, again, we ourselves too possess within our minds an element\nand an apprehension of the Abiding and the Simultaneous; and their\nrudiments operate within us, if all-diffusively yet most powerfully,\nfrom the very first. Indeed the continuous increase in definiteness\nand influence of that element and of its apprehension here, and the\nindefinite expansion and continuously conscious possession of this\nsame element hereafter, are respectively the highest aim and fullest\nachievement of our spiritual life. And finally, the further the soul\nadvances, the more it sees and realizes the profound truth, that all it\ndoes and is, is somehow given to it; and hence that, inasmuch as it is\npermanent at all, it is grounded upon, environed, supported, penetrated\nand nourished by Him who is its origin and its end. Here all the soul\u2019s\nactions tend to coalesce to simply being, and this being, in so far as\nthere and then acceptable to the conscience, comes more and more to be\nfelt and considered as the simple effect of the one direct action of\nGod alone.\n\nAnd yet as to God, some kind and degree of Incarnational doctrine is\nnecessary, and is indeed (in varyingly perfect or imperfect forms) the\ncommon property of all higher religion; and Christians have learnt\nto think the profound thought, of God Himself being in a mysterious\ncloseness to even our most secret perplexities and inarticulate\npain.--And by ourselves, poor weaklings, that vast, continuous\nSimultaneity and Harmony of God can only be more and more nearly\napproached, if, upon our mostly shadowy, and (when at all clear) our\nshort-lived consciousness of an inchoate simultaneity and harmony of\nour own, we work an orderly successiveness, and attempt a Melody: an\nhumble, creaturely imitation of the Eternal, Spaceless Creator, under\nthe deliberately accepted conditions and doubly refracting media\nof time and space. Real temptation, true piercing conflict, heavy\ndarkness, and bewildering perplexity; the constant encountering (as\na necessary condition and occasion of all growth) of numberless and\nmultiform remoter risks of failing and of falling: all this forms an\nessential part of this painful-joyous probation and virile, because\nnecessarily costing and largely gradual, self-constitution of man\u2019s\nfree-willing spirit.\n\nAnd the place and function, in all this spiritual growth-in-conflict,\nof Science, both in its most determinist and apparently\nmost anti-spiritual mood, and in its subtler though no less\ndestructive-seeming attitudes, will turn out, we shall find,--now\nthat our generation is getting to know Science\u2019s special scope and\nimplications,--to be of simply irreplaceable value and potency.\n\nAnd though, in the other life, our earthly pain and temptation\nare to be no more, we may be sure that, even there, the essential\ncharacteristics of our nature will not be reversed. Hence we may\nbe able, later on in this book, to hazard some not all-ungrounded\nconjecture as to the possible substitute and form in Heaven for\nwhat is essentially noble and creaturely in our sufferings and\nself-renunciations here on earth.\n\nAnd lastly, though God\u2019s action in all things in general, and in\nour individual soul in particular, be more and more recognized as\nall-pervasive in proportion as the soul advances: yet this action will\nhave to be conceived as operating in and through and with our own; as\nin each case finding, in one sense, its very matter, in another, its\nvery form, in our own free-willings. For Spirit and spirit, God and the\ncreature, are not two material bodies, of which one can only be where\nthe other is not: but, on the contrary, as regards our own spirit,\nGod\u2019s Spirit ever works in closest penetration and stimulation of our\nown; just as, in return, we cannot find God\u2019s Spirit simply separate\nfrom our own spirit within ourselves. Our spirit clothes and expresses\nHis; His Spirit first creates and then sustains and stimulates our own.\nThe two, as regards the inner life of the human soul, rise and sink\ntogether. But more as to this too hereafter.\n\n\n3. We shall indeed, throughout the next volume, have ample\nopportunities for noting how numerous, definite, far-reaching and at\nall times operative, even though still but partially unfolded, are\nthe evidences for, and the consequences and applications of, such a\nfundamental conception, as they are furnished and required by all\ndeeper human life; hence, above all, by Religion; and in Religion,\nagain, specially by its ever largely elusive, yet ever profoundly\nimportant, constituent, the Mystical Element.\n\n\n\n\nAPPENDIX TO PART II\n\nCHRONOLOGICAL ACCOUNT AND CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE MATERIALS FOR THE\nRE-CONSTITUTION OF SAINT CATHERINE\u2019S LIFE AND TEACHING.\n\n\nINTRODUCTION.\n\nThe following laborious study of the growth and upbuilding of the Life\nand Legend of St. Catherine is a study worth the making. For this study\nwill bring out fully the test and reasons which have guided the process\nof documentary selection and estimation adopted throughout the second\npart of this book, indicating thus the precise degree of reliability\npertaining to my narrative. But especially will it furnish a detailed,\nand peculiarly instructive, example of what, with numberless\ndifferences in degree, kind, and importance, can be traced throughout\nthe history of the transmission of the image and influence of great\nreligious personalities and teachers. These continuously recurring\nphenomena can be taken as, together, constituting the general forms and\nlaws which regulate the growth of all religious devotional biography.\n\nI.\n\nThese general laws appear to be as follows.\n\n\n1. _Three Laws._\n\nThere is the law of _contemporary, simultaneous, spontaneous variation\nof apprehension_. Vernazza and Marabotto, writing down, at the time of\ntheir occurrence or communication, certain facts and sayings with an\nequal self-oblivion, sincerity, and truthfulness, give us apprehensions\nwhich, in great part objectively valuable, are, nevertheless, more\nor less differing pictures of one and the same fact or saying, or\ndifferent selections from amongst the moods and manifestations of one\nliving personality observed by them.--There is the law of _posterior,\nsuccessive, reflective variation of elaboration_. The Dominican\nCensor and Battista Vernazza, re-thinking Catherine and her teaching,\nin other times and away from her direct influence, necessarily see\nher differently again: they are, as it were, spiritual grandchildren,\nwho rather themselves absorb her and re-state her to their generation\nthan they are themselves absorbed by her.--And there is the law of\n_conservation_, _juxtaposition_, and _identification_. First the\nRedactor of the Book of 1528-1530, and lastly the Redactor of that\nof 1551--probably, both times, Battista--with, in between, in 1547,\nthe Redactor who attempted a quadripartite reschematizing of the\n_Life_--could not but try and soften the variations produced by the two\nother laws.\n\n\n2. _The third law tends to confuse the operation of the other two._\n\nAnd note how it is precisely this third law and stage which largely\ntends to make the effects of the two other laws into causes of\nvagueness, confusion, and scepticism. For instead of conceiving\nthe unity and identity of the subject-matter (a deep spiritual\npersonality) as essentially inexhaustible, and as requiring, for its\nleast inadequate apprehension, precisely both those simultaneous and\nspontaneous, and those successive and reflective experiences and\nreproductions of it, as furnished by the two other laws, this stage\ntends to confuse the identity of the apprehended subject-matter with\na sameness in the apprehension of it; and, whilst thus robbing that\nsubject-matter of its richness and movement, to introduce an element of\narrangement and timidity into the originally quite _na\u00eff_, and hence\ndirectly impressive, evidences of the observers. Yet the instinct\nand object of this third law is as legitimate and elementary as are\nthose of the other two, since a real unity and utilization of all the\npreceding variety is as necessary as the variety to be thus integrated,\nand since the other two laws show a similar variety of actuation\nthroughout religious literature.\n\n\n3. _Examples._\n\nWe find (to move in Church History back from St. Catherine) these three\ntendencies at work in the constitution of the Life and Legend of St.\nFrancis of Assisi, A.D. 1181(?)-1226, traced for us now, with so much\nsympathy and acumen by M. Paul Sabatier and the Bollandists. We get\nthem again in the case of St. Thomas of Canterbury, A.D. 1118-1171,\nespecially in that of his Death and Miracles, so carefully studied in\nDr. Edwin Abbot\u2019s remarkable book (1898). And, once more, in those\nMerovingian Saints, the great Martin of Tours in their midst, at the\nend of the fourth century, whose Lives have been so interestingly\ndescribed by Bernouilli (1900). And we find them, with especial\nclearness, in the growth of the Life of St. Anthony, about A.D.\n250-356, as contained in Palladius\u2019s _Historia Monachorum_, now that\nAbbot Cuthbert Butler has given us his admirable analysis and edition\nof that deeply instructive compiler (1898, 1904).\n\nIf we take the Bible, we find (on moving here in a contrary direction)\nthese laws again at work in the elucidation and elaboration of the\ngreat figure of Moses and of his world-historic life-work. For if\nhere we get but little that can claim to be by his pen, or even,\nas literature, to be contemporaneous with him (since the earliest\nCorpus of Laws, the Book of the Covenant, reaches probably only in\nits substance back to him), yet here, too, the earliest consecutive\ndescriptions of his life, by the Jahvist and Elohist writers, give\nus two different, though probably more or less simultaneous, largely\n_na\u00efve_, accounts and impressions of his life and work. And these\nsimultaneous variations are followed, later on, by the successive,\nincreasingly reflective variations and developments of Deuteronomy\nand of the Priestly Code. And lastly, these documents get constituted\n(in probably two great stages), by Redactional work, into the great\ncomposite History and Legislation of our present last four Books\nof Moses.--So again with David. We have the David of some few of\nthe Psalms; the David of the Books of Samuel, in a double series of\nmost vivid and spontaneous, more or less simultaneous but somewhat\ndiffering, accounts; the David of the greater part of the Psalter,\nthe result of a long process of devout successive reflection and\nre-interpretation; and the David of the Books of Chronicles, where\npragmatic systematization reaches its height.--And so too with the\nMaccabean Heroes, whose history appears, apprehended with varying\ndegrees of contemporary, simultaneous, spontaneous vividness, and of\nsubsequent, successive, reflective pragmatism, in the documents and\nredactional settings of the First and Second Books of Maccabees.--And\nthe growth indicated in these three cases covered respectively some\neight hundred, seven hundred, and one hundred years.\n\nBut it is, of course, in the New Testament that the interest and\nimportance of these laws reaches its height. If here we once more\nmove backwards, the case of St. Paul (martyred A.D. 64) furnishes us\nwith parallel contemporary accounts of the spontaneous type, in his\nown Epistles and in the six \u201cWe\u201d-passages by the eyewitness St. Luke\nin the Acts of the Apostles; whilst the remaining account in the Acts\nis doubtless by a later, more reflective and pragmatic, writer.--And\nin the apprehension and interpretation of Our Lord\u2019s inexhaustible\nlife, character, teaching, and work, we find very plainly the three\ntendencies and stages. We get the contemporary, simultaneous,\nspontaneous stage, in the cases of the Aramaic annotations of\nthe Apostle Levi-Matthew, which we still possess, translated and\nincorporated both in the larger and later book, our canonical Greek St.\nMatthew, and in the corresponding parts of our St. Luke; and in the\nreminiscences of another eyewitness, presumably St. Peter, given us by\na disciple in what is still the substance of our Canonical St. Mark. We\nget the posterior, successive, increasingly reflective or contemplative\nstage, chiefly in the two great types furnished, first by the Pauline,\nand then by the Joannine writings. And we get the juxtaposing,\nunifying, largely identifying stage and law operating above all in\nthe, partly successive, Canonization of the New Testament _Corpus_.\nAnd these three stages can be taken as having their downward limits in\nabout A.D. 30, 100, 200; so that here we cover a period of some hundred\nand seventy years.\n\n\n4. _Three different attitudes possible._\n\nAnd, in all these and countless other cases, we can take up three\ndifferent attitudes: the impoverishing, sectarian, \u201cpurity\u201d attitude;\nthe destructive, sceptical, \u201cidentity\u201d attitude; or the fruitful, truly\nCatholic \u201capproximation\u201d and \u201cdevelopment\u201d attitude. The first attitude\nassumes (ever in part unconsciously) the possibility and necessity of\na purely objective apprehension of Personality, of such a Personality\nbeing a static entity, both in itself and in its effects upon, and\nits apprehendedness by, other souls, and of the earliest among the\nobservations concerning such a Personality ever giving us such a\npurely objective, exhaustive picture and experience, or at least the\nnearest approach (in all respects) to such an exhaustive objectivity.\nThe third attitude would so understand the admitted identity of the\nPersonality observed as practically to identify also the simultaneous\nand successive observers and observations, and to eliminate all variety\nand growth in that spirit\u2019s own inner life and in its apprehension\nby other minds. Only the second attitude would, by recognizing both\nthe constant, necessary presence of a subjective element in all these\nsimultaneous and successive apprehensions, and the indefinite richness\nand many-sided apprehensibleness of all great spiritual Personalities,\nwelcome and draw out all the difference in unity of these many\n\u201creactions,\u201d as so many means, for a growing soul, towards a growing\nknowledge of that life and character, whose very greatness is, in part,\nmeasurable by the depth, variety, and persistence of these several\neffects, pictures, and embodiments of itself in different races, times,\nand souls.\n\nLet us, then, betake ourselves to a systematic examination of one\nexample of these world-wide three laws: the trouble taken will be well\nspent.\n\nII.\n\nHad I found room to print my notes in justification of the text\nadopted by me, the reader would have gained some idea of the exceeding\ncomplexity of the materials furnished by the printed _Vita e Dottrina_.\nIndeed the original Preface to that book (1551) finds it necessary to\nconclude with the words \u201cwe therefore\u201d (because of the book\u2019s utility,\nindeed necessity, \u201cin these turbulent times\u201d) \u201cbeg the devout reader\nnot to be disturbed\u201d (_stomacharsi_ now changed to _meravigliarsi_)\n\u201cif he finds here matters which appear to be out of their proper\norder\u201d (_non ben ordinate_), \u201cand which are sometimes repeated; since\nattention has been given, neither to much precision\u201d (_distinzione_),\n\u201cnor to the order of events, nor to elegance of form, but only to that\ntruth and simplicity with which its facts and discourses were gathered\nby devout spiritual persons\u201d (\u201cher Confessor and a Spiritual Son of\nhers\u201d) \u201cfrom the very lips of that Seraphic Woman.\u201d Both the praise\nand the blame of this pregnant sentence will appear to be most fully\ndeserved.\n\nIn our Second Part we have, in imitation of all experience in life\nitself, been thrown _in medias res_, and have thus gained some general\nidea and curiosity as to the sources of our knowledge; in this Appendix\nwe will now, without repeating details already given, take this\nevidence, as much as possible, in its chronological order. And at each\nstage I shall attempt so to analyze the evidence of that stage, as\nto be able to use it as a check and test of the evidence of the next\nstage.--We shall, however, have to bear in mind that this method has\nnecessarily, at each earlier stage, somewhat to beg the question; for,\nin order to make its meaning everywhere sufficiently clear, it has from\nthe first to assume a confidence of tone, which can be justified only\nby the whole argument, and which therefore has its logical place only\nat the very end.\n\nThis Appendix shall consist of two Divisions, of seven stages and eight\nsections respectively. The first Division gives the dated Documents,\nor such as can readily be restricted to within certain years; and the\nsecond Division analyses the remaining, undated Corpus and attempts to\nfix its origin and value.\n\n\nFIRST DIVISION: ACCOUNT AND ANALYSIS OF THE DOCUMENTS PREVIOUS,\nAND IMMEDIATELY SUBSEQUENT TO, THE \u201cVITA E DOTTRINA\u201d WITH THE\n\u201cDICCHIARAZIONE.\u201d\n\n\nI. FIRST STAGE, 1456 TO SEPTEMBER 12, 1510, ALL LEGAL.\n\nThe documents of the first stage are all legal papers, and entirely\ncontemporary and authentic. They have to furnish the skeleton which\nreceives its clothing of flesh from the other documents. I shall here\ndescribe only those not described in Part II, and shall refer back to\nthat Part for those already described there.\n\n\n1. _Deed of 1456._\n\nThere is, first, a deed of August 27, 1456. From amongst the shares\nbelonging to Pomera (formerly) wife to (the late) Bartolommeo de Auria\n(Doria), but now (Sister) Isabella, in the convent of St. David; at the\ninstance of Andrea de Auria, her only son, her heir, and of Francesca,\nthe mother of Catherine, daughter of Jacobo de Fiesco: two shares of\nthe Bank of St. George (\u00a3200) are set apart, for the benefit of the\nsaid Catherine, for her marriage, if she marries according to her\nMother\u2019s advice.[360] Note how early (Catherine is not yet nine years\nold) her mother, Francischetta (so a note to the copy of this document,\nno doubt correctly, calls her, and suspects Pomera to have been\nher sister), is thinking of Catherine\u2019s marriage; and how, although\nCatherine\u2019s father is still alive, nothing is said as to his consent,\nperhaps simply because, this money coming from a maternal aunt and\ncousin, only the mother\u2019s wishes are considered to be important here.\n\n\n2. _Catherine\u2019s Marriage Settlement, January 1463._\n\nThere is, next, Catherine\u2019s marriage settlement, made \u201cat Genoa, in\nthe quarter of St. Laurence, to wit in the sitting-room (_caminata_)\nof the residence of Francisca, formerly wife to the late Don Jacobo\nde Fiescho,\u201d \u201cwith the public street in front, the house of Urbano de\nNegro at its right, and that of Sebastiano de Negro at its left and\nback\u201d; \u201cin the evening of Thursday, January 13, 1463\u201d; between Giuliano\nAdorno, son of the late Don Jacobo, on the one hand, and Francisca,\nmother of Caterinetta and Jacobo and Giovanni de Fiesco, brothers of\nthe same. Giuliano thereby pledges himself to give Catherine on their\nmarriage, \u00a31,000, and he \u201cmortgages to her,\u201d up to this amount, \u201ca\ncertain house of his own, situate in Genoa in the quarter of St. Agnes,\nwith the public street in front, the house of Baldassare Adorno at the\nright hand\u201d (it belonged before this to Don Georgio Adorno), \u201cand on\nthe other hand the public street.\u201d And Francesca, Jacobo, and Giovanni\npromise to pay Giuliano, in bare money and in wedding outfit for\nCatherine, \u00a3400 on completion of the marriage, and another \u00a3400 in the\ncourse of the following two years; and they mortgage to him, up to this\namount, the house in which the settlement is being made. Giuliano is to\nbe free to live with his wife and her family in this same house, for\nthese first two years after his marriage, without any payment.\n\nAt this date, then, Giuliano is already fatherless, and Catherine\u2019s\nbrother Lorenzo is still too young to have any legal voice in the\nmatter. Although Catherine is, after the first two years, not\nguaranteed anything beyond \u00a31,000 capital, or say \u00a340 a year income,\nher outfit is a handsome one.\n\n\n3. _Catherine\u2019s first Will, June 1484._\n\nThen there is Catherine\u2019s first Will, June 23, 1484, after twenty-one\nyears of marriage. She is \u201clying\u201d although \u201cfully herself in mind,\nintellect, and memory,\u201d yet \u201clanguid in body and weighted down by\nbodily infirmity, in the room, her residence, in the women\u2019s quarters\nof the Hospital of the Pammatone,\u201d which \u201cshe has inhabited for a\nconsiderable time (_jamdiu_).\u201d \u201cAnd knowing herself to be without\nchildren, and without hope of future offspring,\u201d she leaves the\nlife-interest in her marriage-dowry of \u00a31,000 to her husband, Giuliano;\nbids divide up, at his death, the bulk of this capital between the\nHospital and her eldest brother Jacobo (\u00a3300 to each), and her two\nyounger brothers Giovanni and Lorenzo (\u00a3150 to each); and orders her\nbody to be buried in the Hospital Church.[361]\n\nTen years, then, after her Conversion, Catherine had already been\nliving for a considerable time within the Hospital. They do not as\nyet occupy a separate building, or even a set of rooms within the\nHospital; and, though both live within it, they evidently occupy\nseparate rooms in different parts of the great complex of buildings;\nfor the room here mentioned is simply Catherine\u2019s (_camera residentiae\ntestatricis_, where _residentiae_ must be a descriptive and not a\npartitive genitive), and forms part and parcel of the women\u2019s wards\n(_in domibus mulierum_). Her absence of hope as to offspring evidently\narises primarily from the life of continence she is leading. Yet this\nlatter determination is clearly not caused by any specific knowledge\nof her husband\u2019s past infidelity: for Thobia must have been now some\nten years old, yet there is no kind of mention of her; whilst, later\non, Catherine never fails to remember her, with one exception to\nbe presently explained. There is no mention of nephews and nieces,\ndoubtless because her brothers were, as yet, either unmarried or\nchildless, or, at least, daughterless. She is fairly well off, for\nbesides this possession of \u00a31,000 she gets her room and board free,\nand Giuliano has still some property of his own more considerable than\nhers. And the share left by her to relations is large--\u00a3600--as over\nagainst \u00a3300 to a public charity (the Hospital), and \u00a3100, presumably,\nfor the funeral, minor charities, and Masses. If she says nothing, as\nyet, as to burial in the same grave with her husband, this is doubtless\nbecause she herself appears now to be the one likely to die first.\n\n\n4. _Giuliano\u2019s Will, October 1494._\n\nThere is, fourthly, the first and last Will, October 20, 1494, of\n\u201cthe Reverend Sir, Brother Giuliano Adorno, professing the Third\nOrder of St. Francis, under the care of the Friars Minor Observants,\u201d\nalready described on pages 151, 152. The will is drawn up in the\n\u201csitting-room\u201d (_caminata_) of the \u201chabitation\u201d of the Testator. Now\nthe Notary, Battista Strata, in a foot-note to a first draft of an\n(unfinished) Will of Catherine, writes: \u201cOn the day on which I drew up\nDon Giuliano\u2019s\u201d; which words (owing to a multiplicity of converging\nindications) can only refer to this Will of October 2, 1494. And\nin this draft Catherine leaves legacies to the servants Benedetta\n(Lombarda) and Mariola Bastarda, as \u201cabiding with, and dwelling in the\nhouse with, Testatrix.\u201d It is clear then that, by now, Catherine and\nGiuliano are living under the same roof, in a distinct house within the\nhospital precincts, with two personal attendants for their common use.\nThey will have moved, out of their separate single rooms, into this\nhouse, upon Catherine becoming Matron, in 1490. In this draft there\nappear also, for the first time, her brother Jacobo\u2019s two daughters\n(\u00a3100 each); and her sister, the Augustinianess Limbania (\u00a310).\n\n\n5. _Four minor documents, 1496-1497._\n\nThere are, next, certain minor documents of 1496-1497, which modify\npoints of previous Wills and clear up details of her life. Thus,\non June 17, 1496 Catherine signs a deed of consent to the sale of\nthe Palace in the S. Agnese (Adorni) quarter.--On January 10, 1496,\nGiuliano, \u201csane in mind although languid in body,\u201d orders, in a\nCodicil, that Catherine shall carry out, according to the directions\nof a certain Friar Minor, a vow made by himself to St. Anthony of\nPadua; notes that the Palace has been sold; and declares that she is\nto be free to annul, amend or diminish, according to her own judgment,\nhis legacy of \u00a3500 to the Hospital.[362] And, in the Cartulary of the\nBank of St. George, Catherine\u2019s name appears as an Investor: on July\n14, 1497 as \u201cwife of Giuliano Adorno\u201d; but on October 6 as \u201cwife and\ntestamentary heiress of the late Giuliano Adorno.\u201d[363] These entries\nwere considered on page 149 note. On the second occasion she orders\nthat the Bank shall, after her death, annually pay over the interest\nof the fourteen shares (\u00a31,400), now bought by her, to the Hospital of\nthe Pammatone, in return for \u201cthe enjoyment and usufruct of a house and\na greenhouse (_viridario_) of (within) the said Hospital,\u201d which had\nbeen conceded to her for her lifetime. The sum (about \u00a356 a year) thus\nceded by her is a handsome one, as she had, by now, well earned the use\nof this house by her constant labours for the Hospital, including her\nmatronship from 1490 to 1496. I take it that she was again thinking of\nThobia; so that this relatively large sum would cover at least part of\nthe Hospital\u2019s expenses incurred for this poor girl.\n\n\n6. _Catherine\u2019s second Will, May 1498._\n\nThis has been studied on pages 152-154.\n\n\n7. _Deed of Cession, September 18, 1499; and Codicil of January 1503._\n\nThese have been studied on pages 155, and 168, 169.\n\n\n8. _Third Will, May 21, 1506; and Codicil of November 1508._\n\nThese have been described on pages 172-174; and 175, 176.\n\n\n9. _Fourth and last Will, March 18, 1509; and two last Codicils, August\n3 and September 12, 1510._\n\nThese have been described on pages 185-187; 202, 203; and 212-214,\nrespectively.\n\nWe have thus described all the fifteen documents which alone still\nbear dates within the range of Catherine\u2019s lifetime, and whose\ncontemporaneousness is above all challenge. They all have the pedantic,\nat first sight unmoving, indeed repulsive, form of legal documents.\nYet the substance of quite ten of them undoubtedly proceeds from\nCatherine; and they all give us a most precious, precise certainty\nwith regard to many cardinal points of locality, date, sequence, and\nself-determination in her life. True, neither the day, nor even the\nmonth, of her Birth or Baptism; nor the year of her Conversion; nor\nthe date of the beginning of her Daily Communions; nor the facts\nas to the rarity or frequency of her Confessions; nor the day or\nmonth of Giuliano\u2019s death, have been recoverable by any contemporary\nattestations. But on other points we thus possess a series of\nabsolutely reliable documents, ranging from 1456 to 1510, whose\ntestimony nothing can be allowed to shake.\n\n\nII. SECOND STAGE: FIVE FURTHER OFFICIAL AND LEGAL DOCUMENTS, 1511-1526;\nAND FOUR MORTUARY DATES, 1524-1587.\n\nAnd this first stage of the evidence is followed by a second, as dry\nand legal, and as absolutely reliable, as the other; yet which still\ndoes not refer to any chronicle or notes of her life, (as either\nalready extant or as in process of registration or radaction), but only\nto the fate of her remains and to certain turning-points in the lives\nof her disciples and eyewitnesses. I note here only those documents\nwhich fix for us the dates of the beginning of her Cultus, and which\ngive us the latest contemporary proof for those persons being still\nalive.\n\n\n1. We get thus the Hospital Account for the Moneys spent on the\nReligious Clothing of the Maid-Servant Mariola Bastarda, July 7, 1511;\nthe entry in the Hospital Cartulary of the expenses incurred for the\ntransport of stone and for a picture, in connection with the first\nopening of Catherine\u2019s Deposito, July 10, 1512; the account, in the\nsame book, concerning the funeral of Don Jacobo Carenzio, who had died\noccupying Catherine\u2019s little house within the Hospital precincts, on\nJanuary 7, 1513; a Will of the little widow-attendant Argentina del\nSale, of January 15, 1522; and the Will of Don Cattaneo Marabotto,\nstill \u201cin good bodily and mental health,\u201d May 11, 1526,--a document\ndrawn up in his dwelling-place, the house belonging to his friends, the\nSalvagii.[364]\n\n\n2. And to this group we can add four further dates, the first and\nlast two of which are completely certain. Ettore Vernazza died on\nJune 26 or 27, 1524; the year is fixed by the great plague epidemic\nwhich carried him off, and the month and day, by his daughter\u2019s\nletter. Cattaneo Marabotto died, there is no reason to doubt, in 1528.\nCatherine\u2019s Dominican cousin and close friend, Suor Tommasa Fiesca,\ndied, eighty-six years of age, in 1534. And Battista Vernazza died,\naged ninety, on May 9, 1587.[365]\n\nHence, up to eighteen years after her death, the two closest of\nCatherine\u2019s confidants were alive; whilst one who had known her, and\nhad been thirteen at the time of Catherine\u2019s death, was still alive\nseventy-seven years after that event.\n\n\nIII. THIRD STAGE: BISHOP GIUSTINIANO\u2019S ACCOUNT OF CATHERINE\u2019S LIFE,\nREMAINS, AND BIOGRAPHY, 1537.\n\nOur third stage is in strikingly manifold contrast to the other two.\nIt is represented by but one single, largely vague and rhetorical, but\nhuman and directly psychological, document; and is the first that tells\nus of a Life.\n\n\n1. _The text._\n\nMonsignore Agostino Giustiniano, Bishop of Nibio, published his\n_Castigatissimi Annali \u2026 della Republica di Genova_, in Genoa, in\n1537. There, on p. 223, he tells us that he was born (of socially\ndistinguished parents) in that city in 1470. And under the date of 1510\n(p. 266) he writes: \u201cAnd in the month of September, it pleased God to\ndraw to Himself Madonna Catarinetta Adorna, who was daughter of Giacobo\ndi Flisco, Vice-Roy of Naples for King Ren\u00e9, and wife to Giuliano\nAdorno, with whom she lived many years in marital chastity. And her\nlife, after the Divine goodness had touched her heart in the years\nof her youth, was all charity, love, meekness, benignity, patience,\nincredible abstinence, and a mirror of every virtue, so that she can be\ncompared to St. Catherine of Siena. And all the city has participated\nin, and has perceived, the odour of the virtues of this holy matron,\nwho, when rapt in the spirit, spoke, amongst other matters, of the\nstate of the souls that are in Purgatory, things excellent and rare\nand worthy of being attended to by such persons as have a taste for\nthe religious and spiritual life. Her body is deposited in the Oratory\nof the larger Hospital, and offers a spectacle no less admirable than\nvenerable, appearing (_come che sia_) all entire with its flesh, so\nthat she looks alive,--as though she had been placed there to-day; and\nyet full twenty-five years have passed since she began to lie there\ndead. The great consciousness of God, the special virtues, the saintly\ndeeds, accompanied by an immense love, which were manifested by this\nvenerable matron, would furnish matter well worthy of being recorded\nhere. Yet we shall pass them over, for the sake of brevity; especially\nsince a book worthy of respect (_un digno libro_) has been composed,\nconcerning these things exclusively, by persons worthy of confidence\n(_digne di fede_).\u201d\n\n\n2. _Its testimony._\n\nNow this is a statement which we have every reason to trust. For Bishop\nGiustiniano, himself a native of Genoa, forty years of age at the\ntime of Catherine\u2019s death, was a man of education, of solid character,\nand of social position; who, throughout his long book, is uniformly\ntruthful and generally accurate; and who had here no conceivable reason\nfor inventing or seriously misstating the few facts alleged by him.\nThese facts, as regards the matter in hand, are three: that she spoke\nof various (evidently various spiritual) matters, and, amongst these,\nof the state of the souls in Purgatory; that a Book was extant at the\nend of 1535, which concerned itself exclusively with Catherine; and\nthat persons worthy of trust had produced this Book.\n\n(1) Giustiniano knows of no writings of hers: she had not written, but\nhad only \u201cspoken excellent and rare things,\u201d and she had done so \u201cwhen\nrapt in the spirit.\u201d The exaggeration here (for when in ecstasy, she\nspoke nothing, or but a few broken words at most) is interesting, since\nit probably grew up as an explanation of, and consolation for, her not\nhaving herself written anything; since during the ecstasy she would be\nincapable of anything but speech, and out of the ecstasy she would not\nremember the sights and sounds perceived during the trance. And yet,\nthus, what had to be written down by others, whilst she was in ecstasy,\nwould be more precious, because more immediately \u201cinspired,\u201d than what\nshe herself could have thought, remembered, and written down, in her\nordinary psycho-physical condition.\n\n(2) The Book, in existence at the end of 1535, not only contained\nsayings concerning the state of the souls in Purgatory, but must have\ncontained these sayings already collected together in a separate\nchapter or division. For her sayings concerning this matter by no\nmeans form the larger, or the most immediately striking, part of her\nauthentic teaching, taken as a whole; and only if already collected\ninto a more or less separate _corpus_ would they have been singled\nout in this manner.--But, if this reasoning is sound and proves\nthe existence of the _Trattato_, already more or less separate as\nat present, similar reasoning will prove the non-existence of the\n_Dialogo_. For the _Trattato_, even in its present length, fills but\nfifteen large-print octavo pages; while the _Dialogo_ fills ninety. It\nis practically inconceivable that the latter document, which can never\nhave existed otherwise than more or less separately, should have been\noverlooked here, where another, so much shorter, and at first sight\nless authoritative, is dwelt on with emphasis.\n\n(3) More than one hand had participated in the production of the Book.\nIt is characteristic of the rhetorically loose phraseology of the times\nthat the word \u201ccomposto\u201d is so used as to leave it quite uncertain\nwhether several original contributors of materials and but one Redactor\nwho constituted these materials into a Book are meant, or whether a\nsuccession of Redactors is already implied.\n\n\n3. _Surviving eyewitnesses._\n\nCertainly by this time the three chief eyewitnesses of her later\nearthly existence, Carenzio, Vernazza, and Marabotto were all dead,\nsince respectively twenty-two, eleven, and seven years. Tommasa Fiesca\nhad died in the previous year. Only Mariola Bastarda and Argentina del\nSale, her old maid-servants, were probably still alive, from among\nthe circle of Catherine\u2019s constant companions; and Battista Vernazza,\nwho was but thirteen when her God-mother died, had still fifty-two\nyears to live. Yet we have to come still later down amongst extant\ndocuments before we can get any further evidence, whether external\nor internal, as to which of these persons, or who else (probably or\ncertainly) wrote down the original contemporary notes; and as to who\nconstituted these notes, (on one or on successive occasions) into this\n\u201cGiustiniano-book,\u201d as I shall call the manuscript \u201cVita e Dottrina,\u201d\nextant in 1535.\n\n\nIV. FOURTH STAGE: THE TWO OLDEST EXTANT MANUSCRIPTS OF THE \u201cVITA E\nDOTTRINA\u201d WITH THE \u201cDICCHIARAZIONE.\u201d\n\nThe fourth stage of evidence is, as to its contents, the most\nimportant of all: but it is, as we shall see, twelve years younger: it\nbelongs to the years 1547, 1548. It consists of two Manuscripts, the\nduodecimo-volume B. 1. 29 of the University Library; and the square\noctavo-volume of the Archives of the Cathedral Chapter, both in Genoa.\nHere, at last, we are face to face with an actual _Life_ of our Saint.\nI have carefully collated them both upon the ninth Genoese Edition of\nthe _Vita ed Opere_, Genova, Sordi Muti: the first MS., throughout, and\nthe second one, sufficiently to make sure of its entire dependence upon\nthe first. I have named them MS. A and MS. B respectively.\n\n\n1. MANUSCRIPT A.\n\n\n1. _Its date and scribe._\n\nManuscript A is very interesting. It opens out as follows: \u201cJesus. Here\nbeginneth the book in which is contained the admirable life and holy\nconversation of Madonna Catherinetta Adorna.\u2026 This book was begun and\nwritten at the request of her Magnificent Ladyship, the Lady Orientina,\nConsort to the most magnificent and generous, illustrious Lord Adam\nCenturione, when she was being vexed by a grave and well-nigh incurable\ninfirmity, during now already thirteen months, by a Religious of the\nObservance \u2026 on the 7th of October of the year fifteen hundred and\nforty-seven.\u201d--And Catherine\u2019s Life concludes with the words: \u201c_Laus\nDeo semper._ This book was written at the request of the Consort, of\nhappy memory, of the \u2026 Lord Adam Centurione, who lay vexed by a most\ngrave infirmity, during now two years. Many a time she would sit and\nfind consolation, in her most painful torments, by reading of the\nburnings (_incendii_) which were suffered, for so long a time, by this\nholy woman.\u2026 At the thirteenth hour of the fourth of February God took\nher to Himself. She, a few days before she passed away, begged me with\ntears, in the presence of the Magnificent Lady, the Lady Ginetta, her\nmost beloved daughter, to finish that which I had undertaken to produce\nfor her own self. And so it will be of use to the latter, and will help\nher to bear her pains and travails, which may the Lord alleviate, by\ngiving her good patience.\u201d--After this follow thirty pages; containing\nan Italian version of St. Bernard\u2019s Sermon on the death of his Brother\nGerard, (Chapter XXVI of his _Sermons on the Canticle of Canticles_).\nAnd the whole concludes with the words: \u201cFinished in the year Fifteen\nhundred and forty-eight, on the thirteenth of February.\u201d\n\nWe have here, then, very precise dates: this _Life_ was written between\nOctober 7, 1547, and February 4-13, 1548, by a Franciscan Observant,\nfirst for the wife, and then for the daughter, of a Doge of Genoa.\n\n\n2. _Comparison with the Printed \u201cLife.\u201d_\n\nNow the whole forty-two chapters of this _Life_, together with the\nSermon, are engrossed throughout, in a careful and upright uncial\nscript. On close comparison with the Printed _Life_ the differences\nturn out to consist, either of vocabulary and dialect, of a simply\nformal kind; or of additions and variations in the subject-matter,\nof an exceedingly trite and would-be edifying character; or of a\nvery few additional passages of genuine importance; or of divisions,\ntranspositions, and _lacunae_--the latter mostly of a significant and\nprimitive kind; or, finally, of one highly interesting change, effected\nin his own copy, by the copyist himself.\n\n(i) _Vocabulary._\n\nThe Observant\u2019s vocabulary is a curious mixture of downright (late)\nLatin, old French, and modern Italian. So \u201cpagura\u201d (_paura_); \u201cin\nsi\u201d (_se_, Fr. _soi_); \u201cdespecto\u201d (_dispetto_); \u201calchuna,\u201d \u201canchora\u201d\n(_alcuna_, _ancora_); \u201clingeriare\u201d (_ligare_, Fr. _lier_); \u201csummissa\u201d\n(_sommessa_, Fr. _soumise_); \u201cuna fiata\u201d (_una volta_, Fr. _une fois_);\n\u201cdido\u201d (_digito_, o. Fr. _doight_).[366] Some of these and such-like\nforms no doubt stood in his Prototype. Thus, whilst he simply copies,\nhe writes--\u201cpecto\u201d and \u201clicet\u201d; when he makes up sentences of his\nown, he writes \u201cpetto\u201d and \u201cabench\u00e8.\u201d And his single Chapter XIII\nhas, on two pages, \u201cper il che\u201d; but, on its last two pages, it has\nthe elsewhere universal \u201cperoch\u00e8\u201d (_perch\u00e8_).--Yet his language is,\nupon the whole, so uniform, whilst his sources (as we shall see) are\nso varied; and again his uniform language is in such marked contrast\nto Giustiniano\u2019s educated Genoese Italian of 1535, and to that of the\nPrinted _Vita_ of 1551: that much of it, even where he is copying the\nsubstance of his Prototype, must be his own.\n\n(ii) _Worthless additions and variations, of two kinds._\n\nThe additions and variations are mostly of two kinds. They are either\nof a directly edificatory character. So the three pages descriptive of\nthe devotion of the crowd, on occasion of the opening of the coffin,\nin the spring of 1512; the very general statement as to the miracles\nthat occurred on that occasion; and, further back, the expansion (by\nthis Franciscan scribe) of Catherine\u2019s comments on (the Franciscan)\nJacopone da Todi\u2019s \u201cla superbia in cielo c\u2019\u00e8.\u201d[367] And in one place,\nto produce edification by a sense of contrast, he adopts a touch of\n(doubtless legendary) gossip against Giuliano, for the heading of his\nChapter XXIV runs: \u201cHow she comported herself towards her husband, who\nwas very contrary to her temperament; and concerning her indefatigable\npatience in bearing with him, and even with the beatings which he gave\nher\u201d;[368]--where the end marked off by me is no doubt the Observant\u2019s\nown addition,--possibly, as we shall see, on the authority of Argentina\ndel Sale.--Or these additions are introduced to minimize or ward off\nscandal. So when, after expanding the parallel between the conversions\nof St. Paul and Catherine, he adds: \u2018\u201cFor He spoke, and they were\n(re-)made\u2019 (Ps. xxxii, 9). But we must not curiously seek for the\nreason of this action\u201d; and then proves his point by three further\nBiblical texts. So too when, after giving an abbreviated account of\nthe contrast between Thommasina\u2019s and Catherine\u2019s rate of spiritual\nadvancement, he again adds some Bible text and some moralizing of\nhis own. And so again where, after reproducing the passage as to her\nbeing linked to God with a thread of gold, he expatiates, once more\nin Scriptural words, on the presence of filial fear and the absence\nof all servile fear within her. And so where, after following his\nPrototype (as still preserved in the Printed _Life_), and declaring\nhis belief that it is reasonable and licit to believe her soul to have\nentered Heaven immediately after death, he continues: \u201cHence he who\ndoes believe this, does not lose in merit\u201d (_non demerita_; an obvious\nlitotes for \u201cmerits\u201d), \u201cand he who believes it not, does not offend.\u201d\nIn all these cases the Biblical texts appear in the Vulgate Latin.[369]\n\nThere can be no doubt that it is this slight recasting of the language,\nand this insertion of trite and timid moralizing of his own, which,\ntogether with the careful engrossing of his copy throughout, and its\noccasional pretty decoration and illumination, permitted the Observant\nto talk (although, even thus, in a manner most misleading for our\npresent habits of language) of having \u201cwritten this Book.\u201d\n\n(iii) _Two genuine dates and accounts._\n\nYet, even amongst the passages which appear in his MS. as additional\nto the later texts, are two evidently genuine and suggestive dates and\naccounts. There is a description of Catherine\u2019s great attack of \u201cfire\nat her heart,\u201d more full and primitive, and more definitely dated than\nany one of its many variants and echoes to be found in the Printed\n_Life_: the slip in the date (he writes November 11, 1506, when his\nown age-indications, and the position of the anecdote, clearly require\n1509) will have had something to do with the strangely uncertain\nposition of this episode in the Printed _Life_.[370]--And further\nback, in opening out the beautiful story of Marco and Argentina, he\nwrites: \u201cThere being in the quarter of the Quay (_contrada del Molo_)\none Marco del Sale, suffering from a cancer in the nose, who, fourteen\nmonths before his infirmity, had taken to wife a virtuous young woman\nnamed Argentina, spiritual daughter of Madonna Catherinetta, as is said\nabove.\u201d[371] This very precise distance of time, between that humble\nwedding and the poor navvy\u2019s illness, will have been derived by the\nObservant from Argentina herself, probably still living at the time of\nhis writing, even now hardly sixty years old.--Hence his long-winded\naddition, as to the mediation of the \u201cspiritual daughter\u201d (certainly\nArgentina), in the matter of our knowledge of Catherine\u2019s prayer for\nthe dying Giuliano,[372] may also have been derived from that gossipy\nlittle woman.\n\n(iv) _Divisions and transpositions._\n\nAs to the divisions and transpositions, the chief of these consist in\nthe first six chapters of the Printed _Vita_ appearing here broken up\ninto (the first) ten chapters; in the MS. Chapters XI to XVI being\ngradually caught up by the Printed series,--indeed the MS. Chapter XVI\ncorresponds to Chapters XVI to XVIII of the published book; in the\nChapters XVII to XIX of the MS. corresponding to Chapters XX and XXI\nof the Print; and Chapters XX, XXI, and XXII of the MS., corresponding\nrespectively to Chapters XXIV, XXV, and XXVII of the Print. Then for\nthree Chapters follows considerable variation: the MS. Chapters XXIII,\nXXIV, and XXV hold the positions respectively of the Printed Chapters\nXXXVII, XLV and XLVI there. And then again there is likeness for three\nChapters--MS. Chapters XXVI to XXVIII corresponding to Printed Chapters\nXXVIII and XXIX there. And once more three MS. Chapters (XXIX to\nXXXI), quite different in sequence to anything there, are followed by\ntwo Chapters (XXXII and XXXIII) corresponding to the Printed Chapters\nXXIX and XXX. Four more MS. Chapters (XXXIV to XXXVII), without any\nmatch, as to order, in the Printed book, are followed by two Chapters\n(XXXVIII and XXXIX), corresponding, respectively, to the beginning\nand end of Chapter XXXI there; and by Chapter XL, identical with the\nopening of Chapter XL and with Chapter XLI there. And, above all,\nChapter XLI here, corresponds to the _Dicchiarazione_ (_Trattato_)\nthere; and is followed here by a final Chapter (XLII), made up of a\nbewilderingly different succession of paragraphs,--paragraphs which, in\nthe Printed _Life_, stand in Chapters XLIX; XVII; and XLVIII to LII.\nAnd, whereas the first forty Chapters of this MS. average six or seven\npages in length, Chapters XLI and XLII are respectively forty-five and\nforty-eight pages long.\n\n(v) _Lacunae._\n\nThese transpositions would alone suffice to show how complicated is the\ntextual history of the _Vita_: we may have to consider some of them\nlater on. But it is the _lacunae_ which are especially interesting.\nOne of these is quite certainly right, as against the printed text.\nParagraphs 23 to 25 of Chapter L of the Print are wanting here. Those\npages give an entirely fantastic, and formally vague, account of a\nsupposed interior stigmatization of Catherine, and of a preposterous\nelongation of one of her arms,--both \u201cfacts\u201d based explicitly upon\nthe authority of Argentina.[373] And the circumstance of the scribe\nbeing a disciple of the stigmatized St. Francis, and the probability\nthat Argentina was still accessible, conjoin to render the absence of\nthese paragraphs from this MS. simply decisive against their historical\ncharacter.--The longest of all the omissions, that of the _Dialogo_,\nmust, even more, be explained on the ground of its non-existence at\nthis time, or, at least, of its not being known to the Scribe, or\nagain, of its having as yet no kind of authority. For not only does he\nmake no use of, or allusion to this, very long, and (were it primitive)\nsimply supreme document, but, as we shall find, quite a number of his\nfacts contradict the _Dialogo\u2019s_ version of them; and we shall soon see\nthat, had he known and esteemed the document, he would not have allowed\nsuch a defiance of it to remain without correction.\n\nOver against these two non-appearances of spurious or secondary matter,\nwe have to set three omissions of highly valuable material. The two\ninterconnected, obviously entirely historical, paragraphs concerning\nMaestro Boerio,--his attempt to cure Catherine, and the excessive\nimpression made upon her by his scarlet robes,[374]--are both wanting\nhere. But we shall see that they were probably not incorporated in any\n_Vita_, till the preparation of the Printed _Life_ of 1551.--Matters\nstand differently with respect to the third omission,--the\nbeautifully vivid, inimitably daring and characteristic, Chapter\nXIX, containing Catherine\u2019s dialogue with the Friar, who, according\nto the well-informed Parpera, was a Franciscan Observant.[375] It is\nimpossible to hold that this, most historical and well-preserved,\nstory did not stand in the Observant\u2019s Prototype, or that it was\notherwise unknown to him; its omission is doubtless deliberate and\n\u201cprudential.\u201d--An interesting instance of demonstrable omission on his\npart, is indeed furnished also by his version of the beautiful story\nof Suor Tommasa\u2019s life: his abbreviation of it is so obvious and yet\nso unintelligent, that only a reference to the full account, which lay\ncertainly before him and is still preserved in the Printed _Life_,\nmakes any satisfactory sense of what he has retained.[376]\n\n\n3. _Modification from a tripartite scheme to a quatripartite one._\n\nBut the most interesting of all the differences between this MS. A of\n1547 and the Printed _Life_ of 1551 is another group of omissions,\nconnected, as these are, with the one single modification introduced\ninto his own text by the Scribe himself. The whole of the matter\ncorresponding to the Printed _Life\u2019s_ Chapter XLIV (all but the first\nseven lines) and that corresponding to the first three paragraphs of\nits Chapter XLIX, which treat consecutively, and with an inimitable\nvividness and a daring, unreflective truthfulness, of her most\nunusual self-revelations to her Confessor Don Marabotto,[377] is\nomitted--possibly, again, in part at least, from fear of scandal; but\nmore probably because, even at this time, this (the most private and\nconsecutive) contribution to the _Life_, still existed separately,\nperhaps from all, and presumably from most, copies of the _Vita_\nthen in circulation. And such a copy will have been the Observant\u2019s\nPrototype.--Only when he had finished copying out his manuscript, will\nhe have discovered that, if he would take any, even though silent,\naccount of that contribution, which, by now, will have become known to\nhim, he must, at all costs, break up and seriously modify one of his\nchapters. We have already studied the treble, most solemn affirmation,\nby Catherine and her Confessor themselves, in that Printed Chapter\nXLIV, as to her twenty-five years of spiritual loneliness and guidance\nby God alone;[378] and we have seen that (since we cannot place her\nConversion before 1474, nor the beginning of her later practice of\nConfession after 1499) we are forced (if we take her words in their\nobvious sense, as applying to Confession as well as to Direction, and\nassume her First Convert-Period, the penitential time, to have been\naccompanied throughout by repeated Confessions) to make this first\nPeriod very short.\n\nNow the volume of 1547, 1548, consists throughout of paper, all but\nthe first three leaves and the tenth leaf, which are of parchment.\nThe first leaf remains blank; the second contains the Observant\u2019s\nPreface on its obverse; the third holds, on its two sides, the first\ntwo pages of the _Vita_. That Preface was certainly written before all\nthe rest, or at least certainly during the lifetime of Donna Orientina\nCenturione, _i.e._ before February 4, 1548; nor does anything in those\nfirst two (parchment and paper) pages of text suggest that they are an\ninsertion subsequent to the following (paper) pages. At first, then,\nthe copy will have consisted of three parchment leaves, and then of\nnothing but paper leaves; and the Observant will have made the last of\nthese parchment leaves the sole and opening parchment leaf of the text\nof the Book.\n\nBut matters stand differently with the tenth leaf, pp. 19, 20 of\nthe MS., which begins with the words \u201cbisogna, sono apparecchiata\na confessar\u201d--\u201c(if) necessary, I am prepared to confess my sins in\npublic\u201d (Catherine\u2019s words, on occasion of her Conversion); and ends\nwith \u201c(abru) savano insino al core. Poi f\u00f9 tirata al Petto\u201d--\u201cLove,\nwith those penetrating rays of its own, which burnt her, even to the\nheart. She was then drawn to the Breast\u201d (narrative words which, in the\nscheme of her _Life_ that follows upon the Conversion-story, mark the\ntransition from one of this scheme\u2019s stages to another).\n\nNow here we have clear indications that these two parchment pages\nhold a modified text. For that last parchment-leaf word \u201cPetto\u201d is\npicked up, on the paper continuation, by \u201cPecto,\u201d the ordinary form of\nthe Observant\u2019s Prototype: see his page 81. And the whole book (all\nbut this parchment leaf and its highly restricted effects), still\nattributes _four years_ to her First Convert-Period, her Penitential,\nPurgative Stage.\n\nIndeed, this solitary parchment leaf itself still allows us to trace,\n(as though the leaf were a Palimpsest), both this, the original,\nlength of that Period, and the fact of that Period having then been\nthe first of three, and not, as now, of four such periods.--For this\nleaf, in finishing up the manuscript\u2019s fourth chapter, the history\nof her Conversion,[379]--declares that \u201cthis sight (of her sins) and\nthis contrition (for them) lasted _fourteen months_, during which she\nwent on confessing herself, continually increasing her self-accusation\n(_aggravando la colpa_); after the passing of which months, all sadness\nwas lifted from her, nor did she have any memory of her sins,--as\nthough she had cast them into the depths of the sea.\u201d And then, in\nthe opening of the fifth chapter,[380] the scheme and conspectus of\nher Convert Life runs as follows. She is first \u201cdrawn to the feet\nof Christ\u201d and abides there \u201c_one year_ until she had satisfied her\nconscience by Contrition, Confession, and Satisfaction.\u201d--\u201cShe next\nfelt herself drawn, with St. John, to repose on the Breast of her\nLoving Lord.\u2026 _The sight of the sins committed by her against God would\ncome to her_, so that she would be, as it were, wild (_arrabbiava_)\nwith grief, and would lick the ground with her tongue; and in this wise\nshe appeared to derive relief for her tempestuous feelings (_affannato\ncuore_). And she abode thus for _three years_, during which she was,\nas it were, wild with grief and love, with those penetrating rays of\nits own, which burned her to the very heart.[381] She was then drawn\nto the Breast\u201d--which last parchment-leaf word is taken up by the\nnext, ordinary paper-leaf: \u201cBreast; and here she was shown the Heart\nof Christ.\u2026 And she abode _many years_ with this impression of His\nburning Heart.--And then she was drawn (still) further up, that is, to\nthe Mouth; and there she was found worthy of being kissed by the true\nSolomon.\u2026 And she no more (directly) recognized her human acts, whether\nthey had been done well or evilly; but she saw all in God.\u201d[382]\n\nWe see here how the original four years of her First Period, which are\nstill retained elsewhere by the Printed _Vita_,[383] have been broken\nup by the scribe of this Manuscript into two shorter (first and second)\nPeriods, of fourteen months (one year), and three years respectively;\nhow the copyist, both in his first apportionment of length to his new\nFirst Period, \u201cfourteen months,\u201d and in his second assignment, now\nof one year (since he has to divide up the original Four years so as\nto get them again by addition, \u201c_one_ year\u201d and \u201c_three_ years\u201d),\nleaves us two curious echoes of the \u201cFour\u201d of his Prototype; how his\namended description of his new second Period is still largely the old\nPenitential description, for she still sees her sins (a sight which\nis here an anachronism), and she is still prostrate on the ground (a\nprostration which exactly suits the Feet, but in no way the Breast of\nChrist); how the Observant has been half-hearted and clumsy, for he has\nnow left two successive Breast-Periods, hardly differentiated from each\nother; and how he was able to shift (though not to change) the original\nsingle Breast-Period (now his second Breast-Period), because of its\nconveniently vague time-note of \u201cmany years.\u201d All this laborious, yet\ntimid, incomplete and ineffectual change, thus forced upon an evidently\nlong-established, toughly resisting composition, can only have taken\nplace under some severe pressure of evidence; and the root-causes of\nthe change are somehow connected with the question as to the duration,\nin her life, of the perception and Confession of her sins. For the\nConfession of her sins, which (in the old scheme) extended over four\nyears, is now restricted to fourteen months or one year; and if\ncontemplative and restful love are now anticipated (from the original\nsecond Period) in the new second Period of three years, yet an intense\nsight of her particular sins, piercing contrition for them, and a\ncomplete prostration on the ground, are all indeed retained, from the\noriginal Feet-Period, for this new second Period, but Confession has\ndisappeared from these three years.\n\nNow we have precisely such absolutely constraining evidence in\nMarabotto\u2019s treble chronicle of Catherine\u2019s own words, with regard to\nthe twenty-five years during which she was led by God\u2019s spirit alone.\nIt is clear then that the most important of Marabotto\u2019s notes did not\nexist incorporated with, or at least had not originally formed part of,\nand did not dominate, the scheme of the _Vita_ which the Observant had\nbefore him; and that, upon his later knowledge of, or pondering over\nthem, he understood Catherine\u2019s words to have applied, not simply to\nDirection but to (at least at all habitual) Confession as well.\n\n\n2. MANUSCRIPT B.\n\n\n1. _Its very primitive heading._\n\nManuscript B starts indeed with a heading demonstrably older than that\nof MS. A. For its \u201cDe la Mirabile Conversione et Vita de la q(uondam)\ndonna Catherinetta Adorna\u201d is more primitive, because of its \u201cthe\nlate,\u201d which indicates a time of writing not yet far removed from the\ndate of her death; its \u201cDonna,\u201d less honorific than the \u201cMadonna\u201d of\nthe other MSS.; and, above all, its giving \u201cConversione\u201d before \u201cVita,\u201d\ninstead of \u201cConversatione\u201d after \u201cVita,\u201d since thus we are assured of\n\u201cConversione\u201d being no slip of the pen for \u201cConversatione,\u201d--Conversion\ncoming necessarily before, and holy Conversation coming after, in\nconsequence of, an admirable life.--And this title will originally have\nheaded a booklet containing simply the story of her Conversion and\nearly Convert life, say, up to the end of Chapter VI of the Printed\n_Vita_, p. 17_b_; or, since even the \u201cet Vita\u201d of this title reads like\na later addition, only up to the end of the present printed Chapter\nII, p. 6_c_. I think there is no doubt that we have here the original\nheading of a tract put together on occasion of the first public Cultus,\nin the summer of 1512.\n\n\n2. _Body of MS. B dependent upon MS. A._\n\nBut the body of MS. B is demonstrably later than, indeed dependent\nupon, MS. A; for here the scribe silently adopts the modification,\neffected by the writer of MS. A in his own text, with regard to\ndoubling the Breast-Period; and yet, even here, we have still the\nObservant\u2019s \u201cPetto\u201d for the first period, and the \u201cPecto\u201d of the\nObservant\u2019s Prototype for the second period.[384] \u201cCome\u201d now appears\nthroughout, in lieu of MS. A\u2019s \u201cComo.\u201d And Giuliano\u2019s name is omitted\n(all but once, in Catherine\u2019s mouth) in the Husband-Chapter.[385]\n\n\n3. _Order, division, numeration of the Chapters._\n\nThe order, division, and numeration of the Chapters is identical with\nthose of MS. A, all but that Chapter XXXIX of MS. A (equivalent to the\nunimportant pp. 82_b_-83_a_ of Chapter XXXI in the Printed _Life_)\nis here omitted. No Chapter numbered XXXIX appears here, but, after a\nsmall break behind Chapter XXXVIII, the _Trattato_ follows, as Chapter\nXL.\n\n\n4. _Laceration at end of Manuscript._\n\nAnd this Chapter XL is abruptly broken off in the midst of a\npenultimate paragraph: \u201cet per gratia li sono monstrati et\u201d are the\nlast words. The authentication of the MS., appended immediately after\nthis rough ending, shows this laceration to be at least as old as 1672.\nNor is it a case of some complete set or sets of leaves being lost,\nsince one leaf has had to be torn off, from the still remaining other\nhalf-sheet.[386] The last part, no doubt, contained the end of the\n_Trattato_ and the Passion-Chapter; and will, like its Prototype, MS.\nA, have been without a trace of the _Dialogo_. Indeed I suspect that it\nwas the latter circumstance which, when once this elaborate composition\nhad come to be prized, gave rise to the, surely deliberate, destruction\nof the evidence for its absence here. MS. A will, in that case, have\nbeen saved from a similar fate, by its special appropriation to a\npowerful family; by its superior, uncial kind of script; and, above\nall, by its important contemporary date and dedication at the end.\n\n\nV. FIFTH STAGE: MANUSCRIPT C.\n\nOur next, deeply interesting stage, is represented by one single MS.\nin the University Library, Genoa,--catalogued as B. VII 17. It is a\ncareful copy, made throughout by the Protonotary Angelo Luigi Giovo,\nand subscribed by himself on April 20, 1671, of, as he there says,\n\u201cAnother ancient MS. received from the Signora ----, Matron of the\nGreat Hospital, who declared that she had herself received it from\nthe Nuns of the Madonna delle Grazie; and which is believed, with\ngreat probability, to be the MS. copied by Ettore Vernazza and sent to\nthe Venerable Donna Battista, his daughter. The book, in view of the\nantiquity of the paper, of the character of the binding of the copy,\nand of the other peculiarities, has been judged by experts to belong\nto the above-mentioned Period.\u201d The reader will soon see why I place\n(not necessarily the execution, but the text of) the MS. thus copied\nby Giovo, before the printing of the _Vita_ in 1551, and will thus be\nhelped to a decision as to the \u201cgreatly probable\u201d attribution to Ettore\nVernazza.\n\n\n1. _Differences in text of MS. C from MSS. A and B._\n\nGiovo\u2019s Copy (my MS. C) follows, up to the end of its Chapter XLI\n(the _Trattato_), the division, number, and sequence of the chapters,\nand the peculiarities of the text, of MS. A, with an all but unbroken\ncloseness: even the slip, of 1506 (for 1509), in the date of the\ngreat attack of \u201cfire at heart,\u201d reappears here as it stands there\n(fol. 33_v_ of MS. C, compared with p. 193 of MS. A). But the \u201cPetto\u201d\nand \u201cPecto,\u201d of respectively the first and second Breast-Periods\nin MSS. A and B, read here, in both cases, as simply \u201cPetto\u201d (MS.\nC, fol. 3).--There is but one at all remarkable addition in this,\nthe _Vita_-part of the MS. In the account of the refusal to accept\nCatherine on the part of the Nuns of the very Convent where, as we\nshall see, the Prototype copied by Giovo was no doubt written, there\noccur the new words: \u201cAlthough her Confessor was instant with them\n(to take her), knowing her, as he did, better than the Nuns knew her\u201d\n(MS. C, fol. 1_v_).--And, in concluding further on (on its fol. 71_v\nseq._) with the Passion-Chapter, as this stands in MS. A (Chapter\nXLII), a Chapter which here (for a reason to be given in a minute)\nis not numbered, the MS. still follows closely (although now with a\nfew generally unimportant additions, omissions, and transpositions of\nparagraphs), the matter, order, and literary form of MS. A.--Only one,\nformally slight, but materially significant, difference exists here\nbetween Giovo\u2019s text and the Printed _Life_. The Printed _Life_, p.\n142_b_, reads: \u201cAfter this, she felt a hard nail at heart\u201d; to this MS.\nC adds (fol. 72_r_) \u201cso that she seemed nailed to the Cross.\u201d Neither\nset of words occurs in MSS. A and B. MS. C here gives us something\nunlike Catherine\u2019s, but very like Battista\u2019s, special spirit.\n\n\n2. _The great addition: the \u201cDialogo,\u201d Part First._\n\n(1) _The \u201cDialogo\u201d originally no longer._\n\nBut it is in the pages intermediate between the _Trattato_ and the\nPassion (foll. 53_v_ to 71_v_), that lies the interest of this MS. For\nhere we get, for the first time, the _Dialogo_, although, as yet, only\nits eventual First Part (pp. 185-225 in the Printed _Life_). Chapter\nXLI (the _Trattato_) has just finished, by only six lines short of its\nprinted form, with the words \u201cbecause that occupation with Himself\nwhich God gives to the soul, slight though it be, keeps the soul so\noccupied, that it exceeds everything, nor can the soul esteem anything\nelse.\u201d And immediately next there come (53_v_) the title-words: \u201cHere\nfollows a certain beautiful Allegory (_Figura_) which this holy soul\ninstitutes (_f\u00e0_) concerning the Soul and the Body.\u201d--The eventual\ndivision into (17) chapters is still absent, and the work seems, at\nthis time, to have been planned to be no longer than it is here. For\nit concludes with the emphatic climax: \u201cNow the Spirit, having come\nto hold this creature in this manner, declared: \u2018I am determined\nhenceforth no more to call her a human creature, because I see her\n(to be) all in God, without any (mere) humanity.\u2019\u201d For these words\nsimply re-cast the last words of the scheme of her entire life, given\nby the _Vita_: \u201cShe said: \u2018I live no more, but Christ lives in me.\u2019\nHence she could no more recognize the quality of her human acts, in\nthemselves--whether they were good or evil; but she saw all in God\u201d\n(Pr. L., p. 6_c_).\n\n(2) _The \u201cDialogo\u2019s\u201d two stages, each comprising two steps, and their\nsuggestions in the \u201cVita.\u201d_\n\nNow the _Dialogo_, as here given, consists of two chief stages, and\neach stage contains two steps.\n\nChapters I to VI give the first stage--the history of a soul in a state\nof moral and spiritual decline and contraction: all this, in the form\nof a Dialogue between the Soul, the Body, and Self-Love.--Throughout\nthis first stage Self-Love holds dominion. But, during the first step,\nthe Soul (although it already distinguishes, with regard to what it\nintends to practise, between simply avoiding grave sin and striving\nafter perfection) still continues fairly determined not to commit sin,\nand still leads the Body. During the second step, on the contrary, even\nthis simple avoidance of grave sin has ceased, for now the Body leads\nthe Soul. Thus first the Soul, and then the Body, each leads the other\nduring one step, for \u201cone week.\u201d--These two steps or weeks stand for\nthe two lustres of Catherine\u2019s pre-Conversion-Period, for the lukewarm,\nand then the positively dissipated, lustre respectively. Chapters I\nto III give the first week, equivalent to the first five years of her\nmarried life, 1463 to 1468; and Chapters IV to VI give the second week,\nand correspond to the second five years, 1468 to 1473.[387]\n\nChapters VII to XXI describe the second stage, that of Conversion and\nTransformation, which (notwithstanding its appearance of instantaneous\nand complete attainment of its end) is here presented as, in reality,\nby far the longer and the more difficult, although the alone fruitful\nand happy one. Chapters VII to XIII describe the first step. Chapters\nVII to IX give us the Soul\u2019s longing for Light; the spark of Pure Love\nshown to it, on its conversion-day; and a long address by the Soul to\nthe Body and Self-Love, and the answers of these two.[388] In this\naddress the Soul for the first time speaks of \u201c_the Spirit_.\u201d[389]\nChapter X makes the Soul for the first time address \u201c_the Lord_,\u201d \u201cO\nSignore,\u201d on the one hand: and her \u201c_Humanity_\u201d \u201cO Umanit\u00e0,\u201d on the\nother.[390] In Chapters XI and XII the Soul stands alone, face to face\nwith the Lord, who appears to it in two successive visions,--first as\nChrist alive and walking along all stained with blood from head to\nfoot; and, on a later occasion, as Christ evidently motionless and\npresumably dead, with His five fountain-wounds, which are sending drops\nof burning blood towards mankind. And these two visions, so carefully\nkept apart, doubtless typify the two periods of Catherine\u2019s Convert\nlife,--the two steps of her second stage: the moving, scourged and\ncross-bearing Christ stands for the active penance of the first four\nyears or fourteen months; and the motionless, crucified Christ stands\nfor the passive purification of the rest of her life.[391] Chapter XIII\nhas no dialogue, but describes her active penances and good works, and\nmentions the Soul, Humanity, and the Spirit.[392]\n\nAnd then, up to the end, in Chapters XIV to XXI, which give us\nthe second step, the dialogue reappears, but now no more between\nthe three _Dramatis Personae_ (Soul, Body, and Self-Love) of the\npre-Conversion-Period; but between the two interlocutors of the\npost-conversion time (the Spirit and Humanity).[393] And there is here\nbut one sporadic mention, an invocation, of \u201cthe Lord\u201d (p. 214_c_).\n\nThus only after its Conversion does the Soul itself become aware of,\nor does it name, either the Spirit or its \u201cHumanity\u201d; and only after\nthe two successive Christ-Visions do these two new experiences and\nconceptions entirely replace the three old ones of Soul, Body, and\nSelf-Love. In a word, we have here, carefully carried through, the\nscheme, so clearly enunciated by Battista Vernazza in 1554, of the two\nsuccessive divisions effected by God in Man, during the process of\nMan\u2019s purification: first, the separation (division) of the Soul from\nthe Body; and then the separation (division) of the Spirit from the\nSoul.[394] And, in strict accordance with this scheme, the Soul here\nbecomes conscious of being, in its upper reaches, Spirit, only on the\nday that it has broken away from the domination of the downward-tending\nBody, and of Self-Love. And once the Soul has thus affirmed the\nSpirit and denied the Body, the \u201cBody\u201d and the \u201cSoul\u201d cease to be\ndirectly mentioned; the one term \u201cHumanity\u201d now takes the Soul\u2019s and\nthe Body\u2019s place. For now the Soul, in so far as it has still not\ncompletely identified itself with the Spirit, does not any more attach\nitself directly to the Body and the Body\u2019s pleasures,--to, as it\nwere, the upper fringe of the Body,--but to the sensible-spiritual\nconsolations which are the necessary concomitants and consequences of\nthe Soul\u2019s affirmation and acceptance of the Spirit,--hence, as it\nwere, to the lower fringe of the Spirit. \u201cI would have thee know,\u201d the\nSpirit now says to Catherine, \u201cthat I fear much more an attachment\nto the spiritual than to the bodily taste and feeling. Man goes his\nway \u2018feeding\u2019 his spiritual sensuality upon the things which proceed\nfrom God, and yet these things are a very poison for the Pure Love of\nGod.\u201d[395]\n\n\n3. _The \u201cDialogo\u201d intensifies or softens certain narratives and sayings\ngiven by the \u201cVita.\u201d_\n\nNow these interesting forty pages of the first _Dialogo_ derive (with\nthe sole exception of three little touches) their entire historical\nmaterials from the _Vita e Dottrina_, and, indeed, from but those\nparts of this _corpus_ which already appear in MSS. A and B, and in\nthe previous pages of MS. C itself. But all these materials have been\nre-thought, re-pictured, re-arranged throughout, by a new, powerful,\nand experienced mind, a mind dominated by certain very definite,\nschematic conceptions as to the constitution of the human personality,\nthe nature of holiness, and the laws of its growth, and which is\ndetermined to find or form concrete examples of these conceptions, in\nand from the life of Catherine.\n\n(1) _Cases of intensifying._\n\nThere are, first, five cases of the intensifying of authentic\n_Vita_-accounts, intensifications necessary, or at least ancillary, to\nthe scheme underlying the whole _Dialogo_-composition.\n\nAs to the pre-conversion sinfulness, during her second \u201cweek,\u201d\nCatherine\u2019s soul is made to say: \u201cIn a short time I was enveloped in\nsin; and, abiding in that snare, I lost the grace (of God) and remained\nblind and heavy, and from spiritual I became all earthly.\u201d[396] Yet\nthere is no evidence that Catherine, even at that time, ever committed\ngrave sin; nor does there exist an authentic saying of hers which,\nhowever intense its expressions of contrition, conveys an impression\nreally equivalent to this passage.--As to the form of her contrition,\n\u201cso greatly was this soul alienated (from her own self) and submerged\nin the sight of the offence of God, that she no longer seemed a\nrational creature, but a terrified animal.\u201d[397] Yet the earlier\naccounts, which certainly do not minimize here, keep well within\nthe limits of normal, though intense, human feeling and expression\nof feeling.--As to the forcible means taken by her to overcome her\nfastidiousness in the matter of cleanliness and in the sense of taste,\n\u201cshe would put the impurities into her mouth, as though they had been\nprecious pearls.\u201d[398] Yet the original versions, drastic enough in\nall conscience, nowhere imply that there was any such relish, even\nof a merely apparent kind.--As to her post-conversion poverty, the\nSpirit says to her: \u201cThou shalt work to provide for thy living,\u201d and\nthe narrative declares: \u201cThe Spirit made her so poor, that she would\nhave been unable to live, had not God provided for her by the means\nof alms.\u201d[399] Yet we know from her wills that (though the Hospital\nauthorities gave her free lodging, and perhaps, at first, free board as\nwell) she retained, up to the last, an appreciable little income, and\nherself conferred many an alms out of these her own means.\n\nNevertheless, in each of these cases, the _Dialogo_ exaggeration is\nsuggested by some phrase or word in the _Vita_ which has been taken\nup into the new context and medium of this other mind, and has come\nto mean something curiously (though often in form but slightly)\ndifferent from that older account.--Thus, in this fourth instance,\nthe _Vita_-accounts had said: \u201cnel _principio_ di sua conversione,\nmolto si _esercit\u00f2_.\u201d \u201cViveva ancora molto _sottomessa ad ogni\ncreatura_.\u201d \u201cQuantunque ella fosse in tutto dedicata ed occupata\nnegli _esercizii_ di esso Spedale, nondimeno mai volle godere ne\nusare una minima cosa di quello per _viver suo_; ma, per quel poco\nche abbisognava, si serviva della _povera_ sostanza sua: onde ben si\nscorgeva che il suo dolce Amore era quello il quale operava in lei\nogni cosa per vera unione.\u201d \u201cSi _esercit\u00f2_ nelle opere pie, cercando i\n_poveri_, essendo condotta delle Donne della Misericordia, e le davano\ndanari ed altre _provvisioni_.\u201d[400] The _Dialogo_-writer has worked\nall this up as follows: \u201cIo (lo Spirito) ti avviso _primieramente_\nvoler io che tu pruovi che cosa sia esser ubbidiente, acci\u00f2 tu\ndivenghi umile e _soggetta ad ogni creatura_; ed accioch\u00e8 ti possi\n_esercitare_, lavorerai per provedere al _viver tuo_.\u201d \u201cPrimieramente\nla fece tanto _povera_, che non avrebbe potuto vivere, se Dio non\nl\u2019avvesse _provveduta_ per via di limosine. Poi quando le Signore della\nMisericordia l\u2019addimandavano per andare a\u2019poveri \u2026 ella sempre con loro\nandava.\u201d[401] I have italicized the words taken over by the _Dialogo_.\nThus her own poor substance (_i.e._ her own modest income), and the\nmoney given to her by the _Misericordia_-ladies for distribution among\nthe poor, becomes a substance, alms and money, given to herself as to a\npoor person.\n\nThe fifth case concerns the affections. In the _Vita_-proper nothing\nis more characteristic of Catherine, up to the spring of 1509, than\nher swift and deep affective sympathy, and the fearless forms of its\nmanifestation. True, Catherine \u201cwould\u201d (certainly up to 1490, perhaps\nmore or less up to 1496) \u201cabide at times,\u201d up to six hours on end,\n\u201cas though dead.\u201d But, \u201con hearing herself called, she would suddenly\narise and betake herself, in answer, to whatever was required of her,\nhowever small a service this might be.\u201d And indeed \u201cshe served the\nsick with most fervent affection:\u201d thus she attended throughout a week\nupon a poor pestiferous woman; and at the end, \u201cunable further to\ncontain herself, kissed\u201d the dying woman \u201cupon the mouth with great\naffection of heart, and so caught the pestilential fever, and well-nigh\ndied of it.\u201d[402]--Then, too, there is the _Vita\u2019s_ quite general,\nindeterminate remark, \u201cshe (Catherine) felt no pain at the deaths of\nher (two elder) brothers and of her sisters\u201d (the latter should be\n\u201csister,\u201d unless, perhaps, a sister-in-law is included) in 1502.[403]\nBut her extant wills have shown us how actively thoughtful she\nremained, even in 1506 and 1509, for her brother, nephews and nieces,\nand humble retainers; and the deeply affectionate scenes with Marco\nand Argentina occurred between 1503 and 1506. Marco, the poor navvy,\nwas dying \u201cof a cancer in the face,\u201d and Catherine, at Argentina\u2019s\nasking, \u201cas though with prompt obedience, betook herself to him\u201d; and\nhe \u201cthrew his arms round Catherine\u2019s neck, and, pressing her with sobs,\nseemed unable to have done with weeping.[404] And then, still weeping,\nwith great tenderness he besought Catherine to adopt his wife as her\nspiritual daughter,\u201d and Catherine did so, and \u201cloved this spiritual\ndaughter much.\u201d[405]--Only in the very late actions, the change as to\nher burial-place (Will of March 1509), and the exclusion of all her\nattendants on January 10, and of most of them on and after August 27,\n1510,[406] are there indications of any absence or renunciation of\ntender and spontaneous human affection.\n\nBut here again the _Dialogo_ both closely presses and profoundly\nchanges the original accounts. For here the Spirit declares to her: \u201cin\nthese exercises\u201d of work among the poor, \u201cI shall keep thee \u2026 as though\nthou wast dead. I will not allow thee to make friends with any one,\nnor that thou shouldst have any particular affection for any relative;\nbut I want thee to love all men, and this without affection, both poor\nand rich, both friends and relatives. I do not want thee, in thine\ninterior, to know one person from the other, nor would I have thee go\nto any one from motives of friendship; it will suffice to go when thou\nart called.\u201d And thus \u201cshe went, when the _Misericordia_-ladies asked\nher to go into dwellings that would have frightened away all ordinary\nmortals. But she, on the contrary, deliberately touched these sick\n(_voleva toccarli_), for the purpose of giving them some refreshment\nto soul and body.\u201d[407]--Note how skilfully the call, and the going\nat the call, the affection and its spontaneous manifestations in the\noriginal accounts, have been altered and crossed by the _Dialogue\u2019s_\nre-statement.--Here again we are strongly reminded of Battista, in\nher letter to the Signora Andronica in 1575, encouraging her to\n\u201cabandon all things,\u201d her children included, \u201cinteriorly,\u201d and \u201cto\nmortify the most pleasing consolation which arises from the children\u2019s\ncompany.\u201d Indeed, already in 1554, Battista has, in one of her own\n_Colloquies_, refused to accept every avoidable consolation arising\nfrom her pure election by God.[408] Only by such a reference of these\n_Dialogo_-passages to Battista, the many-sided, the ever-affectionate\ndaughter and public-spirited woman, can we come to see them in a wider\ncontext; indeed only thus can they cease to be profoundly repulsive.\n\n(2) _Cases of softening._\n\nThere are two instances of the softening of (doubtless authentic)\ndoctrinal sayings given by the _Vita_-proper. Her evidently impulsive\nexclamation: \u201cI would not have grace or mercy, but justice and\nvengeance exercised against the malefactor,\u201d--has here become: \u201cShe did\nnot attach any importance to her sins, on the ground of the punishment\nawaiting them, but solely because they had been enacted against the\ninfinite goodness of God.\u201d--And her bold declaration: \u201cIf any creature\ncould be found which did not participate in the divine goodness, that\ncreature would be as malignant as God is good,\u201d here reads: \u201cThe soul\nbereft of the Divine love becomes _well-nigh_ as malignant as the\nDivine love is good and delightful. I say \u2018well-nigh,\u2019 for God shows\nit a little mercy.\u201d[409] The proclamation of some moral good even in\nlost souls, is thus weakened to an admission of some consolation in the\nlatter.\n\n\n4. _Re-statement of the Conversion-experiences of March 1474._\n\nBut it is in the matters of Catherine\u2019s Conversion in the\nConvent-Chapel, on March 22, 1474, and of the Vision of the Bleeding\nChrist in the Palazzo Adorno, soon after, that the _Dialogo\u2019s_\ntransformation of the _Vita_-accounts reaches its highest interest.\nI give it here as the chief of many such re-statements which I have\ncarefully analyzed.\n\n  _Vita_-proper,                          _Vita_ (_Dialogo_), pp. 199_c_,\n  pp. 4_a_-5_b_.                          200_c_, 202_c_, 208_c_, 209_a_,\n                                          _b_. 209_c_, 210_a_, 211_a_, _b_.\n\n  Subitocch\u00e8 se gli f\u00f9 inginocchiata      Quando Iddio vuole purgare\n  innanzi, receve una                     un anima \u2026 le manda il\n  ferita al cuore d\u2019immenso               suo divino lume, facendola\n  amore di Dio, con una vista             vedere una scintilla di quel\n  cos\u00ec chiara delle sue miserie           puro amore con quale ci ama\n  e diffetti, e della bont\u00e0 di Dio        \u2026 essendo noi nemici per\n  che ne f\u00f9 per cascare in terra.         molte offese che gli abbiamo\n  Onde \u2026 rest\u00f2 quasi fuor di              fatte.\u2026 E le f\u00e0 vedere quel\n  s\u00e8: e perci\u00f2 internamente               affocato amore.\u2026 Tutto\n  gridava con ardente amore:              questo f\u00f9 dimostrato da Dio\n  \u201cNon pi\u00f9 mondo, non pi\u00f9 peccati.\u201d       in un instante, coll\u2019 operazione\n  Ed in quel punto.\u2026                      sua purissima.\u2026 Questo\n  \u2026 Per la viva fiamma d\u2019infocato         raggio d\u2019amore f\u00f9 quello che\n  amore il dolce Iddio                    fer\u00ec quell\u2019 anima in un istante\n  impresse in quell\u2019 anima \u2026              \u2026 che la fece restare in\n  tutta la perfezione.\u2026                   quel punto quasi fuori di s\u00e8.\u2026\n\n  Vedeva ancora le offese che             Le f\u00f9 ancora mostrato \u2026 quanti\n  gli aveva fatte; e perci\u00f2 gridava:      erano tutti i suoi diffetti\n  \u201cO amore mai pi\u00f9, mai                   \u2026 in modo che sommerse\n  pi\u00f9, peccati.\u201d Se le accese poi         s\u00e8 stessa con tal\n  un odio di s\u00e8 medesima, che             dispregio che avrebbe detto\n  non si poteva sopportare, e             i suoi peccati pubbliccamente\n  diceva: \u201cO amore, se bisogna,           per tutta la citt\u00e0, n\u00e8 altro\n  sono apparecchiata di confessare        poteva dire se non: \u201cO Signore\n  i miei peccati in pubblico.\u201d            mai pi\u00f9 mondo, n\u00e8 peccati.\u201d\n\n  Ma volendo il Signore accendere         Stando l\u2019anima in questa\n  intrinsecamente pi\u00f9                     quasi disperazione di s\u00e8\n  l\u2019amor suo in quest\u2019 anima, ed          medesima \u2026 vedendosi un\n  insieme il dolore dei suoi              carico da disperato alle spalle,\n  peccati, se le mostr\u00f2 in ispirito       \u2026 era come una cosa insensata\n  colla Croce in spalla, piovendo         ed attonita fuori di s\u00e8.\u2026\n  tutto sangue, per modo che la           Essendo un giorno in casa,\n  casa le pareva tutta piena di           le apparve in vista interiore\n  rivoli di quel sangue, il quale         il Signor Nostro Ges\u00f9\n  vedeva essere tutto sparso per          Christo, tutto insanguinato\n  amore: il che le accese nel             da capo a\u2019 piedi, in modo che\n  cuore tanto fuoco, che ne               pareva che da quel corpo\n  usciva fuor di s\u00e8, e pareva             piovesse sangue per tutta la\n  una cosa insensata per tanto            terra dove andava; e le f\u00f9\n  amore e dolore che ne sentiva.          detta in occulto questa parola:\n                                          \u201cvedi tu questo sangue? tutto\n                                          \u00e8 sparso per amor tuo, e per\n                                          soddisfazione de\u2019 tuoi peccati.\u201d\n                                          In queste parole le f\u00f9 data\n                                          una gran ferita d\u2019amore verso\n                                          esso Signor nostro Ges\u00f9\n                                          Christo, con una confidenza\n                                          tale, che disparve quella prima\n                                          vista tanto disperata e si\n                                          rallegr\u00f2 un poco in esso\n                                          Signore.\u2026\n\n  Questa vista le f\u00f9 tanto                Le f\u00f9 mostrata un altra\n  penetrativa che                         vista maggior di quella, e\n                                          tanto pi\u00f9 grande che con\n                                          lingua non si potrebbe dire\n                                          \u2026 le f\u00f9 infuso un raggio\n                                          d\u2019amore nel cuore.\u2026 Gridava\n                                          e sospirava molto pi\u00f9 e\n  le pareva sempre vedere (e              senza comparazione che della\n  cogli occhi corporali)                  prima vista, la quale f\u00f9 dell\u2019\n                                          esser maligno di s\u00e8 stessa.\n                                          Questo raggio d\u2019amore le f\u00f9\n  il suo Amore tutto insanguinato         lasciato impresso con quelle\n  e confitto in Croce.                    cinque fontane di Christo, le\n                                          quali mandavano goccie\n                                          d\u2019affuoccato sangue di acceso\n                                          amore verso dell\u2019 uomo.\n\nHence _D._ gives but one exclamation as to \u201cworld\u201d and \u201csins,\u201d and\nconstructs this out of the two (mutually differing) exclamations of the\nsame kind given by _V._, the second of which now stands in _V._ after\nthe Bleeding-Christ episode. Whilst spacing all out, _D._ keeps to the\norder and context of _V.\u2019s_ paragraphs. And _D._ utilizes the curious,\nsilent change from the moving Christ to the affixed Christ in _V.\u2019s_\naccount of the single vision in the Palace, so as to constitute two\nperfectly distinct visions. The Cross of both these doublets of _V._,\n(the \u201cCroce\u201d which, in the first part of _V.\u2019s_ single account, is\n\u201cin spalla,\u201d on His shoulder; and the Cross which, in the second part\nof the same account, He is nailed to), has, in _D._, disappeared from\nboth separate visions. And yet the Cross hovers about the first vision,\nhere transformed into a \u201ccarico alle spalle,\u201d a load upon Catherine\u2019s\nshoulders,--an oppression on her mind; and is presupposed in the second\nvision, since those \u201cfive fountains sending forth burning blood\u201d are,\nof course, the wounds of Christ, whilst He hangs affixed to the Cross\nas described in _V.\u2019s_ second part. And the \u201cSignore piovendo tutto\nsangue,\u201d and the \u201crivoli di sangue, sparso per amore, il che accese\nnel cuore tanto fuoco,\u201d of _V._, have, in _D._, become \u201cquelle cinque\nfontane di Christo, le quali mandavano goccie d\u2019affuocato sangue e\ndi acceso amore.\u201d--This fountain-imagery is derived from numerous\nauthentic sayings and \u201cviste\u201d of Catherine as to the \u201cliving Fount\n(_fonte_) of the divine goodness,\u201d or \u201cof infinite love,\u201d and \u201cthe\nclear waters coming from the divine fount.\u201d The very word \u201cfountain\u201d\n(_fontana_) occurs in one of _V.\u2019s_ descriptive passages; and the idea\nappears in Catherine\u2019s address to Our Lord at the well (_pozzo_) of\nSamaria, and in her thereupon receiving refreshment of soul, by the\ngift of \u201ca little drop (_gocciola_)\u201d of that divine water.[410] And the\nfountains are here made to proceed from a ray of love; and this again\ncomes from numerous authentic sayings of hers: in one case the \u201craggio\nd\u2019amore\u201d appears split up into several rays: \u201craggi \u2026 affocati di\ndivino amore.\u201d[411]\n\n\n5. _Three new authentic details._\n\nAnd yet these remarkable forty pages furnish us with three fresh\nstatements or implications of detail, respectively too precise, vivid\nand verisimilar and too little obvious, to be easily attributable to\nany but a new and authentic source of information. There is the vividly\nprecise information that, during Catherine\u2019s actively penitential\nperiod, \u201cthe love of God, wishing that she should lose all relish in\nwhat she ate, made her always carry some epatic aloes and pounded\nagaric about with her; and whenever she suspected that one kind of\nher food was about to give her more pleasure than another, she would\nfurtively put a little of that most bitter compound upon it, before\neating it.\u201d There is the formal declaration that \u201cshe also went to the\npoor of San Lazaro.\u201d And there is the statement, already noticed, that,\nafter her conversion, she had \u201cto work to provide for her living,\u201d and\n\u201cthat she would have been unable to live, unless God had provided for\nher by way of alms.\u201d[412]\n\nNow the first statement should be compared with Battista Vernazza\u2019s,\nsimilarly precise, pharmaceutical detail as to the cassia used by her\nfather in doctoring the poor in 1493, recorded by Battista, nearly\nninety years later, in 1581:[413] Battista would, then, have been\nquite capable of remembering and recording that aloes-and-agaric\ndetail some seventy years after the event. As to the second statement,\nI have already given the various solid reasons which point to\nCatherine\u2019s co-operation with Battista\u2019s father in his work amongst\nthe Pestiferous, as far back as the year 1493.[414] And as to the\nthird statement (in apparently direct conflict with the declaration\nin the _Vita_-proper, that, although entirely devoted to the service\nof the Hospital, she never would enjoy or use the slightest thing\nbelonging to it for her own living[415]) the Wills prove to us that,\nhowever exaggerated be the language of _D._, it, and not _V._, is here\nsubstantially in the right. For, though she could have afforded to\nlive in modest style, on her own little income, she did, as a matter\nof fact, hold her little house rent-free from the Hospital, in return\nfor her services to it. Here also Battista would have known the precise\nfacts from her father, who had himself drawn up or witnessed three\ndocuments referring to these matters.\n\n\n6. _Battista Vernazza, the author of this first \u201cDialogo.\u201d_\n\nThe reader will by now be concluding with me, that all these\npeculiarities of the _Dialogo_ point to one person as its author:\nBattista Vernazza. And all its other circumstances and characteristics\nmake for the same conclusion.\n\n(1) _Particular circumstances._\n\nThere is the place. For the original of MS. C., in which appear the\nfirst traces, (this whole first part), of _D._, came from Battista\u2019s\nown Convent; and thus a document which, in its later narrative part,\ncontained, as we shall find, so much primary matter due to Vernazza\nthe father, and so much secondary composition and arrangement due to\nVernazza the daughter; and which, in its dialogue part, gave much\noriginal literary work due to a Vernazza: would easily (no doubt soon\nafter Battista\u2019s death), come to be considered as the work and the\ncopying of Ettore Vernazza alone. And there is the date. For if this\nfirst part was written in 1548, 1549, Battista would have been fifty\nor fifty-two years old. And we have already considered writings of\nhers, written, with equal subtlety of psychological distinctions and\neven greater vigour of style, in 1554, 1555, and even in 1575, at\nseventy-eight and eighty-four years of age.[416]\n\nThere is, too, the form, so curiously schematic and abstract, and,\nin part, far-fetched, yet based upon a minute, most ingenious use\nof scriptural texts. Thus those two \u201cweeks,\u201d (symbols for the two,\nrespectively lukewarm and sinful, lustres), are no doubt suggested\nby the \u201cseventy weeks\u201d which \u201cthe man Gabriel\u201d declares to Daniel\n\u201cshall be shortened upon the Jewish people, that transgression may\nbe finished, and everlasting justice may be brought and vision may\nbe fulfilled\u201d;[417] and by Jacob\u2019s twice seven years of servitude\nunder Laban, and by Laban\u2019s words \u201cmake up the week of days of this\nmatch.\u201d[418] We thus get Catherine\u2019s two weeks (of years) of servitude\nto sin, and her two successive \u201cmatches\u201d or alliances, entered into\nbetween her soul and body under the influence of self-love. We found a\nsimilar minute ingenuity in Battista\u2019s use of Scripture in 1554.[419]\n\nAnd there is a complex, abstract, astonishingly self-consistent\npsychology running through the whole, and one simply identical with the\npsychology treated by Battista as more or less a point of revelation to\nherself in 1554. And, partly as effect or as cause of that psychology,\nthe _Dialogo_ has a painfully great, at times downrightly repulsive,\ninsistence upon detachment from emotional feeling, both in intercourse\nwith fellow-creatures, and in spiritual commerce with God, that is\nsimply identical, in its parallelism, range, depth, and doctrinal\nsetting, with the position which Battista takes up in her _Colloquii_\nof 1554.[420]\n\nAgain we get here a prominent and persistent occupation with the\nhistoric Christ and His passion, that are as unlike Catherine\u2019s as\nthey are identical with Battista\u2019s spiritual trend. For, during her\nConversion-Vision, Catherine here sees that \u201cburning love which Our\nLord Jesus Christ manifested when upon earth, from His Incarnation up\nto His Ascension\u201d; and this corresponds precisely with Battista\u2019s sight\n(_vista_), in 1554, of \u201cthe Infinite Love manifested unto men, in\nand by the life of Christ, at the Nativity and at the Ascension.\u201d And\nthe Christ-Vision here becomes two separate apparitions; that of the\nCrucified Christ is declared \u201cgreater than\u201d that of the Walking Christ;\nand there is an insistence upon \u201cthose five Fountains,\u201d an image\nderived indeed from Catherine\u2019s \u201cliving fountain of Goodness, which\nparticipated with the creature,\u201d but which, in Catherine, is conceived\nin connection with God and metaphysically, and here is transferred to\nthe historic and crucified Christ, in close keeping with Battista\u2019s\nwhole emphatic Christo-centrism.[421]\n\nAnd, finally, we find here certain daring anthropomorphisms without\nany full parallel in Catherine\u2019s sayings, but entirely matched by\nexpressions of Battista. God is here not as, in Catherine\u2019s manner,\nHimself an irradiating Love, but is \u201cever standing with burning rays\nof love in His hand, to inflame and penetrate the hearts of men,\u201d a\ncombination of the Thing-imagery dear to Catherine (for Love is here\nstill a luminous, burning substance), and of the human, Personal\npicturing prominent with Battista (for God here has a hand, in which\nHe holds that substance). This latter picturing (probably in 1550) is\nnot unlike the more spiritual anthropomorphism of \u201cthe Increate Heart\u201d\nof God, used by Battista in 1575 a passage already exceeded here, in\nthe _Dialogo_, by the words, \u201cGod showed her the love with which He had\nsuffered\u201d--words which, if pressed, would introduce suffering into the\ndivine nature Itself.[422]\n\n(2) _General considerations._\n\nAll these cumulative reasons of detail will be indefinitely fortified\nby what I shall have to say as to the character of the subsequent\nparts of the _Dialogo_, and in proof of these parts and the first\ninstalment being by one and the same author. But, meanwhile, we can\npress this further general consideration, that only a person with\nconsiderable traditional authority in matters concerning Catherine, and\nyet a person, not a direct eyewitness or full contemporary, hence an\nindividual without any additional information, and unhampered by the\n(otherwise necessary) regard for the sensitiveness of still living\ncontributors to the original biography, can possibly have written such\na document. For this production, when it first appears complete, in\nthe first Printed _Vita_ of 1551, will there occupy quite one third\nof the whole book; and yet, whilst incorporating practically all,\nand only all, the material of those other two-thirds (the _Trattato_\nalone excepted), it gives to everything a fresh grouping and setting,\ncolour and atmosphere, drift and character. Only a remarkable, powerful\nmind; a writer skilled in mystical subjects; one with leisure for\nsuch a careful composition; one, too, sufficiently in sympathy with\nCatherine to be attracted to, and helped through, the difficult task;\na person living now, thirty-eight years after Catherine\u2019s death, in\nan environment of a kind to preserve her memory green: all these\nconditions must, more or less, have met and been realized in the\nwriter of this curious, forcible book.--And Battista, the God-daughter\nof the heroine of the work, and the eldest, devoted daughter of the\nchief contributor to the already extant biography; a Contemplative\nwith a deep interest in, and much practical experience of, the kind of\nspirituality to be portrayed and the sort of literature required; a\nNun, during thirty-eight years, in the very Convent where Catherine\u2019s\nsister (one of its foundresses) had lived and died, and where Catherine\nherself had desired to live and where her Conversion had taken place;\na woman who was but thirteen at the time when Catherine died, after\nnine years of much suffering and seclusion, and who, even now but\nfifty-one years of age, had outlived all the close friends and original\nchief biographers of Catherine by thirty-five, twenty-four, and twenty\nyears: Battista, and Battista alone, united in her own person all these\nnecessary conditions. And it will have been the sensitively original\nand strongly synthetic cast of Battista\u2019s mind which made the strangely\nfragmentary, repetitive, contradictory, static, and yet abrupt and\nunharmonized multiplicity of the _Vita_ both irritating as it stood,\nand yet (with its considerable elements of unmistakably first-hand\nportraiture of a rarely large and lofty mind and character) profoundly\nstimulative to a re-thinking, re-feeling, re-stating of the whole,--at\nleast, up to the zenith of that Soul\u2019s perfection.\n\nBut our next stage will make all this clearer still.\n\n\nVI. SIXTH STAGE: FIRST PRINTED EDITION OF THE\n\u201cVITA-DOTTRINA-DICCHIARAZIONE,\u201d 1551; EXAMINATION OF ALL IT POSSESSES\nIN ADDITION TO MSS. A, B AND C, APART FROM THE \u201cDIALOGO.\u201d\n\nAt last we reach the publication of the _Life_, in Genoa, in\n1551.[423] A printing-press had not been established in Genoa till\n1536 (by Bellone); hence the _Life_ appeared only fifteen years\nafter the earliest date possible for its publication,--other cities\nnot being, as yet, sufficiently interested in Catherine to think of\nsuch an undertaking.--Only further on shall I attempt some analysis,\nestimation, and attribution of that _corpus_ of earlier and earliest\nconstituents of the Book, which, although frequently referred to at our\nlast two stages, had there to remain unanalyzed. In these remaining two\nstages I intend to treat only, first of the Introductory parts of the\nBook, special to its printed form, and then of the Second \u201cChapter\u201d of\nthe _Dialogo_ (its present Second and Third Parts).\n\nHere then we have to deal with the matter which, amongst our extant\ndocuments, appears for the first time in the Printed _Vita_ of\n1551, and first with that part of it which is there devoted to the\npublication of the Book. This part of the matter consists, in the\norder of its place in the Book, of the Title with its Picture; the\nApprobation; the Preface; and the Subscription.\n\n\n1. _Title-page._\n\nThe Title-page has: \u201cBook of the Admirable Life and Holy Doctrine of\nthe Blessed Catarinetta of Genoa, in which is contained a Useful and\nCatholic Demonstration and Declaration of Purgatory.\u201d And underneath\nappears a picture of Our Lord Crucified, and Blessed Catherine on her\nknees before Him, and crowned with a Diadem; with the text: \u201cI confess\nto Thee, Father, Lord of Heaven and Earth, that Thou hast hid these\nthings from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them unto little\nones\u201d (Matt. xi).\n\nNote here, in the Title, the correct and most attractive baptismal\nform of her Christian name, Catarinetta, which appears here for the\nlast time, either in the Title, the Heading, or the Subscription of\nher _Life_; and the disappearance, which is final, of her family name\nAdorna, which had figured in the titles of all the MSS. Thus \u201cLa\nmiranda vita e sancta conversation di Madonna Catherinetta Adorna,\u201d the\nolder heading of MS. A, which will have been that of the Giustiniano\nbook (a heading which itself had succeeded to \u201cDe la Miranda\nConversione di quondam Donna Catherinetta Adorna\u201d of the booklet of\n1512, still preserved in MS. B), has here become \u201cLa vita mirabile e\ndottrina santa de la Beata Catarinetta da Genoa.\u201d--And note how, for\nthe first time, mention is made in the title of what has hitherto been\nbut a long Chapter of the _Vita_; and how what in the MSS. had, in that\nChapter\u2019s heading, claimed but to be a matter of devotional experience\n(\u201cHow, by comparison of the divine fire, which she felt in her heart\nand which purified her soul, she saw interiorly and understood how\nthe Souls abide in Purgatory\u201d), has here been given, some thirty\nyears after the Papal condemnation of Luther\u2019s theses on Purgatory, a\ncontroversial point,--it is now \u201ca Useful and Catholic Demonstration\nand Declaration of Purgatory.\u201d We have here an attitude of mind\ninevitably different from Catherine\u2019s pure positiveness.--And remark,\ntoo, the continued non-indication of the _Dialogo_, although this is\nnow present, like the \u201cDimostrazione,\u201d as a distinct document in the\nBook: the Dialogue is evidently still too new to be able to modify the\nold title-page, and to appear there alongside of a composition which,\nthough but one-sixth of its own length, is now some thirty and more\nyears old.\n\nIn the Picture Catherine wears a diadem, a compromise between an\nindication of her noble birth and a hint of the nimbus which they\nshrink from giving to her unequivocally. And she is kneeling before the\nChrist Crucified,--evidently an attitude chosen as specially typical\nof her whole life and doctrine, because of the passages in the _Vita_:\n\u201cShe ever seemed to see her Love affixed to the Cross\u201d; \u201cshe was next\ndrawn to the side of the Crucified\u201d; \u201cshe appeared in very truth as a\nbody affixed to a Cross,\u201d with the dependent account of her \u201cinterior\nstigmatization,\u201d--\u201cshe received a new wound at her heart, so that she\nmight feel within herself the wound in the side of her tender Love\u201d;\nand the amplifications of some of these passages in the _Dialogo_.[424]\nYet only the first three passages occur in the MSS.; and the first\ntwo are carefully restricted there to her first Conversion-Period\n(of four years at most), whilst the third passage refers to a (quite\nunusual) bodily posture, assumed by her on one single occasion during\nher last illness, an attitude which remained uninterpreted by herself.\nThe fact is that the precise contrary of what this picture suggests is\none of the chief characteristics of Catherine, for she is habitually\nabsorbed in contemplations remarkably lacking in historical imagery and\nsetting. And the _Dialogo_ parallels and variants which, as we have\nseen, so largely increase this historical element, and especially this\noccupation with Christ Crucified, are characteristic, not of Catherine\nbut of Battista. The picture is, no doubt, the consequence of this\nincreasing emphasis laid, in her successive _Vitae_, upon a side of\nreligion all but entirely absent from the middle and last periods of\nCatherine\u2019s actual life; and fully expresses Battista\u2019s feeling, who,\njust as she addressed her whole long letter of 1575 in Donna Anguisola,\n\u201cin the Crucified,\u201d will have seen to it that the whole book concerning\nher own God-mother was placed at the feet of the Crucifix.\n\n\n2. _The Approbation._\n\nThe Latin Approbation runs: \u201cI, Fra Geronimo of Genoa of the Order of\nPreachers, Apostolic Inquisitor into Heretical Pravity throughout the\nwhole Dominion of Genoa, assent to this Book being committed to print,\nfor the consolation and instruction of spiritual persons. Witness\nthis my autograph.\u201d The points of interest in connection with this\nApprobation will appear, as we proceed, to consist in the reasons why\nsuch theological \u201ccorrections\u201d as were actually introduced into the\ndoctrinal parts of the _Vitae_ had all been made long before this date,\nprobably none of them later than 1530; and why they were, throughout,\npractically restricted to her very sober and correct Purgatorial\nteaching, and left her other, far more daring, sayings more or less\nuntouched. I can find no traces of any theological changes introduced,\nfor this edition of 1551, into the _Vita-Dicchiarazione_ sections;\nbut we shall see how three points and tendencies of the _Vita_-proper\nhave been indirectly criticised and \u201ccorrected\u201d by means of their\nre-statement in the _Dialogo_, which was certainly finished, and\npossibly begun, with a view to its appearance in the company of the\n_Vita_ and the _Dicchiarazione_.\n\n\n3. _The Preface._\n\nThe Preface consists of seven full and balanced, dignified and\nself-restrained, thoroughly well-informed and yet, in part,\ndeliberately obscure and illusive, sentences. It still excludes the\nidea of any literary authorship on the part of Catherine: \u201cMadonna\nCaterinetta, of whose admirable Conversion, Life, and Doctrine,\ntogether with her many privileges and particular graces, we shall\nwrite.\u2026 Here, in her Life and Holy Doctrine is to be found.\u2026\u201d Not\nCatherine writes, but \u201cwe,\u201d _i.e._ the final Redactor, or all the\nContributors together with him; and not her Writings are to be found\nhere, but her \u201cDoctrine\u201d only. Indeed, it all \u201chas been collected with\ntruth and simplicity by two devout spiritual persons, from the very\nlips of the Seraphic Woman herself.\u201d More would quite evidently have\nbeen claimed, if more had been true.\n\nAnd it contains two or three evident additions to its original text,\nmade for this publication in view of the entire _Dialogo\u2019s_ first\nappearance here; additions which contain an expression which may well\nhave occasioned or helped on the legend of \u201cCatherine, an Author,\u201d\na legend which was sure to spring up at the first opportunity and\nprovocation. The fifth sentence reads at present as follows: \u201cSono in\nquesto libro [dignissimi suoi trattati dell\u2019 amor di Dio e dell\u2019 amor\nproprio] una bellisima e chiarissima dimostrazione del Purgatorio, e\nin che modo vi stiano dentro le anime contentissime, [e un bel dialogo\ndell\u2019 Anima con il Corpo e Amor poprio, dal quale ne seguita un amoroso\ncolloquio dell\u2019 Anima con il suo Signore] ed altre dignissime cose da\nsapere, veramente tutte di eccellentissima speculazione ed utilit\u00e0 [e\nmassime in questi turbolenti tempi necessarie].\u201d[425]\n\nNow even the last set of bracketed words seems an addition, and points\nto the existence of the body of this Preface at a period prior to\n\u201cquesti turbolenti tempi,\u201d times that I take to be 1536-1537, when\nBattista\u2019s God-father Moro lapsed into Calvinism. Ever since 1520,\nwhen Luther\u2019s Purgatory doctrines were condemned, these writings\nwould have been held, if not \u201cnecessary,\u201d at least \u201cof most excellent\nutility.\u201d--There is, any way, no doubt as to the two previous sets\nbeing insertions. For note, if they be retained, the slovenly\nrepetition, by the first set, of \u201cdignissimi\u201d in the midst of a most\nfinished composition; the extraordinary use of the word \u201cTrattati,\u201d\nto signify either Chapter XXV (which bears the title \u201cDell\u2019 Amor\nProprio e del Divino Amore,\u201d and is a collection of sayings pronounced\non at least three different occasions), or Chapters XXV and XXVI,--in\neither case, Chapters which are no more significant or authentic than\nany other of the doctrinal chapters. And remark, in the second set,\nthe curiously mild praise for the _Dialogo_ contained in the one\npositive \u201cun bel,\u201d wedged in between the two superlatives lavished on\nthe \u201cDimostrazione\u201d and the two superlatives given to the remaining\ndoctrinal parts of the Book. The object of that first \u201cTrattati\u201d\ninsertion is evidently to pick out some one or other of the already\nancient Chapters of the _Vita_, which have some special likeness to the\nsubject-matter and title of the _Dialogo_, so as to prevent the latter\nfrom looking too suspiciously different from the rest of the doctrine\ntraditionally ascribed to Catherine.\n\nI take this Preface to have existed, without these additions, in the\n\u201cworthy book\u201d described by Giustiniano in 1536. But as that careful\nwriter insists upon the precise length of time, because it had been\nconsiderable, during which Catherine\u2019s body had lain incorrupt, and\nsays nothing about the antiquity of the book, a point he would hardly\nhave failed to urge had he been able to do so, I hesitate to push this\nBook, and this its Preface, further back than 1530, a very probable\ndate for the first (at least complete) fusion of Vernazza\u2019s and\nMarabotto\u2019s separate contributions, since these two chief disciples\nwould then have been dead six and two years respectively, and the\nculmination of Protestant \u201cturbulence\u201d in Calvin\u2019s open revolt and\nMoro\u2019s defection would not be taking place for another five and\nsix years respectively.--Catherine indeed appears here no more as\nthe \u201cquondam Donna Catarinetta\u201d of MS. B, but still as \u201cMadonna\nCatherinetta, figliuola di M. Giacomo della nobilissima casa Fiesca,\nmaritata a M. Giuliano Adorno,\u201d a designation distinctly earlier\nthan the \u201cBeata Catarinetta di Genoa\u201d of the Title. And the Book,\nits substance, is declared to have been \u201ccollected by two spiritual\npersons (_Religiosi_), her devotees, from the very lips of the Seraphic\nWoman herself.\u201d This passage, it is true, now reads \u201cRaccolto dai\ndivoti religiosi (suo Confessore e un figliuolo suo spirituale).\u201d But,\nwhere the Preface is above the suspicion of having been touched up, a\n\u201ccio\u00ea\u201d introduces such a bracket; the rhythm of this sentence, in the\nmidst of this otherwise exquisite Preface, is woefully imperfect; and\nthe evidently deliberate ambiguity of \u201cdivoti religiosi\u201d is rendered\nall but nugatory by the considerable clearness of the bracketed\ninformation. The clause will originally have read, \u201cDa due religiosi\nsui divoti,\u201d for this obviates all three objections. But, in this\ndeliberately mysterious form, it must have been written when both were\ndead, and yet when the death of the last was still recent; and this\nagain brings us to a date soon after Marabotto\u2019s death in 1528.\n\nWho wrote this Preface? Much in it points to Battista. So the use\nof \u201ccio\u00e8,\u201d so characteristic of her _Colloquies_ and _Letters_ and\nalso of the _Dialogo_; and the phrase \u201cdivote persone,\u201d recurring\nin the _Dialogo_;[426] and the doctrinal tone of \u201cl\u2019amoroso Signor\nNostro, sitibondo della salute delle sue razionali creature,\u201d \u201cil suo\nconsolatorio spirito,\u201d \u201cla perfetta e consummata unione possibile ai\nviatori,\u201d and \u201cquasi non pi\u00f9 fide, ma gi\u00e0 certezza,\u201d all closely like\npassages in her _Colloquies_ and in her Letter to Donna Anguisola.\nThe mysteriousness and equality of designation, applied to both\nEttore and Don Cattaneo, would come with a special naturalness from\nBattista, spontaneously anxious to place her heroic father\u2019s sanctity\nand intimacy with Catherine on a level with those of Catherine\u2019s\npriest-friend and Confessor Marabotto. And, if written in 1530,\nBattista would at the time have been a formed writer,--a woman of\nthirty-three years of age.--There are, no doubt, certain differences.\nThe _Dialogo_ nowhere has such an \u201cancorch\u00e8 \u2026 niente (non) dimeno\u201d\nclause. \u201cUn Serafino,\u201d \u201cessa Serafica Donna\u201d of this Preface, are,\nin strictness, unmatched in Battista\u2019s, otherwise even intenser,\nwritings. \u201cLa perfetta e consummata unione possibile ai viatori\u201d is\na more ordinary and technical phrase than I can find elsewhere in\nBattista\u2019s writings. Above all, the general style and rhythm is here,\nsomehow, a little different from that of those other writings.--Still,\nthese differences are explicable by the writer of the Preface finding\nhimself largely bound by the existing _Vita_-materials, and by their\nvery niceties of expression. The Author of the Preface is certainly\nidentical with the Redactor of the first (tripartite) _Vita e\nDottrina_; and this Redactor, we shall find, must be Battista. The\ninsertions in the Preface, containing the praise of the _Dialogo_,\nare certainly the work of another hand.--Upon the whole, then, we\ncan safely attribute the Preface, in its original form, to Battista\nVernazza.\n\n\n4. _The Subscription._\n\nThe subscription to the _Vita_-proper, in this first Edition, runs:\n\u201cHere ends the life of the noble Matron, Catarinetta Adorna\u201d; which\nthus still retains (like the Preface, but against the Title) the warmly\nhuman and precise, domestic and familiar designation of the first\nheading of MS. A.\n\n\nVII. SEVENTH STAGE: THE SECOND \u201cCHAPTER\u201d OF THE \u201cDIALOGO,\u201d WHICH\nAPPEARS FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THE PRINTED \u201cVITA,\u201d 1551.\n\n\n1. _Three remarks concerning the two Parts of this \u201cChapter.\u201d_\n\n(1) The additions to the _Dialogo_ which appear here for the first\ntime, and which amount to its present Parts Second and Third, are given\nin this First Edition as one single, the Second, \u201cChapter,\u201d following\nupon the older part here designated \u201cChapter First.\u201d In the Fourth\nEdition, 1601, this division of the _Dialogo_ is formally announced on\nthe Title-page: \u201cWith a Dialogue, divided into two Chapters, between\nthe Soul, the Body, and Self Love; and (the Soul and) the Lord.\u201d I\ndo not know precisely when those two \u201cChapters\u201d were replaced by the\npresent Three Parts, and when these Parts were divided up into the\npresent Chapters; it was, in any case, after the sixth edition (1645).\n\n(2) These last two Parts seem to have been written, from the first,\nwith a view to eventual division into two. For though the whole of this\nSecond Chapter is not much longer than the First Chapter (forty-seven\nand a half pages, against forty), it yet divides up very well at about\nhalf-way, since the first half here ends with a piece of moralizing\nnarrative, applied to the whole earthly existence: \u201cThe more valiant\na man is at the beginning, the greater martyrdom should he expect at\nthe end \u2026 nor does God cease to make provision \u2026 up to that Man\u2019s\ndeath.\u201d[427]\n\n(3) This whole \u201cChapter\u201d Second is by the same author as \u201cChapter\u201d\nFirst; in this Second, even more than in that First \u201cChapter,\u201d there\nare no historical materials other than those still present, more or\nless untouched, in the _Vita_-proper; and yet these materials have\nagain been modified, in their sequence and setting, their tone and\npitch, their drift and meaning, and all this throughout by the same\npowerful and experienced, often deep and touching, but also, in great\npart, painfully abstract and straining, absolute-minded and excessive\nwriter.\n\n\n2. _General indications of identity of authorship for \u201cChapters\u201d First\nand Second._\n\n(1) \u201cChapter\u201d First had, we know, concluded with a paraphrase of the\nlast stage in the scheme of Catherine\u2019s spiritual growth as given\nin the _Vita_-proper, and had thus reached the _ne plus ultra_ of\nperfection for any creature, either here or in the world to come.\n\u201cAnd now the Spirit said: \u2018I am determined no further to call her\na human creature, since I now see her (to be) all in God, without\nany Humanity\u2019\u201d: a statement which may well (like the corresponding\nSpiritual-Kiss stage in the _Vita\u2019s_ scheme)[428] have been intended,\nat the time of its composition, both to describe directly her great\nmiddle years, 1474-1499, and to sum up generally her later life,\n1499-1510.--But no such hyperbolic language, when thus applied to man\nas we know him, or as we can even conceive him here below, can, of\ncourse, be kept up. And thus here in the _Dialogo_ (as previously in\nthe corresponding place in the _Vita_-proper), what had originally been\nthe conclusion of a self-contained account of her Conversion, became,\nowing to the desire of utilizing much extant material which directly\ndescribed her years of physical break-up, but one chapter in the story\nof her total life. Hence we now find, both in the _Vita_-proper and the\n_Dialogo_, an instructive anti-climax, in an attempted description (the\n_Dialogo_ gives this in its \u201cChapter\u201d Second) of her successive states\nfrom 1497 to her death in 1510, states and changes which, were we to\ntake the concluding words of the _Vita_-scheme and of the _Dialogo\u2019s_\n\u201cChapter\u201d First at all strictly, would, in great part, be impossible.\n\n(2) In the _Dialogo\u2019s_ First \u201cChapter\u201d we found a remarkably free,\ndeliberately pragmatic handling of the _Vita_-materials, in the making\ntwo different visions on two separate occasions (the Vision of the\nblood-stained Moving Christ, and the Vision of the blood-pouring\nFixed Christ) out of the one, curiously composite, Moving-Fixed\nChrist-Vision of the _Vita_; and this doubling introduced, into that\nFirst Part, a special kind of obscurity, a sort of eddying, circular,\nrepetitive movement and practical fixedness. Similarly we find here,\nin the Second \u201cChapter,\u201d the one description of her resumption of\nConfession, given by the _Vita_-proper, is made into two accounts,\naccounts still further separated from each other here than the two\nvisions were separated from each other there. For the first ten and a\nhalf Chapters, pages 226_b_ to 242_b_, give us her history from 1497\nto 1501. And, amongst these, Chapter First to Third cover the years\n1497 to 1499; and at the end of Chapter Third, page 232_b_, we get\nan account of how \u201cshe began to confess her sins\u201d (necessarily, at\nthis period, to Marabotto) \u201cwith such Contrition, that it appeared a\nmarvellous thing\u201d--a description which has been taken from the story\nof her First Conversion-Period, but which is made to do duty here, at\nthe date of her beginning to confess, in a very different manner, to\nDon Marabotto, twenty-five years after those Conversion-Confessions.\nYet only at the beginning of the second half of Chapter Tenth (p.\n242_c_) do we hear, (wedged in between two passages, pp. 242_b_,\n243_b_, which are re-castings of descriptions of a scene which occurred\non January 10, 1510, _Vita_, pp. 139_a_-140_c_) of God giving her\nthe help of a \u201cReligioso,\u201d \u201csuo Confessore,\u201d _i.e._ Marabotto (p.\n242_c_). This is followed, not two pages later on (p. 244_b_), by a\ndescription of the experience of the \u201cScintilla\u201d on August 11, 1510\n(_Vita_, p. 148_b_), and by an allusion to her death on September 15,\n1510 (p. 245_c_).--This doubling was no doubt effected for the purpose\nof introducing as much variety as possible into what is, anyhow, a\nmonotonous narrative; of being thus able to produce a more ordinary\nand \u201ccorrect\u201d account of her dispositions and acts, on occasion of\nthe resumption of her Confessions in 1499, than could be given by the\ndirect utilization of Marabotto\u2019s description of them; and of thus,\nby these two narratives in lieu of that single one, giving greater\nplace and prominence to the practice of Confession than this practice\nactually occupied in her real life.\n\n\n3. _Closer examination of the earlier portion of \u201cChapter\u201d Second._\n\nA closer examination of the whole Second \u201cChapter\u201d of the _Dialogo_\nfully substantiates this conclusion, and brings out other interesting\npoints. Let us take the eleven Chapters of the present Part Second.\n\n(1) The first two Chapters describe her condition when \u201cthe Soul\ncould no more correspond to the sensations of the Body,--the Body\nremained, as it were, without its natural being, and dwelt confused and\nstunned, without knowing where it was or what it should do or say\u201d (pp.\n226_c_, 227_a_). And then the Soul begins to address \u201cthe Lord\u201d (p.\n229_a_). And on p. 230_b_ we hear, for the first time, of its \u201csweet\nand cruel Purgatory.\u201d And Chapter Third tells of the Soul\u2019s painful\nprison-life, and of vomitings, emaciation, and occasional inability\nto move (pp. 230_b_-232_a_).--Now Purgatory, prison-house and these\npsycho-physical conditions do not appear, in the _Vita_-proper, till\n\u201cnine years before her death,\u201d and, indeed, in great part only within\nthe last year of her life.[429] Indeed it is only the characteristic\nintensity with which the _Dialogo_ here describes the fresh access of\nContrition, and the resumption of frequent Confession for evidently new\noffences (a description entirely inappropriate to this late stage of\nher life), that makes it difficult to realize that these three Chapters\nare dealing with 1497 to 1499. And the exaggeration here exactly\ncorresponds to the exaggeration, in Part (\u201cChapter\u201d) First, of her\nearlier sinfulness, and her first Conversion and Contrition.\n\n(2) Chapter Fourth then gives a short description of another \u201cray of\nlove\u201d; and then apostrophizes, in seven \u201coh\u201d and \u201cche\u201d sentences,\nsuch a state of soul (pp. 232_c_-233_c_). Chapter Fifth contains one\nquestion and answer exchanged between the Soul and the Lord, and then\nthree narrative-exclamatory paragraphs (pp. 233_c_-235_a_). Chapter\nSixth gives two explanations by the Lord of the Soul\u2019s sufferings,\ninterrupted by the Soul\u2019s thanks and acceptance (pp. 235_b_-237_a_).\nAnd then Chapter Seventh describes a lull in the Soul\u2019s battles and\ntrials (pp. 237_a_-238_a_). And this lull is followed, in Chapter\nEighth, by a declaration from the Lord that she has now been led up to\nthe door of Love but has not yet entered in (pp. 238_a_-239_a_); and,\nin Chapter Ninth, by a dialogue (for the first time in the entire work)\nbetween the Spirit and the Soul, the former being now determined to\nseparate itself from the latter; and, at the end of this same Chapter,\nby a description of this, now more or less achieved, separation (pp.\n239_a_-241_a_; 241_b_).--These conflicts and dialogues between the\nSpirit and the Soul, are closely like the conflicts and dialogues\nbetween the Spirit and \u201cHumanity\u201d in Part First.[430] Yet there, the\nhistorical materials are derived chiefly from the _Vita_-proper, pp.\n20_a_-21_b_, 96_b_-97_c_ (which give an account of her work from 1473\nto 1497); whilst here they come exclusively from pp. 133_b_-138_b_ of\nthe _Vita_-proper (which tell her experiences from November 11 to the\nend of December 1509).\n\n(3) And the last two Chapters, Tenth and Eleventh, are particularly\ndifficult and self-destructive, obscure and disappointing. The Tenth\n(to be fully analyzed presently), is difficult, because it starts\nwith fragments of _Vita_-information which, in the _Vita_, rightly\nrefer, in large part, to the beginning of the last ten years of her\nlife, and even to 1499 in particular,--hence to a period long anterior\nto all that has been described in the _Dialogo_ ever since Chapter\nThird of this Part. And these fragments are here made to lead up\nto a re-statement of the scene of January 10, 1510, when she shut\nherself off from every one, but when Marabotto managed to overhear her\nsoliloquy (pp. 241_c_-244_a_ compared with pp. 139_b_, 113_c_.) And the\nEleventh Chapter is obscure and disappointing, because, after giving\nthe \u201cscintilla\u201d-incident of August 11, 1510, and a final short dialogue\nbetween the \u201cLord\u201d and her \u201cHumanity\u201d (again a combination of _Dramatis\nPersonae_ which has occurred nowhere else), it finishes, not with any\ndescription or even affirmation of her earthly end, but simply with an\naccount as to the necessity of Purgation, and, in particular, with the\nwords \u201ca martyrdom which never ceases until death\u201d (pp. 244_a_-245_c_).\n\n\n4. _Closer examination of later portion of \u201cChapter\u201d Second._\n\nPart Third, on the contrary, is peculiar in this, that its Dialogue\npasses exclusively between but two interlocutors, the Soul and the\nLord: it thus brings back the whole composition to its opening form of\nstrict duologue,--although there the speakers had been the (unpurified)\nSoul and the Body. The present thirteen Chapters constitute, in\nsubstance, a single, all but unbroken, disquisition on God\u2019s love for\nthe Soul, and on the Soul\u2019s growth in the love of God; although the\nform alternates between Chapters of questions and answers, and Chapters\nof rapturous descriptions and apostrophizings of Love.\n\n(1) Chapters First and Second consist of such questions and answers,\nand conclude with an, abruptly introduced, account of her former\nspiritual conversations with her friends, which (though based upon the\nbeautiful document in the _Vita_-proper, pp. 94_b_-95_c_, and upon\nthe fragment there, p. 97_b_, and though the narrative here has a\ncertain noble warmth of its own) is given here merely as a something\nto be transcended, and which, by now, had been actually left far\nbehind. Thus, as in Parts First and Second the _Dialogo_ had given a\ncharacteristically rigoristic, indeed exaggerating, account of her\nConversation and her later Purification respectively, so here again\nthis curious book is more severe than are the authentic accounts on\nwhich it otherwise relies.\n\n(2) Chapter Third gives a question and answer as to the\ncomprehensibility of this love. The answer incorporates Catherine\u2019s\ndescription of her soul as, so to speak, under water in an ocean of\npeace; and interestingly turns the \u201cscintilla,\u201d the \u201cspark of love,\u201d\ninto a \u201cstilla,\u201d a \u201cdrop,\u201d suggested, no doubt, by the \u201cgoccia,\u201d \u201cthe\ndrop of love,\u201d which figured so prominently in Catherine\u2019s great\nconversation with her spiritual children.[431]--Chapters Fourth to\nSixth open out with a page where the Lord declares how the pure and\nlove-absorbed Soul alone holds Love (p. 253); and consist, for the\nrest, of exclamatory descriptions of this love, the soul proffering\nfirst ten \u201cO Amore\u201d apostrophes (pp. 253_c_-258_b_), then one \u201cO Amore\npuro\u201d address (pp. 259_c_, 260_a_). And the tenth of those apostrophes\nintroduces a characteristic sentence from the _Vita_-proper: \u201cthe\nSoul,--if bereft of charity,--when it is separated from the Body,\nwould, rather than present itself thus before that (Divine) cleanness\nand simplicity, cast itself into Hell.\u201d[432]--And Chapter Seventh then\nmakes the Lord ask the Soul to tell him some of the words which it\naddresses to Love; the Soul does so, and the Lord approves of them (pp.\n260_b_-261_b_).\n\n(3) And then Chapter Eighth begins a narrative piece (pp.\n261_c_-263_c_); but which, after a transitional, exclamatory paragraph\n(p. 263_c_), arrives at three short questions and answers. The first\ntwo questions and answers are by the Soul and the Lord respectively;\nthe third question and answer are respectively by the Lord and the Soul\n(pp. 264_a_, _b_). We shall presently see that, in this set of short\nsentences, we have reached the culmination of the whole _Dialogo_, and\nthat, in astonishingly explicit daring, they exceed any and all of\nCatherine\u2019s authentic sayings.\n\n(4) Chapter Ninth then gives a narrative description of the apparently\nempty and abandoned condition of the advanced Soul, and, for this\npurpose carefully utilizes (whilst completely altering the meaning and\ncontext of) Marabotto\u2019s description of Catherine\u2019s first Confession to\nhim. And in its last paragraph it again (but here with less change)\nincorporates other passages of that descriptive Chapter.[433] Then\ncomes Chapter Tenth, with a short question and answer between the\nLord and the Soul, the latter partly in verse (p. 267_a_). And this\nis followed by two descriptive paragraphs, how that this soul \u201cseemed\nto mount above Paradise itself\u201d; \u201cthis heart is transformed into a\ntabernacle of God\u201d; and \u201csuch souls, were they but known, would be\nadored upon earth\u201d (pp. 267_b_, _c_; 268_a_).\n\n(5) This description is followed by a long rapturous suspension of the\ndialogue form, since here the Writer himself addresses successively,\nin three \u201cO\u201d paragraphs, the \u201csoul, heart, and mind\u201d; \u201cLove\u201d; and \u201cthe\nSpirit naked and invisible.\u201d And, after a little exclamation as to\nthe inadequacy of all words (this also is introduced by an \u201cO\u201d), he\nsimilarly invokes (in three other \u201cO\u201d paragraphs), \u201cmy tender Lord\u201d;\nthe \u201cinfinite Good\u201d; and \u201cthe Lord\u201d (pp. 268_b_-269_c_).--The present,\nmost unskilful, division makes Chapter Eleventh begin with these last\nthree of the seven \u201cO\u2019s.\u201d And after the seventh \u201cO\u201d paragraph and a\ndescriptive passage, still addressed to \u201cthe Lord,\u201d composed of five\n\u201cThou\u201d sentences, follows another short interruption,--apologizing\nfor the delay in the narrative and the inadequacy of the words used.\nAnd then two \u201cOim\u00e8,\u201d and one \u201cO terra, terra\u201d paragraph finish up\nthe Writer\u2019s exclamations, and bring us back to the interrupted\ndialogue-form (pp. 269_c_-271_b_). Here again a violent division has\nbeen effected in the text by Chapter Twelfth being made to exclude the\nfirst, but to include, the second \u201cOim\u00e8\u201d (p. 271_a_). And this Chapter,\nafter finishing the \u201cTerra-terra\u201d paragraph, and, with it, the whole\ndigression, re-opens the dialogue with a curious, serpentine, all\nbut unbroken series of seven questions of the Soul and answers of the\nLord, in which each successive question picks up the previous answer\nand point reached, and tries to reach a deeper one. \u201cWhat is Thine\nOperation within man? A Moving of the heart of man. And this Movement?\nA Grace. And this Grace? A Ray of Love. And this Ray of Love? An Arrow.\nAnd this Arrow? A Glimpse (Scintilla) of love. And this Glimpse? An\nInspiration.\u201d And at this point, description is declared to be unable\nto proceed further (pp. 271_b_-272_c_.)\n\n(6) And then Chapter Thirteenth finishes up the whole by two questions\nand descriptive answers. The first question and answer passes between\nthe Writer\u2019s own mind and his heart, and thus again constitutes a break\nin the dialogue; and the second question and answer occurs between the\nLord and the Soul. The first answer dwells upon personal experience,\nas the sole means of some real apprehension of Love; and the second\nanswer concludes the whole book with a majestic paraphrase of\nCatherine\u2019s doctrine as to the immanental, inevitable, self-determined,\nand self-endorsed character of the Soul\u2019s joys and sufferings, here\nand hereafter, on Earth, in Purgatory, indeed in Hell itself (pp.\n273_a_-275_a_). Such passages as these make up for much of the often\npainfully intense, abstract, schematic, rigoristic, and too exclusively\ntranscendental character of this remarkable book, and explain its\nfascination for a mind of such rare experience and breadth as was that\nof Friedrich Schlegel. I shall presently group together the finest\nsayings peculiar to the work.\n\n\nVIII. SEVENTH STAGE CONTINUED: MINUTE ANALYSIS OF ONE PASSAGE FROM THE\nSECOND \u201cCHAPTER.\u201d\n\nBut I must still give for this last \u201cChapter,\u201d as I did for the First\n\u201cChapter,\u201d a synoptic demonstration, by means of one example among\nmany, of the strange manner in which the _Dialogo_-writer combines the\nmost detailed dependence on the materials of the _Vita_-proper with the\nmost sovereign independence concerning the chronology, context, and\ndrift of those same materials.--And again I choose an originally unique\noccurrence and description, so as to eliminate all possibility of an\nexplanation by an original multiplicity of facts and accounts.\n\n_Catherine as \u201cGarzonzello\u201d or \u201cFigliuolino.\u201d_\n\n  _Dialogo_ (_Vita_), p.                  _Vita_-proper, pp.--\n  266_a_, _b_, _c_.\n\n  Il corpo, essendo costretto             117_b_. Non potendosi\n  seguire l\u2019anima, resta per quel         sopportare, per non aver pi\u00f9\n  tempo quasi senz\u2019 anima,                operazione n\u00e8 sentimenti dell\u2019\n  senza umano conforto,                   anima, col corpo tutto debole.\u2026\n\n  \u2026 e non si s\u00e0 n\u00e8 si pu\u00f2                 117_c_. \u201cIo non so dove mi\n  aiutare.                                sia.\u201d\n\n  Per\u00f2 \u00e8 di bisogno che dagli             127_a_. Quali la servivano\n  altri sia aiutato, ovvero               restavano stupefatti, non sapendo\n  occultamente da Dio gli sia             che farle.\n  provveduto, altrimenti restarebbe       120_a_. \u2026 provveduto tal\n  quella creatura abbandonata             bisogno, a lui non restava di\n                                          essa provisione memoria\n                                          alcuna.\n\n                                          121_a_. Persever\u00f2 molti anni\n                                          con bisogno che il Confessore\n                                          le stasse d\u2019 appresso, per\n                                          sostentare l\u2019umanit\u00e0.\n\n                                          117_c_. Dei peccati che diceva\n                                          non le erano lasciato vedere\n                                          come peccati che avesse \u2026\n  come un figliuolino, il quale,          fatti, ma come d\u2019un garzonzello,\n  non avendo i suoi bisogni,              il quale da giovinetto f\u00e0\n  altro riparo non ha se non di           qualche cosa di cui \u00e8 ignorante,\n  piangere tanto che gli sieno            il quale, essendogli\n  dati.                                   detto \u201ctu hai fatto male\u201d per\n                                          questa parola muta subito di\n                                          colore e diventa rosso, ma non\n                                          gi\u00e0 perch\u00e8 conosce il male.\n\n  Non \u00e8 dunque meraviglia,                119_c_. \u201cNon posso pi\u00f9 sopportare\n  se a simili creature Iddio              tanti assedi esteriori\n  provvede di particolari persone         ed interiori; per questo mi\n  che le aiutino, e per                   ha Iddio provveduto del\n  mezzo loro sia alle necessit\u00e0           vostro mezzo \u2026 quando da\n  dell\u2019 anima e del\u2019 corpo sovvenuto,     m\u00e8 siete partito, v\u00f2 lamentadomi\n  altrimenti non potriano                 per la casa.\u201d\n  vivere.\n\n                                          120_a_. era di bisogno che il\n                                          Confessore non si partisse da\n                                          lei.\u2026 Dio, sempre glieli\n  Vedi come il nostro Signor              dava \u2026 tutti i sussidi all\n  Ges\u00f9 Christo lasci\u00f2 _a_ San             anima e al corpo \u2026 per\n  Giovanni [al]la sua diletta             mezzo di lui, al quale in quell\u2019\n  Madre in particolar cura; e             instante provedeva di lume\n  cos\u00ec fece ai suoi discepoli e f\u00e0        e di parole convenienti alla di\n  sempre all\u2019 altre sue divote            lei necessit\u00e0.\n  persone; di modo che l\u2019uno              121_b_. Questa tutto divina\n  soccorre l\u2019altro, cos\u00ec all\u2019anima        \u2026 operazione. Il Confessore\n  come al corpo, con quella               era legato col vincolo del\n  unione divina.                          divino amore.\n\n  E perch\u00e8 in generale le                 117_b_. Dio gli diede lume e\n  persone non conoscono queste            grazia di consoscere quell\u2019\n  operazioni, n\u00e8 hanno insieme            operazione.\n  quella unione, perci\u00f2 a simili          120_b_. E perch\u00e8 quella continua\n  cure bisognano particolari persone,     conversazione e stretta\n  colle quali Iddio operi                 famigliarit\u00e0 facevano alcuni\n  colla sua grazia e lume.                mormorare, non intendendo\n                                          l\u2019opera e la necessit\u00e0.\u2026\n\n  Chi vide queste creature e              117_b_. \u2026 col corpo tutto\n  non le intende, gli sono pi\u00f9            senza vigore, quasi derelitto\n  presto d\u2019 ammirazione che               in se medesimo.\n  di edificazione, dunque non\n  giudicare, se non vuoi errare\n  \u2026 resta l\u2019umanit\u00e0 senza\n  vigore ed abandonata quasi\n  come morta.\n\nThe _Dialogo_-writer having, as we saw, combined, for the purpose\nof describing Catherine\u2019s latter-day habits, _V.\u2019s_ account of her\nunusually peaceful dispositions of soul, obtaining in 1499, with\n_V.\u2019s_ account of her Penance and Confessions in 1473: now utilizes\nhere Marabotto\u2019s account of her Confessions to him from 1499 onwards\n(an account which the writer had rejected there), for an entirely\ndifferent purpose and context than those developed by the Confessor\nhimself. For, in the _Vita_-proper account, it is in connection with\nthe Confession of her sins that we get the highly original and curious\n\u201cgarzonzello\u201d parallel; and Catherine\u2019s lamentations do not there occur\nin any relation to this parallel, but they arise only when Marabotto is\nnot at hand to comfort her. In the _Dialogo_-version it is simply in\nrelation to this requirement of his presence and to its postponement,\nthat Catherine behaves like a \u201cfigliuolino,\u201d and cries till she gets\nwhat she wants. And yet there is not the slightest doubt that it is\nreally the \u201cGarzonzello\u201d Confession-passage which (left unutilized by\nthe writer in his account of the Contrition and Confessions of her\nlast period, _Dialogo_, pp. 231_c_-232_b_, no doubt because of the\ndifficulty and apparent temerity of the facts and doctrines implied),\nhas here been used after all, but with all its originality and daring\ncarefully eliminated from it. For nowhere else, in the _Vita_-proper,\ndoes a \u201cGarzonzello\u201d-passage or language, or anything like them, occur;\nnowhere else again, in the _Dialogo_ does a \u201cfigliuolino\u201d-passage or\nwording, or anything really resembling them, appear; and these two,\nrespectively unique and very peculiar, passages, both occur at one and\nthe same stage of her life, and in connection with one and the same\ncouple of persons.\n\n\nIX. SEVENTH STAGE CONCLUDED: CHARACTER AND AUTHORSHIP OF THIS SECOND\n\u201cCHAPTER.\u201d\n\nLet us take these two points simultaneously, and move, from the more\nformal and literary qualities, through indications of the more or less\nexternal life-circumstances of the author, on to the writer\u2019s special\nviews and aims in psychology and spirituality.\n\n\n1. _The writer\u2019s power._\n\nThe following passages, all more or less peculiar to the _Dialogo_,\nsuffice, I think, to prove his power.\n\nAt the beginning of these, her last nine years, the Lord explains to\nCatherine the means by which Love may be known: \u201cMy love can be better\nknown by means of interior experience than in any other way; if man\nis to acquire it, Love must snatch man from man himself, since it is\nman himself who is his own chief impediment,\u201d[434]--a passage that\nrecalls Thackeray\u2019s _Arthur Pendennis, his Friends and his Greatest\nEnemy_--namely, his own self.\n\nThese years are, a little later, described in language no doubt\nsuggested, probably through some Patristic passage, by Plato, the\nharmonious. \u201cThis soul now abode like a musical instrument which, as\nlong as it remains furnished with chords, gives forth sweet sounds;\nbut which, bereft of them, is silent. Thus she too, in the past, by\nmeans of the sentiments of soul and body, was wont to render so sweet a\nharmony, that every one who heard it rejoiced in it; but now, alienated\nfrom those sentiments, as it were without\u201d psychic \u201cchords, she\nremained entirely bare and mute.\u201d[435]\n\nAnd we are told of \u201cwords which the heart alone speaks to the soul\nalone\u201d[436]--a passage which recalls Pascal\u2019s saying, \u201cThe heart has\nreasons which Reason does not know.\u201d\n\nAmongst the rapturous addresses we find, \u201cO Spirit naked and invisible!\nNo man can hold thee (here below), because of thy very nakedness! Thy\ndwelling-place is in Heaven, even whilst, joined to the body, thou\nhappenest still to tarry upon earth! Thou dost not know thine own self,\nnor art thou known by others in this world. All thy friends and (true)\nrelatives are in Heaven, recognized by thee alone, through an interior\ninstinct infused by the Spirit of God.\u201d[437] An apostrophe which, in\npart, strongly recalls Henry Vaughan\u2019s poem, \u201cThey are all gone into a\nworld of light, and I alone am lingering here.\u201d\n\nThe final address in this series of apostrophes to Love, God, contains\nthe sentences: \u201cO Lord, how great is Thy loving care, both by day and\nby night, for man who knows not even his own self, and far less Thee,\nO Lord. Thou art that great and high God, of whom we cannot speak or\nthink, because of the ineffable super-eminence of Thy Greatness, Power,\nWisdom, and Goodness infinite. Thou labourest in man and for man with\nThy Love, and in return Thou willest that the whole man should act for\nLove, and this because, without Love, nothing good can be produced.\nThou workest solely for man\u2019s true utility; and Thou willest that man\nshould operate solely for Thine honour, and not for his own (separate)\nutility.\u201d[438] A passage strongly coloured by Dionysian ideas.\n\nAnd yet the writer continues to think and to write, but says: \u201cThese\nwords of mine are like ink: for ink is black and of an evil odour; and\nyet, by its means, many ideas are apprehended, which otherwise would be\nignored altogether.\u201d[439] Here we have an image, based as it is upon a\nvivid sensible perception of a chemical compound, which reminds one of\nthe epatic-agaric passage in \u201cChapter\u201d First of the _Dialogo_, and of\nthe reference to cassia in Battista\u2019s letter of 1581.[440]\n\nAnd the whole Book finishes up with two impressive passages. The\nfirst, as to the means of knowing Love, is as Pauline as is most of\nthe remaining doctrine of the _Dialogo_: \u201cNot by means of external\nsigns, nor even by martyrdoms, can this love be comprehended. Only he\nwho actually experiences it can understand something of it.\u201d[441] And\nthe second concludes all with a forcible and comprehensive paraphrase\nof Catherine\u2019s central doctrine,--as to the Soul\u2019s condition and\naction, revealed at the moment of death: \u201cEvery man bears within his\nown self the sentence of his own judgment, pronounced indeed by God,\nyet each man himself ratifies it, in and for his own case and self.\nThere is no place totally bereft of God\u2019s mercy. The very souls in Hell\nitself would suffer a greater Hell outside of it than they do within\nit.\u201d[442]--We have had repeated proofs of how great were Battista\u2019s\ngifts and experience in such-like eloquent writing, from the earlier\n_Dialogo_-Chapter, and from her _Colloquies_ and _Letters_.\n\n\n2. _Indications of special knowledge._\n\nI am compelled to pass over the emotional rhythm, and the mystical\nambiguity and paradox, that appear, in identical forms, in Battista\u2019s\navowed writings and here. But we must briefly dwell upon some special\nsources of interest in Catherine, and of certain knowledge of a\npeculiar kind, traceable in the writer of this second \u201cChapter\u201d; both\nsets of passages clearly point to Battista as their author.\n\n(1) There is the deeply-felt description of Catherine\u2019s conversation\nwith her disciples: \u201cThis soul would many times abide with her\nspiritual friends, discoursing of the Divine Love, in suchwise that\nit appeared to them all as though they were in Paradise. And indeed,\nwhat delightful colloquies took place! Both he who spoke and he who\nlistened, one and all would get nourished by spiritual food, of a\nsweet and delectable kind. And, because the time sped so quickly,\nthey could not attain to satiety; but they would abide so enkindled\nand inflamed, that they knew not what more to say. And yet they could\nnot depart, and would seem as though in an ecstasy. Oh! what loving\nrepasts, what delightful food, what sweet viands, what a gracious\nunion, what a divine companionship!\u201d[443]--Now it is true that the\nwriter has here certainly utilized four pregnantly descriptive lines in\nthe _Vita_-proper, and the fine account there, undoubtedly by Ettore\nVernazza, as regards these conversations.[444] Yet one readily feels,\nat the moved and moving tone of the re-telling here, that the writer\nwas specially impelled to dwell with a tender, living sympathy upon\nthose meetings of forty years ago. Now Battista must, of course, again\nand again, have heard from her Father\u2019s own lips, during those fourteen\nyears that he lived on after Catherine\u2019s great soul had gone to God, of\nthese unforgettable talks, in which he himself had played so large a\npart, as questioner, interpreter, and chronicler.\n\n(2) And the other set of passages points, even more definitely, to the\nsame daughter and father. Catherine\u2019s \u201chumanity,\u201d being threatened by\nthe Spirit with various future sufferings, asks to be told the precise\noffence, charge (_la causa_), which will bring so great a martyrdom\nwith it, without hope of any help. But \u201cshe was answered that this\ngrace,\u201d of knowing exactly what and why she should suffer, \u201cwould be\naccorded to her in due time, as happens with men condemned to death,\nwho, by hearing read aloud to them the precise sentence pronounced\nupon their specific misdeeds, support with a greater peace of mind\ntheir ignominious death.\u201d--And: \u201cSince I am forsaken on all sides,\u201d\nCatherine says to God, \u201cgive me at least, O Lord, some person that\nmay be able to understand and comfort me, amidst the torments that I\nsee coming upon me--as men are wont to do for those who are condemned\nto death, so that the latter may not despair.\u201d--And the natural man\nin such advanced souls is described as suspended in mid-air, \u201clike\nunto one who is hung, and who touches not the ground with his feet,\nbut abides in the air, attached to the cord which has caused his\ndeath.\u201d[445] Ettore\u2019s life-long, detailed interest in, and experience\nof, prisoners and condemned men, whom he, the Founder of the Society\nof the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, so loved to attend and help\nthroughout their last night and at the scaffold, speak here through\nthe devoted daughter who, countless times, must have listened to that\nfather\u2019s prison-experiences, which we found her describing, still\nmost vividly, in 1581, thirty years after the publication of these\n_Dialogo_-passages.[446]\n\n\n3. _Schematic, intensely abstract psychology._\n\nAt this spiritual stage \u201cthere was, as it were, a chain. God, Spirit,\ndraws to Himself the Spirit of man, and there this Spirit abides\ncompletely occupied. The Soul, which cannot abide without the Spirit,\nfollows the Spirit, and is there kept occupied. And the Body, which\nis subject to the Soul, thus prevented from possessing its natural\nsensations and its natural sustenance, remains, as it were, forsaken\nand outside of its natural being.\u201d--\u201cGod at times allowed the Spirit\nto correspond with the Soul, and the Soul with the Body.\u2026 But when God\nwithdrew that Spirit into Himself, all the rest (the Soul) followed\nafter it; and hence the Body remained like dead.\u201d The two dividings,\nfirst of the Soul from the Body, and then of the Soul from the Spirit,\nso much emphasized in those other documents,[447] is thus carried\nthrough in this \u201cChapter\u201d also.\n\n\n4. _Rigorism._\n\nWe find here the same exaggeration as to Catherine\u2019s faults and\ncontrition, and the same rigoristic doctrine as in \u201cChapter\u201d First,\nalthough, here also, counterbalanced by a noble tenderness of heart.\nThus her but semi-conscious attachment to, and self-attribution of,\nspiritual consolations, is here magnified into a grave sin. \u201cHow can I\nact, so as to make satisfaction for this sin, which is so great and so\nsubtle?\u201d her soul asks God, concerning but semi-conscious attachment\nto spiritual consolations. And of her social affections, as manifested\nin her great colloquies with her friends, Catherine now says, \u201cAll\nother loves\u201d than the direct love of God \u201cnow appear to me as worse\nthan sheer self-loves.\u201d--\u201cShe began to confess her sins with so great\na contrition that it appeared a wonderful thing,\u201d we are told of\nCatherine, in 1499-1510; yet we know, from the unimpeachable testimony\nof Don Marabotto himself, that \u201cthe wonderful thing\u201d about these latter\nConfessions was precisely the absence of that former keen sense of, and\nsorrow for, specific sins.[448]\n\n\n5. _Pronounced Christo-centrism and daring Anthropomorphism._\n\nWe get, again, the predominance of the Personal conceptions and\nimagery over those of Thing or Law, and the same greater attention\nto the historical element of religion, that characterize Battista\u2019s\nwritings and \u201cChapter First\u201d of the _Dialogo_, as against Catherine\u2019s\nauthentic sayings.\n\nCatherine\u2019s energetic repudiation of \u201cthe corrupt expression, \u2018You have\noffended God,\u2019\u201d is replaced by God saying to Catherine, \u201cKnow that I\ncannot be offended by man, except when he raises an obstacle to the\nwork which I have ordained for his good.\u201d[449] Catherine has angrily\ndeclared that the term could never be correctly used; the _Dialogo_\nexplains how special and metaphorical is its correct use.\n\nThe Lord declares here: \u201cI descend with a fine thread of gold, which is\nMy secret love, and to this thread is bound a hook, which seizes the\nheart of men. I hold this thread in My hand and ever draw it towards\nMyself.\u201d The hook and hand are additions to her authentic declaration,\n\u201cShe seemed to herself to have in her heart a continuous ray of Love\n\u2026 a thread of gold, as to which she had no fear that it would ever\nbreak.\u201d[450]--We get here the Wedding-feast imagery that is entirely\nwanting in Catherine\u2019s authentic sayings. \u201cThere is no shorter way\nto salvation than (the owning of) this delightful wedding-garment\nof charity\u201d[451] A garment, generally in a bad sense, is quite\nCatherinian; a wedding-garment is exclusively Battistan.--And the\nparallel between St. John\u2019s care of the Blessed Virgin, and Marabotto\u2019s\nattendance upon Catherine[452] is quite foreign to Catherine\u2019s mind.\n\nAnd the whole _Dialogo_ culminates in a double, daring yet graduated,\nanthropomorphic picturing of the deification of the perfect soul,\ninterestingly different from Catherine\u2019s favourite Ocean and Fire\nsimiles, and from her description of the Soul as respectively submerged\nin, and transformed by, this infinite and all-penetrating living\nOcean-Fire, God. The Soul asks what is the name which the Lord gives to\nperfect souls; and the Lord answers (in Latin, as ever with Battista)\nwith the text of Ps. lxxxi, 6: \u201cI have said, ye are Gods, and all of\nyou sons of the Most High\u201d; a text which still leaves us with separate\nhuman personalities face to face with the distinct Spirit-Person, God.\nAnd then, to the Lord\u2019s question, as to what the Soul declares its\nheart to be, the Soul answers (this climax has been carefully led up\nto all along): \u201cI say that it is my God, wounded by love,--in Whom\nI live joyful and contented.\u201d--For, as in Battista\u2019s own _Colloquy_\nof December 10, 1554, we get three simultaneous \u201cvoices\u201d at different\ndepths of her consciousness, so here, in this composition of 1550,\nCatherine hears simultaneously within herself three voices--of the\nLord, of her own soul, and of her own heart. And Catherine can here\ndeclare that now her heart is God, and God wounded by Love; for\nBattista can write in 1576 that, in the perfect state, \u201cof the Increate\nHeart and of the created heart there is made a single, most secret\nand inestimable union,\u201d[453] and that Increate Heart appears here as\nwounded, because God is ever, in Battista\u2019s mind, explicitly identified\nwith Christ, and Christ\u2019s Passion is ever in her thoughts. Catherine\nidentifies her true self with God, and God with Love; and conceives\nher own heart as filled with love and inflamed and pierced by it; but\nnowhere figures God with a Heart, or that Heart as wounded, for she has\nlittle or nothing of Battista\u2019s anthropomorphic tendency in regard to\nGod, or of her historical picturings with regard to Christ.\n\nThe entire _Dialogo_ then is the work of Battista Vernazza; and we\nhave to eliminate it, all but completely, from the means and materials\ndirectly available for the constitution of Catherine\u2019s life and\ndoctrine. The next Division will now attempt to deal finally with\nthe chief of these means--the _Dimostrazione_ (_Trattato_) and the\n_Vita_-proper.\n\n\nSECOND DIVISION: ANALYSIS, ASSIGNATION, AND APPRAISEMENT OF THE\n\u201cVITA-DOTTRINA-DICCHIARAZIONE\u201d CORPUS, IN EIGHT SECTIONS.\n\nWe now find ourselves in face of the most difficult, and the alone\ndirectly important, _corpus_ of documents concerning Catherine\u2019s inner\nlife: the _Vita e Dottrina_, together with the _Dicchiarazione_ or\n_Trattato_. It will be best to begin with this _Trattato_, and only\nafter a careful study of this little book, which, as we know, contains\nthe most original and valuable part of Catherine\u2019s teaching, to finish\nup with an examination of the, now separate, Life and (other) Doctrine.\n\n\nI. THE \u201cDICCHIARAZIONE\u201d: THE TWO STAGES OF ITS EXISTENCE.\n\n\n1. _The \u201cDicchiarazione,\u201d from the first a booklet by itself._\n\nAll the Manuscripts give the _Dicchiarazione_ (_Trattato_)\nsubstantially as we have it at present, although ever as but a Chapter\nof the _Vita e Dottrina_, and not, as yet, itself divided up in any\nway. Even the last Editions of the Printed _Vita_ still retain a\nreference to this old arrangement: \u201cThe soul purifies itself, as do the\nsouls in Purgatory, according to the process described in the Chapter\nappropriated to this matter.\u201d[454]\n\nYet the very length of this \u201cChapter,\u201d then as now, and the solemn\nintroductory paragraph, both point to its having, at first, formed a\nbooklet by itself. Thus the longest of the other doctrinal Chapters of\nMS. A (Chapters XV, XVI, XX, and XL) are respectively 29, 22, 19, and\n17\u00bd pages long; whilst the _Trattato_-Chapter XLII runs to 46 pages.\nOnly the Narrative-Chapter XLI, the Passion, is of an exactly equal\nlength; but we shall find that this Chapter also existed, originally,\nin part at least, as a separate document. And the introduction to\nChapter XLII is unparalleled by anything in such a position. \u201cThis\nholy Soul, whilst yet in the flesh, finding herself placed in the\npurgatory of God\u2019s burning love, which consumed and purified her from\nwhatever she had to purify, in order that, in passing out of this life,\nshe might enter at once into the immediate presence of her tender\nLove,--God: understood, by means of this fire of love, how the souls\nof the faithful abide in the place of Purgatory to purge away every\nstain of sin that, in this life, they had not yet purged.\u201d I have here\nomitted (after \u201cunderstood\u201d) \u201cin her soul,\u201d as marring the rhythm; and\n(before \u201cstain of sin\u201d) \u201crust and,\u201d since the whole group of words\nappears in MS. A as \u201cogni rubigine di macchia di peccato,\u201d requiring\nthe suppression of at least one of the first two nouns: we shall find\nthat \u201crubigine\u201d is secondary.\n\nI have also omitted, from what I hold was the first form of this\nIntroduction, the present second sentence and comparison: \u201cAnd as\nshe, placed in the loving purgatory of the divine fire, abode united\nto this Divine Love, and content with all that He wrought within her:\nso she understood the state of the Souls that are in Purgatory.\u201d For\nall the circumstances and dispositions of this contentment have already\nbeen anticipated in the \u201cHow the Souls abide in Purgatory\u201d of the\nfirst sentence.--We can still show, I think, when and why this second\nsentence was added. Let us get at the reason slowly.\n\n\n2. _Three differences between the first seven and the last ten\nChapters._\n\nThe first seven of the present seventeen Chapters of the\n_Dicchiarazione_ (_Dic._) are indeed like, but also unlike, the last\nten Chapters, in three important matters.[455]\n\n(1) All the seventeen Chapters are full of ideas, even of special words\nand peculiar groups of words, appearing also in various places of the\n_Vita_-proper. Yet the last ten Chapters alone have, in addition, four\ncomplete paragraphs standing, as such, in the _Vita_-proper. The two\nparagraphs of Chapter Eight, and the first paragraph of Chapter Nine,\nof the _Dicchiarazione_ (\u201cPi\u00f9 ancora dico che io veggio\u201d--\u201cse fosse\npossibile,\u201d _Vita_, pp. 175_c_-176_c_), are identical with paragraphs\nfour and five of Chapter Thirty of the _Vita_-proper (\u201cE perci\u00f2 diceva:\nio veggio\u201d--\u201cse fosse possibile,\u201d _Vita_, pp. 78_c_, 79_a_).\n\n_Dic._\u2019s text still keeps two primitive readings: \u201cGate\u201d of Paradise,\nin a first saying, unassimilated to the plural \u201carms\u201d of God in the\nsecond saying; against _V.\u2019s_ assimilation, \u201cgates\u201d and \u201carms.\u201d Again\n\u201cstain\u201d and \u201cstains,\u201d alongside of \u201cimperfection\u201d; against _V.\u2019s_\ntreble \u201cimperfection.\u201d But in all else _V._ is clearly the older text:\nthus \u201cHis company\u201d (against \u201cHis glory\u201d); \u201cun minimo ch\u00e8\u201d (against \u201cun\nminimo brusculo\u201d); \u201cappear before God\u201d (against \u201cfind himself in the\npresence of the Divine Majesty\u201d); \u201cpurge\u201d (against \u201clift away\u201d); and\nother points.\n\nBut if this general priority of the _V._-text be admitted, then this\npart of _Dic._ must have been constituted at a time when these parts\nof _V.\u2019s_ text were already so definitely fixed in themselves, and so\nfirmly worked into their present contexts, that the Redactor of this\npart of _Dic._ dared not take them simply away from their old home, and\ndid not modify them so as to conform with the glosses traceable in the\nearlier Chapters of _Dic._ (note here, in Ch. VIII, the absence of the\n\u201crubigine\u201d present in the earlier Chapters). And this means that this\npart of _Dic._ was constituted when this part of _V._ was no more new,\nand _Dic.\u2019s_ own earlier chapters had been fixed for some time.\n\n(2) All the _Dicchiarazione_ Chapters are based on the assumption of a\ntrue analogy, indeed a continuity, between the soul\u2019s purgation, Here\nand There. But only the last ten Chapters give passages (three whole\nChapters) treating exclusively of this-world sufferings, and an address\nto souls that, in this world, run the risk not simply of Purgatory but\nof Hell hereafter.\n\nThus Chapter Eleven (_Vita_, pp. 178_b_-179_a_) is now indeed\nsuperscribed, \u201cOf the desire of the souls in Purgatory to be quite free\nfrom the stains of their sins\u201d; and contains the clause \u201cnon che possa\nguardare il Purgatorio siccome un Purgatorio\u201d (179_a_). But all the\nchapter-headings are recent, and the heading here is quite inaccurate,\nfor throughout the account (with the probable exception of the clause\nquoted, which is a gloss) the soul is simply in this world, as on pp.\n23_b_, 49_b_, 61_b_, 106_a_, 114_c_ of the _Vita_, which readily calls\nsuch this-world sufferings a \u201cPurgatory,\u201d 128_b_, 136_c_, 137_a_. Here,\nhowever, much of the form (_e.g._ \u201cto contaminate,\u201d \u201cto occasion\u201d), and\nsome of the doctrine (the resurrection effected by Baptism) is alien to\nCatherine\u2019s habits. The Chapter is, then, made up, about equally, of\ngenuine sayings referring exclusively to this-world purgations, and of\nredactional amplifications of a systematizing and sacramental kind.\n\nChapter Twelve (_Vita_, p. 179_b_, _c_) is now subscribed, \u201cHow\nsuffering conjoins itself with joy in Purgatory,\u201d and concludes with\n\u201cThus the souls in Purgatory experience.\u2026\u201d Yet here too the body of\nthe text nowhere directly refers to, or consciously implies, the\nother-world Purgatory; for its last clause, \u201cma questa contentezza non\ntoglie scintilla di pena,\u201d requires freeing from the gloss, \u201calle Anime\nche sono in Purgatorio,\u201d which now stands between \u201ccontentezza\u201d and\n\u201cnon.\u201d\n\nChapter Seventeen (_Vita_, pp. 182_c_-184_c_) now indeed opens with an\nexplicit reference by Catherine of \u201cthis purgative form that I feel it\nin my mind, especially since the last two years\u201d to the souls in \u201cthe\ntrue Purgatory\u201d; but this reference and the five last words of this\nlong Chapter, \u201ce il Purgatorio lo purifica,\u201d are clear glosses, since\nCatherine is here exclusively occupied with the purgative character\nof her this-world sufferings, and not with any likeness of them to\nthe other-world Purgatory. And indeed, since considerations about\nthe other-world Purgatory first occur, in any certainly authentic\n_Vita_-passages, only after the great \u201cray\u201d-experience of November 11,\n1509 (the experience stands on p. 133_b_, where the MSS. give the date;\nthe considerations appear only on pp. 136_b_-137_a_, 144_b_, 146_b_),\nthe \u201clast two years\u201d here must mean that already three years or so\nbefore her death she had come to dwell much on the purifying function\nof her sufferings. Only during the last ten months does she seem to\nhave dwelt upon these sufferings as illustrating the purgations of the\nother life.\n\nAnd finally, Chapter Fifteen (_Vita_, p. 181_b_, _c_) is headed now:\n\u201cReproofs addressed by the souls in Purgatory to worldly persons.\u201d\nBut the text still begins with \u201ca desire comes over me (Catherine)\nto cry out so as to strike fear into every man on earth,\u201d and deals\nthroughout with her this-life fears for such persons, not with respect\nto Purgatory, but with regard to Hell.\n\n(3) Even the first seven _Dicchiarazione_ Chapters we shall find to\ncontain short theological glosses. But only in the last ten Chapters\ncan we find extensive passages incompatible with Catherine\u2019s authentic\nteaching, or at least quite unlike her undoubted utterances.\n\nChapter Thirteen (_Vita_, p. 180_a_, _b_) is now entitled: \u201cHow the\nsouls in Purgatory are no longer in a state to merit; and how they\nregard the charity exercised in the world for them.\u201d Yet this very\n_Dicchiarazione\u2019s_ utterly authentic opening sayings (_Vita_, pp.\n169_c_, 170_a_, _b_) eliminate clearly the second question: such souls\ndo not and cannot regard such charity at all. And though Catherine\n(who put the question of merit, even as to the soul\u2019s this-world\naction, so emphatically behind that of love)[456] never considers\nmerit in connection with Purgatory, yet she conceives the souls in\nPurgatory as purifying themselves of certain passive habitual defects,\nby one initial free election of the condition of suffering, and by\nthen continually willing the painful condition,--volitional acts and\ndispositions that are usually held to imply merit.\n\nThe first paragraph then opens with: \u201cIf the souls in Purgatory could\npurge themselves with contrition, in one instant they would pay all\ntheir debt.\u201d Yet there is no such dilemma in Catherine\u2019s authentic\nthought as \u201cinstant purgation through contrition, of a necessarily\nperfect kind,\u201d or \u201cno purgation through such contrition\u201d; for\nthroughout the first seven Chapters purgation takes place through love\nand general contrition, in a thorough but gradual, seemingly slow,\nmanner, and this not because God prevents the soul\u2019s self-purification\nby what would be the normal means, but, contrariwise, because He does\nnot interfere with the intrinsic, normally necessary interconnection of\nsin and suffering, sorrow, self-renunciation, love and joy.\n\nThe second paragraph runs: \u201cOf the payment not one penny is remitted to\nthose souls.\u2026\u201d This imagery of the payment of something as external to\nthe payer as is money, in view of so external a change as getting out\nof prison, can hardly be Catherine\u2019s, at least not as the deliberate\nexpression of her purgatorial conception. The last paragraph reads:\n\u201cThey are henceforth incapable of seeing except [so much as] God\u2019s\nwill[s] \u2026 they can no more turn [with any attachment] to see the alms\ngiven for their intention by those that are living upon earth [except\nwithin the (general) apprehension of that all-just balance of the\ndivine will], leaving God to do as He pleases in all things [God, who\npays Himself as it pleases His infinite goodness]. And if they could\nturn to see those alms [outside of the divine will], this would be an\nact of self-love (_propriet\u00e0_)\u2026\u201d (180_b_). We have here a substantially\nauthentic saying, but the bracketed words are certain glosses,\nintroducing the utterly un-Catherinian ideas and images of the souls\nbeing allowed to see what is being done for them, of God\u2019s balance, and\nof His paying Himself.\n\nChapter Fifteen\u2019s last paragraph (_Vita_, p. 181_c_), which warns\nthe soul that \u201cthe (kind of) Confession and Contrition necessary for\nsuch a Plenary Indulgence (as shall instantly purify it from all sin)\nis a thing most difficult to gain,\u201d is also quite unlike Catherine\u2019s\npreoccupations, tone, and teaching.\n\n\n3. _Remaining passages of the last ten Chapters not accounted for by\nthe three peculiarities just detailed._\n\nThe three last paragraphs of Chapter Nine (_Vita_, pp. 176_c_-177_b_)\nand the very similar short Chapter Fourteen (_ibid._ pp. 180_c_,\n181_a_) are more painfully composite and more repeatedly worked over\nthan, I think, even the most tormented passages of the first seven\nChapters.\n\nWe thus are left with but four paragraphs, the last two of Chapter\nTen (_Vita_, pp. 178_a_, _b_) and the two of Chapter Sixteen (pp.\n181_c_-182_b_). These two sets form two couples of illustrative\ndescriptions of the Purgatorial process; and, in each set, the first\nparagraph is easier to read but is less authentic than the second,\nvery composite, much-glossed paragraph. The second paragraph of the\nfirst set reads: \u201cL\u2019oro quando \u00e8 purificato [per sino a ventiquattro\ncaratti] non si consuma poi pi\u00f9, per fuoco che tu gli possi dare;\nperch\u00e8 non si pu\u00f2 consumare se non la sua imperfezione. Cos\u00ec | f\u00e2\nil divin fuoco | dell\u2019 anima: Dio la tiene tanto al fuoco, che le\nconsuma ogni imperfezione [e la conduce alla perfezione di ventiquattro\ncaratti, ognuna per\u00f2 in suo grado]. E quando \u00e8 purificata, resta tutta\n| in Dio [senz\u2019 alcuna cosa]| in s\u00e8 stessa; ed il suo essere \u00e8 Dio |\n[il quale quando ha condotta a s\u00e8] l\u2019anima cos\u00ec purificata [allora\nl\u2019anima] resta impassibile [perch\u00e8 pi\u00f9 non le resta da consumare] e se\npure, cos\u00ec purificata, fosse tenuta al fuoco, non le saria penoso, anzi\nle saria fuoco di divino amore, come vita eterna, senza contrariet\u00e0.\u201d\nThe bracketed words are all more or less certain glosses. But there\nis here, besides, a conflation (indicated by vertical lines) of two\napplications of the gold-dross-fire simile: \u201cCos\u00ec dell\u2019 anima: Dio la\ntiene \u2026 imperfezione. E quando \u00e8 purificata, resta tutta in Dio; e se\npure, cos\u00ec purificata, fosse tenuta \u2026\u201d; and \u201ccos\u00ec f\u00e0 il divin fuoco\ndell\u2019 anima, che le consuma ogni imperfezione; e quando \u00e8 purificata\nresta in s\u00e8 stessa, ed il suo essere \u00e8 Dio.\u201d Both applications\nare probably authentic; the latter is too daringly simple and too\ndelicately consistent with Catherine\u2019s surest purgatorial conceptions\nnot to be genuine.\n\nThe second paragraph of the second set contains the important passage:\n\u201cPerch\u00e8 sono in grazia l\u2019intendono e capiscono | Dio | cos\u00ec come\nsono, secondo la loro capacit\u00e0; [e perci\u00f2 a quel] le da un gran\ncontento, il quale non manca mai; anzi lo v\u00e0 loro accrescendo tanto,\nquanto pi\u00f9 si approssimano a Dio.\u201d This seems a conflation of two\nauthentic sentences: \u201cPerch\u00e8--grazia, l\u2019intendono e capiscono cos\u00ec come\nsono--capacit\u00e0;\u201d and \u201cperch\u00e8--grazia, Dio le da un gran contento--a\nDio.\u201d And the paragraph concludes with: \u201cOgn\u00ec poca vista che si possa\navere di Dio, eccede ogni [pena ed ogni] gaudio che l\u2019uomo pu\u00f2 capire,\n[e bench\u00e8 la eccede, non leva loro per\u00f2 una scintilla di gaudio o di\npena];\u201d where the brackets indicate glosses, since the sight of God is\ndirectly ever a source of joy.\n\n\n4. _\u201cDic.\u201d 1 and \u201cDic.\u201d 2 referred to, respectively, by the first and\nsecond sentences of the Dicchiarazione\u2019s present Introduction._\n\nNow the result reached by our analysis of the _Dicchiarazione\u2019s_ last\nten Chapters, viz. that this group (with the possible exception of the\ntwo sets of similes in Chapters Ten and Sixteen and much of Chapter\nSeventeen), was constituted under different, later circumstances than\nwas that of the first seven Chapters, is borne out, indeed required,\nby the present Narrative-paragraph that introduces all the seventeen\nChapters. For the two sentences of this paragraph are similar in form\nbut different in matter. In the first sentence the soul is \u201cplaced in\nPurgatory\u201d in order that, \u201cpassing from this life, it may be presented\nin the sight of its tender Love, God\u201d; Purgatory is \u201ca place\u201d; and the\nsouls are in that place \u201cto purge away every stain of sin.\u201d And this\ncorresponds exactly to Chapters Four, Six, and Seven respectively,\nwhich deal with the diverse souls that \u201chave passed from this life\u201d (p.\n172_c_); with the sight or non-sight of \u201cGod, our Love\u201d possessed by\nthem (p. 174_c_); and with God and Hell as \u201cplaces,\u201d and of the soul\u2019s\npurgatorial plunge \u201cso as to join God\u201d (p. 175_c_). In the second\nsentence, the soul, \u201cplaced in the loving Purgatory of the divine\nfire, stands united to the divine Love and content with all that It\noperates within her,\u201d and Purgatory is not called a \u201cplace.\u201d And this\ncorresponds precisely with Chapter Twelve (p. 179_b_), \u201cas though a man\nstood in a great fire \u2026 the love of God gives him a contentment.\u2026\u201d\n\nThe second sentence, a pale, at first sight redundant, double of the\nfirst, will, then, have been added to the first sentence, when the\nsecond set of chapters was added to the first set.\n\n\nII. THE EARLIER \u201cDICCHIARAZIONE,\u201d AND ITS THEOLOGICAL GLOSSES.\n\nI will here analyse such paragraphs of these first seven chapters, as\nmost fully illustrate the astonishing complexity of the whole, and as,\nbetween them, furnish all the theological \u201ccorrections\u201d to be found in\nthis earliest _Dicchiarazione_.\n\n\n1. _The two Sayings-paragraphs of Chapter First_ (\u201c_Vita_,\u201d pp. 169_c_,\n170_a_, _c_.).\n\nI print these sayings (here now broken up) in parallel columns and in\nthe order of their present position. Columns first and third (numbered\ntogether as I) will turn out to contain original sayings, and column\nsecond (numbered II) will appear as but a Redactor\u2019s re-statement,\nwhich (a sort of link between the two sets) first paraphrases the\nset that has just preceded, and then restates the set that will\nimmediately follow. The arabic numbers indicate the several sayings,\nin their original and secondary forms (the numbers of the latter being\nbracketed): thus II (1), (2), (3), stands for the secondary versions of\nI 1, 2, 3, respectively. I double-bracket the additions (theological\nglosses) of the Printed text, and I single-bracket two MS. clauses\nwhich are clearly a gloss.\n\n  I 1                        II (1)                          I\n\n  Le Anime che               Non _possono avere_\n  sono nel Purgatorio        alcuna memoria\n  _non possono               _propria_ neppure d\u2019\n  avere_ altra elezione      _altri_, n\u00e8 in _bene_\n  che di essere in           n\u00e8 in _male_ [[dacui\n  esso luogo; [e             ricevano maggior\n  questo \u00e8 per _ordinazione  afflizione del suo\n  di Dio_, il quale          ordinario]]; ma hanno\n  ha fatto questo            tanto contento\n  giustamente;] _n\u00e8_         di essere nell\u2019\n  si _possono_ pi\u00f9 voltare   _ordinazione di Dio_,\n  verso _s\u00e8 stesse_,         e che adoperi tutto\n  n\u00e8 dire: \u201cio ho            quello che gli piace\n  fatto tali peccati,        e come gli piace,\n  per i quali merito         che di _s\u00e8 medesime_\n  di _star qui_\u201d;            non ne possono\n  n\u00e8 possono dire            pensare [[con maggiore\n  \u201cnon vorrei averli         lor pena.]]\n  fatti, perch\u00e8 _anderei_\n  ora _in Paradiso_\u201d;\n  n\u00e8 dire ancora\n  \u201c_quello_ ne esce pi\u00f9\n  presto di m\u00e8,\u201d ovvero\n  \u201c_io_ n\u00e8 usciro pi\u00f9\n  presto di _lui_.\u201d\n\n                            (2) e solamente          2. La causa del\n                            _veggiono_ l\u2019operazione  Purgatorio che hanno\n                            della divina             in loro, _veggiono_\n                            bont\u00e0, la quale ha       una sol volta\n                            tanta misericordia       nel passare di\n                            dell\u2019 uomo per condurlo  questa vita, e poi\n                            a s\u00e8, che di             mai pi\u00f9, imperocch\u00e8\n                            pena o di bene           vi saria una\n                            che possa accadere       _propriet\u00e0_.\n                            in _propriet\u00e0_, non se\n                            ne pu\u00f2 vedere.\n\n                            (3) e se\u2019l potessero     3. Essendo dunque\n                            vedere, non sarebbero    in carit\u00e0, e da\n                            in _carit\u00e0 pura_.        quella _non potendo_\n                            Non _possono_            pi\u00f9 deviare con\n                            vedere che siano         _attual diffetto_, non\n                            in quelle pene           possono pi\u00f9 volere\n                            per i loro peccati,      se non il puro volere\n                            e _non possono_ aver     della _pura\n                            quella vista nella       carit\u00e0_.\n                            mente: imperocch\u00e8\n                            vi sarebbe una\n                            _imperfezione attiva_.\n\n                            (4) la quale non         [4. ed essendo in\n                            pu\u00f2 essere in esso       quel fuoco del\n                            luogo, perch\u00e8 non        Purgatorio, sono nell\u2019\n                            vi si pu\u00f2 attualmente    ordinazione divina\n                            peccare.                 (la quale \u00e8 carit\u00e0\n                                                     pura), e non possono\n                                                     pi\u00f9 in alcuna cosa\n                                                     da quella deviare,\n                                                     perch\u00e8 sono\n                                                     privati cos\u00ec di\n                                                     attualmente peccare\n                                                     come sono di\n                                                     attualmente meritare.]\n\nHere the middle sayings are sufficiently recent to have in II (1)\nimitated the secondary \u201cordinazione di Dio\u201d clause present in I 1.\nAnd the two theological \u201ccorrections,\u201d still absent from MSS. A and\nB, both appear among these middle sayings; they attempt to explain\nthe non-attention of the souls to all particular things, as a\nnon-remembrance of such things as would add to their distress.\n\n\n2. _The first two paragraphs of Chapter Second_ (pp. 170_c_-171_b_).\n\nOriginally single sentences have here been repeatedly broken up and\nscattered about amongst other similarly broken-up passages: we can\nstill trace the motive for this procedure. I first print them as\nthey stand, double-bracketing, at the end, the interestingly obvious\ntheological \u201ccorrection\u201d that immediately follows a most authentic,\ndirectly contrary, statement.\n\n\u201cNon credo che si possa trovare contentezza da comparare a quella di\nun\u2019 anima del Purgatorio, eccetto quella de\u2019 Santi di Paradiso: ed\nogni giorno questa contentezza cresce per l\u2019influsso di Dio in esse\nanime, il quale v\u00e0 crescendo, siccome si v\u00e0 consumando l\u2019impedimento\ndell\u2019 influsso. La ruggine del peccato \u00e8 l\u2019impedimento, e il fuoco v\u00e0\nconsumando la ruggine: e cos\u00ec l\u2019anima sempre pi\u00f9 si v\u00e0 discuoprendo al\ndivino influsso. Siccome una cosa coperta non pu\u00f2 corrispondere alla\nriverberazione del sole, non per diffetto del sole, che di continuo\nluce, ma per l\u2019opposizione della copertura: cos\u00ec s\u00e8 si consumer\u00e0 la\ncopertura, si discoprir\u00e0 la cosa al sole, e tanto pi\u00f9 corrisponder\u00e0\nalla riverberazione, quanto la copertura pi\u00f9 si andr\u00e0 consumando.\n\n\u201cCos\u00ec la ruggine (cio\u00e8 il peccato) \u00e8 la copertura dell\u2019 anima, e nel\nPurgatorio si v\u00e0 consumando per il fuoco: e quanto pi\u00f9 si consuma,\ntanto sempre pi\u00f9 corrisponde al vero sole Iddio: per\u00f2 tanto cresce la\ncontentezza, quanto manca la ruggine e si discopre al divin raggio: e\ncos\u00ec l\u2019uno cresce e l\u2019altro manca, finch\u00e8 sia finito il tempo. [[Non\nmanca per\u00f2 la pena, ma solo il tempo di stare in essa pena.]]\u201d\n\nHere the last (double-bracketed) sentence is a deliberate theological\ncorrection, for it formally contradicts the precise point and\nnecessary consequences of the whole preceding, most authentic,\nspecially characteristic doctrine.--In that preceding part three\nparallel illustrative similes (between the intact general statement\nand the equally untouched general conclusion) have been broken\nup, and dovetailed into each other, in a most bewildering manner;\nand this from a (possibly but semi-conscious) desire to obscure a\ncharacteristic feature of her teaching. I shall now give these five\nsentences in English, and will disentangle the three middle ones from\neach other.--The general statement: \u201cI do not think that a contentment\ncould be found comparable to that of a soul in Purgatory, except that\nof the Saints in Paradise; and every day this contentment is on the\nincrease.\u201d--The three images descriptive of the cause and mode of this\nincrease, arranged according to the increasing materiality of their\npicturings. (1) \u201cThe influx of God into the soul goes increasing, in\nproportion as it consumes the impediment to that influx, and as the\nsoul opens itself out more and more to the influx.\u201d (2) \u201cAs an object,\nif covered up, cannot correspond to the beating of the sun upon it, not\nthrough any defect in the sun, which indeed shines on continuously, but\nbecause of the opposition of the covering, (so that) if this covering\nbe consumed, the object will open itself out to the sun: even so does\nthe soul in Purgatory more and more correspond with the true sun, God,\nwhen its covering, sin, gets consumed.\u201d (3) \u201cRust is an impediment to\nfire, and fire goes consuming rust more and more: so does the rust,\nthat is the sin, of the souls in Purgatory, get consumed by the fire;\nand their contentment grows in proportion as the rust diminishes and as\nthe soul uncovers itself to the divine ray (of fire).\u201d--The conclusion,\nwhich perhaps applies grammatically only to the last image, but which,\nas to the sense, most certainly refers to all three pictures. \u201cAnd\nthus does the one (the influx, sun-light, fire-ray) increase, and does\nthe other (the impediment, covering, rust) decrease, until the time\n(necessary for the whole process) be accomplished.\u201d--The three images\nare in no case supplementary, but each is complete and parallel to the\nother two. As the fire that meets with the obstacle of the rust is the\nsame fire as that which removes the rust, so is it in all three cases:\nin each case God, and His direct presence and action, are the \u201cinflux,\u201d\n\u201csun-light,\u201d \u201cfire-ray\u201d; in each case a sinful, morally imperfect,\nhabit of the soul is the \u201cimpediment,\u201d \u201ccovering,\u201d \u201crust\u201d; and in each\ncase the suffering as well as the joy, and the changing relations\nbetween the two, proceed exclusively from the differing relations of\nbut two forces: the soul and God. It is only the peculiar, Redactional\ndovetailing of the fragments of these three parallel similes which now\nconveys the impression that the divine sun-light and fire-ray reaches\nthe uncovered soul in proportion as the soul\u2019s covering and rust is\ndestroyed by material fire; and to convey this very impression, was,\nno doubt, the motive of this dovetailing. The authentic passage on p.\n178b, tells how the same divine fire which, at first, pains because\nit has still to purify the soul, increasingly fills the soul with joy\nin proportion as it can penetrate the soul unopposed: a doctrine also\nexplicitly taught by Catherine, in her dialogue with Vernazza as to the\neffect of a drop of Love were it to fall into Hell (pp. 94_c_, 95_b_).\n\n\n3. _Third paragraph of Chapter Third._\n\nThe much-tormented Chapter Third has, at the opening of its third\nparagraph (p. 172_b_), an interesting theological \u201ccorrection.\u201d The\ncomplete passage now reads: \u201cE perch\u00e8 le anime che sono nel Purgatorio\n[[sono senza colpa di peccato perci\u00f2 non]] hanno impedimento tra Dio\ne loro, [[salvo che quella pena, la quale le ha ritardate, che]]\nl\u2019istinto non ha potuto avere la sua perfezione: e vedendo per certezza\nquanto importi ogni minimo impedimento, ed essere per necessit\u00e0 di\ngiustizia ritardato esso instinto: di qui nasce un estremo fuoco.\u201d The\nbracketed words are two interdependent glosses. For though in some\nother, possibly authentic, passages the souls in Purgatory \u201cnon hanno\ncolpa di peccato,\u201d this most certainly applies only to mortal sin or a\nstill active, formal affirmation of venial sin; since the very _raison\nd\u2019\u00eatre_ of Purgatory is \u201cthe rust of sin,\u201d pp. 169_b_, 170_c_, 171_b_,\n173_c_, 181_a_; \u201cthe stain of sin,\u201d pp. 169_b_, 171_c_, 176_b_; \u201ca mote\nof imperfection,\u201d p. 176_a_; \u201ca stain of imperfection,\u201d p. 176_b_; \u201ca\npassive defect,\u201d p. 170_b_; \u201copposition to the will of God,\u201d p. 177_b_;\nan \u201cimpediment of sin,\u201d 177_b_. And the _Vita_-proper says quite\nplainly: \u201cBoth Purgatory and Hell are made for Sin: Hell to punish\nand Purgatory to purge it\u201d (p. 64_b_).--And this gloss is in strict\nconformity with the glosses that affirm static suffering: in both cases\nall change is excluded from the soul in Purgatory, since this Purgatory\nis neither intrinsically necessary nor amelioratively operative within\nthe soul.\n\n\n4. _First paragraph of Chapter Fourth._\n\nChapter Fourth is comparatively easy, but probably largely secondary,\nbecause uncharacteristic of her teaching. Yet it contains a\n\u201ccorrection\u201d deserving of notice. I give the two sentences which prove\nboth points. \u201cQuei dell\u2019 Inferno \u2026 hanno seco la colpa infinitamente,\ne la pena [non per\u00f2 tanta, quanta meritano; ma pur quella] che hanno \u00e8\nsenza fine. Ma quei del Purgatorio hanno solamente la pena, perciocch\u00e8\nla colpa f\u00f9 cancellata nel punto della morte \u2026 e cos\u00ec essa pena \u00e8\nfinita, e v\u00e0 sempre mancando [[quanto al tempo, come s\u2019\u00e8 detto]]\u201d (p.\n173_a_).--The double-bracketed passage, directly referring to the\ngloss on p. 171_b_, is, like the latter, a theological \u201ccorrection.\u201d\nBut also the single-bracketed words are a gloss, since they disturb\nboth grammar and rhythm of the passage, and introduce a point foreign\nto the argument which is being conducted in this place.--Indeed, even\nthe remaining parts of these sentences are misleading, since Catherine\nheld no such simple and absolute distinction as infinite guilt in the\none case, and apparently no moral imperfection in the other. For of\nthe lost she says: \u201cIf any creature could be found which did in nowise\nparticipate in the divine goodness, that creature would be as malignant\nas God is good\u201d (p. 33_b_); and as to the souls in Purgatory, they are\nimperfect in precise proportion as they do and can suffer.\n\n\n5. _First two sentences of Chapter Fifth._\n\nHere we find the strongest instance of the strange clumsiness\ncharacteristic of the theological \u201ccorrections.\u201d I give the sentences\nas they now stand, simply numbering the sentences thus amalgamated, and\nbracketing at once the undoubted glosses.\n\n(1) \u201cLe Anime del Purgatorio hanno in tutto conforme la loro volont\u00e0\na quella di Dio; e per\u00f2 corrisponde loro colla sua bont\u00e0, e restano\ncontente quanto alia volont\u00e0, e purificate d\u2019ogni lor peccato quanto\nalla colpa. [[Restando cos\u00ec quelle Anime purificate, come quando Dio le\ncre\u00f2]]\n\n(2) \u201ce per essere passate di questa vita malcontente e confessate di\ntutti i loro peccati commessi. \u2026 [Iddio subito perdona loro la colpa e]\nnon resta se non la ruggine del peccato, del quale poi si purificano\nnel fuoco, mediante la pena; [e cos\u00ec]\n\n(3) \u201cpurificate d\u2019ogni colpa, unite a Dio per volont\u00e0 [[veggiono\nchiaramente Dio, secondo il grado che f\u00e0 lor conoscere, e]] veggiono\n[ancora] quanto importi la fruizione di Dio, e che l\u2019anime sono state\ncreate a questo fine.\u201d (Pp. 173_c_, 174_a_.)\n\nAccording to Catherine\u2019s unvarying authentic teaching, souls go to\nPurgatory precisely because they are _not_ already \u201cpure as when God\ncreated them,\u201d and they there do _not_ \u201cclearly see God.\u201d Indeed, the\nsecond sentence here distinctly states, that \u201cthere\u201d still \u201cremains\u201d in\nthem \u201cthe rust of sin,\u201d from which they \u201cthere\u201d purify themselves. And\nthe two \u201cveggiono\u201d conclusions of the third sentence contradict each\nother: for if they see clearly how much the fruition of God matters to\nthem, then they do not as yet possess that full fruition, _i.e._ they\ndo not as yet clearly see God.\n\nThese glosses are made entirely intolerable by a third Redactional\nsentence here, which announces \u201can example,\u201d or figure, of the doctrine\nhere conveyed, and then proceeds to do so in the beautiful Chapter\nSixth. For Chapter Sixth gives us the simile of the One Bread, \u201cthe\nbare sight of which would satiate all creatures\u201d; and the division of\nall souls into those \u201cin Purgatory,\u201d which \u201chave the hope of seeing the\nBread\u201d; those in Hell, which \u201care bereft of all hope of ever being able\nto see the Bread\u201d; and, by implication, those in Heaven, that see and\nsatiate themselves with the Bread. And \u201cthe nearer a man were to get\nto the Bread, without being able to see it, the more would the natural\ndesire for this Bread be enkindled\u201d; \u201cnot having it, he would abide in\nintolerable pain\u201d (p. 174_b, c_).\n\n\nIII. FIVE CONCLUSIONS CONCERNING THE HISTORY OF THE \u201cDICCHIARAZIONE.\u201d\n\n\n1. The authentic sayings, collected throughout the Seventeen Chapters,\nall belong, at earliest, to the last nine, and indeed probably to\nthe last two or three, years of Catherine\u2019s life.--At the latter\ndate Vernazza had been her close friend for twelve, and Marabotto,\nher Confessor for eight years. To one or the other, or to both, we\nundoubtedly owe the first writing down of this, originally small,\nnucleus of authentic sayings,--probably in (many cases) on the very\nday when Catherine uttered one or several of these thoughts.--The\nOne-Bread-Simile Chapter, and one or two other passages, contain\nslightly varying doublets of the same saying, the registration of one\nof which may well be by Vernazza, and the registration of the other\nby Marabotto, each of these two auditors getting, perhaps, addressed\nby Catherine in a slightly different form, or himself looking out for\nthat part or context of a saying which specially appealed to him, or\nslightly, and probably quite unconsciously, giving to the identical\ndeclaration a somewhat differing characteristic \u201ccolour\u201d of his own.\nVernazza is, however, doubtless the first chronicler of the majority of\nthese sayings, in 1508-1510.\n\n\n2. These sayings must have been collected together in a first shorter\n_Dicchiarazione_ (equivalent to the greater part of the present first\nseven chapters and possibly one or two other passages), not long after\nher death, probably simultaneously with, but separately from, a short\n\u201cConversione\u201d account. The first public Cultus in May-July, 1512,\ngiving rise as it did to a painter\u2019s picture of her, cannot have failed\nto suscitate some such manuscript booklets. This short _Dicchiarazione_\nwill already have had the first sentence of the present introduction\nprefixed to it, and this sentence, so like and yet somewhat unlike\nBattista\u2019s writings (Battista who was as yet only fifteen), will have\nbeen written by Ettore. These Chapters already, I think, contained\nthe \u201ccolpa di peccato\u201d and other technically theological passages,\nprobably introduced by Marabotto; but the Chapters will as yet\nhave been free from the theological \u201ccorrections,\u201d which still come\naway too easily from the rest of the text (in contradistinction to\nthe difficulty in the analysis of its other, much more resistant\ncomponents) not to be considerably younger than these latter.\n\n\n3. The \u201ccorrections\u201d insist upon three doctrines, in each case in\ndemonstrable contradiction with Catherine\u2019s authentic teaching:\nthe complete absence of all guilt, sin, imperfection, even though\nmerely passive and habitual, in the soul, even in its first moment in\nPurgatory; the simply vindictive, not curative, hence static, nature\nof the suffering throughout the soul\u2019s prison time, right up to this\ntime\u2019s sudden cessation; and this soul\u2019s clear vision of God from first\nto last. Thus no increase or extension of purity, no work of love, is\neffected in or by the soul during, or by means of, its Purgatory.--Now\nPope Leo the Tenth, in his Bull _Exsurge Domine_ of May 16, 1520,\nagainst Luther, reprobated four propositions concerning Purgatory;\nand the second part of the second of these propositions declares:\n\u201cIt is not proved, by any reasons or by any texts of Scripture, that\nthe souls in Purgatory are out of a state capable of merit or of an\nincrease of Charity.\u201d[457] The Censure of this doctrine must have\nseemed to menace Catherine\u2019s teaching on this same point. For she\nnowhere indeed declares these souls to be capable of meriting, nor does\nshe teach that there is any increase in the intensity of their love;\nyet by the one free act of self-determination to Purgatory, and by the\ngradual extension of this determination of active love throughout all\nthe regions and degrees of the passive will and habitual dispositions\nof the soul, her teaching must, to an at all nervous theologian,\nhave seemed, at the time, to come perilously near to the admission,\nrespectively, of merit and of an increase of love in the Beyond. And\nthe degree in which the fight with nascent Protestantism was raging\nprecisely around such Purgatorial questions, and the solemnity of the\nPope\u2019s condemnation, at this early stage of Catherine\u2019s Cultus and\nreputation, must have combined to render the introduction of these\ndisfiguring glosses an apparent necessity.--I take them to have been\nintroduced soon after Vernazza\u2019s death in 1524, hence some twelve years\nafter the constitution of these seven Chapters; presumably by the\nInquisitor to the Republic of Genoa for the time being.\n\n\n4. The addition of the last ten Chapters to the first seven Chapters,\nand of the second sentence to the Introduction, will have occurred some\ntime after the constitution of the _Vita_-proper, say, in 1531 or 1532;\nbut, in any case, was not due to Vernazza or Marabotto. And the glosses\nwill have been introduced into these ten Chapters quasi-automatically,\nand simply as a consequence to the very deliberate \u201ccorrections\u201d of\nthose previous seven Chapters; for now Catherine\u2019s reputation had had\nanother twelve years in which to grow, and the Bull had been studied\nfor another twelve years.--But no such glosses were introduced into the\n_Vita_-proper, either as to this, or indeed, perhaps, any other point.\nFor this _Vita_ treated only quite incidentally of the other-world\nPurgatory; and this, in those times specially delicate, subject-matter\nhad received every precautionary attention in the _Dicchiarazione_\nprofessedly devoted to it. And other, intrinsically more important\npoints, even though treated here with great boldness, were felt to\nremain as open as before.\n\nBut we must now get on to this _Vita_-proper.\n\n\nIV. THE \u201cVITA\u201d-PROPER, ITS DIVISIONS AND PARTS, AND CHIEF SECONDARY AND\nAUTHENTIC CONSTITUENTS.\n\n\n1. _The three great divisions, and their clearly secondary parts._\n\nThe _Vita_-proper, as we now have it in print, falls into three great\nDivisions, of respectively two, four, and two parts each. The first and\nlast Divisions hold by far the greater amount of the primary material;\nwhereas the middle Division only gives us here and there chapters or\nparagraphs of admirable freshness and beauty.\n\nThe eight opening Narrative Chapters, pp. 1_b_ to 21_b_, and the next\nnine Chapters of Discourses, pp. 21_b_ to 50_c_, form the two parts\nof the first Division, each part being more or less complete and\nhomogeneous within itself; and yet they are together in marked contrast\nto most of the materials of the following Division. It is within the\nlimits of this first Division, and probably even of its first part,\nthat must subsist the materials, predominantly derived from Ettore\nVernazza, of that first \u201cConversione\u201d-booklet of 1512.\n\nThe second Division opens out with the most important Narrative\nChapter Nineteenth, pp. 51_a_-53_c_; but the remaining seven Chapters\nof this its first part (pp. 53_c_-70_a_), contain very little which\nis not findable elsewhere in a more primary form. Then follow, as a\nsecond part, seven Chapters of a bewildering variety of form: three\nare largely Narrative and important (Chapters XXVII to XXIX, pp.\n70_b_-77_b_); the next (Chapter XXX, pp. 77_b_-79_a_) gives Discourses,\nonly in part authentic; the next again (Chapter XXXI, pp. 79_b_-83_c_)\nis chiefly Narrative and important; Chapter XXXII, pp. 83_c_-88_b_,\nis now one long Discourse which incorporates some short but important\nauthentic sayings; and Chapters XXXIII to XXXV (pp. 88_c_-96_b_) are,\nthe first, a Narrative; the last two, Discourses; and, in all three\ncases, preponderatingly secondary and negligible. Then a third part\nconsists of a largely Narrative Chapter of delightful authenticity\nand freshness (Chapter XXXVI, pp. 94_b_-96_b_); a tryingly composite\nbut valuable Narrative Chapter (Chapter XXXVII, pp. 96_b_-97_c_);\nand an important Narrative Chapter with dates (Chapter XXXVIII, pp.\n98_a_-100_a_). And, as a fourth part, we get a group of three Chapters,\nof which the first and last contain highly original matter (Chapters\nXXXIX-XLI, pp. 100_a_-103_b_, 106_a_-111_b_), but of which the middle\none (Chapter XL, pp. 103_c_-105_c_) can safely be neglected. Ettore\u2019s\nchroniclings are again strongly represented in this Division.\n\nAnd the last Division consists, in its first part, of five important\nNarrative Chapters. (Chapters XLII-XLVI, pp. 111_c_-126_c_), clearly by\nvarious hands, and of markedly manifold tone and emotional pitch. And\nthe second part consists of the six Chapters concerning her Passion,\nDeath, and Cultus (Chapters XLVII-LII, pp. 127_a_-166_a_), of which\nwe can safely neglect Chapter XLVII, pp. 127_a_-131_c_ (wanting in\nthe MSS., and a mere collection of passages still present, in a more\nprimitive form and connection, in other parts of the _Vita_); and pp.\n161_c_-166_a_ (which treat of events subsequent to Catherine\u2019s death).\nThis last Division gives the most important of the communications that\ncan with certainty be attributed to Marabotto. And as Division First\u2019s\nfirst part, Catherine\u2019s Conversion, will have existed very early in\na separate form, and its second part will have, if added later, been\nthus added very soon; so this Third Division\u2019s second part, Catherine\u2019s\nPassion, will early have existed separately; and to this will have been\nprefixed, still in early times, the Narrative Chapters XLII, XLIII,\nXLV, and XLVI of the first part, all dealing with matters occurring\nfrom 1496 onwards.\n\n\n2. _Five main additions of the Printed Vita as against the extant MSS._\n\nWe have now reduced the bulk of the _Vita_-proper by 34\u00bd pages, but\nthe remaining 132 pages are capable of further reduction. For the\nPrinted _Vita_, as compared with the MSS., contains, besides the\nalready rejected Chapter XLVII, five main additions.\n\nThe first addition (in the order of the Printed Vita) is the\nbeautifully vivid and daring, certainly historical scene between\nCatherine and the Friar (Chapter XIX, pp. 51_a_-53_b_), a record\ndoubtless due to Ettore Vernazza, and which will have been omitted\nby the Franciscan Scribe of MS. A from scruples with regard to the\ndoctrine implied.\n\nThe second is Chapter XLIV, omitted from p. 117_b_ to p.\n121_b_,--Catherine\u2019s declarations as to her lonely middle period and\nthe account of her Confessions to Don Marabotto, undoubtedly here\nrecorded by this Priest; matter again which the Franciscan Friar might\nwell consider dangerously daring, but which, we have seen, had not yet\nbeen incorporated with the Franciscan\u2019s Prototype, perhaps indeed not\nwith any copy of the then extant _Vita_.\n\nThe third is the fourth paragraph of Chapter XLVIII, p. 133_b_, giving\na new and beautiful description of the \u201cScintilla\u201d experienced by\nCatherine on November 11, 1509. It is of late composition, and Battista\nVernazza is no doubt its author.\n\nThe fourth consists of three new paragraphs to Chapter XLIX,\ndescriptive of Maestro Boerio\u2019s three-weeks\u2019 attempt at curing her,\nsometime in May-July 1510 (pp. 146_c_-147_c_), and of evidently the\nsame Physician\u2019s visit in his scarlet robes on September 2 (p. 154_b_).\nBoth passages, of transparent authenticity and still but little\nenlarged, will have been contributed by this Physician\u2019s Priest-son\nGiovanni Boerio, who, dying in his seventies, in 1561,[458] must\nhimself have been twenty at the time of his Father\u2019s attendance, and\nmay well have had his Father\u2019s contemporary notes before him when\ncomposing these interestingly vivid contributions.\n\nAnd the fifth brings three new paragraphs for the events of September\n4, 1510 (Chapter L, pp. 155_b_-156_a_), already referred to here, on\npp. 209, 210.\n\nThe MSS. read: \u201cOn the following day [4th September], being in great\npain and torment, she extended her arms in suchwise as to appear\nin truth a body fixed to a cross; so that, according as she was\ninteriorly, so also did she show in her exterior, and she said--\u201d[459]\nHereupon follows a long prayer so obviously modelled throughout upon\nOur Lord\u2019s High-Priestly prayer (John xvii, 1-26), and so elaborately\nreflective, that it cannot but most distantly represent anything spoken\nnow by her who had been so interjectional in her remarks ever since\nAugust 16 (pp. 149_b_-155_b_).--Now the Printed _Vita_ introduces\nbetween \u201c\u2026 exterior,\u201d and \u201cand she said,\u201d the following account:\n\u201cWhence, it appears to me, we should indeed believe that the spiritual\nstigmata were impressed in that body which was so afflicted and\nexcruciated by her Love; and although they did not appear exteriorly,\nthey nevertheless could easily be recognized through the Passion which\nshe felt; and that she suffered in her body that pain which her Love\nhad suffered on the Cross: as we read of the Apostle (Gal. vi [17])\nwho bore the stigmata of Our Lord Jesus Christ, not indeed exteriorly\nbut interiorly, through the great love and desire which he felt within\nhimself for his Lord.\u201d\n\n\u201cIn proof that this holy woman bore the stigmata interiorly, a large\nsilver cup was ordered to be brought in, which had a very high-standing\nsaucer\u201d; the cup was \u201cfull of cold water, for refreshing her hands, in\nthe palms of which, because of the great fire that burned within her,\nshe felt intolerable pain. And on putting her hands into it, the water\nbecame so boiling that the cup and the very saucer were greatly heated.\nShe also sustained great heat and much pain at her feet, and hence she\nkept them uncovered; and at her head she similarly suffered great heat\nwith many pains.\u201d\n\nArgentina is then quoted as having seen how \u201cone of\u201d Catherine\u2019s \u201carms\nlengthened itself out by more than half a palm beyond its usual length;\nyet she never said one word as to whence such great pains proceeded.\nIt is true that, on one occasion, before her last infirmity, she\npredicted that she would have to suffer a great malady, which would not\nbe natural but different from other infirmities, and that she would\ndie of it; and that, before her death, she would have within herself\n(_in s\u00e8_) the Stigmata and the Mysteries of the Passion: and this the\naforesaid Argentina revealed later on to many persons.\n\n\u201cNow this Beata being thus, with her arms extended, in pains so great\nthat she could not move.\u2026\u201d And then follows the \u201csaid\u201d with the long\nprayer, as given in the MSS.[460] Stigmatization is thus attributed,\nbut in two degrees and of two kinds. \u201cSpiritual Stigmata,\u201d like St.\nPaul, who had them \u201cthrough the great love and desire which he felt\nwithin himself for his Lord\u201d: this is the conception of the writer of\nthe first paragraph, doubtless Battista Vernazza. \u201cStigmata impressed\nwithin her body,\u201d intense interior physical pain, proved to be such by\nthe intense interior physical heat, and this heat proved by the insides\nof Catherine\u2019s hands causing cold water to boil: this was no doubt\nArgentina\u2019s view--at least as time went on. And note the interesting\ncombination of both views effected by the Redactor in the clauses \u201cthe\nspiritual stigmata were impressed in her body,\u201d \u201cthrough the Passion\nwhich she felt,\u201d and \u201cshe bore the stigmata interiorly.\u201d\n\n\nV. AGE AND AUTHORSHIP OF THE LITERATURE RETAINED.\n\nThe next points to consider, in detail, are the authorship and\nantiquity of the literature retained by us.\n\n\n1. _Indications concerning Ettore Vernazza._\n\nThe indications to be found within the _Vita_ begin at pp. 98_c_,\n99_a_, where, after six lines concerning \u201cseveral ecstasies\u201d which\noccurred in one particular year and which Catherine herself had called\n\u201cgiddiness\u201d (_vertigine_), we are told: \u201cOne day that she was talking\nwith a Religious, that Religious said to her: \u2018Mother, I beg you, for\nthe glory and honour of God, to elect some person that would satisfy\nyour mind, and to narrate to this person the graces which God has\ngranted to you, so that, when you die, these graces may not remain\n\u2026 unknown, and the praise and glory due for them to God may not be\nwanting.\u2019 And then this Soul answered that she was quite willing (_ben\ncontenta_), if this were pleasing to her tender Love; and that, in\nthat case, she would elect no other person than himself.\u201d \u201cAnd then,\nspeaking on another occasion with the said Religious, she began to\nnarrate to him her Conversion. And she acted similarly later on, as\nwell as she could, with regard to many other things, which have been\nfaithfully collected and put into the present book\u201d (_Vita_, pp. 98_c_,\n99_a_). The Preface, we know, mentions \u201ctwo Religious, her devotees,\nher Confessor and a Spiritual son of hers, by whom the (matter of\nthe) book has been collected from the very lips of the Seraphic\nWoman herself\u201d (_Vita_, p. viii_c_): and we know, beyond all cavil,\nthat these two men were Cattaneo Marabotto, the Priest, and Ettore\nVernazza, the Lawyer. The passage just given, _Vita_, pp. 98_c_, 99_a_,\nunmistakably refers to one of these two; and the address of \u201cMother,\u201d\nand the answer of \u201cSon,\u201d which occurs here immediately after the words\ntranslated (p. 99_b_), fit only Vernazza.\n\nNow the opening words of the first two, closely interconnected,\nparagraphs of that Chapter XXXVIII (_Vita_, p. 98_a_, _b_) are: \u201cIn\nthe year 1507\u201d; the first words of the next two paragraphs, which also\nbelong together, are: \u201cIt happened in a certain year.\u201d The subjects and\nsequences of those two sets correspond pretty closely; and the second\nset is in simple juxtaposition to the first set. Yet the sets differ:\nthe first contains a definite date but no allusion to any interlocutor,\nand Catherine moves about and overcomes her scruples by intercourse\nwith God alone; the second is without a date but refers repeatedly to a\nwitness, and Catherine is physically quiescent and solicits spiritual\nhelp from a disciple. Each set is, in its own way, equally vivid and\npeculiar: they can hardly be doublet narratives of the same event.--The\nsecond set, then, gives a later stage of her health and dispositions;\nand the \u201cecstasies,\u201d \u201cgiddinesses,\u201d which left her \u201chalf dead,\u201d must\nrefer to the \u201cassault\u201d of November 11, 1509, which left many other,\nsimilarly deep, impressions and definite records. The penultimate\nparagraph of the Printed _Vita_ (p. 165_c_) reads in the MSS.: \u201cNow\nthose who saw and observed these wonderful operations _during fifteen\nyears_;\u201d and this (since Marabotto did not become Catherine\u2019s Confessor\nnor presumably know her, at least intimately, till 1499) must refer\nspecially to Vernazza, Thus 1495 marks the beginning of his intimacy\nwith Catherine; in 1497 he could ask Catherine to stand God-mother\nto his first child; and the _Vita_ gives, pp. 122_c_, 123_a_, \u201cwhat\nshe said after her husband\u2019s death,\u201d hence in the autumn of 1497, \u201cto\na spiritual son of hers,\u201d who is certainly Vernazza, \u201cconcerning the\ncharacter of Messer Giuliano.\u201d--The conversation of November 1509 is,\nthen, not the starting-point of Vernazza\u2019s observations, or even of his\nregistrations, but only the date from when Catherine began deliberately\nto tell him about her past history.--All this gives us the following\ncanon: whatever in the _Vita_ is attributable to Vernazza can, if its\nsubject-matter is posterior to 1495, have been observed and written\ndown by him, then and there, as it occurred; if its subject-matter is\nprior to 1495, then we have what, at best, is derived from Catherine\u2019s\nmemory and communication to him. And there exists no earlier trained\nand reliable witness of Catherine\u2019s spiritual dispositions and sayings\nthan Vernazza from this date onwards.\n\nTwo beautiful scenes and compositions have undoubtedly been directly\nwitnessed and contemporaneously chronicled by Vernazza,--the\nconversation about Love and Hell, with Ettore as the chief interlocutor\nafter Catherine herself (_Vita_, pp. 94_b_,-95_c_), between July 1495\nand 1502; and the Scene with the Friar, which it is best to put back\nto the end of 1495 or the beginning of 1496, since it is more natural\nto take her words, \u201cif the world or a husband,\u201d as referring to a\nstill living husband.--We can also, I think, attribute to the same\nintermediary the authentic central part of the analogous discourse as\nto \u201cthat corrupt expression: you have offended God,\u201d Chapter XXXIX,\npp. 100_c_-101_b_.--And it is Ettore again through whom, doubtless, we\nderive all but everything that is authentic in the _Dicchiarazione_, as\nwe have already found.\n\nVernazza\u2019s contributions to the second category, _i.e._ reminiscences\nof Catherine brought to paper by him, are also very important and more\nnumerous; but they are, I think, generally worked up with parallel\naccounts due to Marabotto, as we shall presently note.\n\n\n2. _Indications of Marabotto._\n\nThe _locus classicus_ concerning Don Cattaneo appears in the _Vita_ in\nChapter XLIV, p. 117_b_, of which long and most important Chapter (pp.\n116_c_-121_b_) only the first seven lines occur in the MSS. The passage\n(omitting a highly glossed bracketed clause and a parallel, secondary\nhalf-sentence) runs: \u201cAfter this, ( ), the Lord gave her a Priest\n(_Prete_) to have a care of her soul and body. [ ] He was elected\nRector of the Hospital in which she abode, and he was wont to hear her\nConfessions, to say Mass for her, and to give her Communion, as often\nas she liked. This Priest (_Sacerdote_), at the request of various\nspiritual persons devoted to this Beata, has written a considerable\npart (_buona parte_) of this work, having many times tempted her on\nand incited her to tell him of the singular graces which God had given\nher and had effected within her [; especially since (_massime che_)\nthis Religious, owing to long experience and intercourse, knew and\nunderstood particularly well (_molto bene_) the sequence of her life].\u201d\n\nThis introductory authentication is followed by the highly reliable\nand important matters described in my Chapter IV,--her manner of\nConfession; the incident of the perfume from Marabotto\u2019s hand; her\nsolemn declaration as to her twenty-five years of complete interior\nloneliness with God; and the murmurs of some of her friends as to the\ncloseness of their intimacy, and his consequent absence from her for\nthree days. All this (pp. 117_b_-121_b_) was certainly written down by\nMarabotto himself, at the time, in substantially its present form.\n\nAlthough this whole series now opens out with \u201cla prima volta che si\nvolle confessare a questo Religioso\u201d (p. 117_c_), the words \u201ca questo\nReligioso\u201d are doubtless an addition of the Redactor. For everywhere\nelse Marabotto is always \u201cil Confessore\u201d or \u201csuo Confessore,\u201d whilst\n\u201cun Religioso\u201d is reserved for Vernazza: and wherever she uses any\nspecific appellation to the Confessore,--a thing which is quite\nexceptional,--she says \u201cPadre\u201d; whilst where she does so to the\nReligioso, she says \u201cFigliuolo.\u201d[461] And, wherever the Confessore\naddresses her, there is never any specific address; whereas the\nReligioso constantly addresses her as \u201cMadre.\u201d[462]\n\nAs to \u201cConfessore,\u201d we get one mentioned as Confessor to the Convent of\nS. Maria delle Grazie in 1460, p. 2_b_ the same or another Confessor\nof the same Convent in 1473, p. 4_a_, _c_, is called \u201cbuon Religioso.\u201d\nBoth these men, or this one man, heard Catherine\u2019s Confessions at those\ndates. But, a most important point: all the other Confessore-passages\nthroughout the book refer to after 1499, and to Marabotto alone. For\nthis is a list of them all. On p. 7_c_: here she is \u201cso gravely ill,\nas to be unable to eat,\u201d a thing belonging to the times after 1499.\n(In events of an obviously earlier date,--her fervent Communions,--pp.\n8_a_, _c_, we get not \u201cConfessore\u201d but simply \u201cSacerdote.\u201d) On p.\n10_c_: here \u201cto test her, he commanded her to eat,\u201d an action of which\nthe results are described on pp. 117_b_, 119_c_. On page 108_b_: but\nhere her fasting is liable to damage her health, which points to after\n1501. On p. 113_b_: but here the Confessore remains her sole aid, as\nin the accounts referring to Marabotto in January 1510 and shortly\nbefore, pp. 120_a_, 121_b_; 120_b_, 139_a_-_c_. On p. 115_b_: but here\nthe possessed \u201cspiritual daughter\u201d is certainly Mariola Bastarda, who\ndid not live with Catherine till after Giuliano\u2019s death in 1497. On\npp. 117_b_-121_b_: the Confessore is throughout avowedly Marabotto,\nand a treble indication here forces us to date his Confessorship from\nnot before 1499. The remaining \u201cConfessore\u201d-references,--pp. 130_a_,\n138_c_, 139_a_, _b_, _c_; 140_b_, _c_; 143_c_, 156_c_, 157_b_,--are all\nexplicitly subsequent to 1501 and pertinent to Marabotto alone.\n\nNow there is no good reason for doubting Marabotto\u2019s original, and\nstill largely unmodified, authorship of all the above passages in which\nhe himself occurs. Only as to the scene with the possessed Mariola,\nChapter XLIII, pp. 115_a_-_c_, have I long hesitated to attribute\nsomething so insignificant in substance, and yet so pompous in form, to\nMarabotto, either as action or as composition. Yet I have ended, for\nthe reasons given in my Chapter IV, by thinking that, after all, this\nscene does go back, more or less, to him.\n\n\n3. _References to other witnesses._\n\nThere are but few other references to witnesses in the _Vita_. On p.\n124_a_, in the account of Suor Tommasa Fiesca, there are \u201cthe Nuns\nof her first and second Monastery\u201d--San Silvestro and the Monastero\nNuovo,--and \u201csecular persons, her familiar and devoted friends.\u201d I\ntake this admirably vivid and _na\u00efve_ account, pp. 123_b_-124_b_\n(which exists in the MSS. without this sentence and Tommasa\u2019s\ndeath-date, 1534), to rest upon Suor Tommasa\u2019s own reminiscences of\nher heaven-storming cousin, but to be the composition of Battista\nVernazza.--And on p. 158_c_ \u201cseveral of the ten Physicians,\u201d who\nassembled by Catherine\u2019s bedside on September 10, 1510, \u201care still\nalive in this year (1551),\u201d but the very vague account of their\nexamination is no doubt due to a non-medical pen.\n\n\nVI. ANALYSIS OF THE CONVERSION-NARRATIVES.\n\nLet us now take the first of the four Narrative Passages in which\nthe largest or clearest conflations of original documents and of\nsubsequent glosses are traceable: the Conversion-Scene and subsequent\nApparition, March 1473; the \u201cScintilla\u201d-Experience, November 11,\n1509; the Temptation of August 23, 1510; and her Death on September\n14, 1510. Roman and Arabic numerals indicate the probable provenances\nfrom different contributors, and from different narratives of each\ncontributor, respectively; square brackets indicate glosses; and E,\nC, and B stand respectively for the handiwork of Ettore Vernazza, of\nCattaneo Marabotto, and of Battista Vernazza.\n\nTHE TWO CONVERSION-SCENES, pp. 4_a_-5_c_.\n\n(_a_) _In the Chapel._\n\nI. 1. Il giorno dopo la Festa di San Benedetto [ad istanza di sua\nsorella monaca] and\u00f2 Caterina [per confessarsi d\u2019] al Confessore di\nesso Monistero, bench\u00e8 non fosse disposta a confessarsi: ma la sorella\nle disse, \u201calmanco vattegli a raccommandare, perch\u00e8 \u00e8 buon religioso\u201d;\ned, in verit\u00e0 era un uomo santo. 2. Subitoch\u00e8 se gli f\u00f9 inginocchiata\ninnanzi, ricev\u00e8 una ferita al cuore d\u2019immenso amore di Dio, con una\nvista cos\u00ec chiara delle sue miserie e diffetti e della bont\u00e0 di Dio,\nche n\u00e8 f\u00f9 quasi per cascare in terra.\n\nII. 1. Onde per quei sentimenti d\u2019immenso amore e delle offese fatte\nal suo dolce Iddio, f\u00f9 talmente tirata [per affetto purgato] fuor\ndelle miserie del mondo, che rest\u00f2 quasi fuor di s\u00e8; I. 3. e [perci\u00f2]\ninternamente gridava con ardente amore: \u201cnon pi\u00f9 mondo, non pi\u00f9\npeccati.\u201d Ed in quel punto, se ella avesse avuto mille mondi, tutti gli\navrebbe gettati via.\n\nIII. Per la viva fiamma del infocato amore che essa sentiva, il dolce\nIddio impresse in quell\u2019 anima, e le infuse, in un subito, tutta la\nperfezione per grazia: onde la purg\u00f2 di tutti gli affetti terreni, la\nillumin\u00f2 col suo divin lume, facendola vedere coll\u2019 occhio interiore la\nsua dolce bont\u00e0, e finalmente in tutto la un\u00ec, mut\u00f2 e trasform\u00f2 in s\u00e8,\nper vera unione di buona volont\u00e0, accendendola da ogni parte col suo\nvivo amore.\n\n[Stando la Santa per quella dolce ferita quasi alienata da\u2019 sensi\ninnanzi al confessore e senza poter parlare]\n\nI. 4. N\u00e8 avvedendosi il Confessore del fatto, per caso f\u00f9 chiamato e\nlevasi. Dappoich\u00e8 assai presto f\u00f9 retornato, non potendo ella appena\nparlare per l\u2019intrinseco dolore ed immenso amore, allo meglio che\npot\u00e8 gli disse: \u201cPadre, se vi piacesse, lascerei volontieri questa\nConfessione per un\u2019 altra volta\u201d: e cos\u00ec f\u00f9 fatto. 5. Si parti dunque\nCaterina e retornata a casa [si sent\u00ec cos\u00ec accesa e ferita di tanto\namor di Dio, a lei interiormente mostrato colla vista delle sue\nmiserie, che pareva fuors di s\u00e8] ed entrata in una camera la pi\u00f9\nsegreta che pot\u00e8, ivi molto pianse [e sospir\u00f2 con gran fuoco].\n\n[In quel punto f\u00f9 istrutta intrinsecamente dell\u2019 orazione, ma la sua\nlingua] I. 6. non poteva dir altro salvo questo: \u201cO Amore, pu\u00f2 essere\nche mi abbi chiamata [con tanto amore] e fattomi conoscere in un punto\nquello che colla lingua non posso esprimere?\u201d II. 2. Le sue parole in\ntutti quei giorni altro non erano che sospiri, e cos\u00ec grandi che era\ncosa mirabile: ed aveva una si estrema contrizione [di cuore] per le\noffese fatte a tanta bont\u00e0, che se non fosse stata miracolosamente\nsostenuta, sarebbe spirata e crepatole il cuore.\n\n(_b_) _In the Palace._\n\nI. 7. (?) [Ma volendo] il Signore [accendere pi\u00f9 intrinsecamente l\u2019amor\nsuo in quest\u2019 anima ed insieme il dolore dei suoi peccati,] se le\nmostr\u00f2 in ispirito colla Croce in spalla, piovendo tutto sangue, [per\nmodo che la casa le pareva tutta piena di rivoli di quel sangue,] il\nquale vedea essere tutto sparso per amore: il che le accese nel cuore\ntanto fuoco, che n\u00e8 usciva fuor di s\u00e8 [e pareva una cosa insensata per\nlo tanto amore e dolore che ne sentiva.]\n\nII. 3. (?) [Questa vista le f\u00f9 tanto penetrativa, che] le pareva sempre\nvedere (e cogli occhi corporali) il suo Amore tutto insanguinato\ne confitto in Croce; e perci\u00f2 gridava: \u201cO Amore, mai pi\u00f9, mai pi\u00f9\npeccati.\u201d I. 8 (?) Se le accese poi un odio di s\u00e8 medesima, che non si\npoteva sopportare, e diceva: \u201cO Amore, se bisogna, sono apparechiata di\nconfessare i miei peccati in pubblico.\u201d\n\nI. 9. Dopo questo fece la sua [generale] Confessione con tanta\ncontrizione e tali stimoli, che le passavano l\u2019anima [. E bench\u00e8]\nIddio [in quel punto che le diede la dolce ed amorosa ferita, le\navesse perdonato tutti i suoi peccati, abbrucciandoli col fuoco del\nsuo immenso amore; nondimeno volendo soddisfare alla giustizia, la\nfece passare per la via della soddisfazione] disponendo che questa\ncontrizione [lume e conversione] durasse [ro] circa quatt_r_o [dici]\n_anni_, in capo a quali [, poich\u00e8 ella ebbe soddisfatto, le f\u00f9 levata\ndella mente la predetta vista in forma tale che] mai pi\u00f9 non vide\nneppure una minima scintilla dei suoi peccati, come se tutti fossero\nstati gettati nel profondo del mare.\n\nThere is a striking parallelism of sights, sayings, and their\nsequences, between the dated events in the Convent-Chapel, and the\nundated ones in the Palace, divided off by the passage II 2, with its\nvague \u201call these days.\u201d Both sets have a \u201cVista,\u201d--partly of \u201coffese\nfatte\u201d; have next \u201cand hence she cried \u2018no more sin\u2019\u201d; and the first\nconcludes with a wish, expressed to the Confessor, to put off her\nConfession, and the second with an exclamation, addressed to God, of\nher readiness for even a public Confession.--This Christ-Vision, or\nany other Passion-scene, is nowhere implied or referred to in all her\nrecorded post-Conversion sayings and doings; the legendary instinct, we\nknow, developed, from this single adult occupation with the Passion,\nthe \u201cinterior stigmatization\u201d story; and in the Palace Narrative itself\nthere has been, in any case, _some_ uncertainty, shifting, or doubling\nof the tradition as to that figured vision,--for the actual vision\ncannot have represented Christ both as walking and carrying His Cross,\n_and_ as motionless and hanging upon it. Are the two sets, then, but\ntwo variant records of one sole event, and is the second but the result\nof an early determination to find more of an historical, pictorial\nelement in Catherine\u2019s spiritual experiences than had actually been\npresent in it?\n\nYet strong reasons operate on the other side. We have one, and only\none, absolutely certain detail from her childhood, the presence, in\nher bedroom, of a Piet\u00e0 (_Vita_, pp. 1_c_, 2_a_); yet nowhere, in her\nsubsequent actions and sayings, is there the slightest allusion to this\npicture-scene which had so deeply moved her childhood.--And the most\nvivid and characteristic details of the two Conversion-experiences are\ndelicately different in each set.\n\nThe first set, (_a_), consists of three documents. Document I 1,\n2; 3; 4-6 continues the story of Catherine\u2019s relations with the\n\u201cmonistero\u201d of the Madonna delle Grazie, and of her prayer on the eve\nof St. Benedict\u2019s day, told on pp. 2_b_-3_c_; is most vivid, precise,\nand homely; and is doubtless the work of E. Document II 1, 2 is a\ncolourless parallel to I 2, 6; yet in I 2 she sees her own miseries, in\nII 1 she is drawn out of the miseries of the world: II is thus probably\nan ancient doublet, and, if so, then part of some annotations by C.\nAnd document III is obviously from yet another, later, hand,--that\nwhich produced the originally tripartite scheme of Catherine\u2019s Convert\nlife (pp. 5_c_-_bc_), for the three \u201cla\u201d (her, Catherine) after \u201conde\u201d\nof III require but three stages of perfecting; whilst now the printed\ntext attempts (by italicizing \u201cun\u00ec\u201d and \u201ctransform\u00f2\u201d) to produce four\nstages, in keeping with the following, now quadripartite scheme. The\nsecond set, (_b_), begins as though nothing had yet happened or as if,\nat least, the past event had been but a step towards something greater.\nYet precisely such series of apparent anti-climaxes occur demonstrably\nelsewhere in her life.--The account of II 3 (?) is irreconcilably\ndifferent from that of I 7 (?): for there Christ is moving, carrying\nHis Cross and raining blood upon objects not Himself, here He is\nmotionless, probably dead, affixed to the Cross, and His blood has\nmerely stained His own body; there she sees \u201cin the spirit,\u201d here\n\u201cwith bodily eyes\u201d; there, for some minutes, here continuously; there,\nfollowed by speechless ecstasy, here, by penitential exclamations. And\nthis II 3 (?) is not a later stage of the vision given in I 7 (?), as\nthough, dissolving-view-like, the Moving Christ had shaded off into\na Fixed Christ, (although Catherine\u2019s Viste give us such changes,\n_e.g._ that of the Divine Fountain\u2019s successive self-communications,\n_Vita_, pp. 32c, 33a). For the very Redactor treats the second \u201cVista\u201d\nas simply identical with the first; and Battista, we saw, so entirely\nrealizes the contradiction between the two accounts, as to make two\nquite distinct events out of them (_Dialogo_, pp. 209_b_, 211_a_,\n_b_).--This second account can hardly be a gloss, for Battista already\nfound and respected it when at work on the Giustiniani-book of 1529\nor 1530, and was thus powerfully influenced by it when composing\nher _Dialogo_ in about 1547. Indeed, this II 3 (?) has been the\nstarting-point of all the stigmatization-glosses elsewhere, and can\nhardly be a gloss itself.--If all this be so, then either Catherine\nherself told the Christ-Vision to one disciple in two different ways;\nor told it to two companions, to each in a different way; or told the\nstory so vaguely, or with such rich vividness and ambiguity, as to be\ndifferently understood by these two different hearers. Only one of the\ntwo latter alternatives would cover the facts, since no one writer\ncould remain unaware of the contradiction between these two accounts.\nHence we here require two writers, both considerably prior to Battista\nand much respected by her; only E and C answer to these tests; and, in\nthat case, the Living Christ, seen in the Spirit, comes to us through\nE, and the Dead Christ, seen with the bodily eyes, reaches us through\nC.--And then comes I 8, of clearly first-hand authority, and belonging,\nI think, to E\u2019s account.\n\nI 9, concluding the _Vita\u2019s_ Conversion-story, must evidently contain\nsome words, originally belonging to document I, concerning her\nConfession, since I has already twice (I 4, I 8) referred to such a\ncoming Confession. And such words are here: \u201cDopo questo--l\u2019anima\u201d;\n\u201cIddio disponendo-circa quattro _anni_\u201d (this is the original text\nhere); and a vivid description of her suddenly ceasing to see her\nparticular sins.\n\n\nVII. THE SAYINGS-PASSAGES: THREE TESTS FOR DISCRIMINATING AUTHENTIC\nFROM SECONDARY SAYINGS.\n\nAs to the Sayings, it is obviously more difficult to decide as to\ntheir provenance, authenticity, and date of enunciation and literary\nfixation. Yet three tests have proved solidly helpful towards gaining a\nrespectably large collection of texts which can, with high historical\nprobability or even certainty, be reasoned from as truly Catherine\u2019s,\neven in their form.\n\n\n1. _Rhythm._\n\nThere is the test of rhythm and rhyme, since the _Vita_ describes her\n\u201cwont\u201d of \u201cmaking rhymed sayings in her joy,\u201d and gives irrefragable\nproofs of her deep love of Jacopone\u2019s poetry.[463] The still obviously\nrhymed or rhythmical sayings all answer to the other tests of\ngenuineness; and many sayings now turned, by successive Redactors,\ninto more or less sheer prose, can still be restored to their original\npoetic form. All these rhythmic, rhymed sayings have an utterly\n_na\u00efve_, expansive tone, markedly different from the high-pitched\nredactional rhetoric in which they are now embedded, or again from\nBattista\u2019s far more literary poetry: hence they cannot spring from this\nstrong and busy intellect.--Thus she hears her Love say: \u201cChi di M\u00e8 |\nsi fida, || di s\u00e8 | non dubita\u201d; possibly simply quoting, she says to\nher soul, \u201cama chi t\u2019ama, | e chi non t\u2019ama lascia\u201d; and she sums up\nher life\u2019s ideal as, \u201cs\u2019io mangio o bevo, | s\u2019io [] taccio o parlo,\n| dormo o veglio; | s\u2019io son in chiesa, in casa, in piazza: | s\u2019io\nson inferma | o sana: | s\u2019io muojo o non muojo: || ogni ora di vita\nmia, | tutto voglio che sia, | Dio e prossimo: || non vorrei potere ne\nvolere, | fare, parlare n\u00e8 pensare | eccetto tutto Dio.||\u201d[464]--And\nthere are her repetitive utterances, beginning with \u201cnon pi\u00f9 mondo, non\npi\u00f9 peccati,\u201d on March 22, 1472, and finishing with \u201candi\u00e0mo, non pi\u00f9\nterra, non pi\u00f9 terra,\u201d of August 25, 1510.[465]\n\n\n2. _Simplicity._\n\nThe second test requires the sayings to be short and simple, and to\nbe followed, in the present text, by carefully clausulated doublets,\nor to be themselves now glossed and expanded. Such sayings occur\nspecially in Chapters I to VIII; XVIII and XIX; XXVII to XXIX; XXXVI to\nXXXVIII; XLIV to XLVI; and in Chapter L. All these Chapters are largely\nnarrative; can in great part be traced to Vernazza or Marabotto; and\nyield sayings readily attributable to her first Conversion-Period\n(which she doubtless recounted to those Friends), or to 1495-1510, the\nyears of her intercourse with those intimates.\n\n\n3. _Originality._\n\nAnd the third test consists of a daring originality, which, often\nsoftened and counteracted by the successive Redactors, precludes all\nidea of sayings expressive of it proceeding from any one of less\nauthority than herself. These sayings again are all short; they too\noccur, all but exclusively, in the Chapters indicated and in the\n_Dicchiarazione_; they are all referable to the years 1495-1510, and to\nthe registration first of Vernazza, and, later on, of Marabotto.\n\nVery few of the sayings grouped together by me in my Chapter VI but\nsatisfy at least two of these three tests.\n\n\nVIII. CONCLUSION. AT LEAST SIX STAGES IN THE UPBUILDING OF THE COMPLETE\nBOOK OF 1551. THE SLIGHT CHANGES INTRODUCED SINCE THEN. FIRST CLAIMS TO\nAUTHORSHIP FOR CATHERINE.\n\n\n1. _The Stages._\n\nIt would appear, then, from the preceding analyses, that the successive\nstages in the composition and redaction of the _Vita-Dicchiarazione_\ncomplex of documents cannot have been fewer than the following:--\n\n(i) Description and Registration, (1) first by Vernazza (1495-1510),\n(2) then also by Marabotto (1499-1510), more or less on the day of\ntheir occurrence and utterance, of Catherine\u2019s actions, psycho-physical\ncondition, and sayings expressive of her present spiritual experiences;\nand of her deliberate reminiscences concerning her past, especially\nher early Convert life. And similar contemporary Annotations, of much\nlesser volume, by (3) Suor Tommasa Fiesca, (4) Maestro Boerio, and (5)\nDon Giacomo Carenzio--the latter two, only since May 1510.\n\n(ii) Redaction, probably in connection with the first public Cultus in\nthe summer or autumn of 1512, of (1) a short _Conversione_-booklet, by\nVernazza, perhaps already with slight contributions by Marabotto; (2)\na short _Dicchiarazione_-booklet, also by Vernazza, probably as yet\nwithout the theological \u201ccorrections\u201d; and (3) a short Passion-account,\nby Marabotto, with additions by Carenzio and, in substance,\ncontributions by Argentina.\n\n(iii) Redaction, after the death of the last of the two chief friends\n(Marabotto, in 1528), by Battista Vernazza, in 1529 or 1530, of a\ntripartite _Vita_, made up chiefly of II (1) and II (3), and a longer\n_Dicchiarazione_, now with the theological glosses,--these latter\npresumably from the pen of Fra Gaspar Toleto, O.P., the Inquisitor for\nthe Republic of Genoa, or his successor, Fra Geronimo da Genova.\n\n(iv) Partial change of the tripartite scheme of the _Vita-Dottrina_ to\na quadripartite one, early in 1548.\n\n(v) Composition by Battista Vernazza of (1) the _Dialogo_, \u201cChapter\u201d\nI alone, 1549; and then (2) of \u201cChapter\u201d II (the present Parts II and\nIII), in 1550.\n\n(vi) Final Redaction of the text of the Printed\n_Vita-Dicchiarazione-Dialogo_, by means of all the preceding Documents,\nof which I (4) and possibly the Confession-descriptions of I (2) are\nnow incorporated in the complete _Vita_ for the first time; and, with\nthe help of gossipy reminiscences of Argentina, possibly only now\nreduced to writing--in 1550, 1551. This final Redactor would again be\nBattista Vernazza.\n\n\n2. _The Changes._\n\nNow from 1551 onwards this whole _corpus_ has remained stationary,\nwith the exception of purely formal modifications, such as one synonym\nfor another; of, since 1737, her designation, on the title-page and\nin some other places, as \u201cSanta Caterina da Genova,\u201d and, throughout\nthe text, as \u201cCaterina\u201d (only the Ancient Preface still retains the\nstrictly correct \u201cCaterinetta,\u201d _Vita_, p. viii); and of two other,\nmore important changes.\n\nThe first important change is the insertion (later than the fourth\nedition, Venice, 1601) at her death-moment,--between \u201ce in quel punto\u201d\n(after raising her forefinger heavenwards) \u201cquest\u2019 anima beata\u201d and\n\u201ccon una gran pace \u2026 spir\u00f2,\u201d--of the words: \u201cdicendo: In manus tuas\ncommendo spiritum meum.\u201d This, intrinsically appropriate, last saying\nprevented henceforth her last, directly recorded, words from being\nsomething so little beautiful or characteristic as the \u201ccacciate via\nquesta bestia\u201d with which all the MSS., and all the editions till at\nleast 1601, had the fine courage to conclude the series of her sayings.\n\nAnd the second change is a modification in the titles of the Book and\nof its several parts, of significance as indicating the growth of the\nlegend attributing literary composition to her. The First Printed\nEdition (1551) has: \u201cBook of the admirable Life and holy Doctrine of\nthe Blessed Caterinetta of Genoa, in which is contained a useful and\nCatholic Demonstration and Declaration\u201d (Elucidation) \u201cof Purgatory\u201d;\nand in the body of the Book this \u201cDemonstrazione\u201d appears as _Trattato\ndel Purgatorio_, after the _Vita_-proper. But though the complete\n_Dialogo_ appears here, behind the _Trattato_ and divided into two\n\u201cChapters,\u201d no mention is made of it on the title-page.--The Second\nEdition, Florence, 1568, adds to the title: \u201cwith a Dialogue between\nthe Soul and the Body, composed by the same,\u201d thus attributing,\napparently, full literary authorship by Catherine to precisely that\ndocument with which she has least of all to do.--The Fourth Edition,\nVenice, 1601, simply adds, after \u201cDialogue,\u201d \u201cdivided into two\nChapters\u201d; and the Fifth, 1615, modifies this to \u201cthree Chapters,\nbetween the Soul, (and) the Body; Humanity, (and) Self-love; the Spirit\nand the Lord God, composed by the Beata herself.\u201d\n\nThe first French translation, Paris, 1598, puts the _Dialogue_ before\nthe _Treatise_, and still attributes Catherine\u2019s direct authorship to\nthe _Dialogue_ alone. But the first Latin translation, Freiburg in\nBreisgau, 1626, has \u201cLife and Doctrine of Blessed Catherine Adorna \u2026\n(and) the two excellent Treatises of the same: 1. Dialogue between\nthe Soul and the Body; 2. Concerning Purgatory.\u201d Here both works are\nattributed to her, in exactly the same degree; but that degree is not\nclearly specified.[466]\n\nI do not know how soon after the Sixth Edition, Naples, 1645, which\nis still without it, the quite unambiguous title of the Thirteenth\nEdition, Genoa, of about 1880: \u201cVita ed Opere di S. Caterina da\nGenova,\u201d was adopted, nor how soon the present Second Title-page to\nthe _Trattato_ and _Dialogo_--\u201cWorks of St. Catherine\u201d--was inserted.\nYet even here the old correct name for the whole Book still appears as\nthe heading on p. 1: _Vita e Dottrina_, although now, owing to that\nSecond Title-page, \u201cDoctrine\u201d only covers the Doctrinal Chapters of the\n_Vita_-proper.\n\nThus not till 1568 was anything claimed as a composition of Catherine\u2019s\npen, and then only the _Dialogue_; and not till 1626 was the _Treatise_\nput into the same category as the _Dialogue_. Pope Clement XII, in\nhis Bull of Canonization in 1737, declares the _Dialogue_ to be her\ncomposition, whilst nothing is said concerning the _Treatise_, although\nthe Bull itself most wisely follows the account of the _Vita_-proper,\nand softens down or ignores the different version of the _Dialogue_, in\nthe two crucial cases of Catherine\u2019s Vision of the Bleeding Christ and\nof the degree of her poverty.[467]\n\n\n\n\nFOOTNOTES\n\n\n[1] The remainder of this section is for the most part expressed in the\nwords of Prof. Edouard Zeller\u2019s standard _Philosophie der Griechen_. I\nhave used the German text.\n\n[2] _Rep._ VII, 518_b_.\n\n[3] _Phaedo_, 67_c_, 64, 69_c_.\n\n[4] _Theaetetus_, 168_a_.\n\n[5] _Parmenides_, 134_c_.\n\n[6] _Theaetetus_, 176_a_.\n\n[7] Luke ix, 51-56; Matt. xxvi, 51, 52; Mark x, 13-16; ix, 30-32.\n\n[8] I have been much helped throughout the remainder of this section\nby many of the groupings and discussions of texts in Prof. H. J.\nHoltzmann\u2019s _Lehrbuch der N. T. Theologie_, 2 vols., 1897. Inge\u2019s\n_Christian Mysticism_, 1899, has also, in its pp. 44-74, furnished me\nwith some useful hints.\n\n[9] Matt. vi, 26, 28; Mark iv, 27, 28; Matt. xiv, 32; xvi, 2, 3.\n\n[10] Matt. v, 17; vi, 1, 2, 5, 16; v, 23.\n\n[11] Mark v, 25-29; vi, 56.\n\n[12] Mark vi, 12, 13; i, 9, 10; Matt. iii, 13-19; Mark xiv, 22-25;\nMatt. xxvi, 26-29; Luke xxii, 15-19.\n\n[13] Matt. v. 3, 8; xi, 25, 26, 28-30; Mark viii, 34, 35; Matt. xvi,\n24, 25; x, 38, 39; Luke ix, 23, 24; xiv, 27; xvii, 33; Mark vii, 14, 15.\n\n[14] Mark ix, 35, 36; x, 15; x, 14.\n\n[15] Mark xii, 24-27; Matt. xxii, 29-33; Luke xx, 34-38.\n\n[16] 1 Cor. xv, 3-8; xi, 23-26.\n\n[17] Acts ii, 1-13; ix, 1-9; xxii, 3-11; xxvi, 9-18; 1 Cor. xii; xiv; 2\nCor. xii, 1-9.\n\n[18] 1 Cor. i, 18, 22-25; ii, 14, 15.\n\n[19] Col. i, 26; ii. 2; iv, 3, 4.\n\n[20] 1 Cor. ii, 6; iii, 1.\n\n[21] 1 Cor. ii, 10, 11.\n\n[22] Eph. iii, 5; Rom. vi, 6, 8; viii, 11.\n\n[23] Col. i, 15-17; Eph. i, 10; Col. iii, 11; 1 Cor. x, 4; Col. i, 15,\n17; iii, 11; Eph. iv, 13; Gal. ii, 20; iv, 19; 2 Cor. iii, 18.\n\n[24] John i, 14; 1 John i, 1; John v, 28, 29.\n\n[25] 1 John i, 5; iv, 8; John iv, 24; iii, 16; vi, 44; xvii, 18.\n\n[26] John xvii, 24; viii, 58; i, 3, 10; i, 9; 1 John i, 2; John i, 11;\nxiv, 6; x, 7-9; vi, 35; xv, 1.\n\n[27] John iii, 3, 5; 1 John v, 10; John vii, 17; iii, 21.\n\n[28] 1 John iii, 2, 5; v, 6.\n\n[29] John ii, 23, 24; iii, 2; iv, 39, 42; xiv, 11; xx, 29.\n\n[30] John iii, 36; v, 24; 1 John iii, 14; v, 20.\n\n[31] John xiv. 20, 21.\n\n[32] I have been much helped in this section by Prof. R. Eucken\u2019s\nadmirably discriminating, vivid book, _Die Lebensanschauungen der\ngrossen Denker_, in its first and fourth editions, 1890, 1902.\n\n[33] I have been much helped, towards what follows here, by pages 51 to\n128 in M. Maurice Blondel\u2019s great book, _l\u2019Action_, 1893.\n\n[34] I have found much help towards formulating the following\nexperiences and convictions in Professor William James\u2019s striking\npaper, \u201cReflex Action and Theism,\u201d in _The Will to Believe_, pp.\n111-114, 1897.\n\n[35] I have been much helped towards the general contents of the next\nfour sections by that profoundly thoughtful little book, Fechner\u2019s _Die\ndrei Motive und Gr\u00fcnde des Glaubens_, 1863, and by the large and rich\nconception elaborated by Cardinal Newman in his Preface to _The Via\nMedia_, 1877, Vol. I, pp. xv-xciv.\n\n[36] See, for this point, the admirably clear analysis in J.\nVolkelt\u2019s _Kant\u2019s Erkenntnisstheorie_, 1879, pp. 160-234. This book\nis probably the most conclusive demonstration extant of the profound\nself-contradictions running through Kant\u2019s Epistemology.\n\n[37] _Works of St. John of the Cross_, translated by David Lewis, Vol.\nI, ed. 1889, p. 298.\n\n[38] _Ibid._ Vol. II, ed. 1890, pp. 541, 542.\n\n[39] _\u0152uvres de F\u00e9nelon_, Paris, Lebel, Vol. IX, 1828, pp. 632, 652,\n668.\n\n[40] _Tractatus de Gratia et Libero Arbitrio_, cap. xiv, \u00a7 47.\n\n[41] _Summa c. Gentiles_, 1-3, c. 70, _in fine_.\n\n[42] For the recent instances, see Walter Elliott\u2019s _Life of Father\nHecker_, New York, 1894, p. 369; _The Treatise on Purgatory_, by St.\nCatherine of Genoa, with a Preface by Cardinal Manning, 1858, 1880,\n19--; F. W. Faber\u2019s _All for Jesus_, ch. ix, sections iii-v; Aubrey de\nVere\u2019s _Legends and Records of the Church and the Empire_, 1898, pp.\n355, 356; George Tyrrell\u2019s _Hard Sayings_, 1898, pp. 111-130.\n\n[43] I have done my best to recover the day, or at least the month, but\nin vain. The baptismal register of her Parish Church (the Duomo) is, as\nregards that time, destroyed or lost.\n\n[44] Not a shadow of reasonable doubt is possible as to the\nauthenticity of these relics. Buried as she was in the Church of the\nHospital of Pammatone, which latter she had first simply served,\nand then directed and inhabited, during thirty-seven years, her\nresting-place remained a centre of unbroken devotion up to her\nBeatification and Canonization, when the relics were removed but a few\nyards upwards, and placed in their glass shrine above and behind the\naltar in the Chapel of the Tribune--the Deposito di S. Caterina--where\nthey have rested ever since. The special character of the brow and of\nthe hands is still plainly recognizable. Of the four or five portraits\nmentioned by Vallebona, not one can be traced back to her lifetime.\n\nIn the _Manuale Cartularii_ of the Pammatone Hospital, under date\nof 10th July 1512 (p. 62), (I quote from an authentic copy which I\nfound among various documents copied out by the protonotary P. Angelo\nGiovo, and prefixed to his MS. Latin life of the Saint preserved in\nthe _Biblioteca della Missione Urbana_, Genoa, No. 30, 8, 140,) there\nis an entry of money (7 lire 10 soldi, equivalent to about \u00a37 10_s_.)\npaid by the administrators of the Hospital to Don Cattaneo Marabotto,\nher Confessor and Executor: \u201cRatio sepulturae q(uondam) D(ominae)\nCatarinettae Adurnae pro diversis expensis factis p(er) D(ominum)\nCattaneum Marabottum, videlicet _pro pictura_ et apportari facere\nlapides ipsius sepulturae.\u201d The payment must have been either for\nexpressly painting a picture, or for buying one already painted. We\nwould, however, expect, in the former case, for the entry, in analogy\nwith its final clause, to run: \u201cpro pingi facere picturam.\u201d In the\nlatter case, we are almost forced to think of the picture as painted\nby some friend or disciple of the Saint, not for herself or for her\nrelations or friends (for in that case it would hardly have been\nsold, but would have been left or given to the Hospital), but for his\nown consolation, or in hopes of its being eventually bought for the\nHospital (and this may well have been done during her lifetime). In any\ncase, this entry attests that a portrait of the Saint was in existence\nat the Hospital not two years after her death, and which was approved\nof by one of her closest friends. I take it that that portrait was\nplaced on her sepulchral monument erected to her in January 1512 in the\nHospital Church. If still extant, at least in a copy, that original or\ncopy is, presumably, at the Hospital still.\n\nNow there are but three pictures at the Hospital which claim to be\nportraits of her and are not, avowedly, copies. (1) The large oil\npainting of her standing figure, in the room adjoining the closet now\nshown as the place where she died, is clearly a late, quite lifeless\ncomposition. (2) The portrait-head in the Superioress\u2019s room has been\ncarefully examined for me by a trained portrait painter, who reports\nthat the picture consists of a skilful ancient foundation now largely\nhidden under much clumsy repainting. (3) The picture reproduced at\nthe head of this first volume, now in the sacristy of the _Santissima\nAnnunziata in Portorio_ (the Hospital Church), is clearly the work\nof one hand alone. It is without the somewhat disagreeable look\npresent in the previous portrait, a look doubtless introduced there\nby the unskilful restoration. If then the sacristy picture is a copy\nof the Superioress\u2019s picture, it will have been copied before the\nlatter picture was thus repainted. This sacristy picture now hangs\nin an old-fashioned white-and-gold wooden frame with \u201cSanta Catarina\nda Genova\u201d in raised letters carved out upon it, a carving which is\nevidently contemporary with the frame\u2019s make. The frame thus cannot be\nolder than 1737, the year of Catherine\u2019s canonization. But the portrait\nis without trace of a nimbus and carefully reproduces the very peculiar\nfeatures of a particular face, head, and neck.\n\nThe original painting, thus still more or less before us in these\ntwo pictures, was evidently by no mean artist, and strikes a good\nconnoisseur as of the school of Leonardo da Vinci (died 1519). There\nwere several good painters of this school resident in Genoa about\nthis time: Carlo da Milano, Luca da Novara, Vinzenzo da Brescia,\nand Giovanni Mazone di Alessandria. In the very year of her death,\nand still more two years later, she was publicly and spontaneously\nvenerated as Blessed, and this Cultus continued unbroken up to the\nBull of Urban VIII, of 1625. Hence the further back we place one or\nboth of these portraits, the more naturally can we explain the absence\nof the nimbus. Everything conspires, then, to prove that one of these\nportraits goes back, in some way, to the picture painted for or bought\nby Marabotto, and which adorned her monument from 1512 to 1593.\n\nI have striven hard but in vain to find some scrap of Catherine\u2019s\nhandwriting. The late Mr. Hartwell Grisell of Oxford, and the Cavaliere\nAzzolini dei Manfredi of Rome, both of them life-long collectors of\nSaints\u2019 autographs, have kindly assured me that they have never come\nacross a word even purporting to be in her handwriting. The fourteen\nwills and codicils made in her favour or by herself are all, according\nto the universal custom of the time and country, written throughout\nin a rapid, cursive hand by the lawyer himself alone, with certain\nslight signs (crosses or lines) for further identification of his\nauthorship, but with no signature of any kind. There is no shadow of a\ntrue tradition as to any of her sayings or thinkings having ever been\nwritten down by herself. And the business books of the Hospital, kept,\nat least in part, by Catherine from 1490 to 1496, when she was its\nmatron, have long ago been destroyed by fire.\n\n[45] See _Opere Spirituale della Ven. B. Vernazza_, Genova, 1755, 6\nvols., Vol. I, p. 3.\n\n[46] _Op. cit._ p. 45.\n\n[47] Although the Church and Monastery belonged, as Catherine\u2019s Will\nof 1509 puts it, to \u201cthe Order of St. Benedict of the Congregation of\nSaint Justina in Padua\u201d--a Congregation founded from Monte Cassino\nbetween 861 and 874--yet the community were evidently closely bound up\nwith the Augustinian Canons Regular of the Lateran, or at all events\nwith the foundation of the Convent of Augustinian Canonesses at Santa\nMaria delle Grazie. For the concession of Pope Nicolas V for the latter\nConvent is addressed to his \u201cBeloved sons of Saint Theodore of Genoa\u201d\n(Augustinian Canons) \u201cand of Saint Nicolas in Boschetto.\u201d And this\nclose connection with, and action for, a Church and Convent so dearly\nloved by Catherine, will have necessarily been one of the causes of her\naffection for the Benedictine country-side Church.\n\n[48] This evidently most authentic anecdote stands in the _Vita_, p.\n3, in a doubly disconcerting context. Her prayers, always elsewhere\nrecorded together with their effects, are here abruptly left, without\nany indication of their sequel; and the prayer for a _three months\u2019\nillness_ is followed by an attempted explanation of it--that she had\ngone through _three months_ of mental _affliction_. I take it that some\nother continuation has been suppressed, or, at least, that the present\nexplanation owes its \u201cthree months\u201d to a quaint determination to find\nat least a retrospective correspondence between her prayer and the\nhappenings of her life.\n\n[49] _Vita_, p. 4, first two paragraphs. I hope to show in the Appendix\nthat we owe their getting on to paper to Ettore Vernazza, and that he\nderived their contents from Catherine herself, some time after 1495.\n\n[50] _Ibid._ p. 4. \u00a7 3.\n\n[51] _Vita_, p. 4, \u00a7 3; p. 5, \u00a7 1.\n\n[52] _Ibid._ p. 5, \u00a7\u00a7 2, 3. I have, together with the Bull of\nCanonization, deliberately omitted the first two sentences of \u00a7 3,\nwhich (with their representation of Our Lord as appearing not alive\nwith the Cross, but dead on it, and with their repetition here of the\nexclamation as to \u201cno more sins\u201d of her conversion-moment) form an\ninteresting doublet, with a complex and eventful history attaching to\nit. See Appendix to this volume.\n\n[53] _Vita_, p. 5_c_.\n\n[54] _Vita_, p. 5_c_.\n\n[55] _Vita_, pp. 5_c_, 6,--as they appear in MS. \u201cA.\u201d This matter of\nthese periods has given me much trouble, since there are two rival\ntraditions concerning them to be found, really unreconciled, within the\noldest documents of the _Vita_. The point is fully discussed in the\nAppendix.\n\n[56] _Ibid._ cc. ix-xli, pp. 21_c_-111_c_.\n\n[57] _Vita_, p. 7_a_.\n\n[58] I take the above to have been the actual course of events, for the\nfollowing reasons. (1) The text just given talks of \u201cthe desire for\nHoly Communion\u201d having been given to her on that day in 1473, and of\nthis desire \u201cnever failing her throughout the remainder of her life\u201d;\nbut it does not say, that the desire for _daily_ Communion was given\nto her then, or that such a desire was continuously satisfied from the\nfirst. (2) On page 18_b_ we have: \u201cFor about two years she had this\ndesire for death, and this desire continued within her, up to when she\nbegan to communicate daily.\u201d This passage, (which does not occur, here\nor with this Communion notation, in the MSS.,) originally without doubt\nreferred to her later desire for death, carefully described by Vernazza\n(pp. 98_a_, _b_; 99_b_, _c_) as occurring in 1507--a description in the\nmidst of which now occurs an account of certain death-like swoons which\nattacked her in 1509 (pp. 98_c_, and 133_b_; this latter experience is\ngiven in the MSS. as occurring in November 1509). Still this passage\npoints to a tradition, or early inference, that the beginning of the\ndaily communions did not synchronize with her conversion nor indeed\nwith any other very marked date, but took place not many years after\nher return to fervour. (3) It is impossible to assume that she did\nnot communicate at all during these first fourteen months, since\nthere is no evidence that, even before her conversion, she had ever\nabstained from Holy Communion altogether, and since two Eastertides\nwith their strict obligation recurred twice within this period. And if\nshe did communicate repeatedly within this time, then this Lady-Day,\nthree days after her conversion, would be a most natural occasion for\none of these communions. And the desire and not its gratification\nwould be mentioned, because the writer characteristically wants her\nconversion to be followed by something absolutely unintermittent, and\nsuch unintermittence attached, for the present, not to her communions\nthemselves, but only to her desire for them.\n\n[59] _Vita_, pp. 8, 9. A MS. list of conclusions concerning various\npoints of her life, which is contained in the volume _Documenti su\nS. Caterina da Genova_, in the University Library of Genoa, declares\nthis interdict to have lasted ten days, and in the year 1489. This\ninformation is probably correct.\n\n[60] _Ibid._ pp. 8, 9.\n\n[61] _Vita_, p. 7_b_.\n\n[62] I have been unable to discover more than one case illustrative of\nthe practice of that time and town. The Venerable Battista Vernazza, an\nAugustinian Canoness from 1510 to 1587, was not allowed daily Communion\ntill the last years of her life. _Opere_, Genoa, 1755, Vol. I, p. 21.\n\n[63] _Vita_, p. 116_c_. This passage opens a chapter full of the\nmost authentic information, derived directly from Don Marabotto, her\nConfessor and close friend from 1499 onwards. I have, in her saying,\nread \u201cAmore\u201d for the \u201cSignore\u201d of the text of the _Vita_: my reasons\nwill appear later on.\n\n[64] _Vita_, pp. 119_c_, 116_c_, 117_b_.\n\n[65] _Ibid._ p. 16_b_.\n\n[66] _Vita_, p. 6.\n\n[67] _Ibid._ p. 140_b_, _c_.\n\n[68] See here, ch. v, \u00a7 ii, 2 and 5.\n\n[69] Denzinger\u2019s _Enchiridion Definitionum_, ed. 1888, No. 363.\n\n[70] _Summa Theologica_, III, supplem. quaest. 6, art. 3.\n\n[71] Denzinger, _op. cit._ No. 780; _Summa Theologica_, III, supplem.\nquaest. 6, art. 3.\n\n[72] Antonii Ballerini, _Opus Theologicum Morale_, ed. Palmieri, S.J.,\nPrato, 1892, Vol. V, pp. 576-597. The large variations in the earlier\npractice of Penitence and Confession are admirably described in Abb\u00e9\nBoudhinon\u2019s articles, \u201cSur l\u2019Histoire de la P\u00e9nitence,\u201d in the _Revue\nd\u2019Histoire et de Litt\u00e9rature Religieuses_, 1897, pp. 306-344, 496-524.\n\n[73] The reason for this lies in the emphatic, repeated conviction\nof R. 1, based, no doubt, upon the authentic documents (probably\nVernazza\u2019s memoranda) that he has incorporated, (a conviction which\nappears wherever his scheme was not tampered with by R. 2,) that her\ngreat penitential period lasted four years (so still on pp. 12_b_,\n13_b_ twice, 14_c_; and originally, no doubt, on p. 6_a_, and probably\non p. 5_c_, where now we read \u201ca little over a year,\u201d and \u201cabout\nfourteen months\u201d respectively). For not all the subsequent doctoring,\nthat shall be traced later on as having been applied by R. 2 to some\nof the refractory passages, succeeds in making it likely that these\npenitential exercises outlasted the complete disappearance from\nher sight of her sins, which we have already quoted from the last\nlikely passage. And it is equally improbable that formal and repeated\nConfession should not have formed part and parcel of the whole of this\npenitential time. On the other hand, \u201cher Confessor,\u201d on p. 7_7_,\nand \u201cthe spiritual physician\u201d on p. 8_a_, indeed all other mentions\nof a Confessor throughout the Life subsequent to her first convert\nConfession, will be shown in the Appendix to apply exclusively to Don\nMarabotto, and to the last eleven years of her life.\n\n[74] _Vita_, p. 56_b_, _c_. Her words as printed there are: \u201cIo non\nvorrei grazia ne misericordia [nella presente vita] ma giustizia e\nvendetta del malfattore.\u201d But the words I have bracketed are certainly\na gloss; for she is speaking here out of the fulness of her feeling,\nwithout the intrusion of reflection. And as regards temporal punishment\nin the other life, and the soul\u2019s attitude towards it there, she says\nin the _Trattato_, p. 180_b_: \u201cKnow for certain, that of the payment\nrequired from those souls (in Purgatory), there is not remitted even\nthe least farthing, this having been thus established by the divine\njustice.\u2026 Those souls have no more any personal choice, and can no more\nwill anything but what God wills.\u201d\n\n[75] _Dialogo_, pp. 203_a_, 208_b_.\n\n[76] From the authenticated copies of the entries in the Cartulary,\nprefixed to the MS. Life of the Saint in the _Biblioteca della Missione\nUrbana_, Genoa, Nos. 30, 8, 14; and from careful copies of the still\nextant original Wills made for me by Dre. Ferretto, of the Archivio di\nStato, Genova.\n\n[77] Benedicti XIV, _De servorum Dei Beatificatione et Beatorum\nCanonisatione_, ed. Padua, 1743, Vol. II, p. 239_a_.\n\n[78] _Vita_, pp. 56_c_; 3_c_; 95_c_; 124_c_, 125_b_; 122_b_.\n\n[79] I have followed here, for my _terminus a quo_, Vallebona rather\nthan the Bollandists (who prefer 1474 for the date of her conversion),\nbecause the ten years required between her marriage in January 1463\nand her conversion, have fully elapsed by March 1473, and because the\nearlier we place her conversion, the larger is the number of lonely\nconvert years that we can find room for, and the more nearly accurate\nher own allegation of twenty-five years of such loneliness becomes.\nIf we follow the chronology given in the text we get a thoroughly\nunderstandable sequence: Catherine\u2019s conversion, March 1473; Giuliano\u2019s\nbankruptcy, summer of that year; his conversion under the joint\ninfluence of her zeal and of his misfortune; the decision of the couple\nto settle in the midst of the poor and suffering, whom they were now\ndetermined to serve, and the execution of this decision, between\nMichaelmas and Christmas of the same year.\n\n[80] Vallebona, p. 55.\n\n[81] Lived 1550-1614, worked heroically amongst the poor and\npestilential sick, founded the Order of the Fathers of a Good Death,\nand was himself at Genoa, already gravely ill, in 1613.\n\n[82] Vallebona, pp. 55, 56, shows, from Giuliano\u2019s still extant will\nof 1497, how this income from his property in the Island of Scios\nalone amounted to about 30,000 modern Italian lire. We shall study the\ninstructive growth of legend in the matter of Catherine\u2019s \u201cpoverty\u201d\nlater on.\n\n[83] _Vita_, p. 122_b_.\n\n[84] Vallebona, pp. 106, 108.\n\n[85] An interesting legendary development in the _Dialogo_ of this very\nstraightforward account of the _Vita_ will occupy us later on.\n\n[86] _Vita_, pp. 20, 21.\n\n[87] _Ibid._ p. 12.\n\n[88] See an interesting article: \u201cDe Suor Tommasina Fieschi,\u201d by F.\nAlizeri, in _Atti della Societ\u00e0 Ligure di Storia Patria_, Genova, 1868,\npp. 403-415.\n\n[89] The choice of subjects may possibly betray the influence of\nCatherine--of the Piet\u00e0 which Catherine had so much loved as a child,\nand of her special devotion to the Holy Eucharist. But the particular\nform of the latter is in Tommasina unlike Catherine: had Catherine\npainted that symbolical picture, it would have referred to the moment,\nnot Consecration, but of Communion.\n\n[90] _Vita_, pp. 123, 124. Suor Tommasa did not die till 1534, over\n86 years of age. I have been unable to discover her baptismal and her\nmarried names. We shall give some further details about Catherine\u2019s\nprobable relations with her, as writer and as painter.\n\n[91] _Vita_, pp. 12, 13.\n\n[92] _Ibid._ pp. 5, 6, 14.\n\n[93] _Ibid._ p. 13.\n\n[94] _Vita_, p. 6_a_.\n\n[95] _Ibid._ 14_b_. I have introduced into my account a note of\ngradualness which is presented by no single (even authentic) document\nof the _Vita_, but which any attempt at harmonizing those documents\nimperatively requires. For there is, on the one hand, the repeated\ninsistence upon her four years of particular penances for her own\nparticular sins; and the vivid account of the final complete withdrawal\nof all sight of those sins and of all desire for those penances\n(_Ibid._ pp. 12_b_, 13_c_; 14_b_, 5_c_). And there is, on the other\nhand, the, apparently, equally authentic saying, as to her performing\nher penances, before the end of those years, without any particular\nobject in view (_Ibid._ p. 14_b_). The only unforced harmonization is\nthen to assume that a period, in which the sight of her particular sins\nhad been at first all but unintermittent and then still predominant,\nhad shaded off into another period, in which this sight occurred in\never fewer moments, until at last, at the end of four years, a day came\non which it ceased altogether.\n\n[96] The only possible dates are 1475 or 1476. For the change referred\nto takes place \u201csome appreciable time (_alquanto tempo_) after her\nconversion\u201d (_Vita_, p. 10_a_); and yet it must be early enough to\nallow of twenty-three Lents and Advents between the beginning of the\nchange up to its end. And this end came at latest in 1501 (p. 127_a_),\nbut probably in 1499, the year in which Don Marabotto became her\nConfessor. The Lent of 1496 (what remained of it on Lady-Day of that\nyear) seems to me the more likely of the two possible starting-points.\n\n[97] _Vita_, p. 10_a_.\n\n[98] _Ibid._ p. 11_a_.\n\n[99] _Ibid._ p. 10_b_.\n\n[100] _Vita_, p. 8_a_.\n\n[101] See below, next page.\n\n[102] MS. \u201cA,\u201d p. 24, title to chapter vii; _Vita_, p. 10_a_.\nTwenty-five Lents are too many, because: (1) it is impossible to\ninterpret the \u201calquanto tempo dopo la sua conversione,\u201d when these\nfasts began (_Ibid._ p. 10_a_), as less than two years; and (2) it is\nimpossible to bring her resignation of the Matronship of the Hospital\nlower down than the autumn of 1497, a resignation which the _Ibid._ (p.\n96) tells us took place in consequence of her \u201cgreat bodily weakness,\u201d\nwhich forced her to \u201ctake some food after Holy Communion to restore her\nbodily forces, even though it were a fast day.\u201d This allows for at most\ntwenty-three Lents and twenty-two Advents.\n\n[103] _Ibid._ p. 11_b_.\n\n[104] _Vita_, p. 11_c_. I take the last section of this chapter (pp.\n11, 12) to be a later, exaggerating doublet to this account.\n\n[105] _Ibid._ p. 11_b_.\n\n[106] _Ibid._ p. 14_b_, 5_c_.\n\n[107] _Vita_, p. 16_b_.\n\n[108] _Ibid._ pp. 23_a_, 49_a_.\n\n[109] _Ibid._ p. 15_b_.\n\n[110] _Vita_, pp. 15_c_, 97_a_, 15_c_.\n\n[111] _Ibid._ pp. 15_c_, 16_a_, 47_b_.\n\n[112] _Ibid._ p. 17_b_.\n\n[113] I translate _Frate predicatore_ thus, because the generally\nwell-informed Parpera (in his _Vita_ of the Saint, 1681) identifies\nhim with Padre Domenico de Ponzo, an Observant Franciscan and zealous\npreacher. Boll. p. 161 D. In other places, also, the _Vita_ makes use\nof purely popular and misleading designations:--p. 117_b_ \u201cquesto\nReligioso\u201d is Don Marabotto, Secular Priest; pp. 94_c_, 95_a_, _c_,\n98_c_, 99_b_, \u201cReligioso\u201d is Vernazza, layman; p. 123_b_, \u201cSorelle\u201d is\na Sister and Sisters-in-law. Even the final Redactor in the Preface,\np. viii_c_, calls the Secular-Priest Marabotto and the Layman-Lawyer\nVernazza, \u201cdivoti religiosi.\u201d\n\n[114] _Vita_, pp. 51, 52. I take this episode to have occurred whilst\nthe pair were still living out of the Hospital, because of the _giunta\nin casa_, which could hardly be applied to their two little rooms in\nthe latter, whilst this sensitiveness to the opinion of others in\nthis matter of love appears psychologically to be more likely during\nthe early years of her convert life than from 1490 onwards, when,\nas Matron, she occupied a separate little house within the Hospital\nprecincts (hence _sua casa_ in _Vita_, p. 96_b_).\n\n[115] I shall give reasons in due course for holding that the rooms\nstill shown in the Hospital as Catherine\u2019s are different from any ever\noccupied by herself, and that the little house within the Hospital\ngrounds, in which she died in 1510, and into which she (and Giuliano)\nprobably moved in 1490, has long ceased to exist.\n\n[116] _Vita_, p. 20_b_. This characteristic fact has been \u201cexplained\naway\u201d in the _Dialogo_. See Appendix.\n\n[117] _Vita_, p. 20_c_.\n\n[118] _Ibid._ p. 21_c_. All the books and papers of the Hospital\nreferring to these years up to her death, were long ago destroyed\nby fire. I have, however, no doubt as to the, at least substantial,\naccuracy of the above account. For ten wills and assignments, drawn\nup, by various lawyers, in her presence, by her desire and at her\ndictation,--nine of them during the years of her weakness and\nillness,--are still extant, have been carefully copied out for me, and\nwill be analyzed further on. They are all, except on one minor point,\nadmirably precise, detailed, and wise.\n\n[119] _Vita_, p. 21_b_.\n\n[120] The above paragraph is based, with Vallebona, _op. cit._ pp.\n67-72, upon the assumption that Catherine took the kind of share\ndescribed in the labours of this time; since it is practically\nunthinkable that she should not have acted as is here supposed, given\nthe combination of the following facts, which are all beyond dispute.\n(1) The fully reliable Giustiniani in his _Annali_ describes, under the\ndate of 1493, the incidents of the Pestilence as given above; tells us\nhow well, nevertheless, the sick and poor were looked after by those\nwho, from amongst the educated classes, remained amongst them; and\naffirms that the Borgo di San Germano, identical with the Acquasola\nquarter, was assigned to those stricken by the Pestilence. (2) Agostino\nAdorno, Giuliano\u2019s cousin, was Doge of Genoa during this year. And the\nfriendly terms on which the cousins were at this time are proved by\nGiuliano\u2019s Will of the following year (October 1494). (3) Catherine had\nalready been Matron of the Hospital for two years and more, and was\nto continue to be so for another three years. She certainly did not\nabsent herself from her post at this time. And her Hospital directly\nabutted against the Acquasola quarter. (4) The details furnished by\nall the sources conjointly with regard to her six years\u2019 Headship of\nthe Hospital, are so extraordinarily scanty, that we must not too much\nwonder at the all but complete dearth of any allusion to a work which\ncannot have lasted longer than as many months. (5) The _Dialogo_, p.\n222_b_, says: \u201cShe would go, too,\u201d (_i.e._ besides visiting the sick\nand poor in their own houses,) \u201cto the poor of San Lazzaro, in which\nplace she would find the greatest possible calamity.\u201d This clearly\nrefers to some special (Lazar-, Leper-) Refuge, and the term can\ncertainly cover aid given to the pest-stricken. And we shall see that\nthe record here is derived from the writer\u2019s father, Ettore Vernazza,\nthe heroic lover of the pest-stricken poor.\n\nI have, in my text, assumed that the _Vita_ gives us an anecdote\nrelative to her visiting the pestiferous sick of Acquasola. But to do\nthis, I have had (_a_) to take \u201cpestiferous fever\u201d as equivalent to\n\u201cPestilence,\u201d and to assume that it was not an isolated precursory case\nof the coming general visitation; (_b_) to omit, in the _Vita\u2019s_ text,\n\u201cnell\u2019 ospedale,\u201d as an indication where the sick woman was; and \u201callo\nstesso servizio (dell\u2019 ospedale),\u201d as descriptive of where Catherine\nwent back to: the anecdote may well originally have been without\nindication of the place in which the infection came to reduce her to\ndeath\u2019s door.\n\n[121] _Inaugurazione della Statua d\u2019Ettore Vernazza_ (1863), Genova,\nSordo-Muti, 1867. Most of my facts concerning Ettore and his daughters\nare taken from this _brochure_, with its careful biographical Discourse\nby Avvocato Professore Giuseppe Morro (pp. 5-31), and its ample\ncollection of admirable wills and financial decisions (pp. 61-94).\n\n[122] Quoted _ibid._ p. 21. It is absolutely certain that these words\nrefer to the pestilence of 1493, since the epidemic did not again visit\nGenoa till 1503, when Vernazza must have been over thirty years of\nage. And Battista\u2019s silence as to any meeting between her Father and\nCatherine must not be pressed, since she nowhere mentions Catherine,\nand yet we know for certain how close and long was the intimacy between\nthem.\n\n[123] The words of the _Vita_, p. 105_c_, that those who wrote this\nLife \u201csaw and experienced these wonderful operations for _many years_,\u201d\nare given in MS. \u201cA\u201d as \u201cduring _fifteen consecutive_ years (per\nquindici continui anni),\u201d p. 366. All points to her having got to know\nDon Marabotto later than at this time and than Vernazza, yet only the\none or the other of these two men can be meant; hence Vernazza must\nbe intended here. But I have nowhere in the _Vita_ been able to trace\npassages that could with probability be both attributed to Vernazza,\nand dated before the years 1498-1499.\n\n[124] The precise date of Vernazza\u2019s marriage is unknown. But since his\neldest child was born on April 15, 1497, it cannot have taken place\nlater than June 1496. The date of the sale of the Palazzo is derived\nfrom Catherine\u2019s act of consent to the sale, preserved in the Archivio\ndi Stato; a copy lies before me. The date of her resignation is derived\nfrom the _Vita_, p. 96_b_, which says she did so \u201cquando f\u00f9 di anni\ncirca cinquanta.\u201d This \u201ccirca\u201d must no doubt here, as so often (as,\n_e.g._, on p. 97_b_, where \u201ccirca sessanta-tre\u201d refers to November\n1509, when she was sixty-two), be interpreted as \u201cnearly fifty\u201d: she\nwas really forty-nine.\n\n[125] The date of Tommasina\u2019s birth comes from _Ritratti ed Elogi di\nLiguri Illustri_, Genova, Ponthenier; the date of the beginning of\nGiuliano\u2019s illness from his Codicil of January 10, 1497, in which\nhe declares himself as \u201clanguishing\u201d and \u201cinfirm in body\u201d; and the\napproximate date of his death from two entries in the Cartulary of\nthe Bank of St. George, as to investments made by Catherine (copies\nin _Documenti su S. Caterina da Genova_, University Library, Genoa,\nB. VII, 31), of which the first, on July 14, 1497, gives her name\nas \u201cCatterinetta, filia Jacobi di Fiesco et uxor Juliani Adorni\u201d;\nand the second, on October 6, 1497, describes her as \u201cuxor et heres\ntestamentaria quondam fratris Juliani Adorni.\u201d\n\n[126] _Vita_, pp. 122_b_, _c_, 123_a_. I have preserved the descriptive\naccount of Catherine\u2019s prayer and of its effect, although it may\npossibly be but a later dramatized interpretation of the undoubtedly\nauthentic report of her declaration made to Vernazza.--The immediate\ncause of Giuliano\u2019s pain and impatience is given by _Vita_, p. 122_b_,\nas \u201cuna gran passione d\u2019urina\u201d; Vallebona, p. 73, declares the malady\nto have been a \u201ccestite cronica\u201d (tape-worm). I have omitted a short\ndialogue which is given, after her remark to Vernazza, as having\noccurred between her friends and herself, concerning her liberation\nfrom much oppression, and her own indifference to all except the will\nof God, because her answer is given in _oratio obliqua_, and is quite\ncolourless and general; the passage is doubtless of no historical\nvalue: there never lived a less conventional, vapidly moralizing soul\nthan hers.\n\n[127] I work from careful copies specially made for me direct from the\noriginals, by Dre. Augusto Ferretto, of the Archivio di Stato in Genoa.\n\n[128] _Inaugurazione_, pp. 12, 13.\n\n[129] I work again from a copy made by Dre. Ferretto from the original\nin the Archivio di Stato, Genoa.\n\n[130] Marabotto\u2019s help in business matters cannot, on any large scale,\nhave begun till considerably later than his spiritual help. For\nwhereas her Codicil of 1503 nowhere mentions Marabotto, her Will of\n1506 leaves him, as we shall see, a little legacy; her Will of 1509\nprotects him against all harassing inquisition into the details of\nhis administration of her affairs; and her Codicil of 1510 mentions\nonly him and Don Carenzio. And it is incredible that business help\nshould have been given throughout four years, and should have failed\nto gain any recognition in a document which commemorates so many\nlesser services. Marabotto was Rector in 1504 (I owe this date to\nthe kindness of the Rev. Padre Vincenzo Celesia, author of the MS.\n_Storia dell\u2019 Ospedale di Pammatone in Genova_, 1897); he was no more\nRector in September 1509, but Don Jacobo Carenzio then held this post\n(Catherine\u2019s Codicil of that date). Indeed already in March 1509\nMarabotto seems not to have been Rector (Catherine\u2019s Will of that date\nmentions him repeatedly, but nowhere as Rector). I take the Offices\nof _Rettore_ (Master), and of _Rettora_ (Matron), to have never been\nexercised simultaneously: but that, at any one time, there was always\nonly a Rettore or a Rettora presiding over the whole Hospital. The\nOffice of Rettora was abolished altogether in 1730 (_Storia dell\u2019\nOspedale_, p. 1135).\n\n[131] _Vita_, p. 117_b_.\n\n[132] The Appendix will show that the \u201cReligioso,\u201d the \u201cdolce\nfigliuolo,\u201d of pp. 94, 95, and the \u201cReligioso, figliuolo,\u201d of pp. 98,\n99, must be Ettore Vernazza, and not Cattaneo Marabotto.\n\n[133] I take all these facts from F. Federici\u2019s careful MS. work,\n_Famiglie Nobili di Genova_, _sub verbo_ Marabotto.\n\n[134] _Vita_, p. 118, _a_, _b_. The first of these two passages\nis followed, in the same section, by two other slightly different\naccounts. The third of these is no doubt authentic, but refers to a\nstill later period: it shall be given in its proper place. These two\nauthentic accounts are (as is often the case in the _Vita_) joined\ntogether by a vague and yet absolute, unauthentic account, which\ndeclares that she told him all things (apparently on all occasions): a\nstatement untrue of any time in her life.\n\n[135] _Vita_, pp. 117_c_, 118_a_.\n\n[136] _Vita_, p. 94_c_. The three lines which follow in the printed\n_Vita_ are wanting in MS. \u201cA\u201d of 1547, p. 235, and are a disfiguring\ngloss of R 2.\n\n[137] _Vita_, pp. 94, 95.\n\n[138] _Vita_, p. 97_b_; 250, _a_, _b_.\n\n[139] Angel, 50_b_; Cherub, 16_a_, 97_b_; Seraph, 130_b_.\n\n[140] _Vita_, pp. 47_b_, 50_a_, 72_b_.\n\n[141] _Ibid._ p. 115_b_.\n\n[142] _Ibid._ p. 115_b_. There are three passages in the _Vita_\nreferring to cases of possession. (_a_) Page 39_b_ makes Catherine, in\nfinishing up a discourse as to Evil being essentially but a Privation\nof Love, refer to a \u201cReligioso\u201d and to a \u201cSpiritato,\u201d and how the\nlatter, \u201ccostretto\u201d by the former to tell him what he was, \u201canswered\nwith great force: \u2018I am that unhappy wretch bereft of love.\u2019 And he\n(the evil spirit) said so with a voice so piteous and penetrating,\nthat it moved me (Catherine) through and through with compassion.\u201d The\nPossessed One is here a man. In MS \u201cA\u201d (p. 92) the story is still quite\nloosely co-ordinated with her speech; it was originally no doubt an\nindependent anecdote; and was, possibly after a good many intermediary\nliterary fixations, introduced into this place and connection by R 1\nor R 2. (_b_) Page 115_a_, _b_, gives the story reproduced in the text\nabove. The Possessed One is here a woman; and here the entire passage\nformally claims directly to reproduce an actual scene from Catherine\u2019s\nlife. (_c_) Page 162_a_ gives an anecdote of a \u201cfigliuola spirituale\u201d\nof Catherine, who had \u201cil demonio adosso\u201d; and tells how, at the\ntime of her Mistress\u2019s death, the \u201cspirito\u201d within her, \u201ccostretto,\u201d\ndeclared that he had seen Catherine unite herself with God,--and all\nthis with \u201ctormento,\u201d so that \u201cpareva a s\u00e8 intollerabile.\u201d This passage\nclearly refers to the same person as that of passage _b_.\n\nAs to the historicity of the event described in the text, we must\ndistinguish between the general fact of Catherine\u2019s moral and psychic\nascendency over Mariola, a fact as entirely beyond dispute as it\nis valuable and characteristic; and the occurrence of the scene as\ngiven above. As to the latter, the question of its value is of course\ndistinct from that of its occurrence. Its supposed evidential worth is\n_nil_, since Mariola had been intimate with and devoted to Catherine\nfor probably a good ten years at least. But the scene may nevertheless\nhave actually occurred. It is true that the partly parallel case of\nthe \u201cSpiritato\u201d shows how easily such a dramatization of doctrine or\ntransference of experience can occur. And Denys the Areopagite and\nJacopone da Todi are full of this comparison of the soul arrived at\na state of union to an Angel, Cherub or Seraph; and these writers\nhave greatly influenced not only Catherine\u2019s authentic teaching, but\nalso the successive amplifications and modifications of her life and\nsayings. And again we shall prove that certain legendary matters were\ninserted in the _Vita_ at a late date--between 1545 and 1551. But these\npassages all claim to be based upon evidence supplied by Argentina del\nSale; and they were evidently not accepted by Marabotto (1528); the\nliterary form of these legends differs much from that of our passage;\nand if the former are still absent from MSS. \u201cA\u201d and \u201cB,\u201d the latter\nis already present in both. And we have such entirely first-hand proof\nfor the curiously na\u00eff, formal, exteriorizing character of Marabotto\u2019s\nmind, as to leave it always possible that he did bring about a little\nscene of the sort here described. If so, Marabotto\u2019s r\u00f4le in it will\nhave been prompted, in part, by a wish still further to increase\nCatherine\u2019s hold upon Mariola\u2019s mind.\n\n[143] _Vita_, p. 112_a_.\n\n[144] _Vita_, p. 72_b_.\n\n[145] _Ibid._ p. 113_b_. I take these two motives alone to have\noperated throughout such actions of hers during this last period.\nThe additional motive attributed to her (_Ibid._ pp. 129_c_, 130_a_,\nand 134_a_), where she is represented as applying a lighted candle\nor live coal to her bare arm, for the purpose of testing whether her\ninterior spiritual fire or this exterior material one is the greater,\nis entirely unlike Catherine\u2019s spirit. It belongs to the demonstrably\nlegendary and disfiguring interpretations which shall be studied\nfurther on. The sentence on p. 134_a_, in which she herself is made to\ndeclare this motive, is most certainly a worthless gloss.\n\n[146] _Vita_, p. 127_a_.\n\n[147] It is remarkable how tough-lived has been the legend which makes\nVernazza have an only child. Not only Father Sticken (_Acta Sanctorum_,\nSeptember, Vol. V, pp. 123-195) has it in 1752, but even Vallebona,\nin his _Perla dei Fieschi_, still repeats it in 1887. And yet the\n_Inaugurazione_ pamphlet had appeared in Genoa in 1867, giving on pp.\n13, 14, 72, 73 the fullest proofs as to the reality of these two other\nchildren.\n\n[148] _Vita_, p. 123_b_.\n\n[149] I get the date of 1502 for those three deaths from Angelo L.\nGiovo\u2019s MS. _Vita_ of the Saint in the _Biblioteca della Missione\nUrbana_ (Part I, ch. iii). All three names are prominent in the Will of\n1498; in the Codicil of 1503, Jacobo and Giovanni are both styled \u201cthe\nlate,\u201d and her brother Lorenzo has become the sole residuary legatee.\nLimbania appears nowhere after the Will of 1498.\n\n[150] _Atti della Societ\u00e0 Ligure di Storia Patria_, Genova, 1868, p.\n411 (with plate). The article is dated 1871.\n\n[151] _Vita_, pp. 124_b_-126. I get Argentina\u2019s maiden name from a Will\nof hers of the year 1522, of which a copy exists in the MS. volume\n_Documenti relativi a S. Caterina da Genova_, in the Genoa University\nLibrary, B. VII, 31. I have taken Argentina to have previously known,\nperhaps even to have served, Catherine, because of her surprise at\nMarco\u2019s ignorance as to the identity of his visitor; and I have treated\nsuch possible service as but slight, because in Giuliano\u2019s Will of 1494\nand in Catherine\u2019s Will and Codicil of 1498 and 1503, legacies are left\nto the two maids Benedetta and Mariola, but not a word appears as yet\nas to Argentina. The date as to the year I derive from the following\nfacts:--(1) Catherine, as soon as Marco is buried, carries out her\npromise to him, and receives Argentina into her house: so the _Vita_,\npp. 126_c_, 125_c_. (2) Whereas in the Codicil of 1503 there is still\nno trace of Argentina, in the Will of 1506 she appears, and receives\nlegacies of personal linen, etc. These gifts are somewhat increased in\nthe Will of 1509. Argentina has evidently not been long in Catherine\u2019s\nservice at the time of the drawing up of the Will of 1506. (3) The\nProtonotary Angelo L. Giovo (MS. _Vita_ of the Saint of the _Biblioteca\ndella Missione Urbana_ Part I, ch. iii) puts down the date of Marco\u2019s\ndeath as 1495. Although this is evidently wrong, I think it wise to\nkeep at least one of his numbers, which I do by fixing upon 1505.\n\n[152] _Documenti su S. Caterina da Genova_, University of Genoa\nLibrary, gives a note by Angelo L. Giovo, based on the Book of the\nActs of the Protectors of the Hospital: \u201c1506, Marzo, 16mo. Si vede\nche detta Catarinetta Adorna haveva cura dell\u2019 Hospitale, ricevendo li\nfigli esposti e li pegni per essi.\u201d\n\n[153] From Dre. Ferretto\u2019s copy of the original in the Archivio di\nStato.\n\n[154] The clause in this Will which says, \u201cAnd Testatrix, knowing that\nthe said Giuliano her husband, left to a certain female Religious \u00a3150:\nTherefore she herewith annuls the said legacy, in virtue of the power\ngiven her for this purpose,\u201d reads, at first sight, like a harsh,\nunjust act. But it follows upon a similar annulation of the legacy to\nthe Hospital; and we may be quite sure that Catherine, who had now\nloved and served this Institution for thirty-three years, would not\ntreat it unjustly. And in the Will of 1509 Catherine explains that the\nformer legacy has been annulled, \u201cin consideration of the satisfaction\nor settlement (_solutio_) already effected by Testatrix herself with\nregard to the said legacy.\u201d\n\n[155] _Documenti_: extracts by Giovo from \u201cActs of the Protectors.\u201d\n\n[156] From Dre. Ferretto\u2019s copy of the original in the Archivio di\nStato, Genoa.\n\n[157] From Dre. Ferretto\u2019s careful copy of the original in the Archivio\ndi Stato, Genoa.\n\n[158] In the printed _Vita_ a passage occurs on p. 10_b_, describing\nthe interior heat which accompanied her great fasts (1476-1499). But\nthe passage is wanting in the MSS., and is no doubt only a gloss to\nexplain how, at those times, she came to drink water mixed with vinegar.\n\n[159] \u201cOperazione\u201d: _Vita_, pp. 106_c_, 117_b_, 121_b_, 143_b_,\n148_b_, 149_c_. \u201cAssalto\u201d: pp. 138_b_, _c_ (3); 139_a_; 143, _b_, _c_\n(3); 144_a_ (2); 148_a_. \u201cAssedio\u201d: p. 118_b_. \u201cSaetta\u201d: pp. 141_a_,\n145_a_. \u201cFerita\u201d: p. 141_a_, _c_ (2). \u201cRaggio\u201d: pp. 133_b_, 157_c_.\n\u201cScintilla\u201d: pp. 132_a_, 148_b_. The \u201cferita\u201d occurs already (as\na \u201cdolce ferita\u201d) in the account of her Conversion, pp. 4, 5; and\n\u201csaetta,\u201d \u201cferita,\u201d \u201craggio\u201d and \u201cscintilla,\u201d appear very often in her\nown sayings.\n\n[160] The passage in _Vita_, p. 10_b_, which declares that she \u201cfelt\u201d\n(tasted) something sweet within her, upon drinking that salt and sour\nwater during her long fasts, is wanting in the MSS., and is itself\nan interesting attempt to materialize her saying, on p. 11_b_, as to\nthe \u201cother thing\u201d (_i.e._ the love of God), that she was \u201cfeeling\u201d\n(tasting) within herself.\n\n[161] _Vita_, p. 8_a_.\n\n[162] _Ibid._ p. 9_b_. The present conclusion of the sentence, and all\nthe parallels throughout the rest of the page, show plainly that the\nsentence originally read as I have given it.\n\n[163] _Vita_, p. 9_b_.\n\n[164] _Ibid._ p. 16_b_.\n\n[165] _Ibid._ p. 5_b_.\n\n[166] _Vita_, p. 98, _a_, _b_. This is the first of three incidents,\ngiven in chronological order, all referring to her desire for death,\nwhich make up Chapter XXXVIII of the printed _Vita_. The last two are,\nbeyond all doubt, conversations with Vernazza; and this first incident\nis also probably transmitted to us by him.--I have in my translation\nleft out the numerous glosses by which the various Redactors have\ndesperately attempted to eviscerate this story, attempts based on the\ndouble conviction, that Catherine was already absolutely perfect, and\nthat \u201cevery desire is imperfect\u201d (p. 100_a_). These changes will be\nstudied later on.\n\n[167] _Vita_, pp. 118, _b_, _c_, 119_b_, 119_a_. This vivid and simple\ndialogue is followed (p. 119_b_) by a clearly secondary parallel\ndiscourse of Catherine. Only the descriptive end of this latter\nparagraph is no doubt authentic, and has been incorporated in the above\ntranslation.\n\n[168] _Vita_, p. 127_a_.\n\n[169] I translate the above from the oldest account of the event, given\nby MS. \u201cA,\u201d p. 193, at the opening of its Chapter XXIX (the number is\naccidentally omitted), which is headed: \u201cHow in the year 1506, on the\n11th of November, there came upon her so great a burning in the heart,\nthat she wondered at her not expiring.\u201d This 1506, repeated in the\nopening line of the chapter itself, is an undoubted slip; for she is\nsaid to be 63 years old (and she was in her 63rd year in 1509), and the\nplace occupied by the corresponding paragraph in the printed _Vita_,\np. 133_b_ (within a year of her death, p. 132_b_, and some time before\nDecember 1509, p. 138_b_), again clearly marks the date as 1509.\n\n[170] _Vita_, p. 132_a_, _b_. The first eight sentences have been in\npart fused by R 1 into fewer larger periods. The last sentence is\nwanting in MSS. \u201cA\u201dand \u201cB\u201d; although clearly formed upon the model and\nwith the material of the previous sentences, it appears in the printed\n_Vita_ as referring to an \u201caltra vista\u201d (see p. 133_b_).\n\n[171] _Vita_, p. 135_a_. I have, in Catherine\u2019s speech, omitted a final\nclause, \u201cwhich burns me entirely within and without,\u201d because it is not\nnecessary to the sense, and violates the rhythm, which is ever present\nin all Catherine\u2019s authentic sayings.\n\n[172] _Ibid._ pp. 135_c_, 136_a_. I have omitted two glosses introduced\nby \u201ccio\u00e8,\u201d \u201cthat is\u201d; and three short amplifications, which introduce a\ndirect conflict between the two parts. There is, within this particular\npicture and scene, no direct conflict, but, at first, a complete\ncontrariety of aim.\n\n[173] _Vita_, p. 136_c_. This is one out of four or five parallel\nsayings which are accumulated here. They shall be examined later on.\n\n[174] _Vita_, pp. 98_c_, 99_a_; 99_b_, _c_. I have, in the first\nconversation, omitted the introductory attribution of her use of\nthe word \u201cgiddiness\u201d to humility; and, in the second, suppressed\nthe conclusion which repeatedly declares that never again did any\nsuch desire arise within her. For both clauses have got a vague and\nsecondary form, and the second is in direct contradiction with the\nfacts.\n\n[175] _Vita_, 138_c_.\n\n[176] _Vita_, pp. 139_b_, 140_b_, _c_. I have omitted the evidently\nderivative, transcendentally reflective, second of the three paragraphs\nin which this story now appears; the explanatory glosses of the same\ntone as that paragraph; a redundant sentence in Catherine\u2019s speech;\nand the evidently late and schematic designation of \u201cassalto\u201d for the\nentire incident, which is, surely, nothing of the sort.\n\n[177] _Vita_, pp. 120_b_; 119_c_, 120_a_. The sequence and date assumed\nabove I think to be, all things considered, the most likely among the\npossible alternatives. As to her remarks to Marabotto, they appear in\nthe _Vita_ before his three days\u2019 absence. But the interior evidence\nseems strongly in favour of my inversion of that (evidently, in any\ncase, very loose and quite unemphasized) order.\n\n[178] _Ibid._ pp. 141_c_, 143_c_.\n\n[179] _Vita_, p. 141_c_.\n\n[180] _Ibid._ 142_a_. MSS. \u201cA\u201d and \u201cB\u201d open out their chapter on her\nlast illness with the statement that it was (only) four months before\nher death that she took to her bed. I take it that from the end of\nJanuary 1510 onwards, she was often in bed, yet still sometimes out of\nit; but that from mid-May to the end she no more left it.\n\n[181] _Ibid._ p. 142_b_, _c_. I have, in her prayer, omitted the first\nseven words of the present text: \u201c(Gi\u00e0 sono trentacinque anni in\ncirca, che) giammai, Signor mio \u2026\u201d For she would hardly inform God of\nthe approximate number of years of her convert life; the double \u201cgi\u00e0\u201d\npoints to a gloss; and such a gloss would almost irresistibly find\nits way into this place, so as to mitigate the absoluteness of the\nstatement.\n\n[182] _Ibid._ p. 143_b_. I have omitted the words: \u201cwhich (the right\nshoulder) appeared as though severed from the body; and similarly one\nrib seemed severed from the others \u2026\u201d They have precisely the same\n\u201ccolour,\u201d and no doubt proceed from the same contributor, as the longer\npassage relative to her supposed stigmatization, absent from all the\nMSS., but given in the printed _Vita_ on the authority of Argentina.\n\n[183] _Vita_, pp. 143_c_, 71_c_. The second passage, though occurring\nin an early chapter of the _Vita_, undoubtedly belongs to these final\nmonths and fits well into this particular day.\n\n[184] _Ibid._ p. 144_a_. I have accepted this passage, because of its\ngreat vividness. But pp. 139_b_-145_b_ of the printed _Vita_ do not\nexist in the MSS.\n\n[185] _Ibid._ p. 145_b_. On pp. 145_c_, 146_a_, she is said to have,\nduring this time, seen many visions of Angels, to have laughed in their\ncompany, and to have herself recounted this after these occurrences.\nShe is similarly declared to have seen Evil Spirits (_i Demoni_), but\nonly with slight fear. And these passages occur also in the MSS.--But\nthey stand so entirely outside of any context or attribution to any\ndefinite days; such general assertions prove, throughout the _Vita_,\nto be so little trustworthy; and they are such vague and colourless\ndoubles of similar, but definitely dated and characterized, reports\nto be accepted in their place a little lower down, that I cannot but\nreject them here.\n\n[186] _Vita_, pp. 144_b_; 145_c_.\n\n[187] _Ibid._ p. 145_c_.\n\n[188] _Ibid._ p. 146_b_.\n\n[189] _Vita_, pp. 146_c_-147_c_.\n\n[190] Lingard\u2019s _History of England_, ed. 1855, Vol. IV, p. 166; James\nGairdner, _Henry VII_, London, 1889, p. 208.\n\n[191] The five passages of the _Vita_ concerning Physicians (pp. 71_c_,\n72_a_; 145_c_, 146_b_; 146_c_-147_c_; 158_c_, 159_a_) all bear very\nclear marks of successive additions, glosses, and re-castings,--always\nin the direction indicated above.\n\nThe entire Boerio-episode (pp. 146_c_-147_c_), is wanting in all the\nMSS. It is, however, most plainly authentic. I believe both the episode\nand a further passage concerning Boerio to have been furnished by\nBoerio\u2019s son, a Secular Priest, who died a septuagenarian in 1561;\nhis monument still exists in the Church of the Santa Annunciata, at\nSturla, near Genoa. See the _Biografia Medica Ligure_, by Dottore G.\nB. Pescetto, Genova, 1846, Vol. I, p. 104.--There are some suspicious\nsymptoms connected with that first consultation of Physicians: Boerio\u2019s\ninterviews read as though they had not been quite recently preceded\nby such an activity--and it is possible that we have here an account\nproduced by a retrogressive doubling of the undoubtedly authentic\nconsultation of the 10th of September, to be described presently.\nStill, there is nothing intrinsically improbable in the account itself.\nI have, then, allowed both consultations to stand.\n\n[192] _Vita_, p. 72_a_.\n\n[193] Copies of these six entries in the _Manuale Cartularii_ of the\nHospital exist attached to the MS. _Vita_ in the _Biblioteca della\nMissione Urbana_.\n\n[194] From the copy of the original Codicil in the Archivio di Stato,\nmade for me by Dre. Ferretto. The Inventory exists attached to the MS.\n_Vita_ just mentioned.\n\n[195] _Vita_, p. 148_b_. It is remarkable that, since January 10,\nthis is the first date given by the _Vita_; that a series of dated\ndays then extends onwards to August 28 (pp. 148_a_-152_a_); that\nthen a gap occurs, filled in with a general but authentic account\n(pp. 152_b_-153_c_), evidently by another hand, the same writer who\ngave us the (also dateless) account from mid-January to mid-May (pp.\n141_b_-145_b_); and that the dated chronicle is finally carried on from\nSeptember 2 to the end, September 15 (pp. 153_c_-161_a_). If I am right\nas to the oneness of authorship as regards these two undated parts,\nthen they are either not by Vernazza; or if they are, then Vernazza\nmust have been about Catherine till September 2.\n\nNow the _Vita_, p. 120_b_, tells us how Marabotto on one occasion left\nher \u201cfor three days,\u201d at a time when she was already suffering much\nfrom \u201caccidenti.\u201d It is evident, that this absence fits in admirably\nwith the gap already mentioned. Hence these dateless accounts can\nhardly be by Marabotto; and indeed their whole tone and point of view\nare unlike his. They might be by Carenzio: we shall see how strikingly\nobjective and precise are the oldest constituents of the report as to\nthe last three days of her life, during which, or at least at the end\nof which, Marabotto was as certainly absent as was Vernazza. There\nis, however, I think, some difference of tone between this latter\nreport, and those dateless passages; whereas those passages are\nstrikingly similar, in form and tone, to the oldest constituents of the\n_Trattato_, which are undoubtedly the literary work of Vernazza.\n\nThe probabilities then are, that these dateless accounts are by\nVernazza; and that he left Genoa on September 1 or 2.\n\n[196] _Vita_, p. 148_c_. \u201cDisse molte belle parole al santo Sacramento\n[e ai circonstanti, con tanto fervore e piet\u00e0,] che ognuno ne piangeva\nper divozione.\u201d I have omitted the bracketed words, as a disfiguring\ngloss.\n\n[197] _Vita_, p. 149_b_. I have neglected the numerous glosses to this\naccount, and have read \u201cseveral\u201d instead of \u201cseven\u201d days, since she\nwas again in great distress on August 22, or 23 at latest (_Ibid._ p.\n149_c_).\n\n[198] _Ibid._ p. 149_c_. I have here omitted an evidently later\ninsertion and transition between that highly localized paralysis and\nthe death-like sickness of the whole of her; and have made the latter\ncome on after the former, for how otherwise could any one know about\nthat paralysis?\n\n[199] _Ibid._ p. 150_b_. This fact and passage have occasioned an\ninteresting succession of obvious accretions and re-statements.\n\n[200] _Ibid._ p. 151_a_, _b_. I have in the text followed the MSS.\nas against the printed _Vita_, and have omitted a long clause, which\nattempts to find the explanation of these words of hers in a subsequent\npermanent change of attitude towards all those from whom she asked or\nreceived a service.\n\n[201] _Vita_, p. 153_b_.\n\n[202] _Vita_, pp. 150_a_, 154_b_, 127_c_, 153_c_.\n\n[203] A copy of this entry exists, in the Priest Giovo\u2019s handwriting,\nin the collection of Documents prefixed to the MS. _Vita_ of St.\nCatherine, in the _Biblioteca della Missione Urbana_, Genoa.\n\n[204] _Vita_, p. 154_b_, and the Inventory among the documents in the\n_Vita_, volume of the _Biblioteca della Missione_.\n\n[205] _Vita_, pp. 153_a_, 155_a_; 157_c_, 158_a_. For this 7th\nSeptember three heat-and-light impressions are given: (1) \u201cA ray of\ndivine love\u201d; (2) \u201ca vision of fiery stairs\u201d; and (3) this apprehension\nof the whole world on fire. Perhaps the first also is authentic; the\nlast is certainly so. The middle one seems to be secondary, and to have\nslipped in to form a transition and link between the other two accounts.\n\n[206] _Ibid._ p. 153_a_.\n\n[207] _Vita_, p. 155_b_, _c_. A third paragraph, pp. 155_c_, 156_a_\n(equally wanting in all the MSS. and claiming to be based on the\nauthority of Argentina), follows here, and tells how the latter\nsaw one of her mistress\u2019s arms grow over half a palm in additional\nlength, during the following night; and again how Catherine had told\nher, Argentina, that she, Catherine, \u201cwould before her death bear\nthe stigmata and mysteries of the Passion in her own person.\u201d These\n\u201cfacts\u201d are thoroughly characteristic of the source from which they\nare no doubt derived.--A fourth paragraph, p. 156_b_, _c_, has also\nbeen omitted by me, although it occurs also in the MSS. It contains a\nlong prayer put into Catherine\u2019s mouth, and modelled on our Lord\u2019s High\nPriestly Prayer in John xvii, 1-13. It is far too long, elaborate, and\nuncharacteristic to be authentic.\n\n[208] _Ibid._ p. 156_c_.\n\n[209] _Ibid._ p. 158_b_. I have here omitted, after \u201cmiseries,\u201d the\nclause \u201cthrough which she had passed.\u201d For during her middle period she\nseems indeed not to have seen her faults till after she herself had\ngot beyond them: yet that particular dispensation was then vouchsafed\nher because of the excessive pain which the sight of still present\nimperfections would have caused her; and it is that peculiarity which\nexplains the extreme rarity or absence of Confession during that time.\nBut now we have both the pain and the Confession: and I cannot find\nany instances, as in this case, of (evidently keen) annoyance, or\nof Confession, with respect to past and overcome imperfections.--I\nhave also omitted a sentence after \u201cdeparted from her\u201d: \u201cnot that\nthey were matters of any importance, but every slightest defect was\nintolerable to her.\u201d For this is to judge the Saint by another standard\nthan that of her own conscience, and to make her sanctity consist\nof scrupulosity.--And I have dropped a further notice for the same\nday,--a \u201cvista\u201d vouchsafed to her of \u201ca pure and perfect mind, into\nwhich only the memory of divine things can still enter,\u201d with her\ncorresponding laugh and exclamation: \u201cO, to find oneself in this degree\n(of perfection) at the time of death!\u201d For, beautiful as it is, this\nclause but reproduces, in the softened form of a general and joyous\naspiration, what the previous anecdote had given as a particular and\ndepressing consciousness. And the previous anecdote was evidently\noffensive to both Redactors.\n\n[210] _Vita_, pp. 158_c_, 159_a_, _b_.\n\n[211] _Vita_, p. 159_c_. The Codicil I give from Dre. Ferretto\u2019s copy\nof the original in the Archivio di Stato, Genoa. I have, in the _Vita_\npassage, omitted a sentence which now stands between the drop-of-water\nincident, and that of the attack at night, which declares: \u201cAll this\nday she remained without speaking, without ever opening her eyes or\neating or drinking\u201d; for it would be difficult, if we retain it, to\nfind room for the drawing up of the Codicil, which certainly took place\nbefore the attack.\n\n[212] _Vita_, p. 160_a_.\n\n[213] _Vita_, pp. 169_c_, 161_a_.\n\n[214] _Vita_, pp. 161_c_-163_a_.\n\n[215] _Vita_, p. 162_b_.\n\n[216] _Ibid._ pp. 163_b_-164_a_.\n\n[217] _Ibid._ p. 153_a_ (end of August or beginning of September 1510),\n\u201cthrough the intense heat of this fire of love she became yellow all\nover, like the colour of saffron\u201d; p. 161_b_, (\u201cafter death) that\nyellow colour was spread over her whole body, which at first had only\nbeen around the region of the heart\u201d; p. 164_c_ (on opening her coffin\nin the autumn of 1511), \u201cthe skin which corresponded to the heart was\nstill red in sign of the ardent love which she had harboured in it, the\nrest of the body was yellow.\u201d\n\n[218] _Vita_, pp. 17_c_, 18_a_, (97_c_).\n\n[219] _Ibid._ p. 129_b_, (165_c_). In both places there is an explicit\nreference to Saint Ignatius (of Antioch), \u201cwhose heart, when examined\nafter his martyrdom, was found to have written upon it, in letters of\ngold, the sweet name of Jesus.\u201d Perhaps also two lines of Jacopone da\nTodi had some influence here. In _Loda_ LXXXVIII, v. 11, he says of the\nperfected soul: \u201cThe heart annihilates itself, undone (melted down)\nas though it were wax, and finds itself, after this act, bearing the\nfigure (the seal-impression) of Christ Himself.\u201d\n\n[220] _Ibid._ p. 165_c_.\n\n[221] These and similar matters will be found carefully studied in the\nAppendix.\n\n[222] _Lode_ III, XIII, XXXIII, XXXV, XLV, LVIII (_a_) and (_b_),\nLXXIII, LXXV (_a_) and (_b_), LXXVII, LXXIX, LXXXI, LXXXIII, LXXXV,\nLXXXVIII, LXXXIX, LXXXX, LXXXXVII, LXXXXIX.\n\n[223] _Vita_, pp. 32_c_, 33_a_, _b_. I must refer the reader, once for\nall, to the Appendix, for the explanation of the methods used in the\nselection and the emendation of the texts presented in this chapter.\n\n[224] _Vita_, pp. 29_c_; 91_c_; 30_b_; 55_c_, 56_a_; 61_a_.\n\n[225] _Ibid._ p. 76_c_.\n\n[226] _Ibid._ pp. 101_b_; 101_a_; 79_c_.\n\n[227] _Vita_, pp. 36_b_; 80_c_, 81_a_; 74_b_.\n\n[228] _Ibid._ pp. 9_b_; _ibid._, 8_c_.\n\n[229] _Vita_, p. 11_c_.\n\n[230] _Ibid._ p. 11_b_.\n\n[231] _Vita_, pp. 22_b_; 25_c_; 26_b_.--105_c_.--25_c_, 26_a_, 80_b_.\n\n[232] _Ibid._ pp. 15_c_, 16_a_.--9_b_; 53_b_; 67_c_.\n\n[233] _Vita_, pp. 26_b_; 50_b_.--36_b_; 36_c_.--36_b_.\n\n[234] _Ibid._ p. 48_b_.\n\n[235] _Ibid._ pp. 23_c_; 27_a_. The fact of \u201cNettezza\u201d remaining\nat last her only term for the perfection of God shows plainly how\ncomprehensive, definite, and characteristic must have been the\nmeaning she attached to the word. The history of this conception no\ndoubt begins with Plato\u2019s \u201cthe Same\u201d; and this, through Plotinus and\nVictorinus Afer\u2019s Latin translation of him, reappears as \u201cthe Idipsum,\nthe Self-Same,\u201d as one of the names of God in St. Augustine; a term\nwhich in Dionysius (largely based as he is upon Plotinus\u2019s disciple\nProclus) occurs continually, and can there be still everywhere\ntranslated as \u201cIdentity\u201d or \u201cSelf-Identity\u201d (so also Parker). But with\nCatherine the idea seems to have been approximated more to that of\nPurity, although I take it that, with her, \u201cPurit\u00e0\u201d means the absence\nof all excess (of anything foreign to the true nature of God\u2019s or\nthe soul\u2019s essence); and \u201cNetezza,\u201d the absence of all defect, in\nthe shape of any failure fully to actualize all the possibilities\nof this same true nature. I have had to resign myself, as the least\ninadequate suggestions of the rich meaning of \u201cNetezza\u201d and \u201cNetto,\u201d\nto alternating between the sadly general terms \u201cfulness\u201d and \u201cfull,\u201d\nand the pedantic-sounding \u201cself-adequation,\u201d with here and there \u201cclear\nfulness.\u201d\n\n[236] _Vita_, pp. 15_b_, 22_c_; 23_b_; 49_a_; 69_a_.\n\n[237] _Vita_, pp. 31_c_, 32_a_.--66_a_, 66_b_, 87_c_, 107_a_.\n\n[238] _Ibid._ pp. 75_b_, 66_b_.\n\n[239] _Ibid._ pp. 87_c_, 106_a_, 106_c_.\n\n[240] _Vita_, p. 114_a_.\n\n[241] _Ibid._ 28_c_, 29_a_, 29_b_.\n\n[242] _Ibid._ pp. 42_b_, 43_c_.\n\n[243] _Vita_, p. 42_a_.\n\n[244] _Ibid._ pp. 83_c_, 84_a_, 86_b_, 87_a_.\n\n[245] _Ibid._ p. 108_b_.\n\n[246] _Vita_, pp. 81_b_.\n\n[247] _Ibid._ pp. 81_c_; 82_a_; 103_b_.\n\n[248] _Ibid._ p. 31_b_.\n\n[249] _Vita_ p. 54_b_, _c_.\n\n[250] _Ibid._ pp. 52_c_, 53_a_.\n\n[251] _Ibid._ pp. 95_c_, 125_a_; 122_c_; 76_a_.\n\n[252] _Vita_, pp. 9_b_, 15_b_; 11_b_, 8_c_; 155_a_.\n\n[253] _Vita_, pp. 136_b_, 183_c_; 19_b_, 107_b_.\n\n[254] _Ibid._ p. 113_c_.\n\n[255] _Ibid._ pp. 24_b_, 23_b_, 24_b_.\n\n[256] _Vita_, pp. 59_c_, 76_c_, 77_a_.\n\n[257] _Ibid._ p. 37_a_.\n\n[258] _Vita_, pp. 94_a_; 109_b_.\n\n[259] _Ibid._ pp. 87_c_, 53_b_.\n\n[260] _Vita_, pp. 23_c_, 24_a_, 23_c_, 22_c_, 61_c_; 77_b_.\n\n[261] _Ibid._ pp. 34_c_; 175_c_.\n\n[262] _Vita_, pp. 171_c_, 172_a_.\n\n[263] _Ibid._ pp. 30_a_, 29_c_; 43_c_.\n\n[264] _Ibid._ pp. 171_c_, 172_a_.\n\n[265] _Vita_, pp. 52_a_; 51_b_; 106_c_.-94_c_; 95_b_.\n\n[266] _Ibid._ pp. 23_a_; 24_a_.\n\n[267] _Vita_, p. 60_c_.\n\n[268] _Ibid._ pp. 76_b_; 27_a_.\n\n[269] _Ibid._ pp. 8_a_; 15_b_.--8_c_.\n\n[270] _Vita_ (_Trattato_), p. 169_b_. See also _Vita_, Preface, p.\nviii_b_; and p. 144_b_.\n\n[271] _Vita_, pp. 172_c_; _ibid._--38_b_, _c_; 39_a_.\n\n[272] _Vita_, pp. 173_a_.--173_b_.--33_b_.\n\n[273] _Ibid._ (_Trattato_), pp. 170_b_ (169_c_).\n\n[274] _Vita_ (_T._), p. 175_b_.\n\n[275] _Ibid._ (_T._), p. 177_b_.\n\n[276] _Ibid._ (_T._), p. 176_a_; _Vita_ proper, p. 78_c_.\n\n[277] _Vita_ (_T._), p. 175_a_ (see p. 169_b_).\n\n[278] _Ibid._ (_T._), p. 176_a_.\n\n[279] _Vita_ (_T._), pp. 169_c_, 170_a_.--182_b._\n\n[280] _Vita_ (_T._), pp. 173_c_, 174_a_; 171_b_.--64_b_;\n177_b_.--170_c_.\n\n[281] _Ibid._ (_T._), p. 172_b_.\n\n[282] _Vita_ (_T._), p. 172_a_.\n\n[283] _Ibid._ (_T._), p. 174_b_.\n\n[284] _Ibid._\n\n[285] _Vita_ (_T._), p. 174_b_.\n\n[286] _Ibid._\n\n[287] _Vita_ (_T._), p. 182_b_.\n\n[288] _Vita_ (_T._), p. 170_c_.\n\n[289] _Vita_ (_T._), p. 178_b_.\n\n[290] _Vita_ (_T._), p. 178_b_.\n\n[291] _Ibid._\n\n[292] A copy of this document exists prefixed to the MS. _Vita_ of the\n_Biblioteca delta Missione Urbana_.\n\n[293] Copy in the same volume.\n\n[294] _Vita_, p. 164_b_. This first coffin is still extant: it stands\nnow, empty in a glass case, in the smaller of the two rooms shown\nin the Hospital as her last dwelling-place. Twice over the _Vita_\ntalks of a \u201cdeposito,\u201d although directly only in connection with\nits opening \u201cabout eighteen months later,\u201d _i.e._ not before March\n1512. Now Argentina del Sale declares, in a Will of the year 1522 (a\ncopy, in Giovo\u2019s handwriting, exists in the volume of the _Biblioteca\ndella Missione_), that she desires to be buried \u201cin the Church of\nthe Annunciata, in the monument of the late Giuliano Adorno.\u201d Thus\nGiuliano\u2019s grave was still generally known and fully accessible\ntwelve years after Catherine\u2019s death; and it was a \u201cmonumento,\u201d not a\n\u201cdeposito.\u201d I have been completely baffled in all my attempts to trace\nthe eventual fate of that monument, or even its precise site, or the\nprecise date of its disappearance. I can but offer two alternative\nconjectures. (1) It stood in the choir-end of the Church. If so, it\nwill have been covered up, promiscuously with many another vault and\nmortuary slab, when, in 1537, this end was cut off, for the purpose of\nwidening the bastion which still runs behind it and above it, outside.\n(2) The \u201cmonument\u201d was a slab on the floor of the nave or of some\nside-chapel. The present flooring of all the former, and of a large\npart of the Chapels, is relatively new; and it is (all but certainly)\nsuperimposed upon the old flooring or at least upon the old sepulchral\nslabs, since not one inscription remains visible in the nave. And if\nGiuliano\u2019s \u201cmonument\u201d lay there, it will still be extant, hidden away\nunder the present flooring.--In either case it remains remarkable that\nthe slight trouble was not taken to shift nave-wards, or to raise to\nthe newer nave- or chapel-flooring, the \u201cmonument\u201d of Catherine\u2019s own\nhusband. There are certainly monuments still visible in the Church\nolder than 1497. It is impossible to resist the conclusion that some\noccasion was gladly seized for _not_ moving or raising this monument,\nand for thus letting the saintly wife appear entirely alone in the\nHospital Church, unattended by any memorial of her very imperfect\nhusband.\n\n[295] The Inventory and this Acceptance both exist, in copy, in the MS.\n_Vita_ of the _Biblioteca della Missione_. I owe a careful copy of the\nformer to the kindness of Don Giacomo C. Grasso, the Librarian.\n\n[296] From the documents in the MS. _Vita_ of the _Biblioteca della\nMissione_.\n\n[297] _Vita_, pp. 164_b_, _c_, 165_c_. Great and repeated stress is\nlaid here, with unattractively realistic proofs and details, upon the\ndamage done by the damp to the coffin and grave-clothes, and upon the\ncontrasting spotlessness of the body.\n\n[298] MS. _Vita_ of the _Biblioteca della Missione_.\n\n[299] Even the little engraving of the title-page of the first edition\nof the _Vita_ (1551), which shows Catherine kneeling before a crucifix,\nrepresents her, not indeed with a nimbus, but with a diadem upon her\nhead.\n\n[300] Reprinted in _Vita_, p. 282_b_.\n\n[301] A little Prayer-book marker picture, which will, I think, have\nbeen first engraved in 1737, when the body was, as indeed it is to this\nhour, considered quite incorrupt, already gives the large paper rose\nwhich has lain ever since in the place of the mouth and nose, which\nhave perished long ago. But I have been unable to test the claim to\nincorruption further back than this.\n\n[302] _Vita_, pp. 165_c_, 27_b_, 277_a_. In this last passage Maria\nFiesca makes a declaration as to the partial fleshiness and elasticity\nof the body, _e.g._ of the right shoulder; and as to its extraordinary\nweight.\n\n[303] All three classes of cases are represented in Padre Maineri\u2019s\naccount, reproduced in the _Vita_, p. 282_b_, _c_.\n\n[304] Maineri, in _Vita_, p. 278, _b_, _c_. The first edition of the\n_Vita_ calls her \u201cBeata\u201d on its title-page. MS. \u201cA,\u201d of 1547, 1548, has\nsimply \u201cMadonna Catherineta Adorna\u201d on the Franciscan copyist\u2019s own\ntitle, and \u201cBeata\u201d on the title copied by him from the MS. used by him.\n\n[305] There is evidence that the many-sided Queen took an interest in\nCatherine, in the Oratorian G. Parpera\u2019s very careful _Beata Caterina\ndi Genova Illustrata_, Genova, 1682. But the Index of her Latin (and\nItalian) MSS. in the Vatican Library contains no indication of any MS.\n\u201cLife\u201d or \u201cDoctrine\u201d possessed by Christina.\n\n[306] The main facts and dates of these paragraphs devoted to the\nvarious Processes are derived from Padre Maineri\u2019s very clear account,\nfirst published in 1737, and reprinted at the end of the _Vita_, pp.\n278-282.\n\n[307] Copy in MS. _Vita_ in the _Biblioteca della Missione_.\n\n[308] So Padre Celesia, _op. cit._ p. 1121.\n\n[309] Copy in the MS. _Vita_ of the _Biblioteca della Missione_.\n\n[310] From twenty-two conclusions concerning Catherine and her circle,\nconstituting one of the papers in the volume, _Documenti_, etc., of\nthe University Library. They were evidently written after 1675 and\nbefore 1737 (Catherine is \u201cBeata\u201d throughout), but are, wherever I have\nbeen able to test them, as a rule completely right, and never entirely\nwrong. It is certainly somewhat strange that Argentina should, as is\nthere stated, have \u201ccontinued in the said Hospital, and was living\nin it still in 1523,\u201d and should have \u201csimilarly continued to be the\nservant of the Priest Cattaneo (Marabotto).\u201d Still, she may have slept\nat the Hospital and worked at Marabotto\u2019s. I had thought of concluding\nfrom this that Marabotto had been given Catherine\u2019s house in the\nHospital, after Don Carenzio\u2019s death there. But the apparently complete\nabsence of any mention of Marabotto in the Hospital books, after July\n1512, makes me shrink from doing so.\n\n[311] I am proud of this important discovery, since even Giovo had to\nleave a blank for this date in his Chapter IV of Part I of his MS.\n_Vita_, in the _Biblioteca della Missione_, written in 1675. I found\nthe date amongst some notes and copies, in a sprawly handwriting, not\nGiovo\u2019s, but the same which copied out the entry as to Carenzio\u2019s\nfuneral expenses. It is true that in Marabotto\u2019s case this writer\ngives no proof or document; yet there is no reason for distrusting his\nassertion.\n\n[312] Copy from Hospital Cartulary in MS. _Vita_ of the _Biblioteca\ndella Missione Urbana_: \u201c1511, 7 Julii: Hereditas quondam Caterinetae\nAdurnae, pro Maria, olim famula ipsius et filia Hospitalis, pro legato\nfacto dictae Mariae per dictam q(uondam) Caterinetam, \u00a350.--Maria\npraedicta pro D. P. Cattaneo Marabotto, qui habuit curam guarnimentorum\nipsius Mariae, dedicatae in Monasterio Sanctae Brigidae, \u00a350.\u201d--I take\nthese two successive entries to refer to two successive stages of the\nsame transaction, and to but one and the same sum.\n\n[313] From the documents given in the MS. _Vita_ of the _Biblioteca\ndella Missione Urbana_.\n\n[314] My quotations from this letter are all taken from Giuseppe\nMorro\u2019s careful address on Vernazza, published in _Inaugurazione della\nStatua d\u2019Ettore Vernazza_, Genova, 1867, pp. 5-31. It stands _in\nextenso_ in the fine edition of his daughter\u2019s works: _Opere Spirituale\ndella Ven. Madre Donna Battista Vernazza_, 6 vols., Genoa, 1755; Vol.\nVI, Letter XXV.\n\n[315] The document is given in fall, and carefully analyzed, in\n_Inaugurazione_, etc., pp. 61-70.\n\n[316] Battista\u2019s letter, as quoted in _Inaugurazione_, p. 16.\n\n[317] _Inaugurazione_, pp. 17, 18.\n\n[318] Printed in _Inaugurazione_, pp. 71-73.\n\n[319] The present, second and much larger and detached SS. Annunziata,\non the square of that name, was not built (for the Capuchins) till\n1587. In Giuliano\u2019s and Catherine\u2019s Wills of 1494, 1498, and 1506, the\nHospital Church occurs indifferently as \u201cChurch of the Annunciation\nof the Order of Friars Minor of the Observance\u201d with and without the\naddition of \u201cadjoining the Hospital,\u201d or \u201cadjoining the Hospital of\nPammatone.\u201d\n\n[320] This was a Cistercian Convent, founded in the twelfth\ncentury, outside one of the Genoese gates. Only its Chapel survived\nthe destruction of the Convent at the time of the Revolutionary\nsecularization. And even this Chapel was in January 1903 in process of\ndemolition, to make room for the new Via Venti Settembre.\n\n[321] The three daughters\u2019 names in Religion all occur in a document of\nthe Bank of St. George printed in _Inaugurazione_, p. 79.\n\n[322] _Inaugurazione_, p. 18, quoting Battista\u2019s letter of 1581.\n\n[323] _Inaugurazione_, pp. 19, 20.\n\n[324] I derive this particular from Professore G. Morro\u2019s\n_Inaugurazione_, p. 20.\n\n[325] _Inaugurazione_, p. 20.\n\n[326] _Inaugurazione_, p. 21.\n\n[327] _Inaugurazione_, pp. 21, 22. Battista\u2019s account would lead one\nto place that last Communion on the Feast itself; but the various\ninscriptions erected by the most careful Committee of 1867, shows that\nit occurred really on the Eve. See _Inaugurazione_, pp. 37; 39, 40. One\nmore instance of a slight displacement of date effected by a (no doubt\nunconscious) desire to find a full synchronism between the Feast of the\nBaptist and the final Communion of one so devoted to that Saint. The\nCommittee evidently shrank from interpreting her \u201cthree days after\u201d: it\nmay evidently mean either the 26th or the 27th.\n\n[328] As to the older monuments, see _Inaugurazione_, p. 5. An\nexcellent photograph of Varni\u2019s statue forms the title-picture to this\npublication.\n\n[329] An engraving of this (now lost) portrait exists in _Ritratti ed\nElogii di Liguri Illustri_, Genova, Ponthonier, and appears reproduced\nhere as the Frontispiece to Vol. II.\n\n[330] _Inaugurazione_, p. 26.\n\n[331] Even such a rhetorical apostrophe as occurs in the peroration\nof Dottore Morro\u2019s speech (_Inaugurazione_, p. 30): \u201cThou worthy of\nincense and of altars, as was that Catherine Fieschi, whose friend and\nconfidant and spiritual son thou wast, and who was God-mother to thy\nown first-born,\u201d stands, I think, alone.\n\n[332] Schm\u00f6ger: _Leben der gottseligen Anna Katharina Emmerich_,\nFreiburg, 1867, 1870, Vol. II, pp. 892, 898, 900.\n\n[333] Vallebona, _op. cit._ p. 83: \u201cSantissima mia Diva, | questo mio\ncor ricevi: | che quando al sole apriva | le luci a giorni brevi, |\ninfin d\u2019allor fei voto, | con animo devoto, | non mai, madre adorata,\n| esser da Te sviata.\u201d \u201cMy most holy Protectress\u201d and \u201cadored Mother\u201d\nmay apply to Catherine. But I have had to punctuate so as to make\n\u201cche\u201d = \u201cperch\u00e8,\u201d as in Jacopone throughout: so that we now have not\na declaration of time, as to when she, the Protectress, accepted\nTommasa\u2019s heart (which might well have been at Baptism); but a prayer\nthat this Mother may accept her heart, in view of the fact that she,\nTommasa, had, from her first opening of her eyes to life (surely, on\ncoming to some degree of reason), vowed never to be parted from this\nMother. And thus the application to Catherine remains possible but\nbecomes uncertain.\n\n[334] I feel obliged to put the matter in this hypothetical form\nbecause of the several undeniable indications of Catherine\u2019s loss of\ninterest in many, perhaps most, events and occurrences, since, at\nlatest, the beginning of 1509.\n\n[335] See the admirably vivid account of, and wisely-balanced judgment\nconcerning, these events, in the Catholic Alfred von Reumont\u2019s little\nbook, _Vittoria Colonna_, Freiburg, 1881, pp. 117-152; 194-215.\n\n[336] _Acta Sanctorum_, Vol. VI, pp. 192-196.\n\n[337] For Gerson\u2019s \u201cRigorism,\u201d see J. B. Schwab\u2019s admirable monograph,\n_Johannes Gerson_, Regensburg, 1858; and for Contarini\u2019s, Morone\u2019s, and\nthe Colonna\u2019s views, see Reumont\u2019s _Vittoria Colonna_.\n\n[338] _Opere_, Vol. VI, p. 192.\n\n[339] See the Preface to the _Opere_, Vol. I, p. 10.\n\n[340] _Opere_, ed. Genoa, 1755, Vol. V, pp. 218-227.\n\n[341] See here, pp. 265, 266; 272; 280; 264, 265; 135; 160, 274-276.\n\n[342] See here, pp. 116; 117, 266.\n\n[343] The last clause here is very obscure in the original: \u201cnon voglio\nmeritare te, ma rimeritare lo amore che ti porto\u201d; but I take the above\ntranslation to render correctly the substantial meaning.\n\n[344] See here, pp. 265; 262, 263, 261.\n\n[345] See here, pp. 266, 268; 285; 261; 275, 159, 141.\n\n[346] See here, pp. 260, 261, 273, 274.\n\n[347] Ch iv, \u00a7\u00a7 xiii, xiv, xvi (Parker, pp. 48-50).\n\n[348] See here, pp. 138; 277; 260.\n\n[349] See here, p. 270.\n\n[350] See here, pp. 270; 290; 275, 270.\n\n[351] See here, pp. 138, 139; 265, 260; 272.\n\n[352] _Opere_, ed. 1755, Vol. VI, pp. 247, 248.\n\n[353] See here, pp. 263, 266, 280; 272, 275; 292; 277, 262.\n\n[354] See here, pp. 284; 166-174; 143-145.\n\n[355] See here, pp. 140, 141; 131, 116.\n\n[356] _Inaugurazione_, pp. 26, 27.\n\n[357] _Ibid._ pp. 74, 75, 77, 78. _Ibid._ p. 94.\n\n[358] Here, pp. 319, 320; 140, 141, 268.\n\n[359] Date of death: _Ritratti ed Elogii di Liguri Illustri_,\nGenova, Ponthenier (Elogio della Ven. Battista Vernazza). Communion:\n_Opere della Ven. B. Vernazza_, ed. cit., Vol. I, p. 21. The\nportrait-frontispiece of the second volume of this work is a faithful\nfacsimile of the portrait (a lithograph by F. Scotto) published among\nthe _Ritratti_, between 1823 and 1830. The original picture, which will\nhave hung in the convent of S. Marie delle Grazie, I have not been able\nto trace. The portrait now in possession of the Nuns of the convent of\nS. Maria in Passione, the successors of those Canonesses, is a quite\nconventional, inauthentic likeness.\n\n[360] \u201cA(nno) 1456, 27 Augti, ex Locis Pomerae uxore Bartolomaei de\nAuria et a de modo Isabellae dedicatae in monasterio S. David, ad\ninstantiam Andreae Auria, unici ejus filii ex heredis, et Franciscae\nmatris Catherinetae filiae Jacobi de Flisco, Loci duo in ratione dictae\nCatherinetae per ejus maritare et (si) dictae Franciscae fecerit\nconsilio.\u201d From parchment-bound small folio vol.: _Documenti su S.\nCatherina da Genova MSS._, in R. University Library, Genoa.\n\n[361] From Dre. Ferretto\u2019s copy of original in the Archivio di Stato\nGenoa.\n\n[362] The originals of both deeds are in the Archivio di Stato, Genoa,\nAtti del Not. Battista Strata, folie 39, parte II, and 96 (parte III).\n\n[363] Copies of these two entries, in the MS. volume \u201cDocumenti \u2026\nCaterina da Genova,\u201d University Library, Genoa, B VII 31.\n\n[364] The first four documents exist, copied, in the _Vita_ of the\n_Biblioteca della Missione Urbana_; the last is in the Archivio di\nStato, and has been copied out plain for me by Dre. Ferretto.\n\n[365] Ettore Vernazza: _Inaugurazione_, pp. 21, 22; 39, 40. Cattaneo\nMarrabotto: Don Giovo\u2019s declaration among the \u201cConclusions\u201d (in his\nown handwriting) attached to the MS. _Vita_ of St. Catherine in the\n_Biblioteca della Missione Urbana_, Genoa. Tommasa Fiesca: Fed.\nAlizieri, in _Atti della Societ\u00e0 di Storia Patria_, Vol. VIII, Genoa,\n1868, p. 408. Battista Vernazza, _Opere Spirituali della Ven. B.\nVernazza_, Genoa, ed. 1775, Vol. I, Preface.\n\n[366] MS. A, pp. 3; 367; 368-398; 399.\n\n[367] _Ibid._ pp. 361-363; 364; 87, 88.\n\n[368] MS. A, p. 160.\n\n[369] _Ibid._ pp. 134; 168; 198-200; 329; in contrast respectively with\npp. 62; 124; 76; 161 of the Printed _Life_.\n\n[370] MS. A, p. 193, which appears, in a somewhat modified form, in the\nPr. L., p. 97_c_; and, with further transformations, on pp. 139_a_;\n139_c_; 140_a_; 140_b_ of the same.\n\n[371] _Ibid._ p. 169, compared with Pr. L., p. 124_c_.\n\n[372] _Ibid._ p. 163, compared with Pr. L., p. 122_c_.\n\n[373] Pr. L., pp. 155_b_-156_a_.\n\n[374] Pr. L., pp. 146_c_-147_c_; 154_b_.\n\n[375] Pr. L., pp. 51_a_-53_b_.\n\n[376] MS. A, p. 168, compared with Pr. L. pp. 123_b_-124_b_.\n\n[377] Pr. L. pp. 116_c_-121_b_; 139_a_-140_c_. Retained lines: MS. p.\n40 = Pr. L., p. 116_c_.\n\n[378] Pr. L., p. 119_c_.\n\n[379] MS. ch. iv = Pr. L., ch. ii, pp. 4_a_-5_c_.\n\n[380] MS. ch. v = Pr. L., ch. ii, pp. 5_c_-6_c_.\n\n[381] I purposely leave this sentence in its tell-tale clumsiness of\nform.\n\n[382] This corresponds, as to its substance, to Pr. L., pp. 5_c_-6_c_.\n\n[383] Pr. L., p. 14_c_.\n\n[384] MS. B. fol. 2_r_ et _v_.\n\n[385] _Ibid._ fol. 19_r_ et _v_.\n\n[386] MS. B: the break, on fol. 30_r_; the abrupt ending, on bottom of\nfol. 33_v_.\n\n[387] Hence _Dialogo_ (Pr. L.) pp. 185_c_-190_c_ is an expansion of the\n_Vita_-proper (Pr. L.) p. 31; and _Dialogo_ pp. 191_a_-198_a_ is an\nexpansion of _Vita_-proper p. 33.\n\n[388] Hence _Dialogo_ (Pr. L.) pp. 198_b_-206_b_ corresponds to\n_Vita_-proper pp. 4_a_-5_a_.\n\n[389] P. 205_c_.\n\n[390] Pp. 206_c_, 207_b_.\n\n[391] _Dialogo_ pp. 207_c_-212_a_ is thus equivalent to _Vita_-proper\np. 5_b_.\n\n[392] _Dialogo_, pp. 212_b_-212_c_ is hence equivalent to _Vita_-proper\npp. 12_b_-13_c_.\n\n[393] _Dialogo_ pp. 213_c_-225_c_ thus corresponds to _Vita_-proper pp.\n9_b_, 15_b_; 13_c_, 14_a_; 20_a_, 21_a_; 123_b_; 13_b_; 96_b_-97_a_.\n\n[394] See here, pp. 353, 354.\n\n[395] _Dialogo_, pp. 215_c_, 216_a_.\n\n[396] _Dialogo_, p. 197_a_.\n\n[397] _Ibid._ p. 209_b_.\n\n[398] _Ibid._ p. 223_c_.\n\n[399] _Ibid._ p. 221_c_.\n\n[400] _Dialogo_, pp. 20_a_, 13_c_, 21_a_, 20_a_.\n\n[401] _Ibid._ pp. 220_c_, 222_c_.\n\n[402] _Ibid._ p. 21_b_.\n\n[403] _Dialogo_, p. 123_b_.\n\n[404] From MS. A, p. 174: \u201cLi butt\u00f2 le braccie al collo, e,\nstringendola con singulti, non si poteva saziar di piangere.\u201d The\nPrinted _Vita_, p. 125_b_, has only: \u201cLa abbracci\u00f2 piangendo, per lungo\nspazio di tempo.\u201d\n\n[405] See here, pp. 169-171.\n\n[406] See here, pp. 185, 186; 194; 205.\n\n[407] _Ibid._ pp. 221, 222_a_.\n\n[408] See here, pp. 363; 346, 347.\n\n[409] _Ibid._ pp. 56_b_, 203_a_; 33_b_, 202_b_.\n\n[410] _Vita_, pp. 32_c_, 26_c_, 58_a_, 48_a_, 135_a_.\n\n[411] _Ibid._ pp. 76_a_, 157_c_; 103_b_.\n\n[412] _Vita_, pp. 212_c_, 213_a_; 222_b_; 220_c_, 221_c_.\n\n[413] See here, p. 146.\n\n[414] See here, pp. 145, 146.\n\n[415] _Vita_, p. 21_a_.\n\n[416] See here, pp. 344-358; 359-364.\n\n[417] Dan. ix, 24.\n\n[418] Gen. xxix, 20; xxx, 27.\n\n[419] See here, pp. 351, 355.\n\n[420] Compare, as to human intercourse, _Dialogo_ p. 221_b_,\nwith Battista\u2019s advice, given here p. 363; and, as to spiritual\nconsolations, _Dialogo_ pp. 215_c_, 216_a_, with Battista\u2019s\n_Colloquies_, here pp. 346, 347.\n\n[421] Catherine, Pr. _Vita_, p. 209_c_; Battista, in one of the\n_Colloquii_ given in the _Opere_, _loc. cit._, but not otherwise\nreproduced here; Catherine, Pr. _Vita_, pp. 209_c_, 211_c_, 211_b_, 32;\nBattista, here, pp. 359, 360.\n\n[422] Catherine, Pr. _Vita_, p. 97_b_; Battista, Pr. _Vita_, p. 201_b_;\nhere, p. 360; and _Dialogo_, p. 211_a_.\n\n[423] I have not succeeded in finding a copy of this rare book: the\nsix chief libraries of Genoa; the Ambrosian Library, Milan; and the\nVatican and Angelica Libraries, Rome, are certainly without it. My\ngeneral description, and my special reproduction of one passage, of\nit are taken from a series of very careful accounts of the successive\nearly editions of the book, preserved among the Documents relative\nto the Process of Catherine\u2019s Beatification of 1630-1675, in the\nArchiepiscopal Archives, Genoa.\n\n[424] _Vita_, pp. 5_b_, 6_b_, 155_b_-156_a_; 211_b_, 264_b_.\n\n[425] _Vita_, pp. vii_c_, viii_a_; viii_b_.\n\n[426] _Colloquies_, _Opere_, Vol. V, p. 219. _Letters_, _ibid._ Vol.\nVI, p. 24. _Dialogo_, pp. 187_b_, 215_b_, 220_c_, 223_b_, 237_c_,\n247_b_, 248_c_, 273_b_. _Dialogo_, p. 266_b_.\n\n[427] _Vita_: Chapter Second, pp. 226_a_-275_a_. Part Second, pp.\n226_a_-245_c_; Part Third, pp. 246_a_-275_a_. The moralizing narrative:\nlast sentence, p. 245_c_.\n\n[428] _Dialogo_ p. 225_c_, paraphrase of _Vita_ p. 6_c_.\n\n[429] \u201cNine years before her death,\u201d _Vita_, p. 127_a_; \u201cone year\nbefore she passed away,\u201d p. 132_b_; Purgatory, pp. 128_c_, 129_a_;\n136_c_, 144_b_; \u201cPrison of the Body,\u201d p. 137_a_; emaciation, pp.\n144_a_, 160_b_; vomitings, pp. 127_c_, 138_c_, 160_a_, _b_; inability\nto move, pp. 128_a_, 137_b_.\n\n[430] _Vita_, pp. 227_a_-241_b_; 213_c_-225_c_.\n\n[431] The \u201cscintilla,\u201d \u201cstilla,\u201d and \u201cimmersion in the sweetness of\nLove\u201d: _Dialogo_, p. 252_a_, _b_, _c_. In the Vita-proper \u201cscintilla\u201d\nis but once (and in a doubtful passage) so used, p. 148_b_; in the\nother passages \u201cnon una minima scintilla\u201d means there \u201cnot a glimpse\u201d\nof this or that, pp. 5_c_, 62_a_. \u201cStilla\u201d of Blessedness, p. 119_c_;\n\u201cgoccia\u201d of Love, pp. 94_b_-95_c_; \u201cgocciola\u201d of spiritual water\n(refreshment), p. 135_b_. \u201cOcean\u201d and immersion therein, pp. 59_b_,\n60_b_.\n\n[432] _Vita_, pp. 78_c_, 79_a_.\n\n[433] Thus _Vita_ (_Dialogo_), p. 266_a_ = _Vita_ (proper), p. 117_b_,\n_c_; and _Vita_ (_Dialogo_), p. 266_c_ = _Vita_ (proper), pp. 120_b_,\n117_b_.\n\n[434] _Dialogo_, p. 234_b_.\n\n[435] _Dialogo_, p. 241_b_.\n\n[436] _Ibid._ p. 260_b_.\n\n[437] _Vita_, p. 268_c_.\n\n[438] _Ibid._ p. 269_c_.\n\n[439] _Ibid._ p. 270_b_.\n\n[440] _Dialogo_, p. 212_c_; and here, p. 146.\n\n[441] _Ibid._ p. 273_a_.\n\n[442] _Ibid._ p. 275_a_.\n\n[443] _Dialogo_, p. 250_b_.\n\n[444] _Vita_, p. 97_b_: \u201cThis creature would appear with a countenance\nlike unto a Cherub; she gave great consolation to every one who gazed\nupon her, and those who visited her knew not how to depart from her.\u201d\nAnd pp. 94_b_-95_c_. See here, pp. 159-161.\n\n[445] _Ibid._ pp. 231_a_; 242_b_; 248_c_; 249_a_.\n\n[446] See here, pp. 327-329.\n\n[447] See here, pp. 353, 354.\n\n[448] _Dialogo_, pp. 242_b_; 221_b_; 232b; _Vita_-proper, 117_c_,\n118_a_.\n\n[449] _Vita_-proper, pp. 101_b_; _Dialogo_, 247_b_.\n\n[450] _Dialogo_, p. 248_c_; _Vita_-proper, 76_a_.\n\n[451] _Dialogo_, p. 259_c_.\n\n[452] _Ibid._ 266_b_.\n\n[453] _Dialogo_, p. 264_b_; and here, pp. 349-351, 360.\n\n[454] _Vita_, p. 144_c_.\n\n[455] First seven Chapters: _Vita_, pp. 169_b_-75_c_. Last ten\nchapters: _Ibid._ pp. 175_c_-184_c_.\n\n[456] See here, pp. 140, 141.\n\n[457] Denzinger, _Enchiridion Definitionum_, ed. 1888, p. 178, No. 38:\n\u201cAnimae in Purgatorio non sunt securae de earum salute saltem omnes;\nnec probatum est, ullis aut rationibus aut Scripturis, ipsas esse extra\nstatum merendi aut augendae charitatis.\u201d\n\n[458] His Epitaph, in the Church of the Annunciation, at Sturla,\njust outside Genoa, is given in full in Pescetto\u2019s _Biografia Medica\nLigure_, Genova, 1846, p. 104.\n\n[459] MS. A, p. 348 = Pr. L., 155_b_, 156_b_.\n\n[460] Pr. _Vita_, pp. 155_b_, _c_, 156_a_.\n\n[461] _Padre_: pp. 117_b_, 118_b_; _Figliuolo_, pp. 99_b_; 94_b_, _c_,\n95_a_, _b_; 122_c_.\n\n[462] _Madre_, pp. 98_c_; 94_b_, _c_, 95_a_, _b_ (twice).\n\n[463] _Vita_, pp. 50_b_, 37_a_-38_a_; 61_c_, 62_a_; 83_a_; 92_a_.\n\n[464] _Vita_, pp. 53_a_, 76_c_, 73_a_.\n\n[465] _Vita_, pp. 4_b_, 151_b_.\n\n[466] I derive all these titles from the Documents in the Curia\nArcivescovile of Genoa already referred to. The Editions 1568, 1601, I\nhave examined in the Ambrosian Library, Milan.\n\n[467] The Bull is given in full by Fr. Sticker: _Acta Sanctorum_,\nSept., Vol. V, ed. 1866, pp. 181 F-188 A. See there, p. 183 B, E. In\nthe former passage the double description is rightly attributed to\nthe same event; and the contradiction between them is ably eliminated\nby the Bull\u2019s words: \u201cShe seemed to herself to behold the image of\nthe suffering Saviour\u201d (instead of _Vita_, p. 5_b_, \u201caffixed to the\nCross\u201d); and, in the latter passage, the description of her poverty is\nkept free from the extravagances of the _Dialogo_, pp. 220_c_, 221_c_.\n\nEND OF VOL. I\n\n_Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London and Bungay._","title":"The Mystical Element of Religion, as studied in Saint Catherine of Genoa and her friends, Volume 1 (of 2)","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":194963}