Full text of "Saint Catherine of Siena : a study in the religion, literature and history of the fourteenth century in Italy"

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

EPFIGIES S.CATHARINA SENENSIS, QVAM PICTOR
INPARIETE ECCLESIA S.DOMINICI DE SENIS,
DVM VIRGO EXTASIM PATIEBATVR,COLORIBVS
EXPRESSIT ANN.MCCCLXVII.

SAINT CATHERINE

OF SIENA

A STUDY IN THE RELIGION, LITERATURE

AND HISTORY OF THE FOURTEENTH

CENTURY IN ITALY

EDMUND G. GARDNER, M.A

Author of ' Dante's Ten Heavens,' ' The Story of Florence,*
' Dukes and Poets in Ferrara,' ' The King of Court Poets,' etc.

" Entriamo nella casa del cognosc'mento di not."

^^Ik

Irir

MCMVII

LONDON : J. M. DENT & CO.

NEW YORK: E. P. BUTTON & CO.

SEEN BY

PRE5SRVATICN

Richard Clay & Sons, Limited,

bread street hill, e.c., and

bungay, suffolk.

MY FRIEND

MAUD F. JERROLD

PREFACE

In this book I have not attempted to write the conventional
biography of a canonized saint, but a study in Italian history
centred in the work and personality of one of the most wonderful
women that have ever lived — the successor of Dante in the
literature and religious thought of Italy, the connecting link
between St. Francis of Assisi and Fra Girolamo Savonarola in the
strange pageant of the progress of the mystical chariot of the
Spouse, which the divine poet saw in part on the banks of
Lethe in the Earthly Paradise. While devoting my attention
mainly to Catherine's own work and her influence upon the
Italian politics of her age, I have endeavoured at the same time to
make my book a picture of certain aspects, religious and political,
of the fourteenth century in Italy — the epoch that immediately
followed the times of Dante, the stormy period in the history of
the Church of which Petrarca and Boccaccio witnessed the begin-
nings. It may, indeed, be said that so much attention has been
paid to Italian history of late years, and so many fresh sources of
original information made accessible in every direction, that a new
life of the woman who was the truest and most single-hearted
patriot of her age seems not only permissible, but even — from the
scientific point of view — necessary. In this undertaking, I have
been greatly aided by the manuscripts still preserved of Catherine's
letters, manuscripts full of unpublished matter which has hitherto
been unaccountably neglected, having apparently escaped the
notice of all her biographers and editors : matter which throws
; light upon every aspect of the Saint's genius, and has enabled me,
.at many points, to correct the hitherto accepted chronological
(order of her writings and the events in her life to which they
refer.

Our contemporary materials for the life of Catherine of Siena,
apart from isolated documents and the general history of her

PREFACE

times, are derived from five principal sources : the Vita or Legenda
(known as the Legenda prolixa^ or, in Italian, Leggenda maggiore) ;
the Processus ; the Suppkmentum ; the Legenda abbreviata [Leggenda
minore^ in Italian) ; and Catherine's own Letters.

(i) In 1384, four years after the Saint's death, Fra Raimondo
delle Vigne of Capua, who had been her third confessor and chief
director, and was then master-general of the Dominicans, began
his admirable history of her, the Vita by excellence, which, in
one of his letters, he calls : Sanctae Matris Catharinae eximia
Legenda. This was finished in 1395. Raimondo's Latin text was
first published in 1553 at Cologne (an edition now of the utmost
rarity), and has been re-edited by the Bollandists in the third
volume of the Acta Sanctorum for April. An Italian version,
begun by one of the Saint's secretaries, Neri di Landoccio
Pagliaresi, and finished by a native of Piacenza, whose name is
unknown, was printed at the Dominican convent of San Jacopo di
Ripoli near Florence, by Fra Domenico da Pistoia and Fra Piero
da Pisa, in 1477. Another edition, in which the second half of
the translation is identical with that of the editioprincepSy while the
first half (up to the middle of Part II. cap. x. par. 5 in Pecci's
version, or § 283 in the Acta Sanctorum) differs considerably, was
printed at Milan in 1489 ; it is evidently the complete translation
made by the anonymous scholar of Piacenza, at the bidding of
Don Stefano Maconi.^ Instead, however, of these, a compara-
tively modern translation by the Canonico Bernardino Pecci, first
published by Girolamo Gigli at Siena in 1707, may be said to
hold the field. While relying mainly on the Latin text of the
Legenda^ I have consulted the convenience of readers by giving
references to the divisions of part, chapter, and paragraph in
Pecci's version, the corresponding paragraphs in the Acta Sanctorum
being indicated in brackets. Although French, German, and
Spanish translations appeared in the sixteenth century, Raimondo's

^ Cf, F. Grottanelll, Introduction to the Leggenda minore, pp. ix.-xiv., where
however, it has escaped his notice that these two editions do not contain the same
translation. I have not been able to see the intermediate editions, Naples, 1478^
and Milan, 1488, respectively.

viii

PREFACE

complete work has never been translated into English. The lyf
of saint Katherin of Senis the blessid virgin ^ which Caxton printed,
contains only certain portions of it, freely rendered, with con-
siderable omissions. Says the translator in his preface : " I leve of
also poyntes of divynyte whiche passeth your understondyng and
touche only maters that longeth to your lernying." The version
by John Fenn, confessor to the English Augustinian nuns at
Louvain, first published in 1609, is translated from the abridged
Italian edition composed by the famous Dominican controversialist,
Fra Ambrogio Catarino Politi of Siena, in the middle of the
sixteenth century.

(2) Second in date and in importance to the Legenda comes
the Processus. The fact that, although she had not yet been
canonized by the Church, the feast of " a certain person called and
named the blessed Catherine of Siena " was being annually cele-
brated in the Dominican convents and churches of Venice and
elsewhere, and pictures of her were being painted for veneration
in many places, led to complaints being made to Francesco Bembo,
the Castello bishop of Venice. A sermon preached in SS.
Giovanni e Paolo by a certain Fra Bartolommeo da Ferrara
on the first Sunday of May, 141 1, led to him and Fra Tommaso
di Antonio Nacci CafFarini, one of Catherine's earliest followers
and most intimate associates, who was then a friar in that convent,
being summoned before the Bishop ; and the famous Processus
contestationum super sanctitate et doctrina heatae Catharinae de Senis
was the result. This is a collection of testimonies and letters by
Catherine's surviving followers, and others who had come under
her influence, edited (so to speak) by Fra Tommaso Caffarini
between 141 1 and 141 3, with a few later additions. Complete
manuscripts of this Process are preserved in the Biblioteca
Comunale of Siena (MS. T. i. 3) and the Biblioteca Casanatense
of Rome (MS. 2668, or XX. v. 10) ; the former dates from
the fifteenth century (but is not, as sometimes stated, the ori-
ginal), while the latter is a copy of it made in 17 10. Several
of the more important contestations, including those of Fra
Tommaso Caffarini himself, Fra Bartolommeo di Domenico, Don

PREFACE

Bartolommeo da Ravenna, and Don Stefano di Corrado Maconi,
were published by Martene and Durand (from a manuscript in
the Grande Chartreuse), in the sixth volume of their Veterum
Scriptorum et Monumentoruyn amplissima CoUectio. Three others of
the least important had already been given in Mansi's Appendix to
the fourth volume of Baluze's Miscellanea. The contestation of
Stefano Maconi is practically the Epistola Domni Stephani de gestis
et virtutihus S. Catharinae, to Fra Tommaso, given in its original
by the Bollandists in the volume cited of the Acta Sanctoruniy of
which an Italian version is prefixed to Aldo's edition of Catherine's
Letters and another appended to Pecci's translation of the Legenda.
But several contestations of the very first importance, including
those of Don Francesco di Vanni Malavolti, Pietro di Giovanni
Ventura, end Fra Simone da Cortona — all of whom had been of
the inner circle of Catherine's friends and associates — have never
been printed in the original, and have only been made use of, to
any considerable extent, by Augusta Drane, who had copies
specially made for the library of the Dominican nuns at Stone.
In the present volume, I refer to Martene and Durand as
Processus simply, while quoting the unpublished contestations
direct from the Casanatense manuscript, with occasional reference
to the codex of Siena.

(3) The public cult of Catherine being now, as the result of
the Process, firmly established and recognized by authority, the
indefatigable Fra Tommaso CafFarini, about the year 14 14, while
prior of San Domenico at Venice, composed a kind of appendix
or supplement to Fra Raimondo's great Legenda : the Libellus de
Supplemento legendae prolixae heatae Catharinae de Senis. This
work, which has never been published in its entirety, exists in a
fifteenth century manuscript in the Biblioteca Comunale of Siena
(MS. T. i. 2), and a copy, made in 1706 from the original MS.
(then in the Archivio di San Domenico), is preserved in the
Biblioteca Casanatense, the codex numbered 2360 (XX. vi. 36).!
The professed translation by Padre Ambrogio Ansano Tantucci,!
published at Lucca in 1754, is merely a paraphrase of certain]
portions of the work, with the translator's own comments anc

PREFACE

explanations inserted as though they were a portion of the original.
In the present volume, I refer to the Latin text in the Casanatense
manuscript as Supplementum^ and to Tantucci's version simply as
"Tantucci."

(4) Shortly after he compiled the Supplementum (to which he
refers), Fra Tommaso CafFarini wrote an abridgement in Latin of
Fra Raimondo's hegenda^ with a few slight additions and modifica-
tions based upon his own personal knowledge of Catherine's life
and acquaintance with Sienese matters. This was known as the
hegenda abbreviata^ and was printed (still further curtailed) as the
Epitome vitae beatae Caterinae [j/V] de Senis, in the first volume of
the collection of the lives of the Saints known as the Sanctuarium
of Boninus Mombritius, at Milan, in 1479. The Leggenda minore
is a beautiful Italian translation of the whole of Fra Tommaso's
Latin abridgement by Catherine's beloved disciple, Don Stefano
di Corrado Maconi, when prior of the Certosa of Pavia, a manifest
labour of love which brings the list of contemporary lives of the
Saint to an appropriate close. Don Stefano's work was published
by Grottanelli at Bologna in 1868, together with a most precious
collection of letters of Catherine's disciples and associates. It
appears to have escaped the notice of Grottanelli, and of every
one else as far as my knowledge extends, that (with the exception
of the prologue and first two chapters, for which free translations
of the second prologue and corresponding chapters of the Legenda
prolixa are substituted) it had already been printed in the fifteenth
century. A copy of this edition, without date or place of publica-
tion, is in the British Museum, and it is worth noting that the
" Sermone a laude della venerabile vergine," given at the end of
Grottanelli's work, appears in the older edition as the sixth chapter
of the third part, as a recapitulation, by way of conclusion, of
the contents of the book.

Besides these works, Fra Tommaso wrote, in collaboration
with Fra Bartolommeo di Domenico, a little-known treatise on
the Dominican third order of penance, and began a history of that
reformation of the Dominican rule in Venice, with which these
two friars, together with Fra Raimondo, were associated. These

PREFACE

appear to have been composed shortly before 1408, and were first
printed by Flaminio Cornaro, in vol. vii. of his Ecclesiae Venetae
antiquis monumentis illustratae^ Venice, 1 749. The latter, especially,
is full of most interesting documents and letters concerning the
lives of Catherine's disciples in the years immediately following
her death.

(5) Of St. Catherine's Letters, the originals of only six have
been preserved — none of them being in her own hand, but all
written at her dictation by one or other of her secretaries. Four
of these (two in a merely fragmentary condition) are in the
Biblioteca Comunale of Siena, in the famous manuscript numbered
T. iii. 3. ; they are the letters to Stefano Maconi and Pietro di
Giovanni Ventura, numbered 255, 258, 262, 264, in Gigli's
edition, and 319, 320, 329, 332 in that of Tommaseo. A fifth,
also addressed to Stefano Maconi (numbered 256 in Gigli and
365 in Tommaseo), belongs to the Confraternity of Santa Lucia
in Siena. The sixth, addressed to Jacomo di Viva, is among the
treasures left by the late Mr. Hartwell de la Garde Grissell to
the Jesuit church at Oxford, and was first published by Messrs.
Frank Rooke Ley and Arthur Francis Spender in an article con-
tributed by the latter to St. Peter's in 1899. It had not previously
been included in any printed edition of Catherine's works, nor
have I ever met with a copy of it in the manuscript collections.

In addition to these, there are a certain number of manuscripts i
containing copies of Catherine's letters, of which I have personally
studied eighteen. Nine of these contain hitherto unpubHshed
matter : in the Biblioteca Casanatense at Rome, MSS. 292 and
2422 ; in the Biblioteca Riccardiana at Florence, MS. 1303 ;
in the Biblioteca Nazionale at Florence, MSS. xxxv. 199,
xxxviii. 130, Palat. 57, Palat. 58, Palat. 60 ; in the British
Museum, Harleian MS. 3480. The three Palatine MSS. and the
Harleian MS. are fifteenth century copies, in one case complete,
of the famous manuscript of the Saint's letters compiled by
Stefano Maconi, now lost, which was once preserved in the
Certosa of Pavia.

The first edition of Catherine's letters, published at Bologna

xii

PREFACE

in 1492, contains only thirty-one. Aldo Manuzio brought out
what is regarded as the editio princeps at Venice in 1 500, contain-
ing ostensibly 368 letters, but, in reality, allowing for repetitions,
350. This was the basis of three other editions printed at Venice
in the sixteenth century; in 1548 (Toresano), 1562 ("al segno
della Speranza "), and 1584 (Domenico Farri), respectively.
In Girolamo Gigli's monumental Opere della Serafica Santa
Caterina da Siena, the letters, illustrated by the learning of Padre
Federigo Burlamacchi, occupy volumes ii. and iii. (Siena, 17 13,
Lucca, 1721) ; in this edition, which still remains the standard
one, the number is brought up to 373. Niccolo Tommaseo's
convenient edition in four volumes, published at Florence in
i860, is practically a reprint of Gigli and Burlamacchi, the letters
being differently arranged, with a somewhat modernized and not
always judiciously amended text.^ A new and critical edition of
Catherine's letters is greatly needed. In the following pages,
for convenience of reference, I give the numbers in Tommaseo's
edition, with those of Gigli in brackets, but, as far as possible,
have revised the text of my quotations by collation with the
manuscripts.

From the very outset, the biographical and historical value of
Catherine's letters has been, to a considerable extent, impaired by
the copyists (and the editors who followed them) omitting or
suppressing passages which appeared to them of merely temporary
interest, or not tending immediately to edification. A certain
number appear to have been deliberately expurgated, in cases
where the writer's burning words seemed likely to startle the
susceptibilities of the faithful. This process seems to date back
to the generation that immediately followed that of Catherine's
original disciples. A striking instance is seen in a certain letter,
of which the subject is sufficiently obvious, which Aldo introduces
with the rubric : " To one whose name it is better not to write,
because of certain words used in the letter. Let not whoso reads,
or hears it read, wonder if the sense seems to him broken ; for,

^ An excellent selection from the letters, based on Gigli's text, has been
published in English by Miss Vida D. Scudder (London, 1905).

xiii

PREFACE

where et cetera is written, many words are passed over, which it is
not meet that every one should know, nor even the name of him
to whom it went." ^ Neither these words nor the omissions are
due to Aldo himself ; the same heading occurs in every manu-
script containing this letter which I have examined, and evidently
dates back to the end of the fourteenth century. Other letters,
th®ugh for different reasons, have been subjected to a similar
process, with the general result that, even in the editions of Gigli
and Tommaseo, the text is still sadly corrupt and too often
mutilated. The printed versions of several apparently short
letters are little more than the devout exhortations with which
Catherine usually opened her correspondence, the real substance
of what she had to say being in these cases still unpublished. Of
peculiar interest and importance in this connection are two
manuscripts which have hitherto strangely escaped the notice of
students : the Casanatense MS. 292, and the MS. numbered
xxxviii. 130 in the Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze ; both of which
were evidently copied direct from Catherine's original letters.
The former contains the full text of a number of those written in
her name from Rome by Barduccio Canigiani ; the latter the
authentic and complete version of her correspondence with the
Florentine tailor, Francesco di Pippino, and his wife, Monna
Agnese, after the Saint's final departure from Florence. In an
appendix to the present volume, besides six entirely new letters of
St. Catherine, I print two of these latter in full, by comparison
of which with the previously published versions, the reader may
estimate the amount of work still to be done by whoso would
restore to the world the true and complete correspondence of the
seraphic virgin. I am not without hope of myself ultimately
undertaking this task, unless some scholar in Italy should, in the
meanwhile, accomplish it.

Catherine's great literary work, the Dialogo, was published at

Bologna in 1472, at Naples in 1478, and at Venice in 1494.

A number of editions were printed at Venice in the course

of the sixteenth century. It was translated into Latin by Ser

^ Letter 21 (306). CL Dialogo, cap. 124.

xiv

PREFACE

Cristofano dl Gano Guidini and by Fra Raimondo ; the former's
version remains in manuscript at Siena ; that of Fra Raimondo was
printed at Brescia in 1496, and at Cologne in 1553 and 1601.
An English rendering of Fra Raimondo's Latin version, entitled
'The Orcharde of Syon^ by Brother Dane James, was printed by
Wynkyn de Worde in 15 19. The vernacular text was reprinted
by Gigli as the fourth volume of the Opere^ in 1707, from a con-
temporary, but curiously inaccurate and incomplete manuscript,
which he somewhat too readily accepted as the work of Stefano
Maconi. In all these editions the Italian text is unsatisfactory ;
but, though there have been alterations and some serious omissions
made (amounting in one place, in every edition later than that
published at Venice in 15 17, to the greater part of two chapters),
there has been no deliberate attempt at expurgation even in the
most outspoken of its passages.^ In making my quotations from
the Dialogo^ I have occasionally adopted a somewhat eclectic text,
but have derived great assistance from the beautiful manuscript
of Catherine's vernacular from the Biblioteca Barberini, now
in the Vatican {Cod. Barb. Lat. 4063), which gives in many
respects a much better reading than the printed versions, and
one which is in more general accordance with Fra Raimondo's
Latin interpretation of the work.

There is also ascribed to Catherine a short treatise on " Con-
summate Perfection," in somewhat the same form as the Dialogo ;
a kind of spiritual conversation between the soul and her Creator
upon the complete abnegation of self and the perfect fulfilling of
the will of God. It was printed in Latin at Lyons in 1552, under
the title : Dialogus brevis Sanctae Catharinae Senensis^ consummaiam
continens perfectionem.^ The Italian original has never been dis-
covered, and only one manuscript of the Latin version appears to
be known. An Italian translation, by Alessandro Piccolomini,

1 The Dialogo was well translated by Mr. Algar Thorold (London, 1896) ;
but his new and abridged edition (London, 1907), which has the ecclesiastical
imprimatur, omits the greater part of the terrible Trattato delle Lagrime.

2 Alphonsus Rodriguez, the Jesuit mystic, refers to it as St. Catherine's in his
Christian Perfection, Pt. viii. cap. 12.

PREFACE

was published by Gigli as an appendix to his edition of the Dialogo,
and was freely rendered into English by Augusta Drane. None
of the Saint's early biographers or contemporaries make any
mention of this work, which adds nothing to our knowledge of
the thought and doctrine of the seraphic virgin. In the absence
of any external evidence in its favour, I am disposed to regard its
authenticity as highly questionable.

In dealing with the two great political struggles in which
Catherine was engaged, I am much indebted to Alessandro
Gherardi, La Guerra dei Fiorentini con Papa Gregorio XI, as also
to his edition of the Diario d'Anonimo Fiorentino, and to the
masterly work of M. Noel Valois, La France et le Grand Schisme
d' Occident. The pieces justificatives published by the Abbe Gayet
have often proved most useful. I have, however, in many cases
preferred to go directly to the original documents bearing upon
the Great Schism, still existing in the Archivio Segreto of the
Vatican, by the aid of which I am able to give a somewhat full
account of the origin of that extraordinary event.

My grateful thanks are due to the authorities and officials
of the Vatican Archives and Vatican Library, of the Biblioteca
Casanatense and Biblioteca Vittorio Emanuele at Rome, of the
Biblioteca Nazionale and Biblioteca Riccardiana of Florence, and
of the Biblioteca Comunale of Siena, for their kind assistance
and never-failing courtesy ; as also to the Canonico Vittorio
Lusini of the Duomo of Siena, whose works on the churches of
his native city are so highly valued by all students of Sienese
matters, for his kindness in enabling me to have the oppor-
tunity of a more intimate study of the original letter of Saint
Catherine to Stefano Maconi, now a treasured possession of the
Confraternity of Santa Lucia in Siena.

E. G. G.

Siena,

In festo Nativitatis B. M. V.

xvi

CONTENTS

I. CATHERINE'S HIDDEN LIFE
II. FROM DANTE TO SAINT CATHERINE

III. THE VALLEY OF LILIES .

IV. THE COMING OF URBAN THE FIFTH
V. THE SPIRITUAL FELLOWSHIP .

VI. FROM THE CELL TO THE WORLD
VII. UNDER A DARKENING SKY
VIII. BETWEEN FLORENCE AND AVIGNON .
IX. FROM THE BABYLON OF THE WEST .
X. THE ANGEL OF PEACE .
XL CATHERINE S LAST EMBASSY TO FLORENCE
XII. THE BEGINNING OF THE SCHISM

XIII. FROM SIENA TO ROME .

XIV. ON THE FIELD OF BATTLE
XV. THE PASSAGE FROM THE WORLD

XVI. CATHERINE'S LITERARY WORK
XVII. THE DISSOLUTION OF THE FELLOWSHIP

27
47
61
gi

100
128

153
178
201

228

252
281
304
329

353
386

APPENDIX
UNPUBLISHED LETTERS OF SAINT CATHERINE

BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX .

407

+23
429

XVll

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

St. Catherine of Siena. (From an Engraving) . . Frontispiece

Giovanni Colombini. By Sane di Pietro. (Accademia,

Siena) ........ Facing page 64

St. Bridget of Sweden giving her Rule. By G. A.
Sogliani. (Uffizi, Florence. The chief kneeling figure
on the right is Bridget's daughter, St. Catherine of
Sweden) . . . , „ 103

A Page of the Harleian MS. 3480, showing a portion
OF St. Catherine's Letter to Bartolommeo di
Smeduccio. (British Museum) . . . . „ 140

The Ecstasy of St. Catherine. By G. A. Bazzi.

(San Domenico, Siena) . . . . . . „ 192

St. Catherine in Prayer. By Domenico Beccafumi.

(Accademia, Siena) ........ 240

St. Catherine of Siena. By Andrea di Vanni. (San

Domenico, Siena) ........ 298

Letter from St. Catherine to Stefano Maconi.

(Biblioteca Comunale di Siena, MS. T. iii. 3) . • „ 352

The Monks of the Certosa. By Ambrogio Bor-

gognone. (Scuola di Belle Arti, Pavia) . . . „ 392

XIX

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

CHAPTER I
CATHERINE'S HIDDEN LIFE

" Soprastare alle passioni ed atti di tanta gioventudine pare alcuno parlare fabuloso."
— Dante, Vita Nuova, § z.

"O stupor! O admiratio I O inaudita a seculis nostris familiaritatls ostensiol"—
Raimondo da Capua, Legenda^ § II2.

Caterina Benincasa, whom we now call Saint Catherine of
Siena, was born on March 25, 1347 — the Feast of the Annunci-
ation, which, according to Florentine and Sienese reckoning, was
the first day of the new year. It was one hundred and twenty
years since Saint Francis had died at Assisi in the arms of Lady
Poverty, his mystical bride, and a quarter of a century since Dante
had passed away in exile at Ravenna, again to behold Beatrice in
the empyrean heaven of which he sang. These two men are
Catherine's elder brothers in the spirit ; the seraphic Father of
Assisi, Standard-bearer of the Crucified, as the voice in the high
vision on La Verna had hailed him, is her predecessor in the
mystical life ; she is the successor of the poet of the Divina
Commedia in the history of religious thought in Italy.

Of her contemporaries, Francesco Petrarca was then nearly
forty-three years old. Crowned six years before as poet laureate
on the Capitol, he was now the literary dictator of Italy, but, in
the year of Catherine's birth, was back in his Provencal home at
Vaucluse, fighting with the Naiads (as he poetically puts it) who
had destroyed his garden on the bank of the Sorgue during his
long absence across the Alps. It was probably in this very year
that he finished the first part of his Canzoniere for Madonna
Laura with the sonnet " Arbor vittoriosa, triunfale," and he was
about to open the second, nobler and more spiritual series of
lyrics with the sublime canzone, " I' vo pensando " : " For, with
death at my side, I seek a new rule for my life, and I see the
I

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

better but cling to the worse." Giovanni Boccaccio was thirty-
four years old, and not yet the author of the Decameron. He
had written his early prose romance and poems, had deserted or
been deserted by his Fiammetta, and was now either at Florence
or (as seems more likely) in Romagna at Forli, under the
protection of Francesco degli Ordelaffi. Geoffrey Chaucer,
according to the most recent theories of the date of his birth,
was a little boy of seven. Edward III of England had won the
battle of Crecy in the previous year. Charles of Luxemburg,
King of Bohemia, unworthy grandson of Dante's adored Henry,
and son of the heroic blind King John who had fallen at Crecy,
had been elected Holy Roman Emperor as Charles IV. From
Avignon, Pierre Roger de Beaufort misruled the Church of
Christ and profaned the throne of the Fisherman, under the
title of Pope Clement VI.

The condition of Italy had altered but little since Dante had
written his famous lament in the sixth canto of the Purgatorio.
She was still *' hostelry of sorrow," and not yet again " lady of
provinces." " O wonderful poet," writes Catherine's contem-
porary, Benvenuto da Imola, "would that thou couldst come
to life again now ! Where is peace, where is liberty, where is
tranquillity in Italy ? Thou wouldst readily see, O Dante, that
in thy time certain particular evils oppressed her ; but these,
indeed, were small and few ; for thou dost enumerate among the
woes of Italy the lack of a monarch and the discord of certain
families ; whereas now worse things oppress us, so that I can say
of all Italy what thy Virgil said of one city : Crudelis uhique
luctuSy ubique pavor, et plurima mortis imago} Assuredly, Italy
suffered not such things in the time of Hannibal, nor in that of
Pyrrhus, nor in that of the Goths or the Lombards. For Attila
did not cross the Apennines, nor did Totila cross the Po, but
only wasted Apulia and Rome. With how much greater excuse
then, if it were lawful, could I cry out to the Almighty, than thou,
whose lot was cast in happy times which all we now living in
wretched Italy may well envy ? Let Him then, who can, now

1 JeneU, II. 368, 369.
2

CATHERINE'S HIDDEN LIFE

send the Vehro whom thou didst see in vision, if he is ever to
come." 1 Although *' Guelf " and " Ghibelline " had long lost all
significance, the factions continued. The Italian cities either
groaned beneath the heavy yoke of sanguinary tyrants, or, if they
still ruled themselves as free republics, were torn by internal dis-
sensions and harassed by fratricidal wars with their neighbours.
And the anarchy of the country was intensified by the presence of
the wandering companies of mercenary soldiers — Germans, Bretons,
English, Hungarians — now in the pay of some despot, now in that
of a republic, but always fighting for their own hands, levying large
ransoms from cities as the condition of not devastating their territory
and exposing the country-people to the horrors of famine*

The moral state of the land matched the political. The absence
of the Popes, the example of the evil lives of the ministers of the
Church, the growing immorality of high and low, were bringing
religious life to a standstill in Italy. The Franciscan revival was
utterly a thing of the past, while the encyclical letters of the
Generals of the Dominicans testify to the deplorable degeneration
of the Friars Preachers.^ There is abundant evidence in the
Revelations of Birgitta, and in the Dialogue of Catherine herself,
that moral corruption was rampant in the convents and monasteries,
amongst men and women alike. Many of the secular priests
openly kept concubines ; others were usurers ; not a few followed
the example of that bishop recorded by Dante, who was trasmutato
d* Arm in Bacchiglione^ ** translated from Florence to Vicenza," and
did worse.^ The spirit of worldliness, of wickedness in high places,
stalked unabashed through the Church, while the three Beasts of
Dante's allegory made their dens in the Papal Court.

In the year after Catherine's birth, 1348, the great Pestilence,

I brought, it was said, in two Genoese galleys from the East, swept

over Italy, Provence, France, and Spain, and in the following year

spread to England and the rest of Europe. Giovanni Villani, the

^ Comentum super Dantis Jldigherii Comoediam^ iii. p. 181.
* Cf. especially the encyclicals of Simon Lingonensis (1359) ^"'l Elias Raimundi
(1368), Monumenta ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum historica, torn. v. pp. 299, 306,
' Cf. Inf. XV. 1 06-1 14 with the Dialogo, cap. 124.

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

chronicler who could speak of Dante Alighieri as "our neighbour,"
was among the victims at Florence ; the Laura of Petrarca's poetical
homage at Avignon ; Ambrogio Lorenzetti, the supreme painter
of allegory, at Siena. In Italy, the scourge did not rage every-
where with equal violence ; Milan and other cities near the Alps
suffered comparatively little ; Florence and Siena endured its
worst horrors. For the five months during which it devastated
these two cities, from April or May till the beginning or end
of September, all civic life was suspended, and about four-fifths
of the population perished. Peculiarly appalling is the account
given by the Sienese chronicler, Agnolo di Tura. Men and
women felt the fatal swelling, and suddenly, while they spoke,
fell dead. All natural and religious bonds seemed annihilated.
Without any ecclesiastical ceremony, the abandoned dead were
thrown indiscriminately into great trenches hastily dug in different
parts of the city, and roughly covered up with a little earth to
keep them from the dogs. *' And I, Agnolo di Tura, called
Grasso, buried five of my sons in one trench with my own hands."
Men said that the end of the world had come. Bernardo Tolomei,
the founder of the Olivetani, came down with his white-robed
monks from the security of secluded Monte Oliveto, to labour
among the sufferers in the streets of Siena and the other Tuscan
cities, and, with many of his brethren, died in the work. He
had fewer imitators in his own city than among the Florentines.
Matteo Villani, who took up his brother's pen, tells us that at
Florence many who devoted their lives to the service of the plague-
stricken either escaped entirely, or, if they took the infection,
recovered, and their example encouraged others to similar charitable
effort. To him it seemed like a second universal deluge, sent as
a divine punishment for the sins of men.^ It is, indeed, in some

^ Matteo Villani, i. i, 2 ; Cronica Sanese, coll. 123, 124 ; II PoHstore {Rer. It.
Scri/>f.f xx.\v.)f cap. 32 ; Cronica di Pisa, coll. 1020, 1021. The statements of
contemporaries that 80,000 persons died in Siena, and 96,000 in Florence —
incredibly appalling though they seem — are probably more or less accurate.
During the decade preceding the pestilence, the population of Florence was
between 120,000 and 125,000. The survivors numbered not more than 30,000.
In 1 35 1, the population of Florence was still under 50,000. Cf. N. Rodolico,

CATHERINE'S HIDDEN LIFE

sort, a black flood across the ages, severing the Italy that had
been Dante's from the Italy that was to be Catherine's.

Petrarca, as we know from the famous note on the margin of
his Virgil, was at Parma when the news of Laura's death reached
him ; his Trionfo della Morte idealizes this fearful time into an
impassioned homily on the transitoriness of all earthly greatness.
Boccaccio was apparently at Naples, where, in the following year,
he began his 'Decameron with the rhetorical description of the
pestilence at Florence, the details of which he had not personally
witnessed. The passed horrors had no permanent effect for good
on men's minds, and those who believed that a great renovation
of the world would ensue were speedily disillusioned. Restraint
and convention had been cast off; riot and excess of every kind
followed among the survivors. The deserted streets rang with
the shouts of revellers or echoed to the fierce cries of brawlers.
Lust, pride, and avarice tightened their grasp on men's souls.
" Without any restraint," writes Matteo Villani, " almost all our
city plunged into evil living, and the same and worse did the other
cities of the world. And, according to the tidings that we could
hear, there was no part in which those who had escaped from the
divine anger lived in continence, but as though they deemed the
hand of God was weary." Scarcity and famine followed in many
places ; work kept for long at a standstill ; everywhere dissensions
and quarrels arose over questions of heritage and succession. Not
even the characteristic gaiety of the Sienese could hide the appalling
desolation of their city : per Siena non pareva che fusse personal
The cynical and shameless stories of the Decameron paint the cor-
ruption of the following years with the master's hand. Exagger-
I ation, doubtless, there is, and the writer's hatred of the priests and
their allies has coloured his pen ; but the reader of certain terrible
chapters of Catherine's Dialogue^ written not quite thirty years
llater, will find only too striking confirmation of Boccaccio's
ktestimony.

La Democrazia Fiorentina nel suo tramonto, pp. 29-39. These figures do not include
the contado.

^ Cf. M. Villani, i. 4, 5 ; Cronica Sanese, coll. 124, 125.

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

The house in which Catherine was born still stands, albeit
transfigured — not irreverently nor impiously — by generations of
worshippers, on the side of that third of Siena's hills that rises
opposite the Duomo over the deep and fragrant Vallepiatta, the
hill which is crowned by the great red-brick church of the Friars
Preachers, San Domenico. A little further down towards one of
the city gates, a gate famous in the annals of Siena's wars, is " her
deep green spring," Fonte Branda, from which we can still, with
the poet of the Songs before Sunrise^ gaze " up the sheer street " : —

" And the house midway hanging see
That saw Saint Catherine bodily,
Felt on its floors her sweet feet move,
And the live light of fiery love
Burn from her beautiful strange face."

Catherine's family belonged to the class and faction known as
the Dodicini^ or popolo minore, "to wit, of that rank of people
that then ruled and governed the city of Siena." Her father,
Jacomo di Benincasa, was a dyer, a simple and God-fearing citizen,
pure in heart and gentle in speech, such a one as Giotto or Simone
Martini might have painted for one of the first followers of Him
whom men reputed the carpenter's son of Nazareth. Her mother,
Lapa di Puccio di Piagente, was the daughter of a citizen of the
same class of life, who seems to have been also a poet — as many
a popolano of that time in Tuscany was : " a woman," writes Fra
Raimondo, " utterly alien from the corruption of our times, albeit
she was exceedingly careful and busy over the affairs of her house-
hold and family, as all those who know her are aware, for she is
still alive." At the time of the Saint's childhood, her father was
a fairly rich man, and the family all lived together in the house
where his workshop was. All that part of Siena is still redolent
with the aroma of the dyers' and tanners' labours, and the strange,
pleasant smell links the past and present of the people of the city,
whose maiden daughter, in Raimondo's phrase, "was made the
bride of the King of Heaven."

Lapa bore Jacomo a very large family of children. The names
are known of five sons : Benincasa, Bartolommeo, Sandro, Niccolo,

CATHERINE'S HIDDEN LIFE

and Stefano ; and five daughters older than Catherine : NIccoluccia,
Maddalena, Bonaventura, Lisa, and Nera. Bartolommeo, the
second son, married Lisa di Golio (or, according to others, di
Chimento) Colombini, who appears to have been a first cousin of
Giovanni Colombini (the founder of the Gesuati)^ and who was
destined to be very closely associated with Catherine in her life
and work.^ Of the daughters, Niccoluccia and Maddalena married
Palmiero di Nese della Fonte and Bartolo di Vannino, respectively.
Such was the refined purity of the atmosphere of the dyer's house
that when Bonaventura, the third daughter, married a certain
Niccolo di Giovanni Tegliacci, she was so appalled by the licen-
tiousness of the conversation of her husband and his young friends
that she fell seriously ill, and was only restored to health by her
husband's conversion. This Bonaventura was Catherine's favourite
sister. A twin-sister, christened Giovanna, was born at the same
time as Catherine, but died shortly after. From her birth, the
Saint, who was the only one of her younger children that Lapa
was able herself to nourish, was the chief darling and best beloved
of her mother out of all the family. She is usually stated to have
been the youngest, but Raimondo says : *' After Lapa had brought
forth Catherine, she gave birth to another girl, who was called
Giovanna, to renew the memory of the departed sister of Catherine ;
and this was the last, after she had given birth to twenty-five
children." 2 This second Giovanna, or Nanna, died when Catherine
was sixteen years old ; the entry in the Libro de' Morti of San
Domenico runs : " Nanna filia Jacobi Tinctoris sepulta est die
xviii Aprilis, 1363."

As she grew up in childhood, Catherine became the darling
of all the district round. " Verily," writes Fra Raimondo, " the

1 Cf. G. Pardl, Della Vita e degli Scrim di Giovanni Colombini. Giovanni
sends a message to Lisa in one of his letters (addressed to their cousin, Caterina
di Tommaso Colombini, who founded the Gesuate nuns). Lisa's twin-sister
Francesca, like her, became a Dominican tertiary.

2 Legenda, I. ii. I (§ 26). The Leggenda minore (p. 10) makes Catherine
Lapa's youngest child. Cf. Grottanelli, Albero della Famiglia Benincasa, in vol. i.
of Tommaseo's edition of the Letters.

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

wisdom and the prudence of her talk, the sweetness of her holy-
conversation, nor tongue nor pen could easily describe. Those
alone know it who experienced it. Not only her speech, but also
her whole bearing had a strange power, whereby the minds of men
were in such wise drawn to good and to delight in God, that all
sadness was excluded from the hearts of those who conversed with
her, and every mental weariness was driven out ; nay, even the
memory of all troubles departed, and so unwonted and so great
a tranquillity of soul took ^wf place, that each one, marvelling at
himself, rejoiced with a new sort of joy, saying in his mind : It
is good for us to be here, let us make here three tabernacles."
We are surely back in the atmosphere of the Vita Nuova ; not
otherwise had Dante sung of his Beatrice in those golden sonnets
of his youth ; and even as the glorious lady of his mind " was
called by many Beatrice who knew not what they were calling
her," so many in Siena felt such delight in Catherine's childish
wisdom and in her company " that, by a certain excess of joy,
they took from her her proper name, calling her not Catherine
but Eufrosina; nor know I by what instinct." ^ And even as
" the name of that blessed queen Mary was in very great reverence
in the words of this blessed Beatrice," so from her fifth year
Catherine practised the most complete devotion to the Blessed
Virgin, kneeling to salute her on every step as she passed up or
down the staircase of her father's house.

To such a child, in such an age, visions began to come as a
matter of course. She was in her sixth year when, as she returned
with her brother Stefano from the^house of their sister Bonaven-
tura, and passed down the steep Vallepiatta towards the valley of
Fontebranda, she looked up and saw, over the summit of the
church of San Domenico, Christ seated on an imperial throne,
clad in the papal robes, and wearing the tiara, attended by Sts.
Peter and Paul, and the beloved disciple, John. He smiled upon
her and blessed her, and the girl was absorbed in ecstasy, knew
not where she was or what she did, until her brother, calling and
pulling her by the hand, brought her back to the sounds of earth.
1 Legenda, I. ii. 2 (§ 27). Cf. Vita Nuova, § § 2, 21. «

CATHERINE'S HIDDEN LIFE

Then she grew silent, began to abstain from food and cruelly
to afflict her flesh, wandered to woods and caves to imitate the
ancient anchorites of the desert, dreamed of entering the Dominican
order in the disguise of a boy, or gathered other little girls of the
same age around her, to join in her prayers and discipline them-
selves together with her. Burning every day more and more with
the fire of divine love, she consecrated her virginity to Christ.
This, in after years, she told her confessors, was when she was
seven years old — which we shouldjfjprhaps, interpret as wc do
Dante's statement of the beginning of his love for Beatrice : " It
was about the beginning of her ninth year when she appeared to
mc, and I saw her about the end of my ninth year."

But, when she had passed the age of twelve and was considered
marriageable according to the customs of Siena, her sister Bona-
ventura, whom she loved exceedingly, and to whom she could refuse
nothing, at their mother's instigation persuaded her to change for a
while her mode of life, to dye her hair and adorn her person, dress
becomingly, and conform with the fashions of their little world.
She bewailed this bitterly in after times as a grievous sin, and
did heavy penance for it, accusing herself of having loved her
sister more than God ; nor could all the comfortable exhortations
of Fra Raimondo make her see it in any other light. Bonaventura
died in August, 1362, and Catherine at once returned to her
former mode of life. This, however, her father and brothers
would not permit, especially after the death of the elder sister,
whose husband had been a man of some importance among the
adherents of the faction in Siena to which they belonged. They
were resolved upon finding a husband for Catherine whose alliance
would strengthen the position of their family in the city. Finding
her, as they deemed, obstinate and undutiful, they had recourse
to a certain Fra Tommaso della Fonte, one of the friars of San
Domenico, who had been brought up in their house and was
probably a relation of the husband of Catherine's sister Niccoluccia.

This Fra Tommaso is the first of those sons of St. Dominic
with whom Catherine was brought into contact — a group of
wortl^ men who, in the midst of all the ecclesiastical corruption

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

that surrounded them, maintained their single-hearted faith and
religious fervour unimpaired, and found in the scholasticism of the
Angelical Doctor a sufficient answer for all the problems of the
time. Fra Tommaso was Catherine's first confessor, and seems to
have written some account of her life, as far as it came under his
observation, which was incorporated into Fra Raimondo's great
Legenda. Finding her resolute, he bade her follow her inspiration,
and counselled her to cut off her beautiful hair, as a sign to her
family that her intention was fixed. The inevitable domestic perse-
cution followed. Catherine's room was taken from her, and she
was compelled to do all the menial drudgery of the house, the
servant being sent away, in order that she might have neither time
nor place for prayer and devotion. Abuse and reproaches were
heaped upon her, and every unkindness shown her, in order to
break down this seeming obstinacy. But all in vain. Thrown back
upon herself, the girl invented the refuge that she was ever to
urge upon her disciples that they, too, should find, and which could
never be taken from them : the cell of self-knowledge. " She
made herself in her mind, by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, a
secret cell, out of which she resolved never to go by reason of
any external occupation. So it befell that she who, when formerly
she had her exterior cell, sometimes stayed within and sometimes
issued forth, now that she had made this inner cell that could not
be taken from her, never left it." All unkindness, all reproaches,
she bore sweetly and cheerfully. " She told me that she firmly
pictured to herself that her father represented Our Lord and
Saviour Jesus Christ ; her mother the most glorious Mother of
God ; and that her brothers and the rest of the household figured
the holy Apostles and Disciples. And, because of this imagination,
she served them all with such great gladness and diligence, that
every one marvelled." ^ Nor did her visions desert her. In a
dream she thought she saw St. Dominic holding in one hand a
white lily, which, like the bush seen by Moses, burned and
was not consumed, and with the other offering her the black
and white habit of the Dominican tertiaries, the Sisters of

1 Legenda, I. iv. 5» 6 (§ § 49, 50).
10

CATHERINE'S HIDDEN LIFE

Penance, promising that she should be vested in it as she
desired.

Jacomo di Benincasa had by this time been convinced that
his daughter's conduct had a higher sanction, and was not
prompted by any childish caprice. He had come upon her
unawares, as she prayed in the room of her brother Stefano (the
only brother who was still unmarried), and had seen a snow-white
dove hovering over her head. And, so, when the girl, ordinarily
bashful and silent, suddenly revealed to all the family her vow and
her unalterable resolution of having Christ alone for her Spouse,
he bade her follow the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, for she
would meet with no more opposition from him, and enjoined on
all the household to leave her in perfect liberty to serve her Divine
Bridegroom as she thought fit.

" Then, having obtained this full and long-desired liberty of
serving God, the virgin, already entirely dedicated to Him, began
zealously and wonderfully to order all her life in the divine
service. She asked and obtained a small room separate from the
others, in which, as though in the solitude, she could devote
herself to God, and afflict her body according to her desire.
Here no tongue could narrate with what rigour of penitence she
afflicted her body, and with what eagerness of love she sought
the countenance of her Spouse. In this little chamber were
renewed the olden time works of the holy fathers of Egypt, and
all the more wondrously, inasmuch as they were done in her
father's house, without any human teaching, example, or guidance."^

In order to make this liberty still more secure, Catherine
shortly after took the habit of the Sisters of Penance of St.
Dominic, called in Siena the Mantellate — the white robe of
innocence and the black mantle of humility in which we still see
her clad in the pictures. These Mantellate were not nuns, strictly
speaking, but devoted themselves to the service of God in their
own homes. At first the sisters refused to receive a maiden into
their number, as their order was then composed only of widows ;
but at length, when Catherine lay ill and assured her mother that,

1 Ibid., I. vi. I (§ 57).
II

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

if her desire was not fulfilled, God and St. Dominic would take
her from the world, they told Lapa they would grant her daughter's
request, provided the girl was not too beautiful. Their represen-
tatives being reassured upon this point (for she was temporarily,
but completely, disfigured by her illness), and immensely edified
by her conversation, they accepted her as a sister ; and, on her
recovery to health, she received the habit from one of the Dominican
friars who acted as director of the sisterhood at San Domenico
in the Cappella delle Volte — that little chapel still so fragrant
with her spirit. There is some small difference of opinion as
to the date of her thus taking the habit, but I think it was most
probably about the beginning of 1363.

Then began that wonderful life of almost incredible austerity
and of mystical communings with the unseen, that made the whole
existence of this young maiden of the people seem a new, unheard-
of miracle. As far as the austerities were concerned, however, she
was only continuing what she had already begun as soon as her
family had granted her her liberty.

Gradually abstaining from one thing after another, Catherine
freed herself from all dependence on food or sleep. In a short
while, she could easily restrict herself to raw herbs, a little bread,
and water. Then the bread was left out, and she ate only the
herbs. Soon even that became a torment to her, and she seems
often for a long time to have lived upon the Blessed Sacrament of
the Altar alone. " In the time during which I was allowed to be
the witness of her life," writes Fra Raimondo, *' she lived without
any nourishment of food or drink ; aided by no natural power,
she ever sustained, with a joyous countenance, pains and labours
that would have been insupportable to others." In these later
years she would usually, to avoid scandal (for while these things
seemed miracles to Fra Raimondo and his friends, others, of no
less repute in the spiritual life, cried out against them), sip a little
water and force herself to chew some coarse food, but always with
great physical suffering.^ She slept on a bare board. At first

^ On one occasion, to avoid singularity, she appears to have asked the Pope
to impose a rigid fast of bread and water upon her, as a condition of gaining an

CATHERINE'S HIDDEN LIFE

she wore a hair-shirt, but, characteristically dreading the least trace
of uncleanliness, she changed it for a chain of steel, which she
fastened so tightly round her sides that it pierced the skin and
lacerated her tender flesh. Towards the end of her life, Fra
Raimondo compelled her, in virtue of holy obedience, to lay it
aside, which she did, albeit unwillingly. Gradually she overcame
the need of sleep, until at times she would only have half-an-hour
in the space of two days and two nights — and this she told her
confessor was the hardest of all her victories in this kind.
Especially, she loved to keep watch in prayer continuously while
the friars of San Domenico, whom she called her brothers, slept,
and then rest a little on her hard board when they rose to matins.
Not content with this, she would scourge herself with a little steel
discipline until the blood ran down from her shoulders to her feet.
" Three times a day, she shed the blood from her body to render
to her Redeemer blood for blood." Thus she, who had been an
exceptionally robust and healthy child (as her mother told Fra
Raimondo), became so attenuated and wasted that it seemed a
wonder that the ardent spirit could still be confined in so immaterial
a prison. In vain Lapa implored her to mitigate her austerities.
When once, shortly before her taking the Dominican habit, she
prevailed upon her daughter to accompany her to the Bagni of
Vignone, one of the famous hot baths of the contado, Catherine
waited till she was unobserved, and then exposed herself to the
flow of the boiling water, meditating the while on the torments of
Hell and Purgatory, beseeching the Creator to accept these pains
which she thus voluntarily endured, instead of those others which
(she said) her sins merited.

Thus Catherine became one of those saints, horrible and
repulsive to the eyes of many in an age that worships material
gain and physical comfort, who have ofi^ered themselves as a
sacrifice to the Eternal Justice for the sins of the world.

There have been other women who have borne the same

indulgence. Cf. Letter 228 (278), and the notes of Gigli and Tommaseo,
respectively, thereon. A detailed account, differing somewhat from Raimondo'3,
is given by Stefano Maconi, Epistola Domni Stepkani, § 18.

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

burden at different epochs in the Church's history — especially in
times of her greatest corruption — more frequently in the seclusion
of the cloister or in the poor hovels of the peasantry. Catherine
differs from such saints as Fina of San Gimignano and Lydwine
of Schiedam, almost her contemporaries, or Rose of Lima in later
times, inasmuch as this " existence of expiation " was only a small
portion of her life's work ; but the spirit that animated them in
their sufferings was the same. This has been admirably expressed
by a modern French writer, in the case of the young Dutch
woman who was born in the very year that Catherine died :
" She made expiation, even as the other saints of her age, for
the souls in Purgatory, for the abomination of the schism, for the
debauchery of the clergy and the monks, for the wickedness of
the peoples and the kings ; but, in addition to that obligation
which she accepted of repairing the sins committed from one end
of the Universe to the other, she had also the office laid upon
her of being the scapegoat of her own country." Such an
existence of expiation would be incomprehensible without a know-
ledge of the causes, the number, and the nature of the offences,
to make reparation for which here on earth was, in some sort,
her raison d'etre} For the salvation of others, Catherine was
prepared to endure the very pains of Hell. " ' How could I be
content, Lord,' she prayed, * if any one of those who have been
created to Thy image and likeness, even as I, should perish and
be taken out of my hands ^. I would not in any wise that even
one should be lost of my brethren, who are bound to me by
nature and by grace ; I am fain that the old enemy should lose
them all, and Thou gain them, to the greater praise and glory of
Thy name. Better were it for me that all should be saved, and
I alone (saving ever Thy charity) should sustain the pains of
Hell, than that I should be in Paradise and all they perish
damned ; for greater honour and glory of Thy name would it
be.' And she was answered by the Lord, as she secretly con-
fessed to me : * Charity cannot be in Hell, for it would destroy
it utterly ; it were easier for Hell to be destroyed than for Charity

^ J. K. Huysmans, Sainte Lydwine de Schiedam^ pp. 61-65.

CATHERINE'S HIDDEN LIFE

to exist with it.' Then she: ' If Thy truth and Thy justice
permitted it, I would that Hell were utterly destroyed, or at least
that no soul ever more should descend thither, and if (so I were
still united to Thy charity) I were put over the mouth of Hell
to close it, in such wise that none should ever more enter it,
much would I rejoice, so that all my neighbours might thus be
saved.' " ^ And, on another occasion, she prayed : " Lord, give
me all the pains and all the infirmities that there are in the world,
to bear in my body ; I am fain to offer Thee my body in sacrifice,
and to bear all for the world's sins, that Thou mayest spare it
and change its life to another." ** And when she said these words,
she was abstracted from her senses and rapt in ecstasy. But,
when she returned to herself, she was white as snow, and began
to laugh loudly and to say : * Love, Love, I have conquered
Thee with Thyself. For Thou dost wish to be besought for
what Thou canst do of Thine own accord.' " ^

Catherine's first step, after receiving the Dominican habit,
was to enter upon a prolonged retreat. For three years con-
tinuously, she kept a complete silence, speaking only with her
confessor, Fra Tommaso della Fonte, when she confessed to him,
and occasionally with other persons at his bidding. She dwelt
continually within the religious enclosure of her little cell, nor
ever left it save when she went to hear Mass. In Fra Raimondo's
poetical phrase, " She found the desert within her own house and
solitude in the midst of people,"

Now began the continuous series of her visions. In her
narrow cell she smelt the fragrance of celestial lilies, and heard
the ineffable melodies of Paradise, sweetest of all on the lips of
those who had loved Christ on earth with the most ardent love.
" Father," she said to Fra Tommaso, *' do you not hear the
Magdalene, how she sings with a high voice and with grace of
lingular sweetness, in company of all the choir of the blessed .? "
Christ Himself appeared to her spiritual eyes, instructed her in
:he secret mysteries of the Divinity, conversed continually with

^ Legenda, Prologue I. (§ 15).

2 Supplementum (Casanatense MS.), f. 30. Cf. Dante, Par. xx. 94-99.

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

her and familiarly as friend with friend, and kissed her with " the
mysterious kiss that infused into her spirit the sweetness of
ineffable delight." ^ And, at the very beginning of these visions
and revelations, the Lord delivered to her the simple doctrine
which became the basis of her whole conception of God and man :
" Knowest thou, O daughter, who thou art and who am I ?
Thou art ahe who art not, and I am He who am. If thou
hast this knowledge in thy soul, the enemy will never be able to
deceive thee, and thou wilt escape from all his snares ; never
wilt thou consent to anything against My commandments, and
every grace, every truth, every clearness, thou wilt acquire without
difficulty." **The soul," said Catherine, in illustration of this,
" that already sees her own nothingness and knows that all her
good is in her Creator, entirely abandons herself with all her powers
and all creatures, and immerges herself utterly in her Creator, in
such wise that she directs all her operations primarily and entirely
towards Him ; nor would she in any wise go out of Him, in
whom she perceives she has found every good and all perfection of
felicity ; and from the vision of love, which daily increases in her,
she is in a manner so transformed into God that she cannot think,
nor understand, nor love, nor remember aught save God, and
what concerns God. She sees not other creatures or herself, save
only in God, neither does she remember herself or them, save
simply in God ; even as one who dives down into the sea, and is
swimming under its waters, neither sees nor touches aught save
the waters of the sea and the things that are in those waters ; he
sees nothing outside those waters, touches nothing, feels nothing.
If the likeness of those things that are without reflect themselves
in the water, he can, indeed, see them ; but only in the water and
as they are in the water ; not otherwise. And this is the ordered
and right love of self and of all creatures, in which we cannot go
wrong, because of necessity it is governed by divine rule, neither
by it is anything desired outside God, because it is ever exercised
in God and is ever in Him."

1 Tantucci, pp. 36, 45.
16

CATHERINE'S HIDDEN LIFE

And from this, too, she drew her doctrine of holy hate. The
more a soul so conjoined with God loves Him, so much the more
does she hate the offence she commits against Him, and, seeing
the origin of every sin has its roots in her own sensual part, she is
inspired to a holy hate of this and wages a relentless war of the
spirit against it. " Woe to that soul," said Catherine, " in whom
this holy hatred is not ; for needs must be that, where it is not,
self-love will reign, which is the sink of all sins and the root and
cause of every evil greed." ^

This doctrine, upon which her whole spiritual teaching may
be said to depend, Catherine explained in detail, some nine or ten
years later, to an Englishman, whom we shall meet in her circle,
William Flete, one of the Augustinian friars of Lecceto. " The
holy mother," he wrote, at the beginning of 1376, "speaking of
herself in the third person, said that at the beginning of her
illumination she set as the foundation of all her life, against self-
love, the stone of self-knowledge, which she distinguished into
three small stones. The first was the consideration of Creation ;
that is, that she had no being of herself, but dependent only
upon the Creator, both in production and in conservation, and
that the Creator had done and was doing all this through His
grace and mercy. The second was the consideration of Redemp-
tion, that is, how the Redeemer with His blood had restored
the life of grace which had until then been destroyed ; and this
through His pure and fervent love, which man had done nought
to deserve. The third was the consideration of her own sins,
committed after baptism and the grace received in it, for which
she had deserved eternal damnation, and was stupefied at the
eternal goodness of God because He had not commanded the
earth to swallow her up. From these three considerations, there
was born in her so great a hatred of herself, that she desired
nought according to her own wiU, but only according to the will
of God, who, she knew, willed nought save her good. From
this it followed that she was content and glad at every tribulation
. and temptation ; not only because it came to her by the will of

1 Legenda, I. x. i, 8, 9 (§§ 92, 100, lOi).
2 17

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

God, but also to see herself punished and chastised. She began,
therefore, to have the greatest displeasure from those things in
which she at first delighted, and a great delight in what at first
displeased her."

" She also said that self-love is the cause of every evil and
the ruin of every good, and that it is of two kinds, to wit,
sensitive self-love and spiritual self-love. The first is the cause
of all sensual sins, and of all others that are open and manifest,
and are committed through affection for earthly things and
creatures ; that is, when, for love of them, the commandments
of the Creator are scorned and disobeyed. The second self-love,
called spiritual, is that which, after despising earthly things, all
creatures, and even his own senses, nevertheless makes man keep
so tenaciously attached to his own spiritual appetite and to
his own opinion, that he will not serve God nor walk in His
ways unless in accordance with his own desire and feeling.
Therefore, since God wants man without a will of his own, such
a one cannot possibly stand firm nor persevere in his way ; needs
must he fall, because he adheres more to his own will than to
the divine. Such are all those who would fain choose state and
exercise according to their own liking, and not according as they
are called by God and judged by the counsel of prudent and
discreet persons. Such also are those who are too much wedded
to some spiritual work or exercise, such as fasting or the like, as
though it were an end in itself ; for it then happens that, if they
cannot practise it, they at once yield to despair and abandon every-
thing. Among these should also be included those who love
spiritual consolations and sweetnesses too much, and, when these
fail them, soon despair. True spiritual love loves God alone and
the salvation of the soul for God's sake. It makes use of all
other things in due order for this end, and recks not what the
means may be, provided that the end is the honour of God and
the salvation of our neighbours. Whoso, then, possesses true
spiritual love must judge and take all things according to the will
of God, and not according to that of men ; and when he remains
deprived of any spiritual consolation, he must at once think and

CATHERINE'S HIDDEN LIFE

say : This befalls me through the divine disposition, by the per-
mission of God, who, in all the adversities that He sends me, seeks
and wills nought save my justification and salvation. And with
this thought all bitter things will be rendered sweet." ^

But, as the conversations with her divine Lover grew more f
frequent and familiar, and the revelations of the divine Beauty
more full and overwhelming, so did the manifestations of the evil
of the world the more insistently press themselves upon her. And,
as ever with men and women of the Middle Ages, they took a
personal and anthropomorphic form in the shape of temptations
of the devil. At first, indeed, Catherine had doubted whether
the visitation that seemed celestial might not, in reality, have some
such diabolical source. " But I will teach thee," said the Voice
in her heart, " how to distinguish My visions from the visions of
the enemy. My vision begins with terror, but always, as it
grows, gives greater confidence ; it begins with some bitterness,
but always groweth more sweet. In the vision of the enemy
the contrary happens, for in the beginning it seems to bring some
gladness, confidence, or sweetness, but, as it proceeds, fear and
bitterness grow continuously in the soul of whoso beholds it.
Even so are My ways different from his ways. The way of
penance and of My commandments seemeth harsh and difficult
in the beginning ; but, the more one walks therein, the more
does it become easy and sweet ; whereas the way of the vices
appears in the beginning right delightful, but in its course
becomes ever more bitter and more ruinous. But I will give
thee another sign, more infallible and more certain. Be assured
that, since I am Truth, there ever results from My visions a
greater knowledge of truth in the soul ; and, because the know-
ledge of truth is most necessary to her about Me and about herself,
that is, that she should know Me and know herself, from which
knowledge it ever follows that she despises herself and honours
Me, which is the proper office of humility, it is inevitable that from

I 1 Relatione d^una dottr'ina, o document o spir'ttuale, scritta nel? anno del Signore 1 376,
i il giorno settimo del mese di Gennaio, da Fra Guglielmo Flete inglese. Published by
j^Gigli as an appendix to the Dialogo. Cf. Letters 64 (124), 71 (358), 213 (163).

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

My visions the soul becomes more humble, knowing herself better
and despising her own vileness. In the visions of the enemy the
opposite happens ; for, since he is the father of lies, and the king
over all the children of pride, and cannot give save what he has,
from his visions there ever results in the soul a certain self-esteem
or presumption on herself, which is the proper office of pride,
and she remains swollen and puffed up. Thou, then, by ever
examining thyself diligently, wilt be able to consider whence the
vision has come, whether from the truth or from the lie ; for
truth always makes the soul humble, but the lie makes her
proud." ^ And again, when she prayed for strength against these
assaults : " Daughter, if thou wouldst acquire the virtue of
fortitude, thou must needs imitate Me. Albeit I could by My
divine virtue annihilate all the power of the enemy, and take
another way to conquer him, nevertheless, because I wished
with My human actions to give an example to you, I would not
conquer save by the way of the Cross, in order to teach you by
deed as well as word. If you would become strong, to over-
come every power of the enemy, take the Cross for your con-
solation, even as I did, who (as My Apostle says) having joy set
before Me endured the Cross^ in order that you may choose not
only patiently to bear pains and afflictions, but even to embrace
them as consolations. And, verily, they are consolations ; for
the more you bear such things for My sake, the more do you
make yourselves like to Me ; for as you are partakers of the suffer-
ings, it follows, according to the teaching of My Apostle, that so
shall you be also of the consolation. Receive then. My daughter,
the sweet things as bitter, and the bitter things as sweet, for My
sake ; and fear nothing henceforth, for certainly for all things
thou shalt be strong." ^

There came a time, towards the end of these three years,
when these assaults and temptations became horrible and un-
bearable. Aerial men and women, with obscene words and still
more obscene gestures, seemed to invade her little cell, sweeping
round her like the souls of the damned in Dante's Hell, inviting

1 Legendoy I. ix. 4 (§ 85). 2 /^/^.^ j. xi. i (§ 104).

CATHERINE'S HIDDEN LIFE

her simple and chaste soul to the banquet of lust. Their
suggestions grew so hideous and persistent, that she fled in
terror from the cell that had become like a circle of the infernal
regions, and took refuge in the church ; but they pursued her
thither, though there their power seemed checked. And her
Christ seemed far from her. At last she cried out, remembering
the words in the vision : " I have chosen suffering for my
consolation, and will gladly bear these and all other torments, in
the name of the Saviour, for as long as shall please His Majesty."
" When she said this, immediately all that assemblage of demons
departed in confusion, and a great light from above appeared
that illumined all the room, and in the light the Lord Jesus
Christ Himself, nailed to the Cross and stained with blood, as
He was when by His own blood He entered into the holy
place ; and from the Cross He called the holy virgin, saying :
* My daughter Catherine, seest thou how much I have suffered
for thee ? Let it not then be hard to thee to endure for Me.'
Then, in another guise, He approached her to console her, and
spoke sweetly to her of the triumph that she had already won in
that battle. But she, imitating Antony, said : * And where wast
Thou, my Lord, whilst my heart was tormented with so much
foulness ? ' To which the Lord answered : ' I was in thy heart.
Thou, My daughter, who, with My and not with thine own
virtue, hast so faithfully battled, hast merited still greater favour
from Me ; and therefore, henceforth, I will reveal Myself to thee
more often and in more familiar wise.' "

This was the first time that the divine Voice had called her
by her name, and it gave her such rapture of delight that she
prayed her confessor, Fra Tommaso, that he would always
address her in this way : My daughter Catherine ; in order that
the sweetness might be ever renewed. Her colloquies with the
Saviour grew more frequent, more prolonged, more intimate.
Sornetimes He appeared to her with His Virgin Mother, some-
times with St. Dominic, St. Mary Magdalene, St. John the
Evangelist, St. Paul, or other saints ; " but most times He came
unattended, and conversed with her as a friend with a most intimate

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

friend ; in such wise that (as she herself secretly and bashfully
sometimes confessed to me) ofttimes the Lord and she recited
the Psalms, walking up and down in her room, as two religious
or clerics are wont to say the office together. O wondrous,
marvellous, and unheard of in our ages, demonstration of the
divine familiarity ! " ^

During this time of seclusion, Catherine learned to read,
though it does not appear that she attempted to study anything
more than the Psalms and the offices of the Church. Fra
Raimondo tells us that she had originally got the alphabet from
a companion of hers, but found it so hard to get further that,
fearing that she was losing time, she prayed to God and was
miraculously instructed. When he knew her, she could read any
writing, rapidly and with ease, though unlike other people and as
if she knew the meaning of the words without being able to spell
out the syllables. Reading, however, was not her only recreation.
She took great delight in flowers of all kinds, and would weave
them into crosses and garlands in her spare time, singing mystical
songs of divine praise the while. These she would send or give
as presents, either directly or through Fra Tommaso della Fonte,
in token of the love of Christ. A young Dominican friar,
Tommaso di Antonio CafFarini, soon to be very closely associated
with her spiritual life, tells us that, before he knew her, he had
received some of these mystical gifts through her confessor. ^

At the same time, perhaps inevitably, her ecstasies were
growing upon her. After Communion, or at other times when
meditating upon the mysteries hidden in God, she would be rapt
out of her senses for a while, and her body left rigid and seemingly
lifeless, insensible to touch or wound. This increased with years,
and lasted all through her life. It is a not unusual feature in the
legends of women saints and mystics, nor would it be hard to
find a purely natural and scientific explanation.

There are, doubtless, many who will regard this simply as a
form of catalepsy, and who will see in much of these visionary

* Legendat I. xi. 5i 6 (§ § 109-112).

2 Contestatio Fr. Thomae Caffarintf Processus, col. 1260.

CATHERINE'S HIDDEN LIFE

experiences little more than hysterical phenomena ; nor need the
faithful followers of St. Catherine to-day deny this as a possible,
or even probable, element in her life. In the record of her
revelations, we are confronted with things that are incapable of
literal acceptance, that, perhaps, at times even offend our religious
sensibilities, occurring side by side with profound truths, expressed
with wonderful precision and startling inspiration, shedding light
upon every step of the believer's difficult path from the human
to the divine. That phenomena not unconnected with organic
hysteria existed side by side with the possession of a suprasensible
revelation in the lives of many of the greatest mystical saints,
may well be granted. It has even been urged, in the case of St.
Teresa, that, while suffering in a sense from organic hysteria,
her knowledge of the workings of her own soul was so clear and
exact that she could distinguish perfectly between these two
classes of experiences, the natural and the supernatural, and that
this fact is the strongest guarantee for the truth of her account
of the latter.^ Catherine, like Teresa, with her unwavering
fortitude and calm resolution, her firm will which was to impose
itself upon the rulers and powers of the world, her practical sense
and angelic wisdom, is poles asunder from a hysterical subject ;
yet, perhaps, with all her celestial endowments, this thing was
given her as the Pauline *' thorn in the flesh, the messenger of
Satan to buffet me." She had learned early to discriminate
between the two kinds of vision — those that proceeded from her
divine Teacher and those that were the work of the father of
lies. But I do not think that she could distinguish between the
natural and the supernatural in the way that has been claimed for
St. Teresa ; at times, in her visions, we cannot but detect
apparent hallucinations, to which a physician would probably
assign a hysterical origin. Yet the " abundance of the revelations "
is more surely there.

^ For all this delicate question, see especially G. Hahn, Les phenomenes
hytteriques et les revelations de Sainte Therese (Revue des Questions Scientifiques,
xiii. pp. 553-569, xiv. pp. 39-84), and cf. H. .Toly, Psychologic des Saints, pp.
110, III, and W. James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, pp. 1 4- 1 8.

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

The mystical revelations and divine colloquies of these three
years culminated in the " spiritual espousals " of Catherine with
Christ on the last day of the carnival, most probably, I think, in
the year 1366.

By this term, " spiritual espousals," the great mystics clearly
mean something different, not in degree but in kind, from what
every nun may be said to experience when she consecrates her
virginity to Christ. They evidently hold that some chosen souls,
after passing through the ways of purgation and illumination,
having been tried in much tribulation and mortification, and
enlightened by profound meditation upon spiritual things, attain
to a state of mystical perfection which they call the " spiritual
marriage," in which, by an intellectual vision of Christ in the
centre of the soul, they become united to Him in some special
and peculiarly absorbing manner, and become, in some sort, one
thing with Him. The mystical poets of Spain, St. Teresa and
St. John of the Cross, draw a distinction between " spiritual
espousals " and the " spiritual marriage," for which the former
is but a preparation. *' That which God here communicates to
the soul in an instant," says St. Teresa, '* is so great a secret and
so sublime a grace, and what she feels is such an excessive
delight, that I know nothing with which to compare it, except
that Our Lord is pleased at that moment to manifest to her the
glory which is in Heaven ; and this He does in a more sublime
way than by any vision or spiritual delight. More cannot be
said (as far as can be understood) than that this soul becomes one
with God ; for as He Himself is a spirit, His Majesty is pleased
to discover the love He has for us, by making certain persons
understand how it extends, in order that we may praise His
greatness, because He has vouchsafed to unite Himself to a
creature in such a way that, as in the marriage-state husband and
wife can no more be separated, so He will never be separated
from her." ^

It would seem that Catherine does not regard the " spiritual
marriage," as St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross understand it,

1 El Castillo Interior^ Moradas setimas, cap. ii. (Dalton's translation).

CATHERINE'S HIDDEN LIFE

as attainable in this world — at least for one who, like her, though
ever walking with Christ and ever talking with Him even while
in the midst of men, was, nevertheless, called to a life of active
labour for His name rather than to sheer contemplation. Her
" spiritual espousals " were to have their mystical consummation
in the eternal nuptials of Paradise. " It would be foolishness,"
writes St. John of the Cross, " to think that the language of love
and the mystical intelligence can be at all explained in words of
any kind." The loving souls, in whom the Spirit dwells, " use
figures of special comparisons and similitudes ; they hide* some-
what of that which they feel, and, in the abundance of the Spirit,
utter secret mysteries rather than express themselves in clear
words." " It is better to leave the outpourings of love in their
own fulness, that every one may apply them according to the
measure of his spirit and power, than to pare them down to one
particular sense which is not suited to the taste of every one." ^
A mystic must express his vision in the symbolic terms of his
own day, and it is, therefore, not wonderful that Catherine
should describe her spiritual betrothal with imagery suggestive
of the Italian painting of the fourteenth century.

She had prayed again and again, Fra Raimondo tells us, for
the gift of the perfection of the virtue of faith, such that it should
never be shaken or beaten down by any assault of the enemy, and
ever had she heard the same answer made : / will espouse thee to
Myself in Faith. At length, on the last day of the carnival,
while all Siena was given up to the usual festivities of the season,
the Voice told her that the time had come : " I will this day
celebrate solemnly with thee the festival of the betrothal of thy
soul, and, even as I promised, I will espouse thee to Myself in
Faith." " Whilst the Lord was yet speaking, there appeared the
most glorious Virgin, His Mother, the most blessed John
Evangelist, the glorious apostle Paul, and the most holy
Dominic, the father of her order ; and with these the prophet
David, who had the psaltery set to music in his hands ; and,

^ Canttco Esplrttual entre el Alma y Crista, su EsposOj prologo (D. Lewis's
translation).

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

while he played with most sweet melody, the Virgin Mother of
God took the right hand of Catherine with her most sacred hand,
and, holding out her fingers towards the Son, besought Him to
deign to espouse her to Himself in Faith. To which graciously
consenting, the Only Begotten of God drew out a ring of gold,
which had in its circle four pearls enclosing a most beauteous
diamond ; and, placing this ring upon the ring-finger of Catherine's
right hand, He said : ' Lo, I espouse thee to Myself, thy Creator
and Saviour, in the Faith, which, until thou celebratest thy eternal
nuptials with Me in Heaven, thou wilt preserve ever without
stain. Henceforth, My daughter, do manfully and without
hesitation those things which, by the ordering of My providence,
will be put into thy hands ; for, being now armed with the
fortitude of the Faith, thou wilt happily overcome all thy
adversaries.' Then the vision disappeared, but that ring ever
remained on her finger, not indeed to the sight of others, but only
to the sight of the virgin herself ; for she often, albeit with bash-
fulness, confessed to me that she always saw that ring on her
finger, nor was there any time when she did not see it." ^

^ Legendoj I. xii. I, 2 (§ 115).

CHAPTER II
FROM DANTE TO SAINT CATHERINE

«' Ha, mater piissima, sponsa Christi 1 quos in aqua et spirltu generas tibi filios ad
ruborem! Non Charitas, non Astraea, sed filiae sanguisugae factae sunt tibi nurus." —
Dante, Epht. viii. 7.

Fully to understand Catherine's political work and mission,
we must turn to the states and rulers with which and with whom
she was to be brought into direct contact.

The " Babylonian Captivity " of the Popes at Avignon, which
had begun with Clement V in 1305, was still, to some extent, the
dominant feature in the situation. It was on Clement's death,
in 13 14, that the voice had been heard of "a man who was a
prophet," and Dante, in his letter to the Italian cardinals at
Carpentras, had renewed for Rome the lamentation of Jeremiah
for Jerusalem.^ Things had grown worse under Clement's
successor, the Cahorsine John XXII (1316-1334). "The gold
which is the holiness of virtues has grown dim in the Church,"
wrote Alvarus Pelagius, " for all covet material gold. Ordina-
tions and the sacraments are bought and sold for gold. When-
ever I entered the apartment of the chamberlain of our Lord the
Pope, I saw brokers, and tables full of gold, and clerics counting
and weighing florins." 2 Petrarca had written two poetical
epistles to Benedict XII (i 334-1 342), exhorting him to return
to Italy, and he duly offered a similar appeal in the name of
Rome to the man who now sat on the papal throne, Clement VI
(1342-13 5 2). 2 In Clement, the typical Limousin pope, the
corruption of this epoch of the Papacy was personified. Learned
and eloquent, not without a certain magnanimity, his private life,
both as archbishop and as pope, was scandalous, and such was the

^ Eplst, viii. 4.

^ De Planctu Eccksiae, II. 7. Cf. Dante, Par. xviii. 130-136 ; G. Villani,
xi. 20.

2 Epht. meir.y Lib. I. 2, 5 ; Lib. II. 5.

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

luxury and prodigality of his court that he would have taxed all
Christendom, had he been able, to supply the funds. He wasted
the treasures of the Church in lending money to the French kings
to aid them in their wars with England, and in the advancement
of his kindred, filling the Sacred College with men of his own
stamp and country, godless and worldly, many of them of evil
and dissolute life. If Petrarca is to be believed, the riotous
licentiousness of these younger cardinals was but too well matched
in the senile debauchery of their elders who wore that hat, in
Dante's phrase, che -pur di male in peggio si travasa, " which doth
but pass from bad vessel to worse." *' Our two Clements," said
a French prelate of the Curia (probably the Patriarch of Jerusalem,
Philippe de Cabassole) to Petrarca, " have destroyed more of the
Church in a few years than seven of your Gregories could restore
in many centuries." ^

In his three terrible sonnets against Avignon, Petrarca has
painted for all time the state of the society that gathered round
Clement's throne. But in one of his Latin poems, the sixth
eclogue entitled Pastorum pathos^ St. Peter, in the guise of the old
shepherd Pamphilus, rebukes his hireling successor Mitio, who
is Clement himself, for the desolation of the pastures and the
destruction of the flocks, only to find him brazen-faced and
exulting in his shame. ^ Even more frightful is the picture of
the corruption of the papal court which the poet has left us
in his Epistolae sine titulo^ albeit the note of exaggeration and
rhetorical inflation is manifest. " What difference is there," he
asks, " between those enemies of Christ, who betrayed Him with
a kiss and bent the knee before Him in mockery, and the
Pharisees of our time } That same Christ, whose name they
exalt night and day with hymns of praise, whom they robe in
purple and gold, whom they load with jewels, whom they salute
and adore prostrate — that very same do they not buy and sell on
earth like merchandise .'' As it were blindfold that He may not

^ Ep'tst. sine t'ltulo, XIX. Cf. M. Villani, iii. 43 ; Benvenuto da Imola,
Comentum, v. p. 289.
2 Egloga VI.

FROM DANTE TO SAINT CATHERINE

;e, they crown Him with the thorns of their impious wealth ;
they defile Him with most impure spittal, and assail Him with
viperous hissing ; they strike Him with the spear of their poisonous
deeds ; and, so far as in them lies, mocked, naked, poor, and
scourged, they drag Him again to Calvary, and nail Him again
to the Cross." Avignon is the Babylon of the West, the home
of all vices and misery, the same that the Evangelist saw in spirit ;
little, indeed, according to the circuit of its walls, but immense in
its accumulation of wickedness.^

On December 2, 1352, the campanile of St. Peter's was struck
by lightning. All the bells were dashed to the ground and fused
together as though they had been melted in a furnace. At once
the report spread through Rome that Pope Clement was dead.
" Lo now," it seemed to a Swedish widow that Christ said in her
heart, " the bells are burning, and men are crying out : Our lord
is dead, our lord the Pope has departed ; blessed be this day,
but not blessed that lord. How strange, for where all should
cry : May that lord live long and live happily ; there they cry
and say with joy : Down with him and may he not rise up again !
But it is no wonder, for he himself, who should have cried :
Comey and ye shall find rest for your souls ; he cried : Come, and
behold me in pomp and ambition more than Solomon. Come to my
Courts and empty your purses^ and ye shall find perdition for your
souls. For thus did he cry by example and in deed. Therefore
the time of My wrath is now approaching, and I shall judge him
as one that has scattered the flock of Peter. O what a judgment
awaits him ! But, nevertheless, if he will yet be converted to
Me, I will run to meet him half-way like a tender father." ^

Clement's successor, Etienne d'Albret, who took the title of
Innocent VI (1352-1362), was a simple man, "of good life and
not much knowledge ; " he made an earnest, but ineffectual
attempt to reform the papal court. The confusion of French
politics and the presence of bands of mercenaries in Provence

1 Efist. sine titulo, XVI., XIX., XX.

2 Revelationes S. Birgittae, VI. 96. Cf. M. Villani, iii. 42, Clement actually
died at Avignon on December 6.

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

were making Avignon a less desirable residence. Innocent spoke
of returning to, or at least visiting, Rome. In 1353, he sent the
great Spanish cardinal, Egidio (or Gil) de Albornoz, as legate to
Italy, to re-establish the power of the Holy See in the States of
the Church.

The two great powers of the peninsula (leaving Venice out
of the question, as, indeed, she did not yet concern herself much
with the politics of the mainland) were Milan in the north, where
the Visconti — the typical Italian tyrants of the age — were absorbing
a great part of Lombardy, and Naples in the south, under the
sway of sovereigns of the house of Anjou, the descendants of
the great Charles whom Dante saw in the Valley of the Princes
outside the gate of Purgatory. The one state was an absolute
despotism, under a family traditionally hostile to the Church ; the
other a feudal kingdom, normally a staunch supporter of the
Holy See.

On the death of Luchino Visconti in 1349, his brother, the
Archbishop Giovanni — an able and astute ruler, one of the least
atrocious of his cruel house — united the spiritual and temporal
sovereignty of its dominions in his own person. Bologna, though
nominally subject to the Church, had been the most powerful
city in Romagna, and one of the chief free republics of central
Italy. But the factions, raging there as elsewhere, had led to its
falling in 1321, the year of Dante's death, under the sway of a
single man, Romeo de' Pepoli, whose grandsons sold it in 1350
to the Archbishop of Milan. Clement VI shamelessly confirmed
this transaction by granting him the investiture of Bologna for
twelve years. On the death of Giovanni in 1354, he was
succeeded in his temporal sovereignty by his three nephews :
Matteo, Bernabo, and Galeazzo ; but in 1356, either consumed
by his own lusts or poisoned by his brothers, Matteo died, and
the other two divided the dominions of their house. Bernabo
made Milan his capital, while Galeazzo, after the capture of
Pavia in 1359, set his headquarters in the latter city. A Visconti
of uncertain parentage, Giovanni da Oleggio (possibly an un-
acknowledged bastard of the late Archbishop), made himself

FROM DANTE TO SAINT CATHERINE

independent master of Bologna, with aid from the Marquis
of Ferrara, and ruled it with the usual brutal tyranny of his
family.

Bernabo Visconti was now the head of the Ghibelline party in
Italy. A man of fierce passions, subject to paroxysms of bestial
fury, he was a cruel and sanguinary tyrant, but a prudent and
subtle politician. A mighty hunter, he enforced his game-laws
by wholesale blinding, torturing, and hanging of his unhappy
contadini. On one occasion, he burned alive two friars who had
rebuked him for these proceedings. He ground down his people
with taxation, and quartered his five thousand hunting-dogs upon
the citizens and convents ; their keepers were more dreaded than
the magistrates of the towns. Bernabo married Regina Beatrice
della Scala, the ambitious and able daughter of the despot of
Verona. " This woman," writes Corio, " ruled in great part her
husband's dominion ; she was of an imperious nature, proud and
daring, insatiable of wealth." ^

The ruler of the south, the head of what would, under normal
circumstances, have been the Guelf party, was that mysterious and
unhappy woman, Giovanna of Anjou : " the great harlot that
sitteth upon many waters and was called the Queen of Naples." ^
Readers of Dante's Paradiso need not be reminded that Charles
Robert, son of the poet's beloved Charles Martel and Clemence
of Hapsburg, had been excluded from the throne of Naples
by his uncle, Charles Martel's younger brother, Robert the
Wise. Charles Robert became King of Hungary in 1308,
and ruled till 1342. In 1333, a reconciliation of the rival
claims of the two branches of the House of Anjou had been
effected by the marriage of Andrew, second son of Charles
Robert of Hungary, with Giovanna, the granddaughter and
heiress of Robert of Naples — both being seven years old. But
there were a number of princes of the royal blood of Naples
' who might have expected the old King's choice to have fallen

1 Storia di Milano, III. 6. " Regina " appears to have been one of Beatrice's
real names, not merely an assumed title.

2 Walsingham, Historia Anglicana (ed. Riley), II. p. 49,

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

upon them, and the Hungarians were detested. The marriage
was an unhappy one. Robert of Naples died in 1343. On
September 18, 1345, Andrew was strangled as he left the Queen's
chamber at Aversa ; it seems probable that Giovanna was at
least privy to the deed, and others of the royal family were
implicated.

Such, at least, was the view of the avenger — the dead man's
brother, Louis of Hungary — by strict descent the head of the
house of Anjou. A young king, strong and terrible, he
assembled a Hungarian army, and, in 1347, invaded Italy.
Giovanna, who had married her cousin, Luigi of Taranto, fled
to Provence (of which she was Countess), where she convinced
the Pope of her innocence, and sold Avignon to him for a
nominal sum. With his black standard of vengeance floating
before him, the King of Hungary entered the kingdom of
Naples. At Aversa, he executed his cousin, Charles of Durazzo,
on the spot of Andrew's murder, as an accomplice in the crime ;
the rest of the royal family were sent prisoners into Hungary,
with the little child, Carobert, Giovanna's son (ostensibly by her
late husband), who died almost immediately. Naples surrendered
in terror. But, in the next year, Giovanna and Luigi returned ;
and a long war was brought to an end by the Pope's intervention
in April, 1352, leaving the kingdom to Giovanna and her
husband, and to Louis what he professed alone to desire — the
satisfaction of having avenged his brother's death.

Giovanna's second husband died in 1362, and, in 1366, she
married a third, James of Aragon, son of the King of Majorca.
The house of Anjou had now three chief representatives :
Giovanna at Naples, still of surpassing beauty, luxurious and
splendid, not devoid of enlightenment, presiding over the gayest
and most gorgeous court of Italy ; King Louis of Hungary, who
was making his kingdom the most potent state in Europe, con-
quering Moldavia in 1352 and Bulgaria in T26^ ; and the younger
Charles of Durazzo ("Carlo della Pace"), nephew of the Duke
whom Louis had slain, and husband of Giovanna's niece, Mar-
gherita, in the service of his Hungarian cousin, and himself

FROM DANTE TO SAINT CATHERINE

uniting the claims of two branches of the royal house. In 1370,
Louis succeeded his maternal uncle, Casimir III, as King of
Poland. To the Italians, who had seen the vengeance he had
taken for his brother, and the stern justice with which he repressed
the excesses of his own troops in Naples, he seemed a possible
arbiter of the nation's destinies, more formidable than the
Emperor himself In their eyes, he was hardly more a foreigner
than Queen Giovanna or the Visconti of Milan. It will seem
perfectly natural to the Republic of Florence to appeal to him
against the Pope, and to Catherine of Siena herself to look to him
as the champion and defender of the Church.

Between despot-ridden north and feudal south lay the
Republics of Tuscany and the nominal States of the Church.

And here the great Guelf Republic of Florence was still the
dominant power. Excluded from the government by the famous
Ordinances of Justice in 1293, the nobles (magnates or grandi)
had been finally broken in the tremendous street battles of 1343.
The power was mainly in the hands of the wealthy burghers,
popolani grassi, members of the greater Guilds ; but the smaller
tradesmen and artisans, forming the minor Guilds, were gradually
coming to the front, and sharing in the administration. And
rumbhngs of social discontent, sounds from a still lower stratum
of society, were being heard in the background. The supreme
magistracy of the Republic, the Signoria, consisted of the Gonfa-
loniere of Justice and eight Priors of the Arts (instead of the six
in Dante's days), two from each quarter of the city. These
Signori held office for two months ; their nomination was by lot,
and was controlled by a complicated process of scrutiny. Next
came the two " Colleges," that is, the twelve Buonuomini, who
were the counsellors of the Signoria, and the sixteen Gonfalonieri
of the city companies, four from each quarter. All magnates,
whether by birth or declared so as penalty, were excluded from
the Signoria and the Colleges, whose members were all popolani,
Florentine burghers and artisans, ascribed to the greater or minor
Arts or Guilds.

The executive, as in almost all Italian States of the epoch, was

3 ?^2>

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

represented by three alien magistrates : the Captain and the
Podesta, both foreign (that is, from some other Italian state)
nobles, and the Executor of Justice, who was normally a foreign
burgher. There were two great Councils of the State : the
Council of the People, over which the Captain presided, and the
Council of the Commune presided over by the Podesta. In the
former, only popolani could sit, but grandi were also admitted to
the latter. Measures proposed by the Signoria had first to be
carried in the Colleges ; if they passed there, they were then
submitted successively to the Council of the People and to the
Council of the Commune, after which they became law. Tem-
porary measures could, however, be concerted between the
Signoria and a special meeting of richiesti^ citizens summoned for
the purpose, without an appeal to these councils ; and in theory,
and now and then in practice, a general Parliament, open to all
the citizens of Florence, was assembled.

There was, however, in addition, another organization within
the Republic, one which we shall find very closely associated with
Catherine in her dealings with the Florentines. This was the
Parte Guelfa^ with its six captains and two councils, originally
founded in the latter part of the thirteenth century, to maintain
Guelf principles in the State. And in this the magnates were
predominant, three of the captains being elected from their number.
Their power of " admonishing " persons obnoxious to them, as
suspected " Ghibellines," thereby excluding them from office
under heavy penalties, made them greatly dreaded — aU the more
as, now that nothing of GhibelHnism remained but the name, this
power was for the most part used to gratify personal feuds and to
fan the flames of faction.

In Siena, from the middle of the thirteenth century, there had
been a more or less similar constitution of the Commune and of
the People — but with the striking difference that the organization
of the latter was not based upon the Arts or Guilds, which (with
the exception of the two Merchant Guilds, the Arti di Mercanzia,
and the Guild of Wool) were of litde political importance, but
upon the Societaies armorum^ the armed militia or train-bands of

FROM DANTE TO SAINT CATHERINE

the contrade^ or wards, into which the three terzi of the city were
divided.^ The Concilium CampanaCy or Council of the Bell,
elected the executive officials of the State, as usual from out of
the lesser nobles of other Italian cities : the Podesta, the chief
judicial officer, and the Conservatore^ or Capitano di Guerra, later
called the Senator, who led the forces of the Republic in time of
war. But the Captain of the People, in the fourteenth century,
was always a Sienese plebeian.

After the exclusion of the nobles or gentiluomini (milites) from
the administration, in the third quarter of the thirteenth century,
Siena had enjoyed a period of considerable prosperity under the
oligarchical rule of the " good merchants of the Guelf party," the
chief council or magistracy of the Nine. The Nine held office
for two months, lived at the expense of the State, and (to the
complete exclusion of the lower orders no less than of the nobles)
were elected from the rich and enlightened burgher class, corre-
sponding, more or less, to the popolani grassi of Florence. In
Siena the orders that held sway successively were known as Monti.
The adherents and families of this Monte dei Nove are famous in
Sienese history as the Noveschi. The epoch of their rule, when
Siena gained the title of amorosa madre di dolcezza^ is that pictured
to us in those vivid little masterpieces, the sonnets of Folgore da
San Gimignano. Early in the fourteenth century, they^ had pur-
chased the port of Talamone, by which they hoped to make the
Republic a great maritime power, even as Pisa in the past ; but
the unhealthiness of the situation, and the impossibility of keeping
the harbour clear, soon damped their ardour. The sanguinary
feuds of the nobles — the Tolomei against the Salimbeni, the
Malavolti against the Piccolomini, the Saracini against the Scotti
— kept the State in chronic disturbance ; plots and tumults against
the burgher oligarchy, usually hatched by a combination of nobles

1 Cf. R. L. Douglas, History of Siena^ pp. 108-114; E. Armstrong, The
Sienese Statutes of 1262 (on L. Zdekauer's great work, // Constitute del Comune di
Siena del? anno 1262^ Milan, 1897), in the English Historical Review^ vol. xv.,
London, 1900; G. Canestrini, Delia Milizia Italiana dal secolo XIII. al XVI..,
pp. xviii., xix.

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

and popolo minuto, threatened the administration ; while, in the
contado, the Salimbeni were almost independent of the Republic,
made their own alliances, and not unfrequently were united with
the enemies of their fatherland.

The once mighty Republic of Pisa had sunk to a secondary
position among the powers of Tuscany. To its destinies during
the fourteenth century were united those of its neighbour, Lucca,
which had been subjected to Pisan rule in 1342. Pisa was
divided by the factions of the Bergolini and Raspanti ; the latter
being expelled, the family of the Gambacorti swayed the Republic.
Andrea di Gherardo Gambacorti held the chief authority until his
death in 1351, when he was succeeded by his nephews, Francesco
and Lotto. We shall find Andrea's son, Piero, among the friends
and correspondents of Catherine. The rule of the Gambacorti
was just, pacific, and beneficent — they were men of upright life
and loyal to the Republic.

With these four communes, Florence, Siena, Pisa, and Lucca,
Catherine was to be closely connected. The remaining Tuscan
republic, that of Arezzo, hardly touched her life at all. It had
already been subject to Florence from 1336 until 1343, and the
days of its independence were numbered.

To the south and east of Tuscany lay what were nominally
the Papal States, in which, however, the always vague authority of
the Church had sunk to a minimum. Of the cities included in
them, some, such as Perugia, governed themselves as virtually
independent republics ; others, such as Rimini and Forli, were in
the hands of despots like the Malatesta and Ordelafii, who ruled
them either under the title of papal vicars or with no title but
that conferred by the power of the sword and mercenary troops.
The state of the Eternal City itself was peculiar, and was destined
to affect all Christendom in the great struggle with which
Catherine's closing days are associated. ■

Overshadowed by the Popes and Emperors, the Roman
Republic had still existed throughout the centuries, always in
name and at intervals in fact, when, in Giovanni Villani's telling
phrase, e' Romani si levarono a romore e feciono popolo — *' the

FROM DANTE TO SAINT CATHERINE

Romans rose in tumult and established a popular government."
" The ancient people and government of Rome," writes Matteo,
**was to all the world a mirror of constancy and incredible
firmness, of upright and regulated living, and of every moral
virtue. But those who at present possess the ruins of that
famous city are, on the contrary, utterly fickle and inconstant, and
without any shadow of moral virtues. With eager and excessive
lightness, they often overturn their state, and, seeking liberty,
they have found it, but have not known how to set it in order
nor how to keep it." ^ The absence of the Popes, while weaken-
ing the power of the nobles, gave a fresh impulse of life to the
Republic, whose rights had been formally recognized by Clement V
in 1 310. Revolution after revolution followed, until in May,
1347, the humanist Cola di Rienzo, full of poetical and unpractical
dreams of Rome's past, established " the Good Estate," declaring
the cause of Rome that of the whole of Italy, and calling upon the
Italian States to free themselves from their tyrants and to send
representatives to a national parliament. The scheme fell to
nothing, through the disposition of the times and the unworthi-
ness of the man who proposed it. Rienzi fled in December,
and passed more than two years of mystical contemplation among
the Fraticelli in the Abruzzi. An epoch of anarchy followed —
scarcely abating during the Jubilee of 1350, when, finding them-
selves insulted and threatened, the papal legates put the city
under an interdict. Sent by the Emperor as a prisoner to
Avignon, Rienzi was reconciled to Innocent VI, and returned
to Italy in the autumn of 1353, as the Pope's representative,
to collaborate with the great Spanish cardinal in building up the
fabric of the Church's temporal power — only to meet a shameful
death on the steps of the Capitol.

*' The Capitol was yet stained with the blood of Rienzi,"
writes Gibbon, "when Charles the Fourth descended from the
Alps to obtain the Italian and Imperial crowns." For a while,

^ M. Villani, ix. 87. For these changes and counter-changes, see the admir-
I able essay by Pasquale Villari, // comune di Roma nel medio evo, in ^aggt storici e
criticiy Bologna, 1890.

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

Petrarca believed in him as Dante had believed in his grandfather
— but was bitterly disillusioned. Crowned at Rome by the
Cardinal of Ostia, on Easter Day, 1355, he returned to Prague :
" with the crown which he had received without stroke of sword ; M
with the purse full of money, which he had brought empty ; but
with little glory for virtuous deeds, and with great disgrace for the
debasement of the Imperial Majesty." ^ *' Oh," exclaimed
Petrarca, *^if thy grandfather and father met thee in the passage
of the Alps, what thinkest thou they would say ? Emperor of the
Romans in name, thou art in truth only the King of Bohemia." ^

At Siena and at Pisa, the imperial passage was marked by a
revolutionary outbreak and the overthrow of the oligarchical
government.

While on his way to Rome, the Sienese ambassadors, headed
by Guccio Tolomei and Giovanni di Agnolino Salimbeni, had
sworn fidelity to the Emperor at Pisa on behalf of the Nine, and
he had sworn in return to preserve the liberties of Siena, and to
make the Nine his vicars. But when, on his arrival at the city in
March, the nobles and populace rose together, clamouring
" Long life to the Emperor, and death to the Nine," the utmost
that Charles would do for the unlucky magistrates was to refuse
to surrender their persons to the fury of the mob. He received
their abdication, forced them to renounce all the privileges he had
granted them, and to annul the oath he had sworn to their
ambassadors, while the populace were led by the younger nobles
to sack their houses and drag their official chest through the city
at the tail of an ass. The relations and adherents of the Nine
hid themselves as best they could. No one would receive or
speak with them. Their servants deserted them. The very
priests and religious shrank from them as though they had the
plague.

The government was entirely reformed in the interests of the
lower middle classes. A new supreme magistracy of twelve
popolaniy henceforth known as the Twelve, the Signori Dodiciy

1 M. Villani, v. 54.

2 De Rebus Familiaribus, Lib. XIX. ep. 12 (Fracassetti).

FROM DANTE TO SAINT CATHERINE

four from each terzo of the city, was appointed, holding office for
two months, one of them to serve as Captain of the People
and Gonfaloniere of Justice. There was at first a subsidiary
council of six nobles, to be known as the CoUegio, who were not
to reside with the Signoria in the Palace, but without whom the
Twelve could undertake nothing of importance nor open letters
that concerned the State. But at the beginning of June, after the
Emperor had passed again through Siena on his return journey,
Giovanni di Agnolino Salimbeni (the most weighty in counsel
of all the Sienese nobles, and a man most loyal to the Republic,
with whose family Catherine was to be so closely associated), him-
self a member of the College, finding that this arrangement
would not work, agreed with the Twelve to summon a general
council in the Sala Grande of the Palace, at which the six nobles
laid down their office and the College was abolished.^ The
government thus remained entirely in the hands of the Twelve
and their adherents, known as the Dodicini^ afterwards called the
People of the Middle Number. The members of this new Monte
(called, by Matteo Villani, of the " minuti mestieri ") came
from the class of the petty tradesmen and small notaries. It
" formed a class intermediate between the order of the Noveschi
and the lowest populace, and was composed for the most part of
families which had become well-to-do by attending to trade and
commerce, during that long period of prosperity that the Republic
enjoyed under the oligarchical government of the Nine." ^ Their
rule, however, proved the most corrupt and incompetent that
Siena had ever endured, though they carried on an ultimately
successful war against Perugia, and made attempts, partly by
money, partly by hiring other mercenaries, to deal with the ever
increasing scourge of the foreign companies that at intervals
threatened the Sienese contado.

In the meanwhile, at Pisa, an alarm that the Emperor intended
to liberate Lucca, and an attempt to reconcile the rival factions of
the Raspanti and Bergolini, had led to a popular rising against

1 Cron'tca Sanese, coll. 1 48- 1 52.

2 Grottanelli, notes to the Leggenda mtnoref p. 190.

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

him, in which his Germans suffered heavily. Both factions were
equally implicated ; but the Raspanti had gained the ear of the
Emperor, and obtained the support of the imperial troops in
executing vengeance upon their enemies. The houses of the
Gambacorti were destroyed, and the heads of the family put on
their trial for treason. Their innocence was manifest, but the
imperial judges wrung a confession by torture. On May 28, the
three brothers, Francesco, Lotto, and Bartolommeo Gambacorti,
with four of their principal adherents, were beheaded in the
Piazza degli Anziani of Pisa, solemnly protesting their innocence
to the last, and for three days, at the Emperor's orders, their
bodies were ignominiously exposed in the mingled blood and filth
of the piazza.^ Piero Gambacorti, with his friends and kindred,
was banished from the city ; while Caesar went on his way, leaving
an imperial vicar behind him, and the State of Pisa in the hands
of the treacherous Raspanti, who, in 1365, with the aid of foreign
mercenaries, made Giovanni dell' Agnello, an unscrupulous and
worthless upstart, lord of the city, with the title of Doge, to
which he added that of captain-general of Lucca.

Cardinal Albornoz had come to Italy in the latter part of
1353. Temporizing with the Visconti, received enthusiastically
by the Florentines and Sienese, welcomed even by the Perugians,
he had begun by making war upon Giovanni di Vico, titular
Prefect of Rome, the tyrant of Viterbo, Orvieto, Civita Vecchia,
and other places in the Patrimony. Viterbo (henceforth the
capital of the Patrimony), Orvieto, Assisi, Spoleto, and other
Umbrian cities were recovered for the Church, while Rienzi was
playing out the last scene of his deplorable melodrama on the stage
of the Capitol. While Charles IV was receiving the imperial crown
from the hands of the Cardinal of Ostia, the indefatigable Spaniard
was carrying his victorious arms into the Marches, against the
Malatesta of Rimini, Astorre Manfredi of Faenza, Francesco
degli Ordelaffi of Forli and Cesena. The petty despots were
either expelled from their States or forced to act as papal vicars

1 M. Villani, v. 31-33, 37 ; Cronica di P'tsa, coW. 1 02 9- 103 3 ; Cronica Sanese,
coll. 150, 152.

FROM DANTE TO SAINT CATHERINE

on the Cardinal's terms, who made his headquarters at Monte-
fiascone as Rector of the Patrimony. Faenza, Cesena, and Forli
were taken. Defeated in the open field by the papal forces,
Galeotto Malatesta was compelled to enter into an alliance with
the Church.

An even more signal triumph was the recovery of Bologna.
Hard pressed by the armies of Bernabo Visconti, Giovanni da
Oleggio surrendered the city to Albornoz in March, 1360, and
Bologna thus became subject to the direct dominion of the Holy
See. The Cardinal's warlike nephew, Gomez Albornoz, was
made governor. War between Bernabo and the Church followed ;
Bologna was invested by the forces of the Visconti and again hard
pressed, until in June, 136 1, Gomez Albornoz, with the aid of
Galeotto and Malatesta Malatesta, completely defeated Bernabo's
army on the banks of the Savena at San Rossillo. Thus was
the work of recovering the temporalities of the Church practically
accomplished, when, on September 11, 1362, Innocent VI died
at Avignon.

A few years before his death, Innocent, at the advice of
Albornoz (who had practically left the city alone, and had, perhaps,
never entered its walls), had nominated a single foreigner (that is,
not Roman) Senator of Rome, a kind of Podesta to hold office
for six months — the first appointed being a Sienese noble,
Raimondo de' Tolomei. This pleased the people, but about the
same time (1360), taking advantage of the preoccupation of
Albornoz with the affair of Bologna, they set up a popular
government under seven Riformatori (in imitation of the Floren-
tine Fnors)y popo/ani to hold office for three months. Nobles were
excluded from the army as well as from the government — the
popular forces of the Republic being reorganized, under the two
Bandaresi (in imitation of the Gonfalonieri of the Companies in
Florence) and four Antepositi^ into a military guild, which was
known as the Felix Societas Balestrariorum et Pavesatorum Urbisy
the " happy society of the crossbowmen and shieldbearers of
the City." The Bandaresi and Antepositi sat in the special
council of the city, with the Riformatori and the heads of the

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

RIoni (the districts into which Rome is still divided). Later on,
they formed, together with the Riformatori, the Signoria, which
was called the Signoria of the Bandaresi. A force of three thousand
well-armed plebeians waited on their biddings. It was their office
to execute justice against powerful evildoers and refractory nobles,
and all who should shelter criminals in their fortresses ; and they
began their work with the most rigorous severity. " There is no
prince or baron in the jurisdiction of the Roman People," writes
the Florentine chronicler, " who is not terrified thereat and does
not hold them in great dread, and who for fear does not obey the
governors of Rome and their rulers." ^ Such was the Roman
Signoria with which Catherine of Siena, at a critical epoch in her
life, was to have to deal. And better had it fared with the Church,
if it had been only the temporal lords of Rome who trembled
before it !

Amidst this turmoil of political faction and moral corruption,
men and women arose who looked for righteousness ; flowers of
the spiritual life bloomed even in the bloodstained streets of Siena
and on the arid desert of the seven hills of Rome. Catherine's
work was, to some extent, anticipated by the Swedish princess,
Birgitta (whom we now call St. Bridget), that flower of the north
transplanted to the Eternal City, and by Giovanni Colombini,
himself a Sienese.

Giovanni di Pietro Colombini was a rich merchant, belonging to
the order of the Noveschi, one who had himself sat in the Signoria
of the Nine. He was absorbed in mercantile pursuits and in the
acquisition of wealth, until one day, to soothe his irritation when
dinner was not ready and he wished to return to the warehouse,
his wife bade him read a volume of the lives of the Saints. He
chanced upon the legend of St. Mary of Egypt, and was com-
pletely converted by its perusal. Another of the Noveschi, who
had also been one of the Nine, Francesco di Mino Vincenti,
joined him, and the two consulted the pious Carthusian, Pietro
Petroni, who bade them follow Christ in the most absolute

^ M. Villani, ix. 87 ; Villari, op. cit., pp. 234, 235 ; Gregorovius, English
ed., VI. part II. pp. 403, 404.

FROM DANTE TO SAINT CATHERINE

poverty.^ This appears to have been in 1355, the year of the
downfall of the Nine. A few years later, they carried out Pietro's
counsels, placed their daughters in the Benedictine monastery of
Santa Bonda (of which the Abbess, Madonna Paola di Ser Ghino
Foresi, was a sort of spiritual mother to this new movement), and
gave away all their possessions to religion and the poor — Giovanni
first making adequate provision for Monna Biagia, his wife.
Even as they had punished their former avarice with poverty,
they sought for shame where they had once received honour ; and
for two months, the time during which they had sat in the
supreme magistracy ot the Nine, they performed all the menial
work of the Palace, begging their food in the meanwhile through
the streets.

Disciples came to them, who were received and clothed with
rags at the Madonna of the Campo, and initiated into the spirit
of these new poverelli by public humiliation, through the streets of
Siena — which one young noble who joined them confessed that he
found as bitter as death,^ Among the earliest of these Gesuati (as
they were afterwards called) was Tommaso di Guelfaccio, one of
the leading Noveschi, previously a man of soft and luxurious life,
whom we shall meet again in Catherine's circle. Giovanni and
Francesco then wandered over the Sienese contado, preaching
Christ and Poverty, working everywhere a wonderful revival,
stirring up a new life among the Franciscans and Dominicans
themselves, who welcomed them with enthusiasm, especially at
Asciano and Montalcino. Said a friar minor to Giovanni : ** If
religious will once more begin to speak only of God, the
spirit of holy fervour will return among us, and we shall set
the world on fire." ^ Banished from the Sienese dominions
by the Twelve, they wandered to Arezzo, Citta di Castello,

^ Pietro Petroni died in 1 361. A vision which he had upon his death-bed
brought about the conversion of Boccaccio. Cf. Petrarca, Rerum Senilium, Lib. I.
ep. 5 ; Bartholomaeus Senensis, Vita B. Petri Petroni, III. i, 2, 11.

2 Cf. Lettere delB. Giovanni Cohmbini, 87, the reception of Giovanni di Niccol6
di Verdusa.

3 Ibid.y 17.

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

and other Tuscan cities, converting sinners, enforcing reparation
of fame and goods, healing feuds and factions. Pisa, too, gave
them a glad welcome, and at length the Twelve, for very shame,
revoked their sentence of banishment. Something of the mystical
aroma of these days lingers yet in the letters of Giovanni and
Francesco still preserved, and not the least pleasant feature in
them is the beautiful and pathetic spiritual intercourse that still
bound the former to his devoted wife, who, as she said, had
prayed for rain, but had not quite expected such a flood.

A very different figure is Birgitta, whose revelation on the
death of Clement VI we have already heard. Born about the
year 1303, the daughter of Birger, lord of Finstad, and Ingeborge,
his wife (both of whom were connected with the reigning house
of Sweden), Birgitta, when little more than a child, was married to
Ulf Gudmarsson, a Swedish noble of royal blood, to whom she
bore eight children, of whom Charles, the eldest of her five sons,
and Catherine, the second of three daughters, will play a part in
this history. Her married life was (save for the enforced
marriage of her eldest daughter to an unworthy man) one of
almost ideal happiness. Alike in her husband's castle of Ulfasa
and in the court of Magnus II, King of Sweden and Norway, she
wrought for Christ and the salvation of souls. At her request,
her confessor, Matthias of Linkoping, translated the Pentateuch
into Swedish. On their return from a pilgrimage to Compostela,
Ulf Gudmarsson became a monk, in 1343, and died in the
following year, Birgitta being with him at the last.

Then the spirit of prophecy fell upon her, and the same
mystical Voice spoke in the heart of the Swedish princess that the
dyer's daughter of Siena was to hear a few years later. ^ The
wonderful book of Revelations^ that Birgitta now began to dictate,
is at once a spiritual autobiography, a collection of epistles, a
record of graces and visions, a denunciation of the corruption of
the times. It anticipates in many respects Catherine's political
letters and her Dialogue alike. For a while, she returned to the
court, as Mistress of the Palace, to preach repentance there ; a
^ Revelationei S. Bir^ttae, II. 10.
44

-^i

FROM DANTE TO SAINT CATHERINE

little later she founded at Vadstena her order of the Holy Saviour,
composed of women and men alike, each monastery containing
two convents, the Abbess to be as the Virgin Mother in the
midst of the Apostles. Then she looked southwards to Avignon
and Rome, and the Voice spoke again in her heart, inspiring her
with an eloquent letter to Pope Clement, rebuking him as " a
lover of the flesh " for the cupidity and ambition that he suffered
to flourish in the Church, urging him to be converted before it
was too late.i At the end of 1349, she left her native land, and
went, by Milan, Pavia, and Genoa, to Rome for the Jubilee.

W^ith Italy the rest of Birgitta's life was to be associated. At
Farfa, whither she had fled with her company during the interdict,
she was joined by her daughter — the tall, silent, golden-haired
Catherine, unhappy and mysterious, a prey to depression and to
fits of terror which were only too well-founded. W^hile at Farfa,
Catherine heard of the death of her husband. Returning to
Rome, the Swedish ladies took up their residence first in the
palace of the Pope's brother. Cardinal Hugues Roger de Beaufort,
at San Lorenzo in Damaso, and afterwards in the house still
shown (now a Carmelite convent) near the Campo de' Fiori. In
the anarchy that followed the Jubilee, Catherine ran fearful risks
at the hands of the lawless Roman barons who attempted to get
possession of her. At last one of the Orsini, hearing that the
Swedish ladies were to go to S. Lorenzo fuori le Mura on the
Saint's feast, laid an ambush for them between the basilica and
the gate. Converted by a miraculous blindness, the young baron
became their most ardent protector, and through him they
acquired the friendship and support of his house, and especially
of Niccolo Orsini, the Count of Nola.

The desolation of the Eternal City struck deeply into
Birgitta's soul, and inspired pages of pure eloquence not un-
worthy of Petrarca himself. A Voice ever cried in her heart :
" O Rome, Rome, thy walls are broken down ; thy gates are left
unguarded ; thy vessels are sold and thy altars are desolate ; the
living sacrifice and morning incense are consumed in the outer

1 Revelationes , VI. 63.

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

courts, and therefore the sweetest odour of sanctity rises no more
from the Holy of Holies.*' But still she saw room for hope.
" Rome is verily as thou hast seen," said the Voice ; " the altars
are desolate, the offertory is spent in the taverns, and they that
offer serve the world rather than God. Know, nevertheless, that,
from the time of Peter the humble even until Boniface ascended
the seat of pride, innumerable souls have ascended to Heaven.
Rome is still not without friends of God ; let them call upon the
Lord, and He will have mercy upon them." ^ And again she
heard the high command : " Thou shalt remain in Rome until
thou seest the Pope and the Emperor, and thou shalt speak to
them in My name the words that I shall tell thee." So, with the
exception of a pilgrimage to Assisi and the holy places of Naples,
Birgitta remained in Rome, tending the sick in the hospitals,
begging alms for the poor, labouring for the salvation of souls,
while she waited for the promised advent of Pontiff and Emperor ;
and, in the meanwhile, *' she had many revelations concerning the
state of the City, in which our Lord Jesus Christ rebuked the
excesses and the sins of its inhabitants, with grave threatening ot
chastisement. Which revelations, brought to the knowledge ot
the inhabitants of Rome, stirred up furious hatred against the
blessed Birgitta. Wherefore some of them threatened to burn
her alive, and others blasphemed her as a sorceress ; but the
blessed Birgitta patiently suffered their threats and insults." 2

To this coming of Pope and Emperor the thoughts of all
who looked for the salvation of Israel were soon to be directed ;
yet was it to prove but the song that "bore false witness of
dawn."

1 Revelationes, III. 27. 2 Rgx;elatmes extravaganteSy 8.

CHAPTER III

THE VALLEY OF LILIES

" Virgo sacra, jam summo doctore docente imo etiam compellente, addiscebat quotidie
amplius, et in lectulo florido frui Sponsi caelestis amplexibus et ad convallem liliorum
descendere, ut foecundior redderetur ; nee alterum pro altero dimittere aut diminuere." —
Raimondo da Capua, Legenda, § 130.

It was probably in 1366 that Catherine, the mystery of her
spiritual espousals being fulfilled, began to go forth from her cell,
to join in the life of the family, to labour for the conversion of
souls. The voice of the celestial Bridegroom sounded in her
ears : Of en to me^ my sister, my beloved, my dove ; which Fra
Raimondo interprets : " Open for me the gates of souls that I
may enter them. Open the path by which My sheep may pass
in and out, and find pasture. Open for My honour thy treasury
of divine grace and knowledge, and pour it forth upon the faith-
ful." The gifts that she had received in the cell were now to
be made manifest to the world.

Once more, and this time in the face of vigorous opposition
from her family, Catherine devoted herself to all the humblest
menial labours of the house. With her father's leave, she had
full liberty to give as much as she thought fit of his substance to
the poor. She tended the sick, in their houses and in the
hospitals, day and night, and with the greatest zeal nursed those
afflicted by the most loathsome diseases. From a poor woman
named Cecca, dying of leprosy and deserted by all, who reviled
and taunted her while she gave herself up to relieving the horror
and loneliness of her last days, she took the dreadful malady,
which spread over her hands ; but, when the woman at length
died and Catherine had prepared the body for burial, she was
miraculously healed. One of her own sisters in religion, Suora
Palmerina, had been among her chief detractors, and persecuted
her still with her hatred when on her death-bed ; converted at
kst by her prayers, Palmerina died in peace, and Catherine beheld

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

her soul, which, *' albeit it was not yet blessed, was so beautiful
that no words could express." And, all this while, her conversa-
tion with the Divine Master and Spouse continued uninterrupted
and increasingly ardent, although at times He came to her only in
the guise of the beggar to whom she gave her cloak or the silver
cross of her chaplet. " Taught, nay, rather compelled by her
supreme Teacher, she learned every day more and more both to
enjoy the embraces of the celestial Bridegroom in the bed of
flowers, and to descend into the valley of lilies to make herself
more fruitful, nor ever to leave or lessen the one for the sake of
the other." ^

Though sufl^ering intolerable pains in her whole frame, she
impressed all who approached her by her constant mirthfulness,
her never-failing high spirits, her radiant happiness. " She was
always jocund and of a happy spirit," says one of her intimates,
*' and especially when held down by any sickness ; while that
lasted, she was ever all laughing in the Lord and exultant and
rejoicing." ^ To those who criticized her almost entire abstinence
from human food, she would answer humbly : " God for my sins
has smitten me with a singular infirmity, by which I am totally
prevented from taking food ; I would eat right willingly, but
cannot. Pray for me that He may forgive me my sins, because
of which I suffer every ill." ^

From the beginning to the end of her life, Catherine desired
to be subject to all, even to the servant in her father's house and
the poor she encountered in the streets or in the hospital. She,
in all sincerity, regarded herself as the vilest of creatures, and
desired to be treated as such ; again and again, we shall find her
asserting that her sins are the cause of all the evil around her, and
almost that she alone is responsible for all the corruption of the
world. She would fain have her faults judged by comparison
with the graces she received. " If I were perfectly inflamed by
the fire of Divine Love," she said once to Fra Raimondo, " and

1 Legenda, II. ii. 4 (§ 130).

" Conies tatio Fr. Thomae Caffarini, Processus, col. 1258.
3 Legenda, II. v. 9 (§ 1 74).
48

THE VALLEY OF LILIES

besought my Creator with ardent heart, would not He who is all
merciful surely use mercy towards all these, and grant them all
to be enkindled by the fire which would then be in me ? And
what is it that impedes such great good ? Surely nought else
but my sins. The fault cannot be on the side of the Creator, in
whom there is no defect ; it must, therefore, be in me and from
me. When I consider how many and what great graces the
Lord has so mercifully granted me, in order that I might become
such as I have said, and still through my iniquities I am not such,
which is clearly shown me in the evils that I see, I am wroth
against myself and bewail my sins, albeit for this I do not despair,
but always hope the more that He may pardon me and them." ^

There were times, indeed, when she suffered much, need-
lessly, through this humility. Although bound by no vows
(for the Dominican tertiaries did not then take the vows of
Chastity, Poverty, and Obedience, even if there were many who,
like herself, practised them in the highest degree), Catherine had
resolved to render the most absolute obedience to the friar who,
according to the time, was the director of the Mantellate and to
their prioress, as also to her own confessor. And Raimondo tells
us that she persevered so rigidly in this resolution that, as she
lay dying, with all her tendency to self-accusation, she could not
remember that she had ever even once not kept it. Indeed, he
writes, " if this holy virgin had never had any other affliction while
^<he lived, than what her very indiscreet directors inflicted upon
her, she would, in some sort, have been a martyr by reason of her
great patience. For they, in no wise understanding, and often
not even believing the excellence of the gifts granted her from
above, wished entirely to guide her along the road of the others
who live in ordinary fashion, nor did they render honour to the
presence of the Divine Majesty which was leading her by a
wondrous way, albeit of that they continually saw the manifest
signs ; like unto the Pharisees, who in such wise, seeing signs and
prodigies, murmured at the healings which the Lord worked on

^ Legenda^ Prologue I. (§ 13).
4 49

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

the Sabbath, saying : This man is not of God, because he
keepeth not the sabbath day." ^

Almost from the beginning, persecution had come upon her,
of a more material kind than the assaults of the evil spirits in her
visions, and it lasted all through the earlier years of her public
ministry. The persons to whom she had thus made herself
spiritually subject, and especially the women, misliked her mode
of life and distrusted her conduct. '* She could hardly exercise
an act of devotion in public, without suffering calumnies, impedi-
ments, and persecutions, particularly from those who ought most
to have protected her and even to have continually encouraged her
in those very acts." Not only Suora Palmerina, but others of
the Mantellate, her sisters in religion, reviled and slandered her,
and called upon their superiors to correct her. They even gained
over some of the Dominican friars to their side, who refused to
have any dealings with her, often deprived her of the Blessed
Sacrament in Communion, and even for a while took away her
faithful confessor from her. At times, when they condescended
to let her communicate in their church, they would insist upon
her straightway leaving off her prayers of thanksgiving and going
home ; which was a sheer impossibility for Catherine, as she used
to communicate with such fervour that, immediately afterwards,
she would pass into the state of ecstasy, in which for hours she
would be totally unconscious. On one occasion, finding her in
this condition, they forcibly threw her out of the church at mid-
day, and left her in the heat of the sun, watched over by some of
her companions, until she came to her senses. One friar even
brutally kicked her as she lay helpless. Of course we are told
that he came to an evil end, as also did another friar of the same
type, " religious in habit, but not in deeds," who, when the other
friars were in the choir of San Domenico after dinner, catching
sight of her in the church when she was in ecstasy, came down
and pricked her in many places with a needle. Catherine was
not aroused in the least from her trance, but afterwards, when

^ Legenda, I. ix. i (§ 80).
50

THE VALLEY OF LILIES

she came back to her senses, she felt the pain in her body and
perceived that she had been thus wounded.^

But all these things Catherine bore with her usual unalterable
patience and humility. They did it all with holy intention and
for the good of her soul, she said, and she ever prayed for her
assailants as for kind and beloved benefactors. No complaint
ever crossed her lips, even when a friar robbed her of the money
she had for the poor. ** On her tongue and in her heart she had
nought save Jesus ; along the streets she walked with Jesus ; her
eyes gazed fixedly upon Jesus, nor did they ever open through
curiosity to behold other objects, unless they were such that
could guide her to Jesus ; wherefore she was often seen rapt in
ecstasy, and lifted up in wondrous abstraction and excess of
mind." Later, when she was told that men called her a hypocrite
and deceiver, she answered : " They speak sooth, for, if the
world knew me, it would stone me. I am the greatest of all
sinners ; and what remains but that you all pray for me, that
God may illumine me, and bring me to humility and patience and
to do penance for my sins ? Would that I could embrace and
kiss the feet of those who know me so well ! " ^

Hardest of all was it to bear when they deprived her of the
Blessed Sacrament. Whenever she could, she communicated every
day ; not only was this the centre of her whole inner life, but her
very bodily existence seemed to depend upon it. So great was
her inflamed desire of being united to her celestial Bridegroom in
this way, that it was physical, no less than mental agony, to be thus
deprived of His embraces. " I am a miserable wretch," we find
her writing to one of her friars, " for my sins are so manifold
that, since you went away, I have never been worthy to receive
the most sweet and venerable Sacrament. I tell you this in order
that you may help me to weep, and pray that I may be aided, so
that I may receive the fullness of grace. Pardon my ignorance,
father, and remember me at your most holy Mass, and I will

* Legenda, III. vi. 12, 13 (§§ 406,407) ; Contestatio Fr. Simonis de Cortona
(Casanatense MS.), pp. 514, 515.

2 Tantucci, p. 38 ; Contestatio Fr. Barontis, MS. cit., pp. 509, 510,

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

receive the sweet body of the Son of God spiritually from you." ^
And not only her enemies, but even her confessor seemed against
her. Sometimes Fra Tommaso himself bade her, under the duty
of obedience, to mistrust her visions, to regulate her life more
like those of others in order to avoid scandal, to force herself to
eat. Humbly and patiently, she always obeyed him to the letter,
and found the agony caused her by the attempt to eat and drink
a new way of doing penance. " Let us go and execute this
wretched sinner," she would say with a smile when the time came,
and, though she simply masticated what little she took without
swallowing any, the pain was so intolerable that, in after years,
Fra Raimondo urged her not to continue the attempt, in spite of
what was said. Nevertheless, she persevered in this until her
last illness, though the torment it caused her grew almost daily
more terrible and acute.

Friends and disciples, of both sexes, now began to gather
round her. Her little cell in her father's house became a centre
of religious life, an ever-burning spiritual lamp to all in Siena
who looked for righteousness.

A little group of Mantellate became her constant companions.
Chief among them were the two we still see supporting her in
Bazzi's glorious fresco : Alessa Saracini and Cecca (Francesca)
Gori ; both widows of noble birth, who had given all their
possessions to the poor, and taken the black and white habit of
penance. The latter, an older woman, had three sons in the
Dominican order, probably very young novices. Of the former,
Fra Raimondo writes that, although she became her disciple later
in time than some of the others, she was nevertheless, in his
opinion, the first in perfection and Catherine's most faithful
imitator. Both appear to have been educated women, and to
have frequently written Catherine's letters for her. Closely
associated with these was the Saint's beloved sister-in-law, Lisa,
** my sister-in-law, according to the flesh, but my sister in Christ,"
the wife of her brother Bartolommeo — all the members of Jacomo
di Benincasa's family then living under his roof. Her own sister

1 Letter 70 (114).

5«

THE VALLEY OF LILIES

Lisa, too, seems to have taken the habit. Another of the first of
her companions was a certain Caterina di Ghetto (or Scetto),
possibly the daughter of one of the Saint's brothers-in-law, one of
the young unmarried women who, in imitation of Catherine,
joined the Dominican tertiaries.

The earliest of Catherine's men followers were two young
Dominicans : Fra Tommaso di Antonio Nacci Caffarini, a
novice, then about seventeen years old, and Fra Bartolommeo di
Domenico, who was slightly older and already a priest, and had
been a companion in the novitiate with Fra Tommaso della
Fonte. Next to Fra Raimondo, we owe most of our information
about Catherine to the devotion of these two friars. It is
possible that their first introduction to her, by Fra Tommaso
della Fonte, was during the time of her strict seclusion and
retreat in her cell, which still remained the centre of the spiritual
life of all her fellowship.

Fra Bartolommeo gives us a detailed description of that cell,
before she came out of it, while she conversed with no men save
at the command or by the permission of her confessor. We see
its door and window always closed, the hard couch of bare boards,
the little lamps always burning day and night before the images
of Christ, of the Blessed Virgin, and of the Saints which were
painted there. ^ In words that curiously recall those of the Vita
Nuova^ but much less poetically and more crudely expressed, he
tells us how — although he, too, was young, and evidently
morbidly sensitive on this point — all carnal passion died away
when he approached her, and that others, whose normal mode of
thinking and feeling was quite alien from his own, had the same
experience : '* For her aspect and address seemed to pour forth
a certain fragrance of purity, more angelical than human, and
withal she was always joyful and merry of countenance." Even
so had it been with Dante, when he went to behold the nohili e
hudabili portamenti of Beatrice : " And albeit her image, which
kept continually with me, was a power of Love to rule over me,

^ C antes tatio Fr. Bartholomaei, Processus, col. 13 iz.

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

it was, nevertheless, of so noble a virtue that it never suffered
Love to sway me without the faithful counsel of reason." ^

Nevertheless, there were certain things that Bartolommeo at
first found hard to accept. He noticed that, when she returned
to consciousness after her prolonged ecstasies, Catherine always
seemed to know what her women companions had done in the
meanwhile, and sometimes rebuked them for idle talk or waste
of time. The friar, *' in my stupidity, being as yet ignorant ot
the virtues of the holy virgin," could not at once believe that she
did this by what he calls the prophetic spirit : —

" But, at that time, when once I came to her cell with her
aforesaid confessor, after a long conversation she asked us what
we were doing at the second and third hour of the night. But
we, wishing to try her, said, questioning her : * What dost thou
think ^ ' And she answered : * Who knows this better than you
yourselves ^ ' Then her confessor rejoined, at my suggestion :

* I charge thee, on thy obedience, tell us if thou knowest what
we were doing at that time.' But she humbly refused to do
this, until her confessor charged her again on her obedience.
Then, humbly bowing down her head, she said : ' You know
well that there were four of you, and you were in the cell of the
subprior, talking for a long while at that late hour.' We asked
her who they were, and she named each ; and when we asked her
what we said, she replied that, for the most part, we talked about
things pertaining to the salvation of our souls, albeit at times we
touched on other matters. I was amazed, but still doubted
whether one of us four had not told her this. Wishing, therefore,
to test whether she knew this by man or by the spirit of prophecy,
1 came to her on the following day, and in our conversation said :

* O mother ' (for so we were wont to call her), * how knowest thou
what we do ? ' And she : * O son, since it has pleased our sweet
Saviour to give me the sons and daughters which, by His gift, I
have, nothing concerning you is hidden from me ; but He
showeth me clearly everything that is done about them.' Then
I rejoined : * Thou knowest, then, what I was doing yesterday

^ Cf. Contestatio cit., col. 13 14, with Vita Nuova, §§2 and 19.

THE VALLEY OF LILIES

evening at such an hour of the night ? ' And she answered me :
' Surely, for you were writing, and you were writing about such
a matter.' All of which was so. And she added : ' Son, I
always watch and pray for you, my children, and for others, until
in your convent the bell rings for matins, and shows me what you
are doing ; nay, if you had good eyes, you would see me with you
— as clearly as I see all and each of you, who you are, where you
are, and what you are doing. Very often our sweet Saviour bears
me company, while I say the Psalms and walk up and down this
little cell, and He talks with me, instructing me about many
things. But when He sees me wearied, He sits over there, and
at His bidding I sit at His feet, and we talk together up to that
hour. But when that hour comes. He gives me leave to sleep,
saying : Go, daughter, and rest, whilst thy brethren, who are now
rising to matins, praise Me in thy stead. And so I sleep. Then,
after a brief while of slumber, I straightway rise.' " ^

At first, Bartolommeo was not edified by her calling herself
misera, miserabile^ more wretched than all men, the cause of all the
evils that were done. He thought she did not really mean what
she said ; until, to his question how this could be, as she mani-
festly abhorred the sins that many delighted daily to commit, she
answered as she did later on to Fra Raimondo : " O father, I see
you do not know my wretched state. For I, miserable woman,
have received so many and such wondrous gifts from my Creator,
that, as I think, there is no reprobate so vile that, if he had
received such, would not be all aflame and burn with the love of
his Creator. And, both by the example of his life and by the
words of his teaching, he would so enkindle the hearts of men to
the love of our celestial country and to the contempt of the
present life, that they would cease from their sins. Since there-
fore 1, wretched woman, endowed with so many gifts, do not do
this, what can I in very truth say about myself, but that I am
most ungrateful to my God, and that I am the cause of the ruin
of all, who through me could be called back from evil and incited
to good ? If I did my duty, I should call them back by the food
1 Contestatio cit.j coll. 1320, 1321.

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

of God's word, and animate them to act rightly by the example
of a good life ; and, because I have not done this as I might,
surely I am guilty." ^

These were Bartolommeo's last doubts. He became her
most ardent follower and champion, and frequently acted as her
confessor and that of all her spiritual company. A certain
Franciscan friar, Fra Lazzarino of Pisa, was one of the first who
followed him to her feet. An eloquent and popular preacher, a
man of considerable learning, though by no means an exemplary
Franciscan as far as his vow of poverty was concerned, Lazzarino
was at that time lecturing on philosophy at Siena. He hated the
very name of Catherine, abused her both in public and in private,
and persecuted her friends. Knowing the devotion to her of Fra
Bartolommeo, who was then lecturing occasionally on the Sentences
of Peter the Lombard, he tried to make him unpopular with the
students. Finding all his efforts against Catherine's reputation
were useless, he began to preach publicly against her, and, when
that failed, decided to visit her, under pretence of devotion, in
order to catch her in her speech. With this intention, he came
on the evening of the feast of St. Catherine, Virgin and Martyr,
to Bartolommeo's cell, and asked him to bring him to her ; and
the Dominican, thinking his heart was touched, with leave of
Fra Tommaso della Fonte, accompanied him to the house. Let
Bartolommeo himself relate what followed : —

*' When we entered her holy cell, Fra Lazzarino sat down
upon a stool ; she seated herself at his feet upon the floor, while
I took a seat apart on the opposite side. Both kept silence for a
while. At length he began : * I have heard such good report of thy
holiness and that thou art endowed by the Lord with the under-
standing of the Scriptures, that I have come to thee, hoping to
hear somewhat to edify and comfort my soul.' But she answered :
* I am glad at your coming, for I believe the Lord has sent you
in order that you, who have the knowledge of the holy Scriptures
with which you daily feed the souls of the people, may be moved
by charity to comfort my poor little soul ; and so, for the love
^ Contestatio cit., coll. 1346, 1347.

THE VALLEY OF LILIES

of Jesus Christ, I pray you deign to do.' When, therefore, the
time had passed in such conversation and night was at hand, he
(not, indeed, mocking her, as he had thought to do, but neverthe-
less, in his heart, making little account of her) said : * I see the
hour is late, and therefore deem 1 had better go ; I will return
on another occasion at a more suitable hour.' And so he rose up
to go. But, as he went away, the holy virgin followed him, and,
kneeling with crossed arms, besought him to bless her ; which he
did. And, when she had his blessing, she besought him to
remember her in his prayers. Then he, moved rather by shame-
facedness than by devotion, asked her to pray for him, which she
gladly promised she would do. He, therefore, went away, as I
said, making small account of her, deeming her to be a good
woman, but not worthy of her great reputation."

During the following night, Lazzarino rose to meditate upon
the lecture which he was to deliver the next morning, and found
himself overwhelmed by a flood of tears, which he was unable to
check. In the morning, he forced himself to go to the schools
and read his lecture perfunctorily, at once leaving the room when
he had finished, because he could not contain his tears. So passed
the day, until, in the night, he began to think that he had unwittingly
offended God. Then a voice spoke in his heart : " Hast thou
so soon forgotten that, the day before, thou didst scorn My
faithful handmaid Catherine with so orgulous a mind, and that,
albeit feignedly, thou didst nevertheless commend thyself to her
prayers ? " Before sunrise, he left San Francesco and hastened
to Catherine's house. Catherine herself, '* not ignorant of the
things that were being worked in this man by her Spouse,"
opened the door. He fell at her feet ; she knelt and implored him
to rise. Entering the cell, he humbly sat down like her on the
floor, and, after ** a long and holy colloquy," besought her to
adopt him as a son, and to direct him in the way of God. " But
when she said that he knew the way of God better, by means
of the holy Scriptures, he answered that he knew the rind, but
she tasted the very pith. At length, constrained by his earnest
prayers, she answered : ' The way of salvation for your soul is

57 •

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

that, despising the pomp of the world and all its favour, casting
away all money and superfluities, you follow Christ crucified and
your father, Blessed Francis, in nakedness and humility.' "

Fra Lazzarino seemed changed into another man. He gave
away all he had, even his books, excepting a commentary on the
Gospels which he needed for his sermons, " and became really a
true poor man of Christ." He became a zealous champion ot
Catherine's cause, and endured much persecution in consequence,
especially from his own brethren, but triumphed over all and
devoted himself to the conversion of souls. One of his fellow
Franciscans tells us that he fled the society of the other friars to
live in lonely hermitages, from which he would emerge at times
to preach to the people, and that on these occasions his words
were like flaming arrows to pierce the hearts of all who heard.^

Although Bartolommeo says that he became valde domestkus
with himself, Lazzarino — perhaps because of his membership ot
the rival order — does not seem ever to have been closely associated
with Catherine's spiritual family. We have, however, a dictated
letter from Catherine to him, undated, but probably of a some-
what later epoch, a letter in which the Dominican tertiary, too,
claims the seraphic Father of Assisi as hers : —

"Jesus hangs upon the Cross," she writes, "as our rule and
our way, and as a written book in which all the unlearned and
blind can read. The first verse of the book is hate and love ;
that is, love of the honour of the Father, and hatred of sin.
Then, most beloved and dearest brother, and father by our
reverence for the Sacrament, let us follow this sweet book, that
so sweetly shows us the way. And if it befall that our three
foes should assail us in the way, to wit, the world, the flesh, and
the devil, let us take the weapons of hate, as did our father, St.
Francis. In order that the world should not pufF him up, he
chose holy, true, and utter poverty. And so would I have us
do. And if the demon of the flesh should rebel against the
spirit, let us be angry with ourselves, and afflict and chastise our

^ Contestatio «V.,colI. 1 347-1 351 ; Contestat'to Fr. Angeli de Salvettis (O.F.M.),
loc. cit., col. 1367.

THE VALLEY OF LILIES

body ; even as that father of ours did, who ever ran along this
holy way with zeal and not with negligence. And if the devil
should come with many illusions and varied fantasies and with
servile fear, and wish to occupy our mind and soul, let us not
be afraid ; for these things are become powerless by the virtue
of the Cross. O sweetest Love ! They can do no more than
God allows them ; and God wills nought else than our good ;
He will not, therefore, give us more than we can bear. Take
comfort, take comfort ; and do not shun pain ; but ever keep
the will holy, so that it may repose in nought save in what Christ
loved and in what God hated. ^ And our will, so armed with
hate and love, will receive such fortitude that, as St. Paul says,
neither the world nor the devil nor the flesh will be able to draw
us back from this way. Let us bear, let us bear, dearest brother ;
for the more pain we bear down here with Christ crucified, the
more glory shall we receive ; and no pain will be so much re-
warded, as mental pain and labour of the heart ; for these are
the greatest pains of all, and, therefore, are worthy of greater
fruit." 2

It is somewhat remarkable that Catherine seems never to
have had any dealings with Giovanni Colombini. Although she
frequently visited the monastery of Santa Bonda in the company
of Lisa, and corresponded with two of the nuns there, she never
makes any allusion to Giovanni in her letters. A cousin of his,
however, Matteo Colombini, was among her correspondents, and
Tommaso di Guelfaccio, whom we have met among the Gesuati,
seems to have been one of the first to frequent her cell, and was
afterwards, to some extent, associated with her labours.

^ That is, keep the will steadfast in love of virtue and hatred of vice.

2 Letter 225 (121). This letter was probably in answer to one of Lazzarino's
to her, of which a mutilated fragment is preserved in the Biblioteca Comunale of
Siena (MS. T. iii. 3), in which, as far as any connected sense can be made out of
what is left^ he appears to be complaining of the persecution he is receiving from
his fellow Franciscans. It is dated " in Firenze lo dl dela pentecoste," and ad-
dressed to " Chaterina da Siena sposa di Jeso Cristo crocifixo et serva de suo servi
et madre de suo fedeli devoti, in Pisa." Both letters are probably of the year
1375-

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

While the spiritual household of his daughter was thus being
formed, Jacomo di Benincasa died. He had always been a tender
and loving father, especially in these latter years, and Catherine
"found his soul ready for the passage, nor kept back by any
desire of the present life, for which thing she rendered immense
thanks to her Saviour." In after years, she told Fra Raimondo
that she had wrestled with the Lord in prayer that her father
might not have to sustain the pains of Purgatory, and had at
last obtained this grace for him, on the condition that she should
bear them instead. At the instant he passed away, a grievous pain
in the side assailed her, and never again left her until the end of
her life : " But, as he expired, the holy virgin laughed for joy,
saying : * Blessed be the Lord, would that I were as you ; ' nor,
whilst the others wept during the rites for the dead, could she
show aught else save joy and gladness. She comforted her
mother and the others, as though she was in no wise concerned
at this death, for she had seen that soul pass out of the darkness
of the body and enter immediately into the eternal light." ^

Jacomo di Benincasa was buried at San Domenico on August
22, 1368. A man of the old regime, he died but a few weeks
before the overthrow of his party in the State, which was also to
reduce his own family to comparative poverty. A year before
his death, a great event had filled all who looked for righteous-
ness with hopes of a new era and renovation of the Church ;
hopes that Jacomo was not to see dashed to the ground ; a
Sovereign Pontiff had landed in Italy, and the successor of St.
Peter had returned to Rome.

^ Legenday II. vii. 4 (§ § 220-222).

CHAPTER IV
THE COMING OF URBAN THE FIFTH

" Tu es qui venturus es, an alium expectamus " ? — Matth. xi, 3.
'•Colui che fece per vilta lo gran rifiuto." — Dante, Inf. III. 59, 60.

GuiLLAUME DE Grimoard, Abbot of St. Victor of Marseilles,
was at Florence, on his way to Naples on a mission from the
Pope to Queen Giovanna, when the news reached Italy that
Innocent VI was dead. " I dare to say," quoth the worthy monk,
when he heard the tidings, '* that if, by the grace of God, I were
to see a Pope who would come to Italy, to the true papal seat,
and would beat down the tyrants, I should be happy, if I had to
die the next day." ^ On his return from Naples, he arrived at
Marseilles at the end of October, 1362, to be met by a message
from the Sacred College informing him that (owing to a
deadlock in the conclave) he had been elected Pope. He was
crowned at Avignon, under the title of Urban the Fifth.

The newly elected Pontiff was fifty-three years old. Never
having been a cardinal, he was untainted by the corruption of the
Curia. A man of simple and blameless life, learned and devout,
he hated pomp and luxury, abominated simony and nepotism and
all the vices he saw around him. His choice of a name, Urban^
was held by the Italians to point towards Rome.^ In the preced-
ing year, he had been sent as ambassador to Bernabo Visconti,
to urge the rights of the Church upon Bologna ; the tyrant, in
one of his outbursts of bestial fury, had forced him to eat the
fragments of the papal brief and driven him with contumely
from Milan, according to one account with even grosser personal
outrage. He knew then, by personal experience, what these
tyrants of Italy were like. When Bernabo's ambassadors arrived
to congratulate him on his election and to express their master's

1 M. Villani, xi. 26.

8 Cf. Petrarca, Rerum Senilium, Lib. VII. ep. I.
61

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

desire to come to terms, the Pope gravely answered that, when
their lord had restored her cities to the Holy See and repented of
his crimes, he would receive him back into the bosom of the
Church.^ His intention was to crush this chief despot first, and
then send all Christendom forth to recover the Holy Places. But
the realization of the scheme was impossible. Wars raged every-
where. France was at war with England, the Emperor on the
point of hostilities with the King of Hungary, who in his turn
was assailing the Venetians. Italy clung to her state of anarchy.
Siena fought Perugia for the possession of Cortona and Monte-
pulciano ; Florence, with mercenaries under Galeotto Malatesta,
made war on Pisa with mercenaries under Sir John Hawkwood.
A general league against Bernabo effected little, and, in 1364, a
peace was signed at Milan by which Bologna was left in the hands
of the Church, but the Pope weakly consented to remove
Albornoz to the southern legation.

Each peace, whether in France or in Italy, set loose fresh
hordes of mercenaries, who moved over the lands almost
unchecked, so admirably organized as to deserve the description
that Gregorovius gives them, of " errant military states." In vain
did Urban publish bull after buU, hurling anathemas at the
companies and their leaders. The condottieri mocked at Rome's
thunders. In the latter part of 1365, Duguesclin, on his way to
Spain, besieged the Pope himself in Avignon, compelling him to
pay an enormous ransom, and to absolve him and his followers
from all censures.

It was, perhaps, this humiliation that induced Urban to carry
out his old resolution of returning to Rome, to which the Romans
had invited him at the beginning of his pontificate. The
exhortations of the royal Spanish Franciscan, Peter of Aragon,
who came to Avignon full of an impassioned dream of the
reformation of the Church, no less than the eloquent appeal of
Petrarca, made a deep impression on the Pope. The Emperor
was favourable, and Albornoz urged him to make no delay. In

^ M. Villani, xi. 31, 32. Ci.Diar'to d* Jnon'mo Fiorentino (edited by Gherardi),
p. 296.

THE COMING OF URBAN THE FIFTH

spite of the opposition ot the King of France, Urban left
Avignon on April 30, 1367, and, on June 4, he landed at
Corneto, where a great throng of nobles and envoys from almost
every State of Italy was waiting to receive him, headed by Albor-
noz himself and Birgitta's friend, the Count of Nola. In the
midst of all this glittering show were Giovanni Colombini and
Francesco Vincenti, with some sixty of their poverelli^ clad in the
most amazing rags. They had accompanied Albornoz from
Viterbo, had invaded the Franciscan convent in which Urban was
to stay, insisting upon making his bed, and those of the cardinals,
and now, crowned with olive and carrying branches in their
hands, they rushed madly to and fro, cheering frantically for Christ
and the Pope. " It was the most lovely and devout thing that
was ever seen," wrote Giovanni to the Abbess of Santa Bonda.
They were accused of heresy, like that of the Fraticelli, the frati
delta povera vifa, of whom there were many in Tuscany ; but
the Pope's brother, the " Cardinal of Avignon," Anglico de
Grimoard, " who is like a lamb," and the papal secretary,
Petrarca's friend Francesco Bruni, took them under their pro-
tection, and promised to befriend them with the Sovereign
PontifF.

At Corneto the Pope stayed for Whitsuntide, and received an
embassy from the Romans, who conferred the full dominion of
the City upon him, and gave him the keys of Sant' Angelo.
Then he moved on to ToscaneUa, the poverelli running round
him all the way. Urban bore it all with exemplary patience, but,
when he got to his lodging, he sent for Francesco and told him
he did not like their rags, but would clothe them in grey habits
and white hoods at his own expense — whereat the " poor<* little
men " sang psalms of praise.

The Pope entered Viterbo in state on June 9, 1367, ** with
such grace and exultation that it seemed the very stones would
cry : Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." Here
he took up his abode in the great fortress that Albornoz had
built, and received the lords of the Italian cities that acknow-
ledged his sway and the ambassadors of the Republics. To the

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

unsophisticated eyes of Giovanni and Francesco, everything seemed
ideal. " This Holy Father," they wrote to the Abbess and nuns
of Santa Bonda, " is considered a good man, and we believe that
God through him is working good and holy things. He has a
brother who seems to us most holy and a good servant of God
and right humble, and who keeps up his state unwillingly ; he
loves us right well ; may Christ reward him and give him His
grace. Think, Madonna and our mothers, that here is all the
nobility of the world, with pomps and delights and goodly robes
and lordship, and all lovely things and great are here. But, all
the same, never was Poverty so dear to us as now, and never did
she please us so." They were profoundly edified even by the
papal courtiers. " You could not imagine how much virtue we
find in these cardinals and in these great lords and many others,
so much so that we are confounded at what they do. They have
more humility in their great estate and in their vast wealth than
we, poor and proud, in our vile and abject condition ; we make
the show, and they do the deeds." Cardinal Anglico gave them
a rule of life, '* which pleases us much, and, with the grace of
God, will please all, for it is the true way of salvation." ^ But
they would accept no bulls or privileges of any kind from the
Pope. Their friend, the Bishop of Citta di Castello, said to
them : **Let virtues defend you, and not papal bulls."

With their order now confirmed, the seventy or more poverelli
having doffed their rags and put on the new white and grey papal
habit, Giovanni and Francesco left Viterbo towards the end of
July. At Acquapendente, Giovanni fell ill. They tried to bring
him back to Santa Bonda, but he died on the way at the abbey
of San Salvatore on Monte Amiata, on the last day of July,
1367. He was buried in the church of the monastery of Santa
Bonda. Fifteen days later, Francesco Vincenti followed him
into the other world. Their order of the Gesuati, white-hooded
and grey-gowned, lives now only on the canvasses of the painters
of their native city.

One anxiety had clouded the last days of Giovanni's stay at
1 Lettere del B, Giovanni Colombini, 90-93, 95, 108.

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tccnnz/nft^

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Svi!<;«^jS<&?^^,5' Cfi^

THE COMING OF URBAN THE FIFTH

Vlterbo. The Pope was arranging a league against the Visconti,
and the Sienese ambassadors did not come. The only political
letter of Giovanni and Francesco that has come down to us,
dated Viterbo, July i8, is to the '* magnificent lords, the Twelve,
governors of the city of Siena," on this subject. Francesco
Bruni has told them that his Holiness is amazed at their delay,
and they implore them for their own good, lest they lose the
Pope's favour, instantly to send the ambassadors.^ On July 31,
the very day of Giovanni's death, the league was signed in the
Apostolic Palace, and, through the personal influence of the
Marquis of Ferrara, the Republic of Siena joined it.^ But, on
August 20, the great Cardinal Albornoz died, followed to his
grave by the admiration and reverence of friend and foe. At
once his presence was missed in the papal counsels. An anti-
French tumult broke out at Viterbo on September 5, and for
three days Urban and his cardinals were besieged in the fortress
by the insurgents. Florence and Siena, and even Rome itself, sent
troops to his aid, but the Pope was glad at length to leave the
turbulent capital of the Patrimony. Escorted by the Marquis
of Ferrara with his men-at-arms. Urban left Viterbo on October
14. On October 16, he entered Rome in triumph, riding on a
white mule, and was received with universal joy and acclamation.
The Marquis of Ferrara, Count Amedeo of Savoy, the lords of
the Malatesta family, and all the petty nobles of the Marches
and Campagna accompanied him ; the fierce soldier, Rodolfo
Varano of Camerino, bore up the standard of the Church.
Armed mercenaries, infantry and cavalry, surrounded the pre-
lates and cardinals of the Curia. Such was the martial entry of
the Vicar of the Prince of Peace ; but the simple monk, who
thus seemed the sovereign of the world, wept to see the
desolation of the Sacred City, and threw himself in fervent
prayer upon the ground at the tomb of the Apostle whose place
he came to hold.

^ Lettere del B. Giovanni Colombmi, 1 1 o.

2 See G. Sanesi, Ziena nella Lega contro il Visconti. In the Bullettino Senese di
Storia P atria, Anno I., 1894.

5 65

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

In the spring of the following year, 1368, the Emperor came
again to Italy, as he had promised. He came with an army to
carry out the designs of the league against the Visconti, joined
forces with the papal troops and those of Queen Giovanna (to
whom Urban had just given the Golden Rose), but effected
nothing. Having made a truce with Bernabo and accepted a
large sum of money from him, he moved southwards into
Tuscany.

The rule of the Twelve In Siena was tottering. The party
had split into two sections, one of which allied with the Tolomei
and other nobles, while the other had the powerful support of
the Salimbeni. Giovanni di Agnolino Salimbeni managed to
prevent the two factions coming to open war, but, on his return
from an embassy to the Emperor, he was killed by a fall from
his horse on the way from Siena to his castle of Rocca d'Orcia.
The nobles and Noveschi secredy brought troops into the city,
and, on September 2, with the support of the populace, they
forced the Twelve to surrender the Palace and the entire control
of the State. Thirteen consuls were appointed, ten nobles and
three Noveschi, who sent Messer Vanni Malavolti and two other
ambassadors to the Emperor at Lucca. The Salimbeni and the
Dodicini allied, and sent a rival embassy ; Charles accepted their
offers, and despatched Malatesta Malatesta to Siena with eight
hundred horsemen. On September 24, the Salimbeni, shouting
for the People and the Emperor, began a general rising against
the new aristocratic regime, and admitted Malatesta and his
cavalry. There was furious fighting from street to street, and a
last mighty struggle in the Campo round the Palace, which was
finally stormed by the imperial troops and sacked by the in-
furiated populace. The nobles fled the city with their families,
while Malatesta fortified himself in the Poggio Malavolti, from
which he ruled the city as imperial vicar. A popular council of
a hundred and twenty-four plebeians was assembled, called the
Consiglio de Riformatori^ which created a new Signoria of twelve
" Defenders," representatives of all classes of the people. The
Salimbeni were given Massa and five other castles in the Sienese

THE COMING OF URBAN THE FIFTH

contado, and declared popolani. The Emperor, passing through
Siena on his way to join the Pope at Viterbo, knighted two of
the family for their services, and accepted an enormous present of
money from the Commune.

On October 21, the Pope and the Emperor entered Rome
together, Charles leading Urban's mule on foot. This was the
great event for which Birgitta had so long waited in patience,
but, now that it had come, it brought her a personal trial and
disappointment. She had communicated her visions concerning
the reformation of the Church to the Pope. She had written to
the Emperor, urging him to unite in this great work, and she
now wrote again in the name of Christ, bidding him hearken to
her revelations, and strive to make the Divine justice and mercy
feared and desired upon earth.^ But Charles simply ignored her,
and Urban had no time at present to attend to a woman's
admonitions.

The state of Siena was bordering upon anarchy. The banished
nobles held the fortresses in the contado, burned and foraged up
to the gates of the city, and absolutely declined to come to terms
with the government of the Defenders, at whose sentences and
decrees they mocked. Malatesta sent the army of the Commune
against them, but it effected nothing. On December 1 1 , there
was a popular rising against the less democratic element in the
new administration. The mob fired the gate of the Palace, broke
in, and drove out the representatives of the Nine and Twelve
from the Signoria. Ultimately, by a kind of compromise, under
the authority of the imperial vicar, a new council of plebeian
reformers instituted a fresh Signoria of fifteen " Defenders,"
eight of the popolo minuto, four of the Twelve, and three of the
Nine. The Captain of the People and the " Gonfalonier! Maestri "
(the Gonfalonieri of the three terzi of the city) were always to
be of the popok minuio, while the Captain was to have three coun-
sellors, one from each order of the people, all together forming a
supreme authority in criminal cases. Thus was established the

1 RevelationeSf IV, 45, VIII. 50, 51.

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

artisan government of the Riformatori^ or popolo del maggior
numeroy in Siena.^

In the meanwhile, the Dodicini and the Salimbeni, who had
instigated the rising for their own advantage and were naturally-
disappointed at the results, sent agents to the Emperor to implore
his aid. Charles was now on his way back from Rome. On
December 22, with the Empress, he entered Siena, '* all armed
save the head," with an imposing array of imperial troops, and
alighted, as before, at the Palazzo Salimbeni. A few days later,
the Cardinal Guy of Boulogne, a warlike French prelate whom
the Emperor had made imperial vicar-general in all Tuscany,
arrived at Siena with reinforcements. The adherents of the
Twelve hailed him as a possible ecclesiastical despot to overthrow
their enemies. Charles demanded the surrender into his hands
of the towns and fortresses of Massa, Montalcino, Grosseto,
Talamone, and Casole, with the intention of handing them over
to the Cardinal. The Defenders summoned a council of more
than eight hundred citizens, and returned a practically unanimous
refusal. Neither would they make any fresh modification of
their constitution at the Bohemian Caesar's bidding. The Noves-
chi and the populace alike were prepared to end the crisis by
recalling the exiled nobles.

On the morning of January 18, 1369, there arose a sudden
clamour through the streets of Siena : " Long live the People,"
" Death to the traitors who want the nobles back ! " Led by
Niccolo Salimbeni and his allies of the Dodicini, armed bands
rushed through each terzo of the city, sacking and slaying as they
went, while two other Salimbeni, Pietro and Cione, entered the
Palace with their followers. The whole thing had been pre-
arranged with the imperial authorities. Malatesta brought his
soldiery into the Campo and called upon the Defenders, in the
name of the Emperor, to expel their colleagues of the Nine.
Summoned by the Salimbeni, Charles himself mounted, and
moved towards the Palace with three thousand horsemen.

^ Cf. O. Malavolti, Historia d^ Sanest, pp. 132, i-^iv.
68

THE COMING OF URBAN THE FIFTH

All the bells of the city clashed out the alarm. The train-
bands were in arms and poured into the Campo. Seizing the
banner of the People, the Captain, Matteino di Ventura, left the
Palace, put himself at their head, and drove the imperial forces
back upon the Croce del Travaglio. In the narrow streets,
assailed in all directions, deafened by the clanging bells, rained
upon by stones and darts, the heavily-armed chivalry of the north
was helpless. After an " incredible battle " of several hours, the
Emperor was driven back to the Palazzo Salimbeni, with the loss
of more than four hundred slain, including one of his own
nephews. The three representatives of the Nine, who had left
the Palace, were brought back in triumph in procession, to the
sound of trumpets, crowned with garlands and bearing branches
of olive. Pietro and Cione Salimbeni, in their turn, were made
prisoners, and forced to yield up Massa to the Commune. A
proclamation was issued forbidding any food to be sold or given
to the Emperor or his people. Starved and terrified, protesting
that he had been betrayed, the successor of Augustus pardoned
the Commune everything, made the Defenders his vicars in per-
petuity, meekly received back as many of his horses and as much
of his property as the Captain of the People could recover,
accepted a large sum of money, and went his way on January 25.^
So cowed was the Emperor that a mere suggestion of trouble
made him shrink from entering Pisa, where the upstart Doge had
been overthrown and the old democratic government of the
Anziani restored in the previous September. He passed on to
Lucca, where he stayed till July, formally liberating that city for
ever from the Pisan yoke.

In February, the Gambacorti — led by Piero and Gherardo and
their sons — returned to Pisa in triumph, enthusiastically welcomed
by the people in memory of the good government of their fore-
bears. At the high altar of San Michele, Messer Piero swore
love and fidelity to the Commune and People of Pisa, and he
kept his oath. In the inevitable tumult against the Raspanti that

^ Cronica Sanese, coll. 204-207.

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

followed, he did his utmost to restrain the excesses of his adhe-
rents : ** I have forgiven, as you know, the beheading of my
kinsmen," he said, " and will not you forgive ? " ^ In September,
1370, the citizens offered to make him absolute lord of Pisa, but
he refused, and chose to be merely the chief salaried officer of the
Republic, " Captain-General and Defender of the Commune and
People." The administration of the twelve Anziani remained,
but Piero Gambacorti was virtually the ruler of the State. He
was a merciful and pacific man, an ardent Catholic and deeply
religious, and his government was, in the main, of a paternal
description. Lucca lay directly subject to the Roman Empire in
the person of the Cardinal Guy of Boulogne, until in March, 1370,
through the intervention of the Pope, the Cardinal surrendered
his authority, and Lucca became a free Republic once more, with
a Signoria of ten (nine Anziani and a Gonfaloniere of Justice)
and the usual two councils. Like the government of the Gamba-
corti at Pisa, the new-born Republic of Lucca was decidedly papal
in its tendencies and sympathies — a political fact of importance in
the coming convulsions of Italy.

But, in Siena, things seemed little better under the new regime.
There were risings and tumults within the city, in the main the
work of the Salimbeni and the adherents of the Twelve, directed
against the Noveschi ; there was plundering and ravaging in the
contado, the Marquis of Monferrato having failed in his attempt
to reconcile the nobles with the popular government. Armed
guards were set all over the city and at the gates : " And on the
tower of the Campo many guards kept watch, day and night, and
gave signals with fire and smoke when it was needful, and rang
the bells to give the alarm." The Defenders appointed a new
officer, the Executor of Justice, with full powers to enforce order,
but with little result. "And thus all law and all justice was
dead in the city of Siena, by the work of the Salimbeni and of
the Twelve. To such a pitch it came that, in Siena and in the
contado, men slew and plundered on every side." ^ The nobles

^ Cronica di Pisa, col. 1052.
^ Cronica Sanese, coll. 207, 208.
70-

THE COMING OF URBAN THE FIFTH

had sent Messer Vanni Malavolti, the government a certaui
Jacomo di Guido Guernieri (a swordsmith by trade), as ambas-
sadors to Florence, and at length, In the spring of 1369, by
Florentine intervention, a temporary peace was made between the
nobles and the people, which was greeted with trumpets and
salvos and great rejoicing.

Like most others that belonged to the order of the Dodicini,
the family of Jacomo di Benincasa suffered heavily from the
change of government. Catherine's elder brothers, Benincasa and
Bartolommeo, were active members of their faction, and, either
on the occasion of the September rising or in one of the later
tumults, they were sought out by a band of the populace who
meant to take their lives. A friend rushed into the house, telling
them that the enemy were at hand, urging them to take refuge in
the neighbouring church of Sant' Antonio, whither others of their
faction had already fled. But Catherine sprang to her feet :
" They must not go to Sant' Antonio," she said, *' and I am
sorry indeed for those who are there." She put on her mantle,
and, bidding her brothers come with her and fear not, led them
safely through their enemies, who lowered their weapons and
reverently saluted her as she passed, to the hospital of Our Lady,
where she left them in charge of the rector, telling them to stay in
hiding for three days, and then return home in safety. And so
it happened. All those who had taken shelter in Sant' Antonio
were slain or made prisoners, but, after three days, the tumult
subsided. Catherine's brothers were condemned to a fine of one
hundred gold florins, which they paid, and were left in peace.^

As we have seen, the Twelve had still a small part in the
new regime, and Benincasa and Bartolommeo were at first among
the representatives of their faction that held oflfice, the latter, it is
said, having even sat in the Signoria as one of the Defenders for
two months in 1370. But their condition had altered for the
worse since their father's death. The revolution had ruined their
business prospects, and, in the early autumn of this year, the two,

^ The anonymous author of the Miracoli, quoted by Grottanelli in the notes
to the Leggenda m'tnore, pp. 209, 210.

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

together with Stefano, emigrated to Florence, and were admitted
to the Florentine citizenship. Their family had business connec-
tions with Florence, and, apparently, had kept a workshop there
for some considerable time previously.^ In their adopted city
they continued to exercise the art of dyers and tanners, but with
little success, and were soon reduced to poverty. Catherine's
beloved friend and companion, Lisa, naturally accompanied her
husband.

Catherine followed them not only with prayers, but with letters.
Writing to the three together, " I would see you always united,"
she says, " with the sweet bond of holy charity, so that neither
demon nor word of man can separate you from it. I remember
the word that Jesus Christ said : he that humhleth himself shall be
exalted. Do thou, Benincasa, who art the eldest, wish to be the
least of all, and thou, Bartolommeo, wish to be less than the least,
and I pray thee, Stefano, to be subject to God and them ; and so,
sweetly, will you preserve yourselves in most perfect charity." ^
Patience and submission to the will of God is the note of her
three letters to Benincasa. The blood of Christ will make him
strong to bear with true patience every labour and tribulation,
from whatever side they come : ** It will make you persevering,
so that, even until death, you will endure with true humility ;
because in that blood the eye of your understanding will be
illumined by the truth, which is that God wills nought else save
our sanctification, because He loves us ineffably ; otherwise. He
would not have paid so great a price for us. Be then content,
be content in every time and place, for all are given you by the
Eternal Love for love. Rejoice in your tribulations, and consider
yourself unworthy that jGod should send you by the way that

1 Grottanelli, op. cif., pp. 21 1-2 13, gives the text of the petition of the three
brothers (October 16, 1370) for admission to the Florentine citizenship, which
was approved by 78 votes to 28. It is difficult to explain their claim to have
been virtually Florentine citizens for so many years, unless it is a mere form of
words and a recognized polite fiction. In Florence, the j4rj tinture guadi was one
of the minor guilds subjected to the great Jrte delta Lana, the guild of the
wool-merchants.

2 Letter 14 (252).

THE COMING OF URBAN THE FIFTH

His Son trod, and in all things render glory and praise to His
name." " Dearest brother, be a lover of virtue with holy-
patience, and go often to confession, which will help you to bear
your burdens. I tell you that God will use His benignity and
mercy, and will reward you for every burden that you have borne for
love of Him." ^ But, presently, a coldness arose between Benin-
casa and those he had left behind in Siena ; in his tribulation, he
thought that his mother ought to have helped him, while she,
apparently, felt more in need of aid from him. Catherine
naturally took Lapa's part, and held her brother ungrateful : —

" You must remember to correct yourself of your ingratitude
and churlishness, in the matter of the duty you owe your mother,
to whom you are bound by the commandment of God. As to
your not having fulfilled the obligation of helping her, I hold you
excused, because you have not been able ; but, even if you had
been able, I do not know that you would have done it, seeing that
you have been niggardly to her even in your words. In your
ingratitude you have not considered how she bore you and gave
you suck, nor all the care she has had of you and of all the
others. If you tell me that she has not been tender to us, I say
that it is not true, for she has been so tender to you, and to the
other, that it costs her dear. But, even if it were true, you
would be in her debt, and not she in yours. She took no flesh
from you, but gave you hers. I pray you to correct this and
your other defects, and pardon me my rudeness, for, if I did not
love your soul, I would not say what I say to you." ^

A little later, she sent a beautiful and tender letter of counsel
to Benincasa's daughter Nanna, sua nipote verginella^ on her taking
the veil, interpreting for her the parable of the ten Virgins.^
Afterwards, when her influence extended as far as Florence, she
was able to help her brothers materially, by interesting the power-
ful Guelf politician, Niccolo Soderini, on their behalf.

Rome itself had seen but little of the Sovereign Pontiff during
these few years. His health had been steadily failing, and he

^ Letters lo and 20 (249 and 251). 2 Letter 18 (250).

3 Letter 23 (356).

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

had passed most of his time at Viterbo, and especially in the high-
lying and salubrious Montefiascone.

The work of Albornoz had been left incomplete in one essential
point. Perugia, the third city of the Papal States, was still
unsubdued. Its subjugation was a very different matter from
hunting out the tyrants of such places as Forli or Imola : Perugia
was a free and powerful Republic, only nominally subject to the
Church. A conspiracy of the Baglioni in October, 1368, to
surrender the city to the Pope, led to open war between it and
the Holy See, in which the Benedictine Pierre d'Estaing, Arch-
bishop of Bourges, had directed the papal forces ; while the
Perugians had been aided in their resistance by Bernabo Visconti,
Giovanni di Vico, and Hawkwood's English mercenaries. They
had at first been successful, and had even, in the following year,
threatened the Pope himself in Montefiascone. Urban naturally
answered with excommunications and interdict. In the October
of this year, 1369, he received in Rome the Emperor of the
East, Johannes V Palaeologus, who came to implore aid against
the Turks. Thus the Pope, in the space of a year, had seen the
successors of Charlemagne and Justinian alike at his feet ; but
found his power defied by a small Umbrian republic from its
hill.

In April, 1370, Urban for the last time left Rome for Viterbo
and Montefiascone. Giovanni di Vico submitted ; the Perugians
opened negotiations for peace. Then, at Montefiascone, the
Pope suddenly announced his intention of returning to Avignon.

From the outset, Petrarca had hailed the papal return to Rome
as the beginning of a new age for the Church — but only a
beginning — and he had doubted the Pope's strength of will. He
had greeted him on his arrival with the words of the Psalmist,
In exitu Israel de Aegyptu : " When Israel went out of Egypt,
the house of Jacob from a barbarous people, there was joy among
the Angels in heaven and among the faithful on earth. And
lo ! thou, most blessed Father, as far as in thee lies, hast rendered
the Christian people happy. No longer will they now go wander-
ing in search of their Lord or of His vicar ; but the one they

THE COMING OF URBAN THE FIFTH

will find in heaven and within their own souls (for each is the
seat of God), the other on earth and in his proper place, that
place which the Lord chose, in which the first of His vicars
dwelt when he lived, and still remains though dead. Thou hast
restored brightness to our world, and, rising like the sun,
hast put to flight the coldness of long night and the powers of
darkness. The neglect of five pontiffs, equal to thee in rank
but not in soul, and of more than sixty years, hast thou alone in
a few days repaired." Urban has brought the Church back to
her ancient seat ; let him complete his work by restoring her to her
old state of purity and dignity, and begin by reforming the
luxury and pomp of the cardinals. Let him look to the legates
and papal officials, who are usurping the lordship of the Italian
cities, and ruling them with such unheard-of tyranny that Peter
is amazed, and Christ, in indignant wonder, is threatening
vengeance : " And, unless He from heaven and thou on earth
come to the rescue (for the Italians seem drugged and lie in
slumber), it will be all over with us ; we shall soon see Italy
reduced to servitude, and the Church literally militant, in arms
and fighting for temporal sovereignty instead of for the faith ;
we shall see her triumphant, too, so that the fame thereof reaches
heaven and the stars, and individual ecclesiastics ruling in triumph
over this or that city — until, when those who now slumber are
awakened, all things are overthrown and reformed by a terrible
revolution." " Then turn not aside from the way by which thou
hast started, for there is none straighter to salvation ; the time is
short, the journey long, and the hope of the reward will make
the labour light. Beware of looking back ; for thou knowest
that he who has set hand to the plough and looketh back, cannot enter
into the kingdom of God."" " If I heard that thou wast departing,
I should not believe unless I saw ; and if I saw it with my own
eyes, I should find it difficult to believe them. So great is the
hope that I have set upon thee and upon thy virtues." ^

This virile language found an echo in the Pope's heart. He
urged the poet, both directly and through the Patriarch of
^ Rerum Senilium, Lib. IX. ep. i (undated).

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

Jerusalem, to join him in Rome. Petrarca promised that he
would come, and actually started in the spring of 1370, but was
taken ill at Ferrara, and, when he recovered, the doctors forbade
him to proceed,^ He was probably at Padua, or in his retreat at
Arqua among the Euganean Hills, when he heard that all was
over, and that Urban was returning to Provence. In his last
letter to the Pope, one of the noblest of his compositions, Italy
herself addresses the fugitive successor of Peter : —

" When I was lacerated with deadly sores, thou didst descend
to me to cure my wounds, and didst say with Peter : I am an
Apostle of Christ ; have no fear of me, my daughter. Thou didst
begin to pour into them wine and oil, and now, without having
bound them up or applied the remedies, thou art departing from
me. Thou didst find, it may be, that my malady was such as
seemeth to thee incurable, and for this thou art, perchance,
deserting me, like a despairing physician who is ashamed to await
the death of his patient. But who knoweth that He would not
lay His hand upon me with thee, who healed the sick from all
diseases ^. Who knoweth if he would not be with thee, at whose
word the limbs of the infirm were made whole .'' Thou art the
vicar of the one, the successor of the other ; thou boldest the keys
of the Kingdom of Heaven. ... If thou wilt not be moved by
my entreaty. He will meet thee on thy way, who to Peter's words
when he fled : Lord^ whither goest Thou ? answered : I go to Rome
to be crucified again.'' ^

This letter was apparently written in the late spring or early
summer of 1370. On May 22, an embassy from the Romans
came to Montefiascone, to implore the Pope to reconsider his
decision. " The Holy Spirit led me to Rome," he answered ; '* it

^ Rerum Senilium, Lib. XI, ep. i, 16, 17, letters dated Padua, July 25 (1368),
December 24 (1369), May 8 (1370), respectively.

2 The original text of this letter (which is not found in the early editions of
Petrarca's works) is given by A. M. Bandini, Bibliotheca Leopoldina Laurentiana,
Tom. ii. (Florence, 1792), coll. 101-103. In Fracassetti's Italian version, it
appears as the third of the Lettere var'ie. The words, E^ sum Apostolus CAristi,
etc., are those uttered by St. Peter to St. Agatha in prison, according to the legend
of the latter saint, in the Breviarium Romanum for February 5 .

THE COMING OF URBAN THE FIFTH

now leads me away for the honour of the Church." Ill-health
and the evil influence of the French cardinals were probably the
real explanations ; the only plausible excuse that Urban could
have offered was that, Italy being now pacified, his presence was
needed in Avignon to make peace between France and Eng-
land, who had renewed hostihties. On June 7, he made two
cardinals, both of whom were soon to touch Catherine's life
very nearly : Pierre d'Estaing, with the title of Santa Maria
in Trastevere, and the Bishop of Florence, Piero Corsini, the
nephew of Piero degli Albizzi, whose faction had always favoured
the league of Florence with the Church. He likewise appointed
Pierre d'Estaing, who was a great-hearted and far-seeing man, of
virtuous life and enlightened views, albeit of an aristocratic and
somewhat overbearing disposition, to the southern legation in
Italy ; the northern legation, that called of Bologna, he had
previously, in January, 1368, assigned to his own brother,
Anglico de Grimoard. He now bade the Romans farewell,
promising still to care for them as a father, urging them to
remain at peace and not prevent his return, or the coming of his
successor. '* Nevertheless," he said, " we bear witness that we
and our brothers, the cardinals of the Holy Roman Church, and
our familiars and officers, have remained for three years with you
and in the places round about, in great quiet and consolation ; and
you, collectively and individually, have treated us and our Curia
with reverence and kindness." ^

Birgitta had gone with her sons, Charles and Birger, to
Amalfi. She returned, to find Urban on the point of departure,
and resolved to make a last effort to see him. It was in July
when she reached Viterbo and went out to Montefiascone, where
the Pope was. With her came a man of high repute for sanctity,
whom we shall meet again in connection with Catherine : the
*' hermit bishop," Alfonso da Vadaterra. Born of a Sienese father
and a Spanish mother, Alfonso had begun a brilliant ecclesiastical
career as Bishop of Jaen, but had renounced his bishopric, dis-
tributed his goods among the poor, and was now living at Rome

1 Brief of June 26, 1370, in Raynaldus, vii. p. 190.

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

as an Augustinian hermit. He it was who wrote Birgitta's life,
and apparently put the books of her Revelations into the form in
which we now have them.

The Swedish princess on her mule climbed the high hill upon
which Montefiascone stands, to the papal palace at the summit,
overlooking the peaceful lake of Bolsena. There below her lay the
island that had witnessed the martyrdom of Santa Cristina, and
that other where Amalasuentha had been brutally done to death by
her Gothic assassins ; further away lay the quiet little town with
the church that had witnessed the mystical wonder that is cele-
brated still in the Lauda Sion of Aquinas and the marble glory ot
Orvieto's Duomo. She was ushered into the presence of the
Sovereign Pontiff— her friend Niccolo Orsini, the Count of Nola,
apparently acting as interpreter. Urban received her kindly,
granted her the authorization of her rule, but would not discuss
the affairs of the Holy See. Presently, however, he sent a mes-
senger after her, to ask her what was the Divine will in the
matter. Then the visionary spirit seized again upon Birgitta, and
the Blessed Virgin spoke in her heart to this eff^ect : —

" Because of my prayer, he obtained the infusion of the Holy
Spirit, that he should go through Italy to Rome, for nought else
save to do justice and mercy, to strengthen the Catholic faith, to
confirm peace, and thus to renovate Holy Church. Even as a
mother leads her child to what place pleases her while she shows
him her breasts ; so did I lead Pope Urban, by my prayer and
the work of the Holy Spirit, from Avignon to Rome, without any
danger to his person. What hath he done to me } Now he
turneth to me his back and not his face, and he intends to depart
from me ; to this a malign spirit leads him with its fraud. For
he is weary of his divine labour and lusteth for his bodily ease.
Yea, the devil draws him with worldly delectation, for too
desirable to him is the land of his birth in mundane fashion.
He is drawn, too, by the counsels of his carnal friends, who
consider his pleasure and will more than the honour and will of
God, or the profit and salvation of his soul. If it should happen
that he return to the regions where he was elected Pope, he will

THE COMING OF URBAN THE FIFTH

in a brief while receive such a stroke that his teeth will gnash ;
his sight will be darkened and grow dim, and all the limbs of his
body will tremble. The ardour of the Holy Spirit will for a
while grow tepid within him and depart, and the prayers of all
the friends of God, who resolved to pray for him with tears and
groans, will be numbed, and the love of him will grow cold in
their hearts. And he will render account before God of the
things which he has done in the papal chair, and of the things
which he has omitted, but could have done tO the honour of God
in his great position." ^

This revelation she delivered in person to the Pope, in the
presence of the young French cardinal, Pierre Roger de Beaufort,
the nephew of Clement VI. ^ But Urban went sadly on his way.
On September 5, 1370, he sailed from Corneto, reaching France
on the 1 6th. Three months later, on December 19, he died
at Avignon, in the house of his brother Anglico, at his own wish
stretched on the couch of poverty and dressed in the Benedictine
habit. An ineffectual Pope, but a faithful monk to the end.^
On December 30, Cardinal Pierre Roger de Beaufort was
elected to succeed him ; he was ordained priest on January 4,
137 1, and, the next day, was crowned Pope under the title of
Gregory XI.

A month before Urban's death, in November, 1370, a peace
had been concluded at Bologna between the Church and Perugia,
by the intervention of the ambassadors of Florence — rthe principal
conditions of which were that the city of Perugia should recognize
the Pope and the Church in perpetuity as its sovereign, and that

1 Revelationes, IV. 138.

2 The Cardinal had previously refused to present the revelation to Urban.
Cf. Alfonso's testimony in Raynaldus, vii. p. 374..

3 According to Birgitta, in spite of his great fall, Urban's soul finds mercy at
the last because of his fidelity to his vows. Cf. Revelationes, IV. 144 : " Visio quam
habuit Sponsa Christi de judicio animae cujusdam Summi Pontificis defuncti."
The Comtesse de Flavigny {Sainte Brigitte de SuidCj p. 285) is clearly in error in
supposing that Clement VI is the pontiff in question. Cf. Petrarca, Rer. Sen., Lib.
XIII. ep. 13. The Bolognese anticipated the judgment of the Church by at once
venerating th§ dead Pope as a saint.

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

the Pope for his life-time should make the priors of the Republic
his vicars, after they had formally surrendered the keys of the city
to the commissaries of the Cardinal Legate, in sign and recog-
nition of which they were to pay, during the life of the Pope, an
annual tribute of 3,000 gold florins. The Perugians were still
doubting about the meaning of the clause that spoke of the
creation of vicars as only for the life-time of the Pope, while the
recognition of the Church's sovereignty was perpetual, when
Urban died, and the legate, Anglico de Grimoard, had no
further powers to act. But the exiles who had been restored
raised fresh tumults, the city lacked provisions, and Cardinal
d'Estaing, confirmed in his legation by the new Pope, entered
Perugia in triumph, on May 19, 137 1, welcomed by the priors
and citizens with palms and olive-branches.^

Thus, in appearance, was the work of Albornoz completed in
the first year of the pontificate of Gregory XI ; but it was to
prove a house built on sand, with no sure foundation in the love
of the subjects that ostensibly accepted the papal rule. The year
of Urban's desertion of Italy is the year of Catherine's entry
into public life. The new pontiff, gentle, scholarly, sickly and
suffering in his body, well-meaning, but weak and irresolute,
fickle, and at times unexpectedly hard and obstinate, was to
encounter the spiritual force of her whom He, whose vicar on
earth he claimed to be, had wedded to Himself in the mystic
bond of perfect Faith.

1 Cf. Pellini, Historia di Perugia, I. pp. 1080-1085 '■> Supplement to Graziani's
Chronicle, pp. 208-217 ; Montemarte, Cronaca di Orvieto, I. p. 39.

CHAPTER V

THE SPIRITUAL FELLOWSHIP

" Amore non e altro che unimento spirituale dell' anima e della cosa amata." — Dante,
Convivio, III. i,

«' Id quod amatur amore amicitiae, simpliciter et per se amatur." — St. Thomas Aquinas,
Summa Thcologka, I-II. Q. 26. A. 4'

Catherine was now nearly twenty-four years old : a won-
derfully endowed woman. Gifts had been 'given her to fulfil the
impassioned hunger and thirst after righteousness ; a divination of
spirits, and an intuition so swift and infallible that men deemed
it miraculous, the magic of a personality so winning and irresistible
that neither man nor woman could hold out against it, a simple
untaught wisdom that confounded the arts and subtleties of the
world ; and, with these, a speech so golden, so full of a mystical
eloquence, that her words, whether written or spoken, made all
hearts burn within them when her message came. In ecstatic
contemplation she passes into regions beyond sense and above
reason, voyaging alone in unexplored and untrodden realms of
the spirit ; but, when the sounds of the earth again break in
upon her trance, a homely common-sense and simple humour are
hers, no less than the knowledge acquired in these communings
with an unseen world.

It is stated by Orlando Malavolti, the sixteenth century
historian of Siena, that Catherine had already written to Pope
Urban V. But this is manifestly an error. Her time had not
yet come to pass out of her hidden life into what a Pope of the
Renaissance was to call the " game of the world." It is curious
that, while she makes one reference to Urban in a letter to his
successor,^ she never mentions the hopes and fears that had been
raised by his coming. Her entry into public affairs appears to
have begun in those months that intervened between his flight
from Italy and his death at Avignon.

All through this summer of 1370, the soul of Catherine was
1 Letter 231 (7).

6 81

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

overwhelmed with visions and manifestations of divine mysteries.
" To explain in our defective language what I saw," she said in
after years, " would seem to me like blaspheming the Lord, or
dishonouring Him by my speech ; so great is the distance
between what the intellect, when rapt and illumined and
strengthened by God, apprehends, and what can be expressed
with words, that they seem almost contradictory." As she
prayed to the Lord for purity of heart that she might worthily
receive the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, it seemed to her that
a torrent of mingled blood and fire was poured down upon her,
to the mystical cleansing of body and soul. And, a day or two
later, she believed that Christ had drawn her heart from her side,
and given her His own in exchange, with which she was hence-
forth to live. " Do you not see, father," she said to Fra
Tommaso della Fonte, " that I am no longer she who I was, but
that I am changed into another person ? Such gladness and such
delight possess my mind, that I marvel greatly how my soul can
stay in my body. Such ardour is in my soul that this material,
exterior fire seems to me cold by comparison." Praying for
this confessor and her other companions, that eternal life might
be their portion, and seeking a sign from Christ that her prayers
were heard, she felt the palm of her outstretched hand pierced
through by an invisible nail of iron, and thus received the fore-
taste of the stigmata^ the imprint of the five wounds of Our Lord
in His passion, which afterwards — albeit invisible — were to be
hers. "The abundance of graces and revelations and most
manifest visions," writes Fra Raimondo, " at this time so com-
pletely filled the soul of this holy virgin, that she began utterly
to waste away through the greatness of her love ; and she became
so weak that she could no more rise up from her bed, albeit she
suffered nought else save only the love of her eternal Bridegroom,
upon whose name she called continually, as though bereft of
sense."

She prayed earnestly that she might soon be delivered from
the body that kept her from the embraces of her Spouse, and
that, if this might not yet be, in the meanwhile she might at least

THE SPIRITUAL FELLOWSHIP

be united to Him by partaking in the sufferings that He endured
on earth. At length it seemed that her heart was broken by the
force of her love. " So great," she said, " was the fire of divine
love and of the desire of uniting myself with Him I loved, that,
if my heart had been of stone or of iron, it would have been
broken in like manner." It was on a Sunday in the autumn of
this year, 1370, when this mystical death fell upon her — a trance
of some four hours' duration — in which her friends all thought
her actually dead, and filled her cell with cries and lamentations.
In this suspension of her bodily life, Catherine believed that she
had really died, that her soul entered into eternity, tasted the
blessedness of the vision of the Divine Essence, and, like Dante,
beheld the spiritual lives of Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell. Like
Dante, she was bidden repeat to the living what she had seen, in
pro del mondo che mal vive : —

" Whilst my soul beheld all these things, the eternal Bride-
groom, whom I thought fully to possess, said to her : ' Seest
thou of what great glory they are deprived, and with what
grievous torments they are punished, who offend Me ? Return,
then, and make known to them their error, their danger, and loss.'
And, for that my soul shrank with horror from this return, the
Lord added : ' The salvation of many souls demands thy return,
nor shalt thou any more keep that way of life that thou hast
hitherto kept, nor shalt thou henceforth have thy cell for habita-
tion ; nay, thou shalt have to go forth from thine own city for
the welfare of souls. I shall be always with thee, and shall guide
thee and bring thee back ; thou shalt bear the honour of My
name and witness to spiritual things before small and great, the
laity no less than the clergy and religious ; for I shall give thee
speech and wisdom which none will be able to withstand. I shall
lead thee, too, before the pontiffs and rulers of the Churches and
of the Christian people, in order that, as is My wont, by means
of the weak I may confound the pride of the strong.' " ^

Fra Bartolommeo di Domenico tells us that he was preaching
in San Domenico when the report was spread that Catherine had
1 Legenda^ II. vi. 1-9, 17, 20-23 (§ § ^78-193, 206, 212-216).

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

died. After the sermon, he, too, heard the rumour, and rushed
to her cell. It was so full of friars and women that he could
hardly enter, and they told him she had been dead some hours
before. She gradually came to life again in his presence, but for
days could do nothing but weep, and bewail the sad fate of her
soul that, having beheld with the Angels the face of her Creator,
was sent down again to her carnal imprisonment. To the end,
Catherine believed she had been really and truly dead, nor could
she ever speak of this vision without tears. *' Will you not have
pity, father," she said to Fra Raimondo, " upon a soul that had
been freed from the dark prison, and, after having seen a most
blessed light, was again shut up in her former darkness ? I am
that wretched creature to whom this befell, for so did the divine
Providence dispose because of my sins." ^ Nevertheless, this
vision was the prelude to her public life — the mystical signification
of her great and wonderful vocation.

Henceforth, Catherine's work was done openly in the eyes of
the world, though for a while she did not, save in spirit, leave the
territories of the Sienese Republic. A number of conversions
marked the beginning of her public ministry. Andrea di Naddino
Bellanti, a notorious sinner and blasphemer, struck down by
illness in the flower of his manhood, was moved by her prayers
to repentance and an edifying end. Francesco Saracini, the
father-in-law of Alessa, a fierce and irreligious old noble of eighty
years, at her bidding made peace with the enemy whom he hated
to death, and became a model of simple-hearted devotion for the
few months of life that remained to him. Jacomo Tolomei, the
furious son of Francesco and Rabe Tolomei, "uomo assai
maraviglioso e molto terribile," already twice a homicide and the
terror of all the city, not only meekly submitted to his sisters,
Ghinoccia and Francesca, taking the veil, but confessed his own
sins to Fra Bartolommeo, and " was changed from wolf to lamb,
from lion to watch-dog." A younger brother of his, Matteo
Tolomei, became one of Catherine's spiritual household and
entered the Dominican order.

^ Conteftatio Fr. Bartholomaei, coll. 1 332-1 333 ; Legenda, II. vi. 21 (§213).

THE SPIRITUAL FELLOWSHIP

But, among the men and women who gave up everything to
become Catherine's followers and disciples, there were some very-
different from the Dominican tertiaries and the friars. Neri di
Landoccio Pagliaresi, a vernacular poet, and by rank a noble of
one of the lesser Sienese houses, who joined her about this time,
is the first of a little group of youths of birth and learning who
left their families to cleave to her and serve her as secretaries,
binding themselves to her in worship and love of friendship ; a
spiritual tie of whole-hearted devotion, which she describes in
her Dialogue as the means chosen by God to raise a soul as yet
imperfect in love to the perfection of love. By thus conceiving
a spiritual and absorbing love for some one creature, such a soul
frees herself from all unworthy passions, and advances in virtue,
by this ordered love casting out all disordered affections. By the
unselfishness and perfection of her love for such a friend, the soul
can test the perfection or imperfection of her love for God.^ It
is like the love of Dante for Beatrice, but kindled at the foot of
the Cross and consecrated at the steps of the Altar.

" You asked me to receive you for son," she writes to Neri,
in the first of her letters to him ; " and, therefore, I — unworthy,
miserable, and wretched as I am — have already received you, and
receive you with affectionate love ; and I pledge, and will pledge
myself for ever in the sight of God, to bear the weight for you of
all the sins you have committed or might commit. But I pray
you to fulfil my desire ; that is, that you conform yourself with
Christ crucified, by entirely severing yourself from the conversa-
tion of the world ; for in no other way could we have this
conformity with Christ. Clothe yourself, clothe yourself with
Christ crucified ; for He is that wedding garment that will give
you grace here, and afterwards will place you at the banquet of
life eternal." ^

A very different type from this highly-strung and sensitive
poet (who to the end was tormented by terrible fits of despondency
and depression, with a haunting fear lest he should not have

^ Dialogo, cap. 144.

2 Letter 99 (272). In all subsequent letters, Catherine addresses him as tu.

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

grace to persevere) was his friend and companion, Francesco di
Messer Vanni Malavolti, the son of one of the most influential
of the great Sienese nobles.

*' I was then about twenty-five years old," writes Francesco,
" not a little fiery and daring by reason of my kindred and my
birth, well furnished with temporal goods, and, impelled by my
still youthful age, I was living lasciviously and unrestrainedly in
the wretched delights of the world and the flesh, as though I were
never to die, recklessly pursuing my inordinate lusts with all my
power. But it chanced that, as I had conversation and fellowship
with many like me in age and birth, among my other dear and
beloved companions, there was a noble youth of Siena called Neri
di Landoccio di Messer Neri de' Pagliaresi, with whom I spent
much of my time, both because he was very virtuous and pleasant,
and because he was an excellent composer of beautiful poems, in
which at that time I took the greatest delight. This Neri, after
we had been friends for a long while, had heard often (without my
knowledge) of the fame of that glorious virgin Catherine, and
had even spoken to her, whereby he had become wondrously
changed and made another man. Pitying me because of
the lascivious life I led, and desiring the salvation of my
soul rather than of my body, he many times besought me to
go with him to speak with the said virgin Catherine. But I,
caring little for these words and prayers, nay, rather deriding
them, for a long time would not in the least consent to his will ;
but at length, constrained by his prayers, and unwilling to distress
him because of the bond of singular love by which he was bound
to me, I told him that I was ready to satisfy his desire ; albeit, in
my inmost heart, I was not going thither from any devotion, but
rather with contempt, and intending, if she preached to me about
the spirit and especially about confession, to answer her in such
wise that she would never speak to me any more. And so, with
this intention, 1 prepared to go to her. But, when we both came
to the glorious virgin, no sooner had I seen her face than a
terrible fear entered me, with so great a trembling that I almost
fainted ; and, albeit (as I said) I had no thought or intention of

THE SPIRITUAL FELLOWSHIP

confessing, God so wondrously changed my heart at her first
word that I went straightway to confess myself sacramentally ;
and that first visit was so efficacious that I became all the contrary
to what I had been before." After a few more visits to her, he
completely abandoned his former mode of life ; and so great was
the change that, whereas hitherto his own wife, " a noble damsel,
fair and beautiful according to the flesh, but far more according
to virtue and spirit," had not sufficed him, " but I was striving
also, according to my power, to have several other women," he
now, with her consent, lived for a long time with her in chastity,
and, shunning the worldly pleasures in which his soul had
delighted, he found his joy in the churches and in conversing
with the servants of God, and began to frequent Catherine's
house and listen to her teaching.

Nevertheless, shortly after, he fell into a grave sin — known, he
says, only to God. '* Immediately after the commission of this
sin, touched by God, I went to the virgin's home, and, as soon as
I had entered her house, before I had come to her presence,
beyond her wont she had me called to her ; and, having sent out
all the others who were with her, she made me sit down near her,
and said to me : * Tell me, how long is it since thou didst go to
confession ? ' To which I answered : ' Last Saturday.' And
this was perfectly true, for such was the custom of all of us who
conversed with her. Then she : ' Go and confess at once ; ' to
which I : * My sweet mother, I will confess to-morrow, which is
Saturday.' But she repeated the same thing, saying : ' Go, and
do what I tell thee.' And when I sought some delay, and
refused to do it just then, she, with face glowing and enkindled,
said to me : ' How, my son, dost thou think that I have not my
eyes ever open over my children .'' You could not do or say
anything without my knowing it. And how dost thou think
to hide from me that thou hast just now done so and so.? Go
therefore, immediately, and cleanse thyself from such great misery.'
Then, when I heard her tell me exactly all that 1 had done and
said, confused and full of shame, without any other answer,
I straightway heedfully fulfilled her command and went to

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

confession ; and not only then, but on many other occasions,
did she manifest to me, with modest and humble words, not only
my hidden deeds, but also the thoughts that were passing in my
heart, the good as well as the evil." ^

On a later occasion, Catherine was to write to Francesco : " I
can well call thee dear ; so much art thou costing me in tears and
labour and in much bitter sorrow." But, for the present, the
young man was in the first fervour of his conversion. " From
being a bestial man and well-nigh demoniacal," he says, *' I had
come to true knowledge and to life according to the spirit."
His relations and associates strove by all possible means to draw
him from his new mode of living. Two especially misliked his
change to good — " and this, as I deem, because we had previously
been the most concordant in the lascivious vanities of the world."
One of these was a connection by marriage, Neri di Guccio
degli Ugurghieri (a member of the oldest feudal family of Siena),
and the other a companion, Niccolo di Bindo Ghelli. Whenever
they met Francesco, they would abuse Catherine, and declared
themselves ready to say the same to her face. " Come then,"
said Francesco at last, "and I will introduce you to her. If you
convince her, I promise to return with you to my old life ; but
take good heed, for, if you go to her, before you depart she will
convert you, and make you both go to confess your sins." That,
the two protested, Christ Himself could not induce them to do ;
but, nevertheless, a few days afterwards, they accompanied him to
the Saint's house. And, whereas they had come with the intention
of saying everything bad against her, when they were in her
presence, they found they jcould not utter a word : —

" Then she sweetly began to reprove them for many words
which they had used many times against me, even as though she
herself had been bodily always present when they said these things,
albeit she had never heard anything about them from me, of which
may God be my witness. Having heard these words of the
virgin, they were touched and confused, and began to weep
bitterly, nor did they answer anything but this : ' Tell us, lady,

^ Contestdtio Francisci de Malavoltis, cap. i., Casanatense MS., pp. 430-433.

THE SPIRITUAL FELLOWSHIP

what you would have us do, for we are disposed and ready to
do whatever you think fit to command.' To which the virgin
answered, saying : * I wish you instantly to go to confession ; and
do thou, Francesco, lead them to my father, Fra Tommaso.'
And, departing thence, we went together straight to the convent
of the Friars Preachers of Siena, where the said father was, and
there, with the greatest devotion and with tears, both the two
confessed their sins. And so completely did they correct their
lives, that, throughout the whole of that Lent, they were always
present at holy preachings, put aside all evil conversations, and
lived honestly and with the fear of the Lord. And thus it
appears manifestly how wondrously these two, who fled her so,
nevertheless could not escape out of the hands of that holy little
virgin Catherine." ^

Other lay disciples who joined Catherine's spiritual family at
this time were Gabriele di Davino Piccolomini, a married man,
and Nigi di Doccio Arzocchi, apparently a youth, both members
of noble houses. Less closely associated with her, but a fervent
believer in her sanctity and mission, was Tommaso di Guelfaccio,
the follower of Giovanni Colombini, a man in whom the govern-
ment of the Republic placed much confidence. A man of a very
different stamp, who became her disciple through Neri di Lan-
doccio and Nigi di Doccio, and who has left us his memoirs, was
Ser Cristofano di Gano Guidini, a notary. Cristofano belonged
to the faction of the Riformatori, held various small offices under
the government, and in after years sat twice in the chief magistracy
as one of the fifteen Defenders. After he had associated for some
time with Catherine and her circle, he desired to abandon the
world and enter the religious state, but yielded to the prayers of
his mother and determined to marry. He has preserved to us
the letter of advice that Catherine wrote to him on the choice of
a wife, gently blaming him for his decision in abandoning the call
to a higher life, but bidding him, in all he does, seek the honour
of God and the salvation of his soul.^ A simple and straight-

^ Contestatio Francisci de Malavoltis, cap. iii., MS. «/,, pp. 439, 440.

2 letter 43 (240). Cf, Memor'te di Ser Cristofano di Gano Guidini, pp. 31-33,

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

forward man, not without learning, he was, perhaps, the most
practical member of the fellowship.

It was probably through Ser Cristofano that a more important
personage was brought into Catherine's sphere of influence : the
painter and democratic politician, Andrea di Vanni. Andrea di
Vanni had taken part in the revolutionary movement that had
brought about the supremacy of the Riformatori, and was a man
of weight in the counsels of the new magistrates of the Republic,
much employed in important embassies. He was intimate with
the worthy notary, and stood godfather to his eldest son. There
is no reason for supposing that he actually became one of
Catherine's spiritual family, and her letters to him, written when
he was filling the oflice of Captain of the People, are of a later
date. He was a loyal and conscientious politician according to
the lights of his day, and a virile painter, with a noble and
striking ideal of the Blessed Virgin in his art.^ The most im-
portant of his surviving works is the large altar-piece in the church
of Santo Stefano, on the Lizza ; but, restored and repainted though
it be, he would be graceless indeed who could look unmoved
upon that strange, unearthly, almost uncouth, but immeasurably
touching and appealing portrait of Catherine from his hand that
still watches over the Cappella delle Volte in San Domenico.

That a young woman should thus be surrounded with men,
some of them no older than herself, gave food to cynical thoughts
and slanderous tongues. The bitterest of all accusations for
Catherine to bear was made against her. A woman named

and Grottanelli, Orazionl di Santa Brigida (Siena, 1867), p. 4. Cristofano wrote
a life of Giovanni Colombini, translated Catherine's Dialogo into Latin, and had
an Italian version of the Revelations of St. Bridget copied for the Confraternity of
Our Lady.

^ Cf. F. M. Perkins, Andrea Vanni, in the Burlington Magazine, vol. ii.
(London, 1903). He seems to have called himself "Andrea di Vanni," Vanni
becoming a family name in later times. Various documents concerning his public
life, with certain of his letters to the Signoria when ambassador to the Pope jij
(i373» ^84, 1385), are given by G. Milanesi, Documenti per la Storia delP Arte
Senese, vol. i. docs. 90-95, 137, and Borghesi and Banchi, Nuovi documenti, pp.
27, 54» 55.

THE SPIRITUAL FELLOWSHIP

Andrea, whom she was tending while dying slowly of cancer,
accused her to the prioress and sisters of the Mantellate as guilty
of unchastity. In spite of Lapa's vehement indignation, Catherine
nursed her traducer lovingly to the end, and at last gained her
soul, too, for her Divine Bridegroom. In the first pang of the
lying accusation, she had prayed to Him with tears to prove her
innocence ; but when, in answer, He bade her choose between
the crown of pearls and the crown of thorns, she eagerly and
ardently pressed the latter upon her brows. It was on this
occasion that, to punish herself for a momentary fit of aversion
caused by the horrible physical state of the patient's body,
Catherine subjected herself to an ordeal too dreadful to be set
down in this place.

" Sweetest daughter," said the Divine Voice in her heart, on
another occasion, " the time to come of thy earthly pilgrimage
will be full of such wondrous new gifts from Me that it will cause
stupor and incredulity in the hearts of the ignorant and carnal ;
and many, too, that love thee will doubt, and will think that what
will befall thee through My exceeding love is delusion. For I
will pour such abundance of grace into thy soul that it will over-
flow wondrously even in thy body, which will thereby acquire an
all unwonted mode of life. Thy heart will be so mightily in-
flamed towards the salvation of thy neighbours that, forgetting
thine own sex, thou wilt utterly change thy former way of con-
versation, nor wilt thou any more shun the company of men and
women ; nay, for the salvation of their souls, thou wilt expose
thyself to every labour according to thy power. At these things
many will be scandalized, and by them shalt thou be spoken
against that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed. But
be not thou disturbed, nor fear at all ; for I shall be ever with
thee, and shall deliver thy soul from deceitful tongues and from
the mouth of those that lie. So execute manfully whatever the
Holy Spirit instructs thee, because through thee I will deliver
many souls from the jaws of Hell, and, by means of My grace,
bring them to the Kingdom of Heaven." ^
1 Legenda, II. v. i (§ 165).
91

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

It was probably about this time that a last attempt from the
religious portion of the city was made to hinder Catherine's work,
and it came from two men in Siena who were, in Francesco
Malavolti's words, " religious of very great worth according to
the world." One, Fra Gabriele da Volterra, a Franciscan and
then minister of the province, a " Master in Sacred Theology,"
with a great reputation for learning and preaching, was a sort of
petty Brother Elias, who lived sumptuously in the convent of
San Francesco like a great prelate. The other was a friar of the
order of Augustinian hermits, Fra Giovanni Tantucci (usually
known as Giovanni Terzo, to distinguish him from two other j
" Brother Johns " who had preceded him in his convent), also a I
'* Master in Sacred Theology," who had been to England, where
he had taken his doctor's degree at the University of Cambridge.
These two murmured against Catherine, in orthodox pharisaical
fashion, saying that she was an ignorant woman, seducing simple
persons with false expositions of holy Scripture, and leading them i
to hell with herself They resolved to make her recognize her
errors, and came one day to visit her, with two companions,
intending to silence her by difficult theological questions. A
number of men and women were with her when they arrived ;
Fra Tommaso della Fonte, Fra Matteo Tolomei, a certain Niccolo
di Mino, Tommaso di Guelfaccio, Neri di Landoccio, Gabriele
Piccolomini, Alessa, Lisa, Cecca, and others, including Francesco
Malavoiti, who tells the tale of what happened.

" While we were thus listening to the saintly and wonderful
words and doctrine of that holy virgin, she suddenly broke off
in her speech, and, becoming all enkindled and with countenance |
all glowing, she raised her eyes to heaven, and said : ' Blessed be
Thou, sweet and eternal Bridegroom, who dost find so many
new ways and paths by which to draw or lead souls to Thyself.'
And she said many other words, which I do not remember
exactly, and would not be able to repeat in the form in which
they were uttered by her. But we were all attention, consider-
ing what she did, for her motions and all her words were full of
mystery nor without particular cause ; so we were expecting

THE SPIRITUAL FELLOWSHIP

the end that the matter must needs have. Then the father
Fra Tommaso, her confessor, said to her : ' Tell me, daughter,
what is the meaning of what thou hast just done ? What dost
thou mean ? Let us understand something about it.' But she,
like an obedient daughter, answered : ' My father, you will soon
see two great fishes caught in the nets ' ; and said no more. We
still by these words did not know what she meant to say ; but,
while we were thus in suspense and expecting the end of the
affair, one of the virgin's women companions, who lived in the
house with her, said : ' Mother, there is here below Master
Gabriele da Volterra of the Friars Minor, with a companion, and
Master Giovanni Terzo of the friars of St. Augustine, also with
a companion, who wish to come to you.' "

As Catherine was going to meet them, the two came into the
room. They sat down, and the others grouped themselves round,
as they said that they wished to say nothing to her in secret.
Then, '* like two furious lions," the Franciscan and the Augustinian
in turn began to ply her with the most difficult theological
questions, hoping to put her to confusion before her friends and
disciples. " But the Holy Spirit, who deserteth none that trust
in Him, did not desert this humble handmaiden of His, but
granted her so great wisdom and fortitude, that if there had been
not only two such men, but even a thousand or ten thousand, she
would have overthrown all, and won a magnificent triumph over
them, even as that same Holy Spirit said through the mouth of
David : A thousand shall fall at thy side^ and ten thousand at thy
right handy All aflame with divine zeal, yet with the utmost
reverence for her two opponents, Catherine rebuked their inflated
and unprofitable science, their setting their hearts upon the praises
of creatures, and spoke so winningly of the love of Christ that
the two were instantly converted. Master Gabriele was living in
such pomp that in his convent he had made himself one cell out
of three, and furnished it so sumptuously that it would have been
excessive for a cardinal, including ** a most noble bed with a silk
covering and curtains round It, and so many other things that,
together with his books, they would be worth hundreds of ducats.

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

Taking the keys from his girdle, he said before us all : * Is there
no one here who will go to distribute and give away for the love
of God what I have in my cell ? ' Then uprose Niccolo di Mino
and Tommaso di Guelfaccio, and, taking the keys, they said to
him : ' What would you have us do ? ' And Master Gabriele
answered them : * Go into my cell, and whatever you find therein
distribute and give away for the love of God, so that nothing be
left me in it save my breviary.' " They took him at his word,
distributed his books among the other friars of the convent who
were students, and gave the rest to the poor, leaving only what
was sufficient for a humble Franciscan friar of the strict observ-
ance. Gabriele himself shortly after went to Santa Croce at
Florence, and there set himself to serving the friars in the refec-
tory and other acts of humility, although he was still the minister
of the province. Master Giovanni, also, gave away all he had,
keeping only the breviary, and became one of Catherine's im-
mediate followers, afterwards accompanying her in her travels
until her death. He was one of the three confessors who were
deputed by the Pope to hear the confessions of those who were
converted by her means. ^

It was doubtless through Maestro Giovanni Tantucci that
Catherine was brought into touch with the hermits of Lecceto.
The convent of San Salvatore di Lecceto was the head house in
Tuscany of the Augustinian hermits, *' a blessed place," writes its
seventeenth century historian, Ambrogio Landucci, "in which
the Most High chose to work so many wonders." It lies beyond
Belcaro, a few miles westward of Siena, in what still remains of a
once glorious forest of ilex trees. The place was originally
known as the Convento di Selva, the Convent of the Wood,
which was also called the Selva di Lago^ because of the lake or
swamp (afterwards drained) that lay at the foot of the hill upon
which, solitary and austere, the convent still rises. From remote
middle ages, wonderful legends had lingered round the convent
and forest. Miraculous waters had gushed out of the arid soil ;
the stones had taken mystical colours in commemoration of Him
1 Contestatio Francisci de MalavoltiSy cap. iii., MS. cit., pp. 441-4^5.

THE SPIRITUAL FELLOWSHIP

who was crucified ; the flowers of the forest had wonderful
healing properties, " all evident signs that here flourished a
continual spring of Paradise." Angels had descended in human
form to eat with the hermits in their refectory, or to succour
them in their need ; Christ Himself had appeared in the wood to
confirm the young friar, Giovanni di Guccio, in his vocation ; but
fiends liirked in it, ready to ensnare the souls of the unwary,
even as the young Sienese knight, Ambrogio Sansedoni, walking
heedlessly under the ilexes, had been confronted with what seemed
a beautiful girl bound by two ruffians to a tree, who was only
revealed in her true nature at the sign of the Cross.

The great days of the convent, however, were a thing of the
past, although the house was still ruled by Fra Niccolo Tini, the
prior whose sweetness of disposition, boundless humility and
charity, are so lovingly extolled by his novice, Filippo Agazzari.
Both Fra Niccolo Tini and Fra Filippo must have been living
at the convent during the whole time of Catherine's life ; but
she appears to have had no dealings with the former (to whom
she refers indirectly only in one letter), nor does the latter, in his
fascinating Assempri^ ever make any mention of her or any of her
followers. It is, indeed, somewhat starding to find a contem-
porary Sienese, evidently of holy life and devout conversation,
who must have frequently seen Catherine, or, at least, have heard
all about her, in after years picturing the religious and social life
of his day as though no such person had ever existed.^ There
was evidently a party opposed to Catherine in the convent. It
is, at least, certain that none of the fi-iars in Lecceto who now
became Catherine's disciples — William Flete, Felice de' Tancredi
(known as Fra Felice da Massa), Antonio da Nizza, or Giovanni
Tantucci himself — make any appearance in Fra Filippo's pages,

1 Fra Niccol6 Tini (said to have been a Marescotti) was prior of Lecceto
from 1332 till 1388. His life is related in Fra Filippo's Assempro 41. Filippo
entered under him as a novice in 1353, began to write his Assempri in 1397, and
was elected prior in 1398. Giovanni Tantucci (who died in 1 391) apparently
succeeded Fra NIccol6 as prior. Cf. Carpellini, Gli Assempri di Fra Filippo da
Sima, pp. xxvi., xxvii., and Landucci, Sacra Leccetana Seha, pp. 103-109.

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

and the first of these, at least, was a man of some fame in those
days.

William Flete was an Englishman from Cambridge, who had
settled down among the Augustinian hermits at Lecceto, led,
perhaps, to that spot by his acquaintance with Giovanni Tantucci,
who had probably been his fellow-student by the banks of Cam.
In Catherine's circle these two scholars were usually spoken of by
their academic degrees, Giovanni being the " Master," and
William the " Bachelor." In the wood of ilexes, he led a life
more austere than his rule enjoined upon him ; devoting himself
to works of penance and to study ; avoiding all intercourse with
outsiders, and associating but little with the other friars, returning
only to the convent in the evening or for the offices of the
Church.^

It is clear from one of Catherine's letters to him that it seemed
to her that the good hermit of England attached too much
importance to mortification for its own sake. There are those,
she tells him, '* who have set their desire more in mortifying the
body than in slaying their own will. These are fed at the table of
penance, and are good and perfect ; but, if they have not a great
humility and do not take consolation in judging according to the
will of God and not according to that of men, they often mar their
perfection by making themselves judges of those who do not go
by the same road as they. And this befalls them because they
have set more zeal and desire in mortifying the body than in
slaying their own will. Such as these ever wish to choose times
and places and mental consolations in their own way, as also the
tribulations from the world and the assaults of the demon ;
saying, to deceive themselves, being deceived by their own will
(which is called spiritual will) : * I would have this consolation,
and not these assaults and turmoils of the demon ; not, indeed,
for my own sake, but to please and possess God more, because it
seems to me that I possess Him better in this way than in that.*

^ Cf. MemorU di Ser CristofanOy etc., p. 34. William Flete had previously
known Giovanni Colombini, who sends a message to him and to the prior, Letterc
del B, Giovanni Colombini, 80.

THE SPIRITUAL FELLOWSHIP

And thus such a one often falls into pain and weariness, and
becomes thereby unbearable to himself ; and so mars his perfect
state. The taint of pride lies within this, and he perceives it not. i
For, if he were truly humble and not presumptuous, he would
surely see that the first sweet Truth gives state, time, place,
consolation, and tribulation, according as it is necessary for our
salvation, and to complete in the soul the perfection to which she is
chosen. And he would see that it gives everything for love,
and therefore with love." The souls that have this perfect light,
enamoured and panting with love, run to the table of holy desire.
" They lose themselves, stripping off the old man, that is, their
own sensuality, and they clothe themselves with the new man,
Christ sweet Jesus, following Him manfully. These are they
who are fed at the table of holy desire, and who have set their
solicitude more in slaying their own will than in slaying or in
mortifying the body. They have, indeed, mortified the body,
but not as their chief aim, but merely as an instrument to aid them
in slaying their own will ; for their chief aim should be, and is,
to slay the will, so that it neither seek nor will aught save to
follow Christ crucified, seeking the honour and glory of His name
and the salvation of souls. These are ever in peace and in quiet.
No one can scandalize them, because they have got rid of the
thing by which scandal cometh, to wit, their own will. All the
persecution that the world and the devil can give flows under
their feet ; they stand in the water, holding fast to the branches of
inflamed desire, and are not submerged. Such a soul rejoices at
everything ; and she does not judge the servants of God, nor any
rational creature ; nay, she rejoices at every state and every way
that she sees, saying : * Thanks be to Thee, eternal Father, who
hast many mansions in Thy house.' And she rejoices more at the
diverse ways she sees than if she saw all going along one path ;
because she sees the greatness of God's goodness more clearly
revealed. She rejoices at everything, and draws the perfume of the
rose from all. And she does not pass judgment even upon what
she expressly sees to be sin, but is touched with true and holy
compassion, saying : ' To-day it is thou, and to-morrow it
7 97

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

would be myself, were it not for the divine grace that preserves
me. ^

And, a little later, we find her urging him and Frate Antonio
(the hermit of Nice who, Cristofano di Gano tells us, was the
Englishman's chosen companion) not to let their love of solitude
draw them from their duties of obedience and charity : —

*'I tell you, in the name of Christ crucified, that not only
should you say Mass in the convent sometimes in the week when
the prior wishes it, but I want you to say it every day, if you see
that it is his wish. Because you lose your consolations, you do
not lose the state of grace ; nay, rather, you acquire it, when you ■
lose your own will. I want us (in order that we may show our-
selves eaters of souls and tasters of our neighbours) not to attend
only to our own consolations ; we must also care and have com-
passion for the labours of our neighbours, and especially for those
who are united in one same bond of charity. If you did not so,
it would be a very great fault. And, therefore, I wish you to be
sure to listen to the troubles and needs of Frate Antonio, and I
wish and pray Frate Antonio to listen to yours. And so I beseech
you, in Christ's name and mine, to do. In this way you will
preserve true charity in yourselves, and, otherwise, you would
give room to the devil to sow discord." ^

Another early member of the spiritual family was Messer
Matteo di Fazio de' Cenni, " a notable servant of God," who,
after a dissolute youth, had been converted by the influence of
William Flete, and was now devoting himself to an active life of
charity as rector of the Casa della Misericordia, one of the chief
Sienese hospitals. Sano di Maco, a plebeian who had business
connections with the Benincasa family and was a person of some
influence with the artisan government, also became one of Cathe-
rine's sons in religion. An old hermit, Fra Santi da Teramo,
** holy alike in name and in deeds," an anchorite from the Abruzzi
who had been intimately associated with Pietro Petroni and
Giovanni Colombini, likewise joined the circle. " In his old
age," writes Raimondo, " finding this precious pearl, the virgin
^ Letter 64 (124). 2 Letter i"] (128).

THE SPIRITUAL FELLOWSHIP

Catherine, he left the quiet of his cell and his former mode of life,
in order that he might help others as well as himself, and followed
her, especially because of the signs and wonders that he daily saw
both in himself and in others ; declaring that he found greater
quiet and consolation of mind, as also greater advance in virtue,
by following her and listening to her teaching, than he had ever
found in the solitude of his cell." ^

Two others, whose names were destined to be linked more
intimately with that of Catherine, were still needed to complete
the fellowship : Raimondo da Capua himself, and that young
countryman and beloved disciple of the saintly maiden, to whom
at the last he could appeal in testimony of the truth of the whole
of his Life of their spiritual mistress : " He is the witness of
almost all this narration, in such wise that I can say with John
the Evangelist : he knoweth that he saith true. He, that is,
Stefano the Carthusian, knoweth that Raimondo of the order
of Preachers saith true, who, albeit unfit and unworthy, has
composed this Legend."

^ Legenda, III. i. lo (§ 340). Cf. Bartholomaeus Senensis, Vita B. Petri
Petroni, III. 6.

CHAPTER VI
FROM THE CELL TO THE WORLD

•• Buscando mis amores,

Ir^por esos montes y riberas,

Ni cogere las floras,

Ni temer^ las fieras,

Y pasar^ los fuertes y fronteras,"

San Juan de la Cruz, Canciones entre el Alma y el Eiposo.

These were stormy days for Siena. Plots against the
supremacy of the Riformatori were incessant, and the government
retaliated by torture and executions. At the beginning of 137 1,
a conspiracy was discovered, and two culprits were sentenced to
be attanagliati^ that is, torn by hot pincers on a cart all through
the city to the place of execution. Catherine was in the house of
Alessa, when the dreadful pageant passed through the street
below ; at her prayers, the horrible shrieks and despairing blas-
phemies of the condemned men were hushed at a vision of Christ
that came to meet them at the gate of the city, " and they went
to death as joyously as though they were invited to a banquet."

In the July of this year, a formidable rising of the Compagnia
del Bruco, a secret association of the wool-carders, who were
subjected to the Guild of Wool, and forbidden the right of com-
bination, shook for a moment the whole fabric of the State. It
was a curious anticipation of the tumult of the Cicmpi in Florence,
seven years later. For several days the insurgents held the city
at their mercy, and compelled the government to put seven of their
own number into the Signoria. This was followed by a counter
conspiracy of the Dodicini and their allies, with the connivance of
the Captain of the People, Francesco di Naddo, supported by the
Salimbeni. There was a sanguinary massacre in the Costa d'O-
vile on July 30 ; but, in spite of the defection of their chiefs,
the armed companies of the city kept loyal to the government, and,
with the aid of the Noveschi and nobles, the rising was crushed.
The Captain of the People, robed in scarlet, was beheaded on a

100

FROM THE CELL TO THE WORLD

scarlet-covered scaffold in the middle of the Campo. The
Dodicini were excluded from the administration, the central
magistracy now consisting of twelve of the " People of the Greater
Number " and three Noveschi. Among the citizens condemned
to pecuniary penalties was Nanni di Ser Vanni Savini, '* famous
among those who were devoted to the world and full of the
prudence of the flesh," as Fra Raimondo says of him, who was
sentenced to pay a fine of five hundred florins ; a little later, we
shall find him among Catherine's disciples.^

Almost immediately after leaving the seclusion of her father's
house, we find Catherine in touch with the politics of her native
city, and with the great questions that were agitating the whole
Church. Not only are the spears and swords of contending
factions lowered before her as she passes along the streets of
Siena, but the princes and potentates of Italy seem to realize
instantly that a new spiritual power has arisen in the land, and
from Avignon the Pope himself would fain know the secrets that
Christ had hidden from His vicar to reveal to the simple maiden
whom He had made His bride.

This was in part due to the efl^ect produced upon Gregory's
mind by the revelations of Birgitta. From the beginning of his
pontificate, the Swedish princess had exhorted the new Pope to
repair the scandal caused by the defection of his predecessor. In
a vision she heard the voice of the Blessed Virgin, promising that,
if Gregory will restore the papal chair to Rome and reform the
Church, her prayers will flood his soul with spiritual joy from her
divine Son ; if not, he will assuredly feel the rod of Christ's
indignation ; his life will be cut short, and he will be summoned
to the judgment of God. She wrote to bid the Pope come to
Italy by the beginning of the following April (apparently of 1372)
at the latest, if he would still have the Blessed Virgin as a mother
and escape the judgments of God. There will be no peace in
France until the people appease God by some great works of
humility and piety ; as for the expedition which the Pope is
organizing to redeem the sepulchre of Christ with mercenary
1 Cronica Sanese, col. 228. Cf. Legenda, II. vii. 17 (§ 235).

lOI

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

soldiers, that will no more please Him than did the worship of
the Golden Calf.i

At Birgitta's bidding, the hermit-bishop Alfonso brought this
letter to Perugia, and entrusted it to the Count of Nola for
transmission to the Pope. A copy was shown to the Count and
to a sinister personage, of whom more presently, the papal nuncio,
the Abbot of Marmoutier, and then destroyed, after its contents
had been communicated to Cardinal d'Estaing, as also to Gomez
Albornoz, who had been converted by Birgitta and was then
holding Spoleto for the Church. But there was one significant
passage in the revelation which was reserved for Gregory alone.
" Unless the Pope," said Birgitta to Alfonso (speaking in the
person of the Blessed Virgin), " comes to Italy at the time and in
the year appointed, the lands of the Church, which are now united
under his sway and obedience, will be divided in the hands of his
enemies. To augment the tribulation of the Pope, he will not
only hear, but will also see with his own eyes that what I say is
true, nor will he be able with all the might of his power to reduce
the said lands of the Church to their former state of obedience
and peace. These words that I now say to thee are not yet to be
told or written to the Abbot, for the seed is hidden in the earth
until it fructifies in ears of corn." ^ This prophecy was soon to
be fulfilled to the letter, and in part at the Abbot's cost.

Gregory, who had bidden the Abbot demand an explanation
of the first revelation, returned no answer to the second ; and
Birgitta, seeing no hope of his present coming, started for the
Holy Land, in the autumn of 137 1, accompanied by Alfonso, her
two sons, Birger and Charles, and others. At Naples, Charles fell
in love with the still beautiful Queen, and Giovanna, allured by
the splendid manhood of the young northern warrior, returned
his passion. Both of them were married, but the Queen is said
to have contemplated obtaining a divorce and to have suggested
the same to him. An adulterous connection of this kind seemed

^ Revelationes, IV. 139, 140,

2 Ibid., IV. 140. Cf. Comtesse de Flavigny, Sainte BrigLtte de Suide, pp. 397-
402.

102

FROM THE CELL TO THE WORLD

to Birgitta worse than death, and when, before any steps had
been taken, Charles died at the beginning of March, she welcomed
it as his deliverance.^ She left Naples immediately after the
funeral, and, going by way of Cyprus, reached Jerusalem early
in May. In October, she was back in Naples, where she found
the pestilence raging in that gayest and most licentious of cities.
Here she began, apparently at the request of the Queen and
Archbishop, to preach repentance, urging the latter to attempt a
complete reformation of the Neapolitan church by correcting the
immoral lives of its prelates and priests. She exhorted Giovanna
herself to confession and a complete amendment of life, warning
her to set the affairs of the kingdom in order, for that God had
declared that she would have no heir of her body : —

** Let her acquire greater humility and contrition for her sins,
for in My sight she is a robber of many souls, a lavish squanderer
of My goods, a rod and a tribulation to My friends. Let her
have continual fear in her heart, for all her time she has led the
life of a harlot rather than of a queen. Let her devote the rest
of her time, which is brief, to My honour. Let her fear, and so
live that she incur not My judgment. Otherwise, if she will not
hear Me, I will judge her, not as a queen, but as an ungrateful
apostate." ^

Praying for the Pope on the feast of St. Polycarp, January
26, 1373, Birgitta had a vision of Christ, who told her that
Gregory was fettered by his excessive love for his own kindred
and his coldness of mind towards Him, but that, through Our
Lady's prayers, he would overcome all obstacles and come to
Rome. " But whether thou shalt see him come or not, is not
lawful for thee to know." In February, she despatched the
hermit-bishop to Avignon with a long letter to the Sovereign
Pontiff, describing another vision, in which she beheld Gregory
himself standing before the throne of the heavenly Judge, and
heard the terrible rebuke addressed to him : '* Why hatest thou

* Cf. Comtesse de Flavigny, op. cit., pp. 41 1-4 1 5. Giovanna's third husband,
James of Majorca, died in 1375. Cronkon Siculum (ed. J. de Blasiis), p. 28.
2 Revelationes, VII. 11.

103

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

Me so ? Why is thy daring and thy presumption so great
against Me ? For thy mundane court is plundering My celestial
Court. Thou in thy pride dost take My sheep from Me ; thou
dost unlawfully seize upon the goods of the Church, which are
Mine own, and the goods of the subjects of the Church, to give
them to thy temporal friends. Thou dost rob My poor for the
sake of thy rich. Too great is thy audacity and presumption.
What have I done to thee, Gregory ? I patiently permitted thee
to ascend to the Supreme Pontificate, and foretold to thee My
will, and promised thee a great reward. How hast thou repaid
Me for all My benefits .'' Why dost thou make reign in thy
court such great pride, insatiable cupidity, and the lust that I
hate, and likewise the most horrible simony } Moreover, thou
dost rob Me of innumerable souls ; for almost all who come to
thy court dost thou cast into the hell of fire, in that thou dost not
attend to the things that pertain to My Court, albeit thou art the
prelate and pastor of My sheep. The fault is thine, because
thou dost not wisely consider what is to be done for their spiritual
salvation, and what to be corrected. And albeit I could with
justice condemn thee for these things, yet do I still admonish
thee, for the salvation of thy soul, that thou come to Rome, to thy
seat, as quickly as thou canst. Come, then, and do not delay.
Come not with thy wonted pride and mundane pomp, but with
humility and ardent charity ; and, after thou art thus come,
extirpate and root out all the vices from thy court. Put far
from thee the counsels of thy carnal and worldly friends, and
humbly follow the counsels of My spiritual friends. Rise up
manfully, put on thy strength, and begin to renovate My Church,
which I acquired with My own blood ; let it be brought back in
spirit to its primitive holy state, for now it is a house of shame
that is venerated rather than Holy Mother Church. But, if thou
dost not obey My will, I will cast thee down from the Court of
Heaven, and all the devils of hell shall divide thy soul, and for
benediction thou shalt be filled with eternal malediction. If thou
dost obey Me in this way, I will receive thee like a tender Father ;
I will be merciful to thee, and will bless thee, and will robe and

104

FROM THE CELL TO THE WORLD

deck thee with the pontifical vestments of a true Pope ; I will
clothe thee with Myself, so that thou wilt be in Me and I in thee,
and thou shalt possess eternal glory." ^

The Queen, whose heart had been for a little moved by
Birgitta's words, supplied her with means to return to Rome,
which she reached at the beginning of Lent. Here the Count of
Nola and the Abbot of Marmoutier came to her from the Pope,
to ask for light, and, like the Pharisees of old, to demand a sign,
now that the renewal of hostilities between the Church and
Bernabo Visconti seemed to raise a fresh obstacle to his return.
In answer, early in July, Birgitta wrote her last letter to Alfonso,
which he was to show to the Pope. Let Gregory do what lies in
him for the honour of God, the salvation of souls, and the
renovation of the Church, and he will have a sign of eternal
consolation. But, if he does not come, he will have a sign of
another kind, in the loss of things both temporal and spiritual,
and in the remorse of his own conscience. As to the discord
between the Pope and Bernabo, with such danger to innumerable
souls, let the former come to terms. " For, even if the Pope
were expelled from the popedom, it were better that he should
humble himself and make peace on whatever occasion it could be
done, rather than so many souls perish in eternal damnation."
Let him trust in God alone, and, though all dissuade him from
coming to Rome, and do all in their power to hinder him, none
of them shall prevail over him. " Thus saith t.ie Lord : Since
the Pope doubts whether he should come to Rome for the
establishment of peace and the reformation of My Church, I
would have him come by all means in the coming autumn. And
let him know that he can do nothing more pleasing to Me than
coming to Italy." ^

A few days later, on July 23, 1373, Birgitta died. Her
daughter Catherine took the body to Sweden, and then returned
to Rome, to await the coming of the Pope that her mother had
promised. Petrarca died in the following year. And, in the
meanwhile, the other Catherine had taken up the work that the
^ Revelationesy IV. 141, 142. 2 /3/</.^ IV. 143.

105

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

Italian poet and the Swedish princess alike had left uncompleted,
beginning with those two formidable prelates of the Church
Militant whom we have seen meeting over Birgitta's revelations
— Cardinal d'Estaing and the Abbot of Marmoutier.

Cardinal d'Estaing, although upright and strenuous, had
proved a stern and unpopular ruler of Perugia. At the end of
1 37 1, the Pope appointed him to the legation of Bologna, in
succession to Cardinal Anglico de Grimoard, while his place at
Perugia was taken by Cardinal Philippe de Cabassole, Petrarca's
friend, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, a mild-tempered and amiable
prelate who won golden opinions from the Perugians duriiig the
few months of his government. In January, 1372, d'Estaing
made a pompous triumphal entry into Bologna, received with
acclamation by the inhabitants, who saw in him the champion of
their liberty against Bernabo Visconti : " He was reputed a very
great and upright man," says the chronicler, " and they said that
he had great legatorial powers, and more authority from the
Pope than had ever been given to any other representative of the
Church." 1 In the following August, Cardinal de Cabassole died,
and was succeeded by the Abbot of Marmoutier (who had come
to Italy in the preceding year as treasurer general of the Church),
who now governed Perugia and the Patrimony and Spoleto,
with the title of vicar apostolic, the troops being still under the
command of Gomez Albornoz.

Now begins the series of Catherine's letters. And among
the first of them that we can date with any approach to certainty
are the two to Cardinal d'Estaing, in his capacity of legate of
Bologna and chief representative of the Pope in Italy. They are,
as it were, the frontispiece to the whole mystical volume of her
epistles. They give us at once the essence of her spiritualized
political doctrine. Italy is the prologue, peace the epilogue.
Love of Charity is the rule ; self-love and servile fear the
enemies to be overthrown. The philosophy that she has learned
from the Prince of Peace in her cell of self-knowledge is applied
to the political state of the Church and of the world. Already is
^ Cronka di Bologna, coll. 491, 492.
106

FROM THE CELL TO THE WORLD

her soul overwhelmed by that impassioned dream of a reformation
of the Church down to its very foundations — infino alle fondamenta^
to use her own words — which is soon to lead her across the Alps,
the ambassador of Christ as well as of Florence, the maiden image
of the Italian people, to reconcile the Pope with Italy, to bring
him back to Rome.

It was early in 1372 that Catherine first addressed a letter to
Cardinal d'Estaing, opening with a play upon the words legato
and Legato^ which it is impossible to render in English. ** Dearest
and reverend father in Christ sweet Jesus," she begins ; " I,
Catherine, servant and slave of the servants of Jesus Christ, write
to you in His precious blood, with the desire of seeing you bound
in the bond of charity even as you have been made Legate in
Italy,^ as I have heard, and at which I have been greatly and
singularly delighted, considering that by this you will be able to
do much for the honour of God and the weal of Holy Church.
But you know that we can effect no work of grace in ourselves,
nor for our neighbour, without charity ; charity is that sweet and
holy bond which binds the soul with her Creator ; it bound God
in man and man in God. This inestimable charity kept God
and Man fastened and nailed upon the wood of the most holy
Cross." It is charity alone that unites the separated, enriches
the poor in virtue, makes wars to cease, gives patience and
perseverance, and can never be shaken, because it is founded on
the living Rock, on Him who is the way, the truth, and the life.
Bound in this love, let the representative of the Sovereign Pontiff
follow in the footsteps of Christ : —

" I would have you then, like a true son and servant bought
back by the blood of Christ crucified, follow His footsteps, with
manly heart and ready zeal, never turning aside by reason either
of pain or pleasure, but persevering even to the end in this, and
in every other work which you undertake to do for Christ
crucified. Strive to extirpate the iniquities and the miseries of
the world, which come from the many sins that men commit, by
which the name of God is shamed ; do your utmost, as one
^ Legato nellegame della carita si come sete fatto Legato.
107

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

hungry for His honour and for the salvation of your neighbour,
to find a remedy for all this. I am certain that, if you are bound
in the sweet bond of charity, you will use your legation, which
you have received from the Vicar of Christ, in this way. But,
without the first bond of charity, you cannot use it so, nor do
what you ought ; and, therefore, I pray you to try to have this
love in you. Bind yourself with Christ crucified, following His
footsteps with true and royal virtues, and bind yourself with your
neighbour by deeds of love. But I would have us think, dearest
father, that, unless our soul is stripped of all self-love and worldly
affection, we can never come to this true and perfect love, the
bond of charity ; because one love is so contrary to the other,
that the one separates us from God and our neighbour, while the
other unites us ; one gives life, and the other death ; one gives
darkness, and the other light ; one war, and the other peace.
Self-love so narrows the heart that it leaves no room for you or
your neighbour ; but divine charity enlarges it, receiving into
itself friends and enemies and every rational creature, because it
is clothed with the love of Christ and therefore follows Him.
Miserable self-love abandons justice and commits injustice, and
has a servile fear which does not let it do justly what it should,
either because of flatteries or for fear of losing its state. This is
that perverse servitude and fear that led Pilate to slay Christ. I
would have you, then, utterly lay aside this kind of love, and be
founded in true and perfect charity, loving God for His own
sake, inasmuch as He is worthy of being loved, because He is the
supreme and eternal Goodness, and loving yourself for Him and
your neighbour for Him, and not for your own advantage.
Thus, then, my father, legate of our lord the Pope, would I have
you bound in the bond of true and most ardent charity, and this
does my soul desire to see in you." ^

1 Letter 7 (23). The Palatine MS. 56 states that this letter was sent to the
Cardinal " in Corneto, essendo nuovamente fatto ine legato." Students of the
Inferno may remember that it was this legate, " vir magnae virtutis et scientiae,"
who, at the instigation of Benvenuto da Imola, made the stern, but ineffectual
attempt to stamp out unnatural vice in the University of Bologna. Cf. Benvenuto,
Comentum, I. pp. 523, 524, where for 1375 we should probably read 1373.

108

FROM THE CELL TO THE WORLD

And she follows this up with a second letter, "with desire of
seeing you a virile and not cowardly man, so that you may
manfully serve the Spouse of Christ, using both spiritual and
temporal means for the honour of God, as this Spouse hath need
in these times." Let him open the eyes of his understanding to
see her necessities, and let him beware of servile fear (a favourite
doctrine of Catherine's, which we find her repeating again and
again in almost the same words). Let him look upon the im-
maculate Lamb, who sought nought save the honour of the
Father, and feared nothing, not even the shameful death of the
Cross. " We are the scholars, who have been sent to this sweet
and gentle school." And the time has come to put these lessons
into practice : —

" Strive manfully, to the utmost of your power, to bring about
the peace and union of the whole country. And if, for this holy
work, it were necessary to give the life of the body, it should be
given a thousand times, if it were possible. It is a terrible thing
to think and hear and see that we are at war with God, by reason
of the multitude of the sins of the subjects and their pastors, and
also in corporeal war by reason of the rebellion that has arisen
against Holy Church.^ Where all faithful Christians should be
preparing to make war upon the infidels, false Christians are
waging it against each other ; and the servants of God cannot
contain themselves for grief and bitterness, at seeing the damnation
of souls who are perishing for this, and the demons are rejoicing,
because they see what they want to see. Verily, then, it is time
to give our lives in imitation of the Master of Truth, and to care
nought for honour or shame that the world would give us in
painful torments and death of the body. I am certain that you
will do this manfully, if you are clothed with the new man, Christ
. Jesus, and stripped of the old, to wit, of your own sensuality ; for
then you will have cast off servile fear ; in no other way would
you ever do it, but would rather fall into the very sins I have

^ i. e. the war between Bernabo Visconti and the Holy See. Catherine, in
her letter to Bernabo himself, describes it in the same way as " rebellion against
Holy Church."

109

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

named. Considering, then, that it was necessary for you to be a
virile man, and without any fear, and freed from self-love (for you
are put by God in an office that demands no fear save that which
is holy) ; therefore, I said to you that I desired to see you manful
and not timorous. I hope in the Divine Goodness that He will
grant grace to you and to me, that is, to fulfil His will and your
desire and mine. Peace, peace, peace ! Dearest father, make the
Holy Father consider the loss of souls more than that of cities ;
for God demands souls more than cities." ^

A man of a very different stamp from that of this great-
hearted and zealous Cardinal was the other director of the papal
policy in Italy. Gerard du Puy, Abbot of Marmoutier and
nephew to Pope Gregory, was one of the worst of those rapacious
wolves in sheep's clothing to whom the pastors of Avignon had
entrusted their Ausonian flocks. While d'Estaing in his Bolog-
nese legation was vigorously pursuing the campaign against the
Visconti, without oppressing the subjects of the Church committed
to his rule, the Abbot, supported by Hawkwood's mercenaries,
was governing Perugia with the most detestable tyranny. To
secure his hold upon the turbulent city, he was building two great
fortresses, connected by a large covered way supported by arches,
over which troops could pass to and fro. He ground down the
people with taxes, excluded all the citizens, high and low, from his
counsels, and ruled the province with corrupt notaries and foreign
captains. He connived at the most outrageous licence of his
officials, in which a nephew of his own was the worst offender,
and to the protests of the injured parties returned an answer
disgusting in its brutal cynicism.^ Nevertheless, this detestable
monk had been the intermediary between the Pope and Birgitta,
and now, probably immediately after the latter's death in July,
I373> be was bidden approach Catherine in the same way ; his
papal uncle, unabashed by the rebuke of the Swedish prophetess,

'^ Letter 1 1 (24). Cf. Petrarca's cznzone, I farta'tnia : " I' vo gridando : Pace,
pace, pace."

^ Cf. Pellini, I. pp. 1 1 1 1 , 1 1 1 2 ; Supplement to Graziani, pp. 2 1 7-2 1 9 ;
Montemarte, I. p. 41 ; Chronlcon Re^ense {Rer. It. Script.^ xviii.), col. 85.

no 5

FROM THE CELL TO THE WORLD

was still seeking a sign like the Pharisees of old, and the fame of
the maiden of Fonte Branda (probably through the report of the
legate of Bologna) had penetrated even into the papal palace of
Avignon.

We do not know by what means his appeal was conveyed to
Catherine, nor whether she was aware of the character of the
ecclesiastic with whom she was now dealing ; but her answer is
extant, and it is one of the most striking of her political letters.
To this wicked man, too, she writes in the precious blood of
God : ** with desire of seeing you a true priest, and a member
bound in the body of Holy Church." The first part of the letter
is an impassioned hymn to charity, by whose milk the soul lives,
the love that binds the soul to Christ even as it bound the Son of
God to the Cross, the fire that burns away vice and sin and love
of self. All must follow this rule of love, purifying memory,
understanding, and will in this divine fire. Above all, God
demands from men in the position of the Abbot a zeal and
solicitude for the salvation of souls. " This is the way of Christ
crucified, who will always give us the light of peace. But, if we
hold another way, we shall go from darkness to darkness, and
ultimately to eternal death." Her answer to the Pope is that two
things in particular are disfiguring the Church, and must be taken
away : nepotism, "excessive tenderness and solicitude for kinsmen,"
and leniency in dealing with the wickedness of the clergy. " Christ
specially hates three perverse vices : impurity, avarice, and the
puffed-up pride which reigns In the Spouse of Christ, that is, in
the prelates, who attend to nought save pleasures and states and
excessive riches. They see the infernal demons carrying off the
souls of their subjects, and they reck not of it, because they have
become wolves and sellers of the divine grace." " I say not
that the Spouse of Christ will not be persecuted ; but I believe
that she will remain in flower. It is necessary, for her complete
reformation, that she should be pulled down even to her founda-
tions." As to the Abbot's own professed repentance : " I, your
unworthy daughter, have taken and will take the debt of your
sins upon myself, and we shall burn yours and mine together in

III

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

the fire of sweet charity, where they are consumed. Hope and
be assured that the divine grace has pardoned you them." " You
must chiefly labour together with the Holy Father, to the utmost
of your power, in removing the wolves and incarnate demons of
pastors who attend to nought save eating, and goodly palaces, and
stout horses. Alas, that what Christ acquired upon the wood of
the Cross is spent upon harlots ! I pray you that, even if you
have to die for it, you tell the Holy Father to find a remedy for
such great iniquities, and, when the time comes to make pastors
and cardinals, not to make them for the sake of flattery nor for
money nor for simony ; but, with all your power, pray him to heed
and consider whether he finds virtue and good and holy repute in
the man, and not to consider whether he is noble or plebeian ;
for virtue is the thing that makes man noble and pleasing to
God." 1

This year, 1373, was marked by innumerable dissensions and
homicides, especially among the religious and clergy. The Sienese
chronicler declares that the Augustinian friars murdered their
provincial at Sant' Antonio (a convent of the order in the Sienese
contado near the Bagni of Petriuolo) ; that, at Assisi, the Friars
Minor fought with knives, and fourteen were killed ; and at
Siena a young friar in San Domenico killed another, and every
convent was divided against itself The same thing went on
outside the convents ; every order in the State was rent with plots
and petty treasons ; " and so the world is one darkness." 2 The
new Senator of Siena, Count Lodovico da Mogliano from the
Marches, who entered upon ofiice in February — " a man of discreet
years, pacific and wise, who gave good hope to all the citizens " —
attempted to restore order by impartial executions of noble and
plebeian criminals alike ; but the only result was a series of riots,
in which his own life was threatened, and all his household ran
great risks of being massacred by the Sienese populace.^

Three of Catherine's letters bear the impress of these events.
Writing to Pietro, priest of Semignano in the Sienese contado,

^ Letter 109 (41). ^ Cronica Sanese, col. 238.

' Ii>iJ., coll. 235, 236 ; O. Malavolti, p. 141.
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who was at mortal feud with another priest and apparently leading
a scandalous life in other respects, she sets before his eyes the
dignity of the priesthood which he is outraging with his impurity
and his hatred, and threatens him with the judgments of God, if
he does not amend and make peace. " What a scandal it is to
see two priests keep in deadly hatred ! It is a great miracle that
God does not command the earth to swallow you both up. Come,
then, while you are still in time to receive mercy ; hasten to
Christ crucified, who will receive you benignly, if only you wish
it ; and think that, if you do not so, that sentence will fall upon
you which was given to the unjust servant to whom his master
had forgiven his great debt, and who then would not remit a small
one to his fellow-servant." And, in like manner, she bids the
Provost and Jacomo di Manzi, two ecclesiastics of Casole, to
follow the footsteps of the Lamb who made peace between God
and man by shedding His blood upon the Cross, to turn their hate
upon their own sins, and make peace with God and their neigh-
bour. " I beseech you, in the name of Christ crucified, not to
deny me this grace." To Madonna Mitarella da Mogliano, the
wife of the Senator, who had written to her in terror, after the
mob had assailed her husband, that she had " no faith nor hope
save in the prayers of the servants of God," she sent words of
gentle comfort, and a reminder that not a leaf can fall from the
tree without the permission and will of God.^

But letters were the smallest part of Catherine's activity at this
time. Wherever men and women in Siena were in sufl^ering or
in need, she was always there. The sick were healed, the dying
comforted when she stood by them ; hardened sinners were
moved to repentance at her bidding, and heard the sweet assur-
ance from her lips : " Fear not ; I have taken your sins upon
myself." " I never saw any person," writes Francesco Malavolti,
" however badly disposed, of whatever condition or state, come to
this virgin, whom the Holy Spirit had chosen, who ever departed
from her without being first converted to good and without at once
going to confess himself sacramentally, laying aside all evil works

1 Letters 59 (47), 3 (43), 31 (333).
8 * 113

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

and becoming entirely a new being." ^ Pietro di Giovanni Ven-
tura tells us how, at the instance of his sister, he went to visit
Catherine. He had not been to confession for seven years.
" That virgin, raising her hands to heaven, then said : ' Pietro,
I will take all thy sins upon myself, and do penance for them, and
make satisfaction for them instead of thee. But I wish for this
grace, Pietro, from thee — that thou confess thy sins.' To which
I answered, saying : ' It is only a few days since I confessed
them.' And she : * It is not so, for I know that it is seven years J
since thou wert confessed in the least.' And she added : * Why
wilt thou not go to confession ^ ' And, albeit I had told no one
of that matter, nevertheless she manifested it all to me, and even
the cause for which until then I had been unwilling to confess." ^
After that meeting Pietro became one of Catherine's most
devoted followers and disciples, and, though once, for a brief
moment, he wavered and asked for a sign, he was one of the little
band that shared her fortunes down to the end. It was, perhaps,
a foreknowledge of that moment's weakness that made Catherine
address him a beautiful letter upon love and perseverance in the
service of the beloved.^

In northern Italy, Cardinal d'Estaing was strenuously carrying
on hostilities against the Visconti : " he was a right valiant
man," says the chronicler of Bologna, " and made more war
upon the lords of Milan than any other legate who was here
had done, save only him of Spain." ^ But the Tuscan Republics
wavered between Bernabo and the Pope. At the beginning of
November, 1373, two ambassadors from Bernabo and Galeazzo
came to Siena. The latter seems to have soon returned to his
master ; but Bernabo's envoy stayed on " in the hostelry of the
Ocha," until the following January, when, the Sienese regarding
his presence as compromising, he was requested to leave the
city, the Gonfaloniere of the Terzo di CamoUia escorting him

^ Contestatio Francisci de Makvoltis, cap. iii., MS. «/., p. 440.

2 Contestatio Petri quondam Johannis Venture de Senis, MS. cit., p. 482.

8 Letter 47 (235).

^ Cronica di Bologna, col. 496.

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ceremoniously out of the gate.^ While in Siena, he sought an
interview with Catherine, in the name of Bernabo and his
ambitious wife, Beatrice della Scala — possibly with the idea of
convincing her of the good intentions of his master, with a view
to influencing the public opinion of the Sienese through her, now
that fresh processes were being instituted against the Visconti
at the papal court on account of their cruel oppression of the
Milanese clergy. If this was his object, the ambassador was
manifestly unsuccessful.

Catherine promptly dictated to her secretaries the two long
letters to Bernabo and Beatrice which we still possess. Unfor-
tunately, the passages at the end of the letters, in which she
directly answers their requests or questions, were regarded by
her contemporaries as of merely ephemeral interest, and have,
therefore, not been preserved, either in the printed editions or
in any of the manuscripts ; but, reading between the lines of
her letter to Bernabo, we gather that the tyrant of Milan had
tried to represent himself to the simple Sienese maiden as a
kind of scourge of God, divinely ordained to punish the iniquities
of the pastors of the Church.

To this most sanguinary and grasping of all the despots of
Italy, Catherine expounds the law of Love, as shown in the
mystery of the Redemption. She speaks of the vanity of all
earthly lordship, which may pass away in a moment, in com-
parison with the lordship of the city of the soul, in which God
rests, and which, defended by free-will, is impregnable against
all the assaults of the world, the flesh, and the devil. But to
preserve or regain this spiritual liberty, man must be washed in
the blood of Christ ; this blood is kept in the body of Holy
Church, to be administered by the hands of Christ's vicar ; and
we cannot partake of it save through him. *' I tell you, dearest
father, and brother in Christ sweet Jesus, that God does not
wish you, nor any one else, to make yourself the executioner
of His ministers ; for He has reserved this to Himself and

^ Cron'ica Sanese, coll. 238, 239.

IIS

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

committed it to His vicar. And if the vicar does not do what
he should (and it is bad if he does not), we must humbly await
the punishment and chastisement of the Supreme Judge, God
eternal, even if our possessions are taken from us by these men.
I pray you, in the name of Christ crucified, concern your-
self no more with this. Possess your own cities in peace ;
punish your own subjects when they do wrong ; but never
touch those who are the ministers of this glorious and precious
blood, which you can have by no other hands than theirs.
Without it you will not receive the fruit of that blood, but you
will become a putrid limb, cut off from the body of Holy
Church. Now no more, father ; humbly would I have us put
our head upon the lap of Christ in heaven in affection and
love, and of Christ on earth, who holds His place, to show
reverence for the blood of Christ, of which blood he bears the
keys ; to whom he opens, it is opened, and to whom he shuts,
it is shut ; he has the power and the authority, and there is no
one who can take it out of his hands ; because it has been given
him by the first sweet Truth."

Let Bernabo, then, become a faithful son of the Church.
" But what amends shall we make for the time that you have
been outside .? For this, father, it seems to me that a time is
preparing in which we shall be able to make sweet and gracious
amends ; for, as you have disposed your body and temporal
substance to every peril and death in war with your father, so
now I invite you, in the name of Christ crucified, to true and
perfect peace with that father, benign Christ on earth, and to
war upon the infidels, preparing to give your body and substance
for Christ crucified. Make yourself ready, for it befits you to
make this sweet amends ; even as you have gone against him,
so now go to his aid, when the Holy Father raises on high the
banner of the most holy Cross. I wish you to be the first to
invite and urge the Holy Father to make haste, for it is a great
shame and disgrace to Christians to suffer wicked infidels to
possess what by right is ours. But we act like fools and base
of heart, who make war only upon each other ; we are divided

ii6

FROM THE CELL TO THE WORLD

against each other by hate and rancour, whereas we should be
bound by the bond of divnie and most ardent charity." ^

And to Beatrice, whose pride and avarice were notorious
throughout Italy, she writes "with desire of seeing you clothed
in the robe of most ardent charity, so and in such wise that you
may be the means and instrument of reconciling your husband
with Christ sweet Jesus and with His vicar, Christ on earth. I
am certain that, if the virtue of charity is in you, it is impossible
but that your husband will feel the warmth of it." ^ From a
letter addressed to Catherine by Elizabeth of Bavaria, the wife
of Bernabo's son Marco (Petrarca's godson), we find that she
had thoughts of coming in person to Milan. Elizabeth expresses
her deep disappointment at hearing that the Saint has changed
her plans, and humbly commends her husband and little four-
year-old daughter Anna to her prayers.^

With these first political letters, Catherine entered into the
national life of her country. The lords of Italy and the prelates
of the Church had learned by now that her words had a power
not their own, nor was either party unprepared or unwilling to
make use of it for their own ends and advantage.

In the letters to the Cardinal of Bologna and his Milanese
adversary alike, Catherine refers to the Crusade. From the
beginning of his pontificate, Gregory had urged the powers of
Christendom to make peace among themselves, and turn their
arms against the Turks and Saracens. In particular, he had
besought King Louis of Hungary, as the persecutor of infidels
and defender of the Catholic Faith, to use the great power that
the Lord had given him, " for the defence of His people whom
He has redeemed by the shedding of His most precious blood,

^ Letter 28 (191). In the bull of the Pope against Bernabo and Galeazzo,
which is dated January 7, 1373 (Raynaldus, vii. pp. 235-237), the former
is accused of having tortured certain priests to death with appalling atrocity.
The matter is evidently that to which Catherine refers, and the date of the
papal bull, together with the authenticated presence of Bernabo's envoy in
Siena, seems to fix this as the occasion of her letter.

^ Letter 29 (319).

^ Letter e del discepoli di S. Caierina, 2.

117

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

and so from a perishable earthly kingdom pass to an eternal
one." ^ But, before anything could be effected, war broke out
between Venice and Genoa, between the latter power and
Cyprus ; Bernabo Visconti continued to keep all the forces of
the Church engaged in Italy ; all the Pope's efforts to make
peace between France and England proved in vain.

Nevertheless, at the beginning of 1373, Gregory proclaimed
the Crusade. Birgitta, as we saw, had from the outset raised the
voice of prophecy against the scheme, as one that merely afforded
at once an excuse to the Pope for neglecting his more immediate
duty, and an opportunity to the mercenary soldiers for plundering
and ravaging on a more extensive scale than was possible in
Christendom. But Catherine, on the contrary, was fired with
enthusiasm at the papal announcement. She saw in the proposed
expedition at once the liberation of the sepulchre of Christ and
the deliverance of Italy from these armed pests that, like the eagle
upon Prometheus, were feeding upon her vitals ; visions passed
before her eyes of crowds of martyrs offering up their blood for
the redemption of the Holy Land, of men who had hitherto
fought for Mammon putting on the sign of the Cross, expending
their fierce strength and ardour in battling for the Faith. So
when, a little later, the papal summons and invitation were
repeated, and fresh briefs from Avignon arrived in Italy, her
voice rang out, sicura^ halda e lieta, from the " City of the
Virgin," as had Dante's of old from the ruddy sign of Mars.

But already the cloud was gathering on the horizon that was
to render the Pope's design abortive and even Catherine's eloquent
pleading of no avail. Early in the following year, 1374, the
Pope recalled Cardinal d'Estaing, and appointed Guillaume de
Noellet, known as the Cardinal of Sant' Angelo, to take his place
as legate in Italy and papal governor of Bologna. The new
legate entered Bologna on March 15: " He came through
Tuscany, and, when he arrived at Florence, the Florentines
showed him great honour ; but here we did not welcome him as
we had done the others, because this novelty of changing cardinal

^ Raynaldus, vii. pp. 201, 202, 223,
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FROM THE CELL TO THE WORLD

was too frequent. May God have sent us one who will be good
for this city." ^ It was a most unfortunate choice. Cardinal de
Noellet was a tyrannical and incompetent French prelate of the
usual type furnished by Avignon ; he and his colleague, the
Abbot at Perugia, were speedily to drive their Italian subjects to
desperation.

This was a dark and dismal year for all Italy, and especially
for Catherine's native city : " In Siena," writes one of her
chroniclers, at the opening of his records for this year, " there
was pestilence, war, and very great scarcity, so that the bushel of
grain was worth two golden florins." ^

In the spring, a fierce war on a small scale broke out in the
contado. One of the Salimbeni, Andrea di Niccolo, had seized
Perolla, a castle of the Sienese Maremma near Massa, and hurled
the daughter of its late lord, Geri (apparently himself a kinsman
of the Salimbeni), to whom it rightfully belonged, down from the
battlements. Secure in this stronghold, he gathered bandits and
exiles round him, murdered and plundered all through the
Maremma, levying blackmail up to the very gates of Siena.
With aid from the Florentines (to whom in like manner they had
rendered assistance in subduing the Ubaldini in the preceding
kyear), the Sienese got together a large army, under their Senator
i(the Count Lodovico da Mogliano already mentioned), and, on
ipril 23, forced the place to surrender. The Senator returned
to Siena with twenty-nine prisoners, including Messer Andrea
Salimbeni himself. Sixteen were executed, but the Senator, either
by reasons of friendship or for fear of the Salimbeni, shrank from
doing justice on the chief offender. Upon this the populace
armed and assailed the Palace of the Signoria, demanding justice
with threats of raising the whole city. The Defenders, intimi-
dated, gave authority to the leader of the mob, one Noccio di
Vanni, a saddler by trade, to do what seemed to him to the
advantage of the Republic. Noccio at once led his followers to

^ Cronka di Bologna, col. 495.

2 Jnnali di Siena dal 1300 al 1400. Biblioteca Comunale di Siena, MS. A.
iv. I., f. 18.

119

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

the palace of the Senator, who fled at their approach, and, breaking
in, took his seat on the bench as judge, and condemned Andrea
to instant execution. He was promptly beheaded ; but when, a
month or so later, Noccio tried to repeat this process with one
of Andrea's associates, the government interfered, and deprived
him of the authority they had so strangely given.

With some difficulty the tumults were thus appeased in the city.
But, indignant at the affront offered to their house, the Salimbeni
rose in arms in the contado. Niccolo di Niccolo Salimbeni seized
Montemassi, Cione di Sandro Salimbeni harried the district of
Montepulciano, Agnolino di Giovanni Salimbeni, the virtual head
of the house, ravaged the hills and valleys about Montalcino ;
while others of the family with their adherents made war else-
where in the contado, and defied the forces of the Republic.
From Perugia, the Abbot of Marmoutier sent agents to both
parties, offering to mediate, but was suspected (with good reason)
of having a secret understanding with the Salimbeni. A more
genuine pacific offer from the Florentines was rejected by the
latter, who would hear of no terms while their kinsman's blood
was unavenged. Within Siena itself, the faction of the Dodicini
was secretly favouring the rebels. The Signoria appointed a
magistracy of ten to carry on the war, imprisoned twenty-five
of the Dodicini, extorted a heavy sum of money from them in
fines, and sent for aid, which was promptly granted in horse and
foot, to Florence and to Lucca.

It was at this time that Catherine first left the territory of her
native city. Moved by the conflicting reports that had reached his
ears, the General of the order, Fra Elias of Toulouse, summoned
her to attend the chapter-general which met at Florence in May.
*' There came to Florence," writes an anonymous Florentine
contemporary, ''in the month of May, 1374, when the chapter
of the Friars Preachers was held, at the command of the Master
of the order, one wearing the habit of the sisters of penance of
St. Dominic, who was called Caterina di Jacomo di Benincasa of
Siena, who was of the age of twenty-seven years, and whom we
deemed to be a great servant of God. And with her she had

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FROM THE CELL TO THE WORLD

three other women, dressed in her habit, who went in her company.
Hearing her fame, I managed to see her and to gain her friend-
ship, in such wise that she ofttimes came here into my house." ^
We have no clue to the identity of the writer, nor any record
elsewhere of this first visit of Catherine to the great city with
whose political turmoils she was soon to be associated. Probably
on this occasion she made the acquaintance of various Florentine
citizens, of all classes in the State, and more particularly of
Messer Angelo Ricasoli, who had succeeded Cardinal Piero
Corsini as bishop, and Niccolo Soderini, a wealthy and influential
man, of a deeply religious mind, one of the *' popolani grassi "
and a leading spirit in the Parte Guelfa. She left Florence on
June 29, and returned to her mother's house at Siena, to find
the pestilence raging and a partial recurrence of the horrors of
1348 within the city.

This frightful scourge had appeared in May, and it ravaged
Tuscany all through the summer until September, spreading
thence through northern and central Italy even across the Alps.
While attacking all ages and classes, the mortality was particularly
terrible among the children. And the black shadow of famine
dogged its footsteps. There was fearful scarcity of everything —
bread, wine, meat, and oil were at unheard-of prices. In the
great Tuscan cities, the government collected all the materials
that could be made into bread, and doled it out by ticket ; but,
even so, there was not enough to go round. At Siena, the
Spedale di S. Maria della Scala acted up to its great traditions and
devoted all its resources to succouring the poor ; and it was
heroically supported by the Casa della Misericordia and the
Disciplinati of Our Lady. The death-carts went from street to
street, gathering up the dead ; the priests, who tended the dying
and buried the victims, in many cases shared their fate. The
pestilence was already at Florence when Catherine was there, and

^ Miracoli e transito di Santa Caterina, Biblioteca Riccardiana, MS. 1267, f.
190. This little work was printed by Grottanelli in 1862, under the title J/cuni
miracoli di Santa Caterina da Siena, secondo che sono narrati da un Anonimo, suo con-
temporaneo. Cf. Augusta Drane, I. pp. 216-218.

121

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

lasted from March to October ; but the devastation was on a
less dreadful scale than among the Sienese ; out of a population
of 60,000, some 7,000 Florentines perished, and, although we have
not the exact figures, the mortality in Siena was evidently much
greater.^

Two of Catherine's brothers, Bartolommeo, who had ac-
companied her back from Florence, and Stefano, who had gone to
Rome, her sister Lisa, and eight of her nephews and nieces,
Lapa's grandchildren, died. With her own hands Catherine
prepared the bodies for burial, saying over each : " This one, at
least, I shall not lose." With her companions, she passed through
the streets ot the city, seeking out the most infected districts,
entering the houses and the hospitals, tending the stricken,
comforting and converting the dying, laying out the dead — many
of whom she is said to have buried with her own hands. Not a
few — including the hermit, Fra Santi, and the devoted rector of
the Casa della Misericordia, Messer Matteo Cenni — gained such
strength from her ministrations that they rose up healed at her
word, and followed her to render service to the others.

Foremost among her fellow-labourers was the noble and holy
Dominican friar who now became her spiritual director, and
afterwards her biographer : Fra Raimondo delle Vigne of Capua ;
he whom, in her last letter, she was to call '* father and son given
me by that sweet Mother Mary." A man of aristocratic birth
and great learning (among whose ancestors was that ill-fated Piero
delle Vigne, the chancellor of the Emperor Frederick II, whose
fame Dante had so nobly vindicated in a famous canto of the
Inferno)y Raimondo had in some mysterious way — to which he
vaguely refers as miraculous — been called in his youth to the
Dominican order, and had rapidly become a personage of im-
portance among the friars. He had been prior of the Minerva
at Rome in 1367, and shortly after (it being the practice of the

1 Marchionne di Coppo Stefani, Istoria Fiorentina, Lib, IX. rubr. 745, who
gives the Florentine mortality, says that Florence suffered less in proportion to its
inhabitants than any other town in Tuscany, and that elsewhere a third of the
population died.

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order, with a view to avoiding all possibility of heresy or scandal,
to appoint only friars of established fame and doctrine to such
offices) had been made director of the convent of Dominican nuns
of Santa Agnese at Montepulciano, where he had spent two years,
and where, at the request of the nuns, he had written the life of
their blessed patroness which still appears in the /Icta Sanctorum
for her feast. Thence he had been sent to San Domenico at Siena,
as lector or professor of theology, and there (though he did not
for some time see anything miraculous in her, nor put much
credit in her revelations) he had at once espoused Catherine's
cause, and insisted that she should on no account be hindered
from communicating as often as she pleased.^ To him she found
she could open her heart as to no other man, and, with the cordial
and humble assent of Fra Tommaso, he now took his place as her
chief confessor and spiritual director.

" Considering," as he writes, " that Christ is far more powerful
than Galen, and grace than nature," Raimondo led a devoted band
of friars into the thickest fury of the pestilence, to lay down their
lives for their people if such was God's will. Day and night, he
was to be seen in the hospitals, or visiting the stricken in infected
houses, bearing the Blessed Sacrament, hearing their last con-
fessions, performing the rites for the dead. Both he and Fra
Bartolommeo were among those who took the infection, and
believed that Catherine's miraculous intervention had raised them
up from the bed of death. But all the three Dominican sons of
her companion, Cecca Gori, died.

Many others, priests and religious, had deserted the city, like
those of the laity who could find a safer refuge. Fra Filippo
tells a striking story of one of these latter, a man he knew, a great
usurer and oppressor of the poor, who, at the first approach of

^ Legenda, II. xii. 8 (§ 314). It was apparently on the feast of St. John the
Baptist, when he acted as deacon at High Mass in San Domenico at Siena, that
Catherine first saw Raimondo. Cf. Augusta Drane, I. p. 224, and Tantucci,
p. 122. This must have been in the preceding year, if the author of the
Miracoli is right in his statement that, in 1374, Catherine was at Florence till
June 29.

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SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

the pestilence, converted all he had into ready money and fled to
Massa, where he waited until he heard that it had abated. Then
he returned to the city, and, drinking and laughing with his friends,
began to boast that he had jockeyed God. " And, raising his
eyes on high, he cried out at the top of his voice : Thou thoughtest
to catch mey Domenedio, but Thou hast not got me ! But no sooner
had he said this word, than he said another in a lower tone : Woe's
me^ Thou hast indeed got me, for I feel the swelling^ And
straightway he went to his house and died.^

A fresh recruit to Catherine's mystical army at this time was a
young novice of San Domenico, Fra Simone da Cortona. From
his own account of himself, he was a melancholy and sensitive
youth, tormented by shyness, self-consciousness, and religious
scruples. While the other younger friars of the convent, for fear
of infection, shrank from associating with the fathers, Raimondo,
Tommaso Caffarini, and Bartolommeo, who visited the sick,
Simone eagerly sought their company and joined them in their
work ; and they, " as though to reward me for my labour,"
brought him to Catherine, ** which to my taste was, indeed, a
magnificent reward." *'0 how gladly did I see her, and how
eagerly did I listen to her burning words ! Verily, for her sake,
all labour was turned for me into rest." But once, when they
were visiting her, the other friars forgot all about him, and left
him outside ; Catherine called for him, and he, abashed and
mortified, would not go in. Afterwards, when they had left,
Catherine said to her companions : ** My son has gone away
troubled, because he could not speak with me, but I will go to
him this very night." He went to bed, very angry and
miserable ; but she appeared to him in a dream, and gave him
sweet comfort. Afterwards, when he accompanied Fra Bar-
tolommeo, who was preaching a mission at Asciano, Catherine,
fearing that the youth might again think himself neglected,
always remembered him in the postscripts to the letters she
addressed to the elder friar, and excused herself for not having
had time to write directly to him. " Tell Frate Simone, my son
^ Assempro 57, Come un uomo diceva che D'to non faveva gionto.
124

FROM THE CELL TO THE WORLD

in Jesus Christ, that the son is never afraid to go to his mother ;
nay, he runs to her, especially when he thinks himself hardly
used ; and his mother takes him in her arms, and clasps him to
her breast, and comforts him. And, although 1 am a bad mother,
nevertheless I will always bear him at the breast of charity." ^

Worn out by her labours, Catherine herself fell dangerously ill
on the feast of the Assumption of this year, 1374, and with all joy
prayed for death, until restored by a vision of the Blessed Virgin,
who showed her all the souls whom, if her life were prolonged,
she would yet guide to eternal life.^ It having been, as she
believed, revealed to her that she would ultimately be the special
companion in paradise of Agnese of Montepulciano, she felt a
keen desire to visit her shrine in that town. Thither she now
went, on her recovery, followed by Fra Raimondo and another
of her confessors ; and Girolamo del Pacchia's masterpiece still
preserves the legend of how, as Catherine bent down over
Agnese's incorrupt body to kiss her feet, one of them raised
itself to meet her lips. The painter has united this with a similar
episode which is said to have occurred a little later, when Catherine
came again to Montepulciano, accompanied by her sister-in-law
Lisa (who had returned to Siena]after her husband's death and taken
the habit of the Mantellate), to place the latter's two daughters
in the convent ; while she laid her face to the silk covering
that was over the dead face of Agnese, "Lisa and the others,
lifting up their eyes, saw a very white and very minute manna,
that, like rain, descended from on high in such great abundance
that it covered the body of Agnese, and the virgin Catherine, as
also all the others who were present, in such wise that Lisa filled
her hands with those little grains."^

It was during their first stay at Montepulciano that Fra
Raimondo's last doubts were dispelled concerning the divine origin

^ Contestatio Fr. S'monis, MS. a/., pp. 51 1-5 16; Letter 105 (113). Cf.
Dante, Par. xxli. 1-9.

^ So the author o{ the Miraco/i, quoted by Augusta Drane, I. p. 237.

^ Legenda, II. xii. 17-19 (§§ 327, 328). Cf. Raimondo, Fita S. Agnetis de
Monte Polit'iano {Acta Sanctorum^ Aprilis torn, ii,), pp. 793, 794.

125

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

of Catherine's works and revelations, which, till then, had been
keeping his mind in suspense : " for I remembered that it was
now the time of that third beast with the leopard's skin, by which
is signified hypocrisy, and in my days I had met with hypocrites,
especially among women, who are more easily and readily seduced
by the Enemy, as is shown in the case of our first Mother." At
her intercession, he obtained a mental vision of his own sins so
clear, and a contrition so overwhelming, that he was convinced
could proceed from nothing save from the grace of the Holy
Spirit. A little later, when he doubted again of the truth of
what she was revealing to him, he saw her face transformed into
the face of Christ, and experienced a wonderful illumination of
mind concerning the matter of which she spoke.^ Nevertheless,
the good father, who, like Dante, " seco avea di quel d'Adamo,"
was still unable always to follow her etherial flights, and he con-
fesses it with some little humour. On one occasion, when she
was discoursing at great length upon the divine mysteries, he fell
asleep : " But she, who, while she thus spoke, was all absorbed in
God, went on with her discourse for a long time before she
perceived that I was asleep. At last she noticed it, and then
woke me up by saying with a loud voice : * Ah, why do you
lose your soul's profit by sleeping } Am I talking about God to
a wall or to you ? ' "

Montepulciano lay close to the fiefs of the rebellious Salimbeni,
but it seems more probable that Catherine's relations with that
family belong to a later epoch in her life. Nor do I think that
her mediation in the local feuds and dissensions should be assigned
to this date. She appears to have been ill with fever during most
of this visit to the monastery of Santa Agnese, and, as soon as
was possible, she probably returned to Siena.

In spite of the pestilence, the war between the Republic and
the Salimbeni had continued. In October, the latter, in a sudden
sally from their beleaguered fortress of Boccheggiano, completely
defeated the Sienese forces, although outnumbered by nearly three

1 Legenday I. ix. 6, 7 (§§ 87-91). Cf. Par. xxvii. 105, where Dante says
of Beatrice : " che Dio parea nel suo volto gioire."

126

FROM THE CELL TO THE WORLD

to one, capturing their captain and all their munitions of war.
The government retaliated by expelling all members of the family
from Siena, proclaimed them rebels, and ordered their palaces and
houses to be dismantled. But in the following March, 1375, the
Florentines intervened, and sent Buonaccorso di Lapo Giovanni,
Leonardo Strozzi, and Carlo Strozzi as ambassadors to bring
about peace. The three came first to Siena and then went on to
confer with the Salimbeni in Val d'Orcia. At the end of April, it
was proclaimed to the sound of trumpets throughout Siena and in
the lands of the Salimbeni that the whole matter had been referred
to the decision of the Priors of the Commune of Florence.

The representatives of both parties were at Florence, engaged
in the final negotiations, when news reached Tuscany of a more
momentous peace having been made in northern Italy. On June
7, a courier rode into Pisa bearing an olive branch from Cardinal
de Noellet, with the tidings that he had concluded at Bologna a
truce for a year between the Holy See and Bernabo Visconti.
Four days later, the symbolical olive and the official announcement
of the truce was brought to Siena. In both cities the news was
received with sorrow and apprehension ; men doubted the inten-
tions and the good faith of the papal legate ; sinister rumours
were spreading as to the movements of Hawkwood's mercenaries,
whom the Church had dismissed from her service and who were
approaching the Tuscan frontiers. '* From this truce," writes
the chronicler of Pisa, *' there resulted such great evil that war
followed through almost all the world."

127

CHAPTER VII
UNDER A DARKENING SKY

" Then in her sacred saving hands
She took the sorrows of the lands,
With maiden palms she lifted up
The sick time's blood-embittered cup,
And in her virgin garment furled
The faint limbs of a wounded world.
Clothed with calm love and clear desire,
She went forth in her soul's attire,
A missive fire."

A. C. Swinburne, Songs before Sunrise.

Catherine was by this time no longer at Siena. Other
cities in Tuscany were now claiming her spiritual ministrations,
and her great political work had fairly begun.

It was probably in the latter part of 1374 that Birgitta's
confessor, the hermit-bishop, Alfonso da Vadaterra, returned to
Italy from Avignon. He came to Siena, and sought an interview
with Catherine in the name of the Pope, from whom he brought
her the apostolic benediction, to enlist her ever-increasing spiritual
influence for the papal intentions. " The Pope," writes Catherine
to Fra Bartolommeo and Fra Tommaso Caffarini, who were then
at Pisa, " has sent here one of his vicars — the spiritual father of
that Countess who died at Rome. It is he who renounced the
bishopric for love of virtue, and he came to me in the name of
the Holy feather, bidding me offer up special prayers for him
and for Holy Church ; and for a sign he brought me the holy
indulgence. Rejoice then and be glad, for the Holy Father has
begun to attend to the honour of God and of Holy Church. I
have written a letter to the Holy Father, beseeching him, for the
love of that most sweet blood, to give us leave to expose our
bodies to every torment. Pray to the supreme eternal Truth that,
if it is best, He may vouchsafe this mercy to us and to you, so
that we may all together give our lives for Him." ^ To Alfonso

1 Letter 127 (117). Cf. Cristofano di Gano, Memorie, p. 34. This letter
about the Crusade, which was apparently Catherine's first to Gregory XI, has not
come down to us.

128

UNDER A DARKENING SKY

it must have seemed that the spirit of his dead friend lived again
in the Sienese maiden, and he now associated himself with her
spiritual fellowship.

The two friars had spread Catherine's fame through Pisa, and
she received repeated invitations to come thither, especially from
certain nuns who greatly desired to see and to hear her, and who
assured her that she could win many souls to God in that city —
invitations that had been supported by a letter from no less a
person than Piero Gambacorti, the ruler of the Pisan Republic,
himself. Her answer to the latter, admonishing the upright man
who was holding earthly lordship by so doubtful and unstable a
title, to detach himself from the delights of the world and keep
his eyes fixed upon Divine Justice in governing, is extant ; at the
end she excuses herself from coming, on the grounds of her bad
health and the risk of causing scandal — relations being then
somewhat strained between Messer Piero and the Sienese, in
consequence of the refusal of the Pisans to help their nominal
allies against the rebellious Salimbeni, whereas Florence and Lucca
had loyally corresponded to their bond.^

Nevertheless, early in the new year, 1375, Catherine believed
herself to have received a divine command to delay no longer,
and accordingly set out for Pisa. With her went Alessa, Lisa,
Cecca, and others of her women, as also her mother, Monna
Lapa herself, who would not again be parted from her daughter.
Fra Raimondo, Fra Tommaso della Fonte, and Fra Bartolommeo
accompanied her, to hear the confessions of those whom she was
to convert to God.

At Pisa the little band of Sienese received a royal reception,
being met by Piero Gambacorti himself, the Archbishop (Francesco
Moricotti di Vico), and the chief religious and political notabilities
of the State. Catherine was entertained and lodged in the house
of Gherardo Buonconti, a leading citizen of Pisa, and one of
a large family of brothers and sisters, several of whom became
her disciples. The house stood on the Arno, near the little

^ Letter 112 (193). Cf. Legenda, II. viii. 17 (§257), and Cronica Sanese,
col. 240.

9 129

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

church or chapel of Santa Crlstina. Here the same wonders
were enacted as had been done at Siena : the sick were healed ;
men of evil life were brought to repentance. " I saw her speak
to certain sinners," wrote Giovanni Dominici, the famous Cardinal
of Ragusa, then a young Dominican novice, to his mother, " and
her words were so profound, so fiery and potent, that they
straightway transformed these vessels of contumely into pure
vessels of crystal, as we sing in the hymn of St. Mary Magdalene
that our Lord Jesus did to her." ^ A new breath of spiritual
life seemed given to that decaying city, whose days of political
independence were drawing to a close.

There were, as usual, some that murmured, and others that
professed themselves scandalized at Catherine's mode of life and
at the reverence with which she was treated, especially at the way
in which many of the men and women who approached her knelt
and kissed her hands. Two learned men of the city. Maestro
Giovanni Gutalebraccia, a physician, and Ser Pietro di Messer
Albizzo, a lawyer of repute who was a leading spirit among the
adherents of the Gambacorti, came to her, much as Fra Lazzarino
and Maestro Gabriele had done in Siena, and attempted to
bewilder her with theological problems. To aU their questions
she answered simply, that only one thing was necessary : to know
that Christ, the true Son of God, had assumed human nature for
our salvation, had suffered and died for our liberation ; and she
spoke to them so sweetly of the love of Him that they were
moved to tears. But the hostile comments on the reverence shown
her increased, until Fra Raimondo (Fra Bartolommeo being also
present) hinted that she should stop it, asking her if it did not
move her mind to vainglory. *' I hardly notice what they do,"
she replied, ** and, through God's grace, it does not please me ;
I consider only the good affection that brings them to me, and
thank the Divine Goodness that thus moves them, praying that
He may perfect and fulfil those desires which He has inspired.

^ This letter, written from Constance in 141 6, is included in Biscioni,
Lettere di Santi e Beati F'torentini, and there is a Latin version of it appended to
the Processus,

130

UNDER A DARKENING SKY

I marvel how a creature, knowing itself to be a creature, can have
vainglory." ^

But there was one, whom Bartolommeo styles ** a certain man
of no small reputation among spiritual persons," who, in all
sincerity, trembled for the safety of Catherine's soul. This was
the poet of the Gesuati, Bianco dall' Anciolina, known as " El
Bianco da Siena," but sometimes called " El Bianco da Firenze,"
or *' El Bianco da Citta di Castello," from the place where he had
lived as an anchorite after the death of his master, Giovanni
Colombini. ** Now beware, Catherine, my sister," he sang,
** lest thou fall in great ruin ; if thou hast the divine grace, take
heed to preserve it. Beware lest, through thy great fame, thou
becomest hungry for it. If thou art indeed the bride of Christ,
thou canst verily deem thyself blessed ; but if such praise pleases
thee, 1 fear lest the demon rejoice ; beware lest thou be caught
in his snares. Many have been the saints to whom men have
flocked, who, lest they should be wounded by pride, have fled to
the cell. I hear that thou claimest that the Holy Spirit is guiding
thee ; if it is true, I thank God who has so exalted thee. Beware,
beware, beware, lest thou become a liar or cowardly through
vanity. Beware lest the temptation of prophetical speech enthrall
thee. Lay aside the fantasies of vain prophecy ; if thou goest by
their ways, thou wilt find thyself ensnared. Thou art proclaimed
to be of holy life ; thou art already called a saint. If the Holy
Spirit is leading thee, seek not earthly praise, which undoes the
soul that desires it. Shouldst thou fall, many will lose their
faith ; beware, poor woman, lest thou be overthrown. May the
loving divine light so guard thee along its way that thy soul may
take her stand upon the truth alone." ^ This poem, or lauda^ El
Bianco seems to have actually sent to Catherine at Pisa, together
with a long letter, blaming her severely for allowing such honours
to be paid her, generally censuring her mode of life as dangerous

^ Contestatio Fr. Bartholomaei, Processus, coll. 1352, 1353.

2 Poem in 32 stanzas, headed " Questa seguente lauda mandA el Bianco alia
Beata Caterina da Siena " (No. 72 in the printed collection of the Laudi spirituali
del Bianco da Siena).

SAINT CATHEKINE OF SIENA

and objectionable, urging her to shun publicity and to seek
solitude, since the latter was the way of the Saints, while hers was
that of hypocrites and seekers of their own praises. Raimondo
and Bartolommeo attempted to keep the letter from Catherine,
intending to send a sharp answer on their own account ; but she
insisted upon hearing it, professed the warmest gratitude to the
writer for his solicitude for the welfare of her soul, and rebuked
the two friars for their uncharitable interpretation of his good
intentions. Her own answer is extant, written, she tells him,
**with the desire of seeing us united and transformed in that
sweet, eternal, and pure Truth, which takes from us all falsehood
and lying" : —

" I thank you cordially, dearest father, for the holy zeal and
anxiety that you have for my soul. You seem to be in great
doubt at what you hear about my life. I am certain that nothing
moves you save desire of the honour of God and of my salvation,
for you fear that I may be assailed and deluded by the devil. I
do not wonder, father, at your having this fear, especially in the
matter of eating ; for I promise you that it is not only you
who are afraid about it, but I myself tremble for fear of deception
by the devil. But I put my trust in the goodness of God, and
mistrust myself, knowing that upon myself I cannot rely. Not
only in this, but in all I do, I always fear because of my own
frailty, and because of the astuteness of the devil, thinking that
I may be deceived ; for I know and see that the devil lost
blessedness, but not wisdom, and with that wisdom, or rather
astuteness, he could deceive me. But I turn, then, and cling to
the tree of the most holy Cross of Christ crucified, and thereto I
would be fastened ; and I doubt not that, if I be fastened and
nailed to it with Him, through love and with deep humility, the
devils will have no power against me, not because of my virtue,
but by the virtue of Christ crucified. You bid me specially pray
to God that I may eat. I tell you, my father, and I tell you in
the sight of God, that I have always tried in every possible way,
once or twice a day, to take food ; and I have prayed continually,
and do pray to God, and will pray that He may give me grace in

132

UNDER A DARKENING SKY

this matter to live like other creatures, if it is His will, for it is
mine. I pray you to pray that supreme eternal Truth that, if it
is more for His honour and the salvation of my soul. He may
give me grace and enable me to take food, if it pleases Him.
And I am certain that the goodness of God will not despise
your prayers. I beseech you to write to me what remedy you
see for it, and, if only it be to the honour of God, I will
gladly adopt it. And I beseech you, too, not to be hasty in
judging, unless you are quite sure that you see things as they
are in God's sight." ^

The desire that Catherine had expressed in this letter, that
she might "be fastened and nailed to the tree of the most holy
Cross of Christ crucified with Him, through love and with deep
humility," was now to be mystically fulfilled. The church of
Santa Cristina stands on the Lung' Arno, not far from the little
Gothic gem of Santa Maria della Spina, which she, who had
chosen a crown of thorns for a crown of pearls, must have seen in
all its fresh beauty. Although Santa Cristina in its present form
is in the main a building of the nineteenth century, prosaic alike
in its surroundings and its interior, there stands still, by the first
altar to the right of the entrance, a fragment of one of the
pillars of the older church, with the inscription : Signavit
Dominus servant suam Catharinam hie signis redemptionis nostrae :
" Here the Lord signed His servant Catherine with the signs of
our redemption." For here, on the fourth Sunday of Lent,
1375, the Sunday known as haetare Sunday from the text of
Isaiah sung as Introit (" Rejoice ye with Jerusalem, and be glad
with her, all ye that love her "), while rapt in ecstasy after
Communion, Catherine of Siena in a measure received the same

^ Letter 92 (305), which is one of those included in the Harleian MS.
Cf. Contestatio Fr. Bartholomaei, loc. cif., coll. 1354, 1355 (f. 142 in the Sienese
MS.). The poem, or /au^/a, previously quoted, which has hitherto curiously
escaped the notice of all the biographers of St. Catherine, leaves no doubt as to
the identity of the person who wrote to her. For the life of El Bianco at Citti
di Castello, see the Fita d'alcuni servi di Giesit Crista appended to Belcari's Fita del
B. Giovanni Cokmbini.

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

mystical revelation which had been stamped in all the fulness of
its seal upon the members of Francis of Assisi one hundred and
fifty years before. Fra Raimondo and the others saw her
gradually rise up from her prostrate position to her knees, with
face all glowing, stretch out her arms, and then, after remaining
a while steadfast in this attitude, fall suddenly to the ground
as though mortally wounded. " I saw," she said, " the crucified
Lord coming down to me in a great light, and for this, by the
impetus of the mind that would fain go forth to meet its Creator,
the body was constrained to rise. Then from the marks of His
most sacred wounds I saw five blood-red rays coming down
upon me, which were directed towards the hands and feet and
heart of my body. Wherefore, perceiving the mystery, I
straightway exclaimed : Ah^ Lord my God^ I beseech Thee^ let not
the marks appear outwardly on my body. Then, whilst I was yet
speaking, before the rays reached me, they changed their blood-
red colour to splendour, and in the semblance of pure light they
came to the five places of my body, that is, to the hands, the feet,
and the heart. So great is the pain that I endure sensibly in all those
five places, but especially within my heart, that, unless the Lord
works a new miracle, it seems not possible to me that the life of
my body can stay with such agony, and that it will not end in a
few days."

They brought her back to her room, in what appeared a dying
condition. But it seemed that, in answer to the united prayers
of all the fellowship, this new miracle was wrought, and when, on
the following Sunday, she received the Blessed Sacrament again
from Raimondo's hands, her strength was, as it were, supernaturally
renewed. " O Father of ineffable mercy," writes the good friar,
"what wilt Thou do for Thy faithful servants and for Thy
beloved children, when Thou dost show Thyself so benign to
such afflicted sinners as us .'' I said to her : * Mother, does the
pain still last of the wounds which were made in thy body ^ ' And
she answered : * The Lord has heard your prayers, albeit to the
affliction of my soul, and those wounds not only do not afflict
my body, but even fortify it ; so that, instead of receiving

134

UNDER A DARKENING SKY

torment from them, albeit I feel them still, they bring me
strength.' " i

While staying at Pisa, Catherine for the first time saw the sea.
On the island of Gorgona, some twenty miles from Livorno,
there stood a Carthusian monastery, of which a certain Don
Bartolommeo Serafini of Ravenna was then prior : a man of holy
life and spiritual conversation, who believed profoundly in
Catherine's mission, and was eager for the monks under his
charge to hear her words. At his repeated instance, supported
by Fra Raimondo, Catherine visited the island, with a number of
her companions and friends from Pisa. They arrived at evening,

kand, while Raimondo and the others were entertained at the
convent, the prior found rooms for Catherine and her women
without. The next day, at the earnest prayer of the monks,
Catherine spoke to them of the temptations of the monastic life
and of its trials, in such a profound and illuminating fashion that
all were amazed, and the prior, turning to Raimondo, declared
that, if she had heard the confession of each (as he had done), she
could not more appositely have healed the soul of every one.
Bartolommeo himself bears witness to the great spiritual fruit
that she wrought among them. He tells us how she left the
island in the convent boat, and how, when they had reached the
Pisan shore, the monks asked her blessing before rowing back,
and believed that, through her intercession, they were miraculously
delivered from a sudden storm that rose. He speaks, too, of
her parting warning to him concerning a scandal which the devil
would shortly try to cause in his flock, which was soon verified
in the attempted suicide of a young monk, who was only liberated
from temptation by the touch of the mantle that Catherine had
left behind her, and by calling on her name.^

The simplicity with which Don Bartolommeo in his old age
tells these stories is a revelation of the character of the man, and

^ Legenda, II. vi. lo, ii (§§ 194-198). Cf. Lombardelli, Sommario della
disputa a difesa delle Sacre Stimate di Santa Caterina, p. 13.

2 Legenda, II. x, 20 (§ 296) ; Contestatio Dom. Bartholomaei de Ravenna,
Processus, coll, 1 304-1 307.

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

it Is evident that Catherine was as delighted and edified by him as
he had been impressed by her. " God is calHng you by holy
and good inspirations," she wrote to Ippolito degli Ubaldini, a
Florentine noble who sought her advice about entering religion,
" and He has prepared a holy and devout place for you, utterly
cut off from the world, with a father, the Prior of Gorgona, who
is veritably an angel, a mirror of virtue, with a good and holy
family. Tell him your intention fully, and make a steady, firm,
and true resolution. And if you decide to enter that holy and
devout place (which will be the life of your soul), or whatever you
determine, if you dispense your substance to the poor, give some
of it to that place of Gorgona. For the convent needs to be put
into shape, if it is to conform to the rule of the Carthusian
order." ^ Two of the most beautiful of her spiritual letters are
addressed to one of the monks of this convent, Francesco Tebaldi
of Florence, who is apparently the same young man who had
been so sorely tempted to take his own life. " We have all had
a great desire to hear news of you," she says at the end of the
first ; " it seems to me that the demon has not slept, and is not
sleeping with regard to you ; at which I am very glad, because I
see that, by the goodness of God, the battle has not been to
death, but to life. Thanks, thanks, to the sweet God eternal,
who has given us so much grace ! Now you will begin to know
that you are nothing, and to realize that your being, and all grace
that is founded upon your being, comes from Him who is. To
Him let all thanks and praise be rendered ; for it is His will that
we give the flower to Him and that the fruit be our own." ^

A man of a more virile type than the gentle Prior of
Gorgona, who is said to have first met Catherine at this time, and
afterwards came under her influence, was the Florentine hermit of
Vallombrosa, Don Giovanni dalle Celle, whose name runs through
so much of the religious life of the Trecento. His spiritual

1 Letter 130 (271). The convent of Gorgona was a Benedictine house that
had recently been made over to the Carthusians, and would, therefore, need
the building of separate cells for the monks.

2 Letters 150 (62), 154 (63).

136

UNDER A DARKENING SKY

letters, still only in part collected, extend from the forties to the
nineties of the century. Giovanni had become a monk of the
Vallombrosan rule at an early age, and, while superior of S.
Trinita in Florence, had committed a peculiarly scandalous and
infamous crime, for which (after release from imprisonment) he
did penance all the rest of his long life. In his earliest extant
letter, he beseeches the saintly Augustinian hermit, Fra Simone
da Cascia, as a most experienced physician of souls, to heal " the
execrable wound of my mind " : "I was what I am not ; I used
to do penance ; but now, by looking back, I have become a
statue of salt. I used to taste what now, in my wretchedness, I
hardly remember. I have fallen, and cannot rise of myself; I
strive to return to the man I was, but dare not, for my mind is
overwhelmed by remorse and confounded by the shame of my sins.
Receive me, then, crying to thee from the abyss, and begin to
build up in me what I have destroyed." ^ After this he took the
name of Giovanni dalle Celle, "John of the Cells," from the
solitude above Vallombrosa to which he retired, but from which
he issued at intervals to labour in Florence and elsewhere for the
good of souls. Men and women alike appealed to him for
direction ; but his special work of this kind seems to have been
the guidance of a confraternity of young men, known as his
adopted sons, whom he trained in the religious life ; at the same
time, through his friend Guido dal Palagio (a man of devout life
and great charity, known to students of Italian literature by a noble
patriotic canzone, and dear to lovers of the beautiful for the
Franciscan convent above Fiesole which he founded), he kept in
touch with the government of the Republic.

It has frequently been stated that Catherine had come to Pisa
by the express wish of the Pope, to carry out certain negotiations

^ This letter, with Fra Simone's answer, is given by P. Nicola Mattioli, //
Beato Simone Fidati da Cascia (Rome, 1898), pp. 392-410, and must have been
written before 1348, the year of Simone's death. Giovanni's crime, as described
by Girolamo of Vallombrosa, in B. Sorio, Lettere del B. Giovanni dalle Celle, p. 7,
curiously illustrates Catherine's words about the wicked practices of certain monks,
in her Dialogo^ cap. 129.

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

on his behalf, with the object of preventing the Republic from
joining the league that was being formed against the Holy See.
There is no warrant for this in Raimondo's narrative, and it
seems chronologically an anticipation of what was to take place
some months later. If Catherine had any more definite mission
than that of her Divine Spouse for the conversion of souls, it
could only have been in connection with the proposed Crusade ;
she was apparently to use Pisa as a headquarters from which to
stir up enthusiasm among high and low in Italy, alike by letter
and by spoken word, for *' the holy passage."

The Pope was trying gradually to feel his way in this matter,
which he probably had sincerely at heart. Among the numerous
bulls despatched from Avignon was one addressed to the
provincial of the Dominicans in Tuscany, the minister of the
Friars Minor, and to Fra Raimondo, empowering them to
investigate the will and disposition of the faithful, to enroll those
who were ready to give their lives in the great undertaking, and
to report to the Pope thereon, so that he might know upon what
support he could rely from Italy when the banner of the Cross
should actually be raised. There had been some immediate
response from individuals, three of the Buonconti, for instance,
having enrolled themselves ; but it was imperative to secure the
adhesion of the heads of the maritime States of the Mediterranean :
Naples, Genoa, Pisa, and Sardinia ; especially as the practical
intervention of Venice in the enterprise seemed doubtful, and
Louis of Hungary, in spite of his alleged pledges to the contrary,
showed small disposition to move his powers in defence of the
threatened Greeks and their Emperor, notwithstanding an urgent
brief from Gregory inciting him to act with vigour.^ A little
later, these exhortations were renewed, and a friar of great
eloquence, one of the few immediate links between Petrarca's
circle of correspondents and that of Catherine, Fra Bonaventura
Badoara of Padua, an Augustinian hermit, was sent to inflame the

^ Brief of January 28, 1375. Raynaldus, vii. p. 263. The Pope was |
flattering himself that the Greeks were prepared to submit to the Roman obedience
in return for armed Hungarian protection.

UNDER A DARKENING SKY

King's la2:ging zeal.^ But the official invitations of the Pope and
the eloquent exhortations of his Augustinian emissary seem frigid
and perfunctory, when compared with the fiery-hearted enthusiasm,
the white and glowing passion, with which Catherine threw herself
into the undertaking.

From the house of the Buonconti, she despatched letters and
messengers in all directions, to princes and rulers of republics, to
captains of mercenaries and to private citizens alike, urging each
in his own degree to support the papal design, and to be ready to
lay down his life for the Cross when the summons should come.
One of the first to whom she appealed was Queen Giovanna of
Naples, whose ambiguous character and dangerous position stirred
her imagination and excited her compassion. In words of
touching tenderness, the maiden of the people implores the
daughter of kings, who had won from men the title of regina
mere^rixy to repent and amend her life, thereby becoming " a true
and perfect daughter of God," to contemplate the ineffable love
that God bears her, and plant the tree of the Cross in the garden of
her soul. " Rise up, then, manfully, sweetest sister ! It is no
longer time for sleep, for time sleeps not, but ever passes like the
wind. For love's sake, lift up the standard of the most holy
Cross in your heart. Soon must we uplift it, for, as I understand,
the Holy Father will proclaim the war against the Turks. And,
therefore, I pray you to make ready, so that wc may all go
together to die for Christ. I beseech and urge you, in the name
of Christ crucified, to support His Spouse in her need, with your
possessions, your person, and your counsel ; in all that is possible,
show yourself a faithful daughter of sweet and holy Church." ^
And to Bartolommeo di Smeduccio, the tyrant of San Severino in
the Marches, a young condottiere whose growing reputation as a
soldier was giving him a power and importance far beyond that
derived from the forces actually at his disposal, she wrote : " Let
your heart and soul be enkindled in Christ sweet Jesus, with love
and desire of paying Him back for so much love by giving life

^ Brief of October 27, 1375. UiJ., p. 264.
2 Letters 133 (312) and 138 (314).

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

for life. He has given His life for you, and do you give your
life for Him, blood for blood. I invite you, in the name of
Christ crucified, to give your blood for His, when the time comes
which the servants of God are expecting, for going to win back
what has been taken from us : namely, the holy place of the
sepulchre of Christ, as well as the souls of the infidels, who are
our brothers, bought back by the blood of Christ even as we ; to
redeem the place from their hands, and their souls from the hands
of the demons and from their infidelity. I invite you not to be
negligent nor tardy, when the Holy Father raises the standard of
the most holy Cross, and orders the sweet and holy expedition.
I beseech you, by the love of Christ crucified, to await with
gladness and desire the invitation to these sweet and glorious
nuptials, where impurity will be left behind, and the soul, free
from sin and penalty, will be fed at the table of the Lamb. You
would indeed be foolish to keep away from such great delight. It
seems to me that any one who could not go upright should go
there crawling, to show his love for God by giving Him life for
love of life. Make amends for your failings and for your sins
with the instrument of your body, even as with the instrument of
your body you have offended." ^

As far as words went, the response to Catherine's appeals was
prompt. Mariano d' Oristano, who ruled the island of Sardinia
under the title of Judge of Arborea, promised to join the Crusade
in person, and to supply two galleys, a thousand horsemen, three
thousand foot-soldiers, and six hundred crossbowmen, for ten
years. The Genoese seemed enthusiastic. ^ Giovanna professed
herself more than ready. " My venerable mother," wrote
Catherine to the Queen, " I will pray, to the utmost of my
feeble powers, the supreme and eternal goodness of God that He
may give you perfect light for this and all your good works, and
that He may increase desire upon desire in you ; so that, en-
kindled with the fire of love, you may come from the sovereignty
of this miserable and transient life to that perpetual city of

1 Unpublished. Appendix, Letter I.

2 Letter 66 (125).

• 140

\ui co\\^x^ rvon famttatatiatuta
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t:claucnclcctJt^^tncrcc dicoli ^'

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rcucndcctJt amoa Utjaictc^ -
fxtx-uiu cfcvcfoo nimico rnotla. -"
V- Vctx> cJt-cd\vu cixtta cktcto
A cHa feniualita. cwUtimimMTTor-
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frtfho tmaltra uotta^ cWtiot* fa/-
frtrcfx; folo plo tcccito colt mo-
Id / ft cfr-Unttna. iTwrnotata di
dto fotno otccno toddinc txuotc
fcoiu tatc la iiantt::\ ftta / lamo'
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dccta dtic mcdcfitno txnxotcn -
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clio eC dclU inotr''oclto fiCdifpta
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Ic tdrta dxlcctandoii dt'duct ^

lo docdio atno cdtando c^tello
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fa. laCua tuUuta. o la mai nowrc-
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uomvto dc-pctrati mortsiti.Tlo^
ttooUo oa(i "ma conuna.uctajP.

A PAGE OF THE HARLEIAN MS. 3480, SHOWING A PORTION OF
SAINT CATHERINE'S LETTER TO BARTOLOMMEO DI SMEDUCCIO.

[To face p. 140.

UNDER A DARKENING SKY

Jerusalem, the vision of peace, where the Divine Clemency will
make us all kings and lords, and will reward every labour to
whoso endures it for His most sweet love." ^

To the Queen Mother of Hungary, too, Elizabeth of Poland,
Catherine wrote, telling her that Giovanna's support had been
secured, imploring her to use her influence with her son, King
Louis, to induce him to accede to the Pope's request, and serve
the Church with his arms. " The Church has need of your
human aid, and you have need of her divine aid. Be assured
that, the more you give her of your aid, the more you will
partake of the divine grace, the fire of the Holy Spirit, which
is contained in her. I, wretched, miserable woman, have nothing
wherewith to aid her ; but if my blood could be of any avail, I
would gladly shed it all. But I will do this much : I will give
her that little particle that God gives me, that it may be helpful
to her, albeit I see nought in me that is useful that I can give,
save tears and sighs and continual prayer. But you, mother, and
my lord the King, your son, can aid her with prayers through
holy desire, and can also at your will and with love support her
by human aid. Do not shun, then, for the love of God, this
labour ; but embrace it for Christ crucified, for your own utility
and exaltation, and to work out your salvation. And pray your
dear son earnestly to ofl^er himself for love to serve Holy
Church." 2

But, in the meantime, the political horizon in central Italy
had been growing darker and darker. The two papal legates.
Cardinal de Noellet at Bologna, the Abbot of Marmoutier at
Perugia, were steadily filling the cup of their iniquities to the
brim, and the prophecies of Birgitta and Petrarca were soon,
to be fulfilled to the letter. In the summer of this year, 1375,
the storm burst with dramatic suddenness.

From the outset of Gregory's pontificate, the Florentines had
been alarmed by the subjugation of Perugia, and had attempted

^ Letter 143 (31 3), dated August 4. Giovanna, as the descendant of Charles
of Anjou, bore the title of Queen of Jerusalem.
2 Letter 145 (311).

141

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

to form an alliance with Siena, Pisa, Lucca, and Arezzo, for the
defence of Tuscany against the supposed sinister designs of the
papal representatives. They had hitherto, however, found these
other communes unwilling to enter into any league in which the
Church was not included. Their growing suspicions that the two
legates were plotting against the liberties of the Republic, already
excited by the aid that they had given to the Salimbeni and
Ubaldini, were brought to a head in June, when, on the con-
clusion of the truce at Bologna between the Church and the
Visconti, Hawkwood's mercenaries were dismissed from the
service of the former. There had been great scarcity of food
during the spring throughout Florence and the contado (as well as
elsewhere in Italy) ; but, in spite of the express command from
the Pope to the contrary. Cardinal de Noellet refused to allow
grain to be sent thither from the places under his dominion. He
now wrote to the Signoria that Hawkwood was collecting troops,
and that, unless Florence would lend him at least sixty thousand
florins to hire them, he would be unable to prevent these
mercenaries from assailing the territory of the Republic. The
Signoria having expressed their inability to find the requisite
sum, Hawkwood arrived with his company at the Florentine
frontier.

There can be little doubt that the ruling faction in Florence
had been for some time desiring a rupture with the Church,
partly from really patriotic motives, partly with a view to
weakening the power of the Parte Guelfa in the Republic. In
spite of the explicit allegations of Florentine historians, it is most
unlikely that either the Pope or his legates had any intention of
undertaking so impossible a task as the subjugation of Tuscany,
though it may well be that they contemplated the overthrow of
the democratic governments, and the establishment of a regime
less hostile to the aggrandizement of the temporal sovereignty
of the Church. Cardinal de Noellet probably spoke the truth |
when he declared that he had no longer any control over Hawk-
wood's movements, and he was, perhaps, really unable to supply
the Florentines with grain from the cities of Romagna. Gregory

142

UNDER A DARKENING SKY

could protest, with much show of reason on his side, that the
Florentines had not the smallest right to object to the truce with
the Visconti, seeing that they themselves had not contributed
their share to the payment of the mercenaries, as they were bound
by the terms of their treaty with the Church.^ Nevertheless,
the evil government and iniquitous policy of the papal repre-
sentatives in Italy was calculated to arouse the worst appre-
hensions, and the Florentines could not look on with indifference
while the neighbouring cities, hitherto practically free or ruled by
friendly potentates, bound to their Republic by the Guelf league,
were reduced to mere units in a powerful and consolidated State.
The Pope wrote to the Signoria, complaining of their unworthy
suspicions of him, protesting his great affection for the Floren-
tines, and urging them to come to some agreement with the
Cardinal to prevent Hawkwood's soldiers from harming their
cities or those of the Church.^ But it was now too late. On
June 2 1 , the Florentines made terms on their own account with
Hawkwood and his Societas Anglorum, purchasing a five years'
peace with them for the sum of 130,000 gold florins. A few
days later, the anti-papal feeling in the city was roused to a height
of frenzy by the discovery of a plot (which, apparently, was
revealed by Hawkwood himself) to betray Prato to Cardinal
de Noellet ; two of the conspirators, a notary and a monk in
priest's orders, were tortured to death through the streets of
Florence with appalling cruelty. It was further alleged that an
agent of the Cardinal had been in Florence, to spy out a site for
the erection of a papal fortress.^ Hostilities were now inevitable.
On July 24, the Florentines took the politically astute, but
morally indefensible step, of entering into an alliance for five
years with Bernabo Visconti. The next day, pleading the danger

1 Brief of August 8, 1375. Raynaldus, vii. p. 268. Cf. Capponi, Storia della
Repubblica dl Firenze, I. pp. 319-322 ; Marchionne Stefani, Lib. IX. rubr. 751 ;
Ammirato, I. 2. pp. 691, 692.

2 Briefs of June 16 and 21. Gherardi, La Guerra del Tiorentini con Papa
Gregorio XI, docs. 4 and 5.

2 Diario del Monaldi, p. 507 ; Ammirato, I. 2. p. 693.

J43

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

caused by the coming of the English as their justification, they
informed the Republics of Pisa, Siena, Lucca, and Arezzo of
what they had done, and called upon them to join the league.

Having thus blackmailed the Florentines, Hawkwood, in
July, came into the contado of Pisa and then into that of Siena,
compelling each of these communes to make similar terms. Pisa
paid 30,000 florins, and Siena 35,500 (of which Montepulciano
contributed 3,000). *' In order that the Commune should not
suffer for what the pastors of the Church had wrongly made
them pay," the Florentines and Sienese imposed a heavy tax on the
ecclesiastics to raise the money, a levy which, in the case of the
clergy of Siena, amounted to two-thirds of the whole sum.

Catherine was apparently still at Pisa while these things were
being done. Hawkwood had previously made a sort of promise
that he would join the Crusade ; the time seemed ripe for her
to call upon him to fulfil his word, and so leave Tuscany in peace.
She accordingly sent Fra Raimondo to the English camp, with a
letter to Hawkwood and his captains, exhorting them to abandon
the service and pay of the devil, and become soldiers of Christ
crucified. " I pray you sweedy in Christ Jesus that, since God
and our Holy Father have ordered the expedition against the
infidels, and you delight so much in making war and fighting,
you war no more upon Christians, because it offends God ; but
go against those others. How cruel it is that we who are
Christians, members bound in the body of Holy Church, should
persecute one another ! I am much amazed that, after having
promised (as I have heard) to go to die for Christ in this holy
enterprise, you should now be making war here. This is not the
holy disposition that God demands from you." This letter is,
however, merely the credentials for Fra Raimondo, who is to give
them her full message by word of mouth. *' My father and son,
Fra Raimondo, is bringing you this letter. Trust what he tells
you, for he is a true, faithful servant of God, and will not advise
or tell you anything save what is for the honour of God, and the
salvation and glory of your soul." So much were Hawkwood
and his captains impressed by the friar's exhortations, that they

144

UNDER A DARKENING SKY

all took a solemn oath that, if the Crusade really started, they
would go, and Raimondo returned to Catherine with their signed
and sealed promises to this effect. ^

In August, the Florentines elected eight magistrates, two for
each quarter of the city, known as the Otio della Balmy or Otto
della Guerra^ to carry on the conflict with the Church. These
included representatives of each order in the State : one noble,
Alessandro de' Bardi ; one artisan, Giovanni di Mone ; six
burghers, Giovanni Dini, Giovanni Megalotti, Andrea Salviati,
Tommaso Strozzi, Guccio Gucci, Matteo Soldi. They were
all men of mark, able and experienced, animated by sincere
patriotism, haters of the prepotency of the Parte Guelfa ; such
popularity did they acquire by their energetic management of the
task committed to them, that they were called the Otto Santi. Eight
other ojSicials, known as the Otto di livelliy were appointed, to
tax the clergy and the churches for the defence of the city.^
Mercenaries were hired, German cavalry obtained from Bernabo,
and a German condottiere, Conrad Wertinger, who was in the
service of Galeazzo Visconti, was elected captain-general of the
forces of the Republic. The Abbot of Marmoutier having
arrested the Florentine ambassador at Perugia, the Florentines
seized and imprisoned the papal nuncio, Luca Bertini, Bishop of
Narni, who was returning from Avignon to the Patrimony.^

1 Letter 140 (220).

2 Cf. Gherardi, op. cit., p. 23 ; Marchionne Stefani, Lib. IX. rubr. 752, 753 ;
and, for a hostile contemporary view of " citizens who had such presumption as
to consent to be called santiy" Sercambi, Croniche, \. p. 213.

8 Cf. Raynaldus, vii. p. 279 ; Cronlca Sanese, col. 246. The statement made
by Augusta Drane (L p. 347), and copied from her by more recent writers, that
" the mad Ghibelline mob, encouraged by their * Eight Saints,' after slaughtering
the inquisitors, seized the papal nuncio and flayed him alive in the streets of
Florence," is entirely inaccurate. The papal bull (Raynaldus, loc. cit.) merely
says that the nuncio was aliquandiu crudelissimo carcere detentus. For an account of
this personage, who was afterwards Bishop of Siena, see G. A. Pecci, Stor'ta del
Vescovado di Siena, pp. 288-290. Augusta Drane has, perhaps, confused him
with the monk Niccol6 who had been so horribly put to death, probably unjustly,
for the affair of Prato.

10 145

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

Nevertheless, war was not openly declared against the Church,
and a show of diplomatic relations was maintained with the papal
legates. The other Tuscan communes showed no eagerness to
enter the league. Piero Gambacorti was divided between his
religious feelings and his need of Florentine support ; Siena had
differences concerning boundaries with Pisa and Arezzo, which
latter State was the first to adhere to Florence ; Lucca still
regarded the Church as her liberator from the foreign yoke, and
was most unwilling to commit herself to any hostile action. " Do
not allow yourselves to be deceived by any flatteries," wrote
the Pope to the government of Lucca, " nor corrupted by any
sedition, nor terrified by any threats from those who are, perchance,
striving to disturb your peace and pervert your devotion, and who
reduce the liberty of their neighbours to servitude when they
can ; but, like most devoted sons, be columns of the Church
which desires and seeks your liberty." ^

Catherine was still at Pisa at the beginning of September,
where we find her, on the second day of the month, dictating to
Fra Raimondo a letter to the new Senator of Siena, the Marchese
Pietro del Monte Santa Maria, a religious and upright noble from
Umbria, through whom she was able to keep in constant touch
with the government of her native city during her absence at this
time.2 Shortly after, however, she returned with her spiritual
family to Siena, Fra Raimondo apparently remaining at Pisa,
where he was still busy with the affairs of the Crusade. But her
stay at Siena was very brief. The City of the Virgin could look
after herself, and was too powerful to be coerced, while the
position of Pisa and Lucca was difficult in the extreme. Almost
immediately, probably through the medium of Alfonso da Vada-
terra, Catherine received a command from the Pope to repair to
Lucca, to confirm that Republic in its tottering allegiance to the
Holy See.

Tommaso Caffarini and Neri di Landoccio are the only two
of Catherine's household that we know for certain accompanied

1 Brief of August lo, 1375. Pastor, Geschichte, I. doc. 3.

2 Letter 135 (209). Cf. Cronka Sanese, coll. 244, 250.

146

UNDER A DARKENING SKY

her to Lucca, and it is to the pen of the former that we owe the
account of her visit to this most beautiful of Tuscan cities, with its
vines and olives and distant hills of marble, where Ruskin, almost
exactly five hundred years later, saw " one glow of calm glory
and perfect possibilities of human life." The rulers of the
Republic and private citizens alike received her with every
manifestation of reverence and affection ; for the signs and
wonders, both spiritual and material, that she wrought here as
previously at Siena and at Pisa, together with the burning words
that she uttered, convinced them that she *' taught as one that
had authority, and not as the scribes." ^ A little group of letters
still preserved, addressed by her after her departure to women of
Lucca with those beautifully sounding names, Mellina, Colomba,
Caterina, Chiara, Bartolommea, Lagina, shows us the intense
personal love for herself that she aroused in their hearts, to such
an extent that her presence had become all in all to them. " My
beloved daughters," she says in one, " love God without any inter-
mediary. And, if you wish to love Him through me, wretched
and miserable woman as I am, I will teach you where to find me.
That you may not depart from this true love, go to that most
sweet and venerable Cross with the sweet enamoured Magdalene ;
there you will find the Lamb and me, where your desires can be
fed and nourished and fulfilled. In this way would I have you
seek me and all created things ; let this be your standard and
your consolation. And do not think, because my body is far
from you, that my affection and my care for your salvation is
taken from you ; nay, it is greater when I am absent bodily than
when present. Know you not that the holy disciples knew and
felt their Master more after His departure than before ? For
they took such delight in His humanity that they sought no
further ; but, after His presence had gone, they began to know
and understand His goodness. Therefore said the first Truth :

^ CafFarini's account of Catherine's stay at Lucca is in his Supplementuntf
Tantucci, pp. 107, 108. Neri di Landoccio, in his cap'ttolo in praise of St.
Catherine (printed at the end of Toresano's edition of the Letters) refers to a
promise she made him there.

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

// is expedient for you that I go away ; for if I go not away, the
Comforter will not come unto you. So say I : it was expedient that
I should go away from you, in order that you should set your-
selves to seeking God in truth, and not with any intermediary. I
tell you that you will fare better now than before, if you enter
into yourselves to think upon the words and the teaching that
has been given you, and in this way you will receive the fulness
of the grace of God." ^ In these letters, there are constant
references to the love of Mary Magdalene for her Divine Master,
and it is fitting that the one memorial of Catherine in Lucca
to-day should be the great picture by Fra Bartolommeo della
Porta, which represents the Magdalene and Catherine together in
ecstatic adoration of the sovereign mystery of the Christian
faith.

We do not know how long Catherine stayed at Lucca. Her
mission was to the magistrates of the Republic rather than to the
women, and, as soon as she thought she had confirmed them in
their resolution of not joining the league, she passed on to Pisa,
where her influence over Piero Gambacorti secured the neutrality
of that State and a promise that Lucca would be protected by
its power, if necessary. She had, apparently, anticipated that her
absence from Siena would be a brief one, but she now found it
impossible to leave Pisa. *' I am afraid," she wrote to Fra
Tommaso della Fonte, *' that I must obey the orders that have
been given me ; for the Archbishop has asked the General for me
to remain still some days. Beseech that venerable Spaniard to
obtain grace for us that we may not return empty. But, by the
grace of God, I do not think I shall return empty." ^

At the end of October, a Florentine citizen renowned for
eloquence and patriotism, Donato Barbadori, arrived at Pisa as
ambassador from the Commune of Florence, bearing a letter from

1 Letter 164 (348).

2 Letter 139 (106). Cf. Dante, Par. xi. 129. I am inclined to think that
this venerab'tle ^pagnuolo is not Alfonso da Vadaterra (as supposed by the editors of
the Letters), but St. Dominic himself, as we find Catherine elsewhere asking
Dominicans to invoke his intercession in similar language. Cf. below, p. 319.

148

UNDER A DARKENING SKY

the Signoria, expressing their amazement that the Pisans had
rejected their overtures. His instructions were to exhort Messer
Piero and the Anziani to enter the league, and, if they refused, to
warn them in strong language of the indignation this would arouse
in Florence. He was then to do the same at Lucca, where, if the
citizens answered that they would enter the league only when the
other communes of Tuscany had done so, he was to tell them
openly that he had had a favourable reply from Pisa (if it were
so), and to add that the Sienese were most ready to follow the
same course. And indeed, on November 27, Siena formally
joined the league, stipulating that it should not last less than four
years, that she should not be bound to keep more than one
hundred and fifty lances in its service, and that none of the
confederates should aid the Aretines against her.^ Nevertheless,
Pisa and Lucca both stood firm, albeit the latter State gave way
so far as to allow a free passage through its territory to a body of
men-at-arms that Bernabo Visconti was sending to Florence.

The Florentines had at length realized that, even with the
doubtful adherence of the other Tuscan communes, the assistance
of Bernabo Visconti alone would not suffice to enable them to
fight against the Pope — especially as Hawkwood, in spite of the
enormous bribe that he was still receiving from the Republic, had
gone back, in September, to the service of the Church. In
addition, at the beginning of October, the Pope (as, indeed, he
had done several times before) announced his intention of
returning very shortly to Rome. This the Florentines resolved
to prevent. With the consent of the Signoria, the Otto della
Guerra undertook to stir up a general rebellion of all the cities
and towns of the Papal States. Envoys and letters were de-
spatched, offering all the forces of the Republic to aid them, and
promising to preserve their liberty. Let them remember that
they are Italians, whose portion it is to command and not to obey.
Let them contrast the sweetness of liberty with the tyrannical
rule of the barbarians whom the pastors of the Church have sent
from Gaul to oppress them. Let them shake off the shameful
^ Gherardi, op. cit., p. 20, docs. 83 and 84.
149

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

yoke of the foreigner, and show themselves worthy of liberty and
the Italian name.^

There was an immediate and almost unanimous response to
this appeal. The exactions and misrule of the papal officials had
passed the limit of endurance, and the indignation of the Peru-
gians had been further aroused by the death of the wife of one of
their citizens, who, to escape from the violent hands of a nephew
of the Abbot of Marmoutier, had thrown herself from the
window of her house, and been dashed to pieces on the pavement
below. On December 3, with the aid of Florentine troops, the
inhabitants of Citta di Castello began the revolt. Viterbo
followed. The Abbot promptly sent his English mercenaries
against the rebels, upon which, on December 7, the whole people
of Perugia, nobles and populace alike, rose in arms, ** in the name
of God, of His Mother Mary, and of the blessed Saints Ercolano,
Lorenzo, and Costanzo," shouting " Death to the pastors of the
Church ! " There was a general rush of all the papal officials and
adherents to the citadel, to which Gomez Albornoz, after a vain
attempt to beat back the insurgents, also retreated. The
connecting wings of the fortress were broken down, and the
Abbot, with Gomez and the rest, were kept closely blockaded,
continually harassed by the rudimentary artillery of the epoch,
especially a formidable trahocco^ or ballista, which hurled gigantic
stones, and was christened caccia-preti^ the '* priest-hunter." ^

Gubbio, Sassoferrato, Urbino, Todi, Forli, and other cities
rose in rapid succession. In ten days, more than eighty cities and
towns in the Patrimony, Umbria, and the Marches had been lost
to the Church. Of the larger cities, Rome, Ancona, and Orvieto
alone did not move. The Malatesta at Rimini and the Trinci at
Foligno still declared for the Church, and the soldiery of Gomez
Albornoz still held Ascoli. Messenger after messenger rode into
Florence, bearing the branch of olive from the revolted cities.

1 Gherardi, op. clt., doc. 103.

^ There is a vivid account of this liberation of Perugia " from the hands of
the accursed pastors of the Church " in the Supplement to Graziani's Chronicle, pp.
220-224.

150

UNDER A DARKENING SKY

The bells were rung and the city was illuminated. Horse and
foot were promptly despatched to support the insurgents, and to
each town the Florentines sent a red standard with Libertas
emblazoned upon it in white letters, which, together with the flag
of the Commune, floated in front of their troops. Each place as
it rose was received into the league ; but, although the Florentines
rigidly abstained from gaining any advantage to themselves, they
cared less for the liberation of the people than for the expulsion of
their pastors. Without any protest from them, the former tyrants,
whom Cardinal Albornoz had expelled, in many cases returned ;
Francesco di Vico seized Viterbo for himself, Sinibaldo degli
Ordelafii (the son of the formidable Francesco) entered Forli, the
Alidosi retook Imola, and the Polentani Ravenna, while Count
Antonio da Montefeltro occupied Urbino.

Catherine was still at Pisa when the news of the revolution in
the Papal States reached the city. She was at that time staying in
a hospice in the piazza di Santa Caterina, near the convent and
church of the Dominicans. Fra Raimondo and his companion,
Fra Pietro da Velletri, told her the news. " This is milk and
honey," she said, " in comparison with what is to follow. Thus,
father, do the lay folk act now, but soon you will see how much
worse will be the deeds of ecclesiastics. When the Roman Pontiff^
will strive to correct their wicked lives, they will cause a universal
scandal in the whole Holy Church of God, which, in the fashion
of a pestilent heresy, will divide her and torment her." ^ Thus,
Raimondo assures us, did Catherine foretell the schism which they
were both soon to witness.

After this overwhelming triumph for the Florentines, it
became increasingly dangerous for Pisa and Lucca to resist their
overtures. It was probably before leaving Pisa that Catherine
made a fresh appeal to the Anziani of Lucca by letter, not to for-
sake the cause of the Church. " If you tell me that it seems that
she is failing and cannot even help herself, much less her children,
I answer that it is not so, although it may seem like it to the
outward show. If you look within, you will find that strength of
1 Legenda, II. x. 8-10 (§ § 284-286).

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

which her enemies are deprived. I pray you, then, by the love of
Christ crucified, dearest brothers and sons of Holy Church, to
keep ever firm and persevering in what you have begun." She
urges them at length, by every argument she can muster, to face
every danger rather than join the league, and concludes with a
promise of help from Pisa. " I tell you that, if you were to
remain alone, you should stand firm in this field, and not look
back ; but, by the grace of God, there is another there too.
There are the Pisans, your neighbours, who, if you stand firm and
persevere, will never fail you, but will ever aid you and defend you
until death from whosoever would injure you. Ah, sweetest
brothers, what demon will be able to coerce those two members
who are bound together, in order not to offend God, in the bond
of charity .'' " ^

1 Letter i68 (206).

152

CHAPTER VIII
BETWEEN FLORENCE AND AVIGNON

"E crescendo in me il fuoco, mirando vedevo nel costato di Cristo crocifisso intrare '1
popolo cristiano e lo infedele ; e io passavo, per desiderio e affetto d'amore, per lo mezzo di
loro ; ed entravo con loro in Cristo dolce Gesu, accompagnata col padre mio santo Domenico,
e Giovanni singolare con tutti quanti i figliuoli miei. E ailora mi dava la croce in coUo
e I'olivo in mano, quasi come io volessi ; e cosi diceva che io la porgesse all' uno popolo e
air altro." — St. Catherine, Letter 219 (87).

To one endowed with the prophetic spirit, a sinister sign of the
times must have appeared in the creation of cardinals, the second
since Gregory's elevation to the pontificate, which took place on
December 21 in this year, 1375. Among these nine new
princes of the Church were three of the Pope's own kinsmen,
including Gerard du Puy, the infamous Abbot of Marmoutier, who
was still besieged in the citadel of Perugia. All were French,
with the exception of Simone Brossano, the archbishop-elect of
Milan, and Pedro de Luna, a young Spanish prelate of noble
birth, great learning, and apparently sincere piety, who held a
professorship in the University of Montpellier. '* Take heed,"
said Gregory to Pedro de Luna, " lest thy moon suffer eclipse."
Yet, judged by what might have seemed the higher standard, the
Cardinal of Aragon, as he was called, was the only one of the
nine not unworthy of his elevation.

Gregory's choice of cardinals utterly destroyed all hopes in a
possible reformation of the Sacred College. To Catherine, who
had just returned to Siena when the news reached Italy, it seemed
a cruel act of cowardice on the Pope's part, a putting ointment
upon a mortifying wound where the steel and the cautery were
needed for the life of the patient. So we gather from the first of
her letters to Gregory which have been preserved to us, evidently
written about the beginning of the following year, 1376, "with
desire of seeing you a fruitful tree, planted in the soil of true

^S3

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

knowledge of yourself." Love of self has corrupted prelates and
subjects alike, and no one dares begin the work of reform. '* The
sick man is blind, for he knows not his own need, and the pastor,
who is the physician, is blind, for he considers nothing save his
own pleasure and advantage, and, in order not to lose that, does
not employ the knife of justice nor the fire of most ardent charity.
Such a one is truly a hireling shepherd, because not only does he
not draw his little sheep out of the hand of the wolf, but he him-
self devours them ; and the cause of all this is that he loves
himself without God, and does not follow sweet Jesus, the true
Shepherd, who has given His life for His sheep. O babbo mioy
sweet Christ on earth, follow that sweet Gregory, for it will be as
possible to you to quench self-love as it was to him, for he was of
the same flesh as you ; and the same God is now who was then ; we
only need virtue and hunger for the salvation of souls. This is
our remedy, father ; that we lift up this love above ourselves and
every creature outside God ; let us think no more of friends and
kinsmen, nor of temporal necessities, but only of virtue and of
the exaltation of spiritual things ; for temporal things are failing
you for no other reason save that you have abandoned the care of
spiritual things." '* I beseech you to send to Lucca and to Pisa,
dealing with them like a father as God will teach you, helping
them in whatever can be done, and inviting them to stand firm
and persevere. I have been at Pisa and at Lucca until now, inviting
them, to the utmost of my power, not to make a league with the
putrid members who are rebels to you. But they are in great
perplexity, because they have no encouragement from you, and
are being continually urged with threats by the other side to join
it. But, up to now, they have not entirely consented. I beseech
you also to write forcibly to Messer Piero, and do it zealously
and do not delay. I have heard that you have made some
cardinals. I believe that it would be more to the honour of
God, and better for yourself, if you would always take care to
make virtuous men. If the contrary is done, it will be a great
insult to God and the ruination of Holy Church. And let us
not wonder afterwards, if God sends His chastisements and His

154

BETWEEN FLORENCE AND AVIGNON

scourges upon us, for it is just. I beseech you, do what you
have to do manfully and with fear of God." ^

Already the dyer's daughter of Siena could address the
Sovereign Pontiff in terms almost dictatorial. And, indeed,
Gregory had need of such virile counsellors. His newly created
Cardinal du Puy had been compelled to surrender the citadel of
Perugia to the insurgents, on January i, 1376. A fortnight
later, the Florentine force returned to Florence in triumph,
crowned with garlands of olive, to the sound of music and the
pealing of bells. Hardly had Catherine returned to Siena when,
on the very day of the surrender of the citadel of Perugia, Donate
Barbadori again appeared as ambassador at Pisa, sent by the
Eight to that city and to Lucca, once more to demand the
abandonment of their neutrality. And, on March 13, the
Signoria of Florence wrote exultantly to Bernabo Visconti :
" Yesterday, by the grace of God, we concluded the league with
the Pisans and the Lucchese." ^ Nevertheless, in thus joining the
league under compulsion, neither Piero Gambacorti nor the
Anziani of Lucca intended to undertake any hostile measures
against the Pope, and the latter Republic had expressly stipulated
that none of the confederates should be compelled to help any
other who should occupy possessions of the Church.

Immediately after the surrender of the citadel of Perugia,
the Signoria of Florence addressed an impassioned appeal to the
Romans, through Coluccio Salutati, the famous chancellor of
the Republic, one of whose letters in after years was to seem more
formidable to Gian Galeazzo Visconti than an army of twenty
thousand men. God has had compassion upon Italy, he wrote,
and has raised up the spirit of her peoples against the most foul
tyranny of barbarians. This must be particularly pleasing to the

1 Letter 185(1), corrected by the Harleian MS. Catherine wrote simultane-
ously to the Archbishop of Otranto, urging him fearlessly to tell the Pope the truth
about what seemed to him to be for the honour of God and the renovation ot
the Church ; and to the papal secretary, Niccol6 da Osimo, offering Fra Raimondo
for the Church's service. Letters 183 (33) and 181 (40).

2 Gherardi, op cit., doc. 183.

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

Romans, whose love of liberty made them masters of the world.
Let them rise, too, and aid in expelling this abomination from Italy,
for this will be a truly Roman work. Let them not be seduced
by the suggestions of the priests that, if they support the state of
the Church, the Pope will bring back the Roman Curia to Italy.
Surely the Romans will not suffer Italy to be trampled under foot
for their own gain. The example of Urban V has shown how
little such promises can be trusted, and, indeed, if the Pope comes,
he will set his seat at Perugia instead of Rome. *' Therefore,
dearest brothers, consider their deeds, not their words ; for not
your advantage, but their lust of domination is bringing them back
to Italy. Be not deceived by honeyed words, and do not suffer
your Italy, which your forefathers with the cost of so much blood
made the head of all the world, to be subject to barbarians and
foreigners. Repeat once more the saying of the famous Cato :
We do not so much desire to be free as to live with freemen." ^

But the Romans were resolved to do nothing to prevent the
restoration of the Apostolic See to the Eternal City. " We had
firmly intended," wrote Gregory to all the States and peoples of
Italy, a few days later, '* to return with the Roman Curia to the
Supreme City and our other towns in Italy, and to live and die
among you, and to relieve you of the heavy burdens which, on
account of the whirlwinds of warfare, you have borne, to our great
displeasure and that of our predecessors, and to preserve you in
peace, and rule you with beneficent government with the aid of
the Most High." ^ He further appointed a Roman, Cardinal
Francesco Tebaldeschi, a good man but enfeebled by age and
illness, to succeed the Cardinal Abbot of Marmoutier as vicar-
general of the Church in the Papal States. Simultaneously, he
attempted to come to terms with the league, through the
intervention of the Queen of Naples and the Doge of Genoa, who
sent two ambassadors, Niccolo Spinelli and Bartolommeo Giacoppi,
to Florence. But, before they arrived, Gregory, on February 1 1 ,

^ Letter of January 4, 1376. Pastor, Geschichte, I. document 4.
2 Litterae hortativae pro parte domini nostri papae, etc. Dated Avignon, January
6, 1376. Biblioteca Vaticana, Cod, Fat. Lot. 6330, f. 430.

156

BETWEEN FLORENCE AND AVIGNON

formulated a terrible process against the Florentines, which they
described as too atrocious to be addressed even to schismatics and
infidels, enumerating their real or alleged offences against the
Holy See, summoning by name all the citizens who had held
office since June to appear in person at Avignon before the last
day of March. A few days later, with Florentine aid, the city of
Ascoli, upon which the liberty of the whole of the Marches
depended, rose against the Church, and Gomez Albornoz, who
had taken refuge here after the surrender at Perugia, found
himself besieged in the citadel.

From Siena, Catherine watched the course of events with
agonized dismay : lo muoio di dolore e non posso morire^ she
writes ; " I am dying of grief and cannot die." It seemed to her
that the jaws of hell were opened, and that the devils were
carrying off the souls of men on every side. While admitting to
the full that the iniquities and oppression of the papal officials were
the real cause of the war, and that, humanly speaking, the rising
of the cities of the States of the Church had ample justification,
she regarded rebellion against the Pope as in itself a mortal sin, and,
in consequence, the policy of the Florentines as almost diabolical.
Her soul is rent in twain between Italy and the Church, between
liberty and religion, and hence comes what at times seems the
exquisite inconsistency of the letters with which she attempted
to win the contending parties to counsels of charity and peace.

Niccolo Soderini had been elected one of the priors of the
Florentine Republic who held office for the first two months of
1376, and found himself most reluctantly forced into an attitude
of hostility towards the Church. To him Catherine wrote,
" with desire of seeing you a member bound and united in the
bond of true charity, in such wise that you may partake of this
true love, and that, now that you have been made head and set in
signory, you may be the means to help to bind all these members,
your citizens, so that they may not stay in such peril of the
damnation of soul and body." Whoso goes against the Church,
cuts himself off from the sacraments, and despises the blood of
Christ. If they will humble themselves, the Pope is ready to

157

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

receive them ; he is inviting them to peace, notwithstanding the
injury he has received from them. They are misled if they think
themselves the offended parties, for the sins of God's ministers
should have been left to Him to punish. '* I beseech you,
Niccolo, by that ineffable love with which God has created and so
sweetly ransomed you, to strive with all your power (for God has
not given it to you save for some great hidden end) to bring about
peace and union between your fellow-citizens and Holy Church,
in order that yourselves and all Tuscany may not be imperilled." ^
And to the Pope she wrote, bidding him win back the revolted
cities by love alone : —

'* O my sweet, most holy babbo, I can see no other means for
you to have back your little sheep, who like rebels have strayed
from the fold of Holy Church. Wherefore I pray you in the
name of Christ crucified, and I would have you do this mercy for
me, conquer their malice with your benignity. We are yours, O
father ; and I know that they all in general realize that they have
done wrong ; but, albeit they have no excuse for working evil,
nevertheless, because of the hardships and cruel injustice that
they suffered by reason of bad pastors and governors, it seemed
to them impossible to act otherwise. For when they perceived the
stench of the life of many of their rulers, who you know are
demons incarnate, they came into such exceeding fear that they
have acted like Pilate, who slew Christ in order not to lose
lordship ; and so have they done, for they have persecuted you
in order not to lose their state. I crave mercy, then, father, from
you for them. Do not look at the ignorance and pride of your
sons ; but, with love and kindness, giving what gentle punish-
ment and benign rebuke that will please your Holiness, render
peace to us, wretched children who have offended. I tell you,
sweet Christ on earth, in the name of Christ in heaven, that, if
you act thus, without storm or strife, they will all come in sorrow
for the offence committed and will lay their heads in your lap.

^ Letter 171 (217). Cf. Marchionne Stefani, Lib. IX. rubr. 762. From
1344, the Florentine priors began their two months of office from the calends,
instead of the 15 th day as in Dante's time.

.58

BETWEEN FLORENCE AND AVIGNON

Then you will rejoice, and we shall rejoice ; for with love you
will have put back the sheep that was lost into the fold of Holy
Church. And then, my sweet babbo, you will fulfil your holy
desire and the will of God in carrying out the holy enterprise ; to
which I invite you in His name, to do it soon and without
negligence. And they will join with great affection, for they are
disposed to give their lives for Christ. Ah, God, sweet Love !
Uplift soon the banner of the most holy Cross, babbo, and you
will see the wolves become lambs. Peace, peace, peace ; so that
the war may not postpone this sweet time. But if you wish to
execute vengeance and justice, wreak it upon me, miserable and
wretched woman, and give me every pain and torment that you
like, even unto death. I believe that, through the odour of my
own iniquities, many defects and many disasters and discords have
come. Then upon me, your miserable daughter, inflict whatever
punishment you will. Alas, father, I am dying of sorrow and
cannot die. Come, come, and no more withstand the will of God
which calls you ; the starving sheep are awaiting your coming to
hold and possess the place of your ancestor and champion, the
Apostle Peter ; for, as vicar of Christ, you are bound to repose
in your own place. Come, then, come, and delay no more ; take
heart and fear nought that could befall, for God will be with
you." 1

The Florentines had already appealed to the Cardinals Piero
Corsini and Jacopo Orsini to take their part in the papal court,
and promised to send ambassadors to prove their innocence.
Catherine likewise wrote to these two prelates, imploring them to
use their influence in hastening the Pope's coming to Italy and
the beginning of the Crusade ; she urged the Florentine Cardinal
to labour for the reformation of the Church by his own word
and example, and the Roman to press the Pope to make peace
with the revolted cities.^ But the Florentines made no show of
laying down their arms, while town after town in the Papal States,
including Assisi at the beginning of March, rose against the
ecclesiastical ofiicials and joined the league. The two papal

^ Letter 196 (4). ' Letters 177 (29) and 223 (28).

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

ambassadors at length arrived from Bologna, and made three
alternative offers on behalf of the Pope : a truce for five years
with Bernabo and the Florentines and their allies, the rebellious
cities, in the meanwhile, to pay their usual tribute to the apostolic
treasury ; a perpetual peace with Bernabo and the Florentines,
and a truce of five years with the others, who would, as in the
former case, still pay their tribute ; a general peace with the
whole league, the question of the rebellious towns to be referred
to the arbitration of the King of Hungary, the Queen of Naples,
or the Lord of Padua, at the choice of the Florentines
themselves.^ These terms were rejected by the Florentines.
Their agents were busy in Bologna, where Cardinal de Noellet
was suspected of being about to pawn the fortresses of the
Commune to Hawkwood, as he had already done with
Bagnacavallo, to pay the English. On the night of March 20,
the Bolognese nobles, led by Taddeo Azzoguidi, rose against the
legate, while the petty signori of the contado, with Florentine aid,
entered the city with their armed retainers. Taken by surprise,
the Cardinal surrendered the keys of the gates and castles, and
his mercenaries made no resistance. The news caused wild
exultation in Florence, for, says the Bolognese chronicler, " all
that they had done to overthrow the state of the Church would
have been of no avail, if Bologna had not rebelled." ^ A strong
force of troops with the banner of liberty, under Conrad
Wertinger, was at once despatched to Bologna, and received with
enthusiasm. The government of the city was put into the hands
of sixteen Anziani, four for each quarter, and the Cardinal
escorted to Ferrara, where the Marquis held for the Church.
Bagnacavallo and Faenza were still in the hands of the papa-

^ Cf. Gherardi, op. cit., p. 43 «., where it is shown that there is no foundation
for the usual statement that the Pope offered to leave Perugia and Citta di Castello
at liberty, provided the Florentines proceeded no further and did not molest
Bologna. The financial side of the whole question was of vital importance to
the Holy See. From Bologna, alone, the Pope drew the annual sum of 200,000
florins. Cf. Cronicadi Bologna, col. 498.

' Cronica di Bologna, coll. 499-501.

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BETWEEN FLOKENCE AND AVIGNON

//'«/, the former under Hawkwood, the latter ruled by a French
prelate under the title of Count of Romagna. Fearing for his
position, this latter sent for Hawkwood and the English, who
burst into Faenza, shouting Fiva la Chiesa^ sacked the town, and
expelled all the inhabitants, save a number of women whom they
kept for their own lusts. Two of Hawkwood's captains or
caporali were fighting together for the possession of a beautiful
young girl, a novice from one of the convents, who cried upon
her divine Bridegroom and His Mother to deliver her, when
Hawkwood came upon the scene. Unable to separate them, he
stabbed the girl to death with his own dagger. *' And so," writes
Fra Filippo, " the Virgin Mary heard her and delivered her ;
virgin and martyr and bride of her Son, she bore her away to
the realm of life eternal, as it is written in the Psalm : lest the
righteous put forth their hands unto iniquity.^' ^ Shortly after,
Hawkwood sold both Bagnacavallo and Faenza to the Marquis of
Ferrara, to obtain the arrears of pay that were owed him by the
Church.

In spite of the expulsion of the legate from Bologna, the
position of the Florentines was highly critical. If the Pope were
to promulgate his sentence and could induce the nations to enforce
it, the whole mercantile traffic of the Republic would be destroyed.
Rumours had already reached them of papal galleys being
equipped in haste at Marseilles to prey upon their commerce, of
a great army of formidable Breton mercenaries being taken into
the pay of the Church. It was, above all, imperative to gain time.
'* Because of the process," writes Fra Raimondo, ** they were
compelled to treat for peace with the Sovereign Pontiff, through
the means of persons who they knew were acceptable to him.
They were informed that the holy virgin, by reason of the
fame of her sanctity, was most pleasing in the Pope's sight.
Therefore they ordained that I should first go to the said

^ Assempro 58 : "Come una vergine fu guardata da la Vergine Maria per
martirio." The sack of Faenza was on March 2 8, 1376. Cf. Cronaca Riminese
{Rer. It. Script., xv.), col. 914 ; Cronica di Bologna, coll. 501, 502. There was
little actual bloodshed.

II i6i

SAINT CATHEKINE OF SIENA

Sovereign Pontiff, in the name of Catherine, in order to
mitigate his indignation." The friar was apparently to dispose
the Pope in favour of the two Florentine ambassadors, who
were already on their way. He started about the fourth
week in March, accompanied by Giovanni Tantucci, Felice da
Massa, and others of Catherine's household, with the letter of
credentials from Catherine to the Pope which we still possess,
beseeching the wavering Pontiff to make himself, with the aid of
divine grace, the instrument for the pacification of the entire
world. She bids him, in the name of Christ crucified, extirpate
the evil pastors and rulers, " full of impurity and cupidity,
puffed up with pride," the foul plants who are poisoning the
garden of the Church ; and plant in their stead ** sweet smelling
flowers, pastors and governors who will be true servants of Jesus
Christ, who will attend to nought else save the honour of God
and the salvation of souls, and who will be fathers of the poor."
Hitherto, the luxurious lives of the prelates have been shamed by
comparison with the virtues of many of the laity : " But it seems
that the supreme and eternal Goodness is having done by force
what has not been done for love ; it seems that He is allowing
states and pleasures to be taken from His Spouse, as though to
show that He wished Holy Church to return into her primitive
state of poverty, humility, meekness, as she was in that holy time,
when they attended to nought else save the honour of God and
the salvation of souls, caring for spiritual things and not temporal.
For, since she has aimed more at temporal than at spiritual things,
her affairs have gone from bad to worse." But let the Pope
take heart and fear nothing ; if only he will come to Italy and
raise the standard of the Cross, all will be well. But he must
come like a meek lamb, " using the arms of the power of love
alone, aiming only to have the care of spiritual things " : —

"Answer the summons of God, who is calling you to come
to hold and possess the place of the glorious pastor St. Peter,
whose vicar you are. Lift up the banner of the holy Cross.
Come, and you will reform the Church with good pastors.
You will give her back the colour of most burning charity

162

BETWEEN FLORENCE AND AVIGNON

which she has lost ; for so much blood has been sucked from
her by iniquitous devourers, that she has become all pallid.
But take heart and come, father, and do not make the servants
of God wait, who are afflicted with desire. And I, miserable,
wretched woman, can wait no more ; living, I seem to die in pain
at seeing God so outraged. Do not postpone the peace because
of what has happened at Bologna, but come ; for I tell you that
the fierce wolves will lay their heads in your lap like meek lambs,
and crave you to pardon them, father. I say no more. I beseech
you, father, to hear and listen to what Fra Raimondo will tell you,
and the other sons who are with him, who are coming in the
name of Christ crucified and in my name ; for they are true
servants of Christ and children of Holy Church." ^

And, a little later, she wrote to Raimondo and his companions :
" I am dying and cannot die, I am bursting and cannot burst,
with the desire that I have for the renovation of Holy Church,
for the honour of God, and the salvation of every creature, and
of seeing you and the others robed with purity, burned and
consumed in His most ardent charity. Tell Christ on earth not
to make me wait any longer. And when I see him, I shall sing
with that sweet old man Simeon : hord^ now lettest Thou Thy
servant depart in peace ^ according to Thy word."" ^

All immediate prospects of a reconciliation between Italy and
the Holy See seemed dashed to the ground by the revolt
of Bologna and the sack of Faenza. On the last day of
March, Jacopo di Ceva, the fiscal advocate of the Curia who had
formulated the process, demanded in full consistory that sentence
should be pronounced against the Florentines. Their two am-
bassadors, Donate Barbadori and Alessandro dell' Antella, duly

^ Letter 206 (5), amended by the Harleian MS. Raimondo's own words,
Legenda, III. vi. 26 (§ 420), might be taken as meaning that he was sent to the
Pope after the promulgation of the sentence against the Florentines ; that is, in
April ; but the internal evidence of this and Letter 219 (87) seems to fix the date
of his starting between March 2 1 , the day after the revolt of Bologna, and April
I, when Catherine had the vision of the cross and olive-branch.

2 Letter 211 (88).

163

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

appeared to represent the Commune and the citizens implicated,
who (they said) could not appear in person, as they were all in
prison at Florence. They protested the innocence of the
Republic, painted a lurid picture of the evil deeds of the papal
legates, and implored an extension of the time that they might
fully answer all accusations. In reply, Gregory solemnly put
Florence under the interdict, revoked all privileges granted by
his predecessors, declared the goods of each Florentine confiscated,
their possessions and persons to be the free prey of any who
could make themselves masters of them ; he forbade, under the
same penalties, any private person, community or prince to have
any dealings with them or favour them in any way, all previous
obligations being cancelled, and threatened to invoke the arms
of all the powers of Christendom upon the entire nation. The
Eight, together with fifty-one other citizens named (among whom
was Niccolo Soderini), were excommunicated, and, together with
their sons and grandsons, formally deprived of all civic rights
and legal protection, unless they appeared at Avignon by May
30. Against this sentence, Donato Barbadori uttered an im-
passioned and solemn protest, in the name of the Republic ;
turning to the great Crucifix that hung opposite the papal throne, ,
he appealed from the Sovereign Pontiff to Christ Himself: f
** Look upon me, O God of my salvation, and be Thou my
helper ; do not Thou forsake me, for my father and my mother
have forsaken me." ^

But, while these things were being done at Avignon, Catherine
at Siena had a vision, in which it seemed to her that the Divine
Bridegroom bade her, with the Cross on her shoulders and the
olive-branch in her hand, intervene between the Church and
her opponents : —

*' On the night of the first of April," she writes to Raimondo
and his companions, " God more specially revealed His secrets, 1

* Cf. Gherardi, op. c'lt.y pp. 44-46, documents 198, 199 ; St. Antoninus,
Chronicoruniy III. pp. 379-382. On April 5, Charles IV put Florence under the
ban of the Empire ; but his previous exploits at Siena had taught the Florentines
what his imperial threats were worth.

164

BETWEEN FLORENCE AND AVIGNON

manifesting His wondrous mysteries in such wise that my soul
seemed not still to be in the body, and received such fulness of
delight that no tongue can tell it ; for He explained and in part
set forth the mystery of the persecution which Holy Church is
now enduring, and of the renovation and exaltation which she is
to have in the time to come, and said that the present time is
permitted in order to restore her state to her.^ And the first
sweet Truth quoted two words that are in the Holy Gospel : //
must needs be that offences come into the world ; but woe to that man
by whom the offence cometh ; as though to say : * I suffer this time
of persecution in order to extirpate the thorns of My Spouse, for
she is all full of brambles ; but I do not suffer the evil cogitations
of men. Knowest thou what I am doing ? I am doing as I did
when I was in the world, when I made the scourge of small cords,
and cast out them that sold and bought in the Temple, not
suffering that My Father's house should be made a den of thieves.
So I tell thee I am doing now ; for I have made a scourge of
creatures, and by that scourge I am casting out the merchants
— impure, greedy, avaricious, and puffed-up with pride — who
sell and buy the gifts of the Holy Spirit.' Thus I understood
that He was casting them out by the scourge of human
persecution ; that is, by means of tribulation and persecution,
He would free them from their disordered and impure
living. And, while the fire of holy desire increased within
me, as 1 gazed, I saw the Christian people and the un-
believers enter into the side of Christ crucified ; and I, by
desire and the affection of love, passed through the midst of them,
entering with them into Christ sweet Jesus, accompanied by my
father St. Dominic, and my special John with all my children. ^
Then He laid the Cross upon my neck and put the olive into my
hand, even as though I wished it, and bade me offer them to one
people and to the other ; and He said to me : ' Say unto them :

^ i.e. her primitive state of purity, not her temporal possessions.

2 Giovanni singolare con tutti quanti i Jigliuoli miei. My translation is intended
to suggest that " Giovanni singolare " is Fra Raimondo himself, who tells us that
Catherine called him " John." Cf. Legenda, Prologue I. (§ 6).

165

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

I bring you tidings of great joy.' Then my soul was filled ; she
was drowned with the truly blessed in the Divine Essence by
union and affection of love, and so great was the delight that my
soul possessed that she no longer beheld the past sorrow of seeing
the off'ence against God, but said : * O happy and fortunate
fault.' " 1

In the light of this vision, a few days before Easter, which
this year fell upon April 13, Catherine offered her services to
the Republic of Florence as mediator between it and the Pope :
*' remembering the word that our Saviour said to His disciples :
JVith desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I
suffer.'' The passover which she would fain eat with the
Florentines is that of peace and union with the Church, within
whose body alone can they receive the paschal mysteries, the
fruit of the blood of Christ and the heritage of eternal life.

*' You know well," she wrote, " that Christ left us His vicar
for the cure of our souls ; for in nought else can we have
salvation, save in the mystical body of Holy Church, whose
head is Christ, and we are the limbs. And whoso is disobedient
to Christ on earth, who holds the place of Christ in heaven, does
not partake the fruit of the blood of the Son of God ; for God
has decreed that this blood and all the sacraments of Holy
Church, which receive life from this blood, should be com-
municated and given to us through his hands. We cannot go
by another way, nor enter by another gate ; for the first Truth
said : / am the way^ the truths and the life'' He who rebels
against the Church is a rotten member, and what is done to
His vicar on earth, be it reverence or insult, is done to Christ
in heaven. "Then, if God is at, war with you, because of
the injury you have done to our father and His vicar,
I tell you that you are weakened ; for you have lost His
aid. Let us grant that there are many who do not believe that
they off"end God in this, but think that they are off"ering Him a

1 Letter 219 (87), amended by the Harleian MS., from which we learn that
Felice da Massa was one of those who accompanied Raimondo and Giovanni
Tantucci to Avignon.

166

BETWEEN FLORENCE AND AVIGNON

sacrifice in persecuting the Church and her pastors, and who say-
in self-defence : * They are wicked, and do everything evil.' But
1 tell you that God wills, and has commanded so, that, even if the
pastors and Christ on earth were incarnate demons (whereas the
latter is a good and benign father), we must be subject and
obedient to him, not for their sake for what they are, but to be
obedient to God because he is Christ's vicar." If only they will
be reconciled with him, all Tuscany will have spiritual peace and
repose, and the war will be turned against the infidels ; otherwise,
" you and all Tuscany will have the worst time that ever our
ancestors had. Think not that God is sleeping over the injuries
that have been done to His Spouse." Let them, then, eat this
passover of peace and union in the body of the Church, where
the food of the soul is found and the wedding-garment for the
nuptials of eternal life. *' Pardon my presumption, and impute it
to the love that I have for your salvation, both of soul and of
body, and the grief that I have at the damage you are receiving,
spiritually and temporally. And think that I had sooner say it
you by word of mouth than by letter. If through me anything
can be done for the honour of God, to unite you with Holy
Church, I am ready to give my life, if it should be needed." ^

Catherine had just received news from Raimondo at Avignon
which filled her with peace and exultation. He had, like many
others, probably been impressed by the mildness of the Pontiff's
reception, and had over-estimated his pacific disposition. " Rejoice,
rejoice, and exult," she writes in her paschal letter to the friar
and his companions, " for the time is at hand when the spring
will bring us sweet-smelling flowers. And do not wonder if you
see the contrary coming, but be then more certain than ever. I
would fain never rest until I see a knife pass through my throat
for the honour of God, so that my blood may remain sprinkled
in the mystical body of Holy Church." And, in a postscript, she
suggests, subject to Raimondo's approval, that Neri di Landoccio

^ Letter 207 (198). Capecelatro and Augusta Drane refer this letter to
Catherine's second embassy to Florence, but Tommaseo seems to me undoubtedly
right in assigning it to this earlier occasion.

167

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

should be sent to the papal court, *' to work for the peace of
those decayed members who have rebelled against Holy
Church." 1

Neri could now be spared more readily from Catherine's side,
as her spiritual family had just received a new member of the
same kind, who soon became her chosen friend and best-loved
disciple: Stefano di Corrado Maconi. Born in 1347, Stefano
was of the same age as Catherine herself ; his parents, Messer
Corrado and Madonna Giovanna Bandinelli Maconi, belonged
to conspicuous houses among the lesser nobility of Siena, a
former member of the family having even found a place in
the Inferno of the great Florentine. Young and gallant,
educated to a degree presumably rare among the nobles of that
day, Stefano was likewise distinguished for his sweetness and
purity of character, although sharing to the full in the social life
of his order and city. Through a dispute on a point of honour
at some social gathering, the Maconi had become involved in a
feud with the potent families of the Tolomei and Rinaldini, and
Stefano had felt himself compelled in honour to lead the retainers
of his own family. The Maconi would willingly have made peace,
but, in spite of the intervention of many influential citizens, the
Tolomei and Rinaldini would hear of no reconciliation. At length
Stefano's pious mother, Giovanna Maconi, persuaded him to have
recourse to Catherine, and a certain noble friend of theirs, Pietro
Bellanti, who had himself been reconciled to a deadly foe by her
means, offered to bring him to her. " I visited her, therefore,
and she received me, not like a bashful maiden as I expected,
but with most loving charity, as though welcoming a brother on
his return from distant regions. At this I was amazed, and
listened to her efficacious and holy words by which she compelled,
rather than induced me, to go to confession and to live
virtuously. I said : ' The finger of God is here.' And when she
had heard the cause of my visit, she answered confidently : * Go,
dearest son, and trust in the Lord, for I will gladly labour until
you have an excellent peace ; and do you suffer me to take the

1 Letter 226 (89).

i68

BETWEEN FLORENCE AND AVIGNON

whole weight of this business upon my head.'" Stefano merely
tells us that, by her means, they obtained peace in a miraculous
fashion, even against the will of their adversaries ; but we owe
to the pen of his Carthusian biographer the dramatic story of
how, when Catherine had fixed the day for all the parties to
meet at the church of San Cristoforo in the Piazza Tolomei, and
Corrado and Stefano with their kinsmen came as arranged, the
Tolomei and the Rinaldini, with a view of adding a fresh insult
and rendering reconciliation impossible, did not appear. " They
will not hear me," said Catherine, " but, when God speaks, they
will have to listen." As she prayed and was rapt in ecstasy
before the altar, a mysterious force drew the Tolomei and the
Rinaldini, each independently of the other, to the church ; a
divine light irradiated the emaciated kneeling figure in the black
and white habit ; and the factious nobles, seeing a sign from
God, committed all the controversy into her hands, listened
meekly to her words, and exchanged forgiveness and the kiss of
friendship with those who, an hour before, had been their deadliest
foes.^

While Catherine was engaged upon this reconciliation, Stefano
frequently visited her, and sometimes, to his ineffable delight, she
asked him to write letters for her at her dictation. Soon he
became heart and soul hers, enkindled by the divine love that ever
burned in her ; he exulted when he was made a mark for the jests
of the city in consequence, and idlers shouted Caterinato after him
as he passed through the streets. In return, Catherine loved him
with so special an affection that, as he tells us, many of her other
followers took it ill, and bore him a certain envy — among whom,
however, Neri was not included, for, from the outset, he and
Stefano had contracted an ardent friendship which was only to
end with the former's death. Stefano now became, for a time,
the chief of Catherine's secretaries. "After a short while," he

1 Epistola Domni Stepkani, §§2, 3 ; Bartholomaeus Senensis, De Vita et Moribus
beatl Stephani Maconi, Lib. I. cap. 4-6. Bartholomaeus Senensis assigns the
beginning of the feud to the year of pestilence, 1374, and Augusta Drane,
evidently rightly, supposes the reconciliation to have occurred early in 1376.

169

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

writes, " that most holy virgin said to me in secret : ' Know,
most beloved son, that the greatest desire thou hast will soon be
fulfilled.' At this I was astonished ; for I could think of nothing
that I longed for in the world, while I was prepared to reject all
that it could offer. Therefore I said : ' O dearest mother,
what is the greatest desire that I have .? ' ' Look,' she said,
* into thy heart.' And I answered her : * Certainly, most
beloved mother, I can find no greater desire in myself than to keep
always near you.' And she straightway replied : * And this
will be.' But I could not comprehend the way in which this
could suitably happen, considering our different conditions and
position ; but He, to whom nothing is impossible, ordained in a
wondrous way that she should go to Avignon to Gregory XI ;
and so, albeit unworthy, I was accepted as one of this holy
company, thinking it a little thing to leave parents, brothers, sisters,
and kindred, and deeming myself blessed in the enjoyment of the
presence and familiar friendship of the virgin Catherine." ^

It was probably from Florence that Neri di Landoccio started
for Avignon. " To thee, most beloved and dearest son in Christ
sweet Jesus," Catherine wrote to him, while he was waiting at
Pisa for the ship that was to take him to Marseilles, *' I write in
His precious blood, with the desire of seeing thee united and
transformed in the fire of most burning charity, so that thou
mayest be a vessel of love to carry the name and the word of
God, with His great mysteries, into the presence of our sweet
Christ on earth, and mayest bear fruit by inflaming his desire."
He was the bearer of a letter imploring the Pope to imitate
Christ, the Good Shepherd, in his dealings with the rebels, to
make peace with them, and devote his powers to the reformation
of the Church. *' I beseech you, reverend father, to give and

^ Epist. cit., §§ 4, 5, 9. Bartholomaeus Senensis, op. cit., Lib. V. cap. i, tells a
curious story of how Stefano, after joining Catherine's family, was led into
attending a secret meeting against the government in the vaults under the
Spedale, in which several of the aristocratic members of the confraternity of
Our Lady's disciplinati were involved, and of the penance which he inflicted upon
himself at her bidding for the seditious words that he had uttered.

170

BETWEEN FLORENCE AND AVIGNON

grant what Neri, the bearer of this letter, will ask you, if it is
possible to you and according to your will. I beseech you to
give him audience, and believe what he will tell you. And
because sometimes it is impossible to write what one would wish,
I add, if you want to send to tell me something secret, tell him
by word of mouth with confidence (for you can) whatever can be
accomplished by me. If it were necessary to give my life, I
would gladly give it for the honour of God and for the salvation
of souls." ^

Catherine's appeal had reached the Florentines in an auspicious
moment. Although Niccolo Soderini was no longer in the
government, the Signoria that held office for March and April
contained at least one moderate man : Buonaccorso di Lapo
Giovanni. The need was pressing ; papal envoys from Avignon
had been sent in all directions, ordering every sovereign and
commonwealth to break off relations with the Florentines and
expel them from their dominions, and many States had obeyed ;
papal galleys were intercepting Florentine ships, and making
booty of their merchandise ; the Breton mercenaries were quickly
gathering together. Catherine's offer of mediation was accepted,
and, at the beginning of May, accompanied by Stefano Maconi,
Fra Bartolommeo di Domenico, and her usual company of men
and women, she came to Florence. The new Signoria was less
pacifically inclined than its predecessor, and included Giovanni
Dini, one of the Eight. Nevertheless, the Priors came out of
the gate of the city to meet her, and besought her to go on their
behalf to Avignon, to secure at least a favourable hearing for the
ambassadors they were about to send.

During the few weeks that Catherine now stayed in Florence,
while the diplomatic arrangements were being made, she put
herself in touch with every class in the State, and made spiritual
disciples in every direction. She was already acquainted with
Messer Angelo Ricasoli, the luke-warm, time-serving bishop,
and with Niccolo Soderini, the upright and devout republican ;
possibly also with Carlo Strozzi, a wealthy burgher of the Parte
1 Letters 228 (278) and 218 (3).

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

Guelfa, whose wife Laudamia was one of her correspondents.
Buonaccorso di Lapo Giovanni seems to have been her chief link
with the popular side. The family of the Canigiani (kinsmen of
Petrarca's mother, Eletta Canigiani) became especially devoted
to her. The head of the family, Piero di Donato Canigiani,
and his son, Messer Ristoro (a learned lawyer), were men of
great character and personality, wealthy and influential burghers,
leading spirits in the counsels of the Parte Guelfa. A younger
brother of Ristoro, Barduccio di Piero Canigiani, although little
more than a boy, had devoted himself to a religious life and was
one of the " adopted sons " of Don Giovanni dalle Celle. Among
the lower orders, a tailor, Francesco di Pippino, and his wife,
Monna Agnese, were Catherine's ardent disciples. Francesco
does not seem to have been by birth a Florentine, but a native
of San Miniato al Tedesco, who had settled in the capital and
probably become a Florentine citizen. In spite of his humble
position, he was a man of some importance among all in Florence
who looked for righteousness ; and in later years, in his own
unobtrusive way, he made his little house near the Piazza del
Grano, in the quarter of Santa Croce, a centre of religious life
in the city. With them were closely bound in ties of friendship
a high-born couple, Bartolo Usimbardi and his wife, Monna
Orsa, who likewise took Catherine as their supreme guide in
the spiritual life.

Although vigorously continuing the campaign against the
papal officials in Italy, the Florentines were prepared to yield to
the Pope's authority in spiritual matters, and obeyed the interdict.
"To-day," writes a contemporary, ** on the eleventh day of
May, 1376, they left off singing the Mass in the city and
contado of Florence, and no longer celebrated the Body of
Christ to us, citizens and contadini. But we see Him with our
hearts, and God knoweth that we are not Saracens nor pagans,
but are and shall remain true Christians, the elect of God." ^
Another tells us how a passion of devotion swept over the
citizens, who found themselves thus for secular reasons deprived
^ Diario </' Anonimo Fiorentino, p. 308.
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BETWEEN FLORENCE AND AVIGNON

ot the supreme consolation of their religion : Lo pan che il pio
padre a nessun serra. Men and women thronged the churches
to sing psalms and hymns ; incessant processions were made
through the streets, bearing relics of the saints ; as many as
five thousand flagellants passed along, scourging their bare
shoulders, while twenty thousand persons followed ; the com-
mandments of the Church were kept as they had never been
before, and for every one that practised his religion when the
Mass was said, there were now a hundred. A number of noble
and wealthy young men formed a confraternity which met at
Fiesole, devoting themselves to austerity and works of charity,
especially labouring to convert fallen women, whom they
clothed and provided with means to live an honest life ; others
gave up everything, and went about begging alms for the poor :
"And this matter was so spread abroad that it seemed verily
that they wished to conquer the Pope by humility, and to be
obedient to the Church." ^ The government looked with great
suspicion upon this movement, but took no active steps to check
it. There was simultaneously a recrudescence of activity among
the Fraticelli, those frati della povera vita^ who held that the
condemnation of poverty by John XXII had been "the con-
demnation of the life of Christ," and that neither he nor his
successors were lawful popes. Poverty being the law of Christ,
the Court of Avignon was the devil's synagogue. The sacra-
ments were invalid if administered by an unworthy priest.^
Numbers of Florentines, men and women, began to affect their
doctrines, especially now that they seemed justified by the
attitude of the papal court towards the Italians.

The fact was that, at this stage in the conflict, all Florence
was united against the Pope ; adherents of the Parte Guelfa
were agreed with those of the Otto della Guerra that the
Republic must defend her rights and liberties. Men like
Don Giovanni dalle Celle had no doubt as to where the
duties of every citizen lay. *'I have heard news of thee

^ Marchionne Stefani, Lib. IX. rubr. 757. Cf. Dante, Ptfr. xviii. 127-12^,
2 Cf. Tocco, / Fraticelli, pp. 341-353.

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

for this holy Easter," he wrote to Guido dal Palagio, shortly
before Catherine's arrival in Florence, " and I have heard that
thou art compelled to take certain offices of the Commune, for
which matter I believe that questions often arise in thy heart,
because of the war which you have with the Holy Father.
But thou hast no need to doubt, as long as thou directest thy
intentions first to the honour of God, and then to the good
state of thy city ; it is lawful for thee to aid her and defend
her and counsel her, so that she may never fall into the hands
of her enemies. If thou payest the loan, let not thy intention
be to act against the Pope, but to defend thy country, and with
this holy intention thou canst pass through all the offices of
the Commune without mortal sin. Excommunications are made
for those who sin mortally, and therefore hold for certain that
no innocent man can be excommunicated ; and if, nevertheless,
thou wert excommunicated, it would not be valid in the sight of
God, who only confirms the sentence of pastors who bind and
loose justly, with lawful cause. Only, thou must beware of
giving advice or voting that the Pope, or any other cleric or
religious, should be taken or slain. I should have said much
to thee on this matter, did 1 not fear lest my letter should come
into the hands of those who care little for the good state of that
city." ^ But he was equally emphatic by word and letter against
the Fraticelli, and prepared to defend the whole hierarchy of the
Church against them. " What matters it to thee," he wrote to
a Florentine artisan who had joined them, '* whether Christ was
poor or rich, as long as thou believest that He is thy Saviour,
thy Redeemer, thy Food, the price of thy Redemption, and thy
Reward } I certainly believe that Christ was poor, and I would
go through the fire for this, saving always all that our holy
mother, the Catholic and Apostolic Church, holds." ^ Like
Birgitta before him, the monk had profoundly mistrusted the
papal designs for a Crusade. " If thou hast Christ in the
Sacrament of the Altar," he wrote to a young nun named

^ Letter in Tocco, / Fraticelli, p, 348.

2 Wesselofsky, II Paradiso degli Alberti, I. doc. 14.

BETWEEN FLORENCE AND AVIGNON

Domitilla, who had taken Catherine's exhortations as meaning
that she, too, was to go to the Holy Sepulchre, " even as He
came forth from the womb of the Virgin Mary and as He hung
upon the Cross, why wouldst thou abandon Him to go to see
a stone ? " This led to a correspondence with William Flete,
who supposed that he had attacked Catherine herself, with the
result that Don Giovanni, a little later, formally joined her
spiritual fellowship. " It will be glorious for me," he wrote,
" to be called a heretic with her, that, even as Christ who was
reputed a heretic by the Pharisees because He made Himself
the Son of God, I may bear the cross of His passion. O most
sweet heresy of celestial Catherine, who makest just men out
of sinners, and, the friend of publicans and sinners, dost make
the Angels smile and heaven rejoice ! " ^

In the meanwhile, the Florentines continued to foment the
rebellion in the Papal States, and even put a price upon the
head of Gomez Albornoz, who was making a valiant defence
of the citadel of Ascoli. Nor was the papal court resting on
its arms. On May 27, the company of Bretons, six thousand
foot and four thousand horse, under the Cardinal Robert of
Geneva, left Avignon, with orders to march straight upon
Florence. They boasted that, if the sun entered Florence, they
would, and that they would make the Pope's brother, the Vicomte
de Turenne, lord of the city.

It must always remain a question whether the sending of
Catherine to Avignon was the result of a temporary victory of
Niccolo Soderini and the peace party in the counsels of the
Republic, or a mere device on the part of the others to gain time.
The Florentine archives apparently hold no record of the matter,
and we can only gather what happened from Catherine's own

* Lettere del B. Giovanni dalle Celle, 19, with which compare Catherine's letter
to Monna Pavola, 144 (371). Don Giovanni's letters to William Flete
(together with a third, defending Catherine against the Augustinian, Giovanni
da Salerno) are given by Gigli at the end of the Opere, vol. ii. pp. 985-997.
They are included, with three others and a letter from William to Raimondo,
in the Palatine MS. 60.

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

letter to Buonaccorso di Lapo Giovanni. According to this, the
Signoria and the Eight had assured her that they were repentant
for having gone against the Church, and ready to throw them-
selves on the Pope's mercy. *' See, my lords," she said, '* if you
really intend to use all humility in deed as well as word, and
that I should offer you up before your father like sons that
were dead, I will labour in this to the utmost of your wish.
In no other wise would I go." They declared emphatically
that this was their intention, and that they would instruct the
ambassadors, whom they were going to send after her, to confer
with her about everything. ** We do not believe," said one of
those present, apparently Buonaccorso himself, " that this peace
can ever be brought about, save by the hands of the servants of
God." ^ Upon this understanding, in the latter part of May,
Catherine accepted the mission. " It seems to me," she wrote
to the Pope, " that the Divine Goodness is making the great
wolves become lambs. I am now coming to you at once, to lay
them humbled in your lap. I am certain that you will receive
them like a father, notwithstanding the way they have injured
and persecuted you ; learning from the sweet first Truth who
says that the Good Shepherd, when He has found the sheep
that was lost, takes it upon His shoulders and brings it back to
the fold. So will you do, father ; now that your lost sheep is
found again, you will take it on the shoulder of love, and put it
into the sheepfold of Holy Church. Then, at once, our sweet
Saviour wills and commands you to raise the banner of the most
holy Cross against the infidels, and that the whole war should be
turned against them. Keep back the soldiers whom you have
hired to come hither, and do not suffer them to come ; for they
would ruin everything, rather than put it straight. My sweet
father, you ask me about your coming ; and I answer and tell
you, in the name of Christ crucified, that you must come as soon
as you can. If you can do so, come before September ; and, if
vou cannot come before, do not delay longer than until September

1 Letter 234 (215). Cf. below, p. 191,
176

BETWEEN FLORENCE AND AVIGNON

And do not consider any opposition that you may meet ; but
come, like a virile man and without any fear. But take heed, as
you value your life, not to come with armed men, but with the
Cross in your hand, like a meek lamb. If you do so, you will
fulfil the will of God ; but, if you came In another wise, you
would not fulfil, but transgress It. Rejoice, father, and exult ;
come, come.".^

^ Letter 229 (6).

12 177

CHAPTER IX
FROM THE BABYLON OF THE WEST

" Novi expertus ut nulla ibi pietas, nulla caritas, nulla fides, nulla Dei reverentia, nuUus
timor, nihil sancti, nihil iusti, nihil aequi, nihil pensi, nihil denique vel humani. Amor,
pudor, decor, candor inde exulant." — Petrarca, Ef'ut. sine titulo, XVI.

Catherine started from Florence towards the end of May.
She was accompanied by Fra Bartolommeo di Domenico, Stefano
Maconi, Gherardo Buonconti with his brothers, Tommaso and
Francesco, and a number of other disciples ; Alessa, Cecca, and
Lisa were also of the party. No details have been preserved of
the journey, and it is even uncertain what course they took. A
local tradition speaks of Catherine passing through Bologna, while
a passage in a letter from Giovanni dalle Celle to Fra Giovanni
da Salerno seems to show her on her way along the Riviera. In
any case, we know from one of her own letters that she reached
Avignon on June i8, 1376.

Into this Babylon of the West, the mystical bride of Christ
and her companions came as messengers from another world.
Avignon had altered but little since Petrarca had invoked the
fire from heaven to fall upon it. "I know by experience,"
he wrote, " that there is no piety there, no charity, no faith, no
reverence for God nor any fear of Him, nothing holy, nothing
just, nothing worthy of man. Love, purity, decency, candour
are banished from it. All things are full of lies and hypocrisy.
The voices of angels conceal the designs of demons." ^ The only
change for the better since Petrarca wrote these words was that,
instead of a strong pontiff, enslaved to vice and luxury, there
now sat on the papal throne a weak Pope, who, in his sincere but
ineffectual way, looked for righteousness.

Two days after her arrival, the Pope admitted Catherine to
what appears to have been a private audience, only Fra Raimondoj

1 Epist. sine titulo, XVI.
178

FROM THE BABYLON OF THE WEST

being present. Gregory knew no Italian and Catherine no Latin,
the friar acting as their interpreter. In spite of the correspondence
that had passed between them, the Pope had been prejudiced
against her ; but he was unable, now that he saw her face to face,
to withstand the magic of her personality. " In order that thou
mayest see clearly," he said, " that I desire peace, I put the
matter entirely into thy hands ; only be careful for the honour of
the Church." He assigned to her what Stefano Maconi calls *' a
fine house with a beautifully decorated chapel," where, for the three
months that she stayed in Avignon, he lodged and supported her
whole household at his own expense.^

But the Florentine ambassadors did not appear, and rumours
reached the court — rumours greedily accepted and spread abroad
by the prelates of the Curia — that new and oppressive taxes were
being imposed upon the clergy at Florence. The three ambassadors
— Pazzino Strozzi, Alessandro dell' Antella, and Michele
Castellani — had been nominated in May, and their coming
formally notified to the Pope. Their original commission had
reference only to getting the ecclesiastical censures removed, but
this had been extended, at the advice of Bernabo Visconti, to
include the whole question of peace.^ Nevertheless, the counsels
of the Signoria were divided, and at least some of the Eight were
unwilling to come to terms with the Church until the whole of her
temporal power was completely destroyed. The matter lingered
on in this way through all June. Catherine, who had understood
that the ambassadors were to follow her immediately, with full
powers to confer with her and arrange terms with the Pope
through her, and that, in the meanwhile, all hostilities on the part
of the Florentines would be suspended, was amazed and in-
dignant. " Believe me, Catherine," said the Pope, " they
have deceived and will deceive thee ; they will not send the
ambassadors, or, if they do, it will be such a mission that it will
amount to nothing." Already a fresh process was preparing

^ Legenda, III. vi. 26 (§ 420) ; Processus, col. 1337 ; Epistola Domni Stephani,
§11.

2 Gherardi, op. cit., docs. 221, 228.

179

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

against them, threatening them with the most fearful spiritual
and temporal penalties, including the papal anathema and the
proclamation of a crusade against them throughout the entire
world. On their part, the Florentines were preparing vigorously
to push on the campaign, alike against Albornoz in the Marches
and against the Cardinal of Geneva, who was daily expected in
the Bolognese.

To the Eight, on June 28, Catherine wrote an emphatic
letter, beseeching them not to turn back, but to approach the
Pope with true humility of heart, " imploring life like the son that
was dead." She complains strongly of the new tax upon the clergy,
if it is true that they have imposed it, as calculated to alienate those
of the cardinals who desire peace and still further to inflame the
anger of the Pope against them. " I tell you, dearest fathers,
and pray you not to impede the grace of the Holy Spirit, which,
albeit you do not merit it, our sweet Christ on earth is disposed
in his clemency to give you. And you would be putting me to
shame and reproach. For what save shame and confusion could
result, if I tell him one thing and you do ' quite another ^ I
beseech you not to let it happen again. Nay, strive in word and
deed to show that you desire peace and not war. I have spoken
to the Holy Father. He listened to me graciously, through God's
goodness and his own, and showed himself lovingly affected
towards peace, acting like a good father in not so much con-
sidering the offence that his son has committed against him as
whether he has become humble, so that he may be able to pardon
him completely. My tongue could not tell how singularly glad
he was. After I had talked with him for a good space of time,
he said at the end of our conversation that, if what I had laid
before him concerning you were so, he was ready to receive you
as his children, and to do in this matter what I should think
right. It did not seem to the Holy Father that he should give
any more definite answer, until your ambassadors arrive. I am
amazed that they have not yet come. As soon as they arrive, I
shall be with them, and shall then go to the Holy Father ; and I
will write to you according to how I find the matter proceeding.

180

FROM THE BABYLON OF THE WEST

But you, with your levies and changes, are spoiling what I am
sowing. Do no more so, for the love of Christ crucified and for
your own advantage." ^

The three ambassadors had probably already started when this
letter reached Florence. A new Signoria entered office on the
first day of July, and had decided to despatch the three citizens
named as syndics, " to make truce or peace with the Pope, or with
his commissary, upon what conditions they shall think fit."
Their decision was confirmed in the Council of the Captain and
People on July 4, and in the Council of the Podesta and Com-
mune on July 5 ; and, on July 7, the Signoria wrote to Cardinals
Orsini and Corsini, calling God to witness that they had only
acted to defend their own liberty, asking them to use their
influence with the Pope on behalf of their ambassadors, to whom
they would shortly send the mandate for peace. ^ As soon as
they arrived at Avignon, Catherine sent to bid the three come to
her, and, in the presence of Fra Raimondo, reminded them of
what the preceding Signoria had promised her ; she told them
that the Pope had put the peace into her hands, and that they
could have good terms if they desired it. The ambassadors
brusquely answered that they had no commission to confer with
her, nor to make the acts of submission she suggested.^ No
shadow of resentment or personal mortification seems to have
entered Catherine's mind at finding herself thus discarded ;
although bitterly disappointed at what she probably regarded as
the perfidy of the Republic, she continued to beseech the Pope to
deal with them mildly, acting not as a judge but as a father.

Nevertheless, the Florentines were probably in earnest.
The Mantuan representative at the papal court, Cristoforo da
Piacenza, writing to his master, Lodovico Gonzaga, on July 17,
tells him of the arrival of the ambassadors, and that they are
very desirous of peace. They have not been able to see the
Pope, but have visited the cardinals, and are expecting a formal

^ Letter 230 (197) ; in the Harleian MS.

2 Gherardi, op. cit.^ docs. 273, 274 ; Diario (P^nonimo Fiorentino, p. 309.

^ Legenda, III. vi. 27 (§ 421).

181

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

audience. Three ambassadors from Pisa (including Benedetto
Gambacorti, one of Piero's sons), and two from Lucca, had
previously come to beseech the Pope to make peace with the
Florentines. The Pisans had effected nothing ; but to the
ambassadors of Lucca, who had protested that the Lucchese
had never forgotten how the Church had delivered them from
the hands of Pharaoh, the Pope returned a most gracious answer.
He said he loved their city, and was convinced that they had
only entered the league under compulsion ; but he could see
no possibility of peace between the Church and the Florentines,
as they had not power to restore the cities and towns that they
had induced to rebel against her, nor to indemnify her for all
she had lost and suffered ; the vicar of Christ was bound to
have peace with the contrite of heart alone, and not to encourage
sinners in their sins.^ Nevertheless, yielding probably to the
united appeals of Catherine and the ambassadors of Lucca,
Gregory ultimately delegated two cardinals, Pierre d'Estaing
and Gilles Aycelin de Montaigu, to treat with the Florentine
ambassadors.

But Catherine felt that her mission was a higher one than
that she had received from Florence. Disavowed by the Eight,
she was still in Avignon as the ambassador of Christ, to bid the
Pope return to Rome and reform the Church. She continued
at the same time to urge on what she regarded as the holy and
pacific work of the Crusade. When his first prejudices were
overcome, Gregory heard her gladly — the faithful Raimondo
always acting as interpreter. In one of their first interviews,^
Catherine spoke her mind concerning the shameful vices of the
Roman Curia, and the Pope, after a feeble attempt to rebukd
her, listened in silence, and made no comment at the end, though
Raimondo was amazed at the boldness and authority with
which she had spoken. On another occasion, Gregory questioned
her about his return to Rome. " It is not meet," she answeredj
"that a wretched little woman should give advice to the

^ Despatch dated Avignon, July 17. Osio, I. doc. 124. It is curious that
the writer should make no mention of Catherine. I

182

FROM THE BABYLON OF THE WEST

Sovereign Pontiff." And the Pope : " I do not ask you for
advice, but to tell me the will of God in this matter." And,
while she still made excuses, he charged her on her obedience,
to say if she knew anything of the will of God in this affair.
" Then she, humbly bowing down her head, said : * Who
knoweth this better than your Holiness, who vowed to God that
you would do this thing .? ' When he heard this, he was over-
whelmed with amazement, for, as he said, no living man save
himself knew that he had made this vow." ^

There were the usual petty persecutions and trials, for all
the corrupt members of the papal court and their dependants
were naturally against her. Soon after her arrival, three pre-
lates of the Curia came to Catherine, and made a prolonged
attempt to ensnare her in her speech, hoping apparently to
discredit her growing influence with the Pope by convicting
her of having come under false pretences as ambassador for
Florence, or of heresy in the doctrines she professed. Foiled
in their object, they candidly reported to the Pope that they had
never found a soul so humble and so illumined ; but the
attempt, especially with a view to an accusation of heresy, had
been a serious one. " I can tell you," said the Pope's physician,
Francesco Casini, to Stefano Maconi, '* that, if they had not found
this virgin Catherine had a solid foundation, she would never
have made a more unfortunate voyage." ^ This Francesco di
Bartolommeo Casini, a Sienese by birth, who had been one of
Petrarca's friends and correspondents, now attached himself to
Catherine's circle ; a man of great reputation in his own art
and of considerable influence in the papal court, his friend-
ship stood the whole fellowship in good stead. Another
influential person who conceived a great affection and devotion
for Catherine was the Pope's sister, the Countess of Valentinois,
who expressed a desire to be present when she received
Communion. Coming one Sunday morning, at Raimondo's

^ Legenda, II. iv, 7 (§ ^52) ; Processus, col. 1325. Gregory during the
conclave had made a vow that, if elected Pope, he would return to Rome.
2 Epistola Domni Stepkani, §§ 22-24.

183

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

invitation, to her house for this purpose, she brought with her
amongst others the young wife of the Pope's nephew. Dame
Elys de Turenne. After Mass, while Catherine was rapt in
ecstasy, this young woman thought she was feigning, and, under
pretence of kissing her feet, leant over and stabbed them through
and through with a needle, or some other sharp instrument.
Catherine remained insensible and motionless ; but, when she
came to herself, she suffered such great pain from the wounds that
she was scarcely able to walk, and her companions then, for the
first time, perceived what had been done.^ On another occasion,
the mistress of one of the cardinals, either to gratify her
curiosity or to test the Saint's intuition, insisted upon speaking
with her, and made a great show of being a person of spiritual
life ; but Catherine resolutely kept her face averted from her, and
the unfortunate woman had to depart without even seeing her
features.

We have, rather curiously, no record or tradition of Catherine
coming into contact with any of the French cardinals, though,
doubtless, she made the acquaintance personally of d'Estaing,
whom she had previously known by letter. Perhaps, from the
outset, she foresaw that the time would soon come for her to
class all the rest together as dimoni incarnati. The political
situation would have led her into direct intercourse with two of
the Italians, Jacopo Orsini and Piero Corsini, the former of
whom was the official protector (salaried by the Republic) of
Siena at the papal court. Almost certainly, too, she met, and
was doubtfully impressed by, the Cardinal of Aragon, Pedro de
Luna, in whom the " servants of God " (to adopt the quaintly
expressive phraseology of the age) put great hopes. We are
told also of another prelate, not a cardinal, who at first opposed
her, but was ultimately won over to her side — one who was to
play a pre-eminent part in the drama of her latest days,

^ Epistola Domni Stephani, § ii. Fra Bartolommeo, Processus, col. 1327, says
that the injuries inflicted were more serious than Stefano describes, and that
Catherine suffered much in consequence for many days.

184

■

FROM THE BABYLON OF THE WEST

Bartolommeo Prignano, then Archbishop of Acerenza, and
assistant to the Vice-Chancellor of the Holy See.

In the meanwhile, Gregory was ostensibly pushing on the
preparations for his journey to Italy; but the most careful
observers doubted whether he would have the strength of mind
to overcome the obstacles that confronted him. In his despatch
of July 17, Cristoforo da Piacenza informed Lodovico Gonzaga
that a number of the papal officials had already started, and that
Francesco Orsini was on the way to Rome to acquaint the
Romans with the Pope's intentions, and to bid the feudatories ot
the Church be ready to meet his Holiness with fitting reverence
at some port near Rome on September 20. " Nevertheless, he
is finding great obstacles to his setting out, for all the cardinals
of this nation are against it, as also his own father and brothers,
and I hear that the Duke of Anjou is coming to prevent his
moving, if he can. I know not what to say. I see many signs
that point to his going ; for the Lord Otho has already come
with seven galleys and seven smaller ships, which are now at
Marseilles. I hear that the galley belonging to the Commune
of Ancona, upon which the Pope is to travel, is at present at
Marseilles." ^

Louis, Duke of Anjou, brother of the French king, an
ambitious and unstable prince, arrived at the papal court, and
found Catherine in possession of the Pope's mind. Gregory
told him that, at all costs, in spite of his love for his native
land, he was compelled, in the interests of the Church of God,
to return to Rome. Either because his heart was really touched
or because he hoped to use her influence for his own ends,
Louis persuaded Catherine to come with him from Avignon to
his castle of Villeneuve, to console his wife with her ministrations.
Catherine stayed three days at Villeneuve, and so inflamed the
Duke with ardour for the Crusade that he promised that, if the
Pope called upon him to do so, he would himself raise an army
and lead it across the seas at his own expense. He besought

^ Osio, I. doc. 124, Otho of Brunswick was the fourth husband of the
Queen of Naples.

185

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

her to go with him to the King of France. When she humbly
refused, he induced her to write to the King the eloquent letter
we still possess, urging him to reform his kingdom, no longer to
let his wars with England hinder the redemption of the Holy-
Land, but to make peace and enable the Duke to carry out his
holy purpose.^ She wrote at the same time exultantly to the
Pope that at last God had sent the means to begin " the holy
passage," as they had found a prince who would be a good
head. But God bids him undertake another crusade as well ;
to raise the standard of the Cross against the corrupt and
wicked ecclesiastics, and provide the Church with good pastors
and rulers instead.^ A little later, after her return to Avignon,
hearing that Louis had narrowly escaped death through the fall
of a wall at a banquet, Catherine wrote exhorting him to bear
what had happened ever in his memory as a sign from God of
the vanity of earthly pleasure, to keep his heart and desire fixed
and nailed to the Cross, and formally to take the Cross in the
presence of the Pope before the latter set out.^ But already
the Duke's resolution and aspirations were fading away, and
his subsequent career, had Catherine lived to see it, would have
seemed to her the betrayal of all the hopes she had set on him.

Catherine had returned to Avignon to enter into a desperate
struggle with the French cardinals for the soul of the Pope.
In spite of his preparations, Gregory was wavering. " Tell him,"
Christ had seemed to say in her heart when he asked for a sign,
'* that I give him this excellent sign that it is My will that he
should go : the more his going is opposed and contradicted, the
more will he feel such a strength increasing in him as no man
will be able to take from him ; which is contrary to his usual
way." * In the Sacred College, Cardinal d'Estaing, alone among
his countrymen, was supporting the Pope in his preparations ;
Orsini, Corsini, and Pedro de Luna were neutral ; but the rest
were emphatically opposed to the move, and the whole influence
of the King of France was at their back.

1 Processus, col. 1337 ; Letter 235 (186). 2 Letter 238 (9).

^ Letter 237 (190). * Letter 238 (9).

186

FROM THE BABYLON OF THE WEST

It would seem that the Pope was too much afraid of these
latter any longer openly to admit Catherine to his presence ;
communications between them were now, for a while, confined to
messengers and letters. Once the Pope sent her a short note,
saying that the cardinals alleged that Pope Clement IV undertook
nothing without the counsels of the Sacred College, and always
followed their advice, even if his own opinion was different.
**Alas, most holy Father," she answered, "these men quote
Pope Clement IV to you, but they tell you nothing about Pope
Urban V, who asked their advice about things, when he was in
doubt whether it was better to do them or not ; but when a
thing was absolutely clear to him, as your going is to you (about
which you are certain), he took no heed of their counsel, but
followed his own, and did not care although they were all against
him. Follow the counsel of those who think of the honour of
God, the salvation of souls, and the reformation of Holy Church,
not that of men who only love their own lives, honours, states,
and pleasures. I beseech your Holiness, in the name of Christ
crucified, to make haste. Adopt a holy deception ; let it seem
that you are going to delay for a time, and then do it swiftly and
suddenly, for, the more quickly it is done, the sooner will you be
freed from these torments and troubles. Once before they made
you fall into their snares, when you delayed your coming, snares
which the demon had spread in order that the loss and evil should
result which has resulted. You, like a wise man, inspired by the
Holy Spirit, will not fall into them again." ^ Then Gregory
bade Raimondo tell her to pray to God for light to see whether
he would meet with any obstacle. She answered that she had
already prayed, before and after Communion, and she saw no
danger of any kind in the way. " I have prayed, and will pray
our sweet and good Jesus that He may take away all servile fear
from you, and that only holy fear may remain. May there be in

^ Letter 231 (7). A Latin translation of this letter, probably what Raimondo
actually presented to the Pope, is in the Palatine MS. 59 ; but there is not the
slightest foundation for Augusta Drane's statement (L p. 378«.) that all the
letters which Catherine wrote to Gregory at Avignon " are in Latin, not Italian.

187

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

you such an ardour of charity as will not let you hear the voices
of those incarnate demons, nor follow the counsel of those
perverse counsellors founded in self-love, who, as I understand,
are trying to frighten you and so prevent your coming, by saying
that you will be slain. And I tell you in the name of Christ
crucified, sweetest and most holy Father, that you have absolutely
no cause for fear. Come with confidence ; trust in Christ sweet
Jesus ; for, if you do what you ought, God will be with you and
there will be no one against you. Up, manfully. Father ! For
I tell you, you have no need to fear. If you did not do what
you are bound to do, you would have need to fear. You are
bound to come : come then ! Come, sweetly, without any fear.
And if any of your household strive to impede you, say to them
boldly what Christ said to Peter, when, through tenderness, he
sought to draw Him back, from going to His passion : Get thee
behind me^ Satan : thou art an offence unto Me : for thou savour est not
the things that he of God^ but those that be of men.'' ^

The beautiful prayer that Catherine offered on this occasion
was taken down by Tommaso Petra, an Italian protonotary
attached to the papal court, who became one of her disciples, and
was afterwards secretary to Gregory's successor, and has thus
been preserved to us. " O supreme and ineffable Deity," she
prayed at the end, " I have sinned and am not worthy to pray to
Thee, but Thou hast power to make me worthy ; punish my
sins, O Lord, and consider not my miseries. I have one body,
which I offer up to Thee ; here is my flesh, here is my blood ;
let my veins be emptied, my body destroyed, my bones scattered,
for those for whom I pray to Thee ; if it is Thy will, let all my
frame be ground up for Thy vicar upon earth, the bridegroom
of Thy Spouse, for whom I pray Thee to deign to hear me, that
he. Thy vicar, may consider Thy will, may love and fulfil it, so
that we may not perish. Give him a new heart, that he may

^ Letter 233 (8). She had previously written to him : "God has given you
authority and you have taken it : you are bound to use your strength and power ;
and, if you do not wish to use it, it would be more to God's honour and your
soul's salvation to resign what you have taken." Letter 255 (13) ; Harleian MS.

188

FROM THE BABYLON OF THE WEST

continually grow in grace, strong to uplift the banner of the
most holy Cross." ^

From the outset, the Florentines had pushed on the war — as,
indeed, they were compelled to do in the face of the coming of
the Bretons. Rodolfo Varano, Lord of Camerino, a feudatory of
the Church, had been appointed captain-general of the League,
and despatched to Bologna. Bartolommeo di Smeduccio had
likewise been taken into the service of the Republic, and had had
the campaign in the Marches committed to him. Bartolommeo
was a personal enemy of Rodolfo's, and the two would not work
in harmony ; but he bore a more deadly hatred towards Gomez
Albornoz, who had attempted to deprive him of San Severino by
treachery, and he could be trusted to use all his power for the
reduction of the citadel of Ascoli. The Bretons had arrived at
Borgo di Panicale in the Bolognese contado on July 12, had
taken and sacked Crespolano, and were ravaging all the country
round with fire and sword — the Cardinal of Geneva urging them
on and applauding their worst excesses. Rodolfo, though at the
head of a powerful force, contented himself with holding Bologna,
and made no serious efforts to take the field against them.
Elsewhere, the Florentines were feeling the heavy weight of the
papal censures. The expulsion of their merchants and the
imprisonment of their other citizens at Avignon had cut them off
from their profitable commerce with Provence and the papal
court. Although France, Spain, and England did not carry out
the papal decrees to the letter, enough was done in the first two
countries to inflict immense damage upon the commerce of the
Republic, and expelled Florentine merchants returned to the city
from all parts of the world. ^ The Pisans refused to take any
active steps in the matter ; but, after some delay, the Queen of

1 Orationi I. and II.

2 The Bishop of London, William Courtenay, published the bull against the
Florentines, but was compelled by the King and Chancellor to retract the
publication. Cf. Diet, of National Biography, XII. p. 343. In the following June,
1377, we find the Signoria thanking the King and the Duke of Lancaster for
favours granted to Florentines in England. Gherardi, op. cit., doc. 357.

189

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

Naples decided to expel all the Florentines from her dominions,
and to take up arms on behalf of the Church. When the news
reached Florence, on August i6, Ristoro Canigiani and Benedetto
Strozzi were instantly sent as ambassadors of the Commune to
induce Giovanna to reconsider her decision ; and the inclusion of
Messer Ristoro in the embassy is a striking sign of the unity of
all parties among the Florentines for the defence of the Republic.^
They were unsuccessful in their mission ; but, in September, the
forces of the Queen, advancing to the relief of Ascoli, were com-
pletely routed and driven back by Bartolommeo di Smeduccio.
At the beginning of the same month, a conspiracy was discovered
to betray Bologna to the Cardinal of Geneva and the Marquis of
Ferrara ; several Bolognese citizens were executed, others put
under bounds.

The actual rupture of the negotiations came from the Pope.
According to the Florentines, the terms offered them amounted
to the desertion of their allies, the revolted cities of the Papal
States, and the payment of an indemnity of three million florins.
Even to the papal delegates. Cardinals d'Estaing and Aycelin,
this seemed excessive, and they proposed certain modifications, to
which Gregory answered that he would rather suffer the martyr-
dom of St. Bartholomew than consent. He sent the chamberlain,
Pierre de Cros, with an abrupt order to the ambassadors instantly
to depart from the court. The three arrived at Florence on
September 22, and their report, formally delivered before the
Signoria and a council of a number of chief citizens, richiestiy
raised the utmost indignation and alarm throughout the city. On
the day after their arrival, the Eight wrote to Bernabo Visconti
that the coming of the Pope to Italy was now certain, and that it

1 Diario cP Anonimo Fiorentino, pp. 313, 314. But, with regard to another
disciple of Catherine, we may notice that the Eight wrote to the Bolognese on
August 19, exhorting them to prorogue to another time the election of Pietro,
Marchese del Monte Santa Maria, as their captain, not because for his virtues he
is not a man worthy of the greatest honours, but only because of his excessive
devotion to the Church, and because he is closely related to the Ubaldini, their
deadly enemies. Gherardi, op. cit., document 294.

190

FROM THE BABYLON OF THE WEST

was more than ever necessary to strengthen their forces, for,
unless his powers were utterly broken, they would never be able
to extort a fitting peace from him. A few days later, the Signoria
wrote to the Emperor, the King of Hungary, the Doge of
Venice, and the Doge of Genoa, enclosing copies of the terms
the Pope had ofl?ered, declaring that the conditions would be
outrageous if the city had been subjected to a long siege, and the
victor were already lording it within her walls. It was decided to
confiscate and sell the goods of the churches for money to carry
on the war.^

" Alas, alas ! dearest brother," wrote Catherine to Buonaccorso
di Lapo Giovanni, " I am grieved at the methods that have been
adopted in asking peace from the most holy Father ; for there
has been a show of words rather than of deeds. I say this
because, when I came thither to you and to your lords, they
showed in their words that they were repentant for the fault
committed, and it seemed that they would humble themselves
and crave mercy from the Holy Father ; for when I said to
them : ' See, my lords, if you really intend to use all humility
in deed as well as word, and that I should ofi^er you up to your
father like sons that were dead, I will labour in this to the utmost
of your wish. In no other wise would I go ' ; they answered me
that they were content. Alas, alas ! dearest brothers, this was the
way and the gate by which it befitted you to enter ; and there is
no other ; and if you had followed this way in deed as in your
words, you would have had the most glorious peace that ever
any one had. I say not this without cause, for I know what the
disposition of the Holy Father was like ; but since we began to
leave that way, following the astute methods of the world,
carrying into effect something quite different from what was first
professed by word, the Holy Father has been given grounds, not
for peace, but for more anger. For when your ambassadors came
here, they did not adopt the fitting method which the servants of

* Gherardi, op. cit., documents 304-307 (Sept. 23 to Sept. 28, 1376) ;
Diario d'Amnimo Fiorentmo, p. 323, where the Pope is represented as saying : "O
io disfaro al tutto Firenze, o Firenze disfarebbe la santa Chiesa."

191

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

God had suggested to them. You have gone on in your own
fashion ; and I was never able to confer with them, although,
when I asked for the letter of credentials, you told me that you
would tell them that we should confer together about everything.
Your humble words proceeded more from fear and need than
from the spirit of love and virtue. But do you not see how
much evil and how many untoward things have come from your
obstinacy } Alas, alas ! loose yourselves from the league of pride,
and league yourselves with the humble Lamb ; do not despise or
act against His vicar. No more so, for the love of Christ
crucified ! Do not scorn His blood ; but do in the present time
what has not been done in the past. Do not conceive bitterness
or indignation, if it should seem to you that the Holy Father
demands what appears to you very hard and impossible to do.
He will not want more than lies in your power. But he is acting
like a true father who punishes his son when he does wrong ; he
rebukes him severely to make him grow humble and acknowledge
his fault ; and the good son is not angry with his father, because
he sees that what he does is done for love of him. So I say to
you, in the name of Christ crucified, that, as often as you are
spurned by our father, Christ on earth, so often must you fly back
to him. Trust in him, for he is right.

" And now he is coming to his spouse, to the place of St.
Peter and St. Paul. See that you run to him at once, with true
humility of heart and amendment for your faults, following the
holy beginning with which you began. If you do so, you will
have spiritual and bodily peace ; but, if you act in other fashion,
our ancestors never had such great woes as we shall have ; for we
shall be calling the anger of God upon us, and shall not partake
of the blood of the Lamb. I say no more. Be as zealous as
you can, now that the Holy Father will be at Rome. I have
done, and will do, all that I can, even to death, for the honour of
God and for your peace, and in order that this obstacle may
be taken away, for it impedes the sweet and holy passage. If no
other evil resulted from it, we should be worthy of a thousand
hells. Take comfort in Christ, our sweet Jesus, for I hope in

192

FROM THE BABYLON OF THE WEST

His goodness that, if you will adopt the course that you ought,
you will have a good peace." ^

Catherine would gladly have left Avignon before, but the
Pope, still feeling his spiritual powers too weak, wished to have
her there until the very day of his departure. And not without
reason. The French cardinals made a last effort to draw him
back, and produced a letter, apparently anonymous, but which
they ascribed to some person with a reputation for sanctity and
prophecy (possibly the Franciscan, Peter of Aragon, for whom
he had a great esteem), commending the Pope's intention of
returning to Rome, but warning him that an attempt would be
made to poison him if he came to Italy, advising him to postpone
starting until the matter could be investigated, and, in any case,
to begin the Crusade first. The letter was apparently shown to
Catherine, probably by Fra Raimondo, at the Pope's request. She
instantly wrote to Gregory, denouncing it in no measured terms
as the work of an incarnate demon, " the sower of the most
deadly poison that has for a long time been sowed in Holy
Church," and a manifest forgery on the part of the devil's coun-
sellors, who wish to impede the reformation of the Church for
their personal ends. '' I conclude that I do not believe that the
letter sent to you issues from that servant of God who has been
named to your Holiness, nor that it was written very far away ;
but I believe that it comes from near at hand, from the servants
of the devil who have little fear of God. If I believed that it
came from him, I should not consider him a servant of God,
unless I saw other proofs of it. Pardon me, father, if I have
spoken too presumptuously ; I humbly pray you to forgive me,
and to give me your benediction. Remain in the holy and sweet
charity of God. I beseech His infinite goodness to grant me
the grace of soon seeing you, for His honour, set your foot
outside the portals, with peace, repose, and quiet of soul and of
body. I beseech you, sweet father, to give me audience, when it
pleases your Holiness ; for I would fain come into your presence

^ Letter 234 (215).
13 193

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

before I depart. The time is short ; so that, if it pleased you so,
I would fain it were soon." ^

We have no record of what passed at this interview between
Catherine and Gregory — her farewell to him until they should
meet again (but once only, as it was to prove) upon Italian soil.
At last the Pope's resolution was fixed. The galleys, that for
weeks had lain waiting at Marseilles, were secretly made ready,
and Gregory suddenly, to the incredulous dismay of the Sacred
College, announced his intention of departing instantly.

On September 13, 1376, Gregory came out of the papal
palace of Avignon, to return to the seat of the Apostles. A
mournful crowd in silence watched the departure. At the door
of the palace his aged father, Count Guillaume de Beaufort, threw
himself at his feet, crying : " My son, whither art thou going .»*
Shall I never see thee more ^ " " It is written," answered the
Pope, " ihou shalt trample upon the asp and the basilisk.^' And he
passed over the prostrate body of his father — so well had he learned
the lesson Catherine had striven from the outset to impress upon
him, that tenerezza dei parenti was one of the first things that
Christ wished His vicar to root out from his heart.^ From the
beginning, evil omens seemed to attend the Pope's departure.
His mule started and backed, and could not be made to stir, but
another was brought, and Gregory steadfastly went on his way.
Six cardinals — including the Cardinal of Pamplona (Pierre de
Montirac, Vice-Chancellor of the Church), Gilles Aycelin, and
Anglico de Grimoard (who, as archbishop of the city, was staying
at his post) — remained at Avignon. The rest, with the other
papal officials, accompanied the Sovereign Pontiff in the state
procession that moved by slow stages to Marseilles, which they
reached on September 20. Here the papal fleet — twenty-two
galleys and a number of smaller ships, under the supreme
command of the Grand Master of the knights of St. John — lay in

^ Letter 239 (10), corrected by the Harleian MS.

2 Cf Capecelatro, pp. 262, 263. The story is told in the Quarta Vita
Gregorii XI, Baluze, I. col. 481, in which the Count's action is wrongly assigned
to the Pope's mother, who was already dead.

194

FROM THE BABYLON OF THE WEST

readiness ; but it was not until October 2 that the Pope actually
embarked. It seemed that he had wished to postpone his de-
parture from his beloved native land as long as possible. " O
God," writes Pietro Amelio da Alete, the Augustinian Bishop
of Sinigaglia, " who could ever imagine how copious and bitter
were the cries and wailing and lamentations that arose ! Never
was such sorrow known. The Pope himself wept. Every cheek
was wet with tears ; the hearts of all seemed breaking." ^ The
fleet moved slowly from port to port along the Riviera, encoun-
tering terrible weather at sea, and at length, on October i8,
reached Genoa.

And here Catherine and her company were awaiting the Pope's
coming. She had left Avignon on the day of his departure,
September 13, and thence travelled by land, for which the Pope
and the Duke of Anjou had provided her with the requisite
means. We have glimpses of her on the way at Toulon, where,
writes Fra Raimondo, " albeit we were silent, the very stones
seemed to cry that the holy virgin had arrived in the city," and
where she miraculously healed a child ; and again at Voragine (the
modern Varazze), which she found depopulated by the pestilence.
She promised the survivors a brighter future for their town,
commending it to the special protection of the Blessed Trinity
and the Madonna.^ Early in October, she reached Genoa ;
where, with all her company, she stayed for a month in the
house of a noble lady of the city. Madonna Orietta Scotti, whose
husband, Messer Barnaba Scotti, is said to have been descended
from a Scotch soldier of fortune who came to Italy in the days of
Charlemagne.

The tossing on the seas had shaken the Pope's nerves, and the
news he received on landing increased his dismay. On October
12, the Eight had written from Florence to the Romans, pro-
fessing astonishment at their belief in the coming of the Pope,
who was lingering at Marseilles and looking for an excuse to

^ Itinerarium Domini Gregorii Papae XI, a long and detailed composition in
leonine verses, in Rer. It. Script., iii. 2.
2 Cf. Augusta Drane, II. pp. 6-8.

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

return to Avignon : " And, if he comes, it will not be in peaceful
guise, but accompanied by martial fury ; we are absolutely con-
vinced that his presence will bring you nothing save war and
devastation." ^ There were popular tumults in Rome ; the
Florentines continued to carry on the war round Bologna and
Ascoli. Although the reception of the Curia by the Genoese
had been cordial and enthusiastic, the Doge, even in the Pope's
presence, declared himself unable to publish the papal processes
against the Florentines in the city. The French cardinals
exaggerated every report, represented the stormy weather as a
divine warning, and urged the Pope to reconsider the situation.
A consistory was held, at which it was proposed that they should
return to Avignon, and Gregory was about to give way.

But the Pope still thought of Catherine, whom, apparently, he
had not seen since his arrival. He feared to summon her to
his presence, because of the comments and opposition this would
excite among the cardinals, and thought it derogatory to his
dignity to visit her openly in the day, when throngs of people
were pressing to see her and hear her words. In the evening, on
the day of the consistory, he went in disguise to the house of
Orietta Scotti. Catherine fell at his feet ; he bade her rise, for
that he himself was a suppliant, and besought her to obtain him
the grace to know what course he should adopt. After a long
colloquy with her, Gregory departed, full of edification and with
his courage restored.^ He at once informed the cardinals
of his resolution to proceed, and ordered the fleet to put to sea.
On October 29, he set sail from Genoa, and Catherine was
destined never again to see his face in this life.

Catherine herself was delayed at Genoa for some weeks after
the Pope had left, partly by her unceasing labours for the salva-
tion of souls, partly by an outbreak of sickness among her
fellowship. Stefano Maconi tells us that they were almost all

^ Gherardi, op. cit., doc. 309.

2 This incident is recorded only by Fra Tommaso in the Supplementum ;
Tantucci, pp. 48, 49. Cf. Oratione III., the prayer that the Saint offered on this
occasion.

196 _!

FROM THE BABYLON OF THE WEST

taken ill, and that Madonna Orietta watched most anxiously over
them, calling in two physicians every day to their aid. Neri di
Landoccio and Stefano himself, who had nursed the others,
suffered most of all, the former being brought very near to
death's door, and both seemed miraculously restored to health by
Catherine's prayers and her spiritual power upon them.^ " Take
comfort sweetly and be patient," she wrote to Giovanna Maconi,
Stefano's mother, *' and do not be troubled because I have kept
Stefano too long ; for I have taken good care of him. Through
love and affection I have become one thing with him, and there-
fore I have taken what is yours as though it were mine own. I am
sure that you are not really displeased. For you and for him
together I would fain do my very utmost, even unto death. You,
mother, have given birth to him once ; and I wish to give birth to
him and you and all your family, in tears and in labour, through
continual prayer and desire for your salvation." 2

And to her own mother, Lapa, who bewailed her daughter's
long absence and complained that she had been deserted, she
wrote a tender letter of comfort, " with desire of seeing you the
true mother, not only of my body, but of my soul." " Dearest
mother, you know that I must follow the will of God ; and I
know that you wish me to follow it. It was His will that I
should set out on this journey, which has not been without
mystery nor without fruits of great usefulness. It has been by
His will that I have stayed, and not by the will of man ; and, if
any one said the contrary, it is false and not the truth. And so I
shall have to go, following His footsteps in what way and at what
time shall please His inestimable goodness. You, like a good
and sweet mother, should be content and not distressed at bearing
all burdens for the honour of God, and your salvation and mine.
Remember that you did this for the sake of temporal goods,
when your sons left you in order to acquire temporal riches ; but
now, to acquire life eternal, it seems to you such a burden that
you say you will vanish, if I do not answer you at once. All this

^ Ep'istola Domni Stephani, § 13 ; Legenda, II. viii. 21-24 (§ § 261-264).
2 Letter 247 (355).

197

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

befalls you because you love that part which I have received from
you, that is, your flesh with which you clothed me, more than
that which I have received from God. Raise, O raise your heart
and affection to that sweet and most holy Cross, where every
burden becomes light ; be willing to bear a little finite pain, to
escape the infinite pain which we deserve for our sins. Now take
comfort, for the love of Christ crucified ; and do not think your-
self abandoned, either by God or by me. Nay, you will be
consoled and will receive full consolation ; your sorrow has not
been so great, but that the joy will be greater. We shall soon
come, by the grace of God." ^

Early in November, Catherine and her company left Genoa
by sea. After narrowly escaping shipwreck on the way, they
landed at Livorno and went on thence to Pisa, where Lapa, Fra
Tommaso della Fonte, and others met them. From Pisa,
Catherine sent Stefano to Siena, with letters and messages, to
prepare the way for their return ; 2 and, probably about the middle
of December, she found herself once more in her native city.

In the meanwhile, Gregory had proceeded on his way, tossed
by storms at sea and assailed by sinister rumours wherever he
touched shore. At Livorno, which he reached on November 10,
he was received by Piero Gambacorti and his sons, who, together
with the ambassadors of Lucca, again besought him to make peace
with the Florentines. But the Pope would not listen to a word
on the subject, but ordered fresh processes to be published against
them. A fearful tempest arose and scattered the fleet ; the
galleys of the Cardinals of Amiens and Glandeves sank, but their
lives were saved ; the greater part of the ships got to Port'
Ercole. Gregory himself with six galleys was driven to the
island of Elba, from which he despatched a letter to the cardinals,
** bidding them take heart, for these tempests which he had suffered

^ Letter 240 (169).

^ Two letters from Stefano at Siena to Neri at Pisa (" al luogo de' frati di San
Domenico, o vero di Santa Caterina "), dated November 29 and December 8,
1376, are published by Grottanelli in the Lettere dei discepoH, 5 and 6, full of
little playful touches.

198

FROM THE BABYLON OF THE WEST

on the sea were the sign of a great victory, and no prince had ever
come to Italy without enduring storms and tribulations at sea, if
he were afterwards to prove a conqueror, as was shown by the
example of Aeneas and King Charles." ^ At length, on December
5, the Pope reached the shores of the Papal States, and landed at
the port of Corneto.

At Corneto the Pope stayed for nearly six weeks, to keep
Christmas, and to come to terms with the Romans, whom the
Florentines were inciting to insurrection. Here he received a
characteristic letter from Catherine, written shortly after her
return to Siena, exhorting him to constancy, fortitude, and
patience, assuring him of the good disposition of the Sienese,
urging him to proceed with confidence,^ Nevertheless, ill tidings
poured in. On December 14, the citadel of Ascoli, from which
Gomez Albornoz had escaped in a vain effort to procure reinforce-
ments, was compelled to surrender to the forces of the league.
A week later, an attempt to gain back Citta di Castello for the
Church failed ; Uguccione and Francesco, sons of the Marchese
Angelo del Monte Santa Maria, were beheaded ; and Benedetto
Strozzi and Ristoro Canigiani (a further proof of the solidarity of
all parties in Florence for the defence of the Republic) were sent
to confirm the city in its friendship with the Commune of Florence,
*' and with a word from the Eight of the War." ^ Bolsena
revolted from the Church ; and, at the beginning of January, a
papal force composed of troops supplied by the Queen of Naples,
which had been sent against Viterbo, was completely defeated by
Francesco di Vico and the Florentines.^

But this was more than counterbalanced by the submission of
Rome itself. On December 21, an agreement was made between

^ Despatch from Cristoforo da Piacenza to Lodovico Gonzaga, dated Rome,
December 13, 1376. Pastor, Acta Inedita, doc. i.

^ Letter 252 (i i).

^ Diario d'Anonimo Fiorentino, p. 327.

^ Luigi delle Vigne, a brother of Fra Raimondo, was one of the Queen's
knights who were taken prisoners on this occasion. In Letter 254 (284), to Pietro
di Jacomo Tolomei, Catherine begs him to use his influence with the Prefect to
get Luigi set free without ransom.

199

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

Cardinals d'Estaing, Corsini, and Tebaldeschi, in the name of
the Church, and the government and people of Rome, by which
the full dominion of the city was offered to the said cardinals, as
representing the Pope, in the same manner and form as had been
offered to Urban V. The whole of Trastevere and the Leonine
city was put into the hands of Cardinal Tebaldeschi as papal
legate ; the Pope on his part undertaking to preserve and maintain
the Signoria of the Bandaresi, '^ the society of the executors of
justice and four counsellors, the crossbowmen and shieldbearers,"
while stipulating that the right of reforming the said society should
be recognized as pertaining to him.^ The last obstacle to the
return of the Sovereign Pontiff to the seat of the Apostles was
thus removed. On January 13, the fleet sailed from Corneto.
A fair and prosperous voyage to Ostia raised the hopes and
expectations of the Pope and his court ; and, on January 16, they
sailed up the Tiber to San Paolo fuori le Mura, where they were
received with every demonstration of enthusiasm and exultation
by the Bandaresi and the people of Rome. The next day,
January 17, 1377, Gregory made his triumphal entry into the
Eternal City : " Verily," writes the Bishop of Sinigaglia, " I
never thought in this world to see such glory with my own eyes."

^ Convention in Raynaldus, vii. p. 283.

200

CHAPTER X

THE ANGEL OF PEACE

"Per altro non venni se non per mangiare e gustare anime, e trarle delle mani delle
dimonia. La vita voglio lasciare per questo, se io n'avessi mille. E per questa cagione
ander6 e star6 secondo che lo Spirito Santo fara fare." — St. Catherine, Letter 121 (201).

It is evident from Catherine's letters that she had no
thought or desire of seeing Gregory return to Rome as a
temporal sovereign. She dreamed of the Pope as a purely
spiritual power, coming unarmed in poverty and humiHty,
conquering all opposition by the might of love alone. The
spectacle of the Church fighting against the Italians with
mercenary arms, for the recovery of the revolted cities of the
Papal States, was to her an utter horror and abomination, a
veritable war against God.

To the Sovereign Pontiff, shortly after his return to Rome,
she addressed a letter which gives impassioned utterance to the
aspirations of all those Catholics who, at any epoch in the history
of the Church, have prayed that their pastors might realize that
Christ's kingdom was not of this world, and, for the salvation of
souls, consent at length to lay down the Christless burden of tem-
poral power (even if existing merely in unrealizable and vaguely
formulated demands) — only to be confronted by the papal non
possumus^ the declaration that he who sits on the throne , of
the Fisherman cannot renounce what the Church has once
possessed, or claimed to possess, as her own. God demands
peace from the Pope, she writes, and that he should not be so
intent upon temporal lordship and possessions as not to see how
great is the destruction of souls and the outrage to God that
results from war. '* You could indeed say, Holy Father : * I
am bound in conscience to preserve and recover what belongs
to Holy Church.' Alas, I confess that it is true ; but it seems
to me that one must still more guard what is more dear. The

201

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

treasure of the Church is the blood of Christ, given in ransom
for the soul ; for the treasure of the blood is not paid for
temporal substance, but for the salvation of the human race.
So that, supposing that you are bound to conquer and preserve
the treasure and the lordship of the cities that the Church has
lost ; much more are you bound to win back so many little
sheep, who are a treasure in the Church. It is better to let the
mire of temporal things go than the gold of spiritual things.
Peace, peace, for the love of Christ crucified." What is the loss
of the temporal power compared to the evil of seeing grace perish
in men's souls, and the obedience die away that they owe the
Pope ? How can he reform the Church while he remains at
war, and squanders upon soldiers what belongs to the poor ?
" You have need of the aid of Christ crucified ; set, then, your
affection and your desire upon Him ; not on man and on human
aid, but on Christ sweet Jesus, whose place you hold ; for it
seems that He wishes the Church to return to her sweet primal
state. O how blessed will your soul be and mine, when I see
you begin this great good work, and when what God is now
permitting by force shall be accomplished in your hands by
love ! " 1

As soon as Catherine got back to Siena, certain Florentines
waited upon her — apparently on behalf of the Parte Guelfa —
wishing to hear from her lips what she had done for them at
Avignon, and what were the dispositions of the Pope. She
answered that Gregory was ready to receive them into his grace,
if they would give proof of their submission to the Holy See,

^ ;'. e. the return of the Church to her primitive state of poverty and purity
by the loss of her temporal possessions. Letter 209 (2), corrected by the
Harleian MS., which states that this letter was sent to the Pope " poi che fu
giunto a Roma," as is confirmed by internal evidence ; Gigli and Tommaseo are
clearly in error in assigning it to an earlier date. The postscript in the MS.
reads : " I believe that Fra Jacopo da Padova, the bearer of this letter, is a true
and sweet servant of God ; I commend him to you, and beseech your Holiness
to be pleased to see him and the others always near you." Fra Jacopo of
Padua was an Olivetan monk, one of Catherine's correspondents, who was
afterwards prior of San Bartolommeo outside Florence.

202

THE ANGEL OF PEACE

and urged them to send ambassadors to him as soon as he should
have arrived at Rome. They besought her to come again to
Florence, to give a formal account of her legation and appease the
minds of the Parte Guelfa ; this, however, Catherine refused to
do, as compromising the dignity of the Church after what had
passed at Avignon, though she ultimately consented to send
Stefano Maconi in her stead. When he arrived at Florence,
Niccolo Soderini, Piero Canigiani, and Stoldo di Bindo Altoviti
(a prominent member of the Parte Guelfa, who played a con-
siderable part in the internal politics of the Republic) accompanied
Stefano to the Eight, to whom he delivered Catherine's message,
detailing all that had been done in Avignon and urging them to
make peace. But a rumour spread through the city that *' a
certain Catherinated Sienese " was inducing the Eight to subject
the government to the Pope ; a tumult was raised, ** so that not
otherwise than of old the Jews gnashed on the blessed levite
Stephen with their teeth, so did many of the people with
murderous fury upon our Stephen, and they would without
doubt have assailed him, had not the authority of most influential
men intervened." ^ Nevertheless, Stefano's biographer assures
us, his words had not been lost. But events were to render all
immediate prospects of peace out of the question.

Almost all the States of Italy, even those at war with the
Holy See, sent ambassadors to congratulate the Pope on his
arrival. The Sienese were also charged with the task of making
excuses for their having joined the league, and of obtaining
from the Pope the restitution of Talamone, which had been
seized by the prior of the Pisan knights of St. John with aid
from the Church. With them went Tommaso di Guelfaccio,
the Gesuato, bearing a letter from Catherine to the Pontiff,
once more exhorting him to make peace with the Tuscan
communes and the revolted cities, for the pacification of ail Italy.
By love alone can he hope to win the souls of the Italians.

* Barth. Senensis, op. ch.. Lib. I. cap. 8. This is our only authority for this
embassy, which, from the wording of Catherine's answer, was evidently while the
Pope was at Corneto.

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SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

*' The Sienese ambassadors are coming to your Holiness, and,
if there are any folk in the world who can be caught with love,
these are they. And, therefore, I pray you to strive to take them
with this hook. Accept their excuses for the fault which they
have committed, for they are sorry for it, and it seems to them
that they are in such a position that they know not what to do.
I beseech you, sweet babbo mine, if you see any way by which
they could satisfy your HoHness without their being involved in
war with those with whom they are allied, you would be pleased to
adopt it. Bear with them, for the love of Christ crucified. I believe
that, if you do this, it will be a great boon for Holy Church and
obviate much evil." ^ The Pope received them kindly for
Catherine's sake, but would only answer in generalities — with
the result that the ambassadors doubted his pacific intentions, and
concluded that he meant to hold Talamone as a pledge for the
loyalty of the Sienese in his coming campaign for the reconquest
of the Papal States.

The three Florentine ambassadors arrived in Rome on
January 26. They were Pazzino Strozzi, Alessandro dell'
Antella, and Michele Castellani — the same three who had been
to Avignon — and they bore a mandate to congratulate the Pope
and to treat for peace. Gregory received them kindly, but would
only offer practically the same terms as before : they must pay
an indemnity of more than a million florins to the apostolic
treasury within four years, and virtually abandon their colleagues
in the league.^ The indemnity was more than excessive, and an
appalling event, that happened a few days later, enabled the

1 Letter 285 (14), amended by the Harleian MS. The ambassadors were
Andrea di Conte, Giovanni Vincenti, and three others. Cf. O. Malavolti, pp.
143P., 144, and the Cronica Sanese, col, 252. On November 25 (1376), the
Signoria of Florence had requested the Sienese to suspend the sending of the
ambassadors, as the time was at hand in which all the confederates were to meet
to consider the general utility of the league. Gherardi, op. cit., doc. 321.

2 Gherardi, op. cit., pp. 71, 72. St. Antoninus states (III. p. 384) that the
Pope had written from Corneto to the Florentines, bidding them send him the
same ambassadors that had been to Avignon ; but there is documentary evidence
that they had been already appointed in November.

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THE ANGEL OF PEACE

Florentines to give a sinister interpretation to the second papal
demand.

Foiled at Bologna, the Cardinal of Geneva had taken the
Bretons into winter quarters at Cesena, the only large town in
Romagna that now remained faithful to the Church. The over-
bearing brutality of these ruffians, backed by the Cardinal, who
gave them leave to take what they needed from the citizens
without payment, brought about an armed rising in Cesena on
February i, in which some three or four hundred of the Bretons
were killed, and the rest driven from the city, or forced to take
refuge with the Cardinal in the citadel. There was no thought
of rebellion against the Pope : '* Viva la Chiesa," had been
the shout of the populace, no less than " Muoiano i Brettoni " ;
and, on the following day, trusting in the pacific declaration of
the Cardinal, the insurgents laid down their arms. But already,
at the former's summons, Hawkwood and his English were
hastening from Faenza ; joining forces with the infuriated
Bretons, they entered Cesena at night by the citadel, and were
ordered to put the inhabitants to the sword. To do him justice,
Hawkwood hesitated, and made some sort of remonstrance ; but
the Cardinal insisted. On the next day, February 3, an appalling
massacre followed. Men, women, and children were slaughtered
indiscriminately ; the English were chiefly bent on plunder, but
the Bretons, thirsting for vengeance, did not even spare the
infants at the breast or in the cradle, and committed unspeakable
horrors of every description. The churches were desecrated,
those of the friars who attempted to give sanctuary to the
fugitives were murdered with the rest. At least four thousand
of the inhabitants of Cesena were thus butchered ; fifteen
thousand survivors, starving and perishing with the cold, fled
in utter destitution, to die on the way, or find shelter, as best
they could, in the neighbouring towns. A thrill of horror ran
through all Italy — it is impossible to set down on paper even a
small part of the unutterable atrocities that the common report
of the time ascribed to the mercenary soldiers of the Church.
" Nero himself never committed such cruelty," writes the

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SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

Franciscan chronicler of Bologna ; " it was enough to make folk
believe no more in pope or cardinals." In all the cities of the
league, Masses were offered up, and men and women thronged
the churches to make offerings, and to pray for the repose of the
murdered citizens of Cesena.

If such was the fate of the faithful adherents of the Church,
what might not the rebels expect at her hands, if deserted by their
Florentine allies ? Coluccio Salutati wrote, in the name of the
Republic, to the States of Italy and to the princes of Christendom,
declaring that what had happened had thoroughly justified the
policy of Florence. " This is the unhappy fate of peoples that
obey the Church ! This is the deplorable state of Italy, which
these rulers for the Church are destroying and defacing ! But we
do not accuse the humanity of the Sovereign Pontiff of these
things, for we believe that he is cordially displeased by this and
many others, about which we are silent ; but we lament
exceedingly that he still finds no remedy for so many and such
horrible deeds." ^ Nevertheless, Gregory seems to have taken no
steps publicly to dissociate himself from the unutterable horrors
done in his name. In his eloquent canzone to the Pope,
Franco Sacchetti bewails *' the innocent blood of Cesena, shed
with such fury by these wolves of thine " : " Woe to whoso is
under thee and does not rise ! For there is just cause to free
oneself from him who is fain to feed on human blood."

Nowhere in Catherine's letters does she make any explicit
reference to the massacre of Cesena. But, doubtless, the fresh
remembrance of the blood of these unhappy victims to the lust of
the pastors of the Church for temporal sovereignty must have
given terrible actuality to her letter to the Pope, written ten
weeks after the event, pleading for peace at any price : —

^ The fullest account of the massacre is given in thciCronua di Bologna, col. 510;
the Cronica Sanese, coll. 252-254 ; and by St. Antoninus, III. p. 383, who to some
extent exonerates the English of the worst horrors. For the whole subject, cf.
Veccidio di Cesena del 1 377 <// anonimo scrittore coetaneo, ed. G. Gori (Archivio Storico
Italiano, N. S. vol. viii. part 2), and Canestrini, op. cit., p. xlvi.w. Contemporary
authorities differ considerably as to the details and the numbers killed on either
side ; that 4000 of the inhabitants perished in the massacre is the lowest estimate.

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THE ANGEL OF PEACE

" Have mercy upon so many souls and bodies that are perish-
ing. O pastor and keeper of the cellar of the blood of the
Lamb, let not trouble nor shame nor the abuse that you might
think to receive, nor servile fear draw you back, nor the perverse
counsellors of the devil who counsel you to nought else save wars
and misery. Consider what great evils are resulting from this
wicked war, and how great is the good that will be the result of
peace. Alas ! babbo mio, my soul is full of woe, for my iniquities
are the cause of every ill. It seems that the devil has taken the
lordship of the world, not by himself, for he can do nothing ; but
in as much as we have given him. On whatever side I turn, I see
that each one has given him the keys of free will by his perverse
desires ; laymen, religious, and clergy are proudly pursuing delights
and states and worldly riches, with much impurity and misery.
But, above all other things that I see, the most abominable in the
sight of God are the flowers that are planted ,in the mystical
body of Holy Church — which should be flowers of sweet odour,
and their life a mirror of virtue, hungry lovers of the honour of
God and of the salvation of souls. They are befouled with every
misery, lovers of themselves, uniting their own sins with those
of the others, and especially in the persecution that is being dealt
to the sweet Spouse of Christ and to your Holiness.^ Alas ! we
have fallen under the sentence of death, and we have made war
upon God. O babbo mio, you are given us as the mediator to
make this peace ; and I do not see how it can be done, unless you
carry the cross of holy desire. We are at war with God, and
your rebellious children are at war with God and with your
Holiness. God wills and demands of you that, according to your
power, you should take the lordship from the hands of the
demons. Set yourself to freeing Holy Church from the foul smell
of her ministers ; weed out these stinking flowers, and plant sweet-
smelling flowers therein, virtuous men who fear God. Then I
pray your Holiness to be pleased to grant peace and to accept it,
in whatever way it can be had, always without injury to the Church

^ That is, the wickedness of the priests and ecclesiastics is giving strength to
the opponents of the Holy See.

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SAINT CATHERINE 'OF SIENA

and your conscience. God would have you attend to souls and
to spiritual things more than to temporal." ^

Catherine dates this letter from " the new monastery which
you have granted me, entitled Santa Maria degli Angeli." This
was on the site of the present villa of Belcaro, that most roman-
tically placed castle, embedded in its noble grove of ilexes, from
the battlements of which the Sienese contado lies outstretched
before our eyes away to the Maremma and distant Monte Amiata.
It had been given her by Nanni di Ser Vanni Savini, who, after
an unfortunate and turbulent career as a politician of the faction
of the Twelve, had been finally converted to a religious life.
While at Avignon, the Pope had granted her the necessary
faculties ; and on her return to Siena, the Signoria, in answer to
her petition of January 25, 1377, had authorized her to turn
the dismantled fortress into a monastery, for the reception of
" religious sisters, who will continually pray for the city and
citizens and inhabitants of Siena and its contado." ^ The Abbot
of Sant' Antimo, Fra Giovanni di Gano of Orvieto (a monk in
whom Catherine had great confidence, and who occasionally acted
as one of her confessors), formally blessed the beginning of the
monastery as papal commissary, in the presence of all Catherine's
spiritual family, and William Flete came over from the neighbour-
ing Lecceto to say the first Mass. Catherine returned to Siena
on April 25, the feast of St. Mark.

We have lost sight of Francesco di Vanni Malavolti during
these months. During Catherine's absence at Avignon, he had
drifted back to his former dissolute way of life, and, on her return,
at first shrank from visiting her. She implored him to come to

^ Letter 270 (12). The date, April 16, 1377, is given by the Harleian and
Palatine MSS.

2 It was forbidden to alienate fortified places without leave of the Commune,
but the Saint represents in her petition that the castle is in ruins, and that she
will do nothing save with the permission of the Defenders. The petition was
approved hy the General Council of the Bell by 3 3 3 votes to 65, Cf. the document
given by Grottanelli, notes to Leggenda minore, pp. 219-222, and Legenda, II. vii.
17-20 (§§ 235-238). There was a Carthusian convent in the vicinity, of which
several of the monks were among Catherine's disciples and correspondents.

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THE ANGEL OF PEACE

her. " Dearest and beloved son in Christ sweet Jesus," she
wrote, " I, Catherine, servant and slave of the servants of Jesus
Christ, write to thee in His precious blood, with desire of finding
thee again, my little lost sheep, and I have a very great desire of
putting thee back into the fold with thy companions. It seems
to me that the devil has so robbed me of thee that thou dost
not let thyself be found ; and I, thy miserable mother, go seeking
and sending for thee, because I would fain take thee upon my
shoulders, by reason of the bitter sorrow and compassion that I
have for thy soul. Open the eye of thy understanding, dearest
son, raise it from the darkness, and recognize thy fault, not with
confusion of mind, but with knowledge of thyself and with hope
in the goodness of God. See how miserably thou hast spent the
substance of grace that thy heavenly Father gave thee. But,
even as that son did, who, when he had wasted his substance and
began to be in want, realized his fault and had recourse to his
father for forgiveness, so do thou ; for thou art impoverished and
in want ; thy soul is dying of hunger. Go to thy Father for
forgiveness ; He will succour thee, and will not despise thy
desire, if it is founded in sorrow for the sin committed — nay, He
will fulfil it sweetly. Alas, alas ! where are thy sweet desires .''
O my unhappy soul ! I have found that the devil has stolen thy
soul and thy holy desire. The world and its servants have spread
the snares with its disordinate pleasures and delights. Up, now,
take the remedy, and sleep no more. Comfort my soul, and be
not so cruel, for thy salvation, as to grudge me one visit. Do
not let thyself be deceived by the devil through fear or shame.
Break this entanglement. Come, come, dearest son : I can well
call thee dear, so much art thou costing me in tears and labour,
and in much bitter sorrow. Ah, come, my sweet son, and return
to thy fold. I plead my excuse before God, for I can do no
more. In coming and staying, I am asking nothing from thee,
save that thou wouldst do the will of God. I say no more.
May Christ Jesus console thee with thyself and me with thee."^

^ I follow the Palatine MS. 59, which gives a better text of this letter than
14 209

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

Francesco tells us that he at once went to her, " albeit not without
great shame and fear. But she, like a most benign and sweetest
mother, received me with a joyful countenance, giving the greatest
comfort to my weakness. And a few days afterwards, when I
went to her again, and one of the virgin's women companions
said to her, as it were in blame of me, that I had little stability, she
said with a smile : ' Never mind, my sisters, for he cannot escape out
of my hands, let him go by what way he will ; for when he thinks
that I am far from him, I shall put such a yoke upon his neck
that he will never be able to slip out of it.' At this time, I had
both wife and children. The sisters, and I with them, laughed at
these words, and we made merry, nor did any of us then think
any more about them." ^

At Siena, Catherine had again taken up her apostolic mission,
labouring for the conversion of souls, making peace between
enemies, tending and comforting the afflicted. Above all, at this
time, the prisoners and those doomed to death by the law claimed
her ministrations. The government lived in daily apprehension
of conspiracies ; the prisons were full ; executions were incessant.
At the beginning of this year, 1377, a young noble of Gubbio,
Gaddo Accorimboni, had been made podesta, and, in the hope
of obtaining the senatorship, he set about his work with the most
ruthless severity, caring less for justice than for winning a re-
putation as an inflexible and vigorous magistrate. We have
still the beautiful letter that, on the Thursday in Holy Week,
Catherine addressed to the prisoners under his heavy hand,
exhorting them to gain true patience in the contemplation of the
blood of Christ crucified.^ It was probably now that the episode
in her life occurred that is known to so many that know nought
else of Catherine, by Bazzi's fresco and Mr. Swinburne's poem.
A young Perugian noble, apparently little more than a youth,
Niccolo di Toldo, attached to the household of the Senator or

Gigli (266) or Tommaseo (45). It is also one of those included in the Bolognese
edition of 1492.

^ Contestatio Francisci de Malavoltis, cap. i., MS. a/., p. 433.

* Letter 260 (309). Cf. Cronka Satiese, col. 251.

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THE ANGEL OF PEACE

Podesta, was sentenced to death for some rash words he had
uttered against the State. Fra Tommaso Caffarini found him in
the prison of the Commune, raging with despair, refusing to make
his confession or to hear a word about the salvation of his soul.
He had never received the sacraments since his first Communion.
Then Catherine came to his cell, bringing him such mystical
consolation that he became "like a meek lamb led to the sacrifice,"
and died with Christ's name and hers on his lips, she receiving
his severed head into her hands. *' He met his death," writes
Fra Tommaso, " with such wonderful devotion that it seemed not
that of one condemned for any crime of man, but rather the
passing away of some holy martyr. All who witnessed it, among
whom I was one, were moved to such intense compunction of
heart, that never, until then, do I remember having been present
at any funeral where there was so much devotion as at his." ^ I
will return presently to the wonderful letter in which Catherine
informs Fra Raimondo of every detail in the tragedy turned
triumph ; for it is one of those that most vividly illustrate the
words of Stefano Maconi, that in her letters we may perceive
** the living image of that divine virgin, expressed in the most
true features of her holiness."

In the summer of this year, Catherine left the city, to carry
on her spiritual ministry in the Sienese contado. The immediate
occasion of her going was a feud that had arisen between two
of the principal members of the great house of the Salimbeni,
Agnolino di Giovanni di Agnolino and Cione di Sandro, which
was threatening to set the whole district once more aflame
with civil war. A dispute concerning the possession of a
castle, in which they both claimed a share, was the ostensible
cause of the quarrel, but there was also a political difference
between the two nobles. Cione, a restless and turbulent spirit,
inclined to support the policy of the papal legates in Tuscany,
from whom he was always looking for aid against the liberties of

^ Contestatio Fr. Thmae, Processus, col. 1266. The story is one of Fra
Tommaso's additions in the Leggenda minore, pp. 93, 94, as Fra Raimondo, being
then absent from Siena, does not mention it. See below, chapter xvi.

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SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

his fellow-citizens ; while Agnolino, the head of the family,
although he had joined in the rebellion of 1374, had inherited
the traditions of his famous father, Giovanni di Agnolino Salimbeni,
who for so many years had been a power for peace in the State,
and was ready to serve the Republic against all her enemies.
Agnolino's widowed mother, the venerable Madonna Biancina
Salimbeni, a sister of the lords of Foligno, had been for long the
devoted worshipper of Catherine, who was also in correspondence
with Madonna Stricca, the wife of Messer Cione. It was
probably at the invitation of these two ladies that Catherine
intervened in the dispute, though she was doubtless glad of such
an opportunity to pursue the same apostolic work for her divine
Master and Bridegroom among the people of the contado that
she had already accomplished, for so many years, within the walls
of Siena itself.

Several of Catherine's letters to the Salimbeni have been
preserved. Besides Biancina and Stricca, she was in correspond-
ence with Agnolino's two sisters, the Countess Benedetta and
Madonna Isa, both of whom were at this time widows, and
whom she was persuading to enter the religious life.^ To
Benedetta, whose second betrothed had died before the wedding,
and upon whom her family were urging a third marriage for
political reasons, she wrote urging her not to give herself to the
perverse service of the world, but to take the two rebuffs it had
given her as a sign that she was called to be the bride of Christ,
and advising her to enter the new monastery of S. Maria degli
Angeli at Belcaro. And in a longer letter, on divine love con-
trasted with the love of men, she invites her to the enclosed
garden of self-knowledge, planted in the soil of true humility.
" I know," she writes to Agnolino, " that much evil has been said
and will be said to you about the Countess, because she wishes
to be the servant and bride of Jesus Christ. She and you would
be very foolish, if she did not answer, now that the Holy Spirit

* In the Cronica Sanese, under 1373, we read: "Agnolino di Giovanni
Salimbeni nc mand6 a marito due sue sorelle di Dicembre. El Comune di Siena
mand6 gentc a far lo' scorta " (col. 236).

2J2

THE ANGEL OF PEACE

Is calling her. And she has seen that the world rejects her and
drives her to Christ crucified." And to Madonna Isa, who
ultimately became one of the Mantellate, she suggests that
Benedetta should come to the Rocca — Rocca d' Orcia or Rocca di
Tentennano, the chief fortress of the Salimbeni, where Agnolino
usually resided with their mother — before she herself came
thither.i

It was already August when Catherine left Siena, accompanied
by her usual band of disciples and women, which included Fra
Raimondo, Fra Tommaso della Fonte, Fra Bartolommeo, Fra
Matteo Tolomei, Fra Santi, Stefano, Neri, the newly regained
Francesco Malavolti (from whose pen comes the most vivid
description of these months), Gabriele Piccolomini, with Alessa,
Cecca, Lisa, and others of the Mantellate. Monna Lapa —
familiarly known as nonna^ or ** granny," by the members of her
daughter's spiritual family — seems to have come as far as
Montepulciano. She and Cecca were left among the nuns of
the monastery of Satita Agnese, where Cecca had a daughter,
Giustina, a novice ; while Catherine went on her mission, first to
Cione Salimbeni at his stronghold of Castiglioncello del Trinoro,
and thence to Agnolino at the Rocca. '* And in a short space of
time," writes Francesco Malavolti, " she brought both of them
to perfect concord, which many other barons and potent men had
hitherto been unable to effect." From the Rocca, Catherine visited
the Abbey of Sant' Antimo, at the request of her friend the Abbot,
who found himself involved in a quarrel with the archpriest of
Montalcino, who claimed jurisdiction over him. In like fashion,
at Montepulciano, it was her task to pacify Spinello Tolomei and
others of his family, who were in a chronic state of hostility
towards both the Salimbeni and the Republic, and divided among
themselves. In this latter attempt, however, she had only a
partial and temporary success ; for, in the following spring, in
spite of the intervention of the new Bishop of Siena (Luca
Bertini, the papal nuncio whose imprisonment at Florence has

1 Letters 112 (329), 113 (330), 114 (267), 115 (332).

213

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

been already mentioned), Spinello rose in arms, harried the lands
of the Salimbeni, and renewed the fierce factions of the two
houses.

For more than four months Catherine remained in these
parts, making Rocca d' Orcia her headquarters. No traces of
this once famous castle remain to-day. It stood on an eminence
above the Orcia, some twenty-three miles from Siena on the way
to Rome, between Montepulciano and Montalcino, and (like so
many similar castelli that we still see in southern Tuscany and in
the Roman Campagna) was practically a small town centred
round the great fortress of the feudal lord. It was also known
as the *' Isola della Rocca," apparently from its isolated position.
Here, the pacific work for which they had come being accom-
plished, Madonna Biancina showed herself the most loving and '
devoted of hostesses to Catherine and her followers, while men
and women poured in from the hills and country round, to hear
the Saint's words and be healed of their maladies. Wonderful
stories are told us by Fra Raimondo and by Francesco Malavolti
of her power in casting out demons from the bodies of the
possessed,^ but even more remarkable were the conversions that
she effected in men's souls. " I sometimes saw," writes Fra
Raimondo, "a thousand or more persons, men and women, come
together from the mountains and other regions of the Sienese
contado, to see and hear Catherine, as it were summoned by
an invisible trumpet ; and there, not only by her words, but at J
the mere sight of her, they were straightway moved to "
compunction for their misdeeds ; weeping and bewailing their
sins, they hastened to the confessors, of whom I was one, andl:
made their confessions with such great contrition that no one
could doubt that a great abundance of grace had descended from
heaven into their hearts." ^

Eating souls, or devouring demons, was Catherine's playful
term for converting sinners. "We must work for the honour

^ Legenda, II. ix. 7-9 (§§ 274-276) ; Contestatio Francisci de Malavoltis, cap.j
iv., MS. cit., pp. 446-453. Cf. Augusta Drane, II. pp. 61-66.
2 Ibid.f II. vii. 21-22 (§§ 239, 240). Cf. Processus, col. 1271.

214

THE ANGEL OF PEACE

of God, even as the holy apostles did," she writes to Caterina
dello Spedaluccio and Giovanna di Capo, two of her women who
had been left behind in the city, and who repined at her long
absence ; *' after they had received the Holy Spirit, they
separated from each other and from that sweet Mother Mary.
Albeit it would have been their greatest delight to have stayed
together, nevertheless they gave up their own pleasure, to seek
the honour of God and the salvation of souls. This is the rule
that we must adopt for ourselves. You are in Siena, and Cecca
and the nonna are at Montepulciano. Fra Bartolommeo and
Fra Matteo have been there, and will be again. Alessa and
Monna Bruna are at Monte Giovi, eighteen miles from
Montepulciano ; they are with the Countess and Madonna Isa.
Fra Raimondo and Fra Tommaso and Monna Tomma and Lisa
and I are at the Rocca among evil-doers, and they are eating so
many incarnate demons that Fra Tommaso says that he has bad
pains. And, with all this, they cannot have enough ; their
appetite increases, and they are finding work that is highly paid.
Pray the Divine Goodness to give them big and sweet and bitter
mouthfuls." 1 And to Lapa herself, the " nonna " at Monte-
pulciano, she wrote : '* You know, dearest mother, that I, your
miserable daughter, have been placed on earth for nought else
save the honour of God and the salvation of souls. To this
my Creator has called me. 1 know that you are content that I
should obey Him. I beseech you, if you think that I am
staying longer than you would wish, to be content ; for I cannot
do anything else. I believe that, if you knew the case, you
yourself would send me hither, I am here to heal a great
scandal, if I can. It is not the fault of the Countess ; and,
therefore, you must all pray to God and the glorious Virgin that
they send us a good result. Do you, Cecca and Giustina, drown
yourselves in the blood of Christ crucified ; for now is the time
to prove virtue in the soul." ^

1 Letter ii8 (175).

"^ Letter 117 (167). Catherine's mother was by this time herself one of the
Mantellate. A brief from Gregory XI grants special spiritual favours to Lapa,

215

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

In fact, Catherine's prolonged sojourn in the contado was
arousing political suspicions as well as perplexing and distressing
her friends, and troubles of every kind seemed gathering round
her. While she was at Sant' Antimo, the archpriest of Montal-
cino, impelled thereto by his hatred of the Abbot Giovanni di
Gano, laid complaints against both her and him before the govern-
ment. Catherine at once despatched Pietro di Giovanni Ventura in
her name to Siena with a letter to the Defenders and the Captain of
the People, warning them not to set '* the servants of God "
against them by listening to slanderous tongues. She declared
that the Abbot was " as great and perfect a servant of God as
there has been in these parts for a very long time," and that
they ought to reverence and assist him in his work. " You
complain every day that the priests and other ecclesiastics are not
corrected, and now, when you find those who would fain correct
them, you prevent it and raise complaints." As to the accusa-
tions against her and her company, they ought to turn a deaf ear
to them. " We have sought and are continually seeking the
salvation of your souls and bodies, not heeding any labour, but
offering sweet and loving desires to God, with abundance of tears
and sighs, to prevent the divine judgments falling upon you
which we deserve for our iniquities. I have not enough virtue
to do aught but what is imperfect ; but the others, who are
perfect and attend only to the honour of God and the salvation
of souls, are those who do it. But neither the ingratitude nor
the churlishness of my fellow-citizens shall prevent me labouring
even to death for your salvation. We shall learn from that
sweet Paul, who says : Being reviled^ we bless ; being persecuted,
we suffer i£ ; we shall follow his rule. The truth shall be what
will set us free. I love you more than you love yourselves ;
and I love your pacific state and your freedom, even as you do.
So do not believe that anything against it is being done, either by
me or by any other of my company. We are put to sow the word

Cecca, Lisa, and Alessa, " Sienese widows, sisters of penance of the Blessed Dominic."
Cf. Tommaso CafFarini, Tractatus super informatione, etc., p. 13.

216

THE ANGEL OF PEACE

of God and to gather the fruit of souls. Every one is bound
to be keen for his own art ; this is the art that God has given us ;
we must, therefore, exercise it and not bury our talent, for then
we should be worthy of a great rebuke, but employ it at every
time and in every place and on every creature. For God is no
respecter of places or of creatures, but accepts holy and true
desires. I came for nought else save to eat and taste souls, and
draw them from the hands of the devils. For this I would lay
down my life, if I had a thousand, and for this reason I shall go
and stay according as the Holy Spirit shall direct." ^

The murmuring continued while she was at Montepulciano
and the Rocca. Madonna Rabe Tolomei, misliking that her
son, Fra Matteo, should be lingering with Catherine among the
hereditary enemies of her house, wrote that her daughter
Francesca was very ill, and that Matteo must come instantly to
her, on pain of her curse.^ Others declared that Catherine and
Raimondo were plotting with the Salimbeni against the State,
and so wrought upon the Defenders that they despatched
Tommaso di Guelfaccio with a letter ordering them to return to
Siena, where there was some more important peace to be effected
by her means. In her answer, a long and eloquent letter,
Catherine rebukes their self-love and cowardly fear that leads
them to mistrust those who are labouring indefatigably for their
welfare and the peace of the State, at the same time craving
pardon for her presumption in thus addressing them, and
promising to obey their summons as soon as she can.^ To Salvi
di Pietro, a goldsmith in Siena who had weight with the govern-
ment, she wrote that, in spite of the murmurs and suspicions
that had arisen against her and Fra Raimondo, God had bidden
her stay until her work was accomplished, and that she rejoiced
in being thus persecuted. *' Whether the demon likes it or not,
I shall continue to exercise my life in the honour of God and the
salvation of souls, for the entire world and particularly for my
native city. The citizens of Siena do a most shameful thing in

1 Letter 121 (201). 2 Letter 120 (344).

^ Letter 123 (202).

217

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

believing or imagining that we are engaged in weaving plots in
the lands of the Salimbeni, or in any other place in the world.
We are only plotting to defeat the devil, and to deprive him of
the lordship that he has assumed over man by mortal sin, and to
take hate from man's heart and pacify him with Christ crucified
and with his neighbour. These are the plots that we are weaving,
and that I wish to be woven by whoever is with me. I am sorry
for our negligence, whereby we do this only in lukewarm fashion.
And therefore I pray thee, sweet son, and do thou pray all the others,
to pray to God that I may be more zealous in doing this and
every holy work for His honour and the salvation of souls.
Poor calumniated Fra Raimondo begs you to pray to God for
him, that he may be good and patient." ^

Catherine was now, to her great sorrow, compelled to sever
herself from htr povere/Io calunniato. She sent Raimondo from the
Rocca to the Pope : " with certain proposals," he says, ** which
would have been good for the holy Church of God, if they had
been understood ; " and, at Rome, the General of the order
compelled him to resume the office of prior of the Minerva,
which he had already held under Urban V, whereby he was
unable to return to Catherine. And, indeed, save for a few
weeks, she was never again to be unite