Chapter VII (2)

And then he turns to the three Institutions and their like with which he, as notary, as father and as philanthropist, has been specially identified. He fixes the point when two lectures in Philosophy or Theology, one by a Dominican and another by a Franciscan, are to be instituted, for every working day, in the Chapel of the Notaries of Genoa; when one free meal a month is to be provided for eight monastic and charitable institutions, amongst which are the Franciscans of the SS. Annunziata, the Benedictines of San Nicolò in Boschetto, the Canonesses of S. Maria delle Grazie, and the Hospital for Incurables,--“but the expenses are not to exceed £600 a year” (about six guineas each meal)--“nor is money to be given, but the eatables themselves are to be bought for, and given to, the institutions”; and when a Superintendent (_Sindaco_) of the Incurables is to be appointed, with £100 pay a year.

And then he comes back to the poor in general; and thinks also, (somewhat like unto his and Catherine’s ideal, St. Paul as “a citizen of no mean city,”) of the external appearance and utility of his native town of Genoa. The point is fixed when they are to “pay for the poor their hardest imposts, especially those on food”; and when they are to “repair, decorate, and enlarge the Cathedral Church of San Lorenzo,” and to “build a harbour-mole, improve the harbour, and attend to the decoration and look of the town (_ornamentis civitatis_), according to their discretion.”

And he then finishes up with a characteristic reversion to efficacious solicitude for his clan, by marriage benefits for his young kinswomen in the future and by thought for his ancestors and predecessors in the past; and with a no less characteristic divinatory greatness of mind, by the creation of a kind of People’s College or Working-man’s University, which appears here curiously wedged in between the thoughts for his clan in the future and in the past. For he determines the points when the Protectors shall again provide for marrying honest poor girls of his three home villages, and for comforts for the prisoners at Christmas and Easter; when they are to “buy a large and well-situated house, and therein organize a public course of studies, with four Doctors of Law, four very learned Physicians, and two Masters of Grammar and Rhetoric, who shall, all ten, be each bound to deliver one lecture on every working day, and to devote all the rest of their time to the interests of the poor”; and when finally they are to provide for “Masses for his ancestors and predecessors,”--Masses for himself and immediate belongings having been already, no doubt, provided for in his previous Will, since we find such provisions repeated in his last Will, to be given later on.[315]

We thus get here a persistent preoccupation with the most manifold interests of the poor; a shrewd knowledge of men, and careful provisions calculated to rouse their indolence and to check their self-seeking; an utterly unsentimental, realistic, Charity-Organization sort of spirit shown in the insistence upon a careful and complete knowledge of the real degree and kind of want, and of the precise means appropriate for helping the various kinds of poor; a high estimate of knowledge, which he desires to offer to all, according to their various capacities and needs; and lastly, an entire freedom from pietism, for he thinks of, and provides for, harbour-works and the beautifying of the town. There is a large, open-air, operative, sanely optimistic and statesmanlike spirit about it all.

And if all this is in full keeping with, and but expands and supplements, the tenacious realism of a born organizer and administrator: the soaring idealism and universalism of his saint-friend Catherine’s stimulation, and his and her joint experiences and interests, are also directly suggested to us. For there is the special stress laid on the plague-stricken, whom they had tended together in 1493; the interest in physicians and in drugs for the poor, an interest in which she must have preceded him by twenty years or more; and the repeated preoccupation with the marrying of poor young women, and, next after it, with the convent-dowries of girls in socially similar circumstances, in each case especially of kinswomen of his own. This preoccupation was no doubt occasioned chiefly by the thought of his own most happy marriage and of his own children, the two elder now already well settled as Nuns, but the third still possibly to be married; yet we are also vividly reminded of Catherine’s own repeated occupation with the marrying of relatives of her own, and Limbania’s and her own early entrance, and wish to enter, into the Religious state. And then his benefactions include Catherine’s Hospital Church, her favourite Boschetto Church, and that Convent of the Grazie, the scene of her own conversion and the home of her sister Limbania, as well as of his daughters Battista and Daniela. But indeed the whole character of the outlook, in its successive absorption in, each time, just _one_ particular task; in its occupation with succour in proportion to the divinely ordained and ready-found bonds and ties of nature, bonds and ties so dear to the omnipresent God; and in its, nevertheless, in nowise restricting itself to this interest, but moving on and on, distance appearing beyond distance, with love and welcome for all the heroisms and helplessnesses: is all marked with Catherine’s imperial spirit of boundless self-donation.

VII. ETTORE IN ROME AND NAPLES; HIS SECOND WILL; HIS WORK IN THE GENOESE PRISONS.

1. _Ettore in Rome._

And perhaps already in 1513, but, if so, not before March of that year (the date of Pope Leo’s accession), Vernazza was in Rome,--hardly, I think, for the first time. And Battista again tells us, in her long letter of 1581, how that “the incurables in Rome”--which was then, at the beginning of Giovanni de’ Medici’s (Leo X’s) reign, the brilliant centre of the Renaissance at its zenith--“were left to lie in baskets, moaning” for alms, “in the Churches. It was piteous to see them thus forsaken and badly cared for.”

Now there is good reason to think that Vernazza had known the Pope when, as Cardinal de’ Medici, he had, in 1500, stayed for some time in Genoa, in the house of his married sister, Donna Maddalena Cibò. And so Vernazza now presented himself before the Pope, “and said to him: ‘You, Holiness, have a fine work in hand, in patronizing the Arts and Letters: but you cannot leave this Rome of yours saddened by so piteous a spectacle.’” And the Pope thanked him, and begged him to accept the charge of founding and undertaking the government of the Arch-Hospital. And the two “Cardinals, Caraffa,” the vigorous and devoted, but harshly austere Neapolitan, who was, later on, joint-founder of the Theatines and then Pope Paul IV, “and Sauli,” the Genoese, “helped him in his work. Indeed the latter said to him: ‘If you require money, come to me.’”

And this Roman work of Vernazza straightway put forth two offshoots, far away. For “Caraffa founded in Venice a hospital on the model of the one in Rome.” And “there happened to be in Rome” at this time “a certain Bartholommeo Stella, a rich and very generous (_molto galante_) young man. And Vernazza saw him and gained such an influence with him as to end by sending him to Brescia, to promote there also these fruits of Christian faith.”

And in Rome itself “Leo X gave Vernazza practical proofs of his gratitude, and set him forth on his return journey with demonstrations of great honour (_magnifiche demonstrazioni_). And the Arch-Hospital having been thus set going and Vernazza being back in Genoa, Leo X addressed a Brief to him, informing him that his Hospital in Rome was in a state of confusion (_andava sossopra_); ‘I think’ (adds Battista) ‘because its Governors wanted each to be above the other.’ And he returned to Rome, and quieted all controversy.”[316] I take this second Roman journey to have been not before 1515; but it may have occurred any time before 1522, the year of Pope Leo’s death.

This group of facts shows Vernazza’s directness and independence of observation, his initiative and energy, and his courage and respectful liberty of speech, qualities which are all reminiscent of Catherine’s scene with the Friar; the rapidity with which a necessary work, which has been delayed for centuries, and which has required the whole-hearted vigour of a rare personality to call it into being, grows and multiplies, when once it is in existence; and the manner in which the petty, sterilizing ambitions of men can be efficiently checked only by a combination of strength of will, administrative ability, gentle tact and complete disinterestedness,--a combination which again reminds one of Catherine, the successful Rettora.

2. _Ettore in Naples._

It will have been after this second visit to Rome that Vernazza first went to Naples. And there again “he formed a Hospital,” in this case “at the risk of his life; for some evil-wishers there wanted to kill him, being unable to bear the idea that a ‘foreigner’ should have anything to do with the affairs of the city (_ordinasse quella città_). Once the ‘Ave Maria’ had sounded, he did not again issue from his lodging during that day. And yet” even among such untoward circumstances, “he managed not to leave Naples before having, with God’s help, achieved his object,--of providing his much-loved poor with such an institution ready to their hand.”

It was in Naples, too, evidently at the beginning of this very visit, that another generous idea and institution of his first occurred to him, or at least was first put into execution. The whole occurrence reveals a curious mixture of the most divers qualities and, indeed, requires in part to be excused, on the ground of numerous external difficulties which stood in the way of an excellent work, and of the finessing methods evidently deemed, even by good people, to be quite allowable for attaining a good end, in this age of violence, suspicion and intrigue. “A certain Religious, Padre Callisto of Piacenza, was preaching at that time in Naples. Vernazza went to him and said: ‘Father, these Neapolitans are a haughty people, and refuse to bend so low as to found hospitals. But during last night the thought came to me that if a person refuses to mount ten steps--it is still possible to get him to go up fifteen; and when such a person had done the latter, he would find that he had unconsciously mounted the ten as well. Now I cannot discover a more humiliating act than the accompanying of those who have been condemned to death, on their way to execution; and in this city they are led to the gallows with their minds in a state of desperation and without any one to comfort them. Well, then, do this. Preach to the people and tell them that the very first men of Naples have been to see you, with a view to founding a society for escorting these unhappy persons; and say to them: “Let him who cares to enter this society, come to me, to be inscribed on the rolls in a secrecy so complete that even a husband shall be unable to tell his wife.”’ And Padre Callisto, after hearing these words, did, devoted man that he was, his very best, and with such good effect that many went to have themselves inscribed. “But many of those Neapolitan nobles reproved him, saying: ‘Perchance you think yourself still in your Lombardy! We are nobles, and we refuse to form an escort for these culprits.’ And he would answer: ‘If your Lordship does not care to go, do not go. It was the very first men of Naples who sought me out, for the purpose of instituting this society.’ And thus it was actually founded, and indeed became very numerous and much honoured; and those unhappy men received much comfort. And later on, this same society proceeded to found the Hospital.”[317]

There is one repulsive feature in this story. For if the declaration that the very first men of the city had visited the preacher was a statement that damaged no one; which but anticipated what actually occurred soon after; and was the means for the effecting of two works, profoundly useful to all concerned in them and which could not, otherwise, at that time and place, have been carried out at all: yet it was a clear untruth. But all the rest, how admirable it is! Moral, and indeed physical courage; cool-headed, humorous, manly because unflinching, and yet quite uncynical and hopeful, knowledge of the petty perversities of the human heart; and entirely devoted, slow excogitation, concentration of will, and toughly resisting perseverance in a work of the purest philanthropy: all this and much else is visibly present.

3. _Ettore’s Will of 1517._

It may well have been after his return from this journey that Vernazza drew up the Will which we still possess, dated 7th November 1517, and which is interesting in several respects.[318] For one thing, he orders his body to be buried in the Church of the SS. Annunziata,--the Hospital Church, and leaves a legacy for Masses “to the Friars of the Annunziata of Genoa.”[319] And he leaves a similar bequest to the Benedictines of San Nicolò in Boschetto. It is clear that he wanted to be buried in the same Hospital Church as Catherine, and had a devotion similar to hers for the Pilgrimage Church upon the hill.

Secondly, there are careful records and provisions concerning his three children. As to his two eldest, Tommasa (Battista) and Catetta (Daniela), he simply looks back and “declares that he gave to his two daughters that are in the Monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie, to them or to the said Monastery, three thousand Genoese pounds from his own property, and two hundred pounds in addition,--(the latter) spent upon their rooms, habits, and other requisites.” And that “these sums are to be counted as taking the place of dowries which would have accrued to them” (in case of marriage). But as to the youngest, Ginevrina, he looks both back and forwards. “The same Testator is well aware that he placed the said Ginevrina in the Monastery of Saint Andrew,[320] that she might grow up with good morals and in the fear of God, since Testator was unable to keep her by him, having very often been obliged, for the transaction of business in favour of the poor and for other charitable works, to proceed to Rome and other places; and that there existed written directions (of his) in the hands of the Nuns, as to Ginevrina being free, in due time and at the proper age, to choose either to serve God (in Religion), or to marry according to the social rank of the Testator.” And he confirms a legacy of £500, already promised by him to Ginevrina “as appears from a certain document signed by the Abbess of the said Monastery of Saint Andrew”: this money being no doubt in addition to another sum already paid by him to the Convent; and the whole is evidently intended to pay for Ginevrina’s keep, if necessary for life, in case she neither entered Religion nor married. “In case of her becoming a Nun and making her Profession in the said Monastery, he leaves her £100, for the adapting and furnishing of one room for her use; nor can these £100 be spent otherwise.” And if she chooses to wed, the Protectors of the Incurables, his Executors and Heirs, “are to marry her to some young man of good reputation and behaviour, apt at managing his own affairs and at earning money,--all this as perfectly as possible, according to the judgment of the said Protectors.” If she thus marries with their consent, she is to have £3,000 for her dowry; but if she marries without it, she is to have only £1,500.

Here we note Ettore’s high esteem for business capabilities: they are to be required of his possible son-in-law, as one of the conditions for gaining the full dowry; and the curiously unmodern certainty with which he assumes that his still quite young daughter will desire, should she become a Nun, to do so at Sant’ Andrea, and, should she neither wed nor enter Religion, is sure to care to live on for life in this one convent. As a matter of fact Ginevrina, who was evidently very happy at Sant’ Andrea, took the veil there, still during her father’s lifetime, hence within seven years of this date, as Sister Maria Archangela.[321]

And thirdly, we get the striking provision that “any member of the Society of Priests and Laymen” who administer the Hospital for Incurables, “shall have the use of the furniture of the Testator (there remaining), on condition that such member live in this Hospital or in that of the Pammatone (hard by), and not otherwise.” He thus comes back here, once again, to one of the deepest convictions of his life: that only by actually living amongst and with the poor, poor yourself; only by doing the work which the right hand finds to do, with such might and thoroughness that both hands, indeed the whole man, body and soul, are drawn into, and are, as it were, coloured by it: that only by such fraternal-paternal sympathetic identification with its object can such service really rise above the dreary perfunctoriness and the ghastly optimism of mere officialism, and have the fruitfulness begotten only by life directly touching life. And here Catherine’s spirit and example, her long life in the very midst of the great Hospital close at hand, are once more fully apparent.

4. _Ettore in the Genoese prisons._

And, about this time, Vernazza introduced into Genoa the practice and Society which he had first founded in Naples. It was carried out, here also, in the profoundest secrecy. His “Company of St. John the Baptist Beheaded” consisted of himself and three companions: Salvage, Lomellino, and Grimaldo. The Lomellini now owned Giuliano’s former Palace in the Via S. Agnese, and the Grimaldi were one of the great Guelph families of Genoa. These four “took a house with a garden, in an out-of-the-way position; and there they started their association. And ever after, when the members met, they always prayed for these their four founders; and always, my Father being dead, began with his name: ‘Dominus Hector de Vernatia requiescat in pace.’” “I once,” adds Battista, “asked the priest who was their Confessor: ‘What matters do they discuss, when they are thus assembled?’ But he answered: ‘I may not tell’; and put on a particular expression and said: ‘The Hospital for Incurables has only ten thousand lire, and it spends twenty-six thousand. And the _Giuseppine_ and the _Convertite_’ (two other favourite good works of Vernazza) ‘have also to be provided for!’”[322] Evidently the subject-matter of all this elaborate secrecy consisted in plans and means for aiding the condemned (often enough innocent or but politically guilty persons) and benefiting the poor; and the privacy was an imperious necessity in those harsh, turbulent and suspicious times. It was Vernazza’s own Roman patron and collaborator, the Neapolitan Cardinal Caraffa, who later on, as Pope, imprisoned for two years (1557-1559), in the Castle of St. Angelo, the great and saintly Cardinal Morone, on ungrounded suspicion of heresy; and it was his other patron and most intimate fellow-worker, the Genoese Cardinal Sauli, who, later on, was himself tortured and put to death, the victim of political hatred and suspicion, in his own native city.

And now, (conversely from 1461, when a Fregoso Doge had driven out an Adorno,) an Adorno Doge had just driven out and exiled a Fregoso, and had executed Paolo da Novi. And Vernazza “knew well a close friend of this Doge Adorno, one who indeed had helped him to his dignity. And yet afterwards they became mortal enemies, and the Doge condemned his former close friend to death. Now this man having been,” continues Battista, “attended by some one all night, who tried to comfort him and bring him to patience, the poor prisoner somehow derived no consolation from his attendant’s endeavours, but went on repeating: ‘When I remember all that I have done for him…!’ And it was impossible to quiet him. Then he who was spending the wakeful night with him, having noted that all his words had been hitherto of no avail, inspired by God, took another way and said: ‘Indeed and indeed you are right,’ and made himself infirm with the infirm, and echoed all that the prisoner said, making it appear as though he himself, in a similar case, would be likely to act identically. And then, and only then, the condemned man began to feel relief, and started the telling of his own trouble. And when his companion had agreed to all his points, and at last noticed that the prisoner had thoroughly ventilated all his grievance, he said: ‘Indeed, my dear brother, you do not merit this death; but reflect whether, before these occurrences, you did not perform some action which merited it.’ Then the latter reconsidered his case, and said at last: ‘Yes,--I killed a man.’ And his companion replied: ‘Behold, my brother, the true cause of your death’; and added other most appropriate words with such good effect that the man became profoundly contrite and died in the very best dispositions of soul.” “Now I think,” comments Battista, “that the companion was a member of the Society of St. John Baptist, and was, indeed, my Father himself; since my Father told me the story too much in vivid detail (_troppo per sottile_) for him to have been only a reporter. I believe that, to this hour, this society is carrying on the same kind of work.”[323]

Here again we have the same irrepressible, humorously resourceful, tenderly shrewd and world-experienced service of God, in and through His image, in any and every fellow-man; the same breadth in thoroughness; the same universality working itself out, and achieving its substance and self-consciousness, in the particular, as we saw at work in Naples. And this activity, all but its humour, recalls the soaring, world-embracing spirit of Catherine absorbed in self-identification with the pestiferous woman’s dying aspirations and with the cancer-disfigured navvy’s preoccupations for his little wife.

VIII. ETTORE AGAIN IN NAPLES; HIS DEATH IN GENOA; PECULIARITIES OF HIS POSTHUMOUS FAME.

1. _Naples and the Signora Lunga._

It must have been before this prison experience, for Ottaviano Fregoso was still Doge, that Vernazza was again in Naples, and that a thoroughly characteristic, romantic little episode occurred, which not all her seventy-one years of convent life, and the sixty years that had elapsed since its happening, prevent Battista from recounting with a delightfully entire sympathy.

Here in Naples, then, “he joined hands with a certain rich lady, called the Signora Lunga, for the purpose of procuring as many things as possible” for the institutions which he himself had founded or occasioned. This lady, a Spaniard, had been the wife (she was now the widow) of Giovanni Lungo or Longo, President of the Sacred Council.[324] “They went together from house to house, begging for mattresses” for the Hospital. “And this lady now withdrew from the world at large, and lived in that Hospital, and governed and ruled it; and combined with this the execution of other works of mercy. And she had so great a devotion for my Father, that she was wont to say to him: ‘If you were to tell me to cut and wound my own person, indeed I would straightway do it.’ But on Fregoso writing and pressing him to return to Genoa, Vernazza wrote back, that if he, the Doge, promised to be favourable to him, and to help him in a good work which he had in his mind, he, Vernazza, would come at once. And the Doge wrote back that he would do all that Vernazza wished. And then, one morning early” (no doubt at dawn), “not wishing that the Signora Lunga should see him depart, he got into the saddle. And she, by good chance, saw him, and asked him: ‘Where are you going?’ And he struck his spurs into his mule: ‘To Genoa,’ he cried; and flew away; and never saw the Signora Lunga any more.”[325]

Something fresh and bracing breathes and beats here still. We have here the same man who, devoted in every good and filial way to Catherine, had yet left her, no doubt then also on an errand of large-hearted mercy, even in those last days of her life; who now, once again, breaks suddenly away; and who does so again at the call of souls entirely without conventional claims upon him, and who are quite unable to repay him with anything that merely drifting nature ever can hold dear. But here the relation is evidently not that of a man towards a woman much older than himself, and of the spiritual discipleship of a relatively inexperienced soul towards one already far advanced in sanctity: it is clearly one of at least parity of age,--perhaps, indeed, the woman was the younger of the two,--and of largely equal companionship, which would presumably, unchecked, have easily led on to an entirely honourable and happy marriage. And thus, once again, his devotedness had to live and thrive on concrete, untransferable renouncements and sacrifices claimed by his true self in that unique moment and situation: and this too although he will have been at least tempted wistfully to try and delude himself with the monstrous superstition of an automatic sanctity, a merely theoretic and yet somehow real heroism.

2. _The Plague and Ettore’s death in Genoa, June 1524._

“And, arrived in Genoa,” Vernazza “revealed the secret of his heart to the Doge, and his Lordship gave him seven thousand lire and the Privilege,”--the latter being necessary, “since no one cared to have the Lazaretto” (for this was Vernazza’s project) “in proximity to their villas,” and hence the Government had to insist upon its foundation upon the least inconvenient of the various possible sites. And Vernazza in consequence “began to construct a great building for the poor victims of the Plague, and presented it with an endowment of one hundred shares of St. George’s, leaving them to multiply, so that at his death they had increased by eleven shares; and now” (in 1581) “they have reached a great number of thousands of pounds.” And after continuing with an account of his further Bank dispositions, and of his early attempts to help the poor (already given by us), Battista finishes up this part of her account by declaring: “he was wont to go about saying, with conviction and great confidence, that he hoped all things from God; and that, whenever he put his hand to anything, God put the yeast into that paste.”[326]

And her mention of the Lazaretto then leads her on to the final, still vivid and yet self-restrained, account of her father’s death. “The Plague being very severe (_calda_) in Genoa,”--it was past mid-June 1524,--“he came to visit me, and said to me: ‘What do you think I had better do? I am determined in no manner to forsake the poor. Do you think I had better go about on horseback or on foot? In which way do you think I would be safest from infection?’ ‘Oh, Father,’ I said, ‘here we are coming to the Feast of the Baptist, and are at the highest of the heat; and you are determined to go amongst them?’ And he: ‘And is it my fate, to hear such things from you? How truly happy should I be, if I were to die for the poor!’ Then I, seeing so much fortitude in that holy soul, said to him: ‘Father, go.’ But he was not content with looking after the Lazaretto: I think that he scoured the country far and wide. And hence he caught the infection. And on the” (Eve of) “the Feast of the Nativity of St. John Baptist,” June 23, “he confessed and communicated. And in three days he quietly fell asleep in the Lord.”[327]

Surely rarely has so noble a finish been so nobly told! And two things in particular are deserving of special notice. First, there is here again that characteristic combination of quiet reflective common-sense and self-oblivious devotedness. Who could anticipate that the man who so carefully weighed the respective risks of different methods of visiting the sick, would, at the same time, be full of a glad willingness, indeed desire, to die for them? Yet not only does this rich soul exhibit such a living paradox, with an apparent ease and spontaneity, but it is this very extraordinary variety in unity that is an operative cause and element both of the greatness of the act and of its appealingness.

And secondly, it is, I think, not far-fetched to find in this heroic death-ride, if not a direct or even a conscious effect, yet at all events an impressive illustration of, and practical parallel to, Catherine’s teaching as to Heaven being already present everywhere where pure love energizes, and to her picture of the soul’s glad Purgatorial plunge. We know that it was Vernazza himself who, say in 1497, drew forth from her that teaching; and we shall find that it was predominantly he who so carefully registered for us in writing those numerous, vivid picturings of the soul’s joyously voluntary self-dedication to suffering and apparent death. And whether at the moment fully conscious of this or not, his act of some twenty years later illustrates and embodies that teaching; and that teaching again universalizes and brings home to us this action. High on horseback he goes forth, the strong, sound-bodied, whole-hearted man, deliberately sure of finding and of bringing Heaven, wheresoever pure love may be wanted and may joyously appear: joyously fruitful, amidst the very ghastliness of death. And he is rapidly brought low, first on to his bed of sickness, and in a few days into the grave. Indeed he himself had, by his own act, gladly accepted, we may say willed, all this: he himself had cast himself down and away into that deep common fosse, amongst the many thousands of his ever-obscure and now disfigured friends and fellow-dead.

3. _His posthumous fame; its unlikeness to Catherine’s celebrity._

For so it was indeed. Instead of burial in the Pammatone Church, under the same roof with his saintly inspirer, the poor pestilential body was buried away, amongst the whole army of others who, like himself, had died of the Plague, without a stone or token of any kind, to mark where this simple hero lay. Nor was it till 1633, over a century later, that a statue was erected to him at his Lazaretto. For the bust in the rooms of his “Compagnia del Mandiletto” is hardly older; and the hideous gaunt plaster statue in the Albergo dei Poveri is no doubt much younger still.

Only in 1867, on June 23, the anniversary of the day on which he prepared himself to die, was a memorial erected to him which is truly worthy of the man. Santo Varni’s more than life-size marble statue, which represents Vernazza seated, a strongly built man still in his years of vigour, with a head and countenance striking because of their lofty brow, powerful chin, spiritual, mobile lips, large, keen, far-outward-looking eyes; and with thoroughly individual, operative yet sensitive hands, the left extended open, as though to give and ever again to give, and the right reposing upon the case containing the Chart of the Hospital’s foundation: stands, a striking symbol, in the vestibule of the Hospital for Incurables which he founded, where for fifteen years he lived, and where he died.[328] One would be glad to think that the likeness of this admirable work of art reposed upon grounds more direct than one or other of the very late and unworthy representations that preceded it; the authentic portrait of his daughter Battista,[329] who may, after all, have been unlike him in looks; and the sympathetic imagination of a great artist. It was Vernazza himself who prevented any contemporary representation of his own features. For Battista tells us, in her letter of 1581, “he also mortified himself in any inclination to honour. Thus, as is well known, when the Lazaretto had been erected, and he was asked to have his portrait painted to be placed there, he answered: ‘I do not want smoke,’ and refused to act as he was bidden.”[330]

Now here we cannot but find a contrast between Catherine and Ettore; yet it only concerns their posthumous earthly fate and fame. A picture of Catherine was, no doubt, no more painted in her lifetime with her knowledge than was a portrait of Ettore. Yet we know that, in her case, a picture was painted, if not secretly during her lifetime, in any case by some eyewitness, and not more than eighteen months after her death; and a popular religious Cultus to her sprang up and grew, on occasion of that early opening of her coffin. But Ettore has to wait over a century for his first artistic embodiment, and of religious Cultus there was never any question.[331] Whence this difference? Have we any kind of reason for suspecting Ettore’s heroism, indeed sanctity of life and death? Was he indeed clearly much the lesser in the Kingdom of God than was his friend?

The question, it will be noted, does not imply any criticism of the Church’s wise requirement of a previous Cultus, as one of the conditions for the introduction of any and every Process; still less is there any disposition to call in question the choice of Catherine for saintly honours, a choice which this whole book would hope to demonstrate as particularly courageous, wise and indeed providential. The point raised concerns simply the psychology of popular devotion, and the human reason why, given that one was certainly a Saint and the other was presumably another one, there is this marked contrast in the posthumous history of these two lives.

Now if the question be taken thus, the answer can hardly be doubtful. Certainly not because of her profoundly original doctrine, by which Catherine is speculatively more interesting and humanly more complete than Vernazza, was Catherine prized and preferred to Vernazza by the crowd. Nor did they single her out precisely because of her works and long life of mercy, for Vernazza’s labours of this kind no doubt exceeded Catherine’s, both in their variety and in their visible extension. But it was the psycho-physical peculiarities of the life of Catherine, and the more or less complete incorruption of the body: these two things, neither of which has any necessary connection with that faithful and heroic use of free-will and that spirit and grace of God in which the whole substance of sanctity consists, which, each leading on and back to and strengthening the impression and tradition of the other, determined the outbreak and onflow of popular devotion in the one case, and the absence of which prevented the growth of any such cultus in the other. And thus we have here one more instance of the pathetic irony of fate, or rather one of those many mysterious operations of the divine will which, under the ebb and flow of influences that seem merely human and deteriorative, works in history for the slow upward-raising of our poor kind.

When the well-known ecstatic Augustinian Nun, Anne Catharine Emmerich, died at Dülmen, in Westphalia, on February 6, 1824, her remains also were not long allowed to rest undisturbed in the grave. Already in mid-March the poetess Luise Hensel, who had much loved and venerated her, caused the grave to be opened quite privately, in hopes of finding the body still incorrupt, and of once more being able to gaze on that striking countenance. And a few days later, on March 21 and 22, the grave and coffin were again, this time officially, opened. In both cases the body was found still incorrupt, and two pale red spots appeared on the cheeks. But when, on October 6, 1858, the grave was opened a third and last time, nothing was found of the coffin but one nail, and the body was now represented only by so many separate bones.[332] Now when, some twenty years ago, I visited Dülmen in the company of a distinguished Münster Priest, the latter told me, as we stood together by the grave-side, that this discovery had greatly checked the survivals or beginnings of any such local and popular cultus as had been expected and hoped for by Anne Catharine’s, mostly distant or foreign, admirers.

Similar cases it would be easy to multiply; and they all point to the great advantage, probably to the actually determining incentive, which accrued to the Cultus of Catherine, in that her body continued more or less incorrupt, and thus added a sensible marvel after death to the sensible marvels of her fasts and ecstasies during life. Whereas Catharine Emmerich’s analogous psycho-physical condition during life was not thus reinforced by an unusual physical condition after death. And Ettore, again, had evidently nothing physically, or even psycho-physically, abnormal about him, either in life or in death.