Chapter X: makes the Soul for the first time address “the Lord,” “O (2)

(1) Chapters First and Second consist of such questions and answers, and conclude with an, abruptly introduced, account of her former spiritual conversations with her friends, which (though based upon the beautiful document in the _Vita_-proper, pp. 94_b_-95_c_, and upon the fragment there, p. 97_b_, and though the narrative here has a certain noble warmth of its own) is given here merely as a something to be transcended, and which, by now, had been actually left far behind. Thus, as in Parts First and Second the _Dialogo_ had given a characteristically rigoristic, indeed exaggerating, account of her Conversation and her later Purification respectively, so here again this curious book is more severe than are the authentic accounts on which it otherwise relies.

(2) Chapter Third gives a question and answer as to the comprehensibility of this love. The answer incorporates Catherine’s description of her soul as, so to speak, under water in an ocean of peace; and interestingly turns the “scintilla,” the “spark of love,” into a “stilla,” a “drop,” suggested, no doubt, by the “goccia,” “the drop of love,” which figured so prominently in Catherine’s great conversation with her spiritual children.[431]--Chapters Fourth to Sixth open out with a page where the Lord declares how the pure and love-absorbed Soul alone holds Love (p. 253); and consist, for the rest, of exclamatory descriptions of this love, the soul proffering first ten “O Amore” apostrophes (pp. 253_c_-258_b_), then one “O Amore puro” address (pp. 259_c_, 260_a_). And the tenth of those apostrophes introduces a characteristic sentence from the _Vita_-proper: “the Soul,--if bereft of charity,--when it is separated from the Body, would, rather than present itself thus before that (Divine) cleanness and simplicity, cast itself into Hell.”[432]--And Chapter Seventh then makes the Lord ask the Soul to tell him some of the words which it addresses to Love; the Soul does so, and the Lord approves of them (pp. 260_b_-261_b_).

(3) And then Chapter Eighth begins a narrative piece (pp. 261_c_-263_c_); but which, after a transitional, exclamatory paragraph (p. 263_c_), arrives at three short questions and answers. The first two questions and answers are by the Soul and the Lord respectively; the third question and answer are respectively by the Lord and the Soul (pp. 264_a_, _b_). We shall presently see that, in this set of short sentences, we have reached the culmination of the whole _Dialogo_, and that, in astonishingly explicit daring, they exceed any and all of Catherine’s authentic sayings.

(4) Chapter Ninth then gives a narrative description of the apparently empty and abandoned condition of the advanced Soul, and, for this purpose carefully utilizes (whilst completely altering the meaning and context of) Marabotto’s description of Catherine’s first Confession to him. And in its last paragraph it again (but here with less change) incorporates other passages of that descriptive Chapter.[433] Then comes Chapter Tenth, with a short question and answer between the Lord and the Soul, the latter partly in verse (p. 267_a_). And this is followed by two descriptive paragraphs, how that this soul “seemed to mount above Paradise itself”; “this heart is transformed into a tabernacle of God”; and “such souls, were they but known, would be adored upon earth” (pp. 267_b_, _c_; 268_a_).

(5) This description is followed by a long rapturous suspension of the dialogue form, since here the Writer himself addresses successively, in three “O” paragraphs, the “soul, heart, and mind”; “Love”; and “the Spirit naked and invisible.” And, after a little exclamation as to the inadequacy of all words (this also is introduced by an “O”), he similarly invokes (in three other “O” paragraphs), “my tender Lord”; the “infinite Good”; and “the Lord” (pp. 268_b_-269_c_).--The present, most unskilful, division makes Chapter Eleventh begin with these last three of the seven “O’s.” And after the seventh “O” paragraph and a descriptive passage, still addressed to “the Lord,” composed of five “Thou” sentences, follows another short interruption,--apologizing for the delay in the narrative and the inadequacy of the words used. And then two “Oimè,” and one “O terra, terra” paragraph finish up the Writer’s exclamations, and bring us back to the interrupted dialogue-form (pp. 269_c_-271_b_). Here again a violent division has been effected in the text by Chapter Twelfth being made to exclude the first, but to include, the second “Oimè” (p. 271_a_). And this Chapter, after finishing the “Terra-terra” paragraph, and, with it, the whole digression, re-opens the dialogue with a curious, serpentine, all but unbroken series of seven questions of the Soul and answers of the Lord, in which each successive question picks up the previous answer and point reached, and tries to reach a deeper one. “What is Thine Operation within man? A Moving of the heart of man. And this Movement? A Grace. And this Grace? A Ray of Love. And this Ray of Love? An Arrow. And this Arrow? A Glimpse (Scintilla) of love. And this Glimpse? An Inspiration.” And at this point, description is declared to be unable to proceed further (pp. 271_b_-272_c_.)

(6) And then Chapter Thirteenth finishes up the whole by two questions and descriptive answers. The first question and answer passes between the Writer’s own mind and his heart, and thus again constitutes a break in the dialogue; and the second question and answer occurs between the Lord and the Soul. The first answer dwells upon personal experience, as the sole means of some real apprehension of Love; and the second answer concludes the whole book with a majestic paraphrase of Catherine’s doctrine as to the immanental, inevitable, self-determined, and self-endorsed character of the Soul’s joys and sufferings, here and hereafter, on Earth, in Purgatory, indeed in Hell itself (pp. 273_a_-275_a_). Such passages as these make up for much of the often painfully intense, abstract, schematic, rigoristic, and too exclusively transcendental character of this remarkable book, and explain its fascination for a mind of such rare experience and breadth as was that of Friedrich Schlegel. I shall presently group together the finest sayings peculiar to the work.

VIII. SEVENTH STAGE CONTINUED: MINUTE ANALYSIS OF ONE PASSAGE FROM THE SECOND “CHAPTER.”

But I must still give for this last “Chapter,” as I did for the First “Chapter,” a synoptic demonstration, by means of one example among many, of the strange manner in which the _Dialogo_-writer combines the most detailed dependence on the materials of the _Vita_-proper with the most sovereign independence concerning the chronology, context, and drift of those same materials.--And again I choose an originally unique occurrence and description, so as to eliminate all possibility of an explanation by an original multiplicity of facts and accounts.

_Catherine as “Garzonzello” or “Figliuolino.”_

_Dialogo_ (_Vita_), p. _Vita_-proper, pp.--
266_a_, _b_, _c_.

Il corpo, essendo costretto 117_b_. Non potendosi
seguire l’anima, resta per quel sopportare, per non aver più
tempo quasi senz’ anima, operazione nè sentimenti dell’
senza umano conforto, anima, col corpo tutto debole.…

… e non si sà nè si può 117_c_. “Io non so dove mi
aiutare. sia.”

Però è di bisogno che dagli 127_a_. Quali la servivano
altri sia aiutato, ovvero restavano stupefatti, non sapendo
occultamente da Dio gli sia che farle.
provveduto, altrimenti restarebbe 120_a_. … provveduto tal
quella creatura abbandonata bisogno, a lui non restava di
essa provisione memoria
alcuna.

121_a_. Perseverò molti anni
con bisogno che il Confessore
le stasse d’ appresso, per
sostentare l’umanità.

117_c_. Dei peccati che diceva
non le erano lasciato vedere
come peccati che avesse …
come un figliuolino, il quale, fatti, ma come d’un garzonzello,
non avendo i suoi bisogni, il quale da giovinetto fà
altro riparo non ha se non di qualche cosa di cui è ignorante,
piangere tanto che gli sieno il quale, essendogli
dati. detto “tu hai fatto male” per
questa parola muta subito di
colore e diventa rosso, ma non
già perchè conosce il male.

Non è dunque meraviglia, 119_c_. “Non posso più sopportare
se a simili creature Iddio tanti assedi esteriori
provvede di particolari persone ed interiori; per questo mi
che le aiutino, e per ha Iddio provveduto del
mezzo loro sia alle necessità vostro mezzo … quando da
dell’ anima e del’ corpo sovvenuto, mè siete partito, vò lamentadomi
altrimenti non potriano per la casa.”
vivere.

120_a_. era di bisogno che il
Confessore non si partisse da
lei.… Dio, sempre glieli
Vedi come il nostro Signor dava … tutti i sussidi all
Gesù Christo lasciò _a_ San anima e al corpo … per
Giovanni [al]la sua diletta mezzo di lui, al quale in quell’
Madre in particolar cura; e instante provedeva di lume
così fece ai suoi discepoli e fà e di parole convenienti alla di
sempre all’ altre sue divote lei necessità.
persone; di modo che l’uno 121_b_. Questa tutto divina
soccorre l’altro, così all’anima … operazione. Il Confessore
come al corpo, con quella era legato col vincolo del
unione divina. divino amore.

E perchè in generale le 117_b_. Dio gli diede lume e
persone non conoscono queste grazia di consoscere quell’
operazioni, nè hanno insieme operazione.
quella unione, perciò a simili 120_b_. E perchè quella continua
cure bisognano particolari persone, conversazione e stretta
colle quali Iddio operi famigliarità facevano alcuni
colla sua grazia e lume. mormorare, non intendendo
l’opera e la necessità.…

Chi vide queste creature e 117_b_. … col corpo tutto
non le intende, gli sono più senza vigore, quasi derelitto
presto d’ ammirazione che in se medesimo.
di edificazione, dunque non
giudicare, se non vuoi errare
… resta l’umanità senza
vigore ed abandonata quasi
come morta.

The _Dialogo_-writer having, as we saw, combined, for the purpose of describing Catherine’s latter-day habits, _V.’s_ account of her unusually peaceful dispositions of soul, obtaining in 1499, with _V.’s_ account of her Penance and Confessions in 1473: now utilizes here Marabotto’s account of her Confessions to him from 1499 onwards (an account which the writer had rejected there), for an entirely different purpose and context than those developed by the Confessor himself. For, in the _Vita_-proper account, it is in connection with the Confession of her sins that we get the highly original and curious “garzonzello” parallel; and Catherine’s lamentations do not there occur in any relation to this parallel, but they arise only when Marabotto is not at hand to comfort her. In the _Dialogo_-version it is simply in relation to this requirement of his presence and to its postponement, that Catherine behaves like a “figliuolino,” and cries till she gets what she wants. And yet there is not the slightest doubt that it is really the “Garzonzello” Confession-passage which (left unutilized by the writer in his account of the Contrition and Confessions of her last period, _Dialogo_, pp. 231_c_-232_b_, no doubt because of the difficulty and apparent temerity of the facts and doctrines implied), has here been used after all, but with all its originality and daring carefully eliminated from it. For nowhere else, in the _Vita_-proper, does a “Garzonzello”-passage or language, or anything like them, occur; nowhere else again, in the _Dialogo_ does a “figliuolino”-passage or wording, or anything really resembling them, appear; and these two, respectively unique and very peculiar, passages, both occur at one and the same stage of her life, and in connection with one and the same couple of persons.

IX. SEVENTH STAGE CONCLUDED: CHARACTER AND AUTHORSHIP OF THIS SECOND “CHAPTER.”

Let us take these two points simultaneously, and move, from the more formal and literary qualities, through indications of the more or less external life-circumstances of the author, on to the writer’s special views and aims in psychology and spirituality.

1. _The writer’s power._

The following passages, all more or less peculiar to the _Dialogo_, suffice, I think, to prove his power.

At the beginning of these, her last nine years, the Lord explains to Catherine the means by which Love may be known: “My love can be better known by means of interior experience than in any other way; if man is to acquire it, Love must snatch man from man himself, since it is man himself who is his own chief impediment,”[434]--a passage that recalls Thackeray’s _Arthur Pendennis, his Friends and his Greatest Enemy_--namely, his own self.

These years are, a little later, described in language no doubt suggested, probably through some Patristic passage, by Plato, the harmonious. “This soul now abode like a musical instrument which, as long as it remains furnished with chords, gives forth sweet sounds; but which, bereft of them, is silent. Thus she too, in the past, by means of the sentiments of soul and body, was wont to render so sweet a harmony, that every one who heard it rejoiced in it; but now, alienated from those sentiments, as it were without” psychic “chords, she remained entirely bare and mute.”[435]

And we are told of “words which the heart alone speaks to the soul alone”[436]--a passage which recalls Pascal’s saying, “The heart has reasons which Reason does not know.”

Amongst the rapturous addresses we find, “O Spirit naked and invisible! No man can hold thee (here below), because of thy very nakedness! Thy dwelling-place is in Heaven, even whilst, joined to the body, thou happenest still to tarry upon earth! Thou dost not know thine own self, nor art thou known by others in this world. All thy friends and (true) relatives are in Heaven, recognized by thee alone, through an interior instinct infused by the Spirit of God.”[437] An apostrophe which, in part, strongly recalls Henry Vaughan’s poem, “They are all gone into a world of light, and I alone am lingering here.”

The final address in this series of apostrophes to Love, God, contains the sentences: “O Lord, how great is Thy loving care, both by day and by night, for man who knows not even his own self, and far less Thee, O Lord. Thou art that great and high God, of whom we cannot speak or think, because of the ineffable super-eminence of Thy Greatness, Power, Wisdom, and Goodness infinite. Thou labourest in man and for man with Thy Love, and in return Thou willest that the whole man should act for Love, and this because, without Love, nothing good can be produced. Thou workest solely for man’s true utility; and Thou willest that man should operate solely for Thine honour, and not for his own (separate) utility.”[438] A passage strongly coloured by Dionysian ideas.

And yet the writer continues to think and to write, but says: “These words of mine are like ink: for ink is black and of an evil odour; and yet, by its means, many ideas are apprehended, which otherwise would be ignored altogether.”[439] Here we have an image, based as it is upon a vivid sensible perception of a chemical compound, which reminds one of the epatic-agaric passage in “Chapter” First of the _Dialogo_, and of the reference to cassia in Battista’s letter of 1581.[440]

And the whole Book finishes up with two impressive passages. The first, as to the means of knowing Love, is as Pauline as is most of the remaining doctrine of the _Dialogo_: “Not by means of external signs, nor even by martyrdoms, can this love be comprehended. Only he who actually experiences it can understand something of it.”[441] And the second concludes all with a forcible and comprehensive paraphrase of Catherine’s central doctrine,--as to the Soul’s condition and action, revealed at the moment of death: “Every man bears within his own self the sentence of his own judgment, pronounced indeed by God, yet each man himself ratifies it, in and for his own case and self. There is no place totally bereft of God’s mercy. The very souls in Hell itself would suffer a greater Hell outside of it than they do within it.”[442]--We have had repeated proofs of how great were Battista’s gifts and experience in such-like eloquent writing, from the earlier _Dialogo_-Chapter, and from her _Colloquies_ and _Letters_.

2. _Indications of special knowledge._

I am compelled to pass over the emotional rhythm, and the mystical ambiguity and paradox, that appear, in identical forms, in Battista’s avowed writings and here. But we must briefly dwell upon some special sources of interest in Catherine, and of certain knowledge of a peculiar kind, traceable in the writer of this second “Chapter”; both sets of passages clearly point to Battista as their author.

(1) There is the deeply-felt description of Catherine’s conversation with her disciples: “This soul would many times abide with her spiritual friends, discoursing of the Divine Love, in suchwise that it appeared to them all as though they were in Paradise. And indeed, what delightful colloquies took place! Both he who spoke and he who listened, one and all would get nourished by spiritual food, of a sweet and delectable kind. And, because the time sped so quickly, they could not attain to satiety; but they would abide so enkindled and inflamed, that they knew not what more to say. And yet they could not depart, and would seem as though in an ecstasy. Oh! what loving repasts, what delightful food, what sweet viands, what a gracious union, what a divine companionship!”[443]--Now it is true that the writer has here certainly utilized four pregnantly descriptive lines in the _Vita_-proper, and the fine account there, undoubtedly by Ettore Vernazza, as regards these conversations.[444] Yet one readily feels, at the moved and moving tone of the re-telling here, that the writer was specially impelled to dwell with a tender, living sympathy upon those meetings of forty years ago. Now Battista must, of course, again and again, have heard from her Father’s own lips, during those fourteen years that he lived on after Catherine’s great soul had gone to God, of these unforgettable talks, in which he himself had played so large a part, as questioner, interpreter, and chronicler.

(2) And the other set of passages points, even more definitely, to the same daughter and father. Catherine’s “humanity,” being threatened by the Spirit with various future sufferings, asks to be told the precise offence, charge (_la causa_), which will bring so great a martyrdom with it, without hope of any help. But “she was answered that this grace,” of knowing exactly what and why she should suffer, “would be accorded to her in due time, as happens with men condemned to death, who, by hearing read aloud to them the precise sentence pronounced upon their specific misdeeds, support with a greater peace of mind their ignominious death.”--And: “Since I am forsaken on all sides,” Catherine says to God, “give me at least, O Lord, some person that may be able to understand and comfort me, amidst the torments that I see coming upon me--as men are wont to do for those who are condemned to death, so that the latter may not despair.”--And the natural man in such advanced souls is described as suspended in mid-air, “like unto one who is hung, and who touches not the ground with his feet, but abides in the air, attached to the cord which has caused his death.”[445] Ettore’s life-long, detailed interest in, and experience of, prisoners and condemned men, whom he, the Founder of the Society of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, so loved to attend and help throughout their last night and at the scaffold, speak here through the devoted daughter who, countless times, must have listened to that father’s prison-experiences, which we found her describing, still most vividly, in 1581, thirty years after the publication of these _Dialogo_-passages.[446]

3. _Schematic, intensely abstract psychology._

At this spiritual stage “there was, as it were, a chain. God, Spirit, draws to Himself the Spirit of man, and there this Spirit abides completely occupied. The Soul, which cannot abide without the Spirit, follows the Spirit, and is there kept occupied. And the Body, which is subject to the Soul, thus prevented from possessing its natural sensations and its natural sustenance, remains, as it were, forsaken and outside of its natural being.”--“God at times allowed the Spirit to correspond with the Soul, and the Soul with the Body.… But when God withdrew that Spirit into Himself, all the rest (the Soul) followed after it; and hence the Body remained like dead.” The two dividings, first of the Soul from the Body, and then of the Soul from the Spirit, so much emphasized in those other documents,[447] is thus carried through in this “Chapter” also.

4. _Rigorism._

We find here the same exaggeration as to Catherine’s faults and contrition, and the same rigoristic doctrine as in “Chapter” First, although, here also, counterbalanced by a noble tenderness of heart. Thus her but semi-conscious attachment to, and self-attribution of, spiritual consolations, is here magnified into a grave sin. “How can I act, so as to make satisfaction for this sin, which is so great and so subtle?” her soul asks God, concerning but semi-conscious attachment to spiritual consolations. And of her social affections, as manifested in her great colloquies with her friends, Catherine now says, “All other loves” than the direct love of God “now appear to me as worse than sheer self-loves.”--“She began to confess her sins with so great a contrition that it appeared a wonderful thing,” we are told of Catherine, in 1499-1510; yet we know, from the unimpeachable testimony of Don Marabotto himself, that “the wonderful thing” about these latter Confessions was precisely the absence of that former keen sense of, and sorrow for, specific sins.[448]

5. _Pronounced Christo-centrism and daring Anthropomorphism._

We get, again, the predominance of the Personal conceptions and imagery over those of Thing or Law, and the same greater attention to the historical element of religion, that characterize Battista’s writings and “Chapter First” of the _Dialogo_, as against Catherine’s authentic sayings.

Catherine’s energetic repudiation of “the corrupt expression, ‘You have offended God,’” is replaced by God saying to Catherine, “Know that I cannot be offended by man, except when he raises an obstacle to the work which I have ordained for his good.”[449] Catherine has angrily declared that the term could never be correctly used; the _Dialogo_ explains how special and metaphorical is its correct use.

The Lord declares here: “I descend with a fine thread of gold, which is My secret love, and to this thread is bound a hook, which seizes the heart of men. I hold this thread in My hand and ever draw it towards Myself.” The hook and hand are additions to her authentic declaration, “She seemed to herself to have in her heart a continuous ray of Love … a thread of gold, as to which she had no fear that it would ever break.”[450]--We get here the Wedding-feast imagery that is entirely wanting in Catherine’s authentic sayings. “There is no shorter way to salvation than (the owning of) this delightful wedding-garment of charity”[451] A garment, generally in a bad sense, is quite Catherinian; a wedding-garment is exclusively Battistan.--And the parallel between St. John’s care of the Blessed Virgin, and Marabotto’s attendance upon Catherine[452] is quite foreign to Catherine’s mind.

And the whole _Dialogo_ culminates in a double, daring yet graduated, anthropomorphic picturing of the deification of the perfect soul, interestingly different from Catherine’s favourite Ocean and Fire similes, and from her description of the Soul as respectively submerged in, and transformed by, this infinite and all-penetrating living Ocean-Fire, God. The Soul asks what is the name which the Lord gives to perfect souls; and the Lord answers (in Latin, as ever with Battista) with the text of Ps. lxxxi, 6: “I have said, ye are Gods, and all of you sons of the Most High”; a text which still leaves us with separate human personalities face to face with the distinct Spirit-Person, God. And then, to the Lord’s question, as to what the Soul declares its heart to be, the Soul answers (this climax has been carefully led up to all along): “I say that it is my God, wounded by love,--in Whom I live joyful and contented.”--For, as in Battista’s own _Colloquy_ of December 10, 1554, we get three simultaneous “voices” at different depths of her consciousness, so here, in this composition of 1550, Catherine hears simultaneously within herself three voices--of the Lord, of her own soul, and of her own heart. And Catherine can here declare that now her heart is God, and God wounded by Love; for Battista can write in 1576 that, in the perfect state, “of the Increate Heart and of the created heart there is made a single, most secret and inestimable union,”[453] and that Increate Heart appears here as wounded, because God is ever, in Battista’s mind, explicitly identified with Christ, and Christ’s Passion is ever in her thoughts. Catherine identifies her true self with God, and God with Love; and conceives her own heart as filled with love and inflamed and pierced by it; but nowhere figures God with a Heart, or that Heart as wounded, for she has little or nothing of Battista’s anthropomorphic tendency in regard to God, or of her historical picturings with regard to Christ.

The entire _Dialogo_ then is the work of Battista Vernazza; and we have to eliminate it, all but completely, from the means and materials directly available for the constitution of Catherine’s life and doctrine. The next Division will now attempt to deal finally with the chief of these means--the _Dimostrazione_ (_Trattato_) and the _Vita_-proper.

SECOND DIVISION: ANALYSIS, ASSIGNATION, AND APPRAISEMENT OF THE “VITA-DOTTRINA-DICCHIARAZIONE” CORPUS, IN EIGHT SECTIONS.

We now find ourselves in face of the most difficult, and the alone directly important, _corpus_ of documents concerning Catherine’s inner life: the _Vita e Dottrina_, together with the _Dicchiarazione_ or _Trattato_. It will be best to begin with this _Trattato_, and only after a careful study of this little book, which, as we know, contains the most original and valuable part of Catherine’s teaching, to finish up with an examination of the, now separate, Life and (other) Doctrine.

I. THE “DICCHIARAZIONE”: THE TWO STAGES OF ITS EXISTENCE.

1. _The “Dicchiarazione,” from the first a booklet by itself._

All the Manuscripts give the _Dicchiarazione_ (_Trattato_) substantially as we have it at present, although ever as but a Chapter of the _Vita e Dottrina_, and not, as yet, itself divided up in any way. Even the last Editions of the Printed _Vita_ still retain a reference to this old arrangement: “The soul purifies itself, as do the souls in Purgatory, according to the process described in the Chapter appropriated to this matter.”[454]

Yet the very length of this “Chapter,” then as now, and the solemn introductory paragraph, both point to its having, at first, formed a booklet by itself. Thus the longest of the other doctrinal Chapters of MS. A (Chapters XV, XVI, XX, and XL) are respectively 29, 22, 19, and 17½ pages long; whilst the _Trattato_-Chapter XLII runs to 46 pages. Only the Narrative-Chapter XLI, the Passion, is of an exactly equal length; but we shall find that this Chapter also existed, originally, in part at least, as a separate document. And the introduction to