Chapter XLIII: , pp. 115a-c, have I long hesitated to attribute (1)

something so insignificant in substance, and yet so pompous in form, to Marabotto, either as action or as composition. Yet I have ended, for the reasons given in my Chapter IV, by thinking that, after all, this scene does go back, more or less, to him.

3. _References to other witnesses._

There are but few other references to witnesses in the _Vita_. On p. 124_a_, in the account of Suor Tommasa Fiesca, there are “the Nuns of her first and second Monastery”--San Silvestro and the Monastero Nuovo,--and “secular persons, her familiar and devoted friends.” I take this admirably vivid and _naïve_ account, pp. 123_b_-124_b_ (which exists in the MSS. without this sentence and Tommasa’s death-date, 1534), to rest upon Suor Tommasa’s own reminiscences of her heaven-storming cousin, but to be the composition of Battista Vernazza.--And on p. 158_c_ “several of the ten Physicians,” who assembled by Catherine’s bedside on September 10, 1510, “are still alive in this year (1551),” but the very vague account of their examination is no doubt due to a non-medical pen.

VI. ANALYSIS OF THE CONVERSION-NARRATIVES.

Let us now take the first of the four Narrative Passages in which the largest or clearest conflations of original documents and of subsequent glosses are traceable: the Conversion-Scene and subsequent Apparition, March 1473; the “Scintilla”-Experience, November 11, 1509; the Temptation of August 23, 1510; and her Death on September 14, 1510. Roman and Arabic numerals indicate the probable provenances from different contributors, and from different narratives of each contributor, respectively; square brackets indicate glosses; and E, C, and B stand respectively for the handiwork of Ettore Vernazza, of Cattaneo Marabotto, and of Battista Vernazza.

THE TWO CONVERSION-SCENES, pp. 4_a_-5_c_.

(_a_) _In the Chapel._

I. 1. Il giorno dopo la Festa di San Benedetto [ad istanza di sua sorella monaca] andò Caterina [per confessarsi d’] al Confessore di esso Monistero, benchè non fosse disposta a confessarsi: ma la sorella le disse, “almanco vattegli a raccommandare, perchè è buon religioso”; ed, in verità era un uomo santo. 2. Subitochè se gli fù inginocchiata innanzi, ricevè una ferita al cuore d’immenso amore di Dio, con una vista così chiara delle sue miserie e diffetti e della bontà di Dio, che nè fù quasi per cascare in terra.

II. 1. Onde per quei sentimenti d’immenso amore e delle offese fatte al suo dolce Iddio, fù talmente tirata [per affetto purgato] fuor delle miserie del mondo, che restò quasi fuor di sè; I. 3. e [perciò] internamente gridava con ardente amore: “non più mondo, non più peccati.” Ed in quel punto, se ella avesse avuto mille mondi, tutti gli avrebbe gettati via.

III. Per la viva fiamma del infocato amore che essa sentiva, il dolce Iddio impresse in quell’ anima, e le infuse, in un subito, tutta la perfezione per grazia: onde la purgò di tutti gli affetti terreni, la illuminò col suo divin lume, facendola vedere coll’ occhio interiore la sua dolce bontà, e finalmente in tutto la unì, mutò e trasformò in sè, per vera unione di buona volontà, accendendola da ogni parte col suo vivo amore.

[Stando la Santa per quella dolce ferita quasi alienata da’ sensi innanzi al confessore e senza poter parlare]

I. 4. Nè avvedendosi il Confessore del fatto, per caso fù chiamato e levasi. Dappoichè assai presto fù retornato, non potendo ella appena parlare per l’intrinseco dolore ed immenso amore, allo meglio che potè gli disse: “Padre, se vi piacesse, lascerei volontieri questa Confessione per un’ altra volta”: e così fù fatto. 5. Si parti dunque Caterina e retornata a casa [si sentì così accesa e ferita di tanto amor di Dio, a lei interiormente mostrato colla vista delle sue miserie, che pareva fuors di sè] ed entrata in una camera la più segreta che potè, ivi molto pianse [e sospirò con gran fuoco].

[In quel punto fù istrutta intrinsecamente dell’ orazione, ma la sua lingua] I. 6. non poteva dir altro salvo questo: “O Amore, può essere che mi abbi chiamata [con tanto amore] e fattomi conoscere in un punto quello che colla lingua non posso esprimere?” II. 2. Le sue parole in tutti quei giorni altro non erano che sospiri, e così grandi che era cosa mirabile: ed aveva una si estrema contrizione [di cuore] per le offese fatte a tanta bontà, che se non fosse stata miracolosamente sostenuta, sarebbe spirata e crepatole il cuore.

(_b_) _In the Palace._

I. 7. (?) [Ma volendo] il Signore [accendere più intrinsecamente l’amor suo in quest’ anima ed insieme il dolore dei suoi peccati,] se le mostrò in ispirito colla Croce in spalla, piovendo tutto sangue, [per modo che la casa le pareva tutta piena di rivoli di quel sangue,] il quale vedea essere tutto sparso per amore: il che le accese nel cuore tanto fuoco, che nè usciva fuor di sè [e pareva una cosa insensata per lo tanto amore e dolore che ne sentiva.]

II. 3. (?) [Questa vista le fù tanto penetrativa, che] le pareva sempre vedere (e cogli occhi corporali) il suo Amore tutto insanguinato e confitto in Croce; e perciò gridava: “O Amore, mai più, mai più peccati.” I. 8 (?) Se le accese poi un odio di sè medesima, che non si poteva sopportare, e diceva: “O Amore, se bisogna, sono apparechiata di confessare i miei peccati in pubblico.”

I. 9. Dopo questo fece la sua [generale] Confessione con tanta contrizione e tali stimoli, che le passavano l’anima [. E benchè] Iddio [in quel punto che le diede la dolce ed amorosa ferita, le avesse perdonato tutti i suoi peccati, abbrucciandoli col fuoco del suo immenso amore; nondimeno volendo soddisfare alla giustizia, la fece passare per la via della soddisfazione] disponendo che questa contrizione [lume e conversione] durasse [ro] circa quatt_r_o [dici] _anni_, in capo a quali [, poichè ella ebbe soddisfatto, le fù levata della mente la predetta vista in forma tale che] mai più non vide neppure una minima scintilla dei suoi peccati, come se tutti fossero stati gettati nel profondo del mare.

There is a striking parallelism of sights, sayings, and their sequences, between the dated events in the Convent-Chapel, and the undated ones in the Palace, divided off by the passage II 2, with its vague “all these days.” Both sets have a “Vista,”--partly of “offese fatte”; have next “and hence she cried ‘no more sin’”; and the first concludes with a wish, expressed to the Confessor, to put off her Confession, and the second with an exclamation, addressed to God, of her readiness for even a public Confession.--This Christ-Vision, or any other Passion-scene, is nowhere implied or referred to in all her recorded post-Conversion sayings and doings; the legendary instinct, we know, developed, from this single adult occupation with the Passion, the “interior stigmatization” story; and in the Palace Narrative itself there has been, in any case, _some_ uncertainty, shifting, or doubling of the tradition as to that figured vision,--for the actual vision cannot have represented Christ both as walking and carrying His Cross, _and_ as motionless and hanging upon it. Are the two sets, then, but two variant records of one sole event, and is the second but the result of an early determination to find more of an historical, pictorial element in Catherine’s spiritual experiences than had actually been present in it?

Yet strong reasons operate on the other side. We have one, and only one, absolutely certain detail from her childhood, the presence, in her bedroom, of a Pietà (_Vita_, pp. 1_c_, 2_a_); yet nowhere, in her subsequent actions and sayings, is there the slightest allusion to this picture-scene which had so deeply moved her childhood.--And the most vivid and characteristic details of the two Conversion-experiences are delicately different in each set.

The first set, (_a_), consists of three documents. Document I 1, 2; 3; 4-6 continues the story of Catherine’s relations with the “monistero” of the Madonna delle Grazie, and of her prayer on the eve of St. Benedict’s day, told on pp. 2_b_-3_c_; is most vivid, precise, and homely; and is doubtless the work of E. Document II 1, 2 is a colourless parallel to I 2, 6; yet in I 2 she sees her own miseries, in II 1 she is drawn out of the miseries of the world: II is thus probably an ancient doublet, and, if so, then part of some annotations by C. And document III is obviously from yet another, later, hand,--that which produced the originally tripartite scheme of Catherine’s Convert life (pp. 5_c_-_bc_), for the three “la” (her, Catherine) after “onde” of III require but three stages of perfecting; whilst now the printed text attempts (by italicizing “unì” and “transformò”) to produce four stages, in keeping with the following, now quadripartite scheme. The second set, (_b_), begins as though nothing had yet happened or as if, at least, the past event had been but a step towards something greater. Yet precisely such series of apparent anti-climaxes occur demonstrably elsewhere in her life.--The account of II 3 (?) is irreconcilably different from that of I 7 (?): for there Christ is moving, carrying His Cross and raining blood upon objects not Himself, here He is motionless, probably dead, affixed to the Cross, and His blood has merely stained His own body; there she sees “in the spirit,” here “with bodily eyes”; there, for some minutes, here continuously; there, followed by speechless ecstasy, here, by penitential exclamations. And this II 3 (?) is not a later stage of the vision given in I 7 (?), as though, dissolving-view-like, the Moving Christ had shaded off into a Fixed Christ, (although Catherine’s Viste give us such changes, _e.g._ that of the Divine Fountain’s successive self-communications, _Vita_, pp. 32c, 33a). For the very Redactor treats the second “Vista” as simply identical with the first; and Battista, we saw, so entirely realizes the contradiction between the two accounts, as to make two quite distinct events out of them (_Dialogo_, pp. 209_b_, 211_a_, _b_).--This second account can hardly be a gloss, for Battista already found and respected it when at work on the Giustiniani-book of 1529 or 1530, and was thus powerfully influenced by it when composing her _Dialogo_ in about 1547. Indeed, this II 3 (?) has been the starting-point of all the stigmatization-glosses elsewhere, and can hardly be a gloss itself.--If all this be so, then either Catherine herself told the Christ-Vision to one disciple in two different ways; or told it to two companions, to each in a different way; or told the story so vaguely, or with such rich vividness and ambiguity, as to be differently understood by these two different hearers. Only one of the two latter alternatives would cover the facts, since no one writer could remain unaware of the contradiction between these two accounts. Hence we here require two writers, both considerably prior to Battista and much respected by her; only E and C answer to these tests; and, in that case, the Living Christ, seen in the Spirit, comes to us through E, and the Dead Christ, seen with the bodily eyes, reaches us through C.--And then comes I 8, of clearly first-hand authority, and belonging, I think, to E’s account.

I 9, concluding the _Vita’s_ Conversion-story, must evidently contain some words, originally belonging to document I, concerning her Confession, since I has already twice (I 4, I 8) referred to such a coming Confession. And such words are here: “Dopo questo--l’anima”; “Iddio disponendo-circa quattro _anni_” (this is the original text here); and a vivid description of her suddenly ceasing to see her particular sins.

VII. THE SAYINGS-PASSAGES: THREE TESTS FOR DISCRIMINATING AUTHENTIC FROM SECONDARY SAYINGS.

As to the Sayings, it is obviously more difficult to decide as to their provenance, authenticity, and date of enunciation and literary fixation. Yet three tests have proved solidly helpful towards gaining a respectably large collection of texts which can, with high historical probability or even certainty, be reasoned from as truly Catherine’s, even in their form.

1. _Rhythm._

There is the test of rhythm and rhyme, since the _Vita_ describes her “wont” of “making rhymed sayings in her joy,” and gives irrefragable proofs of her deep love of Jacopone’s poetry.[463] The still obviously rhymed or rhythmical sayings all answer to the other tests of genuineness; and many sayings now turned, by successive Redactors, into more or less sheer prose, can still be restored to their original poetic form. All these rhythmic, rhymed sayings have an utterly _naïve_, expansive tone, markedly different from the high-pitched redactional rhetoric in which they are now embedded, or again from Battista’s far more literary poetry: hence they cannot spring from this strong and busy intellect.--Thus she hears her Love say: “Chi di Mè | si fida, || di sè | non dubita”; possibly simply quoting, she says to her soul, “ama chi t’ama, | e chi non t’ama lascia”; and she sums up her life’s ideal as, “s’io mangio o bevo, | s’io [] taccio o parlo, | dormo o veglio; | s’io son in chiesa, in casa, in piazza: | s’io son inferma | o sana: | s’io muojo o non muojo: || ogni ora di vita mia, | tutto voglio che sia, | Dio e prossimo: || non vorrei potere ne volere, | fare, parlare nè pensare | eccetto tutto Dio.||”[464]--And there are her repetitive utterances, beginning with “non più mondo, non più peccati,” on March 22, 1472, and finishing with “andiàmo, non più terra, non più terra,” of August 25, 1510.[465]

2. _Simplicity._

The second test requires the sayings to be short and simple, and to be followed, in the present text, by carefully clausulated doublets, or to be themselves now glossed and expanded. Such sayings occur specially in Chapters I to VIII; XVIII and XIX; XXVII to XXIX; XXXVI to XXXVIII; XLIV to XLVI; and in Chapter L. All these Chapters are largely narrative; can in great part be traced to Vernazza or Marabotto; and yield sayings readily attributable to her first Conversion-Period (which she doubtless recounted to those Friends), or to 1495-1510, the years of her intercourse with those intimates.

3. _Originality._

And the third test consists of a daring originality, which, often softened and counteracted by the successive Redactors, precludes all idea of sayings expressive of it proceeding from any one of less authority than herself. These sayings again are all short; they too occur, all but exclusively, in the Chapters indicated and in the _Dicchiarazione_; they are all referable to the years 1495-1510, and to the registration first of Vernazza, and, later on, of Marabotto.

Very few of the sayings grouped together by me in my Chapter VI but satisfy at least two of these three tests.

VIII. CONCLUSION. AT LEAST SIX STAGES IN THE UPBUILDING OF THE COMPLETE BOOK OF 1551. THE SLIGHT CHANGES INTRODUCED SINCE THEN. FIRST CLAIMS TO AUTHORSHIP FOR CATHERINE.

1. _The Stages._

It would appear, then, from the preceding analyses, that the successive stages in the composition and redaction of the _Vita-Dicchiarazione_ complex of documents cannot have been fewer than the following:--

(i) Description and Registration, (1) first by Vernazza (1495-1510), (2) then also by Marabotto (1499-1510), more or less on the day of their occurrence and utterance, of Catherine’s actions, psycho-physical condition, and sayings expressive of her present spiritual experiences; and of her deliberate reminiscences concerning her past, especially her early Convert life. And similar contemporary Annotations, of much lesser volume, by (3) Suor Tommasa Fiesca, (4) Maestro Boerio, and (5) Don Giacomo Carenzio--the latter two, only since May 1510.

(ii) Redaction, probably in connection with the first public Cultus in the summer or autumn of 1512, of (1) a short _Conversione_-booklet, by Vernazza, perhaps already with slight contributions by Marabotto; (2) a short _Dicchiarazione_-booklet, also by Vernazza, probably as yet without the theological “corrections”; and (3) a short Passion-account, by Marabotto, with additions by Carenzio and, in substance, contributions by Argentina.

(iii) Redaction, after the death of the last of the two chief friends (Marabotto, in 1528), by Battista Vernazza, in 1529 or 1530, of a tripartite _Vita_, made up chiefly of II (1) and II (3), and a longer _Dicchiarazione_, now with the theological glosses,--these latter presumably from the pen of Fra Gaspar Toleto, O.P., the Inquisitor for the Republic of Genoa, or his successor, Fra Geronimo da Genova.

(iv) Partial change of the tripartite scheme of the _Vita-Dottrina_ to a quadripartite one, early in 1548.

(v) Composition by Battista Vernazza of (1) the _Dialogo_, “Chapter” I alone, 1549; and then (2) of “Chapter” II (the present Parts II and III), in 1550.

(vi) Final Redaction of the text of the Printed _Vita-Dicchiarazione-Dialogo_, by means of all the preceding Documents, of which I (4) and possibly the Confession-descriptions of I (2) are now incorporated in the complete _Vita_ for the first time; and, with the help of gossipy reminiscences of Argentina, possibly only now reduced to writing--in 1550, 1551. This final Redactor would again be Battista Vernazza.

2. _The Changes._

Now from 1551 onwards this whole _corpus_ has remained stationary, with the exception of purely formal modifications, such as one synonym for another; of, since 1737, her designation, on the title-page and in some other places, as “Santa Caterina da Genova,” and, throughout the text, as “Caterina” (only the Ancient Preface still retains the strictly correct “Caterinetta,” _Vita_, p. viii); and of two other, more important changes.

The first important change is the insertion (later than the fourth edition, Venice, 1601) at her death-moment,--between “e in quel punto” (after raising her forefinger heavenwards) “quest’ anima beata” and “con una gran pace … spirò,”--of the words: “dicendo: In manus tuas commendo spiritum meum.” This, intrinsically appropriate, last saying prevented henceforth her last, directly recorded, words from being something so little beautiful or characteristic as the “cacciate via questa bestia” with which all the MSS., and all the editions till at least 1601, had the fine courage to conclude the series of her sayings.

And the second change is a modification in the titles of the Book and of its several parts, of significance as indicating the growth of the legend attributing literary composition to her. The First Printed Edition (1551) has: “Book of the admirable Life and holy Doctrine of the Blessed Caterinetta of Genoa, in which is contained a useful and Catholic Demonstration and Declaration” (Elucidation) “of Purgatory”; and in the body of the Book this “Demonstrazione” appears as _Trattato del Purgatorio_, after the _Vita_-proper. But though the complete _Dialogo_ appears here, behind the _Trattato_ and divided into two “Chapters,” no mention is made of it on the title-page.--The Second Edition, Florence, 1568, adds to the title: “with a Dialogue between the Soul and the Body, composed by the same,” thus attributing, apparently, full literary authorship by Catherine to precisely that document with which she has least of all to do.--The Fourth Edition, Venice, 1601, simply adds, after “Dialogue,” “divided into two Chapters”; and the Fifth, 1615, modifies this to “three Chapters, between the Soul, (and) the Body; Humanity, (and) Self-love; the Spirit and the Lord God, composed by the Beata herself.”

The first French translation, Paris, 1598, puts the _Dialogue_ before the _Treatise_, and still attributes Catherine’s direct authorship to the _Dialogue_ alone. But the first Latin translation, Freiburg in Breisgau, 1626, has “Life and Doctrine of Blessed Catherine Adorna … (and) the two excellent Treatises of the same: 1. Dialogue between the Soul and the Body; 2. Concerning Purgatory.” Here both works are attributed to her, in exactly the same degree; but that degree is not clearly specified.[466]

I do not know how soon after the Sixth Edition, Naples, 1645, which is still without it, the quite unambiguous title of the Thirteenth Edition, Genoa, of about 1880: “Vita ed Opere di S. Caterina da Genova,” was adopted, nor how soon the present Second Title-page to the _Trattato_ and _Dialogo_--“Works of St. Catherine”--was inserted. Yet even here the old correct name for the whole Book still appears as the heading on p. 1: _Vita e Dottrina_, although now, owing to that Second Title-page, “Doctrine” only covers the Doctrinal Chapters of the _Vita_-proper.

Thus not till 1568 was anything claimed as a composition of Catherine’s pen, and then only the _Dialogue_; and not till 1626 was the _Treatise_ put into the same category as the _Dialogue_. Pope Clement XII, in his Bull of Canonization in 1737, declares the _Dialogue_ to be her composition, whilst nothing is said concerning the _Treatise_, although the Bull itself most wisely follows the account of the _Vita_-proper, and softens down or ignores the different version of the _Dialogue_, in the two crucial cases of Catherine’s Vision of the Bleeding Christ and of the degree of her poverty.[467]

FOOTNOTES

[1] The remainder of this section is for the most part expressed in the words of Prof. Edouard Zeller’s standard _Philosophie der Griechen_. I have used the German text.

[2] _Rep._ VII, 518_b_.

[3] _Phaedo_, 67_c_, 64, 69_c_.

[4] _Theaetetus_, 168_a_.

[5] _Parmenides_, 134_c_.

[6] _Theaetetus_, 176_a_.

[7] Luke ix, 51-56; Matt. xxvi, 51, 52; Mark x, 13-16; ix, 30-32.

[8] I have been much helped throughout the remainder of this section by many of the groupings and discussions of texts in Prof. H. J. Holtzmann’s _Lehrbuch der N. T. Theologie_, 2 vols., 1897. Inge’s _Christian Mysticism_, 1899, has also, in its pp. 44-74, furnished me with some useful hints.

[9] Matt. vi, 26, 28; Mark iv, 27, 28; Matt. xiv, 32; xvi, 2, 3.

[10] Matt. v, 17; vi, 1, 2, 5, 16; v, 23.

[11] Mark v, 25-29; vi, 56.

[12] Mark vi, 12, 13; i, 9, 10; Matt. iii, 13-19; Mark xiv, 22-25; Matt. xxvi, 26-29; Luke xxii, 15-19.

[13] Matt. v. 3, 8; xi, 25, 26, 28-30; Mark viii, 34, 35; Matt. xvi, 24, 25; x, 38, 39; Luke ix, 23, 24; xiv, 27; xvii, 33; Mark vii, 14, 15.

[14] Mark ix, 35, 36; x, 15; x, 14.

[15] Mark xii, 24-27; Matt. xxii, 29-33; Luke xx, 34-38.

[16] 1 Cor. xv, 3-8; xi, 23-26.

[17] Acts ii, 1-13; ix, 1-9; xxii, 3-11; xxvi, 9-18; 1 Cor. xii; xiv; 2 Cor. xii, 1-9.

[18] 1 Cor. i, 18, 22-25; ii, 14, 15.

[19] Col. i, 26; ii. 2; iv, 3, 4.

[20] 1 Cor. ii, 6; iii, 1.

[21] 1 Cor. ii, 10, 11.

[22] Eph. iii, 5; Rom. vi, 6, 8; viii, 11.

[23] Col. i, 15-17; Eph. i, 10; Col. iii, 11; 1 Cor. x, 4; Col. i, 15, 17; iii, 11; Eph. iv, 13; Gal. ii, 20; iv, 19; 2 Cor. iii, 18.

[24] John i, 14; 1 John i, 1; John v, 28, 29.

[25] 1 John i, 5; iv, 8; John iv, 24; iii, 16; vi, 44; xvii, 18.

[26] John xvii, 24; viii, 58; i, 3, 10; i, 9; 1 John i, 2; John i, 11; xiv, 6; x, 7-9; vi, 35; xv, 1.

[27] John iii, 3, 5; 1 John v, 10; John vii, 17; iii, 21.

[28] 1 John iii, 2, 5; v, 6.

[29] John ii, 23, 24; iii, 2; iv, 39, 42; xiv, 11; xx, 29.

[30] John iii, 36; v, 24; 1 John iii, 14; v, 20.

[31] John xiv. 20, 21.

[32] I have been much helped in this section by Prof. R. Eucken’s admirably discriminating, vivid book, _Die Lebensanschauungen der grossen Denker_, in its first and fourth editions, 1890, 1902.

[33] I have been much helped, towards what follows here, by pages 51 to 128 in M. Maurice Blondel’s great book, _l’Action_, 1893.

[34] I have found much help towards formulating the following experiences and convictions in Professor William James’s striking paper, “Reflex Action and Theism,” in _The Will to Believe_, pp. 111-114, 1897.

[35] I have been much helped towards the general contents of the next four sections by that profoundly thoughtful little book, Fechner’s _Die drei Motive und Gründe des Glaubens_, 1863, and by the large and rich conception elaborated by Cardinal Newman in his Preface to _The Via Media_, 1877, Vol. I, pp. xv-xciv.

[36] See, for this point, the admirably clear analysis in J. Volkelt’s _Kant’s Erkenntnisstheorie_, 1879, pp. 160-234. This book is probably the most conclusive demonstration extant of the profound self-contradictions running through Kant’s Epistemology.

[37] _Works of St. John of the Cross_, translated by David Lewis, Vol. I, ed. 1889, p. 298.

[38] _Ibid._ Vol. II, ed. 1890, pp. 541, 542.

[39] _Œuvres de Fénelon_, Paris, Lebel, Vol. IX, 1828, pp. 632, 652, 668.

[40] _Tractatus de Gratia et Libero Arbitrio_, cap. xiv, § 47.

[41] _Summa c. Gentiles_, 1-3, c. 70, _in fine_.

[42] For the recent instances, see Walter Elliott’s _Life of Father Hecker_, New York, 1894, p. 369; _The Treatise on Purgatory_, by St. Catherine of Genoa, with a Preface by Cardinal Manning, 1858, 1880, 19--; F. W. Faber’s _All for Jesus_, ch. ix, sections iii-v; Aubrey de Vere’s _Legends and Records of the Church and the Empire_, 1898, pp. 355, 356; George Tyrrell’s _Hard Sayings_, 1898, pp. 111-130.

[43] I have done my best to recover the day, or at least the month, but in vain. The baptismal register of her Parish Church (the Duomo) is, as regards that time, destroyed or lost.

[44] Not a shadow of reasonable doubt is possible as to the authenticity of these relics. Buried as she was in the Church of the Hospital of Pammatone, which latter she had first simply served, and then directed and inhabited, during thirty-seven years, her resting-place remained a centre of unbroken devotion up to her Beatification and Canonization, when the relics were removed but a few yards upwards, and placed in their glass shrine above and behind the altar in the Chapel of the Tribune--the Deposito di S. Caterina--where they have rested ever since. The special character of the brow and of the hands is still plainly recognizable. Of the four or five portraits mentioned by Vallebona, not one can be traced back to her lifetime.

In the _Manuale Cartularii_ of the Pammatone Hospital, under date of 10th July 1512 (p. 62), (I quote from an authentic copy which I found among various documents copied out by the protonotary P. Angelo Giovo, and prefixed to his MS. Latin life of the Saint preserved in the _Biblioteca della Missione Urbana_, Genoa, No. 30, 8, 140,) there is an entry of money (7 lire 10 soldi, equivalent to about £7 10_s_.) paid by the administrators of the Hospital to Don Cattaneo Marabotto, her Confessor and Executor: “Ratio sepulturae q(uondam) D(ominae) Catarinettae Adurnae pro diversis expensis factis p(er) D(ominum) Cattaneum Marabottum, videlicet _pro pictura_ et apportari facere lapides ipsius sepulturae.” The payment must have been either for expressly painting a picture, or for buying one already painted. We would, however, expect, in the former case, for the entry, in analogy with its final clause, to run: “pro pingi facere picturam.” In the latter case, we are almost forced to think of the picture as painted by some friend or disciple of the Saint, not for herself or for her relations or friends (for in that case it would hardly have been sold, but would have been left or given to the Hospital), but for his own consolation, or in hopes of its being eventually bought for the Hospital (and this may well have been done during her lifetime). In any case, this entry attests that a portrait of the Saint was in existence at the Hospital not two years after her death, and which was approved of by one of her closest friends. I take it that that portrait was placed on her sepulchral monument erected to her in January 1512 in the Hospital Church. If still extant, at least in a copy, that original or copy is, presumably, at the Hospital still.

Now there are but three pictures at the Hospital which claim to be portraits of her and are not, avowedly, copies. (1) The large oil painting of her standing figure, in the room adjoining the closet now shown as the place where she died, is clearly a late, quite lifeless composition. (2) The portrait-head in the Superioress’s room has been carefully examined for me by a trained portrait painter, who reports that the picture consists of a skilful ancient foundation now largely hidden under much clumsy repainting. (3) The picture reproduced at the head of this first volume, now in the sacristy of the _Santissima Annunziata in Portorio_ (the Hospital Church), is clearly the work of one hand alone. It is without the somewhat disagreeable look present in the previous portrait, a look doubtless introduced there by the unskilful restoration. If then the sacristy picture is a copy of the Superioress’s picture, it will have been copied before the latter picture was thus repainted. This sacristy picture now hangs in an old-fashioned white-and-gold wooden frame with “Santa Catarina da Genova” in raised letters carved out upon it, a carving which is evidently contemporary with the frame’s make. The frame thus cannot be older than 1737, the year of Catherine’s canonization. But the portrait is without trace of a nimbus and carefully reproduces the very peculiar features of a particular face, head, and neck.

The original painting, thus still more or less before us in these two pictures, was evidently by no mean artist, and strikes a good connoisseur as of the school of Leonardo da Vinci (died 1519). There were several good painters of this school resident in Genoa about this time: Carlo da Milano, Luca da Novara, Vinzenzo da Brescia, and Giovanni Mazone di Alessandria. In the very year of her death, and still more two years later, she was publicly and spontaneously venerated as Blessed, and this Cultus continued unbroken up to the Bull of Urban VIII, of 1625. Hence the further back we place one or both of these portraits, the more naturally can we explain the absence of the nimbus. Everything conspires, then, to prove that one of these portraits goes back, in some way, to the picture painted for or bought by Marabotto, and which adorned her monument from 1512 to 1593.

I have striven hard but in vain to find some scrap of Catherine’s handwriting. The late Mr. Hartwell Grisell of Oxford, and the Cavaliere Azzolini dei Manfredi of Rome, both of them life-long collectors of Saints’ autographs, have kindly assured me that they have never come across a word even purporting to be in her handwriting. The fourteen wills and codicils made in her favour or by herself are all, according to the universal custom of the time and country, written throughout in a rapid, cursive hand by the lawyer himself alone, with certain slight signs (crosses or lines) for further identification of his authorship, but with no signature of any kind. There is no shadow of a true tradition as to any of her sayings or thinkings having ever been written down by herself. And the business books of the Hospital, kept, at least in part, by Catherine from 1490 to 1496, when she was its matron, have long ago been destroyed by fire.

[45] See _Opere Spirituale della Ven. B. Vernazza_, Genova, 1755, 6 vols., Vol. I, p. 3.

[46] _Op. cit._ p. 45.

[47] Although the Church and Monastery belonged, as Catherine’s Will of 1509 puts it, to “the Order of St. Benedict of the Congregation of Saint Justina in Padua”--a Congregation founded from Monte Cassino between 861 and 874--yet the community were evidently closely bound up with the Augustinian Canons Regular of the Lateran, or at all events with the foundation of the Convent of Augustinian Canonesses at Santa Maria delle Grazie. For the concession of Pope Nicolas V for the latter Convent is addressed to his “Beloved sons of Saint Theodore of Genoa” (Augustinian Canons) “and of Saint Nicolas in Boschetto.” And this close connection with, and action for, a Church and Convent so dearly loved by Catherine, will have necessarily been one of the causes of her affection for the Benedictine country-side Church.

[48] This evidently most authentic anecdote stands in the _Vita_, p. 3, in a doubly disconcerting context. Her prayers, always elsewhere recorded together with their effects, are here abruptly left, without any indication of their sequel; and the prayer for a _three months’ illness_ is followed by an attempted explanation of it--that she had gone through _three months_ of mental _affliction_. I take it that some other continuation has been suppressed, or, at least, that the present explanation owes its “three months” to a quaint determination to find at least a retrospective correspondence between her prayer and the happenings of her life.

[49] _Vita_, p. 4, first two paragraphs. I hope to show in the Appendix that we owe their getting on to paper to Ettore Vernazza, and that he derived their contents from Catherine herself, some time after 1495.

[50] _Ibid._ p. 4. § 3.

[51] _Vita_, p. 4, § 3; p. 5, § 1.

[52] _Ibid._ p. 5, §§ 2, 3. I have, together with the Bull of Canonization, deliberately omitted the first two sentences of § 3, which (with their representation of Our Lord as appearing not alive with the Cross, but dead on it, and with their repetition here of the exclamation as to “no more sins” of her conversion-moment) form an interesting doublet, with a complex and eventful history attaching to it. See Appendix to this volume.

[53] _Vita_, p. 5_c_.

[54] _Vita_, p. 5_c_.

[55] _Vita_, pp. 5_c_, 6,--as they appear in MS. “A.” This matter of these periods has given me much trouble, since there are two rival traditions concerning them to be found, really unreconciled, within the oldest documents of the _Vita_. The point is fully discussed in the Appendix.

[56] _Ibid._ cc. ix-xli, pp. 21_c_-111_c_.

[57] _Vita_, p. 7_a_.

[58] I take the above to have been the actual course of events, for the following reasons. (1) The text just given talks of “the desire for Holy Communion” having been given to her on that day in 1473, and of this desire “never failing her throughout the remainder of her life”; but it does not say, that the desire for _daily_ Communion was given to her then, or that such a desire was continuously satisfied from the first. (2) On page 18_b_ we have: “For about two years she had this desire for death, and this desire continued within her, up to when she began to communicate daily.” This passage, (which does not occur, here or with this Communion notation, in the MSS.,) originally without doubt referred to her later desire for death, carefully described by Vernazza (pp. 98_a_, _b_; 99_b_, _c_) as occurring in 1507--a description in the midst of which now occurs an account of certain death-like swoons which attacked her in 1509 (pp. 98_c_, and 133_b_; this latter experience is given in the MSS. as occurring in November 1509). Still this passage points to a tradition, or early inference, that the beginning of the daily communions did not synchronize with her conversion nor indeed with any other very marked date, but took place not many years after her return to fervour. (3) It is impossible to assume that she did not communicate at all during these first fourteen months, since there is no evidence that, even before her conversion, she had ever abstained from Holy Communion altogether, and since two Eastertides with their strict obligation recurred twice within this period. And if she did communicate repeatedly within this time, then this Lady-Day, three days after her conversion, would be a most natural occasion for one of these communions. And the desire and not its gratification would be mentioned, because the writer characteristically wants her conversion to be followed by something absolutely unintermittent, and such unintermittence attached, for the present, not to her communions themselves, but only to her desire for them.

[59] _Vita_, pp. 8, 9. A MS. list of conclusions concerning various points of her life, which is contained in the volume _Documenti su S. Caterina da Genova_, in the University Library of Genoa, declares this interdict to have lasted ten days, and in the year 1489. This information is probably correct.

[60] _Ibid._ pp. 8, 9.

[61] _Vita_, p. 7_b_.

[62] I have been unable to discover more than one case illustrative of the practice of that time and town. The Venerable Battista Vernazza, an Augustinian Canoness from 1510 to 1587, was not allowed daily Communion till the last years of her life. _Opere_, Genoa, 1755, Vol. I, p. 21.

[63] _Vita_, p. 116_c_. This passage opens a chapter full of the most authentic information, derived directly from Don Marabotto, her Confessor and close friend from 1499 onwards. I have, in her saying, read “Amore” for the “Signore” of the text of the _Vita_: my reasons will appear later on.

[64] _Vita_, pp. 119_c_, 116_c_, 117_b_.

[65] _Ibid._ p. 16_b_.

[66] _Vita_, p. 6.

[67] _Ibid._ p. 140_b_, _c_.

[68] See here, ch. v, § ii, 2 and 5.

[69] Denzinger’s _Enchiridion Definitionum_, ed. 1888, No. 363.

[70] _Summa Theologica_, III, supplem. quaest. 6, art. 3.

[71] Denzinger, _op. cit._ No. 780; _Summa Theologica_, III, supplem. quaest. 6, art. 3.

[72] Antonii Ballerini, _Opus Theologicum Morale_, ed. Palmieri, S.J., Prato, 1892, Vol. V, pp. 576-597. The large variations in the earlier practice of Penitence and Confession are admirably described in Abbé Boudhinon’s articles, “Sur l’Histoire de la Pénitence,” in the _Revue d’Histoire et de Littérature Religieuses_, 1897, pp. 306-344, 496-524.

[73] The reason for this lies in the emphatic, repeated conviction of R. 1, based, no doubt, upon the authentic documents (probably Vernazza’s memoranda) that he has incorporated, (a conviction which appears wherever his scheme was not tampered with by R. 2,) that her great penitential period lasted four years (so still on pp. 12_b_, 13_b_ twice, 14_c_; and originally, no doubt, on p. 6_a_, and probably on p. 5_c_, where now we read “a little over a year,” and “about fourteen months” respectively). For not all the subsequent doctoring, that shall be traced later on as having been applied by R. 2 to some of the refractory passages, succeeds in making it likely that these penitential exercises outlasted the complete disappearance from her sight of her sins, which we have already quoted from the last likely passage. And it is equally improbable that formal and repeated Confession should not have formed part and parcel of the whole of this penitential time. On the other hand, “her Confessor,” on p. 7_7_, and “the spiritual physician” on p. 8_a_, indeed all other mentions of a Confessor throughout the Life subsequent to her first convert Confession, will be shown in the Appendix to apply exclusively to Don Marabotto, and to the last eleven years of her life.

[74] _Vita_, p. 56_b_, _c_. Her words as printed there are: “Io non vorrei grazia ne misericordia [nella presente vita] ma giustizia e vendetta del malfattore.” But the words I have bracketed are certainly a gloss; for she is speaking here out of the fulness of her feeling, without the intrusion of reflection. And as regards temporal punishment in the other life, and the soul’s attitude towards it there, she says in the _Trattato_, p. 180_b_: “Know for certain, that of the payment required from those souls (in Purgatory), there is not remitted even the least farthing, this having been thus established by the divine justice.… Those souls have no more any personal choice, and can no more will anything but what God wills.”

[75] _Dialogo_, pp. 203_a_, 208_b_.

[76] From the authenticated copies of the entries in the Cartulary, prefixed to the MS. Life of the Saint in the _Biblioteca della Missione Urbana_, Genoa, Nos. 30, 8, 14; and from careful copies of the still extant original Wills made for me by Dre. Ferretto, of the Archivio di Stato, Genova.

[77] Benedicti XIV, _De servorum Dei Beatificatione et Beatorum Canonisatione_, ed. Padua, 1743, Vol. II, p. 239_a_.

[78] _Vita_, pp. 56_c_; 3_c_; 95_c_; 124_c_, 125_b_; 122_b_.

[79] I have followed here, for my _terminus a quo_, Vallebona rather than the Bollandists (who prefer 1474 for the date of her conversion), because the ten years required between her marriage in January 1463 and her conversion, have fully elapsed by March 1473, and because the earlier we place her conversion, the larger is the number of lonely convert years that we can find room for, and the more nearly accurate her own allegation of twenty-five years of such loneliness becomes. If we follow the chronology given in the text we get a thoroughly understandable sequence: Catherine’s conversion, March 1473; Giuliano’s bankruptcy, summer of that year; his conversion under the joint influence of her zeal and of his misfortune; the decision of the couple to settle in the midst of the poor and suffering, whom they were now determined to serve, and the execution of this decision, between Michaelmas and Christmas of the same year.

[80] Vallebona, p. 55.

[81] Lived 1550-1614, worked heroically amongst the poor and pestilential sick, founded the Order of the Fathers of a Good Death, and was himself at Genoa, already gravely ill, in 1613.

[82] Vallebona, pp. 55, 56, shows, from Giuliano’s still extant will of 1497, how this income from his property in the Island of Scios alone amounted to about 30,000 modern Italian lire. We shall study the instructive growth of legend in the matter of Catherine’s “poverty” later on.

[83] _Vita_, p. 122_b_.

[84] Vallebona, pp. 106, 108.

[85] An interesting legendary development in the _Dialogo_ of this very straightforward account of the _Vita_ will occupy us later on.

[86] _Vita_, pp. 20, 21.

[87] _Ibid._ p. 12.

[88] See an interesting article: “De Suor Tommasina Fieschi,” by F. Alizeri, in _Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria_, Genova, 1868, pp. 403-415.

[89] The choice of subjects may possibly betray the influence of Catherine--of the Pietà which Catherine had so much loved as a child, and of her special devotion to the Holy Eucharist. But the particular form of the latter is in Tommasina unlike Catherine: had Catherine painted that symbolical picture, it would have referred to the moment, not Consecration, but of Communion.

[90] _Vita_, pp. 123, 124. Suor Tommasa did not die till 1534, over 86 years of age. I have been unable to discover her baptismal and her married names. We shall give some further details about Catherine’s probable relations with her, as writer and as painter.

[91] _Vita_, pp. 12, 13.

[92] _Ibid._ pp. 5, 6, 14.

[93] _Ibid._ p. 13.

[94] _Vita_, p. 6_a_.

[95] _Ibid._ 14_b_. I have introduced into my account a note of gradualness which is presented by no single (even authentic) document of the _Vita_, but which any attempt at harmonizing those documents imperatively requires. For there is, on the one hand, the repeated insistence upon her four years of particular penances for her own particular sins; and the vivid account of the final complete withdrawal of all sight of those sins and of all desire for those penances (_Ibid._ pp. 12_b_, 13_c_; 14_b_, 5_c_). And there is, on the other hand, the, apparently, equally authentic saying, as to her performing her penances, before the end of those years, without any particular object in view (_Ibid._ p. 14_b_). The only unforced harmonization is then to assume that a period, in which the sight of her particular sins had been at first all but unintermittent and then still predominant, had shaded off into another period, in which this sight occurred in ever fewer moments, until at last, at the end of four years, a day came on which it ceased altogether.

[96] The only possible dates are 1475 or 1476. For the change referred to takes place “some appreciable time (_alquanto tempo_) after her conversion” (_Vita_, p. 10_a_); and yet it must be early enough to allow of twenty-three Lents and Advents between the beginning of the change up to its end. And this end came at latest in 1501 (p. 127_a_), but probably in 1499, the year in which Don Marabotto became her Confessor. The Lent of 1496 (what remained of it on Lady-Day of that year) seems to me the more likely of the two possible starting-points.

[97] _Vita_, p. 10_a_.

[98] _Ibid._ p. 11_a_.

[99] _Ibid._ p. 10_b_.

[100] _Vita_, p. 8_a_.

[101] See below, next page.

[102] MS. “A,” p. 24, title to chapter vii; _Vita_, p. 10_a_. Twenty-five Lents are too many, because: (1) it is impossible to interpret the “alquanto tempo dopo la sua conversione,” when these fasts began (_Ibid._ p. 10_a_), as less than two years; and (2) it is impossible to bring her resignation of the Matronship of the Hospital lower down than the autumn of 1497, a resignation which the _Ibid._ (p. 96) tells us took place in consequence of her “great bodily weakness,” which forced her to “take some food after Holy Communion to restore her bodily forces, even though it were a fast day.” This allows for at most twenty-three Lents and twenty-two Advents.

[103] _Ibid._ p. 11_b_.

[104] _Vita_, p. 11_c_. I take the last section of this chapter (pp. 11, 12) to be a later, exaggerating doublet to this account.

[105] _Ibid._ p. 11_b_.

[106] _Ibid._ p. 14_b_, 5_c_.

[107] _Vita_, p. 16_b_.

[108] _Ibid._ pp. 23_a_, 49_a_.

[109] _Ibid._ p. 15_b_.

[110] _Vita_, pp. 15_c_, 97_a_, 15_c_.

[111] _Ibid._ pp. 15_c_, 16_a_, 47_b_.

[112] _Ibid._ p. 17_b_.

[113] I translate _Frate predicatore_ thus, because the generally well-informed Parpera (in his _Vita_ of the Saint, 1681) identifies him with Padre Domenico de Ponzo, an Observant Franciscan and zealous preacher. Boll. p. 161 D. In other places, also, the _Vita_ makes use of purely popular and misleading designations:--p. 117_b_ “questo Religioso” is Don Marabotto, Secular Priest; pp. 94_c_, 95_a_, _c_, 98_c_, 99_b_, “Religioso” is Vernazza, layman; p. 123_b_, “Sorelle” is a Sister and Sisters-in-law. Even the final Redactor in the Preface, p. viii_c_, calls the Secular-Priest Marabotto and the Layman-Lawyer Vernazza, “divoti religiosi.”

[114] _Vita_, pp. 51, 52. I take this episode to have occurred whilst the pair were still living out of the Hospital, because of the _giunta in casa_, which could hardly be applied to their two little rooms in the latter, whilst this sensitiveness to the opinion of others in this matter of love appears psychologically to be more likely during the early years of her convert life than from 1490 onwards, when, as Matron, she occupied a separate little house within the Hospital precincts (hence _sua casa_ in _Vita_, p. 96_b_).

[115] I shall give reasons in due course for holding that the rooms still shown in the Hospital as Catherine’s are different from any ever occupied by herself, and that the little house within the Hospital grounds, in which she died in 1510, and into which she (and Giuliano) probably moved in 1490, has long ceased to exist.

[116] _Vita_, p. 20_b_. This characteristic fact has been “explained away” in the _Dialogo_. See Appendix.

[117] _Vita_, p. 20_c_.

[118] _Ibid._ p. 21_c_. All the books and papers of the Hospital referring to these years up to her death, were long ago destroyed by fire. I have, however, no doubt as to the, at least substantial, accuracy of the above account. For ten wills and assignments, drawn up, by various lawyers, in her presence, by her desire and at her dictation,--nine of them during the years of her weakness and illness,--are still extant, have been carefully copied out for me, and will be analyzed further on. They are all, except on one minor point, admirably precise, detailed, and wise.

[119] _Vita_, p. 21_b_.

[120] The above paragraph is based, with Vallebona, _op. cit._ pp. 67-72, upon the assumption that Catherine took the kind of share described in the labours of this time; since it is practically unthinkable that she should not have acted as is here supposed, given the combination of the following facts, which are all beyond dispute. (1) The fully reliable Giustiniani in his _Annali_ describes, under the date of 1493, the incidents of the Pestilence as given above; tells us how well, nevertheless, the sick and poor were looked after by those who, from amongst the educated classes, remained amongst them; and affirms that the Borgo di San Germano, identical with the Acquasola quarter, was assigned to those stricken by the Pestilence. (2) Agostino Adorno, Giuliano’s cousin, was Doge of Genoa during this year. And the friendly terms on which the cousins were at this time are proved by Giuliano’s Will of the following year (October 1494). (3) Catherine had already been Matron of the Hospital for two years and more, and was to continue to be so for another three years. She certainly did not absent herself from her post at this time. And her Hospital directly abutted against the Acquasola quarter. (4) The details furnished by all the sources conjointly with regard to her six years’ Headship of the Hospital, are so extraordinarily scanty, that we must not too much wonder at the all but complete dearth of any allusion to a work which cannot have lasted longer than as many months. (5) The _Dialogo_, p. 222_b_, says: “She would go, too,” (_i.e._ besides visiting the sick and poor in their own houses,) “to the poor of San Lazzaro, in which place she would find the greatest possible calamity.” This clearly refers to some special (Lazar-, Leper-) Refuge, and the term can certainly cover aid given to the pest-stricken. And we shall see that the record here is derived from the writer’s father, Ettore Vernazza, the heroic lover of the pest-stricken poor.

I have, in my text, assumed that the _Vita_ gives us an anecdote relative to her visiting the pestiferous sick of Acquasola. But to do this, I have had (_a_) to take “pestiferous fever” as equivalent to “Pestilence,” and to assume that it was not an isolated precursory case of the coming general visitation; (_b_) to omit, in the _Vita’s_ text, “nell’ ospedale,” as an indication where the sick woman was; and “allo stesso servizio (dell’ ospedale),” as descriptive of where Catherine went back to: the anecdote may well originally have been without indication of the place in which the infection came to reduce her to death’s door.

[121] _Inaugurazione della Statua d’Ettore Vernazza_ (1863), Genova, Sordo-Muti, 1867. Most of my facts concerning Ettore and his daughters are taken from this _brochure_, with its careful biographical Discourse by Avvocato Professore Giuseppe Morro (pp. 5-31), and its ample collection of admirable wills and financial decisions (pp. 61-94).

[122] Quoted _ibid._ p. 21. It is absolutely certain that these words refer to the pestilence of 1493, since the epidemic did not again visit Genoa till 1503, when Vernazza must have been over thirty years of age. And Battista’s silence as to any meeting between her Father and Catherine must not be pressed, since she nowhere mentions Catherine, and yet we know for certain how close and long was the intimacy between them.

[123] The words of the _Vita_, p. 105_c_, that those who wrote this Life “saw and experienced these wonderful operations for _many years_,” are given in MS. “A” as “during _fifteen consecutive_ years (per quindici continui anni),” p. 366. All points to her having got to know Don Marabotto later than at this time and than Vernazza, yet only the one or the other of these two men can be meant; hence Vernazza must be intended here. But I have nowhere in the _Vita_ been able to trace passages that could with probability be both attributed to Vernazza, and dated before the years 1498-1499.

[124] The precise date of Vernazza’s marriage is unknown. But since his eldest child was born on April 15, 1497, it cannot have taken place later than June 1496. The date of the sale of the Palazzo is derived from Catherine’s act of consent to the sale, preserved in the Archivio di Stato; a copy lies before me. The date of her resignation is derived from the _Vita_, p. 96_b_, which says she did so “quando fù di anni circa cinquanta.” This “circa” must no doubt here, as so often (as, _e.g._, on p. 97_b_, where “circa sessanta-tre” refers to November 1509, when she was sixty-two), be interpreted as “nearly fifty”: she was really forty-nine.

[125] The date of Tommasina’s birth comes from _Ritratti ed Elogi di Liguri Illustri_, Genova, Ponthenier; the date of the beginning of Giuliano’s illness from his Codicil of January 10, 1497, in which he declares himself as “languishing” and “infirm in body”; and the approximate date of his death from two entries in the Cartulary of the Bank of St. George, as to investments made by Catherine (copies in _Documenti su S. Caterina da Genova_, University Library, Genoa, B. VII, 31), of which the first, on July 14, 1497, gives her name as “Catterinetta, filia Jacobi di Fiesco et uxor Juliani Adorni”; and the second, on October 6, 1497, describes her as “uxor et heres testamentaria quondam fratris Juliani Adorni.”