CHAPTER IV

CATHERINE’S LIFE FROM 1473 TO 1506 AND ITS MAIN CHANGES AND GROWTH

Let us now attempt, as far as the often scanty and obscure evidence

permits, to give, in the following two chapters, some general account

of the changes and growth observable in her external surroundings,

her human intercourse and social occupation, her physical health and

psychical mood, and above all of those inner experiences and spiritual

apprehensions of hers which dominated all the rest, during each of the

three main periods of her convert life. This general account will,

I trust, suggest the main points for our later investigations, and

will show at once how largely artificial, though necessary, all such

dividing into periods must be, in the case of so deeply unified and

diversified an inner life as Catherine’s.

I. FIRST PERIOD OF CATHERINE’S CONVERT LIFE: GIULIANO’S BANKRUPTCY AND

CONVERSION; THEIR WORK AMONG THE POOR, MARCH 1473 TO MAY 1477.

1. _Giuliano’s affairs. Catherine’s attitude._

The first six months of her first period (this latter we take to have

extended from March 1473 to May 1477) were still spent in Giuliano’s

Palace of the Via Agnese and in his country mansion at Prà.[79] But

all was now swiftly changing, or already greatly changed, both around

her and within. Anxiety, hope, grief, consolation--inasmuch as such

feelings could still for her cluster around events external to her

deepest spiritual life, and could make themselves at all separately

felt during this period of profound absorption in her new large life of

love and penance--must all have centred in her husband. For Giuliano

had by now got his affairs into such disorder as to be unable to keep

up his great social position; and by the autumn of 1473 he had sold his

mansion at Prà, and had vacated and let his palace in Genoa itself.[80]

He was also by now a very sincere convert, in his own manner and

degree; and it was no doubt now that he told Catherine, although

she can hardly have failed to know already, of the existence of a

poor little girl whom, with an apparently ominous indication of weak

indulgence on the part of his widowed mother, he had called Tobia.

We shall be able to prove Catherine’s grand magnanimity and true,

cordial forgiveness--directly, no doubt only for and at a later

period; but the documents will show that she knew all the decisive

circumstances long before, and there is no room for doubt that her

dispositions had changed or grown as little as had her knowledge.

2. _Life in the little house outside the Hospital._

Catherine and Giuliano had now, in the autumn of 1473, moved into a

humble little house, in the midst of artisans, mostly dyers, and of the

poor of various sorts, close to the Hospital of the Pammatone, even

then already a vast Institution. This dwelling is probably identical,

as to the site, with the house still standing at the junction of the

Via S. Giuseppe with the Via Balilla, and which bears on its front

a picture of Saints Catherine Adorna and Camillus of Lellis[81] at

the feet of the Madonna. Since the income remaining to them still

amounted, up to Giuliano’s death in 1497, to the equivalent of some

£1,200 a year,[82] this self-abnegation and humble identification

with the lives of the toiling, nameless poor, must have been an act of

deliberate choice, and not one of any degree of necessity. It was never

suspended or revoked by either of them.

They now agreed together to a life of perpetual continence; and

Giuliano became a Tertiary of the Order of St. Francis,[83] amongst

those attached to the Hospital-Church of the Santissima Annunciata in

Portoria, itself served by Observant Franciscans. Their only little

servant-maid, Benedetta Lombarda, was also a Franciscan Tertiary.

But Catherine herself now shows, in this matter of the Religious

State, an interesting clearing-up of her own special way and form of

sanctity. We saw how much the fervent but inexperienced girl of sixteen

had been moved and had longed to be an Augustinian nun; and now the

sadly experienced wife of twenty-six, even in the midst of her first

convert days, and though surrounded at home, in Church, and in the

Hospital, by Religious of the popular and expansive type presented

by the Franciscans, (a type which her own deep sympathy with, indeed

penetration by, the teaching of the great Franciscan Mystic Jacopone

da Todi, will show to have been closely akin to her own,) manifests no

thought of becoming a Religious, even in the slight degree represented

by the Third Order. And up to her death, thirty-seven years later,

she never wavers on this point. A highly characteristic scene and

declaration illustrative of this attitude of hers will be given further

on.

The Hospital of Pammatone had been founded by Bartolommeo Bosco, one of

those large-hearted merchant princes of whom Genoa has had not a few,

in 1424, in the street of that name; and only quite recently, in 1472,

the Friars of the adjoining Church of the Annunciata had agreed to the

incorporation of their own infirmary for sick poor with Bosco’s larger

institution. Hence Catherine and Giuliano found 130 sick-beds always

occupied by patients, and over 100 foundling girls, who were being

trained as silk-workers, all ready to their hands and service.[84]

Catherine was besides gradually introduced to the poor of the district,

by the _Donne della Misericordia_--ladies devoted to such works of

mercy--and betook herself to her tasks with characteristic directness

and thoroughness.[85] She must first, and once for all, completely

master all squeamishness in this her lowly work. So she betook herself

to cleansing their houses from the most disgusting filth; and she

would take home with her the garments of the poor, covered with dirt

and vermin, and, having cleansed them thoroughly, would herself return

them to their owners. And yet nothing unclean was ever found upon

herself. She also tended the sick in the Hospital and in their homes,

with the most fervent affection, speaking to them of spiritual things

and ministering to their bodily wants, and never avoiding any form of

disease, however terrible.[86]

II. CATHERINE AND TOMMASA FIESCA: THEIR DIFFERENCE OF CHARACTER AND

_ATTRAIT_. PECULIARITY OF CATHERINE’S PENITENCE AND HEALTH DURING THIS

TIME.

1. _Catherine’s penances._

And throughout this first period of four years, her penances were

great. She wore a hair-shirt; she never touched either flesh-meat or

fruit, whether fresh or dried; she lay at night on thorns. And by

nature courteous and affable, she would do great violence to herself by

conversing as little as possible with her relations when they visited

her, and, as to anything further, paying heed neither to herself nor to

them; and she acted thus for the purpose of self-conquest; and if any

one was surprised at it, she took no notice.[87]

2. _Catherine and Tommasina._

But one visitor must, even during this period, have been treated by her

with much of her natural spontaneity and ardent expansiveness. She was

a cousin of her own age, a Fiesca and a married woman like herself;

like herself, too, in the wish, just now awakened, to belong entirely

to God, and in her ultimate complete conversion and ardent love of God.

We can attempt to describe her here, as throwing further light upon

Catherine’s idiosyncrasies, at this period in particular.

Tommasina was different from Catherine in the slow, tentative character

of her first turning to God; and different, too, in the eventual form

of her life; for, when later on a widow, she became first, in 1490,

an Augustinian Canoness at Santa Maria delle Grazie; and then, in

1497, a Dominican Nun at the Monastero Nuovo di San Domenico. This

latter convent she had been given to reform and became its Prioress.

In both houses she was known as Suor Tommasina (Fieschi).[88] She

was different again in that she there spent some of her time in

painting many a religious picture, chiefly of the Pietà, and a highly

symbolical composition, illustrative of the moment of Consecration at

Mass.[89] She executed also in exquisitely fine needlework a piece

which represented, above, God the Father surrounded by many Angels,

and, below, Christ with other figures of Saints. Finally she occupied

herself in writing and produced in original composition a treatise on

the Apocalypse, and another on Denys the Areopagite.

And the future Suor Tommasa showed now some of that precious gift of

humour, denied to her otherwise greater cousin. For, no doubt with a

bright twinkle in her eyes at the sight of Catherine’s characteristic

vehemence of onslaught, Tommasa would declare that Catherine was

pushing her and giving her no quarter; and that it would be a great

humiliation for herself if, after all said and done, she were to turn

back. But any such feeling of even the possibility of such a relapse,

was amazing to Catherine, and she said: “If I were to turn back, I

would wish that my eyes might be put out, and that I should be treated

with every other kind of indignity.”[90]

3. _Peculiarity of Catherine’s penitence._

But such intercourse as this must, during this first period, have been

the exception. For her dominant, closely interrelated characteristics

were now a continuous striving to do things contrary to her natural

bias and an alert looking to do the will of others rather than her

own. She moved about with her eyes bent upon the ground. Six hours a

day were spent in prayer, and this although--perhaps just now in part

because--the body greatly felt the strain: the strongly willing spirit

had dominated the weak flesh. Indeed, during this time she was so full

of interior feeling and so occupied within herself, that she was unable

to speak, except in a tone so low as to be barely audible; she seemed

dead to all exterior things.[91]

And these external circumstances and practices are all only the

setting, material, occasion and expression of this her first period’s

actively penitential spirit, when she was persistently pursued by the

detailed sight of her own particular inclinations, her own particular

sins against God, and God’s particular graces towards her own self.

Her very acts of charity and of friendliness, her very prayers, get

all restricted or prolonged, willed or suffered, as, at least in

part, but so many occasions for a love-impelled, yet still reflective

self-mastery and mortification. And it was no doubt during this time

that, when present one day at a sermon in which the conversion of the

Magdalen was recounted, her heart seemed to whisper to her: “Indeed I

understand,” so similar did her own conversion appear to her to that of

the Magdalen.[92]

4. _Her physical health._

As to her physical health, the fire which she felt in her heart seemed

to dry up and burn her interiorly. And so great a physical hunger would

possess her, that she appeared insatiable; and so quickly did she

digest her food, that it looked as if she could have consumed iron. Yet

she had no inclination to other than ordinary food, and did not fail to

keep all the ordinary fasts and abstinences.[93]

III. CHANGE IN THE TEMPER OF CATHERINE’S PENITENCE, FROM MAY 1474

ONWARDS.

Time wears on, and Catherine is still in the same house, and with the

same health, and with the same companions and occupations, penances

and prayers. But the interior dispositions and emotional promptings,

and the mental apprehension of them all, are gradually changing and

are growing wider and freer and less particularized. “She now began

to experience a more affective way, so that she was often as though

beside herself; and” though still “moved by a great interior thirst

after self-hatred, and by a penetrating contrition, she would often lie

prostrate on the ground”; she would do so, “hardly knowing what she was

doing, yet somehow gaining thus some relief for her heart,” overflowing

as it was with a boundless, profound, but now more and more general,

sorrow and tender love.[94] The note of a spontaneous, expansive,

instinctive love is now growing in predominance in her prayer and human

intercourse; and her very penances, though still performed, are now

often practised from a general unreflective instinct of love-impelled

self-hatred, without any conscious application to any particular

inclinations or sins.

For as to her intercourse with others, she will probably already now

have practised many an act of that beautiful and characteristic,

impulsive, expansive tenderness, of which we shall have a good many

examples from the end of her second period. And as to the character

of her mortifications, we hear the following: “Whilst engaged on such

great and numerous mortifications of all her senses, she was sometimes

asked, ‘Why are you doing this (particular) thing?’ And she would

answer, ‘I do not know, except that I feel myself interiorly drawn

to do so, without any opposition from within. And I think that this

is the will of God; but it is not His will, that I should propose to

myself any (particular) object in so doing.’”[95] I take it that, with

this growing intermittence in the sight of her particular sins, her

Confessions, though still practised, will have become less frequent,

and her Holy Communions more so.

IV. CATHERINE’S GREAT FASTS.

1. _The assertions of the “Vita.”_

And a little later on, again on the Feast of the Annunciation (March

25, 1476),[96] another change took place, a change primarily concerned

with her health, but one which brought out also the deep spirituality

of her religion. On this day she experienced one of those interior

locutions, which are so well authenticated in the lives of so many

interior souls; and “her Love said that He wanted her to keep the Forty

Days, in His company in the Desert. And then she began to be unable

to eat till Easter; on the three Easter Days she was able to eat; and

after these she again did not eat, till she had fulfilled as many days

as are to be found in Lent.”[97] Similarly with regard to Advent. “Up

to Martinmas” (November 12) “she would eat like all the world; and then

her fast would begin, and would continue up to Christmas-Day.” Her

subsequent Lenten fasts are described as beginning with Quinquagesima

Monday and ending on Easter Sunday morning.[98]

2. _Substantial accuracy of these accounts. Three facts to be

remembered._

I take it that there can be no reasonable doubt as to the substantial

accuracy of this account. But the following three facts must be borne

in mind as regards the physical aspect of the matter.

The fast, for one thing, is not an absolute one. The account itself

declares that she now and then drank a tumblerful of water, vinegar,

and pounded rock-salt.[99] And to this must be added both the daily

reception of wine--I suppose as much as a wineglassful--which was,

according to a Genoese custom of that time, received by her, as a kind

of ablution, immediately after her Communion;[100] and such slight

amount of solid food as, when in company, she would force herself to

take and would sometimes, though rarely, manage to retain.[101]

Again, the fast varies partly, in different years, in the date of its

inception; and partly it does not synchronize with the beginning of

the ecclesiastical fast. In the first year her Lenten fast begins on

Lady-Day, in the following years on Quinquagesima Sunday; her Advent

fast begins throughout on Martinmas, November 12.

And finally, the number of such fasts cannot be more than twenty-three

Lents and twenty-two Advents. The MS. of 1547 has preserved the

right tradition of a difference in the numbers of the Lenten and

Advent fasts, but has raised the number of the former to a round,

symmetrical one. It gives twenty-five Lents and twenty-two Advents.

The printed _Vita_ of 1551 levels the numbers respectively down and

up to twenty-three Lents and as many Advents.[102] Some further minor

physical points will be considered in a later chapter.

3. _Effect of these Fasts, and her attitude towards them._

But two other matters are here of direct spiritual interest: the

effect of these fasts on her spiritual efficiency, and her own

two-fold attitude towards them. For we are told, again I think quite

authentically, that during these fasts she was more active in good

works, and felt more bright and strong in health, than usual;[103]

answering thus to one of the tests put forward by Pope Benedict XIV,

for discriminating supernatural, spiritually valuable fasts from

simply natural ones. But with him we can find our surest tests in

what is altogether beyond the range of the physical and psychical:

in her own moral estimate of all these matters. For one thing, there

appears here again that noble shrinking from any singularity of this

kind within herself, and from all notice on the part of others. “This

inability to eat gave her many a scruple at first, ignorant as she

was as to its cause, and ever suspecting some delusion; and she would

force herself to eat, considering that nature required it. And though

this invariably produced vomiting, yet she would make the attempt

again and again.” “She would go to table with the others, and would

force herself to eat and drink a little, so as to escape notice and

esteem as much as possible.”[104] And again here, as in all matters

visible and tangible, she shows an impressive loneliness in the midst

of her more carnal-minded disciples. “She would say within herself,

in astonishment” at their stopping to wonder at things so much on the

surface: “If you but knew another thing, which I feel within myself!”

And she would declare: “If we would rightly estimate the operations

of God, we should wonder more at interior than at exterior things.

This incapacity to eat is indeed an operation of God, but one in

which my will has no part; hence I cannot glory in it. Nor is there

cause for our wondering at it, since for God this is as though a mere

nothing.”[105]

4. _The fasts form no part of her penitence._

These fasts, although beginning within her first period are not

characteristic of it; and her biographers rightly put them into a

chapter distinct from her penances, properly speaking. These penances

will have continued alongside of, and in between, these fasts for about

a year after the beginning of the latter. And then at last, at the

end of this first period of four years, “all thought of such (active)

mortifications was, in an instant, taken from her mind in such guise

that, even had she wished to carry out such mortifications, she would

have been unable.” For “the sight of her sins was now taken from her

mind, so that she henceforth did not catch a glimpse of them,--as

though they had all been cast into the depths of the sea.”[106]

V. SECOND, CENTRAL PERIOD OF CATHERINE’S CONVERT LIFE, 1477-1499: ITS

SPECIAL SPIRITUAL FEATURES.

We now come to the second, longest, and central period of her life,

1477-1499. But though at first sight Chapters VI to XLII, and XLV

of the _Vita_ would seem exclusively to treat of these twenty-two

years, examination proves this to be far from the case. If little or

nothing from the first period is to be found there, very much from the

third is embedded in those pages. And this scantiness of information

springs from the simple fact that, during these twenty-two years,

her inner life is led by herself alone, without any direct human aid

of companionship; and her sufficient health, and the correspondingly

large amount of external activity among the sick and poor, leave her

but little or no time for those conferences and discourses amongst

friends, of which her last period is full. This dearth of evidence is

all the more to be regretted, since these central years represent the

culmination of her balance and many-sided power.

1. _Interior change._

For the first two years of this time she and Giuliano continued to

live in their small house of the Portoria quarter, very busy, both of

them, amongst the sick and poor, as well in the houses round about as

in the Hospital. Indeed, externally, little or no change can have been

apparent. It was the interior change, the moving away from the actively

and directly penitential state into one of expansive love and joy,

which alone, as yet, marked a new period.

2. _The Three Rules of Love. The Divine method of the soul’s

purification._

Some time during these new beginnings it must have been that “her Love

once said within her mind: ‘Observe, little daughter, these three

rules. Never say “I will,” or “I will not.” Never say “mine,” but ever

say “our.” Never excuse thyself, but be ever ready to accuse thyself.’”

And another time He said: “When thou sayest the ‘Our Father,’ take for

thy foundation ‘Thy Will be done.’ In the Hail Mary, take ‘Jesus.’ In

Holy Scripture take ‘Love,’ with which thou wilt ever go straightly,

exactly, lightly, attentively, swiftly, enlightenedly, without error,

without guide, and without the means of other creatures, since Love

suffices unto itself to do all things without fear or weariness, so

that martyrdom itself appears unto it a joy.”[107]

But this her love, just because it is so real and from God, appears

indeed to fill her at any given moment, yet it grows and shows

her, at each fresh stage, both its own incompleteness and her own

imperfection, in her and its former stages. “At any one moment the love

of that moment seemed to me to have attained to its greatest possible

perfection. But then, in the course of time, my spiritual sight having

become clearer, I saw that it had had many imperfections.” “Day by day

I perceive that motes have been removed, which this Pure Love casts

out and eliminates. This work is done by God, and man is not aware of

it at the time, and cannot then see these imperfections; indeed God

continuously allows man to see his (momentary) operation as though it

were without imperfection, whilst all the time He, before Whom the

heavens are not pure, is not ceasing from removing imperfections from

his soul.”[108]

As ever throughout her life so now also, consolations are not the aim

and end, but only the actual effects of her devotedness, and the ever

fresh incentives to increased disinterestedness and self-surrender.

And, with regard to these consolations, she again strove to escape all

notice. “She would at times have her mind so full of divine love, as to

be all but incapable of speaking; and would be in so great a transport

of feeling as to be obliged to hide herself so as not to be seen.

She would lose the use of her senses and remain like one dead; and,

to escape the occurrence of such things, she would force herself to

remain in company as much as possible. And she would say to her Lord:

‘I do not want that which proceedeth from Thee, but I want Thee alone,

O tender Love.’ But just because her love was so sincere and she fled

from consolations, her Lord gave her of them all the more.”[109]

3. _Her Ecstasies._

If on one of the many occasions when she had hidden herself away in

some secret spot, she was ever discovered by any one, they would find

her walking up and down, and seeming as though she would wish to do

so without end; or they would come upon her with her face in her

hands, prostrate on the ground, entranced, and with feelings beyond

description or conception. “These ecstasies would almost always last

three or four hours; and if, on coming to herself, she spoke of the

wonders she had seen, there was no one to understand her, and so she

kept silence.” “And if called during one of these trances, she would

not hear, even though they did so loudly.”[110]

This inattention would, however, occur only in case the call was simply

one of curiosity. For on other occasions “she would remain as though

dead for six hours; but on being called to the doing of any duty,

however trifling it might seem, she would instantly arise and respond

and go about the doing of this her obligation. And she would thus leave

all, without any kind of trouble, according to her wont of flying from

self-will as though it were the devil. And coming thus forth from her

hiding-place she would have her face flushed, so as to look like a

cherub, and to seem to have upon her lips the ‘who then shall separate

me from the love of Christ?’ of the glorious Apostle.” And “on thus

arising from those trances, she seemed to feel stronger both in body

and in soul,”[111] as in the case of the fasting.

Even in the midst of her work absorptions would occur like unto these

in all but their length of duration: “At times her hands would sink,

unable to go on, and weeping she would say, ‘O my Love, I can no more’;

and would thus sit for a while with her senses alienated, as though

she had been dead. And this would occur oftener at one time than at

another, according to the varying fulness of experience present in that

purified mind.”[112]

4. _Pure Love, independent of any particular state or form of life._

And she was full of the conviction, and cared much for the formal

acknowledgment on the part of others, that the possession and the

increase of the most perfect love is independent of any particular

state or form of life, and is directly dependent upon two things

only, the grace of God and the generosity of the human will. “One

day a Friar and Preacher,[113] perhaps to test her or because of some

mistaken notion, told her that he himself was better fitted for loving

than she, because he having entered Religion and renounced all things

both within and without, and she being married to the world as he was

to Religion, he found himself more free to love God, and more acted

upon by Him. And the Friar went on, and alleged many other reasons.

But when had spoken much and long, an ardent flame of pure love seized

upon Catherine, and she sprang to her feet with such fervour as to

appear beside herself, and she said: ‘If I thought that your habit had

the power of gaining me one single additional spark of love, I should

without fail take it from you by force, if I were not allowed to have

it otherwise. That you should merit more than myself, is a matter that

I concede and do not seek, I leave it in your hands; but that I cannot

love Him as much as you, is a thing that you will never by any means

be able to make me understand.’ And she said this with such force

and fervour, that all her hair came undone, and, falling down, was

scattered upon her shoulders. And yet all the while this her vehement

bearing was full of grace and dignity.--And when back at home, and

alone with her Lord, she exclaimed: ‘O Love, who shall impede me from

loving Thee? Though I were, not only in the world as I am, but in a

camp of soldiers, I could not be impeded from loving Thee.’”[114]

There is probably no scene recorded for us, so completely

characteristic of Catherine at her deepest: the breadth and the

fulness, the self-oblivion and the dignity, the claimlessness and the

spiritual power--all are there.

VI. CATHERINE AND GIULIANO MOVE INTO THE HOSPITAL IN 1479, NEVER AGAIN

TO QUIT IT. SHE IS MATRON FROM 1490 TO 1495.

The special character, both in form and content, of Catherine’s

spiritual life and doctrine will occupy us in Chapter VI. Here we

have as yet specially to busy ourselves with its external and social

occasions and effects. And these effects were both large and constant;

indeed they were on the increase up to 1497, two years before this

second period comes to a close.

1. _Catherine and Giuliano occupy two small rooms in the Hospital._

For in 1479 the couple shift their quarters from outside the Hospital

to within that great building, and there, for eleven years, they

together occupy two little rooms, living without pay and at their own

expense, but entirely devoted to the care of the poor sick and dying

and of the orphans collected there.[115] Indeed Catherine never again

lived outside the walls of the Hospital during the thirty-one years

that still remained to her on earth.

2. _Catherine’s double life here, 1479-1490._

And here in these rooms, and for eleven years, she worked among

the sick, as but one of their many nurses. The spacious, high,

white-washed, stone-flagged wards, with the great tall windows shedding

floods of glaring light or cheering sunshine, according to the season

without and to the mood of the poor sick within, stand still as

they stood in Catherine’s day. True, new wards have been added; the

lay female Nurses of her time have been in part replaced by Nursing

Sisters, and the Observant Friars by Capuchins; much, very much has

been discovered since, both as to man’s body and as to the facts and

functions of his mind; all things, and man’s interpretation of all

things, seem as though irretrievably changed. And yet the mystery of

devoted love, its necessity, difficulty, and actual operative presence,

as an occasional pang and aspiration in us all, as a visible, dominant

influence in some of us, remain with and in us still unchanged, with

all the freshness of an elemental force, indestructible, inexhaustible.

This devoted work of Catherine, this her serving of the sick “with

the most fervent affection, and immense solicitude,”[116] had also

the remarkable circumstance about it that, “notwithstanding all

this her attentive,” outward-looking “care, she never was without

the consciousness of her tender Love; nor again did she, because

of this consciousness, fail in any practical matter concerning the

Hospital.”[117]

3. _Matron of the Hospital, 1490-1496._

And this double life continued thus, and grew in depth and breadth. And

at the end of fourteen years of such humble service, she was, in 1490,

appointed Matron (_Rettora_) of the whole Institution, apparently the

same year as that in which her now widowed cousin Tommasina entered the

Augustinian Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie. During the six years

in which she held this office, she had much administrative business and

responsibility weighing upon her. Large sums of money passed through

her hands, and she always managed to spend and to account for them with

the greatest care and success. Indeed “her accounts were never found

wrong by a single _danaro_ (farthing).”[118]

VII. CATHERINE AND THE PLAGUE. THE OUTBREAK OF 1493.

It must have been after she had thus shown a rare devotedness

and talent in an ordinary Nurse’s work, and had next, as Matron,

manifested, for some years, a remarkable administrative ability, that,

in 1493, she rose, in both capacities, to the very height of heroism

and efficiency.

1. _Catherine’s general activity._

Early in January of that year, quite exceptionally cold weather visited

the city: the harbour was frozen over; and early in the spring the

Plague broke out so fiercely, and raged so long--till the end of

August--that of those who remained in the stricken city, four-fifths

succumbed to the terrible disease. Most of the rich and noble, all

those that did not occupy any official post, fled from the town. But

Catherine not only remained at her post, but she it was no doubt

who organized, or helped to organize, the out-of-door ambulance and

semi-open-air wards which we know to have been instituted at this

juncture on the largest scale. The great open space immediately at the

back of and above the Hospital, where now still stretch the public

gardens of the Acquasola, she managed to cover with rows of sailcloth

tents, and appointed special Doctors (mostly Lombards), Nurses, and

Priests and Franciscan Tertiaries, for the physical and spiritual care

of their occupants. Throughout the weeks and months of the visitation

she was daily in their midst, superintending, ordering, stimulating,

steadying, consoling, strengthening this vast crowd of panic-stricken

poor and severely strained workers.

2. _The pestiferous woman._

And “on one occasion, she found” here, “a very devout woman, a Tertiary

of St. Francis, dying of” this “pestilential fever. The woman lay there

in her agony, speechless for eight days. And Catherine constantly

visited her, and would say to her, ‘Call Jesus.’ Unable to articulate,

the woman would move her lips; and it was conjectured that she was

calling Him as well as she could. And Catherine, when she saw the

woman’s mouth thus filled, as it were, with Jesus, could not restrain

herself from kissing it with great and tender affection. And in this

way she herself took this pestilential fever, and very nearly died of

it. But, as soon as ever she had recovered, she was back again at her

work, with the same great attention and diligence.”[119]

How much there is in this little scene! Beautiful, utterly

self-oblivious impulsiveness; a sleepless sense of the omnipresence

of Christ as Love, and of this Love filling all things that aspire

and thirst after it, as spontaneously as the liberal air and the

overflowing mother’s breast fill and feed even the but slightly

aspiring or the painfully labouring lungs and the eager, helpless

infant mouth; swift, tender, warm, whole-hearted affection for this

outwardly poor and disfigured, but inwardly rich and beautiful

fellow-creature and twin-vessel of election; an underlying virile

elasticity of perseverance and strenuous, cheerful, methodical

laboriousness; all these things are clearly there.

Only when everything had again returned to its normal condition did

she once more restrict herself to the administrative work of the

Hospital.[120]

VIII. CATHERINE AND ETTORE VERNAZZA, 1493-1495.

It must have been during this epidemic of 1493 that Catherine first got

to know, or at least first to work with, a man hardly less remarkable

than herself.

1. _Ettore’s family, marriage, and philanthropic work._

The Genoese notary Ettore Vernazza, Catherine’s junior by some

twenty-three years, (as in the cases of his still greater

contemporaries and compatriots, Columbus, Pope Julius II, and Andrea

Doria, the year of his birth remains uncertain, but is probably 1470,)

was a scion of the ancient house of Vernaccia, which derived its name

from a wine-producing village on the Eastern Riviera. A Riccobono

Vernaccia had been Chancellor of Genoa, as far back as 1345. Ettore,

the first of the family to write his name Vernazza, was the son of

the Notary Pietro Vernaccia and of Battistina Spinola, his wife. A

sister of his, Marietta, married into the Fieschi family.[121] And if

Catherine really did go among the pestiferous sick, she can hardly

have failed to meet Ettore, now twenty-three years old. For his eldest

daughter, the Augustinian Canoness, the Venerable Battista Vernazza,

a most careful writer and one full of a life-long vivid remembrance

of her father, in an account of Ettore, written by her in Genoa in

1581 (she was born in 1497, four years after the event she describes),

tells of “a great compassion which he had conceived when still very

young, at the time that the pestilence raged in Genoa, and when he used

to go around to aid the poor, and when he found that, by means of a

preparation of cassia, he could bring them back from (certain) death to

life.”[122]

2. _Ettore’s character; Catherine’s chief biographer._

Ettore was, and he kept and made himself, and rare graces fashioned

him ever increasingly into, a man of fine and keen, deep and

world-embracing mind and heart, of an overflowing, ceaseless activity,

and of a will of steel. To him, the earliest and perhaps up to the

end the most intimate, certainly the most perceptive, of Catherine’s

disciples and chroniclers, we owe the transmission of many of the

reminiscences of her conversion and early strivings (no doubt

primarily derived from her own self), and of probably more than half

of such authentic sayings and discourses of hers, as were recorded

contemporaneously with their utterance. Indeed all that remains to us

of written testimony, contemporaneous in this strict sense of the word,

and that is other than legal documents, can, up to 1499, be safely

attributed to him. And all such constituents of the now sadly mixed up,

and most varyingly valuable, materials and successive layers of the

_Vita ed Opere_ as can with probability be assigned to his composition,

are characterized by a remarkable clearness and consistency, restraint

and refinement, elasticity and freshness of spiritual apprehension

and sympathy. Thus Ettore’s influence back upon the formation of

Catherine’s literary image and of our entire, especially of our

authentic, conception of her, was predominant, and her influence

upon his whole life was decisive; and hence his life can be rightly

taken as an indefinite extension and new application and necessary

supplementation of her own life and doctrine. I shall then, for both

these reasons, try and work up what we can recover concerning the

successive stages of his intercourse with Catherine and of the growth

of his own life up to her death, into the corresponding vicissitudes of

her remaining years.

It must have been two years later (1495) that Vernazza became her

disciple; and probably some two or three years still further on, that

Ettore began to keep (no doubt at first only quite occasional) records

of her Sayings and Doings.[123]

IX. CATHERINE’S HEALTH BREAKS DOWN, 1496; OTHER EVENTS OF THE SAME YEAR.

The year 1496 is marked by various events external and internal.

1. _Three external changes._

In June, or some time before, Vernazza marries the beautiful

Bartolommea Ricci, of the distinguished family of that name. On

the 17th of June Giuliano sells his Palace in the Via St. Agnese.

And, probably at Midsummer, perhaps at Michaelmas, Catherine, forced

to do so by increasing physical infirmities, resigns her office of

Matron.[124]

2. _End of the extraordinary Fasts._

Catherine “was now no more able to have a care of the government of

the Hospital or of her own little house” (within its precincts) “owing

to her great bodily weakness. She would now find it necessary, after

Communion, to take some food to restore her bodily strength, and this

even if it was a fast day.” We thus get the beginning of a third

period with regard to such fasting powers. In the first, she had done

as all the world, but had been able to keep all the Church fasts and

abstinences. In the second, she had, during Lent and Advent, eaten

little or nothing, and had, during the remainder of the time, lived as

she had done before. And now, for the rest of her life, her eating and

fasting are entirely fitful and intermittent, and she has to abandon

all (at least systematic) attempts to keep even the ordinary Church

fasts and abstinences.

If we are determined to insist on the accuracy of the “twenty-three

Lents and twenty-two Advents” of her extraordinary fasts affirmed

already by MS. “A,” we shall have to understand this present inability

to fast as applying, till after Lent 1496, only to the times outside

of Lent and Advent, since this fasting period cannot be made to begin

earlier than Lent 1476. I take it that in this, as certainly in most

other cases, there was, in reality, a much more gradual transition than

the _Vita_ accounts would lead one to expect.

3. _She continues within the Hospital precincts. Her two maid-servants._

Catherine had ceased to be Matron, but she did not leave the ample

precincts of the Hospital; indeed she continued in the separate little

house, which she had, probably since 1490, been occupying with

Giuliano. But it will be better to describe her abode a little later

on, when we can be quite sure as to its identity.

She had now, as I think had been the case since soon after she had

left her Palace, two maids in her service: the widow and Franciscan

Tertiary, Benedetta Lombarda, who appears, already then as an old and

valued servant, in Giuliano’s will of October 1494, and who never left

Catherine till her death; and a younger, unmarried maid, either Mariola

Bastarda or a certain Antonietta. Argentina del Sale, too, will have

often, perhaps continually, been about Catherine, aiding her in various

ways; but she will not as yet have been living under the same roof with

her. As we shall find, this little perfervid and untrained intelligence

became the instrument, or at least the occasion, of the introduction of

the largest legendary incident into the ultimate _Vita_ of her mistress.

X. EVENTS OF 1497.

The next year, 1497, is marked by two events, of all but contradictory

import and effect.

1. _Birth of Tommasina (Battista) Vernazza._

On April 15 Vernazza’s first child, a daughter, is born; and Catherine

is her God-mother and holds her at the Font. Dottore Tommaso Moro, a

learned lawyer friend of Ettore, is the God-father, and the child is

given his name and is called Tommasina. What would Catherine have felt

or said had she foreseen the vicissitudes--they will occupy us in due

course--through which this, her fellow God-parent, was to pass, during

the storms of that Religious Revolution which were to break out so soon

after her death? She would, we may be sure, have at all events been

glad at the action and influence of her God-daughter towards and upon

her God-father, in those sad and most difficult times.

2. _Giuliano’s death._

And Giuliano was gravely ill ever since the beginning of the year,

if not before; and some time in August or September he died.[125] He

had been suffering long from a chronic and most painful illness; and

towards the end, “he became very impatient; and Catherine, fearful

lest he should lose his soul, withdrew into another chamber, and there

cried aloud for his salvation unto her tender Love, ever repeating

with tears and sighs these words alone: ‘O Love, I demand this soul of

Thee; I beg Thee, give it me, for indeed Thou canst do so.’ And having

persevered thus for about half-an-hour with many a plaint, she was

given at last an interior assurance of having been heard. And returning

to her husband, she found him all changed and peaceful in his ways,

and giving clear indications, both by words and signs, that he was

fully resigned to the will of God.” And “some time after his death she

said to a spiritual son of hers,” no doubt Vernazza: “‘My son, Messer

Giuliano has gone; and you know well that he was of a somewhat wayward

nature, whence I suffered much mental pain. But my tender Love, before

that he passed from this Life, certified me of his salvation.’ And

Catherine, having spoken these words, showed signs of regret at having

uttered them; and he was discreet and did not answer this remark of

hers, but turned the conversation to other topics.”[126] At all events

this conversation is thoroughly authentic, and Catherine’s reserve,

and her regret at having somewhat broken through her usual restraint,

are profoundly characteristic: the contributors to and redactors of

her Life have been increasingly blind, or even opposed, to all such

beautifully spontaneous and human little shynesses and regrets for

momentary indiscretions.

3. _Giuliano’s Will._

Giuliano had, by his Will of the 20th October 1494, ordered his body

to be buried in the Hospital Church; and this was now carried out by

Catherine. A vault of some dimensions must have been made or bought,

since later both she herself and Argentina del Sale declared their wish

to be buried in Giuliano’s “monument.” Perhaps the wish of the latter

was carried out.

But Giuliano had left two far more important and difficult matters to

the management of Catherine,--matters which, indeed, were respectively

full of pain and of anxiety for her,--Thobia, and his share in the

Island of Scios. As to Thobia, he had left £500 to the Protectors of

the Hospital, among which were reckoned £200 which he had already paid

them through his late mother, Thobia Adorna, for the keep of this

daughter of his, and had warmly recommended her to their kind care; and

had arranged, in case they refused this responsibility, that Thobia

(who must by now have been quite twenty-six years of age) should be

regularly paid the interest on this money. He also left to Catherine,

for payment to “a certain person in Religion,”--possibly a member of

a Third Order, and whose identity is carefully concealed, but who

cannot fail to be Thobia’s mother--“£150, in repayment of the same sum,

borrowed from her by himself and the said Catherine,”--money which this

poor mother will have spent on the child’s keep, up to the time when

Giuliano told his story to Catherine.

As to his two _carati_ (shares) in the lands of the Island of Scios,

farmed by the Genoese Merchant Company “Maona,” he desires that,

if sold, his cousins Agostino and Giovanni Adorno shall be able to

buy these _carati_ for a lower price than would be required of any

other purchaser. There are also elaborate conditions and alternatives

attached to a legacy of £2,000 to his unmarried nephew Giovanni

Adorno, with a view to his marrying and having legitimate children: an

anxiety which of itself would show how sincere had been Giuliano’s own

conversion, and which was evidently not far-fetched, since in this very

Will he leaves £125 to a natural sister of his, Catherine, daughter of

his father Jacobo, for the boarding (no doubt during the latter years

of her life) of his late mother, Thobia Adorna.

Giuliano had also left Catherine herself £1,000,--a return of her

marriage dowry, and £100 from himself; and in addition “all garments,

trinkets, gold, silver, cash, furniture, and articles of vertu, which

might be found either in his dwelling-place or elsewhere.” And he

does so because he “knows and recognizes that the said Catherine, his

beloved wife and heiress, has ever behaved herself well and laudably

towards himself,” and “wants to provide the means for her continuing

to lead, after his death, her quiet, peaceful, and spiritual mode of

life.” And he adds the condition that, “if the said Catherine were

to proceed to a second marriage (a thing which he does not think she

will ever do), then he deprives her of all the legacies and rights and

duties of heirship mentioned in this Will, and confers them upon the

honourable Office of the Misericordia of Genoa,”--a society with and

for which, as we have seen, Catherine had worked so much and so well.

Altogether Giuliano had left by this Will about £6,000 for Catherine

to allot and appropriate; and quite £4,000 of this sum-total demanded

careful and even anxious consideration, whilst £650 of it could not but

provoke painful memories and make a call upon all her generosity. And

by his Codicil of January 1497, he had given her still greater latitude

of action, by declaring that, as regarded his legacy to the Hospital,

Catherine should have full power and leave to abrogate or to modify

it, according to her will and pleasure.[127] Thus these documents

constitute an impressive proof of Giuliano’s full trust in the wisdom,

balance of mind and magnanimity of his wife, now herself already so

broken in health.

4. _Catherine’s execution of Giuliano’s Will._

It is nine months after Giuliano’s death, on May 19, 1498, that we can

watch and see how Catherine has been attempting to execute her trust,

and how her nature has responded to these various difficult calls

upon it, and to the claims of her own family. She first of all, then,

orders her body to be buried in the same grave with her husband, in the

Hospital Church; and that only the Friars and Clergy of the Hospital

shall be present at the funeral; and leaves £10 for her obsequies and

£50 for Masses for herself. She next leaves to the Priest Blasio Cicero

four shares of the Bank of St. George (about £200), of which he is to

pay £150 to a certain female Religious, in satisfaction for a certain

debt. And she abrogates Giuliano’s legacy to the Hospital, and, in its

place, herself leaves it four shares of St. George’s (at the time about

£200, but always tending to increase in value), in liquidation of the

£300 that remained unpaid from among the £500 of that legacy. She next

leaves to Benedetta Lombarda one share of Saint George’s, in addition

to the similar share left her by Giuliano; and to “Antonietta, dwelling

with Testatrix, £25, in case she shall live with her up to her death.”

As to the two _carati_, she leaves them to Giovanni Adorno, in lieu

of the money bequeathed to him by Giuliano. As to her own relations,

she leaves two shares of St. George’s apiece to her two nieces Maria

and Battista, the daughters of her eldest brother Jacobo, for their

marriage portions; and, if they all die before marriage, then all this

money is to go to their father. She leaves £10 to her Augustinian

Canoness sister Limbania; and institutes her three brothers Jacobo,

Giovanni and Lorenzo, and their heirs, her residuary legatees.

Here four things are noticeable. Catherine has herself undertaken the

expenses of Thobia’s keep; the apparent lessening on her part of the

sum originally apportioned for the purpose by Giuliano is doubtless

only apparent, and must proceed from the same cause which has produced

a similar apparent diminution in the amount of Giuliano’s legacy to

his nephew from £2,000 to £1,500. In the next place, this is the only

one out of the couple’s four Wills, in which the second maid is not

Mariola Bastarda, but a certain Antonietta. Catherine feels uncertain

as to whether Antonietta will persevere in her service to the end;

and we shall find that she has again disappeared in Catherine’s next

Will of 1506, and that Mariola has again taken up her old place. We

shall find that a story, of which the authenticity and significance

are most difficult to fix, attaches without doubt to one or the other

of these maids. In the third place, Catherine does not sell the two

_carati_, but leaves them, in lieu of the money bequeathed to him, to

Giovanni Adorno; no doubt from the feeling that thus, at her death,

this her share in the government and exploitation of the Greek island

would be in the hands of a man in the prime of life, who could help to

check malpractices. And lastly, she shows a generous forgiveness of

Giuliano, a delicate magnanimity towards Thobia and Thobia’s mother,

and a thoughtful affection for all her own near and grown-up relations,

by ordering her body to be buried in the same grave with Giuliano;

by herself undertaking the charges of Thobia’s keep, and appointing a

priest by name for handing over Giuliano’s legacy to the still unnamed

mother of Thobia; and by remembering her sister, although she had long

been provided for in her Convent, her three brothers, who were no doubt

indefinitely richer than herself, and especially her two marriageable

nieces. Altogether, of the £2,304 definitely accounted for in the

Will, she leaves £69 for her own funeral and for Masses for herself;

£400 for Thobia and her mother; £210 to her own relations; £125 to

servants; and £1,500 to her husband’s nephew. There is no trace here of

any indifference to the natural ties of kindred, or of an abstraction

of mind rendering her incapable of a careful consideration and firm

decision in matters of business: a point which we shall find to be of

much importance, later on.

5. _Ettore’s “Mandiletto”-work._

In this year, too, if not already in the previous one, Vernazza founded

the institution of the “Mandiletto.” Still a young man--for he was

now at most but twenty-eight--Ettore had been noticing, in his work

among the poor, how much misery of all kinds obtained in commercial,

money-making, hazard-loving Genoa, amongst persons who, even though

ill, refused to take refuge in the hospitals; and who, however poor

at present, had known better, even brilliant days, and were too proud

to beg, or even to accept alms from any one who could recognize them.

And hence he now organized a system for discovering and visiting such

persons in their own homes and for minimizing their pain in accepting

help, by arranging that the members of this little fraternity should

never visit such houses, except with some kind of little veil or

handkerchief (_fazzoletto_, _mandiletto_) applied to their faces.[128]

Catherine, who had helped the Uffizio della Misericordia so much, and

who herself so greatly disliked being noticed or even simply seen

whenever she was doing or suffering anything at all out of the common,

had no doubt, at least in a general way, inspired this beautifully

delicate means of preserving and sparing the bashfulness of the giver

and the dignity of the recipient. Throughout the remaining years of her

life she must have cared to hear Vernazza’s report as to the progress

of this work.

XI. BEGINNING OF HER THIRD, LAST PERIOD; END OF THE EXTRAORDINARY

FASTS; FIRST RELATIONS WITH DON MARABOTTO.

But it is in the next year, 1499, that we reach the actual beginning of

the third and last period of Catherine’s Convert life.

1. _End of the Fasts; transfer of the “carati.”_

Some of the events of this year are again predominantly external, or

but continuations or consequences of previous inclinations of her will.

It must have been at the end of the Lent of this spring-time that all

extraordinary fasting-power, of a kind that could be foreseen and

that more or less synchronized with the ecclesiastical season, left

her for good and all. And she had gone on feeling strongly her share

of responsibility for the government of that far-off island. Hence

she betook herself, on September 18 of this year, with the Notary

Battista Strata, who has drawn up nine out of the fourteen Legal Acts

of Giuliano and herself, to the great palace of the Cardinal Giuliano

della Rovere, who, four years later, became Pope Julius II. This palace

stood by the (now destroyed) Church of San Tommaso, and was at this

time the residence of Giovanni Adorno. And there, in the great Loggia

looking south, Catherine dictated the substance of an Act of Cession

then and there to her husband’s nephew of those two _carati_, which

weighed so heavily on her mind. Perhaps Giovanni was in poor health,

and Catherine was too eager to eschew her responsibility in the matter

to be willing to wait any longer.[129]

2. _Beginning of Catherine’s relations with Don Marabotto._

The chief event, however, from the point of view of her inner life,

and which gives us a second close and most important eyewitness for

her last period, was the beginning of her spiritual relations with Don

Marabotto.[130] “At the end of the twenty-five years during which she

had persevered the way of God without the means of any creature,” says

the _Vita_, “the Lord gave her a priest, to take care both of her soul

and of her body; a spiritual man and one of holy life, to whom God gave

light and grace to understand His operations within her. He had been

appointed Rector of the Hospital; and hence was in a position to hear

her Confession, say Mass for her, and give her Holy Communion according

to her convenience.”[131] Now the rare and profound isolation and

independence of her middle period render this turning to and finding

of human help specially significant; the numerous sayings addressed

to her Confessor to be found throughout the _Vita_ were all, with the

sole exception of those contained in the Conversion-scene, spoken to

Marabotto and transmitted by him to us;[132] and probably at least half

of the narrative of her Life and well-nigh all her Passion are due to

Don Marabotto’s pen. It is then important, and it is possible to get a

fairly clear idea as to the sort of man he was.

3. _Don Marabotto’s family and character; Catherine’s attitude towards

him._

Don Cattaneo came from a stock even more ancient and distinguished

than that of Vernazza. A Marabotto had had a lawsuit with the Bishop

of Genoa in 1128; Roggiero Marabotto had lent money to the King of

Sardinia in 1164; Martino Marabotto had been Ambassador to Rome,

Florence, and Lucca in 1256; Pelagio of that name had been Notary to

the Mint in 1435; Giorgio, a Doctor of Medicine in 1424; Ambrosio,

Lieutenant-Governor of Corsica in 1459. And the family, like the

Fieschi, had always been Guelph: Federico Marabotto had armed nine

galleys against the Ghibellines and had had a narrow escape from the

latter, during a dark night of 1330; and Antonio and Domenico were

known Guelph leaders in 1450 and 1452. Indeed the latter was Procurator

to the Fieschi family in 1443, and thus anticipated, by sixty years

and on a larger scale, Don Cattaneo’s management of Catherine Fiesca’s

modest affairs.[133]

Don Cattaneo himself we find ever gentle, patient, devoted and

full of unquestioning reverence towards Catherine; most valuably

accurate and detailed in his reproduction of things, in proportion

to their tangibleness; naïf and without humour, thoroughly matter of

fact, readily identifying the physical with the spiritual, and thus

often, unconsciously, all but succeeding in depriving Catherine’s

spirit, for us who have so largely to see her with his eyes, of much

of its specially characteristic transcendence and of its equally

characteristic ethical and spiritual immanence. Such a mind would

appear better fitted to follow,--at a respectful distance,--than to

lead such a spirit, as Catherine’s; and, indeed, to be more apt to help

her as a man of business than as a man of God. As a matter of fact,

however, he was quite evidently of very great help and consolation,

even in purely spiritual matters, to Catherine, during these last

eleven years of her life. Not as though there were any instances

of his initiating, stimulating, or modifying any of her ideals or

doctrines: she entirely remains, in purely spiritual matters, her

own old self, and continues to grow completely along the lines of

her previous development. And again he did attend, with an all but

unbroken assiduity, to matters not directly belonging to his province

_qua_ priest,--to her much-tried, ever-shifting bodily health, and,

probably some three or four years later on, to her financial affairs,

which latter were still of some variety and complication, owing to her

generous anxiety to do much for others, with but little of her own. But

between these two opposite extremes of possible help or influence lay

another middle level, in which his aid was considerable. For “whenever

God worked anything within her, which impressioned her much either in

soul or body, she would confer about it all with her Confessor; and he,

with the grace and light of God, understood well-nigh all, and would

give her answers which seemed to show that he himself felt the very

thing that she was feeling herself.” “And she would say, that even

simply to have him by, gave her great comfort, because they understood

each other, even by just looking each other in the face without

speaking.”[134] Marabotto’s Direction consists, then, in giving her the

human support of human understanding and sympathy, and, no doubt, in

reminding her, in times of darkness, of the lights and truths received

and communicated by her in times of consolation. Never does Marabotto

see, or think he sees, as far or as clearly as she sees, when she sees

at all; and it is the light derived by him from herself at one time,

which he administers to her soul at another.

4. _Catherine’s first Confession to Don Cattaneo._

The general tone and character of her first Confession to him are

described to us, no doubt from his own contemporary record. “She said:

‘Father, I know not where I am, either as to my soul or as to my body.

I should like to confess, but I cannot perceive any offence committed

by me.’” “And as to the sins which she mentioned,” adds Marabotto, “she

was not allowed to see them as so many sins, thought or said or done by

herself. But her state of soul was like unto that of a small boy, who

would have committed some slight offence in simple ignorance; and who,

if some one told him: You have done evil, would at these words suddenly

change colour and blush, and yet not because he has now an experimental

knowledge of evil.” “And many a time she would say to her Confessor:

‘I do not want to neglect Confession, and yet I do not know to whom to

give the blame of my sins; I want to accuse myself, and cannot manage

it.’ And yet, with all this, she made all the acts appropriate to

Confession.”[135]

We shall see, indeed, how keen, right up to the end, was her sense of

her frailty and of her general and natural inclination to evil. And her

teaching as to numerous positive and active imperfections remaining

in the soul, in every soul, up to the very end, is so clear and

constant, and so admittedly derived from her own experience, that we

can explain the above only by the supplementary part of her doctrine

(also derived from her own experience), which insists that some greatly

advanced souls do not, at the time of committing them, as yet see these

their imperfections, and that, by the time they have so far further

advanced as to see these imperfections, they are no more inclined to

commit them. In this way, then, there would be no fully formal sin or

deliberate imperfection to confess.

XII. HER CONVERSATIONS WITH HER DISCIPLES; “CATERINA SERAFINA.” DON

MARABOTTO AND THE POSSESSED MAID.

1. _Pure Love and Heaven._

It is probably during the next two years of her life, that occurred the

beautiful scene and conversation,--so typical of her relations with her

disciples during this first part of her last period (1499 to 1501),

which we can think of as her spiritual Indian summer, her Aftermath.

The scene has been recorded for us by her chief interlocutor, Vernazza.

Probably Bartolommea, Ettore’s wife, was present, and possibly also

Don Marabotto. “This blessed soul,” he writes, “all surrounded though

she was by the deep and peaceful ocean of her Love, God, desired

nevertheless to express in words, to her spiritual children, the

sentiments that were within her. And many a time she would say to them:

‘O would that I could tell what my heart feels!’ And her children

would say: ‘O Mother, tell us something of it.’ And she would answer:

‘I cannot find words appropriate to so great a love. But this I can

say with truth, that if of what my heart feels but one drop were

to fall into Hell, Hell itself would altogether turn into Eternal

Life.’”[136] “And one of these her spiritual children, an interior soul

(_un Religioso_),”--Vernazza, present on this occasion,--“dismayed at

what she was saying, replied: ‘Mother, I do not understand this; if

it were possible, I would gladly understand it better.’ But Catherine

answered: ‘My son, I find it impossible to put it otherwise.’ Then he,

eager to understand further, said: ‘Mother, supposing we gave your word

some interpretation, and that this corresponded to what is in your

mind, would you tell us if it was so?’ ‘Willingly, dear son,’ rejoined

Catherine, with evident pleasure.”

“And the disciple continued: ‘The matter might perhaps stand in this

wise.’ And he then explained how that the love which she was feeling

united her, by participation, with the goodness of God, so that she

no more distinguished herself from God. Now Hell stands for the very

opposite, since all the spirits therein are in rebellion against God.

If then it were possible for them to receive even a little drop of such

union, it would deprive them of all rebellion against God, and would

so unite them with Love, with God Himself, as to make them be in Life

Eternal. For Hell is everywhere where there is such rebellion; and Life

Eternal, wheresoever there is such union. And the Mother, hearing this,

appeared to be in a state of interior jubilation; whence with beaming

face she answered: ‘O dear son, truly the matter stands as you have

said; and hearing you speak, I feel it really is so. But my mind and

tongue are so immersed in this Love, that I cannot myself either say or

think these or other reasons.’ And the Disciple then said: ‘O Mother,

could you not ask your Love, God, for some of these little drops of

union for your sons?’ She answered, and with increased joyousness: ‘I

see this tender Love to be so full of condescension to these my sons,

that for them I can ask nothing of It, and can only present them before

His sight.’”[137]

I sincerely know not where to look for a doctrine of grander depth

and breadth, of more vibrating aliveness; for one more directly the

result of life, or leading more directly to it, than are those few

half-utterances and delicately strong indications of an overflowing

interior plenitude and radiant, all-conquering peace.

And even one such scene is sufficient to make us feel that the

following passage of the _Dialogo_ is, in its substance and tone,

profoundly true to facts: “This soul remained henceforth” (in this

third period) “many a time in company with its many spiritual friends,

discoursing of the Divine Love, in such wise that they felt as though

in Paradise, both collectively, and each one in his own particular way.

How delightful were these colloquies! He who spoke and he who listened,

each one fed on spiritual food of a delicious kind; and because the

time flew so swiftly, they never could attain satiety, but, all on fire

within them, they would remain there, unable at last to speak, unable

to depart, as though in ecstasy.”[138]

2. _“Caterina Serafina”._

Five times the _Vita_ compares her countenance, which, when she was

deeply moved, had a flushed, luminous and transparent appearance, to

that of an Angel or Cherub or Seraph;[139] and it even gives a story,

which purports to explain how she came to be called the latter. And

though this anecdote may be little more than a literary dramatization

of this popular appellation of Catherine; and although, even if the

scene be historical, Catherine has no kind of active share in bringing

it about; yet the passage is, in any case, of some real interest, since

it testifies to and typifies Catherine’s abundance of moral and mental

sanity and strong, serene restorative influence over unbalanced or

tempted souls, and this at a time when she herself had already been in

delicate health for about five years.

The story is interesting also in that it shows how strikingly like

the superficial psycho-physical symptoms of persons described as

possessed by an evil spirit were, and were thought to be, to those

of ecstasy, hence to Catherine’s own. Thus when an attack seized

this “spiritual daughter of Catherine,--a woman of large mind (_alto

intelleto_), who lived and died in virginity, and under the same

roof with Catherine” (no doubt Catherine’s second, unmarried servant

Mariola Bastarda is meant, and each must have had experience of the

other’s powers and wants from or before 1490 till 1497, and again

from 1500 onwards),--“she would become greatly agitated and be thrown

to the ground. The evil spirit would enter into her mind, and would

not allow her to think of divine things. And she would thus be as one

beside herself, all submerged in that malign and diabolic will.”--And

similarly we are told that Catherine would “throw herself to the

ground, altogether beside herself,” “immersed in a sea,”--in this

case, “of the deepest peace”; and “she would writhe as though she were

a serpent.”[140]

Yet this superficial likeness between these two states,--a likeness

apparent already in the similar double series of phenomena described

in St. Paul’s Epistles and in the Acts of the Apostles,--serves,

here also, but to bring out in fuller relief the profound underlying

spiritual and moral difference between the two conditions of soul.

For it is precisely in Catherine’s company that, when insufferable

to her own self, the afflicted Mariola would recover her peace and

self-possession, so that “even a silent look up to Catherine’s face

would help to bring relief.”[141]

It is in 1500, soon after Mariola’s return to her mistress (I take the

maid’s state of health to have occasioned her absence from Catherine

for two years or so), that this spiritual daughter is represented as

declaring in the first stage of one of these attacks,--or rather “the

unclean spirit” possessing her is said to have exclaimed to Catherine

“We are both of us thy slaves, because of that pure love which thou

possessest in thy heart”; and “full of rage at having made this

admission, he threw himself on the ground, and writhed with the feet.”

And then when,--all this is supposed to take place in the presence of

both Catherine and Don Marabotto,--the possessed one has stood up, the

Confessor forces the spirit step by step to speak out and to declare

successively that Catherine is “Caterina,” “Adorna or Fiesca,” and

“Caterina Serafina,” the latter being uttered amidst great torment.[142]

XIII. CATHERINE’S SYMPATHY WITH ANIMAL- AND PLANT-LIFE: HER LOVE OF THE

OPEN AIR. HER DEEP SELF-KNOWLEDGE AS TO THE HEALTHINESS OR MORBIDNESS

OF HER PSYCHO-PHYSICAL STATES.

1. _Increase of suffering and of range of sympathy._

It is indeed in this last period of her life that we can most clearly

see a deeply attractive mixture of personal suffering and of tender

sympathy with even the humblest of all things that live. And this is

doubtless not simply due to the much fuller evidence possessed by us

for these last years, but is quite as much owing to the actual increase

of these twin things within herself. “She was most compassionate

towards all creatures; so that, if an animal were killed or a tree

cut down, she could hardly bear to see them lose that being which

God had given them.”[143] And a beautiful communion of spirit can

now be traced even between plant-life and herself; and an innocent

self-diversion from a too exciting concentration, and help towards a

patient keeping or a bracing reconquering of calmness, is now found by

her, Franciscan-like, in the open air and amidst the restful flowers

and trees. Thus “at times she would seem to have her mind in a mill;

and as if this mill were indeed grinding her, soul and body”; and then

“she would walk up and down in the garden, and would address the plants

and trees and say: ‘Are not you also creatures created by my God? Are

not you, too, obedient to Him?’”--even though, I think she meant to

say, your life moves on so instinctive, calm, and freely expansive in

the large, liberal air, as I feel it to do, by its very contrast to my

own eager, crowded life, struggling in vain for a sustained perfection

of equipoise and for an even momentary adequacy of self-expression.

“And doing thus, she would gradually be comforted.”[144]

Indeed she would, in still intenser moods, use plants and other

creatures of God in a more violent fashion. But this is now no more

done as of old, for direct purposes of mortification; but, at one

time, from an unreflective transport of delight, delight which itself

seems ever to impel noble natures to seek to mix some suffering with

it; and, at another time, for the purpose of producing strong physical

impressios, counter-stimulations and escapes from a too great intensity

of interior feeling. “She would at times, when in the garden, seize

hold of the thorn-covered twigs of the rose-bushes with both her hands;

and would not feel any pain whilst thus doing it in a transport of

mind. She would also bite her hands and burn them, and this in order to

divert, if possible, her interior oppression.”[145]

2. _She alone keeps the sense of the truly spiritual, in the midst of

her psycho-physical states._

Indeed nothing is more characteristic of her psychic state, during

these years, than the ever-increasing intensity, shiftingness and

close interrelation between the physical and mental. But we shall find

that, whereas those who surround her, Confessor, Doctors, Disciples,

Attendants, all, in various degrees and ways, increasingly insist

upon and persist in finding direct proofs of the supernatural in the

purely physical phenomena of her state even when taken separately,

and indeed more and more in exact proportion to their non-spiritual

character: Catherine herself, although no doubt not above the medical

or psychical knowledge of her time, remains admirably centred in the

truly spiritual, and continually awake to the necessity of interior

spiritual selection amongst and assimilation and transformation of all

such psycho-physical impressions and conditions. Even in the midst

of the extreme weaknesses of her last illness we shall see her only

quite exceptionally, and ever for but a few instants, without this

consciousness of the deep yet delicate difference in ethical value and

helpfulness between the various psycho-physical things experienced by

herself, and of the requirements, duties and perceptions of her own

spirit with regard to them.

And this attitude is all the more remarkable because, to the outer

difficulty arising from the persistent, far more immediate, and

apparently more directly religious, view of all her little world

about her, came two peculiarities working in the same direction from

within her own self. There was the old constitutional keenness and

concentration of her highly nervous physical and psychical temperament,

and the rarely high pitch and swift pace of her whole inner life, which

must, at all times, have rendered suspense of judgment and detachment

with regard to her own sensations and quasi-physical impressions

specially difficult. And there was now the new intensity and closeness

of interaction between soul and body, which must have made such lofty

detachment from all but spiritual realities a matter of the rarest

grace and of the most heroic self-conquest.

3. _Catherine’s health does not break up completely till 1507._

The _Vita_, indeed, as we now have it, tells us that “about nine years

before her death,” hence in 1501, “an infirmity came upon her, which

neither her attendants nor the doctors knew how to identify”; and that

“there was confusion, not on her own part, but on the part of those

who served her.”[146] But this whole Chapter XLVII (pp. 127-132) of

the present _Vita_, which opens out thus, is wanting in MSS. “A” and

“B”; and is composed of documents which appear, in a fuller and more

primitive form and in their right chronological place, in the next

three chapters (pp. 132-160), chapters without doubt predominantly

due to Marabotto; and of the documents making up the present Chapter

XXXVIII (pp. 98, 99), which are earlier again, in both contents and

composition, and are very certainly the work of Vernazza. And this

means that, though the present Chapter XLVII claims to give a general

account of her condition during 1501-1510, it does not, as a matter of

fact, give us anything but details belonging without doubt to 1507-1510.

The manner in which this late compiler insists upon the directly

spiritual, indeed supernatural, character of even the clearly secondary

and physical phenomena of her state, make it highly probable that,

having once exaggerated the quality, he readily snatched at any

indications (possibly a slip of the pen in some MS., writing 1501

instead of 1507; we have a similar slip in MS. “A” which on p. 193

twice writes 1506 for 1509), which favoured an early date for the

beginning of her last illness. Certainly the legal documents at our

disposal show her to us still variously interested and active, right up

to 1507.

It will, then, be better first to describe this activity up to 1507,

and to take even the general questions concerning her illness in

connection with her last four years, 1507-1510.

XIV. CATHERINE’S SOCIAL JOYS AND SORROWS, 1501-1507.

1. _Birth of Ettore’s last two daughters._

It will have been during these years 1501 to 1507, unless indeed

already between 1497 and 1501, that Vernazza’s second and third

daughters were born; and if Catherine had stood God-mother to his

eldest child, Tommasina, it is inconceivable that she should not

have cared for Tommasina’s sisters, Catetta and Ginevrina. Certainly

their father, Catherine’s closest friend and disciple, gave detailed

attention, right up to the end of his strenuous life, to all three

children; and made most thoughtful particular provision, in his still

extant remarkable Will of 1517, for the youngest, Ginevrina, who at

that time was the only one not yet settled in life.[147] Thus Vernazza

knew how to combine all this detailed thought for his own children

with the spacious public spirit of which his Dispositions are a still

extant, most impressive monument; and Catherine, who was his deepest

inspirer, clearly led the way here, right up to the last four years of

her life. For we have already seen how she managed to conjoin, in a

fashion similar to Ettore’s, a universalist love for Love Transcendent,

with a particularism of attachment to individual souls, in which that

Love is immanent.

2. _Deaths of Limbania, Jacobo, and Giovanni._

And if she had joy over souls coming into the world, she had sorrow

over souls leaving it. For in the single year 1502 she lost her only

sister, Limbania, and her two elder brothers Jacopo and Giovanni. It

is true that the _Vita_ says: “There died several of her brothers and

sisters; but, owing to the great union which she had with the tender

will of God, she felt no pain, as though they had not been of her

own blood.”[148] But then we have already often found how subject to

caution and rebate are all such general, absolute statements; this

passage in particular is, by its vagueness and ambiguity (she had but

one sister of her own), stamped as late and more or less secondary;

and we shall trace, later on, a similar even more extensive _a priori_

modification of her authentic image in the _Dialogo_. Certainly her

Wills show no kind of indifference to her own relations. In that of

1498 she specially and carefully remembered these very three relations;

and in proportion as these two brothers’ children grow up and at all

require her help, Catherine specially refers to and plans for them,--so

for Jacobo’s eldest daughter Maria, in view of getting her married

(Wills of 1498, 1503, 1506, 1509); and for Giovanni’s three sons (Wills

of 1503, 1506, 1509). Jacobo’s second daughter seems also to have died

at this time, as she no more appears after the Will of 1498. We shall

see how exactly the same affectionate interest is shown by her towards

her still remaining brother and his two sons.[149]

3. _The Triptych “Maestà.”_

And she evidently still went on increasing the number of the objects

of her interest and affection, and the degree of her attachment to

such objects as she already loved. For in her Codicil of the next

year, January 1503, she gives a careful description of a picture

now belonging to herself, “a ‘Majesty,’ representing the Virgin

Mary with Saint Joseph, and the Lord Jesus at their feet, with her”

(Fieschi-Adorni) “coat-of-arms painted within and without.” The

picture evidently represented the Adoration of the Infant Jesus, and

was painted on wood,--a triptych: with Catherine’s arms painted both

inside and outside the two wings. She again describes it thus fully in

her Wills of 1506 and 1509, leaving it, on all those occasions, to a

certain Christofero de Clavaro (Christofer of Chiavari?). It is then

quite clear both that this picture had been specially painted by some

one for Catherine, and that Catherine, for some reason or reasons,

greatly treasured it. Who then was the painter and what was the reason?

I think both are not difficult to find.

We have seen how Catherine’s much-loved cousin, the widowed Tommasina

Fiesca, had in 1497 moved into the Monastero Nuovo in the Aquasola

quarter,--close to Catherine’s abode; so that the cousins will have

met constantly from that time forward. We have also seen that this

distinguished artist painted many a “Pietà” (the dead Christ on

His Mother’s lap, possibly with Angels on each side), and executed

a piece of needlework again representative of a group,--this time

God the Father with many Angels above, and Christ below. Indeed

Federico Alizeri has succeeded in rediscovering one of her works, a

representation of Christ crowned with thorns and surrounded by the

Instruments and Mysteries of His Passion, painted in fine outline upon

sheepskin mounted on a wood-panel.[150] And we have seen how much

Catherine had, as a child, been affected by a “Pietà,” and shall find

her, even after this date, still affected by a religious picture. There

can then be no reasonable doubt that Suor Tommasina was the painter

and giver of this picture,--again a group, a “Maestà,” instead of the

usual “Pietà.”

And the facts of Catherine caring to possess, to preserve, and to

transmit something thus specially appropriated to herself, with her

family arms upon a religious picture, are all deeply significant

touches, and quite unlike what all the secondary, and even some of the

primary, parts of the _Vita_ would lead one to expect.

4. _Increasing care for Thobia._

And this same Codicil shows us how her care, and no doubt her genuine

affection, for Thobia was growing. For she now leaves her the income

on two shares of the Bank of St. George (no doubt only a slight gift,

about £2 10_s._ a year; but Catherine possesses but very little that

she is free to leave as she likes, the claims upon her are very many,

and the young woman is already well provided for, considering her

social station), her better silk gown, a skirt, and various veils. The

poor girl died in 1504 or 1505, for in Catherine’s Will of 1506 she

appears as “the late Thobia.” She must have been about thirty years old

at the time.

5. _Argentina del Sale; story of Marco del Sale’s death._

But in lieu of poor Thobia, Catherine was now given by Providence a

new lowly object of affection and interest. For it was doubtless in

the late spring of 1505 that occurred the incident, of which we have

the beautifully simple and naïf record in Chapter XLVI of the _Vita_;

a record certainly based upon information supplied by Argentina, but

which I take to be the literary work of Vernazza, and to be more or

less contemporary with the events described. A humble young friend

or acquaintance of Catherine’s, who had perhaps already been her

occasional little day-servant, one Argentina de Ripalta, had now been

away from her and married, for a year, to a poor navvy working in the

Molo (Quay) quarter of the town; and this her husband, Marco del Sale,

was now dangerously ill, indeed he was dying of a cancer in the face.

And, having tried every kind of remedy, and seeing himself incurable,

and being thus in great and hopeless pain, Marco had lost all patience

and was as one beside himself. And then Argentina bethought herself of

Catherine, and came to the Hospital, and begged her to come and see her

husband, and pray to God for him.

And Catherine was at once at Argentina’s disposal, and straightway went

off with her. And having come into Marco’s room, she greatly comforted

him with her few but homely and fervent words. Then starting off again

in company with Argentina, Catherine entered, near to the house and

still close to the sea, into the little Church of Santa Maria delle

Grazie la Vecchia,--so called to distinguish it from the more recent

Chapel of the Augustinianesses, which bore the same general title,--and

there, kneeling in a corner, Catherine prayed for Marco. The little

seamen’s Church is still in use, with its many mementoes of four

centuries and more of ships foundered and of ships safely come to port.

And having here finished her prayer, Catherine returned with Argentina

to the Hospital. There Argentina left her, and returned to Marco, and

found him so changed that from a Devil he seemed turned into an Angel.

And with joyous tender feeling he asked: “O Argentina, come, tell me

who is that holy soul that you brought me?” But Argentina answered:

“Why, that is Madonna Caterinetta Adorna, a woman of most perfect

life.” And the sick man replied: “I beg of thee, by the love of God, to

take care to bring her here a second time to me.”

And so the next day Argentina returned to the Hospital and told all to

Catherine. And Catherine again promptly came back with Argentina. But

when Catherine had entered the room and approached the bed, Marco threw

his arms round her, and wept for a long space of time. And then, still

weeping, but with great relief, he said to her: “Madonna, the reason

why I wished you to come is, first to thank you for the kindness you

have shown me; and next to ask a favour of you, which I beg you not to

refuse me. For when you had left this room, Our Lord Jesus Christ came

to me visibly and in the form in which He appeared to the Magdalen in

the garden, and gave me His most holy blessing, and pardoned me all my

sins, and told me that I should prepare for death, because that I shall

go to Him on Ascension-Day. Hence I pray you, most tender Mother, deign

to accept Argentina as your spiritual daughter, and to keep her with

you constantly. And thou, Argentina, I pray thee, be content with this

plan.” They both gladly declared themselves ready and content.

When Catherine had gone away, Marco sent for a certain Augustinian

Friar of the Monastery of the Consolation, and carefully confessed his

sins and received Holy Communion; and then ordered all his worldly

affairs with a notary and with his relations. And he did all this in

spite of them all, who thought that his intense pain had driven him

off his head, and who kept saying: “Take comfort, Marco, soon you will

be well again; there is no occasion as yet for you to attend to these

things.”

And the Eve of the Ascension having come round, he again sent for the

same Confessor, and again confessed and communicated, and got him this

time to add Extreme Unction and the Recommendation of the Dying, and

all this with great composure and devotion. But as the night came on,

he said to the Friar: “Return to your Monastery; and when the time

comes, I will give you notice.” And then, alone with Argentina, he

took his crucifix in his hand, and turning towards his wife he said:

“Argentina, see, I leave thee Him for thy husband; prepare thyself to

suffer, for I declare to thee that suffering is in store for thee.”

This did not fail to come about, for she suffered later on, both

mentally and physically. And for the rest of the night he continued to

comfort her, and to encourage her to give herself to God and to accept

suffering as the ladder for mounting up to Heaven. Then when the dawn

had come he said: “Argentina, abide with God; the hour has come.” And

having finished these words, he expired; and his spirit straightway

went to the window of the cell of his Confessor, and tapping against

the pane said: “Ecce homo.” But the Friar hearing this, at once knew

that Marco had passed to his Lord.

And as soon as Marco’s body had been buried, Catherine took Argentina

to live with her as her spiritual daughter, and thus kept her promise.

And since she loved this daughter much, she was wont to take her with

her when she went out. And hence one day, when once more passing by

the little Church on the little square by the Quay, she and her young

daughter again went in and prayed. And on coming out, Catherine said to

Argentina: “This is the place, where grace was gained in prayer for thy

husband.”[151]

6. _Catherine’s social interests in 1506._

And in the following year, 1506, we still find Catherine full of

interest and activity of the most varied kind. On March the 13th and

16th Catherine was again busy for the Hospital, by receiving the

Foundlings and the various articles and monies anonymously deposited

there for their keep. And these can hardly have been altogether

exceptional acts, even for this period of her life.[152] And on the

21st of May she made her third Will, which is interesting for various

reasons. For it is in this document that we first hear of the deaths

of her two elder brothers and of Thobia, and (by implication) of that

of her sister Limbania and of her second niece Battista. And we can

once more trace here the continuity of her interests and attachments.

Her elder niece Maria is again provided with a marriage dowry; her

brother Lorenzo remains (now sole) residuary legatee; Thobia’s mother

gets her legacy compounded for an immediate settlement and payment; the

maids Benedetta and Mariola have their legacies somewhat increased;

the “Maestà” is again carefully described and allotted; and she again

orders her body to be buried alongside of that of her husband.[153]

Indeed fresh interests appear here. For the three sons of her second

brother and the eldest son of her third brother are now grown up; and

so she makes these four nephews her residuary legatees, should her

brother Lorenzo die before herself. Don Marabotto has now been her

Confessor and Chaplain for seven, and her Almoner for three years; and

so she leaves him the income of eight shares of St. George’s for his

lifetime, which, at 4 per cent. would make £16 a year,--the capital to

go, at Marabotto’s death, to her heirs. And Argentina del Sale has been

with her for just about a year; and so she leaves her various articles

of personal linen and bedding.[154]

But, above all, the place of this Will’s redaction is new amongst

the memorials of her life, and directly indicative of a still

further enlargement of her influence and interests. For if of the

fourteen legal documents drawn up for, and in the presence of,

Giuliano or herself, eleven were composed in the small house within

the great Hospital of the Pammatone, and only two others,--the

Marriage-Settlement, and the Deed of Transfer in favour of Giovanni

Adorno,--had hitherto been written elsewhere, this Will was executed in

the Refuge for Incurables, in the Portorio quarter, in the evening of

the day mentioned, in the presence of three weavers and one dyer,--two

trades strongly represented in this poor and populous quarter. Now

the choice of this place is deeply suggestive, because it became the

chief care and final home of Ettore Vernazza’s later years. Indeed it

is certain that, on the death of his wife, Vernazza came and lived

in the midst of these poor Incurables; and that this residence here

of Catherine’s closest friend did not begin later than three years

from this date--hence still during Catherine’s lifetime, in 1509. His

far-reaching Wills of 1512 and 1517 are both dated from this Refuge,

of which he was, by then, manager and chief supporter; and it is there

that he died his heroic death in 1524. Hence it is certain that now

already Vernazza must have been deeply interested in this fine, but

at that time still languishing, work (its fixed income did not as

yet amount to fully £400 a year), and he must often have been there;

possibly he had even already a room of his own in the house.

There can, in any case, be no doubt, that in the choice of this place

for the drawing-up of this Will, we have an indication, all the more

interesting because entirely incidental, of the wide and ever-widening

range, and of the entirely solid, indeed heroic character of

Catherine’s interest and influence. It also shows us that she was still

able to get about, although this Refuge, now the Spedale dei Chronici,

is, no doubt, not far away from her Pammatone home. If she could still

go there, she no doubt still could and did go to her cousin Suor

Tommasina’s Convent, which was certainly no further off. And I surmise

that many a spiritual colloquy will have taken place, with Catherine

as chief interlocutor, and Suor Tommasina and Ettore Vernazza as chief

questioners and listeners, in the parlour of San Domenico and in that

of the Refuge respectively.