CHAPTER V

CATHERINE’S LAST FOUR YEARS, 1506 TO 1510--SKETCH OF HER CHARACTER,

DOCTRINE, AND SPIRIT

I. CATHERINE’S EXTERNAL INTERESTS AND ACTIVITIES UP TO MAY 1510.

OCCASIONAL SLIGHT DEVIATIONS FROM HER OLD BALANCE. IMMENSELY CLOSE

INTERCONNECTION OF HER WHOLE MENTAL AND PSYCHO-PHYSICAL NATURE.

IMPRESSIONS AS CONNECTED WITH THE FIVE SENSES.

1. _Indications of external interests._

Even during the next four years, up to May 1510, we still find

various most authentic and clear indications of external interests

and activities in Catherine’s life. Thus, on the 21st June 1507, the

Protectors of the Hospital address a letter to Don Giacobo Carenzio

(who had, as they tell him, been elected Master--_Rettore_--already

fifteen months previously), urging him to come and take up his post;

and Catherine, who, as we shall see, was later on variously helped

by this Priest, and who cared so much for the Hospital, cannot have

remained indifferent to that first election and to this present

reminder.

Again on the 6th December 1507, the Protectors, Lorenzo Spinola,

Manfredo Fornari, and Emmanuele Fiesco, met in Catherine’s room, and

decided, no doubt with her advice and co-operation, to allow another

widow-lady and devotee of the Hospital, Brigidina, wife of the late

Giacomo Castagneto, to settle within its precincts.[155] Then on

27th November 1508 she makes a Codicil, leaving an additional £25 to

Mariola, and a further article of dress to Argentina; and declaring

that she is “entirely content” with Don Marabotto’s administration of

her monies and charities. Don Cattaneo has then now become her Almoner,

and her charitable activity continues large. The document is drawn up

by Ettore Vernazza, an unimpeachable witness to Marabotto’s rectitude

and exactness.[156]

Indeed as late down as 18th March 1509 her long Will of that date shows

an admirable persistence of her old attachment for and interest in her

surviving brother, niece (the provision for Maria’s possible marriage

is particularly careful and detailed), and nephews (the youngest of

the latter, Giovanni, is omitted, no doubt because he had now become a

Cardinal, with a corresponding income); in Don Marabotto, who retains

the same little pension; in her three maids Benedetta, Mariola, and

Argentina, all of whose legacies get somewhat increased; and in the

fortunes of the Hospital and of Thobia’s mother (she repeats her

account of what she has already done for them).[157]

2. _Occasional imperfection of judgment._

Yet now at last we can find symptoms of the final break-up of her

health, and of an occasional slight or momentary deviation from, or

diminution of, her old completeness of balance in both judgment,

taste, and feeling,--although even now this occurs only in matters of

relatively secondary importance, and but heightens the impressiveness

of the still unbroken front which she maintains, in all her fully

deliberate acts, with regard to all essential matters. Indeed, it

is not difficult to feel, even where one cannot directly trace, in

all such acts and matters, a still further deepening of the heroic

watchfulness and childlike spontaneity, and of the humility and tender

_naïveté_ and creatureliness, of her general tone and attitude.

3. _Close-knittedness of her psycho-physical organism: her spiritual

utilization of this._

But before recounting the few instances in which we can trace an

indication of partly physical depression, or of some lessening of

mental alertness or volitional power in secondary matters, or of slight

passing unwilled _maladif_ impressions, let us attempt a somewhat

methodic description of the extreme sensitiveness and immensely close

interconnection of her whole psycho-physical nature, and of the general

modifications, both in quality and in quantity, which these impressions

were wont to go through; and all this, just now, on occasion of

incidents closely similar to those already experienced in her past life.

It would indeed be altogether mistaken to class all this sensitiveness

as necessarily but a form of illness; for the great majority, and all

the most characteristic, of her apparently physical pains and troubles,

are but varieties and heightenings of the always unusually swift and

profound impressionableness of her whole psycho-physical organism. With

the sole exception of that attack of pestilential fever (probably in

the year 1493), I can nowhere, right up to three days before her death,

find any trace in her life of illnesses or disturbances of any but a

psycho-physical, nerve-functional type.

Indeed her psychic self is throughout so impressionable, and the mind

is, ever since her Conversion, so active, dominant, and absorbed in

the actual and attempted apprehension of the great realities which,

though invisible, require for their vivid apprehension an imaginative

pictorial embodiment: that we shall have, in a later chapter, to ask

ourselves the question whether it was not the mind, or the imagination

at the mind’s bidding, which thus affected the psycho-physical life,

rather than the psycho-physical life which, primarily independent

of the former, offered itself as but so much raw, still unrelated

material, to the fashioning, transforming mind. Especially will it be

necessary to consider carefully the influence upon her mind, and upon

the chronicler’s accounts of her state, which may have been exercised

by the writings of the Areopagite and of Jacopone. It will then become

clear that these authors have undoubtedly contributed to the form in

which these truths and realities were, if not actually apprehended by

Catherine, at least described by her disciples.

Yet even this point remains, in Catherine’s case, (and indeed in that

of all the great Saints,) of no real spiritual or moral importance,

since all these great and generous souls persist in ever using these

psycho-physical things, whether they be projections or “givennesses,”

as but so many instruments and materials for the apprehension,

illustration, acquisition, and purification of spiritual truth and of

the spirit’s own fulness and depth. And Catherine’s persistence in this

attitude of utilization and transcendence of what the natural man so

continuously tends to make his direct aim and final limit continues

practically unbroken to the end. I will group these psychic impressions

according to the five senses.

4. _Impressions connected with the sense of touch._

The earliest, and up to the end the most marked and general, of all

such unusual impressions appears to have been one connected with the

sense of touch,--that feeling of mostly interior, but later on also

of exterior, warmth, indeed often of intense heat and burning, which

comes to her, the first as though sunshine were bathing her within or

without, the second sometimes as though a great fire were enveloping

her, and sometimes as though a living flame were piercing her within.

Already in 1473, on occasion of her Conversion, we find unmistakable

indications of such sensations; they are, however, of a predominantly

pleasurable kind. And I take it that during her great lonely

middle-period they will, in so much as present, have been of a similar

nature. But later on, from after 1499 onwards, these sensations and

attacks become increasingly painful,[158] and are specially described,

and variously alluded to, under the terms of _operation_, _assault_,

_siege_. When specially keen and concentrated, and accompanied by some

piercing psycho-spiritual perception, they appear under the terms of

_arrow_, _wound_; and the perception itself bears then the name of

_ray_ or _spark_ (of divine love).[159]

Now we lookers-on can, of course, with more or less ease, mentally

separate, in a general way, the latter, the spiritual apprehension,

creation and content, from the former, the psycho-physical occasion,

material and form; although it is certainly difficult, and probably

impossible, to decide, at least in any one case, how far it is her

mental activity that occasions her psycho-physical condition, or how

far it is the latter which occasions the former. But what actually and

demonstrably happened in Catherine’s case, was something incomparably

beyond the range to which such psycho-physical considerations apply.

For to her, psychically, a keenly sentient; rationally, a deeply

thinking, feeling, and willing creature,--these experiences, howsoever

classable, were most real, and, in course of time, more and more

penetrating and painful; and they were, to her own consciousness,

entirely prior to any interpretation or utilization of them. Hence,

for the present at all events, we had better take these states as they

presented themselves to her immediate and ordinary consciousness. And

this very same immensely sentient soul was so firmly centred, deep down

below and beyond the psycho-physical, in the Moral and Spiritual, that

these experiences were welcomed and actively used but as so many means

and materials for ethical purification and character-building, and for

the analogical apprehension and illustration of spiritual truths.

Thus it is that these sensations of burning which, during her years

of health, were themselves so pleasurable and peaceful, helped, as

we shall find when we come to consider her doctrine, to suggest and

illustrate for her the joys and health-giving influence of the presence

of God, both here and in Paradise, and of the soul’s apprehension of

God, as light for the understanding and warmth for the affections and

the will. And when, with her failing health, these sensations turned

into painful, in part seemingly physical attacks,--attacks which,

however, left the mind in an increased and ever-increasing peace and

contentment,--they again helped her to gain and develop her doctrine

concerning Purgatory.

In both cases her teaching gained thus a vividness of quasi-directly

sensible experience, of something in a manner actually seen and

felt, since it was built up out of suggestions derived from direct

sensations and psycho-physical states. And yet in both cases not all

such sensations, of themselves quite valueless and uninstructive from

an ethical and religious point of view, could have helped towards

anything of spiritual significance, had they not been sifted, taken

up, organized and transformed in and into a large and deep spiritual

experience and personality. There is absolutely nothing automatic or

necessary in the crowning, ethically significant stages of this whole

process, however rapid and instinctive and effortless, and simply of

a piece with the psycho-physical occasions, these utilizations and

grace-impelled and grace-informed creations may appear. We shall,

in proof of this, soon see how physical and literal and spiritually

insignificant remained, during the last four months of her life,

the apprehensions of her disciples as to these heats and piercing

sensations: these good, indeed devoted, people seem incapable of

measuring spiritual love by anything higher than thermometer-readings

or other physical tangibilities. And we shall also have to record one

or two momentary instances when this heat-feeling and apprehension

clearly assumed a _maladif_ character in Catherine herself.

5. _Impressions connected with taste and smell._

The unusual sense-perceptions which were the next to be aroused

were apparently those of taste and smell: although the one

certain indication I can find of such an unusual psycho-physical

taste-and-smell impression, of a pleasurable and not clearly _maladif_

character, is not earlier than 1499.[160] It came to her in connection

with the one great devotion of her whole convert life,--the Holy

Eucharist. “Having on one occasion received Holy Communion, so much

odour and sweetness came to her, that she seemed to be in Paradise.

Whence, feeling this, she straightway turned towards her Love and

said: ‘O Love, dost Thou perhaps intend to draw me to Thyself with

these savours? I want them not, since I want nothing but Thee

alone, and all of Thee.’”[161] Here, then, she turns away from and

transcends, precisely as St. John of the Cross was soon to insist so

strongly that we should do, the sensible and immediate, and reaches

on to the spiritual, ultimate, and personal. And similarly some such

psycho-physical experience seems presupposed in her declaration: “If

a Consecrated Host and unconsecrated ones were to be given to me,

I should distinguish the former from the latter as I do wine from

water.”[162] Yet her biographer can truthfully insist upon love being

the original cause of such recognition: “She said this, because the

Consecrated Host sent forth a certain ray of love which pierced her

heart.” And she herself gives a still more spiritual parallel instance

and explanation of such recognition: “If I were to be shown the Court

of Heaven, with all its members robed in one and the same manner, in

suchwise that there would, so far, be no perceptible difference between

God and the Angels: the love which I have in my heart would still

recognize God, as readily as the dog recognizes his master.” This love

indeed would move out to Him even more swiftly and easily, because

“love, which is God Himself, finds in an instant, without any means,

its own end and ultimate repose.”[163]

Clearly _maladif_ over-sensitiveness and shiftingness of the senses of

taste and scent will appear presently, during the last months of her

life.

6. _Hearing and Sight._

The most important and mental of the senses, hearing and sight, appear,

on the contrary, with little or nothing particularly unusual about

them, throughout her life.

For as to her sense of hearing, the inner voices already described as

heard by her at different times, cannot fairly be classed under this

or any other sense-perception, healthy or otherwise; since they appear

to have been most vivid and clear thoughts presented to her mind,

with in each case the consciousness that they were the suggestions of

Mind,--of a Spirit other than her own. They appear to have always been

described by herself as “words spoken to the mind,” “words as it were

heard.”[164] Traces of any _maladif_ affection of this sense will be

difficult or impossible to find, even during her last illness.

And as to sight, always so closely akin to mental processes, anything

at all really exceptional cannot, I think, be found in her life so far

at all. For her evidently great impressionableness to certain religious

pictures,--so as a child, in regard to the “Pietà,” and now again

apparently with the “Maestà,”--and to certain sights of nature, cannot

fairly be considered abnormal. And as to Visions, the only one recorded

so far, that of the Bleeding Christ, was primarily a mentally mediated

experience: “the Lord showed Himself to her in the spirit,” says the

account, no doubt in full accordance with her own analysis of such

experiences.[165] Some few disturbances of this sense will, however,

appear during the course of her last illness.

II. MORE OR LESS _MALADIF_ EXPERIENCES AND ACTIONS.

The amplest proof of the deep and delicate impressionableness of her

nature is probably, however, to be found in that profound melancholy,

that positive disgust with everything within her and without, and that

strong desire for death which we found to have possessed her during

the three months previous to her Conversion in March 1473. For we

should note that that melancholy did not directly spring from spiritual

motives or considerations: it was previous to all definite sorrow for

sin and to all full and willed sense of things religious and eternal.

Indeed, with the appearance of the religious standards and certitudes,

that crushing universal feeling of melancholy and of positive disgust

breaks up, and yields to contrasted joys and sorrows, and to a buoyant

energy in the very midst and through the very means of suffering and

of sacrifice. Thus the dawn of her spiritual re-birth was indeed dark

and oppressive; but this oppression did not directly proceed from any

clear consciousness of the Perfect and Eternal which arose within her

only as part and parcel of this explicit Conversion. The oppression

simply indicated, of itself, a nature so sensitive and claimful, as to

require, in order to achieve any degree of contentment, a spiritual,

regenerative, re-interpretative power capable of responding to and

matching the deepest realities of life. That nature was thus full of

the need of such realities and of such contact with them, but was

without the power of producing, or of adequately responding to, such

realities,--or indeed of imaginatively forecasting them. And similarly

in 1507, the dawn of her painful, joyful-sorrowful birthday to eternity

was again dark and oppressive and productive of an intense desire for

death, a desire which had, apparently, been entirely absent from her

soul ever since 1473. Here again this oppression was not directly

religious or moral, but, taken in itself, was simply psycho-physical.

Indeed this oppression marks the beginning of the special limitations,

difficulties, and slightly deflecting influences now introduced into

her life by henceforth steadily increasing positive illness. I propose,

then, to begin with this opening depression of hers, and next to go

through the main incidents of her remaining life, as far as possible,

in strictly chronological order. I will group all this around six main

facts and dates.

1. _Desire for death, 1507._

“In the year 1507 she on one occasion was present at the recitation

of the Offices for the Dead. And a desire to die came upon her. And

she said: ‘O Love, I desire nothing but Thee, and Thee in Thine own

manner: but, if it pleases Thee, allow me at least to go and see others

die and be buried, in order that I may see in others that great good,

which it does not please Thee should as yet be in myself.’ And her Love

consented to this; and consequently, for a certain space of time, she

went to see die and be buried all those who died in the Hospital. And

as, later on, her union with this her tender Love increased, her desire

for death disappeared little by little.”[166]

She is, then, still active, and moves about in the spacious Hospital

and in the adjoining Church. And this desire, as it gradually

disappeared, will, doubtless, not have left mere blanks in her

consciousness, or have reduced the sum-total of her feelings; but, with

that diminution, some of her old tenderness for and interest in others,

will have reappeared. And again we see how no one set of feelings,

one “psychosis,” ever simply repeats itself, in even one and the same

soul: for Catherine’s positive disgust with all things, which prepared

and accompanied her desire for death in 1473, is absent from the

otherwise similar desire of 1507. In both cases there is the same sheer

“givenness” and isolation of the feeling. _Then_, she did not desire

death to escape temptation or sin; _now_, she does not desire it,

directly and within her emotional nature, in order to get to God: in

each case the feeling stands simply by itself, and is not immediately

connected with religion at all. And finally, this incident, and its

later equivalent repetitions in November 1509 and September 1510, prove

once again on what a veritable bed of Procrustes those determined

_a-priorists_, the Redactors of the _Vita_, have placed, pulled about

and mutilated, as far as in them lay, the immensely spontaneous and

rich personality of Catherine, in their determination to find her ever

all-perfect, and perfect after their own fixed pattern. For it proves

to demonstration, either that Catherine continued liable to human

imperfections, or that not all desires are imperfect. And both these

things are true, beyond the possibility of doubt.

2. _The scent-impression from Don Cattaneo’s hand._

And next we get an instance of clearly abnormal sense-perception,

which is deeply interesting because of the vivid, first-hand form in

which the fact has come down to us, and still more on account of its

impressive illustration of the two possible mental attitudes towards

such matters. It will have occurred in 1508; and Don Marabotto is, in

any case, the other interlocutor in the scene, and its chronicler.

And if there is undoubtedly a somewhat ludicrous _naïveté_ about his

attitude at the time of the occurrence, there is also a striking

simplicity and self-oblivion in the perfectly objective manner in

which he chronicles the scene in all its bearings, and Catherine’s

marked superiority to himself. It is this complete directness and

simplicity of motive which, on the side of character, will have bound

these otherwise strangely diverse souls together; and which rendered

Don Marabotto, even simply as a character, not unworthy of his close

intimacy with Catherine.

The abnormality here concerns the sense of smell alone; the impression

here lasts a considerable time: and now she acquiesces in it, but only

for the purpose of moving through it, as a mere means. “Having been

infirm for many days, Catherine one day took the hand of her Confessor

and smelt it: and its odour penetrated right to her heart,” so that

“for many days this perfume restored and nourished her, body and soul.”

Don Marabotto then asks her what kind of thing this odour is that she

is smelling. And she tells him that it is an odour so penetrating and

sweet, as to seem capable of bringing the dead to life; that God had

sent it to her, to strengthen her soul and body, now that these were

so much oppressed; and hence “since God grants me this odour, I am

determined to derive strength from it, as long as He shall please that

I shall do so.” But Marabotto, “thinking that he must surely be able

to perceive what was being transmitted by himself, went smelling his

own hand, but to no effect.” And Catherine gently rebuked his action by

declaring: “The things which depend entirely upon God’s own free gift,

He does not give to those that seek them. Indeed He gives such things

at all, only in cases of great necessity, and as an occasion of great

spiritual profit.”[167]

The impression and consolation are here still connected with the

Holy Eucharist: for the hand which she smells is no doubt the right

one,--the hand which was wont daily to consecrate in her presence and

daily to communicate her. The declaration as to the odour’s power to

raise the dead to life has occurred already in connection with the

Holy Eucharist, and will have been in part suggested to her by such

Johannine passages as “I am the … Life,” “I am the Living Bread,” “he

that eateth this Bread shall live,” shall be made to live, “for ever.”

And although the odour is here the prominent impression, and “savours”

are wanting, yet “sweetness” still occurs, probably as a sort of

sensation of tasting.--Marabotto’s mind has in it, on this occasion,

two plausible assumptions, each strengthening the other; and Catherine

controverts both. He evidently thinks: “Catherine’s states are all most

valuable, hence real, hence objective: if then she says she smells this

or that, others will be able to do so too.” And: “What a man transmits,

that he can himself experience: hence, on this ground also, I should

be able to smell this perfume.”--And Catherine’s mind evidently also

contains two very different convictions: the first, that experiences,

even when thus but semi-spiritual, are, for all their reality, not

directly transferable from soul to soul; and the second, that all such

sensible and semi-sensible experiences, whether normal or exceptional,

are all but means at the disposal of the free-willing spirit, means

which become limits and obstacles as soon as they are treated as ends.

Thus if this experience points to a certain abnormality of condition

in the peripheral, psycho-physical regions of the soul, Catherine’s

attitude towards it, and towards the whole question occasioned by

it, has got a massive depth of sanity about it, perhaps unattainable

by, certainly untested in, the always and simply, even peripherally,

healthy soul.

3. _Shifting of her burial-place._

And in her Will of March 1509 we find traces of a certain weakening of

her former ample business capacity, and of her vigilance, perseverance,

and balance, in spite of friendly pressure or criticism, with regard

to matters of practical import. For, as to her general incapacity for

business, the Will contains a clause exempting Marabotto from all

future challenge of his administration of her monies, up to the date

of the making of this Will. And this clause finds its explanation in

the admission of the _Vita_, with regard to her life during these

last years, that, owing to the mysterious and shifting nature of her

infirmity, “there was confusion in governing her,” “confusion not

on her own part, but on that of those who served her,”[168] words

which will grow still clearer in our account of her last four months.

For this state of her health must have rendered the administration

of her affairs by another both necessary and difficult. And as to

the diminution of her vigilance and perseverance in matters of not

directly spiritual or moral import, we have here, for the first time,

a departure from her resolution, emphatically expressed in the Wills

and Codicil of 1498, 1503, 1506, of being buried beside her husband.

She now orders herself to be buried in the Church of San Nicolò in

Boschetto, and that so much is to be spent on the funeral as shall seem

fit to Don Marabotto.

Three points should here be borne in mind. For one thing, Catherine

had a long-standing affection for that beautifully situated

Pilgrimage-Church, partly no doubt from associations dating back to

her summer _villegiatura_ days at the neighbouring Prà, and partly,

probably, from memories connected with her sister Limbania, since, as

we have already seen, Limbania’s Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie

was the joint foundation of the two Genoese Monasteries of San Teodoro

fuore le Mura and of San Nicolò in Boschetto. Limbania had died in

that Convent in 1502, and Catherine had, in her Codicil of 1503, left

a small sum for mortuary Masses for herself to the Monastery of San

Nicolò.

But, next, it was doubtless the growing conviction as to her sanctity

amongst her immediate friends, and their desire to keep her grave

and remains, as an eventual place and object of veneration, distinct

from any others, perhaps specially from those of her husband, whose

defective reputation might otherwise damage or delay the growth of such

a cultus of his wife, which was the determining cause of this change

in the place of sepulture. These friends were able to prevail, no

doubt because her interest and determination in such matters had become

weakened by ill-health of now thirteen years’ duration. And they will

have fixed upon this place some four English miles away, partly because

it happened to be one she loved, but also because thus no question of

separating her remains from those of Giuliano would formally arise.

Her later Codicil will prove the presence of both these motives, and

Catherine’s unconsciousness as to the situation, and the vagueness of

her acquiescence.

And, finally, we must note that, if this action of her _entourage_

offends our present-day tastes and susceptibilities, it was yet

thoroughly in accordance with a quite hoary tradition and feeling in

such matters, and was in no sense an idea special to, or originated

by, this group of persons; and again, that the four Protectors of the

Hospital (the trustees and executors of the Will), her sole surviving

brother Lorenzo (the residuary legatee), and above all her closest,

great-souled friend Vernazza (one of the six witnesses), are all

parties to the pious stratagem, and share its responsibility with

Marabatto.

4. _The “scintilla”-experience; spiritual refreshment derived from a

picture._

We have next an important group of experiences and convictions in

November 1509. “On the 11th November 1509, there came upon her an

insupportable fire of infinite love; and she declared that there had

been shown to her one single spark (scintilla) of Pure Love, and that

this had been but for a short moment; and that, had it lasted even a

little longer, she would have expired because of its great force. She

could hardly eat, nor speak so as to be heard, in consequence of this

penetrating wound of love that she had received in her heart.”[169]

Few events of her life have left such profound traces, so many

echoes and waves and wavelets as it were, throughout both her

authentic sayings and the various secondary and tertiary imitations,

re-castings, and expansions of her original account as has this

scintilla-experience. I will here translate the nine varying

impressions and exclamations which, proceeding from different minds

and different dates, have, all but one, been worked up by the _Vita_

into a single paragraph, which, by its very multitude of flickerings

as to meaning and of experimentations as to form, gives us a striking

picture of the deep and many-sided influence of this single event, so

short in its clock-time duration. “This creature, all lost in her own

self, found her true self in one instant in God.” “Although she reputed

herself to be very poor, yet she remained rich in the divine love.”

“She, knowing the grace and operation to be all from God, remained lost

in herself, and living only in God.” “She gave her free-will to God,

and God then restored it to her.” “She gave her free-will to God, and

God thereupon worked with its means.” “O the great wonder, to see a

man established in the midst of so many miseries, and yet God having

so great a care of him! All tongues are incapable of expressing it,

all intellects of understanding it.” “That man becomes foolish in the

eyes of the world, to whom Thou, O Lord God, dost manifest even but the

slightest spark of Thine unspeakable Love.” “Thou, O God, desirest to

exalt man, and to make him as though another God, by means of love.”

Of later date or type: “In God she saw all the operations, by means of

which He had caused her to merit (in the past).” And of still later,

clearly secondary, character: “God showed her in one instant the

succession of His (future) operation, as though she would have to die

of a great martyrdom.”[170]

And this great experience of hers led on to a scene which, whilst

emphasizing the psycho-physical effect, occasion or concomitant of

such spiritual experiences, also gives us the strongest instance of

her impressionableness to pictures in particular. “Finding herself

in such ardour, she felt herself compelled to turn to a figure of the

Woman of Samaria at the well with her Lord; and in her extreme distress

Catherine addressed Him thus: ‘O Lord, I pray Thee, give me a little

drop of this water, which of old Thou didst give to the Samaritan

woman, since I can no more bear so great a fire.’ And suddenly, in

that instant, there was given her a little drop of that divine water;

and by it she was refreshed within and without, and she had rest for

some appreciable time.”[171] But, above all, this experience and its

precursor were, if not the actual beginning, at least the culminating

point in the experiences or projections which led to or articulated

her doctrine on Purgatory. In a later chapter I hope to trace the

connection between those experiences and this doctrine. Here we must

add two other vivid interior experiences and convictions of hers which

are placed by the _Vita_, no doubt rightly, in direct succession to,

and in more or less connection with, the great “scintilla”-operation,

although neither of them appears amongst the images and conceptions

which make up the _Trattato del Purgatorio_.

“One day” (she recounted this herself) “she appeared to herself to

abide suspended in mid-air. And the spiritual part wanted to attach

itself to heaven; but her other part wished to attach itself to earth:

yet neither the one nor the other managed to become possessed of its

object, and simply abode thus in mid-air, without achieving its desire.

And after abiding thus for a long time, the part which was drawing her

to heaven seemed to her to be gaining the upper hand (over the other

part), and, little by little, the spiritual part forcibly drew her

upwards, so that at every moment she saw herself moving further and

further away from earth. And although this at first seemed to be a

strange thing to the part that was being drawn, and this part was ill

content to be thus forced; yet when it had been so far removed, as no

more to be able to see the earth, then it began to lose its earthly

instinct and affection, and to perceive and to relish the things which

were relished by the spiritual part. And this spiritual part never

ceased from drawing it heavenward. And so at last these two parts came

to a common accord.”[172] And again on another occasion: “The soul is

so desirous of departing from the body to unite itself with God, that

its body appears to it a veritable Purgatory, which keeps it distant

from its true object.”[173]

This group of experiences straightway enforces some important spiritual

laws. For one thing, this scintilla-experience, since her Conversion

the deepest of her life, is clearly also the richest and most

complex,--witness the numerous, mutually supplementary or critical,

attempts at analysis furnished by even her immediate companions. And

this experience is only simple in the sense in which white light, which

combines all the prismatic colours, or a living healthy human body,

composed of numberless constituents, is simple.

And next, nothing indicates that this experience was of a character

essentially different from that of her older contemplations; and

everything appears to show that it was, substantially, a grace

addressed to, and an act performed by, her spiritual nature,--her

intelligence and free will, God’s Spirit stimulating and sustaining

hers in a quite exceptional degree, and hence less than ever weakening

or supplanting this her spirit’s action. It was as much a gift of

herself by herself to God, as if it had not been a pure grace from Him;

and yet her very power and wish and determination to give herself,

were rendered possible and became actual through that pure prevenient,

accompanying and subsequent gift of God.

Again, it is certain that either there was no clear mental scheme,

reasoning, or picture during the experience, or that, if there was,

it consisted of a spacial simultaneity rather than of a temporal

succession, and that it showed her, if her own soul at all, then that

soul in its most universally human, typical aspects and relations.

In no case was there anything historical or prophetical, strictly

biographical about it.

And then we have, even though she could give no kind of definite

account of it, the most solid reasons for accepting this experience as

genuine, wholesome, and valuable. For she evidently fully believed in

it herself; and we shall see how clearly and readily she continued,

even after this experience, to distinguish between wholesome and

mental, and _maladif_ and simply psychic, states of abstraction.

Again it became the occasion and material of most deep and fruitful

spiritual doctrine; whereas nothing is more empty and unsuggestive

than are the bare, brute “facts” of all merely nervous or hysterical

hallucinations. It also demonstrably strengthened her will for the

last deep sufferings and sacrifices yet to be gone through, and no

doubt added a fresh stimulus to her already profound influence over

Vernazza, and pricked him onwards on his career of the most solid,

heroic philanthropy and self-sacrifice. And yet we can see that her

psycho-physical organism is now functionally weak and ill. For great

physical exhaustion now follows upon an experience substantially the

same as those which used to strengthen her so markedly even in physical

respects.

As to the scene with the picture, we again get a case not unlike the

odour of Marabotto’s hand, in so much as here too the experience hovers

between the mental and physical, and there is a sensible impression as

from a physical substance with reference to a Person,--this taste of

a “divine water” moving here on to Christ, to God, the Living Water,

as that smell of sweetness moves on to the “Living Bread,” Christ, and

God. It is, unfortunately, impossible to identify that picture, which

may well have been a fresco-painting in some building or passage of the

Hospital, since destroyed, or on some extant wall, white-washed since

those days. The vivid picturings of the soul in mid-air, and of the

soul in the purgatory of its body, will be considered in connection

with her psycho-physical states and her doctrine.

But before leaving this November experience, we must give two

significant conversations held by her with Vernazza at the time, and

which have been no doubt handed down to us by himself. “One day,

speaking of this” (the scintilla-) “event with a spiritual person

(_Religioso_) she called it ‘a giddiness’ (_vertigine_). But that

person said to her: ‘Mother, I beg of you that you will yourself

select a person who may happen to suit your mind (_soddisfaccia alla

mente vestra_), and will narrate to this person the graces which God

has granted to you, so that, when you come to die, these graces may

not remain hidden and unknown, and an opportunity for God’s praise

and glory may not thus be lost.’ And she then answered that she was

entirely willing (_ben contenta_), if this be pleasing to her tender

Love; and that, in that case, she would not choose another person than

himself, although she was convinced that it was impossible to describe

even a small fragment of such interior experiences as occurred between

God and her soul; and that as to exterior things, few or none had taken

place in her case.” Here again we have evidence as to her habit of

making light of and transcending all psycho-physical phenomena, however

striking and mysterious; and we get a positive authorization conferred

by herself upon Vernazza, such as is claimed by no other contributor to

the _Vita_.

And “speaking with him some days later, she said: ‘Son, I have had a

certain prick of conscience, of which I will tell you. The other day,

when you told me that I might possibly remain dead some day during one

of those giddinesses, there seemed to arise in me, at that moment, a

feeling of joy, a profound aspiration which said: ”O, if that hour

would but come!“ And then this feeling suddenly ceased. Now I declare

to you, that I do not wish that in this matter there should be any

glimpse (scintilla) of a desire of my own for earth or heaven, or for

any other created thing; but that I wish to leave all things to the

disposition of God.’ Then this person answered, that there was no

occasion for her to have a prick of conscience, because, although joy

had awaked in her mind, and a sudden exclamation had occurred there,

at the mention of the word ‘death,’ yet that nothing of this had

proceeded from the will, nor had it been endorsed by the reason; but

that it had proceeded solely from the instinct of the pleasure-loving

soul (_anima_), which ever, according to its nature, tends to such an

end. And how the proof that this was a correct account, lay in this,

that her prick of conscience had not really penetrated to the depths of

her heart, but had remained on the surface, at the same slight depth

at which the movement of joy had remained. And she confessed that the

matter really stood thus, and remained satisfied.”[174]

Here three points are of interest. I take her impulse of deep longing

to die in one of those trances, to have arisen, not simply from joy

at the thought of dying, but from joy at the prospect of dying of

joy,--of dying with the joy fixed in that moment in the soul for

ever. For heaven itself appears here not as a synonym for God, but as

a creature, as the summing up of infinite and endless consolation of

all right kinds, spiritual and psycho-physical. And it is this that

makes her scruple thoroughly understandable, and but one more instance

of her virile fight with all direct attachment to the consequences and

concomitants of devotedness.--And next we should note her deep trust

in the spiritual experience and wisdom of Vernazza, the layman and

lawyer, some twenty-five years her junior; and her asking his advice

on a matter which we would readily suppose her to reserve for Don

Marabotto, who by now had been her Confessor and Spiritual Adviser for

many years.--And lastly, the depth and delicacy of Vernazza’s analysis

are most striking, with their clear perception of the various levels

and degrees of true selfhood and volition within the human soul: she

had really had neither a full will, nor a deliberate wish, nor indeed

any penetrating, spontaneous reproach of conscience; she had, in fact,

been suffering from a scruple, and he was required, and was able, to

make her see that this had been the case.

5. _Catherine’s sense of intense cold, and her attitude towards Don

Marabotto._

And in December 1509 and January 1510 we come across a group of

experiences and actions, in some respects different from, and

supplementary of, the set just concluded. For “in the month of December

she suffered from great cold,”--I take this cold to have been, at least

partially, special to her state, and not to have proceeded primarily

from the winter temperature,--“but she paid no attention to it.” “And

behold one night there came so great an attack (_assalto_) upon her,

that she could not conceal it. There was a great heaving of the body,

much bile was evacuated, and the nose bled. And she then sent for her

Confessor, and said to him: ‘Father, it seems to me that I must die,

because of the many weakenings of various sorts (_accidenti_) that have

happened to me.’” “And this attack (_assalto_) lasted for about three

hours,” “her body trembling like a leaf.” “And then her body became

quiet again, but was now so broken and weak that it was necessary to

give her minced chicken to revive her; and a good many days had to pass

before she returned to her (latter-day) vigour.”[175]

And “on the 10th of January 1510, she appeared determined to see her

Confessor no more, either as to help and comfort for her soul or as

to her bodily health. It seemed to her that he was too indulgent to

herself, in her sayings and doings. But the fact was, that he saw it

to be necessary that she should do all that her instinct prompted her

to say or do; and it would indeed have been well-nigh impossible to

force her to act against these interior movements of hers. Yet since

she was herself in cause, she did not acknowledge such necessities

(_ordinazioni_); rather these actions of hers appeared to her but as

so many disordered doings, and she went forcing herself to try and

not give trouble to those who were good enough to put up with her

(_chi la comportava_).--And when night came, she locked herself up

alone into a separate room, refusing food or conversation or comfort

from any one. But after a while she had to come out, with a view

to rendering a certain service, and her Confessor managed to slip

into the room unobserved and to hide himself there. And she, having

returned and locked herself in, and thinking herself quite alone,

said with a sobbing voice to her Lord: ‘O Lord, what wouldest Thou

have me do further in this world? I neither see nor hear, nor eat

nor sleep; I do not know what I do or what I say. I feel as though I

were a dead thing. There is no creature that understands me; I find

myself lonely, unknown, poor, naked, strange, and different from the

rest of the world; and hence I know not any more how to live with (my

fellow-) creatures upon earth.’ These and such-like words she spoke

so piteously, that her Confessor could bear it no longer; and he

discovered himself, and came up to and spoke to her. And God gave him

grace, so that she remained comforted in mind and body by his words,

and was in fair health for a good many days after.”[176]

Nevertheless “her Confessor, since his continual intercourse and close

familiarity with Catherine gave occasion to murmurs on the part of

some who did not fully understand his special work and its necessity,

left her and was absent for three days” (probably shortly after the

scene just related), “for the purpose of testing that work of his,

and seeing whether it was indeed all from God, and thus to escape

all scruple in the matter. But when, three days later, he returned

to her house and had learnt and considered the various accidents and

incidents which had occurred meanwhile, he was so entirely satisfied

with the evidence afforded by experiment, that he lost all scruple in

the matter, and indeed regretted having made the trial, because of the

great distress which she had suffered from it.” It will have been on

this occasion that she said to him: “I seem to see that God has given

to you this one care of myself, and hence that you should not attend to

anything else. For now I can no longer support alone so many exterior

and interior oppressions (_assedi_). When you leave me, I go lamenting

about the house, saying that you are cruel and do not understand my

extreme necessity; for if you did, you would pay greater attention to

it.”[177]

And it will have been later on again, in February and March, that she

intimated, during two of her violent attacks (on the first occasion by

signs, on the second by words), her impression that she would succumb,

and her wish to receive Extreme Unction. But Don Marabotto correctly

judged that she would safely get through these seizures, and the

anointing was put off for the present.[178]

This group is again interesting. For it gives us evidence as to

how dependent this character and career of the rarest loneliness

and independence had now become upon human help and sympathy; and

lets us see how illness had now introduced an excessive suddenness,

absoluteness, and shiftingness into her feelings and minor actions,

and an occasional slight querulousness into her remarks. It shows us

her old social, altruistic instincts and standard still at work within

her; for she still suffers from the consciousness, whenever she is

thrown back upon herself, of being different from other people; she

still longs to attend to the wants of others, regrets the trouble

she gives them, and feels grateful for the services they render; and

she still busies herself, in the reduced measure now possible to

her, with services of her own to others,--a “certain service,” which

she had to render, had sufficed to break through her self-imposed

seclusion. It lets us see how watchful against and suspicious of

self, and of what could flatter and indulge it, she still remained;

and how independent her judgment continued, even with regard to her

Confessor. And this her judgment we shall have good reason to hold to

have been remarkably well-grounded, in so far as this, that had only

Marabotto possessed a deeper insight into her psycho-physical state

and less of a determination to treat all her states and impulses as

equally solid and spiritual, or at least as equally to be yielded to,

he could have helped her more; and she would then, thus helped, have

been able, even now, fully to resist or to give way, in proportion to

the healthiness or the morbidness of the attack. And finally we see

how truly serviceable and necessary, and indeed repeatedly right where

her own estimate was wrong, was the help and sympathy and judgment

of her Confessor; and how difficult, entirely unselfish, and devoted

was his action and attitude. It is interesting to note that Catherine

was probably always right in her instinct as to matters directly

affecting herself, where the will came in, or could be made to come

in; and that she was wrong only in such a point of mere physical fact

and determinism as whether or not, and how long, her physical strength

would hold out.

6. _Events from January to May 1510._

I will here try and put together, in their actual succession from

January to May 1510, the chief psycho-physical phenomena and their

parallel utilizations, together with such mental and spiritual

experiences and actions as seem to have been only quite indirectly,

or not all, occasioned by her state of health. In a later chapter I

propose to study all this health matter in some detail. Here I would

simply warn the reader against treating, with certainly most of her

chroniclers, these psycho-physical phenomena as separately and directly

spiritual or miraculous or ethically significant. Found alone, they

would now, on the contrary, directly suggest simply nervous disorder of

some kind or other, a thing which, in itself, is always an evil. Their

interest and spiritual importance arises for us entirely from their

predominantly mental qualities; from their appearance in a person of

such powerful mind and large and efficient character; and from their

splendidly ethico-religious utilization by that same person.

On one day “she had an impression (‘wound,’ _ferita_) which was so

great, that she lost her speech and sight, and abode in this manner

some three hours. She made signs with her hands, of feeling as it were

red-hot pincers attacking her heart and other interior parts. But for

all this, she did not lose her full consciousness (_intelletto_).”

This was the second occasion on which she indicated her wish to be

anointed.[179] On another day “it was impossible to keep her in bed:

she seemed like a creature placed in a great flame of fire, and it was

impossible to touch her skin, because of the acute pain which she felt

from any such touch.”[180]

A little later on “she abode in so great a peace and interior

contentment that she was” in all respects “considerably relieved and

reinvigorated (_ristorata_). But she did not long remain in this

condition. For very soon she was in a state of interior nudity and

aridity, and she prayed: ‘Never hitherto, O my Lord, have I asked

Thee for anything for myself: now I pray Thee with all my might, that

Thou mayest not will to separate me from Thee. Thou well knowest, O

Lord, that I could not bear this.’ And to her disciples she said, in

connection with this desolation: ‘If a man were to take a soul from

Paradise, how do you think such a soul would feel? You might give it

all the pleasures in the world, and as much more as you can imagine:

and yet all would be but Hell, because of the memory of that divine

union’ (formerly possessed and now lost).”[181]

Again a little later on “she had another attack (_assalto_), when all

her body trembled, especially her right shoulder. It was impossible

to move her from her bed; she did not eat, drank next to nothing, and

did not sleep.”[182] On another day, “she had another attack,”--this

was the occasion of her third indication of a wish to receive Extreme

Unction,--“a spasm in the throat and mouth, so that she could not

speak, nor open her eyes, nor keep her breath except with extreme

difficulty.” “They applied cupping-glasses, with a view to aiding

her to find her breath and to regain speech, yet these helped but

little.”[183] For another day we are told that “in her flesh were

certain concavities, as though it were dough, and the thumb had been

pressed into it. And she called out in a loud voice, because of the

great pain.”[184]

On another day “her pains made her call out as loudly as she could,

and she dragged herself about on her bed. And those that stood by were

dumfounded, at seeing a body, which appeared to be healthy, in such

a tormented state. And then she would laugh, speak as one in health,

and say to the others, not to be sorrowful on her account, since she

was very contented. And this “set of attacks” lasted four days; she

then had a little rest; and, after this, those attacks returned as

before.”[185]

This group is in so far particularly difficult, as we have to try and

decide whether, and if so how far, these pains of hers were primarily

psychical, and, in some way and degree, originally, and by force

of long habits of concentrated religious thinking and picturing,

suggested, or at least stimulated, by the mind itself; or whether these

pains were primarily physical, although evidently only functional and

preponderantly nervous. For on the answer to that question depends,

if not our selection from amongst, at least our interpretation of,

the largely contradictory, successively “doctored,” and more or less

violently schematized evidence, of which the above passages give the

most characteristic and primitive parts. If it was the mind itself

which, unconsciously to its owner, suggested these pains, then we can

and must accept, as quite contemporary and indeed fully exact, those

passages which make her peace and even sensible consolation arise

during the same moments as, and in exact proportion to, the presence

of the pains. If, on the other hand, the pains arose independently

of the subconscious mind, and were merely mastered by the conscious

intelligence and will, then it seems reasonable to assume that we

have here, as is certainly the case in other matters and places in

the _Vita_, an ideal foreshortening, juxtaposition, and unification

of what, in the actual experience, occurred more lengthily and

successively.

It is certainly remarkable in this connection, that, whereas we have

had a clearly marked case of mental, spiritual desolation, outside of

one of these attacks, it is at least very difficult to find anything

certainly of the kind during one of them; indeed the juxtaposition of,

not simply profound spiritual peace, but of sensible, also psychic

or quasi-psychic, consolation with those pains, is so constant and

apparently spontaneous, that secondary, or at least schematic and _a

priori_, reporting seems to have been at work rather in the passages

which affirm the excessiveness of those pains, than in those which

insist that those pains were, so to speak, _not_ pains. All her own

authentic sayings leave the impression of immense psycho-spiritual

sensitiveness, of much actual mental and emotional suffering as well as

joy, but not, I think, of purely physical suffering. “I find so much

contentment on the part of my spirit and so much peace in my mind, that

tongue could not tell nor reason comprehend it; but on the part of my

humanity” (her psycho-physical organism) “all my pains are, so to say,

not pains,” she says, shortly after a particularly violent attack,

with four “accidents.” And a contributor declares that the joy and the

torment ever arose together. It is true that another passage says that,

during such attacks, “her disciples, seeing her suffer so much, desired

that she should expire, so as no more to have to see her in such great

and continuous torment”; but then this desire of theirs was evidently

rather a sympathetic feeling than a deliberate judgment, for, once

she has got over the attack, all this desire of theirs disappears as

rapidly as it had come.[186]

III. CATHERINE’S HISTORY FROM MAY TO SEPTEMBER 9, 1510.

1. _Catherine and the Physicians._

It is at the end of the preceding months that we are told how

“the Physician” (possibly the Hospital House-Surgeon) “attempted

to administer medicine to her. But it gave rise to such repeated

‘accidents’ (vomitings), that she all but died of it, and remained very

weak.”[187]

“And four months before she died,” hence in mid-May, “many physicians

were called together. And they saw and examined the patient, but

failed to find any trace of bodily infirmity, in spite of the care

and attention bestowed by them on the case. And she declared her

conviction that her infirmity was not of a kind requiring physicians

or bodily physic. But on the physicians persevering and ordering

her, she obediently took all that they prescribed, although with

great difficulty and to her hurt. Until at last those same physicians

concluded that there was no remedy within the art of medicine

applicable to the case, and that the infirmity was supernatural.”[188]

“But now there supervened, on his return from England, an excellent

Genoese physician, Maestro Giovan Battista Boerio, who, for many

years, had been in the service of the English King, Henry VII. And

Boerio visited Catherine, and warned her to beware of giving scandal

by refusing medical treatment. And she, in return, assured him that it

grieved her much if she scandalized any one; and that she was prepared

to use any remedy for her ailment, if such could be found.” And indeed

“joy arose within her, at the hope of being cured by him. But in the

following night much” psycho-physical “pain and trouble came upon her,”

and “she then reproved her natural self (_umanità_), saying: ‘Thou

sufferest this, because thou didst rejoice without (just) cause.’” Yet

after about three weeks’ trial of every kind of remedy, a trial which

left her as it found her, Boerio abandoned the task, but “henceforward

held Catherine in esteem and reverence, calling her ‘Mother,’ and often

visiting her.”[189]

Here we have an interesting group of facts. For one thing, we know how

King Henry “had for years been visited by regular fits of the gout;

his strength visibly wasted away, and every spring the most serious

apprehensions were entertained of his life.” “He had also pains in the

chest and difficulty of respiration.” And, “in the spring of 1509 the

King sank under the violence of the disease.”[190] And thus Boerio

will, a year after the death of his royal master, have been called

in to the sick-bed of the Viceroy’s daughter, not simply as a court

physician or as a generally skilful doctor, but as a man known to have

had long experience of a case which prima facie was not all unlike

Catherine’s.

Then it is impossible not to feel throughout these and other passages

of the _Vita_ which are concerned with physicians, a curious

combination of contradictory feelings. There is reproof of the doctors’

presumption in venturing to begin by treating her illness as though

it were a simply natural one; and there is the proud pleasure at thus

getting, through the breakdown of this their presumptuous undertaking,

professional testimony to the supernatural character of her infirmity.

And the two motives lead to the self-contradictory over-emphasizing

both of the Physicians’ moral worth and finality of testimony at the

end of each experience, and of their rationalistic rashness in being

willing to try again, a rashness assumed to be apparent to every one

but themselves before each new attempt. For they must be represented

as worthy and skilful men; else what value has their testimony? And

their action must be intrinsically foolish from the outset; else what

becomes of the transparently and separately supernatural character of

her illness?[191]

And then we can still see fairly clearly that Catherine does not share

the views of practically all her attendants, and of certainly all the

later contributors to and revisers of the _Vita_. For even now the book

still leaves intact the passages which show her as hoping to be cured

by Boerio, and as then condemning herself for having rejoiced without

cause,--evidently, without supernatural justification; as prepared

to believe that the physicians might be able to find an appropriate

remedy, and as willingly trying the remedies they actually offer her;

and as indeed declaring her doubt whether any physic would do her

any good, yet nowhere announcing a conviction as to the directly and

separately supernatural character of her illness. “Her attendants,”

says the obviously most authentic continuation of the passage

concerning the cupping-glasses given further back, “let these attacks

come and go, with as little damage as possible. Her body had to be and

was sustained without the aid of medicine, and solely by means of great

care and great vigilance.”[192]

2. _Catherine and Don Carenzio, Argentina, and Ettore Vernazza._

It will have been the end of June, or the beginning of July, when

these medical experiments ceased. But before them (on March 11 and

twice in April), and again three times during them (in May and June),

monies were paid, in Catherine’s name, by Don Giacomo Carenzio, now

resident as Rettore in the Hospital, in the matter of the granting

of Indulgences to the Church attached to the Hospital. And although

this affair, occurring thus so late on in her illness, in which we

have already found her not always to have dominated the plans of her

attendants, cannot well be pressed as necessarily characteristic of

her, yet I take it to be quite likely that she still took some active

part in the matter.[193]

Catherine certainly still attended to business, even two months later;

for, on August 3, Vernazza drew up a Codicil in her presence “in the

bedroom of Argentina del Sale,” says the document itself. Since the

Inventory, still extant, of the things found in Catherine’s rooms at

the time of her death, gives a list of the bedclothes of only two beds,

and these two beds are then both in the same room, and the one bed is

Catherine’s, and the other is that of the _famiglia_ (the servant)

Argentina: it is clear that, for at least the last six weeks of her

life, Catherine had only one person sleeping in her little house with

her, and that this person was the navvy Marco’s little widow. I take

it, with Vallebona, that the room was really Catherine’s ordinary

bedroom; but that, as Argentina now slept there as regularly as her

mistress herself, Catherine preferred, whether from humility or

affection (the latter motive seems the more probable), to think of the

room as belonging to Argentina.[194]

For some reason unknown to us, Vernazza, Catherine’s closest friend,

must have left Genoa soon after drawing up this Codicil. For he did not

draw up or witness her final Codicil of September 12, although, when in

Genoa at all, he now lived close by, and although this final Codicil

but gave effect to the plan regarding her sepulture which underlay the

change introduced into the Will of March 1509, a Will which had been

witnessed by himself. And, as we shall see, he was absent, indeed far

away (_lontano_), from her death-bed, some six weeks after the date at

which we have now arrived. I think we can only explain this departure

by assuming that already now, before his inspirer’s death, his zeal and

activity had expanded beyond the limits of the Genoese Republic; and

that, dying as she already was, and devoted to her as he ever remained,

he nevertheless (since there was now so little that he could hope to

do for her own person, and there was so much to do elsewhere in the

way of developing and applying her spirit and teachings) now rode off

to Venice or to Rome, as we know him to have done, so often and for so

long, during the fourteen remaining years of his life. And we have in

this a fact peculiarly characteristic of these two expansive souls,--of

the influence of the one, the frail woman, dying in her little

sick-room, and of the execution of her world-embracing aspirations by

the other, the strong man, battling, often at the risk of his very

life, for the poor and oppressed, outside, on the great trysting-field

of men’s passions and requirements.

3. _Psycho-physical condition and its utilization, August 10 to 27._

But Catherine, lying in her sick-room, suffered on August 10 from one

of her great burnings. “And next day, whilst her body was still in pain

and trouble, God drew her mind upwards to Himself. And she fixed her

eyes on the ceiling, and remained thus almost immovable for an hour,

and spoke not but laughed joyously. And when she had returned to her

more ordinary consciousness, she said this one thing only: ‘O Lord, do

with me whatsoever Thou wilt.’”[195]

On August 15, she, “when about to communicate, addressed many

beautiful words to the Blessed Sacrament, so that every one present

was moved to tears.”[196] During the following day and night she

suffered so greatly, that “all considered she would certainly die. She

asked,”--this was the third or even fourth time,--“for Extreme Unction,

and” this time “it was given her, and she received it with great

devotion.”

“On the day following,” the 17th, “she was in a state of jubilation

of heart (_giubilo di cuore_), which manifested itself exteriorly in

merry laughter. And, having been asked as to the cause, she said that

she had seen various most beautiful, merry, and joyous countenances, so

that she had been unable to refrain from laughing. And this impression

continued throughout several days, during which she appeared to be

improved in health.”[197] But on August 22 or 23, “she again had a

day of much heat and trouble. She remained maimed (paralyzed) in her

right hand and in one finger of the left hand. And then she remained as

though dead for about sixteen hours.”[198]

In the night of the 23rd or 24th (Feast of St. Bartholomew) she had “a

great attack in mind and body; and being unable to speak, she made the

sign of the Cross upon her heart. And, later on, she was understood to

have been molested by a diabolical temptation.”[199]

On the 25th “she was in great weakness. And she caused her windows to

be opened, so as to be able to see the sky. And, as the night came

on, she had many candles lit; and she chanted, as well as she could,

the ‘Veni, Creator Spiritus.’ And when she had finished she fixed her

eyes upon the sky, and remained thus an hour and a half, making many

gestures with her hands and eyes. And when she had resumed her ordinary

consciousness (_quando fù ritornata in sè_), she said repeatedly:

‘Let us go’; and then added: ‘No more earth, no more earth.’ And her

body remained greatly shaken from this contemplation (_vista_).” And

on August 27 “she saw herself as though bereft of her body and of its

animating soul, and her spirit alone in God above. And after this she

addressed those present and said: ‘Let only those come in who may be

necessary.’”[200]

This particular group is specially interesting. For it shows us

Catherine’s love of the large and expansive, of the spiritually simple

and interior, and of the supernatural and transcendent in her look-out

into the open; in her vivid apprehension of her spirit bereft of all

things except the Supreme Spirit, that spirit’s native element and

home; and in her gaze into the starlit Italian August sky above. And it

gives us indications, elsewhere so rare in her life, of her attachment

to the visible, audible, tangible vehicles and expressions of religion,

as so many helps and occasions of its immanence in our minds and

hearts, in her signing her heart with the sign of the Cross, her having

the candles lit and her chanting a definite traditional Church hymn,

and in her fourth demand of Extreme Unction and devout reception of

it. It is also noticeable how vivid and yet how undefined are her

impressions of those countenances, since neither she herself anywhere,

nor even her chroniclers in this place, explicitly identify them with

Angels; and how still more general and indefinite remains the “diabolic

temptation,” since in this case, only when it was over, was she

“understood” to have been thus tempted. Indeed any directly diabolical

temptation would be profoundly uncharacteristic of her special call

and way: all through the records of her life and teaching it is the

selfish, claimful Self that she fears “more than a demon,” “worse than

the devil”; she is, in a very true sense, too busy watching, fighting,

ignoring, supplanting Self, and ever putting, keeping, and replacing

God, Love, in Self’s stead, to give or find occasion for what, in this

her immensely strenuous inner life, would have been a remoter conflict.

4. _Persistent self-knowledge and excessive impressionableness._

The _Vita_ next gives us five most vivid but undated paragraphs as to

her health. I will take them together with such other dated occurrences

as will bring us down to September 10.

There is first a characteristic general fact, and a probably often

repeated remark of Catherine’s. “At times she would have no pulse,

and at other times she would have a good one; often she would seem to

sleep; and from this state she would awake, at one time completely

herself again, and at other times so limp, oppressed, and shattered

as to be unable to move. And those that attended on her did not know

how to distinguish one state from the other. And hence, on coming to,

she would sometimes say, ‘Why did you let me remain in this quietude,

from which I have almost died?’”[201] Thus Catherine’s attendants

are helplessly at sea concerning her psycho-physical condition, and

they identify, and directly supernaturalize, each and all of her

successive and simultaneous states. But Catherine herself remains

clearly conscious of different levels and values in these states: of

normal, grace-impelled, freely-willed, strength-bringing contemplations

and quietudes; and of sickly, weakening, more or less hysterical,

lassitudes and failures. And she is thus aware of the deep difference

between the two sets of states, that are externally so similar, at

the very time of experiencing the one or the other of them; and is

conscious, at the same time, both of being unable, by her own unaided

will, to give effect, from within, to this her own knowledge, and of

being able and willing, indeed anxious, to follow the lead and the

pressure of wisely discriminating will-acts, proceeding from without,

and, as it were, meeting her own wishes half-way, and thus turning them

into effective willings. She herself has still the knowledge, but, now

she is ill, she has no more the power. They have the power, but not the

knowledge. And she knows all this, through God’s illumination working

in and upon her own long and rich experiences, sound good sense, severe

self-detachment, close self-observation, and incorruptible veracity of

mind; and she knows it in spite of, and in direct opposition to, the

far more flattering misconceptions, and entirely well-meant and sincere

opinions (representative of the traditional and contemporary consensus

of view on these obscure matters) of the servants, lawyers, physicians,

relatives, and priests about her. The incident is closely parallel to

her scruple as to Marabotto’s spoiling her; and one more similar detail

will be mentioned later on.

But next, we get now abundant evidence that she was ill indeed. There

is the rapidly shifting fancifulness of the senses of taste and smell,

together with an ever-increasing difficulty of swallowing. “She would,

at times, be so thirsty as to feel capable of drinking all the water of

the sea, and yet she could not, as a matter of fact, manage to swallow

even one little drop of water.” “Seeing on one occasion a melon, and

conceiving a great desire to eat it, she had it given to her. But

hardly had she a piece of it in her mouth, but she rejected it with

great disgust.” “She often bathed her mouth with water, and then

suddenly she would reject it.” “To-day the smell of wine would please

her, and she would bathe her hands and face in it, with great relish;

and to-morrow she would dislike it so much, as to be unable any longer

to see or smell it in her room.”[202] And, in strict conformity with

this detail, I find an entry in the Hospital account-book for this

time, of money disbursed to the account of Catherine, for a cask of

wine for her use.[203]

Yet her biographers are evidently only stating the simple truth

when they declare that she continued to receive Holy Communion with

ease and safety; for not only are there three quite unsuspicious

passages, descriptive of her receptions of It, under most difficult

circumstances; but we find, on counting up the incidental and bare

mentions of her Communions, that, during the fourteen days from

September 2 to 15, her death-day, she communicated ten times, and one

or two further Communions may have been accidentally omitted.

There is, again, an occasional abnormal sensitiveness to colours,

and their mental connotations, at least in connection with red.

“On September 2, a Physician, a friend of hers,”--no doubt Maestro

Boerio,--“came to visit her, robed in his Doctor’s ‘scarlet,’” as was

no doubt the custom when visiting patients of quality. “And she bore

this sight for a little, so as not to hurt his feelings. But when

she could bear it no longer, she said to him: ‘Sir, I can no further

bear the sight of this gown of yours, because of what it represents

(suggests) to me.’ The Physician departed at once and returned clad

in another,” a black “gown.” The Chronicler, probably Boerio’s

priest-son, is no doubt substantially right in interpreting this as

meaning that the scarlet suggested to her a seraph aflame with divine

love. Yet I find, from the inventory of her final possessions, that

she possessed, and doubtless used, among her bedclothes a vermilion

silk coverlet and a vermilion blanket,--an undoubted indication

of her love for this colour.[204] These two vicissitudes of her

colour-affection no doubt mutually supplement and explain each other:

when not over-impressionable and not already stimulated to the full

of her capacity, this colour would suggest her central doctrine and

experience, and would be pleasurable; when over-impressionable and

already stimulated as much as, then and there, she could bear and

utilize, the colour would but strain and disturb her.

And, finally, there are sensations and impressions of extreme heat and

cold, and excessive sensibility or insensibility in tactual matters.

“At one time she was cold; and at another, burning hot.” “On one day,”

early in September, “she suffered great cold in her right arm, followed

by acute pain”; and on September 7, “her body felt all on fire; and,

since it seemed to her as though the whole world were aflame, she asked

whether this were the case, and had her windows opened, so as to be

reassured as to the real facts.”[205]

“At times she would be sensitive to such a degree, that it was

impossible to touch her sheets or a hair of her head; she would,

if this were done, cry out as though she had been grievously

wounded.”[206] The temporary paralysis and anaesthetic conditions have

been already described.

5. _Three spiritually significant events, September 4-9._

We can next consider together three spiritually significant incidents

which occurred during these penultimate days of hers.

“On September 4 she lay there in her bed, in great pain, her arms

stretched out in suchwise that she appeared like a body nailed to a

cross; as she was within, so did she appear without.” Here, then,

she finds a certain attraction and help in an external, quasi-ritual

attitude and act; for this attitude, however spontaneous and but

subconscious, was doubtless not simply accidental or the mere result

of pain. It is, with the Pietà-picture of her childhood and the

Conversion-vision of the Bleeding Christ, one of the only three direct

references to the Passion which I can find throughout her whole

life and teaching. This little act gave occasion to the “Spiritual

Stigmata”-legend, which is inserted here, in two paragraphs, by the

_Vita_, on the alleged, and I think actual, authority of the credulous

and long-lived Argentina. The legend is wanting in all the MSS.; its

late genesis and growth is clearly traceable.[207]

“On September 5, some time after her Communion, she suddenly had a

sight (_vista_) of herself, as dead and lying in a truckle-bed, with

many Religious, robed in black, around her. And she rejoiced greatly

at this sight. But afterwards, having a prick of conscience because of

this rejoicing, she confessed it to her Confessor.”[208] Here we have

once more a particular desire within Catherine’s soul, and a scruple

consequent upon it; and all this but ten days before her death.

And on the 9th, after Communion, there was “suddenly shown her a sight

of her (spiritual) miseries; and this gave great annoyance (_noia_) to

her mind. And, as soon as she was able to tell (confess) them, she did

so; and the sight then departed from her.”[209] Here, then, we have

clear testimony to imperfections perceived by herself as still within

her, and to her Confession of them as such; things characteristic

of her third as against her second period, but which most of the

contributors to the _Vita_ try hard to obscure even here.

IV. THE LAST SIX DAYS OF CATHERINE’S LIFE, SEPTEMBER 10-15.

And now the events of real significance which occurred during the last

six days of her life can be grouped under six heads.

1. _A great consultation of Physicians, September 10._

On the 10th there occurred a second, and last, great consultation of

Physicians. The number is this time given--they were ten: “of whom

several are still alive,” writes the final Redactor of the printed

_Vita_ of 1551. And, in this case, they did not prescribe any remedies;

but “examining her and inspecting everything with great diligence,

they finally concluded that such a case was (must be) a supernatural

and divine thing, since neither the pulse, nor any of the secretions,

nor any other symptom, showed any trace of any infirmity. They were

astounded, and departed recommending themselves to her prayers.” “When

she was not oppressed or tormented by her attacks (_accidenti_), she

seemed well; when she was being stifled by them (_suffocata_), she

seemed dead: and again, suddenly, the opposite condition would be seen.

And hence it was most clearly understood, that all this operation was

produced (_ordinata_) by the divine goodness itself.”[210]

Here we have a clear exposition of the two sets of phenomena which

specially impressed her _entourage_, and of the reasoning by which

these appearances were turned into direct proofs of the Metaphysical,

indeed of the Supernatural. There are three assumptions at work here.

What exceeds the knowledge of the Physicians of any one period, can be

safely held to exceed not only human knowledge throughout all coming

ages, but the powers of nature itself. All purely natural illness is

either simply physical or simply mental, and always shows traces

of a simply physical or of a simply mental kind. And all purely

natural illness is either slow in its transitions, or, at least, not

sudden in its transitions back and up to apparent health. And these

assumptions must have lain in those minds as part and parcel of their

hereditary furniture, in so far as they did not energize and aspire,

and did not, by moving out and up into the regions of Action and of

the Spiritual, of the Dynamic and of Love, transcend all that is

mechanically transmissible, and, with it, all that was bound to change

and be proved inadequate in the knowledge of their time. It was their

very religion which, with its strong predisposition and determination

to find immediate, independent, tangible, medically certified proofs

for an exceptional, indeed exclusive action of God, kept these

Physicians thus, even religiously, tied down in and by the Contingent

and Transitory. And it was her very religion which, by its grandly

ethico-spiritual Transcendence, kept Catherine above and outside the

very possibility of growing obsolete or old. We now see, with even

painful clearness, how inadequate, indeed how directly suggestive

of the contrary, were those Physicians’ and Redactors’ treasured

proofs. For neither the absence of all symptoms of physical or of

clearly mental disease, nor the presence of an astounding frequency,

abruptness, and completeness of change in the psycho-physical actions

and functions of the living person, nor, above all, the conjunction of

these two peculiarities, are for us now, taken by themselves, anything

but indications of nervous, hysterical derangement. It is in spite of

these things, or at least only on occasion of them, that Catherine

is great. Indeed one fails to see how, in any case, such purely

psycho-physical phenomenal data could, of themselves and directly, ever

compel any such metaphysical and spiritual conclusions. And, be it

noted, only in proportion as men abandon such impossible enterprises,

do they become sufficiently detached from these phenomena to be able

accurately to gauge their nature. These attendants who build so much

on these phenomena, do not see them as they are; Catherine, who builds

nothing on them, and who simply uses them as fresh means and occasions

of ethico-spiritual growth, sees them, to an astonishing extent, as

they really are.

2. _The final Codicil, September 12._

On the 12th, “she communicated as usual, but tasted no other food,

and after this she remained a very long time without speaking. And

after they had been bathing her mouth for some time, she exclaimed,

‘I am suffocating’ (_io affogo_). She said this because a little drop

of water had trickled into her throat, and she could not gulp it

down.” And in the evening the Notary Saccheri drew up in her presence,

with her nephew Francesco Fiesco and the maid Argentina del Sale as

two of the seven witnesses, a last Codicil, in which she, “although

languishing in body, yet possessed of her faculties (_in sua sana

memoria esistente_), ordained that her body should be buried in such

a place and Church as should be ordained by Don Jacobo Carenzio, the

present Rector of the Hospital, and Don Cattaneo Marabotto.” And “at

ten o’clock at night she complained of a very great heat (fire), and

then ejected from the mouth much black blood. And black spots appeared

all over her body, with very severe suffering. And her sight became so

weak that she could barely distinguish one person from the other.”[211]

Here at last we can plainly see the object which had moved her

friends, eighteen months before, to get her to fix upon San Nicolò in

Boschetto as her burial-place. They now, when she is at the point of

death, and in the last moment of fairly lucid mind, get her finally

to declare,--not that she is to be buried in the Hospital Church

apart from her husband, though this is what they themselves intend

to do, but simply that her grave is to be wheresoever Dons Marabotto

and Carenzio shall decide. It is interesting to note to how late a

date her friends thought it wise to postpone such a move, and in how

indirect and roundabout a fashion they had to attain their end. Yet it

is again plain that the whole scheme was willed and executed by her

family and friends unanimously; for, if Vernazza had been a witness

to the previous Will, so was Francesco Fiesco now a witness to this

Codicil.--We should also note that, if the difficulty in swallowing

of the early day is still entirely in keeping with her life-long

psycho-physical peculiarities, the attack at night is the first in her

life when the blood lost is described as of bad quality and where

spots appear on her person, indeed where any symptom of definite

illness is recorded. But now at last it is evident that downright

physical mischief is at work.

3. _Symptoms of organic lesion and delirium, September 13._

Before dawn “on the 13th, she evacuated much blood of a bad quality and

great heat, so that she remained even weaker than before. Nevertheless

she again communicated at her usual hour.” And later on “she fixed her

gaze immovably upon the ceiling, and made many gestures with her mouth

and hands. The bystanders asked her what it was that she was seeing,

and she said: ‘Drive away that beast that wants to eat…,’ and the

remainder of the words could not be made out.”[212]

Here two points are of pathetic interest. This great heat of her

blood was considered, no doubt from the first by at least some of

her attendants, and then later on more and more by the Redactors, as

so directly marvellous, spiritually significant, and confirmatory of

sayings of her own as to her interior ardours, that three various

though parallel anecdotes and proofs as to the intensity of its heat

are solemnly printed here by the _Vita_, only the first of which

appears in the MSS. Purely secondary, physical matters are thus, with a

short-sighted good faith and admiration, eagerly utilized to naturalize

and obscure a soaringly spiritual personality. Truly, she was not

simply mistaken as to her isolation: she too had the privilege to share

some of the piercing loneliness of Christ.