CATHERINE’S REMAINS AND CULTUS; THE FATE OF HER TWO PRIEST FRIENDS AND
OF HER DOMESTICS; AND THE REMAINING HISTORY OF ETTORE VERNAZZA
INTRODUCTORY.
I now propose to attempt, in these last two biographical chapters,
to give, first, an account of the fate of Catherine’s remains and
possessions; and, next, of the vicissitudes in the lives of her
companions and immediate disciples. I shall thus range from the day
of her death on Sunday, September 15, 1510, up to 1551, the year of
the publication of the _Vita e Dottrina_; indeed, in the instance of
one particular disciple, up to 1587. And I shall do so, partly as a
further contribution to the knowledge of her own character and even
of her doctrine, this finest expression of what she spiritually was,
and of her influence upon her immediate little world; and partly in
preparation for the study of the influence of this _entourage_ back
upon the apprehension and presentation of her figure, upon the growth
of her “Legend,” and upon the contemporary and gradual, simultaneous
and successive, upbuilding of that complex structure, her “Life.” This
latter inquiry is probably too technical to interest the majority of
readers, and will be found relegated to the Appendix at the end of this
volume.
I shall group all the facts, alluded to above, under five heads: her
burial, and the events immediately surrounding it; the different
removals of the remains, and the chief stages of her Official Cultus;
the fate of her two priest friends and advisers, and of her domestics;
the remaining history of her closest friend Ettore Vernazza; and
finally the long career, rich in autobiographical annotations, of
Ettore’s daughter, Catherine’s God-child, Tommasina (Battista)
Vernazza. We shall thus first finish up what is predominantly the
story of things, and of the more external, even although the most
splendid and authoritative, appreciation and authentication of her
holiness; and shall only then go back to what is (almost exclusively)
an interior history of souls, and one which will materially contribute
to our apprehension of Catherine’s special character and influence
and to a vivid perception of the advantages, strength, limits, and
difficulties of that particular kind of religion and of its attestation
and transmission. Ettore’s and Battista’s stories, however, are so full
that I must give three entire sections to Ettore, and one whole chapter
to Battista.
I. THE BURIAL AND THE EVENTS IMMEDIATELY SURROUNDING IT. SEPTEMBER 15
TO DECEMBER 10, 1510.
1. _The Burial, September 16._
We have seen how, in the evening of Thursday, September 12, the already
dying Catherine had, in a Codicil, declared that she desired to be
buried wheresoever the priests Jacobo Carenzio and Cattaneo Marabotto
should decide. She died in the early morning of Sunday, the 15th; and
already on the next day, with the rapidity which, in such matters,
continues characteristic of southern countries, the burial took place.
First, Dons Jacobo Carenzio and Cattaneo Marabotto declared, in a
written document, that “knowing the late Donna Caterinetta to have
ordained that her body should be buried in such a place as they
themselves might ordain: they, in consequence, willed and ordained that
her said body be buried in the Church of the Hospital.”[292] And next,
the funeral took place with a certain amount of pomp: for authentic
copies are still extant of the expenses incurred,--among other things
for wax candles, including three white-wax flambeaux, amounting in
all to over one hundred pounds weight of wax.[293] The evidently
highly emaciated, and hence naturally flexible, body had been enclosed
in a “fine coffin of wood,” and was now, at this first deposition,
put in “a resting-place (_deposito_) against one of the walls” of
the Church. There can be no doubt that this first resting-place
was not the monument of her husband Giuliano, although the latter
was still visible and readily accessible for a considerable time
after,--certainly up to 1522, and probably down to 1537.[294]
2. _Catherine’s possessions at the time of her death._
And next, on Tuesday the 17th, an Inventory was drawn up of the things
possessed by Catherine at the moment of her death, for the use of the
Hospital “Protectors,” the Trustees and Executors of her Will. An
authentic copy of it is still extant, and furnishes first-hand evidence
for the presence, up to the very last, and amongst the tangible objects
and small possessions in daily use, of memorials and expressions of
the three great stages of her life, and of the (in part successive and
past, in part simultaneous and still present) layers, or as it were
concentric rings, of her character. We thus get a vivid presentation
of that variety in unity and unity in variety, which is of the very
essence of the fully living soul; and we also see how incapable of
being otherwise than caricatured, if expressed in but a few hyperbolic
words, was even her spirit of poverty and of mortification, in this
her last stage, which, in some sense and degree, still retained and
summed up, and in other ways added a special touch of a large freedom
to, all the various previous stages of her life.
The list gives the things according to the rooms in which they stood,
beginning with her own death-room, and, here, with her own bed. In this
“_the_ room” (_camera_) there are “a down coverlet” and “two large
mattresses”; “three” (other) “coverlets, one of vermilion silk” and
“two of” some simpler “white” material; “two blankets, one vermilion,
the other white”; “five-and-a-half pairs of sheets”; and “a pillow”:
all this for Catherine’s bed. And these clothes, together with those of
the bed of the “famiglia” (the maid Argentina), constitute, together
with the two bedsteads, absolutely all the chattels present in this
“bedroom” (_camera_).
“In the” adjoining “room with the blue wall-hangings and the”
intervening “curtain,” there were: “three stuff gowns, one black and
the other Franciscan-colour,” _i.e._ grey; “two silk gowns”; “two
jackets, one” of which was again “of grey stuff, without a lining”;
seven other garments, “one being of black silk”; a very small amount
of body-linen; “three table-cloths and twenty-one towels”; “two silver
cups and saucers” and “six silver spoons”; “eight pewter candlesticks”;
“one casserole”; “four wooden basins”; “a kettle”; and a few other poor
odds-and-ends, for kitchen and sick-room use; and a three-legged table
and one or two other articles of simple furniture.
And finally “a closet” (_recamera_) is mentioned, with a press in it.
It is noticeable that here, again, no printed book or manuscript of
any kind is mentioned: but it is clear that she herself had, some
time after her Will of March 18, 1509, given away her dearly prized
“Maestà”-triptych to Christoforo di Chiavaro, for this picture nowhere
occurs in this list; and something of the same kind may have occurred
with one or two books.
But if we group these things somewhat differently, we at once get a
vivid conception of the precise, and hence complex, sense in which
she can be said to have died very poor; and we get clear indications
of the three stages of her life. For the silver service is a survival
from her pre-conversion, worldly-wealthy days; the pewter candlesticks,
and the rough, sparse furniture, belong to her directly penitential
first-conversion period and mood; and the soft, warm, gay-coloured
coverlets and apparel of rich material are no doubt predominantly
characteristic of her last years when, largely under Don Marabotto’s
wise advice, she allowed herself a greater freedom in matters of
external mortification, and readily accepted bodily attentions and
comforts, reserving now the fulness of her attention to matters of
interior disposition and purification. She thus attained, by means of
and after all those previous forms of mortification, to a perfected,
evangelical liberty, in which the death to self was, if somewhat
different, yet even more penetrative than before.
In the evening of this day, the Protectors of the Hospital formally
renew their acceptance of the office of Trustees and Executors, imposed
on them by Catherine’s Will of March 18 of the previous year.[295]
3. _Distribution of Catherine’s chattels._
And thirdly, there are the various sellings, re-sellings, and
distributions of her humble little collection of things, which take
place with the slow multiplicity of steps, dear to all corporations.
Workmen get paid, on November 22, for carrying her property on to the
market-place, for the sale. On the same day Argentina receives “such
things left to her in Catherine’s Will as Catherine had not herself
already given to her maid.” And, on December 10, the remainder of
that property, which had evidently been bought in by the Hospital on
that November day, is finally re-valued, bought, and divided up by
and between the Protectors, who take most of the large furniture;
Marabotto, who buys ten things (a pair of fire-irons, a wardrobe, and
a gilt article amongst them); her brother Lorenzo, who acquires four
things (amongst them “a woman’s work-box?--_capsetina a domina_”); and
the Rector, Don Carenzio, who becomes possessed of the down coverlet
and of a piece of vermilion cloth.[296]
Here the absence of all buying by or for Vernazza or a representative
of his is noticeable. He was evidently still far away, busy in putting
his and his dead Saint-friend’s large ideas into practice; and his
three daughters, the eldest of whom was but thirteen, were being
brought up in two Convents.
The fate of Catherine’s little house is too closely bound up with that
of one of her friends for its history to be easily severable from his.
It stands over to the third section.
II. THE DIFFERENT REMOVALS OF THE REMAINS, AND THE CHIEF STAGES OF HER
OFFICIAL CULTUS.
1. _Opening of the “Deposito.” Successive “translations.”_
Catherine’s remains were left “for about eighteen months” in their
first resting-place, (_deposito_) by one of the walls of the “Hospital
Church.” But then “it was found that the spot was damp, owing to a
conduit of water running under the wall. And the resting-place was
broken up, and the coffin was opened: and the holy body was found
entire from head to foot, without any kind of lesion.” “And so great a
concourse of people took place, to see the body, that the remains were
left exposed indeed for eight days; but, owing to a part of them having
been abstracted,” apparently at the opening of the coffin, “they were
exhibited shut off (from the crowd) in a side-chapel, where they could
be seen but not touched.” “And after this, the remains were deposited
high up, in a sepulchre of marble, in the Church of the Hospital.”[297]
The interest of this removal consists in three sets of facts, the last
set being of capital importance among the determining causes of her
cultus and eventual canonization. For one thing, we still have the
accounts of the expenses incurred in connection with it, the Hospital
repaying, to two ladies (one of them Donna Franchetta, the wife of
Giuliano’s cousin Agostino Adorno) and to Don Marabotto, the sums
expended by them upon this translation and sepulchre: Marabotto’s
expenses being in part for “causing the stone for the sepulchre to be
brought.” These accounts are put down in the Hospital Cartulary under
July 10, nearly twenty-two months after the first deposition; but the
expenses may well have been incurred by those three friends, three or
four months before. We thus find two ladies (a relative and a friend),
and Don Marabotto, to the fore; but no mention of Carenzio, although
the latter was at the time, as we shall see, still Rector of the
Hospital and living in Catherine’s little house there.
And secondly, it is on this occasion that mention is made of the
picture which I have more or less identified with the portrait
reproduced in this volume. There are two highly ambiguous entries
concerning it. “To account of the Sepulture of the late Donna
Caterinetta Adorna, for divers expenses incurred by Don Cattaneo
Marabotto: to wit, for a picture, and for causing the stone for the
sepulture to be brought, £7 10_s._”; “the Maintenance Committee
(_fabrica_) of the Hospital, for a picture erected in the Church of the
Hospital, above the Altar: to the credit of Don Cattaneo Marabotto,
£9 7_s._”[298] Now I take it that only one interpretation is at all a
probable one, viz. that both these entries, in the comfortably slipshod
way in which most of these accounts were kept, refer somehow to one and
the same picture; and that this picture was a portrait of Catherine.
For it is certain that the second account refers in some way to
Catherine and to this first transference of her remains; it is highly
unlikely that two pictures of herself would be produced and paid for,
on one and the same occasion; and it is most improbable that Marabotto
would care, on occasion of all this popular enthusiasm for his deceased
friend and penitent, to spend money on a picture representative of some
figure other than her own.
The reader will note that the portrait which I thus connect with this
picture has not, as yet, got any nimbus, an absence hardly possible
in any much later picture.[299] And I take it that the picture was
placed above an altar, possibly even _the_ Altar (the High Altar) of
the Church, not only because _that_ was the most honorific place, but
also a little because the sepulchre had been placed too high up for the
relatively small picture to be sufficiently visible if attached to the
monument itself.
And thirdly, we have here, in this week-long public veneration of the
remains, and in this erection of her picture over one of the Church
Altars, the first unmistakable beginnings of a popular cultus. For the
evidences and expressions of devotion to her, which I have recorded
at the time of her death, were all restricted to the circle of her
personal friends, and her first deposition remained, apparently, free
from any popular concourse or commotion. The series of cures attributed
to her intercession does not begin till this opening of the _deposito_.
Certainly the first, and possibly the first four, of these cases, as
given by Padre Maineri (1737), occurred in connection with this first
opening.[300] And it is certain that, if the (greater or lesser)
incorruption of the body was possibly nothing even physically so very
remarkable, given all the circumstances;[301] and if this fact left
the question of her sanctity intrinsically entirely where it found
the matter: yet the incorruption it was that gave the first, and, as
it turned out, an abiding impulse to the popular devotion. Indeed,
as we shall see later on, it is highly improbable that, but for this
condition of the body, a cultus would ever have arisen sufficiently
popular and permanent to lead on to her Beatification and Canonization.
But as things now stood, the movement had been set going, and it
continued on and on.
The remaining translations were: a second one, into “an honourable
sepulchre lower down,” still before 1551, and already mentioned in
the first edition of the _Vita_ of that year; a third, in 1593, when
the remains were placed in their present position, but in a marble
monument, up in the choir, above the Church entrance; and a fourth and
fifth, in 1642 and 1694, when the body was placed, for the first and
second time, in shrines having glass sides, so that the relics could
be seen: that of 1694 is the one in which the remains still repose.
And in 1709, Cardinal Lorenzo Fiesco being Archbishop of Genoa, the
body was reclothed, on June 13, by ladies, amongst whom was a Maria
B. Fiesca.[302] We thus see how unbroken was, in this case, the
authentication of the remains, and how fresh remained, most naturally,
the interest taken in their cultus by Catherine’s most powerful family.
2. _Motives operating for Catherine’s Canonization._
It is indeed clear that Catherine’s greatness,--what made her a large,
rich mind and saintly spirit,--is one thing; and that Catherine’s
popularity,--what occasioned the official recognition of that
greatness,--is another thing. Her mind and teaching, her character and
special grace and _attrait_, were of rare width and penetration; in
part, they were strikingly original through just this their depth of
psychological and spiritual self-consistency and closeness of touch
with the soul’s actual life. And these points had profoundly impressed
a very small group of friends. And again, her work among the poor and
sick had been long, varied, and utterly devoted. And here she had been
widely appreciated. Yet these, the two lives which, between them,
constituted all her sanctity and significance, had, the former nothing,
and the latter but little and only mediately, to do with the forces
which led on eventually to her formal canonization.
The motives for putting Rome in motion for this her canonization were,
no doubt, predominantly three. There was the popular devotion, which
apparently was first aroused, and was then instantly turned into
a downright cultus, by the discovery, in May or June 1512, of the
incorruption of her remains; and which from thenceforward continued
and grew, in connection with these relics and with the physical cures
and ameliorations attributed to the touch of the dead body, or of
its integuments, or even of the oil of the lamp which evidently soon
(presumably on occasion of that first outburst of devotion) was kept
lit before Catherine’s resting-place.[303] There was next the gratitude
of the Hospital authorities to Catherine for her life-work amongst
them; and their most natural and laudable wish to utilize her sanctity
and its recognition for the benefit of the ever-continuous and pressing
necessities of their vast institution and its Church. And finally,
there was the feeling of clanship and the active interest taken in the
matter by the (all but regal) family of the Fieschi, backed, as they
were, by the Republic of Genoa and various other sovereign bodies and
persons.
The combination of these three things proved sufficiently powerful to
take the place of certain ordinary incentives which were wanting, and
even to overcome certain unusual difficulties which were undoubtedly
present, in the case. Certain incentives were lacking. For there was,
in this instance, no Religious Order to put forward and to work, with
all the continuous, unresting, unhasting momentum of an institution,
for a saintly subject of its own, a subject whose glorification would
bring honour and profit to the body from which she sprang, and an
accession of popularity to the special object and work of that Order.
And certain obstacles were present. For few characters, interior
ideals and explicit teachings, could be found more _sui generis_, more
profoundly, even daringly original and all re-constitutive, and less
immediately understandable and copyable, than are these of Catherine.
But the enthusiasm and self-interest of the populace, of a charitable
institution, and of a powerful family, replaced what was thus lacking
and overcame what was thus operative; and the directly visible and
universally understandable part of her life and example, was allowed to
outweigh any objection that could be urged on the ground of the less
obvious and more difficult, far more original and profound, sides of
her special personality and piety.
And a matter which further helped on the canonization was that when
Pope Urban VIII, in 1625, published his Bull forbidding thenceforth,
under grave penalties, that any one, “even though he have died with the
reputation of extraordinary Christian perfection, be called ‘Blessed’
or ‘Saint,’ until he has first been declared to be such, and to merit
religious worship, by the Holy Roman See”; and ordaining that the same
rule should be practised concerning persons already deceased, who were
currently recognized as saints: he excepted, with regard to this second
class, those who, “during an immemorial course of time” previous to the
publication of this Bull, had been venerated as saints by the people,
without opposition or complaint on the part of the Church authorities.
For this “time immemorial” was considered by theologians to amount, as
a minimum, to a hundred years. And since religious worship had begun
to be paid to her certainly not later than 1512, and the title “Beata”
had already then been publicly given to her, Catherine continued, even
after Pope Urban’s Bull, to be invoked and venerated as “Blessed,” with
the knowledge, though without any positive and express approbation, of
the Roman Church.[304]
3. _Canonization, 1737._
But the devotees of Catherine, naturally enough, were not content
with less than a formal approbation, and, as usual, the obtaining of
the latter was a very long and elaborate affair. At the beginning of
1630 a petition was sent in to Cardinal Cesarini in Rome; who, after
much examination, gave his opinion on May 24, 1636. There the matter
again rested for twenty-four years.--But in 1670 the very active
and able Florentine, Cardinal Azzolini, (the same whose interesting
correspondence with that undisciplined and wayward, but thoroughly
sincere and much-maligned woman, Queen Christina of Sweden, has been
recently published,) became the “Ponente,” the Advocate, for the
cause.[305] The Cardinal wrote in 1672 to Archbishop Spinola of Genoa
for his opinion; and the latter, after much further examination,
declared that the cultus of Catherine, having existed for over a
century before Pope Urban’s Bull, she ought, in accordance with the
tenor of that Bull, to be maintained in possession of that same cultus.
The Congregation of Rites approved of this sentence on March 30, 1675,
and Clement X, the now eighty-five years old Altieri Pope, gave it his
assent. Thus Catherine had a full official recognition as “Beata.”
Next came the examination of her doctrine and “writings,” from
1676 onwards, culminating in their approbation, for purposes of
Canonization, by Pope Innocent XI (Odescalchi) in 1683. It is this
investigation which, with some of the discussions concerning her
virtues, adds considerably to our materials and means for judging of
her teaching. I have already touched on these discussions; and they
will occupy us again in the second volume.
And then, in 1682, Cardinal Azzolini, supported by King Louis XIV of
France and the King of Spain, again presses Rome,--this time with a
view to reaching Canonization. And on Cardinal Azzolini dying, Cardinal
Imperiali became second “Ponente” of the cause. In 1690 the City of
Genoa obtained leave from the Congregation of Rites for the recitation
of the Office and for the Celebration of the Mass of the Common of
Widows, in honour of Blessed Catherine; in 1733 an Office and a Mass
proper to herself were approved; and in 1734 her eulogy was inserted in
the Roman Martyrology, under date of March 22 (her conversion-day): “At
Genoa, the Blessed Catherine, widow, distinguished by her contempt of
the world and love of God.”
But meanwhile the long process as to the heroic degree of her virtues
had issued in the Report of the Commission in 1716; and in the
affirmative decree of the Congregation of Rites, confirmed by Clement
XII (Corsini) in 1733.
And, before the conclusion of this investigation of her virtues, the
examination of the miracles ascribed to her intercession had been
begun in Genoa in 1730, by a deputation consisting of the Archbishop
De-Franchi and two Bishops, sitting in the Archiepiscopal Palace;
and six miracles were, in 1736, approved as valid, from amongst the
numerous cases alleged to have occurred in 1730. And then three from
amongst these six miracles were finally approved by Rome, on April 5,
1737, as efficient towards Canonization.
And at last, on April 30 of the same year, Feast of St. Catherine of
Siena, Pope Clement, “in order that the faithful of Christ may, in
Blessed Catherine, have a perfect example of all the virtues, and
especially of the love of God and of their neighbour; and that a
new honour and ornament may shine forth for the Republic of Genoa;
orders the present Decree for the Canonization of the said Blessed
Catherine,--a Canonization which has still to be carried out,--to be
expedited and published.”--And on May 18 following, on the Feast of
the Holy Trinity, the same Pope performed, in the Basilica of St.
John Lateran, the function of the Canonization of Blessed Catherine,
together with that of three other Beati: the two Frenchmen, Vincent
de Paul, Founder of the Congregation of the Mission (the Lazarists)
(1576-1660), and Jean François Regis, a Jesuit Mission-Preacher in
the Huguenot parts of France (1597-1640); and the Italian Giuliana
Falconieri, Foundress of the Third Order of Servites (1270-1341).[306]
It was now, on this canonization-day, over two hundred and sixteen
years since Catherine Fiesca Adorna, that keen and ardent spirit, had
flown to God, her Love. We must return to those earlier times.
III. THE FATE OF CATHERINE’S PRIEST FRIENDS.
_Introductory._
In thus reverting to the period which immediately succeeded Catherine’s
death, and to the predominantly obscure and humble persons who had
directly known her well, we bid adieu, indeed, to things massive,
fixed, and final: yet we exchange the description of what, after all,
was but an authoritative declaration of accomplished facts, for the
study of that alone directly soul-stirring thing, the picture and
drama of living, energizing human souls; of how these souls were being
influenced by a greater one than themselves; and again of how these,
thus influenced, lesser minds and hearts transmitted, developed, and
coloured the tradition of the life to which they owed so much.
Now the effect, or at least the record of the effect, of the conception
of Catherine formed by her two Priest friends and by her domestics
back upon her transmitted image and upon the growth of her Legend, is,
apart from the indications in the _Vita_ already given or still to be
considered, upon the whole, but slight. Still, as we shall eventually
find, the few facts as to the subsequent lives of these persons, which
shall now be given, are of very distinct use in appraising their
respective shares in the gradual constitution of the _Vita e Dottrina_.
1. _Don Carenzio, 1510-1513._
I take Don Jacopo Carenzio first, since he was the Priest in actual
attendance upon Catherine at the last, and because he now, no doubt
immediately after the funeral or at latest on the day of the removal of
her chattels to the market-place, became possessed, as we shall see, of
Catherine’s little house. He was thus the one who alone could continue
and augment a cultus as strictly local as even Argentina’s had been,
during those weeks, perhaps months, of sole night-charge of her dying
mistress in these very rooms.
The identification of the building is complete. For as far back as
October 6, 1497, not long after Giuliano’s death,--he was still alive
on July 14,--the Protectors of the Hospital referred to their “grant
to Catherine, during her lifetime, of the enjoyment and use of a
house with a greenhouse, forming part of the Hospital.” And in this
greenhouse she, on the evening of Sunday, March 18, 1509, had, in the
presence of Vernazza and four other witnesses, dictated her Fourth Will
to Battista Strata. It was, then, of a size sufficient to render it
worth mentioning, and it was evidently closed in. Now there is a legal
instrument, dated Saturday, August, 30, 1511, drawn up at a meeting
held by the four “Protectors,” “in the chief (sitting-) room of the
Residence of the Rector, in which the late Donna Caterinetta was wont
to live.” And in this they declare that, “seeing that the Reverend Don
Jacopo Carenzio, the Rector, is about to go to his home at Diano, for
the purpose of carrying out a matter of the greatest importance to
himself, and is shortly to return from thence, and that he wishes to
persevere throughout his life in the said office of Rector; and since
they desire that he should willingly hasten his return, and should be
able to persevere with full confidence, and should not, as long as
he lives, be moved from this room together with the whole building
contiguous with it, to the room which, with its appurtenant building,
is at present in the course of erection as the official residence of
the Rector; they have altogether conceded to the above-named Reverend
Jacopo, Rector, present and accepting, the said room together with the
whole building belonging to this room, for him to hold and inhabit
throughout his life, together with the greenhouse.”[307]
Here three points are of interest. Don Carenzio is, then, a native
of the little Diano Castello on the Western Riviera hillside, some
fifty English miles from Genoa and some twenty short of San Remo;
and must have belonged to some humble family in that insignificant
little place. His origin is thus in marked contrast to Marabotto’s,
and still more to Vernazza’s. And next, it is clear that the house
and greenhouse inhabited and used by Don Carenzio till his death are
identical with those tenanted by Catherine, ever since at least the
death of Giuliano. And thirdly, it is equally clear that this house was
in no part identical with the two rooms still shown as the Saint’s. For
these latter are high up from the ground; do not now form, and probably
never formed, part of a disconnected house; and they no doubt stand on
another site. The little house will have been demolished at latest in
1780, when the present great quadrangle was built.[308]
Now here, in these rooms full of the memory of Catherine, Don Carenzio
will, not unreasonably, have hoped to live during many years. For it is
not likely that he was older than, or indeed as old as, Don Marabotto,
since he was now occupying that same office of Rector which Marabotto
had held some six years previously. And yet Marabotto did not die till
eighteen years later, whereas Carenzio’s death came soon. For his
funeral took place on January 7, 1513, for which day there is an entry
in the Hospital Cartulary for the cost of twenty-three pounds-weight
of wax candles,--less than one-fourth the amount used at Catherine’s
obsequies; and for that of the Priest’s vestments in which the body was
robed and buried.[309]
It seems unlikely that Carenzio was not buried in the Hospital Church,
seeing that he died whilst, apparently, still _ex-officio_ Rector of
the Hospital. But, if he was interred there, his monument, like that
of Giuliano, was cut off and buried away in and with the Church end
in 1537, or was covered up in some restoration; for there is no trace
of it either in the Church itself or in any book treating of the
sepulchral monuments of Genoa.
It is remarkable also that, though he had been the one priest present
at Catherine’s death, and had tenanted Catherine’s own rooms throughout
the two years and two or three months since her death, and had,
alongside of Marabotto, been appointed by Catherine herself as the
person to determine the place of her sepulture: his name nowhere occurs
in connection with the plan for the opening of her _deposito_ some
eighteen months after her death; nor with the execution of that plan;
nor with any of the consequent initiations of a public cultus. It is
impossible to doubt that we have here some little counter jealousy and
return exclusion, a sort of answer by Marabotto to his, Marabotto’s,
own enforced absence from the death-chamber and his twenty-four hours’
ignorance of his Penitent’s death, which we had to note in its proper
place. Poor little human frailties which may have appeared less petty
and more completely excusable at close quarters than they look at this
distance of time! I take it that, if there was a deliberate exclusion
of Carenzio, the ceremony of opening the resting-place will have been
timed to tally with some absence of the Rector,--say, on another visit
to his native Diano.
2. _Don Marabotto, 1510-1528._
As to Don Cattaneo Marabotto, I have not been able to discover much. We
have already seen how he bought ten of Catherine’s chattels on December
10, after her death. On July 7, 1511, he pays over to Catherine’s old
servant, the maid Maria (Mariola Bastarda), her late mistress’s little
legacy, in a form to be described presently.
But the most important facts concerning him--apart from his share in
the _Vita_, which shall be considered at length hereafter--are the
following three. There is, first, the fact (already dwelt upon) that
he, and apparently he alone, initiated, or at least led and directed,
the plan of opening the _deposito_, exposing the body, giving it a
marble sarcophagus, and erecting a picture over an altar in the Church
to Catherine. And next, that “still in 1523 Argentina del Sale was his
servant,”--she had evidently then, on Catherine’s death in 1510, become
his attendant.[310] And thirdly, that he did not die till 1528.[311]
There seems to be but little doubt that he was, at least slightly,
Catherine’s junior. Yet already on his first intercourse with her,
he, the Rector of the Hospital, must have been a fully mature man. I
suppose him to have been born somewhere about 1450; in which case he
will have been about seventy-eight at the time of his death.
In any case, he lived long enough to see and hear much of a kind to
console and strengthen his devotion to Catherine and his faith in the
self-rejuvenating powers of the Church, and much of a nature to dismay
and alarm the gentle, peaceable old man. For there were the opening of
the coffin; the incorruption; the popular concourse and enthusiasm;
the graces and the cures of May to July 1512. And there were Luther’s
ninety-five Theses nailed to the University Church of Wittenberg, on
the Eve of All-Saints, 1517; and Pope Leo X’s condemnation of forty
of them in 1520, and amongst them three Theses which concerned the
doctrine of Purgatory, one of which must have seemed strangely like
one of Catherine’s own contentions. And there were the books of Henry
VIII of England and of Erasmus against Luther, in 1522, 1524, and in
Italy the foundation of the Capuchin Order in 1527; there were, too,
the Peasants’ War and Luther’s marriage in Germany in 1525, and, in
1527, the sacking of Rome by the Imperial troops. And through all this
world-wide, epoch-making turmoil and conflict we think of him, probably
not simply from our lack of documents, as leading a quiet, obscure,
somewhat narrow existence; yet one redeemed from real insignificance by
his silent watchfulness and action, and still more by his writing, in
honour of his large-souled Penitent, ever so sincerely felt by him as
indefinitely greater than himself.
I do not know where he was buried. It was not, however, in the Hospital
Church; for in that case there would have been some entry in the books
of the expenses incurred in connection with his funeral.
IV. THE FATE OF CATHERINE’S THREE MAID-SERVANTS.
As to Catherine’s three maid-servants the facts that can still be
traced are as follow.
1. _Benedetta._
The widow and Franciscan Tertiary Benedetta Lombarda, although her
name had continued to appear in the documents from Giuliano’s Will in
1496 down to Catherine’s last will of March 1509, disappears after
this latter date entirely from sight. Since both Mariola and Argentina
reappear in the Hospital books, (although Mariola had, like Benedetta,
ceased to serve Catherine at the last), it looks as though Benedetta
had died between the Will of March 1509 and Catherine’s death in
September 1510. Yet it is possible that Catherine herself handed over
to Benedetta her little share in the former’s money and chattels; and
that Benedetta is no more mentioned after her mistress’s death because,
unlike Mariola and Argentina, she did not continue to live in and
belong to the Hospital, whose accounts alone are our extant sources of
information for the other two servants.
2. _Mariola._
But as to Mariola and Argentina, and their lives after 1510, we do
know something. Mariola (Maria) Bastarda had, on leaving Catherine’s
service, (probably only some weeks, but possibly some months before
her mistress’s death), become one of the servants, or under-nurses
(_filia_), of the Hospital; and, on July 7 of the following year (1511)
she was clothed a Novice in the Convent of Bridgettines in Genoa, with
the money left to her in Catherine’s Will.[312]
The latter fact is interesting as showing how purposely vague and
ambiguous, and how little capable of being pressed, are at least
some of the statements of the _Vita_, if taken as they stand and
prior to any distinction of documents and of their varying degrees
of trustworthiness. For there we read, after the scene where the
evil spirit within the maid declares Catherine’s true surname to be
“Serafina”: “this possessed person (_spiritata_) was endowed with a
lofty intelligence, and lived to the end in virginity.” Who would
readily guess that we have here to do with little Mariola? The passage
is, I think, in part modelled upon Acts xxi, 9: “And he” (Philip the
Evangelist, one of the seven Deacons) “had four daughters virgins,
who did prophesy.” Even so then did Catherine, the teacher, have “a
spiritual daughter,” a virgin, who “prophesied,” divined and announced,
the true character of her mistress.--“We believe,” continues the
_Vita_, “that the Lord had given her this spirit to keep her humble.
She finished her life in a holy manner.” Who would guess that this
meant profession as a Nun? The point is, I take it, kept vague in part
to make the insertion of the words which follow possible. “Nor did the
evil spirit ever depart from her, till well-nigh the very end, when she
was about to die.” It is evident that this cannot be pressed: and that
either the attacks continued to the end, but were rare and slight; or
that they were serious and frequent, but ceased a considerable time
before her death. For, though we do not know when she died, we have no
right to assume, in evidently still so young a person, that death came
soon.
3. _Argentina._
And Argentina appears in several documents. So in an entry of the
Hospital Cartulary for November 22, 1510, as to the value of the things
then handed over to her in accordance with Catherine’s Will. So again
in three legal documents drawn up for her and in her presence,--a Will
of October 1514, a Codicil of some later (unspecified) date, and a
second Will of January 15, 1522. In the Codicil she doubles the little
sum she had left to the Hospital in 1514; and in the last document
she declares her wish to be buried “in the Church of the Annunciata,
in the monument (vault) of the late Giuliano Adorno, or in such other
as may seem good to …”; and leaves moneys “for Masses to be said for
her soul, by two of the Brethren of the Monastery of San Nicolò in
Boschetto.”[313]
This group of papers is interesting. For we see from it how even an
obscure little serving-woman was wont, in Italy, the classic country
of Law and Lawyers, and during these claimful, pushing times, to have
Wills and Codicils drawn up for her. We perceive, too, how proud and
fond Argentina remained of her former avocation of servant to Giuliano,
since only he and not his Saint-wife lay in that vault; and how,
nevertheless, an uncertainty possesses her mind as to whether this
can or will be carried out--no doubt owing to the fact that the vault
had not received the remains of his wife, and had not indeed probably
been opened again at all since his death, twenty-five years before.
And we can note how Argentina, together with, and no doubt at least in
part because, of her late mistress, has an affection for the Monastery
and Pilgrimage Church of San Nicolò, on that wooded hill, so near to
Catherine’s former villa.
And Argentina appears finally in that list of conclusions (already
referred to in Marabotto’s case) as continuing to live in the
Hospital; and as still living in it in 1523; and, similarly, as
continuing in the capacity of servant to Don Marabotto. I have already
pointed out the difficulties inherent in this statement, but believe it
to be correct. Yet it would be of considerable importance if we could
reach lower down, and could fix the exact death-date of poor Marco del
Sale’s ardent-minded, imaginative little widow. Since she was doubtless
considerably, I think quite twenty years, younger than Marabotto, and
since even the latter lived on, we know, till 1528, six years after
this Will, there was nothing, in the matter of actual age, to prevent
her living on up to 1550 or beyond. And circumstances connected with
the growth of Catherine’s legend seem to point, as we shall find, to
Argentina having died in any case after Marabotto, and probably not
before 1547. Similarly, Catherine herself did not die till twenty-six
years after her first Will (1484-1510).
V. THE TWO VERNAZZAS: THEIR DEBT TO CATHERINE, AND CATHERINE’S DEBT TO
THEM.
We now move on from these four figures which, seen against the
living background of those strenuous times, appear indeed small and
contracted; and which, in relation to Catherine, appear rather as
a mere memory and mechanical continuation of her limitations, and
specially of the phenomenal accidents and relative monotony of her
sick-room period, than as a rich and vigorous, because truly personal,
expansion and re-application of her many-sided action, breadth and
warmth, and human practicality, during the times of her fullest
self-expression. Such a new facing of the new problems, with a strength
both old and new, enkindled indeed at her light and warmth, and yet
developed also from the vigorously fresh centres of other deep hearts
and virile minds and wills, we must now attempt to picture, in the
case of the two greatest of Catherine’s disciples, Ettore Vernazza and
his eldest daughter Battista. And yet if, in the former four cases,
while the results of this influence appeared few and insignificant, the
actual fact and source of this influence were plain beyond all cavil:
in these latter two instances we have, indeed, a rich crop of thoughts
and acts, of wisdom and of heroism, but then it is mostly impossible
to sort out what is here the direct and unmistakable outcome of
Catherine’s influence.
The great, open, spiritual and even temporal, battlefield, if not
of Europe at least of Italy; the abuses and tyrannies, but also the
necessity and the power for good, of governments; and the strenuous,
tragic, and transformatory conflicts of single wills within their own
soul’s world, and again with other wills, both single and combined: all
this lies spread out here like a map before us, seen from the bracing
heights of time. There is nothing here, at least in the Ettore’s case,
that the most intolerantly robust, or even the most hysterically
would-be strong, mind could suspect of sickliness. And yet, if
undoubtedly much of all this fruitful virility in Catherine’s closest
friend, and in Catherine’s God-daughter, proceeds from Catherine
herself, it nevertheless springs up and grows within them, not as an
avowed, nor probably, for the most part, even as conscious, imitation
or reminiscence.
Thus here again we get an impressive instance of one profound sense
in which the grain of wheat of any great and wholesome influence must
die. For only if and when broken up, selected from, and assimilated to
and within, another mind’s and heart’s life and system, can that older
living organism, which yet was, in the first instance, so moving just
because of its unique organization round a centre possible only to
that one other soul, truly and permanently develop and enrich a living
centre not its own. And so in this case too: Catherine’s influence is
all the more real in Ettore and Battista, because the latter are in
no sense simple copies of the former. She has lived on in them, at
the cost of becoming in part ignored, in part absorbed, by them: and
continues to influence them through certain elements of her life that
have been assimilated, and through the reinterpreted image of that
life’s historic reality, an image which is ever reinviting them to do
and to be, _mutatis mutandis_, what she herself had done and been.
But, indeed, (even apart from all direct influence exercised by
Catherine’s personality upon them, or by them upon Catherine’s legend),
these two lives are interesting as further authentic illustrations of
Catherine’s school and spirit, and, indeed, of the mystical element of
religion in general.
I shall first take the father, devoting three sections to him.
VI. ETTORE VERNAZZA’S LIFE, FROM 1509 TO 1512.
_Introductory._
We possess, if few, yet quite first-rate materials for the
reconstruction of the remaining part of Vernazza’s life. For there are
his own testamentary provisions as to the disposition of his property,
(as elaborate and vividly characteristic as Mr. Cecil Rhodes’s), drawn
up in 1512 and 1517, and occupying twelve closely-printed octavo pages;
and there is a long, homely, and admirably realistic description of his
life and character, written by Battista, not, it is true, till 1581,
when she was eighty-four years of age, and nearly sixty years after her
father’s death, but which is, there is no reason to doubt, perfectly
truthful, generally accurate, and all the more moving, in that the
living man and his large-hearted heroism were thus continuing to touch
and inspire his daughter, at the very moment of her writing, with a
finely restrained emotion, of deeds and personalities witnessed, by
her own eyes and spirit, over half a century before. I shall take the
several documents, not each as they stand but piecemeal, according to
the dates of the events recorded or of the legal act performed.
1. _Ettore’s married life; and thought of the monastic state._
“My Father and Mother,” writes Battista, “lived together” from 1496
to 1509 “in the greatest peace, since they wished each other every
kind of good; so that I do not remember ever having heard one word of
dissension pass between them.--And although my Mother was a beautiful
and attractive young woman, and was loved by persons deserving of
esteem, yet she would stay at home, alone, with her children. And my
Father acted similarly, except when he was obliged to go out on some
business. Otherwise I do not remember having ever noticed either of
them going out to some late party (_veglià_), as is the custom in
Genoa.”--And she tells how “he was so abstemious” in the matter of
food, “that he was wont strictly to limit the amount of bread that
he ate. But my Mother, noticing this, had the breads baked very
substantial.”
“And when my Mother died” in the spring of 1509, “my Father thought of
becoming a Lateran (Augustinian) Canon. But, on asking the advice of
Padre Riccordo da Lucca,” (I take it, himself a Lateran Canon,) “who
was just then preaching in Genoa with very great fervour, the latter
did not encourage him to carry out his intention, observing, as he
did, my Father’s inclination for founding works of charity.” And her
father proved docile. Indeed she says of him generally that “he greatly
mortified his self-will, and for this reason had put himself under
obedience to a priest, who had the reputation of being exceptionally
devoted (_molto buono_), and obeyed him as though he had been the very
voice of God.” “And my Father then gave up his own house, and went to
live in rooms which had been got ready for him in the Hospital for
Incurables, of which he was one of the Managers and indeed one of the
first _Builders_. And here he always lived, when he was in Genoa; here
he died; and this institution he made his heir.”[314]
Here it is interesting to note the similarities and differences
between this union, so happy and thus blessed with three children, and
Catherine’s marriage, so unhappy and childless; between his thought
of a religious vocation after his marriage was over, and Catherine’s
before hers was begun; and between his fifteen years of residence in
the midst of the incurable poor at the _Chronici_, and Catherine’s
similar, though earlier and longer, life surrounded by the sick poor
at the _Pammatone_. There is some likeness, too, in the matter of
corporal mortification; although, with Vernazza, it is less acute,
but is apparently kept up throughout his life, whilst with Catherine
the active bodily mortifications are very prominent whilst they last,
but are kept up thus for but a few years. As to obedience, we have
here, for Vernazza, a more authoritative account than are any of the
general statements on the same point with regard to Catherine; but in
Catherine’s case many concrete instances give us a definite idea as to
the character and limits of this docility, whereas all such instances
are, in Vernazza’s case, restricted to the above incident alone. Yet
this one example of his obedience shows how largely conceived, how
simply divinatory and stimulative of his own deepest (although as
yet but half-born) ideals, how ancillary to his own grace-impelled
self-determination, and hence how truly liberating, were this direction
and docility. The Venerable Cardinal de Berulle’s determination of
Descartes to a philosophical career, and St. Philip Neri deciding
Cardinal Baronius to write his entirely open-minded, indeed severe,
_Ecclesiastical Annals_, would doubtless be true parallels to this
particular relationship.
2. _Ettore’s great Will of 1512._
We have already seen that Ettore was away from Genoa from about
September 10, 1510, onwards, and that he was far away at the time of
Catherine’s death. He may well have been away most of the year 1511,
nor is there indeed any indication that he was in Genoa at the opening
of Catherine’s _deposito_ in May to July 1512. But he was certainly
there in October 1512, for on the 16th of that month he drew up a
munificent and far-sighted deed of gift, of one hundred shares of the
Bank of St. George, to various charitable and public purposes.
Vernazza had already previously provided for his three daughters;
and now orders that the interest of these other shares (a capital
amounting, at the time, to the value of some £10,400) should, for the
first nine years, be used by the “Protectors” of the Incurables for the
benefit of that Institution, which thus occupies the first place in his
solicitudes.
And then these shares should be allowed to multiply, by means of their
accumulated interests and of the reinvestments of the latter, till they
had reached the number of five hundred shares; and then, if and when
an epidemic arose and the citizens fled from the city, the income of
these shares for three years should be given to the Board of Health,
for the use of those suffering from the epidemic. And when the shares
had become two thousand, a commodious Lazaretto-house should be bought
or built, with the income of not more than ten years. And after this,
when the shares had become six thousand, one half or more of their
interest should go towards the keep and nursing of the patients in this
Lazaretto.
After these three stages devoted to the victims of the Plague, he
determines the point at which the interest of the moneys shall be
applied successively to providing marriage portions for honest poor
girls of Genoa and of his home villages of Vernazza, Arvenza, and
Cogoleto, preference being always given to the large clan of Vernazzi;
to providing means for honest poor girls desiring to enter Convents
that keep their Rule (_monasteria observantiae_), up to £100 each, with
a similar preference as in the previous case.
And then he attends to the poor in general. To providing extra pay
for the Notaries and Clerks of the “Uffizio della Misericordia,” “on
condition that they devote all their time to the interests of the poor
exclusively; and that they make diligent inquiry as to the means of the
poor and their several characters, and find out whether they are in
real want or not, and draw up a book in which all the poor, individuals
and families, shall be inscribed clearly and by name,--in each case
with a note indicating whether they belong to the first, second, or
third degree of necessitousness.” To paying two Physicians and two
Surgeons, for otherwise entirely gratuitous service of the sick poor
alone, and doubling this pay during the prevalence of an epidemic,
“but strictly enforcing the loss, in salary, of double the amount of
any moneys they can be proved to have accepted from their patients.”
All this, together with these four Doctors’ names, to be annually
proclaimed in the streets by the town-crier. To paying a Dispenser and
instituting a Dispensary, exclusively for the sick poor and entirely
gratuitous, up to £2,000 a year for the latter. To appointing two
Advocates and two Solicitors, for the exclusive and gratuitous service
of the poor, in any and all cases of law-suits and molestations. The
same proclamation as with the Doctors, to be made in this matter also.
And to maintaining foundling boys and girls of Genoa, under provisions
which are carefully laid down.
And then he turns to the three Institutions and their like with which
he, as notary, as father and as philanthropist, has been specially
identified. He fixes the point when two lectures in Philosophy or
Theology, one by a Dominican and another by a Franciscan, are to be
instituted, for every working day, in the Chapel of the Notaries of
Genoa; when one free meal a month is to be provided for eight monastic
and charitable institutions, amongst which are the Franciscans of
the SS. Annunziata, the Benedictines of San Nicolò in Boschetto,
the Canonesses of S. Maria delle Grazie, and the Hospital for
Incurables,--“but the expenses are not to exceed £600 a year” (about
six guineas each meal)--“nor is money to be given, but the eatables
themselves are to be bought for, and given to, the institutions”; and
when a Superintendent (_Sindaco_) of the Incurables is to be appointed,
with £100 pay a year.
And then he comes back to the poor in general; and thinks also,
(somewhat like unto his and Catherine’s ideal, St. Paul as “a citizen
of no mean city,”) of the external appearance and utility of his native
town of Genoa. The point is fixed when they are to “pay for the poor
their hardest imposts, especially those on food”; and when they are to
“repair, decorate, and enlarge the Cathedral Church of San Lorenzo,”
and to “build a harbour-mole, improve the harbour, and attend to the
decoration and look of the town (_ornamentis civitatis_), according to
their discretion.”
And he then finishes up with a characteristic reversion to efficacious
solicitude for his clan, by marriage benefits for his young kinswomen
in the future and by thought for his ancestors and predecessors in
the past; and with a no less characteristic divinatory greatness of
mind, by the creation of a kind of People’s College or Working-man’s
University, which appears here curiously wedged in between the thoughts
for his clan in the future and in the past. For he determines the
points when the Protectors shall again provide for marrying honest poor
girls of his three home villages, and for comforts for the prisoners at
Christmas and Easter; when they are to “buy a large and well-situated
house, and therein organize a public course of studies, with four
Doctors of Law, four very learned Physicians, and two Masters of
Grammar and Rhetoric, who shall, all ten, be each bound to deliver one
lecture on every working day, and to devote all the rest of their time
to the interests of the poor”; and when finally they are to provide for
“Masses for his ancestors and predecessors,”--Masses for himself and
immediate belongings having been already, no doubt, provided for in his
previous Will, since we find such provisions repeated in his last Will,
to be given later on.[315]
We thus get here a persistent preoccupation with the most manifold
interests of the poor; a shrewd knowledge of men, and careful
provisions calculated to rouse their indolence and to check their
self-seeking; an utterly unsentimental, realistic, Charity-Organization
sort of spirit shown in the insistence upon a careful and complete
knowledge of the real degree and kind of want, and of the precise means
appropriate for helping the various kinds of poor; a high estimate of
knowledge, which he desires to offer to all, according to their various
capacities and needs; and lastly, an entire freedom from pietism, for
he thinks of, and provides for, harbour-works and the beautifying of
the town. There is a large, open-air, operative, sanely optimistic and
statesmanlike spirit about it all.
And if all this is in full keeping with, and but expands and
supplements, the tenacious realism of a born organizer and
administrator: the soaring idealism and universalism of his
saint-friend Catherine’s stimulation, and his and her joint experiences
and interests, are also directly suggested to us. For there is the
special stress laid on the plague-stricken, whom they had tended
together in 1493; the interest in physicians and in drugs for the
poor, an interest in which she must have preceded him by twenty years
or more; and the repeated preoccupation with the marrying of poor
young women, and, next after it, with the convent-dowries of girls in
socially similar circumstances, in each case especially of kinswomen
of his own. This preoccupation was no doubt occasioned chiefly by
the thought of his own most happy marriage and of his own children,
the two elder now already well settled as Nuns, but the third still
possibly to be married; yet we are also vividly reminded of Catherine’s
own repeated occupation with the marrying of relatives of her own,
and Limbania’s and her own early entrance, and wish to enter, into
the Religious state. And then his benefactions include Catherine’s
Hospital Church, her favourite Boschetto Church, and that Convent of
the Grazie, the scene of her own conversion and the home of her sister
Limbania, as well as of his daughters Battista and Daniela. But indeed
the whole character of the outlook, in its successive absorption in,
each time, just _one_ particular task; in its occupation with succour
in proportion to the divinely ordained and ready-found bonds and ties
of nature, bonds and ties so dear to the omnipresent God; and in its,
nevertheless, in nowise restricting itself to this interest, but moving
on and on, distance appearing beyond distance, with love and welcome
for all the heroisms and helplessnesses: is all marked with Catherine’s
imperial spirit of boundless self-donation.
VII. ETTORE IN ROME AND NAPLES; HIS SECOND WILL; HIS WORK IN THE
GENOESE PRISONS.
1. _Ettore in Rome._
And perhaps already in 1513, but, if so, not before March of that year
(the date of Pope Leo’s accession), Vernazza was in Rome,--hardly, I
think, for the first time. And Battista again tells us, in her long
letter of 1581, how that “the incurables in Rome”--which was then, at
the beginning of Giovanni de’ Medici’s (Leo X’s) reign, the brilliant
centre of the Renaissance at its zenith--“were left to lie in baskets,
moaning” for alms, “in the Churches. It was piteous to see them thus
forsaken and badly cared for.”
Now there is good reason to think that Vernazza had known the Pope
when, as Cardinal de’ Medici, he had, in 1500, stayed for some time in
Genoa, in the house of his married sister, Donna Maddalena Cibò. And
so Vernazza now presented himself before the Pope, “and said to him:
‘You, Holiness, have a fine work in hand, in patronizing the Arts and
Letters: but you cannot leave this Rome of yours saddened by so piteous
a spectacle.’” And the Pope thanked him, and begged him to accept the
charge of founding and undertaking the government of the Arch-Hospital.
And the two “Cardinals, Caraffa,” the vigorous and devoted, but harshly
austere Neapolitan, who was, later on, joint-founder of the Theatines
and then Pope Paul IV, “and Sauli,” the Genoese, “helped him in his
work. Indeed the latter said to him: ‘If you require money, come to
me.’”
And this Roman work of Vernazza straightway put forth two offshoots,
far away. For “Caraffa founded in Venice a hospital on the model of
the one in Rome.” And “there happened to be in Rome” at this time “a
certain Bartholommeo Stella, a rich and very generous (_molto galante_)
young man. And Vernazza saw him and gained such an influence with him
as to end by sending him to Brescia, to promote there also these fruits
of Christian faith.”
And in Rome itself “Leo X gave Vernazza practical proofs of his
gratitude, and set him forth on his return journey with demonstrations
of great honour (_magnifiche demonstrazioni_). And the Arch-Hospital
having been thus set going and Vernazza being back in Genoa, Leo X
addressed a Brief to him, informing him that his Hospital in Rome was
in a state of confusion (_andava sossopra_); ‘I think’ (adds Battista)
‘because its Governors wanted each to be above the other.’ And he
returned to Rome, and quieted all controversy.”[316] I take this second
Roman journey to have been not before 1515; but it may have occurred
any time before 1522, the year of Pope Leo’s death.
This group of facts shows Vernazza’s directness and independence of
observation, his initiative and energy, and his courage and respectful
liberty of speech, qualities which are all reminiscent of Catherine’s
scene with the Friar; the rapidity with which a necessary work,
which has been delayed for centuries, and which has required the
whole-hearted vigour of a rare personality to call it into being, grows
and multiplies, when once it is in existence; and the manner in which
the petty, sterilizing ambitions of men can be efficiently checked only
by a combination of strength of will, administrative ability, gentle
tact and complete disinterestedness,--a combination which again reminds
one of Catherine, the successful Rettora.
2. _Ettore in Naples._
It will have been after this second visit to Rome that Vernazza first
went to Naples. And there again “he formed a Hospital,” in this case
“at the risk of his life; for some evil-wishers there wanted to
kill him, being unable to bear the idea that a ‘foreigner’ should
have anything to do with the affairs of the city (_ordinasse quella
città_). Once the ‘Ave Maria’ had sounded, he did not again issue
from his lodging during that day. And yet” even among such untoward
circumstances, “he managed not to leave Naples before having, with
God’s help, achieved his object,--of providing his much-loved poor with
such an institution ready to their hand.”
It was in Naples, too, evidently at the beginning of this very visit,
that another generous idea and institution of his first occurred to
him, or at least was first put into execution. The whole occurrence
reveals a curious mixture of the most divers qualities and, indeed,
requires in part to be excused, on the ground of numerous external
difficulties which stood in the way of an excellent work, and of the
finessing methods evidently deemed, even by good people, to be quite
allowable for attaining a good end, in this age of violence, suspicion
and intrigue. “A certain Religious, Padre Callisto of Piacenza, was
preaching at that time in Naples. Vernazza went to him and said:
‘Father, these Neapolitans are a haughty people, and refuse to bend so
low as to found hospitals. But during last night the thought came to me
that if a person refuses to mount ten steps--it is still possible to
get him to go up fifteen; and when such a person had done the latter,
he would find that he had unconsciously mounted the ten as well. Now I
cannot discover a more humiliating act than the accompanying of those
who have been condemned to death, on their way to execution; and in
this city they are led to the gallows with their minds in a state of
desperation and without any one to comfort them. Well, then, do this.
Preach to the people and tell them that the very first men of Naples
have been to see you, with a view to founding a society for escorting
these unhappy persons; and say to them: “Let him who cares to enter
this society, come to me, to be inscribed on the rolls in a secrecy so
complete that even a husband shall be unable to tell his wife.”’ And
Padre Callisto, after hearing these words, did, devoted man that he
was, his very best, and with such good effect that many went to have
themselves inscribed. “But many of those Neapolitan nobles reproved
him, saying: ‘Perchance you think yourself still in your Lombardy! We
are nobles, and we refuse to form an escort for these culprits.’ And
he would answer: ‘If your Lordship does not care to go, do not go. It
was the very first men of Naples who sought me out, for the purpose of
instituting this society.’ And thus it was actually founded, and indeed
became very numerous and much honoured; and those unhappy men received
much comfort. And later on, this same society proceeded to found the
Hospital.”[317]
There is one repulsive feature in this story. For if the declaration
that the very first men of the city had visited the preacher was a
statement that damaged no one; which but anticipated what actually
occurred soon after; and was the means for the effecting of two works,
profoundly useful to all concerned in them and which could not,
otherwise, at that time and place, have been carried out at all: yet
it was a clear untruth. But all the rest, how admirable it is! Moral,
and indeed physical courage; cool-headed, humorous, manly because
unflinching, and yet quite uncynical and hopeful, knowledge of the
petty perversities of the human heart; and entirely devoted, slow
excogitation, concentration of will, and toughly resisting perseverance
in a work of the purest philanthropy: all this and much else is visibly
present.
3. _Ettore’s Will of 1517._
It may well have been after his return from this journey that Vernazza
drew up the Will which we still possess, dated 7th November 1517,
and which is interesting in several respects.[318] For one thing, he
orders his body to be buried in the Church of the SS. Annunziata,--the
Hospital Church, and leaves a legacy for Masses “to the Friars of the
Annunziata of Genoa.”[319] And he leaves a similar bequest to the
Benedictines of San Nicolò in Boschetto. It is clear that he wanted to
be buried in the same Hospital Church as Catherine, and had a devotion
similar to hers for the Pilgrimage Church upon the hill.
Secondly, there are careful records and provisions concerning his
three children. As to his two eldest, Tommasa (Battista) and Catetta
(Daniela), he simply looks back and “declares that he gave to his
two daughters that are in the Monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie,
to them or to the said Monastery, three thousand Genoese pounds from
his own property, and two hundred pounds in addition,--(the latter)
spent upon their rooms, habits, and other requisites.” And that “these
sums are to be counted as taking the place of dowries which would
have accrued to them” (in case of marriage). But as to the youngest,
Ginevrina, he looks both back and forwards. “The same Testator is well
aware that he placed the said Ginevrina in the Monastery of Saint
Andrew,[320] that she might grow up with good morals and in the fear of
God, since Testator was unable to keep her by him, having very often
been obliged, for the transaction of business in favour of the poor
and for other charitable works, to proceed to Rome and other places;
and that there existed written directions (of his) in the hands of the
Nuns, as to Ginevrina being free, in due time and at the proper age, to
choose either to serve God (in Religion), or to marry according to the
social rank of the Testator.” And he confirms a legacy of £500, already
promised by him to Ginevrina “as appears from a certain document signed
by the Abbess of the said Monastery of Saint Andrew”: this money
being no doubt in addition to another sum already paid by him to the
Convent; and the whole is evidently intended to pay for Ginevrina’s
keep, if necessary for life, in case she neither entered Religion nor
married. “In case of her becoming a Nun and making her Profession in
the said Monastery, he leaves her £100, for the adapting and furnishing
of one room for her use; nor can these £100 be spent otherwise.” And
if she chooses to wed, the Protectors of the Incurables, his Executors
and Heirs, “are to marry her to some young man of good reputation and
behaviour, apt at managing his own affairs and at earning money,--all
this as perfectly as possible, according to the judgment of the said
Protectors.” If she thus marries with their consent, she is to have
£3,000 for her dowry; but if she marries without it, she is to have
only £1,500.
Here we note Ettore’s high esteem for business capabilities: they are
to be required of his possible son-in-law, as one of the conditions for
gaining the full dowry; and the curiously unmodern certainty with which
he assumes that his still quite young daughter will desire, should she
become a Nun, to do so at Sant’ Andrea, and, should she neither wed
nor enter Religion, is sure to care to live on for life in this one
convent. As a matter of fact Ginevrina, who was evidently very happy at
Sant’ Andrea, took the veil there, still during her father’s lifetime,
hence within seven years of this date, as Sister Maria Archangela.[321]
And thirdly, we get the striking provision that “any member of the
Society of Priests and Laymen” who administer the Hospital for
Incurables, “shall have the use of the furniture of the Testator (there
remaining), on condition that such member live in this Hospital or in
that of the Pammatone (hard by), and not otherwise.” He thus comes back
here, once again, to one of the deepest convictions of his life: that
only by actually living amongst and with the poor, poor yourself; only
by doing the work which the right hand finds to do, with such might
and thoroughness that both hands, indeed the whole man, body and soul,
are drawn into, and are, as it were, coloured by it: that only by such
fraternal-paternal sympathetic identification with its object can such
service really rise above the dreary perfunctoriness and the ghastly
optimism of mere officialism, and have the fruitfulness begotten only
by life directly touching life. And here Catherine’s spirit and
example, her long life in the very midst of the great Hospital close at
hand, are once more fully apparent.
4. _Ettore in the Genoese prisons._
And, about this time, Vernazza introduced into Genoa the practice and
Society which he had first founded in Naples. It was carried out,
here also, in the profoundest secrecy. His “Company of St. John the
Baptist Beheaded” consisted of himself and three companions: Salvage,
Lomellino, and Grimaldo. The Lomellini now owned Giuliano’s former
Palace in the Via S. Agnese, and the Grimaldi were one of the great
Guelph families of Genoa. These four “took a house with a garden, in
an out-of-the-way position; and there they started their association.
And ever after, when the members met, they always prayed for these
their four founders; and always, my Father being dead, began with his
name: ‘Dominus Hector de Vernatia requiescat in pace.’” “I once,” adds
Battista, “asked the priest who was their Confessor: ‘What matters do
they discuss, when they are thus assembled?’ But he answered: ‘I may
not tell’; and put on a particular expression and said: ‘The Hospital
for Incurables has only ten thousand lire, and it spends twenty-six
thousand. And the _Giuseppine_ and the _Convertite_’ (two other
favourite good works of Vernazza) ‘have also to be provided for!’”[322]
Evidently the subject-matter of all this elaborate secrecy consisted
in plans and means for aiding the condemned (often enough innocent
or but politically guilty persons) and benefiting the poor; and the
privacy was an imperious necessity in those harsh, turbulent and
suspicious times. It was Vernazza’s own Roman patron and collaborator,
the Neapolitan Cardinal Caraffa, who later on, as Pope, imprisoned
for two years (1557-1559), in the Castle of St. Angelo, the great and
saintly Cardinal Morone, on ungrounded suspicion of heresy; and it was
his other patron and most intimate fellow-worker, the Genoese Cardinal
Sauli, who, later on, was himself tortured and put to death, the victim
of political hatred and suspicion, in his own native city.
And now, (conversely from 1461, when a Fregoso Doge had driven out an
Adorno,) an Adorno Doge had just driven out and exiled a Fregoso, and
had executed Paolo da Novi. And Vernazza “knew well a close friend of
this Doge Adorno, one who indeed had helped him to his dignity. And
yet afterwards they became mortal enemies, and the Doge condemned his
former close friend to death. Now this man having been,” continues
Battista, “attended by some one all night, who tried to comfort him
and bring him to patience, the poor prisoner somehow derived no
consolation from his attendant’s endeavours, but went on repeating:
‘When I remember all that I have done for him…!’ And it was impossible
to quiet him. Then he who was spending the wakeful night with him,
having noted that all his words had been hitherto of no avail, inspired
by God, took another way and said: ‘Indeed and indeed you are right,’
and made himself infirm with the infirm, and echoed all that the
prisoner said, making it appear as though he himself, in a similar
case, would be likely to act identically. And then, and only then,
the condemned man began to feel relief, and started the telling of
his own trouble. And when his companion had agreed to all his points,
and at last noticed that the prisoner had thoroughly ventilated all
his grievance, he said: ‘Indeed, my dear brother, you do not merit
this death; but reflect whether, before these occurrences, you did not
perform some action which merited it.’ Then the latter reconsidered
his case, and said at last: ‘Yes,--I killed a man.’ And his companion
replied: ‘Behold, my brother, the true cause of your death’; and added
other most appropriate words with such good effect that the man became
profoundly contrite and died in the very best dispositions of soul.”
“Now I think,” comments Battista, “that the companion was a member of
the Society of St. John Baptist, and was, indeed, my Father himself;
since my Father told me the story too much in vivid detail (_troppo per
sottile_) for him to have been only a reporter. I believe that, to this
hour, this society is carrying on the same kind of work.”[323]
Here again we have the same irrepressible, humorously resourceful,
tenderly shrewd and world-experienced service of God, in and
through His image, in any and every fellow-man; the same breadth
in thoroughness; the same universality working itself out, and
achieving its substance and self-consciousness, in the particular,
as we saw at work in Naples. And this activity, all but its humour,
recalls the soaring, world-embracing spirit of Catherine absorbed in
self-identification with the pestiferous woman’s dying aspirations and
with the cancer-disfigured navvy’s preoccupations for his little wife.
VIII. ETTORE AGAIN IN NAPLES; HIS DEATH IN GENOA; PECULIARITIES OF HIS
POSTHUMOUS FAME.
1. _Naples and the Signora Lunga._
It must have been before this prison experience, for Ottaviano
Fregoso was still Doge, that Vernazza was again in Naples, and that a
thoroughly characteristic, romantic little episode occurred, which not
all her seventy-one years of convent life, and the sixty years that had
elapsed since its happening, prevent Battista from recounting with a
delightfully entire sympathy.
Here in Naples, then, “he joined hands with a certain rich lady,
called the Signora Lunga, for the purpose of procuring as many things
as possible” for the institutions which he himself had founded or
occasioned. This lady, a Spaniard, had been the wife (she was now
the widow) of Giovanni Lungo or Longo, President of the Sacred
Council.[324] “They went together from house to house, begging for
mattresses” for the Hospital. “And this lady now withdrew from the
world at large, and lived in that Hospital, and governed and ruled it;
and combined with this the execution of other works of mercy. And she
had so great a devotion for my Father, that she was wont to say to
him: ‘If you were to tell me to cut and wound my own person, indeed I
would straightway do it.’ But on Fregoso writing and pressing him to
return to Genoa, Vernazza wrote back, that if he, the Doge, promised
to be favourable to him, and to help him in a good work which he had
in his mind, he, Vernazza, would come at once. And the Doge wrote back
that he would do all that Vernazza wished. And then, one morning early”
(no doubt at dawn), “not wishing that the Signora Lunga should see him
depart, he got into the saddle. And she, by good chance, saw him, and
asked him: ‘Where are you going?’ And he struck his spurs into his
mule: ‘To Genoa,’ he cried; and flew away; and never saw the Signora
Lunga any more.”[325]
Something fresh and bracing breathes and beats here still. We
have here the same man who, devoted in every good and filial way
to Catherine, had yet left her, no doubt then also on an errand of
large-hearted mercy, even in those last days of her life; who now,
once again, breaks suddenly away; and who does so again at the call of
souls entirely without conventional claims upon him, and who are quite
unable to repay him with anything that merely drifting nature ever can
hold dear. But here the relation is evidently not that of a man towards
a woman much older than himself, and of the spiritual discipleship
of a relatively inexperienced soul towards one already far advanced
in sanctity: it is clearly one of at least parity of age,--perhaps,
indeed, the woman was the younger of the two,--and of largely equal
companionship, which would presumably, unchecked, have easily led on
to an entirely honourable and happy marriage. And thus, once again,
his devotedness had to live and thrive on concrete, untransferable
renouncements and sacrifices claimed by his true self in that unique
moment and situation: and this too although he will have been at
least tempted wistfully to try and delude himself with the monstrous
superstition of an automatic sanctity, a merely theoretic and yet
somehow real heroism.
2. _The Plague and Ettore’s death in Genoa, June 1524._
“And, arrived in Genoa,” Vernazza “revealed the secret of his heart
to the Doge, and his Lordship gave him seven thousand lire and the
Privilege,”--the latter being necessary, “since no one cared to
have the Lazaretto” (for this was Vernazza’s project) “in proximity
to their villas,” and hence the Government had to insist upon its
foundation upon the least inconvenient of the various possible sites.
And Vernazza in consequence “began to construct a great building for
the poor victims of the Plague, and presented it with an endowment of
one hundred shares of St. George’s, leaving them to multiply, so that
at his death they had increased by eleven shares; and now” (in 1581)
“they have reached a great number of thousands of pounds.” And after
continuing with an account of his further Bank dispositions, and of
his early attempts to help the poor (already given by us), Battista
finishes up this part of her account by declaring: “he was wont to go
about saying, with conviction and great confidence, that he hoped all
things from God; and that, whenever he put his hand to anything, God
put the yeast into that paste.”[326]
And her mention of the Lazaretto then leads her on to the final, still
vivid and yet self-restrained, account of her father’s death. “The
Plague being very severe (_calda_) in Genoa,”--it was past mid-June
1524,--“he came to visit me, and said to me: ‘What do you think I had
better do? I am determined in no manner to forsake the poor. Do you
think I had better go about on horseback or on foot? In which way do
you think I would be safest from infection?’ ‘Oh, Father,’ I said,
‘here we are coming to the Feast of the Baptist, and are at the highest
of the heat; and you are determined to go amongst them?’ And he: ‘And
is it my fate, to hear such things from you? How truly happy should I
be, if I were to die for the poor!’ Then I, seeing so much fortitude
in that holy soul, said to him: ‘Father, go.’ But he was not content
with looking after the Lazaretto: I think that he scoured the country
far and wide. And hence he caught the infection. And on the” (Eve of)
“the Feast of the Nativity of St. John Baptist,” June 23, “he confessed
and communicated. And in three days he quietly fell asleep in the
Lord.”[327]
Surely rarely has so noble a finish been so nobly told! And two things
in particular are deserving of special notice. First, there is here
again that characteristic combination of quiet reflective common-sense
and self-oblivious devotedness. Who could anticipate that the man
who so carefully weighed the respective risks of different methods
of visiting the sick, would, at the same time, be full of a glad
willingness, indeed desire, to die for them? Yet not only does this
rich soul exhibit such a living paradox, with an apparent ease and
spontaneity, but it is this very extraordinary variety in unity that is
an operative cause and element both of the greatness of the act and of
its appealingness.
And secondly, it is, I think, not far-fetched to find in this heroic
death-ride, if not a direct or even a conscious effect, yet at all
events an impressive illustration of, and practical parallel to,
Catherine’s teaching as to Heaven being already present everywhere
where pure love energizes, and to her picture of the soul’s glad
Purgatorial plunge. We know that it was Vernazza himself who, say in
1497, drew forth from her that teaching; and we shall find that it
was predominantly he who so carefully registered for us in writing
those numerous, vivid picturings of the soul’s joyously voluntary
self-dedication to suffering and apparent death. And whether at the
moment fully conscious of this or not, his act of some twenty years
later illustrates and embodies that teaching; and that teaching again
universalizes and brings home to us this action. High on horseback he
goes forth, the strong, sound-bodied, whole-hearted man, deliberately
sure of finding and of bringing Heaven, wheresoever pure love may be
wanted and may joyously appear: joyously fruitful, amidst the very
ghastliness of death. And he is rapidly brought low, first on to his
bed of sickness, and in a few days into the grave. Indeed he himself
had, by his own act, gladly accepted, we may say willed, all this: he
himself had cast himself down and away into that deep common fosse,
amongst the many thousands of his ever-obscure and now disfigured
friends and fellow-dead.
3. _His posthumous fame; its unlikeness to Catherine’s celebrity._
For so it was indeed. Instead of burial in the Pammatone Church, under
the same roof with his saintly inspirer, the poor pestilential body was
buried away, amongst the whole army of others who, like himself, had
died of the Plague, without a stone or token of any kind, to mark where
this simple hero lay. Nor was it till 1633, over a century later, that
a statue was erected to him at his Lazaretto. For the bust in the rooms
of his “Compagnia del Mandiletto” is hardly older; and the hideous
gaunt plaster statue in the Albergo dei Poveri is no doubt much younger
still.
Only in 1867, on June 23, the anniversary of the day on which he
prepared himself to die, was a memorial erected to him which is truly
worthy of the man. Santo Varni’s more than life-size marble statue,
which represents Vernazza seated, a strongly built man still in his
years of vigour, with a head and countenance striking because of
their lofty brow, powerful chin, spiritual, mobile lips, large, keen,
far-outward-looking eyes; and with thoroughly individual, operative
yet sensitive hands, the left extended open, as though to give and
ever again to give, and the right reposing upon the case containing
the Chart of the Hospital’s foundation: stands, a striking symbol,
in the vestibule of the Hospital for Incurables which he founded,
where for fifteen years he lived, and where he died.[328] One would
be glad to think that the likeness of this admirable work of art
reposed upon grounds more direct than one or other of the very late
and unworthy representations that preceded it; the authentic portrait
of his daughter Battista,[329] who may, after all, have been unlike
him in looks; and the sympathetic imagination of a great artist. It
was Vernazza himself who prevented any contemporary representation of
his own features. For Battista tells us, in her letter of 1581, “he
also mortified himself in any inclination to honour. Thus, as is well
known, when the Lazaretto had been erected, and he was asked to have
his portrait painted to be placed there, he answered: ‘I do not want
smoke,’ and refused to act as he was bidden.”[330]
Now here we cannot but find a contrast between Catherine and Ettore;
yet it only concerns their posthumous earthly fate and fame. A picture
of Catherine was, no doubt, no more painted in her lifetime with her
knowledge than was a portrait of Ettore. Yet we know that, in her case,
a picture was painted, if not secretly during her lifetime, in any case
by some eyewitness, and not more than eighteen months after her death;
and a popular religious Cultus to her sprang up and grew, on occasion
of that early opening of her coffin. But Ettore has to wait over a
century for his first artistic embodiment, and of religious Cultus
there was never any question.[331] Whence this difference? Have we any
kind of reason for suspecting Ettore’s heroism, indeed sanctity of life
and death? Was he indeed clearly much the lesser in the Kingdom of God
than was his friend?
The question, it will be noted, does not imply any criticism of
the Church’s wise requirement of a previous Cultus, as one of the
conditions for the introduction of any and every Process; still less
is there any disposition to call in question the choice of Catherine
for saintly honours, a choice which this whole book would hope to
demonstrate as particularly courageous, wise and indeed providential.
The point raised concerns simply the psychology of popular devotion,
and the human reason why, given that one was certainly a Saint and the
other was presumably another one, there is this marked contrast in the
posthumous history of these two lives.
Now if the question be taken thus, the answer can hardly be doubtful.
Certainly not because of her profoundly original doctrine, by which
Catherine is speculatively more interesting and humanly more complete
than Vernazza, was Catherine prized and preferred to Vernazza by the
crowd. Nor did they single her out precisely because of her works
and long life of mercy, for Vernazza’s labours of this kind no doubt
exceeded Catherine’s, both in their variety and in their visible
extension. But it was the psycho-physical peculiarities of the life
of Catherine, and the more or less complete incorruption of the body:
these two things, neither of which has any necessary connection with
that faithful and heroic use of free-will and that spirit and grace
of God in which the whole substance of sanctity consists, which, each
leading on and back to and strengthening the impression and tradition
of the other, determined the outbreak and onflow of popular devotion
in the one case, and the absence of which prevented the growth of any
such cultus in the other. And thus we have here one more instance of
the pathetic irony of fate, or rather one of those many mysterious
operations of the divine will which, under the ebb and flow of
influences that seem merely human and deteriorative, works in history
for the slow upward-raising of our poor kind.
When the well-known ecstatic Augustinian Nun, Anne Catharine Emmerich,
died at Dülmen, in Westphalia, on February 6, 1824, her remains also
were not long allowed to rest undisturbed in the grave. Already in
mid-March the poetess Luise Hensel, who had much loved and venerated
her, caused the grave to be opened quite privately, in hopes of
finding the body still incorrupt, and of once more being able to gaze
on that striking countenance. And a few days later, on March 21 and
22, the grave and coffin were again, this time officially, opened. In
both cases the body was found still incorrupt, and two pale red spots
appeared on the cheeks. But when, on October 6, 1858, the grave was
opened a third and last time, nothing was found of the coffin but
one nail, and the body was now represented only by so many separate
bones.[332] Now when, some twenty years ago, I visited Dülmen in the
company of a distinguished Münster Priest, the latter told me, as we
stood together by the grave-side, that this discovery had greatly
checked the survivals or beginnings of any such local and popular
cultus as had been expected and hoped for by Anne Catharine’s, mostly
distant or foreign, admirers.
Similar cases it would be easy to multiply; and they all point to the
great advantage, probably to the actually determining incentive, which
accrued to the Cultus of Catherine, in that her body continued more
or less incorrupt, and thus added a sensible marvel after death to
the sensible marvels of her fasts and ecstasies during life. Whereas
Catharine Emmerich’s analogous psycho-physical condition during
life was not thus reinforced by an unusual physical condition after
death. And Ettore, again, had evidently nothing physically, or even
psycho-physically, abnormal about him, either in life or in death.