Chapter XLI here, corresponds to the _Dicchiarazione_ (_Trattato_)

there; and is followed here by a final Chapter (XLII), made up of a

bewilderingly different succession of paragraphs,--paragraphs which, in

the Printed _Life_, stand in Chapters XLIX; XVII; and XLVIII to LII.

And, whereas the first forty Chapters of this MS. average six or seven

pages in length, Chapters XLI and XLII are respectively forty-five and

forty-eight pages long.

(v) _Lacunae._

These transpositions would alone suffice to show how complicated is the

textual history of the _Vita_: we may have to consider some of them

later on. But it is the _lacunae_ which are especially interesting.

One of these is quite certainly right, as against the printed text.

Paragraphs 23 to 25 of Chapter L of the Print are wanting here. Those

pages give an entirely fantastic, and formally vague, account of a

supposed interior stigmatization of Catherine, and of a preposterous

elongation of one of her arms,--both “facts” based explicitly upon

the authority of Argentina.[373] And the circumstance of the scribe

being a disciple of the stigmatized St. Francis, and the probability

that Argentina was still accessible, conjoin to render the absence of

these paragraphs from this MS. simply decisive against their historical

character.--The longest of all the omissions, that of the _Dialogo_,

must, even more, be explained on the ground of its non-existence at

this time, or, at least, of its not being known to the Scribe, or

again, of its having as yet no kind of authority. For not only does he

make no use of, or allusion to this, very long, and (were it primitive)

simply supreme document, but, as we shall find, quite a number of his

facts contradict the _Dialogo’s_ version of them; and we shall soon see

that, had he known and esteemed the document, he would not have allowed

such a defiance of it to remain without correction.

Over against these two non-appearances of spurious or secondary matter,

we have to set three omissions of highly valuable material. The two

interconnected, obviously entirely historical, paragraphs concerning

Maestro Boerio,--his attempt to cure Catherine, and the excessive

impression made upon her by his scarlet robes,[374]--are both wanting

here. But we shall see that they were probably not incorporated in any

_Vita_, till the preparation of the Printed _Life_ of 1551.--Matters

stand differently with respect to the third omission,--the

beautifully vivid, inimitably daring and characteristic, Chapter

XIX, containing Catherine’s dialogue with the Friar, who, according

to the well-informed Parpera, was a Franciscan Observant.[375] It is

impossible to hold that this, most historical and well-preserved,

story did not stand in the Observant’s Prototype, or that it was

otherwise unknown to him; its omission is doubtless deliberate and

“prudential.”--An interesting instance of demonstrable omission on his

part, is indeed furnished also by his version of the beautiful story

of Suor Tommasa’s life: his abbreviation of it is so obvious and yet

so unintelligent, that only a reference to the full account, which lay

certainly before him and is still preserved in the Printed _Life_,

makes any satisfactory sense of what he has retained.[376]

3. _Modification from a tripartite scheme to a quatripartite one._

But the most interesting of all the differences between this MS. A of

1547 and the Printed _Life_ of 1551 is another group of omissions,

connected, as these are, with the one single modification introduced

into his own text by the Scribe himself. The whole of the matter

corresponding to the Printed _Life’s_ Chapter XLIV (all but the first

seven lines) and that corresponding to the first three paragraphs of

its Chapter XLIX, which treat consecutively, and with an inimitable

vividness and a daring, unreflective truthfulness, of her most

unusual self-revelations to her Confessor Don Marabotto,[377] is

omitted--possibly, again, in part at least, from fear of scandal; but

more probably because, even at this time, this (the most private and

consecutive) contribution to the _Life_, still existed separately,

perhaps from all, and presumably from most, copies of the _Vita_

then in circulation. And such a copy will have been the Observant’s

Prototype.--Only when he had finished copying out his manuscript, will

he have discovered that, if he would take any, even though silent,

account of that contribution, which, by now, will have become known to

him, he must, at all costs, break up and seriously modify one of his

chapters. We have already studied the treble, most solemn affirmation,

by Catherine and her Confessor themselves, in that Printed Chapter

XLIV, as to her twenty-five years of spiritual loneliness and guidance

by God alone;[378] and we have seen that (since we cannot place her

Conversion before 1474, nor the beginning of her later practice of

Confession after 1499) we are forced (if we take her words in their

obvious sense, as applying to Confession as well as to Direction, and

assume her First Convert-Period, the penitential time, to have been

accompanied throughout by repeated Confessions) to make this first

Period very short.

Now the volume of 1547, 1548, consists throughout of paper, all but

the first three leaves and the tenth leaf, which are of parchment.

The first leaf remains blank; the second contains the Observant’s

Preface on its obverse; the third holds, on its two sides, the first

two pages of the _Vita_. That Preface was certainly written before all

the rest, or at least certainly during the lifetime of Donna Orientina

Centurione, _i.e._ before February 4, 1548; nor does anything in those

first two (parchment and paper) pages of text suggest that they are an

insertion subsequent to the following (paper) pages. At first, then,

the copy will have consisted of three parchment leaves, and then of

nothing but paper leaves; and the Observant will have made the last of

these parchment leaves the sole and opening parchment leaf of the text

of the Book.

But matters stand differently with the tenth leaf, pp. 19, 20 of

the MS., which begins with the words “bisogna, sono apparecchiata

a confessar”--“(if) necessary, I am prepared to confess my sins in

public” (Catherine’s words, on occasion of her Conversion); and ends

with “(abru) savano insino al core. Poi fù tirata al Petto”--“Love,

with those penetrating rays of its own, which burnt her, even to the

heart. She was then drawn to the Breast” (narrative words which, in the

scheme of her _Life_ that follows upon the Conversion-story, mark the

transition from one of this scheme’s stages to another).

Now here we have clear indications that these two parchment pages

hold a modified text. For that last parchment-leaf word “Petto” is

picked up, on the paper continuation, by “Pecto,” the ordinary form of

the Observant’s Prototype: see his page 81. And the whole book (all

but this parchment leaf and its highly restricted effects), still

attributes _four years_ to her First Convert-Period, her Penitential,

Purgative Stage.

Indeed, this solitary parchment leaf itself still allows us to trace,

(as though the leaf were a Palimpsest), both this, the original,

length of that Period, and the fact of that Period having then been

the first of three, and not, as now, of four such periods.--For this

leaf, in finishing up the manuscript’s fourth chapter, the history

of her Conversion,[379]--declares that “this sight (of her sins) and

this contrition (for them) lasted _fourteen months_, during which she

went on confessing herself, continually increasing her self-accusation

(_aggravando la colpa_); after the passing of which months, all sadness

was lifted from her, nor did she have any memory of her sins,--as

though she had cast them into the depths of the sea.” And then, in

the opening of the fifth chapter,[380] the scheme and conspectus of

her Convert Life runs as follows. She is first “drawn to the feet

of Christ” and abides there “_one year_ until she had satisfied her

conscience by Contrition, Confession, and Satisfaction.”--“She next

felt herself drawn, with St. John, to repose on the Breast of her

Loving Lord.… _The sight of the sins committed by her against God would

come to her_, so that she would be, as it were, wild (_arrabbiava_)

with grief, and would lick the ground with her tongue; and in this wise

she appeared to derive relief for her tempestuous feelings (_affannato

cuore_). And she abode thus for _three years_, during which she was,

as it were, wild with grief and love, with those penetrating rays of

its own, which burned her to the very heart.[381] She was then drawn

to the Breast”--which last parchment-leaf word is taken up by the

next, ordinary paper-leaf: “Breast; and here she was shown the Heart

of Christ.… And she abode _many years_ with this impression of His

burning Heart.--And then she was drawn (still) further up, that is, to

the Mouth; and there she was found worthy of being kissed by the true

Solomon.… And she no more (directly) recognized her human acts, whether

they had been done well or evilly; but she saw all in God.”[382]

We see here how the original four years of her First Period, which are

still retained elsewhere by the Printed _Vita_,[383] have been broken

up by the scribe of this Manuscript into two shorter (first and second)

Periods, of fourteen months (one year), and three years respectively;

how the copyist, both in his first apportionment of length to his new

First Period, “fourteen months,” and in his second assignment, now

of one year (since he has to divide up the original Four years so as

to get them again by addition, “_one_ year” and “_three_ years”),

leaves us two curious echoes of the “Four” of his Prototype; how his

amended description of his new second Period is still largely the old

Penitential description, for she still sees her sins (a sight which

is here an anachronism), and she is still prostrate on the ground (a

prostration which exactly suits the Feet, but in no way the Breast of

Christ); how the Observant has been half-hearted and clumsy, for he has

now left two successive Breast-Periods, hardly differentiated from each

other; and how he was able to shift (though not to change) the original

single Breast-Period (now his second Breast-Period), because of its

conveniently vague time-note of “many years.” All this laborious, yet

timid, incomplete and ineffectual change, thus forced upon an evidently

long-established, toughly resisting composition, can only have taken

place under some severe pressure of evidence; and the root-causes of

the change are somehow connected with the question as to the duration,

in her life, of the perception and Confession of her sins. For the

Confession of her sins, which (in the old scheme) extended over four

years, is now restricted to fourteen months or one year; and if

contemplative and restful love are now anticipated (from the original

second Period) in the new second Period of three years, yet an intense

sight of her particular sins, piercing contrition for them, and a

complete prostration on the ground, are all indeed retained, from the

original Feet-Period, for this new second Period, but Confession has

disappeared from these three years.

Now we have precisely such absolutely constraining evidence in

Marabotto’s treble chronicle of Catherine’s own words, with regard to

the twenty-five years during which she was led by God’s spirit alone.

It is clear then that the most important of Marabotto’s notes did not

exist incorporated with, or at least had not originally formed part of,

and did not dominate, the scheme of the _Vita_ which the Observant had

before him; and that, upon his later knowledge of, or pondering over

them, he understood Catherine’s words to have applied, not simply to

Direction but to (at least at all habitual) Confession as well.

2. MANUSCRIPT B.

1. _Its very primitive heading._

Manuscript B starts indeed with a heading demonstrably older than that

of MS. A. For its “De la Mirabile Conversione et Vita de la q(uondam)

donna Catherinetta Adorna” is more primitive, because of its “the

late,” which indicates a time of writing not yet far removed from the

date of her death; its “Donna,” less honorific than the “Madonna” of

the other MSS.; and, above all, its giving “Conversione” before “Vita,”

instead of “Conversatione” after “Vita,” since thus we are assured of

“Conversione” being no slip of the pen for “Conversatione,”--Conversion

coming necessarily before, and holy Conversation coming after, in

consequence of, an admirable life.--And this title will originally have

headed a booklet containing simply the story of her Conversion and

early Convert life, say, up to the end of Chapter VI of the Printed

_Vita_, p. 17_b_; or, since even the “et Vita” of this title reads like

a later addition, only up to the end of the present printed Chapter

II, p. 6_c_. I think there is no doubt that we have here the original

heading of a tract put together on occasion of the first public Cultus,

in the summer of 1512.

2. _Body of MS. B dependent upon MS. A._

But the body of MS. B is demonstrably later than, indeed dependent

upon, MS. A; for here the scribe silently adopts the modification,

effected by the writer of MS. A in his own text, with regard to

doubling the Breast-Period; and yet, even here, we have still the

Observant’s “Petto” for the first period, and the “Pecto” of the

Observant’s Prototype for the second period.[384] “Come” now appears

throughout, in lieu of MS. A’s “Como.” And Giuliano’s name is omitted

(all but once, in Catherine’s mouth) in the Husband-Chapter.[385]

3. _Order, division, numeration of the Chapters._

The order, division, and numeration of the Chapters is identical with

those of MS. A, all but that Chapter XXXIX of MS. A (equivalent to the

unimportant pp. 82_b_-83_a_ of Chapter XXXI in the Printed _Life_)

is here omitted. No Chapter numbered XXXIX appears here, but, after a

small break behind Chapter XXXVIII, the _Trattato_ follows, as Chapter

XL.

4. _Laceration at end of Manuscript._

And this Chapter XL is abruptly broken off in the midst of a

penultimate paragraph: “et per gratia li sono monstrati et” are the

last words. The authentication of the MS., appended immediately after

this rough ending, shows this laceration to be at least as old as 1672.

Nor is it a case of some complete set or sets of leaves being lost,

since one leaf has had to be torn off, from the still remaining other

half-sheet.[386] The last part, no doubt, contained the end of the

_Trattato_ and the Passion-Chapter; and will, like its Prototype, MS.

A, have been without a trace of the _Dialogo_. Indeed I suspect that it

was the latter circumstance which, when once this elaborate composition

had come to be prized, gave rise to the, surely deliberate, destruction

of the evidence for its absence here. MS. A will, in that case, have

been saved from a similar fate, by its special appropriation to a

powerful family; by its superior, uncial kind of script; and, above

all, by its important contemporary date and dedication at the end.

V. FIFTH STAGE: MANUSCRIPT C.

Our next, deeply interesting stage, is represented by one single MS.

in the University Library, Genoa,--catalogued as B. VII 17. It is a

careful copy, made throughout by the Protonotary Angelo Luigi Giovo,

and subscribed by himself on April 20, 1671, of, as he there says,

“Another ancient MS. received from the Signora ----, Matron of the

Great Hospital, who declared that she had herself received it from

the Nuns of the Madonna delle Grazie; and which is believed, with

great probability, to be the MS. copied by Ettore Vernazza and sent to

the Venerable Donna Battista, his daughter. The book, in view of the

antiquity of the paper, of the character of the binding of the copy,

and of the other peculiarities, has been judged by experts to belong

to the above-mentioned Period.” The reader will soon see why I place

(not necessarily the execution, but the text of) the MS. thus copied

by Giovo, before the printing of the _Vita_ in 1551, and will thus be

helped to a decision as to the “greatly probable” attribution to Ettore

Vernazza.

1. _Differences in text of MS. C from MSS. A and B._

Giovo’s Copy (my MS. C) follows, up to the end of its Chapter XLI

(the _Trattato_), the division, number, and sequence of the chapters,

and the peculiarities of the text, of MS. A, with an all but unbroken

closeness: even the slip, of 1506 (for 1509), in the date of the

great attack of “fire at heart,” reappears here as it stands there

(fol. 33_v_ of MS. C, compared with p. 193 of MS. A). But the “Petto”

and “Pecto,” of respectively the first and second Breast-Periods

in MSS. A and B, read here, in both cases, as simply “Petto” (MS.

C, fol. 3).--There is but one at all remarkable addition in this,

the _Vita_-part of the MS. In the account of the refusal to accept

Catherine on the part of the Nuns of the very Convent where, as we

shall see, the Prototype copied by Giovo was no doubt written, there

occur the new words: “Although her Confessor was instant with them

(to take her), knowing her, as he did, better than the Nuns knew her”

(MS. C, fol. 1_v_).--And, in concluding further on (on its fol. 71_v

seq._) with the Passion-Chapter, as this stands in MS. A (Chapter

XLII), a Chapter which here (for a reason to be given in a minute)

is not numbered, the MS. still follows closely (although now with a

few generally unimportant additions, omissions, and transpositions of

paragraphs), the matter, order, and literary form of MS. A.--Only one,

formally slight, but materially significant, difference exists here

between Giovo’s text and the Printed _Life_. The Printed _Life_, p.

142_b_, reads: “After this, she felt a hard nail at heart”; to this MS.

C adds (fol. 72_r_) “so that she seemed nailed to the Cross.” Neither

set of words occurs in MSS. A and B. MS. C here gives us something

unlike Catherine’s, but very like Battista’s, special spirit.

2. _The great addition: the “Dialogo,” Part First._

(1) _The “Dialogo” originally no longer._

But it is in the pages intermediate between the _Trattato_ and the

Passion (foll. 53_v_ to 71_v_), that lies the interest of this MS. For

here we get, for the first time, the _Dialogo_, although, as yet, only

its eventual First Part (pp. 185-225 in the Printed _Life_). Chapter

XLI (the _Trattato_) has just finished, by only six lines short of its

printed form, with the words “because that occupation with Himself

which God gives to the soul, slight though it be, keeps the soul so

occupied, that it exceeds everything, nor can the soul esteem anything

else.” And immediately next there come (53_v_) the title-words: “Here

follows a certain beautiful Allegory (_Figura_) which this holy soul

institutes (_fà_) concerning the Soul and the Body.”--The eventual

division into (17) chapters is still absent, and the work seems, at

this time, to have been planned to be no longer than it is here. For

it concludes with the emphatic climax: “Now the Spirit, having come

to hold this creature in this manner, declared: ‘I am determined

henceforth no more to call her a human creature, because I see her

(to be) all in God, without any (mere) humanity.’” For these words

simply re-cast the last words of the scheme of her entire life, given

by the _Vita_: “She said: ‘I live no more, but Christ lives in me.’

Hence she could no more recognize the quality of her human acts, in

themselves--whether they were good or evil; but she saw all in God”

(Pr. L., p. 6_c_).

(2) _The “Dialogo’s” two stages, each comprising two steps, and their

suggestions in the “Vita.”_

Now the _Dialogo_, as here given, consists of two chief stages, and

each stage contains two steps.

Chapters I to VI give the first stage--the history of a soul in a state

of moral and spiritual decline and contraction: all this, in the form

of a Dialogue between the Soul, the Body, and Self-Love.--Throughout

this first stage Self-Love holds dominion. But, during the first step,

the Soul (although it already distinguishes, with regard to what it

intends to practise, between simply avoiding grave sin and striving

after perfection) still continues fairly determined not to commit sin,

and still leads the Body. During the second step, on the contrary, even

this simple avoidance of grave sin has ceased, for now the Body leads

the Soul. Thus first the Soul, and then the Body, each leads the other

during one step, for “one week.”--These two steps or weeks stand for

the two lustres of Catherine’s pre-Conversion-Period, for the lukewarm,

and then the positively dissipated, lustre respectively. Chapters I

to III give the first week, equivalent to the first five years of her

married life, 1463 to 1468; and Chapters IV to VI give the second week,

and correspond to the second five years, 1468 to 1473.[387]

Chapters VII to XXI describe the second stage, that of Conversion and

Transformation, which (notwithstanding its appearance of instantaneous

and complete attainment of its end) is here presented as, in reality,

by far the longer and the more difficult, although the alone fruitful

and happy one. Chapters VII to XIII describe the first step. Chapters

VII to IX give us the Soul’s longing for Light; the spark of Pure Love

shown to it, on its conversion-day; and a long address by the Soul to

the Body and Self-Love, and the answers of these two.[388] In this

address the Soul for the first time speaks of “_the Spirit_.”[389]

Chapter X makes the Soul for the first time address “_the Lord_,” “O

Signore,” on the one hand: and her “_Humanity_” “O Umanità,” on the

other.[390] In Chapters XI and XII the Soul stands alone, face to face

with the Lord, who appears to it in two successive visions,--first as

Christ alive and walking along all stained with blood from head to

foot; and, on a later occasion, as Christ evidently motionless and

presumably dead, with His five fountain-wounds, which are sending drops

of burning blood towards mankind. And these two visions, so carefully

kept apart, doubtless typify the two periods of Catherine’s Convert

life,--the two steps of her second stage: the moving, scourged and

cross-bearing Christ stands for the active penance of the first four

years or fourteen months; and the motionless, crucified Christ stands

for the passive purification of the rest of her life.[391] Chapter XIII

has no dialogue, but describes her active penances and good works, and

mentions the Soul, Humanity, and the Spirit.[392]

And then, up to the end, in Chapters XIV to XXI, which give us

the second step, the dialogue reappears, but now no more between

the three _Dramatis Personae_ (Soul, Body, and Self-Love) of the

pre-Conversion-Period; but between the two interlocutors of the

post-conversion time (the Spirit and Humanity).[393] And there is here

but one sporadic mention, an invocation, of “the Lord” (p. 214_c_).

Thus only after its Conversion does the Soul itself become aware of,

or does it name, either the Spirit or its “Humanity”; and only after

the two successive Christ-Visions do these two new experiences and

conceptions entirely replace the three old ones of Soul, Body, and

Self-Love. In a word, we have here, carefully carried through, the

scheme, so clearly enunciated by Battista Vernazza in 1554, of the two

successive divisions effected by God in Man, during the process of

Man’s purification: first, the separation (division) of the Soul from

the Body; and then the separation (division) of the Spirit from the

Soul.[394] And, in strict accordance with this scheme, the Soul here

becomes conscious of being, in its upper reaches, Spirit, only on the

day that it has broken away from the domination of the downward-tending

Body, and of Self-Love. And once the Soul has thus affirmed the

Spirit and denied the Body, the “Body” and the “Soul” cease to be

directly mentioned; the one term “Humanity” now takes the Soul’s and

the Body’s place. For now the Soul, in so far as it has still not

completely identified itself with the Spirit, does not any more attach

itself directly to the Body and the Body’s pleasures,--to, as it

were, the upper fringe of the Body,--but to the sensible-spiritual

consolations which are the necessary concomitants and consequences of

the Soul’s affirmation and acceptance of the Spirit,--hence, as it

were, to the lower fringe of the Spirit. “I would have thee know,” the

Spirit now says to Catherine, “that I fear much more an attachment

to the spiritual than to the bodily taste and feeling. Man goes his

way ‘feeding’ his spiritual sensuality upon the things which proceed

from God, and yet these things are a very poison for the Pure Love of

God.”[395]

3. _The “Dialogo” intensifies or softens certain narratives and sayings

given by the “Vita.”_

Now these interesting forty pages of the first _Dialogo_ derive (with

the sole exception of three little touches) their entire historical

materials from the _Vita e Dottrina_, and, indeed, from but those

parts of this _corpus_ which already appear in MSS. A and B, and in

the previous pages of MS. C itself. But all these materials have been

re-thought, re-pictured, re-arranged throughout, by a new, powerful,

and experienced mind, a mind dominated by certain very definite,

schematic conceptions as to the constitution of the human personality,

the nature of holiness, and the laws of its growth, and which is

determined to find or form concrete examples of these conceptions, in

and from the life of Catherine.

(1) _Cases of intensifying._

There are, first, five cases of the intensifying of authentic

_Vita_-accounts, intensifications necessary, or at least ancillary, to

the scheme underlying the whole _Dialogo_-composition.

As to the pre-conversion sinfulness, during her second “week,”

Catherine’s soul is made to say: “In a short time I was enveloped in

sin; and, abiding in that snare, I lost the grace (of God) and remained

blind and heavy, and from spiritual I became all earthly.”[396] Yet

there is no evidence that Catherine, even at that time, ever committed

grave sin; nor does there exist an authentic saying of hers which,

however intense its expressions of contrition, conveys an impression

really equivalent to this passage.--As to the form of her contrition,

“so greatly was this soul alienated (from her own self) and submerged

in the sight of the offence of God, that she no longer seemed a

rational creature, but a terrified animal.”[397] Yet the earlier

accounts, which certainly do not minimize here, keep well within

the limits of normal, though intense, human feeling and expression

of feeling.--As to the forcible means taken by her to overcome her

fastidiousness in the matter of cleanliness and in the sense of taste,

“she would put the impurities into her mouth, as though they had been

precious pearls.”[398] Yet the original versions, drastic enough in

all conscience, nowhere imply that there was any such relish, even

of a merely apparent kind.--As to her post-conversion poverty, the

Spirit says to her: “Thou shalt work to provide for thy living,” and

the narrative declares: “The Spirit made her so poor, that she would

have been unable to live, had not God provided for her by the means

of alms.”[399] Yet we know from her wills that (though the Hospital

authorities gave her free lodging, and perhaps, at first, free board as

well) she retained, up to the last, an appreciable little income, and

herself conferred many an alms out of these her own means.

Nevertheless, in each of these cases, the _Dialogo_ exaggeration is

suggested by some phrase or word in the _Vita_ which has been taken

up into the new context and medium of this other mind, and has come

to mean something curiously (though often in form but slightly)

different from that older account.--Thus, in this fourth instance,

the _Vita_-accounts had said: “nel _principio_ di sua conversione,

molto si _esercitò_.” “Viveva ancora molto _sottomessa ad ogni

creatura_.” “Quantunque ella fosse in tutto dedicata ed occupata

negli _esercizii_ di esso Spedale, nondimeno mai volle godere ne

usare una minima cosa di quello per _viver suo_; ma, per quel poco

che abbisognava, si serviva della _povera_ sostanza sua: onde ben si

scorgeva che il suo dolce Amore era quello il quale operava in lei

ogni cosa per vera unione.” “Si _esercitò_ nelle opere pie, cercando i

_poveri_, essendo condotta delle Donne della Misericordia, e le davano

danari ed altre _provvisioni_.”[400] The _Dialogo_-writer has worked

all this up as follows: “Io (lo Spirito) ti avviso _primieramente_

voler io che tu pruovi che cosa sia esser ubbidiente, acciò tu

divenghi umile e _soggetta ad ogni creatura_; ed acciochè ti possi

_esercitare_, lavorerai per provedere al _viver tuo_.” “Primieramente

la fece tanto _povera_, che non avrebbe potuto vivere, se Dio non

l’avvesse _provveduta_ per via di limosine. Poi quando le Signore della

Misericordia l’addimandavano per andare a’poveri … ella sempre con loro

andava.”[401] I have italicized the words taken over by the _Dialogo_.

Thus her own poor substance (_i.e._ her own modest income), and the

money given to her by the _Misericordia_-ladies for distribution among

the poor, becomes a substance, alms and money, given to herself as to a

poor person.

The fifth case concerns the affections. In the _Vita_-proper nothing

is more characteristic of Catherine, up to the spring of 1509, than

her swift and deep affective sympathy, and the fearless forms of its

manifestation. True, Catherine “would” (certainly up to 1490, perhaps

more or less up to 1496) “abide at times,” up to six hours on end,

“as though dead.” But, “on hearing herself called, she would suddenly

arise and betake herself, in answer, to whatever was required of her,

however small a service this might be.” And indeed “she served the

sick with most fervent affection:” thus she attended throughout a week

upon a poor pestiferous woman; and at the end, “unable further to

contain herself, kissed” the dying woman “upon the mouth with great

affection of heart, and so caught the pestilential fever, and well-nigh

died of it.”[402]--Then, too, there is the _Vita’s_ quite general,

indeterminate remark, “she (Catherine) felt no pain at the deaths of

her (two elder) brothers and of her sisters” (the latter should be

“sister,” unless, perhaps, a sister-in-law is included) in 1502.[403]

But her extant wills have shown us how actively thoughtful she

remained, even in 1506 and 1509, for her brother, nephews and nieces,

and humble retainers; and the deeply affectionate scenes with Marco

and Argentina occurred between 1503 and 1506. Marco, the poor navvy,

was dying “of a cancer in the face,” and Catherine, at Argentina’s

asking, “as though with prompt obedience, betook herself to him”; and

he “threw his arms round Catherine’s neck, and, pressing her with sobs,

seemed unable to have done with weeping.[404] And then, still weeping,

with great tenderness he besought Catherine to adopt his wife as her

spiritual daughter,” and Catherine did so, and “loved this spiritual

daughter much.”[405]--Only in the very late actions, the change as to

her burial-place (Will of March 1509), and the exclusion of all her

attendants on January 10, and of most of them on and after August 27,

1510,[406] are there indications of any absence or renunciation of

tender and spontaneous human affection.

But here again the _Dialogo_ both closely presses and profoundly

changes the original accounts. For here the Spirit declares to her: “in

these exercises” of work among the poor, “I shall keep thee … as though

thou wast dead. I will not allow thee to make friends with any one,

nor that thou shouldst have any particular affection for any relative;

but I want thee to love all men, and this without affection, both poor

and rich, both friends and relatives. I do not want thee, in thine

interior, to know one person from the other, nor would I have thee go

to any one from motives of friendship; it will suffice to go when thou

art called.” And thus “she went, when the _Misericordia_-ladies asked

her to go into dwellings that would have frightened away all ordinary

mortals. But she, on the contrary, deliberately touched these sick

(_voleva toccarli_), for the purpose of giving them some refreshment

to soul and body.”[407]--Note how skilfully the call, and the going

at the call, the affection and its spontaneous manifestations in the

original accounts, have been altered and crossed by the _Dialogue’s_

re-statement.--Here again we are strongly reminded of Battista, in

her letter to the Signora Andronica in 1575, encouraging her to

“abandon all things,” her children included, “interiorly,” and “to

mortify the most pleasing consolation which arises from the children’s

company.” Indeed, already in 1554, Battista has, in one of her own

_Colloquies_, refused to accept every avoidable consolation arising

from her pure election by God.[408] Only by such a reference of these

_Dialogo_-passages to Battista, the many-sided, the ever-affectionate

daughter and public-spirited woman, can we come to see them in a wider

context; indeed only thus can they cease to be profoundly repulsive.

(2) _Cases of softening._

There are two instances of the softening of (doubtless authentic)

doctrinal sayings given by the _Vita_-proper. Her evidently impulsive

exclamation: “I would not have grace or mercy, but justice and

vengeance exercised against the malefactor,”--has here become: “She did

not attach any importance to her sins, on the ground of the punishment

awaiting them, but solely because they had been enacted against the

infinite goodness of God.”--And her bold declaration: “If any creature

could be found which did not participate in the divine goodness, that

creature would be as malignant as God is good,” here reads: “The soul

bereft of the Divine love becomes _well-nigh_ as malignant as the

Divine love is good and delightful. I say ‘well-nigh,’ for God shows

it a little mercy.”[409] The proclamation of some moral good even in

lost souls, is thus weakened to an admission of some consolation in the

latter.

4. _Re-statement of the Conversion-experiences of March 1474._

But it is in the matters of Catherine’s Conversion in the

Convent-Chapel, on March 22, 1474, and of the Vision of the Bleeding

Christ in the Palazzo Adorno, soon after, that the _Dialogo’s_

transformation of the _Vita_-accounts reaches its highest interest.

I give it here as the chief of many such re-statements which I have

carefully analyzed.

_Vita_-proper, _Vita_ (_Dialogo_), pp. 199_c_,

pp. 4_a_-5_b_. 200_c_, 202_c_, 208_c_, 209_a_,

_b_. 209_c_, 210_a_, 211_a_, _b_.

Subitocchè se gli fù inginocchiata Quando Iddio vuole purgare

innanzi, receve una un anima … le manda il

ferita al cuore d’immenso suo divino lume, facendola

amore di Dio, con una vista vedere una scintilla di quel

così chiara delle sue miserie puro amore con quale ci ama

e diffetti, e della bontà di Dio … essendo noi nemici per

che ne fù per cascare in terra. molte offese che gli abbiamo

Onde … restò quasi fuor di fatte.… E le fà vedere quel

sè: e perciò internamente affocato amore.… Tutto

gridava con ardente amore: questo fù dimostrato da Dio

“Non più mondo, non più peccati.” in un instante, coll’ operazione

Ed in quel punto.… sua purissima.… Questo

… Per la viva fiamma d’infocato raggio d’amore fù quello che

amore il dolce Iddio ferì quell’ anima in un istante

impresse in quell’ anima … … che la fece restare in

tutta la perfezione.… quel punto quasi fuori di sè.…

Vedeva ancora le offese che Le fù ancora mostrato … quanti

gli aveva fatte; e perciò gridava: erano tutti i suoi diffetti

“O amore mai più, mai … in modo che sommerse

più, peccati.” Se le accese poi sè stessa con tal

un odio di sè medesima, che dispregio che avrebbe detto

non si poteva sopportare, e i suoi peccati pubbliccamente

diceva: “O amore, se bisogna, per tutta la città, nè altro

sono apparecchiata di confessare poteva dire se non: “O Signore

i miei peccati in pubblico.” mai più mondo, nè peccati.”

Ma volendo il Signore accendere Stando l’anima in questa

intrinsecamente più quasi disperazione di sè

l’amor suo in quest’ anima, ed medesima … vedendosi un

insieme il dolore dei suoi carico da disperato alle spalle,

peccati, se le mostrò in ispirito … era come una cosa insensata

colla Croce in spalla, piovendo ed attonita fuori di sè.…

tutto sangue, per modo che la Essendo un giorno in casa,

casa le pareva tutta piena di le apparve in vista interiore

rivoli di quel sangue, il quale il Signor Nostro Gesù

vedeva essere tutto sparso per Christo, tutto insanguinato

amore: il che le accese nel da capo a’ piedi, in modo che

cuore tanto fuoco, che ne pareva che da quel corpo

usciva fuor di sè, e pareva piovesse sangue per tutta la

una cosa insensata per tanto terra dove andava; e le fù

amore e dolore che ne sentiva. detta in occulto questa parola:

“vedi tu questo sangue? tutto

è sparso per amor tuo, e per

soddisfazione de’ tuoi peccati.”

In queste parole le fù data

una gran ferita d’amore verso

esso Signor nostro Gesù

Christo, con una confidenza

tale, che disparve quella prima

vista tanto disperata e si

rallegrò un poco in esso

Signore.…

Questa vista le fù tanto Le fù mostrata un altra

penetrativa che vista maggior di quella, e

tanto più grande che con

lingua non si potrebbe dire

… le fù infuso un raggio

d’amore nel cuore.… Gridava

e sospirava molto più e

le pareva sempre vedere (e senza comparazione che della

cogli occhi corporali) prima vista, la quale fù dell’

esser maligno di sè stessa.

Questo raggio d’amore le fù

il suo Amore tutto insanguinato lasciato impresso con quelle

e confitto in Croce. cinque fontane di Christo, le

quali mandavano goccie

d’affuoccato sangue di acceso

amore verso dell’ uomo.

Hence _D._ gives but one exclamation as to “world” and “sins,” and

constructs this out of the two (mutually differing) exclamations of the

same kind given by _V._, the second of which now stands in _V._ after

the Bleeding-Christ episode. Whilst spacing all out, _D._ keeps to the

order and context of _V.’s_ paragraphs. And _D._ utilizes the curious,

silent change from the moving Christ to the affixed Christ in _V.’s_

account of the single vision in the Palace, so as to constitute two

perfectly distinct visions. The Cross of both these doublets of _V._,

(the “Croce” which, in the first part of _V.’s_ single account, is

“in spalla,” on His shoulder; and the Cross which, in the second part

of the same account, He is nailed to), has, in _D._, disappeared from

both separate visions. And yet the Cross hovers about the first vision,

here transformed into a “carico alle spalle,” a load upon Catherine’s

shoulders,--an oppression on her mind; and is presupposed in the second

vision, since those “five fountains sending forth burning blood” are,

of course, the wounds of Christ, whilst He hangs affixed to the Cross

as described in _V.’s_ second part. And the “Signore piovendo tutto

sangue,” and the “rivoli di sangue, sparso per amore, il che accese

nel cuore tanto fuoco,” of _V._, have, in _D._, become “quelle cinque

fontane di Christo, le quali mandavano goccie d’affuocato sangue e

di acceso amore.”--This fountain-imagery is derived from numerous

authentic sayings and “viste” of Catherine as to the “living Fount

(_fonte_) of the divine goodness,” or “of infinite love,” and “the

clear waters coming from the divine fount.” The very word “fountain”

(_fontana_) occurs in one of _V.’s_ descriptive passages; and the idea

appears in Catherine’s address to Our Lord at the well (_pozzo_) of

Samaria, and in her thereupon receiving refreshment of soul, by the

gift of “a little drop (_gocciola_)” of that divine water.[410] And the

fountains are here made to proceed from a ray of love; and this again

comes from numerous authentic sayings of hers: in one case the “raggio

d’amore” appears split up into several rays: “raggi … affocati di

divino amore.”[411]

5. _Three new authentic details._

And yet these remarkable forty pages furnish us with three fresh

statements or implications of detail, respectively too precise, vivid

and verisimilar and too little obvious, to be easily attributable to

any but a new and authentic source of information. There is the vividly

precise information that, during Catherine’s actively penitential

period, “the love of God, wishing that she should lose all relish in

what she ate, made her always carry some epatic aloes and pounded

agaric about with her; and whenever she suspected that one kind of

her food was about to give her more pleasure than another, she would

furtively put a little of that most bitter compound upon it, before

eating it.” There is the formal declaration that “she also went to the

poor of San Lazaro.” And there is the statement, already noticed, that,

after her conversion, she had “to work to provide for her living,” and

“that she would have been unable to live, unless God had provided for

her by way of alms.”[412]

Now the first statement should be compared with Battista Vernazza’s,

similarly precise, pharmaceutical detail as to the cassia used by her

father in doctoring the poor in 1493, recorded by Battista, nearly

ninety years later, in 1581:[413] Battista would, then, have been

quite capable of remembering and recording that aloes-and-agaric

detail some seventy years after the event. As to the second statement,

I have already given the various solid reasons which point to

Catherine’s co-operation with Battista’s father in his work amongst

the Pestiferous, as far back as the year 1493.[414] And as to the

third statement (in apparently direct conflict with the declaration

in the _Vita_-proper, that, although entirely devoted to the service

of the Hospital, she never would enjoy or use the slightest thing

belonging to it for her own living[415]) the Wills prove to us that,

however exaggerated be the language of _D._, it, and not _V._, is here

substantially in the right. For, though she could have afforded to

live in modest style, on her own little income, she did, as a matter

of fact, hold her little house rent-free from the Hospital, in return

for her services to it. Here also Battista would have known the precise

facts from her father, who had himself drawn up or witnessed three

documents referring to these matters.

6. _Battista Vernazza, the author of this first “Dialogo.”_

The reader will by now be concluding with me, that all these

peculiarities of the _Dialogo_ point to one person as its author:

Battista Vernazza. And all its other circumstances and characteristics

make for the same conclusion.

(1) _Particular circumstances._

There is the place. For the original of MS. C., in which appear the

first traces, (this whole first part), of _D._, came from Battista’s

own Convent; and thus a document which, in its later narrative part,

contained, as we shall find, so much primary matter due to Vernazza

the father, and so much secondary composition and arrangement due to

Vernazza the daughter; and which, in its dialogue part, gave much

original literary work due to a Vernazza: would easily (no doubt soon

after Battista’s death), come to be considered as the work and the

copying of Ettore Vernazza alone. And there is the date. For if this

first part was written in 1548, 1549, Battista would have been fifty

or fifty-two years old. And we have already considered writings of

hers, written, with equal subtlety of psychological distinctions and

even greater vigour of style, in 1554, 1555, and even in 1575, at

seventy-eight and eighty-four years of age.[416]

There is, too, the form, so curiously schematic and abstract, and,

in part, far-fetched, yet based upon a minute, most ingenious use

of scriptural texts. Thus those two “weeks,” (symbols for the two,

respectively lukewarm and sinful, lustres), are no doubt suggested

by the “seventy weeks” which “the man Gabriel” declares to Daniel

“shall be shortened upon the Jewish people, that transgression may

be finished, and everlasting justice may be brought and vision may

be fulfilled”;[417] and by Jacob’s twice seven years of servitude

under Laban, and by Laban’s words “make up the week of days of this

match.”[418] We thus get Catherine’s two weeks (of years) of servitude

to sin, and her two successive “matches” or alliances, entered into

between her soul and body under the influence of self-love. We found a

similar minute ingenuity in Battista’s use of Scripture in 1554.[419]

And there is a complex, abstract, astonishingly self-consistent

psychology running through the whole, and one simply identical with the

psychology treated by Battista as more or less a point of revelation to

herself in 1554. And, partly as effect or as cause of that psychology,

the _Dialogo_ has a painfully great, at times downrightly repulsive,

insistence upon detachment from emotional feeling, both in intercourse

with fellow-creatures, and in spiritual commerce with God, that is

simply identical, in its parallelism, range, depth, and doctrinal

setting, with the position which Battista takes up in her _Colloquii_

of 1554.[420]

Again we get here a prominent and persistent occupation with the

historic Christ and His passion, that are as unlike Catherine’s as

they are identical with Battista’s spiritual trend. For, during her

Conversion-Vision, Catherine here sees that “burning love which Our

Lord Jesus Christ manifested when upon earth, from His Incarnation up

to His Ascension”; and this corresponds precisely with Battista’s sight

(_vista_), in 1554, of “the Infinite Love manifested unto men, in

and by the life of Christ, at the Nativity and at the Ascension.” And

the Christ-Vision here becomes two separate apparitions; that of the

Crucified Christ is declared “greater than” that of the Walking Christ;

and there is an insistence upon “those five Fountains,” an image

derived indeed from Catherine’s “living fountain of Goodness, which

participated with the creature,” but which, in Catherine, is conceived

in connection with God and metaphysically, and here is transferred to

the historic and crucified Christ, in close keeping with Battista’s

whole emphatic Christo-centrism.[421]

And, finally, we find here certain daring anthropomorphisms without

any full parallel in Catherine’s sayings, but entirely matched by

expressions of Battista. God is here not as, in Catherine’s manner,

Himself an irradiating Love, but is “ever standing with burning rays

of love in His hand, to inflame and penetrate the hearts of men,” a

combination of the Thing-imagery dear to Catherine (for Love is here

still a luminous, burning substance), and of the human, Personal

picturing prominent with Battista (for God here has a hand, in which

He holds that substance). This latter picturing (probably in 1550) is

not unlike the more spiritual anthropomorphism of “the Increate Heart”

of God, used by Battista in 1575 a passage already exceeded here, in

the _Dialogo_, by the words, “God showed her the love with which He had

suffered”--words which, if pressed, would introduce suffering into the

divine nature Itself.[422]

(2) _General considerations._

All these cumulative reasons of detail will be indefinitely fortified

by what I shall have to say as to the character of the subsequent

parts of the _Dialogo_, and in proof of these parts and the first

instalment being by one and the same author. But, meanwhile, we can

press this further general consideration, that only a person with

considerable traditional authority in matters concerning Catherine, and

yet a person, not a direct eyewitness or full contemporary, hence an

individual without any additional information, and unhampered by the

(otherwise necessary) regard for the sensitiveness of still living

contributors to the original biography, can possibly have written such

a document. For this production, when it first appears complete, in

the first Printed _Vita_ of 1551, will there occupy quite one third

of the whole book; and yet, whilst incorporating practically all,

and only all, the material of those other two-thirds (the _Trattato_

alone excepted), it gives to everything a fresh grouping and setting,

colour and atmosphere, drift and character. Only a remarkable, powerful

mind; a writer skilled in mystical subjects; one with leisure for

such a careful composition; one, too, sufficiently in sympathy with

Catherine to be attracted to, and helped through, the difficult task;

a person living now, thirty-eight years after Catherine’s death, in

an environment of a kind to preserve her memory green: all these

conditions must, more or less, have met and been realized in the

writer of this curious, forcible book.--And Battista, the God-daughter

of the heroine of the work, and the eldest, devoted daughter of the

chief contributor to the already extant biography; a Contemplative

with a deep interest in, and much practical experience of, the kind of

spirituality to be portrayed and the sort of literature required; a

Nun, during thirty-eight years, in the very Convent where Catherine’s

sister (one of its foundresses) had lived and died, and where Catherine

herself had desired to live and where her Conversion had taken place;

a woman who was but thirteen at the time when Catherine died, after

nine years of much suffering and seclusion, and who, even now but

fifty-one years of age, had outlived all the close friends and original

chief biographers of Catherine by thirty-five, twenty-four, and twenty

years: Battista, and Battista alone, united in her own person all these

necessary conditions. And it will have been the sensitively original

and strongly synthetic cast of Battista’s mind which made the strangely

fragmentary, repetitive, contradictory, static, and yet abrupt and

unharmonized multiplicity of the _Vita_ both irritating as it stood,

and yet (with its considerable elements of unmistakably first-hand

portraiture of a rarely large and lofty mind and character) profoundly

stimulative to a re-thinking, re-feeling, re-stating of the whole,--at

least, up to the zenith of that Soul’s perfection.

But our next stage will make all this clearer still.

VI. SIXTH STAGE: FIRST PRINTED EDITION OF THE

“VITA-DOTTRINA-DICCHIARAZIONE,” 1551; EXAMINATION OF ALL IT POSSESSES

IN ADDITION TO MSS. A, B AND C, APART FROM THE “DIALOGO.”

At last we reach the publication of the _Life_, in Genoa, in

1551.[423] A printing-press had not been established in Genoa till

1536 (by Bellone); hence the _Life_ appeared only fifteen years

after the earliest date possible for its publication,--other cities

not being, as yet, sufficiently interested in Catherine to think of

such an undertaking.--Only further on shall I attempt some analysis,

estimation, and attribution of that _corpus_ of earlier and earliest

constituents of the Book, which, although frequently referred to at our

last two stages, had there to remain unanalyzed. In these remaining two

stages I intend to treat only, first of the Introductory parts of the

Book, special to its printed form, and then of the Second “Chapter” of

the _Dialogo_ (its present Second and Third Parts).

Here then we have to deal with the matter which, amongst our extant

documents, appears for the first time in the Printed _Vita_ of

1551, and first with that part of it which is there devoted to the

publication of the Book. This part of the matter consists, in the

order of its place in the Book, of the Title with its Picture; the

Approbation; the Preface; and the Subscription.

1. _Title-page._

The Title-page has: “Book of the Admirable Life and Holy Doctrine of

the Blessed Catarinetta of Genoa, in which is contained a Useful and

Catholic Demonstration and Declaration of Purgatory.” And underneath

appears a picture of Our Lord Crucified, and Blessed Catherine on her

knees before Him, and crowned with a Diadem; with the text: “I confess

to Thee, Father, Lord of Heaven and Earth, that Thou hast hid these

things from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them unto little

ones” (Matt. xi).

Note here, in the Title, the correct and most attractive baptismal

form of her Christian name, Catarinetta, which appears here for the

last time, either in the Title, the Heading, or the Subscription of

her _Life_; and the disappearance, which is final, of her family name

Adorna, which had figured in the titles of all the MSS. Thus “La

miranda vita e sancta conversation di Madonna Catherinetta Adorna,” the

older heading of MS. A, which will have been that of the Giustiniano

book (a heading which itself had succeeded to “De la Miranda

Conversione di quondam Donna Catherinetta Adorna” of the booklet of

1512, still preserved in MS. B), has here become “La vita mirabile e

dottrina santa de la Beata Catarinetta da Genoa.”--And note how, for

the first time, mention is made in the title of what has hitherto been

but a long Chapter of the _Vita_; and how what in the MSS. had, in that

Chapter’s heading, claimed but to be a matter of devotional experience

(“How, by comparison of the divine fire, which she felt in her heart

and which purified her soul, she saw interiorly and understood how

the Souls abide in Purgatory”), has here been given, some thirty

years after the Papal condemnation of Luther’s theses on Purgatory, a

controversial point,--it is now “a Useful and Catholic Demonstration

and Declaration of Purgatory.” We have here an attitude of mind

inevitably different from Catherine’s pure positiveness.--And remark,

too, the continued non-indication of the _Dialogo_, although this is

now present, like the “Dimostrazione,” as a distinct document in the

Book: the Dialogue is evidently still too new to be able to modify the

old title-page, and to appear there alongside of a composition which,

though but one-sixth of its own length, is now some thirty and more

years old.

In the Picture Catherine wears a diadem, a compromise between an

indication of her noble birth and a hint of the nimbus which they

shrink from giving to her unequivocally. And she is kneeling before the

Christ Crucified,--evidently an attitude chosen as specially typical

of her whole life and doctrine, because of the passages in the _Vita_:

“She ever seemed to see her Love affixed to the Cross”; “she was next

drawn to the side of the Crucified”; “she appeared in very truth as a

body affixed to a Cross,” with the dependent account of her “interior

stigmatization,”--“she received a new wound at her heart, so that she

might feel within herself the wound in the side of her tender Love”;

and the amplifications of some of these passages in the _Dialogo_.[424]

Yet only the first three passages occur in the MSS.; and the first

two are carefully restricted there to her first Conversion-Period

(of four years at most), whilst the third passage refers to a (quite

unusual) bodily posture, assumed by her on one single occasion during

her last illness, an attitude which remained uninterpreted by herself.

The fact is that the precise contrary of what this picture suggests is

one of the chief characteristics of Catherine, for she is habitually

absorbed in contemplations remarkably lacking in historical imagery and

setting. And the _Dialogo_ parallels and variants which, as we have

seen, so largely increase this historical element, and especially this

occupation with Christ Crucified, are characteristic, not of Catherine

but of Battista. The picture is, no doubt, the consequence of this

increasing emphasis laid, in her successive _Vitae_, upon a side of

religion all but entirely absent from the middle and last periods of

Catherine’s actual life; and fully expresses Battista’s feeling, who,

just as she addressed her whole long letter of 1575 in Donna Anguisola,

“in the Crucified,” will have seen to it that the whole book concerning

her own God-mother was placed at the feet of the Crucifix.

2. _The Approbation._

The Latin Approbation runs: “I, Fra Geronimo of Genoa of the Order of

Preachers, Apostolic Inquisitor into Heretical Pravity throughout the

whole Dominion of Genoa, assent to this Book being committed to print,

for the consolation and instruction of spiritual persons. Witness

this my autograph.” The points of interest in connection with this

Approbation will appear, as we proceed, to consist in the reasons why

such theological “corrections” as were actually introduced into the

doctrinal parts of the _Vitae_ had all been made long before this date,

probably none of them later than 1530; and why they were, throughout,

practically restricted to her very sober and correct Purgatorial

teaching, and left her other, far more daring, sayings more or less

untouched. I can find no traces of any theological changes introduced,

for this edition of 1551, into the _Vita-Dicchiarazione_ sections;

but we shall see how three points and tendencies of the _Vita_-proper

have been indirectly criticised and “corrected” by means of their

re-statement in the _Dialogo_, which was certainly finished, and

possibly begun, with a view to its appearance in the company of the

_Vita_ and the _Dicchiarazione_.

3. _The Preface._

The Preface consists of seven full and balanced, dignified and

self-restrained, thoroughly well-informed and yet, in part,

deliberately obscure and illusive, sentences. It still excludes the

idea of any literary authorship on the part of Catherine: “Madonna

Caterinetta, of whose admirable Conversion, Life, and Doctrine,

together with her many privileges and particular graces, we shall

write.… Here, in her Life and Holy Doctrine is to be found.…” Not

Catherine writes, but “we,” _i.e._ the final Redactor, or all the

Contributors together with him; and not her Writings are to be found

here, but her “Doctrine” only. Indeed, it all “has been collected with

truth and simplicity by two devout spiritual persons, from the very

lips of the Seraphic Woman herself.” More would quite evidently have

been claimed, if more had been true.

And it contains two or three evident additions to its original text,

made for this publication in view of the entire _Dialogo’s_ first

appearance here; additions which contain an expression which may well

have occasioned or helped on the legend of “Catherine, an Author,”

a legend which was sure to spring up at the first opportunity and

provocation. The fifth sentence reads at present as follows: “Sono in

questo libro [dignissimi suoi trattati dell’ amor di Dio e dell’ amor

proprio] una bellisima e chiarissima dimostrazione del Purgatorio, e

in che modo vi stiano dentro le anime contentissime, [e un bel dialogo

dell’ Anima con il Corpo e Amor poprio, dal quale ne seguita un amoroso

colloquio dell’ Anima con il suo Signore] ed altre dignissime cose da

sapere, veramente tutte di eccellentissima speculazione ed utilità [e

massime in questi turbolenti tempi necessarie].”[425]

Now even the last set of bracketed words seems an addition, and points

to the existence of the body of this Preface at a period prior to

“questi turbolenti tempi,” times that I take to be 1536-1537, when

Battista’s God-father Moro lapsed into Calvinism. Ever since 1520,

when Luther’s Purgatory doctrines were condemned, these writings

would have been held, if not “necessary,” at least “of most excellent

utility.”--There is, any way, no doubt as to the two previous sets

being insertions. For note, if they be retained, the slovenly

repetition, by the first set, of “dignissimi” in the midst of a most

finished composition; the extraordinary use of the word “Trattati,”

to signify either Chapter XXV (which bears the title “Dell’ Amor

Proprio e del Divino Amore,” and is a collection of sayings pronounced

on at least three different occasions), or Chapters XXV and XXVI,--in

either case, Chapters which are no more significant or authentic than

any other of the doctrinal chapters. And remark, in the second set,

the curiously mild praise for the _Dialogo_ contained in the one

positive “un bel,” wedged in between the two superlatives lavished on

the “Dimostrazione” and the two superlatives given to the remaining

doctrinal parts of the Book. The object of that first “Trattati”

insertion is evidently to pick out some one or other of the already

ancient Chapters of the _Vita_, which have some special likeness to the

subject-matter and title of the _Dialogo_, so as to prevent the latter

from looking too suspiciously different from the rest of the doctrine

traditionally ascribed to Catherine.

I take this Preface to have existed, without these additions, in the

“worthy book” described by Giustiniano in 1536. But as that careful

writer insists upon the precise length of time, because it had been

considerable, during which Catherine’s body had lain incorrupt, and

says nothing about the antiquity of the book, a point he would hardly

have failed to urge had he been able to do so, I hesitate to push this

Book, and this its Preface, further back than 1530, a very probable

date for the first (at least complete) fusion of Vernazza’s and

Marabotto’s separate contributions, since these two chief disciples

would then have been dead six and two years respectively, and the

culmination of Protestant “turbulence” in Calvin’s open revolt and

Moro’s defection would not be taking place for another five and

six years respectively.--Catherine indeed appears here no more as

the “quondam Donna Catarinetta” of MS. B, but still as “Madonna

Catherinetta, figliuola di M. Giacomo della nobilissima casa Fiesca,

maritata a M. Giuliano Adorno,” a designation distinctly earlier

than the “Beata Catarinetta di Genoa” of the Title. And the Book,

its substance, is declared to have been “collected by two spiritual

persons (_Religiosi_), her devotees, from the very lips of the Seraphic

Woman herself.” This passage, it is true, now reads “Raccolto dai

divoti religiosi (suo Confessore e un figliuolo suo spirituale).” But,

where the Preface is above the suspicion of having been touched up, a

“cioê” introduces such a bracket; the rhythm of this sentence, in the

midst of this otherwise exquisite Preface, is woefully imperfect; and

the evidently deliberate ambiguity of “divoti religiosi” is rendered

all but nugatory by the considerable clearness of the bracketed

information. The clause will originally have read, “Da due religiosi

sui divoti,” for this obviates all three objections. But, in this

deliberately mysterious form, it must have been written when both were

dead, and yet when the death of the last was still recent; and this

again brings us to a date soon after Marabotto’s death in 1528.

Who wrote this Preface? Much in it points to Battista. So the use

of “cioè,” so characteristic of her _Colloquies_ and _Letters_ and

also of the _Dialogo_; and the phrase “divote persone,” recurring

in the _Dialogo_;[426] and the doctrinal tone of “l’amoroso Signor

Nostro, sitibondo della salute delle sue razionali creature,” “il suo

consolatorio spirito,” “la perfetta e consummata unione possibile ai

viatori,” and “quasi non più fide, ma già certezza,” all closely like

passages in her _Colloquies_ and in her Letter to Donna Anguisola.

The mysteriousness and equality of designation, applied to both

Ettore and Don Cattaneo, would come with a special naturalness from

Battista, spontaneously anxious to place her heroic father’s sanctity

and intimacy with Catherine on a level with those of Catherine’s

priest-friend and Confessor Marabotto. And, if written in 1530,

Battista would at the time have been a formed writer,--a woman of

thirty-three years of age.--There are, no doubt, certain differences.

The _Dialogo_ nowhere has such an “ancorchè … niente (non) dimeno”

clause. “Un Serafino,” “essa Serafica Donna” of this Preface, are,

in strictness, unmatched in Battista’s, otherwise even intenser,

writings. “La perfetta e consummata unione possibile ai viatori” is

a more ordinary and technical phrase than I can find elsewhere in

Battista’s writings. Above all, the general style and rhythm is here,

somehow, a little different from that of those other writings.--Still,

these differences are explicable by the writer of the Preface finding

himself largely bound by the existing _Vita_-materials, and by their

very niceties of expression. The Author of the Preface is certainly

identical with the Redactor of the first (tripartite) _Vita e

Dottrina_; and this Redactor, we shall find, must be Battista. The

insertions in the Preface, containing the praise of the _Dialogo_,

are certainly the work of another hand.--Upon the whole, then, we

can safely attribute the Preface, in its original form, to Battista

Vernazza.

4. _The Subscription._

The subscription to the _Vita_-proper, in this first Edition, runs:

“Here ends the life of the noble Matron, Catarinetta Adorna”; which

thus still retains (like the Preface, but against the Title) the warmly

human and precise, domestic and familiar designation of the first

heading of MS. A.

VII. SEVENTH STAGE: THE SECOND “CHAPTER” OF THE “DIALOGO,” WHICH

APPEARS FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THE PRINTED “VITA,” 1551.

1. _Three remarks concerning the two Parts of this “Chapter.”_

(1) The additions to the _Dialogo_ which appear here for the first

time, and which amount to its present Parts Second and Third, are given

in this First Edition as one single, the Second, “Chapter,” following

upon the older part here designated “Chapter First.” In the Fourth

Edition, 1601, this division of the _Dialogo_ is formally announced on

the Title-page: “With a Dialogue, divided into two Chapters, between

the Soul, the Body, and Self Love; and (the Soul and) the Lord.” I

do not know precisely when those two “Chapters” were replaced by the

present Three Parts, and when these Parts were divided up into the

present Chapters; it was, in any case, after the sixth edition (1645).

(2) These last two Parts seem to have been written, from the first,

with a view to eventual division into two. For though the whole of this

Second Chapter is not much longer than the First Chapter (forty-seven

and a half pages, against forty), it yet divides up very well at about

half-way, since the first half here ends with a piece of moralizing

narrative, applied to the whole earthly existence: “The more valiant

a man is at the beginning, the greater martyrdom should he expect at

the end … nor does God cease to make provision … up to that Man’s

death.”[427]

(3) This whole “Chapter” Second is by the same author as “Chapter”

First; in this Second, even more than in that First “Chapter,” there

are no historical materials other than those still present, more or

less untouched, in the _Vita_-proper; and yet these materials have

again been modified, in their sequence and setting, their tone and

pitch, their drift and meaning, and all this throughout by the same

powerful and experienced, often deep and touching, but also, in great

part, painfully abstract and straining, absolute-minded and excessive

writer.

2. _General indications of identity of authorship for “Chapters” First

and Second._

(1) “Chapter” First had, we know, concluded with a paraphrase of the

last stage in the scheme of Catherine’s spiritual growth as given

in the _Vita_-proper, and had thus reached the _ne plus ultra_ of

perfection for any creature, either here or in the world to come.

“And now the Spirit said: ‘I am determined no further to call her

a human creature, since I now see her (to be) all in God, without

any Humanity’”: a statement which may well (like the corresponding

Spiritual-Kiss stage in the _Vita’s_ scheme)[428] have been intended,

at the time of its composition, both to describe directly her great

middle years, 1474-1499, and to sum up generally her later life,

1499-1510.--But no such hyperbolic language, when thus applied to man

as we know him, or as we can even conceive him here below, can, of

course, be kept up. And thus here in the _Dialogo_ (as previously in

the corresponding place in the _Vita_-proper), what had originally been

the conclusion of a self-contained account of her Conversion, became,

owing to the desire of utilizing much extant material which directly

described her years of physical break-up, but one chapter in the story

of her total life. Hence we now find, both in the _Vita_-proper and the

_Dialogo_, an instructive anti-climax, in an attempted description (the

_Dialogo_ gives this in its “Chapter” Second) of her successive states

from 1497 to her death in 1510, states and changes which, were we to

take the concluding words of the _Vita_-scheme and of the _Dialogo’s_

“Chapter” First at all strictly, would, in great part, be impossible.

(2) In the _Dialogo’s_ First “Chapter” we found a remarkably free,

deliberately pragmatic handling of the _Vita_-materials, in the making

two different visions on two separate occasions (the Vision of the

blood-stained Moving Christ, and the Vision of the blood-pouring

Fixed Christ) out of the one, curiously composite, Moving-Fixed

Christ-Vision of the _Vita_; and this doubling introduced, into that

First Part, a special kind of obscurity, a sort of eddying, circular,

repetitive movement and practical fixedness. Similarly we find here,

in the Second “Chapter,” the one description of her resumption of

Confession, given by the _Vita_-proper, is made into two accounts,

accounts still further separated from each other here than the two

visions were separated from each other there. For the first ten and a

half Chapters, pages 226_b_ to 242_b_, give us her history from 1497

to 1501. And, amongst these, Chapter First to Third cover the years

1497 to 1499; and at the end of Chapter Third, page 232_b_, we get

an account of how “she began to confess her sins” (necessarily, at

this period, to Marabotto) “with such Contrition, that it appeared a

marvellous thing”--a description which has been taken from the story

of her First Conversion-Period, but which is made to do duty here, at

the date of her beginning to confess, in a very different manner, to

Don Marabotto, twenty-five years after those Conversion-Confessions.

Yet only at the beginning of the second half of Chapter Tenth (p.

242_c_) do we hear, (wedged in between two passages, pp. 242_b_,

243_b_, which are re-castings of descriptions of a scene which occurred

on January 10, 1510, _Vita_, pp. 139_a_-140_c_) of God giving her

the help of a “Religioso,” “suo Confessore,” _i.e._ Marabotto (p.

242_c_). This is followed, not two pages later on (p. 244_b_), by a

description of the experience of the “Scintilla” on August 11, 1510

(_Vita_, p. 148_b_), and by an allusion to her death on September 15,

1510 (p. 245_c_).--This doubling was no doubt effected for the purpose

of introducing as much variety as possible into what is, anyhow, a

monotonous narrative; of being thus able to produce a more ordinary

and “correct” account of her dispositions and acts, on occasion of

the resumption of her Confessions in 1499, than could be given by the

direct utilization of Marabotto’s description of them; and of thus,

by these two narratives in lieu of that single one, giving greater

place and prominence to the practice of Confession than this practice

actually occupied in her real life.

3. _Closer examination of the earlier portion of “Chapter” Second._

A closer examination of the whole Second “Chapter” of the _Dialogo_

fully substantiates this conclusion, and brings out other interesting

points. Let us take the eleven Chapters of the present Part Second.

(1) The first two Chapters describe her condition when “the Soul

could no more correspond to the sensations of the Body,--the Body

remained, as it were, without its natural being, and dwelt confused and

stunned, without knowing where it was or what it should do or say” (pp.

226_c_, 227_a_). And then the Soul begins to address “the Lord” (p.

229_a_). And on p. 230_b_ we hear, for the first time, of its “sweet

and cruel Purgatory.” And Chapter Third tells of the Soul’s painful

prison-life, and of vomitings, emaciation, and occasional inability

to move (pp. 230_b_-232_a_).--Now Purgatory, prison-house and these

psycho-physical conditions do not appear, in the _Vita_-proper, till

“nine years before her death,” and, indeed, in great part only within

the last year of her life.[429] Indeed it is only the characteristic

intensity with which the _Dialogo_ here describes the fresh access of

Contrition, and the resumption of frequent Confession for evidently new

offences (a description entirely inappropriate to this late stage of

her life), that makes it difficult to realize that these three Chapters

are dealing with 1497 to 1499. And the exaggeration here exactly

corresponds to the exaggeration, in Part (“Chapter”) First, of her

earlier sinfulness, and her first Conversion and Contrition.

(2) Chapter Fourth then gives a short description of another “ray of

love”; and then apostrophizes, in seven “oh” and “che” sentences,

such a state of soul (pp. 232_c_-233_c_). Chapter Fifth contains one

question and answer exchanged between the Soul and the Lord, and then

three narrative-exclamatory paragraphs (pp. 233_c_-235_a_). Chapter

Sixth gives two explanations by the Lord of the Soul’s sufferings,

interrupted by the Soul’s thanks and acceptance (pp. 235_b_-237_a_).

And then Chapter Seventh describes a lull in the Soul’s battles and

trials (pp. 237_a_-238_a_). And this lull is followed, in Chapter

Eighth, by a declaration from the Lord that she has now been led up to

the door of Love but has not yet entered in (pp. 238_a_-239_a_); and,

in Chapter Ninth, by a dialogue (for the first time in the entire work)

between the Spirit and the Soul, the former being now determined to

separate itself from the latter; and, at the end of this same Chapter,

by a description of this, now more or less achieved, separation (pp.

239_a_-241_a_; 241_b_).--These conflicts and dialogues between the

Spirit and the Soul, are closely like the conflicts and dialogues

between the Spirit and “Humanity” in Part First.[430] Yet there, the

historical materials are derived chiefly from the _Vita_-proper, pp.

20_a_-21_b_, 96_b_-97_c_ (which give an account of her work from 1473

to 1497); whilst here they come exclusively from pp. 133_b_-138_b_ of

the _Vita_-proper (which tell her experiences from November 11 to the

end of December 1509).

(3) And the last two Chapters, Tenth and Eleventh, are particularly

difficult and self-destructive, obscure and disappointing. The Tenth

(to be fully analyzed presently), is difficult, because it starts

with fragments of _Vita_-information which, in the _Vita_, rightly

refer, in large part, to the beginning of the last ten years of her

life, and even to 1499 in particular,--hence to a period long anterior

to all that has been described in the _Dialogo_ ever since Chapter

Third of this Part. And these fragments are here made to lead up

to a re-statement of the scene of January 10, 1510, when she shut

herself off from every one, but when Marabotto managed to overhear her

soliloquy (pp. 241_c_-244_a_ compared with pp. 139_b_, 113_c_.) And the

Eleventh Chapter is obscure and disappointing, because, after giving

the “scintilla”-incident of August 11, 1510, and a final short dialogue

between the “Lord” and her “Humanity” (again a combination of _Dramatis

Personae_ which has occurred nowhere else), it finishes, not with any

description or even affirmation of her earthly end, but simply with an

account as to the necessity of Purgation, and, in particular, with the

words “a martyrdom which never ceases until death” (pp. 244_a_-245_c_).

4. _Closer examination of later portion of “Chapter” Second._

Part Third, on the contrary, is peculiar in this, that its Dialogue

passes exclusively between but two interlocutors, the Soul and the

Lord: it thus brings back the whole composition to its opening form of

strict duologue,--although there the speakers had been the (unpurified)

Soul and the Body. The present thirteen Chapters constitute, in

substance, a single, all but unbroken, disquisition on God’s love for

the Soul, and on the Soul’s growth in the love of God; although the

form alternates between Chapters of questions and answers, and Chapters

of rapturous descriptions and apostrophizings of Love.

(1) Chapters First and Second consist of such questions and answers,

and conclude with an, abruptly introduced, account of her former

spiritual conversations with her friends, which (though based upon the

beautiful document in the _Vita_-proper, pp. 94_b_-95_c_, and upon

the fragment there, p. 97_b_, and though the narrative here has a

certain noble warmth of its own) is given here merely as a something

to be transcended, and which, by now, had been actually left far

behind. Thus, as in Parts First and Second the _Dialogo_ had given a

characteristically rigoristic, indeed exaggerating, account of her

Conversation and her later Purification respectively, so here again

this curious book is more severe than are the authentic accounts on

which it otherwise relies.

(2) Chapter Third gives a question and answer as to the

comprehensibility of this love. The answer incorporates Catherine’s

description of her soul as, so to speak, under water in an ocean of

peace; and interestingly turns the “scintilla,” the “spark of love,”

into a “stilla,” a “drop,” suggested, no doubt, by the “goccia,” “the

drop of love,” which figured so prominently in Catherine’s great

conversation with her spiritual children.[431]--Chapters Fourth to

Sixth open out with a page where the Lord declares how the pure and

love-absorbed Soul alone holds Love (p. 253); and consist, for the

rest, of exclamatory descriptions of this love, the soul proffering

first ten “O Amore” apostrophes (pp. 253_c_-258_b_), then one “O Amore

puro” address (pp. 259_c_, 260_a_). And the tenth of those apostrophes

introduces a characteristic sentence from the _Vita_-proper: “the

Soul,--if bereft of charity,--when it is separated from the Body,

would, rather than present itself thus before that (Divine) cleanness

and simplicity, cast itself into Hell.”[432]--And Chapter Seventh then

makes the Lord ask the Soul to tell him some of the words which it

addresses to Love; the Soul does so, and the Lord approves of them (pp.

260_b_-261_b_).

(3) And then Chapter Eighth begins a narrative piece (pp.

261_c_-263_c_); but which, after a transitional, exclamatory paragraph

(p. 263_c_), arrives at three short questions and answers. The first

two questions and answers are by the Soul and the Lord respectively;

the third question and answer are respectively by the Lord and the Soul

(pp. 264_a_, _b_). We shall presently see that, in this set of short

sentences, we have reached the culmination of the whole _Dialogo_, and

that, in astonishingly explicit daring, they exceed any and all of

Catherine’s authentic sayings.

(4) Chapter Ninth then gives a narrative description of the apparently

empty and abandoned condition of the advanced Soul, and, for this

purpose carefully utilizes (whilst completely altering the meaning and

context of) Marabotto’s description of Catherine’s first Confession to

him. And in its last paragraph it again (but here with less change)

incorporates other passages of that descriptive Chapter.[433] Then

comes Chapter Tenth, with a short question and answer between the

Lord and the Soul, the latter partly in verse (p. 267_a_). And this

is followed by two descriptive paragraphs, how that this soul “seemed

to mount above Paradise itself”; “this heart is transformed into a

tabernacle of God”; and “such souls, were they but known, would be

adored upon earth” (pp. 267_b_, _c_; 268_a_).

(5) This description is followed by a long rapturous suspension of the

dialogue form, since here the Writer himself addresses successively,

in three “O” paragraphs, the “soul, heart, and mind”; “Love”; and “the

Spirit naked and invisible.” And, after a little exclamation as to

the inadequacy of all words (this also is introduced by an “O”), he

similarly invokes (in three other “O” paragraphs), “my tender Lord”;

the “infinite Good”; and “the Lord” (pp. 268_b_-269_c_).--The present,

most unskilful, division makes Chapter Eleventh begin with these last

three of the seven “O’s.” And after the seventh “O” paragraph and a

descriptive passage, still addressed to “the Lord,” composed of five

“Thou” sentences, follows another short interruption,--apologizing

for the delay in the narrative and the inadequacy of the words used.

And then two “Oimè,” and one “O terra, terra” paragraph finish up

the Writer’s exclamations, and bring us back to the interrupted

dialogue-form (pp. 269_c_-271_b_). Here again a violent division has

been effected in the text by Chapter Twelfth being made to exclude the

first, but to include, the second “Oimè” (p. 271_a_). And this Chapter,

after finishing the “Terra-terra” paragraph, and, with it, the whole

digression, re-opens the dialogue with a curious, serpentine, all

but unbroken series of seven questions of the Soul and answers of the

Lord, in which each successive question picks up the previous answer

and point reached, and tries to reach a deeper one. “What is Thine

Operation within man? A Moving of the heart of man. And this Movement?

A Grace. And this Grace? A Ray of Love. And this Ray of Love? An Arrow.

And this Arrow? A Glimpse (Scintilla) of love. And this Glimpse? An

Inspiration.” And at this point, description is declared to be unable

to proceed further (pp. 271_b_-272_c_.)

(6) And then Chapter Thirteenth finishes up the whole by two questions

and descriptive answers. The first question and answer passes between

the Writer’s own mind and his heart, and thus again constitutes a break

in the dialogue; and the second question and answer occurs between the

Lord and the Soul. The first answer dwells upon personal experience,

as the sole means of some real apprehension of Love; and the second

answer concludes the whole book with a majestic paraphrase of

Catherine’s doctrine as to the immanental, inevitable, self-determined,

and self-endorsed character of the Soul’s joys and sufferings, here

and hereafter, on Earth, in Purgatory, indeed in Hell itself (pp.

273_a_-275_a_). Such passages as these make up for much of the often

painfully intense, abstract, schematic, rigoristic, and too exclusively

transcendental character of this remarkable book, and explain its

fascination for a mind of such rare experience and breadth as was that

of Friedrich Schlegel. I shall presently group together the finest

sayings peculiar to the work.

VIII. SEVENTH STAGE CONTINUED: MINUTE ANALYSIS OF ONE PASSAGE FROM THE

SECOND “CHAPTER.”

But I must still give for this last “Chapter,” as I did for the First

“Chapter,” a synoptic demonstration, by means of one example among

many, of the strange manner in which the _Dialogo_-writer combines the

most detailed dependence on the materials of the _Vita_-proper with the

most sovereign independence concerning the chronology, context, and

drift of those same materials.--And again I choose an originally unique

occurrence and description, so as to eliminate all possibility of an

explanation by an original multiplicity of facts and accounts.

_Catherine as “Garzonzello” or “Figliuolino.”_

_Dialogo_ (_Vita_), p. _Vita_-proper, pp.--

266_a_, _b_, _c_.

Il corpo, essendo costretto 117_b_. Non potendosi

seguire l’anima, resta per quel sopportare, per non aver più

tempo quasi senz’ anima, operazione nè sentimenti dell’

senza umano conforto, anima, col corpo tutto debole.…

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

aiutare. sia.”

Però è di bisogno che dagli 127_a_. Quali la servivano

altri sia aiutato, ovvero restavano stupefatti, non sapendo

occultamente da Dio gli sia che farle.

provveduto, altrimenti restarebbe 120_a_. … provveduto tal

quella creatura abbandonata bisogno, a lui non restava di

essa provisione memoria

alcuna.

121_a_. Perseverò molti anni

con bisogno che il Confessore

le stasse d’ appresso, per

sostentare l’umanità.

117_c_. Dei peccati che diceva

non le erano lasciato vedere

come peccati che avesse …

come un figliuolino, il quale, fatti, ma come d’un garzonzello,

non avendo i suoi bisogni, il quale da giovinetto fà

altro riparo non ha se non di qualche cosa di cui è ignorante,

piangere tanto che gli sieno il quale, essendogli

dati. detto “tu hai fatto male” per

questa parola muta subito di

colore e diventa rosso, ma non

già perchè conosce il male.

Non è dunque meraviglia, 119_c_. “Non posso più sopportare

se a simili creature Iddio tanti assedi esteriori

provvede di particolari persone ed interiori; per questo mi

che le aiutino, e per ha Iddio provveduto del

mezzo loro sia alle necessità vostro mezzo … quando da

dell’ anima e del’ corpo sovvenuto, mè siete partito, vò lamentadomi

altrimenti non potriano per la casa.”

vivere.

120_a_. era di bisogno che il

Confessore non si partisse da

lei.… Dio, sempre glieli

Vedi come il nostro Signor dava … tutti i sussidi all

Gesù Christo lasciò _a_ San anima e al corpo … per

Giovanni [al]la sua diletta mezzo di lui, al quale in quell’

Madre in particolar cura; e instante provedeva di lume

così fece ai suoi discepoli e fà e di parole convenienti alla di

sempre all’ altre sue divote lei necessità.

persone; di modo che l’uno 121_b_. Questa tutto divina

soccorre l’altro, così all’anima … operazione. Il Confessore

come al corpo, con quella era legato col vincolo del

unione divina. divino amore.

E perchè in generale le 117_b_. Dio gli diede lume e

persone non conoscono queste grazia di consoscere quell’

operazioni, nè hanno insieme operazione.

quella unione, perciò a simili 120_b_. E perchè quella continua

cure bisognano particolari persone, conversazione e stretta

colle quali Iddio operi famigliarità facevano alcuni

colla sua grazia e lume. mormorare, non intendendo

l’opera e la necessità.…

Chi vide queste creature e 117_b_. … col corpo tutto

non le intende, gli sono più senza vigore, quasi derelitto

presto d’ ammirazione che in se medesimo.

di edificazione, dunque non

giudicare, se non vuoi errare

… resta l’umanità senza

vigore ed abandonata quasi

come morta.

The _Dialogo_-writer having, as we saw, combined, for the purpose

of describing Catherine’s latter-day habits, _V.’s_ account of her

unusually peaceful dispositions of soul, obtaining in 1499, with

_V.’s_ account of her Penance and Confessions in 1473: now utilizes

here Marabotto’s account of her Confessions to him from 1499 onwards

(an account which the writer had rejected there), for an entirely

different purpose and context than those developed by the Confessor

himself. For, in the _Vita_-proper account, it is in connection with

the Confession of her sins that we get the highly original and curious

“garzonzello” parallel; and Catherine’s lamentations do not there occur

in any relation to this parallel, but they arise only when Marabotto is

not at hand to comfort her. In the _Dialogo_-version it is simply in

relation to this requirement of his presence and to its postponement,

that Catherine behaves like a “figliuolino,” and cries till she gets

what she wants. And yet there is not the slightest doubt that it is

really the “Garzonzello” Confession-passage which (left unutilized by

the writer in his account of the Contrition and Confessions of her

last period, _Dialogo_, pp. 231_c_-232_b_, no doubt because of the

difficulty and apparent temerity of the facts and doctrines implied),

has here been used after all, but with all its originality and daring

carefully eliminated from it. For nowhere else, in the _Vita_-proper,

does a “Garzonzello”-passage or language, or anything like them, occur;

nowhere else again, in the _Dialogo_ does a “figliuolino”-passage or

wording, or anything really resembling them, appear; and these two,

respectively unique and very peculiar, passages, both occur at one and

the same stage of her life, and in connection with one and the same

couple of persons.

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

“CHAPTER.”

Let us take these two points simultaneously, and move, from the more

formal and literary qualities, through indications of the more or less

external life-circumstances of the author, on to the writer’s special

views and aims in psychology and spirituality.

1. _The writer’s power._

The following passages, all more or less peculiar to the _Dialogo_,

suffice, I think, to prove his power.

At the beginning of these, her last nine years, the Lord explains to

Catherine the means by which Love may be known: “My love can be better

known by means of interior experience than in any other way; if man

is to acquire it, Love must snatch man from man himself, since it is

man himself who is his own chief impediment,”[434]--a passage that

recalls Thackeray’s _Arthur Pendennis, his Friends and his Greatest

Enemy_--namely, his own self.

These years are, a little later, described in language no doubt

suggested, probably through some Patristic passage, by Plato, the

harmonious. “This soul now abode like a musical instrument which, as

long as it remains furnished with chords, gives forth sweet sounds;

but which, bereft of them, is silent. Thus she too, in the past, by

means of the sentiments of soul and body, was wont to render so sweet a

harmony, that every one who heard it rejoiced in it; but now, alienated

from those sentiments, as it were without” psychic “chords, she

remained entirely bare and mute.”[435]

And we are told of “words which the heart alone speaks to the soul

alone”[436]--a passage which recalls Pascal’s saying, “The heart has

reasons which Reason does not know.”

Amongst the rapturous addresses we find, “O Spirit naked and invisible!

No man can hold thee (here below), because of thy very nakedness! Thy

dwelling-place is in Heaven, even whilst, joined to the body, thou

happenest still to tarry upon earth! Thou dost not know thine own self,

nor art thou known by others in this world. All thy friends and (true)

relatives are in Heaven, recognized by thee alone, through an interior

instinct infused by the Spirit of God.”[437] An apostrophe which, in

part, strongly recalls Henry Vaughan’s poem, “They are all gone into a

world of light, and I alone am lingering here.”

The final address in this series of apostrophes to Love, God, contains

the sentences: “O Lord, how great is Thy loving care, both by day and

by night, for man who knows not even his own self, and far less Thee,

O Lord. Thou art that great and high God, of whom we cannot speak or

think, because of the ineffable super-eminence of Thy Greatness, Power,

Wisdom, and Goodness infinite. Thou labourest in man and for man with

Thy Love, and in return Thou willest that the whole man should act for

Love, and this because, without Love, nothing good can be produced.

Thou workest solely for man’s true utility; and Thou willest that man

should operate solely for Thine honour, and not for his own (separate)

utility.”[438] A passage strongly coloured by Dionysian ideas.

And yet the writer continues to think and to write, but says: “These

words of mine are like ink: for ink is black and of an evil odour; and

yet, by its means, many ideas are apprehended, which otherwise would be

ignored altogether.”[439] Here we have an image, based as it is upon a

vivid sensible perception of a chemical compound, which reminds one of

the epatic-agaric passage in “Chapter” First of the _Dialogo_, and of

the reference to cassia in Battista’s letter of 1581.[440]

And the whole Book finishes up with two impressive passages. The

first, as to the means of knowing Love, is as Pauline as is most of

the remaining doctrine of the _Dialogo_: “Not by means of external

signs, nor even by martyrdoms, can this love be comprehended. Only he

who actually experiences it can understand something of it.”[441] And

the second concludes all with a forcible and comprehensive paraphrase

of Catherine’s central doctrine,--as to the Soul’s condition and

action, revealed at the moment of death: “Every man bears within his

own self the sentence of his own judgment, pronounced indeed by God,

yet each man himself ratifies it, in and for his own case and self.

There is no place totally bereft of God’s mercy. The very souls in Hell

itself would suffer a greater Hell outside of it than they do within

it.”[442]--We have had repeated proofs of how great were Battista’s

gifts and experience in such-like eloquent writing, from the earlier

_Dialogo_-Chapter, and from her _Colloquies_ and _Letters_.

2. _Indications of special knowledge._

I am compelled to pass over the emotional rhythm, and the mystical

ambiguity and paradox, that appear, in identical forms, in Battista’s

avowed writings and here. But we must briefly dwell upon some special

sources of interest in Catherine, and of certain knowledge of a

peculiar kind, traceable in the writer of this second “Chapter”; both

sets of passages clearly point to Battista as their author.

(1) There is the deeply-felt description of Catherine’s conversation

with her disciples: “This soul would many times abide with her

spiritual friends, discoursing of the Divine Love, in suchwise that

it appeared to them all as though they were in Paradise. And indeed,

what delightful colloquies took place! Both he who spoke and he who

listened, one and all would get nourished by spiritual food, of a

sweet and delectable kind. And, because the time sped so quickly,

they could not attain to satiety; but they would abide so enkindled

and inflamed, that they knew not what more to say. And yet they could

not depart, and would seem as though in an ecstasy. Oh! what loving

repasts, what delightful food, what sweet viands, what a gracious

union, what a divine companionship!”[443]--Now it is true that the

writer has here certainly utilized four pregnantly descriptive lines in

the _Vita_-proper, and the fine account there, undoubtedly by Ettore

Vernazza, as regards these conversations.[444] Yet one readily feels,

at the moved and moving tone of the re-telling here, that the writer

was specially impelled to dwell with a tender, living sympathy upon

those meetings of forty years ago. Now Battista must, of course, again

and again, have heard from her Father’s own lips, during those fourteen

years that he lived on after Catherine’s great soul had gone to God, of

these unforgettable talks, in which he himself had played so large a

part, as questioner, interpreter, and chronicler.

(2) And the other set of passages points, even more definitely, to the

same daughter and father. Catherine’s “humanity,” being threatened by

the Spirit with various future sufferings, asks to be told the precise

offence, charge (_la causa_), which will bring so great a martyrdom

with it, without hope of any help. But “she was answered that this

grace,” of knowing exactly what and why she should suffer, “would be

accorded to her in due time, as happens with men condemned to death,

who, by hearing read aloud to them the precise sentence pronounced

upon their specific misdeeds, support with a greater peace of mind

their ignominious death.”--And: “Since I am forsaken on all sides,”

Catherine says to God, “give me at least, O Lord, some person that

may be able to understand and comfort me, amidst the torments that I

see coming upon me--as men are wont to do for those who are condemned

to death, so that the latter may not despair.”--And the natural man

in such advanced souls is described as suspended in mid-air, “like

unto one who is hung, and who touches not the ground with his feet,

but abides in the air, attached to the cord which has caused his

death.”[445] Ettore’s life-long, detailed interest in, and experience

of, prisoners and condemned men, whom he, the Founder of the Society

of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, so loved to attend and help

throughout their last night and at the scaffold, speak here through

the devoted daughter who, countless times, must have listened to that

father’s prison-experiences, which we found her describing, still

most vividly, in 1581, thirty years after the publication of these

_Dialogo_-passages.[446]

3. _Schematic, intensely abstract psychology._

At this spiritual stage “there was, as it were, a chain. God, Spirit,

draws to Himself the Spirit of man, and there this Spirit abides

completely occupied. The Soul, which cannot abide without the Spirit,

follows the Spirit, and is there kept occupied. And the Body, which

is subject to the Soul, thus prevented from possessing its natural

sensations and its natural sustenance, remains, as it were, forsaken

and outside of its natural being.”--“God at times allowed the Spirit

to correspond with the Soul, and the Soul with the Body.… But when God

withdrew that Spirit into Himself, all the rest (the Soul) followed

after it; and hence the Body remained like dead.” The two dividings,

first of the Soul from the Body, and then of the Soul from the Spirit,

so much emphasized in those other documents,[447] is thus carried

through in this “Chapter” also.

4. _Rigorism._

We find here the same exaggeration as to Catherine’s faults and

contrition, and the same rigoristic doctrine as in “Chapter” First,

although, here also, counterbalanced by a noble tenderness of heart.

Thus her but semi-conscious attachment to, and self-attribution of,

spiritual consolations, is here magnified into a grave sin. “How can I

act, so as to make satisfaction for this sin, which is so great and so

subtle?” her soul asks God, concerning but semi-conscious attachment

to spiritual consolations. And of her social affections, as manifested

in her great colloquies with her friends, Catherine now says, “All

other loves” than the direct love of God “now appear to me as worse

than sheer self-loves.”--“She began to confess her sins with so great

a contrition that it appeared a wonderful thing,” we are told of

Catherine, in 1499-1510; yet we know, from the unimpeachable testimony

of Don Marabotto himself, that “the wonderful thing” about these latter

Confessions was precisely the absence of that former keen sense of, and

sorrow for, specific sins.[448]

5. _Pronounced Christo-centrism and daring Anthropomorphism._

We get, again, the predominance of the Personal conceptions and

imagery over those of Thing or Law, and the same greater attention

to the historical element of religion, that characterize Battista’s

writings and “Chapter First” of the _Dialogo_, as against Catherine’s

authentic sayings.