CHAPTER I

[Frontispiece: ST. RITA RECEIVES HER MIRACULOUS WOUND]

LIFE OF ST. RITA

OF CASCIA, O.S.A.

from the Italian

BY

VERY REV. RICHARD CONNOLLY

O.S.A., D.D.

R. & T. WASHBOURNE

4 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON

BENZIGER BROS.: NEW YORK, CINCINNATI AND CHICAGO

1903

Nihil Obstat:

FR. JOANNES L. CONDON, O.S.A.,

CENS. DEPUTATUS.

PERMISSION TO PUBLISH

We approve of the publication of the 'Life of

St. Rita of Cascia,' from the Italian, by the

Very Rev. Fr. Richard Connolly, O.S.A., D.D.

FR. W. O'SULLIVAN, O.S.A.,

VICAR PROVINCIAL.

CORK, _Feast of St. Patrick_, 1903.

Imprimatur:

HERBERTUS CARDINALIS VAUGHAN,

ARCHIEPISCOPUS WESTMONASTERIENSIS.

CONTENTS

PART I

RITA IN THE WORLD

CHAPTER

I. CASCIA: A GLANCE AT ITS HISTORY

II. RITA'S PARENTS

III. RITA'S WONDERFUL CONCEPTION

IV. RITA'S BIRTH

V. THE WHITE BEES OF ST. RITA

VI. RITA'S CHILDHOOD

VII. RITA'S LOVE OF RETIREMENT

VIII. RITA'S MARRIAGE

IX. RITA AS WIFE

X. DEATH OF RITA'S HUSBAND AND CHILDREN--RITA AS WIDOW

PART II

RITA IN THE CLOISTER

I. RITA'S MIRACULOUS ENTRY INTO THE CLOISTER AND HER RECEPTION

II. RITA AS NOVICE--HER PROFESSION

III. RITA'S CHARITY

IV. OTHER VIRTUES WHICH RITA PRACTISED IN THE CLOISTER

V. RITA'S OBSERVANCE OF THE RELIGIOUS VOWS

VI. RITA'S PENANCES

VII. RITA'S SPIRIT OF PRAYER

VIII. A THORN FROM THE SAVIOUR'S CROWN OF THORNS WOUNDS RITA'S FOREHEAD

IX. RITA GOES TO ROME TO GAIN THE INDULGENCE OF THE JUBILEE

X. RITA'S LAST ILLNESS AND DEATH

PART III

RITA IN HEAVEN

I. WONDERFUL EVENTS THAT HAPPENED AT RITA'S DEATH--BURIAL OF HER SACRED BODY

II. MIRACLES WROUGHT BY GOD THROUGH RITA'S INTERCESSION BEFORE HER BEATIFICATION

III. EFFICACY OF THE RELICS OF ST. RITA

IV. MARVELS OF ST. RITA'S SEPULCHRE

V. IMMEMORIAL WORSHIP OF ST. RITA

VI. SOLEMN BEATIFICATION OF RITA

VII. MIRACLES WORKED BY RITA AFTER HER BEATIFICATION

VIII. MORE RECENT MIRACLES OF ST. RITA

IX. HER CANONIZATION

X. THE THREE MIRACLES APPROVED FOR HER CANONIZATION

CONCLUSION

Part I

RITA IN THE WORLD

LIFE OF ST. RITA OF CASCIA

CHAPTER I

CASCIA: A GLANCE AT ITS HISTORY

St. Bernard observes that the place in which our Saviour died attracts

our devotion in a greater degree than any of those places in which He

dwelt during His life, and can therefore boast of a certain

pre-eminence. Speaking of St. Rita, we can say the same of Cascia

compared with Rocca Porena, her birthplace. Cascia governed Rocca

Porena as did Jerusalem Nazareth, but it is not on this account we

claim its superiority, but because our saint lived there for many years

and died there, and there her relics are venerated. Cascia is

therefore looked upon as St. Rita's home, and hence she is called St.

Rita of Cascia. Were we but to give a cursory sketch of the history of

Cascia from its annals, which still exist, the present volume could not

contain what we should be forced to write, so important did it become;

we will therefore content ourselves with alluding to a few of the more

salient points in its story.

This ancient and illustrious town is built under the shadow of the

Apennines, at a point in that chain of mountains almost midway between

the Alps and the Mediterranean. It is on the borders of Umbria, seven

miles from Norcia, ten from Leonessa, thirty from Rieti, and

twenty-three from Spoleto. It stands on the site of the ancient

Cursula, which is believed to have been a Roman free-town--that is, its

people enjoyed the honours, rights, and privileges of Roman

citizenship, and their town was governed by its own laws. That Cursula

was a town of some importance is attested by its remains, which are

still extant, notably by the Temple of the Augurs, the Temple of Mars,

and the House of the Duumviri.

We have nothing else than these remains to guide us in inquiring into

the history of Cursula, nor can we surmise the epoch from whence to

date its existence. We know from Dionysius of Halicarnassus that it

was destroyed, and that a new town rose on the ruins of the original

one, but the dates of these events cannot be fixed with certainty. The

date of the rebuilding of Cursula may, with some probability, be placed

at something more than ten years before the birth of our Saviour, and

hence its pagan inhabitants were strengthening the foundations of its

future greatness when Jesus Christ, born in Bethlehem, was laying the

_foundation of the Redemption of man_. We know, too, that it was a

republic, but are left in the dark as to how it managed to achieve and

preserve its independence. It is credible that, like other Italian

cities, it acquired its liberty at the time of the second fall of the

Roman Empire, after the death of the Emperor-Saint Henry, during the

Pontificate of John XIX., or about the year 1025. This independence it

retained till 1260, in which year, through the ambition of rival

leaders, the seeds of civic dissension were sown, and the republic was

exposed to dangers from without. It was at this time that the people

of Cascia determined to put themselves under the authority of Alexander

IV., who then occupied the Papal chair. They were induced to this

action by what they saw of the peaceful nature of the Papal government,

and because they adhered to the Guelph party, which was favourable to

the Holy See. Alexander IV. was the great Pontiff who, uniting the

greatest virtues to the highest mental attainments, contrived during

the height of the sanguinary quarrels between Guelphs and Ghibellines,

which had for twenty years torn and divided Italy, to stamp out

incendiarism, to crush tyranny, and cause peace and happiness to

flourish again in the distracted peninsula. Cascia had no reason to

regret the changed state of affairs, for the monarchical system which

its submission to the Pope introduced by no means destroyed its

republican form of government. Hence it retained the right of

regulating its own affairs by its own laws; hence its mayor, elected

every six months, retained his authority; hence it retained those

chiefs of the people, at first called 'Ateposti,' then 'Gonfalonieri,'

and finally 'Consuls.' To these latter a troop of soldiers, called the

people's jury, was subject, who had the duty not only of defending the

people, but of acting on the offensive when necessary. The court of

justice, the guards and robes of the consuls, the stately retinue of

the mayor, the fortifications with their garrisons, the number of

subject towns and villages--of which more than forty recognise Cascia

as their chief at present, without speaking of the many which the

ravages of time have destroyed--the right of peace and war left, at

least in part, to the brave people of Cascia--these and other memories

of the past, which even now may be seen in the consular registers,

constitute a proof of the liberty which Cascia enjoyed under the Popes

and of the fame which it acquired.

But at the beginning of the disastrous and prolonged schism of the

anti-Popes, Cascia unfurled the standard of rebellion, either through a

desire of complete independence, or, as some say, on account of the

insolent conduct of the Papal soldiers, and for a period of about 131

years--till the year 1517--it remained under a sort of mixed

government. This interval of complete independence was filled up by an

uninterrupted series of wars waged with its neighbours of Norcia, of

Leonessa, of Monreale, of Aquila, or of Cerreto. But after the first

outburst of enthusiasm for complete independence, and in the midst of

quarrels with its neighbours, the republic of Cascia took occasion to

show its pristine reverence and love for the See of Rome. A clear

proof of the correspondence between Cascia and the Papal See is the

formal announcement, made by the Cardinals met together in council at

Constance, to the commune of Cascia, of the election of Pope Martin V.

to the Pontifical throne. The prompt assistance given by the people of

Cascia to Eugene IV., successor to Martin V., against Corrado Trinci,

Governor of Foligno, who tried to make himself lord and master of that

city, is another proof of their loyalty to the Holy See. When the wise

and great-minded Leo X. ascended the Papal throne he brought back

Cascia to its obedience to the Holy See by a brief dated 1517. All its

ancient privileges and distinctions were confirmed by him, and a

Cardinal was appointed to govern the city; for Cascia still continued

to have the title 'city,' as it had till 1600 at least. Some speak of

money coined there, of its coats of arms, of printing done there, of

its prosperity and commerce, of the cultivation of the fine arts; but

the cultivation of souls is what chiefly adorns it.

And, in the first place, if nobility presupposes the talents or merits

of ancestors either in field or court, what must we say of Cascia,

which reckoned in its environs 200 famous families, which are extinct

only within the last two centuries, without speaking of others that

betook themselves elsewhere, or of the ancient patrician families that

still dwell in the homes of their ancestors?

There is no need to go back to remote antiquity to catch a glimpse of

the great men who had their origin in Cascia in the splendour of its

greatest glories. The great ones born there, even in the latest years

of its decadence, are a proof of what it produced in the past, and are

sufficient to renew the honours it merited in its beginnings.

The Cardinals, the Bishops, the Prelates, the names distinguished in

science and in arms of the Poli, Frenfanelli, Benenati, Cruciani,

Squarcipani, Colangeli, Negroni, Graziani, Franceschini, Leonetti,

Giudici, Elemosina, Girolami, Gregorietti, and of other illustrious

families, would supply ample material to whosoever would wish to

pronounce the praises of Cascia. We, who have for our study a nun and

a saint, shall content ourselves with going into the shadow of the

cloister and of the sanctuary. We find Andrew of Cascia, a Franciscan

who lived at the same time as St. Rita, who had the happiness of

bringing the Gospel to the Turks at Fez, where he suffered martyrdom

after converting many to Christ and working many miracles. The glory

of this humble friar outshines the glory which the honours of the world

can give. Blessed Pace, a Minor Conventual, born in Cascia, great in

virtue and by the miracles he worked, raised himself above every

earthly greatness.

But what must have most drawn the soul of our St. Rita to desire from

her childhood the life of the cloister, and to follow it in her mature

years, were the singular models of sanctity which the Augustinian

institute in Cascia could furnish. The memory of the saintly heroes,

followers of the great Augustine, who dwelt in the woods about Cascia,

was to her the memory of a recent event. The first of these recluses

is Blessed John, who from being lord of three towns shut himself in the

Valley of Attino, not far from Cascia, in order to lead a life hidden

in God in the deepest contemplation. Then comes Blessed Ugolino, who

imitated the example of Blessed John in renouncing the pleasant things

of this world to engage himself entirely with heavenly things in the

hermitage of St. Anatolia, in the territory of Cascia, where, living in

misery, he prepared for himself a way to a high degree of glory in

heaven. The third is Blessed Simon Fidati, whom the shades of the

hermitage could not hide from the world. For the books on the ascetic

life which this very learned hermit of St. Augustine wrote in these

solitudes began to make him known; then his unwearying and fruitful

preaching through the chief cities of Italy, especially Florence and

Siena; the conversions of which he was the instrument; the number of

enemies he reconciled; his spirit of prophecy; his unconquerable

charity on most difficult occasions; the foundation of two monasteries

in the city of Florence; the other works written by him, whence he

deserved to be reckoned the brightest ornament of the Augustinian Order

at that time, both by his eloquence and profound learning, more infused

than acquired, as well as for the piety and fervour which animated him

in writing--these and many other of his merits made him glorious in

this world, and still more glorious in heaven.

Contemporary with Blessed Simon were many other remarkable men of the

same Order, and born in the same place, as Fr. Bartolo, Vicar of the

Lateran Basilica, who enriched his convent of Cascia with more than 600

relics; the Venerable Andrew, noble standard-bearer of the Gospel in

Turkey; another Venerable Andrew, of the Capozi family, rendered famous

his country, his name, and the Augustinian Order by his fruitful

preaching and his learning. Fr. Nicholas, of the noble family of the

Saracini of Cascia, was also a contemporary of St. Rita. After leaving

the pomp of the world to follow Jesus Christ in poverty and

humiliation, he was raised through all the ranks of the monastic

hierarchy till he was elected and re-elected General of his Order, and

then promoted by Pope John XXIII. to the episcopal See of Macerata and

Recanati, where he died in the odour of sanctity in the arms of the

people whom he had reformed and whom he loved. In those times, too,

Stephen of Castel San Giorgio, in the district of Cascia, by his

virtues and talents, obtained the highest honours in his Order, and

became Procurator-General. We might mention the names of many other

famous men of the convent and city of Cascia, either contemporary with

St. Rita or nearly so, as Angelus and Louis of Cascia, Cherubinus

Lavosi (Bishop of Telesia), Paoletti, Squarcipani, Amici, three of the

Simonetti family--all either theologians of some eminence or famous

preachers, or remarkable for their writings; but the notice of these

and of others, however praiseworthy for virtue or honourable to their

native city of Cascia, might seem beside our purpose and be tedious to

those who wish to read the life of St. Rita. At all events, it may be

deduced from what we have written that Cascia was not without honour in

its history and in its inhabitants.

Still, what is Cascia in the sight of God? What is even Jerusalem

before Him and in the light of His inscrutable judgment? Human

greatness, which dazzles our eyes, disappears in the glance of God, and

is lost in its own nothingness. There is no distinction of persons

with Him, nor is there distinction of places. The little town of

Nazareth, out of which, in the common very poor opinion of it, it

seemed nothing good could come, was, in the Divine councils,

preordained to be the fatherland of the Saviour of the world; and the

still meaner town of Bethlehem--even a stable in Bethlehem--was chosen

as His place of birth. Thus it often happens that God chooses the weak

things, the lowly, the despicable, the things of naught to confound the

goodly things and the strong, and to work great designs, in order that

the creature may not have whence to vaunt himself before his Creator.

Such was the case exactly with that humble spot Rocca Porena, which was

destined to be the birthplace of St. Rita.

To give some idea of it, let us say it is two miles and a half from

Cascia towards the west, where it is closed in, not to say buried. An

overhanging mountain crushes it in on all sides and dominates it, and

with difficulty gives access to it from the east by two narrow roads,

one on either side of a precipitous rock. The river which flows to the

base of this rock, famous in the life of the saint, does not approach

the small piece of level ground which, together with the village, forms

the bottom of a deep basin. The sun is tardy there in rising, and sets

early, leaving the barren plain to its languor and sadness. One would

say that a place so isolated and confined, where neither the beauty of

nature nor of art appears, and where the sky is almost the only thing

in view, was created for contemplation and to be the home of innocence.

The two houses of St. Rita are still to be seen, almost at opposite

ends of the village, the one in which she was born and lived until her

marriage in that part called the Borghetto, and the other where she

lived a wife, and which is now turned into a little chapel in her

honour, in the place called the Piazza. The saint's garden, now grown

wild, is also shown to the pious traveller. Besides these there does

not seem to be anything worthy of mention. We may therefore infer that

as Bethlehem was styled the least amongst the cities of Judea, so,

perhaps, is Rocca Porena the least amongst the towns of Cascia--the

least, indeed, as a place, but memorable by reason of the favour shown

it, which exalts it far above the others, since it has given to us that

great saint who, by her singular example of innocence and virtue, is

become the guide and model in the way of perfection to virgins, to

married women, to widows, and to those living in the cloisters, in such

a manner as Bethlehem--if we may lawfully make a comparison between the

original and a faint copy--was exalted by the birth of Jesus Christ,

where, as Blessed Simon of Cascia says, He made Himself the mystical

and life-giving bread for our common nourishment and comfort on the way

which leads to heaven.

CHAPTER II

RITA'S PARENTS

The fortunate parents of Rita were Antonio Mancini, of Rocca Porena and

Amata Ferri, who is believed to be from a village called Fogliano.

Antonio was not noble, nor had he a title, but we may apply to him the

praise which the Holy Spirit gives to Noah--that he was a just man and

perfect in his times, and he walked with God. The Gracchi, the

Scipios, the Cæsars among the number of their family honours cannot

find a title greater or even equal to this.

Every other superiority is vanity, and if there be glory from other

titles, it is the glory of another, which cannot pass to the posterity

of those who merited it. Justice alone makes that real nobility which

St. Augustine and other holy fathers call nobility according to the

heart of God. And although even this cannot be passed on to

descendants, as it did not pass from Noah to his son Cham, whom he

cursed, yet it is not unusual for God to recall the justice of parents,

not only for a model, but to give a certain extrinsic glory to their

descendants. Hence, when the Holy Spirit wished to record the praises

of St. John the Baptist, He wished also for his honour that we should

remember that his parents were both 'just before God, walking in all

the commandments and justifications of the Lord without blame.' So we

can also say of Antonio and Amata, of whom was born St. Rita, who had a

special devotion to St. John. They were not of noble blood, but they

were noble in their works; they were not rich in temporal goods, but

they were rich in the true treasures of Divine grace, which do not pass

from those who possess them. They enjoyed the esteem of all who knew

them, an esteem more precious than that which flattery offers to the

rich and great of this world. Their fortune constituted that

mediocrity which the wise man sought from God in order that abundance

might not tempt him to forget his Creator, nor poverty to give himself

a prey to any vice. The industrious and honourable labour, and the

innocent pastoral life which in their time did not degrade the

Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, did not make the Mancini family

less worthy of honour. Rather from the fruits of their labour did they

acquire the means of exercising a beneficent liberality towards the

poor of Jesus Christ, whom they cherished with an ardent charity.

Whether the fruits of their fields were abundant or scarce, these two

happy ones, husband and wife, lived contented in their frugality,

always giving thanks to the Giver of every good gift, and placing

themselves entirely in conformity with the most just and providential

dispositions of heaven. Perfect concord, which was their dearest

virtue, since in it is the fulness of the law, always reigned in their

home. And hence when they heard of divisions amongst others, which

were only too frequent in that age and country, they were speedily

present with them, and with their insinuating manners and holy zeal

they insisted in their charitable offices till peace was restored.

They were, on this account, commonly called the 'peacemakers of Jesus

Christ.'

They corrected the erring according to the rules of the Gospel; they

interceded for them with so fervent prayers, with so great concern, and

with so happy results, that, like Moses, they appeared to be

constituted mediators between the people and God. They steadily hated

vice, and practised every virtue. The book from which they learned and

cherished sentiments so virtuous was none other than the Passion of the

Redeemer. It furnished them with inexhaustible matter for their

meditations, for their liveliest compassion, and for that remarkable

piety which, from her cradle, they instilled into the heart of Rita,

and which they left her as a heritage. In a word, it may with reason

be said of them what was said of the parents of St. John the

Baptist--that they were both just to the eyes of God, walking without

stain in the exact observance of the law. This was their nobility,

this was their wealth, which it pleased God to pass to their daughter

and to multiply in her in a singular way. Thus we may say, as Blessed

Simon of Cascia writes, that the parents' goodness instilled the best

dispositions even before her birth into her who was to be born from

them, as the goodness of Zachary and Elizabeth went to exalt the holy

precursor St. John.

Thus these two holy souls, husband and wife, lived a long series of

years in these exercises of virtue and piety, without, however, seeing

any fruit of their chaste union. God so disposed it that the desires

of their youthful years should be vain, that they should labour to

detach their minds still more from mortal things, and in order that the

proofs of an extraordinary work of His providence should one day shine

the brighter. Meanwhile, their desire of offspring, with which nature

innocently inspired them, had not only grown cold with advancing years,

but was quite extinct; no other care should remain with them now than

that of ascending to the eternal heritage of the heavenly Father,

instead of descending to the care of children and transmitting their

temporal possessions to their posterity on earth.

CHAPTER III

RITA'S WONDERFUL CONCEPTION

That God, who is wonderful in His saints, and who, to use a sacred

expression, seems at times to play sport with the world, and especially

with those creatures that form His delight, wished in the end, and at a

time when in the natural order offspring could least be expected from

these old and barren consorts, to grant them in a prodigious manner the

fulfilment of their ancient desires--a fulfilment the more acceptable

as more unforeseen, and the happier and more certain inasmuch as it was

marked and sealed with the seal of the Omnipotent. So great and so

remarkable graces can foreshadow only great and remarkable sanctity.

Isaac was meant to be the type of Jesus Christ sacrificed for the human

race; he was intended to be a figure of the propagation of the

faithful; he should be great in the order of grace. Still, he was born

out of the order of nature, of parents also barren by reason of their

age. He who was to prepare the way for the impending appearance of the

Redeemer, and who was to be more than a prophet and the greatest

amongst the saints, he also was miraculously born of parents aged and

barren; not to speak of other distinguished personages, both of the Old

and New Testaments, who in various ways were born in a supernatural

manner to exalt the stupendous works of omnipotence and of grace. Not

otherwise did the Lord, who in His lofty designs intended great things

for our heroine, dispose that her conception should be most remarkable

and above the order of nature.

Amata became conscious of the wonderful event, and, full of amazement,

she dared not credit the evidence of it. In such a state she felt her

heart agitated, now by fears that she was deceived, again by hope of

the contrary; at one time by shame at so unusual an occurrence at such

an age as hers, at another her feelings of wonder overwhelmed her; and

again she experienced renewed struggles of fresh fears, emotions, and

passions. But, as is the way with the just, the troubled woman had

recourse to prayer to the Father of light, to the God of consolation,

and whilst she persevered in her humble, fervent, and constant prayers,

there appeared to her an angel, a bearer of certainty, of peace, and of

happy tidings, as an angel appeared to Abraham and Sara while they were

employed in the charitable exercise of hospitality, and to Zachary

amidst his prayers and offerings of incense. However joyful and

consoling in itself was this angelic apparition, it did not fail to

cause in her heart feelings of perturbation. Daniel and the other

prophets had a like sensation in similar circumstances; Zachary had the

same feelings, and so had the most holy Mother of God herself. The

reason is, as Blessed Simon of Cascia wisely observes, that humanity is

naturally disturbed and stricken with fear at the sudden sight of

things extraordinary or greater than itself. But, as the same blessed

writer adds, since those heavenly spirits, when they are sent for our

relief, are accustomed to comfort the timid, thus, as the archangel

told the father of the future Precursor not to fear, and by the

announcement of his birth in the near future calmed his heart with

efficacious words, so did another ambassador from heaven bring the same

security and joy to the troubled mind of Rita's mother, and assure her

that she should bring forth a child; and that nothing should be wanting

to the fulness of her consolation, he made known to her in brief the

eminent virtues and glory of the daughter that was to be born to her,

as the sanctity of the Baptist was likewise foretold to Zachary.

The miraculous pledge of grace which Antonio's happy wife bore already

in her womb and her lively faith prevented her from smiling at

announcements so wonderful; unlike Abraham's wife, who smiled at a not

dissimilar announcement. Nor did she sin through incredulity, as did

Elizabeth's husband, who was punished for his sin, but forewarned by

fact, and full of that faith which teaches that God can raise up

children to Abraham even from the very stones, she instantly believed

in the words of the angel. The angelic vision disappeared, and Amata,

considering her own unworthiness, was seized with fresh wonder and

profound humility. Thinking at the same time on the signal favour, she

retired, with great contentment and singular gratitude and love towards

the Divine goodness, to pour out the fulness of her pure and fervent

affection at the feet of her most beneficent God. It is easy to think

what a new stimulus to piety in herself and her virtuous husband was

this great grace. Thus they remained happy in their virtue and secure

in the hands of Divine providence, joyously awaiting the happy day of

Rita's extolled birth.

CHAPTER IV

RITA'S BIRTH

Now that we are about to describe Rita's birth, it will not be out of

place to cast a passing glance at the unhappy state of those times, in

order to see things more clearly as we progress with our history, and

in order that the providence of God and His grace may more clearly be

discerned to His honour and glory. The memories are still fresh in our

minds, or, rather, the wounds which the avenging sword of the God of

armies inflicted on us. There is not a moment in which we do not

recall with horror the mournful losses inflicted by arms on property,

commerce, arts, study, families, States, good order, morals, on

religion and the Church. But however true and just our regrets may be,

it is a fact that Italy was much more harassed and afflicted at the

period about the birth of Rita. To read of the extortions of the

Visconti through the wide extent of their dominions in Lombardy, the

cruelty exercised by them on the pretext of punishing treason, their

unbridled lust, and their most unworthy harassing of the clergy,

excites our horror. At the other extremity of Italy, in the kingdom of

Naples, a territory of equal importance, wrongs and scandals of every

description, and the most deplorable calamities, caused by the parties

of the Dukes of Anjou and Surazzo, who laid claim to the kingdom,

spread themselves and took root as the civil war that followed on the

death of King Robert became more widespread. The different other

States into which Italy was then divided were not anything better. For

the luxury of these little Courts which tried to rival the great ones

to the grave oppression of the people, their despotism, their rivalry

and wars, their unbridled ambition to command which multiplied the

domestic treasons and assassinations of brothers by brothers, of

relatives by relatives (if we except the houses of Savoy, Monferrato,

Saluzzo, and Este)--these and the other dominant vices and scandals

served only to increase misery and sorrow. The cities of the Papal

States were also, for the most part, groaning under the yoke of

rebels--bloody, inexorable, lewd tyrants--and especially before Gregory

IX. re-established his throne in Rome after his return from Avignon.

And, as if these Italian tyrants were not sufficient to cause public

misery, hordes of devastating soldiers issued from Germany, Hungary,

and England to complete the confusion. Warner, Muriale, Sando,

Anchino, Augustus, and others--all captains of the dissolute soldiers

of fortune--were the stubborn arbiters of Italian affairs from the

middle of the fourteenth century till the time of Charles V., although

they were not owners of even a perch of land. These gave their

services in the perpetual wars to whoever paid them best, and went

about pillaging, imposing tribute and subsidies--and woe to him who was

slow in satisfying their demands!--laying waste fields, besieging

towns, and universally exercising their pitiless power. Hence, as the

people model themselves after the manners of kings and nobles, it is

easy to divine the general state of morals in the midst of such

depravity. Let us draw a veil over that picture, the sight of which

would move to horror humanity, religion, and especially modesty.

Let it suffice to say that so deeply rooted was this universal

depravity that not even the pestilence, that so evident sign of the

anger of heaven, which in the middle of that century carried off more

than half the inhabitants of Italy, was able to check it. And that

which the prophet Isaias seems to have foreseen in his time, but in

another sense, was fulfilled here too: such as the people is, so shall

the priest be--so strong was the influence of the bad example and want

of discipline introduced into Italy by the abandoning of their

Apostolic See in Rome by the Popes. The prevailing depravity

afterwards opened the way to still greater evils.

For the zeal with which Urban VI., successor of Gregory XI., sought to

remedy the evils which afflicted the Church was intolerable to some,

and hence followed the election of an anti-Pope, which gave rise to

that terrible schism which burst forth a little before the birth of

Rita, and ended only a short time before her death.

Who can recall without tears the separations between friends, princes

taking opposing sides, the spiritual and temporal arms put in

antagonism, the neglect of the canons, the numberless scandals and

losses of the Church, which would at that time have been threatened

with absolute ruin, but that the gates of hell can never prevail

against the unshakable edifice founded on the rock of Peter, which can

never fail? The Church was at that time, moreover, filled with sorrow

by the heresies of the Beguins, the Flagellants, the Adamites, the

Waldensians, the Wickliffites, and others, and by the rapid successes

of Amurath I., who, to the loss of the Christian name, took possession

of Thessaly and Macedonia about the time of Rita's birth. Neither in

the Eastern nor in the Western Church was there an Emperor either

fitted to oppose a bulwark against the inrush of such evils or disposed

to oppose them. John Paleologus in the East had lost heart through his

frequent defeats, and was leagued against the powers of Christendom;

and in the West, Wenceslaus, given to the wine-cup and to luxury, was

become good for nothing.

The republics of the time, amongst which was Cascia, were not much more

fortunate than the kingdoms. Genoa and Venice, which only a short time

previous might have been compared in their rivalry to Rome and Carthage

in the ancient world, had now both become exhausted of all their

strength through a long series of stubborn wars undertaken against one

another, and although they were now mutually at peace and also with the

other Powers, through the intervention of the Duke of Savoy, they were

unable to show any opposition to the common enemy of Christendom. Nor

did the avarice and ambition of these States fail to bring in their

train a fruitful crop of all other vices. Florence, too, although

happy in the cultivation of the fine arts, was infected with the

general depravity. The city was torn by faction, and weakened by those

other vices against which Blessed Simon of Cascia had so strenuously

preached a few years earlier. And although these exhortations brought

about a reform, it was but half-hearted and short-lived. Vicious

practices increased in the city, and open rebellion against the Holy

See was their eventual outcome. Of Cascia itself we read that in 1380

the Guelphs and the Ghibellines committed horrible atrocities

throughout the city and its dependent territory. And although the

opposing factions patched up a peace between them in that year, it was

of no long duration, since, as we have said in the first chapter, the

people of Cascia rebelled against the Holy See during the first years

of the schism of the anti-Popes, just after the birth of Rita. Murder

and robbery, pillage and incendiarism followed in the wake of

rebellion, and brought ruin to many families in Cascia and destruction

upon her religious places. A war soon broke out between Cascia and

Leonessa, which lasted for twelve months, and would have continued much

longer but for the friendly intervention of the Trinci of Foligno,

through whose efforts peace was made. Such was the wretched condition

of affairs in Italy at that time.

It is truly wonderful, as St. John Chrysostom says of a somewhat

similar case, how so fair a rose as St. Rita was could have bloomed

amid so many thorns. Yet such was the disposition of Divine

providence, which decreed that where sin superabounded grace should

abound in that chosen soul who, from the miraculous events that

preceded her birth and her innocence, which she preserved intact,

seemed almost to have been sanctified in her mother's womb. Rita,

then, was born in the village of Rocca Porena in the year 1381, during

the pontificate of Urban. Her parents were Antonio Mancini and Amata

Ferri, the child of whose old age she was, the first and only fruit of

their chaste love, or, rather, of their remarkable virtue. The pure

joy which filled Amata's heart at the sight of the infant, which heaven

itself had extolled, must have made her forget those trials which every

mother has experienced since our first mother Eve committed original

sin. Antonio, too, as he gazed tenderly on the predestined child, must

have exulted in the Lord, and must, like Simeon of old, have felt

himself ready to die content; he, too, could now sing a hymn of

thanksgiving to God, who had granted him the happiness of seeing the

glory of his family, of his country, and of the new house of Israel.

The general joy and universal congratulation of relatives and

neighbours added to the happiness of the pious couple, whose virtue and

charity had made them esteemed by all. Thus did the relatives and

neighbours of the holy Elizabeth rejoice at the equally wonderful birth

of St. John the Baptist, for the Lord desired to make known the mercy

he had shown in the first appearance of the Precursor. 'All who love

goodness,' says Simon of Cascia, 'participate in the joy that is

occasioned by the birth of one destined to live for the common good.'

Those who rejoice in grace, and in the sight of the fruits of justice,

must let their sentiments be evident to all, as in the present case, in

which a pious mother brought forth a saintly child. It is part of the

spiritual life to be pleased at the prosperity of others, and to

rejoice with those especially who have been marked by the favour of the

Omnipotent God.

Meanwhile, the parents of the newly-born infant, in the midst of these

rejoicings, were pondering on what name they should call her, and again

that God, who had by an angel announced her birth, again in a vision of

the night made them know that Rita was to be her name. It is a rare

privilege of some saints, remarks St. Ambrose, to deserve to get their

names from God Himself. Thus Jacob was named Israel by the Lord, thus

was the Baptist named John by the angel, thus the Eternal Father called

the Word made flesh by the name Jesus before He was born, and thus did

she who was to imitate the virtues of the Baptist and be a faithful

follower of Jesus Christ get her name from heaven. The name Rita, as

being quite an unusual name, must have been meant to signify the

sanctity that was to mark the life of the child so designated, and if

we were to give credence to the opinion of the Augustinian author

Didacus, Rita signifies virtue and grace.

But this name foreshadowed only what Rita was to be, not what she was.

For although she could be considered from then as a child of God in the

order of predestination, yet according to the order of nature, and

according to her actual state, she was, owing to original sin, a child

of wrath; and to become an adopted child of God she needed to be

cleansed from the hereditary stain of original sin in the sanctifying

waters of the Redeemer. Her baptism took place on the fourth day after

her birth, although we may believe her pious parents wished her to be

baptized with all possible speed, and from the delay we may conclude

that the time of her birth must have been in the winter season. There

was no baptismal font at that time in Rocco Porena, and the child had

therefore to be taken to the collegiate church of St. Mary in Cascia,

where that grace which was to be the beginning and the seal of her

sanctification awaited her. There Rita put off the garb of sin, and

came forth from the salutary bath of baptism clothed in the garment of

innocence and enriched with the gifts of the Holy Ghost, who from the

moment chose her to be His spouse. Thus did the regenerated babe

return to her mother's bosom and the joyful embraces of her parents,

fairer to the eyes of faith than her beauty made her to the eyes of men.

CHAPTER V

THE WHITE BEES OF ST. RITA

When the godmother and her attendants returned from Cascia after the

baptism, a feast was prepared for them and the relatives of the happy

parents, to celebrate in a manner becoming their humble position the

double birth of Rita in the order of nature and of grace. Meanwhile,

the child had closed her eyes in a tranquil slumber. When the next day

dawned, the fifth day of her existence, a swarm of bees, all of the

fairest white colour, and such as were never before seen, made their

appearance. They flew a-buzzing about the cradle of the child, and

after alighting for a moment on her angelic face were seen to go in and

come out of her slightly open mouth in a sort of regular order, as if

to take from her lips the honey of Paradise. What feelings of wonder

and awe must have been awakened in the heart of Amata and those who

were present by so marvellous an occurrence!

The Gospel tells us that fear came upon all the neighbours of Elizabeth

and Zachary as they considered the miraculous events that marked the

birth of the Baptist, and that they noised abroad all these things that

foretold his future extraordinary sanctity. In like manner similar the

wonderful signs that were given at Rita's birth, for Divine providence

so disposed it in order that honour should be rendered to her by those

whose attention had been attracted by these extraordinary happenings,

and that those who came in contact with her should be induced to order

their own lives more exactly by following the salutary example she was

to give. This incident of the appearance of the white bees in the

cradle of our saint is the one which the painters and poets who have

illustrated her life have vied most with one another in depicting. To

avoid having to return again to the subject of the bees, which have

ever been mentioned in connection with the life of St. Rita, we will

here describe what seems to be a confirmation and perpetuation of the

wonderful occurrence we have just related. Going from Rocca Porena to

Cascia, and entering the convent where our saint resided, there, in an

old wall opposite the convent gate, at a point midway between the cell

which Rita inhabited and the spot in which her body was laid to rest,

we are met with a sight that cannot fail to move us to admiration. For

there, even to the present day, the bees, commonly called St. Rita's

bees, have their nest. They are called St. Rita's, for they have been

there since her time, and have come there, we may believe, owing to

her, and, as it were, to do her honour. There is only a small number

of them--some twelve or fifteen--and everything connected with them is

extraordinary and wonderful. In the first place, as we have hinted

above, the species to which these bees belong has never, as far as we

are aware, been determined. They live each one to itself in a hole

which it has dug in the wall, and as often as these holes have been

stopped up in the process of plastering the wall they have again

excavated them. They spin a sort of white substance, with which they

stop the entrance to their retreat, as if to hide themselves from view

during their long retirement and fast of eleven months. They appear

only on those days dedicated to the memory of our Lord's Passion, and,

be it noted, these are mostly movable feasts; and they betake

themselves to retirement about the time of the death of St. Rita, who

was devoted, as we shall see, to meditation on the Passion of our Lord.

For four centuries they have been found in the same place, without ever

having changed their place of abode. These ascertained facts seem to

declare clearly enough that it has been the will of the Most High to

extol through them the merit and the glory of His beloved servant.

There is no need to add the many anecdotes of these bees, which are

related in some lives of our saint, and which the nuns of Cascia still

tell; let one suffice. Jacobilli says that one of these bees was sent

to Pope Urban VIII. in a crystal vessel, and that it soon flew back

again to the place it occupied in the convent wall.

Here it may be asked whether the bees we have described are the same

that appeared when Rita was an infant in swaddling-clothes. It would

be harder to give an answer to this question than to the riddle which

Sampson proposed to his bridesmen. Sampson's faithless spouse was able

to wrest his secret from him and then reveal it to her Philistine

friends: that the sweetness that came forth out of the strong was the

honeycomb that was made in the mouth of the lion that he had torn in

pieces a short time before. But we can find no answer to our question.

However, those biographers of St. Rita who, without hesitation,

confused the bees that appeared at her birth with those in the convent

may be excused, as they supposed both to be of the same white colour.

But they have been mistaken, for those at present in the convent wall

are not white--in fact, they do not differ in colour from ordinary

bees, except that they are of a deep red on the back and they want the

sting. But perhaps these writers were not so far from the truth, since

there is but the accidental variety of colour that distinguishes the

present bees from the white ones that appeared first at Rita's birth.

And who can say but that those once meant by God to symbolize by their

whiteness the splendour of Rita's baptismal innocence may not, through

the power of God, have taken on their present appearance to signify the

humiliation and sadness of the penances she took upon herself? To

change the appearance of a species already existing or to create a new

species is easy to God. Let the truth of the matter be where it may,

it is clear that both are marvellous, and worthy to be recorded in the

history of our saint. But it is time we returned to gaze on her,

surrounded in her cradle by those lilies of her incipient sanctity, and

crowned with the bright circle of bees that still buzzed around her.

We might now inquire whether the bees that entered her innocent mouth

made a honeycomb in it, as is believed to have happened to St. Ambrose

in his infancy, as if to forecast the mellifluous eloquence which he

poured forth in his manhood in defence of the Church. Although this

anecdote as related of St. Rita is not sufficiently well proven,

neither is it impossible; for when there is question of miraculous

events the difficulties of time and place do not form an insurmountable

obstacle, as they did not in the case of St. Ambrose. At all events,

we have two authors that assert it, and perhaps their opinion is

supported by the farther statement that is made--that Rita abstained

from her mother's milk on the day on which the bees appeared, the fifth

day after her birth. God may have wished to give her for corporal food

mystical or symbolical honey of unearthly origin, as He had fed her

soul with the food of baptismal grace. In this way would be more

clearly signified that which was foreshadowed by the appearance of the

bees, the insinuating sweetness in word and manner which was afterwards

the cause of the conversion of many sinners, which ever brought

consolation to the afflicted, and spiritual profit to all who had the

good fortune to converse with her.

CHAPTER VI

RITA'S CHILDHOOD

St. Augustine in his Confessions takes up two chapters in describing

his infancy, and he discovers in that period of his life only misery

and vestiges of sin, but he recalls these evils that spring from our

sinful origin only to extol the triumphs which Divine grace obtained in

his mature years. The time of infancy is, however, one in which, since

there can be no acts of reflection, nor exercise of will, there can be

no demerit or actual sin, nor merit or virtue. It will not, therefore,

be strange if our history passes over the infancy of Rita and proceeds

to describe her childhood. From the extraordinary piety that

distinguished her parents we can easily surmise what care they took in

training and educating their child to instil into her mind the truths

of religion. They had abundant proofs that Rita was especially dear to

God, that she was born for heaven, and that Divine grace had marked her

for its own. But they knew also that God, who disposes all things

wisely, wished them to co-operate in moulding the chosen child to

virtue and in establishing her in holiness. They were well aware that

even the chiefest vessels of election had for a time kicked against the

goads of grace. Nor were they ignorant what a bulwark of defence is

raised by education and by the example of parents--a fact which many

unhappy parents either know not or are careless of, and hence by their

neglect they become the cause of the eternal ruin of their children.

It will not, therefore, be useless to remark the watchfulness, the care

and anxiety, with which Rita's parents observed all the movements,

words, and actions of a child so dear to them, lest she should take a

step to the right or to the left of the way that leads to heaven, and

which, with the dawning of reason, she began to discern for herself.

But these happy parents had no cause for anxiety during the process of

instructing and moulding the character of their child, for she had,

through God's grace, acquired a disposition marked by uncommon

submission and precocious wisdom. Let it suffice to say that even then

she could not bear those pastimes and sports which are proper to that

tender age, and which are universally regarded as innocent. She had an

example in Tobias, who, although he was the youngest in his tribe,

showed himself to be the wisest, and never did anything that was

childish.

Another failing, which is dear not only to children, but to all, and

especially to the female sex, the love of fine clothes, was an

abomination to Rita. We must not believe that a virtuous mother like

Amata, especially considering her lowly condition, could allow her

daughter to appear in anything savouring of pride or ostentation. On

the other hand, Rita, although scrupulously obedient in other things to

the slightest wish of her parents, became uneasy whenever they wished

her to put on some pretty ornament; she used even to run away and hide

herself at such times, till she saw that her disinclination provoked a

smile. Thus, satisfied with her humble dress, she took more pains to

adorn her soul than to improve her appearance by the addition of the

least ornament. To simplicity in dress she joined a sedateness of

manner so beyond her years that it attracted universal respect,

admiration, and love, and set a salutary example not only to those of

her own age, but to older people also. She restrained to a wonderful

degree that common tendency of women to curiosity and gossip, and

having her thoughts occupied with higher subjects she avoided all human

conversation as far as good manners and obedience permitted. Obedience

was the virtue according to which she regulated all her actions. She

regarded a beck of her parents as a command of God which she could not

violate; and her obedience was all the more willing as it accorded with

the impulse of grace which impelled her to the practice of all other

virtues. For obedience, as Blessed Simon of Cascia observes, is the

gate of the virtues. Rita's love of retirement and of prayer had

already risen to the heroic point. Whoever wished to see her was

certain of finding her either at home or in the neighbouring parish

church, which was her favourite place of prayer, where she spent entire

hours in meditation and devotion, to the great edification of all.

Although penance is a virtue hardly suitable to so tender an age or to

such perfect innocence, yet Rita began from her earliest years to

chastise her body by different mortifications, and especially by

fasting; and to render her abstinence more meritorious and acceptable

to God she distributed to the poor children of the neighbourhood that

food which she denied herself, thus bringing forth fruits of mercy and

charity from the root of penance. This was the only way in which her

loving good-will and tender compassion could show themselves in action;

poverty made anything further impossible. But the Lord, who searches

the heart, and delights in men of goodwill, sought nothing more from

Rita then. But she was unconsciously increasing in charity and in

merit as she grew in years, so that she could apply to herself the

saying of Job--that mercy came out with him from his mother's womb, and

from his infancy grew up with him.[1] Not only did her spirit grow, as

it were, and become strong by the exercise of these beautiful virtues,

but her progress in all virtue was extraordinary.

[1] Job xxi. 18.

CHAPTER VII

RITA'S LOVE OF RETIREMENT

St. John the Baptist experienced a similar strengthening of the spirit,

as we read in that place in which it is also written that he went into

the desert, where he hid himself, as Blessed Simon says, in order to

give himself up entirely to prayer, contemplation, and penance. The

comparison between these saints is often a fitting one, for Rita always

follows closely in the footsteps of her great model. It is true that,

according to the example of the Psalmist, she walked in the innocence

of her heart, in the bosom of her virtuous family, for she found

nothing abroad that could distract her spirit from the affairs of her

home, whilst her gravity, modesty, and habitual seclusion opened to her

a wide field for the exercise of her love of prayer. Yet she was so

enamoured of heavenly things that she wearied of the things of earth,

and desired, in a certain sense, to be out of the world; and since this

could not be, she regarded with a holy envy the lot of so many

anchorites and heroines of solitude, who, in deserts and in the depths

of woods, lived lives more like those of angels than of men. She had

before her eyes the examples of Blessed Simon, of Blessed Ugolino, of

Blessed John, and of the other saintly hermits of St Augustine, who had

only recently passed to their reward in heaven, or were still living in

the neighbourhood of Rocca Porena. The example of these models of

holiness increased in her heart her dearest desire to serve her beloved

Jesus amid the silence of the woods and on the mounts of myrrh. But

the love of her aged parents, and obedience, more than any thought of

her youth and sex, prevented her from fulfilling her generous design.

The sacred love with which she was animated made her industrious, and

suggested the thought of converting her home into the solitude she

longed for. With the consent of her parents she chose a little room

separated from the others, and turned it into an oratory. Its walls

she decorated with pictures of our Lord's Passion, and there she shut

herself in, as into the midst of all delights. Her Divine Lover

awaited her there to speak to her heart, and there, far from the eyes

of men, in perpetual silence and abstinence, she enjoyed those

ineffable consolations of grace which the profane know not of. The

constant object of her thoughts, of her ecstasies of soul, of the most

ardent love of her heart, was the Passion of her crucified Spouse; and

in the midst of the tears which accompanied her meditation, whilst her

heart was filled with Divine compassion, she experienced that true

peace and happiness of soul which only grace can produce--how we know

not--from sorrow. She felt herself transformed into the Crucified One,

for whom alone she now lived--rather, she no longer lived, but Jesus

Christ lived in her. In that school of love, through that Divine

teaching, she came to know more certainly the fallacy of all worldly

things; she saw how the world deceives us, and she saw also the charms

and pomps and pleasures of this life, but she saw them as they really

are, and could therefore say with the wise man that they are but vanity

and affliction of spirit. She therefore resolved to have no part in

this deceitful world, and since life in the desert was denied her, she

resolved to bury herself in a cloister. But she had not yet reached

the age in which to put her design into execution. Meanwhile the holy

child lived in her first place of retirement for a full twelvemonth,

until the obligation of assisting her parents and the duties of charity

and obedience forced her from the place of her spiritual happiness.

This happened probably when she was about eleven years old. Her

parents were now beginning to feel the burden of their years, and Rita

had perforce to enter upon an active life, and exercise works of mercy

and justice, without, however, entirely abandoning her practices of

meditation. Her history does not tell us how she performed the

domestic duties that fell to her lot, perhaps because, from what we

know of her life hitherto, that may more easily be imagined than

described. Whilst fulfilling the parts of both sisters of Lazarus, she

did not cease to envy John in the desert. Although the Holy Spirit

had, through her prayers, made known to her many things, and although

she continued still to be enlightened from above, yet she knew not what

was written in the eternal decrees concerning herself, that Providence

only put off to a better time the fulfilment of her thirst for solitude

and for a cloistered life. Rita was intended to be an example to every

age and condition; she should therefore live other lives before

reaching the cloister she panted for.

CHAPTER VIII

RITA'S MARRIAGE

In the year 1393 Italy, not to say the whole world, was suffering under

the evils that proceed from political disturbance, and the state of

morals throughout the peninsula was deplorable. Still, the honour of

the Church was upheld by the many saints whose lives then adorned it,

not the least of whom was Rita. Urban VI. was dead, and Boniface IX.

ruled in his place. But the Holy See had to withstand many a rude

shock, for the anti-Pope Robert, then near his end, continued to

dispute the possession of the Apostolic keys, and at his death left to

his more impious successor, Pietro di Luna, his sad legacy of obstinate

schism. Heresy, fanaticism,--religious and political--and the utmost

corruption of morals were not wanting to fill the cup of Italy's woes.

The weak hands of the cruel and dissolute Wenceslaus still held the

sceptre of the West, and John Paleologus, who had succeeded his father

Emmanuel, could only weep over the impending ruin of his falling

empire, that was shaken in every part by the infidel arms of the Sultan

Bajazet. In Italy the rivalry of the different States, and, above all,

the vaulting ambition of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Lord of Milan, served

to keep alive disunion, antagonism, and wretchedness. At this very

time the republic of Cascia, which, since its revolt against the Holy

See, had hardly enjoyed a moment of peace or prosperity, was in arms

against the Guelphs of Cerreto, and had at the same time to prosecute a

stubborn war against Aquila. In these contests the military portion of

Cascia, by their deeds of violence, their robberies, and their

atrocities, trampled on every law of humanity and modesty. It is true

that hostilities came to an end in 1395, when terms of peace were

agreed on; but warlike Cascia could not remain long at rest, but took

up arms against Monte Reale in a new war, which lasted till 1397.

Whilst Cascia and the other States we have mentioned were seeking by

iniquitous means to widen the borders of the kingdom of confusion and

sin, Rita, in Rocca Porena, was meditating only how she could best

please God, that, as the Apostle says, she might be holy in body and in

spirit. The lurid picture of universal disorder rightly excited in her

feelings of horror, and convinced her all the more of the vanity and

cruelty of the world.

She saw the deceitful pleasures, the snares and thorns, the inevitable

evils that show themselves at every step, and the dangers that at every

moment threaten the soul with ruin. On the other hand, she perceived

the great advantages that result from separating one's self from the

world; she recalled all the spiritual joy and interior consolation she

experienced during the time she lived in retirement in her home, and

she therefore felt herself more firmly grounded in her determination to

flee for ever from the tumult of worldlings. The solitude which formed

the object of her desires, and in which she resolved to offer to God

the holocaust of her virginity, was the convent of Cascia, where she

afterwards lived and died, called at that time St. Mary Magdalen's, and

occupied then, as well as now, by nuns of the Order of St. Augustine.

This pious project had been for some time maturing in her mind, and

although she was hardly twelve years of age she determined to carry it

into effect without any of those wearisome delays which the grace of

the Holy Spirit knows not of, which belong to certain weak and

hesitating souls that cannot break the world's ties, or those of vain

fear, when God calls them to a state of perfection. Although Rita then

heard the call of her Divine Lover, she did not know the time He had

fixed for the fulfilling of her wishes, but, overcome by a holy

impatience, she resolved to make known to her parents her desire for a

religious life. Who can tell what struggles the voice of nature must

have caused in her soul at this crisis, as she thought that she was for

ever about to separate herself from the side of her dearly loved and

aged parents? Even the saints feel the strength of nature, but, like

giants, they pass on to triumphs in the kingdom of grace. Thus Rita

acted. She shut her ears to the insinuating voice of flesh and blood,

informed her parents of her religious vocation, and humbly and

fervently begged their leave to obey the voice of God. When they heard

their daughter express such a wish, Antonio and Amata, pious though

they were, did not hide their sorrow and the trouble they felt. They

besought with tears that their only child, the one object of their

tenderest love, their only prop and consolation, should not abandon

them in their old age. Their tearful pleading, acting on the filial

love and obedience which filled Rita's heart, prevailed on her to put

off for a better time the fulfilment of her noble purpose. Being so

far successful, her parents turned their attention to providing a

husband for her, in order both to make sure of retaining her society

and her assistance that had become necessary to them, and to save their

family from extinction; and they fixed their eyes on a young man

called, according to some, Ferdinand, and to others Paul. But old eyes

do not always see clearly. The young man whom they selected was

impulsive and irascible, with a character formed amid the savage

surroundings of that time and place--in a word, he was well fitted to

try the patience and virtue of Rita. He was proposed as a husband to

the saintly girl, and all the weight of parental authority, and every

motive that human nature could suggest, were adduced to win her

consent. We do not know with what prayers and entreaties the

distressed girl opposed the suggestion, but we do know that she showed

the repugnance her soul felt. It was not, however, the disposition of

her intended husband that made her hate the idea of marriage, for if

the knowledge of it were hidden from her parents, it could scarcely be

known to a young girl so fond of retirement. All Rita's aversion and

complaining sprang from the fear of seeing closed to her the road that

led to the conventual life to which she aspired, and the dread of

having to dwell in the midst of an evil and destroying world, in which

she would be plunged into the dangerous cares of married life. Seeing

at last that her tears could not bend her parents to her wishes, and

feeling somewhat shaken by considerations of filial piety and

obedience, she had recourse in her hard trial to the Father of light.

During her prayer she became conscious of an inspiration that told her

to bend her neck to the yoke of matrimony, and thus understood that

what she took to be a suggestion of paternal love, purely human and the

voice of flesh and blood, was in reality a disposition of heaven.

Resignation to the Divine will partly restored her peace of mind, and

the consent to her marriage which she announced to her parents filled

them with satisfaction. Rita gave her consent through an impulse of

obedience, and since perfect obedience to the Divine will requires a

holy blindness, she took no care to inquire about the fortune,

appearance, or other qualities of her future husband. Rita was

therefore in the first flower of her youth, her beauty, and virtue

when, under the nuptial veil of her modesty, she stood before the altar

to become a party to that indissoluble contract which Jesus Christ

raised to the dignity of a Sacrament, and which gives children to the

people of God. The relatives and friends on both sides were resolved

to celebrate the nuptials with feastings, but the common joy did not

reach the heart of the pious bride, for that was fixed on nobler

objects. To the hour of her marriage Rita had been an excellent

example to all virgins. In those few years she had given enough

lessons to show how virginal candour and pure innocence should be

preserved; she had now to follow another path to become a bright

example of virtue to all who live in the married state.

CHAPTER IX

RITA AS WIFE

The Apostle's saying, that 'all things work together for good to those

who love God,' remains always true. Rita had passed from the state of

virginity to that of matrimony, yet this step towards a lower state was

destined to lead her to a higher grade of glory. Thus St. Monica,

whose faithful follower our heroine was ever to be, would not have been

St. Augustine's mother by nature, and in the order of grace would not

have drawn the erring Patrizio, her husband, to God, would not have so

wide a field wherein to exercise her patience and fortitude, would not

have left all those examples of virtue which her son Augustine admires

and exalts in his book of 'Confessions,' if Divine Providence had not

led her by that path which, long after, her daughter Rita followed.

The ways are diverse and diverse are the gifts, but the Spirit is the

same which guides souls in a wonderful manner towards greater good.

The way of tribulation was that which the Lord opened to our saint, and

by the means of matrimony He wished her to pass through fire and

water--in other words, through every sort of danger, temptation, and

persecution, in order to prove and purify her, as gold is purified in

the furnace, and thence to receive her into heaven as a most pure

holocaust. Hence the God whose wish placed her in the married state so

disposed it that she should pass from her original life of filial

submission to that of slavery under a tyrannical husband. Thus it was

that hardly had a few days passed after the marriage than her unworthy

husband began to illtreat the innocent Rita with reproaches, abuse,

threats, and even blows, of which the only cause was his own brutal

inclination. But our gentle heroine had studied in the school of the

Crucified One; she had already learned how to conquer her passions even

to the extent of rejoicing in the midst of tribulation, for she was

convinced that tribulation is the food of Christian patience, that

penitence is the great proof of real virtue, and that on the exercise

of it is based our priceless hope of eternal good that shall not fail

us.

Yet because she was aware that not all who suffer are blessed, but only

those who surfer for justice' sake, she took every care and tried every

means to please her husband, whom nothing could satisfy. She waited on

him, tried to discover his wants, sought to interpret his unspoken

wishes, studied his temper--in a word, she did her utmost never to give

him the least cause to complain, at least in everything in which her

duty as a Christian permitted. She was well aware that a wife ought to

regard her husband as a master to whom that obedience and reverential

fear are due which the Church owes to her head, Christ Jesus. She not

only knew, but practised it 111 a way that astonished all who were

acquainted with the natural brutality of her husband and her own heroic

submission, meekness, and invincible constancy. She obeyed his every

beck, and undertook no duty without first seeking his approval. So far

did she carry this submission that she did not go out of her house even

to attend the Divine offices in church without having first obtained

his permission. With all this the contest was a long one between the

husband's cruelty and the wife's sweetness of temper, between his

vicious nature and her virtue, between his pride and her humility, his

ferocity and her meekness, his arrogance and her tractableness, between

his power to give pain and her ability to surfer.

But the victory was gained by Rita's virtues, for her long-suffering at

length won her husband's heart, and brought unity and love into their

home. Whenever afterwards Ferdinand felt inclined, as he sometimes

did, to have recourse to cutting words or unseemly acts, at the sight

of her humility and patience, and the memory of her gentle admonitions,

he adopted the expedient of going out of the house till his mind

recovered its tranquillity. We read, too, that, completely overcome by

her sweet gentleness, he one day threw himself at her feet to ask

pardon from her for his faults and to promise to correct them. To the

unspeakable consolation of Rita he kept this promise, nor was she slow

to refer all the praise of this conversion to the Giver of all good

things, who alone is Lord of the human heart. When fraternal

correction is not the outcome of irritation or pride, it is an

instrument of Divine grace, and we know that it has no other object

than the salvation of him who is corrected when the word and manner

which convey it are marked by moderation and kindness. Rita therefore

brought into action all the graces, natural and supernatural, which she

possessed, in order to bind closely to her that unquiet heart of her

husband, and to draw him to the Lord, and induce him to fulfil his

Christian obligations.

Two sons were born to them, the elder of whom was named Gian Giacomo,

and the other Paolo Maria. Both of them inherited their father's

quarrelsome and irascible temperament, and his example did not help to

improve them. We may easily imagine the trouble, the watchfulness, the

uneasiness, the fear, and anxiety which a devoted Christian mother like

Rita must have experienced in rearing, educating, and, above all, in

forming the minds of her young children. The words which she kept

continually repeating in their ears, and which she would have wished to

impress indelibly on their hearts, were words of the holy fear of God,

of piety and devotion. But not so much with words did the pious mother

endeavour to instil into them the pure maxims of the Gospel as by the

example of her own exalted virtues. Would that fathers and mothers

would learn once for all from the saints, and become convinced of the

undeniable truth that their children are moulded more by their example

than by their words, even when these are not contradicted by their

deeds! Rita, however, in her vigilance spared nothing, neither words

nor actions, nor advice nor blame, nor threats nor chastisements, to

train these tender plants heavenwards; but their natural and more easy

tendency was downwards, and this was her greatest cause of sorrow

amongst so many causes, and the worst of all her troubles. We do not

mean to say that Gian Giacomo and Paolo were like David's sons Amnon

and Absolom, yet it is a fact that the children of holy people are

sometimes self-willed and wicked, however holy their upbringing may

have been. Rita, however, knew what a mother's duty was, and she

therefore, in bringing up her children, never allowed her zeal to

slacken, nor her patience to wear out, nor her watchfulness to grow

weary.

The trials were severe enough which our heroine had to undergo from the

society of an irascible husband, whose virtue was none of the most

steadfast, but they were redoubled by the evil inclinations she saw

appear in her children, and their hatred of all good instruction. The

citizens of the heavenly kingdom, whilst they live in this world

amongst the sinful and the wicked, must, as St. Augustine teaches, be

tossed about by temptations, in order that they may keep themselves in

the practice of virtue, and be proved as gold is proved in the

crucible. Tried by such afflictions, Rita seemed to have come to such

a pass that she could do nothing else than, with the prophet, raise her

pure hands to heaven night and day, to seek in God alone some relief in

her troubles and some defence against the evils of her house.[1] If

ever she deemed it necessary to have recourse to prayer, now assuredly

was a time that called for redoubled prayer and the greatest fervour.

She therefore prayed without ceasing. Her continued meditations on the

sufferings of our Lord was a relief in her distress; frequent communion

brought comfort to her troubled state, and her particular devotion to

our Blessed Lady, consoler of the afflicted, to St. John the Baptist,

St. Augustine, and St. Nicholas of Tolentine, often brought

forgetfulness of her woes. Women of the world enduring the like

suffering and trouble would deem themselves dispensed from the practice

of any other mortification, and in their love of ease, which readily

flatters them, would find a thousand pretexts to exempt themselves even

from the fasts that are commanded. But Rita, who was in the world but

not of it, far from suspending the acts of penitence she was used to

practise before her marriage, took refuge in works of greater

austerity, in abstinence and fastings and in chastising her body. In

spite of these acts of mortification, she still had sufficient strength

and vigour to attend to all the needs of her house and assist the wants

of her neighbours; she relieved the necessities of the poverty

stricken, and with her own hands prepared food for them; by the

bedsides of the sick she was unwearying, and, in a word, made herself

all things to all men. When she had to appear abroad, either in the

performance of her works of charity or to be present at the Divine

mysteries in the church, her angelic modesty and the goodness and

interior peace which shone in her countenance served to edify all who

saw her. These were her adornments, not the trappings of worldly show,

which from childhood she abhorred, and which were more detestable in

her eyes now that she had advanced so far on the way of perfection.

She carefully avoided all unbecoming neglect in dress, and appeared in

a garb free from everything savouring of vanity, not to say

indecency--such a dress as would escape the eyes of the curious, and

which, instead of luxuriousness, showed a contempt of the present life,

and was exactly what necessity and Christian humility required. In her

intercourse with others, whilst always well-mannered and agreeable, she

possessed singular tact in avoiding all conversations which were not of

God or of works of corporal or spiritual mercy to her neighbours. No

one ever heard from her lips any of those complaints against her

husband which are so frequent when women meet together. If ever any of

her female acquaintances who knew how she was treated by her

ill-tempered husband tried to provoke her to complain by affected pity,

as grumbling women not unfrequently did, she either turned the

conversation to another subject or covered her husband's faults with

the mantle of charity, and thereby gave a practical example of virtue

which her neighbours might to their advantage imitate. In brief, St.

Rita was another St. Monica: she was the strong woman of the parables

of Solomon, and was in all respects the best model for married women.

[1] Ps. lxxvi. 2.

CHAPTER X

DEATH OF RITA'S HUSBAND AND CHILDREN--RITA AS WIDOW

Rita had succeeded, as we have said, in assuaging the cruelty that

seemed to have been natural to her husband. The means she employed to

effect this change were the gentle manner which she naturally

possessed, and which Divine grace made still more gentle; the good

advice she ever gave, her kindness and unwearying patience, her good

example, and, above all, her fervent prayers. But whether it was that

his enemies, brooding over old causes of hate, resolved to take revenge

for past offences, or that Ferdinand, in a fresh outburst of passion,

had exposed himself to new quarrels and new dangers, the fact remains

that when he had lived eighteen years with Rita he was barbarously

murdered a short distance outside Rocca Porena (the place where the

unfortunate victim fell is still shown). Hardly had the report of his

tragic death reached the ears of his widowed spouse than, despite her

magnanimous heart, she paid the tribute of nature in an outburst of

bitter, scalding tears. In the depths of her heart the holy woman felt

the wounds that had taken from her side the husband she loved. But the

thoughts that made her weep were not thoughts of temporal losses, or of

her sorrow, or of being left alone to provide for her family, or of

having to dwell with undutiful children with no one to support her.

Far other sadder and more serious considerations were breaking her

heart. A little human feeling and a weak grasp of faith are enough to

fill us with horror at hearing of a violent death. We may, then,

easily imagine what grief Rita felt as she considered in the light of

her lively faith all the evil on the one part and the other that may

have preceded and accompanied that homicidal attempt, or as she dwelt

on the uncertainty of pardon or of her husband's penitence, or his

having to appear before his Judge without having received the last

Sacraments. Nevertheless, that lively faith which made her feel doubly

the crushing force of the calamity that had overtaken her soon raised

her above herself, above death and every human consideration. She

raised the eyes of her soul to heaven and remembered, and was sure that

Divine Providence, whose designs are inscrutable, not only disposes all

the good that is done, but permits all the evil which comes from man's

free-will. This thought sufficed to bow her down before the throne of

the Divine Majesty, to adore His just judgments, and hence came comfort

to her bruised heart. The saints have no need of the barren

consolations of the world; they find in religion that comfort which

reason alone can never give. Our noble heroine did not for a moment

hesitate to pardon sincerely from her heart the murderers of her

unfortunate husband, but, mindful of the example of Jesus Christ, who

prayed to the Eternal Father for those who crucified Him, and of St.

Stephen, who interceded for those who were stoning him to death, she

too offered fervent supplications to the Divine Mercy for those cruel

murderers.

Hardly had Rita raised her mind above the stormy sea of her sorrows

than a new trouble appeared to afflict her. She perceived with

consternation that her sons, although yet of tender years, were

plotting vengeance against those who were guilty of their father's

blood. The afflicted widow exerted all her force by word and deed to

excite in them sentiments of resignation and of forgiveness and of

Christian charity. She ceased not to keep before their minds the

eternal maxims, the fear of judgment and of hell, the examples of the

saints, and especially the example of our crucified Redeemer, who, in

the extremity of His sufferings, interceded for His inhuman

executioners. She took care, too, immediately to remove out of the

sight of her sons the bloody garments of her slain husband. But in

spite of all her advice and solicitude, the sorrowing mother could not

touch her children's vengeful hearts, or, if she did succeed in

softening them, it was but for a moment they abandoned their wicked

intentions. Amidst circumstances of such distress, and oppressed by

her fears, the unhappy widow knew not whither to turn, and on earth she

found only subjects of sorrow and vestiges of sin. She turned her

weeping eyes once more to heaven, and there again she found the

greatest comfort in her sufferings. Although she was a mother, and had

a mother's affectionate heart, yet because she loved and sought God's

honour more than her own flesh and blood, like a noble Christian

heroine, she supplicated the Lord either to change her children's

hearts or to take them out of this world before they could accomplish

the vengeance they were meditating. Rita's vows were acceptable to

heaven, and to her was granted to complete Abraham's sacrifice in a new

way--for the patriarch's knife was arrested in mid-air, and Isaac was

saved; but she saw her two sons fall one after another victims to her

prayers that pierced the heavens. Thus we may well hope that the most

merciful Lord provided for their eternal salvation during their mortal

illness, and then took them, lest wickedness should alter their

understanding,[1] and at the same time provided for the mother by

opening to her a way into a new life far removed from the world and so

long the object of her wishes, a life altogether spiritual and by

anticipation blessed. The brave woman did not weep, and although at

the time of her husband's tragic end she was dissolved in tears through

fear about the salvation of his soul and the souls of his murderers,

yet at the deaths of her children she only thanked her God who had

taken them away from the dangers of sin and the risk of another more

dreadful death--that of the soul.

It is difficult to discover how long Rita had to struggle with her

vengeful children, or how long she remained in the world after they had

passed to eternity. It seems certain, however, that the time she lived

as a widow was short. But we know that during that period she placed

all her confidence in God, and that she was engaged night and day in

the practice of most perfect prayer,[2] according to St. Paul's

instruction to widows. She bore the cross with Jesus Christ, and lived

a life of perpetual self-denial. More than ever she kept her body in

subjection by scourgings and continued fasting, and she distributed to

the poor that part of her food which her abstinence spared. She

rejoiced in performing works of mercy, and was, in a word, all love

towards God and her neighbour, and in no way solicitous about herself.

Amongst other instances of her heroic charity we read that, happening

one day upon a poor man half naked and trembling with cold, she took

one of her own garments and gave it to him, and went on her way

rejoicing that God had given her the opportunity and the grace to

deprive herself of what she herself needed in order to help one of the

poor of the Lord. Her dress was of coarse serge, and was a dark blue

in colour, and during the severity of the winter she added a rough

cloak. She always wore sackcloth that she might always be doing

penance. In retirement alone she found her consolation and joy; and no

sooner were her children dead than her old burning desire to enclose

herself once for all within the cherished shadows of the cloister

sprang into life again. We may relate an incident which gave a new

impetus to her vocation, as it is told by an ancient writer: Having

gone one day from Rocca Porena to Cascia, she went into the church of

the Augustinian nuns whilst Mass was being said, and there she felt as

if those words of our Saviour were being imprinted on her mind, 'I am

the Way, the Truth, and the Life'--words which then passed into her

heart to pierce it with the Divine love which spoke to her and invited

her.

We may well believe, too, that the worthy examples of other female

saints then living or but recently gone to their reward offered new

arguments to urge her not to delay entering on a conventual life. The

memory of St. Bridget of Sweden and Blessed Angela of Foligno was still

recent, whilst St. Margaret of Monferrato and St. Frances of Rome were

then still living, all of them illustrious women raised up by God, as

Rita was in Cascia, to oppose and bear testimony against the corruption

of those times, and all of them predestined to become models to the

virgins of the cloister after having adorned in the world the three

states of virginity, married life and widowhood. But even without

these examples Rita was sufficiently conscious of the interior voice of

her heavenly Spouse, and she readily prepared to obey it. Thus Abraham

had hardly heard the angel's voice when he arose in the darkness of the

night and went to sacrifice his son; the shepherds who were watching

their flocks when they heard the announcement of the Divine Infant's

birth ran to offer Him their homage; the Magi, as soon as they saw the

new star, did not hesitate to undertake their long journey to adore the

King of kings in His swaddling-clothes; the Apostles, at the first call

of the Redeemer, left their nets and followed Him; the head of the

Apostles, Peter, at a sign from the angel, rose quickly from his broken

chains; so Rita determined to hide herself without delay in that sacred

retreat where her Divine Lover was awaiting her. That retreat, as we

have said, was the convent in Cascia of the nuns who follow the rule of

the great Augustine, who were called at that time nuns of St. Mary

Magdalen, from the ancient title of their church, and who were

remarkable for strict observance. We have said before that the

Augustinian Order flourished there not only in the convent of the nuns,

but in the wonderful sanctity of the worthy followers of the Blessed

Simon, Blessed Ugolino, and Blessed John and Simon, all of whom had

dwelt in the woods of Cascia. This, too, must have been a strong

attraction to our saint, and a further inducement to fix her mind

unchangeably on Cascia. The memory of the heroic virtues practised by

St. Nicholas of Tolentine, her special advocate, was still fresh in the

minds of men, and the fame of his stupendous miracles had spread

throughout the land. But the principal motive why she sought to wear

the habit of St. Augustine was that God in His inscrutable decrees had

called her to that state by the loving invitations of His grace. The

pious widow approached the nuns, and, throwing herself at their feet,

in simple words and with all the fervour of her heart expressed her

desire to serve God within their walls and in that penitential garb

they wore. But her request was vain; it was not thought convenient to

receive a widow in a convent intended for virgins, and it was against

their custom. Rita took her refusal patiently, but she did not lose

courage, and, like Abraham, she hoped against hope.[3] Some time after

she went back again, represented that she had a vocation, renewed her

prayers and sighs; but she was rejected a second and, again, a third

time. But the more the nuns persisted in refusing her admission, the

more did Rita acquire the merit of humility, patience, and unalterable

confidence in God. She attributed her refusal to her own unworthiness,

and in her self-contempt she more and more conformed herself to her

model, Jesus. This was the manner of life which Rita led in the world,

where she was a mirror of every virtue to virgins, to the married, and

to widows. We shall see how she became an example of sanctity to

religious in the cloister.

[1] Wisd. of Sol. iv. ii.

[2] 1 Tim. v. 5.

[3] Rom. iv. 18.

END OF PART I

Part II

RITA IN THE CLOISTER

CHAPTER I

RITA'S MIRACULOUS ENTRY INTO THE CLOISTER

AND HER RECEPTION

All Rita's thoughts and all her affections were centred in heaven, and

the reason why she desired to lead a more perfect life in the cloister

was thereby to make more certain of attaining the object of her

desires. But the world in that century of wickedness was engaged about

far different things; the vortex of worldly hopes and ambitions had

engulfed almost all the aspirations of men. In the East, rapine, vice,

violence, murder, irreligion, and a long train of irreparable wrongs,

had followed quickly upon the victories of Sultan Bajazet and the

defeats of the Emperor Emmanuel. The prolonged war was still being

waged in the German Empire between Sigismund and the rebellious

Hussites, who despised human life in their endeavours to spread their

heresy and profane and overthrow the altar. The government of the

Church, then under Pope John XXIII., was most violently harassed by the

anti-Pope Pietro di Luna, whose contumacy the Council of Constance

failed to break down, as the Council of Pisa had failed before. Italy

continued to be the laughing-stock of tyrants and of the resuscitated

factions of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. Of the two Visconti who

governed the Cisalpine province, one was the slave of his vices and the

other was the prisoner of his rebellious subject Facino Cane, tyrant of

Alexandria, who was the formidable chief of a marauding band and the

despoiler of the province. The tyrannous usurpations of Ottobono in

Parma, Da Vignate in Lodi, Fondolo in Cremona, and Malatesta in Brescia

still continued. The Romagna and the Marshes enjoyed no higher degree

of liberty or prosperity under the yoke of despotism. The factions of

Durozzo and of Anjou still disputed possession of the kingdom of

Naples, and the ambitious Ladislaus, with designs on the whole Italian

peninsula, began to threaten Rome with the fugitive Pontiff. The

republics of Venice, Genoa, Florence, and Siena were either plotting

against one another or actually at war. Cascia was the only one of the

republics that had begun to taste the almost forgotten fruits of peace.

But neither in Cascia nor elsewhere were good morals to be found; they

seemed to have barely secured a refuge in the cloisters. Hence Rita

was sighing night and day for the sacred shelter, and although she had

till then bloomed as a stainless lily among thorns, yet she did not

consider that she could live secure in the danger-laden atmosphere that

surrounded her. But how could she aspire to a cloistered life when all

hope seemed futile after the repulses she had received? Yet to that

life she aspired, and not in vain. For those undertakings which seem

arduous and sometimes impossible become not only practicable, but easy

to heroic faith. The invitations which Divine grace held out to her

and the refusals with which Rita was met by the nuns were nothing more

than the loving pleasantries of her heavenly Spouse, and but trials of

her virtue and constancy. Therefore the more her wishes were

frustrated, the more frequent became her prayers and the more fervent

the sighs of her heart. She had recourse, too, to the mediation of the

saints, and did not fear to make herself importunate to her protectors,

St. John the Baptist, St. Augustine, and St. Nicholas. And the measure

of the effect which her prayers produced was, as St. Augustine teaches,

the fervour of the love that preceded them. She merited the favour she

sought, and received it. Here is how the incident is related by the

writers of her life:

The saint was one night kneeling on the ground, rapt in prayer, her

hands extended to heaven after her usual manner and as the royal

prophet teaches, when she suddenly heard a knocking at the door of her

house, and someone calling out her name. The first feeling of the

lonely widow was one of trouble and fear, but she invoked the Divine

assistance, took courage, and went to the window--but nothing was to be

seen or heard. She returned to her prayer, but was interrupted by the

same unknown voice calling her. Her fear increased, but she went to

the window again--and again there was only darkness and silence

without. She then began to think it might be some trick of the devil,

and, puzzled between doubt and fear, she threw herself at the feet of

Jesus Christ, and besought Him more fervently to enlighten and to help

her, and that He would be pleased to make known His Divine will,

whether what she had experienced was a delusion of the devil or a voice

from heaven. Her short prayer was so pleasing to God that Rita soon

felt herself rapt in ecstasy, and then she saw and heard clearly, and

her fear was changed into joyful consolation. She saw her three holy

patrons, and heard the joyous words with which the spouse of the

Canticles called his beloved, 'Arise, make haste, my love, and

come--come, for it is time at last to enter the cloister from which

thou hast been repulsed so many times.' As soon as these words had

been uttered, the rapture of her ecstasy ceased, but she still

retained, deeply impressed on her mind, a vivid picture of the entire

vision. Then, by a Divine impulse, she went to the window a third

time, and, enlightened by God, she saw, to her great surprise, a person

of venerable aspect, who invited her by signs to follow him. Whether

he appeared in his usual rough vesture of woven camel-hair, or clad in

skins, or in other guise, we know not, but for certain it was no other

than St. John the Precursor, as Rita was not slow to recognise, and he

it was who was so clearly manifested to her in the preceding vision.

She felt her heart overflowing with rapture, and hastened to obey the

signs of her heavenly guide. Hardly had she reached the spot where he

stood than her astonishment and joy were still further increased, for

there, at either side of her great protector, stood her other patrons,

Augustine and Nicholas, both ready and prepared to escort her towards

the fate she desired so ardently for herself. It will not be out of

place to remark here that the house in which Rita dwelt and out of

which she went on the night in which these extraordinary events

occurred was built at the base of a steep shelf of rock anciently

called the 'Gun' of Rocca Porena, and which it was almost impossible to

climb. Yet, leaving the usual road, it was by way of this rock that

her sainted guides led Rita, perhaps to indicate to her by the

precipitous nature of the place the steepness of the mountain of

monastic perfection which she was destined to scale, and by the chasm

below the terrible nature of a fall from grace. Rita was seized by

sudden fear at the sight here presented to her, but Divine grace and

her holy companions brought her comfort, and enabled her to rise

superior to herself, so that she mounted fearlessly through the

darkness of the night over the rough stones and trunks of fallen trees

till she reached the highest point of that beetling rock, which is now

called the 'Saint's Rock,' from so memorable an occurrence. If the

ascent of the rock is difficult, the descent on the side of Cascia is

quite impossible, from whence it is believed that when the four saints

had accomplished the difficult ascent they were either borne through

the air from mountain to mountain, or else passed without pause to

their intended goal, as if to signify the liberty enjoyed by all who

reach the highest point of perfection and have climbed the mount of

God. However the authors may differ in minor points in describing this

event, we may well judge that everything connected with it is

miraculous, as Rita's entry into the convent was also miraculous, for

she entered whilst the gates were closed, or through a gate opened for

her and closed when she had passed the portals by an invisible hand.

When Rita found herself within the sacred enclosure where she had so

ardently desired to be, her glorious escort disappeared in a moment

from sight, and she was abandoned and left all alone in the darkness,

and had to pass the remainder of the night in an ecstasy of wonder, but

tossed about on a sea of uncertainty by the rush of the thoughts that

filled her mind. The nuns rose in the early morning to sing the

praises of the Lord, and what was their surprise when they saw within

their convent, and trembling with fright, the humble widow whom they

had repeatedly rejected! They plied her with questions, and Rita

replied simply and modestly by describing the whole history of the

miraculous occurrence of the night. For the last time she begged them

with the greatest fervour not to reject her any longer--and how could

they refuse her in the face of so evident a miracle? The nuns,

therefore, with common consent and unusual applause, received the holy

widow into their number, and after joining with her in thanking and

praising the Most High, they put on her their penitential habit, and

admitted her to the novitiate with all solemnity and every mark of

general satisfaction. The nuns were delighted at the turn of events,

and Rita's joy exceeded all bounds, till, comparing her unworthiness

with the great goodness of God, she was abashed before Him. The more

she thought on the greatness of the remarkable favours conferred on

her, the more profound did her humility become, and she poured forth a

thousand times her tribute of gratitude to heaven, but could never find

words or thoughts able to express the thanks she owed to Divine

Providence.

This miraculous entry into the convent occurred during the unhappy

years we have before described, or about the year 1413, when Rita was

nearly thirty-two years of age; for she was married in her thirteenth

year, and lived eighteen years with her husband, and was a widow for

about a year, when her second son died; whilst the interval between

that event and her entry to the convent, the period of her repeated

rejections, must have been short. In the same year the Augustinian

Order could boast of another splendid addition to its members, for the

reception of Alexander Oliva, called the Blessed, occurred then. He

afterwards reached the highest honours within the Order, and was raised

to the dignity of Cardinal before he passed to the glory he had

prepared for himself in heaven. But the Order has greater reason to be

proud of Rita's reception, because, although her life was passed in

obscurity and far from the eyes of the world, it certainly was not less

bright with the splendour of the Saints, and after death she has

acquired more of the veneration of the faithful.

CHAPTER II

RITA AS NOVICE: HER PROFESSION

From her early youth Rita had a great longing for a solitary life, but

now that the Omnipotent God had placed her in the convent she had no

further reason to sigh for the deserts of the Jordan, the solitudes of

Tagaste, the silence of Valmanente, the groves of her native place, or

any other home of hermits. The cloister constituted the fulfilment of

all her desires, and her only remaining anxiety was to emulate the

great virtues of her three holy patrons, the blessed hermits of Cascia,

and the other holy ones whose lives had made the glory of the

solitudes. To say truth, it must have cost her very little labour to

follow in their footsteps, for there was no need for her to change her

habits and manners when she put off a secular dress for the garb of a

nun, and she had but to live the remainder of her life as she had

hitherto lived in order to reach the highest point of perfection.

Jesus Christ teaches us that the surest way of attaining perfection is

by renouncing all earthly possessions, and our saint, although she had

always lived completely detached from worldly things, hastened to

practise the Saviour's teaching in the most effectual manner by

distributing all her slender fortune amongst the poor. Thus, without

property, without husband or children, and far from her relatives, Rita

rejoiced to be an abject slave in the house of the King of Peace, and

deemed herself to enjoy a nobler freedom, more ample wealth, and a

happier lot than they who dwell in the sumptuous tabernacles of sinners

surrounded by the riches, the pomp, and the glory of this world.

No one can tell us better than her companions in religion how she lived

during the year of her noviceship, and they were astonished and

confused at what they observed in her, and from the first regarded her

as a model of the purest and most tried virtue. Poverty, chastity, and

obedience had nothing to alarm her, for she was long accustomed to live

in poverty in Rocca Porena; her body she had crucified with Christ in

God; and she had lived subject not only to her prudent parents, but to

a cruel husband. So also had the other virtues which she practised in

her noviceship become familiar to her in the world, if we except alone

some prescribed corporal penances and the more abundant prayers which

she was enabled to offer. Nothing else regarding her can be

established from the scanty memorials of those obscure times, and we

only know that as the time of noviceship went on she persevered in

those holy practices of extraordinary piety and austere penance, and

prepared to bind herself to her God with stronger ties on the day of

her new regeneration. The learned Cardinal Seripando and others call

the day of the formal profession of monastic vows the day of new

regeneration, for through the sacrifice then made of one's will, of

bodily pleasures, and of property, the total remission of all

punishment due to sin may be merited. That day at length arrived, and

the holy novice, having first made a rigorous examination of her whole

life and marked all the stains on her pure conscience, which she

removed by the fire of her sorrow and the blood of Jesus Christ,

presented herself before the altar to vow perpetual observance of the

evangelical counsels. She had no hesitation in placing her hand on the

holy Rule of the great Augustine, for her heroic trust in the

assistance of grace gave her courage, and for the rest, although the

Rule may seem severe to the minds of worldlings, the saints regard it

but as a law of love, and a cord to unite souls to God. Therefore Rita

preferred this sweet servitude to all the kingdoms of earth, and

considered herself the happiest of women since she had at last reached

the goal towards which from her earliest years she had felt herself

drawn by heaven's gentle violence.

The exact date of the profession is unknown, but it very probably took

place when Fr. Pietro di Vena Tolosano was General of the Order, and he

succeeded in that office Fr. Saracini, who was from Rocca Porena, and

who had been made Bishop of Macerata. The date of profession would

therefore be about 1414. History leaves us to imagine also the

feelings of the newly-professed nun, but we may well judge from her

past that that solemn day was one of an outpouring of love and

gratitude to God. But of one incident connected with the day we are

informed, and it is that whilst Rita, never satisfied that she had

sufficiently extolled the goodness of the Lord, was still kneeling late

at night before the crucifix, she suddenly felt herself ravished out of

her senses into a state of sublime ecstasy. She thereupon saw in

spirit what was given Jacob to see in a dream--a ladder that reached

from earth to heaven, and angels ascending and descending by it, and at

the summit our Lord, who was inviting her to ascend. We may believe

that this was the mystic ladder of charity, whose steps, as St.

Augustine says, God Himself prepares, so that those chosen souls which

He wishes to exalt may ascend by them, and at whose top He stands to

await them at the term of their journey to receive and introduce them

into the possession of heaven. But no one could penetrate its meaning

better than the ecstatic Rita. The holy woman awoke from her ecstasy

enlightened by these heavenly instructions, and came out of the light

of God to seek Him again and follow His leading with greater anxiety

amidst the darkness of our mortal state.

CHAPTER III

RITA'S CHARITY

What constitutes the greatness of the mystic city, the new Jerusalem,

is not the number and variety of its inhabitants, or the fame of great

undertakings, but charity alone. In fact, the Virgin Mary was exalted

above all the choirs of heaven, and St. John the Baptist was called the

greatest of the saints even before the testimony at the Jordan,

although their lives were nothing more than a continuous exercise of

charity. Hence, coming to speak of Rita, if she had charity she

possessed all things,[1] since the fulness of the law is charity, and

if she had it in an eminent degree she was a great saint, for perfect

charity is perfect justice.[2] This is the sublime principle which St.

Augustine, himself a great master of charity and evangelical

perfection, proposes in that golden Rule of his, which so many

religious Orders have adopted, and which Rita observed to the last

letter--a principle which, as Blessed Alphonsus of Oroza says, is a

summary of the entire Christian religion, and which at the same time

proves the excellence and the adaptability of the Rule to all ages.

It was to the attainment of charity that Rita even before her

profession, but more determinedly afterwards, gave her undivided

attention, and employed all the affections of her heart and the powers

of her mind. We leave it to others to describe her heroic faith and

hope; for us it will be enough to treat of that virtue which

presupposes the other two--embraces them and gives them their life.

The first proof that one possesses this virtue is fulfilling the will

of God by observing His holy law, as Jesus Christ taught us when He

said: 'He that hath My commandments, and keepeth them: he it is that

loveth Me. And He that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and I

will love him, and will manifest Myself to him.'[3] Now, all those who

have written the life of our saint and the evidence of tradition

regarding her assure us that she observed with the utmost exactness all

the commandments of God, the precepts of the Church, and the commands

of her superiors. The very manner with which she observed these

precepts was perfect, for she always obeyed cheerfully, and with joy

readily and exactly sought to anticipate commands, and to exceed in

fulfilling them. And this exact observance was extended not only to

what is of command, but to the evangelical counsels also, and yet so

light to her was the weight of this burden that she took upon herself

very many works of supererogation to give an outlet to her burning

piety. She was the first to rise from her bed at midnight, the first

at prayer, in the choir, at instruction, at penitential observances and

the works of mercy, in obedience, first at all the duties of the

community, in which latter she was always best pleased the meaner the

office entrusted to her to perform. In the midst of her uninterrupted

occupations and vigils she had no other thought than to find the safest

ways of seconding the holy will of God, a thought that produced in her

that holy fear which is the offspring of love. She was always afraid

of offending her most loving God even in the slightest matter, and so

fearsome of it was she that the very name of sin was a horror to her.

Hence, to remove as far as possible all danger of sin, she imposed on

herself a law of rigorous silence, for she knew the truth of the saying

of St. James the Apostle, that 'if any man offend not in word, the same

is a perfect man.'[4] In order more easily to carry out her design she

remained shut up in her cell alone with her agonized Spouse Jesus, like

a 'dove in the clefts of the rock, in the hollow places of the

wall.'[5] She never left her cell except to find her sovereign good

either in the Blessed Sacrament or amongst the poor and sick, or in

such other works of charity as her state permitted her to perform.

Even in circumstances such as these she was on her guard to utter no

word that she had not weighed well, and it is said of her that she even

used to keep a pebble in her mouth to remind her to preserve the

silence she loved.

Sometimes, of course, she had to speak, through necessity or

politeness, or for convenience' sake, and in such cases her words were

in accord with the feelings of her heart, and hence, since she was all

spirit, her discourses were on things of the spirit; she was all

charity, and her speech therefore tended to the greater glory of God

and the salvation of her neighbours. She was not wanting in that easy

fluency which springs from the heart and can reach hearts, which is

proper to the saints and inspires sanctity, which feeds on love and

draws souls to God. Whether Rita possessed this honied eloquence from

the time the wonderful bees appeared over her cradle, or acquired it by

the practice of the greatest charity towards her neighbour, only God,

who gave it to her, knows. We only know that she made use of the

opportunities which this gift afforded her to give advice to doubting

souls, to comfort the pusillanimous, to console the afflicted, to bring

back the erring to the way of salvation, to practise these and other

works of mercy with that happy success which the Giver of every good

gift was wont to grant her.

Amongst her wonderful deeds of charity we find it recorded that having

heard of two persons of the town who had been long living in a state of

sin, and were thereby the cause of great public scandal, she wept for

their sins, and then determined on the difficult task of making them

separate and leading them to repent. Rita had had too many proofs of

the Divine goodness not to be confident of success in her present

undertaking. She first had recourse to prayer and to penance, which

she offered in union with the sufferings of Jesus Christ for the

conversion of the sinners, and then had each of the scandal-givers

brought to her in turn, and, alone with them, by her gentle insinuating

manner she brought them to see their deplorable condition, and she had

the happiness of seeing them shed tears of compunction and afterwards

perform constant penance for their past transgressions. In very truth,

such evils as those under which these two sinners laboured were what

excited Rita's greatest compassion, but she was by no means wanting in

compassion for those suffering from bodily ills, nor was her fervent

charity slow in coming to their assistance. Never was anyone ill in

the convent whom Rita did not nurse, often for whole days and nights.

She saw in the sick Jesus Christ Himself, and therefore delighted to be

by their bedsides. She pitied them, and sought to soothe their pains

by the sweet considerations which religion, and especially the Passion

of Christ, inspired her. With her own hands she gladly rendered them

every service, even the meanest and most nauseating, and for this

blessed work of charity she did not hesitate to forsake her usual

devotional practices, and feared not to leave God for God's work. In a

word, she was all things to all, for, as St. Paul, too, had

experienced, her compassion made the infirmities of the suffering her

own. And therefore all those who died in the convent during her forty

years of life in it had the happiness of having her for their attendant

and consoler, and drew their last breath in her holy arms, reclining

against her tender heart. Her very charity was the reason which

condemned her for many years to a total separation from her beloved

sisters in religion, lest, as we shall tell later, the offensive odour

of a sore on her forehead, by which she was afflicted, might render her

presence disagreeable to them. She then saw very well that she had

become almost an outcast from the community, but she felt no resentment

on that account, but lived as an exile, contented in her cell, since

she knew that she was no inconvenience to her neighbour, and gave no

offence to God. She even rejoiced in her humiliation and in her

infirmities and her separation from creatures. We omit many other

proofs of the greatness of the charity to God and her neighbour which

filled Rita's heart. In order to know her charity we have but to

recall how she lived with a cruel and ferocious husband, how she

interceded for his murderers, how she offered her very children as a

sacrifice to God, how she devoted her time in the world to deeds and

prayers for her neighbour's good. Such was her charity, heartfelt,

unbounded, kind, patient, strong, and unconquerable.

Hitherto we have spoken only of Rita's effective or working charity,

or, at most, of her love to her neighbour, but what description dare we

give of her internal love of God? It would never be possible for us to

describe the ardour and fire of love which was ever consuming her

heart. How her affections soared towards heaven, how her soul was

transformed through Divine love, how the interior life of that seraph

of charity was lived, it would be impossible to describe. However, we

shall try to convey an idea, though imperfect, of it, especially when

we come to speak of her spirit of prayer. Meanwhile, the reader may

form some notion of it by gauging the measure of Rita's charity to her

neighbour, and from the consideration of what we have hitherto

described of a life not only blameless and holy, but everywhere aided

and distinguished by heaven's most singular favours.

[1] 1 Cor. xiii.

[2] St. Augustine.

[3] John xiv. 21.

[4] Jas. iii. 2.

[5] Cant. ii. 14.

CHAPTER IV

OTHER VIRTUES WHICH RITA PRACTISED IN THE CLOISTER

That truth to which St. Augustine draws our attention in many passages

in his works--that charity is the source of all other virtues and their

life-giving principle--is confirmed by St. Gregory, who illustrates it

by comparing the virtues to the branches of a tree, which all spring

from the same root, which root of the virtues is charity. In fact, the

virtue of Christian prudence, for example, is nothing else than a

continued eagerness, in those who love God, to distinguish good from

evil, and to select the fittest means to please the Object of their

love, and attain to Him as their last end; justice is but a constant

desire in those who love God to render Him the worship due to Him and

their neighbour whatever is theirs; temperance is a curb which they who

prefer Divine to earthly love employ in order to keep their rebellious

appetites under the sweet yoke of that heavenly love; fortitude is but

the strength of charity which makes man superior to every trouble and

suffering; and the teaching of St. Augustine regarding the other

virtues is the same, according to their various natures. Now, if

Rita's charity was as great as we have described it, and as we shall

afterwards see more clearly, to what a pitch of perfection must she not

have reached in her practice of the other virtues!

Prudence, which is the first of the moral virtues, was quite

characteristic of Rita, and invariably showed its presence in her

exercise of all her other extraordinary gifts. This it was that taught

her the saving art of examining and judging rightly and adopting the

most suitable means for attaining that better part which, like another

Mary, she had irrevocably chosen for herself; this suggested to her the

surest method of regulating her conduct, her appetites, and her very

works of penance and devotion; this made her sparing of conversation,

diligent, circumspect, cautious, compliant and gentle-mannered; and,

finally, this virtue, through her long practice of it, or, rather,

because its origin is in God, enabled her to give the solidest and

holiest counsel to the advantage of her neighbour.

The virtue of justice also shone brightly in her life, for her life was

a continuous act of reverential homage to religion, the majesty of God,

the greatness of the most holy Virgin Mary, the merits of the Saints,

the authority of the Church, the laws of right, of friendship, of

gratitude, and of truth.

Nor was she less remarkable for the virtue of temperance, for she had

conquered her passions, and kept them subject to the spirit in a way

entirely heroic, by her continued rigorous fastings and the

uninterrupted practice of the most austere penances. It is wonderful

to consider how her virtue of temperance, which increased and waxed

strong amidst harsh and stern surroundings of penitential practices,

brought in its train a pretty group of gentler virtues--modesty,

purity, clemency, meekness, urbanity, graciousness.

Rita's fortitude also, which whilst she lived in the world was

extraordinary, increased in the cloister in proportion with her other

virtues, if we may not say it surpassed the others, since it was the

distinguishing mark of her character. The devil, of course, tried, by

insidious suggestions, to tarnish the purity of her heart and inspire

her with a love of sensual pleasures and a distaste for perfection; but

although his infernal assaults were strong and long continued, our

saint, who had prepared her mind against temptation from her youth, and

was now become an unconquerable heroine in the army of Christ, was so

well able to defend herself and fight valiantly that temptation only

served to multiply her triumphs and her laurels. It is said, too, that

the tempter, seeing that he failed in his interior assaults, sought to

frighten her by horrible phantoms; but in vain, for Rita, by the sign

of the Cross, put him to flight, and showed her scorn for him as a

powerless enemy. The flesh, too, tried to rebel against the law of the

spirit; but the holy woman kept it as a slave in bonds of sackcloth,

and brought it into subjection by sanguinary scourgings. Even the

little world of her convent tried her virtue in some sense, especially

during the years she suffered from the sore on her forehead. But

Rita's fortitude made these little trials seem but playful caresses.

The pain and the stench of the sore, the inconveniences of her poverty

and mortification, the great length of her last illness, and other

similar troubles with which the Lord tries the souls that are most

acceptable to Him, instead of depressing her were rather as food to

strengthen and increase her fortitude, magnanimity, patience,

confidence in God, and final perseverance.

With all this precious equipment of wonderful gifts and sublime

virtues, Rita had, nevertheless, the meanest opinion of herself, and

spoke of herself as if she were the vilest of creatures, thankless for

the gifts which Divine goodness had bestowed on her, a miserable

sinner, and unworthy to enjoy the companionship of so many sacred

virgins of the Lord. She not only spoke in this manner, but wished

everyone to have the same opinion which, in her heart, she had of

herself. Hence she had a horror of praise, and when at meditation she

felt those extraordinary lights and that spiritual ardour which

preceded her ecstasies, she used to beseech God that He would

condescend so to work in her soul that her companions might not be

conscious of it, and might never be led to have a favourable opinion of

her. But it was her humility that betrayed her expectations, for the

more she humbled herself, the more was she exalted, not only in the

eyes of God, but of men, and the deeper she sunk herself in the abyss

of lowliness, the higher was raised the edifice of her sanctity.

CHAPTER V

RITA'S OBSERVANCE OF THE RELIGIOUS VOWS

There is a love which is the soul of every virtue, and another love

which is an incentive to every vice; the former we call charity, the

latter concupiscence. Charity, since it comes from heaven, has for its

aim three noble objects--God, ourselves, and our neighbours.

Concupiscence, since it is altogether of the earth, has low aims, which

are likewise threefold--the pomp of the world, self-interest, and

pleasure. According as one or other of these is stronger in us we

attain sanctification and happiness, or spiritual ruin and misery. To

destroy the reign of perverse love and these three hostile passions

there are no arms more reliable than those which attack their very

foundations, and these arms are obedience, poverty, and chastity.

These were the arms which Rita continued to wield until she received

from her Divine Spouse the eternal crown prepared for her ripe and

splendid virtues!

The strongest weapon of the perfect is obedience, and when it is

employed by charity it opens up the way to every good object, as, on

the other hand, disobedience lays open the way to every evil, visible

and invisible, of the world. To begin with the consideration of this

great virtue, which Rita made a solemn vow to practise, we can affirm

that she possessed it in a most eminent degree. All her actions were

so many acts of obedience, or, rather, her whole conventual life was an

uninterrupted act of the humblest, truest, and readiest obedience.

Following the principles of her enlightened piety, she knew only too

well the truth declared to Samuel, that the sacrifice of the will is

more acceptable to God than the sacrifice of victims.[1] She always

kept before her eyes the example of a God who, for our instruction,

willed to live subject to His own creatures. She felt moved to imitate

the heroic virtue of so many sainted monks and nuns, and she saw

clearly the great advantage which obedience gave in directing our steps

through this world of darkness and sin. She therefore subjected

herself not only to all the laws of the Gospel, of the Church, of the

Rule and Constitutions of her Order, and not only obeyed with respect

and alacrity all the commands of the different superiors she had, and

carried out the duties of the various offices she filled, but she

eagerly desired to subject herself to her equals or juniors in the

convent, and sought to anticipate the commands even of these, to follow

their counsels and carry out their desires, esteeming herself only as

the unworthy servant of all. Virtue so rare deserved to be put to the

severest proof, since God often tries the virtue of the pious either

Himself or through the means of others.

The trial of Rita's obedience was this: The Prioress, who had observed

her great spirit of submission, commanded her to water every day a

dried-up tree that was in the convent garden. Rita made no objection

against so strange a command; she did not say that such an order was

outside the matters to which the Rule obliged her; she did not even

submit that it would be time lost, for she was convinced that the time

in which any work of obedience is done is time well spent. Therefore,

with her will in complete accord with the orders she received, she

continued to obey them for several seasons, and in this she was

imitating the example of the holy abbot John, of whom we read in the

lives of the Fathers that, in order to follow the instructions of his

director, he humbled himself so far as to carry a pail of water a

considerable distance to water a dry trunk of a tree. So did St. Rita

likewise, and not in vain; for so pleasing to God were her acts of

heroic obedience that, as tradition tells, the tree bloomed again, and

began to bear flowers and fruit, and from that fact it was called the

'Saint's Tree.'

What chiefly concerned her was that her obedience should bear fruit

unto eternal life, and hence the love which her heart felt for this

beautiful virtue was ever increasing. She therefore sought the

approval, direction, and restraining influence of another's will not

only in her temporal undertakings, but also in her devotional and

penitential exercises. When there was question of going to Rome to

gain the indulgences of the jubilee year, and again when she was to be

separated during the last years of her life from the pleasant society

of her sisters in religion, she allowed no consideration of fervent

piety, no personal reluctance, to come between her and her duty towards

holy obedience, from which she would not swerve an iota. Thus our

saint passed the rest of her life without a will of her own, or, if she

had a will, it was one that desired to do nothing except what obedience

ordered, in this way making certain of doing the will of God in all

things, which was the single object of all her desires. This is how

she conquered in herself and annihilated that great predominant passion

of man, the love of worldly glory.

She conquered also the second strong passion--love of self-interest--by

a generous love of evangelical poverty. We have already remarked how

from her earliest years, and amongst the comforts of her father's

house, she was enamoured of this holy poverty, and how she was

accustomed to observe it in her humble manner of dress, in opposing all

outward show, in the frugality of her living, in her abstinence, in

depriving herself of her best garments for the poor, and in renouncing

in their favour all her earthly possessions at her entrance into

religion, whence it seems, there was nothing else that could be added

except the vow and perseverance. Nevertheless, the spirit of poverty

markedly increased in Rita whilst she lived in the convent, where she

was chosen to dwell till her death. There, in truth, everything

breathed humility and straitness of means, and she might well be

satisfied that by ordinary observance she was fulfilling her vow. But

saints are never satisfied unless they go beyond the goal of ordinary

mortals and if they do not reach the heroic point of virtue. It

happened thus in Rita's case, for although she loved uniformity and was

opposed to those singularities which often deserve to be the subject of

suspicion, yet she felt that she ought not to oppose God's

inspirations, or confine herself solely to the usages of the community,

but, subject to obedience, she carried the rigours of religious poverty

much farther. We might tell here of her protracted fastings and the

small quantity of food of the poorest sort with which she kept herself

alive, but we shall speak of these things in a subsequent chapter, and

shall now only touch on the poverty of her dress and of her abode.

She did not show her poverty by wearing a coarser habit or one

differing in any way from those of her sisters in religion, yet there

is one particular that shows in a singular, not to say miraculous,

manner her spirit of poverty; for, like the Hebrews in the desert, from

the moment she put her foot in the convent till she entered the

promised land of the blessed, a period of more than forty years, she

had only one habit, which she wore night and day, and even during her

illnesses. As regards the poverty of her dwelling-place, her little

room, which may still be seen, declares it sufficiently, for it is only

a narrow cell, the least of all, crushed into a corner of the

dormitory, and with no light except a sort of twilight that filters

into it from the common window. A few pictures representing the

mysteries of our Lord's Passion were its only ornaments; the bed was

hard and rough, and more adapted to give pain than rest; all other

necessaries were wanting. Yet the holy penitent lived there contented,

and considered herself rich and wealthy, especially when she considered

the nakedness of the Crucified One, for she regarded the Cross of

Christ, her loving Spouse, as a mirror wherein to behold herself. The

cold words 'mine' and 'thine' which have been the cause of division in

families and kingdoms, and still divide hearts, never issued from her

lips, and even the things most necessary to her she let depend on her

Superior's will, and was always ready to deprive herself of them at the

slightest beck of authority, for she never had the least desire to own

anything.

There is related of her a singular fact, which proves her detachment

from the things of earth. Going on a journey undertaken for reasons of

devotion, of which we shall speak later, with some of the nuns of the

convent, she threw into a river the money that had been given her to

defray her expenses, or, as others say, which she accidentally found.

Her companions thought that, considering their great necessity, this

was an act of real imprudence, and could not refrain from blaming her.

But Rita, who was full of confidence in the protection of heaven,

assured them they would want for nothing; and so it happened, for they

wanted for nothing throughout their journey. That God who feeds the

birds of the air and the fishes of the deep took care to provide His

servant and her companions with every necessary on their long way. In

such a way did Rita, poor in possessions and in spirit, advance with

great strides on the way of perfection, and add new riches to the

incorruptible treasures she had laid up in heaven.

By poverty and obedience she had overcome the two passions of

self-interest and worldly glory; there remained the third passion, that

for sensual pleasures, against which our saint had to wage a more

bitter war, because, like the Apostle, she felt in herself that law

that was contrary to the law of the spirit, and because, as St.

Augustine writes, this is precisely the hardest fight that has to be

fought by Christians and the perfect. It is true that this most

virtuous woman was accustomed from her earliest years to watch over all

her thoughts and to keep a careful guard on her senses, and that from

her youth she had determined to preserve the candour of her virginity

intact; that she constantly preserved the most exemplary modesty; that

she avoided to the utmost of her power, even when in the world, all

evil discourse and companions and other incentives to impurity; that

she had lived most chastely and immaculately even as a wife. Yet with

all this she was not free from temptations, and to conquer them she had

recourse to an extreme rigour of life.

The demon used all his power in attacking Rita's purity; at one time he

tempted her by impure phantasms, at another by seductive apparitions.

But she put him to flight by her lively faith and her austere penances.

In the fiercest assaults of temptation she went so far as to burn her

hand or foot, thus putting out one fire by the pain of another, in

order to keep herself entirely pure in the sight of her most pure

heavenly Spouse. Through love of this virtue she avoided all

opportunities of seeing or being seen, and she adopted this safeguard

even with her own relatives. When she had sometimes to appear abroad

she showed such recollection, modesty, and gravity as to excite the

wonder of others and attract universal veneration. So remarkable was

her modesty on such occasions that when she came back to the convent

(in those days the obligations of enclosure were not so strict as they

now are) she was sometimes able to declare that she had not seen a

single person. This circumspection which our saint employed in the

custody of her eyes may seem excessive to worldly-minded people, but

'everyone hath his proper gift from God';[2] and besides, the means of

attaining to extraordinary virtue like Rita's are not always ordinary;

nor were her penances, which were a means to this end, ordinary

penances. If such was the violence of her spiritual struggles, there

is no doubt but that the victories she gained were remarkable and

productive of many good results, and that the reward which God reserved

for her in a happy eternity was passing great.

[1] 1 Kings xv. 22.

[2] 1 Cor. vii. 7.

CHAPTER VI

RITA'S PENANCES

However hard and sharp penance may appear at the first glance, yet it,

too, is a daughter of love, love that gives strength to put a curb on

carnal appetites, which are ever striving to rebel against the first

uncreated love, and which incites to reparation of past offences and

atonement for them. It is no wonder, then, that Rita, who was burning

with the flame of Divine love, and who had the holiest horror of sin,

should carry her austerities even to the point of heroism. True, such

innocence did not deserve so great pains; but she who, in her profound

humility, thought herself full of defects and faults, who knew human

frailty and the frequent dangers of falling into sin, and who was not

exempt from the wicked suggestions of the world, the flesh, and the

devil, did not consider herself exempt from those penances which she

practised, for the good of sinners, as a defence against danger and an

assurance of victory in temptation. Her whole life, therefore, was one

continued exercise of penance owing to the great self-denial which she

exhibited from her early youth, but more markedly in her married life

and her widowed state, and owing also to the fastings she practised in

the world, and the other mortifications which we mentioned in former

chapters, but, above all, owing to the severe and almost incredible

chastising of the flesh, which she made a law that she observed during

all the years she lived in the cloister.

To begin with her fastings, hardly had she embraced the Rule of St.

Augustine, which exhorts all to conquer the flesh by fasting as much as

health will permit, than she abandoned herself to a life of the most

rigorous and prolonged fasting. She never admitted any of those

exaggerated pretexts which the delicate sex finds it so easy to allege

in order to be dispensed from the laws of fasting and abstinence. She

only knew that God is not deceived, and that to desire to deceive one's

self is impious folly. She therefore had no hesitation in fulfilling

the most rigorous laws of abstinence without any ill-timed fear of

injuring her health. Every year she fasted during three entire Lents,

and also on the vigils of all holidays of obligation, of all the feasts

of the Blessed Virgin, of all the saints of the Order, and of her

particular advocates, not to mention other extraordinary fasts which

she observed. She took food only once a day, and never drank wine.

Her condiments were often wormwood, ashes, and tears. For the greater

part of the year she lived on bread and water, and as she advanced in

years and progressed in sanctity she reduced her food to such scanty

proportions that it was looked on as a miracle how she could in such a

way support life. St. Augustine's most prudent Rule does not prescribe

such things, and therefore Rita, by her heroic fasts, gave all the more

glory to the Most High; and by imitating the abstinences of the

Baptist, of St. Nicholas of Tolentine, and her other protectors, all

well-known models of penitence, she rendered them the truest honour,

for the best way of honouring the saints is to imitate their virtues.

But not only did she try to follow their example by penances of this

sort, but in all the other austerities of her life she endeavoured to

imitate them as exactly as her condition allowed.

The very dwelling-place in which she hid herself proclaimed her

penitential disposition, for it was only a little cell, bare and dark,

and had rather the appearance of a prison to which she had been

condemned for some serious crime. We do not know for certainty whether

even for appearance' sake there was a bed in it, but we do know very

well that when Rita was overcome by natural weariness she took her

short repose stretched on the ground, or, at best, on a board. She

rose without fail from that hardest of couches at midnight to begin the

infliction of greater torment on herself; for at that hour she scourged

herself with a scourge of iron in order to appease Divine justice in

favour of the souls in purgatory, who, though still of the communion of

saints and participators in our suffrages, are left to suffer the

greatest sorrow, deprived as they are of the Beatific Vision and

tortured by the pain of their fires. Her great charity made her feel

the holiest compassion for these unhappy souls, and it was charity that

nerved her arm to continue these scourgings; but if she ever felt for

herself charity, too, might have induced her to lay aside her

ensanguined whip of iron. On two other occasions every day she took

the discipline, once for the benefactors of her convent and Order, when

she used thongs of leather, and again for the conversion of sinners, at

which her whip was of twisted and knotted cords. With all this she was

not satisfied if that rebellious enemy her flesh were not suffering

continual pain, and hence she always wore next her skin a cilicium made

of rough bristles, and on the inner side of her habit she fastened

thorns that pricked her painfully at every movement she made. Amongst

these thorns and the painful practices of her life our saint lay

hidden, like the mystic lily of the sacred Canticles, inaccessible to

passions, guarded on every side, growing more beautiful and brighter

every day, because more like her heavenly Spouse crowned with thorns.

CHAPTER VII

RITA'S SPIRIT OF PRAYER

If Rita's body, oppressed by fastings, imprisoned in hair shirts and

galling bonds, made livid by scourgings, was forced to groan and sigh,

it was far otherwise with her spirit. The more the body was crushed

under the weight of penances, the more were the spaces of the soul

enlarged, the greater its liberty, the more readily might it raise

itself above all earthly things, to be plunged into the sublime depths

of heavenly things and taste of their ineffable sweetness. And if her

spirit sighed, it was a far different sigh from that of the body; it

was the sigh of the dove--a sigh of peace and love such as was foretold

by the Holy Spirit the Consoler by the mouth of the Psalmist to all

souls that devote themselves to penance and prayer--'Rise ye after ye

have sitten, you that eat the bread of sorrow.'[1]

The same wonderful effects of grace were experienced by St. Augustine,

who in his exposition of that verse of the Psalms could not refrain

from exclaiming, 'How sweet are the sighs and the tears of prayer! No

pleasure of the theatres or of the world can equal the joy of such

tears.'[2] We must not, however, come to the conclusion that this

interior joy was the chief motive that made our saint love prayer, for

she loved the God of consolations much more than she loved the

consolations of God; but it was an innocent attraction to her

God-loving heart, and on that account she never could interrupt

exercises so dear to her without feeling pain.

We have already related that from her childhood she had received the

gift of prayer, and which she developed in a striking way even in the

years of her early youth; and we have told how she gave herself

entirely to prayer during the year of her marvellous retirement in her

father's house, and how she continued to make progress in devotional

practices, especially when she was freed from the ties and cares of

matrimony. Yet when we compare all these things with her advancement

after she has embraced a conventual life, they seem but the very

beginning of piety. As a nun, Rita's prayers were offered in the

darkness of the night, in the early morning, throughout the

day--prayer, in a word, was her life, for not even for a moment could

she withdraw herself from the presence of her uncreated Love. The

hours between midnight and the break of day were the fullest of delight

for her, and the most favourable in which to treat all alone with God

the most important affairs of eternity and to pour out the fulness of

her love at the feet of the Crucified One. In the winter time, however

prolonged her vigils were, that time was always short to her, and

daylight came unlooked for. It seemed to her, as once to St. Anthony

the abbot, that the sun was doing her wrong by appearing too soon, for

she feared that he was coming to scatter with his rays the beautiful

light of her heavenly exaltations and seraphic thoughts. She never

wanted matter whereon to meditate, for the attributes of God and His

inexhaustible beneficence were to her subjects that she could never be

weary of considering. The sole thought that she was in the presence of

the majesty of God, that infinite majesty that fills with its being

heaven and earth and the abysses, was sufficient to raise her above

every created thing and transform her into God Himself.

One subject, nevertheless, beyond every other, occupied Rita's

mind--that of the Passion of Jesus Christ. It almost seems as if she

had inherited from her parents this particular devotion, and that upon

it she had laid the foundation-stone of her sanctity. It was to the

Passion that she was accustomed from childhood to direct her thoughts

and affections, her sighs and tears. The reader may remember how at a

tender age she shut herself into the little room at home, and there

continued to meditate on the sorrowful mysteries, which also were

depicted in the pictures which hung on the walls, and, better still,

were carved on her heart. The senses should do their part the better

to assist the soul in its efforts after piety, and this was the reason

why Rita procured and kept in her cell in the convent certain

representations of the Passion of her dear Jesus.

To this end she kept in two distinct parts of her cell objects that

recalled to her the history of the Passion. In one place she

constructed a representation of a mountain, which, whenever she looked

upon it, recalled Mount Calvary and all the torments which the Saviour

of the world suffered there. She meditated with sighs and tears on her

Divine Spouse arriving there, falling under the terrible weight of His

torments, His cross, and all the sins of men. With an outburst of

weeping she thought of Him deprived of His garments and fixed to the

cross with rough nails. She meditated with the liveliest compassion on

the cruel strokes of the hammer that tore His hands and feet, and on

all the other terrible torments that Jesus suffered for love of men.

In another corner of her cell she had a representation of the Holy

Sepulchre, and at sight of it she considered how the adorable body of

Christ was placed in it, how for three days it remained buried, how His

spirit went down to console the holy fathers in Abraham's bosom, and,

finally, how the Redeemer rose again to a new life triumphant and

glorious. During these meditations our saint was always alone; as

Jeremias says, 'she sat solitary and held her peace, and was raised

above herself';[3] in that sweet silence, in those loving soliloquies,

in that intimate intercourse with God she was superior to passion, to

nature, and to herself. So great was her mental exaltation during her

meditation on the Divine mysteries that she was often raised above the

life of the senses and rapt in delicious ecstasies, and on one

occasion, so strong was the ecstatic influence, the nuns thought she

was dead.

Now, seeing that she soared to such sublime heights in prayer, it will

be no wonder that she possessed also as she did, and in a singular

manner, the gifts of wisdom and intelligence, so that she could reason

on the perfections of God and on the most abstruse mysteries of faith

with a subtle knowledge that could be acquired by no study nor any

natural capacity. Thus God hides the secrets of His wisdom from the

wise of this world and reveals them to His humble servants, to those

who appear ignorant in the eyes of the world. All these things excited

to rage the infernal enemy of all good and all sanctity, and in order

to make the holy nun desist from her pious practice he tried to

frighten her with horrible yells and dreadful apparitions. But she

continued to be motionless in prayer, and by prayer itself triumphed

over all the powers of hell. By the merit of her prayers, too, she

acquired a certain authority over devils. A proof of this is that a

woman who had for years been harassed by diabolical interference was

freed from it by Rita. Through prayer, too, she obtained the grace of

a supernatural healing for a young girl who was ill, whose mother had

the consolation of seeing her cured after having brought her to the

saint to ask the help of her prayers. We know that God was accustomed

to grant whatever she asked for, and so great was the fame of her

successful intercession and sanctity that devout people, confident in

her advocacy, came to her in crowds, and of all who came none went away

dissatisfied. Yet these were but the first-fruits that appeared

externally and to the eyes of men to testify to the extraordinary

efficacy of her prayers. We shall see more clearly in the remainder of

her life, and much more so after her death, in the many prodigious

works that God performed through her intercession, how great was the

merit of our saint's faith and of her prayers.

We may also mention at the conclusion of this chapter the most fervent

prayers which she often offered before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament

and before the pictures of the most holy Virgin; but it was not the

circumstance of place that chiefly enkindled her devotion, for at every

instant and in all places she found Jesus and Mary, and a thousand

objects adapted to excite her most fervent piety.

[1] Ps. cxxvi. 3.

[2] Ps. cxxvi.

[3] Lam. iii. 28.

CHAPTER VIII

A THORN FROM THE SAVIOUR'S CROWN OF THORNS

WOUNDS RITA'S FOREHEAD

Rita had lived thirty years in the convent, leading that saintly life

we have described, and had attained her sixty-second year, when, in the

year 1443, it pleased God to mark in a wonderful manner, and, as it

were, put His seal on her merit by conferring on her a privilege that

is well worthy to be described.

There lived at that time St. James of the Marshes, one of those

Apostolic men whom God then raised up, like St. Vincent Ferrer, St.

Laurence Giustiniani, St. Bernardine of Siena, and St. John of

Capestrano, to be strong barriers against the depravity of the world,

the rage of civil discord, the shock of schism, and the advance of

rising heresies. After many years passed with great advantage to souls

in the missions of Bosnia, Hungary, and the East, he was recalled in

that year by Pope Eugene IV., who destined him to preach the Crusade in

the province of Aquila, against the infidel Sultan Amurath II., who had

already penetrated into the heart of Hungary. On his return he had

occasion to go through the territory and towns of Spoleto preaching the

Gospel, and he expounded the word of God in Cascia amongst other

places. His discourses in Cascia were on the subject of our Lord's

Passion, and Rita was present at them. That a nun was present amongst

the people to hear the holy preacher will cause no astonishment when we

know that although the law of religious enclosure had been established

by many Councils and by Pope Boniface VIII., yet its observance was not

rigorously enforced until the time of the Council of Trent, and nuns

might go out of their convents, especially when there was question of

fulfilling religious duties or to hear the word of God preached.

Rita, then, with the other nuns of her convent, was present at the

sermons, which she listened to with that purity of intention that casts

out all curiosity, and has for its only objects the glory of God and

the sanctification of the soul. The sanctity and zeal of the preacher,

who had long known the secret of touching the most hardened hearts,

will enable us to judge of the effects of his preaching. That his

subject was our Lord's Passion--the chief object of Rita's meditation,

and which excited her to the highest point of the love of God--will be

enough to tell us how deeply his discourses must have impressed her. A

divine compassion filled her heart, and she only restrained her tears

as she listened in order afterwards to pour them copiously forth when

she knelt before the crucifix in the old oratory of the convent. One

day, as she was there prostrated, wounded in spirit by the vehemence of

her great sorrow, with much sobbing she prayed and besought her Love,

who had been crowned with thorns, to permit her whilst still in the

flesh to taste at least of the bitter chalice of His sufferings. Her

heartfelt prayers were heard, and she saw one of the thorns of the

crown of the crucifix detach itself, as it were, and strike her on the

left side of the forehead with such force that it almost penetrated the

bone, causing her exquisite pain. She fainted from the pain, and it

seemed to her that only by a miracle could she survive such great

suffering. But love was stronger than pain in her, and grace supported

the weakness of nature itself. The wound, which by time grew larger,

festered, and became wormy, was visible on her forehead for fifteen

years. The worms and the offensive smell, similar to that which once

tormented Job, increased the pain of the wound and disgusted others.

But these things formed the delight of the patient nun, whose one

desire was to become like her Saviour, who, as the prophet Isaias

says,[1] was become for her and for the human race the most abject of

men and the Man of Sorrows, whose look was hidden and despised--a

prophecy so exactly fulfilled that He was unrecognisable when the

streams of blood flowed down His face from the wounds the thorns had

made in His head. When Rita was asked, as she sometimes was, what the

worms were that occasionally fell from her forehead, she used to reply,

with a joyous smile, 'They are my little angels,' letting it thereby be

seen that the more she was humbled and afflicted in the flesh, the more

she rejoiced in spirit, as was also the case with St. Francis of Assisi

and St. Catherine of Siena, whose great privilege of the stigmata is

celebrated by feasts of the Church, and also with another Augustinian

nun, St. Clare of Montefalco, on the living flesh of whose heart

miraculous representations of the Passion were impressed. Rita

rejoiced the more in this gift, inasmuch as it procured for her more

frequent occasion of exercising herself in humility, patience,

retirement, silence, prayer, and the love of that God who had conferred

on her so marked a distinction. From thenceforward as long as she bore

that mark of the Redemption on her forehead, which was as long as she

lived, she never ceased to thank Him for it and to praise and bless

Him. She, too, was become an outcast from amongst men, but instead of

being afflicted thereby she was only the more strongly united to God,

in whom all her desires and all her hopes of consolation were centred.

She considered that singular effect of Divine grace which is not

offended by unsightliness of body as abundant compensation for any

sufferings she had to bear and as a pledge of an ample eternal reward

in heaven.

[1] Isa. liii. 3.

CHAPTER IX

RITA GOES TO ROME TO GAIN THE INDULGENCE OF

THE JUBILEE

If Rita's life till the time when she received the wound in her

forehead may be called a hidden life, from thenceforward it was a

buried life, and invisible to the eyes of men. On that account,

passing in silence over an interval of eight years, our history

proceeds to describe the events of her life in the year 1450. The

intervening years were not, however, years of idleness for our holy

nun, or if she did enjoy repose it was not very dissimilar from that of

the blessed in heaven, and perhaps of more advantage to the Church than

any active efforts of hers. The Western Church, as a matter of fact,

had just then, through the prayers of the saints, arisen from its state

of dejection and abasement.

The schism of the Greeks, Armenians, and Ethiopians had come to an end

ten years before, and the glory of that happy event was attributed

principally to the merits of St. Nicholas of Tolentine, who was

canonized at that time by Pope Eugene IV. The other schism, of the

anti-Popes, died out, too, a few months later, when Felix V.

voluntarily abdicated; and Rita's penances and prayers must have

co-operated in bringing about so joyful a conclusion.

Nicholas V., who occupied the chair of Peter, was thus enabled to

proclaim peacefully a solemn jubilee for the year 1450, to throw open

the treasure-house of Divine indulgences for the advantage of the

faithful. This was the sixth jubilee celebrated in the new Church of

Jesus Christ, and seeing that the Church was enjoying the lately

restored peace, and that piety had begun again to spring up, greater

crowds of people than ever before, from all parts of the world, were

flocking to Rome to participate in the extraordinary spiritual favours.

When even the least devout were hastening thither, we may judge how

ardent was Rita's desire of availing of so precious an occasion. She

was aware that even her sisters in religion were preparing to set out

for Rome, and she, who for many years and until that moment seemed in

her retirement to hate the very light of day, was not afraid to leave

her cell for a purpose so holy; and making light of the inconveniences

of travel and of her advanced age, she threw herself at the feet of the

Superior, and begged leave to join the other nuns in their devout

pilgrimage. But the Prioress did not think it prudent that Rita, owing

to the offensive nature of the sore on her forehead, should appear in

public or undertake a journey, and therefore sent her back to her cell,

telling her that she should first think of curing her wound, and then

she would grant the permission asked for. The condition imposed almost

in jest was not long in being fulfilled, for Rita had recourse to

fervent prayer to the Lord, who had inspired her with the desire of

going on the pilgrimage, and who was accustomed to grant all her

petitions, and she received instantly the favour she so ardently

desired. It is to be remarked here that Rita, who always, in her

profound humility, endeavoured to hide the favours of heaven, chose in

this instance to make use of an ointment in order to conceal the

miracle of her instantaneous healing. But the work of God was too

evident, and the Superior had therefore no hesitation in granting the

permission that Rita sought, and her blessing.

She set out on foot in the company of her sisters in religion without

any consideration for her age, which was then about sixty-nine years,

with no dread of the long journey or the inconveniences of the season,

and she pushed forward joyously towards the metropolis of the Catholic

world.

It was on this journey that the incident occurred which was mentioned

when speaking of her spirit of poverty, that when she was crossing over

a river she threw into it the little sum of money that was given to her

probably to supply their wants on the pilgrimage. Her companions

blamed her for what she had done; but not God, who had secretly urged

her to that act of generosity, and who afterwards provided herself and

her companions with all they needed until their return to the convent.

When she arrived at her journey's end she lost no time in gazing on

those monuments of profane antiquity of which Rome is so proud, but

directed all the feelings and sentiments of her body and soul towards

those things that were the objects of her piety--the memories of the

holy martyrs, the confessions of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul,

devout visits to the churches, and the gaining of the holy indulgences.

It would seem, indeed, that having led such a stainless life, and after

so great and so severe penances, that she had no need to have recourse

to those extraordinary means of atonement for sin; but holiness is

always deeply humble, and the same humility which led St. Briget and

St. Catherine to the second jubilee brought St. Rita a century later to

the sixth. Enriched with new treasures of grace, and impatient to be

free from the din of the streets and the perpetual crush of people, she

with her companions, ever in the arms of Divine Providence, began the

journey back to Cascia, and after walking four or five days arrived

again at the convent and her beloved cell. She had hardly reached home

when, wonderful to tell, the sore on her forehead, which had healed up

by the power of God a little before she set out from Cascia, suddenly

broke out again, and thereby made it more evident that the preceding

cure had been miraculous. Never more, until the day of her death, was

Rita to be deprived of a privilege so dear to her.

CHAPTER X

RITA'S LAST ILLNESS AND DEATH

Rita survived seven years after her return from Rome. The first three

of these, like the eight preceding years, are hidden under the veil of

God's deep designs, for it is not granted to us to discover anything of

her exterior life during that period. Of her interior life, too, there

is nothing left, if we except certain general knowledge of her spirit

of penance, her continued love of prayer, and her union with God ever

becoming closer.

Three years passed, and Rita had reached the seventy-second year of her

age and the fortieth of her life in religion, when it pleased the Lord

to visit her with an illness which afflicted her for four years, and

ended only with her life. This is the first time after so many years

that any illness of Rita's is mentioned, except the sore on her

forehead, which goes far to prove that even long-continued and rigorous

penances are not--contrary to the opinion of the world's

delicacy--opposed to bodily health or calculated to shorten life. It

might seem, indeed, that, considering the great misfortunes she had to

bear, the many humiliations, and the many voluntary penances she

undertook, she ought to be exempted from this final suffering. With

all that, God wished that this beautiful work of His hands should be

marked by the greatest perfection, and desired to exalt her to the

higher places in His glory, and He also willed to add to her past

sufferings and the still present troubles of her wounded forehead the

pain of this long illness. We do not know with certainty what malady

she suffered from, but, whatever it was, it resisted all the remedies

of science. It is not improbable that, as one of the writers of her

life suggests, it was a wasting fever, one of those maladies that sap

the vital strength by degrees through an obstinate and mortal languor,

and finally causes death.

During all that time she remained confined to her hard bed, and the

manner in which she bore all the pains and annoyances of her long

illness was a cause of the greatest edification to all who assisted,

for her face not only showed the resignation and serenity of her mind,

but she was always desiring to suffer still greater pain, and was for

ever thanking Divine Providence that deigned to purify her in this

world and give her some occasion of acquiring merit. But there was one

pain she felt more than any other, and it was because through illness

she was become useless to the community, and even a burden and trouble

to her sisters, especially by reason of the deformity and offensiveness

of the sore on her forehead; yet not even the grief of this could take

away from her the merit of her most heroic resignation to the will of

God and equally heroic humility and patience. Yet another matter there

was which must have weighed heavily on her, when we compare the very

lowly opinion she had of herself with that sublimest idea she had been

enabled to form of God's infinite majesty, and that was that she could

now no longer present herself at the Eucharistic table to receive her

Jesus with that frequency with which she had been accustomed to partake

of that heavenly bread, but was now, on the contrary, obliged to

receive Him lying on her miserable pallet. But the holy soul supplied

in ardent desire and in the intensest internal acts of adoration and

love for that external veneration which her bodily weakness rendered

impossible. As her disease progressed, or, rather, as her sanctity

increased, so small was the quantity of food she consumed that it could

not be told how she was able to live, and therefore the nuns who were

attending on her came to the conclusion that she was kept alive by the

bread of angels. Nor was their idea so far from the truth, for Rita

herself had to confirm it when, on their pressing her to take some more

nourishment, she replied: 'My soul, fixed to the sacred wounds of Jesus

Christ, is fed with other food.'

Now, it happened that whilst the saint was in this state, and not far

from the end of her mortal life, a relative came to visit her, and

after passing some time in condoling with her and giving her comfort,

was about to go away. Before her departure she asked Rita if she

wanted anything, and said she would willingly do her a service. 'Yes,'

said Rita. 'I beg you to go to the garden of my house as soon as you

reach Rocca Porena, and pluck a rose there and bring it to me.' It was

then the month of January, the time in which the greatest rigour of

winter is felt, especially in that valley, which is closed in on all

sides by overhanging mountains, where the sun rises late and sets

early, and where at that season all nature is buried under snow and

ice. At the strange request the woman did not know what to think

except that Rita was wandering in her mind through the severity of her

illness. She pitied her, and went back to Rocca Porena. When she

reached home it happened that she went to the garden, either through

curiosity or because God so disposed it, and she saw, conspicuous

amidst the frozen bushes, a full-blown red rose. At the sight she was

seized by various feelings of wonder, joy, and devotion, and ran to

pluck the flower, with which she returned without delay to the convent

of Cascia to deliver the wonderful gift to the saint. Rita took it as

coming from the hands of her Divine Spouse, and with holy joy offered

it to her sisters who were standing around. They, too, were seized

with wonder and amazement, and joined with her in praising the goodness

and omnipotence of God.

Another prodigious occurrence, not unlike that we have just related and

not less wonderful, happened very soon after. The same woman who had

brought the flower to the saint was bidding her farewell on another

occasion, and asked her again if she needed anything. Rita thus

answered the charitable question: 'Since you are so kind, I beg that

you will go to the same garden, where you will find two figs, which you

will have the charity to bring me.' This time the woman did not

hesitate a moment, but as soon as she heard the words hurried home, and

in a short time was in the garden mentioned. There, on a leafless

tree, she found the two ripe figs, which she plucked with renewed

wonder and pleasure, and carried immediately to the sick nun. At the

sight of this second wonder Rita broke forth into new acts of gratitude

and love to the Lord, in which her sisters joined. The fame of these

miraculous events was spread throughout the neighbourhood, and wonder

seized on all the people, and they conceived a great veneration for the

dying saint, whom they clearly perceived to be beloved by God.

Thus compassed about with flowers and fruit, like the bride of the

sacred Canticles,[1] Rita felt that she was languishing with love, and

by this growing weaker, she eagerly desired to be free from the ties of

the body, and at last take flight to enjoy for all eternity her

Uncreated Good. Her chaste sighs were not in vain, for her Divine

Spouse Jesus, accompanied by the most holy Virgin, appeared to her to

announce the joyous tidings that in three days she should be taken from

the world and from pain, and received into Paradise to receive the

reward due to her virtues and sufferings. The vision disappeared, and

joy inundated Rita's heart, and well was this known from that

extraordinary and angelic serenity of her countenance which she

preserved till her last breath, in spite of the pains and sorrows of

death. The nuns alone wept as they stood around her bed. In these

last moments of hers, profoundly moved by her tranquillity and the

wonders they had seen, they had come to know her better, and to

appreciate more perfectly her extraordinary virtues. In the midst of

these tears the saint turned to her dear sisters, humbly asked pardon

of all of them for any offence she might have given them and for the

trouble she had caused, left them in remembrance of her beautiful words

of peace, obedience, and piety, and then asked the blessing of the

Superior. Her desolate sisters wanted, too, to get a blessing from her

as a pledge of that charity with which she had always loved them, and

with which they besought that she would love and protect them when she

was in heaven. Rita blessed them, tried to console them, and then had

no thought for anything but eternity.

Our heroine, it is true, was assured from above of the possession of

future glory, yet she in no wise neglected to fortify herself with all

the aids and comforts with which our holy Mother Church prepares us for

the great passage. Gathering, therefore, all the strength of her

spirit, she expressed her desire that the Holy Viaticum should be

brought to her, and Extreme Unction administered. She received these

holy Sacraments with a fervour which cannot easily be imagined, much

less described, and with these fresh pledges of grace, and with her

eyes turned towards the home of the Blessed, her soul took its flight

thither, where she lives an immortal life filled with ineffable joy,

the reward of her heroic Virtues. Her precious death took place during

the Pontificate of Calixtus III., in the year 1457, when she had

attained the seventy-sixth year of her age and the forty-fourth of her

religious life, on the night of the 22nd of May, when Saturday was

ending, a day specially consecrated to the honour of the Virgin Mary,

to whom she was always most devout, and towards the beginning of

Sunday, the day dedicated to the Lord and figurative of eternal repose.

[1] Cant. ii. 5.

END OF PART II

Part III

RITA IN HEAVEN

CHAPTER I

WONDERFUL EVENTS THAT HAPPENED AT RITA'S

DEATH--BURIAL OF HER SACRED BODY

In describing Rita's mortal life, we judged it expedient to give from

time to time some idea of the trend of events and of the calamities of

the times in which she lived, and we have hopes that it will not be

displeasing to the reader nor outside the scope we proposed to

ourselves if we continue to follow the same plan now that we are come

to speak of her immortal life in so far as it may be said to be visible

in those works in which God willed to give glory to His servant even on

earth. For her, indeed, time was changed into changeless eternity, but

the world was, as ever, in its instability, and was perpetually

changing appearance. The short-lived peace which had been established

at the Council of Florence had once more fled from the distracted East,

and Mahomet II., destined by God to punish those relapsing schismatics,

had at this time overturned the Empire of Constantinople, and was

threatening with ruin the newly-established Empire of Trebizond, as

well as other kingdoms. It is true that in the year 1457--the year of

Rita's death--the infidel usurper was driven back out of Hungary and

Belgrade, and had been defeated by the brave Scanderbeg in Albania, by

Cardinal de Aquileia on the Ægean Sea, and by Uson Cassano near the

confines of Persia. But these losses caused only a temporary check,

and were but the last flattering hope of the hardened and perfidious

Greeks. Calixtus III. was then Pope, and from his Apostolic throne it

was his sad lot to see the heritage of Jesus Christ despoiled, and

could only weep over what he could not prevent. The wise Pontiff

strained every effort to prevent still greater ruin, but the

effeminacy, egoism, and rivalry of the Courts of Europe opposed his

brave purpose, and left open a free passage to the progress of the

conqueror. In the West the outlook was brighter for the Church and the

world, for affairs were directed by the Emperor Frederick III.,

surnamed the Peacemaker, and Pope Calixtus, whose great desire was to

see peace firmly established in Italy, from whence it had so long been

banished. Indeed, it was only in the year before he ascended the Papal

throne that the first signs of reviving peace were seen in that

troubled peninsula. It was through the means of a humble Augustinian

friar that in the end was obtained that peace which princes and

monarchs had in vain attempted to restore; for Fr. Simonetto of

Camerino, a priest of extraordinary piety, is famous in history for

being the pacificator of Italy. Good morals and piety began to gain

vigour, and brought consolation to the Church for the irreparable

losses it had sustained in the East. The reigning houses also that

were least friendly to national concord, and which had not remained

unstained by depravity, began again to give indications of sanctity.

In this very year of 1457, Fr. Gabriel Sforza, Archbishop of Milan,

styled the Blessed, passed to his heavenly reward, and a few months

after his death Blessed Christina Visconti followed him to the kingdom

of heaven. Like Rita, both of these were Augustinians. The

Governments of the republics of Siena and of Genoa were the last to

suffer from the disasters of war, the former having been attacked by

the ambitious Picunino, and Genoa having been engaged with the maritime

forces of Alphonsus, King of Naples; but even these wars had at last

come to an end. Cascia, which still continued to be governed as a

republic, in common with the other States was enjoying in prosperity

the fruits of peace, and was now about to acquire greater renown

through the death of Rita, whose imperishable glory was soon to be

proclaimed.

Scarcely, indeed, had she breathed her last when began a long series of

prodigious events, which immediately spread her fame abroad. The first

of these to excite wonder was that at the moment of her death the nun

who had been her closest companion in life saw the soul of the saint

take its flight to heaven, accompanied by angels, in the garb of

brightness in which it had pleased God to clothe her. The second

wonder was that at that same moment the bell of the convent rang out,

tolled by no visible agency, and the saint's cell was radiating with an

unaccustomed splendour. The sore on her forehead, too, which in life

had been most offensive, was now giving forth an odour of heavenly

fragrance, and that wound, which had been an unsightly deformity, now

took on the appearance of a shining jewel. Her body, which before had

exhibited all the wasting effects of continual mortification, but was

the seat of a most pure soul and the temple of the Holy Ghost, was now

transformed and clothed with almost superhuman beauty. In a word, not

only her soul, but her very body seemed as if it had been assumed into

the splendour of the saints. At the manifestation of events so

wonderful the nuns and the faithful who were present changed their

sorrow into a holy joy, and ceased not to bless the Lord and recommend

themselves to Rita's patronage. As the report of these prodigies

spread about, the people flocked in crowds to see and to venerate that

sacred body, and thus God was praised in the wonders He had worked, the

virtues of His saint were published, and in the hearts of many there

sprang up the desire of imitating her example. The obsequies were to

be solemnly celebrated on the following morning, and meanwhile the

crowds arriving from all the surrounding country were continually

increasing. Amongst the others came a woman who was a near relative of

Rita, whose arm had been many years paralysed. This woman approached

the sacred body, and, to relieve her feelings of love, sorrow, and

devotion, clasped it around the neck. On the instant her withered arm

suddenly regained feeling and strength. She began to cry out that a

miracle was wrought for her, and all the bystanders took up the cry of

'A miracle! a miracle!' whilst she who was healed kissed again and

again the body of her deliverer, and returned thanks to God for His

great mercy. The body was brought from the cell into the ancient

chapel, where it was quickly surrounded by a crush of impatient people,

who seemed as if they never could be satisfied with gazing on the

sacred remains of the holy nun. The last solemn offices were

celebrated, but the body had to be left visible for a long time to

satisfy the pious curiosity and devotion of the faithful. At last it

was placed in a coffin of poplar, which was enclosed in another of

walnut wood, in order that one who was so honoured by God should

receive honourable sepulture. This was but the beginning of Rita's

renown. We shall see as we advance how God gave greater glory to His

servant.