Saint Catherine of Siena

Her understanding of divine things made her realize that there is a higher degree in the order of perfection, which is that state of innocence and complete ignorance of the life of the senses, called the state of virginity. She felt that there is an exquisite purity that the majority of men do not know, or at least do not have the courage to practice beyond adolescence, and without which, however, that ineffable union with the Creator, which is the primary need felt by elite souls, is impossible. Perhaps her eyes had also fallen one day upon that page of the divine book where the Savior, in a word, reveals to his disciples, still blinded by the flesh, this great sign of celestial predestination, and perhaps her heart was attached to this beautiful page. These words, devoid of meaning for so many fine minds that had reached maturity, had not been silent for this seven-year-old child. One day, when she was alone before God, and no one could hear her, she threw herself at the knees of the Blessed Virgin Mary, that model and guardian of virgins, and with eyes full of tears, prostrated humbly, she took the Immaculate Queen as witness to the solemn vow she was about to make for her entire life.

"O Blessed Virgin," she said to her, "mother of that beautiful love which God has placed in my heart, and which, I feel, is the most perfect of affections in this world, you who were the first to preserve for the jealous God the purity of your body and your heart, deign not to consider the profound unworthiness of your servant, and grant her to receive as spouse the one she desires with all the strength of her soul, your divine son Jesus. And I, I promise you here, to him and to you, to preserve my innocence for the love of him, and never to receive another spouse."

The Lord heard her promise, and later he consecrated it through a mystical union before the celestial court.

After this vow, Catherine walked with great strides in the holy paths; to crucify her body, to humble self-love—which is still the most pleasing of all macerations to God—was her entire occupation. She deprived herself of meat, and when it was served to her, she gave it to her little brother Stephen. With the holy virtues, there also grew in this heart the love of souls and the desire for the glory of God. Thus, she loved with an exquisite tenderness the Saints who had worked the most at these two great works of life: the conversion of sinners and the glorification of the name of God. Saint Dominic was one of those who had made this the special goal of their lives. Catherine was seized with a particular veneration and tenderness for this Saint and for his angelic virtue, and she resolved to enter, sooner or later, into a monastery of the Order of Saint Dominic.

There was even a moment in her heart of the thought of leaving her country, of taking men's clothing, and of entering the Order of Preachers. One had seen in the past a great Saint forget her sex and let it remain unknown to others, dying in holy solitudes under the habit of the cenobites; but the project upon which she settled was to enter the Order of the Sisters of Saint Dominic.

There were then in Italy a great number of monasteries of women of this Order; there were two in Siena, and these nuns were called the Sisters; one recognized them from afar by their large black mantle of the Penance of Saint Dominic, and because of this they were named the Mantellate Sisters, Ma ntellate. Cathe Sœurs Mantelées Religious order to which the saint belongs. rine resolved to go find these nuns and begged them to receive her among them, and to let her wear their habit.

But God willed that a great trial should come to further strengthen her vocation.

This trial, almost all women who have left the world to serve God solely and without reserve have known; in some, it is born of themselves, and of that leaven of vanity that this delicate and graceful sex draws from its own beauty. In others, it is born of another kind of obstacle even less easy to overcome, of the contradictions that their heart feels rising around it and that it may encounter in a world they still esteem or in a family whose disapproval or pain they fear.

The family of little Catherine had made other plans for her: her mother Lapa wanted to marry her off. Already one of Catherine's older sisters, Bonaventure, had made a marriage that rejoiced her mother; and she herself was busy finding a good match for her young sister. The love of God and His service were not incompatible with marriage; one had even seen mothers of families sanctified by their children. All these reasonings did not weaken Catherine's still-secret design, but she let herself go to the desires of her mother and sister. While keeping her faith pure within herself, she let herself be dressed with elegance, she accepted all the finery with which they enhanced her freshness and beauty. She took care of her corset, she made herself pretty and sought to please; but she shook off this numbness of her piety in time. She awoke from this sleep of her soul and punished herself cruelly for it.

As for her young sister, she also expiated this involuntary crime of having wanted to take away from God a heart made for Him alone. She died prematurely, and Catherine had to weep for herself and for this cherished sister. She offered to God tears and fasts for this dear soul, and she had the consolation of being enlightened from above on her eternal destinies. God showed her grace, but her mother had not renounced her views on Catherine; the hope of seeing herself live again in numerous grandchildren flattered her pride. In her eyes, all the glory of a woman being in the fruitfulness of her womb, she pressed her more than ever. A Dominican, a friend of this family, was asked to use all his authority on Catherine. She made the confession of her heart to this holy monk, and he did not seek to shake such beautiful designs. "Well!" said this confidant of her pious secret to her, "if it is true that you no longer have any desire for this world, give your family an exterior sign of it, cut your hair. It is only in this way that you will seriously mark your resolution."

To cut her beautiful black hair, the pride of her mother, the adornment of her youth—was it necessary?

Catherine did not hesitate; she put the scissors to her beautiful braids, and they fell. She took a veil and covered her uncrowned head with it to hide from her mother this sort of theft committed against her tenderness. Lapa finally noticed it; her pain first took away any feeling of anger. But then, it was an explosion of recriminations. "Do you think," she said, "to escape our views on you just by that? Your hair will grow, and even if your heart should be torn by it, we will certainly force you to take a husband."

Then Lapa, to divert Catherine from the direction her ideas had taken, gave her the occupation of managing the entire interior of the household: she helped the servant almost in the coarsest details, and she barely had time left to follow her strictest religious duties. She did not lose patience, and the grace of God sustained her in this new contradiction. It was then that she made for herself a kind of cell within herself, where she shut herself up with God while her body was absorbed by work. In serving her father, she imagined herself serving Our Lord Jesus Christ. In serving her mother, she believed she was serving the Blessed Virgin; her brothers and sisters represented to her the disciples and the holy women.

But her father, a man more pious and more clear-sighted than the rest of his family, discerned this invincible vocation even in this submission to orders that deprived her of her hours of meditation and her holy works. God performed a miracle to come to the aid of his good faith and piety. He saw one day appear over his daughter, prostrate in prayer, far from all eyes, a dove white as snow. It was a heavenly warning, and Giacomo understood that he could not fight with God. The greatest obstacle to Catherine's vocation was found to be overcome.

In Catherine, too, the bonds that attached her to the earth were broken at the same instant. The same day she gathered her family, declared to all the vow by which her heart had irrevocably committed itself to the Lord, and the absolute refusal she made of any alliance in this world. Enlightened by the spirit from above, her father no longer resisted; he even ordered that she be left in complete freedom to follow the vocation she had chosen.

Lapa's overly sensitive love for her daughter Catherine yielded to the authority of Giacomo, and she sacrificed, albeit with regret to this God against whom her despair was still struggling, all the hopes she had rested on this dear child.

Catherine made a cell for herself in her father's house, where all the practices of penance subjected her pure flesh to her victorious spirit. Then began for her a life of austerities and privations so severe that the greatest Saints have not known any beyond that degree. Discipline, iron frames, hair shirts, deprivation of food—none of these voluntary martyrdoms of penance were unknown to her youth. One of her harshest austerities was a daily struggle against sleep: sometimes it was very late, and Catherine was still discoursing with her confessor, the Blessed Raymond of Capua, on the things of God. Her soul and body were awake, and yet this holy man, aged in the service of God and the holiest of lives, would slump over and fall asleep. Then she would wake him gently and say to him: Is this how the body must prevail over the things of the spirit, and is it to a man of God that I am speaking of divine things?

She eventually reached the age of twenty, being able to live solely on bread, water, and raw herbs.

But this was not without a certain decline in her health and strength. For a long time, her mother's tenderness struggled against this penitent life. In the evening, she would tear her away from her hair shirt and the boards upon which her delicate and emaciated limbs rested at night, to lead her to sleep in her own bed. On Catherine's side, it was also a continual struggle against this tenderness that fought against grace, and her spirit of penance was so ingenious that it always managed to undo the care her mother took of her poor body.

One day, she took her to the baths; the waters of Siena were very renowned in the Middle Ages. It was on a beautiful summer morning, in a beautiful valley bordered almost by the Apennines; under the fragrant shade of the lemon and orange trees was the bathers' pool; everything in this place should have spoken of rest and softness to this young girl. Catherine perhaps felt all the danger there was for her soul in this mysterious attraction that exists between the harmonies of nature and the life of our senses, and she immediately wanted to subject all her sensual instincts to grace once and for all. She expressed to her mother the desire to enter the water only when everyone else had left. The crowd of bathers soon dispersed, and Catherine immediately entered the water; but under the pretext of making the bath more beneficial, she stood at the opening of the channels that brought in the sulfurous water. And let one judge the torture she was inflicting at that moment on a poor, weakened body, which found itself completely burned by these streams of boiling water.

The author of her life recounts that she later told him with the simplicity of a dove, and as if to deflect from this penance all its real merit: "I was thinking during that time of the tortures of hell and purgatory; I begged my Creator, whom I have offended so much, to change for me these deserved torments into these pains that I suffered willingly, and in the hope of this mercy, I forgot everything."

Do you know, you who read the imperfect narration of this angelic life, what were these offenses that she expiated so cruelly? These offenses, her confessor, a truthful man worthy of all belief, did not fear to tell us: they were slight failings against the spirit of grace; it was perhaps an instant in one of her days when she disobeyed the constant thought of God; it was, shall we believe it! the forgetting of some pious habit, or a quarter of an hour of sleep for which she was perhaps reproached by this grace of God, which reigned victorious and sovereign in her flesh, refined by the strength of the spirit.

We have often heard these holy severities, these heroic outbursts of the spirit against the flesh, blasphemed around us. It is not even only the vulgar who have dared to rise up against this life of austerity and penance which, alone, the law of individual liberty would defend against its anathemas. Books written by some venerated pens, eloquent in human things but unskilled in the things of God, have been the sometimes fanatically impious organs of this reprobation of an irreligious and perverted century. We who are still in the world, who are bound to it by so many ties, dare, however, to interpret the reason for this ascetic life. The crowd sees in these disciplines, these hair shirts, these cilices, only the blood that stains them. On these bodies of Saints, it sees only the wounds they have inflicted upon themselves in a holy barbarity; and yet, if some miraculous virtue comes out of these wounds for our good, it is because it is the very hand that belongs to this body that carved them there, that nourished them there. What energy of body and soul do all these voluntarily suffered torments not reveal? And without these outbursts of the spirit against the flesh, who knows to what extent the flesh would have lashed out against the spirit?

All the rights that the body abdicates, it cedes to the spirit; all the forces, all the faculties whose exercise it refuses, flow toward the soul. This emaciated, withered, exhausted body is no longer a barrier between the soul and its Creator, between man and the infinite; it is barely a veil that protects the mysterious conversations of this soul with God from the indiscreet curiosity of the indifferent. Raised above itself, refined, this seeing soul knows no more darkness; a supernatural light descends within it and connects it to the mysteries of the kingdom of God, whose advent it calls for every day with ineffable ardor. Having become more clear-sighted than all the scholars according to the world, she perceives the immensity of this God, His majesty, His incomparable holiness so outraged, so misunderstood by guilty humanity. Then the crimes of sinners appear to her in all their horror; her own failings take on proportions relative to the greatness of this offended majesty, of this impeccable nature of God, before whom the highest virtue is itself only darkness and imperfection. Then this holy soul sees with terror the Angels veiling themselves with their wings before the thrice-holy God; and as the justice of this God demands holocausts from her, and He wants none outside of ourselves, this elite creature offers herself to this justice. She offers herself, that is to say, she offers her innocent flesh to be consumed by the fire of the spirit; that is to say, she accomplishes, she realizes in the law of Christ the sacrifices of the primitive law; that is to say, into this sacred fire that burns in the chaste sanctuary of her soul, always without being consumed, she throws the ever-renewed fuel of all the passions, all the instincts, all the lusts of corrupted nature.

And that is why pain is absent from all these pains invented, heaped voluntarily upon these bodies of Saints. That is why they smiled at suffering and fled from pleasure.

However, Catherine's mother, Lapa, ignorant of the mysteries of this interior life, had great difficulty in understanding the reason for this life of penance in her daughter, so pure, so sweet, so charitable. She grieved every day, and never ceased to complain that her beautiful Catherine, once so strong, so robust, that she carried the load of a donkey or a horse to the attic of the house without fatigue, was now only a puny creature who had strength only when speaking of God and heavenly things. It was also a great sorrow for her to see Catherine take the habit of the Sisters of Penance. Until Catherine's entry among these sisters, one had seen there only widows and married women. These sisters even lived outside, in their families. It is only from this moment that this Third Order of the Sisters of Penance of Saint Dominic took a more regular and perfect form.

It was a beautiful day for this young girl when she went up with her mother to the church of Saint Dominic and when, before her sisters in religion gathered early in the sanctuary, she received the symbolic habit that she had desired so ardently since her childhood, the white tunic, symbol of innocence, the black mantle, symbol of humility. Innocence and humility, that was her whole life. For the fame to which this simple girl of the people of Tuscany was called was to take nothing away from the angelic purity of her manners, nor from the simplicity of her whole being.

There was also in her, from this moment, a redoubling of fervor and piety. From that moment, she spent three years observing monastic silence so well that she spoke during all that time only to confess. Poverty also became part of her life; she renounced everything, even in the midst of the abundance that reigned in her father's house, where she regarded herself as a servant, and not as the heiress of all that wealth. As for chastity and obedience, those two other severe vows of the religious life, they had long been the foundation of her entire life.

Who could recount her vigils, her prayers, her meditations, her groans? He whom she loved, the ineffable object of all her sighs, heard these groans of her spirit; often He deigned at her call to come and encourage His servant; and this heavenly vision so absorbed her that ecstasy would stop the words begun upon her lips. These communications, so close and so intimate with the Spirit of God, explain how her soul had enough strength to sustain her body, exhausted by abstinence; for she often remained for an unlimited space of time without taking food. They also explain how this simple girl revealed in the Middle Ages this admirable doctrine, which is an inexplicable miracle in a woman deprived of all science according to men.

A worthy daughter of Saint Dominic and Saint Thomas Aquinas—these two devotions dear to her heart, along with the devotion to Saint Mary Magdalene, whom God Himself gave her as a patroness in one of her visions—the first foundation of the doctrine of Saint Catherine of Siena is the perfect detachment from oneself, even in the thoughts of the heart. God had said to her in an apparition: "My daughter, think only of me: if you do so, I will think of you unceasingly." Regarding her doctrine, Saint Catherine had many visions from then on. But, as if to enlighten her on the nature of these revelations and to reassure her against the evil spirit, to whom this holy soul was always a formidable enemy, the Savior appeared to her one day and taught her how to discern the inspirations of the Holy Spirit from those of the demon. "My visions," He told her, "begin with terror and continue in peace. Their beginning makes one feel a certain bitterness which changes little by little into sweetness, whereas the inspirations of the evil spirit begin by troubling the soul with a false joy. But they end in sadness and darkness; for My ways are very different from those of hell. The visions that come from Me also procure humility, and the others swell with pride: for pride is the father of lies, and humility is inseparable from holiness."

From then on, it was nothing but a perpetual communion of Catherine with God. If she spoke to someone, her heavenly visions often surprised her in the middle of this conversation, necessary no doubt, but human. A soul that belongs to God, she thought, must belong to Him not only for the sake of heaven, but even more for the sake of union through love. "Why occupy yourselves with yourselves?" she often said later to her disciples and even to her confessor. "Let Providence act; in the midst of the greatest dangers, it has its eyes fixed on you, it will always save you." She consecrated in her works admirable chapters to this divine Providence, which she exalted with all the strength of her love.

Thus, this Providence of God loves her and guards her in an almost always miraculous way. She thus found herself knowing how to read and write by a prodigy, one day when, discouraged by her useless efforts, she implored Him to come to her aid.

One of the sublime teachings of Catherine's doctrine is also this: "The soul united to God," she says, "loves Him as much as it hates the sensual part of its being." The love of God engenders hatred of sin, and when the soul sees that sin takes root in the senses, it hates them and strives to annihilate the sin that is in them. This holy hatred begins in the soul by a certain contempt for itself, and this contempt protects it against the seductions of men and the demon. Thus Saint Paul once said: "It is in my weakness that my strength lies." A fertile word that the Saints have developed in their sublime acts. One must see from this how much Catherine, in her teachings, castigates in her disciples self-love, "father of pride," she said, "and of all vices." When she said this, she spoke upon the ruins of her own heart, long since immolated to God alone. But before being raised to these wonders of uncreated wisdom and divine love, Catherine had had to struggle with the spirit of darkness. The ancient serpent had whispered impure words into the ears of the young girl. It had cast trouble and despair into the fervent soul of the Christian. It must be said to the glory of Catherine, and for the eternal consolation of all Christian souls, who, more than worldly souls, know the anxieties of tribulation.

One day, Catherine fell into mortal doubts, for she was tempted in her soul before being tempted in her members, just as it happened to the greatest Saints. An enemy of her penances and macerations, the spirit of evil insinuated to her that God was going to abandon her in the extraordinary ways in which He had led her; and that if one can find one's way on the beaten paths, one would never know it again, once thrown into these mysterious paths that lead either to an almost impossible perfection or to an almost certain damnation. What a moment! What torture! Alas! All the torments of this world could not offer an image of this frightful perplexity. To aspire to God, to perfection, and to see moving away like a lying mirage this heaven of love and purity which the soul has made its end and its life from this world! To fall from there, not into the common paths, but into the mire that borders them! Oh! When the ancients had created this fantastic and frightening figure of their Tantalus in torment, they had had the vision of the Christian soul devoured by this thirst for heaven that nothing can extinguish but heaven itself, by this thirst spurred on even more by this appalling temptation.

"Poor girl," a sardonic and cruel voice murmured to Catherine, "what audacity, what temerity in your desire for perfection! Do you think you can rise with impunity to the rank of the angels, you, a fragile creature, kneaded from the same clay as all these sinners? Forget these foolish dreams! You are still young; while your eyes still have some sparkle, while your brow has kept its youth, fix on one of these hearts that you have disdained until this day. There only is security, there only is happiness. Look at Rachel, look at Sarah, Rebecca. Are they not holy women? And do you think you will ever rise above these models of strong women?" And Catherine, staggering with terror, but strong in her faith and her confidence, answered: "I trust in Him who is my strength, in the Christ whom I love, and not in myself." Let Christian hearts retain this well and let them pause at this picture. There are moments in life when this memory, this single memory, can save them from despair. This persevering confidence, this uprightness of her spirit and her heart which fixed her to this thought as to a point of support, this confidence saved Catherine. The evil spirit then left her soul. It took hold of the woman. It entered her through thought, that messenger of heaven and hell. It therefore surrounded her with the most shameful scenes, with the most crudely sensual images. This torture lasted a long time. Catherine turned her eyes away, and a blush rose to her modest brow. But behind her, the same images reappeared. Obsessed, she fled, as once Saint Jerome fled his holy grotto, her narrow cell, all filled with chastity and memories of penance; she went to ask all the sanctuaries of Siena for her deliverance; but everywhere she carried with her these phantoms of hell. The altars of Saint Dominic, heavenly protector of all chastities in peril, were the confidants of her terrors and her anxieties. But Catherine, tested, did not forget prayer, that channel of all divine help. On the contrary, she increased her sacrifices, the number of hours she gave to orison, to penance. Faithful to the inspirations of grace, she excited herself to a holy hatred of herself and took advantage of her apparent humiliation to offer the Lord a more perfect feeling of her spiritual poverty. Sometimes she remained for long hours as if annihilated at the foot of the cross. Then she would rise to serve God with more courage.

It is through this humility, this constant submission, that Catherine triumphed over such a terrible trial. It had lasted several days. It went away, and for a long time. It was then that, prostrate, she felt the Holy Spirit enlighten her heart with this fertile light that made her feel the necessity of these trials in the career of holiness. Beatitude is at the end, but trials and sorrows sow this road. Alas! How many tears have marked on this earth the passage of these Saints whom our heart cherishes, whom our worship honors! But Jesus, in calling them after Him, had said to them: Let him who wishes to follow me leave everything there and take up my cross. And they, generous to a holy madness, said: Lord, your cross is not enough, we will render you blood for blood!

This is what Catherine of Siena also said to her Lord in her communications with Him, which were visible only to her alone. After this cruel trial, consolation and joy abounded in her heart. The Savior Himself appeared to her as in His sacrifice on Calvary. "Where were you, Lord," Catherine asked Him gently, "while my thought was soiled with all these images?" "I was in your heart, my daughter," the Spouse told her, "and I was delighted there by the fidelity you kept for Me during this painful combat."

In the midst of the torrents of bliss that filled her life from that day on, Catherine still returned to this memory with delight. The thought of what she had suffered flooded her delivered soul with emotion and gratitude. Like Saint Jerome, she sometimes found herself regretting this militant epoch of her life. It had been for her an immense step in virtue.

Here begins the public life of Catherine, as her holy confessor speaks, and her beneficial action on all of Christendom. As the Blessed Raymond of Capua also says: Such a light could not remain under a bushel, and was it not necessary to show to all eyes the city placed on the mountain?

It was then also that there took place in the life of Catherine this mystical union between her and her beloved Lord, a vision worthy of the admiration of the angels, which has seized the imagination of our elite artists, and which they have reproduced so many times in painting and in legend.

One day—it was on the eve of Lent, and everyone, Christians and worldlings, was celebrating with all the usual follies the last joys of the carnival—Cather ine was alone union mystique Symbolic spiritual union between a saint and Christ. in her cell, and she was adoring with all her soul this God whom everyone around her was forgetting. "Lord," she said in her holy ecstasy, "make me strong, so that nothing can ever separate me from your love." A voice, the divine voice of the Spouse, answered her: "Be at peace, I will marry you in faith."

At these words, the Spouse Himself descended, and with Him appeared before the dazzled Catherine the resplendent Virgin Mary, sacred patroness of all the Virgins of heaven and earth, then Saint John the Evangelist, with his eagle gaze and his dove-like purity, the victorious Saint Paul, Saint Dominic, illustrious for his angelic manners and his learned works, finally with them all, King David, that eternal model of penitent love; in the presence of all this procession of holiness and virtues, the Immaculate Virgin, mother of pure love, took in her divine hands the right hand of Catherine and presented it to her Son, asking Him for the mystical ring for her. A gold ring adorned with four precious stones that surrounded a magnificent diamond shone in the hand of the Savior. No doubt there was there also a figure intelligible only to the piety of Catherine and the Saints.

The Savior presented the ring to His fiancée and placed it on her finger, saying: "I, your Creator with my heavenly Father, I your Redeemer, I marry you now in faith, and you will keep it pure until the day when we will celebrate the eternal wedding in heaven."

The vision disappeared, but the ring remained on Catherine's finger. She alone saw it; for everyone else, it was invisible. It never left her, and she never tired of admiring it.

From that moment, God willed that this zeal, which Catherine nurtured in her heart for His glory and the salvation of men, should bear its fruit. Already at that time, some were scandalized by the greatness of her revelations and the heroism of her virtues. For the anointing of the divine word was often her only nourishment, and she refused food for long periods without, however, falling into weakness. A famous ascetic from Florence was scandalized by this like the others. He expressed this to her, and Catherine defended herself, in a letter that was modest and imbued with strength and grace, against the suspicions that her conduct had given rise to in the mind of this man.

Thus, Catherine often had to endure formidable contradictions within her family, and even within her spiritual family. Some treated her as a hypocrite, others mocked her. A religious of the Order of Saint Dominic once overwhelmed her with cruel insults; Catherine answered him only with silence, and as charitable as she was patient, she defended him against Father Raymond and the religious of his Order who wanted to treat with severity a man whom grace found so rebellious.

The Lord said to her one day: The pride of men has become intractable; my justice will confound them by an equitable judgment. I want to give them a salutary confusion, and for this, in my divine wisdom, I will send them women who are ignorant and weak by nature, but wise and powerful by my grace, in order to confound their pride. Catherine was to be one of these privileged women, perhaps the most illustrious. God formally ordered her to appear in public, promising to be with her through His grace, and this was admirably testified to by several marvelous facts of her family life. Carried by the humility of her spirit and her state to fulfill, in her dealings with her family, the offices most disdained by all and even by the servants themselves, Catherine nevertheless received the grace of never being troubled in her intimate communications with God, even in the midst of the roughest domestic labors, and she was often seen lifted from the ground during her ecstasies, as Saint Mary Magdalene once was: her body followed her soul to show the virtue of the Spirit that drew her. One day when she was sitting by the fire to watch over the meat that was being roasted, Catherine had one of those ecstasies that tore her from the earth. Her sister-in-law arrived who, seeing this, accustomed as she was to seeing her sister in this state of rapture, continued her work. She took away the meat when it was time and left Catherine surrendered to her vision; when she returned later, she found Catherine on the burning coals. Now, the fire was very large. Immediately the frightened young woman fled, crying: Alas! alas! Catherine is all burned! When they pulled the young girl out, her body and her clothes were intact. There was no trace of burning, not even dust or ash attached to the fabric of her dress. "The celestial fire that inflamed her soul," said one of her confessors, "had stopped the fire of the earth." The Holy Spirit also preserved her from the traps into which the evil spirit often lured her. It is said that one day this enemy of men, in his fury against Catherine, threw her into a great fire before those she was instructing. While the bystanders cried out in fear and strove to pull her from the fire, she rose alone, smiling, and her clothes were not even damaged. Catherine looked calmly around her, and she said, laughing, to those who were watching her, as frightened by this miracle that saved her as they had been by this strange accident: "Do not pay attention to it, it is the bad beast."

This bad beast, Saint Teresa knew it too, when her holiness was being perfected in battles. This bad beast, God the Father, for our redemption, indeed permitted it to dare to transport the immaculate person of our Savior onto the mountain. Why would it not have its role in the torments and martyrdom of our most illustrious Saints?

Catherine was also thrown into a mire by this power of hell. She was returning that day quite quietly to Siena at her age, and some brothers of Saint Dominic were surrounding her. But there, as always, the reward followed the trial.

One day when the Saint had remained for a long time in prayer at the church of Saint Dominic, and was returning home, she found herself surrounded by an immense light. She stops, and sees the Savior holding in his hands a heart resplendent with life and beauty. — She, trembling, humbles herself and prostrates herself before her celestial Spouse. — But Christ comes to her with kindness, and opening her side, he places this heart in her bosom in place of her own. For a long time, the faithful Catherine had said to her beloved: Lord, take away my heart. — My daughter, says the Savior, here is my heart that I give you, and by it you shall live forever. Catherine's companions affirmed that they had seen on her side a red scar that testified to the truth of what she said.

Since that time, Catherine carried within her, not only this symbolic fire of charity, but an ardent and true fire, and this fire renewed in her her whole being and all her virtues.

Into her modest cell descended all the poetry, all the felicities of heaven. Sometimes it was the Queen of angels herself, sometimes it was Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint John the Evangelist, who lavished their sublime teachings upon her. Another day she received as her patron the blessed Mary Magdalene, and she knew from her in an instant that suavity of love, that generous abandonment that had drawn her from the bosom of worldly delights to the feet of Christ. — Since that time, she no longer named Saint Magdalene anything but the sweet lover, her mother.

Also, as for all the Saints, the true nourishment of Catherine was the Eucharistic meat and drink, and her union with the Sacrament of the altar was so intimate, so continuous, that the mere sight of the sacred bread sometimes satiated her.

Her confessor relates that it seemed that the Eucharistic victim, as if it had been impatient to go and reside in this tabernacle of purity and holy adoration, came one day to place itself of its own accord on the paten at the moment when he was advancing to give communion to his illustrious penitent. — Often witnesses affirmed that the holy host, at the moment of communion, would leap from the priest's hands to Catherine's lips. — These were nothing but miracles and favors from heaven.

She saw the angels serving Mass, a golden veil in their hands. She heard the celestial choirs. She saw the Saints, the Virgin herself, enraptured with admiration before the humiliations of the God of the altar.

She received communion every day and she believed with the great number of Saints that sinful man, after having purified his conscience by absolution, must not, under the sole pretext of his unworthiness, distance himself from the holy table.

On this subject, she wrote to a knight of the republic of Florence a remarkable letter, of which here are a few lines: "It does not befit you to act like many imprudent people who fail in what is commanded by the holy Church, saying: I am not worthy! and they spend a long time in mortal sin without taking the food of the soul. — O guilty humility! Eh! who does not see that you are not worthy of it! Do not wait, for you will not be more worthy at the last hour than at the first. — With our own justice we will never be worthy, but God is the one who is worthy, and who makes us worthy by his dignity which is infinite, which never diminishes."

The active life of Catherine is no less worthy of admiration, no less sown with wonders than is her mystical life, and than was later her teaching life. — Almsgiving was like a recreation for her heart. She loved above all to use the goods that her father, a righteous and just man, gave her for alms in favor of the hidden and honorable miseries that the society of cities hides in its bosom. There were in Siena those noble and chaste miseries that veiled themselves, ashamed of their destitution. Catherine went to seek them out discreetly. With her friendly hand she satiated these venerable hungry ones, she substituted a bed for the pallet, filled the bin with fresh bread, brought wine, wheat, oil, and, at the same time, tears of sympathy, a fraternal compassion made them accept with happiness gifts that one would have blushed to beg from haughty opulence. — She went alone, in the morning by stealth, to these poor people. God miraculously opened their door for her, which she closed again while escaping after having left her offerings there.

One day when a cruel illness kept her in bed, she learned that a poor widow in her neighborhood no longer had bread to give to her children. Her heart bled with compassion, and she prayed, so that the Lord would give her enough strength to be able to go and relieve this distress. The next day, she rises before daybreak, gleans in the granaries of the paternal house, loads herself with bread, wine, wheat, oil, and everything she finds in the way of food under her hand. But how, weak and sick, to carry all these provisions alone? There was almost a mule's load of it. God will come to her aid. Can strength fail the faithful servants whom Providence has chosen as its treasurers in this world? She puts part of her load on her shoulders, another at her belt, she takes another with both hands, and lifts all these burdens while invoking God. Her hope is not deceived. She sets off, light as a messenger from on high; she did not even feel this load, which was nearly a hundred pounds, weighing on her. — She runs; she arrives. — But near the widow's house, her pace slows, her burden makes itself felt. She prays with fervor and strength returns to her. — The door of the poor dwelling was not closed from the top. She opens it and deposits her load inside. But the weight of it was so considerable that in falling it wakes the poor widow. — Already Catherine was fleeing and conjuring her divine spouse to return to her the strength that he had just withdrawn from her by taking away her burden. — The widow had recognized her habit. She knew that this benefactress who was hiding herself was Catherine, Catherine whose morning alms, like those of Saint Nicholas, came to gladden the awakening of the unfortunate, Catherine whose fraternal charity gave to the poor, like Saint Martin, the greater half of her cloak.

One day, at the church of the Preaching Friars of Siena, a poor man asked her for alms; she had nothing, but to refuse a poor man was for her a bitter pain. She therefore looked at herself to see what she could give him: the bride of the Lord had neither rings nor pearls, for her adornment, her glory is interior. Her eyes stopped on a silver cross that was attached to one of those small cords trimmed with knots, on which one recites the Lord's Prayer and which are called for this reason Pater nosters. She detached this cross and gave it to the poor man, who received it with joy and withdrew. The following night, as Catherine was praying, the Savior appeared to her holding in his hand the same cross all adorned with precious stones. — Do you recognize this cross, my daughter, he said to her. — I recognize it, said Catherine, but it was not so beautiful when it was mine. — Yesterday, said the Lord, you gave it to me with love, and I promise you that on the day of judgment I will return it to you as it is, so that it may become your glory. — He disappeared, but he reappeared often to Catherine under the habit of the poor. One day she gave to one of these poor people, whose unknown face hid from her heart the one she loved, her dress, the only one she had kept for herself. The Lord returned to her the next day a tunic sown with gold and precious pearls. First fruits of the eternal rewards that already figured this cloak of glory with which God will clothe those who will have covered his glorious members, in the sad nakedness of the poor of this world! Another day the Savior renewed in her favor, in her father's house, this miracle of water changed into wine at the wedding at Cana. Sufferings without remedy, evils that science had renounced curing, attracted above all the compassion of Catherine.

There was in Siena an unfortunate woman, named Tecca. Leprosy covered her body, and her sores spread infection around her: everyone abandoned her. The insatiable charity of Catherine adopted this unfortunate woman. She surrounded her with care, made herself her slave, and did not fear to embrace her as a friend. Were not all those who suffered her friends? This unfortunate woman became accustomed to this care, to this tenderness, a miracle of a religion of love and sacrifice; she no longer wanted to allow Catherine to be absent on Sunday for the divine office. The leper, who believed herself owed all this care, blasphemed and slandered her benefactress. Catherine's mother conjured her to leave this wicked old woman, but Catherine's charity did not become discouraged; she finally contracted this horrible leprosy that she was fighting in Tecca. This misfortune did not stop her in her task; but he who heals and who saves had sufficiently rejoiced in the generous courage of his beloved. Tecca died, and she had no sooner rendered her last breath than Catherine's leprosy disappeared all at once, and her hands which had contracted it first became whiter and more radiant with beauty than before.

Another also cruelly exercised her patience: it was a religious of her Order, Palmerina. Her wounded pride, a dull envy, had excited in her heart a poisoned hatred against this angel of virtues; she cast ignoble slanders on this spotless reputation. God punished her, she was attacked by a mortal illness, and she found herself in agony. During this time, Catherine accused herself of all this evil, and she conjured her divine Savior not to let this soul leave the world without having inspired in her sentiments of charity and sweetness. It was then that, in an ecstasy, she saw by the spirit of God how beautiful is a soul, one of those souls that the Savior has loved even to descending from heaven to redeem them.

Catherine's powerful prayer always delayed Palmerina's agony, and the last battle of this poor woman was something frightening. Catherine had the revelation of it, and she shed so many tears that she finally obtained from God the conversion of this hardened heart which a ray of mercy came to enlighten at its last hour. She accused herself of her fault and received the kiss and the forgiveness of Catherine, who had been heard.

But that was not all, and Catherine was to cast upon the political discords that divided her homeland the unction and peace of the divine; thus she is called the peacemaking angel of Siena.

In 1368, a terrible revolution had inaugurated the Mount of the Reformers, for the Italian republics were always torn by their internal discords. The defeated republicans of Siena fell under the harsh domination of the plebeians, whose suspicious tyranny spied on the citizens even into the most secret intimacy of the family. The nobleman Agnelo d'Andrea was arrested for not having invited a reformer to a great feast he was giving at his villa near Siena.

From her peaceful cell, Catherine heard the threats of the riot and the cries of death that this rebellious crowd cast at the senator Ludovic de Magliano, and, as an angel of peace, she wrote to the duchess, his wife, words of hope and encouragement to implore her to remain firm in the service of God in the midst of tribulation.

She had also converted that young knight from Perugia whom the republic of Siena sacrificed to its suspicious tyranny, Nicolas Rulda, accused of revolt and co Nicolas Rulda A young man condemned to death whom Catherine accompanies to his execution. nspiracy by the Mount of the Reformers. The popular government issued a death sentence against him. The proud soul of this patrician did not lower itself to ask for mercy. He offered his head to popular hatred. But his youth had been licentious, and Catherine's friendship reconciled him with divine justice. At her voice, repentance descended into his heart. He died a hero.

He had demanded of Catherine that she lead him to the scaffold, so that the prayer of this virgin might escort him to the foot of God's throne. Saint Catherine of Siena, disdaining the hatred that this good work could arouse against her, followed him to the place where he was to be executed. Catherine smiled at him in his final moments, and it was the most sublime scene that could be seen in the episodes of these sinister revolutions: this holy girl beside this block, this child of the people exhorting this patrician to die as a martyr, and this blood of noble Italy splashing onto the virginal mantle of a daughter of artisans.

For a long time, Catherine had been more than a simple Christian virgin. She was also the strong woman, the one who spreads peace, order, and work everywhere. She brought order above all into the spiritual world, and at that time she began to lay the first stone of this mystical foundation, of this school which is her glory.

In antiquity, illustrious women had sometimes been seen teaching doctrines of philosophy. The famous Hypatia had been one of the glories of her century in this sense.

The example of a woman teaching and speaking in public was therefore not new, especially in these Italian republics so close to the warm climates of Greece.

But the example of a woman, however holy she might be, speaking aloud of theology and holiness, this was something that was bound to attract public astonishment in this Catholic Italy of the Middle Ages. Saint Bridget in her revelations, Saint Hildegard, had both illustrated their holiness through learned writings that had helped the Church in this protest of our glorious Middle Ages against the religious rationalism whose phantom was rising threateningly. Saint Catherine of Siena did more; she dared to preach her doctrine openly. She proclaimed it, and cast her mystical teachings to the echoes of Siena, Pisa, and Rome. She was one of the glorious leaders of this mystical school, the only one that established harmony between the spirit and the heart, the only one that did not separate the power of knowing from that of loving. Catherine remembered that a sublime word had been said in the past: To love is to know, and disdaining abstract truth, she instinctively brought all speculations back to love.

The greatest miracle of this life, so beautiful and so full of wonders, is perhaps this miraculous gift of science and strength that the Holy Spirit sent her and which made an illustrious philosopher and theologian of this daughter of the people who had never learned anything.

From the moment she began to speak in public, she attracted to her multitudes of men and women who came down from the mountains and the surrounding countries to hear her word of love and consolation. Even monasteries left their enclosure to hear her. And it is a strange spectacle, this inspired young girl calling around her an entire school composed of parents, friends, priests, knights, soldiers, young women, religious, and laypeople, all united, all like a single family in the same faith, the same doctrine, the same love, the same hope, all submitted to this superior soul who dominated them with all the greatness and strength she had received from God, all praising her, invoking the power that her prayer had acquired over the heart of God, and glorifying this God in his humble servant.

We regret having given too much space to the obscure life of Catherine to be able to insist more on this remarkable tableau where great men of her time, grouped by sincere admiration around her, proclaim her, with a unanimous and unsuspected voice, the most illustrious woman of the Middle Ages.

The mystical doctrine that Catherine teaches is summed up in two words: love and patience. That is her whole life, that is also her doctrine. In this doctrine, Saint Catherine of Siena does not separate from silent and ecstatic love, from the sweetness of prayer, the active life of charity which spreads over suffering and sinful humanity in generous and fruitful waves.

It was not of herself that this illustrious student of the love of Christ dared to preach to her brothers and reveal to them the miracles and supernatural lights infused into her soul. Her humility defended her for a long time from so many honors. But inspiration is an order of the Holy Spirit. Neither the ignorance of his chosen ones nor the barbarity of men can prevent it from manifesting itself and coming out of the heart and intelligence of the Saints. Who could have stopped it in the Prophets? Did not Zechariah, the high priest, struck by the justice of God in the very organ of his speech, feel the bonds that held his tongue loosen to obey the Spirit who whispered in his ear the name of John when it was necessary to name the precursor of the Messiah?

Thus, in the face of the turbulent schools of the most illustrious universities of Europe, Catherine opened her mystical school like a delicious garden where the sweet teachings of divine love awaited the sick souls that doubt or rationalism had struck. All the glory of this holy mission came to Catherine only from her humble obedience to the movements of grace, of that grace which had taken her in the swaddling clothes of childhood and which had led her, docile and victorious, to the highest summits of Christian perfection. It was the whole philosophy of the cross, of which she had received the breath from the Savior himself in the dark and painful days of her mortified and solitary life!

Everything has been said about Catherine's teachings when her disciples have been named. The first, according to grace, is the Blessed Raymond of Capua. The second is an artist, an artist whose ar dent faith almost Raymond de Capoue Confessor and principal biographer of Saint Catherine. made him a master, Andrea Vanni. Raymond of Capua was of the Order of Saint Dominic. He was one of Catherine's successors with Father Tommaso della Fonte and Bartholomew of Siena, both also of the Order of Preachers. Masters and disciples of their penitent, they came, after sacramental confession, to listen to Catherine, and remained seated at the feet of this virgin, listening to the Spirit speak through her pure and innocent mouth. As for Father Bartholomew, he was an eminent man. Apostle of Tuscany, he was the first to collect the chronicles of the Third Order. He was Catherine's friend; he had known her young, and nothing is sweeter or purer than the account he gave of the birth of their holy friendship. He later accompanied her on her travels to Pisa, Lucca, Avignon, Genoa, Florence, and Rome. Catherine, following this gift of perfect knowledge that she had of souls, felt in her heart like the echo of all the sufferings and all the impressions that this heart, which was so dear to her, felt at any distance whatsoever. It was the same for some others of her privileged disciples, Stefano Maconi, for example.

The conquest of this soul had been less easy for her. She had seized him in the midst of the fiery impetuosity of pleasures. Pressed by an ardent desire for deliverance for his dear homeland, this young man full of lively and generous passions had resolved to put an end to the aristocratic struggles and political hatreds that divided the Sienese republic. He dared to choose as arbiter between his noble family and some rival enemy noble races, Catherine, whose holiness had become an authority. Catherine resolved to give this beautiful soul to God. She succeeded. From the first exhortations that the Saint insinuated to him about the irregularity of his life, Stefano's eyes filled with tears. "The finger of God is there," he said. This young man had come there for the salvation of others; he found his own there.

Catherine was not long in procuring the peace that Stefano solicited by dint of prayers. One day when she had gone to pray in the church of San Cristoforo, waiting in vain for the appointment she had set for the representatives of these rival races, grace suddenly broke this hereditary hatred, riveted so to speak to their noble coats of arms. They entered this church where Catherine appeared in ecstasy, already surrounded as if by a halo. In that instant, peace and charity descended into the souls of these rough knights. Catherine then rose, spoke to them of God and the goods that concord produces. She demanded from them mutual forgiveness, the mutual forgetting of their old hatred. She joined their hands, she mingled them in her sisterly kiss. All wept, all asked for this union, this fraternity that the angel of the homeland preached to them so well, and Catherine glorified God who alone can perform such miracles.

Stefano made rapid progress in virtue. He almost never left this underground chapel of the hospice of Santa Maria della Scala where Catherine gathered her friends and disciples to pray with her, and where she herself had her little oratory. More than once his sweet friend, whom he called his mother, and who also had for him all the maternal tenderness and anxieties, delivered him from a peril, snatched him from the danger of a conspiracy. Her prayer also saved from a devouring fever Neri, a friend of Stefano, a young and brilliant knight whom she also formed in the humble school of Christ. Ardent, full of the pride of his blood, the sword of humility seemed cruel to him at first and made his heart bleed at its first wounds. Catherine accustomed this proud soul to bear the yoke of the Gospel docilely. But it was with the clear-sighted affection of a mother, through progressive and delicate care, that she strengthened him and raised him up.

It was to the still timid faith of this young man that she addressed this reproach: I want, my son, that you open the eye of your intelligence, that you see the love of God for you, and that you lose your fear. Fear is a forgetting of this doctrine that has been taught to you; it dries up the soul and the body and keeps them in a continual sadness.

This Neri became one of the most ardent defenders of the faith in the Middle Ages. Later, by Catherine's order, he negotiated the peace of the Church with Queen Joanna of Naples. He died shortly after Catherine in a hermitage in the mountains of Umbria.

After them came Vanni, who painted in the enthusiasm of faith this beautiful coronation of the Virgin that one admired in one of the palaces of Siena. Catherine had known him when she was barely twenty years old. This young artist, an imagination of a poet, a heart of a hero, had undergone the domination of this beautiful soul, so chaste, so elevated, so ardent. He had for her an exquisite feeling where admiration, respect, and tenderness came to melt into an elite affection. One day when he surprised her rapt in ecstasy in the chapel of Saint Dominic of Siena, Vanni painted with his heart this portrait of Catherine that one saw for a long time on that wall. Subsequently, the artist became captain of the people. That day he received from Catherine an admirable letter which has been preserved and which is a whole treatise on social and political economy.

Another disciple of Catherine was Matteo di Cenni, an admirable man, a heart of fire, capable of the most heroic enterprises of charity. He was one day at the point of death, at the hospital of the Misericordia, where he was fighting with all his care against the ravages that the terrible plague of the year 1374 caused in Siena. Catherine learned of it; she ran to her dear child. "Let us go," she said to him, "stand up, Matteo. It is not time to remain in rest." And her dear sick one rose full of joy. The prayer of Catherine, the vow of her tenderness, had saved him.

Three miles from Siena rose in the Middle Ages the monastery of Lecceto. There lived hermits of the Order of Saint Augustine. Catherine loved this monastery. Lost in the solitudes of this fertile Italian countryside, it made the faithful soul forget that at its feet roared the passions and covetousness of the earth. It was there that the seat of Catherine's school was truly established. All the memories that are attached to her blessed name are there. Near the church is this room, which has become famous, where she retired to be alone with God. She found in this monastery another disciple, an Englishman who had come into these solitudes, one does not know how. She also found there Brother Anthony of Nice, whose whole life was devoted to the defense of the Church, and another brother, John Tantucci. That one humbly called Catherine his master. She also knew there Brother Felix da Massa, and this blessed Brother Jerome, a passionate lover of the divine mysteries of the Redemption.

After them came women whose names became illustrious by attaching themselves to hers. There were a great number of them in the ranks of these Mantellate, religious of the Penance of Saint Dominic. Those who became the most famous are: the noble Giovanna Pazzi, an ardent Florentine whose good heart and beautiful intelligence Catherine loved. Giovanna di Capa, consoled by Catherine in the midst of the terrible riot of Florence which had struck her with terror; cured of a dangerous fever by her intercession, she followed her and loved her. There was also Cecca, whose tomb one sees at the Minerva, Cecca the laughing one, the mad one, as Catherine gently said. Finally, there was the amiable Alessa; Alessa, a daughter of the illustrious race of the Saracini. This charming young woman had remained a widow at twenty. Like Asella, so praised by Saint Jerome, she hid her youth and her withered illusions from the world under the veil of the Mantellate. It is thus that she knew Catherine, and that she attached herself to her. Alessa survived this dear friend; and when the holy relics of Catherine, carried in triumph, passed through the streets of Siena, it was on the arm of Alessa in mourning that Lapa, Catherine's old mother, leaned, she who had been returned to life by the prayers of this virgin for many long years. All of Catherine's disciples, lay and religious, have testified to the wonders of her admirable eloquence, incomprehensible in a woman raised as she had been. The scholars of her century questioned her, astonished. "Where does so much science come from," they said to themselves, "to an obscure woman who has never learned anything?" Everything she knew came to her directly from God, as she says enough in the book she composed during her ecstasies. It often happened that she dictated to two or three secretaries at once on various subjects, and without any embarrassment.

Her speech seduced everyone, and her detractors themselves had their mouths full of praise when they had seen her. From all sides, people came to hear her.

Hence, from this illustration, from this holiness, the weight she had in the destinies of the Church and her country. So many labors, however, did not stop the ordinary practices of her piety and her active charity. She was the honor of her people, and yet the humblest of the Saints saw her prostrate in their sanctuaries. She favored above all the monastery of Montepulciano, a foundation of the thirteenth century where rested the relics of a holy young girl of the country, who died in the flower of her youth, under the habit of the servants of God and in the odor of virtues. It was Saint Agnes of Montepulciano. A humble flower of the Apennines, her tomb received the homage of all Italian Catholicism. It is claimed that when Catherine stepped forward to kiss her feet, this saint of heaven, as if she shuddered upon recognizing a saint of the earth, gently lifted one of her feet and presented it to Catherine.

In this monastery of Montepulciano, founded under the Rule of Saint Dominic, Catherine enclosed all that she loved of her family: two nieces, her cherished children, daughters of her sister Lisa. These two ties attracted her sometimes still to Montepulciano. The vocation of her dear Eugenia was especially the object of her care, and when she was far from her, she wrote her letters almost similar to those that Saint Jerome addressed from his solitude of Bethlehem to those young priests whom he wanted to be the honor of the Church and the edification of the faithful.

At another monastery, the old convent of Santa Bonda, she had a friend, Sister Constance, with whom she sometimes spent long and sweet hours of intimacy, as she did with Alessa in Siena. Returning to her native city, she sometimes stopped with some of her brothers at the castle della Rocca. One day, after having reconciled two knights of the neighborhood, enemies for a long time, she delivered a poor woman tormented by the evil spirit by making the sign of the cross on her throat, where it was holding on.

This castle della Rocca belonged to noble friends of Catherine whom the tyranny of the Popolo spied on from afar, because this illustrious family was suspect to it. To the North of this magnificent domain unfolded one of the most beautiful valleys of the Orcia. This stay would have been the delight of Catherine on earth, if her dreams of heaven had not closed her heart in advance to all desires, even the purest, of this world; for she loved this nature which spoke to her of God so loudly. She loved the morning song of the birds, the sounds of the evening in the countryside, the flowers, all these poems that the hand of God has sown on the earth. At the summit of the Apennines, she sought to grasp the sighs of the leaves agitated by the wind, and the harmonies of this majestic and wild nature. She too was a poet; and all the Saints have carried in their heart, in their intelligence, Poetry, which Fable itself had made the daughter of heaven.

Catherine held from another family the superb castle of Belcaro, where the Pope authorized her to establish a community of Mantellate. Only there did the Third Order become regular. She had already founded the monastery of Our Lady of the Angels.

Upon returning from one of these pilgrimages, she found mourning and sorrow in Siena. It was the year 1374; civil war was tearing the Sienese republic apart. To these horrors was added the plague. The Angel of Siena did not fail her country. Catherine could not refuse it all the help of her prayer and charity. She and her companions were sublime there.

The salvation of souls then called her to Pisa. Some brothers and some Mantellate accompanied her on this journey. She was staying there with Gérard Buonconti, and her arrival was a celebration. The archbishop, lords, religious, priests, and children of illustrious families formed her procession. One could see little Tora, who later became the blessed Saint Clare Gambacorti. In Gérard's house, she renewed, by the power of her prayer, the miracle of an empty barrel suddenly becoming full of delicious and inexhaustible wine.

However, two great thoughts agitated Catherine's soul: the pacification of the Church, the beloved mother, for whom she felt devoured by zeal and love, and then that thought so fruitful in the Middle Ages: the holy war of the Crusades.

In Pisa, she had frequent conversations with the ambassador of Cyprus, and she communicated to him the premonition she had of the coming misfortunes by which a long schism was to tear the Church apart. She also confided this to the good Father Raymond, who followed her everywhere. She saw this crusade, the object of all her wishes, pushed back very far by the discords that separated Christian peoples. This was perhaps the sorrow that consumed her life.

Perugia had just revolted, and Catherine, who foresaw all the evils to come, did everything to prevent the revolt in Pisa, Lucca, and the rest of Tuscany. In Lucca, she had already founded a sort of mystical colony with which she corresponded.

It was in Pisa that Catherine remained dead for a whole day. Her sisters and brothers wept around her; suddenly her heartbeat returned, and she was heard to cry out: "O my soul, how unhappy you are!"

Everyone rejoiced to see their mother, their benefactress, returned among them; she alone wept, because her soul, which had perhaps already glimpsed the splendors of God, was descending back to this land of exile.

And indeed, Catherine revealed it. She had glimpsed all the mysteries of the other life, the glory of the just, the confusion of sinners: She had seen the divinity, and the heavenly Father had said to her: "Consider all these things, and descend back to earth to reveal my judgments to men, and to convert and teach them. You will instruct them in spiritual doctrine, and I will give you my divine wisdom against which the contradictions of the world can do nothing."

Shortly after, in one of her ecstasies, and as Catherine, devoured by that generous charity known to all the Saints, asked the Savior to be admitted to the honor of sharing in the sufferings of the cross, she received on her body all the stigmata of the Passion. These pains that she had so desired were cruel. She then understood what this immolated love was that had saved the world; she understood how much "this heart had loved men." These divine and miraculous wounds were still visible on her, even after her death.

Catherine's labors for the unity of the Church are the illustration of the last part of her life.

The fourteenth century was ending in strange convulsions. There was nothing but discord in all the States of Europe. Political, civil, and religious discords; the fire was everywhere, and everywhere terrible. Germany, France, England, and Spain were torn from within, or threatened from without. The republics were no happier. In the Low Countries and in the Italian republics, popular tyranny made people regret or desire the yoke of the harshest despotism.

In the republic of Siena, this popular tyranny was not represented by one person, as is the case even in the most calamitous monarchies; for liberal government, that great political heresy, has its sects like all heresies. The Mount of the Reformers, the Mount of the Nine, the Mount of the Twelve, gave the republic as many masters as they had members. The Viscontis were ravaging Lombardy, Naples was struck with terror under the rule of Joanna, and Rome, abandoned by the Popes of Avignon, was in an even worse state; anarchy was tearing it apart.

And yet Italy, devoured by so many plagues, still dominated the nations by its soul and its spirit. Law and Poetry had reached their full splendor there. Petrarch and Boccaccio represented the Genius of Poetry there. And Catherine, offering in her writings and speeches the gravity and rectitude of a statesman alongside her poetic mysticism, personified in herself alone the Genius of Law and the Genius of Poetry. In this sense, she was not only the honor of her century and her country; she offers a summary of their character.

However, the Papal States, reconquered by Gilles Albornoz, were being reshaped while the struggle of the Popes with that terrible house of Visconti began again. A league was formed in Christendom, composed of the main powers of Europe. In the meantime, the legates who had succeeded the wise government of Albornoz had, through their ambition and rapacity, stirred up the republic of Florence, until then so devoted to the Holy See. The hatred against the clergy went so far among the Florentines as to abolish the canonical courts and massacre the priests. In Prato, the same revolt had taken place. Galeazzo Visconti took advantage of these facts. The revolt took on even greater proportions. The old Ghibelline spirit organized the government of terror. Perugia, Bologna, and more than sixty cities of the Pope's States made common cause with Florence. It was more than the feeling of patriotic independence that was the soul of the revolt. The worthy and excellent Gregory XI felt it and was struck by it. But he protested against the events with his interdict. He had to.

Florentine commerce was crushed in this bloody struggle. Because of the vexations and looting they suffered from the nations where all their commerce had taken re fuge, the F Grégoire XI Pope who approved the order. lorentines attempted a step toward conciliation with Gregory: it failed. Who was going to restore harmony between this unleashed popular power and the spiritual power of the Roman Church? Things were in a desperate state. Catherine, at the news of all these evils, had remained dismayed. She loved her country with that energy she brought to her sweetest affections. And the Church, how much more she loved it! What bitterness, what struggles for her heart!

One day she arose, as half a century later Joan of Arc the inspired was to arise—a daughter of the people as well. She carried the salvation of Christendom in her heart that day. Then began a sublime correspondence between Catherine and Gregory XI. She initiated us into a new politics that does not speak the language of common diplomacy; it is the true politics, the only good one, the one that enlightens, that pacifies. She prays, she conjures this Pontiff: "Alas! my sweet Father," she writes to him, "in the name of Jesus crucified, I pray you to act with Grégoire XI Pope who approved the order. kindness and to overcome the malice and pride of your children through patience, humility, and gentleness. You know, Father, that one does not drive out the demon by the demon, but by virtue alone. Alas! Father! peace, peace for the love of God, so that your children do not lose the inheritance of eternal life. Peace and no more war! let us march upon our enemies carrying the sacred standard of the cross and armed with the sword of the sweet and holy word of God. I can do nothing more; have pity on the two and loving desires that I offer you with my tears for the holy Church. For me, I will gladly give my life for the glory of God and the salvation of souls. Jesus, love." Such is therefore Catherine's politics: Prayer, tears, forgiveness, peace. It is the politics of the cross.

Not only was it her politics, but she was not of any party other than that of justice. While she was asking the Pope for peace, so that Christian civilization could go to the aid of the Holy Places, and so that this captivity of the Avignon papacy would cease, she sought to correct the real vice of the administration of the legates, who had been the great leaven in these revolts. She painted in her letters, full of sense and equity, the source of so many evils, and she wrote to princes and lords to revive in their hearts the patriotic sentiment and respect for popular rights.

The Florentines' attempts for peace failed once again. There was no one left but Catherine who could procure it. She rose while ill, left by sending Raymond of Capua ahead of her; she dared to go herself to ask Gregory for peace. This peace, the re-establishment of the papacy in Rome, was Catherine's whole dream.

But she bought success dearly. It was cruelly delayed by the bad faith of the Florentines, who seemed for a long time to toy with the patience of this good Pontiff. The cardinals themselves, jealous to see Catherine's advice always preponderant in the Pope's councils, attacked the holiness of this virgin. Three of them especially, men eminent in science, tried to catch her in her speech. Catherine was unshakeable, and she confounded them by the humility and wisdom of her answers; they confessed to the Pope that the Holy Spirit spoke through this peaceful and inspired mouth.

During this stay in Avignon, Catherine accomplished a great undertaking. She dared to proclaim before the sovereign Pontiff the vices of the Roman court. She dared to ask in the name of the immaculate doctrine of Christ for the reform of these abuses.

She spoke of all these things with an oratorical eloquence and a rectitude that charmed Gregory, and that swayed his will. He often had her come and ordered her to speak of the things of God in full consisto ry; her Avignon City of which Saint Rufus was the first bishop and founder of the church. speeches were worthy of public admiration. Some felt the divine inspiration stirring in her; but others, envious and jealous, affected to be scandalized. It was not far from them presenting her to the people as a witch, just as the English people dared to do later for Joan of Arc.

The Avignon court was hostile to her, for it was known that Catherine's mission was to bring the triumphant papacy back to Rome. She finally decided this great question. Saint Bridget, another illustrious saint, had just died, and her prophecies had also shaken the Pope. Finally, the hour of this departure so desired by Catherine arrived. The Pope left Avignon solemnly, and he went to sit again on the tomb of Saint Peter (January 17, 1377). Gregory had required that she leave at the same time as him. Toulon and the other cities she passed through wanted to see this g irl Rome Birthplace of Maximian. whom the papal court held in such high esteem and whose holiness was making so much noise. She did good there as well.

She now had to pacify Florence, where the wind of revolution was still blowing. Catherine asked for peace with the Roman court. She obtained it from the Guelph party, which was the flower of the nation. The committee of the Eight did not want it; this quarrel engendered new discords.

In this supreme struggle, the Eight were victorious. The populace was with them; it was a horrible carnage. Catherine appeared to these wretches as the most illustrious host to be sacrificed to the fatherland, to the public good. Threatened with all her own, surrounded by frightening vociferations, pursued, Catherine, with a smile on her lips, congratulated herself on being able to give her life and her blood for the Church. She hoped perhaps that this blood would appease the popular furies, that it would dissipate the drunkenness of these madmen and make peace flourish again in Tuscany. The most formidable populace of Florence, the Ciompi or wool carders, were looking for her everywhere. She presented her head to their raised halberds. She threw herself into the midst of these furious men and fell to her knees at the feet of their leader: "You are looking for Catherine," she said to them, "here she is. Do what God will permit you, but do no harm to these who are mine."

The leader of the popular conspiracy stopped at the sight of her. This courage, this contempt for life, the inspiration that always guided her in the great hours of her destiny, gave Catherine a prestige that her well-known holiness supported. "Withdraw," he said to her. "Flee, for mercy's sake," as if he had feared that one of his troop would dare to lay a hand on this chosen one.

But Catherine did not get up. "No," she said, "I want to die here, I want to give my blood for this God whose vicars you outrage, for you, for your salvation. That is my only desire." This troop was moved. And this mad leader fled with his eyes full of tears, as if he had been the victim being pursued and not the executioner.

From that day the revolution calmed down in Florence, and little by little Catherine saw the peace for which she had offered herself as a holocaust advancing.

The cities of the Papal States were about to surrender; the Florentine Republic felt its political and commercial interests threatened by this very revolution, which had resulted only in blood tribunals. Gregory asked only for a little good will. Catherine, like the dove of the ark, carried the olive branch from one camp to the other, and the peace of Sarzana ended her political mission. Her name was laden with the blessings of the republic. In Siena, she was received in triumph (March 1378).

Immediately, this humble and strong woman went to hide her glory in her solitary cell in the contrada dell'Oca. There she dictated to her beloved disciples that admirable book which summarizes her doctrine, and which is the masterpiece of her works, the Dialogue, one of the most important monuments of mystical theology.

Catherine is not a stranger to the reform of the temporal administration of the Pontificate, which repaired all the odious conduct of the legates. The constitution of Gregory XI ensured happiness and freedom for the populations of the Pope's States.

To the gentle yoke of Gregory XI succeeded the upright, just, bu t severe Urbain VI Pope who extended the feast of the Visitation to the entire Church in 1389. government of Urban VI. This noble Pontiff wished to establish ecclesiastical reform in all its rigor. His cardinals united against him. A schism broke out in the Church. This was yet another new sorrow and new labors for Catherine.

When Urban VI was still only Archbishop of Bari, he had known Catherine at the court of Avignon, and he knew her virtue and her influence on the minds of the people. He called her to Rome by a formal order, for the Saint felt her last days on earth approaching, and she needed solitude and recollection.

Urban VI received her with kindness and as the true power that she was, moreover, by merit and holiness. She gave the cardinals, in full consistory, a speech so wise, so imposing, on the particular Providence of God in the government of His Church, that she fortified the tried heart of the new head of the Church, and, at the prayer of Urban, she devoted herself to the defense of unity.

She called all the princes of Europe to obedience to the sovereign Pontiff; her second care was to seek, through letters full of heart and animated by the energetic sentiment of duty, to bring back the three cardinals who were the authors of the schism. Then, as she feared that France, the eldest daughter of the Church, might strengthen the schism by giving its adhesion, she wrote to King Charles V himself, to ask for his recognition in favor of Urban VI. This was no small step. King Charles V was slow to make his decisions, and if he were deceived, he would not go back on them. Moreover, France did not hide its sympathies for the French Popes of Avignon. What had been foreseen happened. Charles V declared himself for Clement VII, who sat in Avignon.

France was excommunicated. In hatred of its influence, England became Urbanist. Germany and Hungary had already offered their obedience to Urban VI, through the negotiations of Catherine.

But Clement VII, by dismembering the Pontifical States for the benefit of a prince of the house of France, became unpopular in Italy. Catherine therefore had the advantage of preaching for the threatened common fatherland, at the same time as for the unity of the Church, while France had no ally but Joanna of Naples; all Christian nations had allied against her.

One saw then, in the midst of this great quarrel of Christendom, the voice of two women rise, perhaps the most illustrious of that time, both sisters in holiness, both eminent in merit. It was Saint Catherine of Siena, the arbiter of Italy, and another Catherine, daughter of Saint Bridget, to whom Urban, who knew her, said: "My daughter, one can see well that you were nourished by your mother's milk." The great thought of the reformation of the Church united these two illustrious women. From the mutual sympathies of their political thought was born this beautiful and holy friendship which is their glory. Saint Catherine of Siena, the more eminent of the two, was in these sweet relations the more humble of the two, and it was she who went every day to seek the conversation of her friend at the Viminal, where the humble monastery of the Poor Clare nuns directed by Catherine of Sweden was located.

Catherine attempted to bring the hardened heart of Joanna of Naples back to the true Church. She began a long corre spondence with t Jeanne de Naples Queen of Naples with whom Catherine corresponded to bring her back to the Church. his queen. But the blindness and cruel levity of Joanna exhausted Catherine's patience. Joanna, having long since fallen from her throne due to her crimes, had, so to speak, only one foot left on it. Catherine addressed herself to Charles Durazzo.

This young prince responded to her call. He publicly recognized Urban VI, and as the avenger of the crimes of the Queen of Naples, called by the wishes of the Neapolitans, he gathered the inheritance of this princess.

The last human consolation that awaited Catherine in this world was the victory that Urban VI won in Rome itself against a band of Bretons, partisans of the antipope Clement VII. Catherine deprived herself of her beloved disciples to offer their arms to the defense of the papacy; Raymond and Stephen had left. They had surprised prophetic weapons in her eyelids. It was her last farewell.

The year 1380 was the last of this glorious life which had been given, distributed to all. She expired on April 29. It was the day of the feast of Saint Peter, martyr, that blessed Dominican who rendered his soul while writing with his blood these words: I believe in God.

The anguish caused by her revelations on the future of the Church was for this Saint like a painful passion. She cried out to the Lord, and asked for grace for this Church, the spouse of his divine Son. "Take," she cried, "O my Creator, this body that I have received from your hands. Do not spare either flesh or blood, break it, throw it into burning braziers; break my bones, provided that it pleases you to hear me in favor of your vicar..."

Before her final hour, she wrote to the blessed Raymond: "My friend, my life is distilling itself for the Church, the sweet spouse of Christ. I walk in the path watered by the blood of the martyrs. I pray to God to let me soon see the redemption of his people."

The evil spirit, her enemy, stirred up a terrible combat for her at this supreme moment, for the death of the Saints of the Lord is sometimes full of tribulations and anguish. The spectacle of this final struggle, and of the sufferings of this soul that hell still wanted to snatch away even on the threshold of heaven, made the pious women and the Saints who surrounded her shudder. This suffering was long, but finally the tempter left her; the smile reappeared on Catherine's lips, and her hymns of gratitude to the God who awaited her did not end until her life did.

Her farewells to those she loved were sublime. Her amiable Stephen, led to the feet of the dying Catherine by an inspiration of the Holy Spirit, received her last words. He retired into the Carthusian Order, just as Catherine had predicted to him.

There was in Rome a pious widow, Semia, whom she admitted into her familiarity. She had had a dream that very night, a prophetic dream that showed her the mercies of God upon Catherine, and the presentation to heaven of this new sister of the virgins.

Several of her disciples also received the warning of the eternal triumph of their beloved mother. Catherine herself appeared, at the hour of her death, to Father Raymond, her spiritual director who was then in Genoa, and made her happiness known to him.

The news of this death was a calamity in the Church, a mourning for all of Italy. The body of Saint Catherine, adorned in the habit of Saint Dominic, with the white wool veil and the black mantle, was carried to the Minerva and deposited in a chapel of Saint Dominic. Her funeral lasted three days. Miracles abounded thereafter in this blessed chapel.

But the Republic of Siena was jealous of Rome, and it asked the Pope for a relic of this daughter of its bowels. The Pope gave it that head which had carried so many high, so many noble thoughts. The arrival of this precious relic in cette tête Relic of the saint's head preserved in Siena. Siena was a triumph even more complete than the first for the venerated memory of Catherine. All the inhabitants of Siena, lay and religious, great and small, poor and rich, went to salute the blessed Head of the Saint.

The Republic of Siena honored the house of Giacomo, where Catherine had grown in age and virtues, as equal to a holy place.

This poor cell of the Fullonica, all full of the ravishments of Catherine, of the perfumes of her purity, and of her sighs toward heaven, this cell where she worked with her companions, where, as a true Italian, she often mixed with holy words a musical melody that came from her poet's heart, this cell itself is today a magnificent oratory. Art has adorned this sanctuary, opulence has enriched it with its gifts. Finally, the cult of catholicity honors and consecrates it.

Before '93, Paris possessed some of her bones in the great convent of the religious of Saint Dominic. The church of Mailly (Somme) currently possesses some of her relics.

Pope Pius II canonized her in 1461, eighty-one years after her birth into heaven, and Urban VIII, in the reform of the Breviary, transferred her feast Pie II Contemporary pope who praised the virtues of Joan. to April 30. By decree of April 13, 1866, Pius IX established Saint Catherine of Siena as the second patroness of Rome.

Here is how the patron saint of Siena is represented:

1° Our Lord appears to her, and to reward her for her charity toward the sick, allows her to apply her mouth to the wound in his side; 2° Saint Dominic clothes her in the habit of his Order; 3° one sees her holding a rosary in her hand, kneeling, with the same Saint Dominic at the feet of the holy Virgin. This is to express that after the founder of the devotion of the Rosary, no one worked more to spread it than Saint Catherine of Siena; 4° on an old wood engraving of the 15th century, one finds her standing, holding a crucifix accompanied by a lily and a palm. In the same hand, she also holds a book on which is written: Jesu dolce, Jesu amore; in the other, a flaming heart with this legend on a scroll: Cor mundum crea in me, Deus. Above, two Angels fly, suspending three crowns over her head, that of science, that of virginity, and that of martyrdom (by the stigmata, no doubt); 5° but the most characteristic way of representing her is assuredly the following: Full-length figure, costume of the Dominican nuns, on her head a crown of thorns, a crucifix in her hand on which a bouquet of lilies blooms; at her feet, on her hands, on her left side, the stigmata figured by seven-rayed stars or folds; 6° Fra Bartolomeo, of the Order of Saint Dominic, painted the mystical marriage of Saint Catherine.

Besides the letters and the dialogue, one has from Saint Catherine a treatise on Obedience, one on Discretion, one on Prayer, and a fourth on Providence. There is in all of them a great foundation of mystical theology.

The Life of Saint Catherine, which occupies one hundred and twenty-six folio pages in the Bollandists, 4. 112 of April, was first composed by Father Raymond of Capua, her confessor: no one knew the Saint better than he: he speaks as an eyewitness. See also a letter from Father Stephen Conrad, prior of the Charterhouse of Paris; the record of the canonization reported by Surtos and the Bollandists; the admirable letters of the Saint; her History, by Chavin de Malan, 2 vol. in-8°, Paris, 1814.

SAINT ADJUTOR, LORD OF VERNON, HERMIT.