Note 120 — Chapter IV · CATHERINE’S LIFE FROM 1473 TO 1506 AND ITS MAIN CHANGES AND GROWTH

The above paragraph is based, with Vallebona, op. cit. pp. 67-72, upon the assumption that Catherine took the kind of share described in the labours of this time; since it is practically unthinkable that she should not have acted as is here supposed, given the combination of the following facts, which are all beyond dispute. (1) The fully reliable Giustiniani in his Annali describes, under the date of 1493, the incidents of the Pestilence as given above; tells us how well, nevertheless, the sick and poor were looked after by those who, from amongst the educated classes, remained amongst them; and affirms that the Borgo di San Germano, identical with the Acquasola quarter, was assigned to those stricken by the Pestilence. (2) Agostino Adorno, Giuliano’s cousin, was Doge of Genoa during this year. And the friendly terms on which the cousins were at this time are proved by Giuliano’s Will of the following year (October 1494). (3) Catherine had already been Matron of the Hospital for two years and more, and was to continue to be so for another three years. She certainly did not absent herself from her post at this time. And her Hospital directly abutted against the Acquasola quarter. (4) The details furnished by all the sources conjointly with regard to her six years’ Headship of the Hospital, are so extraordinarily scanty, that we must not too much wonder at the all but complete dearth of any allusion to a work which cannot have lasted longer than as many months. (5) The Dialogo, p. 222b, says: “She would go, too,” (i.e. besides visiting the sick and poor in their own houses,) “to the poor of San Lazzaro, in which place she would find the greatest possible calamity.” This clearly refers to some special (Lazar-, Leper-) Refuge, and the term can certainly cover aid given to the pest-stricken. And we shall see that the record here is derived from the writer’s father, Ettore Vernazza, the heroic lover of the pest-stricken poor.

I have, in my text, assumed that the Vita gives us an anecdote relative to her visiting the pestiferous sick of Acquasola. But to do this, I have had (a) to take “pestiferous fever” as equivalent to “Pestilence,” and to assume that it was not an isolated precursory case of the coming general visitation; (b) to omit, in the Vita’s text, “nell’ ospedale,” as an indication where the sick woman was; and “allo stesso servizio (dell’ ospedale),” as descriptive of where Catherine went back to: the anecdote may well originally have been without indication of the place in which the infection came to reduce her to death’s door.