Note 126 — Chapter IV · CATHERINE’S LIFE FROM 1473 TO 1506 AND ITS MAIN CHANGES AND GROWTH

Vita, pp. 122b, c, 123a. I have preserved the descriptive account of Catherine’s prayer and of its effect, although it may possibly be but a later dramatized interpretation of the undoubtedly authentic report of her declaration made to Vernazza.—The immediate cause of Giuliano’s pain and impatience is given by Vita, p. 122b, as “una gran passione d’urina”; Vallebona, p. 73, declares the malady to have been a “cestite cronica” (tape-worm). I have omitted a short dialogue which is given, after her remark to Vernazza, as having occurred between her friends and herself, concerning her liberation from much oppression, and her own indifference to all except the will of God, because her answer is given in oratio obliqua, and is quite colourless and general; the passage is doubtless of no historical value: there never lived a less conventional, vapidly moralizing soul than hers.