Part 2 — APPENDIX TO PART II CHRONOLOGICAL ACCOUNT AND CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE MATERIALS FOR THE RE-CONSTITUTION OF SAINT CATHERINE’S LIFE AND TEACHING. (continued 2)

3. The Preface.

The Preface consists of seven full and balanced, dignified and self-restrained, thoroughly well-informed and yet, in part, deliberately obscure and illusive, sentences. It still excludes the idea of any literary authorship on the part of Catherine: “Madonna Caterinetta, of whose admirable Conversion, Life, and Doctrine, together with her many privileges and particular graces, we shall write.… Here, in her Life and Holy Doctrine is to be found.…” Not Catherine writes, but “we,” i.e. the final Redactor, or all the Contributors together with him; and not her Writings are to be found here, but her “Doctrine” only. Indeed, it all “has been collected with truth and simplicity by two devout spiritual persons, from the very lips of the Seraphic Woman herself.” More would quite evidently have been claimed, if more had been true.

And it contains two or three evident additions to its original text, made for this publication in view of the entire Dialogo’s first appearance here; additions which contain an expression which may well have occasioned or helped on the legend of “Catherine, an Author,” a legend which was sure to spring up at the first opportunity and provocation. The fifth sentence reads at present as follows: “Sono in questo libro [dignissimi suoi trattati dell’ amor di Dio e dell’ amor proprio] una bellisima e chiarissima dimostrazione del Purgatorio, e in che modo vi stiano dentro le anime contentissime, [e un bel dialogo dell’ Anima con il Corpo e Amor poprio, dal quale ne seguita un amoroso colloquio dell’ Anima con il suo Signore] ed altre dignissime cose da sapere, veramente tutte di eccellentissima speculazione ed utilità [e massime in questi turbolenti tempi necessarie].”[425]

Now even the last set of bracketed words seems an addition, and points to the existence of the body of this Preface at a period prior to “questi turbolenti tempi,” times that I take to be 1536-1537, when Battista’s God-father Moro lapsed into Calvinism. Ever since 1520, when Luther’s Purgatory doctrines were condemned, these writings would have been held, if not “necessary,” at least “of most excellent utility.”—There is, any way, no doubt as to the two previous sets being insertions. For note, if they be retained, the slovenly repetition, by the first set, of “dignissimi” in the midst of a most finished composition; the extraordinary use of the word “Trattati,” to signify either Chapter XXV (which bears the title “Dell’ Amor Proprio e del Divino Amore,” and is a collection of sayings pronounced on at least three different occasions), or Chapters XXV and XXVI,—in either case, Chapters which are no more significant or authentic than any other of the doctrinal chapters. And remark, in the second set, the curiously mild praise for the Dialogo contained in the one positive “un bel,” wedged in between the two superlatives lavished on the “Dimostrazione” and the two superlatives given to the remaining doctrinal parts of the Book. The object of that first “Trattati” insertion is evidently to pick out some one or other of the already ancient Chapters of the Vita, which have some special likeness to the subject-matter and title of the Dialogo, so as to prevent the latter from looking too suspiciously different from the rest of the doctrine traditionally ascribed to Catherine.

I take this Preface to have existed, without these additions, in the “worthy book” described by Giustiniano in 1536. But as that careful writer insists upon the precise length of time, because it had been considerable, during which Catherine’s body had lain incorrupt, and says nothing about the antiquity of the book, a point he would hardly have failed to urge had he been able to do so, I hesitate to push this Book, and this its Preface, further back than 1530, a very probable date for the first (at least complete) fusion of Vernazza’s and Marabotto’s separate contributions, since these two chief disciples would then have been dead six and two years respectively, and the culmination of Protestant “turbulence” in Calvin’s open revolt and Moro’s defection would not be taking place for another five and six years respectively.—Catherine indeed appears here no more as the “quondam Donna Catarinetta” of MS. B, but still as “Madonna Catherinetta, figliuola di M. Giacomo della nobilissima casa Fiesca, maritata a M. Giuliano Adorno,” a designation distinctly earlier than the “Beata Catarinetta di Genoa” of the Title. And the Book, its substance, is declared to have been “collected by two spiritual persons (Religiosi), her devotees, from the very lips of the Seraphic Woman herself.” This passage, it is true, now reads “Raccolto dai divoti religiosi (suo Confessore e un figliuolo suo spirituale).” But, where the Preface is above the suspicion of having been touched up, a “cioê” introduces such a bracket; the rhythm of this sentence, in the midst of this otherwise exquisite Preface, is woefully imperfect; and the evidently deliberate ambiguity of “divoti religiosi” is rendered all but nugatory by the considerable clearness of the bracketed information. The clause will originally have read, “Da due religiosi sui divoti,” for this obviates all three objections. But, in this deliberately mysterious form, it must have been written when both were dead, and yet when the death of the last was still recent; and this again brings us to a date soon after Marabotto’s death in 1528.

Who wrote this Preface? Much in it points to Battista. So the use of “cioè,” so characteristic of her Colloquies and Letters and also of the Dialogo; and the phrase “divote persone,” recurring in the Dialogo;[426] and the doctrinal tone of “l’amoroso Signor Nostro, sitibondo della salute delle sue razionali creature,” “il suo consolatorio spirito,” “la perfetta e consummata unione possibile ai viatori,” and “quasi non più fide, ma già certezza,” all closely like passages in her Colloquies and in her Letter to Donna Anguisola. The mysteriousness and equality of designation, applied to both Ettore and Don Cattaneo, would come with a special naturalness from Battista, spontaneously anxious to place her heroic father’s sanctity and intimacy with Catherine on a level with those of Catherine’s priest-friend and Confessor Marabotto. And, if written in 1530, Battista would at the time have been a formed writer,—a woman of thirty-three years of age.—There are, no doubt, certain differences. The Dialogo nowhere has such an “ancorchè … niente (non) dimeno” clause. “Un Serafino,” “essa Serafica Donna” of this Preface, are, in strictness, unmatched in Battista’s, otherwise even intenser, writings. “La perfetta e consummata unione possibile ai viatori” is a more ordinary and technical phrase than I can find elsewhere in Battista’s writings. Above all, the general style and rhythm is here, somehow, a little different from that of those other writings.—Still, these differences are explicable by the writer of the Preface finding himself largely bound by the existing Vita-materials, and by their very niceties of expression. The Author of the Preface is certainly identical with the Redactor of the first (tripartite) Vita e Dottrina; and this Redactor, we shall find, must be Battista. The insertions in the Preface, containing the praise of the Dialogo, are certainly the work of another hand.—Upon the whole, then, we can safely attribute the Preface, in its original form, to Battista Vernazza.

4. The Subscription.

The subscription to the Vita-proper, in this first Edition, runs: “Here ends the life of the noble Matron, Catarinetta Adorna”; which thus still retains (like the Preface, but against the Title) the warmly human and precise, domestic and familiar designation of the first heading of MS. A.

VII. Seventh Stage: The Second “Chapter” of the “Dialogo,” which appears for the First Time in the Printed “Vita,” 1551.

1. Three remarks concerning the two Parts of this “Chapter.”

(1) The additions to the Dialogo which appear here for the first time, and which amount to its present Parts Second and Third, are given in this First Edition as one single, the Second, “Chapter,” following upon the older part here designated “Chapter First.” In the Fourth Edition, 1601, this division of the Dialogo is formally announced on the Title-page: “With a Dialogue, divided into two Chapters, between the Soul, the Body, and Self Love; and (the Soul and) the Lord.” I do not know precisely when those two “Chapters” were replaced by the present Three Parts, and when these Parts were divided up into the present Chapters; it was, in any case, after the sixth edition (1645).

(2) These last two Parts seem to have been written, from the first, with a view to eventual division into two. For though the whole of this Second Chapter is not much longer than the First Chapter (forty-seven and a half pages, against forty), it yet divides up very well at about half-way, since the first half here ends with a piece of moralizing narrative, applied to the whole earthly existence: “The more valiant a man is at the beginning, the greater martyrdom should he expect at the end … nor does God cease to make provision … up to that Man’s death.”[427]

(3) This whole “Chapter” Second is by the same author as “Chapter” First; in this Second, even more than in that First “Chapter,” there are no historical materials other than those still present, more or less untouched, in the Vita-proper; and yet these materials have again been modified, in their sequence and setting, their tone and pitch, their drift and meaning, and all this throughout by the same powerful and experienced, often deep and touching, but also, in great part, painfully abstract and straining, absolute-minded and excessive writer.

2. General indications of identity of authorship for “Chapters” First and Second.

(1) “Chapter” First had, we know, concluded with a paraphrase of the last stage in the scheme of Catherine’s spiritual growth as given in the Vita-proper, and had thus reached the ne plus ultra of perfection for any creature, either here or in the world to come. “And now the Spirit said: ‘I am determined no further to call her a human creature, since I now see her (to be) all in God, without any Humanity’”: a statement which may well (like the corresponding Spiritual-Kiss stage in the Vita’s scheme)[428] have been intended, at the time of its composition, both to describe directly her great middle years, 1474-1499, and to sum up generally her later life, 1499-1510.—But no such hyperbolic language, when thus applied to man as we know him, or as we can even conceive him here below, can, of course, be kept up. And thus here in the Dialogo (as previously in the corresponding place in the Vita-proper), what had originally been the conclusion of a self-contained account of her Conversion, became, owing to the desire of utilizing much extant material which directly described her years of physical break-up, but one chapter in the story of her total life. Hence we now find, both in the Vita-proper and the Dialogo, an instructive anti-climax, in an attempted description (the Dialogo gives this in its “Chapter” Second) of her successive states from 1497 to her death in 1510, states and changes which, were we to take the concluding words of the Vita-scheme and of the Dialogo’s “Chapter” First at all strictly, would, in great part, be impossible.

(2) In the Dialogo’s First “Chapter” we found a remarkably free, deliberately pragmatic handling of the Vita-materials, in the making two different visions on two separate occasions (the Vision of the blood-stained Moving Christ, and the Vision of the blood-pouring Fixed Christ) out of the one, curiously composite, Moving-Fixed Christ-Vision of the Vita; and this doubling introduced, into that First Part, a special kind of obscurity, a sort of eddying, circular, repetitive movement and practical fixedness. Similarly we find here, in the Second “Chapter,” the one description of her resumption of Confession, given by the Vita-proper, is made into two accounts, accounts still further separated from each other here than the two visions were separated from each other there. For the first ten and a half Chapters, pages 226b to 242b, give us her history from 1497 to 1501. And, amongst these, Chapter First to Third cover the years 1497 to 1499; and at the end of Chapter Third, page 232b, we get an account of how “she began to confess her sins” (necessarily, at this period, to Marabotto) “with such Contrition, that it appeared a marvellous thing”—a description which has been taken from the story of her First Conversion-Period, but which is made to do duty here, at the date of her beginning to confess, in a very different manner, to Don Marabotto, twenty-five years after those Conversion-Confessions. Yet only at the beginning of the second half of Chapter Tenth (p. 242c) do we hear, (wedged in between two passages, pp. 242b, 243b, which are re-castings of descriptions of a scene which occurred on January 10, 1510, Vita, pp. 139a-140c) of God giving her the help of a “Religioso,” “suo Confessore,” i.e. Marabotto (p. 242c). This is followed, not two pages later on (p. 244b), by a description of the experience of the “Scintilla” on August 11, 1510 (Vita, p. 148b), and by an allusion to her death on September 15, 1510 (p. 245c).—This doubling was no doubt effected for the purpose of introducing as much variety as possible into what is, anyhow, a monotonous narrative; of being thus able to produce a more ordinary and “correct” account of her dispositions and acts, on occasion of the resumption of her Confessions in 1499, than could be given by the direct utilization of Marabotto’s description of them; and of thus, by these two narratives in lieu of that single one, giving greater place and prominence to the practice of Confession than this practice actually occupied in her real life.

3. Closer examination of the earlier portion of “Chapter” Second.

A closer examination of the whole Second “Chapter” of the Dialogo fully substantiates this conclusion, and brings out other interesting points. Let us take the eleven Chapters of the present Part Second.

(1) The first two Chapters describe her condition when “the Soul could no more correspond to the sensations of the Body,—the Body remained, as it were, without its natural being, and dwelt confused and stunned, without knowing where it was or what it should do or say” (pp. 226c, 227a). And then the Soul begins to address “the Lord” (p. 229a). And on p. 230b we hear, for the first time, of its “sweet and cruel Purgatory.” And Chapter Third tells of the Soul’s painful prison-life, and of vomitings, emaciation, and occasional inability to move (pp. 230b-232a).—Now Purgatory, prison-house and these psycho-physical conditions do not appear, in the Vita-proper, till “nine years before her death,” and, indeed, in great part only within the last year of her life.[429] Indeed it is only the characteristic intensity with which the Dialogo here describes the fresh access of Contrition, and the resumption of frequent Confession for evidently new offences (a description entirely inappropriate to this late stage of her life), that makes it difficult to realize that these three Chapters are dealing with 1497 to 1499. And the exaggeration here exactly corresponds to the exaggeration, in Part (“Chapter”) First, of her earlier sinfulness, and her first Conversion and Contrition.

(2) Chapter Fourth then gives a short description of another “ray of love”; and then apostrophizes, in seven “oh” and “che” sentences, such a state of soul (pp. 232c-233c). Chapter Fifth contains one question and answer exchanged between the Soul and the Lord, and then three narrative-exclamatory paragraphs (pp. 233c-235a). Chapter Sixth gives two explanations by the Lord of the Soul’s sufferings, interrupted by the Soul’s thanks and acceptance (pp. 235b-237a). And then Chapter Seventh describes a lull in the Soul’s battles and trials (pp. 237a-238a). And this lull is followed, in Chapter Eighth, by a declaration from the Lord that she has now been led up to the door of Love but has not yet entered in (pp. 238a-239a); and, in Chapter Ninth, by a dialogue (for the first time in the entire work) between the Spirit and the Soul, the former being now determined to separate itself from the latter; and, at the end of this same Chapter, by a description of this, now more or less achieved, separation (pp. 239a-241a; 241b).—These conflicts and dialogues between the Spirit and the Soul, are closely like the conflicts and dialogues between the Spirit and “Humanity” in Part First.[430] Yet there, the historical materials are derived chiefly from the Vita-proper, pp. 20a-21b, 96b-97c (which give an account of her work from 1473 to 1497); whilst here they come exclusively from pp. 133b-138b of the Vita-proper (which tell her experiences from November 11 to the end of December 1509).

(3) And the last two Chapters, Tenth and Eleventh, are particularly difficult and self-destructive, obscure and disappointing. The Tenth (to be fully analyzed presently), is difficult, because it starts with fragments of Vita-information which, in the Vita, rightly refer, in large part, to the beginning of the last ten years of her life, and even to 1499 in particular,—hence to a period long anterior to all that has been described in the Dialogo ever since Chapter Third of this Part. And these fragments are here made to lead up to a re-statement of the scene of January 10, 1510, when she shut herself off from every one, but when Marabotto managed to overhear her soliloquy (pp. 241c-244a compared with pp. 139b, 113c.) And the Eleventh Chapter is obscure and disappointing, because, after giving the “scintilla”-incident of August 11, 1510, and a final short dialogue between the “Lord” and her “Humanity” (again a combination of Dramatis Personae which has occurred nowhere else), it finishes, not with any description or even affirmation of her earthly end, but simply with an account as to the necessity of Purgation, and, in particular, with the words “a martyrdom which never ceases until death” (pp. 244a-245c).

4. Closer examination of later portion of “Chapter” Second.

Part Third, on the contrary, is peculiar in this, that its Dialogue passes exclusively between but two interlocutors, the Soul and the Lord: it thus brings back the whole composition to its opening form of strict duologue,—although there the speakers had been the (unpurified) Soul and the Body. The present thirteen Chapters constitute, in substance, a single, all but unbroken, disquisition on God’s love for the Soul, and on the Soul’s growth in the love of God; although the form alternates between Chapters of questions and answers, and Chapters of rapturous descriptions and apostrophizings of Love.

(1) Chapters First and Second consist of such questions and answers, and conclude with an, abruptly introduced, account of her former spiritual conversations with her friends, which (though based upon the beautiful document in the Vita-proper, pp. 94b-95c, and upon the fragment there, p. 97b, and though the narrative here has a certain noble warmth of its own) is given here merely as a something to be transcended, and which, by now, had been actually left far behind. Thus, as in Parts First and Second the Dialogo had given a characteristically rigoristic, indeed exaggerating, account of her Conversation and her later Purification respectively, so here again this curious book is more severe than are the authentic accounts on which it otherwise relies.

(2) Chapter Third gives a question and answer as to the comprehensibility of this love. The answer incorporates Catherine’s description of her soul as, so to speak, under water in an ocean of peace; and interestingly turns the “scintilla,” the “spark of love,” into a “stilla,” a “drop,” suggested, no doubt, by the “goccia,” “the drop of love,” which figured so prominently in Catherine’s great conversation with her spiritual children.[431]—Chapters Fourth to Sixth open out with a page where the Lord declares how the pure and love-absorbed Soul alone holds Love (p. 253); and consist, for the rest, of exclamatory descriptions of this love, the soul proffering first ten “O Amore” apostrophes (pp. 253c-258b), then one “O Amore puro” address (pp. 259c, 260a). And the tenth of those apostrophes introduces a characteristic sentence from the Vita-proper: “the Soul,—if bereft of charity,—when it is separated from the Body, would, rather than present itself thus before that (Divine) cleanness and simplicity, cast itself into Hell.”[432]—And Chapter Seventh then makes the Lord ask the Soul to tell him some of the words which it addresses to Love; the Soul does so, and the Lord approves of them (pp. 260b-261b).

(3) And then Chapter Eighth begins a narrative piece (pp. 261c-263c); but which, after a transitional, exclamatory paragraph (p. 263c), arrives at three short questions and answers. The first two questions and answers are by the Soul and the Lord respectively; the third question and answer are respectively by the Lord and the Soul (pp. 264a, b). We shall presently see that, in this set of short sentences, we have reached the culmination of the whole Dialogo, and that, in astonishingly explicit daring, they exceed any and all of Catherine’s authentic sayings.

(4) Chapter Ninth then gives a narrative description of the apparently empty and abandoned condition of the advanced Soul, and, for this purpose carefully utilizes (whilst completely altering the meaning and context of) Marabotto’s description of Catherine’s first Confession to him. And in its last paragraph it again (but here with less change) incorporates other passages of that descriptive Chapter.[433] Then comes Chapter Tenth, with a short question and answer between the Lord and the Soul, the latter partly in verse (p. 267a). And this is followed by two descriptive paragraphs, how that this soul “seemed to mount above Paradise itself”; “this heart is transformed into a tabernacle of God”; and “such souls, were they but known, would be adored upon earth” (pp. 267b, c; 268a).

(5) This description is followed by a long rapturous suspension of the dialogue form, since here the Writer himself addresses successively, in three “O” paragraphs, the “soul, heart, and mind”; “Love”; and “the Spirit naked and invisible.” And, after a little exclamation as to the inadequacy of all words (this also is introduced by an “O”), he similarly invokes (in three other “O” paragraphs), “my tender Lord”; the “infinite Good”; and “the Lord” (pp. 268b-269c).—The present, most unskilful, division makes Chapter Eleventh begin with these last three of the seven “O’s.” And after the seventh “O” paragraph and a descriptive passage, still addressed to “the Lord,” composed of five “Thou” sentences, follows another short interruption,—apologizing for the delay in the narrative and the inadequacy of the words used. And then two “Oimè,” and one “O terra, terra” paragraph finish up the Writer’s exclamations, and bring us back to the interrupted dialogue-form (pp. 269c-271b). Here again a violent division has been effected in the text by Chapter Twelfth being made to exclude the first, but to include, the second “Oimè” (p. 271a). And this Chapter, after finishing the “Terra-terra” paragraph, and, with it, the whole digression, re-opens the dialogue with a curious, serpentine, all but unbroken series of seven questions of the Soul and answers of the Lord, in which each successive question picks up the previous answer and point reached, and tries to reach a deeper one. “What is Thine Operation within man? A Moving of the heart of man. And this Movement? A Grace. And this Grace? A Ray of Love. And this Ray of Love? An Arrow. And this Arrow? A Glimpse (Scintilla) of love. And this Glimpse? An Inspiration.” And at this point, description is declared to be unable to proceed further (pp. 271b-272c.)

(6) And then Chapter Thirteenth finishes up the whole by two questions and descriptive answers. The first question and answer passes between the Writer’s own mind and his heart, and thus again constitutes a break in the dialogue; and the second question and answer occurs between the Lord and the Soul. The first answer dwells upon personal experience, as the sole means of some real apprehension of Love; and the second answer concludes the whole book with a majestic paraphrase of Catherine’s doctrine as to the immanental, inevitable, self-determined, and self-endorsed character of the Soul’s joys and sufferings, here and hereafter, on Earth, in Purgatory, indeed in Hell itself (pp. 273a-275a). Such passages as these make up for much of the often painfully intense, abstract, schematic, rigoristic, and too exclusively transcendental character of this remarkable book, and explain its fascination for a mind of such rare experience and breadth as was that of Friedrich Schlegel. I shall presently group together the finest sayings peculiar to the work.

VIII. Seventh Stage continued: Minute Analysis of one Passage from the Second “Chapter.”

But I must still give for this last “Chapter,” as I did for the First “Chapter,” a synoptic demonstration, by means of one example among many, of the strange manner in which the Dialogo-writer combines the most detailed dependence on the materials of the Vita-proper with the most sovereign independence concerning the chronology, context, and drift of those same materials.—And again I choose an originally unique occurrence and description, so as to eliminate all possibility of an explanation by an original multiplicity of facts and accounts.

Catherine as “Garzonzello” or “Figliuolino.”

Dialogo (Vita), p. 266a, b, c. Vita-proper, pp.--

Il corpo, essendo costretto seguire l’anima, resta per quel tempo quasi senz’ anima, senza umano conforto, 117b. Non potendosi sopportare, per non aver più operazione nè sentimenti dell’ anima, col corpo tutto debole.…

… e non si sà nè si può aiutare. 117c. “Io non so dove mi sia.”

Però è di bisogno che dagli altri sia aiutato, ovvero occultamente da Dio gli sia provveduto, altrimenti restarebbe quella creatura abbandonata 127a. Quali la servivano restavano stupefatti, non sapendo che farle. 120a. … provveduto tal bisogno, a lui non restava di essa provisione memoria alcuna. 121a. Perseverò molti anni con bisogno che il Confessore le stasse d’ appresso, per sostentare l’umanità. 117c. Dei peccati che diceva non le erano lasciato vedere come peccati che avesse …

come un figliuolino, il quale, non avendo i suoi bisogni, altro riparo non hà se non di piangere tanto che gli sieno dati. fatti, ma come d’un garzonzello, il quale da giovinetto fà qualche cosa di cui è ignorante, il quale, essendogli detto “tu hai fatto male” per questa parola muta subito di colore e diventa rosso, ma non già perchè conosce il male.

Non è dunque meraviglia, se a simili creature Iddio provvede di particolari persone che le aiutino, e per mezzo loro sia alle necessità dell’ anima e del’ corpo sovvenuto, altrimenti non potriano vivere. 119c. “Non posso più sopportare tanti assedi esteriori ed interiori; per questo mi hà Iddio provveduto del vostro mezzo … quando da mè siete partito, vò lamentadomi per la casa.”

120a. era di bisogno che il Confessore non si partisse da lei.… Dio, sempre glieli

Vedi come il nostro Signor Gesù Christo lasciò a San Giovanni [al]la sua diletta Madre in particolar cura; e così fece ai suoi discepoli e fà sempre all’ altre sue divote persone; di modo che l’uno soccorre l’altro, così all’anima come al corpo, con quella unione divina. dava … tutti i sussidi all anima e al corpo … per mezzo di lui, al quale in quell’ instante provedeva di lume e di parole convenienti alla di lei necessità. 121b. Questa tutto divina … operazione. Il Confessore era legato col vincolo del divino amore.

E perchè in generale le persone non conoscono queste operazioni, nè hanno insieme quella unione, perciò a simili cure bisognano particolari persone, colle quali Iddio operi colla sua grazia e lume. 117b. Dio gli diede lume e grazia di consoscere quell’ operazione. 120b. E perchè quella continua conversazione e stretta famigliarità facevano alcuni mormorare, non intendendo l’opera e la necessità.…

Chi vide queste creature e non le intende, gli sono più presto d’ ammirazione che di edificazione, dunque non giudicare, se non vuoi errare … resta l’umanità senza vigore ed abandonata quasi come morta. 117b. … col corpo tutto senza vigore, quasi derelitto in se medesimo.

The Dialogo-writer having, as we saw, combined, for the purpose of describing Catherine’s latter-day habits, V.’s account of her unusually peaceful dispositions of soul, obtaining in 1499, with V.’s account of her Penance and Confessions in 1473: now utilizes here Marabotto’s account of her Confessions to him from 1499 onwards (an account which the writer had rejected there), for an entirely different purpose and context than those developed by the Confessor himself. For, in the Vita-proper account, it is in connection with the Confession of her sins that we get the highly original and curious “garzonzello” parallel; and Catherine’s lamentations do not there occur in any relation to this parallel, but they arise only when Marabotto is not at hand to comfort her. In the Dialogo-version it is simply in relation to this requirement of his presence and to its postponement, that Catherine behaves like a “figliuolino,” and cries till she gets what she wants. And yet there is not the slightest doubt that it is really the “Garzonzello” Confession-passage which (left unutilized by the writer in his account of the Contrition and Confessions of her last period, Dialogo, pp. 231c-232b, no doubt because of the difficulty and apparent temerity of the facts and doctrines implied), has here been used after all, but with all its originality and daring carefully eliminated from it. For nowhere else, in the Vita-proper, does a “Garzonzello”-passage or language, or anything like them, occur; nowhere else again, in the Dialogo does a “figliuolino”-passage or wording, or anything really resembling them, appear; and these two, respectively unique and very peculiar, passages, both occur at one and the same stage of her life, and in connection with one and the same couple of persons.

IX. Seventh Stage concluded: Character and Authorship of this Second “Chapter.”

Let us take these two points simultaneously, and move, from the more formal and literary qualities, through indications of the more or less external life-circumstances of the author, on to the writer’s special views and aims in psychology and spirituality.

1. The writer’s power.

The following passages, all more or less peculiar to the Dialogo, suffice, I think, to prove his power.

At the beginning of these, her last nine years, the Lord explains to Catherine the means by which Love may be known: “My love can be better known by means of interior experience than in any other way; if man is to acquire it, Love must snatch man from man himself, since it is man himself who is his own chief impediment,”[434]—a passage that recalls Thackeray’s Arthur Pendennis, his Friends and his Greatest Enemy—namely, his own self.

These years are, a little later, described in language no doubt suggested, probably through some Patristic passage, by Plato, the harmonious. “This soul now abode like a musical instrument which, as long as it remains furnished with chords, gives forth sweet sounds; but which, bereft of them, is silent. Thus she too, in the past, by means of the sentiments of soul and body, was wont to render so sweet a harmony, that every one who heard it rejoiced in it; but now, alienated from those sentiments, as it were without” psychic “chords, she remained entirely bare and mute.”[435]

And we are told of “words which the heart alone speaks to the soul alone”[436]—a passage which recalls Pascal’s saying, “The heart has reasons which Reason does not know.”

Amongst the rapturous addresses we find, “O Spirit naked and invisible! No man can hold thee (here below), because of thy very nakedness! Thy dwelling-place is in Heaven, even whilst, joined to the body, thou happenest still to tarry upon earth! Thou dost not know thine own self, nor art thou known by others in this world. All thy friends and (true) relatives are in Heaven, recognized by thee alone, through an interior instinct infused by the Spirit of God.”[437] An apostrophe which, in part, strongly recalls Henry Vaughan’s poem, “They are all gone into a world of light, and I alone am lingering here.”

The final address in this series of apostrophes to Love, God, contains the sentences: “O Lord, how great is Thy loving care, both by day and by night, for man who knows not even his own self, and far less Thee, O Lord. Thou art that great and high God, of whom we cannot speak or think, because of the ineffable super-eminence of Thy Greatness, Power, Wisdom, and Goodness infinite. Thou labourest in man and for man with Thy Love, and in return Thou willest that the whole man should act for Love, and this because, without Love, nothing good can be produced. Thou workest solely for man’s true utility; and Thou willest that man should operate solely for Thine honour, and not for his own (separate) utility.”[438] A passage strongly coloured by Dionysian ideas.

And yet the writer continues to think and to write, but says: “These words of mine are like ink: for ink is black and of an evil odour; and yet, by its means, many ideas are apprehended, which otherwise would be ignored altogether.”[439] Here we have an image, based as it is upon a vivid sensible perception of a chemical compound, which reminds one of the epatic-agaric passage in “Chapter” First of the Dialogo, and of the reference to cassia in Battista’s letter of 1581.[440]

And the whole Book finishes up with two impressive passages. The first, as to the means of knowing Love, is as Pauline as is most of the remaining doctrine of the Dialogo: “Not by means of external signs, nor even by martyrdoms, can this love be comprehended. Only he who actually experiences it can understand something of it.”[441] And the second concludes all with a forcible and comprehensive paraphrase of Catherine’s central doctrine,—as to the Soul’s condition and action, revealed at the moment of death: “Every man bears within his own self the sentence of his own judgment, pronounced indeed by God, yet each man himself ratifies it, in and for his own case and self. There is no place totally bereft of God’s mercy. The very souls in Hell itself would suffer a greater Hell outside of it than they do within it.”[442]—We have had repeated proofs of how great were Battista’s gifts and experience in such-like eloquent writing, from the earlier Dialogo-Chapter, and from her Colloquies and Letters.

2. Indications of special knowledge.

I am compelled to pass over the emotional rhythm, and the mystical ambiguity and paradox, that appear, in identical forms, in Battista’s avowed writings and here. But we must briefly dwell upon some special sources of interest in Catherine, and of certain knowledge of a peculiar kind, traceable in the writer of this second “Chapter”; both sets of passages clearly point to Battista as their author.

(1) There is the deeply-felt description of Catherine’s conversation with her disciples: “This soul would many times abide with her spiritual friends, discoursing of the Divine Love, in suchwise that it appeared to them all as though they were in Paradise. And indeed, what delightful colloquies took place! Both he who spoke and he who listened, one and all would get nourished by spiritual food, of a sweet and delectable kind. And, because the time sped so quickly, they could not attain to satiety; but they would abide so enkindled and inflamed, that they knew not what more to say. And yet they could not depart, and would seem as though in an ecstasy. Oh! what loving repasts, what delightful food, what sweet viands, what a gracious union, what a divine companionship!”[443]—Now it is true that the writer has here certainly utilized four pregnantly descriptive lines in the Vita-proper, and the fine account there, undoubtedly by Ettore Vernazza, as regards these conversations.[444] Yet one readily feels, at the moved and moving tone of the re-telling here, that the writer was specially impelled to dwell with a tender, living sympathy upon those meetings of forty years ago. Now Battista must, of course, again and again, have heard from her Father’s own lips, during those fourteen years that he lived on after Catherine’s great soul had gone to God, of these unforgettable talks, in which he himself had played so large a part, as questioner, interpreter, and chronicler.

(2) And the other set of passages points, even more definitely, to the same daughter and father. Catherine’s “humanity,” being threatened by the Spirit with various future sufferings, asks to be told the precise offence, charge (la causa), which will bring so great a martyrdom with it, without hope of any help. But “she was answered that this grace,” of knowing exactly what and why she should suffer, “would be accorded to her in due time, as happens with men condemned to death, who, by hearing read aloud to them the precise sentence pronounced upon their specific misdeeds, support with a greater peace of mind their ignominious death.”—And: “Since I am forsaken on all sides,” Catherine says to God, “give me at least, O Lord, some person that may be able to understand and comfort me, amidst the torments that I see coming upon me—as men are wont to do for those who are condemned to death, so that the latter may not despair.”—And the natural man in such advanced souls is described as suspended in mid-air, “like unto one who is hung, and who touches not the ground with his feet, but abides in the air, attached to the cord which has caused his death.”[445] Ettore’s life-long, detailed interest in, and experience of, prisoners and condemned men, whom he, the Founder of the Society of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, so loved to attend and help throughout their last night and at the scaffold, speak here through the devoted daughter who, countless times, must have listened to that father’s prison-experiences, which we found her describing, still most vividly, in 1581, thirty years after the publication of these Dialogo-passages.[446]

3. Schematic, intensely abstract psychology.

At this spiritual stage “there was, as it were, a chain. God, Spirit, draws to Himself the Spirit of man, and there this Spirit abides completely occupied. The Soul, which cannot abide without the Spirit, follows the Spirit, and is there kept occupied. And the Body, which is subject to the Soul, thus prevented from possessing its natural sensations and its natural sustenance, remains, as it were, forsaken and outside of its natural being.”—“God at times allowed the Spirit to correspond with the Soul, and the Soul with the Body.… But when God withdrew that Spirit into Himself, all the rest (the Soul) followed after it; and hence the Body remained like dead.” The two dividings, first of the Soul from the Body, and then of the Soul from the Spirit, so much emphasized in those other documents,[447] is thus carried through in this “Chapter” also.

4. Rigorism.

We find here the same exaggeration as to Catherine’s faults and contrition, and the same rigoristic doctrine as in “Chapter” First, although, here also, counterbalanced by a noble tenderness of heart. Thus her but semi-conscious attachment to, and self-attribution of, spiritual consolations, is here magnified into a grave sin. “How can I act, so as to make satisfaction for this sin, which is so great and so subtle?” her soul asks God, concerning but semi-conscious attachment to spiritual consolations. And of her social affections, as manifested in her great colloquies with her friends, Catherine now says, “All other loves” than the direct love of God “now appear to me as worse than sheer self-loves.”—“She began to confess her sins with so great a contrition that it appeared a wonderful thing,” we are told of Catherine, in 1499-1510; yet we know, from the unimpeachable testimony of Don Marabotto himself, that “the wonderful thing” about these latter Confessions was precisely the absence of that former keen sense of, and sorrow for, specific sins.[448]

5. Pronounced Christo-centrism and daring Anthropomorphism.

We get, again, the predominance of the Personal conceptions and imagery over those of Thing or Law, and the same greater attention to the historical element of religion, that characterize Battista’s writings and “Chapter First” of the Dialogo, as against Catherine’s authentic sayings.

Catherine’s energetic repudiation of “the corrupt expression, ‘You have offended God,’” is replaced by God saying to Catherine, “Know that I cannot be offended by man, except when he raises an obstacle to the work which I have ordained for his good.”[449] Catherine has angrily declared that the term could never be correctly used; the Dialogo explains how special and metaphorical is its correct use.

The Lord declares here: “I descend with a fine thread of gold, which is My secret love, and to this thread is bound a hook, which seizes the heart of men. I hold this thread in My hand and ever draw it towards Myself.” The hook and hand are additions to her authentic declaration, “She seemed to herself to have in her heart a continuous ray of Love … a thread of gold, as to which she had no fear that it would ever break.”[450]—We get here the Wedding-feast imagery that is entirely wanting in Catherine’s authentic sayings. “There is no shorter way to salvation than (the owning of) this delightful wedding-garment of charity”[451] A garment, generally in a bad sense, is quite Catherinian; a wedding-garment is exclusively Battistan.—And the parallel between St. John’s care of the Blessed Virgin, and Marabotto’s attendance upon Catherine[452] is quite foreign to Catherine’s mind.

And the whole Dialogo culminates in a double, daring yet graduated, anthropomorphic picturing of the deification of the perfect soul, interestingly different from Catherine’s favourite Ocean and Fire similes, and from her description of the Soul as respectively submerged in, and transformed by, this infinite and all-penetrating living Ocean-Fire, God. The Soul asks what is the name which the Lord gives to perfect souls; and the Lord answers (in Latin, as ever with Battista) with the text of Ps. lxxxi, 6: “I have said, ye are Gods, and all of you sons of the Most High”; a text which still leaves us with separate human personalities face to face with the distinct Spirit-Person, God. And then, to the Lord’s question, as to what the Soul declares its heart to be, the Soul answers (this climax has been carefully led up to all along): “I say that it is my God, wounded by love,—in Whom I live joyful and contented.”—For, as in Battista’s own Colloquy of December 10, 1554, we get three simultaneous “voices” at different depths of her consciousness, so here, in this composition of 1550, Catherine hears simultaneously within herself three voices—of the Lord, of her own soul, and of her own heart. And Catherine can here declare that now her heart is God, and God wounded by Love; for Battista can write in 1576 that, in the perfect state, “of the Increate Heart and of the created heart there is made a single, most secret and inestimable union,”[453] and that Increate Heart appears here as wounded, because God is ever, in Battista’s mind, explicitly identified with Christ, and Christ’s Passion is ever in her thoughts. Catherine identifies her true self with God, and God with Love; and conceives her own heart as filled with love and inflamed and pierced by it; but nowhere figures God with a Heart, or that Heart as wounded, for she has little or nothing of Battista’s anthropomorphic tendency in regard to God, or of her historical picturings with regard to Christ.

The entire Dialogo then is the work of Battista Vernazza; and we have to eliminate it, all but completely, from the means and materials directly available for the constitution of Catherine’s life and doctrine. The next Division will now attempt to deal finally with the chief of these means—the Dimostrazione (Trattato) and the Vita-proper.

Second Division: Analysis, Assignation, and Appraisement of the “Vita-Dottrina-Dicchiarazione” Corpus, in Eight Sections.

We now find ourselves in face of the most difficult, and the alone directly important, corpus of documents concerning Catherine’s inner life: the Vita e Dottrina, together with the Dicchiarazione or Trattato. It will be best to begin with this Trattato, and only after a careful study of this little book, which, as we know, contains the most original and valuable part of Catherine’s teaching, to finish up with an examination of the, now separate, Life and (other) Doctrine.

I. The “Dicchiarazione”: the Two Stages Of its Existence.

1. The “Dicchiarazione,” from the first a booklet by itself.

All the Manuscripts give the Dicchiarazione (Trattato) substantially as we have it at present, although ever as but a Chapter of the Vita e Dottrina, and not, as yet, itself divided up in any way. Even the last Editions of the Printed Vita still retain a reference to this old arrangement: “The soul purifies itself, as do the souls in Purgatory, according to the process described in the Chapter appropriated to this matter.”[454]

Yet the very length of this “Chapter,” then as now, and the solemn introductory paragraph, both point to its having, at first, formed a booklet by itself. Thus the longest of the other doctrinal Chapters of MS. A (Chapters XV, XVI, XX, and XL) are respectively 29, 22, 19, and 17½ pages long; whilst the Trattato-Chapter XLII runs to 46 pages. Only the Narrative-Chapter XLI, the Passion, is of an exactly equal length; but we shall find that this Chapter also existed, originally, in part at least, as a separate document. And the introduction to Chapter XLII is unparalleled by anything in such a position. “This holy Soul, whilst yet in the flesh, finding herself placed in the purgatory of God’s burning love, which consumed and purified her from whatever she had to purify, in order that, in passing out of this life, she might enter at once into the immediate presence of her tender Love,—God: understood, by means of this fire of love, how the souls of the faithful abide in the place of Purgatory to purge away every stain of sin that, in this life, they had not yet purged.” I have here omitted (after “understood”) “in her soul,” as marring the rhythm; and (before “stain of sin”) “rust and,” since the whole group of words appears in MS. A as “ogni rubigine di macchia di peccato,” requiring the suppression of at least one of the first two nouns: we shall find that “rubigine” is secondary.

I have also omitted, from what I hold was the first form of this Introduction, the present second sentence and comparison: “And as she, placed in the loving purgatory of the divine fire, abode united to this Divine Love, and content with all that He wrought within her: so she understood the state of the Souls that are in Purgatory.” For all the circumstances and dispositions of this contentment have already been anticipated in the “How the Souls abide in Purgatory” of the first sentence.—We can still show, I think, when and why this second sentence was added. Let us get at the reason slowly.

2. Three differences between the first seven and the last ten Chapters.

The first seven of the present seventeen Chapters of the Dicchiarazione (Dic.) are indeed like, but also unlike, the last ten Chapters, in three important matters.[455]

(1) All the seventeen Chapters are full of ideas, even of special words and peculiar groups of words, appearing also in various places of the Vita-proper. Yet the last ten Chapters alone have, in addition, four complete paragraphs standing, as such, in the Vita-proper. The two paragraphs of Chapter Eight, and the first paragraph of Chapter Nine, of the Dicchiarazione (“Più ancora dico che io veggio”—“se fosse possibile,” Vita, pp. 175c-176c), are identical with paragraphs four and five of Chapter Thirty of the Vita-proper (“E perciò diceva: io veggio”—“se fosse possibile,” Vita, pp. 78c, 79a).

Dic.’s text still keeps two primitive readings: “Gate” of Paradise, in a first saying, unassimilated to the plural “arms” of God in the second saying; against V.’s assimilation, “gates” and “arms.” Again “stain” and “stains,” alongside of “imperfection”; against V.’s treble “imperfection.” But in all else V. is clearly the older text: thus “His company” (against “His glory”); “un minimo chè” (against “un minimo brusculo”); “appear before God” (against “find himself in the presence of the Divine Majesty”); “purge” (against “lift away”); and other points.

But if this general priority of the V.-text be admitted, then this part of Dic. must have been constituted at a time when these parts of V.’s text were already so definitely fixed in themselves, and so firmly worked into their present contexts, that the Redactor of this part of Dic. dared not take them simply away from their old home, and did not modify them so as to conform with the glosses traceable in the earlier Chapters of Dic. (note here, in Ch. VIII, the absence of the “rubigine” present in the earlier Chapters). And this means that this part of Dic. was constituted when this part of V. was no more new, and Dic.’s own earlier chapters had been fixed for some time.

(2) All the Dicchiarazione Chapters are based on the assumption of a true analogy, indeed a continuity, between the soul’s purgation, Here and There. But only the last ten Chapters give passages (three whole Chapters) treating exclusively of this-world sufferings, and an address to souls that, in this world, run the risk not simply of Purgatory but of Hell hereafter.

Thus Chapter Eleven (Vita, pp. 178b-179a) is now indeed superscribed, “Of the desire of the souls in Purgatory to be quite free from the stains of their sins”; and contains the clause “non che possa guardare il Purgatorio siccome un Purgatorio” (179a). But all the chapter-headings are recent, and the heading here is quite inaccurate, for throughout the account (with the probable exception of the clause quoted, which is a gloss) the soul is simply in this world, as on pp. 23b, 49b, 61b, 106a, 114c of the Vita, which readily calls such this-world sufferings a “Purgatory,” 128b, 136c, 137a. Here, however, much of the form (e.g. “to contaminate,” “to occasion”), and some of the doctrine (the resurrection effected by Baptism) is alien to Catherine’s habits. The Chapter is, then, made up, about equally, of genuine sayings referring exclusively to this-world purgations, and of redactional amplifications of a systematizing and sacramental kind.

Chapter Twelve (Vita, p. 179b, c) is now subscribed, “How suffering conjoins itself with joy in Purgatory,” and concludes with “Thus the souls in Purgatory experience.…” Yet here too the body of the text nowhere directly refers to, or consciously implies, the other-world Purgatory; for its last clause, “ma questa contentezza non toglie scintilla di pena,” requires freeing from the gloss, “alle Anime che sono in Purgatorio,” which now stands between “contentezza” and “non.”

Chapter Seventeen (Vita, pp. 182c-184c) now indeed opens with an explicit reference by Catherine of “this purgative form that I feel it in my mind, especially since the last two years” to the souls in “the true Purgatory”; but this reference and the five last words of this long Chapter, “e il Purgatorio lo purifica,” are clear glosses, since Catherine is here exclusively occupied with the purgative character of her this-world sufferings, and not with any likeness of them to the other-world Purgatory. And indeed, since considerations about the other-world Purgatory first occur, in any certainly authentic Vita-passages, only after the great “ray”-experience of November 11, 1509 (the experience stands on p. 133b, where the MSS. give the date; the considerations appear only on pp. 136b-137a, 144b, 146b), the “last two years” here must mean that already three years or so before her death she had come to dwell much on the purifying function of her sufferings. Only during the last ten months does she seem to have dwelt upon these sufferings as illustrating the purgations of the other life.

And finally, Chapter Fifteen (Vita, p. 181b, c) is headed now: “Reproofs addressed by the souls in Purgatory to worldly persons.” But the text still begins with “a desire comes over me (Catherine) to cry out so as to strike fear into every man on earth,” and deals throughout with her this-life fears for such persons, not with respect to Purgatory, but with regard to Hell.

(3) Even the first seven Dicchiarazione Chapters we shall find to contain short theological glosses. But only in the last ten Chapters can we find extensive passages incompatible with Catherine’s authentic teaching, or at least quite unlike her undoubted utterances.

Chapter Thirteen (Vita, p. 180a, b) is now entitled: “How the souls in Purgatory are no longer in a state to merit; and how they regard the charity exercised in the world for them.” Yet this very Dicchiarazione’s utterly authentic opening sayings (Vita, pp. 169c, 170a, b) eliminate clearly the second question: such souls do not and cannot regard such charity at all. And though Catherine (who put the question of merit, even as to the soul’s this-world action, so emphatically behind that of love)[456] never considers merit in connection with Purgatory, yet she conceives the souls in Purgatory as purifying themselves of certain passive habitual defects, by one initial free election of the condition of suffering, and by then continually willing the painful condition,—volitional acts and dispositions that are usually held to imply merit.

The first paragraph then opens with: “If the souls in Purgatory could purge themselves with contrition, in one instant they would pay all their debt.” Yet there is no such dilemma in Catherine’s authentic thought as “instant purgation through contrition, of a necessarily perfect kind,” or “no purgation through such contrition”; for throughout the first seven Chapters purgation takes place through love and general contrition, in a thorough but gradual, seemingly slow, manner, and this not because God prevents the soul’s self-purification by what would be the normal means, but, contrariwise, because He does not interfere with the intrinsic, normally necessary interconnection of sin and suffering, sorrow, self-renunciation, love and joy.

The second paragraph runs: “Of the payment not one penny is remitted to those souls.…” This imagery of the payment of something as external to the payer as is money, in view of so external a change as getting out of prison, can hardly be Catherine’s, at least not as the deliberate expression of her purgatorial conception. The last paragraph reads: “They are henceforth incapable of seeing except [so much as] God’s will[s] … they can no more turn [with any attachment] to see the alms given for their intention by those that are living upon earth [except within the (general) apprehension of that all-just balance of the divine will], leaving God to do as He pleases in all things [God, who pays Himself as it pleases His infinite goodness]. And if they could turn to see those alms [outside of the divine will], this would be an act of self-love (proprietà)…” (180b). We have here a substantially authentic saying, but the bracketed words are certain glosses, introducing the utterly un-Catherinian ideas and images of the souls being allowed to see what is being done for them, of God’s balance, and of His paying Himself.

Chapter Fifteen’s last paragraph (Vita, p. 181c), which warns the soul that “the (kind of) Confession and Contrition necessary for such a Plenary Indulgence (as shall instantly purify it from all sin) is a thing most difficult to gain,” is also quite unlike Catherine’s preoccupations, tone, and teaching.

3. Remaining passages of the last ten Chapters not accounted for by the three peculiarities just detailed.

The three last paragraphs of Chapter Nine (Vita, pp. 176c-177b) and the very similar short Chapter Fourteen (ibid. pp. 180c, 181a) are more painfully composite and more repeatedly worked over than, I think, even the most tormented passages of the first seven Chapters.

We thus are left with but four paragraphs, the last two of Chapter Ten (Vita, pp. 178a, b) and the two of Chapter Sixteen (pp. 181c-182b). These two sets form two couples of illustrative descriptions of the Purgatorial process; and, in each set, the first paragraph is easier to read but is less authentic than the second, very composite, much-glossed paragraph. The second paragraph of the first set reads: “L’oro quando è purificato [per sino a ventiquattro caratti] non si consuma poi più, per fuoco che tu gli possi dare; perchè non si può consumare se non la sua imperfezione. Così | fâ il divin fuoco | dell’ anima: Dio la tiene tanto al fuoco, che le consuma ogni imperfezione [e la conduce alla perfezione di ventiquattro caratti, ognuna però in suo grado]. E quando è purificata, resta tutta | in Dio [senz’ alcuna cosa]| in sè stessa; ed il suo essere è Dio | [il quale quando ha condotta a sè] l’anima così purificata [allora l’anima] resta impassibile [perchè più non le resta da consumare] e se pure, così purificata, fosse tenuta al fuoco, non le saria penoso, anzi le saria fuoco di divino amore, come vita eterna, senza contrarietà.” The bracketed words are all more or less certain glosses. But there is here, besides, a conflation (indicated by vertical lines) of two applications of the gold-dross-fire simile: “Così dell’ anima: Dio la tiene … imperfezione. E quando è purificata, resta tutta in Dio; e se pure, così purificata, fosse tenuta …”; and “così fà il divin fuoco dell’ anima, che le consuma ogni imperfezione; e quando è purificata resta in sè stessa, ed il suo essere è Dio.” Both applications are probably authentic; the latter is too daringly simple and too delicately consistent with Catherine’s surest purgatorial conceptions not to be genuine.

The second paragraph of the second set contains the important passage: “Perchè sono in grazia l’intendono e capiscono | Dio | così come sono, secondo la loro capacità; [e perciò a quel] le da un gran contento, il quale non manca mai; anzi lo và loro accrescendo tanto, quanto più si approssimano a Dio.” This seems a conflation of two authentic sentences: “Perchè—grazia, l’intendono e capiscono così come sono—capacità;” and “perchè—grazia, Dio le da un gran contento—a Dio.” And the paragraph concludes with: “Ognì poca vista che si possa avere di Dio, eccede ogni [pena ed ogni] gaudio che l’uomo può capire, [e benchè la eccede, non leva loro però una scintilla di gaudio o di pena];” where the brackets indicate glosses, since the sight of God is directly ever a source of joy.

4. “Dic.” 1 and “Dic.” 2 referred to, respectively, by the first and second sentences of the Dicchiarazione’s present Introduction.

Now the result reached by our analysis of the Dicchiarazione’s last ten Chapters, viz. that this group (with the possible exception of the two sets of similes in Chapters Ten and Sixteen and much of Chapter Seventeen), was constituted under different, later circumstances than was that of the first seven Chapters, is borne out, indeed required, by the present Narrative-paragraph that introduces all the seventeen Chapters. For the two sentences of this paragraph are similar in form but different in matter. In the first sentence the soul is “placed in Purgatory” in order that, “passing from this life, it may be presented in the sight of its tender Love, God”; Purgatory is “a place”; and the souls are in that place “to purge away every stain of sin.” And this corresponds exactly to Chapters Four, Six, and Seven respectively, which deal with the diverse souls that “have passed from this life” (p. 172c); with the sight or non-sight of “God, our Love” possessed by them (p. 174c); and with God and Hell as “places,” and of the soul’s purgatorial plunge “so as to join God” (p. 175c). In the second sentence, the soul, “placed in the loving Purgatory of the divine fire, stands united to the divine Love and content with all that It operates within her,” and Purgatory is not called a “place.” And this corresponds precisely with Chapter Twelve (p. 179b), “as though a man stood in a great fire … the love of God gives him a contentment.…”

The second sentence, a pale, at first sight redundant, double of the first, will, then, have been added to the first sentence, when the second set of chapters was added to the first set.

II. The earlier “Dicchiarazione,” and its Theological Glosses.

I will here analyse such paragraphs of these first seven chapters, as most fully illustrate the astonishing complexity of the whole, and as, between them, furnish all the theological “corrections” to be found in this earliest Dicchiarazione.

1. The two Sayings-paragraphs of Chapter First (“Vita,” pp. 169c, 170a, c.).

I print these sayings (here now broken up) in parallel columns and in the order of their present position. Columns first and third (numbered together as I) will turn out to contain original sayings, and column second (numbered II) will appear as but a Redactor’s re-statement, which (a sort of link between the two sets) first paraphrases the set that has just preceded, and then restates the set that will immediately follow. The arabic numbers indicate the several sayings, in their original and secondary forms (the numbers of the latter being bracketed): thus II (1), (2), (3), stands for the secondary versions of I 1, 2, 3, respectively. I double-bracket the additions (theological glosses) of the Printed text, and I single-bracket two MS. clauses which are clearly a gloss.

I 1 II (1) I

Le Anime che sono nel Purgatorio non possono avere altra elezione che di essere in esso luogo; [e questo è per ordinazione di Dio, il quale ha fatto questo giustamente;] nè si possono più voltare verso sè stesse, nè dire: “io ho fatto tali peccati, per i quali merito di star qui”; nè possono dire “non vorrei averli fatti, perchè anderei ora in Paradiso”; nè dire ancora “quello ne esce più presto di mè,” ovvero “io nè usciro più presto di lui.” Non possono avere alcuna memoria propria neppure d’ altri, nè in bene nè in male [[dacui ricevano maggior afflizione del suo ordinario]]; ma hanno tanto contento di essere nell’ ordinazione di Dio, e che adoperi tutto quello che gli piace e come gli piace, che di sè medesime non ne possono pensare [[con maggiore lor pena.]]

(2) e solamente veggiono l’operazione della divina bontà, la quale ha tanta misericordia dell’ uomo per condurlo a sè, che di pena o di bene che possa accadere in proprietà, non se ne può vedere. 2. La causa del Purgatorio che hanno in loro, veggiono una sol volta nel passare di questa vita, e poi mai più, imperocchè vi saria una proprietà.

(3) e se’l potessero vedere, non sarebbero in carità pura. Non possono vedere che siano in quelle pene per i loro peccati, e non possono aver quella vista nella mente: imperocchè vi sarebbe una imperfezione attiva 3. Essendo dunque in carità, e da quella non potendo più deviare con attual diffetto, non possono più volere se non il puro volere della pura carità.

(4) la quale non può essere in esso luogo, perchè non vi si può attualmente peccare. [4. ed essendo in quel fuoco del Purgatorio, sono nell’ ordinazione divina (la quale è carità pura), e non possono più in alcuna cosa da quella deviare, perchè sono privati così di attualmente peccare come sono di attualmente meritare.]

Here the middle sayings are sufficiently recent to have in II (1) imitated the secondary “ordinazione di Dio” clause present in I 1. And the two theological “corrections,” still absent from MSS. A and B, both appear among these middle sayings; they attempt to explain the non-attention of the souls to all particular things, as a non-remembrance of such things as would add to their distress.

2. The first two paragraphs of Chapter Second (pp. 170c-171b).

Originally single sentences have here been repeatedly broken up and scattered about amongst other similarly broken-up passages: we can still trace the motive for this procedure. I first print them as they stand, double-bracketing, at the end, the interestingly obvious theological “correction” that immediately follows a most authentic, directly contrary, statement.

“Non credo che si possa trovare contentezza da comparare a quella di un’ anima del Purgatorio, eccetto quella de’ Santi di Paradiso: ed ogni giorno questa contentezza cresce per l’influsso di Dio in esse anime, il quale và crescendo, siccome si và consumando l’impedimento dell’ influsso. La ruggine del peccato è l’impedimento, e il fuoco và consumando la ruggine: e così l’anima sempre più si và discuoprendo al divino influsso. Siccome una cosa coperta non può corrispondere alla riverberazione del sole, non per diffetto del sole, che di continuo luce, ma per l’opposizione della copertura: così sè si consumerà la copertura, si discoprirà la cosa al sole, e tanto più corrisponderà alla riverberazione, quanto la copertura più si andrà consumando.

“Così la ruggine (cioè il peccato) è la copertura dell’ anima, e nel Purgatorio si và consumando per il fuoco: e quanto più si consuma, tanto sempre più corrisponde al vero sole Iddio: però tanto cresce la contentezza, quanto manca la ruggine e si discopre al divin raggio: e così l’uno cresce e l’altro manca, finchè sia finito il tempo. [[Non manca però la pena, ma solo il tempo di stare in essa pena.]]”

Here the last (double-bracketed) sentence is a deliberate theological correction, for it formally contradicts the precise point and necessary consequences of the whole preceding, most authentic, specially characteristic doctrine.—In that preceding part three parallel illustrative similes (between the intact general statement and the equally untouched general conclusion) have been broken up, and dovetailed into each other, in a most bewildering manner; and this from a (possibly but semi-conscious) desire to obscure a characteristic feature of her teaching. I shall now give these five sentences in English, and will disentangle the three middle ones from each other.—The general statement: “I do not think that a contentment could be found comparable to that of a soul in Purgatory, except that of the Saints in Paradise; and every day this contentment is on the increase.”—The three images descriptive of the cause and mode of this increase, arranged according to the increasing materiality of their picturings. (1) “The influx of God into the soul goes increasing, in proportion as it consumes the impediment to that influx, and as the soul opens itself out more and more to the influx.” (2) “As an object, if covered up, cannot correspond to the beating of the sun upon it, not through any defect in the sun, which indeed shines on continuously, but because of the opposition of the covering, (so that) if this covering be consumed, the object will open itself out to the sun: even so does the soul in Purgatory more and more correspond with the true sun, God, when its covering, sin, gets consumed.” (3) “Rust is an impediment to fire, and fire goes consuming rust more and more: so does the rust, that is the sin, of the souls in Purgatory, get consumed by the fire; and their contentment grows in proportion as the rust diminishes and as the soul uncovers itself to the divine ray (of fire).”—The conclusion, which perhaps applies grammatically only to the last image, but which, as to the sense, most certainly refers to all three pictures. “And thus does the one (the influx, sun-light, fire-ray) increase, and does the other (the impediment, covering, rust) decrease, until the time (necessary for the whole process) be accomplished.”—The three images are in no case supplementary, but each is complete and parallel to the other two. As the fire that meets with the obstacle of the rust is the same fire as that which removes the rust, so is it in all three cases: in each case God, and His direct presence and action, are the “influx,” “sun-light,” “fire-ray”; in each case a sinful, morally imperfect, habit of the soul is the “impediment,” “covering,” “rust”; and in each case the suffering as well as the joy, and the changing relations between the two, proceed exclusively from the differing relations of but two forces: the soul and God. It is only the peculiar, Redactional dovetailing of the fragments of these three parallel similes which now conveys the impression that the divine sun-light and fire-ray reaches the uncovered soul in proportion as the soul’s covering and rust is destroyed by material fire; and to convey this very impression, was, no doubt, the motive of this dovetailing. The authentic passage on p. 178b, tells how the same divine fire which, at first, pains because it has still to purify the soul, increasingly fills the soul with joy in proportion as it can penetrate the soul unopposed: a doctrine also explicitly taught by Catherine, in her dialogue with Vernazza as to the effect of a drop of Love were it to fall into Hell (pp. 94c, 95b).

3. Third paragraph of Chapter Third.

The much-tormented Chapter Third has, at the opening of its third paragraph (p. 172b), an interesting theological “correction.” The complete passage now reads: “E perchè le anime che sono nel Purgatorio [[sono senza colpa di peccato perciò non]] hanno impedimento tra Dio e loro, [[salvo che quella pena, la quale le ha ritardate, che]] l’istinto non ha potuto avere la sua perfezione: e vedendo per certezza quanto importi ogni minimo impedimento, ed essere per necessità di giustizia ritardato esso instinto: di qui nasce un estremo fuoco.” The bracketed words are two interdependent glosses. For though in some other, possibly authentic, passages the souls in Purgatory “non hanno colpa di peccato,” this most certainly applies only to mortal sin or a still active, formal affirmation of venial sin; since the very raison d’être of Purgatory is “the rust of sin,” pp. 169b, 170c, 171b, 173c, 181a; “the stain of sin,” pp. 169b, 171c, 176b; “a mote of imperfection,” p. 176a; “a stain of imperfection,” p. 176b; “a passive defect,” p. 170b; “opposition to the will of God,” p. 177b; an “impediment of sin,” 177b. And the Vita-proper says quite plainly: “Both Purgatory and Hell are made for Sin: Hell to punish and Purgatory to purge it” (p. 64b).—And this gloss is in strict conformity with the glosses that affirm static suffering: in both cases all change is excluded from the soul in Purgatory, since this Purgatory is neither intrinsically necessary nor amelioratively operative within the soul.

4. First paragraph of Chapter Fourth.

Chapter Fourth is comparatively easy, but probably largely secondary, because uncharacteristic of her teaching. Yet it contains a “correction” deserving of notice. I give the two sentences which prove both points. “Quei dell’ Inferno … hanno seco la colpa infinitamente, e la pena [non però tanta, quanta meritano; ma pur quella] che hanno è senza fine. Ma quei del Purgatorio hanno solamente la pena, perciocchè la colpa fù cancellata nel punto della morte … e così essa pena è finita, e và sempre mancando [[quanto al tempo, come s’è detto]]” (p. 173a).—The double-bracketed passage, directly referring to the gloss on p. 171b, is, like the latter, a theological “correction.” But also the single-bracketed words are a gloss, since they disturb both grammar and rhythm of the passage, and introduce a point foreign to the argument which is being conducted in this place.—Indeed, even the remaining parts of these sentences are misleading, since Catherine held no such simple and absolute distinction as infinite guilt in the one case, and apparently no moral imperfection in the other. For of the lost she says: “If any creature could be found which did in nowise participate in the divine goodness, that creature would be as malignant as God is good” (p. 33b); and as to the souls in Purgatory, they are imperfect in precise proportion as they do and can suffer.

5. First two sentences of Chapter Fifth.

Here we find the strongest instance of the strange clumsiness characteristic of the theological “corrections.” I give the sentences as they now stand, simply numbering the sentences thus amalgamated, and bracketing at once the undoubted glosses.

(1) “Le Anime del Purgatorio hanno in tutto conforme la loro volontà a quella di Dio; e però corrisponde loro colla sua bontà, e restano contente quanto alia volontà, e purificate d’ogni lor peccato quanto alla colpa. [[Restando così quelle Anime purificate, come quando Dio le creò]]

(2) “e per essere passate di questa vita malcontente e confessate di tutti i loro peccati commessi. … [Iddio subito perdona loro la colpa e] non resta se non la ruggine del peccato, del quale poi si purificano nel fuoco, mediante la pena; [e così]

(3) “purificate d’ogni colpa, unite a Dio per volontà [[veggiono chiaramente Dio, secondo il grado che fà lor conoscere, e]] veggiono [ancora] quanto importi la fruizione di Dio, e che l’anime sono state create a questo fine.” (Pp. 173c, 174a.)

According to Catherine’s unvarying authentic teaching, souls go to Purgatory precisely because they are not already “pure as when God created them,” and they there do not “clearly see God.” Indeed, the second sentence here distinctly states, that “there” still “remains” in them “the rust of sin,” from which they “there” purify themselves. And the two “veggiono” conclusions of the third sentence contradict each other: for if they see clearly how much the fruition of God matters to them, then they do not as yet possess that full fruition, i.e. they do not as yet clearly see God.

These glosses are made entirely intolerable by a third Redactional sentence here, which announces “an example,” or figure, of the doctrine here conveyed, and then proceeds to do so in the beautiful Chapter Sixth. For Chapter Sixth gives us the simile of the One Bread, “the bare sight of which would satiate all creatures”; and the division of all souls into those “in Purgatory,” which “have the hope of seeing the Bread”; those in Hell, which “are bereft of all hope of ever being able to see the Bread”; and, by implication, those in Heaven, that see and satiate themselves with the Bread. And “the nearer a man were to get to the Bread, without being able to see it, the more would the natural desire for this Bread be enkindled”; “not having it, he would abide in intolerable pain” (p. 174b, c).

III. Five Conclusions concerning the History of the “Dicchiarazione.”

1. The authentic sayings, collected throughout the Seventeen Chapters, all belong, at earliest, to the last nine, and indeed probably to the last two or three, years of Catherine’s life.—At the latter date Vernazza had been her close friend for twelve, and Marabotto, her Confessor for eight years. To one or the other, or to both, we undoubtedly owe the first writing down of this, originally small, nucleus of authentic sayings,—probably in (many cases) on the very day when Catherine uttered one or several of these thoughts.—The One-Bread-Simile Chapter, and one or two other passages, contain slightly varying doublets of the same saying, the registration of one of which may well be by Vernazza, and the registration of the other by Marabotto, each of these two auditors getting, perhaps, addressed by Catherine in a slightly different form, or himself looking out for that part or context of a saying which specially appealed to him, or slightly, and probably quite unconsciously, giving to the identical declaration a somewhat differing characteristic “colour” of his own. Vernazza is, however, doubtless the first chronicler of the majority of these sayings, in 1508-1510.

2. These sayings must have been collected together in a first shorter Dicchiarazione (equivalent to the greater part of the present first seven chapters and possibly one or two other passages), not long after her death, probably simultaneously with, but separately from, a short “Conversione” account. The first public Cultus in May-July, 1512, giving rise as it did to a painter’s picture of her, cannot have failed to suscitate some such manuscript booklets. This short Dicchiarazione will already have had the first sentence of the present introduction prefixed to it, and this sentence, so like and yet somewhat unlike Battista’s writings (Battista who was as yet only fifteen), will have been written by Ettore. These Chapters already, I think, contained the “colpa di peccato” and other technically theological passages, probably introduced by Marabotto; but the Chapters will as yet have been free from the theological “corrections,” which still come away too easily from the rest of the text (in contradistinction to the difficulty in the analysis of its other, much more resistant components) not to be considerably younger than these latter.

3. The “corrections” insist upon three doctrines, in each case in demonstrable contradiction with Catherine’s authentic teaching: the complete absence of all guilt, sin, imperfection, even though merely passive and habitual, in the soul, even in its first moment in Purgatory; the simply vindictive, not curative, hence static, nature of the suffering throughout the soul’s prison time, right up to this time’s sudden cessation; and this soul’s clear vision of God from first to last. Thus no increase or extension of purity, no work of love, is effected in or by the soul during, or by means of, its Purgatory.—Now Pope Leo the Tenth, in his Bull Exsurge Domine of May 16, 1520, against Luther, reprobated four propositions concerning Purgatory; and the second part of the second of these propositions declares: “It is not proved, by any reasons or by any texts of Scripture, that the souls in Purgatory are out of a state capable of merit or of an increase of Charity.”[457] The Censure of this doctrine must have seemed to menace Catherine’s teaching on this same point. For she nowhere indeed declares these souls to be capable of meriting, nor does she teach that there is any increase in the intensity of their love; yet by the one free act of self-determination to Purgatory, and by the gradual extension of this determination of active love throughout all the regions and degrees of the passive will and habitual dispositions of the soul, her teaching must, to an at all nervous theologian, have seemed, at the time, to come perilously near to the admission, respectively, of merit and of an increase of love in the Beyond. And the degree in which the fight with nascent Protestantism was raging precisely around such Purgatorial questions, and the solemnity of the Pope’s condemnation, at this early stage of Catherine’s Cultus and reputation, must have combined to render the introduction of these disfiguring glosses an apparent necessity.—I take them to have been introduced soon after Vernazza’s death in 1524, hence some twelve years after the constitution of these seven Chapters; presumably by the Inquisitor to the Republic of Genoa for the time being.

4. The addition of the last ten Chapters to the first seven Chapters, and of the second sentence to the Introduction, will have occurred some time after the constitution of the Vita-proper, say, in 1531 or 1532; but, in any case, was not due to Vernazza or Marabotto. And the glosses will have been introduced into these ten Chapters quasi-automatically, and simply as a consequence to the very deliberate “corrections” of those previous seven Chapters; for now Catherine’s reputation had had another twelve years in which to grow, and the Bull had been studied for another twelve years.—But no such glosses were introduced into the Vita-proper, either as to this, or indeed, perhaps, any other point. For this Vita treated only quite incidentally of the other-world Purgatory; and this, in those times specially delicate, subject-matter had received every precautionary attention in the Dicchiarazione professedly devoted to it. And other, intrinsically more important points, even though treated here with great boldness, were felt to remain as open as before.

But we must now get on to this Vita-proper.

IV. The “Vita”-proper, its Divisions and Parts, and Chief Secondary and Authentic Constituents.

1. The three great divisions, and their clearly secondary parts.

The Vita-proper, as we now have it in print, falls into three great Divisions, of respectively two, four, and two parts each. The first and last Divisions hold by far the greater amount of the primary material; whereas the middle Division only gives us here and there chapters or paragraphs of admirable freshness and beauty.

The eight opening Narrative Chapters, pp. 1b to 21b, and the next nine Chapters of Discourses, pp. 21b to 50c, form the two parts of the first Division, each part being more or less complete and homogeneous within itself; and yet they are together in marked contrast to most of the materials of the following Division. It is within the limits of this first Division, and probably even of its first part, that must subsist the materials, predominantly derived from Ettore Vernazza, of that first “Conversione”-booklet of 1512.

The second Division opens out with the most important Narrative Chapter Nineteenth, pp. 51a-53c; but the remaining seven Chapters of this its first part (pp. 53c-70a), contain very little which is not findable elsewhere in a more primary form. Then follow, as a second part, seven Chapters of a bewildering variety of form: three are largely Narrative and important (Chapters XXVII to XXIX, pp. 70b-77b); the next (Chapter XXX, pp. 77b-79a) gives Discourses, only in part authentic; the next again (Chapter XXXI, pp. 79b-83c) is chiefly Narrative and important; Chapter XXXII, pp. 83c-88b, is now one long Discourse which incorporates some short but important authentic sayings; and Chapters XXXIII to XXXV (pp. 88c-96b) are, the first, a Narrative; the last two, Discourses; and, in all three cases, preponderatingly secondary and negligible. Then a third part consists of a largely Narrative Chapter of delightful authenticity and freshness (Chapter XXXVI, pp. 94b-96b); a tryingly composite but valuable Narrative Chapter (Chapter XXXVII, pp. 96b-97c); and an important Narrative Chapter with dates (Chapter XXXVIII, pp. 98a-100a). And, as a fourth part, we get a group of three Chapters, of which the first and last contain highly original matter (Chapters XXXIX-XLI, pp. 100a-103b, 106a-111b), but of which the middle one (Chapter XL, pp. 103c-105c) can safely be neglected. Ettore’s chroniclings are again strongly represented in this Division.

And the last Division consists, in its first part, of five important Narrative Chapters. (Chapters XLII-XLVI, pp. 111c-126c), clearly by various hands, and of markedly manifold tone and emotional pitch. And the second part consists of the six Chapters concerning her Passion, Death, and Cultus (Chapters XLVII-LII, pp. 127a-166a), of which we can safely neglect Chapter XLVII, pp. 127a-131c (wanting in the MSS., and a mere collection of passages still present, in a more primitive form and connection, in other parts of the Vita); and pp. 161c-166a (which treat of events subsequent to Catherine’s death). This last Division gives the most important of the communications that can with certainty be attributed to Marabotto. And as Division First’s first part, Catherine’s Conversion, will have existed very early in a separate form, and its second part will have, if added later, been thus added very soon; so this Third Division’s second part, Catherine’s Passion, will early have existed separately; and to this will have been prefixed, still in early times, the Narrative Chapters XLII, XLIII, XLV, and XLVI of the first part, all dealing with matters occurring from 1496 onwards.

2. Five main additions of the Printed Vita as against the extant MSS.

We have now reduced the bulk of the Vita-proper by 34½ pages, but the remaining 132 pages are capable of further reduction. For the Printed Vita, as compared with the MSS., contains, besides the already rejected Chapter XLVII, five main additions.

The first addition (in the order of the Printed Vita) is the beautifully vivid and daring, certainly historical scene between Catherine and the Friar (Chapter XIX, pp. 51a-53b), a record doubtless due to Ettore Vernazza, and which will have been omitted by the Franciscan Scribe of MS. A from scruples with regard to the doctrine implied.

The second is Chapter XLIV, omitted from p. 117b to p. 121b,—Catherine’s declarations as to her lonely middle period and the account of her Confessions to Don Marabotto, undoubtedly here recorded by this Priest; matter again which the Franciscan Friar might well consider dangerously daring, but which, we have seen, had not yet been incorporated with the Franciscan’s Prototype, perhaps indeed not with any copy of the then extant Vita.

The third is the fourth paragraph of Chapter XLVIII, p. 133b, giving a new and beautiful description of the “Scintilla” experienced by Catherine on November 11, 1509. It is of late composition, and Battista Vernazza is no doubt its author.

The fourth consists of three new paragraphs to Chapter XLIX, descriptive of Maestro Boerio’s three-weeks’ attempt at curing her, sometime in May-July 1510 (pp. 146c-147c), and of evidently the same Physician’s visit in his scarlet robes on September 2 (p. 154b). Both passages, of transparent authenticity and still but little enlarged, will have been contributed by this Physician’s Priest-son Giovanni Boerio, who, dying in his seventies, in 1561,[458] must himself have been twenty at the time of his Father’s attendance, and may well have had his Father’s contemporary notes before him when composing these interestingly vivid contributions.

And the fifth brings three new paragraphs for the events of September 4, 1510 (Chapter L, pp. 155b-156a), already referred to here, on pp. 209, 210.

The MSS. read: “On the following day [4th September], being in great pain and torment, she extended her arms in suchwise as to appear in truth a body fixed to a cross; so that, according as she was interiorly, so also did she show in her exterior, and she said—”[459] Hereupon follows a long prayer so obviously modelled throughout upon Our Lord’s High-Priestly prayer (John xvii, 1-26), and so elaborately reflective, that it cannot but most distantly represent anything spoken now by her who had been so interjectional in her remarks ever since August 16 (pp. 149b-155b).—Now the Printed Vita introduces between “… exterior,” and “and she said,” the following account: “Whence, it appears to me, we should indeed believe that the spiritual stigmata were impressed in that body which was so afflicted and excruciated by her Love; and although they did not appear exteriorly, they nevertheless could easily be recognized through the Passion which she felt; and that she suffered in her body that pain which her Love had suffered on the Cross: as we read of the Apostle (Gal. vi [17]) who bore the stigmata of Our Lord Jesus Christ, not indeed exteriorly but interiorly, through the great love and desire which he felt within himself for his Lord.”

“In proof that this holy woman bore the stigmata interiorly, a large silver cup was ordered to be brought in, which had a very high-standing saucer”; the cup was “full of cold water, for refreshing her hands, in the palms of which, because of the great fire that burned within her, she felt intolerable pain. And on putting her hands into it, the water became so boiling that the cup and the very saucer were greatly heated. She also sustained great heat and much pain at her feet, and hence she kept them uncovered; and at her head she similarly suffered great heat with many pains.”

Argentina is then quoted as having seen how “one of” Catherine’s “arms lengthened itself out by more than half a palm beyond its usual length; yet she never said one word as to whence such great pains proceeded. It is true that, on one occasion, before her last infirmity, she predicted that she would have to suffer a great malady, which would not be natural but different from other infirmities, and that she would die of it; and that, before her death, she would have within herself (in sè) the Stigmata and the Mysteries of the Passion: and this the aforesaid Argentina revealed later on to many persons.

“Now this Beata being thus, with her arms extended, in pains so great that she could not move.…” And then follows the “said” with the long prayer, as given in the MSS.[460] Stigmatization is thus attributed, but in two degrees and of two kinds. “Spiritual Stigmata,” like St. Paul, who had them “through the great love and desire which he felt within himself for his Lord”: this is the conception of the writer of the first paragraph, doubtless Battista Vernazza. “Stigmata impressed within her body,” intense interior physical pain, proved to be such by the intense interior physical heat, and this heat proved by the insides of Catherine’s hands causing cold water to boil: this was no doubt Argentina’s view—at least as time went on. And note the interesting combination of both views effected by the Redactor in the clauses “the spiritual stigmata were impressed in her body,” “through the Passion which she felt,” and “she bore the stigmata interiorly.”

V. Age and Authorship of the Literature retained.

The next points to consider, in detail, are the authorship and antiquity of the literature retained by us.

1. Indications concerning Ettore Vernazza.

The indications to be found within the Vita begin at pp. 98c, 99a, where, after six lines concerning “several ecstasies” which occurred in one particular year and which Catherine herself had called “giddiness” (vertigine), we are told: “One day that she was talking with a Religious, that Religious said to her: ‘Mother, I beg you, for the glory and honour of God, to elect some person that would satisfy your mind, and to narrate to this person the graces which God has granted to you, so that, when you die, these graces may not remain … unknown, and the praise and glory due for them to God may not be wanting.’ And then this Soul answered that she was quite willing (ben contenta), if this were pleasing to her tender Love; and that, in that case, she would elect no other person than himself.” “And then, speaking on another occasion with the said Religious, she began to narrate to him her Conversion. And she acted similarly later on, as well as she could, with regard to many other things, which have been faithfully collected and put into the present book” (Vita, pp. 98c, 99a). The Preface, we know, mentions “two Religious, her devotees, her Confessor and a Spiritual son of hers, by whom the (matter of the) book has been collected from the very lips of the Seraphic Woman herself” (Vita, p. viiic): and we know, beyond all cavil, that these two men were Cattaneo Marabotto, the Priest, and Ettore Vernazza, the Lawyer. The passage just given, Vita, pp. 98c, 99a, unmistakably refers to one of these two; and the address of “Mother,” and the answer of “Son,” which occurs here immediately after the words translated (p. 99b), fit only Vernazza.

Now the opening words of the first two, closely interconnected, paragraphs of that Chapter XXXVIII (Vita, p. 98a, b) are: “In the year 1507”; the first words of the next two paragraphs, which also belong together, are: “It happened in a certain year.” The subjects and sequences of those two sets correspond pretty closely; and the second set is in simple juxtaposition to the first set. Yet the sets differ: the first contains a definite date but no allusion to any interlocutor, and Catherine moves about and overcomes her scruples by intercourse with God alone; the second is without a date but refers repeatedly to a witness, and Catherine is physically quiescent and solicits spiritual help from a disciple. Each set is, in its own way, equally vivid and peculiar: they can hardly be doublet narratives of the same event.—The second set, then, gives a later stage of her health and dispositions; and the “ecstasies,” “giddinesses,” which left her “half dead,” must refer to the “assault” of November 11, 1509, which left many other, similarly deep, impressions and definite records. The penultimate paragraph of the Printed Vita (p. 165c) reads in the MSS.: “Now those who saw and observed these wonderful operations during fifteen years;” and this (since Marabotto did not become Catherine’s Confessor nor presumably know her, at least intimately, till 1499) must refer specially to Vernazza, Thus 1495 marks the beginning of his intimacy with Catherine; in 1497 he could ask Catherine to stand God-mother to his first child; and the Vita gives, pp. 122c, 123a, “what she said after her husband’s death,” hence in the autumn of 1497, “to a spiritual son of hers,” who is certainly Vernazza, “concerning the character of Messer Giuliano.”—The conversation of November 1509 is, then, not the starting-point of Vernazza’s observations, or even of his registrations, but only the date from when Catherine began deliberately to tell him about her past history.—All this gives us the following canon: whatever in the Vita is attributable to Vernazza can, if its subject-matter is posterior to 1495, have been observed and written down by him, then and there, as it occurred; if its subject-matter is prior to 1495, then we have what, at best, is derived from Catherine’s memory and communication to him. And there exists no earlier trained and reliable witness of Catherine’s spiritual dispositions and sayings than Vernazza from this date onwards.

Two beautiful scenes and compositions have undoubtedly been directly witnessed and contemporaneously chronicled by Vernazza,—the conversation about Love and Hell, with Ettore as the chief interlocutor after Catherine herself (Vita, pp. 94b,-95c), between July 1495 and 1502; and the Scene with the Friar, which it is best to put back to the end of 1495 or the beginning of 1496, since it is more natural to take her words, “if the world or a husband,” as referring to a still living husband.—We can also, I think, attribute to the same intermediary the authentic central part of the analogous discourse as to “that corrupt expression: you have offended God,” Chapter XXXIX, pp. 100c-101b.—And it is Ettore again through whom, doubtless, we derive all but everything that is authentic in the Dicchiarazione, as we have already found.

Vernazza’s contributions to the second category, i.e. reminiscences of Catherine brought to paper by him, are also very important and more numerous; but they are, I think, generally worked up with parallel accounts due to Marabotto, as we shall presently note.

2. Indications of Marabotto.

The locus classicus concerning Don Cattaneo appears in the Vita in Chapter XLIV, p. 117b, of which long and most important Chapter (pp. 116c-121b) only the first seven lines occur in the MSS. The passage (omitting a highly glossed bracketed clause and a parallel, secondary half-sentence) runs: “After this, ( ), the Lord gave her a Priest (Prete) to have a care of her soul and body. [ ] He was elected Rector of the Hospital in which she abode, and he was wont to hear her Confessions, to say Mass for her, and to give her Communion, as often as she liked. This Priest (Sacerdote), at the request of various spiritual persons devoted to this Beata, has written a considerable part (buona parte) of this work, having many times tempted her on and incited her to tell him of the singular graces which God had given her and had effected within her [; especially since (massime che) this Religious, owing to long experience and intercourse, knew and understood particularly well (molto bene) the sequence of her life].”

This introductory authentication is followed by the highly reliable and important matters described in my Chapter IV,—her manner of Confession; the incident of the perfume from Marabotto’s hand; her solemn declaration as to her twenty-five years of complete interior loneliness with God; and the murmurs of some of her friends as to the closeness of their intimacy, and his consequent absence from her for three days. All this (pp. 117b-121b) was certainly written down by Marabotto himself, at the time, in substantially its present form.

Although this whole series now opens out with “la prima volta che si volle confessare a questo Religioso” (p. 117c), the words “a questo Religioso” are doubtless an addition of the Redactor. For everywhere else Marabotto is always “il Confessore” or “suo Confessore,” whilst “un Religioso” is reserved for Vernazza: and wherever she uses any specific appellation to the Confessore,—a thing which is quite exceptional,—she says “Padre”; whilst where she does so to the Religioso, she says “Figliuolo.”[461] And, wherever the Confessore addresses her, there is never any specific address; whereas the Religioso constantly addresses her as “Madre.”[462]