Part 2 — CHAPTER V CATHERINE’S LAST FOUR YEARS, 1506 TO 1510—SKETCH OF HER CHARACTER, DOCTRINE, AND SPIRIT

I. Catherine’s External Interests and Activities up to May 1510. Occasional Slight Deviations from her Old Balance. Immensely Close Interconnection of her whole Mental and Psycho-Physical Nature. Impressions as connected with the Five Senses.

1. Indications of external interests.

Even during the next four years, up to May 1510, we still find various most authentic and clear indications of external interests and activities in Catherine’s life. Thus, on the 21st June 1507, the Protectors of the Hospital address a letter to Don Giacobo Carenzio (who had, as they tell him, been elected Master—Rettore—already fifteen months previously), urging him to come and take up his post; and Catherine, who, as we shall see, was later on variously helped by this Priest, and who cared so much for the Hospital, cannot have remained indifferent to that first election and to this present reminder.

Again on the 6th December 1507, the Protectors, Lorenzo Spinola, Manfredo Fornari, and Emmanuele Fiesco, met in Catherine’s room, and decided, no doubt with her advice and co-operation, to allow another widow-lady and devotee of the Hospital, Brigidina, wife of the late Giacomo Castagneto, to settle within its precincts.[155] Then on 27th November 1508 she makes a Codicil, leaving an additional £25 to Mariola, and a further article of dress to Argentina; and declaring that she is “entirely content” with Don Marabotto’s administration of her monies and charities. Don Cattaneo has then now become her Almoner, and her charitable activity continues large. The document is drawn up by Ettore Vernazza, an unimpeachable witness to Marabotto’s rectitude and exactness.[156]

Indeed as late down as 18th March 1509 her long Will of that date shows an admirable persistence of her old attachment for and interest in her surviving brother, niece (the provision for Maria’s possible marriage is particularly careful and detailed), and nephews (the youngest of the latter, Giovanni, is omitted, no doubt because he had now become a Cardinal, with a corresponding income); in Don Marabotto, who retains the same little pension; in her three maids Benedetta, Mariola, and Argentina, all of whose legacies get somewhat increased; and in the fortunes of the Hospital and of Thobia’s mother (she repeats her account of what she has already done for them).[157]

2. Occasional imperfection of judgment.

Yet now at last we can find symptoms of the final break-up of her health, and of an occasional slight or momentary deviation from, or diminution of, her old completeness of balance in both judgment, taste, and feeling,—although even now this occurs only in matters of relatively secondary importance, and but heightens the impressiveness of the still unbroken front which she maintains, in all her fully deliberate acts, with regard to all essential matters. Indeed, it is not difficult to feel, even where one cannot directly trace, in all such acts and matters, a still further deepening of the heroic watchfulness and childlike spontaneity, and of the humility and tender naïveté and creatureliness, of her general tone and attitude.

3. Close-knittedness of her psycho-physical organism: her spiritual utilization of this.

But before recounting the few instances in which we can trace an indication of partly physical depression, or of some lessening of mental alertness or volitional power in secondary matters, or of slight passing unwilled maladif impressions, let us attempt a somewhat methodic description of the extreme sensitiveness and immensely close interconnection of her whole psycho-physical nature, and of the general modifications, both in quality and in quantity, which these impressions were wont to go through; and all this, just now, on occasion of incidents closely similar to those already experienced in her past life.

It would indeed be altogether mistaken to class all this sensitiveness as necessarily but a form of illness; for the great majority, and all the most characteristic, of her apparently physical pains and troubles, are but varieties and heightenings of the always unusually swift and profound impressionableness of her whole psycho-physical organism. With the sole exception of that attack of pestilential fever (probably in the year 1493), I can nowhere, right up to three days before her death, find any trace in her life of illnesses or disturbances of any but a psycho-physical, nerve-functional type.

Indeed her psychic self is throughout so impressionable, and the mind is, ever since her Conversion, so active, dominant, and absorbed in the actual and attempted apprehension of the great realities which, though invisible, require for their vivid apprehension an imaginative pictorial embodiment: that we shall have, in a later chapter, to ask ourselves the question whether it was not the mind, or the imagination at the mind’s bidding, which thus affected the psycho-physical life, rather than the psycho-physical life which, primarily independent of the former, offered itself as but so much raw, still unrelated material, to the fashioning, transforming mind. Especially will it be necessary to consider carefully the influence upon her mind, and upon the chronicler’s accounts of her state, which may have been exercised by the writings of the Areopagite and of Jacopone. It will then become clear that these authors have undoubtedly contributed to the form in which these truths and realities were, if not actually apprehended by Catherine, at least described by her disciples.

Yet even this point remains, in Catherine’s case, (and indeed in that of all the great Saints,) of no real spiritual or moral importance, since all these great and generous souls persist in ever using these psycho-physical things, whether they be projections or “givennesses,” as but so many instruments and materials for the apprehension, illustration, acquisition, and purification of spiritual truth and of the spirit’s own fulness and depth. And Catherine’s persistence in this attitude of utilization and transcendence of what the natural man so continuously tends to make his direct aim and final limit continues practically unbroken to the end. I will group these psychic impressions according to the five senses.

4. Impressions connected with the sense of touch.

The earliest, and up to the end the most marked and general, of all such unusual impressions appears to have been one connected with the sense of touch,—that feeling of mostly interior, but later on also of exterior, warmth, indeed often of intense heat and burning, which comes to her, the first as though sunshine were bathing her within or without, the second sometimes as though a great fire were enveloping her, and sometimes as though a living flame were piercing her within.

Already in 1473, on occasion of her Conversion, we find unmistakable indications of such sensations; they are, however, of a predominantly pleasurable kind. And I take it that during her great lonely middle-period they will, in so much as present, have been of a similar nature. But later on, from after 1499 onwards, these sensations and attacks become increasingly painful,[158] and are specially described, and variously alluded to, under the terms of operation, assault, siege. When specially keen and concentrated, and accompanied by some piercing psycho-spiritual perception, they appear under the terms of arrow, wound; and the perception itself bears then the name of ray or spark (of divine love).[159]

Now we lookers-on can, of course, with more or less ease, mentally separate, in a general way, the latter, the spiritual apprehension, creation and content, from the former, the psycho-physical occasion, material and form; although it is certainly difficult, and probably impossible, to decide, at least in any one case, how far it is her mental activity that occasions her psycho-physical condition, or how far it is the latter which occasions the former. But what actually and demonstrably happened in Catherine’s case, was something incomparably beyond the range to which such psycho-physical considerations apply. For to her, psychically, a keenly sentient; rationally, a deeply thinking, feeling, and willing creature,—these experiences, howsoever classable, were most real, and, in course of time, more and more penetrating and painful; and they were, to her own consciousness, entirely prior to any interpretation or utilization of them. Hence, for the present at all events, we had better take these states as they presented themselves to her immediate and ordinary consciousness. And this very same immensely sentient soul was so firmly centred, deep down below and beyond the psycho-physical, in the Moral and Spiritual, that these experiences were welcomed and actively used but as so many means and materials for ethical purification and character-building, and for the analogical apprehension and illustration of spiritual truths.

Thus it is that these sensations of burning which, during her years of health, were themselves so pleasurable and peaceful, helped, as we shall find when we come to consider her doctrine, to suggest and illustrate for her the joys and health-giving influence of the presence of God, both here and in Paradise, and of the soul’s apprehension of God, as light for the understanding and warmth for the affections and the will. And when, with her failing health, these sensations turned into painful, in part seemingly physical attacks,—attacks which, however, left the mind in an increased and ever-increasing peace and contentment,—they again helped her to gain and develop her doctrine concerning Purgatory.

In both cases her teaching gained thus a vividness of quasi-directly sensible experience, of something in a manner actually seen and felt, since it was built up out of suggestions derived from direct sensations and psycho-physical states. And yet in both cases not all such sensations, of themselves quite valueless and uninstructive from an ethical and religious point of view, could have helped towards anything of spiritual significance, had they not been sifted, taken up, organized and transformed in and into a large and deep spiritual experience and personality. There is absolutely nothing automatic or necessary in the crowning, ethically significant stages of this whole process, however rapid and instinctive and effortless, and simply of a piece with the psycho-physical occasions, these utilizations and grace-impelled and grace-informed creations may appear. We shall, in proof of this, soon see how physical and literal and spiritually insignificant remained, during the last four months of her life, the apprehensions of her disciples as to these heats and piercing sensations: these good, indeed devoted, people seem incapable of measuring spiritual love by anything higher than thermometer-readings or other physical tangibilities. And we shall also have to record one or two momentary instances when this heat-feeling and apprehension clearly assumed a maladif character in Catherine herself.

5. Impressions connected with taste and smell.

The unusual sense-perceptions which were the next to be aroused were apparently those of taste and smell: although the one certain indication I can find of such an unusual psycho-physical taste-and-smell impression, of a pleasurable and not clearly maladif character, is not earlier than 1499.[160] It came to her in connection with the one great devotion of her whole convert life,—the Holy Eucharist. “Having on one occasion received Holy Communion, so much odour and sweetness came to her, that she seemed to be in Paradise. Whence, feeling this, she straightway turned towards her Love and said: ‘O Love, dost Thou perhaps intend to draw me to Thyself with these savours? I want them not, since I want nothing but Thee alone, and all of Thee.’”[161] Here, then, she turns away from and transcends, precisely as St. John of the Cross was soon to insist so strongly that we should do, the sensible and immediate, and reaches on to the spiritual, ultimate, and personal. And similarly some such psycho-physical experience seems presupposed in her declaration: “If a Consecrated Host and unconsecrated ones were to be given to me, I should distinguish the former from the latter as I do wine from water.”[162] Yet her biographer can truthfully insist upon love being the original cause of such recognition: “She said this, because the Consecrated Host sent forth a certain ray of love which pierced her heart.” And she herself gives a still more spiritual parallel instance and explanation of such recognition: “If I were to be shown the Court of Heaven, with all its members robed in one and the same manner, in suchwise that there would, so far, be no perceptible difference between God and the Angels: the love which I have in my heart would still recognize God, as readily as the dog recognizes his master.” This love indeed would move out to Him even more swiftly and easily, because “love, which is God Himself, finds in an instant, without any means, its own end and ultimate repose.”[163]

Clearly maladif over-sensitiveness and shiftingness of the senses of taste and scent will appear presently, during the last months of her life.

6. Hearing and Sight.

The most important and mental of the senses, hearing and sight, appear, on the contrary, with little or nothing particularly unusual about them, throughout her life.

For as to her sense of hearing, the inner voices already described as heard by her at different times, cannot fairly be classed under this or any other sense-perception, healthy or otherwise; since they appear to have been most vivid and clear thoughts presented to her mind, with in each case the consciousness that they were the suggestions of Mind,—of a Spirit other than her own. They appear to have always been described by herself as “words spoken to the mind,” “words as it were heard.”[164] Traces of any maladif affection of this sense will be difficult or impossible to find, even during her last illness.

And as to sight, always so closely akin to mental processes, anything at all really exceptional cannot, I think, be found in her life so far at all. For her evidently great impressionableness to certain religious pictures,—so as a child, in regard to the “Pietà,” and now again apparently with the “Maestà,”—and to certain sights of nature, cannot fairly be considered abnormal. And as to Visions, the only one recorded so far, that of the Bleeding Christ, was primarily a mentally mediated experience: “the Lord showed Himself to her in the spirit,” says the account, no doubt in full accordance with her own analysis of such experiences.[165] Some few disturbances of this sense will, however, appear during the course of her last illness.

II. More or Less Maladif Experiences and Actions.

The amplest proof of the deep and delicate impressionableness of her nature is probably, however, to be found in that profound melancholy, that positive disgust with everything within her and without, and that strong desire for death which we found to have possessed her during the three months previous to her Conversion in March 1473. For we should note that that melancholy did not directly spring from spiritual motives or considerations: it was previous to all definite sorrow for sin and to all full and willed sense of things religious and eternal. Indeed, with the appearance of the religious standards and certitudes, that crushing universal feeling of melancholy and of positive disgust breaks up, and yields to contrasted joys and sorrows, and to a buoyant energy in the very midst and through the very means of suffering and of sacrifice. Thus the dawn of her spiritual re-birth was indeed dark and oppressive; but this oppression did not directly proceed from any clear consciousness of the Perfect and Eternal which arose within her only as part and parcel of this explicit Conversion. The oppression simply indicated, of itself, a nature so sensitive and claimful, as to require, in order to achieve any degree of contentment, a spiritual, regenerative, re-interpretative power capable of responding to and matching the deepest realities of life. That nature was thus full of the need of such realities and of such contact with them, but was without the power of producing, or of adequately responding to, such realities,—or indeed of imaginatively forecasting them. And similarly in 1507, the dawn of her painful, joyful-sorrowful birthday to eternity was again dark and oppressive and productive of an intense desire for death, a desire which had, apparently, been entirely absent from her soul ever since 1473. Here again this oppression was not directly religious or moral, but, taken in itself, was simply psycho-physical. Indeed this oppression marks the beginning of the special limitations, difficulties, and slightly deflecting influences now introduced into her life by henceforth steadily increasing positive illness. I propose, then, to begin with this opening depression of hers, and next to go through the main incidents of her remaining life, as far as possible, in strictly chronological order. I will group all this around six main facts and dates.

1. Desire for death, 1507.

“In the year 1507 she on one occasion was present at the recitation of the Offices for the Dead. And a desire to die came upon her. And she said: ‘O Love, I desire nothing but Thee, and Thee in Thine own manner: but, if it pleases Thee, allow me at least to go and see others die and be buried, in order that I may see in others that great good, which it does not please Thee should as yet be in myself.’ And her Love consented to this; and consequently, for a certain space of time, she went to see die and be buried all those who died in the Hospital. And as, later on, her union with this her tender Love increased, her desire for death disappeared little by little.”[166]

She is, then, still active, and moves about in the spacious Hospital and in the adjoining Church. And this desire, as it gradually disappeared, will, doubtless, not have left mere blanks in her consciousness, or have reduced the sum-total of her feelings; but, with that diminution, some of her old tenderness for and interest in others, will have reappeared. And again we see how no one set of feelings, one “psychosis,” ever simply repeats itself, in even one and the same soul: for Catherine’s positive disgust with all things, which prepared and accompanied her desire for death in 1473, is absent from the otherwise similar desire of 1507. In both cases there is the same sheer “givenness” and isolation of the feeling. Then, she did not desire death to escape temptation or sin; now, she does not desire it, directly and within her emotional nature, in order to get to God: in each case the feeling stands simply by itself, and is not immediately connected with religion at all. And finally, this incident, and its later equivalent repetitions in November 1509 and September 1510, prove once again on what a veritable bed of Procrustes those determined a-priorists, the Redactors of the Vita, have placed, pulled about and mutilated, as far as in them lay, the immensely spontaneous and rich personality of Catherine, in their determination to find her ever all-perfect, and perfect after their own fixed pattern. For it proves to demonstration, either that Catherine continued liable to human imperfections, or that not all desires are imperfect. And both these things are true, beyond the possibility of doubt.

2. The scent-impression from Don Cattaneo’s hand.

And next we get an instance of clearly abnormal sense-perception, which is deeply interesting because of the vivid, first-hand form in which the fact has come down to us, and still more on account of its impressive illustration of the two possible mental attitudes towards such matters. It will have occurred in 1508; and Don Marabotto is, in any case, the other interlocutor in the scene, and its chronicler. And if there is undoubtedly a somewhat ludicrous naïveté about his attitude at the time of the occurrence, there is also a striking simplicity and self-oblivion in the perfectly objective manner in which he chronicles the scene in all its bearings, and Catherine’s marked superiority to himself. It is this complete directness and simplicity of motive which, on the side of character, will have bound these otherwise strangely diverse souls together; and which rendered Don Marabotto, even simply as a character, not unworthy of his close intimacy with Catherine.

The abnormality here concerns the sense of smell alone; the impression here lasts a considerable time: and now she acquiesces in it, but only for the purpose of moving through it, as a mere means. “Having been infirm for many days, Catherine one day took the hand of her Confessor and smelt it: and its odour penetrated right to her heart,” so that “for many days this perfume restored and nourished her, body and soul.” Don Marabotto then asks her what kind of thing this odour is that she is smelling. And she tells him that it is an odour so penetrating and sweet, as to seem capable of bringing the dead to life; that God had sent it to her, to strengthen her soul and body, now that these were so much oppressed; and hence “since God grants me this odour, I am determined to derive strength from it, as long as He shall please that I shall do so.” But Marabotto, “thinking that he must surely be able to perceive what was being transmitted by himself, went smelling his own hand, but to no effect.” And Catherine gently rebuked his action by declaring: “The things which depend entirely upon God’s own free gift, He does not give to those that seek them. Indeed He gives such things at all, only in cases of great necessity, and as an occasion of great spiritual profit.”[167]

The impression and consolation are here still connected with the Holy Eucharist: for the hand which she smells is no doubt the right one,—the hand which was wont daily to consecrate in her presence and daily to communicate her. The declaration as to the odour’s power to raise the dead to life has occurred already in connection with the Holy Eucharist, and will have been in part suggested to her by such Johannine passages as “I am the … Life,” “I am the Living Bread,” “he that eateth this Bread shall live,” shall be made to live, “for ever.” And although the odour is here the prominent impression, and “savours” are wanting, yet “sweetness” still occurs, probably as a sort of sensation of tasting.—Marabotto’s mind has in it, on this occasion, two plausible assumptions, each strengthening the other; and Catherine controverts both. He evidently thinks: “Catherine’s states are all most valuable, hence real, hence objective: if then she says she smells this or that, others will be able to do so too.” And: “What a man transmits, that he can himself experience: hence, on this ground also, I should be able to smell this perfume.”—And Catherine’s mind evidently also contains two very different convictions: the first, that experiences, even when thus but semi-spiritual, are, for all their reality, not directly transferable from soul to soul; and the second, that all such sensible and semi-sensible experiences, whether normal or exceptional, are all but means at the disposal of the free-willing spirit, means which become limits and obstacles as soon as they are treated as ends.

Thus if this experience points to a certain abnormality of condition in the peripheral, psycho-physical regions of the soul, Catherine’s attitude towards it, and towards the whole question occasioned by it, has got a massive depth of sanity about it, perhaps unattainable by, certainly untested in, the always and simply, even peripherally, healthy soul.

3. Shifting of her burial-place.

And in her Will of March 1509 we find traces of a certain weakening of her former ample business capacity, and of her vigilance, perseverance, and balance, in spite of friendly pressure or criticism, with regard to matters of practical import. For, as to her general incapacity for business, the Will contains a clause exempting Marabotto from all future challenge of his administration of her monies, up to the date of the making of this Will. And this clause finds its explanation in the admission of the Vita, with regard to her life during these last years, that, owing to the mysterious and shifting nature of her infirmity, “there was confusion in governing her,” “confusion not on her own part, but on that of those who served her,”[168] words which will grow still clearer in our account of her last four months. For this state of her health must have rendered the administration of her affairs by another both necessary and difficult. And as to the diminution of her vigilance and perseverance in matters of not directly spiritual or moral import, we have here, for the first time, a departure from her resolution, emphatically expressed in the Wills and Codicil of 1498, 1503, 1506, of being buried beside her husband. She now orders herself to be buried in the Church of San Nicolò in Boschetto, and that so much is to be spent on the funeral as shall seem fit to Don Marabotto.

Three points should here be borne in mind. For one thing, Catherine had a long-standing affection for that beautifully situated Pilgrimage-Church, partly no doubt from associations dating back to her summer villegiatura days at the neighbouring Prà, and partly, probably, from memories connected with her sister Limbania, since, as we have already seen, Limbania’s Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie was the joint foundation of the two Genoese Monasteries of San Teodoro fuore le Mura and of San Nicolò in Boschetto. Limbania had died in that Convent in 1502, and Catherine had, in her Codicil of 1503, left a small sum for mortuary Masses for herself to the Monastery of San Nicolò.

But, next, it was doubtless the growing conviction as to her sanctity amongst her immediate friends, and their desire to keep her grave and remains, as an eventual place and object of veneration, distinct from any others, perhaps specially from those of her husband, whose defective reputation might otherwise damage or delay the growth of such a cultus of his wife, which was the determining cause of this change in the place of sepulture. These friends were able to prevail, no doubt because her interest and determination in such matters had become weakened by ill-health of now thirteen years’ duration. And they will have fixed upon this place some four English miles away, partly because it happened to be one she loved, but also because thus no question of separating her remains from those of Giuliano would formally arise. Her later Codicil will prove the presence of both these motives, and Catherine’s unconsciousness as to the situation, and the vagueness of her acquiescence.

And, finally, we must note that, if this action of her entourage offends our present-day tastes and susceptibilities, it was yet thoroughly in accordance with a quite hoary tradition and feeling in such matters, and was in no sense an idea special to, or originated by, this group of persons; and again, that the four Protectors of the Hospital (the trustees and executors of the Will), her sole surviving brother Lorenzo (the residuary legatee), and above all her closest, great-souled friend Vernazza (one of the six witnesses), are all parties to the pious stratagem, and share its responsibility with Marabatto.

4. The “scintilla”-experience; spiritual refreshment derived from a picture.

We have next an important group of experiences and convictions in November 1509. “On the 11th November 1509, there came upon her an insupportable fire of infinite love; and she declared that there had been shown to her one single spark (scintilla) of Pure Love, and that this had been but for a short moment; and that, had it lasted even a little longer, she would have expired because of its great force. She could hardly eat, nor speak so as to be heard, in consequence of this penetrating wound of love that she had received in her heart.”[169]

Few events of her life have left such profound traces, so many echoes and waves and wavelets as it were, throughout both her authentic sayings and the various secondary and tertiary imitations, re-castings, and expansions of her original account as has this scintilla-experience. I will here translate the nine varying impressions and exclamations which, proceeding from different minds and different dates, have, all but one, been worked up by the Vita into a single paragraph, which, by its very multitude of flickerings as to meaning and of experimentations as to form, gives us a striking picture of the deep and many-sided influence of this single event, so short in its clock-time duration. “This creature, all lost in her own self, found her true self in one instant in God.” “Although she reputed herself to be very poor, yet she remained rich in the divine love.” “She, knowing the grace and operation to be all from God, remained lost in herself, and living only in God.” “She gave her free-will to God, and God then restored it to her.” “She gave her free-will to God, and God thereupon worked with its means.” “O the great wonder, to see a man established in the midst of so many miseries, and yet God having so great a care of him! All tongues are incapable of expressing it, all intellects of understanding it.” “That man becomes foolish in the eyes of the world, to whom Thou, O Lord God, dost manifest even but the slightest spark of Thine unspeakable Love.” “Thou, O God, desirest to exalt man, and to make him as though another God, by means of love.” Of later date or type: “In God she saw all the operations, by means of which He had caused her to merit (in the past).” And of still later, clearly secondary, character: “God showed her in one instant the succession of His (future) operation, as though she would have to die of a great martyrdom.”[170]

And this great experience of hers led on to a scene which, whilst emphasizing the psycho-physical effect, occasion or concomitant of such spiritual experiences, also gives us the strongest instance of her impressionableness to pictures in particular. “Finding herself in such ardour, she felt herself compelled to turn to a figure of the Woman of Samaria at the well with her Lord; and in her extreme distress Catherine addressed Him thus: ‘O Lord, I pray Thee, give me a little drop of this water, which of old Thou didst give to the Samaritan woman, since I can no more bear so great a fire.’ And suddenly, in that instant, there was given her a little drop of that divine water; and by it she was refreshed within and without, and she had rest for some appreciable time.”[171] But, above all, this experience and its precursor were, if not the actual beginning, at least the culminating point in the experiences or projections which led to or articulated her doctrine on Purgatory. In a later chapter I hope to trace the connection between those experiences and this doctrine. Here we must add two other vivid interior experiences and convictions of hers which are placed by the Vita, no doubt rightly, in direct succession to, and in more or less connection with, the great “scintilla”-operation, although neither of them appears amongst the images and conceptions which make up the Trattato del Purgatorio.

“One day” (she recounted this herself) “she appeared to herself to abide suspended in mid-air. And the spiritual part wanted to attach itself to heaven; but her other part wished to attach itself to earth: yet neither the one nor the other managed to become possessed of its object, and simply abode thus in mid-air, without achieving its desire. And after abiding thus for a long time, the part which was drawing her to heaven seemed to her to be gaining the upper hand (over the other part), and, little by little, the spiritual part forcibly drew her upwards, so that at every moment she saw herself moving further and further away from earth. And although this at first seemed to be a strange thing to the part that was being drawn, and this part was ill content to be thus forced; yet when it had been so far removed, as no more to be able to see the earth, then it began to lose its earthly instinct and affection, and to perceive and to relish the things which were relished by the spiritual part. And this spiritual part never ceased from drawing it heavenward. And so at last these two parts came to a common accord.”[172] And again on another occasion: “The soul is so desirous of departing from the body to unite itself with God, that its body appears to it a veritable Purgatory, which keeps it distant from its true object.”[173]

This group of experiences straightway enforces some important spiritual laws. For one thing, this scintilla-experience, since her Conversion the deepest of her life, is clearly also the richest and most complex,—witness the numerous, mutually supplementary or critical, attempts at analysis furnished by even her immediate companions. And this experience is only simple in the sense in which white light, which combines all the prismatic colours, or a living healthy human body, composed of numberless constituents, is simple.

And next, nothing indicates that this experience was of a character essentially different from that of her older contemplations; and everything appears to show that it was, substantially, a grace addressed to, and an act performed by, her spiritual nature,—her intelligence and free will, God’s Spirit stimulating and sustaining hers in a quite exceptional degree, and hence less than ever weakening or supplanting this her spirit’s action. It was as much a gift of herself by herself to God, as if it had not been a pure grace from Him; and yet her very power and wish and determination to give herself, were rendered possible and became actual through that pure prevenient, accompanying and subsequent gift of God.

Again, it is certain that either there was no clear mental scheme, reasoning, or picture during the experience, or that, if there was, it consisted of a spacial simultaneity rather than of a temporal succession, and that it showed her, if her own soul at all, then that soul in its most universally human, typical aspects and relations. In no case was there anything historical or prophetical, strictly biographical about it.

And then we have, even though she could give no kind of definite account of it, the most solid reasons for accepting this experience as genuine, wholesome, and valuable. For she evidently fully believed in it herself; and we shall see how clearly and readily she continued, even after this experience, to distinguish between wholesome and mental, and maladif and simply psychic, states of abstraction. Again it became the occasion and material of most deep and fruitful spiritual doctrine; whereas nothing is more empty and unsuggestive than are the bare, brute “facts” of all merely nervous or hysterical hallucinations. It also demonstrably strengthened her will for the last deep sufferings and sacrifices yet to be gone through, and no doubt added a fresh stimulus to her already profound influence over Vernazza, and pricked him onwards on his career of the most solid, heroic philanthropy and self-sacrifice. And yet we can see that her psycho-physical organism is now functionally weak and ill. For great physical exhaustion now follows upon an experience substantially the same as those which used to strengthen her so markedly even in physical respects.

As to the scene with the picture, we again get a case not unlike the odour of Marabotto’s hand, in so much as here too the experience hovers between the mental and physical, and there is a sensible impression as from a physical substance with reference to a Person,—this taste of a “divine water” moving here on to Christ, to God, the Living Water, as that smell of sweetness moves on to the “Living Bread,” Christ, and God. It is, unfortunately, impossible to identify that picture, which may well have been a fresco-painting in some building or passage of the Hospital, since destroyed, or on some extant wall, white-washed since those days. The vivid picturings of the soul in mid-air, and of the soul in the purgatory of its body, will be considered in connection with her psycho-physical states and her doctrine.

But before leaving this November experience, we must give two significant conversations held by her with Vernazza at the time, and which have been no doubt handed down to us by himself. “One day, speaking of this” (the scintilla-) “event with a spiritual person (Religioso) she called it ‘a giddiness’ (vertigine). But that person said to her: ‘Mother, I beg of you that you will yourself select a person who may happen to suit your mind (soddisfaccia alla mente vestra), and will narrate to this person the graces which God has granted to you, so that, when you come to die, these graces may not remain hidden and unknown, and an opportunity for God’s praise and glory may not thus be lost.’ And she then answered that she was entirely willing (ben contenta), if this be pleasing to her tender Love; and that, in that case, she would not choose another person than himself, although she was convinced that it was impossible to describe even a small fragment of such interior experiences as occurred between God and her soul; and that as to exterior things, few or none had taken place in her case.” Here again we have evidence as to her habit of making light of and transcending all psycho-physical phenomena, however striking and mysterious; and we get a positive authorization conferred by herself upon Vernazza, such as is claimed by no other contributor to the Vita.

And “speaking with him some days later, she said: ‘Son, I have had a certain prick of conscience, of which I will tell you. The other day, when you told me that I might possibly remain dead some day during one of those giddinesses, there seemed to arise in me, at that moment, a feeling of joy, a profound aspiration which said: ”O, if that hour would but come!“ And then this feeling suddenly ceased. Now I declare to you, that I do not wish that in this matter there should be any glimpse (scintilla) of a desire of my own for earth or heaven, or for any other created thing; but that I wish to leave all things to the disposition of God.’ Then this person answered, that there was no occasion for her to have a prick of conscience, because, although joy had awaked in her mind, and a sudden exclamation had occurred there, at the mention of the word ‘death,’ yet that nothing of this had proceeded from the will, nor had it been endorsed by the reason; but that it had proceeded solely from the instinct of the pleasure-loving soul (anima), which ever, according to its nature, tends to such an end. And how the proof that this was a correct account, lay in this, that her prick of conscience had not really penetrated to the depths of her heart, but had remained on the surface, at the same slight depth at which the movement of joy had remained. And she confessed that the matter really stood thus, and remained satisfied.”[174]

Here three points are of interest. I take her impulse of deep longing to die in one of those trances, to have arisen, not simply from joy at the thought of dying, but from joy at the prospect of dying of joy,—of dying with the joy fixed in that moment in the soul for ever. For heaven itself appears here not as a synonym for God, but as a creature, as the summing up of infinite and endless consolation of all right kinds, spiritual and psycho-physical. And it is this that makes her scruple thoroughly understandable, and but one more instance of her virile fight with all direct attachment to the consequences and concomitants of devotedness.—And next we should note her deep trust in the spiritual experience and wisdom of Vernazza, the layman and lawyer, some twenty-five years her junior; and her asking his advice on a matter which we would readily suppose her to reserve for Don Marabotto, who by now had been her Confessor and Spiritual Adviser for many years.—And lastly, the depth and delicacy of Vernazza’s analysis are most striking, with their clear perception of the various levels and degrees of true selfhood and volition within the human soul: she had really had neither a full will, nor a deliberate wish, nor indeed any penetrating, spontaneous reproach of conscience; she had, in fact, been suffering from a scruple, and he was required, and was able, to make her see that this had been the case.

5. Catherine’s sense of intense cold, and her attitude towards Don Marabotto.

And in December 1509 and January 1510 we come across a group of experiences and actions, in some respects different from, and supplementary of, the set just concluded. For “in the month of December she suffered from great cold,”—I take this cold to have been, at least partially, special to her state, and not to have proceeded primarily from the winter temperature,—“but she paid no attention to it.” “And behold one night there came so great an attack (assalto) upon her, that she could not conceal it. There was a great heaving of the body, much bile was evacuated, and the nose bled. And she then sent for her Confessor, and said to him: ‘Father, it seems to me that I must die, because of the many weakenings of various sorts (accidenti) that have happened to me.’” “And this attack (assalto) lasted for about three hours,” “her body trembling like a leaf.” “And then her body became quiet again, but was now so broken and weak that it was necessary to give her minced chicken to revive her; and a good many days had to pass before she returned to her (latter-day) vigour.”[175]

And “on the 10th of January 1510, she appeared determined to see her Confessor no more, either as to help and comfort for her soul or as to her bodily health. It seemed to her that he was too indulgent to herself, in her sayings and doings. But the fact was, that he saw it to be necessary that she should do all that her instinct prompted her to say or do; and it would indeed have been well-nigh impossible to force her to act against these interior movements of hers. Yet since she was herself in cause, she did not acknowledge such necessities (ordinazioni); rather these actions of hers appeared to her but as so many disordered doings, and she went forcing herself to try and not give trouble to those who were good enough to put up with her (chi la comportava).—And when night came, she locked herself up alone into a separate room, refusing food or conversation or comfort from any one. But after a while she had to come out, with a view to rendering a certain service, and her Confessor managed to slip into the room unobserved and to hide himself there. And she, having returned and locked herself in, and thinking herself quite alone, said with a sobbing voice to her Lord: ‘O Lord, what wouldest Thou have me do further in this world? I neither see nor hear, nor eat nor sleep; I do not know what I do or what I say. I feel as though I were a dead thing. There is no creature that understands me; I find myself lonely, unknown, poor, naked, strange, and different from the rest of the world; and hence I know not any more how to live with (my fellow-) creatures upon earth.’ These and such-like words she spoke so piteously, that her Confessor could bear it no longer; and he discovered himself, and came up to and spoke to her. And God gave him grace, so that she remained comforted in mind and body by his words, and was in fair health for a good many days after.”[176]

Nevertheless “her Confessor, since his continual intercourse and close familiarity with Catherine gave occasion to murmurs on the part of some who did not fully understand his special work and its necessity, left her and was absent for three days” (probably shortly after the scene just related), “for the purpose of testing that work of his, and seeing whether it was indeed all from God, and thus to escape all scruple in the matter. But when, three days later, he returned to her house and had learnt and considered the various accidents and incidents which had occurred meanwhile, he was so entirely satisfied with the evidence afforded by experiment, that he lost all scruple in the matter, and indeed regretted having made the trial, because of the great distress which she had suffered from it.” It will have been on this occasion that she said to him: “I seem to see that God has given to you this one care of myself, and hence that you should not attend to anything else. For now I can no longer support alone so many exterior and interior oppressions (assedi). When you leave me, I go lamenting about the house, saying that you are cruel and do not understand my extreme necessity; for if you did, you would pay greater attention to it.”[177]

And it will have been later on again, in February and March, that she intimated, during two of her violent attacks (on the first occasion by signs, on the second by words), her impression that she would succumb, and her wish to receive Extreme Unction. But Don Marabotto correctly judged that she would safely get through these seizures, and the anointing was put off for the present.[178]

This group is again interesting. For it gives us evidence as to how dependent this character and career of the rarest loneliness and independence had now become upon human help and sympathy; and lets us see how illness had now introduced an excessive suddenness, absoluteness, and shiftingness into her feelings and minor actions, and an occasional slight querulousness into her remarks. It shows us her old social, altruistic instincts and standard still at work within her; for she still suffers from the consciousness, whenever she is thrown back upon herself, of being different from other people; she still longs to attend to the wants of others, regrets the trouble she gives them, and feels grateful for the services they render; and she still busies herself, in the reduced measure now possible to her, with services of her own to others,—a “certain service,” which she had to render, had sufficed to break through her self-imposed seclusion. It lets us see how watchful against and suspicious of self, and of what could flatter and indulge it, she still remained; and how independent her judgment continued, even with regard to her Confessor. And this her judgment we shall have good reason to hold to have been remarkably well-grounded, in so far as this, that had only Marabotto possessed a deeper insight into her psycho-physical state and less of a determination to treat all her states and impulses as equally solid and spiritual, or at least as equally to be yielded to, he could have helped her more; and she would then, thus helped, have been able, even now, fully to resist or to give way, in proportion to the healthiness or the morbidness of the attack. And finally we see how truly serviceable and necessary, and indeed repeatedly right where her own estimate was wrong, was the help and sympathy and judgment of her Confessor; and how difficult, entirely unselfish, and devoted was his action and attitude. It is interesting to note that Catherine was probably always right in her instinct as to matters directly affecting herself, where the will came in, or could be made to come in; and that she was wrong only in such a point of mere physical fact and determinism as whether or not, and how long, her physical strength would hold out.

6. Events from January to May 1510.

I will here try and put together, in their actual succession from January to May 1510, the chief psycho-physical phenomena and their parallel utilizations, together with such mental and spiritual experiences and actions as seem to have been only quite indirectly, or not all, occasioned by her state of health. In a later chapter I propose to study all this health matter in some detail. Here I would simply warn the reader against treating, with certainly most of her chroniclers, these psycho-physical phenomena as separately and directly spiritual or miraculous or ethically significant. Found alone, they would now, on the contrary, directly suggest simply nervous disorder of some kind or other, a thing which, in itself, is always an evil. Their interest and spiritual importance arises for us entirely from their predominantly mental qualities; from their appearance in a person of such powerful mind and large and efficient character; and from their splendidly ethico-religious utilization by that same person.

On one day “she had an impression (‘wound,’ ferita) which was so great, that she lost her speech and sight, and abode in this manner some three hours. She made signs with her hands, of feeling as it were red-hot pincers attacking her heart and other interior parts. But for all this, she did not lose her full consciousness (intelletto).” This was the second occasion on which she indicated her wish to be anointed.[179] On another day “it was impossible to keep her in bed: she seemed like a creature placed in a great flame of fire, and it was impossible to touch her skin, because of the acute pain which she felt from any such touch.”[180]

A little later on “she abode in so great a peace and interior contentment that she was” in all respects “considerably relieved and reinvigorated (ristorata). But she did not long remain in this condition. For very soon she was in a state of interior nudity and aridity, and she prayed: ‘Never hitherto, O my Lord, have I asked Thee for anything for myself: now I pray Thee with all my might, that Thou mayest not will to separate me from Thee. Thou well knowest, O Lord, that I could not bear this.’ And to her disciples she said, in connection with this desolation: ‘If a man were to take a soul from Paradise, how do you think such a soul would feel? You might give it all the pleasures in the world, and as much more as you can imagine: and yet all would be but Hell, because of the memory of that divine union’ (formerly possessed and now lost).”[181]

Again a little later on “she had another attack (assalto), when all her body trembled, especially her right shoulder. It was impossible to move her from her bed; she did not eat, drank next to nothing, and did not sleep.”[182] On another day, “she had another attack,”—this was the occasion of her third indication of a wish to receive Extreme Unction,—“a spasm in the throat and mouth, so that she could not speak, nor open her eyes, nor keep her breath except with extreme difficulty.” “They applied cupping-glasses, with a view to aiding her to find her breath and to regain speech, yet these helped but little.”[183] For another day we are told that “in her flesh were certain concavities, as though it were dough, and the thumb had been pressed into it. And she called out in a loud voice, because of the great pain.”[184]

On another day “her pains made her call out as loudly as she could, and she dragged herself about on her bed. And those that stood by were dumfounded, at seeing a body, which appeared to be healthy, in such a tormented state. And then she would laugh, speak as one in health, and say to the others, not to be sorrowful on her account, since she was very contented. And this “set of attacks” lasted four days; she then had a little rest; and, after this, those attacks returned as before.”[185]

This group is in so far particularly difficult, as we have to try and decide whether, and if so how far, these pains of hers were primarily psychical, and, in some way and degree, originally, and by force of long habits of concentrated religious thinking and picturing, suggested, or at least stimulated, by the mind itself; or whether these pains were primarily physical, although evidently only functional and preponderantly nervous. For on the answer to that question depends, if not our selection from amongst, at least our interpretation of, the largely contradictory, successively “doctored,” and more or less violently schematized evidence, of which the above passages give the most characteristic and primitive parts. If it was the mind itself which, unconsciously to its owner, suggested these pains, then we can and must accept, as quite contemporary and indeed fully exact, those passages which make her peace and even sensible consolation arise during the same moments as, and in exact proportion to, the presence of the pains. If, on the other hand, the pains arose independently of the subconscious mind, and were merely mastered by the conscious intelligence and will, then it seems reasonable to assume that we have here, as is certainly the case in other matters and places in the Vita, an ideal foreshortening, juxtaposition, and unification of what, in the actual experience, occurred more lengthily and successively.

It is certainly remarkable in this connection, that, whereas we have had a clearly marked case of mental, spiritual desolation, outside of one of these attacks, it is at least very difficult to find anything certainly of the kind during one of them; indeed the juxtaposition of, not simply profound spiritual peace, but of sensible, also psychic or quasi-psychic, consolation with those pains, is so constant and apparently spontaneous, that secondary, or at least schematic and a priori, reporting seems to have been at work rather in the passages which affirm the excessiveness of those pains, than in those which insist that those pains were, so to speak, not pains. All her own authentic sayings leave the impression of immense psycho-spiritual sensitiveness, of much actual mental and emotional suffering as well as joy, but not, I think, of purely physical suffering. “I find so much contentment on the part of my spirit and so much peace in my mind, that tongue could not tell nor reason comprehend it; but on the part of my humanity” (her psycho-physical organism) “all my pains are, so to say, not pains,” she says, shortly after a particularly violent attack, with four “accidents.” And a contributor declares that the joy and the torment ever arose together. It is true that another passage says that, during such attacks, “her disciples, seeing her suffer so much, desired that she should expire, so as no more to have to see her in such great and continuous torment”; but then this desire of theirs was evidently rather a sympathetic feeling than a deliberate judgment, for, once she has got over the attack, all this desire of theirs disappears as rapidly as it had come.[186]

III. Catherine’s History from May to September 9, 1510.

1. Catherine and the Physicians.

It is at the end of the preceding months that we are told how “the Physician” (possibly the Hospital House-Surgeon) “attempted to administer medicine to her. But it gave rise to such repeated ‘accidents’ (vomitings), that she all but died of it, and remained very weak.”[187]

“And four months before she died,” hence in mid-May, “many physicians were called together. And they saw and examined the patient, but failed to find any trace of bodily infirmity, in spite of the care and attention bestowed by them on the case. And she declared her conviction that her infirmity was not of a kind requiring physicians or bodily physic. But on the physicians persevering and ordering her, she obediently took all that they prescribed, although with great difficulty and to her hurt. Until at last those same physicians concluded that there was no remedy within the art of medicine applicable to the case, and that the infirmity was supernatural.”[188]

“But now there supervened, on his return from England, an excellent Genoese physician, Maestro Giovan Battista Boerio, who, for many years, had been in the service of the English King, Henry VII. And Boerio visited Catherine, and warned her to beware of giving scandal by refusing medical treatment. And she, in return, assured him that it grieved her much if she scandalized any one; and that she was prepared to use any remedy for her ailment, if such could be found.” And indeed “joy arose within her, at the hope of being cured by him. But in the following night much” psycho-physical “pain and trouble came upon her,” and “she then reproved her natural self (umanità), saying: ‘Thou sufferest this, because thou didst rejoice without (just) cause.’” Yet after about three weeks’ trial of every kind of remedy, a trial which left her as it found her, Boerio abandoned the task, but “henceforward held Catherine in esteem and reverence, calling her ‘Mother,’ and often visiting her.”[189]

Here we have an interesting group of facts. For one thing, we know how King Henry “had for years been visited by regular fits of the gout; his strength visibly wasted away, and every spring the most serious apprehensions were entertained of his life.” “He had also pains in the chest and difficulty of respiration.” And, “in the spring of 1509 the King sank under the violence of the disease.”[190] And thus Boerio will, a year after the death of his royal master, have been called in to the sick-bed of the Viceroy’s daughter, not simply as a court physician or as a generally skilful doctor, but as a man known to have had long experience of a case which prima facie was not all unlike Catherine’s.

Then it is impossible not to feel throughout these and other passages of the Vita which are concerned with physicians, a curious combination of contradictory feelings. There is reproof of the doctors’ presumption in venturing to begin by treating her illness as though it were a simply natural one; and there is the proud pleasure at thus getting, through the breakdown of this their presumptuous undertaking, professional testimony to the supernatural character of her infirmity. And the two motives lead to the self-contradictory over-emphasizing both of the Physicians’ moral worth and finality of testimony at the end of each experience, and of their rationalistic rashness in being willing to try again, a rashness assumed to be apparent to every one but themselves before each new attempt. For they must be represented as worthy and skilful men; else what value has their testimony? And their action must be intrinsically foolish from the outset; else what becomes of the transparently and separately supernatural character of her illness?[191]

And then we can still see fairly clearly that Catherine does not share the views of practically all her attendants, and of certainly all the later contributors to and revisers of the Vita. For even now the book still leaves intact the passages which show her as hoping to be cured by Boerio, and as then condemning herself for having rejoiced without cause,—evidently, without supernatural justification; as prepared to believe that the physicians might be able to find an appropriate remedy, and as willingly trying the remedies they actually offer her; and as indeed declaring her doubt whether any physic would do her any good, yet nowhere announcing a conviction as to the directly and separately supernatural character of her illness. “Her attendants,” says the obviously most authentic continuation of the passage concerning the cupping-glasses given further back, “let these attacks come and go, with as little damage as possible. Her body had to be and was sustained without the aid of medicine, and solely by means of great care and great vigilance.”[192]

2. Catherine and Don Carenzio, Argentina, and Ettore Vernazza.

It will have been the end of June, or the beginning of July, when these medical experiments ceased. But before them (on March 11 and twice in April), and again three times during them (in May and June), monies were paid, in Catherine’s name, by Don Giacomo Carenzio, now resident as Rettore in the Hospital, in the matter of the granting of Indulgences to the Church attached to the Hospital. And although this affair, occurring thus so late on in her illness, in which we have already found her not always to have dominated the plans of her attendants, cannot well be pressed as necessarily characteristic of her, yet I take it to be quite likely that she still took some active part in the matter.[193]

Catherine certainly still attended to business, even two months later; for, on August 3, Vernazza drew up a Codicil in her presence “in the bedroom of Argentina del Sale,” says the document itself. Since the Inventory, still extant, of the things found in Catherine’s rooms at the time of her death, gives a list of the bedclothes of only two beds, and these two beds are then both in the same room, and the one bed is Catherine’s, and the other is that of the famiglia (the servant) Argentina: it is clear that, for at least the last six weeks of her life, Catherine had only one person sleeping in her little house with her, and that this person was the navvy Marco’s little widow. I take it, with Vallebona, that the room was really Catherine’s ordinary bedroom; but that, as Argentina now slept there as regularly as her mistress herself, Catherine preferred, whether from humility or affection (the latter motive seems the more probable), to think of the room as belonging to Argentina.[194]

For some reason unknown to us, Vernazza, Catherine’s closest friend, must have left Genoa soon after drawing up this Codicil. For he did not draw up or witness her final Codicil of September 12, although, when in Genoa at all, he now lived close by, and although this final Codicil but gave effect to the plan regarding her sepulture which underlay the change introduced into the Will of March 1509, a Will which had been witnessed by himself. And, as we shall see, he was absent, indeed far away (lontano), from her death-bed, some six weeks after the date at which we have now arrived. I think we can only explain this departure by assuming that already now, before his inspirer’s death, his zeal and activity had expanded beyond the limits of the Genoese Republic; and that, dying as she already was, and devoted to her as he ever remained, he nevertheless (since there was now so little that he could hope to do for her own person, and there was so much to do elsewhere in the way of developing and applying her spirit and teachings) now rode off to Venice or to Rome, as we know him to have done, so often and for so long, during the fourteen remaining years of his life. And we have in this a fact peculiarly characteristic of these two expansive souls,—of the influence of the one, the frail woman, dying in her little sick-room, and of the execution of her world-embracing aspirations by the other, the strong man, battling, often at the risk of his very life, for the poor and oppressed, outside, on the great trysting-field of men’s passions and requirements.

3. Psycho-physical condition and its utilization, August 10 to 27.

But Catherine, lying in her sick-room, suffered on August 10 from one of her great burnings. “And next day, whilst her body was still in pain and trouble, God drew her mind upwards to Himself. And she fixed her eyes on the ceiling, and remained thus almost immovable for an hour, and spoke not but laughed joyously. And when she had returned to her more ordinary consciousness, she said this one thing only: ‘O Lord, do with me whatsoever Thou wilt.’”[195]

On August 15, she, “when about to communicate, addressed many beautiful words to the Blessed Sacrament, so that every one present was moved to tears.”[196] During the following day and night she suffered so greatly, that “all considered she would certainly die. She asked,”—this was the third or even fourth time,—“for Extreme Unction, and” this time “it was given her, and she received it with great devotion.”

“On the day following,” the 17th, “she was in a state of jubilation of heart (giubilo di cuore), which manifested itself exteriorly in merry laughter. And, having been asked as to the cause, she said that she had seen various most beautiful, merry, and joyous countenances, so that she had been unable to refrain from laughing. And this impression continued throughout several days, during which she appeared to be improved in health.”[197] But on August 22 or 23, “she again had a day of much heat and trouble. She remained maimed (paralyzed) in her right hand and in one finger of the left hand. And then she remained as though dead for about sixteen hours.”[198]

In the night of the 23rd or 24th (Feast of St. Bartholomew) she had “a great attack in mind and body; and being unable to speak, she made the sign of the Cross upon her heart. And, later on, she was understood to have been molested by a diabolical temptation.”[199]

On the 25th “she was in great weakness. And she caused her windows to be opened, so as to be able to see the sky. And, as the night came on, she had many candles lit; and she chanted, as well as she could, the ‘Veni, Creator Spiritus.’ And when she had finished she fixed her eyes upon the sky, and remained thus an hour and a half, making many gestures with her hands and eyes. And when she had resumed her ordinary consciousness (quando fù ritornata in sè), she said repeatedly: ‘Let us go’; and then added: ‘No more earth, no more earth.’ And her body remained greatly shaken from this contemplation (vista).” And on August 27 “she saw herself as though bereft of her body and of its animating soul, and her spirit alone in God above. And after this she addressed those present and said: ‘Let only those come in who may be necessary.’”[200]

This particular group is specially interesting. For it shows us Catherine’s love of the large and expansive, of the spiritually simple and interior, and of the supernatural and transcendent in her look-out into the open; in her vivid apprehension of her spirit bereft of all things except the Supreme Spirit, that spirit’s native element and home; and in her gaze into the starlit Italian August sky above. And it gives us indications, elsewhere so rare in her life, of her attachment to the visible, audible, tangible vehicles and expressions of religion, as so many helps and occasions of its immanence in our minds and hearts, in her signing her heart with the sign of the Cross, her having the candles lit and her chanting a definite traditional Church hymn, and in her fourth demand of Extreme Unction and devout reception of it. It is also noticeable how vivid and yet how undefined are her impressions of those countenances, since neither she herself anywhere, nor even her chroniclers in this place, explicitly identify them with Angels; and how still more general and indefinite remains the “diabolic temptation,” since in this case, only when it was over, was she “understood” to have been thus tempted. Indeed any directly diabolical temptation would be profoundly uncharacteristic of her special call and way: all through the records of her life and teaching it is the selfish, claimful Self that she fears “more than a demon,” “worse than the devil”; she is, in a very true sense, too busy watching, fighting, ignoring, supplanting Self, and ever putting, keeping, and replacing God, Love, in Self’s stead, to give or find occasion for what, in this her immensely strenuous inner life, would have been a remoter conflict.

4. Persistent self-knowledge and excessive impressionableness.

The Vita next gives us five most vivid but undated paragraphs as to her health. I will take them together with such other dated occurrences as will bring us down to September 10.

There is first a characteristic general fact, and a probably often repeated remark of Catherine’s. “At times she would have no pulse, and at other times she would have a good one; often she would seem to sleep; and from this state she would awake, at one time completely herself again, and at other times so limp, oppressed, and shattered as to be unable to move. And those that attended on her did not know how to distinguish one state from the other. And hence, on coming to, she would sometimes say, ‘Why did you let me remain in this quietude, from which I have almost died?’”[201] Thus Catherine’s attendants are helplessly at sea concerning her psycho-physical condition, and they identify, and directly supernaturalize, each and all of her successive and simultaneous states. But Catherine herself remains clearly conscious of different levels and values in these states: of normal, grace-impelled, freely-willed, strength-bringing contemplations and quietudes; and of sickly, weakening, more or less hysterical, lassitudes and failures. And she is thus aware of the deep difference between the two sets of states, that are externally so similar, at the very time of experiencing the one or the other of them; and is conscious, at the same time, both of being unable, by her own unaided will, to give effect, from within, to this her own knowledge, and of being able and willing, indeed anxious, to follow the lead and the pressure of wisely discriminating will-acts, proceeding from without, and, as it were, meeting her own wishes half-way, and thus turning them into effective willings. She herself has still the knowledge, but, now she is ill, she has no more the power. They have the power, but not the knowledge. And she knows all this, through God’s illumination working in and upon her own long and rich experiences, sound good sense, severe self-detachment, close self-observation, and incorruptible veracity of mind; and she knows it in spite of, and in direct opposition to, the far more flattering misconceptions, and entirely well-meant and sincere opinions (representative of the traditional and contemporary consensus of view on these obscure matters) of the servants, lawyers, physicians, relatives, and priests about her. The incident is closely parallel to her scruple as to Marabotto’s spoiling her; and one more similar detail will be mentioned later on.

But next, we get now abundant evidence that she was ill indeed. There is the rapidly shifting fancifulness of the senses of taste and smell, together with an ever-increasing difficulty of swallowing. “She would, at times, be so thirsty as to feel capable of drinking all the water of the sea, and yet she could not, as a matter of fact, manage to swallow even one little drop of water.” “Seeing on one occasion a melon, and conceiving a great desire to eat it, she had it given to her. But hardly had she a piece of it in her mouth, but she rejected it with great disgust.” “She often bathed her mouth with water, and then suddenly she would reject it.” “To-day the smell of wine would please her, and she would bathe her hands and face in it, with great relish; and to-morrow she would dislike it so much, as to be unable any longer to see or smell it in her room.”[202] And, in strict conformity with this detail, I find an entry in the Hospital account-book for this time, of money disbursed to the account of Catherine, for a cask of wine for her use.[203]

Yet her biographers are evidently only stating the simple truth when they declare that she continued to receive Holy Communion with ease and safety; for not only are there three quite unsuspicious passages, descriptive of her receptions of It, under most difficult circumstances; but we find, on counting up the incidental and bare mentions of her Communions, that, during the fourteen days from September 2 to 15, her death-day, she communicated ten times, and one or two further Communions may have been accidentally omitted.

There is, again, an occasional abnormal sensitiveness to colours, and their mental connotations, at least in connection with red. “On September 2, a Physician, a friend of hers,”—no doubt Maestro Boerio,—“came to visit her, robed in his Doctor’s ‘scarlet,’” as was no doubt the custom when visiting patients of quality. “And she bore this sight for a little, so as not to hurt his feelings. But when she could bear it no longer, she said to him: ‘Sir, I can no further bear the sight of this gown of yours, because of what it represents (suggests) to me.’ The Physician departed at once and returned clad in another,” a black “gown.” The Chronicler, probably Boerio’s priest-son, is no doubt substantially right in interpreting this as meaning that the scarlet suggested to her a seraph aflame with divine love. Yet I find, from the inventory of her final possessions, that she possessed, and doubtless used, among her bedclothes a vermilion silk coverlet and a vermilion blanket,—an undoubted indication of her love for this colour.[204] These two vicissitudes of her colour-affection no doubt mutually supplement and explain each other: when not over-impressionable and not already stimulated to the full of her capacity, this colour would suggest her central doctrine and experience, and would be pleasurable; when over-impressionable and already stimulated as much as, then and there, she could bear and utilize, the colour would but strain and disturb her.

And, finally, there are sensations and impressions of extreme heat and cold, and excessive sensibility or insensibility in tactual matters. “At one time she was cold; and at another, burning hot.” “On one day,” early in September, “she suffered great cold in her right arm, followed by acute pain”; and on September 7, “her body felt all on fire; and, since it seemed to her as though the whole world were aflame, she asked whether this were the case, and had her windows opened, so as to be reassured as to the real facts.”[205]

“At times she would be sensitive to such a degree, that it was impossible to touch her sheets or a hair of her head; she would, if this were done, cry out as though she had been grievously wounded.”[206] The temporary paralysis and anaesthetic conditions have been already described.

5. Three spiritually significant events, September 4-9.

We can next consider together three spiritually significant incidents which occurred during these penultimate days of hers.

“On September 4 she lay there in her bed, in great pain, her arms stretched out in suchwise that she appeared like a body nailed to a cross; as she was within, so did she appear without.” Here, then, she finds a certain attraction and help in an external, quasi-ritual attitude and act; for this attitude, however spontaneous and but subconscious, was doubtless not simply accidental or the mere result of pain. It is, with the Pietà-picture of her childhood and the Conversion-vision of the Bleeding Christ, one of the only three direct references to the Passion which I can find throughout her whole life and teaching. This little act gave occasion to the “Spiritual Stigmata”-legend, which is inserted here, in two paragraphs, by the Vita, on the alleged, and I think actual, authority of the credulous and long-lived Argentina. The legend is wanting in all the MSS.; its late genesis and growth is clearly traceable.[207]

“On September 5, some time after her Communion, she suddenly had a sight (vista) of herself, as dead and lying in a truckle-bed, with many Religious, robed in black, around her. And she rejoiced greatly at this sight. But afterwards, having a prick of conscience because of this rejoicing, she confessed it to her Confessor.”[208] Here we have once more a particular desire within Catherine’s soul, and a scruple consequent upon it; and all this but ten days before her death.

And on the 9th, after Communion, there was “suddenly shown her a sight of her (spiritual) miseries; and this gave great annoyance (noia) to her mind. And, as soon as she was able to tell (confess) them, she did so; and the sight then departed from her.”[209] Here, then, we have clear testimony to imperfections perceived by herself as still within her, and to her Confession of them as such; things characteristic of her third as against her second period, but which most of the contributors to the Vita try hard to obscure even here.

IV. The Last Six Days of Catherine’s Life, September 10-15.

And now the events of real significance which occurred during the last six days of her life can be grouped under six heads.

1. A great consultation of Physicians, September 10.

On the 10th there occurred a second, and last, great consultation of Physicians. The number is this time given—they were ten: “of whom several are still alive,” writes the final Redactor of the printed Vita of 1551. And, in this case, they did not prescribe any remedies; but “examining her and inspecting everything with great diligence, they finally concluded that such a case was (must be) a supernatural and divine thing, since neither the pulse, nor any of the secretions, nor any other symptom, showed any trace of any infirmity. They were astounded, and departed recommending themselves to her prayers.” “When she was not oppressed or tormented by her attacks (accidenti), she seemed well; when she was being stifled by them (suffocata), she seemed dead: and again, suddenly, the opposite condition would be seen. And hence it was most clearly understood, that all this operation was produced (ordinata) by the divine goodness itself.”[210]

Here we have a clear exposition of the two sets of phenomena which specially impressed her entourage, and of the reasoning by which these appearances were turned into direct proofs of the Metaphysical, indeed of the Supernatural. There are three assumptions at work here. What exceeds the knowledge of the Physicians of any one period, can be safely held to exceed not only human knowledge throughout all coming ages, but the powers of nature itself. All purely natural illness is either simply physical or simply mental, and always shows traces of a simply physical or of a simply mental kind. And all purely natural illness is either slow in its transitions, or, at least, not sudden in its transitions back and up to apparent health. And these assumptions must have lain in those minds as part and parcel of their hereditary furniture, in so far as they did not energize and aspire, and did not, by moving out and up into the regions of Action and of the Spiritual, of the Dynamic and of Love, transcend all that is mechanically transmissible, and, with it, all that was bound to change and be proved inadequate in the knowledge of their time. It was their very religion which, with its strong predisposition and determination to find immediate, independent, tangible, medically certified proofs for an exceptional, indeed exclusive action of God, kept these Physicians thus, even religiously, tied down in and by the Contingent and Transitory. And it was her very religion which, by its grandly ethico-spiritual Transcendence, kept Catherine above and outside the very possibility of growing obsolete or old. We now see, with even painful clearness, how inadequate, indeed how directly suggestive of the contrary, were those Physicians’ and Redactors’ treasured proofs. For neither the absence of all symptoms of physical or of clearly mental disease, nor the presence of an astounding frequency, abruptness, and completeness of change in the psycho-physical actions and functions of the living person, nor, above all, the conjunction of these two peculiarities, are for us now, taken by themselves, anything but indications of nervous, hysterical derangement. It is in spite of these things, or at least only on occasion of them, that Catherine is great. Indeed one fails to see how, in any case, such purely psycho-physical phenomenal data could, of themselves and directly, ever compel any such metaphysical and spiritual conclusions. And, be it noted, only in proportion as men abandon such impossible enterprises, do they become sufficiently detached from these phenomena to be able accurately to gauge their nature. These attendants who build so much on these phenomena, do not see them as they are; Catherine, who builds nothing on them, and who simply uses them as fresh means and occasions of ethico-spiritual growth, sees them, to an astonishing extent, as they really are.

2. The final Codicil, September 12.

On the 12th, “she communicated as usual, but tasted no other food, and after this she remained a very long time without speaking. And after they had been bathing her mouth for some time, she exclaimed, ‘I am suffocating’ (io affogo). She said this because a little drop of water had trickled into her throat, and she could not gulp it down.” And in the evening the Notary Saccheri drew up in her presence, with her nephew Francesco Fiesco and the maid Argentina del Sale as two of the seven witnesses, a last Codicil, in which she, “although languishing in body, yet possessed of her faculties (in sua sana memoria esistente), ordained that her body should be buried in such a place and Church as should be ordained by Don Jacobo Carenzio, the present Rector of the Hospital, and Don Cattaneo Marabotto.” And “at ten o’clock at night she complained of a very great heat (fire), and then ejected from the mouth much black blood. And black spots appeared all over her body, with very severe suffering. And her sight became so weak that she could barely distinguish one person from the other.”[211]

Here at last we can plainly see the object which had moved her friends, eighteen months before, to get her to fix upon San Nicolò in Boschetto as her burial-place. They now, when she is at the point of death, and in the last moment of fairly lucid mind, get her finally to declare,—not that she is to be buried in the Hospital Church apart from her husband, though this is what they themselves intend to do, but simply that her grave is to be wheresoever Dons Marabotto and Carenzio shall decide. It is interesting to note to how late a date her friends thought it wise to postpone such a move, and in how indirect and roundabout a fashion they had to attain their end. Yet it is again plain that the whole scheme was willed and executed by her family and friends unanimously; for, if Vernazza had been a witness to the previous Will, so was Francesco Fiesco now a witness to this Codicil.—We should also note that, if the difficulty in swallowing of the early day is still entirely in keeping with her life-long psycho-physical peculiarities, the attack at night is the first in her life when the blood lost is described as of bad quality and where spots appear on her person, indeed where any symptom of definite illness is recorded. But now at last it is evident that downright physical mischief is at work.

3. Symptoms of organic lesion and delirium, September 13.

Before dawn “on the 13th, she evacuated much blood of a bad quality and great heat, so that she remained even weaker than before. Nevertheless she again communicated at her usual hour.” And later on “she fixed her gaze immovably upon the ceiling, and made many gestures with her mouth and hands. The bystanders asked her what it was that she was seeing, and she said: ‘Drive away that beast that wants to eat…,’ and the remainder of the words could not be made out.”[212]

Here two points are of pathetic interest. This great heat of her blood was considered, no doubt from the first by at least some of her attendants, and then later on more and more by the Redactors, as so directly marvellous, spiritually significant, and confirmatory of sayings of her own as to her interior ardours, that three various though parallel anecdotes and proofs as to the intensity of its heat are solemnly printed here by the Vita, only the first of which appears in the MSS. Purely secondary, physical matters are thus, with a short-sighted good faith and admiration, eagerly utilized to naturalize and obscure a soaringly spiritual personality. Truly, she was not simply mistaken as to her isolation: she too had the privilege to share some of the piercing loneliness of Christ.

And next, we have here her last coherent utterance; and the care and fearless honesty with which it has been chronicled and printed as such—and as the concluding words of a chapter (Chapter L), up to at least the fourth edition, Venice 1601—are truly admirable. The words, “that wants to eat,” appear in MSS. “A” and “B,” and are, I think, authentic. They may mean that the beast was looking about for some unspecified food, or that it was wanting to devour her (the former is, I think, the more likely meaning, for there is no indication of fright, and devorare would, in the latter case, be the more natural word). We have, in any case, a quasi-physical, distinctly maladif impression; one which, as regards at least its apparently sensible embodiment, was the simple projection of her own mind. And indeed there is nothing to show that she had any consciousness of any spiritual significance about it. It has got all the opaque, uninteresting character of mere, given, unrelated, and unsuggestive fact, which all such purely nervous projections always have; and stands thus in complete and instructive contrast to her finely suggestive and transparent, spiritually significant Viste, which contributed so largely to the volitional stimulation and moral and religious witness and truth of her life.

4. Catherine’s death, dawn of September 15, 1510.

During the early night hours of “the 14th, she again lost much blood, and she weakened much in her speech. Yet she once more, and it was the last time, communicated as usual. And throughout this day she lay there, with her pulse so slight as to be unfindable.” And “many devoted friends were present.”

And as the subsequent night ceased to be Saturday and became Sunday, the 15th, “she was asked whether she wished to communicate. But she then pointed with her right index-finger towards the sky.” And her friends understood that she wished to indicate by this that she had to go and communicate in heaven. “And at this moment, this blessed soul gently expired, in great peace and tranquillity, and flew to her tender and much desired Love.”[213]

Here three points are of interest. Catherine undoubtedly died at, or shortly before, dawn on the 15th September, as is clearly required by the older account on page 160c of the Vita. Yet a second account, sufficiently early to appear in all the MSS., is given on page 161c, according to which she died on the 14th. The reason of this latter pragmatic “correction” is obvious: the 15th is but the Octave of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, the 14th is the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. The temptation to find a final, strikingly appropriate synchronism, when, to do so, her death need only be pushed back some six hours at most, was too great to be resisted to the end; and an untrained, enthusiastic, imaginative mind like Argentina’s would, probably from the very first, have almost unconsciously helped to establish, or perhaps she single-handedly fixed, this date.

And next, the “many friends” present will no doubt have included her sole surviving brother Lorenzo and his son Francesco, who, only three days before, had witnessed her Codicil; one or other of the four “Protectors” of the Hospital; Don Carenzio, the Rector; and Argentina del Sale. But Vernazza, as we already know, was far away; and, as we shall find in a moment, Mariola, and, above all, Marabotto, though both in Genoa, were both absent from her death-bed. Now it is certain that the absence of Marabotto cannot have been accidental, for death had evidently been recognized by all to be imminent, ever since the 12th at least; and he himself would certainly not have put anything in the world before attending Catherine at the moment of her death. Nor, as we shall find, was he ill just now. Yet we must, I think, suppose him to have been (at least off and on) about her person, during the 12th, up to the drawing up of the Codicil, which directly concerns himself together with Carenzio. His own name appears second, no doubt because, as the document itself mentions, Carenzio and not he is now Rector of the Hospital in which the document is being drawn up. Marabotto will have withdrawn after the attack on that night which left Catherine hardly capable of any further distinguishing one person from another; and he will have retired because Carenzio, from some little jealousy or feeling of punctilio, cared to claim the right, as Rector, alone to attend her at the last; or for some other slight reason such as this. In any case, there is here one more indication of a certain friction and rivalry amongst her attendants and chroniclers, which, however painful, will help us in our study of the peculiarities of her biography. There is, however, nothing to show that Marabotto’s final withdrawal took place at the instigation, or even with the knowledge, of Catherine; and the cause of that withdrawal can certainly not have been a grave one.

And finally, there appeared eventually, at earliest in the fifth edition, 1615, but possibly not till the sixth, in 1645, or even later, a gloss which effectually prevents her “unedifying” remark of the 13th from being her last utterance. After the words, “and at this moment, this blessed soul,” there then appears the clause: “saying: ‘Into Thy hands, O Lord, I commend my Spirit.’” The passage occurs in the late and entirely secondary MS. “F,” which contains also other demonstrably legendary “embellishments.”

5. Intimations of her death vouchsafed to friends.

The Vita gives an account of seven intimations or apparitions, vouchsafed at the moment of her death to as many chosen friends and disciples,—so many communications of her passage and instant complete union with God. Although no names are given, it is easy to identify the first six persons as Argentina del Sale, “a spiritual daughter of hers, present at her death”; Mariola Bastarda, “another spiritual daughter of hers, who had an evil spirit upon her (il demonio adosso)”; Maestro Boerio, “a physician, her devotee”; Ettore Vernazza, “a very spiritual man and her devotee”; Tommasa Fiesca, “a holy Religious woman, most devoted to her”; and Benedetta Lombarda, “another Religious woman, who had been a member of her household (sua famigliare).” The seventh and last, “a nun” (una monaca), is so little characterized, as to be incapable of certain identification: possibly Battista Vernazza is meant, who, though but thirteen years old, was already an Augustinian Novice.[214]

The order in which the first six names appear is evidently determined partly by the degree of physical proximity to Catherine—Argentina by her bedside, comes before Boerio in another house in Genoa, and Boerio comes before Vernazza, since the latter is far away (lontano); partly by sex—Boerio and Vernazza, though simple laymen, appear before the three Religious women; and partly by the abnormal spiritual condition, and consequent increase in the value of the testimony, of the souls concerned—Mariola the Possessed comes first among all those not actually present at the death. Even this order, and still more the form of all these little notices, show plainly that the stress is laid, not so much on the intimation of the death, as on that of the immediate entrance into glory. Note that there is no reference anywhere to Don Carenzio, certainly as much present at the death as Argentina; nor, within this particular list, to Don Marabotto, as certainly absent as Ettore Vernazza.

It is disappointing to find that, whereas such intimations, or at least communications as to death at the moment of its occurrence, belong to the best authenticated of the more mysterious human experiences, and although we would expect to find some such unmistakably vivid and first-hand accounts at this point in the life of one so spiritually great and so deeply loved as was Catherine, the accounts are all, with the possible exception of that concerning Boerio, very general and colourless. As to Boerio we are told: “A Physician, her devotee, was asleep, but awoke at the moment of her passing, and heard a voice which said to him: ‘Abide with God; I am now going to Paradise.’ And he called his wife and said to her: ‘Madonna Caterina has died at this moment’; and this turned out to have been the case.”[215]

Two insipid, vague, and gossipy fragments concerning Don Marabotto strive to make up for his absence from the list of the seven recipients of synchronizing intimations. “Her Confessor during that night (14th to 15th) and throughout the following day (15th), had no notice whatever concerning her.” This is told as if it had been something spiritually remarkable, whereas it was evidently but strangely unkind on the part of the other friends of Catherine. “The next day (16th) he attempted to say a Mass for the Dead for the soul of Catherine.” He evidently had been told on the evening of the 15th, or quite early on the 16th, for there is here no claim to any supernatural intimation. “And he found himself unable to pray for her in particular. And again on the following day, whilst saying a Mass in honour of several Martyrs, his mind was suddenly, from the Introit onwards, fixed upon Catherine’s spiritual martyrdom, so that his abundant weeping made it difficult for him to finish his Mass.”[216] There is, as so often with Marabotto, something slightly comical, and yet respectable, because thoroughly genuine, loyal, and truthful, about this his eager desire to experience something unusual, the careful registration of something quite commonplace, and the wistful attempt to make it out extraordinary after all.

6. Alleged miraculous condition of Catherine’s skin and heart.

There remain two more medical details, which are, however, of some significance in connection with the spirit of her entourage.

Her skin is declared to have been, after death, of a yellow colour throughout. Indeed in various places of the Vita yellow or red colour is noted in connection with her person, but generally as localized about the region of the heart. But the accounts vary, indeed contradict each other, so much, that I shrink from finally adopting any one account.[217]

The action of her heart was often laborious or even acutely painful: “At the last, owing to the great fire of pure and penetrating love, that burnt within her heart, the skin over it became so tender as to be unable to be touched. It seemed as though she had a wound right through her heart. And she often held her hand over it; and it would pant like a pair of bellows, on one day more than on another.”[218] And how often had not Catherine spoken of the wondrous things, the spiritual joys and sufferings, that she felt within her heart! And so some of her materializing biographers, probably some of her attendants before them, doubt not that “if only her (physical) heart had been examined after death, some marvellous sign would have been found upon it.”[219] We even find a report that “this holy soul, several months before her death, left an order that, after her death, her body should be opened and her heart examined, because they would find it all consumed (burnt up) by love. Nevertheless her friends did not dare to do so.”[220] This sheer legend will have been due to Argentina, and will have become articulate long after the first deposition of Catherine’s remains. There is certainly no other, indeed no kind of authentic, evidence of any such wish or hesitation on the part of any one at the time. It is sad to note how rapidly and easily, all but inevitably, the vivid, spiritual ideas and experiences of Catherine were thus materialized and spoilt.