Catherine of Siena

by Sigrid Undset

  He never doubted her burning love of God and her perfect sincerity. But at times he doubted whether she really had experienced all the visions and locutions which she described to him—were not at least some of them due to imagination? While they were together in Montepulciano, Raimondo said to her one evening that she was to gain full forgiveness for all his sins from her heavenly Bridegroom. He would not be satisfied with anything less than a bull of indulgence such as one receives from the Roman Curia. Catherine laughed softly and asked what sort of bull it was he wanted? The priest replied seriously that if he could experience a grief over his sins deeper than any he had ever known, he would consider this as good as the bull. Catherine nodded. After a short while they parted to go to bed.

  But the next morning Raimondo felt so ill that he had to remain in bed. Another monk looked after and nursed him, Catherine was also ill and had a high temperature, but she got up to come and look after Raimondo. “You are even weaker than I”, he said. “You should not have come.” But Catherine sat down, and in her usual way began to talk of the goodness of God and the ingratitude of men. In the meantime Raimondo got up, rather embarrassed, but also encouraged by this visit of his “mamma”. He sat down on a bench, and suddenly it was as though he saw a revelation: he saw all his sins naked before him, saw that he had deserved eternal punishment from the severe Judge—but he saw also the Judge’s mercy and love, which had not only redeemed him and freed him from punishment, but had clothed his nakedness with His own clothes, warmed him and let him take his rest in His own bosom. Through His grace, and His eternal goodness, death had been turned to life, fear to hope, sorrow to joy, shame to honour. . . Raimondo burst into tears and wept and wept as though his heart would break, and Catherine sat silently by his side and let him weep. Suddenly Raimondo remembered their conversation of the evening before, and it dawned on him: “Is this the bull I demanded of you?” “This is the bull”, she replied and rose. For a moment she let her hand rest on his shoulder: “Remember God’s gifts”—and then she left him.

  They were still living in the convent, and Catherine lay in bed with a raging fever. Raimondo came to see her, and she began excitedly to tell him about her latest revelation. Raimondo openly confessed his own weakness: although he had received unusual grace in answer to her prayers, he still doubted: Yes, this is indeed very strange and extraordinary, but I wonder if everything she is telling me is true? He looked at the young woman’s face, burning with fever, and suddenly it changed to the face of a man. The face of a man of about thirty, magnificently beautiful, oval, with fair hair and beard. He looked severely into the friar’s face, and Raimondo began to tremble; he lifted his hands and called aloud: “Oh, who is it that looks at me like this?” Catherine’s voice replied: “It is that which IS.” The vision disappeared; the face on the coarse pillow was again Catherine’s. Writing of this event Raimondo ends solemnly, “Truly I say this before the face of God, before God Himself, Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who knows that I do not lie.”

  From that day Raimondo never doubted that Catherine had been chosen to act and speak as Christ’s ambassador to her contemporaries. The new and deeper insight into things of the spirit which he obtained he attributed gratefully to Catherine’s prayers and power. Their way here on earth parted after a few short years, but to the end of his days Raimondo of Capua lived on the inspiration he had received from his “mother”, and never tired of praising God for His gift to mankind, His chosen messenger Catherine Benincasa.

  XIV

  APPARENTLY CATHERINE soon won the love of the nuns of Montepulciano, for she writes of the happiness she feels here among these contemplatives, where the peace and silence of the convent is only broken by services and singing in the church. But she was not given much breathing space before the complications of this world and the uncontrolled passions of mankind once again demanded her service.

  The Riformati government in Siena sent for her—they desired her presence at home. To judge from the letter of reply she sent them it seems as though rumour, always busy with Catherine’s comings and goings, had interpreted her visit to a strange town as unfaithfulness to her birthplace. Catherine does not defend herself against this interpretation—instead she tells the rulers of Siena that men who are to rule others must above all be able to rule themselves. How, she asks, can the blind lead the blind, or the dead bury the dead? “I have seen before, and I still see, that because you lack correct information you punish the innocent and let the guilty escape unpunished.” Her advice is always the same: break the chains of sin, cleanse yourselves by confession, be reconciled to God—then you will be real rulers, for who can really be master if he is not master of himself, if reason does not rule his senses? She names a certain case in which a worthy abbot has been persecuted, and this, after the government leaders have complained so bitterly about unworthy monks. Is there any point in such behaviour? Regarding her return, she has still several things to do in Montepulciano, so it is not possible for the moment. She regrets that they have lent their ears to false accusations; certainly she loves them and prays with sorrow and tears that the Divine Righteousness may not send them the punishment which we all deserve for our ingratitude, and that truth may make us all free. “Let all do the work which God has given them, and not bury their talent, for that is also a sin deserving severe punishment. It is necessary to work always and everywhere for all God’s creatures. God is not bound by places or people. He looks upon our honest and holy desires, which are the tools we must work with.”

  Towards the end of the year 1374 Catherine was home again in Siena, and here she was visited by Alfonso da Vadaterra, a Spaniard who had once been Bishop of Jaen, but was now a hermit of St. Augustine. He had been spiritual director to St. Birgitta of Sweden, and one of her best friends. The Pope had sent him from Avignon to give Catherine the papal blessing, and to ask her to support his plans by praying for Holy Church and for himself.

  One of his plans was to call all Christian princes to a new crusade. It was now almost two years since his first summons, and the Christian princes were still only concerned with quarrels among themselves. Filled as they were with mutual distrust and the desire to increase their own power and lessen that of their neighbour, in whom they saw a potential enemy, they replied with excuses and evasions to the Pope’s attempt to call them to arms against their common enemy, Islam. For Catherine this crusade now became a matter which was to occupy her for the rest of her life. For her it meant the liberation of Christians who were now the underdogs of infidel masters, the reconquest of the Holy Places where Christ had lived and died, and the apostles and martyrs had worked and suffered death. At any moment a wave of victorious Asiatics might flood the lands where Christians could still freely worship Him whom Catherine loved to call the Very Truth—the lands where nothing but the world, the devil and themselves hindered Holy Church from giving her children the gifts of the sacraments. If the war-hungry lords and peoples humbly armed themselves to fight for God’s honour instead of for their own lust for power, a crusade would also put an end to the civil wars which ravaged the whole world as Catherine knew it; and it might do great good to the crusaders’ souls. From this time on a stream of letters went out from Catherine’s simple little cell to kings, statesmen and well-known military leaders in many lands. She advises them for the sake of their own souls to be converted to the true love of God and to arm themselves for the holy cause, the crusade. The Sienese Popolana writes to the powerful men of this world as one who has authority, conscious that she is neither more nor less than a tool in the hand of her Lord Jesus Christ: and as for the majesty of this world, Catherine did not believe in it. For her it was a mirage, which shines for a moment before it vanishes into nothing. This did not prevent her judgment of worldly affairs from being acute, and the advice she gave her correspondents full of sound common sense. But her advice was too straightforward and honest for people who dealt in cunning and intrigues—so they did not follow it.

 
It was at this time that Catherine wrote her first letter to Pope Gregory XI, and begged him for the sake of Christ’s precious blood to “allow us to offer our bodies to every kind of torture”. Catherine talks of martyrdom to the Pope, whose piety and warm-heartedness were spoilt by weakness and exaggerated love for his own relations and his beautiful fatherland of France; so that his will to take the necessary steps to put an end to corruption within the Church was powerless, and he never managed to do anything effective to prevent the lambs whose shepherd he was from being led astray. Martyrdom, maintains Catherine, is the only means of giving the Bride of Christ the beauty of her youth again. She was soon to show how whole-heartedly she meant this.

  By going to Pisa in February 1375 she would have the opportunity of serving the Pope’s cause. Bernabo Visconti was still interested in obtaining an alliance with the Tuscan republics, Pisa, Lucca, Siena, Florence and Arezzo. Their adherence to the Pope, that is to say the Pope as temporal prince of the Papal States, lay in the balance—little was needed to tip it the wrong way, especially as the French legates ceaselessly defied the Italians. Catherine, and all faithful children of the Church in Italy, knew of no other remedy for their country’s misery than the return of the Pope to Rome. But Catherine had not yet come to the point at which she threw herself entirely into this cause. But she started on the road which would lead her to this when she accepted the invitation of the Pisans to visit their town. Her presence there might for a time strengthen their loyalty to the Pope.

  Among those who accompanied her were Alessia, Lisa and several other Mantellate. One of them was her mother, Lapa. Some time before, she had let herself be clothed in the black cape of the Sisters of Penitence, so now she too belonged to her daughter’s spiritual family. It is a pity that Catherine’s first biographers have not thought it worth while to describe Lapa’s conversion. One can only guess at the loneliness which the old woman must have felt—she had lost so many of her children, and the child she was most fond of, her beloved Catherine, led such an extraordinary and terrible life. So she then heroically decided to try Catherine’s way of living to see if this could help her to understand something of what was happening around her and lead her nearer to her own child. She clung to Catherine, wanted to be with her wherever she went, and was in despair each time it happened that Catherine could not take her.

  Fra Raimondo, Fra Bartolommeo Dominici and Fra Tommaso della Fonte were also among the company. As so many were converted by Catherine’s missionary work the Pope had ordained that there were always to be three priests among her company, to hear confessions and give absolution.

  On their arrival in Pisa the sisters from Siena received a welcome such as people in the Middle Ages reserved for a guest who was generally considered a saint. The governor of Pisa, the Archbishop, and crowds of other prominent personages went out to meet Catherine, and the crowds cheered her as the crowds always, everywhere, cheer their favourite heroes, whether they be victorious generals, highly publicised leaders, popular football players or world-famous film stars. But in the Middle Ages it was chiefly saints who were popular heroes, even for people who themselves were very far from being saints, and had not the faintest desire to be saints because, as everyone knew, holiness demands heroism—heroism of an unusually severe and difficult kind.

  Catherine and her companions stayed in the house of Gherardo Buonconti, a person of some importance in the town. Next to his house was a little church dedicated to St. Christina. Catherine went to Mass in this church every morning.

  Sick people were brought to her and went away healed by her prayers and her advice to confess their sins and receive absolution. This of course brought even more people to her. It was while she was in Pisa that Raimondo saw for the first time that she allowed one of the visitors to kiss her hand. Raimondo did not like this and said so, but received the answer that she had the gift of seeing people’s souls and therefore did not notice very much what people looked like otherwise, or what they did. . . .

  But the most overwhelming event in Catherine’s life while she was in Pisa was that she was marked with Christ’s stigmata. Raimondo describes the event as he saw it.

  On Laetare Sunday—mid-Lent Sunday—he celebrated Mass in the church of St. Christina and had given Catherine Holy Communion. She lay on her face for a long while afterwards without moving. Raimondo and her friends waited patiently—they hoped that when she awoke from her ecstasy she would have a message for them from the lips of her Bridegroom. Suddenly it was as though the outstretched figure was lifted up; she knelt with closed eyes and her face shining with supernatural bliss. She stretched out her arms, with the palms of her hands outwards, stiff and still: then she fell suddenly to the ground as though mortally wounded. A little while after, she recovered consciousness.

  Some time later she called Raimondo to her and whispered: “Father, know that by the grace of Our Lord Jesus I now bear His stigmata on my body.” Raimondo had guessed by her movements what had happened, but he asked her to describe the manner in which the gift of grace had been given her. “I saw Our Saviour on the cross lean down toward me in a bright light. And when my soul tried to hasten to meet its Creator, it forced my body to rise. Then I saw how five jets of blood came from the five wounds and streamed towards my miserable body. I cried out, ‘O my Lord and Saviour, I beg You, do not let the wounds on my body be visible outwardly’—and while I spoke the jets of blood changed to shining light, and as rays of light they struck my hands, feet and heart.”

  In answer to Raimondo’s question Catherine said the pains from the wounds, especially the wound in the heart, were so violent that it seemed impossible for her to suffer such agony and live, unless God worked another miracle. As soon as she returned to Buonconti’s house she had to go to bed, and she lay there for a whole week unable to move; she looked almost as though she were already dead. Raimondo and her friends gathered round her and wept and lamented: they begged God not to make them motherless—how could they withstand the storms of this world if He took from them their mother and teacher, to whom they owed all they knew of the blessed way of virtue? They begged Catherine: “Mother, we know that you desire your Bridegroom Christ, but you are sure of your reward, so you must have mercy on those who must remain here without you in the storm and tempest, and who are so weak. . . . We beg you, pray Him to let us have you among us a little while yet.” Catherine wept, but she replied: “With all my heart I wish you to be happy for all eternity, but I know that He who is your and my Saviour knows best how you shall be led. His will be done.” These seemed terrible words for all those who loved her, for they took them to mean goodbye. They wept even more bitterly and begged God to let them keep their mother.

  In this way a week passed, but then her children realised that they were not to lose her this time. On Easter Sunday Catherine was so well that she could get up and go to Mass and Communion at St. Christina’s. It seemed as though her body had received new strength and energy, and when Raimondo asked, “Mother, do the wounds in your body still pain you?” she replied, Yes, but in some wonderful way these pains seemed to strengthen her and hold her up. As long as she lived, the stigmata were invisible, but on her corpse they showed clearly.

  It was in Pisa, too, that there occurred another miracle—this time with a wine-barrel. Catherine was dreadfully weak, but as she could not swallow anything at all, Raimondo thought that it might perhaps refresh her if her wrists were bathed with a special sort of white wine. Buonconti had none of this wine, but thought they could obtain some from a neighbour. But the neighbour apologised—he had had a barrel of it, but it had been empty for a long while, and to prove this he drew out the bung. The wine poured out in such a stream that all three men were wet through. When rumours of this extraordinary event spread throughout the town it caused such a commotion that Catherine became greatly embarrassed and prayed for the stream of wine to cease. Those who came to get a little of the miraculous wine had to return disappointed—there was nothing in the b
arrel but a thick sediment.

  There is an island called Gorgona which lies just outside Leghorn, the port of Pisa. On the island was a Carthusian monastery, and the prior and monks sent an invitation to Catherine to come and visit them. She finally had to accept and she and her friends took a boat from Leghorn to Gorgona. It was her first journey by sea—in fact the first time she had seen the sea. It would have been interesting to know what her reactions were, for the sea must have played a large part in her imagination; she so often used, to explain spiritual experiences, analogies such as “the fish in the water and the water in the fish”, or based on things which have sunk to the bottom of the sea and are seen through the water.

  The visitors were met on the jetty by the prior and some of the monks; Catherine and the women in the company were led to a hostel not far from the monastery while the men stayed in the monastery itself. The next morning the prior, followed by all the monks, came to greet Catherine, and the prior asked her to speak to them of spiritual things. At first she asked to be excused, but in the end she had to give in to their prayers, and she spoke to them of temptation and victory over temptation, “which the Holy Spirit caused her to speak of”. Afterwards the prior said to Raimondo, “I am confessor for all my sons. But if Catherine had herself heard all their confessions she could not have spoken more clearly and more to the point—when she spoke of the difficulties and dangers of the monastic life each of my monks heard exactly what he most needed. There is no doubt that she is a seer and moved by the Holy Spirit.”