In This Book I Have Not Attempted to Write the Conventional Biography Of

Introduction In this book I have not attempted to write the conventional biography of a canonized saint, but a study of Italian history centered in the work and personality of one of the most wonderful women that ever lived. While devoting my attention mainly to Catherine’s own work and influence upon the politics of her age, I have endeavored at the same time to make my book a picture of certain aspects, religious and political, of the fourteenth century in Italy. In this undertaking, I have been aided greatly by the manuscripts still preserved of Catherine’s letters, manuscripts full of unpublished matter that has been unaccountably neglected, having apparently escaped the notice of all of her previous biographers and editors. This material throws light upon every aspect of the saint’s genius and has enabled me, at many points, to correct erroneously accepted ideas about the events of her life and the order of her writings. From the very beginning, the biographical and historical value of Catherine’s letters has been, to a considerable extent, impaired by copyists (and editors who followed them) omit- ting or suppressing passages that appeared to them to be of only temporary interest, or not tending immediately toward edification. A certain number appear to have been deliberately expurgated, in cases where the writer’s burning words seemed likely to startle the susceptibilities of the faithful. This process seems to date back to the generation that immediately followed that of Catherine’s original disciples. A striking instance of this editorial suppression is seen in a certain letter that Aldo Manuzio (the editor of the second 3 RoadtoSienaFormat.indd 3 6/16/09 11:54:52 AM the road to siena edition of Catherine’s letters, published in Venice in 1500) intro- duces with the rubric: “To one whose name it is better not to write, because of certain words used in the letter. Let not whoso reads, or hears it read, wonder if the sense seems to him broken; for where et cetera is written, many words are passed over, which it is not meet that every one should know, nor even the name of him to whom it went.” Both these words and the omissions were not made by Aldo himself. And the same heading then occurs in every manuscript containing this letter that I have examined and evidently dates back to the end of the fourteenth century. Catherine was one of the greatest letter writers of her century. Nearly four hundred of her letters have been preserved. They are written to men and women in every walk of life and every level of society. Her varied correspondents include a mendicant in Florence, a Jewish banker in Padua, and two sovereign s pontiffs and three kings. Leaders An Update on Catherine’s of armies, rulers of Italian Letters Vida Scudder was in the process republics, receive her burning of editing St. Catherine’s letters for words and bow to her inspired English publication, simultaneous with will, just as often as do private Gardner’s writing of this biography. Publication of the two books, within citizens seeking her counsel in two years of each other, gave birth to the spiritual life, or simple monks the renaissance of St. Catherine schol- and hermits in their cells striving arship that continued throughout the to find the way of perfection. twentieth century. Scudder begins her introduction this way: “The letters She was able to warn a queen: of Catherine Benincasa, commonly “Instead of a woman, you have known as St. Catherine of Siena, have become the servant and slave of become an Italian classic; yet perhaps the first thing in them to strike a reader nothingness, making yourself the is their unliterary character. He only subject of lies and of the demon will value them who cares to overhear who is their father,” while she the impetuous outpourings of the heart 4 RoadtoSienaFormat.indd 4 6/16/09 11:54:52 AM introduction and mind of an unlettered daughter of bids the wife of a tailor, “Clothe the people, who was also, as it hap- yourself in the royal virtues.” pened, a genius and a saint. Her letters were talked rather than written. Her wonderful, all-embracing She learned to write only three years and intuitive sympathy knows before her death, and even after this time no barriers, but penetrates into was in the habit of dictating her corre- the house of shame as well as spondence, sometimes two or three letters at a time, to the noble youths who into the monastery. served her as secretaries” (Scudder 1, Some of the letters are purely 1). More recently, another scholar has mystical, ecstatic outpourings of clarified, “Catherine’s Letters amount at present, to 381. But it is not impossible Catherine’s heart, the translation that more might be found in old convent in ordinary speech of the con- libraries or elsewhere” (Cavallini, 7). versation of angels, overheard in s suprasensible regions. Others are nearer to familiar domestic correspondence, in which the daily needs of life become ennobled and even the innocent japery of her friends and followers isn’t neglected. Catherine’s earliest letters were written for her by her women companions: Alessa, Cecca, and occasionally Giovanna Pazzi. During the heat of her greatest involvement in political affairs, she had three regular secretaries, three young nobles whom we will meet in the chapters to follow: Neri di Landoccio Pagliaresi, Stefano di Corrado Maconi, and Francesco di Messer Vanni Malavolti. Francesco Malavolti has left us a delightful picture of Catherine’s method of composition at that time. We see her dictating simultaneously to these three young men three letters: one to Pope Gregory, another to Bernabo Visconti, and a third to a certain nobleman whose name Francesco doesn’t remem- ber. She dictates first to one, then to another. At times, her face is covered by her hands or veil, as though she is absorbed in thought; at other times with clasped hands and head raised up to heaven; and at intervals she seems rapt in ecstasy, but 5 RoadtoSienaFormat.indd 5 6/16/09 11:54:52 AM the road to siena nevertheless goes on continuously speaking. Then suddenly, all three of the scribes stop writing, look puzzled, and appeal to Catherine for help. They have all taken down the same sentence, not knowing for whom it was intended. Catherine reassures them, saying, “Dear sons, don’t trouble over this, for you have done it all by the work of the Holy Spirit. When the letters are finished, we will see how the words fit in with our intentions, and then we’ll arrange what had best be done.” It was during a brief interval, between her leaving Florence and going to Rome during the late summer and early autumn of 1378, that Catherine had a few months of comparative peace in Siena and completed her great literary work, The Dialogue of Divine Providence. “When the peace was announced,” writes Fra Raimondo (the book’s compiler, and the author’s spiritual director), “she returned to her own home and set herself with diligence to the task of composing a certain book, which was inspired by the supreme Spirit, and dictated in the vernacular. She had asked her secretaries to observe attentively at those times when she was rapt out of her corporeal senses, and to carefully write down whatever she would then dictate. They did this faithfully, and compiled a book full of high and salutary doctrines that had been revealed by the Lord and dictated to her.” In her last letter, Catherine refers to it simply as il libro nel quale io trovava alcuna recreazione, “the book in which I found some recreation,” even though her friends describe her as dictating it to the secretaries while “rapt in singular excess and abstraction of mind.” It is not clear that Catherine herself would have made any claims of supernatural authority for the Dialogue, or would have regarded it as anything more than the pious meditations of a spirit “thirsty with great desire for the honor of God and the salvation of souls”—one who (in her own characteristic phrase) 6 RoadtoSienaFormat.indd 6 6/16/09 11:54:52 AM introduction “dwells in the cell of knowledge of self in order to better know the goodness of God.” The Dialogue was first published in the original Italian in Bologna in 1472, at Naples in 1478, and then in Venice in 1494. The Dialogue was translated into Latin by 1496 and then English by 1519. The book is concerned with the whole spiritual life of a person in the form of a prolonged dialogue, or series of dia- logues, between the eternal Father and the impassioned human soul, represented as Catherine herself. It opens with a striking passage on the essence of mysticism, the possibility of the union of the soul with God in love: When a soul lifts herself up, thirsty with great desire for the honor of God and the salvation of souls, she exercises herself for a while in habitual virtue and dwells in the cell of knowledge of self in order to better know the goodness of God. For love follows knowledge, and when she loves, she seeks to follow and to clothe herself with the truth. But in no way does the creature taste and become illumined by this truth as much as by means of humble and continuous prayer, based on knowledge of self and of God. Prayer exercises the soul in this way, by uniting her to God as she follows the steps of Christ crucified—and thus, by desire and affection and union of love, she is transformed into him.

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