A. M. D. G. Ctbranj (Unttvintt 387 HKUNSWICK AVENTT TORONTO. CAN. / & DT 1 3/3 (T , COLL. CHRIST!. REGIS. BIB. MAJ. TORONTO EFFIGIES S.CATHARINA SENENSIS,QVAM PICTOR INPARIETE ECCLESL& S.DOMINICt DE SENIS, DVM VIRGO EXTASIM PATIEBATVR^OLORIBVTS EXPRESSIT ANN.MCCCLXVII. Saint Catherine of Siena at the age of twenty : from the original engraving of Vannis pifture of the Saint. Her Life and Times By C. M. Of the Third Order of Penance of St. Dominic /J V Author "In St. Dominic s of Country," " Taradys Terrestre" etc. Sdited by Fr. %%> J^RRSTT, O.T. With a Treface by Fr. TH03MfS M. SCH^ETSR O.T. VJ? COLL. CHRIST!. REGIS TC TO ( BUllNS 6ff GATES B. HE ^T>ER London St. Louis, Mo. 1916 35847 NIHIL 0<BST4T: H. S. <Bowcten. 8dm. Can. Surmont. Die 2 Westmonasterii, 5 Octobris, 1915 5 PRINTED IN ENGLAND SPI<%ITUALI FILIO CA^ISSIMO AMICO FIT>LI COAVJUTORI FO^TI MEO PST^O qUIL<DAT JMULTOltJJM HUJMILIS U^C LIBELLUJM D.D. TH 8 C S INT<%ODUCTI03^ . xi Fr. Thomas Schwertner O.T. xv by JM. y CHAPTER I THS REMOTS P^PA^TIO^ (1347-1367) . i CHAPTER II THE IMMBTUATE T^PA^TIO^i 367-1 374) . 41 CHAPTER III Missio^of PE^fce to ruscA^r (1374-1376) 84 CHAPTER IV TH JMISSIOM^OF PEACE TO C (1376-1378) . 124 CHAPTER V TH <%ENDI^G OF THS SEAMLESS GARMENT (1378) .163 CHAPTER VI ( THS HIT> DE^THI^GS OF GOT> (1378-1379) . 199 CHAPTER VII THS riSIOZ^OF TStACS (1380) . ? . 241 Vli ILL Portrait St. Catherine Siena of of (after Vanni) Frontispiece To face page The Church of San Domenico, Siena ... c Casa di Santa Siena . Caterina, . 25 The St. Catherine {Mystical Espousals of of Siena . 41 Siena ........ 59 Interior the Cathedra Siena . of I, . 75 c/f Street in Siena . 9 g y The Cathedral and Tapal Palace, Avignon . 125 " The Orcharde Tage from of Syon" . 199 Interior the of tMinerva, 1{ome . .269 xii INTRODUCTION God raised up a messenger of Peace, not only to her fellow- country-men, but by a series of strange and mysterious events, to the Church on earth. She became the trusted counsellor of two it was her voice which friend and Popes ; finally decided Gregory XI to return from Avignon to Rome. When the great Schism broke in 1378, she spent the last years of her life fighting with tongue and pen for " " she died Urban VI, the true Christ on earth ; and like a martyr of the mystical sufferings laid upon her by her Divine Spouse, having offered herself as a victim for the Divisions of Christendom. Saint Catherine s short life is so important from the historical, and so full of incident from the personal standpoint, that only a vivid sketch on broad outlines has been attempted in the present work. This is founded on the Legenda of Fra Raimondo da her confessor and on the Processus Capua, biographer ; of Venice on Saint Catherine s letters of ; (nearly 400 in whole or in have been and which, part, preserved) ; " " on the wonderful Dialogue she dictated to her secretaries in 1378. No Saint ever raised to the altars has ever combined, as did Catherine of Siena, the perfection of the contemplative and the fulness of the active life the essence of the Spirit of that Order to which she had belonged from her childhood, and in which she proved herself, every moment of her life, a true Daughter of St. Dominic. The illustrations in the text are taken from woodcuts in two mediaeval translations of the Legenda of Fra Raimondo da Capua : two from La Vie de Madame Saincte Katherine de Seine (Jean Petit, Paris, 1503) ; and the rest from the Hystori und zvunderbdrlicb legend Kathe rine von Senis (Augsburg, 1515). That facing page 199 is from the Orcharde a translation of the of Syon, "Dialogue" of St. Catherine made by the chaplain of the Brigittine nuns of Syon Abbey, and printed by Wynkyn de Worde (London, 1519). The originals are in the British The of Museum^ portrait St. Catherine, which forms the frontispiece, is from the original engraving of Vanni s of the pifture Saint, published by Gigli (V ofere delta Santa Serafica Caterina da Siena. Siena, 1707). As two excellent bibliographies for the Life of St. Catherine INTRODUCTION xiii have already been given in the biographies mentioned, it was not thought necessary to add a third to the present work but I must indebtedness to M. ; acknowledge my Salembier s Le Grand Schisme de ^Occident (Paris, 1900), on which part of this book is based. I must express my grateful thanks to the Right Rever end Dom Cabrol, O.S.B., Abbot of Farnborough, and also to the Very Reverend Father Bede Jarrett, O.P., Prior of Haverstock Hill, for the loan of valuable books from the libraries of their respective houses. C. M. ANTONY. London. Feast of St. Rose of Lima. August $oth, 1915. 8 F ^ C 8 loves Catherine Benincasa because she was always and everywhere a woman in every fibre of her being. EVERYBODYThose of her contemporaries who had no ear for her words, no sympathy with her ways, nor understanding of her mission, were quickly subdued by the charm of her personality. Her undoubted powers of intellect, her indisputable gift of quick, sure intuition, her wisdom in outlining sane and safe measures of statecraft, her mastery of the most harmonious cadences of a musical language, no doubt enhanced, but did not alter essentially, the engaging beauty of her character. What her contempo raries and the world since her time have always associated with her name is a dignity which was queenly in its .reserve and delicacy, a tenderness which was motherly in its broad helpfulness and deep self-sacrifice, a simplicity which was maidenly in its utter trustfulness and uncalculating generosity, a confidence in human nature which was childlike in its forgetfulness of past ingratitudes and disappointments. Though she was born a plebeian her own people to this day proudly call her the Popolana yet the unclion of a natural nobility of soul and mind was ever visible upon her. By nature and temperament she was fitted to be what she succeeded in remaining to the end a strong, noble woman, whose greatest strength lay in her tenderness, and whose nobility sprang from her tender femininity. But Catholics love Catherine Benincasa principally for her sanctity. This sanctity it is that has insured her the glory of an immortality among men, as it has brought her an im mortality of glory before God. To Catholics, who believe that grace perfects and supplements nature, the soft glow of Catherine s womanliness becomes indis tinguishable from the snow-white radiance of her holi ness. She is, first and foremost, a rare flower of the Faith. She is a trophy of supernatural grace. She is a xvi PREFACE masterpiece of the refining, spiritualizing powers of Catholicism. She is a friend, well tried and much trusted, of Jesus Christ. Him she sought from her young days in Holy Scripture and Holy Church, where He lives to impart to us His spirit and help us to reproduce it in our lives. And Catherine sought nothing more earnestly than to put on Christ, and Him crucified. She would be the spouse of the King of the Five Wounds. Therefore she realized early in life the need of putting off herself com pletely and entirely. Strong woman that she was, it called for no mean nor unheroic battling to drive away the faults impatience, censoriousness, a spirit of criti cism which are the inevitable accompaniments of a nervous, vivacious temperament like hers. Outward persecution, indeed, helped to bring under control the hastiness and of her but it impetuosity nature ; was within that all the finer battles were fought out. By drawing the sword of penance daily against herself whom she had learned to know intus et in pectore by searching self-examination she succeeded in crucifying the carnal spirit with its sensitive appetites, in constrain " " ing her will to accept the hard sayings of Christian reason, and in submitting her mind to the guidance of truth. Yet there was nothing hard or unfeeling, nothing of the Stoic or Indian fanatic, about her self-immolation. For if she arrived early at a state of union with God, it was because she understood from the first the Apostle s word (Rom. xiii. 10, Heb. x. 38) that the principle and motive and end of all spiritual growth must be a rapturous love of God for His own sake. The sum total of her spiritual teaching, as also the mainspring of all her striving, was Charity. Knowing " full well the Scriptural word, Whoso abideth in Charity abideth in God," she bent all her energies to correspond as fully as she could with the graces which the good Master poured out upon her. She lived to love. She loved to love. She made all things oil and fuel to feed the living flame of her love. Therefore, joy and peace sweetest because most mature fruits of charity filled her heart, as they illumined her face. Though her body was P<REFACE xvii racked with exquisite pain, though her eyes rained con stant tears of bitter sorrow over the sad plight of Church and State, though the plans upon which she had expended much labour and many tears were cast upon the rocks under her very eyes, though her heart was not strong enough to withstand the impact of her many disappoint ments, she was withal to the last a true, because a joyous, daughter of St.