St Catharine of Siena Reading Pa Bulletin

  CATHERINE OF SIENA

SIGRID UNDSET

CATHERINE OF SIENA

Translated past Kate Austin-Lund

IGNATIUS Printing SAN FRANCISCO

Original edition:

© 1951 past H. Aschehoug and Company (West. Nygaard) Equally

Oslo, Norway

Original English language edition

© 1954 by Sheed and Ward, Inc., New York

All rights reserved

Published with ecclesiastical approval

Cover art: Saint Catherine of Siena Receiving the Stigmata

Domenico Beccafumi (1486-1551)

Coll. Moss Stanley, Riverdale-on-Hudson, New York

© Scala / Art Resource, New York

Encompass pattern by Roxanne Mei Lum

Published in 2009 by Ignatius Press, San Francisco

ISBN 978-1-58617-408-viii

Library of Congress Command Number 2009923626

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

Chapter I

Affiliate II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter Vii

Chapter VIII

Chapter Nine

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Chapter 15

Chapter XVI

Chapter XVII

Affiliate XVIII

Chapter Nineteen

Affiliate 20

Affiliate XXI

Chapter XXII

Chapter XXIII

Chapter XXIV

Chapter XXV

Chapter XXVI

Chapter XXVII

Chapter XXVIII

Affiliate XXIX

I

IN THE City-STATES OF TUSCANY the citizens—Popolani—; businessmen, master craftsmen and the professional form had already in the Middle Ages demanded and won the right to take part in the government of the commonwealth next with the nobles—the Gentiluomini. In Siena they had obtained a third of the seats in the High Council as early equally the 12th century. In spite of the fact that the different parties and rival groups within the parties were in constant and often violent disagreement, and in spite of the frequent wars with Florence, Siena'southward neighbour and most powerful competitor, prosperity reigned within the metropolis walls. The Sienese were rich and proud of their urban center, so they filled it with cute churches and public buildings. Masons, sculptors, painters and smiths who made the exquisite lattices and lamps, were seldom out of work. Life was like a brightly coloured tissue, where violence and vanity, greed and uninhibited want for sensual pleasure, the longing for ability, and ambition, were woven together in a multitude of patterns. But through the tissue ran silver threads of Christian clemency, deep and genuine piety in the monasteries and among the good priests, among the brethren and sisters who had defended themselves to a life of helping their neighbours. The well-to-practice and the common people had to the best of their ability provided for the ill, the poor and the lonely with unstinted generosity. In every course of the customs at that place were expert people who lived a tranquillity, modest and beautiful family unit life of purity and religion.

The family unit of Jacopo Benincasa was ane of these. By trade he was a wool-dyer, and he worked with his elder sons and apprentices while his married woman, Lapa di Puccio di Piagente, firmly and surely ruled the large household, although her life was an almost unbroken cycle of pregnancy and childbirth—and almost half her children died while they were still quite small. It is uncertain how many of them grew upwards, only the names of 13 children who lived are to be found on an old family tree of the Benincasas. Considering how terribly high the charge per unit of infant bloodshed was at that fourth dimension, Jacopo and Lapa were lucky in being able to bring up more than half the children they had brought into the world.

Jacopo Benincasa was a man of solid means when in 1346 he was able to rent a house in the Via dei Tintori, close to the Fonte Branda, 1 of the beautiful covered fountains which bodacious the town of a plentiful supply of fresh water. The onetime dwelling house of the Benincasas, which is still much as information technology was at that time, is, according to our ideas, a small-scale firm for such a big family. Just in the Heart Ages people were not fussy about the question of housing, to the lowest degree of all the citizens of the fortified towns where people huddled together equally best they could within the protection of the walls. Building space was expensive, and the urban center must have its open markets, churches and public buildings, which at any rate theoretically belonged to the entire population. The houses were crowded together in narrow, crooked streets. According to the ideas of that time the new home of the Benincasas was large and impressive.

Lapa had already had twenty-two children when she gave nativity to twins, ii little girls, on Annunciation Twenty-four hours, March 25, 1347. They were christened Catherine and Giovanna. Madonna Lapa could only nurse one of the twins herself, so little Giovanna was handed over to a nurse, while Catherine fed at her female parent's breast. Never before had Monna Lapa been able to experience the joy of nursing her own children—a new pregnancy had e'er forced her to requite her kid over to another adult female. But Catherine lived on her mother's milk until she was old enough to be weaned. It was all too natural that Lapa, who was already avant-garde in years, came to love this child with a demanding and well-significant mother-love which later on, when the child grew up, made the relationship between the good-hearted, unproblematic Lapa and her young hawkeye of a girl one long series of eye-rending misunderstandings. Lapa loved her immeasurably and understood her not at all.

Catherine remained the youngest and the darling of the whole family, for little Giovanna died in infancy, and a new Giovanna, born a few years afterward, soon followed her sister and namesake into the grave. Her parents consoled themselves with the firm belief that these small-scale, innocent children had flown from their cradles straight into Paradise—while Catherine, as Raimondo of Capua writes, using a slightly far-fetched pun on her proper noun and the Latin word "catena" (a chain), had to piece of work hard on globe earlier she could accept a whole chain of saved souls with her to heaven.

When the Blessed Raimondo of Capua collected material for his biography of St. Catherine he got Madonna Lapa to tell him almost the saint'south childhood—long, long ago, for Lapa was past that fourth dimension a widow of eighty. From Raimondo'due south description one gets the impression that Lapa enjoyed telling everything that came into her head to such an understanding and responsive listener. She told of the old days when she was the active, busy mother in the middle of a flock of her ain children, her nieces and nephews, grandchildren, friends and neighbours, and Catherine was the adored baby of a couple who were already elderly. Lapa described her hubby Jacopo as a man of unparalleled goodness, piety and uprightness. Raimondo writes that Lapa herself "had not a sign of the vices which ane finds amid people of our fourth dimension"; she was an innocent and simple soul, and completely without the ability to invent stories which were not truthful. But because she had the well-being of and then many people on her shoulders, she could not be and then unworldly and patient every bit her husband; or perhaps Jacopo was really nearly likewise proficient for this world, so that his married woman had to be fifty-fifty more practical than she already was, and on occasion she thought it her duty to utter a word or two of common sense to protect the interests of the family. For Jacopo never said a hard or untimely discussion yet upset or badly treated he might be, and if others in the house gave style to their bad temper or used bitter or unkind words he always tried to talk them circular: "Now listen, for your own sake you must keep calm and not use such unseemly words." In one case one of his townsmen tried to strength him into paying a large sum of coin which Jacopo did not owe him, and the honest dyer was hounded and persecuted till he was virtually ruined by the slanderous talk of this man and his powerful friends. Simply in spite of e

verything Jacopo would non allow anyone to say a word against the man; Lapa did so, but her husband replied: "Get out him in peace, you will see that God volition show him his fault and protect us." And a curt while after that information technology really happened, said Lapa.

Coarse words and dingy talk were unknown in the dyer's home. His daughter Bonaventura, who was married to a young Sienese, Niccolo, was and then much grieved when her husband and his friends engaged in loose talk and told doubtful jokes that she became physically ill and began to waste material away. Her husband, who must really have been a well-significant young man, was worried when he saw how thin and pale his bride was, and wanted to know what was wrong with her. Bonaventura replied seriously, "In my begetter's house I was not used to listening to such words as I must hear here every day. You can be certain that if such indecent talk continues in our business firm y'all will live to encounter me waste to death." Niccolo at once saw to it that all such bad habits which wounded his wife'south feelings were stopped, and openly expressed his admiration for her chaste and modest ways, and the piety of his parents-in-police.

Such was the home of picayune Catherine. Everyone petted and loved her, and when she was however quite tiny her family unit admired her "wisdom" when they listened to her innocent prattle. And equally she was also very pretty Lapa could scarcely ever have her to herself; all the neighbours wanted to borrow her! Medieval writers seldom trouble to describe children or endeavor to understand them. Simply Lapa manages in a few pages of Raimondo'due south book to give us a flick of a little Italian girl, serious and yet happy, attractive and mannerly—and already beginning to show that overwhelming vitality and spiritual energy which many years later made Raimondo and her other "children" surrender to her influence, with the feeling that her words and her presence banished despondency and faint-heartedness, and filled their souls with the peace and dearest of God. As soon as she left the circle of her own family, lilliputian Catherine became the leader of all the other small children in the street. She taught them games which she had herself invented—that is to say innumerable small acts of devotion. When she was five years sometime she taught herself the Angelus, and she loved repeating it incessantly. Every bit she went up or down the stairs at home she used to kneel on each step and say an Ave Maria. For the pious piffling daughter of a pious family, where everyone talked kindly and politely to everyone else, it must have been quite natural for her equally shortly as she had heard of God to talk in the same mode to Him and His following of saints. It was and then even so a kind of game for Catherine. But small children put their whole souls and all their imagination into their games.

The neighbours chosen her Euphrosyne. This is the proper noun of i of the Graces, and it seemed that Raimondo had his doubts near it; could the good people in the Fontebranda quarter have such knowledge of classical mythology that they knew what the proper name meant? He thought that peradventure, before she could talk properly, Catherine chosen herself something which the neighbours took to be Euphrosyne, for there is also a saint of that proper noun. The Sienese were however used to seeing processions and listening to songs and verse, and then they could easily have picked up more of the poets' belongings than Raimondo imagined. Thus for example, Lapa'due south male parent, Puccio di Piagente, wrote verse in his gratuitous time; he was by trade a craftsman—a mattress maker. He was moreover a very pious homo, generous towards the monasteries and to monks and nuns. He might easily take known both the pagan and the Christian Euphrosyne. Catherine was for a fourth dimension very much interested in the fable of St. Euphrosyne, who is supposed to have dressed equally a boy and run away from dwelling house to enter a monastery. She toyed with the idea of doing the same herself. . . .

One evening, when Catherine was almost six years old, she was on her mode dwelling house afterwards visiting her married sister Bonaventura. She was with two minor boys, one of whom was her brother Stefano—he was a yr or 2 older than she, and presumably was oftentimes commissioned by their female parent to look after his little sister. The children had come up to a place where the street goes steeply downhill between garden walls and house-fronts towards the valley, where Fontebranda's mannerly rock canopy shades the well where the local women exercise their washing, or from which they pour the cold clear water into copper urns which they then comport home on their heads. On the other side of the valley are the great stone walls of the abbey church building of San Domenico, massive and austere, with no other ornament than a serial of windows with pointed arches built into the gable-end of the choir.

The footling girl looked over the valley—it is chosen Valle Piatta. Then she looked upwards, over the roof of the church. She saw a sight and then wonderful that she could never accept dreamed of anything similar it: the Saviour of the world sitting on a imperial throne, clothed in a bishop's robes, and with the triple crown of the Pope on His caput. Abreast Him stood the apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, and St. John the Evangelist. The child stood as though she were rooted to the spot. She stared enraptured at the vision "with the eyes both of her body and her soul". Our Lord smiled lovingly at her, lifted His paw and blessed the child with the sign of the cross, as a bishop does. . . .

Catherine stood motionless, while the dear of God streamed into her soul, illing her whole being and transforming information technology—for ever. Up and downward the narrow street the evening bustle of people, ox-carts and riders passed, and at the acme of the street stood the little girl, commonly so shy, with her face up and eyes upturned, as all the same as though she were made of stone.

The boys were already halfway down the hill when Stefano turned and looked for his sister, and saw her standing there, right at the top of the street. He called to her several times. Catherine did not move. He turned and ran upwards to her, calling her all the time—presumably somewhat impatiently. But she did non notice him until he took her arm, and asked her what she was doing. Then she looked as though she had woken from a deep sleep. She looked downwardly and replied, "Oh, if you had seen what I see I am certain you lot would never accept interrupted me and taken such a sugariness sight from me." When she looked up once again the vision was gone. She began to weep bitterly, wishing that she had never turned from the heavenly vision.

When Raimondo of Capua had get her begetter confessor, Catherine told him that from that twenty-four hours she began to larn of the style the saints had lived, and especially of the life of St. Dominic and the Desert Fathers, though no one had taught her except the Holy Spirit. But a child of half dozen tin can absorb a mass of cognition without knowing where it comes from. The Dominican monastery with its fortress-similar church lay at the summit of the loma above her habitation. The preaching friars in the black and white robes of their club must have frequented the streets where the Benincasa children ran to visit their neighbours and married sisters. And in their house they had living with them a young boy who a few years later on entered the Dominican Order—Tommaso della Fonte. He was the blood brother of Palmiero della Fonte who had married Niccoluccia Benincasa, and when Tommaso at the age of ten had lost his parents during the plague in 1349 he was given a dwelling house past his blood brother'due south male parent-in-law. The fact that Catherine had a foster-blood brother who wished to be a Dominican living in the same firm may have affected her more than she understood at the fourth dimension, or could call back later.

But the moment when Catherine had seen heaven and received the blessing of her Saviour in a vision had changed her for e'er. She was even so a little child, merely everyone at home noticed that she suddenly became then mature and so extraordinarily sensible that she was more like a grown-upward than a niggling girl. She had been initiated. The perky piddling Euphrosyne had seen a glimpse of the overwhelming truth which she had been seeking when she played her pious games—she had stepped into the boundless worlds of God's dear and the dear of God. Perhaps in a vague way she understood that her prayers and meditations had become a means past which she might fix herself to receive a call—what information technology would be she did not know yet—which was to come one day from Him whom she had seen in a vision, and who had blessed her with His outstretched hand. Nonetheless she had learned of the lives and practices of God's saints, it is at whatsoever rate certain that Catherine now tried to imitate their vigilance and asceticism equally well as she could. Quite unlike near growing children, she became quie

ter and ate less than before. During the day her father and the men in the house worked in the dye-works in the cellar, and her mother and the women were occupied in the big kitchen which was also the household living-room—a large room at the meridian of the house, with a terrace in forepart where small shrubs and potted plants edged the parapet, and a line of washing fluttered in the wind. In the meantime the bedrooms on the flooring between were empty most of the day. Catherine sought the solitude of i of these rooms and secretly shell her sparse shoulders with a little whip. But naturally the other little girls of the neighbourhood discovered this fairly soon—children never respect a person's need of being alone; and then they wanted to practise what Catherine did, because they had got into the habit of imitating her. Then they met in another out-of-the-way corner of the business firm and beat themselves, while Catherine said the "Our Male parent" and the "Hail Mary" as many times as she thought necessary. It was all delightfully secretive, and the little flock of small sisters of penitence must have felt highly edified and happy. It was also, as Raimondo remarks, a prologue to the future.

But sometimes Catherine longed to slip abroad from her playmates, especially the little boys. So, her mother told Raimondo subsequently, she used to go up the stairs and then quickly that Lapa was certain she did not touch the steps with her anxiety—it was every bit though she floated. This terrified her female parent, for she was afraid the child would fall and hurt herself. The longing for solitude, and the legends of the Desert Fathers nigh which she thought so much, made Catherine dream of a cavern in the desert where she could hide herself and soapbox only with God.

One beautiful summer morning Catherine provided herself with a loaf of staff of life and went out alone in the direction of her married sister'southward house most the Porta di San Ansano. But this time she went past it, and out of the gate, and for the first fourth dimension in her life the little child of the city looked out over the tranquility Valle Piatta and the greenish countryside. She was then used to her ain world, with the houses close in on each other along the steep, narrow streets, and the swarms of people on foot or horseback, the donkeys, the ox-carts and the teams of mules, the dogs, and—ever-present members of all Italian families—the cats, that Catherine well-nigh certainly idea that this green and peaceful world must be the desert. So she walked on and looked for a cave. Along the sides of the valley in that location were many grottoes in the limestone hills, and equally before long as she had plant one which she idea would be suitable she went in and knelt down. She began to pray as devoutly as she could. But in a little while an extraordinary feeling came over her—it was as though she were lifted up from the floor of the cave and floating under the roof. She was agape that this was perchance a temptation of the devil—that he was trying to frighten her out of praying. And then she continued to pray even more devoutly and determinedly. When she awoke from her trance and found herself on her knees on the flooring of the cavern information technology was the time of Nones—three o'clock in the afternoon, the hour when the Son of God died on the cross.

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