Yet another of the sons who were nearest to her heart had left her. And Raimondo was to remain in Genoa. The Pope had again had plans of sending him to the King of France. Then came the news that the King of Aragon had imprisoned Urban’s ambassador to the Spanish King, and once again Raimondo’s courage failed. But Catherine was resigned—she must accept the fact that she could not measure him by her own yardstick. And her last letters to him show that she loved him as much as before. If he had not in him the iron of which martyrs are made, she knew for certain that Our Lord Jesus Christ had determined him for other work in His vineyard, and knew that there he would do his uttermost.
However busy she was with politics, Catherine always found time to write to her private friends; it must have been a great consolation for her, knowing as she did how few of the great ones of this world would listen to her attempts to convince them, if her advice did not coincide with their worldly interests. But she wrote tender and intimate letters to the tailor Francesco Pippino and his wife, Monna Agnese—good friends since her first visit to Florence. To Ristori Canigiani, the brother of her “youngest son” Barduccio, she gives advice as to how he can serve God in the position he has in the world, as a married man, father and head of a great family. But whatever his position in the world, he wished to serve God to the best of his ability, and Catherine advised him practically and tenderly. She sent a warning to the pious wife of the tailor—Agnese wished to practise strict self-denial, but Catherine begged her to guard against any exaggeration: “The blessed Christ is our peace, He who made Himself a mediator between God and us.” “Read in the sweet book which is He” (the New Testament), and the doubt which she and her husband have felt after reading some new prayer-books will disappear. If there is anything in these books which is against the teachings of the Church and the saints, leave them alone.
She naturally exchanged letters regularly with Stefano Maconi and with Neri, who was absent on the Pope’s and her errands. When Andrea di Vanni, the painter who had once painted a sketch of her as a young girl on a pillar in the Dominican church at home, was chosen as Capitano del Popolo in Siena in 1379, Catherine wrote him a long letter, saying that she longed to see her friend become a just and good ruler. Yet another of her letters to Andrea di Vanni was most probably written in the autumn of 1379.
XXVI
IN JANUARY 1380 Catherine moved into a somewhat larger house near Santa Maria sopra Minerva, the street which is now called Via di Sta. Chiara. She wrote to Neri that she hoped to be home in Siena again for Easter. But it is possible that she had a presentiment that it was not to be so. “In Your nature, Eternal Divinity, I have learned to know my own nature”, she whispered in one of the prayers which one of her disciples wrote down while she prayed in ecstasy. “My nature is fire.”
It was almost burned out. The thirty-three-year-old woman was so emaciated as to be almost a skeleton; the skin seemed to cling to the bones. Monna Lapa maintained that Catherine was not only so thin that she looked like a shadow, but she had also grown much shorter than she used to be. The mother’s heart must have bled when she looked at this daughter who had once been so lovely and so strong. The Blessed Sacrament was now her only food. She could not manage to swallow anything else, not even a little water, although her breath was like hot air from a glowing furnace. Once again, and for the last time, the hidden fires were to leap up, and then the soul consumed the long-suffering body and flew off to become one with the “Love which moves the sun and all the stars.”
Her death-agony began when the Romans at the beginning of January rebelled against the Pope and threatened to take his life. Broken with sorrow at this new horror, Catherine could do nothing but pray her Bridegroom not to allow such a terrible crime to occur. While she prayed, she saw with her inner sight how the whole town was flooded with devils who tried to incite the people to patricide. They screamed at the virgin: “Damned woman, do you dare to stand up against us? Do not doubt we shall see to it that you die a terrible death.” She never replied, only continued to pray, for the people and for the Pope. After some days she had a vision, and with her inner hearing she heard her Lord answer: “Let this people who daily mock My name fall into this sin. Then I will take revenge and crush them, for My justice cannot let Me tolerate their abominations any longer.” “O most merciful Lord, You know how almost the whole world has risen in fury against Your Bride whom You bought with Your precious blood. You know how few there are who support and protect her. You must know how usurpers and the enemies of the Church long for Your Vicar to be overthrown and killed. If this misfortune happens, not only this people but the whole of Christendom and Your Church will suffer terribly. Turn Your wrath from us and do not despise Your people whom You have redeemed at so high a price.”
Several days and nights passed in this way. Catherine begged her Lord insistently to have mercy on His people, but the Lord answered that for the sake of justice He could not hear her prayer, and devils threatened and raged at the saint. She prayed so intensely that she said afterwards that her body would have fallen to pieces if the Lord had not bound it with His strength as the cooper binds hoops round a barrel. According to what Catherine wrote to Raimondo about those days, her visions and locutions were almost entirely intellectual; they practically never took the form of pictures or sounds. Finally she triumphed with her prayers. She had answered her Bridegroom: “Since it is impossible for Your justice to be denied fulfilment, let the punishment of these people fall on my body. Lord, hear Your servant-woman—I am willing to drink this cup of death and suffering for the glory of Your Name and for Your Church. I have always wished for this, as Your Truth can witness, and from this wish sprang the love which the whole of my heart and the whole of my soul have felt for You.”
After this prayer, which she made in her thoughts, not in words, the voice of her Lord in her soul was silent. But she knew by the silence and peace which filled her that her prayers had been heard.
From this time the troubles in the city began to diminish, and after some days Rome was once again more or less peaceful—no Roman had ever known it completely peaceful. But this spiritual battle had worked complete havoc with Catherine’s body. She looked like a corpse as she lay and rested on her bed of rough planks. Her children were in despair, for they had given up all hope that their beloved mother could live. But each morning she got up and walked the whole way from her house to St. Peter’s. The only relaxation she allowed her tortured body was that the Mass which was celebrated daily at her private altar was now said as late as at terce—about nine o’clock. She remained in prayer at the tomb of the apostles until vespers, and then went home and fell on her bed, unable to move.
In the entrance to the old basilica of St. Peter’s, there was a mosaic of Giotto’s, called “Navicella”—St. Peter’s ship. Catherine must have seen it hundreds of times, sometimes with deep thoughts, sometimes without noticing it. But when she received the vision which assured her that her heavenly Bridegroom had accepted her prayer to sacrifice her life, the impression of this mosaic may have helped to decide the pictorial form of her vision.
Sexagesima Sunday fell on January 29. Catherine was on her knees in St. Peter’s, where she had remained motionless for hours. But suddenly at vespers her friends saw that she collapsed, as though an overwhelming burden had been laid on her shoulders and crushed her body with its weight. When they tried to help her to her feet she was so weak that she could not stand. Supported by two of her sons she was more carried than led home. When they lifted her onto her bed it looked as though she were dying.
Tommaso Caffarini’s description is repeated by William Flete: “As Catherine knelt at the tomb of St. Peter that Sunday at vespers, while the winter evening began to creep in over the city, she felt how Jesus Christ laid the whole weight of His Church, la Navicella, on the thin shoulders of His faithful bride.”
And the crushing pain was sweet too—indescribably sweet. It meant that He had accepted the sacrifice she had offered Hi
m in love and desire. It meant too that He would soon come and lead her from “this dark world” to the land of her desire and eternal union with Him.
The following evening Catherine dictated a letter to Pope Urban. In a momentary pause between shattering spiritual experiences, visions of God’s majesty and the terrible power of the evil ones, racked by spiritual and physical pains, Catherine sent this last short message to the man whose virtues and faults she had measured with perfectly clear insight, and to whom she firmly and steadfastly believed that God had entrusted the office which she considered the greatest and most important on earth. The letter, with its mixture of tenderness and anxious predictions based on Urban’s character, of sound common sense and deep spiritual insight, is wonderfully clear and purposeful. This time she does not call herself the serving-woman and slave of God’s servants, but simply the poor, unworthy little daughter of her dearest and most Holy Father. She says how earnestly she wishes to see him follow in the footsteps of the great St. Gregory, so that, enlightened by the sweet light of Truth, he may guide his flock with such great wisdom that he may never need to reconsider any of his actions or commands. She has heard of the bitter and offensive answer which the Prefect of Rome has given to the Pope’s ambassadors, and advises him to call a meeting of the leaders of the seven districts of the city and some of the nobles. “I beg you, Most Holy Father, continue to meet them as equals, as you have done up to now, and be wise and bind them to you with the bonds of love. When they come to you to tell of the decisions they have made in their councils, receive them with the greatest possible friendliness and explain to them what Your Holiness thinks most important. Forgive me if my love makes me say things which had been better unsaid, but I know that you ought to understand the character of your children, the Romans, who will be drawn to you and bound more easily by goodness than by hard words and power. You know, too, that it is most important for you and for the Holy Church to keep this people faithful and obedient to Your Holiness. For this is the seat of our faith’s origin and its head. I beg you, too, be most careful never to make any promises which you are not quite sure you can keep, and so escape the difficulties which would follow such an action. Dearest, Most Holy Father, allow me to say these things. I hope that your humility and your goodness will make you receive these words without anger or scorn, because they come from a poor miserable woman—he who is humble does not allow the personality of the adviser to be an obstacle, he only thinks of God’s glory, of Truth and his own salvation.”
Finally she names an incident which occurred in Siena when the Pope’s ambassador was there and caused great annoyance. (What this incident was is not known.) Catherine warns against measures which can cause bitterness in the feeble hearts of men. What the Pope needs is a man of peace, not a warrior, even though this man may have acted from a praiseworthy but exaggerated desire for justice. But Urban must remember that men are weak, and use a medicine more suitable for healing sickness. “Remember how ruin spread over the whole of Italy because of the wicked rulers who behaved in a manner which was harmful to God’s Church; and yet they were not removed from their positions. I know that you know it. May Your Holiness understand what has to be done! Courage, courage, for God does not despise your desire and the prayers of His servants. I say no more. I ask humbly for your blessing. Sweet Jesus, Jesus Love.”
It had been her intention to write to the three cardinals too, but now her physical pains became too violent. Exhausted, she remained silent. But after a while the demons began to attack her with terrible fury—she who was no more than a worm in the dust had dared to tear out of their claws all they had possessed so long, even inside Holy Church herself. In addition to the physical pain, there came too an agony of soul so terrible that she had to escape from her cell and seek refuge in the chapel in the house. Just as during that time in her youth when devils were allowed to persecute her, it seemed to her now that her own cell was the place where they had the most power over her.
She got up, but could not walk, and supported herself on Barduccio’s shoulder. But she was immediately thrown down, and while she lay on the floor it seemed to her that her soul left her body. Not, as before, when her soul had escaped its cage of flesh and blood and enjoyed a foretaste of the blessedness of souls which have come into possession of the Highest Good; it seemed to her now as though her body did not belong any more to her, but to another. When she saw the grief of the boy who was with her she was astonished, but could use her body to speak to him and say, “Son, do not be afraid.” But she saw that her tongue was as unable to move as her limbs; it was as though her body were lifeless. So she let her body lie there and fastened the eyes of her intellect on the abyss of the Trinity. Her mind was filled with thoughts of the Church’s need and all that Christians everywhere in the world suffered and needed. She cried to God and begged confidently for His help for all those whose suffering and want she felt as if it were her own. She prayed too for each of her spiritual children separately. The devils were dispersed and she heard in her soul the voice of God’s Lamb: “Be confident that I shall fulfil the desire of all My servants. I wish you to understand that I am a good Lord. I act as the potter who breaks up and re-forms his vases. Therefore have I broken the vase of your body, and I shall re-form it in the garden of the Holy Church. It will be different from what it was before.” And the divine Potter broke her with grace and with words which she could repeat to no one—not even to Raimondo.
Her body began to breathe again; it looked as though life had returned. But when she had been carried down to a room on the ground floor, a new and terrible horror came over her. It was as though the room were full of demons, and she had to fight the hardest fight she had ever been submitted to, for they wanted her to believe that it was not she but an unclean spirit who lived in her body. She did not flinch from the fight, but the whole time her soul repeated with intense tenderness: “Deus in adjutorium meum intende, Domine, ad adjuvandum me festina”—God come to my help, O Lord hasten and come to my help—words from the daily Office which she had always loved.
The storm raged for two days, but her desire and her spirit never wavered; her soul was united with its goal, but her body was as though annihilated. On the day of the Purification of Our Lady God showed her the great dangers which threatened His Church, and told her to hear Mass before daybreak each day during Lent. It seemed impossible that a woman so ill could manage to do so; but for those who obey God all things are possible.
All this is described by Catherine in the last letter she sent to her friend Fra Raimondo, in Genoa. The letter is written about the middle of February, and she knew it would be a last farewell. Although she did not know what God would do with her, she was completely happy, not in spite of her sufferings, but as it were on a different plane in her soul—for at the same time she was filled with grief and anxiety over the miseries of the times, anxious for those she loved, and suffering intolerable physical pain. But these physical pains were perhaps a new way of winning the martyr’s crown, for she knew that she would die of them and of the love of God and His Church with which her soul overflowed.
Anxiety for those she loved—she speaks to Raimondo of her anxiety for him, her father and her son, whom the beloved Virgin Mary has given her. Let him die from all personal feelings, and consecrate himself body and soul to the service of the Church. “Always be prepared in all situations. You will not be able to enjoy much of the solitude of the cell, but it is my will that you carry with you everywhere the cell in your heart, for you know that when we are enclosed in it the enemy cannot harm us.” He must be a model for all priests. The voluntary poverty in which he has always lived, his generosity and kindness to the poor, must be ceaselessly renewed and rejuvenated in perfect humility. “Love the table of the cross and nourish yourself with the soul’s food in holy vigilance and ceaseless prayer; say Mass every day unless you are absolutely prevented. Avoid vain and useless talk. Cast your weakness and slavish fear from you, for the Holy Church has
no use for such servants.”
She had already finished her letter to Raimondo with a loving farewell, in which she expressed her deep love for his soul and her hope that he might be like a candle set on a high candlestick, and that he might never retreat before persecution, but be brave, brave in Jesus Christ; and then she adds a kind of postscript. She has asked him for pardon for her many faults—disobedience, ingratitude, lack of respect, and also for this letter if it makes him sad, and she asks him not to be unhappy if they cannot meet, as long as they can pray for each other. He is to take in hand all her writings, and she begs him to pray for her and also to make others pray for her. She ended the letter, but then it seemed to her that there was something else she had to say, and the next day she had a couple of pages added. They dealt with her anxiety for Pope Urban—she could speak freely of it to Raimondo.
It is as though she were forced to do it, to say a little more about her longing to stand before the eternal Trinity, of her boundless love and anxiety for the Church on earth which she was soon to leave, and which was still so full of abuses and false servants. Christ had spoken of Pope Urban in her innermost soul: “I permit him to cleanse the Church with the violent means he uses and with the fear which he awakes in his subordinates, but others shall come who shall serve the Church with love, and they shall make her rich. He [Urban] shall be for the Bride what fear is for the soul, for the soul is first cleansed of its vices by fear, but later it is filled and adorned by love.” “Say to My Vicar that he must try to make his nature milder and that he must be willing to grant peace to all those who are willing to be reconciled to him. Say to the cardinals, the pillars of the Holy Church, that if they really wish to compensate for all that has been laid waste, they must unite and stand together, so that they form a cape to cover their father’s faults.” She had been as though drowned in the divine mysteries in a way which she had never before experienced, and she was so overwhelmed that she was forced to get up and go down to the oratory in her house.