VI
THE TRUTH ABOUT the much slandered medical science of the Middle Ages is that it had probably advanced as far as was possible in an age when no one had as yet dreamed of the microscope, and sciences such as chemistry and biology were in their infancy. The medieval medical schools were built on the empirical knowledge of generations—in some cases on experience which went back to prehistoric times. But as to the efficacy of the various medicines from the vegetable, animal and mineral kingdoms, or the warm or cold springs to which people came to take the waters, the scientists of the time had more or less to guess. As they had no means of analysing the remedies they used, any understanding of their effects could only be based on mere theorising and speculation, and was often quite fantastic. The medical student of those days turned towards the theology and philosophy of his time to discover why disgusting things such as bones and entrails of animals or people worked as cures in certain sicknesses, or why one could make effective medicines of flowers and roots and decoctions of bark and wood. Organic therapy and the discovery of the part played by the hormones have to a certain extent rehabilitated some of the cures of the Middle Ages, which the doctors of the last generation regarded as the crowning stupidity of a superstitious age. But as no one knew anything of such things as adrenalin or the sex hormones, the learned men of the Middle Ages reasoned that as it is good for the soul to raise itself above such feelings as fear and disgust, the same must apply to the body; and as they thought in analogies they sometimes prescribed cures which were quite worthless, simply because they were bound to cause aversion among normal people.
They had no means of ascertaining which were the valuable ingredients in the medicines they made from herbs, but some of these still have their place in pharmacology to-day—not to speak of their use in patent medicines. The doctors of the Middle Ages knew enough about infection to institute quarantine for travellers who came from places where epidemics were raging, even though their ideas about the properties of infection were at times quite extraordinary, and they were far from sure which illnesses were infectious—a question which has also been widely discussed in our own time, and upon which the last word has not yet been said. They knew that it could be fatal if a wound were infected, but they had no other method of cleansing a wound than the red-hot iron of the surgeon or the method used in the Bible—bathing it in wine and covering it with oil. Sometimes by good luck the alcohol in the wine worked as a weak disinfectant, and oil poured over the surface of the wound gave it, at any rate, protection against infection from the air. Nevertheless the patient’s lot was a hard one. Anaesthetics did not exist, although they had a few medicines which could dull pain to a certain extent, and besides these, generous doses of strong wine were prescribed.
But the will to alleviate the sufferings of mankind was as strong as at any time in the history of mankind. Much has been said and written of the cruelty of the Middle Ages. And it is true that when their passions were aroused men and women of those times could commit outrages and acts of cruelty against their enemies which are almost as horrible as those we know from our own time, with its totalitarian war, scientific torture practised by members of governments against people suspected of inimical attitudes towards the party in power, and the planning of the elimination of whole nations. On the whole the laws of the Middle Ages were nothing like so barbarous or unjust as those of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when authoritarian states could, with icy ruthlessness, torture and condemn to agonising deaths those wretches who had infringed, or were suspected of having infringed, their rules. The Church, despite all the human weaknesses and sins of her servants, was a source of mercy, and at times, at the most unexpected moments and through the most unlikely spokesmen, stood up and reminded the powers of this world that justice should be tempered with mercy. But the ruling powers—in the city-states, the empires, the principalities—were often unable to maintain good laws against the evil passions of self-willed men. Catherine had seen too much of lawlessness and the expressions of human passion both at home in Siena, and later everywhere in her native Italy and abroad, for her to be surprised at anything.
But side by side with these expressions of violence, of outraged pride or desire which broke out in bloodthirsty revenge and rapine, every child was used to seeing men and women who had offered their lives to the service of the downtrodden and wretched—the victims of man’s inhumanity to man as well as the victims of illness and catastrophe. Some of these messengers of divine grace had chosen this life of service while they were still in early youth, or even as small children; others had been hardened sinners who, in the very act of grasping at unlawful booty with bloody hands, had suddenly and dramatically been converted. There was a kind of universal consciousness that life was extremely uncertain in a community which could offer little protection to a man who did not belong to a family or a corporation, to whose accumulated strength he could add whatever strength he might have of his own. This laid the people of the Middle Ages open to sudden emotional reactions, which in certain circumstances could penetrate the very depths of the soul. Then the power of faith, all they had learned of religion, could suddenly break into their consciousness like fire which has been smouldering underground, and the conversion really be a new birth: the prince’s royal garments, the knight’s armour, the peasant’s rough smock, clothed a man who was entirely different from the man he had been a moment before. The story of St. John Gualbert is not so very extraordinary, it is merely one of the best known of the kind. John and his men were lying in ambush on the hill near the church of San Miniato waiting to kill the man who had murdered John’s brother. The enemy walked straight into the trap, and when he realised that he had fallen into the hands of a man from whom he could expect no mercy he threw himself shrieking into the dust of the road. Then John suddenly remembered that it was Good Friday: he leaped from his horse and fell on his knees beside his intended victim, took him in his arms and bade him go in peace. But when afterwards he hurried into San Miniato and fell on his face before the crucifix, then, according to the legend, Christ leaned down from the cross and embraced the young man who had forgiven as God forgives us. From his abbey in Vallombrosa St. John Gualbert seemed to send out silent waves of spiritual strength. He made peace between enemies and stilled bitter feuds and quarrels continually until his death in 1073.
The hospital of Santa Maria della Scala had flourished for at least two hundred years when Catherine Benincasa was a young girl. The friars and nuns who worked there had given everything they possessed to the poor and the sick. The republic of Siena had built the elaborate collection of buildings close to the cathedral, on one of the most valuable sites within the city walls. There were separate wards for men and women, lodgings for pilgrims, a house for foundlings, rooms where food for the poor was prepared and given out, storerooms and cellars. Brothers and sisters lived according to a monastic rule which had been adjusted to their vocation. As true sons of the merchant republic, the brothers had also worked out an extraordinarily effective system of book-keeping and administration of the revenue and expenses of the institution. It was made virtually impossible for a frail brother to enrich himself or his relations in the world at the expense of the heritage of the poor.
There were, however, several other hospitals in Siena, smaller and poorer, as well as a hospital for lepers, San Lazzaro, which lay outside the city walls, as was the custom at that time. The Mantellate and others cared for the sick in their homes. Catherine’s mission in the world, as it had been explained to her by Christ Himself, soon led her to the hospitals of Siena and to the homes where women lay suffering from horrible diseases.
Catherine would sometimes spend the night in La Scala hospital, when she had been working in the wards after the time when it was safe for a young woman to go alone through the streets of Siena. She had been allotted a tiny room down in the cellars; it was shown in our own day to visitors—at any rate up till immediately before the last war. When she st
ayed the night at La Scala, it was also to take over the watch in the small hours—the cold and comfortless hours before dawn when the patient’s life is at its lowest ebb and the nurses are worn out and without courage. Catherine’s biographers tell us that she gladly took on herself the charge of hopeless cases and the most difficult and ungrateful patients. The good Sisters of La Scala were more than willing to let her take them over as soon as they learned her indefatigable patience and her unquenchable good humour and serenity.
There were in those days, too, a number of patients in the hospitals whom an angel from heaven could not have satisfied: it is the same in our own day, and will always be so. These became Catherine’s patients, and she strove untiringly to do everything humanly possible to lessen their sufferings. She was always smiling and industrious, while the patients grumbled and swore at her and complained bitterly that she neglected them, was stupid, incompetent, and a hypocrite who went around pretending to be a saint. Old courtesans and superannuated prostitutes who had long ago been forced to retire from the life of pleasure to which they had belonged, found a bitter consolation in making the work of their young nurse as difficult as possible. Lying there in their hospital beds they were afraid: the aura of chastity and Christian charity which surrounded their nurse terrified them because they had offended God so continually, and they hated with their whole souls this woman whose help they could not forego.
A woman called Cecca who suffered from a revolting illness had taken refuge in one of the small hospitals when she could no longer be at home. The hospital was very poor, and Cecca possessed nothing, so the sisters could not give her more than the essentials of life. But her state grew worse and worse, and when it became obvious to everyone that she was suffering from leprosy none of them would nurse her as they were all afraid of infection. When Catherine heard of this she offered to nurse Cecca. She brought the sick woman medicine and food, prepared her meals and washed her whole stinking body, which was covered with scabs, before applying such salves as could to some extent lessen the irritation and smarting. But Cecca was a thoroughly unpleasant woman. Catherine promised to come to her every morning and evening as long as Cecca lived—and the poor woman perhaps found some miserable consolation for her own wretchedness in making this strong and healthy young girl as unhappy as she could. She soon began to treat Catherine as though she were her servant, and swore at her in a way that no decent housewife would ever dream of doing to her maid. Everything Catherine did for her was wrong. Sometimes when she had been praying rather longer in church she would come to Cecca later than usual. The old witch received her with oaths: “Welcome, noble lady, welcome queen and lady of Fontebranda—and where has the queen been all the morning? Isn’t the queen a paragon, always with the brothers in the church the whole day long; it seems as though Her Highness can never have enough of the monks. . . .” She did her best to annoy Catherine, to see if she would make an angry reply. But Catherine only hurried to light the fire, put the water on to warm and hung the cauldron on the hook, while she begged the other’s pardon: “Dear Monna Cecca, for the love of God do not be so angry, I shall have everything ready in a moment. . . .”
Quietly Catherine went about her duties for the leper, and Lapa’s daughter was a competent nurse. Everyone admired her ceaseless care for the awful old woman with the poisonous tongue and stinking sores. Catherine’s secret sorrow was for Cecca’s soul, for the old woman was ill prepared to receive God’s mercy, and she only became worse if anyone tried to talk to her of God. Catherine could only pray for her. Then Lapa intervened: “Wretched girl, you will be infected with leprosy. I forbid you absolutely to visit her any more!” Catherine, who trusted implicitly in God, tried to soothe her mother’s anger as well as she could, and to persuade her that there was no danger of her being infected. But one day she could not help seeing it: her hands, which had touched the leper daily for so long, showed the sure signs of leprosy. The girl did not waver a moment. She cared nothing for what might happen to her body as long as she could do her Bridegroom a service which she knew would please Him. She knew by heart His words from the Sermon on the Mount—to fail Cecca now because she had these sores on her hands, would be the same as to fail Him.
Cecca died. It seems as though Raimondo believed that Catherine’s sacrifice finally made sufficient impression on the old woman for her to listen to the consolation the girl whispered in her ears as she died in her arms. The corpse was horrible, and Catherine washed and clothed it and laid it in the coffin. And when the Mass for the Dead had been read she buried the leper with her own hands, for there was no one else who would do it. But when she rose from the new grave and looked at her hands, which were dirty from the last act of charity she could show Cecca, there was not a sign of the disease upon them. They were as white and beautiful as ever. Right up to her death, when terrible self-imposed agonies and ceaseless hard work, pain and sickness had ravaged her body, Catherine’s hands remained unusually beautiful.
The patients in the hospital did what they could to try Catherine’s patience, but for a very long time she had been absolutely convinced that those who tried to make life unpleasant for her were in fact her greatest friends, for her only wish was to follow in her Lord’s footsteps, and His way on earth had been the way of suffering. He was misunderstood by the precious souls for whom He had been made man so that He might save them: they had slandered Him, betrayed Him and finally condemned Him to death as a criminal. A hard way? No, not for those who try to follow where He has gone before; has He not said “I am the Way”? So the whole way is Jesus Christ, who is love, light, sweetness and holy joy, and the way to heaven is like heaven itself.
Nevertheless, although Catherine steadfastly believed that it was a joy to be able to suffer for Jesus’s sake, she could not prevent her heart of flesh from being hurt to the very core when her sisters in the order turned against her. Palmerina was a Mantellata, a rich widow who had given everything she owned to the Misericordia hospital. For many years she had lived a life of prayer and penitence. She was a very pious woman, but when the devil whispered to her that she was good and pious, she listened to him. . . . The whole town was now talking about this girl who was supposed to be a saint—a girl who was always gadding about the town, and was far too familiar not only with her women friends, but with a lot of young men too, not excluding some of the young monks, moreover. Palmerina could not rid herself of the thought that Catherine was not as holy as she made out, and all these supernatural gifts of grace, visions and ecstasies and all the rest—Palmerina had never experienced anything of the kind, and one must believe that God who is just would sooner have favoured Palmerina. . . . She fell ill and Catherine came and offered to nurse her. Palmerina had her chased from her door with taunts. Catherine was by now an experienced judge of souls, and could not help seeing that if Palmerina hated her it must be because she was jealous. She lay at her Bridegroom’s feet and begged and prayed for the dying woman’s soul: “It were better that I had never been born than that I should be guilty of the damnation of this sister of mine. O, gentle Jesus, do not let this soul which You have created in Your own image be lost for the sake of my sins.”
Although Catherine was not called to the deathbed of this sister she was allowed to see in a vision that in her last hour Palmerina had repented of all her sins and received the Last Sacrament. Afterwards Jesus let His bride see this soul which she had saved by her prayers. Although Palmerina was not yet clothed in that glory which the soul receives when it sees God as He is—she was still in purgatory—she had regained that beauty which a soul receives at its creation and at baptism. But even that was a beauty so wonderful that, as Catherine said later to Raimondo, it was impossible to describe it in words. Jesus said: “Dear daughter, do you not think that she is lovable and wonderfully gracious? Who would not suffer all the torments in the world to win so glorious a creation? I who am perfect beauty, from which all beauty radiates, I loved the beautiful souls sufficiently to come down to earth
and give My blood to buy them. How much more ought you to struggle to help each other so that such wonderful creations shall not be lost. I let you see this soul so that you may have an even greater longing to save everyone, and strive to draw others to this work, with the grace which I shall give you.”
Catherine was so transported by this sight that she begged her Bridegroom to give her grace to see the beauty of the souls among whom she lived, so that she might be even more constant in her work for their salvation. The Lord promised her that because she had been so zealous to save Palmerina’s soul He would in future enlighten her spirit to see the beauty or ugliness of the souls around her. “You shall with your inner senses understand the condition of these souls just as clearly as with your physical senses you can understand the condition of their bodies. And you shall be able to see not only the souls of those around you, but the souls of all those for whom you pray.”