Thus here again we get an impressive instance of one profound sense in which the grain of wheat of any great and wholesome influence must die. For only if and when broken up, selected from, and assimilated to and within, another mind’s and heart’s life and system, can that older living organism, which yet was, in the first instance, so moving just because of its unique organization round a centre possible only to that one other soul, truly and permanently develop and enrich a living centre not its own. And so in this case too: Catherine’s influence is all the more real in Ettore and Battista, because the latter are in no sense simple copies of the former. She has lived on in them, at the cost of becoming in part ignored, in part absorbed, by them: and continues to influence them through certain elements of her life that have been assimilated, and through the reinterpreted image of that life’s historic reality, an image which is ever reinviting them to do and to be, mutatis mutandis, what she herself had done and been.
But, indeed, (even apart from all direct influence exercised by Catherine’s personality upon them, or by them upon Catherine’s legend), these two lives are interesting as further authentic illustrations of Catherine’s school and spirit, and, indeed, of the mystical element of religion in general.
I shall first take the father, devoting three sections to him.
VI. Ettore Vernazza’s Life, from 1509 to 1512.
Introductory.
We possess, if few, yet quite first-rate materials for the reconstruction of the remaining part of Vernazza’s life. For there are his own testamentary provisions as to the disposition of his property, (as elaborate and vividly characteristic as Mr. Cecil Rhodes’s), drawn up in 1512 and 1517, and occupying twelve closely-printed octavo pages; and there is a long, homely, and admirably realistic description of his life and character, written by Battista, not, it is true, till 1581, when she was eighty-four years of age, and nearly sixty years after her father’s death, but which is, there is no reason to doubt, perfectly truthful, generally accurate, and all the more moving, in that the living man and his large-hearted heroism were thus continuing to touch and inspire his daughter, at the very moment of her writing, with a finely restrained emotion, of deeds and personalities witnessed, by her own eyes and spirit, over half a century before. I shall take the several documents, not each as they stand but piecemeal, according to the dates of the events recorded or of the legal act performed.
1. Ettore’s married life; and thought of the monastic state.
“My Father and Mother,” writes Battista, “lived together” from 1496 to 1509 “in the greatest peace, since they wished each other every kind of good; so that I do not remember ever having heard one word of dissension pass between them.—And although my Mother was a beautiful and attractive young woman, and was loved by persons deserving of esteem, yet she would stay at home, alone, with her children. And my Father acted similarly, except when he was obliged to go out on some business. Otherwise I do not remember having ever noticed either of them going out to some late party (veglià), as is the custom in Genoa.”—And she tells how “he was so abstemious” in the matter of food, “that he was wont strictly to limit the amount of bread that he ate. But my Mother, noticing this, had the breads baked very substantial.”
“And when my Mother died” in the spring of 1509, “my Father thought of becoming a Lateran (Augustinian) Canon. But, on asking the advice of Padre Riccordo da Lucca,” (I take it, himself a Lateran Canon,) “who was just then preaching in Genoa with very great fervour, the latter did not encourage him to carry out his intention, observing, as he did, my Father’s inclination for founding works of charity.” And her father proved docile. Indeed she says of him generally that “he greatly mortified his self-will, and for this reason had put himself under obedience to a priest, who had the reputation of being exceptionally devoted (molto buono), and obeyed him as though he had been the very voice of God.” “And my Father then gave up his own house, and went to live in rooms which had been got ready for him in the Hospital for Incurables, of which he was one of the Managers and indeed one of the first Builders. And here he always lived, when he was in Genoa; here he died; and this institution he made his heir.”[314]