The Mystical Element of Religion, as studied in Saint Catherine of Genoa and her friends, Volume 1 (of 2)

by Freiherr von Friedrich Hügel

Here it is interesting to note the similarities and differences between this union, so happy and thus blessed with three children, and Catherine’s marriage, so unhappy and childless; between his thought of a religious vocation after his marriage was over, and Catherine’s before hers was begun; and between his fifteen years of residence in the midst of the incurable poor at the Chronici, and Catherine’s similar, though earlier and longer, life surrounded by the sick poor at the Pammatone. There is some likeness, too, in the matter of corporal mortification; although, with Vernazza, it is less acute, but is apparently kept up throughout his life, whilst with Catherine the active bodily mortifications are very prominent whilst they last, but are kept up thus for but a few years. As to obedience, we have here, for Vernazza, a more authoritative account than are any of the general statements on the same point with regard to Catherine; but in Catherine’s case many concrete instances give us a definite idea as to the character and limits of this docility, whereas all such instances are, in Vernazza’s case, restricted to the above incident alone. Yet this one example of his obedience shows how largely conceived, how simply divinatory and stimulative of his own deepest (although as yet but half-born) ideals, how ancillary to his own grace-impelled self-determination, and hence how truly liberating, were this direction and docility. The Venerable Cardinal de Berulle’s determination of Descartes to a philosophical career, and St. Philip Neri deciding Cardinal Baronius to write his entirely open-minded, indeed severe, Ecclesiastical Annals, would doubtless be true parallels to this particular relationship.

2. Ettore’s great Will of 1512.

We have already seen that Ettore was away from Genoa from about September 10, 1510, onwards, and that he was far away at the time of Catherine’s death. He may well have been away most of the year 1511, nor is there indeed any indication that he was in Genoa at the opening of Catherine’s deposito in May to July 1512. But he was certainly there in October 1512, for on the 16th of that month he drew up a munificent and far-sighted deed of gift, of one hundred shares of the Bank of St. George, to various charitable and public purposes.

Vernazza had already previously provided for his three daughters; and now orders that the interest of these other shares (a capital amounting, at the time, to the value of some £10,400) should, for the first nine years, be used by the “Protectors” of the Incurables for the benefit of that Institution, which thus occupies the first place in his solicitudes.

And then these shares should be allowed to multiply, by means of their accumulated interests and of the reinvestments of the latter, till they had reached the number of five hundred shares; and then, if and when an epidemic arose and the citizens fled from the city, the income of these shares for three years should be given to the Board of Health, for the use of those suffering from the epidemic. And when the shares had become two thousand, a commodious Lazaretto-house should be bought or built, with the income of not more than ten years. And after this, when the shares had become six thousand, one half or more of their interest should go towards the keep and nursing of the patients in this Lazaretto.

After these three stages devoted to the victims of the Plague, he determines the point at which the interest of the moneys shall be applied successively to providing marriage portions for honest poor girls of Genoa and of his home villages of Vernazza, Arvenza, and Cogoleto, preference being always given to the large clan of Vernazzi; to providing means for honest poor girls desiring to enter Convents that keep their Rule (monasteria observantiae), up to £100 each, with a similar preference as in the previous case.

And then he attends to the poor in general. To providing extra pay for the Notaries and Clerks of the “Uffizio della Misericordia,” “on condition that they devote all their time to the interests of the poor exclusively; and that they make diligent inquiry as to the means of the poor and their several characters, and find out whether they are in real want or not, and draw up a book in which all the poor, individuals and families, shall be inscribed clearly and by name,—in each case with a note indicating whether they belong to the first, second, or third degree of necessitousness.” To paying two Physicians and two Surgeons, for otherwise entirely gratuitous service of the sick poor alone, and doubling this pay during the prevalence of an epidemic, “but strictly enforcing the loss, in salary, of double the amount of any moneys they can be proved to have accepted from their patients.” All this, together with these four Doctors’ names, to be annually proclaimed in the streets by the town-crier. To paying a Dispenser and instituting a Dispensary, exclusively for the sick poor and entirely gratuitous, up to £2,000 a year for the latter. To appointing two Advocates and two Solicitors, for the exclusive and gratuitous service of the poor, in any and all cases of law-suits and molestations. The same proclamation as with the Doctors, to be made in this matter also. And to maintaining foundling boys and girls of Genoa, under provisions which are carefully laid down.

And then he turns to the three Institutions and their like with which he, as notary, as father and as philanthropist, has been specially identified. He fixes the point when two lectures in Philosophy or Theology, one by a Dominican and another by a Franciscan, are to be instituted, for every working day, in the Chapel of the Notaries of Genoa; when one free meal a month is to be provided for eight monastic and charitable institutions, amongst which are the Franciscans of the SS. Annunziata, the Benedictines of San Nicolò in Boschetto, the Canonesses of S. Maria delle Grazie, and the Hospital for Incurables,—“but the expenses are not to exceed £600 a year” (about six guineas each meal)—“nor is money to be given, but the eatables themselves are to be bought for, and given to, the institutions”; and when a Superintendent (Sindaco) of the Incurables is to be appointed, with £100 pay a year.

And then he comes back to the poor in general; and thinks also, (somewhat like unto his and Catherine’s ideal, St. Paul as “a citizen of no mean city,”) of the external appearance and utility of his native town of Genoa. The point is fixed when they are to “pay for the poor their hardest imposts, especially those on food”; and when they are to “repair, decorate, and enlarge the Cathedral Church of San Lorenzo,” and to “build a harbour-mole, improve the harbour, and attend to the decoration and look of the town (ornamentis civitatis), according to their discretion.”