Chapters VII to XXI describe the second stage, that of Conversion and Transformation, which (notwithstanding its appearance of instantaneous and complete attainment of its end) is here presented as, in reality, by far the longer and the more difficult, although the alone fruitful and happy one. Chapters VII to XIII describe the first step. Chapters VII to IX give us the Soul’s longing for Light; the spark of Pure Love shown to it, on its conversion-day; and a long address by the Soul to the Body and Self-Love, and the answers of these two.[388] In this address the Soul for the first time speaks of “the Spirit.”[389] Chapter X makes the Soul for the first time address “the Lord,” “O Signore,” on the one hand: and her “Humanity” “O Umanità,” on the other.[390] In Chapters XI and XII the Soul stands alone, face to face with the Lord, who appears to it in two successive visions,—first as Christ alive and walking along all stained with blood from head to foot; and, on a later occasion, as Christ evidently motionless and presumably dead, with His five fountain-wounds, which are sending drops of burning blood towards mankind. And these two visions, so carefully kept apart, doubtless typify the two periods of Catherine’s Convert life,—the two steps of her second stage: the moving, scourged and cross-bearing Christ stands for the active penance of the first four years or fourteen months; and the motionless, crucified Christ stands for the passive purification of the rest of her life.[391] Chapter XIII has no dialogue, but describes her active penances and good works, and mentions the Soul, Humanity, and the Spirit.[392]
And then, up to the end, in Chapters XIV to XXI, which give us the second step, the dialogue reappears, but now no more between the three Dramatis Personae (Soul, Body, and Self-Love) of the pre-Conversion-Period; but between the two interlocutors of the post-conversion time (the Spirit and Humanity).[393] And there is here but one sporadic mention, an invocation, of “the Lord” (p. 214c).
Thus only after its Conversion does the Soul itself become aware of, or does it name, either the Spirit or its “Humanity”; and only after the two successive Christ-Visions do these two new experiences and conceptions entirely replace the three old ones of Soul, Body, and Self-Love. In a word, we have here, carefully carried through, the scheme, so clearly enunciated by Battista Vernazza in 1554, of the two successive divisions effected by God in Man, during the process of Man’s purification: first, the separation (division) of the Soul from the Body; and then the separation (division) of the Spirit from the Soul.[394] And, in strict accordance with this scheme, the Soul here becomes conscious of being, in its upper reaches, Spirit, only on the day that it has broken away from the domination of the downward-tending Body, and of Self-Love. And once the Soul has thus affirmed the Spirit and denied the Body, the “Body” and the “Soul” cease to be directly mentioned; the one term “Humanity” now takes the Soul’s and the Body’s place. For now the Soul, in so far as it has still not completely identified itself with the Spirit, does not any more attach itself directly to the Body and the Body’s pleasures,—to, as it were, the upper fringe of the Body,—but to the sensible-spiritual consolations which are the necessary concomitants and consequences of the Soul’s affirmation and acceptance of the Spirit,—hence, as it were, to the lower fringe of the Spirit. “I would have thee know,” the Spirit now says to Catherine, “that I fear much more an attachment to the spiritual than to the bodily taste and feeling. Man goes his way ‘feeding’ his spiritual sensuality upon the things which proceed from God, and yet these things are a very poison for the Pure Love of God.”[395]
3. The “Dialogo” intensifies or softens certain narratives and sayings given by the “Vita.”
Now these interesting forty pages of the first Dialogo derive (with the sole exception of three little touches) their entire historical materials from the Vita e Dottrina, and, indeed, from but those parts of this corpus which already appear in MSS. A and B, and in the previous pages of MS. C itself. But all these materials have been re-thought, re-pictured, re-arranged throughout, by a new, powerful, and experienced mind, a mind dominated by certain very definite, schematic conceptions as to the constitution of the human personality, the nature of holiness, and the laws of its growth, and which is determined to find or form concrete examples of these conceptions, in and from the life of Catherine.
(1) Cases of intensifying.
There are, first, five cases of the intensifying of authentic Vita-accounts, intensifications necessary, or at least ancillary, to the scheme underlying the whole Dialogo-composition.
As to the pre-conversion sinfulness, during her second “week,” Catherine’s soul is made to say: “In a short time I was enveloped in sin; and, abiding in that snare, I lost the grace (of God) and remained blind and heavy, and from spiritual I became all earthly.”[396] Yet there is no evidence that Catherine, even at that time, ever committed grave sin; nor does there exist an authentic saying of hers which, however intense its expressions of contrition, conveys an impression really equivalent to this passage.—As to the form of her contrition, “so greatly was this soul alienated (from her own self) and submerged in the sight of the offence of God, that she no longer seemed a rational creature, but a terrified animal.”[397] Yet the earlier accounts, which certainly do not minimize here, keep well within the limits of normal, though intense, human feeling and expression of feeling.—As to the forcible means taken by her to overcome her fastidiousness in the matter of cleanliness and in the sense of taste, “she would put the impurities into her mouth, as though they had been precious pearls.”[398] Yet the original versions, drastic enough in all conscience, nowhere imply that there was any such relish, even of a merely apparent kind.—As to her post-conversion poverty, the Spirit says to her: “Thou shalt work to provide for thy living,” and the narrative declares: “The Spirit made her so poor, that she would have been unable to live, had not God provided for her by the means of alms.”[399] Yet we know from her wills that (though the Hospital authorities gave her free lodging, and perhaps, at first, free board as well) she retained, up to the last, an appreciable little income, and herself conferred many an alms out of these her own means.
Nevertheless, in each of these cases, the Dialogo exaggeration is suggested by some phrase or word in the Vita which has been taken up into the new context and medium of this other mind, and has come to mean something curiously (though often in form but slightly) different from that older account.—Thus, in this fourth instance, the Vita-accounts had said: “nel principio di sua conversione, molto si esercitò.” “Viveva ancora molto sottomessa ad ogni creatura.” “Quantunque ella fosse in tutto dedicata ed occupata negli esercizii di esso Spedale, nondimeno mai volle godere ne usare una minima cosa di quello per viver suo; ma, per quel poco che abbisognava, si serviva della povera sostanza sua: onde ben si scorgeva che il suo dolce Amore era quello il quale operava in lei ogni cosa per vera unione.” “Si esercitò nelle opere pie, cercando i poveri, essendo condotta delle Donne della Misericordia, e le davano danari ed altre provvisioni.”[400] The Dialogo-writer has worked all this up as follows: “Io (lo Spirito) ti avviso primieramente voler io che tu pruovi che cosa sia esser ubbidiente, acciò tu divenghi umile e soggetta ad ogni creatura; ed acciochè ti possi esercitare, lavorerai per provedere al viver tuo.” “Primieramente la fece tanto povera, che non avrebbe potuto vivere, se Dio non l’avvesse provveduta per via di limosine. Poi quando le Signore della Misericordia l’addimandavano per andare a’poveri … ella sempre con loro andava.”[401] I have italicized the words taken over by the Dialogo. Thus her own poor substance (i.e. her own modest income), and the money given to her by the Misericordia-ladies for distribution among the poor, becomes a substance, alms and money, given to herself as to a poor person.