The fifth case concerns the affections. In the Vita-proper nothing is more characteristic of Catherine, up to the spring of 1509, than her swift and deep affective sympathy, and the fearless forms of its manifestation. True, Catherine “would” (certainly up to 1490, perhaps more or less up to 1496) “abide at times,” up to six hours on end, “as though dead.” But, “on hearing herself called, she would suddenly arise and betake herself, in answer, to whatever was required of her, however small a service this might be.” And indeed “she served the sick with most fervent affection:” thus she attended throughout a week upon a poor pestiferous woman; and at the end, “unable further to contain herself, kissed” the dying woman “upon the mouth with great affection of heart, and so caught the pestilential fever, and well-nigh died of it.”[402]—Then, too, there is the Vita’s quite general, indeterminate remark, “she (Catherine) felt no pain at the deaths of her (two elder) brothers and of her sisters” (the latter should be “sister,” unless, perhaps, a sister-in-law is included) in 1502.[403] But her extant wills have shown us how actively thoughtful she remained, even in 1506 and 1509, for her brother, nephews and nieces, and humble retainers; and the deeply affectionate scenes with Marco and Argentina occurred between 1503 and 1506. Marco, the poor navvy, was dying “of a cancer in the face,” and Catherine, at Argentina’s asking, “as though with prompt obedience, betook herself to him”; and he “threw his arms round Catherine’s neck, and, pressing her with sobs, seemed unable to have done with weeping.[404] And then, still weeping, with great tenderness he besought Catherine to adopt his wife as her spiritual daughter,” and Catherine did so, and “loved this spiritual daughter much.”[405]—Only in the very late actions, the change as to her burial-place (Will of March 1509), and the exclusion of all her attendants on January 10, and of most of them on and after August 27, 1510,[406] are there indications of any absence or renunciation of tender and spontaneous human affection.
But here again the Dialogo both closely presses and profoundly changes the original accounts. For here the Spirit declares to her: “in these exercises” of work among the poor, “I shall keep thee … as though thou wast dead. I will not allow thee to make friends with any one, nor that thou shouldst have any particular affection for any relative; but I want thee to love all men, and this without affection, both poor and rich, both friends and relatives. I do not want thee, in thine interior, to know one person from the other, nor would I have thee go to any one from motives of friendship; it will suffice to go when thou art called.” And thus “she went, when the Misericordia-ladies asked her to go into dwellings that would have frightened away all ordinary mortals. But she, on the contrary, deliberately touched these sick (voleva toccarli), for the purpose of giving them some refreshment to soul and body.”[407]—Note how skilfully the call, and the going at the call, the affection and its spontaneous manifestations in the original accounts, have been altered and crossed by the Dialogue’s re-statement.—Here again we are strongly reminded of Battista, in her letter to the Signora Andronica in 1575, encouraging her to “abandon all things,” her children included, “interiorly,” and “to mortify the most pleasing consolation which arises from the children’s company.” Indeed, already in 1554, Battista has, in one of her own Colloquies, refused to accept every avoidable consolation arising from her pure election by God.[408] Only by such a reference of these Dialogo-passages to Battista, the many-sided, the ever-affectionate daughter and public-spirited woman, can we come to see them in a wider context; indeed only thus can they cease to be profoundly repulsive.
(2) Cases of softening.
There are two instances of the softening of (doubtless authentic) doctrinal sayings given by the Vita-proper. Her evidently impulsive exclamation: “I would not have grace or mercy, but justice and vengeance exercised against the malefactor,”—has here become: “She did not attach any importance to her sins, on the ground of the punishment awaiting them, but solely because they had been enacted against the infinite goodness of God.”—And her bold declaration: “If any creature could be found which did not participate in the divine goodness, that creature would be as malignant as God is good,” here reads: “The soul bereft of the Divine love becomes well-nigh as malignant as the Divine love is good and delightful. I say ‘well-nigh,’ for God shows it a little mercy.”[409] The proclamation of some moral good even in lost souls, is thus weakened to an admission of some consolation in the latter.
4. Re-statement of the Conversion-experiences of March 1474.
But it is in the matters of Catherine’s Conversion in the Convent-Chapel, on March 22, 1474, and of the Vision of the Bleeding Christ in the Palazzo Adorno, soon after, that the Dialogo’s transformation of the Vita-accounts reaches its highest interest. I give it here as the chief of many such re-statements which I have carefully analyzed.
Hence D. gives but one exclamation as to “world” and “sins,” and constructs this out of the two (mutually differing) exclamations of the same kind given by V., the second of which now stands in V. after the Bleeding-Christ episode. Whilst spacing all out, D. keeps to the order and context of V.’s paragraphs. And D. utilizes the curious, silent change from the moving Christ to the affixed Christ in V.’s account of the single vision in the Palace, so as to constitute two perfectly distinct visions. The Cross of both these doublets of V., (the “Croce” which, in the first part of V.’s single account, is “in spalla,” on His shoulder; and the Cross which, in the second part of the same account, He is nailed to), has, in D., disappeared from both separate visions. And yet the Cross hovers about the first vision, here transformed into a “carico alle spalle,” a load upon Catherine’s shoulders,—an oppression on her mind; and is presupposed in the second vision, since those “five fountains sending forth burning blood” are, of course, the wounds of Christ, whilst He hangs affixed to the Cross as described in V.’s second part. And the “Signore piovendo tutto sangue,” and the “rivoli di sangue, sparso per amore, il che accese nel cuore tanto fuoco,” of V., have, in D., become “quelle cinque fontane di Christo, le quali mandavano goccie d’affuocato sangue e di acceso amore.”—This fountain-imagery is derived from numerous authentic sayings and “viste” of Catherine as to the “living Fount (fonte) of the divine goodness,” or “of infinite love,” and “the clear waters coming from the divine fount.” The very word “fountain” (fontana) occurs in one of V.’s descriptive passages; and the idea appears in Catherine’s address to Our Lord at the well (pozzo) of Samaria, and in her thereupon receiving refreshment of soul, by the gift of “a little drop (gocciola)” of that divine water.[410] And the fountains are here made to proceed from a ray of love; and this again comes from numerous authentic sayings of hers: in one case the “raggio d’amore” appears split up into several rays: “raggi … affocati di divino amore.”[411]