In the Picture Catherine wears a diadem, a compromise between an indication of her noble birth and a hint of the nimbus which they shrink from giving to her unequivocally. And she is kneeling before the Christ Crucified,—evidently an attitude chosen as specially typical of her whole life and doctrine, because of the passages in the Vita: “She ever seemed to see her Love affixed to the Cross”; “she was next drawn to the side of the Crucified”; “she appeared in very truth as a body affixed to a Cross,” with the dependent account of her “interior stigmatization,”—“she received a new wound at her heart, so that she might feel within herself the wound in the side of her tender Love”; and the amplifications of some of these passages in the Dialogo.[424] Yet only the first three passages occur in the MSS.; and the first two are carefully restricted there to her first Conversion-Period (of four years at most), whilst the third passage refers to a (quite unusual) bodily posture, assumed by her on one single occasion during her last illness, an attitude which remained uninterpreted by herself. The fact is that the precise contrary of what this picture suggests is one of the chief characteristics of Catherine, for she is habitually absorbed in contemplations remarkably lacking in historical imagery and setting. And the Dialogo parallels and variants which, as we have seen, so largely increase this historical element, and especially this occupation with Christ Crucified, are characteristic, not of Catherine but of Battista. The picture is, no doubt, the consequence of this increasing emphasis laid, in her successive Vitae, upon a side of religion all but entirely absent from the middle and last periods of Catherine’s actual life; and fully expresses Battista’s feeling, who, just as she addressed her whole long letter of 1575 in Donna Anguisola, “in the Crucified,” will have seen to it that the whole book concerning her own God-mother was placed at the feet of the Crucifix.
2. The Approbation.
The Latin Approbation runs: “I, Fra Geronimo of Genoa of the Order of Preachers, Apostolic Inquisitor into Heretical Pravity throughout the whole Dominion of Genoa, assent to this Book being committed to print, for the consolation and instruction of spiritual persons. Witness this my autograph.” The points of interest in connection with this Approbation will appear, as we proceed, to consist in the reasons why such theological “corrections” as were actually introduced into the doctrinal parts of the Vitae had all been made long before this date, probably none of them later than 1530; and why they were, throughout, practically restricted to her very sober and correct Purgatorial teaching, and left her other, far more daring, sayings more or less untouched. I can find no traces of any theological changes introduced, for this edition of 1551, into the Vita-Dicchiarazione sections; but we shall see how three points and tendencies of the Vita-proper have been indirectly criticised and “corrected” by means of their re-statement in the Dialogo, which was certainly finished, and possibly begun, with a view to its appearance in the company of the Vita and the Dicchiarazione.
3. The Preface.
The Preface consists of seven full and balanced, dignified and self-restrained, thoroughly well-informed and yet, in part, deliberately obscure and illusive, sentences. It still excludes the idea of any literary authorship on the part of Catherine: “Madonna Caterinetta, of whose admirable Conversion, Life, and Doctrine, together with her many privileges and particular graces, we shall write.… Here, in her Life and Holy Doctrine is to be found.…” Not Catherine writes, but “we,” i.e. the final Redactor, or all the Contributors together with him; and not her Writings are to be found here, but her “Doctrine” only. Indeed, it all “has been collected with truth and simplicity by two devout spiritual persons, from the very lips of the Seraphic Woman herself.” More would quite evidently have been claimed, if more had been true.
And it contains two or three evident additions to its original text, made for this publication in view of the entire Dialogo’s first appearance here; additions which contain an expression which may well have occasioned or helped on the legend of “Catherine, an Author,” a legend which was sure to spring up at the first opportunity and provocation. The fifth sentence reads at present as follows: “Sono in questo libro [dignissimi suoi trattati dell’ amor di Dio e dell’ amor proprio] una bellisima e chiarissima dimostrazione del Purgatorio, e in che modo vi stiano dentro le anime contentissime, [e un bel dialogo dell’ Anima con il Corpo e Amor poprio, dal quale ne seguita un amoroso colloquio dell’ Anima con il suo Signore] ed altre dignissime cose da sapere, veramente tutte di eccellentissima speculazione ed utilità [e massime in questi turbolenti tempi necessarie].”[425]
Now even the last set of bracketed words seems an addition, and points to the existence of the body of this Preface at a period prior to “questi turbolenti tempi,” times that I take to be 1536-1537, when Battista’s God-father Moro lapsed into Calvinism. Ever since 1520, when Luther’s Purgatory doctrines were condemned, these writings would have been held, if not “necessary,” at least “of most excellent utility.”—There is, any way, no doubt as to the two previous sets being insertions. For note, if they be retained, the slovenly repetition, by the first set, of “dignissimi” in the midst of a most finished composition; the extraordinary use of the word “Trattati,” to signify either Chapter XXV (which bears the title “Dell’ Amor Proprio e del Divino Amore,” and is a collection of sayings pronounced on at least three different occasions), or Chapters XXV and XXVI,—in either case, Chapters which are no more significant or authentic than any other of the doctrinal chapters. And remark, in the second set, the curiously mild praise for the Dialogo contained in the one positive “un bel,” wedged in between the two superlatives lavished on the “Dimostrazione” and the two superlatives given to the remaining doctrinal parts of the Book. The object of that first “Trattati” insertion is evidently to pick out some one or other of the already ancient Chapters of the Vita, which have some special likeness to the subject-matter and title of the Dialogo, so as to prevent the latter from looking too suspiciously different from the rest of the doctrine traditionally ascribed to Catherine.
I take this Preface to have existed, without these additions, in the “worthy book” described by Giustiniano in 1536. But as that careful writer insists upon the precise length of time, because it had been considerable, during which Catherine’s body had lain incorrupt, and says nothing about the antiquity of the book, a point he would hardly have failed to urge had he been able to do so, I hesitate to push this Book, and this its Preface, further back than 1530, a very probable date for the first (at least complete) fusion of Vernazza’s and Marabotto’s separate contributions, since these two chief disciples would then have been dead six and two years respectively, and the culmination of Protestant “turbulence” in Calvin’s open revolt and Moro’s defection would not be taking place for another five and six years respectively.—Catherine indeed appears here no more as the “quondam Donna Catarinetta” of MS. B, but still as “Madonna Catherinetta, figliuola di M. Giacomo della nobilissima casa Fiesca, maritata a M. Giuliano Adorno,” a designation distinctly earlier than the “Beata Catarinetta di Genoa” of the Title. And the Book, its substance, is declared to have been “collected by two spiritual persons (Religiosi), her devotees, from the very lips of the Seraphic Woman herself.” This passage, it is true, now reads “Raccolto dai divoti religiosi (suo Confessore e un figliuolo suo spirituale).” But, where the Preface is above the suspicion of having been touched up, a “cioê” introduces such a bracket; the rhythm of this sentence, in the midst of this otherwise exquisite Preface, is woefully imperfect; and the evidently deliberate ambiguity of “divoti religiosi” is rendered all but nugatory by the considerable clearness of the bracketed information. The clause will originally have read, “Da due religiosi sui divoti,” for this obviates all three objections. But, in this deliberately mysterious form, it must have been written when both were dead, and yet when the death of the last was still recent; and this again brings us to a date soon after Marabotto’s death in 1528.
Who wrote this Preface? Much in it points to Battista. So the use of “cioè,” so characteristic of her Colloquies and Letters and also of the Dialogo; and the phrase “divote persone,” recurring in the Dialogo;[426] and the doctrinal tone of “l’amoroso Signor Nostro, sitibondo della salute delle sue razionali creature,” “il suo consolatorio spirito,” “la perfetta e consummata unione possibile ai viatori,” and “quasi non più fide, ma già certezza,” all closely like passages in her Colloquies and in her Letter to Donna Anguisola. The mysteriousness and equality of designation, applied to both Ettore and Don Cattaneo, would come with a special naturalness from Battista, spontaneously anxious to place her heroic father’s sanctity and intimacy with Catherine on a level with those of Catherine’s priest-friend and Confessor Marabotto. And, if written in 1530, Battista would at the time have been a formed writer,—a woman of thirty-three years of age.—There are, no doubt, certain differences. The Dialogo nowhere has such an “ancorchè … niente (non) dimeno” clause. “Un Serafino,” “essa Serafica Donna” of this Preface, are, in strictness, unmatched in Battista’s, otherwise even intenser, writings. “La perfetta e consummata unione possibile ai viatori” is a more ordinary and technical phrase than I can find elsewhere in Battista’s writings. Above all, the general style and rhythm is here, somehow, a little different from that of those other writings.—Still, these differences are explicable by the writer of the Preface finding himself largely bound by the existing Vita-materials, and by their very niceties of expression. The Author of the Preface is certainly identical with the Redactor of the first (tripartite) Vita e Dottrina; and this Redactor, we shall find, must be Battista. The insertions in the Preface, containing the praise of the Dialogo, are certainly the work of another hand.—Upon the whole, then, we can safely attribute the Preface, in its original form, to Battista Vernazza.