I have also omitted, from what I hold was the first form of this Introduction, the present second sentence and comparison: “And as she, placed in the loving purgatory of the divine fire, abode united to this Divine Love, and content with all that He wrought within her: so she understood the state of the Souls that are in Purgatory.” For all the circumstances and dispositions of this contentment have already been anticipated in the “How the Souls abide in Purgatory” of the first sentence.—We can still show, I think, when and why this second sentence was added. Let us get at the reason slowly.
2. Three differences between the first seven and the last ten Chapters.
The first seven of the present seventeen Chapters of the Dicchiarazione (Dic.) are indeed like, but also unlike, the last ten Chapters, in three important matters.[455]
(1) All the seventeen Chapters are full of ideas, even of special words and peculiar groups of words, appearing also in various places of the Vita-proper. Yet the last ten Chapters alone have, in addition, four complete paragraphs standing, as such, in the Vita-proper. The two paragraphs of Chapter Eight, and the first paragraph of Chapter Nine, of the Dicchiarazione (“Più ancora dico che io veggio”—“se fosse possibile,” Vita, pp. 175c-176c), are identical with paragraphs four and five of Chapter Thirty of the Vita-proper (“E perciò diceva: io veggio”—“se fosse possibile,” Vita, pp. 78c, 79a).
Dic.’s text still keeps two primitive readings: “Gate” of Paradise, in a first saying, unassimilated to the plural “arms” of God in the second saying; against V.’s assimilation, “gates” and “arms.” Again “stain” and “stains,” alongside of “imperfection”; against V.’s treble “imperfection.” But in all else V. is clearly the older text: thus “His company” (against “His glory”); “un minimo chè” (against “un minimo brusculo”); “appear before God” (against “find himself in the presence of the Divine Majesty”); “purge” (against “lift away”); and other points.
But if this general priority of the V.-text be admitted, then this part of Dic. must have been constituted at a time when these parts of V.’s text were already so definitely fixed in themselves, and so firmly worked into their present contexts, that the Redactor of this part of Dic. dared not take them simply away from their old home, and did not modify them so as to conform with the glosses traceable in the earlier Chapters of Dic. (note here, in Ch. VIII, the absence of the “rubigine” present in the earlier Chapters). And this means that this part of Dic. was constituted when this part of V. was no more new, and Dic.’s own earlier chapters had been fixed for some time.
(2) All the Dicchiarazione Chapters are based on the assumption of a true analogy, indeed a continuity, between the soul’s purgation, Here and There. But only the last ten Chapters give passages (three whole Chapters) treating exclusively of this-world sufferings, and an address to souls that, in this world, run the risk not simply of Purgatory but of Hell hereafter.
Thus Chapter Eleven (Vita, pp. 178b-179a) is now indeed superscribed, “Of the desire of the souls in Purgatory to be quite free from the stains of their sins”; and contains the clause “non che possa guardare il Purgatorio siccome un Purgatorio” (179a). But all the chapter-headings are recent, and the heading here is quite inaccurate, for throughout the account (with the probable exception of the clause quoted, which is a gloss) the soul is simply in this world, as on pp. 23b, 49b, 61b, 106a, 114c of the Vita, which readily calls such this-world sufferings a “Purgatory,” 128b, 136c, 137a. Here, however, much of the form (e.g. “to contaminate,” “to occasion”), and some of the doctrine (the resurrection effected by Baptism) is alien to Catherine’s habits. The Chapter is, then, made up, about equally, of genuine sayings referring exclusively to this-world purgations, and of redactional amplifications of a systematizing and sacramental kind.
Chapter Twelve (Vita, p. 179b, c) is now subscribed, “How suffering conjoins itself with joy in Purgatory,” and concludes with “Thus the souls in Purgatory experience.…” Yet here too the body of the text nowhere directly refers to, or consciously implies, the other-world Purgatory; for its last clause, “ma questa contentezza non toglie scintilla di pena,” requires freeing from the gloss, “alle Anime che sono in Purgatorio,” which now stands between “contentezza” and “non.”
Chapter Seventeen (Vita, pp. 182c-184c) now indeed opens with an explicit reference by Catherine of “this purgative form that I feel it in my mind, especially since the last two years” to the souls in “the true Purgatory”; but this reference and the five last words of this long Chapter, “e il Purgatorio lo purifica,” are clear glosses, since Catherine is here exclusively occupied with the purgative character of her this-world sufferings, and not with any likeness of them to the other-world Purgatory. And indeed, since considerations about the other-world Purgatory first occur, in any certainly authentic Vita-passages, only after the great “ray”-experience of November 11, 1509 (the experience stands on p. 133b, where the MSS. give the date; the considerations appear only on pp. 136b-137a, 144b, 146b), the “last two years” here must mean that already three years or so before her death she had come to dwell much on the purifying function of her sufferings. Only during the last ten months does she seem to have dwelt upon these sufferings as illustrating the purgations of the other life.