(1) “Le Anime del Purgatorio hanno in tutto conforme la loro volontà a quella di Dio; e però corrisponde loro colla sua bontà, e restano contente quanto alia volontà, e purificate d’ogni lor peccato quanto alla colpa. [Restando così quelle Anime purificate, come quando Dio le creò]
(2) “e per essere passate di questa vita malcontente e confessate di tutti i loro peccati commessi. … [Iddio subito perdona loro la colpa e] non resta se non la ruggine del peccato, del quale poi si purificano nel fuoco, mediante la pena; [e così]
(3) “purificate d’ogni colpa, unite a Dio per volontà [veggiono chiaramente Dio, secondo il grado che fà lor conoscere, e] veggiono [ancora] quanto importi la fruizione di Dio, e che l’anime sono state create a questo fine.” (Pp. 173c, 174a.)
According to Catherine’s unvarying authentic teaching, souls go to Purgatory precisely because they are not already “pure as when God created them,” and they there do not “clearly see God.” Indeed, the second sentence here distinctly states, that “there” still “remains” in them “the rust of sin,” from which they “there” purify themselves. And the two “veggiono” conclusions of the third sentence contradict each other: for if they see clearly how much the fruition of God matters to them, then they do not as yet possess that full fruition, i.e. they do not as yet clearly see God.
These glosses are made entirely intolerable by a third Redactional sentence here, which announces “an example,” or figure, of the doctrine here conveyed, and then proceeds to do so in the beautiful Chapter Sixth. For Chapter Sixth gives us the simile of the One Bread, “the bare sight of which would satiate all creatures”; and the division of all souls into those “in Purgatory,” which “have the hope of seeing the Bread”; those in Hell, which “are bereft of all hope of ever being able to see the Bread”; and, by implication, those in Heaven, that see and satiate themselves with the Bread. And “the nearer a man were to get to the Bread, without being able to see it, the more would the natural desire for this Bread be enkindled”; “not having it, he would abide in intolerable pain” (p. 174b, c).
III. Five Conclusions concerning the History of the “Dicchiarazione.”
1. The authentic sayings, collected throughout the Seventeen Chapters, all belong, at earliest, to the last nine, and indeed probably to the last two or three, years of Catherine’s life.—At the latter date Vernazza had been her close friend for twelve, and Marabotto, her Confessor for eight years. To one or the other, or to both, we undoubtedly owe the first writing down of this, originally small, nucleus of authentic sayings,—probably in (many cases) on the very day when Catherine uttered one or several of these thoughts.—The One-Bread-Simile Chapter, and one or two other passages, contain slightly varying doublets of the same saying, the registration of one of which may well be by Vernazza, and the registration of the other by Marabotto, each of these two auditors getting, perhaps, addressed by Catherine in a slightly different form, or himself looking out for that part or context of a saying which specially appealed to him, or slightly, and probably quite unconsciously, giving to the identical declaration a somewhat differing characteristic “colour” of his own. Vernazza is, however, doubtless the first chronicler of the majority of these sayings, in 1508-1510.
2. These sayings must have been collected together in a first shorter Dicchiarazione (equivalent to the greater part of the present first seven chapters and possibly one or two other passages), not long after her death, probably simultaneously with, but separately from, a short “Conversione” account. The first public Cultus in May-July, 1512, giving rise as it did to a painter’s picture of her, cannot have failed to suscitate some such manuscript booklets. This short Dicchiarazione will already have had the first sentence of the present introduction prefixed to it, and this sentence, so like and yet somewhat unlike Battista’s writings (Battista who was as yet only fifteen), will have been written by Ettore. These Chapters already, I think, contained the “colpa di peccato” and other technically theological passages, probably introduced by Marabotto; but the Chapters will as yet have been free from the theological “corrections,” which still come away too easily from the rest of the text (in contradistinction to the difficulty in the analysis of its other, much more resistant components) not to be considerably younger than these latter.
3. The “corrections” insist upon three doctrines, in each case in demonstrable contradiction with Catherine’s authentic teaching: the complete absence of all guilt, sin, imperfection, even though merely passive and habitual, in the soul, even in its first moment in Purgatory; the simply vindictive, not curative, hence static, nature of the suffering throughout the soul’s prison time, right up to this time’s sudden cessation; and this soul’s clear vision of God from first to last. Thus no increase or extension of purity, no work of love, is effected in or by the soul during, or by means of, its Purgatory.—Now Pope Leo the Tenth, in his Bull Exsurge Domine of May 16, 1520, against Luther, reprobated four propositions concerning Purgatory; and the second part of the second of these propositions declares: “It is not proved, by any reasons or by any texts of Scripture, that the souls in Purgatory are out of a state capable of merit or of an increase of Charity.”[457] The Censure of this doctrine must have seemed to menace Catherine’s teaching on this same point. For she nowhere indeed declares these souls to be capable of meriting, nor does she teach that there is any increase in the intensity of their love; yet by the one free act of self-determination to Purgatory, and by the gradual extension of this determination of active love throughout all the regions and degrees of the passive will and habitual dispositions of the soul, her teaching must, to an at all nervous theologian, have seemed, at the time, to come perilously near to the admission, respectively, of merit and of an increase of love in the Beyond. And the degree in which the fight with nascent Protestantism was raging precisely around such Purgatorial questions, and the solemnity of the Pope’s condemnation, at this early stage of Catherine’s Cultus and reputation, must have combined to render the introduction of these disfiguring glosses an apparent necessity.—I take them to have been introduced soon after Vernazza’s death in 1524, hence some twelve years after the constitution of these seven Chapters; presumably by the Inquisitor to the Republic of Genoa for the time being.
4. The addition of the last ten Chapters to the first seven Chapters, and of the second sentence to the Introduction, will have occurred some time after the constitution of the Vita-proper, say, in 1531 or 1532; but, in any case, was not due to Vernazza or Marabotto. And the glosses will have been introduced into these ten Chapters quasi-automatically, and simply as a consequence to the very deliberate “corrections” of those previous seven Chapters; for now Catherine’s reputation had had another twelve years in which to grow, and the Bull had been studied for another twelve years.—But no such glosses were introduced into the Vita-proper, either as to this, or indeed, perhaps, any other point. For this Vita treated only quite incidentally of the other-world Purgatory; and this, in those times specially delicate, subject-matter had received every precautionary attention in the Dicchiarazione professedly devoted to it. And other, intrinsically more important points, even though treated here with great boldness, were felt to remain as open as before.