V. Age and Authorship of the Literature retained.
The next points to consider, in detail, are the authorship and antiquity of the literature retained by us.
1. Indications concerning Ettore Vernazza.
The indications to be found within the Vita begin at pp. 98c, 99a, where, after six lines concerning “several ecstasies” which occurred in one particular year and which Catherine herself had called “giddiness” (vertigine), we are told: “One day that she was talking with a Religious, that Religious said to her: ‘Mother, I beg you, for the glory and honour of God, to elect some person that would satisfy your mind, and to narrate to this person the graces which God has granted to you, so that, when you die, these graces may not remain … unknown, and the praise and glory due for them to God may not be wanting.’ And then this Soul answered that she was quite willing (ben contenta), if this were pleasing to her tender Love; and that, in that case, she would elect no other person than himself.” “And then, speaking on another occasion with the said Religious, she began to narrate to him her Conversion. And she acted similarly later on, as well as she could, with regard to many other things, which have been faithfully collected and put into the present book” (Vita, pp. 98c, 99a). The Preface, we know, mentions “two Religious, her devotees, her Confessor and a Spiritual son of hers, by whom the (matter of the) book has been collected from the very lips of the Seraphic Woman herself” (Vita, p. viiic): and we know, beyond all cavil, that these two men were Cattaneo Marabotto, the Priest, and Ettore Vernazza, the Lawyer. The passage just given, Vita, pp. 98c, 99a, unmistakably refers to one of these two; and the address of “Mother,” and the answer of “Son,” which occurs here immediately after the words translated (p. 99b), fit only Vernazza.
Now the opening words of the first two, closely interconnected, paragraphs of that Chapter XXXVIII (Vita, p. 98a, b) are: “In the year 1507”; the first words of the next two paragraphs, which also belong together, are: “It happened in a certain year.” The subjects and sequences of those two sets correspond pretty closely; and the second set is in simple juxtaposition to the first set. Yet the sets differ: the first contains a definite date but no allusion to any interlocutor, and Catherine moves about and overcomes her scruples by intercourse with God alone; the second is without a date but refers repeatedly to a witness, and Catherine is physically quiescent and solicits spiritual help from a disciple. Each set is, in its own way, equally vivid and peculiar: they can hardly be doublet narratives of the same event.—The second set, then, gives a later stage of her health and dispositions; and the “ecstasies,” “giddinesses,” which left her “half dead,” must refer to the “assault” of November 11, 1509, which left many other, similarly deep, impressions and definite records. The penultimate paragraph of the Printed Vita (p. 165c) reads in the MSS.: “Now those who saw and observed these wonderful operations during fifteen years;” and this (since Marabotto did not become Catherine’s Confessor nor presumably know her, at least intimately, till 1499) must refer specially to Vernazza, Thus 1495 marks the beginning of his intimacy with Catherine; in 1497 he could ask Catherine to stand God-mother to his first child; and the Vita gives, pp. 122c, 123a, “what she said after her husband’s death,” hence in the autumn of 1497, “to a spiritual son of hers,” who is certainly Vernazza, “concerning the character of Messer Giuliano.”—The conversation of November 1509 is, then, not the starting-point of Vernazza’s observations, or even of his registrations, but only the date from when Catherine began deliberately to tell him about her past history.—All this gives us the following canon: whatever in the Vita is attributable to Vernazza can, if its subject-matter is posterior to 1495, have been observed and written down by him, then and there, as it occurred; if its subject-matter is prior to 1495, then we have what, at best, is derived from Catherine’s memory and communication to him. And there exists no earlier trained and reliable witness of Catherine’s spiritual dispositions and sayings than Vernazza from this date onwards.
Two beautiful scenes and compositions have undoubtedly been directly witnessed and contemporaneously chronicled by Vernazza,—the conversation about Love and Hell, with Ettore as the chief interlocutor after Catherine herself (Vita, pp. 94b,-95c), between July 1495 and 1502; and the Scene with the Friar, which it is best to put back to the end of 1495 or the beginning of 1496, since it is more natural to take her words, “if the world or a husband,” as referring to a still living husband.—We can also, I think, attribute to the same intermediary the authentic central part of the analogous discourse as to “that corrupt expression: you have offended God,” Chapter XXXIX, pp. 100c-101b.—And it is Ettore again through whom, doubtless, we derive all but everything that is authentic in the Dicchiarazione, as we have already found.
Vernazza’s contributions to the second category, i.e. reminiscences of Catherine brought to paper by him, are also very important and more numerous; but they are, I think, generally worked up with parallel accounts due to Marabotto, as we shall presently note.
2. Indications of Marabotto.
The locus classicus concerning Don Cattaneo appears in the Vita in Chapter XLIV, p. 117b, of which long and most important Chapter (pp. 116c-121b) only the first seven lines occur in the MSS. The passage (omitting a highly glossed bracketed clause and a parallel, secondary half-sentence) runs: “After this, ( ), the Lord gave her a Priest (Prete) to have a care of her soul and body. [ ] He was elected Rector of the Hospital in which she abode, and he was wont to hear her Confessions, to say Mass for her, and to give her Communion, as often as she liked. This Priest (Sacerdote), at the request of various spiritual persons devoted to this Beata, has written a considerable part (buona parte) of this work, having many times tempted her on and incited her to tell him of the singular graces which God had given her and had effected within her [; especially since (massime che) this Religious, owing to long experience and intercourse, knew and understood particularly well (molto bene) the sequence of her life].”
This introductory authentication is followed by the highly reliable and important matters described in my Chapter IV,—her manner of Confession; the incident of the perfume from Marabotto’s hand; her solemn declaration as to her twenty-five years of complete interior loneliness with God; and the murmurs of some of her friends as to the closeness of their intimacy, and his consequent absence from her for three days. All this (pp. 117b-121b) was certainly written down by Marabotto himself, at the time, in substantially its present form.