Although this whole series now opens out with “la prima volta che si volle confessare a questo Religioso” (p. 117c), the words “a questo Religioso” are doubtless an addition of the Redactor. For everywhere else Marabotto is always “il Confessore” or “suo Confessore,” whilst “un Religioso” is reserved for Vernazza: and wherever she uses any specific appellation to the Confessore,—a thing which is quite exceptional,—she says “Padre”; whilst where she does so to the Religioso, she says “Figliuolo.”[461] And, wherever the Confessore addresses her, there is never any specific address; whereas the Religioso constantly addresses her as “Madre.”[462]
As to “Confessore,” we get one mentioned as Confessor to the Convent of S. Maria delle Grazie in 1460, p. 2b the same or another Confessor of the same Convent in 1473, p. 4a, c, is called “buon Religioso.” Both these men, or this one man, heard Catherine’s Confessions at those dates. But, a most important point: all the other Confessore-passages throughout the book refer to after 1499, and to Marabotto alone. For this is a list of them all. On p. 7c: here she is “so gravely ill, as to be unable to eat,” a thing belonging to the times after 1499. (In events of an obviously earlier date,—her fervent Communions,—pp. 8a, c, we get not “Confessore” but simply “Sacerdote.”) On p. 10c: here “to test her, he commanded her to eat,” an action of which the results are described on pp. 117b, 119c. On page 108b: but here her fasting is liable to damage her health, which points to after 1501. On p. 113b: but here the Confessore remains her sole aid, as in the accounts referring to Marabotto in January 1510 and shortly before, pp. 120a, 121b; 120b, 139a-c. On p. 115b: but here the possessed “spiritual daughter” is certainly Mariola Bastarda, who did not live with Catherine till after Giuliano’s death in 1497. On pp. 117b-121b: the Confessore is throughout avowedly Marabotto, and a treble indication here forces us to date his Confessorship from not before 1499. The remaining “Confessore”-references,—pp. 130a, 138c, 139a, b, c; 140b, c; 143c, 156c, 157b,—are all explicitly subsequent to 1501 and pertinent to Marabotto alone.
Now there is no good reason for doubting Marabotto’s original, and still largely unmodified, authorship of all the above passages in which he himself occurs. Only as to the scene with the possessed Mariola, Chapter XLIII, pp. 115a-c, have I long hesitated to attribute something so insignificant in substance, and yet so pompous in form, to Marabotto, either as action or as composition. Yet I have ended, for the reasons given in my Chapter IV, by thinking that, after all, this scene does go back, more or less, to him.
3. References to other witnesses.
There are but few other references to witnesses in the Vita. On p. 124a, in the account of Suor Tommasa Fiesca, there are “the Nuns of her first and second Monastery”—San Silvestro and the Monastero Nuovo,—and “secular persons, her familiar and devoted friends.” I take this admirably vivid and naïve account, pp. 123b-124b (which exists in the MSS. without this sentence and Tommasa’s death-date, 1534), to rest upon Suor Tommasa’s own reminiscences of her heaven-storming cousin, but to be the composition of Battista Vernazza.—And on p. 158c “several of the ten Physicians,” who assembled by Catherine’s bedside on September 10, 1510, “are still alive in this year (1551),” but the very vague account of their examination is no doubt due to a non-medical pen.
VI. Analysis of the Conversion-Narratives.
Let us now take the first of the four Narrative Passages in which the largest or clearest conflations of original documents and of subsequent glosses are traceable: the Conversion-Scene and subsequent Apparition, March 1473; the “Scintilla”-Experience, November 11, 1509; the Temptation of August 23, 1510; and her Death on September 14, 1510. Roman and Arabic numerals indicate the probable provenances from different contributors, and from different narratives of each contributor, respectively; square brackets indicate glosses; and E, C, and B stand respectively for the handiwork of Ettore Vernazza, of Cattaneo Marabotto, and of Battista Vernazza.