[123] The words of the Vita, p. 105c, that those who wrote this Life “saw and experienced these wonderful operations for many years,” are given in MS. “A” as “during fifteen consecutive years (per quindici continui anni),” p. 366. All points to her having got to know Don Marabotto later than at this time and than Vernazza, yet only the one or the other of these two men can be meant; hence Vernazza must be intended here. But I have nowhere in the Vita been able to trace passages that could with probability be both attributed to Vernazza, and dated before the years 1498-1499.
[124] The precise date of Vernazza’s marriage is unknown. But since his eldest child was born on April 15, 1497, it cannot have taken place later than June 1496. The date of the sale of the Palazzo is derived from Catherine’s act of consent to the sale, preserved in the Archivio di Stato; a copy lies before me. The date of her resignation is derived from the Vita, p. 96b, which says she did so “quando fù di anni circa cinquanta.” This “circa” must no doubt here, as so often (as, e.g., on p. 97b, where “circa sessanta-tre” refers to November 1509, when she was sixty-two), be interpreted as “nearly fifty”: she was really forty-nine.
[125] The date of Tommasina’s birth comes from Ritratti ed Elogi di Liguri Illustri, Genova, Ponthenier; the date of the beginning of Giuliano’s illness from his Codicil of January 10, 1497, in which he declares himself as “languishing” and “infirm in body”; and the approximate date of his death from two entries in the Cartulary of the Bank of St. George, as to investments made by Catherine (copies in Documenti su S. Caterina da Genova, University Library, Genoa, B. VII, 31), of which the first, on July 14, 1497, gives her name as “Catterinetta, filia Jacobi di Fiesco et uxor Juliani Adorni”; and the second, on October 6, 1497, describes her as “uxor et heres testamentaria quondam fratris Juliani Adorni.”
[126] Vita, pp. 122b, c, 123a. I have preserved the descriptive account of Catherine’s prayer and of its effect, although it may possibly be but a later dramatized interpretation of the undoubtedly authentic report of her declaration made to Vernazza.—The immediate cause of Giuliano’s pain and impatience is given by Vita, p. 122b, as “una gran passione d’urina”; Vallebona, p. 73, declares the malady to have been a “cestite cronica” (tape-worm). I have omitted a short dialogue which is given, after her remark to Vernazza, as having occurred between her friends and herself, concerning her liberation from much oppression, and her own indifference to all except the will of God, because her answer is given in oratio obliqua, and is quite colourless and general; the passage is doubtless of no historical value: there never lived a less conventional, vapidly moralizing soul than hers.
[127] I work from careful copies specially made for me direct from the originals, by Dre. Augusto Ferretto, of the Archivio di Stato in Genoa.
[128] Inaugurazione, pp. 12, 13.
[129] I work again from a copy made by Dre. Ferretto from the original in the Archivio di Stato, Genoa.
[130] Marabotto’s help in business matters cannot, on any large scale, have begun till considerably later than his spiritual help. For whereas her Codicil of 1503 nowhere mentions Marabotto, her Will of 1506 leaves him, as we shall see, a little legacy; her Will of 1509 protects him against all harassing inquisition into the details of his administration of her affairs; and her Codicil of 1510 mentions only him and Don Carenzio. And it is incredible that business help should have been given throughout four years, and should have failed to gain any recognition in a document which commemorates so many lesser services. Marabotto was Rector in 1504 (I owe this date to the kindness of the Rev. Padre Vincenzo Celesia, author of the MS. Storia dell’ Ospedale di Pammatone in Genova, 1897); he was no more Rector in September 1509, but Don Jacobo Carenzio then held this post (Catherine’s Codicil of that date). Indeed already in March 1509 Marabotto seems not to have been Rector (Catherine’s Will of that date mentions him repeatedly, but nowhere as Rector). I take the Offices of Rettore (Master), and of Rettora (Matron), to have never been exercised simultaneously: but that, at any one time, there was always only a Rettore or a Rettora presiding over the whole Hospital. The Office of Rettora was abolished altogether in 1730 (Storia dell’ Ospedale, p. 1135).
[131] Vita, p. 117b.
[132] The Appendix will show that the “Religioso,” the “dolce figliuolo,” of pp. 94, 95, and the “Religioso, figliuolo,” of pp. 98, 99, must be Ettore Vernazza, and not Cattaneo Marabotto.