[133] I take all these facts from F. Federici’s careful MS. work, Famiglie Nobili di Genova, sub verbo Marabotto.
[134] Vita, p. 118, a, b. The first of these two passages is followed, in the same section, by two other slightly different accounts. The third of these is no doubt authentic, but refers to a still later period: it shall be given in its proper place. These two authentic accounts are (as is often the case in the Vita) joined together by a vague and yet absolute, unauthentic account, which declares that she told him all things (apparently on all occasions): a statement untrue of any time in her life.
[135] Vita, pp. 117c, 118a.
[136] Vita, p. 94c. The three lines which follow in the printed Vita are wanting in MS. “A” of 1547, p. 235, and are a disfiguring gloss of R 2.
[137] Vita, pp. 94, 95.
[138] Vita, p. 97b; 250, a, b.
[139] Angel, 50b; Cherub, 16a, 97b; Seraph, 130b.
[140] Vita, pp. 47b, 50a, 72b.
[141] Ibid. p. 115b.
[142] Ibid. p. 115b. There are three passages in the Vita referring to cases of possession. (a) Page 39b makes Catherine, in finishing up a discourse as to Evil being essentially but a Privation of Love, refer to a “Religioso” and to a “Spiritato,” and how the latter, “costretto” by the former to tell him what he was, “answered with great force: ‘I am that unhappy wretch bereft of love.’ And he (the evil spirit) said so with a voice so piteous and penetrating, that it moved me (Catherine) through and through with compassion.” The Possessed One is here a man. In MS “A” (p. 92) the story is still quite loosely co-ordinated with her speech; it was originally no doubt an independent anecdote; and was, possibly after a good many intermediary literary fixations, introduced into this place and connection by R 1 or R 2. (b) Page 115a, b, gives the story reproduced in the text above. The Possessed One is here a woman; and here the entire passage formally claims directly to reproduce an actual scene from Catherine’s life. (c) Page 162a gives an anecdote of a “figliuola spirituale” of Catherine, who had “il demonio adosso”; and tells how, at the time of her Mistress’s death, the “spirito” within her, “costretto,” declared that he had seen Catherine unite herself with God,—and all this with “tormento,” so that “pareva a sè intollerabile.” This passage clearly refers to the same person as that of passage b.