As to the historicity of the event described in the text, we must distinguish between the general fact of Catherine’s moral and psychic ascendency over Mariola, a fact as entirely beyond dispute as it is valuable and characteristic; and the occurrence of the scene as given above. As to the latter, the question of its value is of course distinct from that of its occurrence. Its supposed evidential worth is nil, since Mariola had been intimate with and devoted to Catherine for probably a good ten years at least. But the scene may nevertheless have actually occurred. It is true that the partly parallel case of the “Spiritato” shows how easily such a dramatization of doctrine or transference of experience can occur. And Denys the Areopagite and Jacopone da Todi are full of this comparison of the soul arrived at a state of union to an Angel, Cherub or Seraph; and these writers have greatly influenced not only Catherine’s authentic teaching, but also the successive amplifications and modifications of her life and sayings. And again we shall prove that certain legendary matters were inserted in the Vita at a late date—between 1545 and 1551. But these passages all claim to be based upon evidence supplied by Argentina del Sale; and they were evidently not accepted by Marabotto (1528); the literary form of these legends differs much from that of our passage; and if the former are still absent from MSS. “A” and “B,” the latter is already present in both. And we have such entirely first-hand proof for the curiously naïf, formal, exteriorizing character of Marabotto’s mind, as to leave it always possible that he did bring about a little scene of the sort here described. If so, Marabotto’s rôle in it will have been prompted, in part, by a wish still further to increase Catherine’s hold upon Mariola’s mind.
[143] Vita, p. 112a.
[144] Vita, p. 72b.
[145] Ibid. p. 113b. I take these two motives alone to have operated throughout such actions of hers during this last period. The additional motive attributed to her (Ibid. pp. 129c, 130a, and 134a), where she is represented as applying a lighted candle or live coal to her bare arm, for the purpose of testing whether her interior spiritual fire or this exterior material one is the greater, is entirely unlike Catherine’s spirit. It belongs to the demonstrably legendary and disfiguring interpretations which shall be studied further on. The sentence on p. 134a, in which she herself is made to declare this motive, is most certainly a worthless gloss.
[146] Vita, p. 127a.
[147] It is remarkable how tough-lived has been the legend which makes Vernazza have an only child. Not only Father Sticken (Acta Sanctorum, September, Vol. V, pp. 123-195) has it in 1752, but even Vallebona, in his Perla dei Fieschi, still repeats it in 1887. And yet the Inaugurazione pamphlet had appeared in Genoa in 1867, giving on pp. 13, 14, 72, 73 the fullest proofs as to the reality of these two other children.
[148] Vita, p. 123b.
[149] I get the date of 1502 for those three deaths from Angelo L. Giovo’s MS. Vita of the Saint in the Biblioteca della Missione Urbana (Part I, ch. iii). All three names are prominent in the Will of 1498; in the Codicil of 1503, Jacobo and Giovanni are both styled “the late,” and her brother Lorenzo has become the sole residuary legatee. Limbania appears nowhere after the Will of 1498.
[150] Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria, Genova, 1868, p. 411 (with plate). The article is dated 1871.
[151] Vita, pp. 124b-126. I get Argentina’s maiden name from a Will of hers of the year 1522, of which a copy exists in the MS. volume Documenti relativi a S. Caterina da Genova, in the Genoa University Library, B. VII, 31. I have taken Argentina to have previously known, perhaps even to have served, Catherine, because of her surprise at Marco’s ignorance as to the identity of his visitor; and I have treated such possible service as but slight, because in Giuliano’s Will of 1494 and in Catherine’s Will and Codicil of 1498 and 1503, legacies are left to the two maids Benedetta and Mariola, but not a word appears as yet as to Argentina. The date as to the year I derive from the following facts:—(1) Catherine, as soon as Marco is buried, carries out her promise to him, and receives Argentina into her house: so the Vita, pp. 126c, 125c. (2) Whereas in the Codicil of 1503 there is still no trace of Argentina, in the Will of 1506 she appears, and receives legacies of personal linen, etc. These gifts are somewhat increased in the Will of 1509. Argentina has evidently not been long in Catherine’s service at the time of the drawing up of the Will of 1506. (3) The Protonotary Angelo L. Giovo (MS. Vita of the Saint of the Biblioteca della Missione Urbana Part I, ch. iii) puts down the date of Marco’s death as 1495. Although this is evidently wrong, I think it wise to keep at least one of his numbers, which I do by fixing upon 1505.