[172] Ibid. pp. 135c, 136a. I have omitted two glosses introduced by “cioè,” “that is”; and three short amplifications, which introduce a direct conflict between the two parts. There is, within this particular picture and scene, no direct conflict, but, at first, a complete contrariety of aim.
[173] Vita, p. 136c. This is one out of four or five parallel sayings which are accumulated here. They shall be examined later on.
[174] Vita, pp. 98c, 99a; 99b, c. I have, in the first conversation, omitted the introductory attribution of her use of the word “giddiness” to humility; and, in the second, suppressed the conclusion which repeatedly declares that never again did any such desire arise within her. For both clauses have got a vague and secondary form, and the second is in direct contradiction with the facts.
[175] Vita, 138c.
[176] Vita, pp. 139b, 140b, c. I have omitted the evidently derivative, transcendentally reflective, second of the three paragraphs in which this story now appears; the explanatory glosses of the same tone as that paragraph; a redundant sentence in Catherine’s speech; and the evidently late and schematic designation of “assalto” for the entire incident, which is, surely, nothing of the sort.
[177] Vita, pp. 120b; 119c, 120a. The sequence and date assumed above I think to be, all things considered, the most likely among the possible alternatives. As to her remarks to Marabotto, they appear in the Vita before his three days’ absence. But the interior evidence seems strongly in favour of my inversion of that (evidently, in any case, very loose and quite unemphasized) order.
[178] Ibid. pp. 141c, 143c.
[179] Vita, p. 141c.
[180] Ibid. 142a. MSS. “A” and “B” open out their chapter on her last illness with the statement that it was (only) four months before her death that she took to her bed. I take it that from the end of January 1510 onwards, she was often in bed, yet still sometimes out of it; but that from mid-May to the end she no more left it.
[181] Ibid. p. 142b, c. I have, in her prayer, omitted the first seven words of the present text: “(Già sono trentacinque anni in circa, che) giammai, Signor mio …” For she would hardly inform God of the approximate number of years of her convert life; the double “già” points to a gloss; and such a gloss would almost irresistibly find its way into this place, so as to mitigate the absoluteness of the statement.