[329] An engraving of this (now lost) portrait exists in Ritratti ed Elogii di Liguri Illustri, Genova, Ponthonier, and appears reproduced here as the Frontispiece to Vol. II.
[330] Inaugurazione, p. 26.
[331] Even such a rhetorical apostrophe as occurs in the peroration of Dottore Morro’s speech (Inaugurazione, p. 30): “Thou worthy of incense and of altars, as was that Catherine Fieschi, whose friend and confidant and spiritual son thou wast, and who was God-mother to thy own first-born,” stands, I think, alone.
[332] Schmöger: Leben der gottseligen Anna Katharina Emmerich, Freiburg, 1867, 1870, Vol. II, pp. 892, 898, 900.
[333] Vallebona, op. cit. p. 83: “Santissima mia Diva, | questo mio cor ricevi: | che quando al sole apriva | le luci a giorni brevi, | infin d’allor fei voto, | con animo devoto, | non mai, madre adorata, | esser da Te sviata.” “My most holy Protectress” and “adored Mother” may apply to Catherine. But I have had to punctuate so as to make “che” = “perchè,” as in Jacopone throughout: so that we now have not a declaration of time, as to when she, the Protectress, accepted Tommasa’s heart (which might well have been at Baptism); but a prayer that this Mother may accept her heart, in view of the fact that she, Tommasa, had, from her first opening of her eyes to life (surely, on coming to some degree of reason), vowed never to be parted from this Mother. And thus the application to Catherine remains possible but becomes uncertain.
[334] I feel obliged to put the matter in this hypothetical form because of the several undeniable indications of Catherine’s loss of interest in many, perhaps most, events and occurrences, since, at latest, the beginning of 1509.
[335] See the admirably vivid account of, and wisely-balanced judgment concerning, these events, in the Catholic Alfred von Reumont’s little book, Vittoria Colonna, Freiburg, 1881, pp. 117-152; 194-215.
[336] Acta Sanctorum, Vol. VI, pp. 192-196.
[337] For Gerson’s “Rigorism,” see J. B. Schwab’s admirable monograph, Johannes Gerson, Regensburg, 1858; and for Contarini’s, Morone’s, and the Colonna’s views, see Reumont’s Vittoria Colonna.
[338] Opere, Vol. VI, p. 192.