It must have been two years later (1495) that Vernazza became her disciple; and probably some two or three years still further on, that Ettore began to keep (no doubt at first only quite occasional) records of her Sayings and Doings.[123]
IX. Catherine’s Health breaks down, 1496; other Events of the Same Year.
The year 1496 is marked by various events external and internal.
1. Three external changes.
In June, or some time before, Vernazza marries the beautiful Bartolommea Ricci, of the distinguished family of that name. On the 17th of June Giuliano sells his Palace in the Via St. Agnese. And, probably at Midsummer, perhaps at Michaelmas, Catherine, forced to do so by increasing physical infirmities, resigns her office of Matron.[124]
2. End of the extraordinary Fasts.
Catherine “was now no more able to have a care of the government of the Hospital or of her own little house” (within its precincts) “owing to her great bodily weakness. She would now find it necessary, after Communion, to take some food to restore her bodily strength, and this even if it was a fast day.” We thus get the beginning of a third period with regard to such fasting powers. In the first, she had done as all the world, but had been able to keep all the Church fasts and abstinences. In the second, she had, during Lent and Advent, eaten little or nothing, and had, during the remainder of the time, lived as she had done before. And now, for the rest of her life, her eating and fasting are entirely fitful and intermittent, and she has to abandon all (at least systematic) attempts to keep even the ordinary Church fasts and abstinences.
If we are determined to insist on the accuracy of the “twenty-three Lents and twenty-two Advents” of her extraordinary fasts affirmed already by MS. “A,” we shall have to understand this present inability to fast as applying, till after Lent 1496, only to the times outside of Lent and Advent, since this fasting period cannot be made to begin earlier than Lent 1476. I take it that in this, as certainly in most other cases, there was, in reality, a much more gradual transition than the Vita accounts would lead one to expect.
3. She continues within the Hospital precincts. Her two maid-servants.
Catherine had ceased to be Matron, but she did not leave the ample precincts of the Hospital; indeed she continued in the separate little house, which she had, probably since 1490, been occupying with Giuliano. But it will be better to describe her abode a little later on, when we can be quite sure as to its identity.