II. More or Less Maladif Experiences and Actions.
The amplest proof of the deep and delicate impressionableness of her nature is probably, however, to be found in that profound melancholy, that positive disgust with everything within her and without, and that strong desire for death which we found to have possessed her during the three months previous to her Conversion in March 1473. For we should note that that melancholy did not directly spring from spiritual motives or considerations: it was previous to all definite sorrow for sin and to all full and willed sense of things religious and eternal. Indeed, with the appearance of the religious standards and certitudes, that crushing universal feeling of melancholy and of positive disgust breaks up, and yields to contrasted joys and sorrows, and to a buoyant energy in the very midst and through the very means of suffering and of sacrifice. Thus the dawn of her spiritual re-birth was indeed dark and oppressive; but this oppression did not directly proceed from any clear consciousness of the Perfect and Eternal which arose within her only as part and parcel of this explicit Conversion. The oppression simply indicated, of itself, a nature so sensitive and claimful, as to require, in order to achieve any degree of contentment, a spiritual, regenerative, re-interpretative power capable of responding to and matching the deepest realities of life. That nature was thus full of the need of such realities and of such contact with them, but was without the power of producing, or of adequately responding to, such realities,—or indeed of imaginatively forecasting them. And similarly in 1507, the dawn of her painful, joyful-sorrowful birthday to eternity was again dark and oppressive and productive of an intense desire for death, a desire which had, apparently, been entirely absent from her soul ever since 1473. Here again this oppression was not directly religious or moral, but, taken in itself, was simply psycho-physical. Indeed this oppression marks the beginning of the special limitations, difficulties, and slightly deflecting influences now introduced into her life by henceforth steadily increasing positive illness. I propose, then, to begin with this opening depression of hers, and next to go through the main incidents of her remaining life, as far as possible, in strictly chronological order. I will group all this around six main facts and dates.
1. Desire for death, 1507.
“In the year 1507 she on one occasion was present at the recitation of the Offices for the Dead. And a desire to die came upon her. And she said: ‘O Love, I desire nothing but Thee, and Thee in Thine own manner: but, if it pleases Thee, allow me at least to go and see others die and be buried, in order that I may see in others that great good, which it does not please Thee should as yet be in myself.’ And her Love consented to this; and consequently, for a certain space of time, she went to see die and be buried all those who died in the Hospital. And as, later on, her union with this her tender Love increased, her desire for death disappeared little by little.”[166]
She is, then, still active, and moves about in the spacious Hospital and in the adjoining Church. And this desire, as it gradually disappeared, will, doubtless, not have left mere blanks in her consciousness, or have reduced the sum-total of her feelings; but, with that diminution, some of her old tenderness for and interest in others, will have reappeared. And again we see how no one set of feelings, one “psychosis,” ever simply repeats itself, in even one and the same soul: for Catherine’s positive disgust with all things, which prepared and accompanied her desire for death in 1473, is absent from the otherwise similar desire of 1507. In both cases there is the same sheer “givenness” and isolation of the feeling. Then, she did not desire death to escape temptation or sin; now, she does not desire it, directly and within her emotional nature, in order to get to God: in each case the feeling stands simply by itself, and is not immediately connected with religion at all. And finally, this incident, and its later equivalent repetitions in November 1509 and September 1510, prove once again on what a veritable bed of Procrustes those determined a-priorists, the Redactors of the Vita, have placed, pulled about and mutilated, as far as in them lay, the immensely spontaneous and rich personality of Catherine, in their determination to find her ever all-perfect, and perfect after their own fixed pattern. For it proves to demonstration, either that Catherine continued liable to human imperfections, or that not all desires are imperfect. And both these things are true, beyond the possibility of doubt.
2. The scent-impression from Don Cattaneo’s hand.
And next we get an instance of clearly abnormal sense-perception, which is deeply interesting because of the vivid, first-hand form in which the fact has come down to us, and still more on account of its impressive illustration of the two possible mental attitudes towards such matters. It will have occurred in 1508; and Don Marabotto is, in any case, the other interlocutor in the scene, and its chronicler. And if there is undoubtedly a somewhat ludicrous naïveté about his attitude at the time of the occurrence, there is also a striking simplicity and self-oblivion in the perfectly objective manner in which he chronicles the scene in all its bearings, and Catherine’s marked superiority to himself. It is this complete directness and simplicity of motive which, on the side of character, will have bound these otherwise strangely diverse souls together; and which rendered Don Marabotto, even simply as a character, not unworthy of his close intimacy with Catherine.
The abnormality here concerns the sense of smell alone; the impression here lasts a considerable time: and now she acquiesces in it, but only for the purpose of moving through it, as a mere means. “Having been infirm for many days, Catherine one day took the hand of her Confessor and smelt it: and its odour penetrated right to her heart,” so that “for many days this perfume restored and nourished her, body and soul.” Don Marabotto then asks her what kind of thing this odour is that she is smelling. And she tells him that it is an odour so penetrating and sweet, as to seem capable of bringing the dead to life; that God had sent it to her, to strengthen her soul and body, now that these were so much oppressed; and hence “since God grants me this odour, I am determined to derive strength from it, as long as He shall please that I shall do so.” But Marabotto, “thinking that he must surely be able to perceive what was being transmitted by himself, went smelling his own hand, but to no effect.” And Catherine gently rebuked his action by declaring: “The things which depend entirely upon God’s own free gift, He does not give to those that seek them. Indeed He gives such things at all, only in cases of great necessity, and as an occasion of great spiritual profit.”[167]
The impression and consolation are here still connected with the Holy Eucharist: for the hand which she smells is no doubt the right one,—the hand which was wont daily to consecrate in her presence and daily to communicate her. The declaration as to the odour’s power to raise the dead to life has occurred already in connection with the Holy Eucharist, and will have been in part suggested to her by such Johannine passages as “I am the … Life,” “I am the Living Bread,” “he that eateth this Bread shall live,” shall be made to live, “for ever.” And although the odour is here the prominent impression, and “savours” are wanting, yet “sweetness” still occurs, probably as a sort of sensation of tasting.—Marabotto’s mind has in it, on this occasion, two plausible assumptions, each strengthening the other; and Catherine controverts both. He evidently thinks: “Catherine’s states are all most valuable, hence real, hence objective: if then she says she smells this or that, others will be able to do so too.” And: “What a man transmits, that he can himself experience: hence, on this ground also, I should be able to smell this perfume.”—And Catherine’s mind evidently also contains two very different convictions: the first, that experiences, even when thus but semi-spiritual, are, for all their reality, not directly transferable from soul to soul; and the second, that all such sensible and semi-sensible experiences, whether normal or exceptional, are all but means at the disposal of the free-willing spirit, means which become limits and obstacles as soon as they are treated as ends.
Thus if this experience points to a certain abnormality of condition in the peripheral, psycho-physical regions of the soul, Catherine’s attitude towards it, and towards the whole question occasioned by it, has got a massive depth of sanity about it, perhaps unattainable by, certainly untested in, the always and simply, even peripherally, healthy soul.