And “on the 10th of January 1510, she appeared determined to see her Confessor no more, either as to help and comfort for her soul or as to her bodily health. It seemed to her that he was too indulgent to herself, in her sayings and doings. But the fact was, that he saw it to be necessary that she should do all that her instinct prompted her to say or do; and it would indeed have been well-nigh impossible to force her to act against these interior movements of hers. Yet since she was herself in cause, she did not acknowledge such necessities (ordinazioni); rather these actions of hers appeared to her but as so many disordered doings, and she went forcing herself to try and not give trouble to those who were good enough to put up with her (chi la comportava).—And when night came, she locked herself up alone into a separate room, refusing food or conversation or comfort from any one. But after a while she had to come out, with a view to rendering a certain service, and her Confessor managed to slip into the room unobserved and to hide himself there. And she, having returned and locked herself in, and thinking herself quite alone, said with a sobbing voice to her Lord: ‘O Lord, what wouldest Thou have me do further in this world? I neither see nor hear, nor eat nor sleep; I do not know what I do or what I say. I feel as though I were a dead thing. There is no creature that understands me; I find myself lonely, unknown, poor, naked, strange, and different from the rest of the world; and hence I know not any more how to live with (my fellow-) creatures upon earth.’ These and such-like words she spoke so piteously, that her Confessor could bear it no longer; and he discovered himself, and came up to and spoke to her. And God gave him grace, so that she remained comforted in mind and body by his words, and was in fair health for a good many days after.”[176]
Nevertheless “her Confessor, since his continual intercourse and close familiarity with Catherine gave occasion to murmurs on the part of some who did not fully understand his special work and its necessity, left her and was absent for three days” (probably shortly after the scene just related), “for the purpose of testing that work of his, and seeing whether it was indeed all from God, and thus to escape all scruple in the matter. But when, three days later, he returned to her house and had learnt and considered the various accidents and incidents which had occurred meanwhile, he was so entirely satisfied with the evidence afforded by experiment, that he lost all scruple in the matter, and indeed regretted having made the trial, because of the great distress which she had suffered from it.” It will have been on this occasion that she said to him: “I seem to see that God has given to you this one care of myself, and hence that you should not attend to anything else. For now I can no longer support alone so many exterior and interior oppressions (assedi). When you leave me, I go lamenting about the house, saying that you are cruel and do not understand my extreme necessity; for if you did, you would pay greater attention to it.”[177]
And it will have been later on again, in February and March, that she intimated, during two of her violent attacks (on the first occasion by signs, on the second by words), her impression that she would succumb, and her wish to receive Extreme Unction. But Don Marabotto correctly judged that she would safely get through these seizures, and the anointing was put off for the present.[178]
This group is again interesting. For it gives us evidence as to how dependent this character and career of the rarest loneliness and independence had now become upon human help and sympathy; and lets us see how illness had now introduced an excessive suddenness, absoluteness, and shiftingness into her feelings and minor actions, and an occasional slight querulousness into her remarks. It shows us her old social, altruistic instincts and standard still at work within her; for she still suffers from the consciousness, whenever she is thrown back upon herself, of being different from other people; she still longs to attend to the wants of others, regrets the trouble she gives them, and feels grateful for the services they render; and she still busies herself, in the reduced measure now possible to her, with services of her own to others,—a “certain service,” which she had to render, had sufficed to break through her self-imposed seclusion. It lets us see how watchful against and suspicious of self, and of what could flatter and indulge it, she still remained; and how independent her judgment continued, even with regard to her Confessor. And this her judgment we shall have good reason to hold to have been remarkably well-grounded, in so far as this, that had only Marabotto possessed a deeper insight into her psycho-physical state and less of a determination to treat all her states and impulses as equally solid and spiritual, or at least as equally to be yielded to, he could have helped her more; and she would then, thus helped, have been able, even now, fully to resist or to give way, in proportion to the healthiness or the morbidness of the attack. And finally we see how truly serviceable and necessary, and indeed repeatedly right where her own estimate was wrong, was the help and sympathy and judgment of her Confessor; and how difficult, entirely unselfish, and devoted was his action and attitude. It is interesting to note that Catherine was probably always right in her instinct as to matters directly affecting herself, where the will came in, or could be made to come in; and that she was wrong only in such a point of mere physical fact and determinism as whether or not, and how long, her physical strength would hold out.
6. Events from January to May 1510.
I will here try and put together, in their actual succession from January to May 1510, the chief psycho-physical phenomena and their parallel utilizations, together with such mental and spiritual experiences and actions as seem to have been only quite indirectly, or not all, occasioned by her state of health. In a later chapter I propose to study all this health matter in some detail. Here I would simply warn the reader against treating, with certainly most of her chroniclers, these psycho-physical phenomena as separately and directly spiritual or miraculous or ethically significant. Found alone, they would now, on the contrary, directly suggest simply nervous disorder of some kind or other, a thing which, in itself, is always an evil. Their interest and spiritual importance arises for us entirely from their predominantly mental qualities; from their appearance in a person of such powerful mind and large and efficient character; and from their splendidly ethico-religious utilization by that same person.
On one day “she had an impression (‘wound,’ ferita) which was so great, that she lost her speech and sight, and abode in this manner some three hours. She made signs with her hands, of feeling as it were red-hot pincers attacking her heart and other interior parts. But for all this, she did not lose her full consciousness (intelletto).” This was the second occasion on which she indicated her wish to be anointed.[179] On another day “it was impossible to keep her in bed: she seemed like a creature placed in a great flame of fire, and it was impossible to touch her skin, because of the acute pain which she felt from any such touch.”[180]
A little later on “she abode in so great a peace and interior contentment that she was” in all respects “considerably relieved and reinvigorated (ristorata). But she did not long remain in this condition. For very soon she was in a state of interior nudity and aridity, and she prayed: ‘Never hitherto, O my Lord, have I asked Thee for anything for myself: now I pray Thee with all my might, that Thou mayest not will to separate me from Thee. Thou well knowest, O Lord, that I could not bear this.’ And to her disciples she said, in connection with this desolation: ‘If a man were to take a soul from Paradise, how do you think such a soul would feel? You might give it all the pleasures in the world, and as much more as you can imagine: and yet all would be but Hell, because of the memory of that divine union’ (formerly possessed and now lost).”[181]