Then it is impossible not to feel throughout these and other passages of the Vita which are concerned with physicians, a curious combination of contradictory feelings. There is reproof of the doctors’ presumption in venturing to begin by treating her illness as though it were a simply natural one; and there is the proud pleasure at thus getting, through the breakdown of this their presumptuous undertaking, professional testimony to the supernatural character of her infirmity. And the two motives lead to the self-contradictory over-emphasizing both of the Physicians’ moral worth and finality of testimony at the end of each experience, and of their rationalistic rashness in being willing to try again, a rashness assumed to be apparent to every one but themselves before each new attempt. For they must be represented as worthy and skilful men; else what value has their testimony? And their action must be intrinsically foolish from the outset; else what becomes of the transparently and separately supernatural character of her illness?[191]
And then we can still see fairly clearly that Catherine does not share the views of practically all her attendants, and of certainly all the later contributors to and revisers of the Vita. For even now the book still leaves intact the passages which show her as hoping to be cured by Boerio, and as then condemning herself for having rejoiced without cause,—evidently, without supernatural justification; as prepared to believe that the physicians might be able to find an appropriate remedy, and as willingly trying the remedies they actually offer her; and as indeed declaring her doubt whether any physic would do her any good, yet nowhere announcing a conviction as to the directly and separately supernatural character of her illness. “Her attendants,” says the obviously most authentic continuation of the passage concerning the cupping-glasses given further back, “let these attacks come and go, with as little damage as possible. Her body had to be and was sustained without the aid of medicine, and solely by means of great care and great vigilance.”[192]
2. Catherine and Don Carenzio, Argentina, and Ettore Vernazza.
It will have been the end of June, or the beginning of July, when these medical experiments ceased. But before them (on March 11 and twice in April), and again three times during them (in May and June), monies were paid, in Catherine’s name, by Don Giacomo Carenzio, now resident as Rettore in the Hospital, in the matter of the granting of Indulgences to the Church attached to the Hospital. And although this affair, occurring thus so late on in her illness, in which we have already found her not always to have dominated the plans of her attendants, cannot well be pressed as necessarily characteristic of her, yet I take it to be quite likely that she still took some active part in the matter.[193]
Catherine certainly still attended to business, even two months later; for, on August 3, Vernazza drew up a Codicil in her presence “in the bedroom of Argentina del Sale,” says the document itself. Since the Inventory, still extant, of the things found in Catherine’s rooms at the time of her death, gives a list of the bedclothes of only two beds, and these two beds are then both in the same room, and the one bed is Catherine’s, and the other is that of the famiglia (the servant) Argentina: it is clear that, for at least the last six weeks of her life, Catherine had only one person sleeping in her little house with her, and that this person was the navvy Marco’s little widow. I take it, with Vallebona, that the room was really Catherine’s ordinary bedroom; but that, as Argentina now slept there as regularly as her mistress herself, Catherine preferred, whether from humility or affection (the latter motive seems the more probable), to think of the room as belonging to Argentina.[194]
For some reason unknown to us, Vernazza, Catherine’s closest friend, must have left Genoa soon after drawing up this Codicil. For he did not draw up or witness her final Codicil of September 12, although, when in Genoa at all, he now lived close by, and although this final Codicil but gave effect to the plan regarding her sepulture which underlay the change introduced into the Will of March 1509, a Will which had been witnessed by himself. And, as we shall see, he was absent, indeed far away (lontano), from her death-bed, some six weeks after the date at which we have now arrived. I think we can only explain this departure by assuming that already now, before his inspirer’s death, his zeal and activity had expanded beyond the limits of the Genoese Republic; and that, dying as she already was, and devoted to her as he ever remained, he nevertheless (since there was now so little that he could hope to do for her own person, and there was so much to do elsewhere in the way of developing and applying her spirit and teachings) now rode off to Venice or to Rome, as we know him to have done, so often and for so long, during the fourteen remaining years of his life. And we have in this a fact peculiarly characteristic of these two expansive souls,—of the influence of the one, the frail woman, dying in her little sick-room, and of the execution of her world-embracing aspirations by the other, the strong man, battling, often at the risk of his very life, for the poor and oppressed, outside, on the great trysting-field of men’s passions and requirements.
3. Psycho-physical condition and its utilization, August 10 to 27.
But Catherine, lying in her sick-room, suffered on August 10 from one of her great burnings. “And next day, whilst her body was still in pain and trouble, God drew her mind upwards to Himself. And she fixed her eyes on the ceiling, and remained thus almost immovable for an hour, and spoke not but laughed joyously. And when she had returned to her more ordinary consciousness, she said this one thing only: ‘O Lord, do with me whatsoever Thou wilt.’”[195]
On August 15, she, “when about to communicate, addressed many beautiful words to the Blessed Sacrament, so that every one present was moved to tears.”[196] During the following day and night she suffered so greatly, that “all considered she would certainly die. She asked,”—this was the third or even fourth time,—“for Extreme Unction, and” this time “it was given her, and she received it with great devotion.”