CHAPTER VI
CATHERINE’S DOCTRINE
The attentive reader will no doubt have perceived how great have been the difficulties at every step taken, in the previous chapters, towards a critically clear and solid account of Catherine’s life. He will, then, be quite prepared again to find difficulties, though largely of another order, in the task that now lies before us,—the attempt at a clear and authentic reproduction of her teaching.
1. Four difficulties in the utilization of the sources.
The sources are, it is true, at first sight, fairly abundant,—altogether about one hundred of the two hundred and eighty pages of the Vita ed Opere. But four peculiarities render their utilization a matter of much labour and caution.
For one thing, they certainly include no piece written by herself, and probably none written down before 1497. Catherine’s memory can no doubt be trusted, and with it much of the oldest version of those great turning-points of her inner life which occurred long before that date, and which she thus, later on, communicated to her two closest friends. Yet hers was a mind so constantly absorbed in present experiences and in self-renewal as to be all but incapable of dwelling, in any detail, upon her past experiences or judgments.
And next, within and for this her “doctrinal,” her “widowed” and “suffering” period, we are perplexed by the total absence of logical or indeed of any other order in the presentation of these discourses and contemplations. We have either to do without any order at all, or to construct one for ourselves,—which latter course of itself already means a reconstruction of the book.
But far more delicate is the task presented by the third peculiarity,—the fact, demonstrated both by the internal evidence and analysis and by the external evidence of the MSS., of the bewildering variety of forms and connections in which one and the same doctrine, sometimes an obviously unique saying, will appear. Six, ten, even twelve or more variants are the rule, not the exception. And I am specially thinking, under this heading, of contemporary variations—that is, variations of form that can reasonably be attributed either to her own initiative at work under differences of mood and of starting-point; or to the variety of the minds who apprehended and registered this teaching at the time of its delivery; or to both influences simultaneously. In the first case we get, say, her doctrine as to man’s weakness and sinfulness, in two moments of depression and consolation respectively, registered by one and the same disciple,—say, by Vernazza or by Marabotto. In the second case we get some such two sayings as rendered the one by Vernazza and the other by Marabotto severally. And in the third case we get both the depressed and the joyful original sayings, as they have passed through the minds of both Vernazza and Marabotto.
And lastly, we get another class, redactional variations; and these it is often as difficult as it is always necessary to detect. I mean the parallel passages, evolved in course of time by her attendants or constructed by successive redactors, more or less on the model of, but also with more or less of departure from, her own authentic sayings: blurred, partly inaccurate echoes, as it were, of her own living voice. These will generally have grown up but semi-consciously, or at least have arisen from simple motives of her glorification or of literary filling-in or rounding-off. For we must not forget the forty years which passed between her death and the Vita.
I am thinking here too of the theological limitations and corrections, introduced into the older text in the form of definite counter-statements, which we shall find to be especially visible in the Trattato; and of the, doubtless preponderatingly unconscious, modifications of an analogous kind which determined the composition of the Dialogo, and are traceable throughout that whole long work. For here again we have to remember how, between her living teachings, so ardent and familiar, so entirely from within and unoccupied with the world without, which reached up to 1510, and even the earliest MS. redaction of the contemporary jotting down of those sayings which we still possess,—that of 1547,—runs the great upheaval of the Protestant Reformation, beginning with Luther’s Theses of 1517. Catherine’s own fellow God-parent to Vernazza’s eldest daughter, the Doctor of Laws Tommaso Moro, had meanwhile become a Calvinist (1537), and then had returned to the Catholic Obedience in 1539, first under this his God-daughter’s influence. No wonder that what, under the magic suasion of her living personality, in times as yet free from the controversial and polemical tone and temper, and through and for her friends already won to and comprehensive of her teachings, had been certainly registered, and perhaps for a while transmitted, in its own pristine, winningly daring and unguarded, form, would, with her old friends dead and a new generation grown up and engrossed in attack and defence of various points of the Catholic position, be felt to require tempering and safeguarding, rewriting and controversial utilization. Hence we get three successive steps. The theological counter-statements in the Trattato, probably introduced between 1524 and 1530. The controversial point and utilization attempted in the very title of the Vita which promises, “una utile e cattolica dimostrazione e declarazione del Purgatorio,” and in the Preface, which declares the book to contain things “specially necessary in these our turbulent times,” touches which go back probably to 1536, perhaps even to 1524-1530. And the composition of the entire Dialogo, hardly begun before 1546.[221]
It is interesting to note how neither for the approbation of the first edition in 1551 (by the Dominican Fra Geronimo of Genoa), nor during the examination by the Congregation of Rites and the final approbation by Pope Innocent XI, 1677-1683, was any additional correction required or (as far as I know) even suggested. The latter point is particularly striking; for we have thus the very Pope who, in 1687, condemned Molinos’ teaching, solemnly approving Catherine’s doctrine four years before, after a seven years’ examination.