When one of the wild young nobles of the town was condemned to death according to the harsh law of the day for having dared to criticize his government, Catherine visited him in prison. She found him raging up and down his cell like some trapped wild animal, refusing all comfort; but her presence and sympathy brought him so great a sense of peace and even of thanksgiving that he went to the scaffold at last joyfully, we are told, calling it ‘the holy place of justice’. Here, not shrinking from the scene of death itself, Catherine awaited him, kneeling before the block, and received his head in her lap when it was severed from his body. ‘When he was at rest,’ she wrote afterwards, showing what the strain had been, ‘my soul also rested in peace and quiet.’
St. Catherine was not alarmed when ambassadors from other cities, and even messengers from the Pope at Avignon, came to ask her advice on thorny problems. She believed that she was a messenger of God, ‘servant and slave of the servants of Jesus Christ’, as she styled herself in her letters, and that God intended the regeneration of Italy to be brought about neither by Emperor, nor by a Holy Roman Republic, but by the Pope himself. No longer must he live at Avignon, but return to Rome, and, once established there, begin the work of reform so sorely needed both by Church and State. Then would follow a call to the world that, recognizing by his just and generous acts that he was indeed the ‘Father of Christendom’, would joyfully come to offer its allegiance.
This high ideal touched the hearts and imaginations of even the least spiritual of Catherine’s contemporaries. One of her letters was addressed to that firebrand Sir John Hawkwood, whom she besought to turn his sword away from Italy against the Turks; and it is said that on reading it he took an oath that if other captains would go on a crusade he would do so also.
St. Catherine herself went to Avignon and saw Pope Gregory XI—a timid man, who loved luxury and peace of mind, fearing greatly the turbulence of Rome. At this time all the barons of the Campagna and most of the cities on the papal estates were up in arms, and Gregory had been warned that unless he went in person to pacify the combatants he was likely to lose all his temporal possessions. Catherine, when consulted, told him sternly that he should certainly return to Italy, but not for this reason.
‘Open the eyes of your intelligence,’ she said, ‘and look steadily at this matter. You will then see, Holy Father, that ... it is more needful for you to win back souls than to reconquer your earthly possessions.’
In January 1377 St. Catherine gained her most signal triumph, for Gregory XI, at her persuasion, appeared in Rome and took up his quarters there, so bringing to an end the ‘Babylonish Captivity’. Not long afterwards he died; and the Romans who had rejoiced at his coming were overwhelmed with fear that his successor might be a Frenchman and return to Avignon. ‘Give us a Roman!’ they howled, surging round the palace where the College of Cardinals, or Consistory, as it was called, was holding the election; and the cardinals, believing that they would be torn in pieces unless they at least chose an Italian, hastily elected a Neapolitan, the Archbishop of Bari, who took the name of Urban VI.
It was an unfortunate choice. Urban honestly wished to reform the Church, but of Christian charity, without which good deeds are of no avail, he possessed nothing. Arrogant, passionate, and fierce in his frequent hatreds, blind to either tact or moderation, he tried to force the cardinals by threats and insults into surrendering their riches and pomp. ‘I tell you in truth,’ exclaimed one of them, when he had listened to the Pope’s first fiery denunciations, ‘you have not treated the Cardinals to-day with the respect they received from your predecessors. If you diminish our honour we shall diminish yours.’
Rome was soon aflame with the plots of the rebellious college, whose members finally withdrew from the city, declared that they had been intimidated in their choice by the mob, that the election of Urban was therefore invalid, and that they intended to appoint some one else. As a result of this new conclave there appeared a rival Pope, Clement VII, who after a short civil war fled from Italy and took up his residence at Avignon.
The Great Schism
The period that followed is called the Great Schism, one of the times of deepest humiliation into which the papal power ever descended. From Rome and Avignon two sets of bulls, claiming divine sanction and the necessity of human obedience, went forth to Christendom, their authors each declaring himself the one lawful successor of St. Peter, and Father of the Holy Catholic Church.