Her spiritual pretensions had not even, as far as they were concerned, been proved to be genuine. They solicited from the Pope, therefore, an interview with the Mantellate nun, in which the soundness of her theology might be tested. This encounter lasted from noon until late in the evening, during the whole of which time they endeavoured to confuse her into foolishness. But Catherine had a very clear brain and a very quick one. She knew her subject, and, being a clever woman, in a few minutes also, roughly, the temperaments of the men she was dealing with. The thought is a purely personal one, but it is difficult not to believe that she enjoyed the excitement. Catherine was humble through instinct, but she must have realized that she was considerably more capable than most people. Stephen Marconi, present during the interview, says that two of them were enticed over almost immediately, and took sides with Catherine against their own party. The questions put, however, were anything but easy to deal with. Among other points they queried how she knew that she was not really in the subtle clutches of Satan; it was no uncommon trick for the Evil One to change himself into an angel of light, or sham to be a vision of Christ himself. All this time her extraordinary manner of life might be simply a cunning prelude to damnation.
Catherine neither wavered nor deliberated; her calm was gracious and simple; she was exquisitely willing to be interrogated. The cardinals gave in; the struggle over, they had even the grace to admit that “they had never met a soul at once so humble and so illuminated.” Gregory, inherently a gentleman, afterwards apologized to Catherine for having permitted her to be molested by them, and from that time her troubles with the cardinals at any rate terminated.
Gregory himself had from the beginning been openly impressed by her. She left Avignon before the actual journey to Rome was made, but her passionately eager persuasions were the fire at which Gregory’s conscience chiefly ignited. For his household became desperate and loquacious at the mere suggestion. Gregory also had been born in France; all his roots were in the genial soil of Avignon. But Catherine would not let the matter rest. In a yearning and courageous letter, beginning, “Holy Father, I, your miserable little daughter Catherine,” she urged him to be overborne by nobody against doing his duty, for if God was with him, nobody could be against him.
Gregory went, and in a man old, fearsome, and extremely out of health, the action has an element of greatness. For the reputation of Rome, constantly reiterated by those about him, was very much like that of a den of wild beasts. Ser Amily, a provincial poet, who gives a rhymed description of the journey from Avignon, says, further, that all the physicians and astrologers prophesied a fatal termination to the expedition, but adds that they had apparently misread the constellations, as after some terrifying storms they sailed for the rest of the way upon a tranquil sea.
The fatal termination merely tarried somewhat, though the entrance into Rome proved a triumphant pageant. The streets had been laid with carpets, white flowers rained from every window—no welcome could have looked more cordial or inspiriting. The entry once over, however, Gregory found himself alone in an inimical country. Catherine wrote encouraging letters to him to discard all fears and strenuously to do all he could. But Gregory had done all he could. Rome, depraved and indocile, required a sterner nature at its head. He was ill and overtired, and fourteen months after having reached Italy, died, lonely and disheartened, at the age of sixty-seven.
Urban VI., by birth a peasant, short, squat, unpolished, succeeded him. The election was instantly unpopular. Half the people desired a French pope, residenced at Avignon and keeping French interests uppermost. The rest writhed under the truculent uncouthness of the new Pope, hating him personally. Matters became so envenomed that the most acutely aggrieved presently declared his election to have been illegal, and proceeded to place another pope at Avignon, known as Clement VII.
There were, in consequence, two popes—one at Rome, and the other in France. Both claimed supreme authority, and the confusion produced by them brought the papacy very near to the ridiculous. Then commenced, according to Muratori, a long series of terrible scandals in the Church. The result was unceasing private and public dissensions, incessantly culminating in murder. Urban excommunicated Clement and his cardinals. Clement, on his part, excommunicated Urban and his followers. The same benefices were conferred on different persons by the rival popes, each appointing his own bishop to every vacant see. Urban had been one of the cardinals during Catherine’s momentous stay at Avignon, and knowing his character, she wrote him after his election some very wistful counsel. The necessity of behaving benevolently was like a cry wrung out of her involuntarily; again and again, in different phraseology, she begged him to “restrain a little those too quick movements with which nature inspires you.”
This puts matters prettily—with an innate tact of feeling. Urban, in reality, was a man destitute of pleasant impulses. Fundamentally irritable, he possessed no control of utterance. Towards the cardinals his manners were inexcusable. He shouted the word “Fool!” at them upon the least hint of contradiction: over a difference of opinion he blurted furiously, “Hold your tongue; you don’t know what you are talking about.” Having determined to put down the rampant cupidity and immorality of these same cardinals, he raided their palaces as the quickest method of exposing them. On the other hand, he was a man of absolute probity, austerity, and courage. Petrarch had several times attacked the gluttony of high ecclesiastics. Urban ordered that one course only was ever to be seen upon the table of any prelate whatsoever, and adhered to the rule himself even upon occasions of hospitality. The following incident is a good example of his courage. As a result of the schism and his own extreme unpopularity, the people of Rome broke into open rebellion. The mob rushed to storm the Vatican. At the first rumour the household had fled to take refuge in other places. Only Urban refused to move, and remained alone in the great empty palace. When the mob stormed the doors and made for the Pope, they found him sitting motionless upon the throne, dressed in full pontifical splendour and holding the cross in solemn defiance in one upraised hand. The sight of his immovable figure, dramatic, repellent, denunciatory, broke the nerve of the impressionable Romans. They saw before them the representative of God, and with incoherent noises, fearful of eternal wrath, they fled, leaving the rigid figure impassive as an image, alone once more.
It was with Urban that Catherine went through the last exciting interview of her life. The impression left by her personality at Avignon must have been considerable, for when the election of Clement VII. took place and divided the Church into two disordered and querulous factions, the man who could not support a single adverse suggestion actually sent for Catherine to come and help him render the people of Rome at least loyal to the true Head of the Church. Catherine, though by now very frail in body, set out immediately, taking twenty helpful people with her, but, for some reason not given, leaving Stephen Marconi behind. Then, when she had got to Rome, and had recovered from the exhaustion of the journey, Urban insisted that she should give an address upon the schism before the entire assembly of cardinals.
She could only have looked a rather wan and paltry object set against the lace and silk and breadth of the well-fed cardinals. She was by this time nothing but a narrow line of black draperies and a thin white face. But the moment she began to speak the old warmth leapt into her voice, and the nun became more deeply rich in colour than all the scarlet and purple she fronted. Catherine never lost her head or her courage. She was there to rouse the sluggish morals of the cardinals, but she was quite aware that Urban stood almost as much in need of improvement as they did. With admirable clarity she laid stress upon the fact that the only weapons suitable for a pope were patience and charity. Urban owned neither, but the pluck and eloquence of the woman reached some responsive feeling, and he praised her then and there in a generous abundance of phrases. Unfortunately he did nothing else, and the following Christmas Catherine sent him another cajoling reminder—the kind of reminder only a subtle woman, and one with charming ways in private life, would have thought of. She preserved some oranges, coated them with sugar, and having gilded them, sent them to the Pope. With the present came a note, explaining that in the preserving all the acidity of the orange had been drawn out, and that, like the orange, the fruit of the soul, when prepared and sweetened and gilded on the outside with the gold of tenderness, would overcome all the evil results of the late schism, or, as with a careful selection of an unhurtful word, she put it—“the late mischance.”