Thus denuded of all devotional "improvement," and of all those portions of the narrative which alone clerical writers have for the most part thought much worth preserving, the story can present but a very skeleton outline indeed; for the notices of the Saint to be met with in contemporary lay writers are singularly few and scanty.
Catherine was one of the youngest of a family of twenty-five children. Her twin sister died a few days after her birth. At a very early age she was observed to be taciturn, and solitary in her habits; and was remarkable for the small quantity of nourishment she took. At about twelve years old she manifested her determination to devote herself to a religious life. The modes of this manifestation, and the difficulties she encountered in carrying her wishes into execution against the opposition of her family, as related by her biographer, are curious; but cannot be admitted into this chapter of "facts."
Some few years later than this, it should seem,—but Father Raymond's aversion to dates does not permit us to ascertain exactly at what age,—Catherine, with much difficulty, and being confined to her bed by illness at the time, persuaded her mother to go to certain religious women attached to the order of St. Dominic, and prefer to them her petition to be admitted among them. These devotees were termed—"Mantellate di S. Domenico,"—"the cloaked women of St. Dominic;" and they appear to have been bound by the vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience. But they were not strictly nuns, as they were not cloistered, but lived each in her own habitation, and went about the city freely. On these grounds the Mantellate made much difficulty about receiving Catherine into their society; alleging, that they conferred their habit only on widows, or elderly single women, as scandal would be caused by a young woman leading a single but uncloistered life. On being further urgently entreated, however, on the behalf of Catherine, they agreed to send a deputation of their body to visit the sick girl, promising to receive her, if it should be found that, though young, she was not pretty. The deputed judges came; and to Catherine's great delight pronounced favourably as to the absence of any disqualifying personal charms; though the more gallant confessor insinuates, that their decision was in great part influenced by the effects of illness on the candidate's appearance. She was accordingly made a sister of St. Dominic, and placed under the spiritual guidance and direction of the friars of that order.
Then we have exceedingly copious accounts of penitences, austerities, and abstinence, which, though in all probability true to a frightful degree, yet, certainly cannot, as related by Father Raymond, be accepted as unmiraculous truths. One circumstance mentioned by him, however, at this point of his narrative, does not seem liable to any suspicion, and is worth noting. Her early confessors, he says, did not believe the miraculousness of her fasts and sufferings.
From this period to the end of her life we have accounts of her frequent, apparently daily, "ecstasies," or fits. And it is interesting to observe, that the descriptions of these seizures given by her biographer on more than one occasion, show them to have been very evidently of a cataleptic nature. The Dominican monk of course has not, or at least does not manifest, the least suspicion that these "ecstasies" were attributable to any other than a directly miraculous cause. But his account is sufficiently accurate to render the matter satisfactorily clear to modern readers.
FATHER RAYMOND'S DOUBTS.
The passage, in which he first speaks of these fits, of his own doubts concerning the nature of them, and especially of the mode he adopted to arrive at a correct decision on this point, is sufficiently curious.
"Shortly[10] afterwards," he says, having been telling the story of some vision, "she lost the use of her corporal senses and fell into ecstasy. Hence proceeded all the wonderful things that subsequently took place, both as regards her abstinence, such as is not practised by others, her admirable teaching, and the manifest miracles, which Almighty God, even during her lifetime, showed before our eyes. Wherefore, since here is the foundation, the root, and the origin of all her holy works.... I sought every means and every way, by which I might investigate whether her operations were from the Lord, or from another source,—whether they were true or fictitious. For I reflected, that now was the time of that third beast with the leopard's skin, by which hypocrites are pointed out; and that in my own experience I had found some, especially among the women, who easily deceive themselves, and are more readily seduced by the enemy, as was manifested in the case of the first mother of us all. Other matters also presented themselves to my mind, which constrained me to remain uncertain and dubious concerning this matter. While I was thus in doubt, unable to acquire a strong conviction on either side of the question, and anxiously wishing to be guided by Him, who can neither deceive nor be deceived, it struck me, that if I could be certain, that by means of her prayers I had obtained from the Lord a great and unusual sense of contrition for my sins, beyond anything I was wont to feel, this should be for me a perfect proof that all her operations proceeded from the Holy Ghost."
He then recounts at length, what may be as well told in a few words,—how he besought her to pray for him, telling her, that he desired to have a proof of the efficacy of her prayer by being conscious of an unusually strong sense of contrition within himself,—how she promised that he assuredly should have this proof,—how he was next day confined to his bed by illness, and so weak as to be hardly able to speak; and how, being then visited and exhorted by Catherine, who herself left with difficulty a sick bed to come to him, he did feel especially and unusually contrite; and so the required proof was complete, and he was ever after ready to accept any amount of miraculous performance on the part of the Saint with perfect faith in its reality and sanctity.
Did the diplomatist General of the Dominicans really think that he had obtained the proof, he says he wished for? Were the other women, whom he had deemed impostors or dupes of the evil one, equally devoted to and in the hands of the Dominican Order, equally fervent and promising in their vocation of saintship, and equally endowed with the strength of character and will, which united to her physical infirmities, rendered Catherine so rarely and highly valuable an instrument for the promotion of "religion" and the glory of the order?—questions, which must be left to the consideration of the reader. On a subsequent occasion, Father Raymond describes[11] more at length the nature of the seizure, to which Catherine was subject. We are told that,—