Catherine dictates these sentences as hearing them word for word as she repeats them, from the mouth of God!
"Know, O daughter! that no one can escape from my hands, because I am He, who I am; and ye do not exist by yourselves, but only in so far as ye are created by Me, who am the Creator of all things that have existence, except only Sin, which does not exist, and therefore has not been created by me. And because it is not in me, it is not worthy of being loved. And therefore the Creature offends, because he loves that which he ought not to love, which is sin, and hates Me, whom he is bound and obliged to love; for I am supremely good, and have given him existence by the so ardent fire of my love. But from Me men cannot escape. Either they fall into my hands for justice on their sins, or they fall into my hands for mercy. Open therefore the eyes of your mind, and look at my hand, and you will see that what I have said to you is the truth." Then she raising her eyes in obedience to the supreme Father, "saw enclosed in his hand the entire universe," &c., &c.[24]
It is evident, that this could not have been written from the Saint's dictation. But the work may have been composed from notes taken down while she poured forth her trance-talk. And such an hypothesis would not be incompatible with Oudin's supposition, that the book, as we have it, was composed by Father Raymond. In any case the staple of its contents, if not inferior to the generality of the theological literature of the time, shows at least no such superiority to it as to place the author in the high and exceptional position Catherine is proved to have occupied.
Twenty-six prayers have been preserved among the works of Saint Catherine; and it might be supposed, that such a record of the secret outpourings of an ardent heart in its communion with the infinite God, sole object of its fervent aspirations and daily and nightly meditations, would have been calculated to throw considerable light on the character, capabilities, and mental calibre of the worshipper. But these documents afford no glimpse of any such insight. They are not the sort of utterances that could ever bring one human heart nearer to another: and no assimilating power of sympathy will enable the reader of them to advance one jot towards a knowledge of the heart from which they proceeded. The impression they are calculated to produce, is either that the Saint was a self-conscious actor and pretender, or that they are not her compositions. And the latter, perhaps, may be considered the more probable hypothesis.
HER PRAYERS.
Though addressed in form to the Deity, there is little that can be accurately called prayer. The speaker, or writer rather, seems continually to forget his avowed object, and runs off into long statements of the nature and attributes of the Deity, and ecclesiastical propositions based thereon, evidently prompted rather by didactic views on mortal hearers, than by effort to hold communion with the Almighty. It is all dry, cold, repetitive, verbose theology, instead of the spontaneous warm utterances of either a thankful or a contrite heart;—neither the expression of an earnest spirit, nor the production of an eloquent writer.
There remain the letters, by far the most interesting and valuable of the Saint's reputed works. They are 373 in number, and form two stout quarto volumes of the Lucca edition. In the four octavo volumes of the cheap Milan reprint before mentioned, only the first 198 are given; though there is no word of notice or explanation to indicate, that the work is not complete. On the contrary, the fourth volume is entitled "fourth and last;" and we are left to the hopeful conjecture, that the devout editors found the speculation so bad a one commercially, that they thought fit to close the publication suddenly, and leave their subscribers to discover as late as might be, that they had purchased an imperfect book.
The 373 letters of the entire collection have among them many addressed to kings, popes, cardinals, bishops, conventual bodies, and political corporations, as well as a great number written to private individuals. And it seems strange, that among so many correspondents of classes, whose papers are likely to be preserved, and many of whom, especially the monastic communities, would assuredly have attached a high value to such documents, no one original of any of these letters should have been preserved.
ORIGINALS OF HER LETTERS.
Girolamo Gigli, the editor of the quarto edition of the Saint's works, printed at Lucca and Siena, in 1707–13, an enthusiastic and laborious investigator and collector of every description of information regarding her, gives in his Preface to the letters, a careful account of the manuscript collections from which they have at different times been printed, but has not a word to say of any scrap of original document. "As soon," he writes, "as the saintly Virgin had ascended to heaven in the year 1380, some of her secretaries and disciples collected from one place and another some of her letters and writings." But the words which follow this seem to indicate that even these earliest collectors did not possess any of the original manuscripts, but made copies of them, in most cases probably from other copies. "The blessed Stefano Maconi," he says, "having transcribed the book of the Dialogue, added at the end of it some epistles; and another larger collection was made, also by him as I think, in a certain volume which exists in the library of the Certosa at Pavia. Buonconti also collected not a few, as may be seen by an ancient copy in his writing, which was among the most notable things left by the Cardinal Volunnio Bandinelli, and now belongs to the Signor Volunnio, his nephew and heir. We have another abundant collection in an ancient manuscript preserved in the library of St. Pantaleo at Rome; and this is one of the most faithful of all those I have seen in its orthography and style; and as far as can be judged by the character of the writing, the scribe must have been contemporary with the Saint. But the blessed Raymond of Capua, her confessor, left to the Dominicans of Siena two very large volumes of her letters neatly copied out on parchment, in which nearly all those collected by the others are contained. And these most precious documents are rendered more valuable by the testimony given to their authenticity by the blessed Tomaso Caffarini in the above cited reports made at Venice."[25]