"Several epistles are extant," writes this sixteenth century Frenchman, "from Catherine of Siena to Urban, and one to King Charles V., written on the 6th of May, 1379, to uphold that Pope's cause. And certainly nothing more weighty or more elegant could have been conceived or written by any man of that time, not even excepting Petrarch, whose genius I admire, and whose works I generally prefer to those of any other writer of that age."
To the present writer such an opinion appears perfectly monstrous, and wholly unaccountable on any simply literary consideration of the matter. It may be admitted to be no little extraordinary that a poor dyer's daughter in the fourteenth century should write these letters, such as they are; that she should possess so much knowledge of the general state of Church politics in Europe, as they evince; and most of all that having popes, kings, and cardinals for her correspondents, she should be listened to by them with respect and attention. Even to the Pope, she on more than one occasion ventures on a tone of very decided reproof; and it should seem, that Urban VI., a choleric and violent tempered man, received from her in good part communications couched in language such as rarely reaches Papal ears. "The blessed Christ," she says, in writing to Urban of the vices of the ecclesiastics, a topic to which she returns again and again, "complains of this, that his Church is not swept clean of vices, and your Holiness has not that solicitude on the subject which you ought to have." Again, when there had been riots in Rome, in consequence of the Pope having failed to keep certain promises he had made to the people, she "humbly begs him to take care, prudently to promise only what it will be possible for him to perform in its entirety."
All this is curious enough, and abundantly sufficient to prove that Catherine was an influential power in her generation. It will be the business of a following chapter to offer some suggestions as to the explanation of this remarkable fact. But let the causes of it have been what they may, it is difficult to suppose that they can be found in the persuasive eloquence, or literary merit of her appeals to those in power.
CHAPTER VI.
CATHERINE'S LETTER TO THE KING OF FRANCE.
The letter selected as a specimen of the vast mass of the Saint's correspondence is perhaps the most specially celebrated of the whole collection. It was to Charles V. of France, on the 6th of May, 1379, on the subject of the favour shown by him to the party of the Anti-pope Clement VII., and runs as follows:—
"Dearest father in sweet Christ Jesus, I Catherine the slave of the servants of Jesus Christ, write to you in his precious blood, with the desire to see in you[29] a true and entirely perfect light, in order that you may know the truth of that which is necessary to you for your salvation. Without this light, we shall go into darkness; darkness which will not permit us to discern that which is hurtful to the soul and to the body, from that which is useful to us; and thus destroys the perceptions of the soul, so that good things are made to seem bad, and bad things good, that is to say, vice. And those things, which lead us to sin, appear to us good and delightful; and virtue, and that which leads us to virtue, appears to us bitter and of great difficulty. But he, who has light, knows well the truth; and accordingly loves virtue, and God, who is the cause of all virtue; and hates vice, and his own sensuality, which is the cause of all vice. What is it, that takes from us this true and sweet light? The self-love which a man has for his own self, which is a cloud that obscures the eye of the intellect, and hides from the pupil the light of the most holy faith. And thus a man goes as one blind and ignorant, following his own frailty, wholly given up to passion, without the light of reason, even as an animal, which, because it has no reasoning powers, allows itself to be guided by its own sensations. Great pity is it that man, whom God has created in his own image and likeness, should voluntarily by his own fault make himself worse than the brute animal, that like an ungrateful and ignorant creature, neither knows nor acknowledges the benefits of God, but attributes them to himself. From self-love proceeds every evil. Whence come injustice, and all the other faults? From self-love. It commits injustice against God, against itself, against its neighbour, and against Holy Church. Against God it commits injustice, in that it does not render glory and praise to his name, as it ought to do. To itself it does not render hatred and dislike of vice, and love of virtue; nor to its neighbour benevolence; and if it is found in a ruler, it does not do justice to its neighbour, because it does so[30] only according to the pleasure of human creatures, or for its own natural pleasure.[31] Nor to the Church does it render obedience, or assistance, but continually persecutes it. All is caused by self-love, which does not permit a man to know the truth, because he is deprived of light. This is very manifest to us, and we see it, and have proofs in ourselves every day that it is so.