A Decade of Italian Women, vol. 1 (of 2)

by Thomas Adolphus Trollope

THE SECRET OF HER INFLUENCE.

The recent reprint, and large circulation of the "Legend" and Letters of St. Catherine, give a present interest to her story, which it would otherwise want, and indicate but too clearly, that her influence is not a mere thing of the past, but a living and active fact. But the causes and nature of this influence are far from being a secret to those who have paid any attention to the present condition of Italy, and who understand the modus operandi, and policy of a church, the whole purpose, scope, and meaning of whose being, is the preservation of its own existence, and that of the sovereigns, its partners and accomplices in the subjugation and plundering of the people. And the direct and indirect uses of Saintly literature towards this end, however well worthy of being studied, form no proper part of the present subject. The influence, far more difficult to be accounted for, which Catherine cannot be denied to have exercised over Popes and Kings, her contemporaries, is what should be here explained, as far as any explanation can be found for it.

That none such must be sought in the literary qualities of her writings, has probably been made sufficiently manifest. When every allowance has been made for the intellectual difference, which may be supposed to exist between a fourteenth century and a nineteenth century reader, it still remains incredible, that such missives, as that above translated from the Saint's Italian, should, irrespectively of any otherwise manifested claims of the sender of them, have been found powerfully persuasive by those to whom they were addressed. We have no proof, indeed, that this especial letter did produce any effect on the King of France. And with regard to the letters written to Urban, after the breaking out of the schism, it may be argued, that, whatever he may have privately thought of Catherine's pretensions and powers, he was no doubt too well aware of the importance an enthusiastic, well accredited Saint, might be of to his party, to think of throwing cold water on her zeal and exertions. The success of her mission to Avignon, however, and the employment of her intercession with the Pope by the rulers of Florence, testify abundantly to the esteem in which she was held.

Can it be supposed, that the wide-spread reputation she acquired, and the marvellous power she exercised, were derived from the impression made on her contemporaries by her virtues, the purity of her life, the earnestness of benevolence, and the zeal of her charity? But that would be to attribute to mere goodness a power over one of the most corrupt generations in the history of the world, which it has never been seen able to exert over any age. It would be to attribute to the virtue of Catherine a triumph, which the infinitely more perfect virtue of One infinitely greater than she failed to achieve.

HER MORAL NATURE.

Of all possible solutions this would be the least compatible with the conditions of the age in which she lived. But the low morality, to which mere purity of life would have appealed in vain, was especially favourable to the powerful and successful operation of another class of the Saint's pretensions. In proportion as the intellectual and moral darkness of men make a spiritual conception of Deity more and more impossible to them, are they prone in the desolation of their unacknowledged, but none the less effective atheism, to accept with ready awe and reverential fear any such gross material manifestations, as profess to reveal to them a God sufficiently ungodly not to be disturbingly out of place in their scheme of life and eternity. Those "ages of faith," therefore, whose title to that appellation consists in their eager readiness to accept and believe any quantity of such miracles as could be conceived to proceed only from the will of a God created in the likeness of a very unspiritual man, were probably as little faithful to any spiritually profitable ideal of the Divine nature, as any generations since the dawn of Christianity.

To such ages Catherine was admirably adapted to appeal with remarkable force and success. Her strength of will, and her infirmity of body, both contributed to produce the effect to be explained. The first, as evidenced by the unflinchingly persevering infliction of self-torments, such as would have been wholly intolerable to a weaker will, and by continued exertion under suffering, weakness, and malady, made a large and important part of the saintly character; as the same qualities differently evidenced would have led to eminence in any career, and in any age. But joined to this potent strength of will may be observed evidences of a very remarkable degree of spiritual egotism, and "the pride that apes humility." The poor Sienese dyer's daughter must have been one of those rare natures, to whom the quiet obscure career marked out for them, as it might seem, irrevocably by the circumstances of their birth, was an intolerable impossibility. A woman, poor, plebeian, unlettered, frail in health, and in the fourteenth century! Surely no possible concatenation of circumstances could be devised, from which it would appear so impossible to emerge into power and celebrity! But the "Io Caterina schiava dei servi di Dio," of the letters, who thinks that entire nations shall be accepted or rejected as reprobate by the Eternal in accordance with the measure of HER merits or demerits, and who bargains with God to bear in HER own person the sacrilegious sin of a whole revolted people!—this Caterina was one whom no position could doom to the obscurity intolerable to such idiosyncrasies. And she rushed forth with uncontrollable determination on the one only path open to her;—not by any means necessarily with the conscious intention of making hypocritical use of the profession of sanctity for the achievement of distinction; but driven by the unrecognised promptings of ambition to the determination to excel in the department of human endeavour, which all contemporary opinion pointed out to her, as the highest, holiest, and noblest, open to mankind.

But the peculiar infirmity to which she was subject contributed a part of her extraordinary adaptability to the career she was to run, fully as important as any of the elements of strength in her character. Not only did her frequent cataleptic trances obtain from the people the most unhesitating belief in her supernatural communion with God, and in the miraculous visions which she related, in all probability with perfect sincerity, as having taken place therein; but they had as powerful a subjective as an objective effect. The Saint arose from each of these abnormal conditions of existence, nerved for fresh endurance, armed with increased pretensions, and animated with renewed enthusiasm, the result of hallucinations produced by the intensity of her waking wishes, imaginations, and aspirations.

THE DOMINICAN ORDER.

To these fortunately combined elements of success must be added a third, perhaps hardly less essential to it than either. Catherine, with her equally valuable and rare gifts and infirmities, fell from the outset of her career into hands well skilled and well able to make the most of them. She was from the beginning a devoted member of the great Order of St. Dominick; and it may be doubted on which side lies the balance of obligation between the Saint and her order. If she was to them a fruitful source of credit, profit, and power, they afforded her a status, worldly-wisdom, and backing, without which she could not have attained the position she did. She had for her confessor and special adviser one whom we must suppose to have been the most notable man among the Dominicans of his time, inasmuch as he became their General. And we have seen enough of this able monk in his quality of Saint-leader, to authorise the belief, that he was quite ready to supply as much of the wisdom of the serpent, as might be needed to bring to a good working alloy the Saint's dove-like simplicity. In what exact proportions the metal was thus run, that was brought to bear on the Popes and other great people so strangely influenced by Catherine, it is impossible to say. But there will be little danger of error in concluding, that the effect of either ingredient solely would not have been the same.