Finally, should it still seem difficult to believe, that two fourteenth century Popes, one a mild Frenchman, and the other an overbearing and choleric Italian, should have accepted the Sienese Virgin as a special messenger from Heaven, have really credited her miraculous pretensions, and have accorded a respect to her epistles on the score of their being inspired (which they assuredly would not have yielded to them as simply human compositions), it may be suggested, that men placed in the position of those Popes may possibly not have sincerely believed all that they deemed it politic to seem to believe. The miracle-working Saint, who came with such a man as Father Raymond to prompt her, backed by all the power and interest of the Dominican Order, with the ambassadorial credentials of the revolted and dangerous community of Florence in her hand, and with almost unlimited power of moving and directing the passions of large masses of the populace, was not a personage to be set at nought by a prudent Pontiff in the position of either Gregory XI. or Urban VI.
The history of Catherine's Saintship since her canonisation has been too much the same, as that of all her brethren and sisters of the calendar, to make it at all interesting to enter into details of the "dulia"—not worship! observe Protestant reader!—offered to her. She has her chapels, her relics, her candles, her office, her day, her devotees, like the rest of Rome's holy army. But what she could not be permitted to have, despite the recognition of Urban VIII., in 1628, was a claim to blood-relationship with the noble family of Borghese. Whether the Saint's heraldic backers were correct in attributing to her such an honour, or those of the Borghese right in disputing the fact, it is clear that that remarkably noble family had not sufficient respect for saintly reputation, however exalted, to endure that a dyer's daughter, let her have been what she might, should mar by her vicinity the nobleness of the many barbarous barons and worthless knights who have borne the family name. So great was the outcry they raised, that Urban VIII. was obliged infallibly to unsay his previous saying on the subject.
ANECDOTE OF THE PRESENT POPE.
By way of a conclusion, which, while it shows, that in the case of Catherine at least, there is an exception to the rule that excludes a prophet from honour in his own country, proves also that the subject of her Saintship is not a matter of mere historical interest, but aspires to the dignity of an "actualité," an anecdote may be told of the present Pope's recent journey through Tuscany.
Arrived at Siena, he too, like his predecessors, either thought it holy, or thought it politic, to pay due attention to the popular Saint in her own city. He accordingly directed the Saint's head, in its setting of silver and precious stones, to be brought from the Dominican church to his lodging in the Grand-ducal palace. But the populace of the city, especially the women of the ward in which the Saint was born, estimated the value of the precious relic so much more highly than they did the honesty of the Pontiff, that they insisted on not losing sight of their treasure, and could hardly be persuaded that Pio Nono had no burglarious intentions respecting it.
CATERINA SFORZA.
1462.-1509.