CHAPTER II.
THE SAINT'S BIOGRAPHER.
A great number of devout writers have occupied their pens on "legends" and biographies of St. Catherine, more or less complete in their scope and pretensions. The public library at Siena contains no less than seventy-nine works, of which the popular Saint of the city is the subject. Almost all of them, however, seem to be based more or less directly and avowedly on the work of "the Blessed" Raymond of Capua.
Perhaps some heretic's untutored mind may be so ignorant as not to know that the adjective joined to Raymond in the preceding sentence is not only an epithet, but a title. "Beatification," is a spiritual grade inferior to "sanctification," conferred by the same unerring authority, and implying different and inferior privileges and position.
Childish trash enough it seems. Yet may not possibly some disciple of that modern school of moralists, which teaches that happiness is not, or should not be man's highest and ultimate aim, see in this assertion of the superiority of "sanctification" to "blessedness," one of the many instances in which Rome's pettifogging formalism and unspiritual materialism have fossilised a lofty thought into a low absurdity?
Be this as it may, Raymond of Capua was never in Rome's hierarchy "more than blessed."