converted into an oratory. In the garden where she loved to cultivate the symbolic rose and lily and violet for the altar, is a chapel in which hangs the miraculous crucifix painted by Giunta of Pisa, framed in pillars of black marble, over the altar. Before this crucifix she received the stigmata in the church of St. Christina at Pisa. In these various oratories are a profusion of paintings by Sodoma, Vanni, and other eminent artists. Del Pacchia has attained the very perfection of feminine beauty in his painting of St. Catharine’s visit to the shrine of St. Agnes of Monte Pulciano—a genuine production of Christian inspiration. Salimbeni represents her calm amid the infuriated, ungrateful Florentines after her return from Avignon; and Sebastian Folli, her appearance before Gregory XI.
But the most sacred part of the house is her chamber, a little, dark cell about fifteen feet long and eight or nine wide. A bronze door now opens into this sanctuary. Here you are shown the board on which she slept, and other relics of the saint. Here she passed nights in prayer and converse with the angels. Here she scourged her frail body, unconscious that her mother was weeping at the door. Here she wrote the admirable letters so remarkable for their purity and elegance of style. Here took place the divine Sposalizio which, immortalized by art, we see all over Italy. Here, when calumniated by the repulsive object of her heroic charity, she came to pour out her pure soul, that shrank from the foul accusations, before the heavenly Bridegroom; but when he appeared with two crowns, one of gold set with jewels, and the other of thorns, she unhesitatingly chose the latter, pressing it deep into her head, thus
becoming for all time, in the world of art, the thorn-crowned Catharine. Pius IX., when he visited the house in 1857, prayed long in this cell, where lived five centuries ago the obscure maiden who, for a time, almost guided St. Peter’s bark.
On St. Catharine’s day the house is richly adorned and resplendent with light. The walls are covered with emblems and verses commemorating her life. The altars have on their finest ornaments. The neighboring streets are strewn with flowers and hung with flags. Hangings are at all the windows. A silver statue of the saint is borne into the street by a long procession of clergy and people. The magistrates join the cortège, and they all go winding up to San Domenico with chants, perfumes, and flowers, where a student from the college Tolomei pronounces a eulogy on their illustrious townswoman. When night comes on, the whole hill around Fonte Branda is illuminated, the rosary is said at the foot of the Madonnas, and hymns are sung in honor of the saint.
St. Catharine’s life, in which everything transcends the usual laws of nature, has been written by her confessor, the Blessed Raymond of Capua—the life of one saint by another. He was not a credulous man easily led away by fantasies of the imagination, but one of incontestable ability and knowledge, who relates what he witnessed in the soul of whose secrets he was the depositary, who scrutinized every prodigy, but only to give additional splendor to the truth.
Raymond was a descendant of Piero della Vigna (the celebrated chancellor of Frederick II.), whose spirit Dante finds imprisoned in “the drear, mystic wood” of the Inferno,
and, plucking a limb unwittingly from
“The wild thorn of his wretched shade,”
to his horror brings forth at once cries and blood. For nineteen years Raymond was general of the Dominican Order. Pope Urban VI. confided the most delicate and difficult missions to him; called him his eyes, his tongue, his feet, and his hands; held him up to the veneration of princes and people; and would have raised him to the highest dignities but for the opposition of the saint. No one, therefore, could have greater claims to our confidence.
Catharine Benincasa was born in 1347. From her earliest years she was a being apart, and favored with divine communications. Uncomprehended at first by those around her, her home became to her a place of trials. Her parents tried to draw her into the world, and she cut off her long, golden hair. They wished her to marry, and she consecrated herself to a higher love. They then subjected her to household labor, but she found peace in its vulgar details. She worked by day. At night she prayed till lost in ecstasy, insensible to everything earthly. She wished to enter the Third Order of St. Dominic, but was refused admission because she was too young and beautiful. It was only after an illness that made her unrecognizable that she was received; but she continued, like all the members, an inmate of her father’s house. Her soul was peculiarly alive to the sweet harmonies of nature. She liked to go into the woods, at springtime, to listen to the warbling of the birds and watch the mysterious movements of awakening vegetation. She loved the mountain heights, with their wild melodies of winds and