torrents, as well as the gentle rustling of the air among the leaves, which seemed to her like nature’s whispered prayer. She said, as she looked at the ant, a thought of God had created it. She loved flowers. She had a taste for music, and liked to sing hymns as she sewed. The name of Mary from her lips was said to leave a singular harmony in the ears of her listeners. She sympathized in every kind of misery to aid it; lent a helping hand to every infirmity, and often served in the hospital, choosing those who were abandoned by the rest of the world as the objects of her care. She rose above the wants of the body. From her childhood she never ate meat, the very odor of which became repugnant to her. For years she subsisted from Ash Wednesday till Whitsuntide solely on the Holy Eucharist, which she received every morning. She entered into all the troubles of the times, diffusing everywhere the pure light of divine charity. Though without human instruction, she astonished the doctors of the church by her profound knowledge of theology. “The purest Italian welled from her untutored lips.” She wrote to popes, cardinals, princes, and republics. Some of her letters are to Sir John Hawkwood, or, as the Italians call him, Giovanni Aguto, the ferocious English condottiere, who stained the flag of the church, and then entered the service of her enemies. She takes a foremost rank among the writers of the age—that of Boccaccio, who lacks her touching grace and simplicity.
Siena, at the time of St. Catharine, was no longer the powerful, united city it had been a century before, but in its turn had become the prey of anarchy and division. The different classes of people were at war
with each other. They proscribed each other; and private hatred took advantage of the disorder to indulge in every kind of revenge. The Macconi were at variance with the Rinaldini; the Salimbeni with the Tolomei; the Malvotti with the Piccolomini.
War reigned all over Italy. Milan and all Lombardy were ravaged by the Visconti. Naples was a prey to the excesses caused by Queen Joanna. Florence, that had been devoted to the church, was now governed by the Ghibellines, who went to every extreme against the Guelphs, whose cause, says Dean Milman, “was more (!) than that of the church: it was that of freedom and humanity.” The States of the church were ravaged. Rome itself, widowed and abandoned, “with as many wounds as she had palaces and churches,” as Petrarch says, was in a complete state of anarchy.
Amid all these horrors St. Catharine moved, an angel of peace. God gave her a wonderful power of appeasing private resentments and calming popular tumults. Inveterate enemies clasped hands under her influence. Veteran warriors, and republics themselves, listened respectfully to her voice. She wrote to Pope Gregory XI. at Avignon, pleading the cause of all Italy, and urging him to return to Rome, where he could overrule the passions that agitated the country, and restore dignity to the Apostolic See. Her heart bled at the sight of so much misery and crime. “Peace! peace!” she wrote to the pope—“peace for the love of a crucified God! Do not regard the ignorance and blindness and pride of your children. You will perhaps say you are bound by conscience to recover what belongs to holy church. Alas! I acknowledge it; but when
a choice is to be made, it should be of that which is most valuable. The treasure of the church is the Blood of Christ shed for the redemption of souls. This treasure of blood has not been given for temporal dominion, but for the salvation of the human race. If you are obliged to recover the cities and treasures the church has lost, still more are you bound to win back the souls that are the true riches of the church, which is impoverished by losing them. It is better to let go the gold of temporal than the gold of spiritual wealth. You must choose between two evils—that of losing grandeur, power, and temporal prosperity, and the loss of grace in the souls that owe obedience to your Holiness. You will not restore beauty to the church by the sword, by severity and war, but by peaceful measures. You will combat more successfully with the rod of mercy and kindness than of chastisement. By these means you will recover what belongs to you both spiritually and temporally.”
Noble liberty on the part of the dyer’s daughter! And it is to the honor of Pope Gregory that he listened to her with respect. It was time to pour oil on the troubled waters. The proud republic of Florence, after revolting against all spiritual authority, torturing the priests, declaring liberty preferable to salvation, and exciting the papal cities to rebellion, had been laid under an interdict. The people began to feel the disastrous effects on their commerce, and came to solicit Catharine’s intervention with the pope. She went to Avignon, where she made known her mission in a public consistory. “She passed from her father’s shop to the court of princes, from the calmness of solitude to the troubles of factions;
and everywhere she was in her place, because she had found in solitude a peace above all the agitations of the world, and a profound charity.”
Pope Gregory left her to dictate the terms of peace with the Florentines, though he foresaw their ingratitude. Nay, more: after some hesitation he decided to return to Rome. Nor was St. Catharine the only woman that urged him to do so. St. Bridget of Sweden added the influence of her prophetic voice. Ortensia di Gulielmo, one of the best poets of the day, thus begins a sonnet:
“Ecco, Signor, la greggia tua d’intorno