As is so often the case in the lives of the chosen instruments of Providence, Catharine was to do a great work at Avignon, but not the work for which she apparently went there. She was received by the Pope with the greatest kindness and distinction; she was even intrusted by him with full powers to make peace with the Florentines. But Gregory XI. knew the men with whom he was dealing better than she. The government of Florence was still in the hands of the eight; they did not really desire peace, at least on any terms that the Pope could grant them. They had yielded to the vast majority of their fellow-citizens in seeming to wish for what would be in reality the end of their own power. The envoys delayed their journey to Avignon: when they did arrive, and Catharine proposed to use the full powers the Pops had given her, they replied that they had no authority to treat with her; nor were they more honest in their dealings with the Pope himself. The time, then, for the particular task that Catharine had undertaken was not yet come; but she was at Avignon now, at the side of Gregory XI., and she was to decide him to a step far more important than the granting a peace to Florence.
The character of Gregory XI. is so constantly represented in the same colors by historians of every grade, that it would seem almost rash to suppose that they could all have been mistaken in the picture. It has a softness and beauty about it that are extremely touching, when viewed in the light of his many misfortunes and early death, overshadowed as it was by the threats of the still greater troubles from which it saved him. He had been marked out for high ecclesiastical dignity from the very first, and was but eighteen when his uncle, Clement VI., made him cardinal. His career after his elevation justified his premature advancement; he made himself famous for learning, and even more so for his tender piety and the unsullied purity of his life. His humility and sweetness won all hearts: perhaps the more because his frail health, his pale countenance, and evident delicacy of constitution, gave a kind of plaintive charm to his very [{556}] appearance. Though he was barely forty years of age at the death of Urban V., he had been elected Pope after the conclave had lasted but a single night. He had refused at first, but at last had been forced to accept the crown of St. Peter as a matter of duty. He was then only in deacon's orders. No one has ever questioned the purity of his aims, or even the rightness of his views and the soundness of his judgment. We have already said, with regard to one great paramount question of the time, that he had secretly vowed to take back the papacy to Rome, if he ever should be elected pope. But, inheriting as he did the traditions of Clement VI., surrounded in France by noble and powerful relatives, and by cardinals almost exclusively his fellow-countrymen, and with health and constitution that were almost sure to be ruined at once by the air of Rome, everything seemed to forbid him to make the effort that was required. The earlier years of his reign had passed away, not indeed without many thoughts and even declarations on the subject, but without any steps being taken to put the design in execution. In 1374 he had announced his intention of visiting Rome to the emperor; in the following January he had written in the same sense to Edward III. and to other kings of Europe. But that summer and autumn saw the outbreak at Florence, and the great revolution that arrayed almost the whole of the Ecclesiastical States in rebellion against the Church; and the advocates of the French residence of the papacy must have thought themselves safe now that Italy had risen against Gregory. He was not, like Urban V., a pope elected from outside the College of Cardinals, with little sympathy and but few ties with them. He was of one of the great Limousin families, the nephew of the most brilliant of the Avignon popes, surrounded by powerful relatives, all of whom were interested in keeping him where he was. The quiet security of Provence suited him, and he was one of those gentle characters, not wanting in ordinary firmness and decision, which still are more fitted for tranquil times than for days of disturbance, and are more capable of suffering and of patience than of initiating bold measures and breasting the waves of a great emergency. Family and personal influence had much weight with him; not from any active ambition or spirit of nepotism, so much as that it had become at Avignon a matter almost of course that many of the splendid prizes in the gift of the Popes should be bestowed on their relatives. He himself owed his position originally to that custom. At a time when reform was much needed in the prelacy, and many abuses and scandals existed which required to be sternly rebuked and punished, he could see what was wanting more easily than carry it out with a severity alien to his nature. He was influenced by the atmosphere around him. In the same way, notwithstanding his own strong inclination to grant peace on any terms to the Florentines, he seems to have yielded as to his actual policy to the more violent and relentless counsels of the French cardinals, headed by Robert of Geneva, who led the Breton companies over the Alps. It might well have been thought that such a pontiff would not now act against the advice and the wishes of all around him, and that the actual state of Italy would be enough to make him adjourn indefinitely his promised journey to Rome.
To such a character it is sometimes everything to have support and companionship—the mind and the voice of another, however inferior, that seem to give body and life to thoughts and designs not new indeed, but which seemed before to belong rather to the world of dreams and imaginations than of possible realities; to change wishes and longings into practical resolutions; to chase away phantom difficulties, and nerve the will to efforts and sacrifices which the conscience [{557}] has long prompted. With all of us our own ideas and designs seem sometimes to date their real existence from the moment that we found they were shared by some one else. In the case of Gregory XI., he seems, before the arrival of Catharine at Avignon, to have been almost alone in his wish to return to Italy; and he had already seen something of St. Bridget, and learnt from intercourse with her what the personal influence of great sanctity might be. Catharine at once won his perfect confidence, and her presence gave him the courage to follow out the course which he had long felt to be the right one. It is this which makes it historically true that she had so great a part in the final return of the Holy See from Avignon. It is easy to find reasons why Gregory should have returned; it is easy to show that there was danger that an attempt might be made by the Romans to give their city a bishop of their own creation; or, on the other hand, that Gregory had intended to take the step long before he took it. If these things are alleged to show that the influence of St. Catharine has been exaggerated by her historians, they are beside the point. Her providential mission at Avignon was not to put new considerations before the mind of Gregory, but to strengthen his will to act upon considerations already familiar to him.
The esteem in which the Pope held her was not only manifested by the reception he gave her, and by his inviting her even to speak in public as to what she thought to be required for the best interests of the Church; it also shielded and defended her from the dislike with which her unwelcome presence was viewed by many a magnificent prelate and many a brilliant official of the court of Avignon. The reforms that she spoke of as so necessary, and the return to Rome that she recommended, were equally distasteful to them. Three of the most learned prelates asked leave of the Pope to visit her, and began to catechise her most severely both as to her presumption in coming as the envoy of Florence, and as to her preternatural gifts of prayer and her extraordinary mode of life. But they left her overwhelmingly convinced of her sanctity and wonderful gifts. The fine ladies about the court—the sisters, nieces, and relations of the Pope and the cardinals—looked on her with instinctive dread. Some of them even tried to patronize and make her the fashion; but she either exhorted them plainly to conversion, or turned from them with that stern silence with which her Master received the overtures of the blood-stained paramour of Herodias. One of them—a niece of the Pope— knelt beside her in apparent devotion, as she was rapt in prayer before communion, and plunged a needle or bodkin into her bare foot, to see whether she could feel it. When her state of abstraction ceased, Catharine could hardly walk, and her sandal was full of congealed blood. The French king heard of her influence with the Pope, and sent his brother, the Duke of Anjou, to dissuade Gregory from listening to her; but Catharine won the respect and admiration of the duke, prevailed on him to offer himself for the crusade, and suggested him to the Pope as its captain-in-chief. Then an attempt was made to influence Gregory by means of the deference that he paid to the advice of saintly souls. A forged letter was sent him—as it appears, in the name of the holy Peter of Aragon—telling him that if he went to Italy he would be poisoned. Catharine showed him that the letter was not such as a servant of God would write, and that poison could be given him in France as well as in Italy. After all, the Pope still hesitated; he made preparations and issued orders, but it was with slowness and reluctance; and at any time a change might come over the state of affairs in Italy that might be the occasion of indefinite delay. One day again he asked her opinion. She said she was a poor weak woman; how should she [{558}] give advice to the sovereign Pontiff? "I do not ask you to counsel me," he replied, "but to tell me what is the will of God." Again she excused herself; and Gregory again urged her, commanding her at last, by virtue of her obedience, to tell him what she knew of God's will as to the matter. She bowed her head—"Who knows the will of God better than your holiness, who have promised him by vow to return to Rome?" Gregory had never revealed his vow to living soul; and from that moment his determination was taken. Still the opposition was great and powerful. The cardinals urged him with the example of an excellent Pope, Clement IV., who had never done anything without the approval of the Sacred College. Catharine met their arguments, she even went so far as to urge the Pope to depart secretly, so obstinate and so influential was the party that wished to retain him in France. At length, on September 13, 1376, amid the remonstrances of his family and the tears of his aged father, as well as the sullen complaints of the whole court, Gregory XI. left Avignon. Catharine had remained to the last, and then went on foot with her companions to Genoa, whither the Pope was to pass by sea. It seemed as if every kind of influence that could beat down his courage was to be allowed to work upon the failing heart of Gregory. Everything that could be turned into a bad omen was carefully noted. His horse refused to let him mount; then it became so restive that another had to be brought. As he passed by Novis, Orgon, and Aix to Marseilles, everywhere the inhabitants were in tears and gloom. Marseilles itself, when he came to embark, was the scene of a grand explosion of grief. Then there came the terrors of a dangerous voyage, from the extremely severe weather encountered by the fleet. The grand master of the Knights of St. John himself took the helm of the galley in which the Pope sailed—a weather-beaten veteran, accustomed to perils of all sorts, who had to exert all his skill under the storm that came on as they made across toward Genoa. They were obliged to put into Villafranca for some days. It was not till the 18th of October, sixteen days after leaving Marseilles, that Genoa was reached. Here the Pope was met by bad news from Rome and from Florence; the Florentines, alarmed at his approach, were preparing for the most desperate hostilities; the Romans seemed quite unwilling to put the government of the city into his hands. A consistory was held (the greater number of the cardinals were with the Pope), and the resolution was adopted not to proceed further with the journey. All seemed lost; but Catharine with her company was in Genoa. The Pope sought her out—it is said, by night; and from her calm and fervent words gained fresh strength and courage to pursue his journey to the end. [Footnote 85]
[Footnote 85: See Capecelatro, "Storia di Santa Catarina," lib. v., p. 222, 2d ed.]
So, after ten days spent at Genoa, the fleet once more put to sea, to be driven again into Porto Fino, where the feast of All Saints was kept. It arrived at Leghorn on the 7th of November, and there again lingered ten or eleven days. As far as Piombino all went well. When the galleys left that port, another storm—the most violent of all they had met with—arose, and drove them back shattered and disabled; three cardinals were seriously ill, one of whom died at Pisa a few days later. At last Corneto was reached on December 6, more than two months after the departure from Marseilles. Gregory remained there for several weeks to regain his strength, and then sailed up the Tiber, landing near the basilica of St. Paul on January 17, 1377, the day before the feast of the Roman Chair of St Peter. His entrance was a triumph that seemed to promise him every security for peace and tranquillity; and the joy and devotion of the Romans may [{559}] have taken away for the moment the mournful feelings with which he had turned his back on France. Thus, a year and a half after the revolution at Florence, which, had caused so rapid and widespread a defection among the cities of the Pontifical States, and seemed to threaten the very existence of the temporal power of the Church, these very events, which might have seemed likely to furnish reason for the prolonged exile of the papacy, brought about, under the providence of God, the fulfilment of the resolution to return to Rome which the Pope had so long delayed to accomplish. The instrument of the deliverance of the Holy See from its dangerous position was the envoy of its rebellious children, the humble maiden from Siena.
A CHRISTMAS CAROL.
BY AUBREY DE VERE.
Primeval night had repossess'd
Her empire in the fields of peace;
Calm lay the kine on earth's dark breast;
The earth lay calm in heaven's embrace.
That hour, where shepherds kept their flocks,
From God a glory sudden fell;
The splendor smote the trees and rocks.
And lay like dew along the dell.
God's angel close beside them stood:
"Fear naught," that angel said, and then,
"Behold, I bring you tidings good:
The Saviour Christ is born to men."
And straightway round him myriads sang
Loud song again, and yet again,
Till all the hollow valley rang
"Glory to God, and peace to men."
The shepherds went and wondering eyed,
In Bethlehem born, the heavenly stranger.
Mary and Joseph knelt beside:
The Babe was cradled in the manger!