After 1370, Catherine’s Annus Mirabilis, which she said had changed her to another woman, it looked at first to the observers as though her life continued more or less as before. Visions and ecstasies were her daily bread, and her body weakened only to show its miraculous resilience every time the love of Christ and her fellow-men forced her to rise and put her hand to the plough. The extraordinary manner in which she lived without eating was occasionally interrupted by periods when she could take a minute amount of nourishment—fruit juice or vegetables which she chewed, spitting out the solid parts afterwards, and a little water.
All the time the flock of her spiritual sons and daughters, the Caterinati, grew. Siena had seen with astonishment how one after another of the town’s strong and sinful men were tamed by the little Sister of Penitence, and allowed her to lead them back to the fold. In fact it was perhaps even more astonishing how many of the young nobles, youths with a taste for intellectual refinements and aesthetic pleasures, became Catherine’s disciples and daily companions.
Neri di Landoccio dei Pagliaresi loved poetry, and was himself no mean poet; his delightful poems were sung and read everywhere in Siena. Nervous and emotional, prone to attacks of melancholia during which he despaired of his life and doubted his salvation, he clung to his “mamma”, whose divine joy no adversity and no physical pain could shadow. Catherine’s genius was that her Christ-like heart had room for all her children of the spirit—perhaps she did not love them all with equal intensity, but at any rate she loved them in such a way that no glimpse of any jealousy among them has reached us. It is as though she loved each one in a special way, so that for each daughter and son she could be exactly what he or she needed. The theme of all her letters to Neri di Landoccio is always the same: be of good courage. But she also advised him solemnly to see through this world, to see how little its gifts are worth, to fill himself with the love of God, for His love for us will fulfil all our truest and holiest desires. In the precious blood of Jesus Christ was healing for his soul, which Catherine once compared with a leaf which trembles with every wind.
Neri worked for Catherine as one of her secretaries, and was continually with her. He brought many of his friends to her, and many of them became her disciples. Among them was Francesco di Vanni Malavolti, young, rich, sensual, avid for pleasure and distraction. His family had married him to a young and beautiful girl of noble birth, but he had been a sadly unfaithful husband who played the part of a Don Juan among the girls and young wives on his family estates. When he went with Neri to visit Catherine, he swore that if she mentioned conversion and confession to him she would receive a reply which would keep her mouth shut. No sooner did he stand face to face with the young sister, looking into her shining eyes, and hearing the first words which she uttered with her delightful voice, than he began to tremble. This was a power he had never met before, and in his impulsive way he immediately put himself into her hands, and asked to be allowed to be her son.
He was sincere enough about his conversion, but it was not easy for Francesco Malavolti to break with his former bad habits. Not long after she had received him as her son, he came to see Catherine. She met him with a question: “My son, when did you last go to confession?” Last Saturday, said Francesco confidently, and on the following day, Saturday, he would go again. But at this his “mother” turned her back on him, filled with righteous anger: “My son, do you really think that I do not know what you have done? Do you not know that I follow my children wherever they go? You cannot do or say a single thing without my knowing of it at the same moment.” She told him where and when he had committed each sin. “Go immediately and free yourself from such great misery.”
It was not Francesco Malavolti’s last fall from grace. Especially at times when Catherine was not in Siena the young man would allow himself to be tempted back to the old sinful ways. Catherine wrote to him and begged him tenderly to come back to the fold. “I, your poor mother, wander around distracted, looking for you. I wish I could lift you on the shoulders of my unhappiness and carry you home. . . . You have become poor, you are in need and your soul is about to starve to death. . . . Comfort my spirit and cease to be so cruel towards yourself and your Saviour. . . . Dearest son, I must call you the child of my heart, for you have cost me many tears, bitterness and trouble.”
Francesco came back, happy to be able to sit once again at the feet of his “mother”. Again he went astray, until most of Catherine’s friends gave him up—he would never be a dependable member of the flock. Catherine only smiled. She said she was sure that this wild bird of hers would not escape her in the end. But it was not until Catherine was dead and Francesco Malavolti had also lost his wife and his child and become a Benedictine monk that he really understood how bravely his beloved mother had fought to save his soul. He wrote the story of his conversion, which was to be published when she was canonised, and now he understood completely how he really had been her dearest child, even though she had had as great love towards many others: but how such things can be is the secret of those who have consented to have their hearts recreated to resemble the heart of Jesus.
But it was not only the young and frivolous, or the young and brutal, sinners of Siena’s noble families who were captured by Catherine’s intense personality. Messer Matteo di Cenni Fazi was quite another kind of man, a middle-aged citizen, when he went to visit Catherine together with another worthy elderly gentleman. They came out of curiosity, but the sight of the maiden kneeling in prayer, still as a statue, made such a deep impression on them that they attached themselves to her and became her faithful friends and disciples. Messer Matteo, who in his quiet and well-behaved way had been a very worldly man, gave everything he possessed to charity, and chose the arduous and exhausting work of serving the poor and the sick as rector of Casa della Misericordia, the second largest hospital in the town. Cristofano di Gano Guidini was also a citizen of ripe age, a hardworking notary, and he too joined Catherine’s family and became one of her secretaries. Andrea di Vanni, the painter who had made a sketch of Catherine in her early twenties on one of the pillars in the Dominican Church, also joined the circle of Caterinati at about this time.
Messer Michele di Ser Monaldo was also a notary. He was a pious and just man, and with the consent of his wife he had taken upon himself to serve the nuns in the convent of San Giovanni Baptista in Siena. He let the nuns bring up his two little girls. But after a while the youngest, a child of eight, began to suffer from terrible attacks. She knew neither grammar nor Latin, but during these attacks she spoke fluent Latin and spoke of learned subjects as though she were an elderly doctor. Moreover she suffered from attacks of cramp, and the good sisters had no doubt that the small child was possessed of an evil spirit. She became so much worse, and her condition caused such confusion in the convent, that the nuns dared not keep little Lorenzina, but asked her father to take her home again. In vain the parents took the little girl to all the churches in Siena where miracle-working saints were buried, or where there were relics which could work miracles. Raimondo considered that the saints wanted Catherine to work this cure, and it was for this reason they would not help Lorenzina. Messer Michele and his wife took the child with them to Catherine and asked her to pray for her. But Catherine excused herself: “Ah, I am myself tortured every day by evil spirits, I do not need to take up the fight against other people’s demons.” She tried, moreover, to escape by a back door and hide herself from the despairing parents.
Her biographers are convinced that she did this from humility. But perhaps Catherine was really so beset with temptations from demons that she was afraid to have anything to do with Lorenzina’s case. At a later date, too, she showed the same reluctance to deal with a woman who was possessed, although she finally overcame this fear of demons who tortured other people and indeed became famous for her power to cast out unclean spirits.
Messer Michele and his wife would not give up hope. Nothing could shake their confidence in Catherine, and as they
knew that she was always obedient to her spiritual director, they took Lorenzina with them to Fra Tommaso della Fonte. He was sorry for them, and took the child to Catherine. He asked her to let the child sleep with her that night, and Catherine obediently received Lorenzina. She let the child kneel beside her when she prayed, and then Catherine fought the demon the whole night. At dawn he relinquished his victim, and Lorenzina lay down to sleep, apparently quite well and normal.
As soon as it was light Alessia hurried to Fra Tommaso with the good news. Together with Lorenzina’s parents he went to Catherine, but when Messer Michele and his wife began to pour out streams of gratitude and delight Catherine replied seriously that it was best for the little girl to remain with her a few days longer. She taught the child to pray and instructed her in all kinds of devotions which would strengthen her soul. But one day Catherine had to leave the house for some hours. Before she went she said to her friends that they must on no account let Lorenzina be alone for so much as a minute.
Catherine left, but suddenly she said to the sister who was with her that they must put on their capes and hurry home. “I have a feeling that that wolf from hell has returned to torment and injure our little lamb.” The first thing they saw when they entered was that the child was completely changed, had cramp and was raving. The zealous virgin immediately commanded the demon to depart: “Evil dragon, how dare you came back to torture this innocent little girl? I think that through the power of Jesus Christ you shall now be cast out in such a way that you will never return.” The evil spirit threatened her: “If I am cast out of her I shall enter you.” But Catherine replied, “If it is my Lord’s will; for without His consent you have no power whatsoever.”
Again the little girl became quiet, but the spirit had worked so violently in her throat that it was terribly swollen. Catherine made the sign of the cross over her throat and the swelling disappeared. Now it seemed as though Lorenzina was cured for good. A little while after, her parents were able to take her back to the convent, and when she grew up she became a good nun, who never showed any sign of being anything but healthy and normal. Both Raimondo and Fra Tommaso Caffarini knew Messer Michele and his wife well and heard the story from them.
But as rumours of Catherine’s holiness and stories of the unnatural life she led spread through the neighbourhood of Siena, and even further afield, critics and scandalmongers outside the town also busied themselves talking about the dyer’s daughter from Fontebranda. Fra Giovanni Tantucci, an Augustinian hermit, lived in the little monastery of Lecceto near a small lake north of Siena in the middle of a beautiful oak wood, and was much disturbed at the idea of this ignorant woman deluding simple and unlettered people with her alleged revelations and her arbitrary interpretations of the truths of the Faith. The Augustinian, who was a learned doctor of theology and a famous preacher, talked at great length of the affair to a friend who was also a doctor of theology, the Franciscan, Fra Giovanni da Volterra. The two experts agreed to visit Catherine and unmask her for what she was—a dangerous fanatic, and presumably a heretic too, although she probably did not herself understand this. . . .
They happened to come at a time when many of her friends were with Catherine. Besides Francesco Malavolti who has related this story, Fra Tommaso della Fonte was there—he was still Catherine’s confessor—as well as Matteo Tolomei, Neri, and several other of her sons, Alessia, Cecca, and other Sisters of Penitence. The two learned doctors attacked Catherine “like raging lions”, and bombarded her with the subtlest and most difficult theological questions they could invent. They were so abashed at her replies, given so clearly and wisely, that they wished they could withdraw from the whole affair, when Catherine suddenly took the offensive. She reminded them that they had once taken vows to live in poverty (the Augustinian hermits are also a mendicant order); but how had they kept these vows? They lived like cardinals, in spacious cells, with bookshelves, good beds and arm-chairs. “How can you dare to try to understand anything of the kingdom of heaven? You have thrown away the kernel and now chew the empty shell of faith. For the sake of Jesus Christ, stop living such a life. . . . ”
The learned Franciscan offered Catherine the key of his cell—would she be so kind as to send someone there to empty the cell of all its superfluous contents and give them to the poor? Fra Giovanni Tantucci did the same. He later became one of Catherine’s closest friends and accompanied her to Avignon and to Rome. When the Pope commanded that there should always be three priests among Catherine’s following, so that they could hear confessions and give the sacraments to the sinners whom she converted, Fra Giovanni was one of the three.
Catherine visited the hermitage of Lecceto with Fra Giovanni and came to know the monks who lived there. One of them was the Englishman William Flete. He was a melancholy aesthete and dreamer who first and foremost sought spiritual joys for himself in his religion. He became a warm admirer of Catherine, exchanged letters with her, and after her death made her name and works known in England. But he refused very definitely to join the circle of a saint who combined the active with the contemplative life, as Catherine did. He was far too happy in his solitude in the beautiful woods, where he had experienced such wonderful hours in prayer and meditation.
Catherine Benincasa was both contemplative and active, and adulation and abuse made equally little impression upon her. She had been a mediator in controversies between individuals and between powerful groups; she had been a miracle-worker and a theological doctor. Her work in the world, which might seem exhausting to even the most robust of women, was interrupted for rest only during those moments when her soul escaped from her body into the embrace of her Bridegroom. Catherine received her spiritual energy, which few could resist, as well as the physical strength which allowed her to live a life completely independent of material things, from the words which He spoke to her soul, from His hands which held her up. Friends who were constantly with her saw how Catherine during her ecstasies seemed to be lifted from the floor where she knelt, and seemed to float, as though her soul in its flight upwards drew her body after it, instead of being bound to earth by the body.
Raimondo of Capua, who had had some mystical experiences himself, although they had been few and almost always seem to have occurred in connection with his penitent, tries with loving care in his description of her life to explain as much as he could understand of her strange way of life. When the soul is carried off to distant heavens and enjoys completely intellectual visions, it is made independent of the body, and in its longing to be made entirely one with what it sees—God—it passionately desires to be wholly free of the body. If God did not in a miraculous way maintain life in the body, it would disintegrate and perish. When the soul afterwards returns to the lower sphere, it seems like a humiliation; it is as though the soul in its knowledge of divine Perfection and its own imperfection drifts on outspread wings between two abysses. Confident and blessed, it has touched the shores of eternal life, but as long as it remains one with the mortal body it cannot have peace either in the hereafter or in this world. Raimondo believed that this was what St. Paul meant when he wrote to the Corinthians: “And lest the greatness of the revelations should exalt me, there was given me a thorn in my flesh”, and further “. . . power is made perfect in infirmity.”
The intense remorse which Catherine always felt for her sins came of her knowledge of what complete Purity, complete Love, really is. When she accused herself passionately for having slighted God because she let herself be distracted for a moment to see a brother go past in the church; when she reproached herself bitterly for her untruthfulness because she had politely said Yes to some Dominicans who invited her to come and see a monastery, when she had no intention of doing so—then the sensitiveness of her conscience may seem exaggerated, so that one can scarcely help wondering, was Catherine really quite sincere when she sometimes called herself the worst of all sinners? Even Raimondo of Capua had to confess that he had on occasion been doubtful. But in the end he learn
ed to understand that Catherine measured perfection and imperfection with a yardstick which ordinary people do not know. Only God is perfect—this she had been allowed to see in her visions—and everything which is not God is imperfection. When she spoke as though she believed that her sins were the cause of the misery of the Holy Church and the whole world, she meant it with deadly seriousness. Obviously she knew that hundreds of thousands of other souls were also sufficiently sinful to bring the same miseries over the whole world and the Church. But it was not for her to judge them—she could only judge herself. This is the economy of the society of the blessed: just as the rewards of the blessed are collected in the treasure-houses of the Church, so that every poor and infirm soul may have its share of this treasure, so in a mysterious way the sins of the faithful impoverish the whole of Christendom. Our generation, which has seen how the horrors of war and the concentration camps have fallen alike on the guilty and on those who by human reckoning were the most guiltless, should find it easier than our forefathers, with their naïve belief in personal success as a reward for personal service, to understand the dogma of the Church that we all have our share in the rewards of all the saints and the guilt of all sinners.
When a volcano erupts, streams of red-hot lava pour out over the sides of the crater, while great pieces of rock and clouds of hot gases are thrown into the air. Sudden insight into the structure of one’s own soul can come on one like the eruption of a volcano. But after a while the lava cools and stiffens, either to become fruitful earth in which forests and orchards may flourish, or to remain as a black and barren desert—all according to the circumstances. But for years after the eruption clouds of fine dust may float high up in the air currents—invisible except in certain strong lights. In the eyes of the saints the clouds of dust of small sins, which we scarcely notice, are always visible in the glow of the light from above.