Catherine of Siena Read online

  The Holy Spirit had taught her how to build herself an inner cell, a place of refuge where she could pray and think of her Beloved, and from this no one could recall her; here no one could come and disturb her. “The Kingdom of God is within you”: now she understood the meaning of these words, spoken by Him who is truth itself. Within us—it is there that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are poured out upon us to perfect our natural talents, to break down internal and external obstacles. If we passionately desire the true good, the heavenly Guest comes and lives within us—He who has said “Be of good courage, I have conquered the world.”

  Catherine trusted in Him, and felt that a cell, not built by human hands, was formed within her, so that she had no need to regret that they had taken from her the little cell of wood and stone. Later she used to advise her disciples when they complained of being so overburdened with the problems of the world that they never found quiet to meet God or to drink of the spring by which they lived: “Build an inner cell in your soul and never leave it.” Raimondo admits that he did not understand these words of his “mother” at once, but “it is extraordinary to see how I and all who have lived near her understand all her actions and words much better now than in those days when we had her beside us.”

  One day Catherine knelt lost in prayer in Stefano’s room. Her father came in to find something—she was strictly forbidden to lock her door. Jacopo discovered the girl kneeling in a corner, and on her head rested a snow-white dove, but when he approached it rose and flew out of the window. But when Jacopo asked about the dove Catherine said no, she had seen no bird in the room. Jacopo said nothing, but in his heart he mused over this and many other things he had noticed.

  III

  THE SISTERS OF PENITENCE of St. Dominic’s third order originated from a brotherhood of laymen which St. Dominic had founded and called the Militia of Jesus Christ. Besides undertaking to say certain prayers instead of the daily Offices which the monks read—many of these laymen could not read—the brothers were also pledged to defend the possessions of the Church. During the years when the heretics had been in power in Southern France and Northern Italy, a large amount of the Church’s lands had come into the hands of layfolk who disposed of them as though they were their own rightful inheritance. St. Dominic chose a life of strict poverty for the first order, the preaching friars, and the second order, the contemplative sisters. But the poverty of the plundered cathedrals and churches, abbeys and convents had become a hindrance to the work of bishops and priests, and the same applied to the charitable and missionary work of the old monastic foundations. One of the objects of the Militia was to try to regain for the Church what was hers by right. The greater number of these brothers were married men and therefore according to the Catholic laws of marriage could not take any vows without the consent of their wives. Therefore their wives had to vow never to hinder their husbands in the work they had undertaken. In this way the third order came to consist chiefly of married couples who lived together in a life of semi-seclusion, in the world, but not of the world. As a sign that they were attached to the Dominican order they were to wear clothes of the order’s colours, black and white, but nothing was prescribed regarding the fashion of their clothes. Towards the end of the thirteenth century the order gradually lost its character of a militia but continued as the Sisters and Brothers of Penitence of St. Dominic’s third order. When they became widows the sisters offered the rest of their lives entirely to the service of God. They remained in their own homes, but lived like nuns. They did not have their own churches or oratories, but used to meet in a chosen chapel, if possible in a church which belonged to the Friars Preachers. Here they took part in the Mass and prayed together. When, after a time, they were given a special costume—a white woollen dress with a white veil and black cape—they were called “le Mantellate”—the Cloaked Sisters.

  In Siena there were many Mantellate. Married women and widows from every class of society belonged to this congregation, which had its meeting place in the church of San Domenico, in a chapel called Capella della Volte. Ever since childhood Catherine had had a special regard for St. Dominic and loved to slip out early in the morning to go to Mass in the church up on the hill above her home, so she must have seen the Mantellate gathered in devotion hundreds of times. Her sister-in-law Lisa, and an aunt, Jacobo’s widowed sister, belonged to this sisterhood. At this time when her family was doing all it could to make this impossible daughter behave like a normal girl, sending her hither and thither, up stairs and down all day long, while they fumed over her obstinacy and almost as much over her patience and unfalteringly glad obedience in everything except the one thing which meant most to them—Catherine’s soul was full of the longing which had woken in her dimly when she was a child: she longed to be allowed to become a Mantellata. Every day she prayed to her Beloved in heaven to bestow this gift upon her.

  One night this servant of Christ dreamed that she saw before her many venerable patriarchs and fathers of monastic orders, and among them stood St. Dominic—she knew him at once by the beautiful white lily he held in his hand. All these saints told her to choose an order to which she could belong so that she might serve her Lord better than before. Catherine immediately turned towards St. Dominic, and he came to meet her. He showed her a robe like those worn by the Sisters of Penitence, and said to her, “Beloved daughter, take courage. Be afraid of nothing, for you shall surely be clothed in this robe which you desire.” Catherine wept with joy and thanked Our Lord and His soldier St. Dominic, and awakened, bathed in tears.

  But now that He had let His servant know what His will with her was, Catherine was sure that Christ would help her. She went to her parents and told them the reason for her incomprehensible resistance to the plans they had made for her future. She did this the very day after her dream. “I have already let you see so many signs that it should have been easy for you to understand, but out of reverence for my parents, such as God bids us show, I have never spoken out before. But now there must be an end of silence, and I will open my heart to you and confess that I have made a resolution, and that not recently, for I made it when I was still a child, and I have kept true to it ever since. In my early childhood I promised my Saviour, my Lord Jesus Christ, and His blessed Mother that I would always remain a virgin, and it was not out of childishness but for serious reasons that I promised this. I have promised them that I will never take another husband. And now that by God’s mercy I have come to years of wisdom this decision is still rooted in my heart. It would be easier to melt a stone than to tear this holy resolution out of my heart. You only waste time in trying to fight against it. My advice to you is therefore that you break off these negotiations for my marriage, for on this point I shall never be able to obey you; I must obey God before men. If you will keep me in the house under these conditions let me stay here as your servant, I will gladly do everything to help you to the best of my ability. But if you chase me from my home because of this decision, so be it: it can in no way change my heart. I have a Bridegroom who is so rich and powerful that He will not let me suffer want, but will surely provide me with all I need.”

  When Catherine had spoken, the whole Benincasa family broke into loud lamentations; they sighed and wept, and no one could speak. They looked at this young girl who had always been so modest and quiet-spoken and who now spoke to them so boldly and seriously, and they understood that Catherine was ready to leave her father’s house sooner than break her vow. There was no hope of making a good match for her. The Benincasas wept and wept.

  But her father, Jacopo, soon mastered his emotion. When it really came to the point he was not greatly surprised. He answered her gently and kindly: “My dearest daughter, it is far from us to set ourselves against the will of God in any way, and it is from Him that your purpose comes. We have learned through long experience that you are not moved by the selfishness of youth but by the mercy of God. Keep your promise and live as the Holy Spirit tells you to live. We shall never distur
b you again in your life of prayer and devotion, or try to tempt you from your sacred work. But pray steadfastly for us, that we may be worthy of the Bridegroom you chose while still so young.” He turned to his wife and sons and said, “From now on no one is to tease or annoy my beloved daughter or dare to lay obstacles in her way. Let her serve her Bridegroom in complete freedom and pray earnestly for us. We could never have obtained so honourable a marriage for her, so let us not complain that instead of a mortal man we have been given the immortal God-made-man.”

  The brothers were still sorrowful, and Lapa lamented loudly. But Catherine inwardly thanked her victorious Bridegroom who had led her to triumph, and she thanked her parents as humbly as she could.

  They let her have her own room—a tiny little cell on the first landing. Like so many houses in Siena the Benincasa’s home was built against a hill, so that Catherine’s chamber at the back of the house was in fact on a level with the narrow lane which ran behind the building. The room was only three by nine feet. A few stone steps led up to the one little window, which was probably barred, as windows on the ground floor usually were. Some pictures of saints, a chest where she kept her few possessions, a bed of boards with a chunk of wood as a pillow—this was all her furniture. Catherine sat on this bed when she meditated, knelt upon it when she prayed, and lay on it, fully clothed in her woollen robe, to sleep. For a while she wore a hair-shirt next to the skin. But she was always meticulous about keeping herself clean—like St. Teresa of Avila there was only one form of corporal discipline which she never practised, the filth and lousiness which so many male saints have valued as a cure for pride. Later she changed the hair-shirt for a thin iron chain which she fastened so tight round herself that it bit into her flesh. She wore this iron chain right up to the time when her confessor commanded her to lay it aside, and this was towards the end of her life when she had become very weak.

  Many years later Catherine wrote in her book The Dialogue what her heavenly Bridegroom had told her, when she was in ecstasy, about physical discipline: “What I demand of my servants is inner virtue and the struggles of the soul, not such external deeds as have the body alone as their instrument. These are means of increasing virtue, but are not virtues in themselves.” And sometimes a soul becomes enamoured of such outward penitential exercise, and then it becomes an obstacle on the way to perfection. Complete trust in the love of Christ and a hatred of one’s own ego; true humility, perfect patience, hunger and thirst for God’s sake and the salvation of the soul—these were the signs of a pure heart which has killed sensual desire by the love of righteousness.

  In the same way St. Benedict in the rules of his order forbade exaggerated corporal self-discipline: it is usually forbidden in the rules of the monastic orders for a monk or nun to exercise such discipline without first seeking advice from his or her confessor and spiritual adviser. But St. Benedict himself had in his youth practised extraordinarily rigorous self-discipline to cleanse his soul from the impressions he had received during the years he lived in Rome among corrupt men and women. Catherine, who was still extremely young, was certain that the self-discipline to which she subjected herself in solitude was inspired by the Holy Spirit. It was right for her, and so. . . .

  It is not difficult to believe her when she later told Fra Raimondo that the sacrifice which cost her most when she was young was that of sleep. At first she spent the whole night in prayer and converse with her Bridegroom, and only when matins was being celebrated in the monasteries did she lie down to sleep for a short while. But after a time the soul triumphed over the demands of the body, until she was able to manage with half an hour’s sleep, and this sometimes only every other day. As “her commerce was in heaven” she felt that the time she used in sleep was truly wasted.

  For a long time now she had denied herself wine, which for centuries has been both food and drink to the Italians. First she mixed a little wine in the water she drank—just enough to colour it—so that she should not offend the others at table. It was several years since she had eaten meat—she told Raimondo later that the very smell of meat was unpleasant to her, a thing to be remembered when Catherine later of her own free will undertook all the housework which she had once been forced to do, and turned the spit and stirred the saucepans with the odorous meals of meat, vegetables and spices which are the masterpieces of Italian cooking. But it is not surprising that Lapa complained and even swore when Catherine also removed the good bread from her diet and wanted to live only on vegetables, and little enough of them. When Raimondo wrote his book on the blessed Catherine’s way of life, he had good reason to emphasise the fact that this holy woman practised such strict self-denial as no one had heard of since the days of the Desert Fathers, and this not in the solitude of the desert, but in the home of a large and well-to-do middle-class family.

  In order to imitate her spiritual father, St. Dominic, Catherine gave herself the discipline—scourged herself with an iron chain—three times a day: once for her own sins, once for the sins of all living souls, and once for the souls in purgatory. The blood often ran down her shoulders—as Raimondo says, she gave her Saviour “blood for blood”.

  Her poor mother had scarcely had time to accustom herself to the thought that her best loved daughter would never be a bride nor a mother, when she learned to her despair of these incomprehensible tortures which this incomprehensible child of hers was applying to herself. “Oh, my daughter, my daughter, you will die, you are killing yourself—Oh, who has taken my child from me? Who had brought this sorrow on me?” The wife of Benincasa shrieked and wailed until her voice resounded through the narrow streets around, filling the neighbours with alarm, and friends and passers-by rushed into the house to find out what new misfortune had befallen poor old Lapa.

  As she was unable to make Catherine eat, she made up her mind to see to it that the girl at any rate got some hours of decent sleep each night. She walked into Catherine’s cell, where she found her daughter kneeling on the planks of her bed, dragged her “by force” into her own room and compelled her to lie in her own bed, tucked warmly in between linen sheets and soft pillows. Catherine lay obediently beside her mother. She prayed silently and meditated until Lapa had fallen asleep and she could creep away and continue to pray as usual. But “Satan whom she had challenged with her steadfast determination, then wakened Lapa”—Raimondo was in no doubt that it was Satan who tried to use Lapa and her natural maternal love as his instrument to tempt Catherine from the way which would lead her to perfect union with Christ, even though the innocent and inoffensive Lapa of course knew nothing of this. Stefano Maconi, who knew through experience a good deal about the conflict between a vocation and well-meaning mother-love, contents himself with saying in his Italian translation of Tommaso Caffarini’s Latin biography of St. Catherine that Lapa loved her daughter’s body better than her soul. In order to pacify both her mother and her own conscience Catherine now smuggled some wooden planks in under the sheets in the place in Lapa’s bed where she was to sleep. When her mother discovered her daughter’s pious trick she was forced to let Catherine do “what the Spirit moved her to”, even though Lapa muttered and moaned a good deal before she gave in.

  Catherine often talked to her parents of her longing to belong to St. Dominic’s order of Sisters of Penitence. This also made Lapa extremely unhappy. She dared not forbid her to mention the matter, but she hit upon the idea of making her daughter think of other things by taking her to the baths of Vignone, south of Siena. At that time this was a fine large watering-place, with a number of inns to accommodate the stream of visitors who came to the warm sulphur springs. Catherine agreed to her mother’s plan obediently. But when they were about to begin their cure, she asked to be allowed to bathe alone. Lapa said she might do so—she did not know that instead of going to the pool where the water was pleasantly warm, Catherine went to the place where the sulphur water ran out of the pipes, scalding hot. The pain was awful, but she tried to imagine the torments of purgato
ry and hell, while she begged her Creator to receive these self-inflicted sufferings instead of the torments she deserved to suffer as punishment for each time she had offended God.

  Lapa was bound to confess that she had lost the battle. And now Catherine implored her mother to go to the prioress of the Mantellate and ask whether her daughter could be clothed in the robes of the order. At last Lapa went, very unwillingly, and her heart was certainly considerably lightened when the sisters replied that it was against their custom to accept young girls in the congregation. As all the sisters had to live according to the rule in their own homes, ordinary prudence demanded that they should only accept women of ripe years who wished to offer themselves entirely to God for the rest of their lives.

  But not long after, Catherine became seriously ill. She was covered with a kind of rash on her face and over her whole body, had violent pains and lay in a burning fever. Lapa sat by her bed and nursed her faithfully and tirelessly. She attempted to console her sick child with caresses and loving words, and did everything she could to make her well again. Catherine had but one wish, and Lapa was now willing to do anything if only she could save her child’s life. She was therefore prepared to try once again to obtain for her daughter what her heart so passionately desired. After all, it was better that the child should become a Sister of Penitence here on earth than that God and St. Dominic could call her to themselves, for it seemed that they called her ceaselessly. . .