Catherine was
a remarkable woman in Renaissance Italy. She refused her parents’ arrangements
for her to marry and went into isolation for three years. She gathered a huge
following of friends and disciples. She persuaded the Pope to come back from
Avignon to Rome and gave herself in service of the Church and the poor.
Three years’ isolation and a mystical marriage
Catherine joined the third order of St. Dominic, wore the black and white
habit but stayed at home. For three years she never left her room, except to go
to Mass and confession, and spoke to no one except her confessor. “My cell will
not be one of stone,” she said, “but one of self-knowledge.”
She received a vision of
Christ, who told her: “Know, daughter, that I am He who is, and you are that
which is not.” From this she developed her sense of her vocation and her
spiritual life. She trained herself to live on a spoonful of herbs a day and a few hours’ sleep
every night. While the town of Siena celebrated Carnivale, she remained praying in her room where she experienced a mystical marriage with
Jesus. Jesus appeared to her and placed a ring on her finger, visible only to
herself.
A following – ‘Caterinati’
After three years she resumed her share of the housework at home and
began to mix with other people, first through nursing the sick and helping the
poor. She soon had a following – men and women, friars and priests – attracted
as much by her gifts of discernment and asceticism as by her lively personality
and personal charm. The people of Siena, puzzled by all this coming and going
around a young woman with a reputation for holiness, called them the
‘Caterinati’, of “Catherine followers”. Affectionately they called her Mama.
Call as peacemaker
In 1370 she experienced a kind of mystical death with a vision of hell,
purgatory and heaven followed by a divine call to enter the public life of the
world. She never learned to
write herself until quite near her death. At first she served as a local
peacemaker, mediating between feuding families in Siena. But soon she was
called to make peace in the armed conflict between the city of Florence and the
Avignon-based papacy.
The Popes had been in
Avignon since 1309 and were strongly under the influence of France. The Italian
cities were at strife with the French papal legates. When Florence declared war
on the papal states in protest against the legates’ rule, eighty towns joined
them in ten days. While Catherine was in Pisa, working in the cause of peace,
she received the stigmata on the fourth Sunday of Lent, 1375, although the
marks remained invisible until after her death.
At Avignon
At a certain stage in this war, Florence asked Catherine to go to
Avignon to intercede with Pope Gregory XI on behalf of their embassy. She
agreed and went with twenty-three members of the ‘bella brigata’, including
four priests, to Avignon arriving in May, 1376 where she stayed for
four months.
It was a difficult time for
Catherine. The prelates of the inquisition harassed her with examinations in
doctrine; the women of power made fun of her and the Florentine ambassadors did
not accept her mediation. But Pope Gregory XI listened to her. She
understood the irresolution of his character and finally succeeded in
getting him to do what he had already decided in his heart he ought to do – go
to Rome.
The Papacy restored to Rome
Pope Gregory XI left Avignon for Rome the following September, but
died within a year. The Romans rioted, demanding a Roman pope. The cardinals
elected a Neapolitan, Urban VI, who soon proved so arrogant, over-zealous and
prone to violent outbursts of temper that the French and other cardinals
regretted their action. But failing to persuade him to resign, they withdrew to
Anagni and elected a second, in fact an anti-pope, who went to live
in Avignon, Robert of Geneva (Clement VII), thus starting the great western
Schism which lasted for the next forty years.
Loyal to the belligerent
Urban VI
Catherine remained loyal to the belligerent Urban VI and at his
request went to Rome to work to restore unity. She frequently wrote letters to
him urging him to moderate his harshness and to various European leaders and
the cardinals to whom she pleaded to recognise him as the authentic pope. But
she felt the wound in the body of Christ could only be healed by a great
sacrifice.
Her death and influence
One evening in January, 1380, while dictating a letter to Urban, she
suffered a stroke. It seemed as if the church, like a mighty ship, was placed
on her back. She had a second stroke while at prayer in St. Peter’s and died
three weeks later on April 29th, 1380, aged thirty-three. She was buried under
the high altar in the Dominican church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, but her
head was afterwards removed and taken to Siena, where it is enshrined in the
Dominican church. Her friend, Raymond of Capua, later Master General of the
Dominicans, wrote her life, which was influential in leading to her
canonisation in 1461 by the Sienese Pope Pius II (Enea Silvio Piccolomini).
Writings
Before leaving Siena for the last time, she dictated a book called The
Dialogue of St. Catherine; this and her four hundred Letters comprise a great treasury of spiritual
writing.
Doctor of the Church
In 1970 Pope Paul VI named St Catherine of Siena, along with St
Teresa of Avila, “Doctor of the Church”.
-- adapted from CatholicIreland.net
