The Mystical Element of Religion, as studied in Saint Catherine of Genoa and her friends, Volume 1 (of 2)

“And the disciple continued: ‘The matter might perhaps stand in this wise.’ And he then explained how that the love which she was feeling united her, by participation, with the goodness of God, so that she no more distinguished herself from God. Now Hell stands for the very opposite, since all the spirits therein are in rebellion against God. If then it were possible for them to receive even a little drop of such union, it would deprive them of all rebellion against God, and would so unite them with Love, with God Himself, as to make them be in Life Eternal. For Hell is everywhere where there is such rebellion; and Life Eternal, wheresoever there is such union. And the Mother, hearing this, appeared to be in a state of interior jubilation; whence with beaming face she answered: ‘O dear son, truly the matter stands as you have said; and hearing you speak, I feel it really is so. But my mind and tongue are so immersed in this Love, that I cannot myself either say or think these or other reasons.’ And the Disciple then said: ‘O Mother, could you not ask your Love, God, for some of these little drops of union for your sons?’ She answered, and with increased joyousness: ‘I see this tender Love to be so full of condescension to these my sons, that for them I can ask nothing of It, and can only present them before His sight.’”[137]

I sincerely know not where to look for a doctrine of grander depth and breadth, of more vibrating aliveness; for one more directly the result of life, or leading more directly to it, than are those few half-utterances and delicately strong indications of an overflowing interior plenitude and radiant, all-conquering peace.

And even one such scene is sufficient to make us feel that the following passage of the Dialogo is, in its substance and tone, profoundly true to facts: “This soul remained henceforth” (in this third period) “many a time in company with its many spiritual friends, discoursing of the Divine Love, in such wise that they felt as though in Paradise, both collectively, and each one in his own particular way. How delightful were these colloquies! He who spoke and he who listened, each one fed on spiritual food of a delicious kind; and because the time flew so swiftly, they never could attain satiety, but, all on fire within them, they would remain there, unable at last to speak, unable to depart, as though in ecstasy.”[138]

2. “Caterina Serafina”.

Five times the Vita compares her countenance, which, when she was deeply moved, had a flushed, luminous and transparent appearance, to that of an Angel or Cherub or Seraph;[139] and it even gives a story, which purports to explain how she came to be called the latter. And though this anecdote may be little more than a literary dramatization of this popular appellation of Catherine; and although, even if the scene be historical, Catherine has no kind of active share in bringing it about; yet the passage is, in any case, of some real interest, since it testifies to and typifies Catherine’s abundance of moral and mental sanity and strong, serene restorative influence over unbalanced or tempted souls, and this at a time when she herself had already been in delicate health for about five years.

The story is interesting also in that it shows how strikingly like the superficial psycho-physical symptoms of persons described as possessed by an evil spirit were, and were thought to be, to those of ecstasy, hence to Catherine’s own. Thus when an attack seized this “spiritual daughter of Catherine,—a woman of large mind (alto intelleto), who lived and died in virginity, and under the same roof with Catherine” (no doubt Catherine’s second, unmarried servant Mariola Bastarda is meant, and each must have had experience of the other’s powers and wants from or before 1490 till 1497, and again from 1500 onwards),—“she would become greatly agitated and be thrown to the ground. The evil spirit would enter into her mind, and would not allow her to think of divine things. And she would thus be as one beside herself, all submerged in that malign and diabolic will.”—And similarly we are told that Catherine would “throw herself to the ground, altogether beside herself,” “immersed in a sea,”—in this case, “of the deepest peace”; and “she would writhe as though she were a serpent.”[140]

Yet this superficial likeness between these two states,—a likeness apparent already in the similar double series of phenomena described in St. Paul’s Epistles and in the Acts of the Apostles,—serves, here also, but to bring out in fuller relief the profound underlying spiritual and moral difference between the two conditions of soul. For it is precisely in Catherine’s company that, when insufferable to her own self, the afflicted Mariola would recover her peace and self-possession, so that “even a silent look up to Catherine’s face would help to bring relief.”[141]

It is in 1500, soon after Mariola’s return to her mistress (I take the maid’s state of health to have occasioned her absence from Catherine for two years or so), that this spiritual daughter is represented as declaring in the first stage of one of these attacks,—or rather “the unclean spirit” possessing her is said to have exclaimed to Catherine “We are both of us thy slaves, because of that pure love which thou possessest in thy heart”; and “full of rage at having made this admission, he threw himself on the ground, and writhed with the feet.” And then when,—all this is supposed to take place in the presence of both Catherine and Don Marabotto,—the possessed one has stood up, the Confessor forces the spirit step by step to speak out and to declare successively that Catherine is “Caterina,” “Adorna or Fiesca,” and “Caterina Serafina,” the latter being uttered amidst great torment.[142]

XIII. Catherine’s Sympathy with Animal- and Plant-Life: her Love of the Open Air. Her Deep Self-knowledge as to the Healthiness or Morbidness of her Psycho-Physical States.

1. Increase of suffering and of range of sympathy.

It is indeed in this last period of her life that we can most clearly see a deeply attractive mixture of personal suffering and of tender sympathy with even the humblest of all things that live. And this is doubtless not simply due to the much fuller evidence possessed by us for these last years, but is quite as much owing to the actual increase of these twin things within herself. “She was most compassionate towards all creatures; so that, if an animal were killed or a tree cut down, she could hardly bear to see them lose that being which God had given them.”[143] And a beautiful communion of spirit can now be traced even between plant-life and herself; and an innocent self-diversion from a too exciting concentration, and help towards a patient keeping or a bracing reconquering of calmness, is now found by her, Franciscan-like, in the open air and amidst the restful flowers and trees. Thus “at times she would seem to have her mind in a mill; and as if this mill were indeed grinding her, soul and body”; and then “she would walk up and down in the garden, and would address the plants and trees and say: ‘Are not you also creatures created by my God? Are not you, too, obedient to Him?’”—even though, I think she meant to say, your life moves on so instinctive, calm, and freely expansive in the large, liberal air, as I feel it to do, by its very contrast to my own eager, crowded life, struggling in vain for a sustained perfection of equipoise and for an even momentary adequacy of self-expression. “And doing thus, she would gradually be comforted.”[144]

Indeed she would, in still intenser moods, use plants and other creatures of God in a more violent fashion. But this is now no more done as of old, for direct purposes of mortification; but, at one time, from an unreflective transport of delight, delight which itself seems ever to impel noble natures to seek to mix some suffering with it; and, at another time, for the purpose of producing strong physical impressios, counter-stimulations and escapes from a too great intensity of interior feeling. “She would at times, when in the garden, seize hold of the thorn-covered twigs of the rose-bushes with both her hands; and would not feel any pain whilst thus doing it in a transport of mind. She would also bite her hands and burn them, and this in order to divert, if possible, her interior oppression.”[145]

2. She alone keeps the sense of the truly spiritual, in the midst of her psycho-physical states.

Indeed nothing is more characteristic of her psychic state, during these years, than the ever-increasing intensity, shiftingness and close interrelation between the physical and mental. But we shall find that, whereas those who surround her, Confessor, Doctors, Disciples, Attendants, all, in various degrees and ways, increasingly insist upon and persist in finding direct proofs of the supernatural in the purely physical phenomena of her state even when taken separately, and indeed more and more in exact proportion to their non-spiritual character: Catherine herself, although no doubt not above the medical or psychical knowledge of her time, remains admirably centred in the truly spiritual, and continually awake to the necessity of interior spiritual selection amongst and assimilation and transformation of all such psycho-physical impressions and conditions. Even in the midst of the extreme weaknesses of her last illness we shall see her only quite exceptionally, and ever for but a few instants, without this consciousness of the deep yet delicate difference in ethical value and helpfulness between the various psycho-physical things experienced by herself, and of the requirements, duties and perceptions of her own spirit with regard to them.

And this attitude is all the more remarkable because, to the outer difficulty arising from the persistent, far more immediate, and apparently more directly religious, view of all her little world about her, came two peculiarities working in the same direction from within her own self. There was the old constitutional keenness and concentration of her highly nervous physical and psychical temperament, and the rarely high pitch and swift pace of her whole inner life, which must, at all times, have rendered suspense of judgment and detachment with regard to her own sensations and quasi-physical impressions specially difficult. And there was now the new intensity and closeness of interaction between soul and body, which must have made such lofty detachment from all but spiritual realities a matter of the rarest grace and of the most heroic self-conquest.

3. Catherine’s health does not break up completely till 1507.

The Vita, indeed, as we now have it, tells us that “about nine years before her death,” hence in 1501, “an infirmity came upon her, which neither her attendants nor the doctors knew how to identify”; and that “there was confusion, not on her own part, but on the part of those who served her.”[146] But this whole Chapter XLVII (pp. 127-132) of the present Vita, which opens out thus, is wanting in MSS. “A” and “B”; and is composed of documents which appear, in a fuller and more primitive form and in their right chronological place, in the next three chapters (pp. 132-160), chapters without doubt predominantly due to Marabotto; and of the documents making up the present Chapter XXXVIII (pp. 98, 99), which are earlier again, in both contents and composition, and are very certainly the work of Vernazza. And this means that, though the present Chapter XLVII claims to give a general account of her condition during 1501-1510, it does not, as a matter of fact, give us anything but details belonging without doubt to 1507-1510.

The manner in which this late compiler insists upon the directly spiritual, indeed supernatural, character of even the clearly secondary and physical phenomena of her state, make it highly probable that, having once exaggerated the quality, he readily snatched at any indications (possibly a slip of the pen in some MS., writing 1501 instead of 1507; we have a similar slip in MS. “A” which on p. 193 twice writes 1506 for 1509), which favoured an early date for the beginning of her last illness. Certainly the legal documents at our disposal show her to us still variously interested and active, right up to 1507.

It will, then, be better first to describe this activity up to 1507, and to take even the general questions concerning her illness in connection with her last four years, 1507-1510.

XIV. Catherine’s Social Joys and Sorrows, 1501-1507.

1. Birth of Ettore’s last two daughters.

It will have been during these years 1501 to 1507, unless indeed already between 1497 and 1501, that Vernazza’s second and third daughters were born; and if Catherine had stood God-mother to his eldest child, Tommasina, it is inconceivable that she should not have cared for Tommasina’s sisters, Catetta and Ginevrina. Certainly their father, Catherine’s closest friend and disciple, gave detailed attention, right up to the end of his strenuous life, to all three children; and made most thoughtful particular provision, in his still extant remarkable Will of 1517, for the youngest, Ginevrina, who at that time was the only one not yet settled in life.[147] Thus Vernazza knew how to combine all this detailed thought for his own children with the spacious public spirit of which his Dispositions are a still extant, most impressive monument; and Catherine, who was his deepest inspirer, clearly led the way here, right up to the last four years of her life. For we have already seen how she managed to conjoin, in a fashion similar to Ettore’s, a universalist love for Love Transcendent, with a particularism of attachment to individual souls, in which that Love is immanent.

2. Deaths of Limbania, Jacobo, and Giovanni.

And if she had joy over souls coming into the world, she had sorrow over souls leaving it. For in the single year 1502 she lost her only sister, Limbania, and her two elder brothers Jacopo and Giovanni. It is true that the Vita says: “There died several of her brothers and sisters; but, owing to the great union which she had with the tender will of God, she felt no pain, as though they had not been of her own blood.”[148] But then we have already often found how subject to caution and rebate are all such general, absolute statements; this passage in particular is, by its vagueness and ambiguity (she had but one sister of her own), stamped as late and more or less secondary; and we shall trace, later on, a similar even more extensive a priori modification of her authentic image in the Dialogo. Certainly her Wills show no kind of indifference to her own relations. In that of 1498 she specially and carefully remembered these very three relations; and in proportion as these two brothers’ children grow up and at all require her help, Catherine specially refers to and plans for them,—so for Jacobo’s eldest daughter Maria, in view of getting her married (Wills of 1498, 1503, 1506, 1509); and for Giovanni’s three sons (Wills of 1503, 1506, 1509). Jacobo’s second daughter seems also to have died at this time, as she no more appears after the Will of 1498. We shall see how exactly the same affectionate interest is shown by her towards her still remaining brother and his two sons.[149]

3. The Triptych “Maestà.”

And she evidently still went on increasing the number of the objects of her interest and affection, and the degree of her attachment to such objects as she already loved. For in her Codicil of the next year, January 1503, she gives a careful description of a picture now belonging to herself, “a ‘Majesty,’ representing the Virgin Mary with Saint Joseph, and the Lord Jesus at their feet, with her” (Fieschi-Adorni) “coat-of-arms painted within and without.” The picture evidently represented the Adoration of the Infant Jesus, and was painted on wood,—a triptych: with Catherine’s arms painted both inside and outside the two wings. She again describes it thus fully in her Wills of 1506 and 1509, leaving it, on all those occasions, to a certain Christofero de Clavaro (Christofer of Chiavari?). It is then quite clear both that this picture had been specially painted by some one for Catherine, and that Catherine, for some reason or reasons, greatly treasured it. Who then was the painter and what was the reason? I think both are not difficult to find.

We have seen how Catherine’s much-loved cousin, the widowed Tommasina Fiesca, had in 1497 moved into the Monastero Nuovo in the Aquasola quarter,—close to Catherine’s abode; so that the cousins will have met constantly from that time forward. We have also seen that this distinguished artist painted many a “Pietà” (the dead Christ on His Mother’s lap, possibly with Angels on each side), and executed a piece of needlework again representative of a group,—this time God the Father with many Angels above, and Christ below. Indeed Federico Alizeri has succeeded in rediscovering one of her works, a representation of Christ crowned with thorns and surrounded by the Instruments and Mysteries of His Passion, painted in fine outline upon sheepskin mounted on a wood-panel.[150] And we have seen how much Catherine had, as a child, been affected by a “Pietà,” and shall find her, even after this date, still affected by a religious picture. There can then be no reasonable doubt that Suor Tommasina was the painter and giver of this picture,—again a group, a “Maestà,” instead of the usual “Pietà.”

And the facts of Catherine caring to possess, to preserve, and to transmit something thus specially appropriated to herself, with her family arms upon a religious picture, are all deeply significant touches, and quite unlike what all the secondary, and even some of the primary, parts of the Vita would lead one to expect.

4. Increasing care for Thobia.

And this same Codicil shows us how her care, and no doubt her genuine affection, for Thobia was growing. For she now leaves her the income on two shares of the Bank of St. George (no doubt only a slight gift, about £2 10s. a year; but Catherine possesses but very little that she is free to leave as she likes, the claims upon her are very many, and the young woman is already well provided for, considering her social station), her better silk gown, a skirt, and various veils. The poor girl died in 1504 or 1505, for in Catherine’s Will of 1506 she appears as “the late Thobia.” She must have been about thirty years old at the time.

5. Argentina del Sale; story of Marco del Sale’s death.

But in lieu of poor Thobia, Catherine was now given by Providence a new lowly object of affection and interest. For it was doubtless in the late spring of 1505 that occurred the incident, of which we have the beautifully simple and naïf record in Chapter XLVI of the Vita; a record certainly based upon information supplied by Argentina, but which I take to be the literary work of Vernazza, and to be more or less contemporary with the events described. A humble young friend or acquaintance of Catherine’s, who had perhaps already been her occasional little day-servant, one Argentina de Ripalta, had now been away from her and married, for a year, to a poor navvy working in the Molo (Quay) quarter of the town; and this her husband, Marco del Sale, was now dangerously ill, indeed he was dying of a cancer in the face. And, having tried every kind of remedy, and seeing himself incurable, and being thus in great and hopeless pain, Marco had lost all patience and was as one beside himself. And then Argentina bethought herself of Catherine, and came to the Hospital, and begged her to come and see her husband, and pray to God for him.

And Catherine was at once at Argentina’s disposal, and straightway went off with her. And having come into Marco’s room, she greatly comforted him with her few but homely and fervent words. Then starting off again in company with Argentina, Catherine entered, near to the house and still close to the sea, into the little Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie la Vecchia,—so called to distinguish it from the more recent Chapel of the Augustinianesses, which bore the same general title,—and there, kneeling in a corner, Catherine prayed for Marco. The little seamen’s Church is still in use, with its many mementoes of four centuries and more of ships foundered and of ships safely come to port. And having here finished her prayer, Catherine returned with Argentina to the Hospital. There Argentina left her, and returned to Marco, and found him so changed that from a Devil he seemed turned into an Angel. And with joyous tender feeling he asked: “O Argentina, come, tell me who is that holy soul that you brought me?” But Argentina answered: “Why, that is Madonna Caterinetta Adorna, a woman of most perfect life.” And the sick man replied: “I beg of thee, by the love of God, to take care to bring her here a second time to me.”

And so the next day Argentina returned to the Hospital and told all to Catherine. And Catherine again promptly came back with Argentina. But when Catherine had entered the room and approached the bed, Marco threw his arms round her, and wept for a long space of time. And then, still weeping, but with great relief, he said to her: “Madonna, the reason why I wished you to come is, first to thank you for the kindness you have shown me; and next to ask a favour of you, which I beg you not to refuse me. For when you had left this room, Our Lord Jesus Christ came to me visibly and in the form in which He appeared to the Magdalen in the garden, and gave me His most holy blessing, and pardoned me all my sins, and told me that I should prepare for death, because that I shall go to Him on Ascension-Day. Hence I pray you, most tender Mother, deign to accept Argentina as your spiritual daughter, and to keep her with you constantly. And thou, Argentina, I pray thee, be content with this plan.” They both gladly declared themselves ready and content.

When Catherine had gone away, Marco sent for a certain Augustinian Friar of the Monastery of the Consolation, and carefully confessed his sins and received Holy Communion; and then ordered all his worldly affairs with a notary and with his relations. And he did all this in spite of them all, who thought that his intense pain had driven him off his head, and who kept saying: “Take comfort, Marco, soon you will be well again; there is no occasion as yet for you to attend to these things.”

And the Eve of the Ascension having come round, he again sent for the same Confessor, and again confessed and communicated, and got him this time to add Extreme Unction and the Recommendation of the Dying, and all this with great composure and devotion. But as the night came on, he said to the Friar: “Return to your Monastery; and when the time comes, I will give you notice.” And then, alone with Argentina, he took his crucifix in his hand, and turning towards his wife he said: “Argentina, see, I leave thee Him for thy husband; prepare thyself to suffer, for I declare to thee that suffering is in store for thee.” This did not fail to come about, for she suffered later on, both mentally and physically. And for the rest of the night he continued to comfort her, and to encourage her to give herself to God and to accept suffering as the ladder for mounting up to Heaven. Then when the dawn had come he said: “Argentina, abide with God; the hour has come.” And having finished these words, he expired; and his spirit straightway went to the window of the cell of his Confessor, and tapping against the pane said: “Ecce homo.” But the Friar hearing this, at once knew that Marco had passed to his Lord.

And as soon as Marco’s body had been buried, Catherine took Argentina to live with her as her spiritual daughter, and thus kept her promise. And since she loved this daughter much, she was wont to take her with her when she went out. And hence one day, when once more passing by the little Church on the little square by the Quay, she and her young daughter again went in and prayed. And on coming out, Catherine said to Argentina: “This is the place, where grace was gained in prayer for thy husband.”[151]

6. Catherine’s social interests in 1506.

And in the following year, 1506, we still find Catherine full of interest and activity of the most varied kind. On March the 13th and 16th Catherine was again busy for the Hospital, by receiving the Foundlings and the various articles and monies anonymously deposited there for their keep. And these can hardly have been altogether exceptional acts, even for this period of her life.[152] And on the 21st of May she made her third Will, which is interesting for various reasons. For it is in this document that we first hear of the deaths of her two elder brothers and of Thobia, and (by implication) of that of her sister Limbania and of her second niece Battista. And we can once more trace here the continuity of her interests and attachments. Her elder niece Maria is again provided with a marriage dowry; her brother Lorenzo remains (now sole) residuary legatee; Thobia’s mother gets her legacy compounded for an immediate settlement and payment; the maids Benedetta and Mariola have their legacies somewhat increased; the “Maestà” is again carefully described and allotted; and she again orders her body to be buried alongside of that of her husband.[153] Indeed fresh interests appear here. For the three sons of her second brother and the eldest son of her third brother are now grown up; and so she makes these four nephews her residuary legatees, should her brother Lorenzo die before herself. Don Marabotto has now been her Confessor and Chaplain for seven, and her Almoner for three years; and so she leaves him the income of eight shares of St. George’s for his lifetime, which, at 4 per cent. would make £16 a year,—the capital to go, at Marabotto’s death, to her heirs. And Argentina del Sale has been with her for just about a year; and so she leaves her various articles of personal linen and bedding.[154]

But, above all, the place of this Will’s redaction is new amongst the memorials of her life, and directly indicative of a still further enlargement of her influence and interests. For if of the fourteen legal documents drawn up for, and in the presence of, Giuliano or herself, eleven were composed in the small house within the great Hospital of the Pammatone, and only two others,—the Marriage-Settlement, and the Deed of Transfer in favour of Giovanni Adorno,—had hitherto been written elsewhere, this Will was executed in the Refuge for Incurables, in the Portorio quarter, in the evening of the day mentioned, in the presence of three weavers and one dyer,—two trades strongly represented in this poor and populous quarter. Now the choice of this place is deeply suggestive, because it became the chief care and final home of Ettore Vernazza’s later years. Indeed it is certain that, on the death of his wife, Vernazza came and lived in the midst of these poor Incurables; and that this residence here of Catherine’s closest friend did not begin later than three years from this date—hence still during Catherine’s lifetime, in 1509. His far-reaching Wills of 1512 and 1517 are both dated from this Refuge, of which he was, by then, manager and chief supporter; and it is there that he died his heroic death in 1524. Hence it is certain that now already Vernazza must have been deeply interested in this fine, but at that time still languishing, work (its fixed income did not as yet amount to fully £400 a year), and he must often have been there; possibly he had even already a room of his own in the house.

There can, in any case, be no doubt, that in the choice of this place for the drawing-up of this Will, we have an indication, all the more interesting because entirely incidental, of the wide and ever-widening range, and of the entirely solid, indeed heroic character of Catherine’s interest and influence. It also shows us that she was still able to get about, although this Refuge, now the Spedale dei Chronici, is, no doubt, not far away from her Pammatone home. If she could still go there, she no doubt still could and did go to her cousin Suor Tommasina’s Convent, which was certainly no further off. And I surmise that many a spiritual colloquy will have taken place, with Catherine as chief interlocutor, and Suor Tommasina and Ettore Vernazza as chief questioners and listeners, in the parlour of San Domenico and in that of the Refuge respectively.

CHAPTER V
CATHERINE’S LAST FOUR YEARS, 1506 TO 1510—SKETCH OF HER CHARACTER, DOCTRINE, AND SPIRIT

Again on the 6th December 1507, the Protectors, Lorenzo Spinola, Manfredo Fornari, and Emmanuele Fiesco, met in Catherine’s room, and decided, no doubt with her advice and co-operation, to allow another widow-lady and devotee of the Hospital, Brigidina, wife of the late Giacomo Castagneto, to settle within its precincts.[155] Then on 27th November 1508 she makes a Codicil, leaving an additional £25 to Mariola, and a further article of dress to Argentina; and declaring that she is “entirely content” with Don Marabotto’s administration of her monies and charities. Don Cattaneo has then now become her Almoner, and her charitable activity continues large. The document is drawn up by Ettore Vernazza, an unimpeachable witness to Marabotto’s rectitude and exactness.[156]

Indeed as late down as 18th March 1509 her long Will of that date shows an admirable persistence of her old attachment for and interest in her surviving brother, niece (the provision for Maria’s possible marriage is particularly careful and detailed), and nephews (the youngest of the latter, Giovanni, is omitted, no doubt because he had now become a Cardinal, with a corresponding income); in Don Marabotto, who retains the same little pension; in her three maids Benedetta, Mariola, and Argentina, all of whose legacies get somewhat increased; and in the fortunes of the Hospital and of Thobia’s mother (she repeats her account of what she has already done for them).[157]

2. Occasional imperfection of judgment.

Yet now at last we can find symptoms of the final break-up of her health, and of an occasional slight or momentary deviation from, or diminution of, her old completeness of balance in both judgment, taste, and feeling,—although even now this occurs only in matters of relatively secondary importance, and but heightens the impressiveness of the still unbroken front which she maintains, in all her fully deliberate acts, with regard to all essential matters. Indeed, it is not difficult to feel, even where one cannot directly trace, in all such acts and matters, a still further deepening of the heroic watchfulness and childlike spontaneity, and of the humility and tender naïveté and creatureliness, of her general tone and attitude.

3. Close-knittedness of her psycho-physical organism: her spiritual utilization of this.

But before recounting the few instances in which we can trace an indication of partly physical depression, or of some lessening of mental alertness or volitional power in secondary matters, or of slight passing unwilled maladif impressions, let us attempt a somewhat methodic description of the extreme sensitiveness and immensely close interconnection of her whole psycho-physical nature, and of the general modifications, both in quality and in quantity, which these impressions were wont to go through; and all this, just now, on occasion of incidents closely similar to those already experienced in her past life.

It would indeed be altogether mistaken to class all this sensitiveness as necessarily but a form of illness; for the great majority, and all the most characteristic, of her apparently physical pains and troubles, are but varieties and heightenings of the always unusually swift and profound impressionableness of her whole psycho-physical organism. With the sole exception of that attack of pestilential fever (probably in the year 1493), I can nowhere, right up to three days before her death, find any trace in her life of illnesses or disturbances of any but a psycho-physical, nerve-functional type.

Indeed her psychic self is throughout so impressionable, and the mind is, ever since her Conversion, so active, dominant, and absorbed in the actual and attempted apprehension of the great realities which, though invisible, require for their vivid apprehension an imaginative pictorial embodiment: that we shall have, in a later chapter, to ask ourselves the question whether it was not the mind, or the imagination at the mind’s bidding, which thus affected the psycho-physical life, rather than the psycho-physical life which, primarily independent of the former, offered itself as but so much raw, still unrelated material, to the fashioning, transforming mind. Especially will it be necessary to consider carefully the influence upon her mind, and upon the chronicler’s accounts of her state, which may have been exercised by the writings of the Areopagite and of Jacopone. It will then become clear that these authors have undoubtedly contributed to the form in which these truths and realities were, if not actually apprehended by Catherine, at least described by her disciples.

Yet even this point remains, in Catherine’s case, (and indeed in that of all the great Saints,) of no real spiritual or moral importance, since all these great and generous souls persist in ever using these psycho-physical things, whether they be projections or “givennesses,” as but so many instruments and materials for the apprehension, illustration, acquisition, and purification of spiritual truth and of the spirit’s own fulness and depth. And Catherine’s persistence in this attitude of utilization and transcendence of what the natural man so continuously tends to make his direct aim and final limit continues practically unbroken to the end. I will group these psychic impressions according to the five senses.

4. Impressions connected with the sense of touch.

The earliest, and up to the end the most marked and general, of all such unusual impressions appears to have been one connected with the sense of touch,—that feeling of mostly interior, but later on also of exterior, warmth, indeed often of intense heat and burning, which comes to her, the first as though sunshine were bathing her within or without, the second sometimes as though a great fire were enveloping her, and sometimes as though a living flame were piercing her within.

Already in 1473, on occasion of her Conversion, we find unmistakable indications of such sensations; they are, however, of a predominantly pleasurable kind. And I take it that during her great lonely middle-period they will, in so much as present, have been of a similar nature. But later on, from after 1499 onwards, these sensations and attacks become increasingly painful,[158] and are specially described, and variously alluded to, under the terms of operation, assault, siege. When specially keen and concentrated, and accompanied by some piercing psycho-spiritual perception, they appear under the terms of arrow, wound; and the perception itself bears then the name of ray or spark (of divine love).[159]

Now we lookers-on can, of course, with more or less ease, mentally separate, in a general way, the latter, the spiritual apprehension, creation and content, from the former, the psycho-physical occasion, material and form; although it is certainly difficult, and probably impossible, to decide, at least in any one case, how far it is her mental activity that occasions her psycho-physical condition, or how far it is the latter which occasions the former. But what actually and demonstrably happened in Catherine’s case, was something incomparably beyond the range to which such psycho-physical considerations apply. For to her, psychically, a keenly sentient; rationally, a deeply thinking, feeling, and willing creature,—these experiences, howsoever classable, were most real, and, in course of time, more and more penetrating and painful; and they were, to her own consciousness, entirely prior to any interpretation or utilization of them. Hence, for the present at all events, we had better take these states as they presented themselves to her immediate and ordinary consciousness. And this very same immensely sentient soul was so firmly centred, deep down below and beyond the psycho-physical, in the Moral and Spiritual, that these experiences were welcomed and actively used but as so many means and materials for ethical purification and character-building, and for the analogical apprehension and illustration of spiritual truths.

Thus it is that these sensations of burning which, during her years of health, were themselves so pleasurable and peaceful, helped, as we shall find when we come to consider her doctrine, to suggest and illustrate for her the joys and health-giving influence of the presence of God, both here and in Paradise, and of the soul’s apprehension of God, as light for the understanding and warmth for the affections and the will. And when, with her failing health, these sensations turned into painful, in part seemingly physical attacks,—attacks which, however, left the mind in an increased and ever-increasing peace and contentment,—they again helped her to gain and develop her doctrine concerning Purgatory.

In both cases her teaching gained thus a vividness of quasi-directly sensible experience, of something in a manner actually seen and felt, since it was built up out of suggestions derived from direct sensations and psycho-physical states. And yet in both cases not all such sensations, of themselves quite valueless and uninstructive from an ethical and religious point of view, could have helped towards anything of spiritual significance, had they not been sifted, taken up, organized and transformed in and into a large and deep spiritual experience and personality. There is absolutely nothing automatic or necessary in the crowning, ethically significant stages of this whole process, however rapid and instinctive and effortless, and simply of a piece with the psycho-physical occasions, these utilizations and grace-impelled and grace-informed creations may appear. We shall, in proof of this, soon see how physical and literal and spiritually insignificant remained, during the last four months of her life, the apprehensions of her disciples as to these heats and piercing sensations: these good, indeed devoted, people seem incapable of measuring spiritual love by anything higher than thermometer-readings or other physical tangibilities. And we shall also have to record one or two momentary instances when this heat-feeling and apprehension clearly assumed a maladif character in Catherine herself.

5. Impressions connected with taste and smell.

The unusual sense-perceptions which were the next to be aroused were apparently those of taste and smell: although the one certain indication I can find of such an unusual psycho-physical taste-and-smell impression, of a pleasurable and not clearly maladif character, is not earlier than 1499.[160] It came to her in connection with the one great devotion of her whole convert life,—the Holy Eucharist. “Having on one occasion received Holy Communion, so much odour and sweetness came to her, that she seemed to be in Paradise. Whence, feeling this, she straightway turned towards her Love and said: ‘O Love, dost Thou perhaps intend to draw me to Thyself with these savours? I want them not, since I want nothing but Thee alone, and all of Thee.’”[161] Here, then, she turns away from and transcends, precisely as St. John of the Cross was soon to insist so strongly that we should do, the sensible and immediate, and reaches on to the spiritual, ultimate, and personal. And similarly some such psycho-physical experience seems presupposed in her declaration: “If a Consecrated Host and unconsecrated ones were to be given to me, I should distinguish the former from the latter as I do wine from water.”[162] Yet her biographer can truthfully insist upon love being the original cause of such recognition: “She said this, because the Consecrated Host sent forth a certain ray of love which pierced her heart.” And she herself gives a still more spiritual parallel instance and explanation of such recognition: “If I were to be shown the Court of Heaven, with all its members robed in one and the same manner, in suchwise that there would, so far, be no perceptible difference between God and the Angels: the love which I have in my heart would still recognize God, as readily as the dog recognizes his master.” This love indeed would move out to Him even more swiftly and easily, because “love, which is God Himself, finds in an instant, without any means, its own end and ultimate repose.”[163]

Clearly maladif over-sensitiveness and shiftingness of the senses of taste and scent will appear presently, during the last months of her life.

6. Hearing and Sight.

The most important and mental of the senses, hearing and sight, appear, on the contrary, with little or nothing particularly unusual about them, throughout her life.

For as to her sense of hearing, the inner voices already described as heard by her at different times, cannot fairly be classed under this or any other sense-perception, healthy or otherwise; since they appear to have been most vivid and clear thoughts presented to her mind, with in each case the consciousness that they were the suggestions of Mind,—of a Spirit other than her own. They appear to have always been described by herself as “words spoken to the mind,” “words as it were heard.”[164] Traces of any maladif affection of this sense will be difficult or impossible to find, even during her last illness.

And as to sight, always so closely akin to mental processes, anything at all really exceptional cannot, I think, be found in her life so far at all. For her evidently great impressionableness to certain religious pictures,—so as a child, in regard to the “Pietà,” and now again apparently with the “Maestà,”—and to certain sights of nature, cannot fairly be considered abnormal. And as to Visions, the only one recorded so far, that of the Bleeding Christ, was primarily a mentally mediated experience: “the Lord showed Himself to her in the spirit,” says the account, no doubt in full accordance with her own analysis of such experiences.[165] Some few disturbances of this sense will, however, appear during the course of her last illness.

II. More or Less Maladif Experiences and Actions.

The amplest proof of the deep and delicate impressionableness of her nature is probably, however, to be found in that profound melancholy, that positive disgust with everything within her and without, and that strong desire for death which we found to have possessed her during the three months previous to her Conversion in March 1473. For we should note that that melancholy did not directly spring from spiritual motives or considerations: it was previous to all definite sorrow for sin and to all full and willed sense of things religious and eternal. Indeed, with the appearance of the religious standards and certitudes, that crushing universal feeling of melancholy and of positive disgust breaks up, and yields to contrasted joys and sorrows, and to a buoyant energy in the very midst and through the very means of suffering and of sacrifice. Thus the dawn of her spiritual re-birth was indeed dark and oppressive; but this oppression did not directly proceed from any clear consciousness of the Perfect and Eternal which arose within her only as part and parcel of this explicit Conversion. The oppression simply indicated, of itself, a nature so sensitive and claimful, as to require, in order to achieve any degree of contentment, a spiritual, regenerative, re-interpretative power capable of responding to and matching the deepest realities of life. That nature was thus full of the need of such realities and of such contact with them, but was without the power of producing, or of adequately responding to, such realities,—or indeed of imaginatively forecasting them. And similarly in 1507, the dawn of her painful, joyful-sorrowful birthday to eternity was again dark and oppressive and productive of an intense desire for death, a desire which had, apparently, been entirely absent from her soul ever since 1473. Here again this oppression was not directly religious or moral, but, taken in itself, was simply psycho-physical. Indeed this oppression marks the beginning of the special limitations, difficulties, and slightly deflecting influences now introduced into her life by henceforth steadily increasing positive illness. I propose, then, to begin with this opening depression of hers, and next to go through the main incidents of her remaining life, as far as possible, in strictly chronological order. I will group all this around six main facts and dates.

1. Desire for death, 1507.

“In the year 1507 she on one occasion was present at the recitation of the Offices for the Dead. And a desire to die came upon her. And she said: ‘O Love, I desire nothing but Thee, and Thee in Thine own manner: but, if it pleases Thee, allow me at least to go and see others die and be buried, in order that I may see in others that great good, which it does not please Thee should as yet be in myself.’ And her Love consented to this; and consequently, for a certain space of time, she went to see die and be buried all those who died in the Hospital. And as, later on, her union with this her tender Love increased, her desire for death disappeared little by little.”[166]

She is, then, still active, and moves about in the spacious Hospital and in the adjoining Church. And this desire, as it gradually disappeared, will, doubtless, not have left mere blanks in her consciousness, or have reduced the sum-total of her feelings; but, with that diminution, some of her old tenderness for and interest in others, will have reappeared. And again we see how no one set of feelings, one “psychosis,” ever simply repeats itself, in even one and the same soul: for Catherine’s positive disgust with all things, which prepared and accompanied her desire for death in 1473, is absent from the otherwise similar desire of 1507. In both cases there is the same sheer “givenness” and isolation of the feeling. Then, she did not desire death to escape temptation or sin; now, she does not desire it, directly and within her emotional nature, in order to get to God: in each case the feeling stands simply by itself, and is not immediately connected with religion at all. And finally, this incident, and its later equivalent repetitions in November 1509 and September 1510, prove once again on what a veritable bed of Procrustes those determined a-priorists, the Redactors of the Vita, have placed, pulled about and mutilated, as far as in them lay, the immensely spontaneous and rich personality of Catherine, in their determination to find her ever all-perfect, and perfect after their own fixed pattern. For it proves to demonstration, either that Catherine continued liable to human imperfections, or that not all desires are imperfect. And both these things are true, beyond the possibility of doubt.

2. The scent-impression from Don Cattaneo’s hand.

And next we get an instance of clearly abnormal sense-perception, which is deeply interesting because of the vivid, first-hand form in which the fact has come down to us, and still more on account of its impressive illustration of the two possible mental attitudes towards such matters. It will have occurred in 1508; and Don Marabotto is, in any case, the other interlocutor in the scene, and its chronicler. And if there is undoubtedly a somewhat ludicrous naïveté about his attitude at the time of the occurrence, there is also a striking simplicity and self-oblivion in the perfectly objective manner in which he chronicles the scene in all its bearings, and Catherine’s marked superiority to himself. It is this complete directness and simplicity of motive which, on the side of character, will have bound these otherwise strangely diverse souls together; and which rendered Don Marabotto, even simply as a character, not unworthy of his close intimacy with Catherine.

The abnormality here concerns the sense of smell alone; the impression here lasts a considerable time: and now she acquiesces in it, but only for the purpose of moving through it, as a mere means. “Having been infirm for many days, Catherine one day took the hand of her Confessor and smelt it: and its odour penetrated right to her heart,” so that “for many days this perfume restored and nourished her, body and soul.” Don Marabotto then asks her what kind of thing this odour is that she is smelling. And she tells him that it is an odour so penetrating and sweet, as to seem capable of bringing the dead to life; that God had sent it to her, to strengthen her soul and body, now that these were so much oppressed; and hence “since God grants me this odour, I am determined to derive strength from it, as long as He shall please that I shall do so.” But Marabotto, “thinking that he must surely be able to perceive what was being transmitted by himself, went smelling his own hand, but to no effect.” And Catherine gently rebuked his action by declaring: “The things which depend entirely upon God’s own free gift, He does not give to those that seek them. Indeed He gives such things at all, only in cases of great necessity, and as an occasion of great spiritual profit.”[167]

The impression and consolation are here still connected with the Holy Eucharist: for the hand which she smells is no doubt the right one,—the hand which was wont daily to consecrate in her presence and daily to communicate her. The declaration as to the odour’s power to raise the dead to life has occurred already in connection with the Holy Eucharist, and will have been in part suggested to her by such Johannine passages as “I am the … Life,” “I am the Living Bread,” “he that eateth this Bread shall live,” shall be made to live, “for ever.” And although the odour is here the prominent impression, and “savours” are wanting, yet “sweetness” still occurs, probably as a sort of sensation of tasting.—Marabotto’s mind has in it, on this occasion, two plausible assumptions, each strengthening the other; and Catherine controverts both. He evidently thinks: “Catherine’s states are all most valuable, hence real, hence objective: if then she says she smells this or that, others will be able to do so too.” And: “What a man transmits, that he can himself experience: hence, on this ground also, I should be able to smell this perfume.”—And Catherine’s mind evidently also contains two very different convictions: the first, that experiences, even when thus but semi-spiritual, are, for all their reality, not directly transferable from soul to soul; and the second, that all such sensible and semi-sensible experiences, whether normal or exceptional, are all but means at the disposal of the free-willing spirit, means which become limits and obstacles as soon as they are treated as ends.

Thus if this experience points to a certain abnormality of condition in the peripheral, psycho-physical regions of the soul, Catherine’s attitude towards it, and towards the whole question occasioned by it, has got a massive depth of sanity about it, perhaps unattainable by, certainly untested in, the always and simply, even peripherally, healthy soul.

3. Shifting of her burial-place.

And in her Will of March 1509 we find traces of a certain weakening of her former ample business capacity, and of her vigilance, perseverance, and balance, in spite of friendly pressure or criticism, with regard to matters of practical import. For, as to her general incapacity for business, the Will contains a clause exempting Marabotto from all future challenge of his administration of her monies, up to the date of the making of this Will. And this clause finds its explanation in the admission of the Vita, with regard to her life during these last years, that, owing to the mysterious and shifting nature of her infirmity, “there was confusion in governing her,” “confusion not on her own part, but on that of those who served her,”[168] words which will grow still clearer in our account of her last four months. For this state of her health must have rendered the administration of her affairs by another both necessary and difficult. And as to the diminution of her vigilance and perseverance in matters of not directly spiritual or moral import, we have here, for the first time, a departure from her resolution, emphatically expressed in the Wills and Codicil of 1498, 1503, 1506, of being buried beside her husband. She now orders herself to be buried in the Church of San Nicolò in Boschetto, and that so much is to be spent on the funeral as shall seem fit to Don Marabotto.

Three points should here be borne in mind. For one thing, Catherine had a long-standing affection for that beautifully situated Pilgrimage-Church, partly no doubt from associations dating back to her summer villegiatura days at the neighbouring Prà, and partly, probably, from memories connected with her sister Limbania, since, as we have already seen, Limbania’s Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie was the joint foundation of the two Genoese Monasteries of San Teodoro fuore le Mura and of San Nicolò in Boschetto. Limbania had died in that Convent in 1502, and Catherine had, in her Codicil of 1503, left a small sum for mortuary Masses for herself to the Monastery of San Nicolò.

But, next, it was doubtless the growing conviction as to her sanctity amongst her immediate friends, and their desire to keep her grave and remains, as an eventual place and object of veneration, distinct from any others, perhaps specially from those of her husband, whose defective reputation might otherwise damage or delay the growth of such a cultus of his wife, which was the determining cause of this change in the place of sepulture. These friends were able to prevail, no doubt because her interest and determination in such matters had become weakened by ill-health of now thirteen years’ duration. And they will have fixed upon this place some four English miles away, partly because it happened to be one she loved, but also because thus no question of separating her remains from those of Giuliano would formally arise. Her later Codicil will prove the presence of both these motives, and Catherine’s unconsciousness as to the situation, and the vagueness of her acquiescence.

And, finally, we must note that, if this action of her entourage offends our present-day tastes and susceptibilities, it was yet thoroughly in accordance with a quite hoary tradition and feeling in such matters, and was in no sense an idea special to, or originated by, this group of persons; and again, that the four Protectors of the Hospital (the trustees and executors of the Will), her sole surviving brother Lorenzo (the residuary legatee), and above all her closest, great-souled friend Vernazza (one of the six witnesses), are all parties to the pious stratagem, and share its responsibility with Marabatto.

4. The “scintilla”-experience; spiritual refreshment derived from a picture.

We have next an important group of experiences and convictions in November 1509. “On the 11th November 1509, there came upon her an insupportable fire of infinite love; and she declared that there had been shown to her one single spark (scintilla) of Pure Love, and that this had been but for a short moment; and that, had it lasted even a little longer, she would have expired because of its great force. She could hardly eat, nor speak so as to be heard, in consequence of this penetrating wound of love that she had received in her heart.”[169]

Few events of her life have left such profound traces, so many echoes and waves and wavelets as it were, throughout both her authentic sayings and the various secondary and tertiary imitations, re-castings, and expansions of her original account as has this scintilla-experience. I will here translate the nine varying impressions and exclamations which, proceeding from different minds and different dates, have, all but one, been worked up by the Vita into a single paragraph, which, by its very multitude of flickerings as to meaning and of experimentations as to form, gives us a striking picture of the deep and many-sided influence of this single event, so short in its clock-time duration. “This creature, all lost in her own self, found her true self in one instant in God.” “Although she reputed herself to be very poor, yet she remained rich in the divine love.” “She, knowing the grace and operation to be all from God, remained lost in herself, and living only in God.” “She gave her free-will to God, and God then restored it to her.” “She gave her free-will to God, and God thereupon worked with its means.” “O the great wonder, to see a man established in the midst of so many miseries, and yet God having so great a care of him! All tongues are incapable of expressing it, all intellects of understanding it.” “That man becomes foolish in the eyes of the world, to whom Thou, O Lord God, dost manifest even but the slightest spark of Thine unspeakable Love.” “Thou, O God, desirest to exalt man, and to make him as though another God, by means of love.” Of later date or type: “In God she saw all the operations, by means of which He had caused her to merit (in the past).” And of still later, clearly secondary, character: “God showed her in one instant the succession of His (future) operation, as though she would have to die of a great martyrdom.”[170]

And this great experience of hers led on to a scene which, whilst emphasizing the psycho-physical effect, occasion or concomitant of such spiritual experiences, also gives us the strongest instance of her impressionableness to pictures in particular. “Finding herself in such ardour, she felt herself compelled to turn to a figure of the Woman of Samaria at the well with her Lord; and in her extreme distress Catherine addressed Him thus: ‘O Lord, I pray Thee, give me a little drop of this water, which of old Thou didst give to the Samaritan woman, since I can no more bear so great a fire.’ And suddenly, in that instant, there was given her a little drop of that divine water; and by it she was refreshed within and without, and she had rest for some appreciable time.”[171] But, above all, this experience and its precursor were, if not the actual beginning, at least the culminating point in the experiences or projections which led to or articulated her doctrine on Purgatory. In a later chapter I hope to trace the connection between those experiences and this doctrine. Here we must add two other vivid interior experiences and convictions of hers which are placed by the Vita, no doubt rightly, in direct succession to, and in more or less connection with, the great “scintilla”-operation, although neither of them appears amongst the images and conceptions which make up the Trattato del Purgatorio.

“One day” (she recounted this herself) “she appeared to herself to abide suspended in mid-air. And the spiritual part wanted to attach itself to heaven; but her other part wished to attach itself to earth: yet neither the one nor the other managed to become possessed of its object, and simply abode thus in mid-air, without achieving its desire. And after abiding thus for a long time, the part which was drawing her to heaven seemed to her to be gaining the upper hand (over the other part), and, little by little, the spiritual part forcibly drew her upwards, so that at every moment she saw herself moving further and further away from earth. And although this at first seemed to be a strange thing to the part that was being drawn, and this part was ill content to be thus forced; yet when it had been so far removed, as no more to be able to see the earth, then it began to lose its earthly instinct and affection, and to perceive and to relish the things which were relished by the spiritual part. And this spiritual part never ceased from drawing it heavenward. And so at last these two parts came to a common accord.”[172] And again on another occasion: “The soul is so desirous of departing from the body to unite itself with God, that its body appears to it a veritable Purgatory, which keeps it distant from its true object.”[173]

This group of experiences straightway enforces some important spiritual laws. For one thing, this scintilla-experience, since her Conversion the deepest of her life, is clearly also the richest and most complex,—witness the numerous, mutually supplementary or critical, attempts at analysis furnished by even her immediate companions. And this experience is only simple in the sense in which white light, which combines all the prismatic colours, or a living healthy human body, composed of numberless constituents, is simple.

And next, nothing indicates that this experience was of a character essentially different from that of her older contemplations; and everything appears to show that it was, substantially, a grace addressed to, and an act performed by, her spiritual nature,—her intelligence and free will, God’s Spirit stimulating and sustaining hers in a quite exceptional degree, and hence less than ever weakening or supplanting this her spirit’s action. It was as much a gift of herself by herself to God, as if it had not been a pure grace from Him; and yet her very power and wish and determination to give herself, were rendered possible and became actual through that pure prevenient, accompanying and subsequent gift of God.

Again, it is certain that either there was no clear mental scheme, reasoning, or picture during the experience, or that, if there was, it consisted of a spacial simultaneity rather than of a temporal succession, and that it showed her, if her own soul at all, then that soul in its most universally human, typical aspects and relations. In no case was there anything historical or prophetical, strictly biographical about it.

And then we have, even though she could give no kind of definite account of it, the most solid reasons for accepting this experience as genuine, wholesome, and valuable. For she evidently fully believed in it herself; and we shall see how clearly and readily she continued, even after this experience, to distinguish between wholesome and mental, and maladif and simply psychic, states of abstraction. Again it became the occasion and material of most deep and fruitful spiritual doctrine; whereas nothing is more empty and unsuggestive than are the bare, brute “facts” of all merely nervous or hysterical hallucinations. It also demonstrably strengthened her will for the last deep sufferings and sacrifices yet to be gone through, and no doubt added a fresh stimulus to her already profound influence over Vernazza, and pricked him onwards on his career of the most solid, heroic philanthropy and self-sacrifice. And yet we can see that her psycho-physical organism is now functionally weak and ill. For great physical exhaustion now follows upon an experience substantially the same as those which used to strengthen her so markedly even in physical respects.

As to the scene with the picture, we again get a case not unlike the odour of Marabotto’s hand, in so much as here too the experience hovers between the mental and physical, and there is a sensible impression as from a physical substance with reference to a Person,—this taste of a “divine water” moving here on to Christ, to God, the Living Water, as that smell of sweetness moves on to the “Living Bread,” Christ, and God. It is, unfortunately, impossible to identify that picture, which may well have been a fresco-painting in some building or passage of the Hospital, since destroyed, or on some extant wall, white-washed since those days. The vivid picturings of the soul in mid-air, and of the soul in the purgatory of its body, will be considered in connection with her psycho-physical states and her doctrine.

But before leaving this November experience, we must give two significant conversations held by her with Vernazza at the time, and which have been no doubt handed down to us by himself. “One day, speaking of this” (the scintilla-) “event with a spiritual person (Religioso) she called it ‘a giddiness’ (vertigine). But that person said to her: ‘Mother, I beg of you that you will yourself select a person who may happen to suit your mind (soddisfaccia alla mente vestra), and will narrate to this person the graces which God has granted to you, so that, when you come to die, these graces may not remain hidden and unknown, and an opportunity for God’s praise and glory may not thus be lost.’ And she then answered that she was entirely willing (ben contenta), if this be pleasing to her tender Love; and that, in that case, she would not choose another person than himself, although she was convinced that it was impossible to describe even a small fragment of such interior experiences as occurred between God and her soul; and that as to exterior things, few or none had taken place in her case.” Here again we have evidence as to her habit of making light of and transcending all psycho-physical phenomena, however striking and mysterious; and we get a positive authorization conferred by herself upon Vernazza, such as is claimed by no other contributor to the Vita.

And “speaking with him some days later, she said: ‘Son, I have had a certain prick of conscience, of which I will tell you. The other day, when you told me that I might possibly remain dead some day during one of those giddinesses, there seemed to arise in me, at that moment, a feeling of joy, a profound aspiration which said: ”O, if that hour would but come!“ And then this feeling suddenly ceased. Now I declare to you, that I do not wish that in this matter there should be any glimpse (scintilla) of a desire of my own for earth or heaven, or for any other created thing; but that I wish to leave all things to the disposition of God.’ Then this person answered, that there was no occasion for her to have a prick of conscience, because, although joy had awaked in her mind, and a sudden exclamation had occurred there, at the mention of the word ‘death,’ yet that nothing of this had proceeded from the will, nor had it been endorsed by the reason; but that it had proceeded solely from the instinct of the pleasure-loving soul (anima), which ever, according to its nature, tends to such an end. And how the proof that this was a correct account, lay in this, that her prick of conscience had not really penetrated to the depths of her heart, but had remained on the surface, at the same slight depth at which the movement of joy had remained. And she confessed that the matter really stood thus, and remained satisfied.”[174]