Certain details of her Hell doctrine which appear in immediate contrast to, or in harmony with, some special points of her Purgatorial teaching, had better appear in connection with the latter.
3. Purgatory; the initial experience and act.
Let us now take, in all but complete contrast to this doctrine as to Hell, what she has to say about Purgatory. And here we have first to deal with the initial experience and act, both of them unique and momentary, of the soul destined for Purgatory. As to that experience, only one description has been preserved for us. “Once, and once only, do the souls (that are still liable to, and capable of, purgation) perceive the cause of (their) Purgatory that they bear within themselves,—namely in passing out of this life: then, but never again after that: otherwise self would come in (vi saria una proprietà).”[273]
And this unique and momentary experience is straightway followed by as unique and momentary an act, free and full, on the part of the experiencing soul. Catherine has described this act in every kind of mood, and from the various points of view, already drawn out by us, of her doctrine, so that we have here again a most impressive and vivid summing-up and pictorial representation of all her central teaching.
“The soul thus seeing” (its own imperfection) and, “that it cannot, because of the impediment” (of this imperfection) “attain (accostarsi) to its end, which is God; and that the impediment cannot be removed (levato) from it, except by means of Purgatory, swiftly and of its own accord (volontieri) casts itself into it.”[274] Here we have the continuation of the outward movement: the soul is here absolutely impeded in that, now immensely swift, movement, and is brought to a dead stop, as though by something hard on the soul’s own surface, which acts as a barrier between itself and God; it is offered the chance of escaping from this intolerable suffering into the lesser one of dissolving this hard obstacle in the ocean of the purifying fire: and straightway plunges into the latter.
“If the soul could find another Purgatory above the actual one, it would, so as more rapidly to remove from itself so important (tanto) an impediment, instantly cast itself into it, because of the impetuosity of that love which exists between God and the soul and tends to conform the soul to God.”[275] Here we have an extension of the same picturing, interesting because the addition of an upwards to the outwards introduces a conflict between the image (which evidently, for the soul’s plunge, requires Purgatory to lie beneath the soul), and the doctrine (which, taking Purgatory as the means between earth and heaven, cannot, if any spacial picturing be retained at all, but place Heaven at the top of the picture, and Purgatory higher up than the soul which is coming thither from earth). The deep plunge has become a high jump.
“I see the divine essence to be of such purity, that the soul which should have within it the least mote (minimo chè) of imperfection, would rather cast itself into a thousand hells, than find itself with that imperfection in the presence of God.”[276] Here the sense of touch, of hardness, of a barrier which is checking motion, has given way to the sense of sight, of stain, of a painful contrast to an all-pure Presence; and the whole picture is now devoid of motion. We thus have a transition to the immanental picturing, with its inward movement or look.
“The soul which, when separated from the body, does not find itself in that cleanness (nettezza) in which it was created, seeing in itself the stain, and that this stain cannot be purged out except by means of Purgatory, swiftly and of its own accord casts itself in; and if it did not find this ordination apt to purge that stain, in that very moment there would be spontaneously generated (si generebbe) within itself a Hell worse than Purgatory.”[277] Here we have again reached her immanental conception, where the soul’s concern is with conditions within itself, and where its joys and sorrows are within. Its trouble is, in this case, the sense of contrast, between its own original, still potential, indeed still actual though now only far down, hidden and buried, true self, and its active, obvious, superficial, false self. In so far as there is any movement before the plunge, it is an inward, introspective one; the soul as a whole is, for that previous moment, not conceived as in motion, but a movement of her self-observing part or power takes place within her from the surface to the centre; and only then, after her rapid journey from this her surface-being to those her fundamental ineradicable requirements, and after the consequent intolerably painful contrast and conflict within herself, does she cast herself, with swift wholeheartedness, with all she is and has, into the purifying place and state.
And, in full harmony with this immanental conception, the greater suffering which would arise did she abide with this sight of herself and yet without any moral change is described as springing up spontaneously within herself. “The soul, seeing Purgatory to have been ordained for the very purpose of purging away its stains, casts itself in, and seems to find a great compassion (on the part of God) in being allowed (able) to do so.” This appears to be only a variety of the immanental view just given.[278]
4. Purgatory: the subsequent process.
We have finally to give her doctrine as to the particular dispositions, joys, and sufferings of the soul during the process of its purgation, and as to the cause and manner of the cessation of that process.
As to the dispositions, they are generally the same as those which impelled the soul to put itself in this place or condition. Only whereas then, during that initial moment, they took the form of a single act, an initiation of a new condition, now they assume the shape of a continuous state. Then the will freely tied itself; now it gladly though painfully abides by its decision and its consequences. Then the will found the relief and distraction of full, epoch-making action; now it has but to will and work out the consequences involved in that generous, all-inclusive self-determination. The range and nature of this, its continuous action will thus be largely the very reserve of those of that momentary act. “The souls that are in Purgatory are incapable of choosing otherwise than to be in that place, nor can they any more turn their regard (si voltare) towards themselves, and say: ‘I have committed such and such sins, for which I deserve to tarry here’; nor can they say, ‘Would that I had not done them, that now I might go to Paradise’; nor yet say, ‘That soul is going out before me’; nor, ‘I shall go out before him.’ They are so completely satisfied that He should be doing all that pleases Him, and in the way it pleases Him, that they are incapable of thinking of themselves.” Indeed they are unable even to see themselves, at least directly, for “these souls do not see anything, even themselves in themselves or by means of themselves, but they (only) see themselves in God.” Indeed we have already seen that to do, or to be able to do, otherwise, would now “let self come in (sarebbe una proprietà).”[279]
And the joys and sufferings, and the original, earthly cause of the latter, are described as follows. “The souls in Purgatory have their (active) will conformed in all things to the will of God; and hence they remain there, content as far as regards their will.” “As far as their will is concerned, these souls cannot find the pain to be pain, so completely are they satisfied with the ordinance of God, so entirely is their (active) will one with it in pure charity. On the other hand, they suffer a torment so extreme, that no tongue could describe it, no intellect could form the least idea of it, if God had not made it known by special grace.” And indeed she says: “I shall cease to marvel at finding that Purgatory is” in its way as “horrible as Hell. For the one is made for punishing, the other for purging: hence both are made for sin, sin which itself is so horrible and which requires that its punishment and purgation should be conformable to its own horribleness.” For in Purgatory too there still exist certain remains of imperfect, sinful habits in the will. “The souls in Purgatory think much more of the opposition which they discover in themselves to the will of God,” than they do of their pain. And yet, being here with their actual will fully at one with God’s purifying action (an action directed against these remains of passive opposition), “I do not believe it would be possible to find any joy comparable to that of a soul in Purgatory, except the joy of the Blessed in Paradise.”[280]
Now the sufferings of the soul are represented either as found by it, under the form of an obstacle to itself, whilst in motion to attain to God, a motion which in some passages is outward, in others inward; or as coming to it, whilst spacially at rest. Only in the latter case is there a further attempt at pictorially elucidating the nature of the obstacle and the cessation of the suffering. It is fairly clear that it is the latter set of passages which most fully suits her general teaching and even imagery. For, as to the imagery: after that one movement in which the soul determines its own place, we want it to abide there, without any further motion. And, as to doctrine: more and more as the soul’s history is unfolded, should God’s action within it appear as dominating and informing the soul’s action towards God, and should change of disposition supplant change of place.
First, then, let us take the clearer but less final conception, and see the soul in movement, in a struggle for outward motion. “Because the souls that are in Purgatory have an impediment between God and themselves, and because the instinct which draws the soul on to its ultimate end is unable as yet to attain to its fulfilment (perfezione), an extreme fire springs up from thence (within them), a fire similar to that of Hell.” We have here an application and continuation of the transcendental imagery, so that the impediment is outside or on the surface of the soul, and God is outside and above this again: but the whole picture here, at least as regards the fire, is obscure and tentative.[281]
Or the soul is still conceived as in movement, but the motion is downwards from its own surface to its own centre, a centre where resides its Peace, God Himself. “When a soul approaches more and more to that state of original purity and innocence in which it had been created, the instinct of God, bringing happiness in its train (istinto beatifico), reveals itself and increases on and on, with such an impetuousness of fire that any obstacle seems intolerable.”[282] Here we have the immanental picturing, the soul moving down, under the influence of its instinct for God, to ever fuller masses of this instinct present within the soul’s own centre. But the extreme abstractness and confusion of the language, which mixes up motion, different depths of the soul, and various dispositions of spirit, and which represents the soul as capable of approaching a state which has ceased to exist, cast doubts on the authenticity of this passage. In both these sets where the soul is in motion, we hear only of an impediment in general and without further description; and, in both cases, the fire springs up because of this impediment, whereas, as we shall see, in the self-consistent form of her teaching the Fire, God, is always present: the impediment simply renders this Fire painful, and that is all.
And next we can take the soul as spacially stationary, and as in process of qualitative change. Here we get clear and detailed pictures, both of what is given to the soul and of what is taken away from it. The images of the positive gain constitute the beautiful sixth chapter of the Trattato. But its present elaborate text requires to be broken up into three or four variants of one and the same simile, which are probably all authentic. I give them separately.
“If in the whole world there existed but one loaf of bread to satisfy the hunger of every creature: in such a case, if the creature had not that one bread, it could not satisfy its hunger, and hence it would remain in intolerable pain.”[283] Note how, so far, the nature of the possession of the bread is not specified, it is simply “had”; and how the pain seems to remain stationary.
“Man having by nature an instinct to eat: if he does not eat, his hunger increases continually, since his instinct to eat never fails him.”[284] Here all is clearer: man now takes the place of the creature in general; the possession is specified as an eating; the pain is a hunger; and this hunger is an ever-increasing one.
“If in all the world there were but one loaf of bread, and if only through seeing it could the creature be satisfied: the nearer that creature were to approach it (without seeing it and yet knowing that only the said bread could satisfy it), the more ardently would its natural desire for the bread be aroused within it (si accenderebbe),—that bread in which all its contentment is centred (consiste).”[285] Here the image for the nature of the appropriation has been shifted from the least noble of the senses, taste and touch, to the noblest, sight: there is still a longing, but it is a longing to see, to exercise and satiate fully the intellectual faculties. And yet the satiety is evidently conceived not as extending to these faculties alone, but as including the whole soul and spirit, since bread would otherwise cease to be the symbol here, and would have been replaced by light. Note too the subtle complication introduced by the presentation, in addition to the idea of an increase of hunger owing to lapse of time, of the suggestion that the increase is caused by a change in the spacial relations between the hungering creature and its food, and by an ever-increasing approach of that creature to this food.
“And if the soul were certain of never seeing the bread, at that moment it would have within it a perfect Hell, and become like the damned, who are cut off from all hope of ever seeing God, the true Bread. The souls in Purgatory, on the other hand, hope to see that Bread, and to satiate themselves to the full therewith; whence they suffer hunger as great as will be the degree to which they will (eventually) satiate themselves with the true Bread, God, our Love.”[286] Here it is noticeable how the specific troubles of Hell and Purgatory are directly described, whereas the corresponding joys of Heaven are only incidentally indicated; and how the full sight is not preceded by a partial sight, but simply by a longing for this full sight, so that, if we were to press the application of this image, the soul in Purgatory would not see God at all. And yet, as we have seen above, souls there see, though not their particular sins, yet their general sinful habits; for what are the “impediment,” the “imperfection,” the “stain,” which they go on feeling and seeing, but these habits? And they see themselves, though not in themselves, yet in God. But, if so, do they not see God?
The answer will doubtless be that, just as they do not see their sins any more in their specific particularity, but only feel in themselves a dull, dead remainder of opposition and imperfection, so also they do not, after the initial moment of action and till quite the end of their suffering, see God clearly,—as clearly as they do when the process is at an end. During one instant at death they had seen (as in a picture) their sins and God, each in their own utterly contrasted concrete particularity; and this had been the specific cause of their piercing pain and swift plunge. And then came the period of comparative dimness and dulness, a sort of general subconsciousness, when their habits of sin, and God, were felt rather than seen, the former as it were in front of the latter, but both more vaguely, and yet (and this was the unspeakable alleviation) now in a state of change and transformation. For the former, the blots and blurrs, and the sense of contrariety are fading gradually out of the outlook and consciousness; and the latter, the light and life, the joy and harmony of the soul, and God, are looming clearer, nearer, and larger, on and on. And even this initial feeling, this general perception, this semi-sight and growing sight of God, is blissful beyond expression; for “every little glimpse that can be gained of God exceeds every pain and every joy that man can conceive without it.”[287]
The imagery illustrative of what is taken from the soul, and how it is taken, is two-fold, and follows in the one case a more transcendental, in the other case a more immanental, conception, although in each case God is represented as in motion, and the soul as abiding in the same place and simply changing its qualitative condition under the influence of that increasing approach of God and penetration by Him.
The illustration for the more transcendental view is taken from the sun’s light and fire’s heat and a covering. It is, as a matter of fact, made up of three sayings: one more vague and subtle, and two more clear and vivid, sayings. “The joy of a soul in Purgatory goes on increasing day by day, owing to the inflowing of God into the soul, an inflowing which increases in proportion as it consumes the impediment to its own inflowing.”—God’s action upon the imperfect soul is as the sun’s action upon “a covered object. The object cannot respond to the rays of the sun which beat upon it (reverberazione del sole), not because the sun ceases to shine,—for it shines without intermission,—but because the covering intervenes (opposizione). Let the covering be consumed away, and again the object will be exposed to the sun and will answer to the rays in proportion as the work of destruction advances.”—Now “Sin is the covering of the soul; and in Purgatory this covering is gradually consumed by the fire; and the more it is consumed, the more does the soul correspond and discover itself to the divine ray. And thus the one (the ray) increases, and the other (the sin) decreases, till the time (necessary for the completion of the process) is over.”[288]
It is clear that we have here three parallel passages, each with its own characteristic image, all illustrative of an identical doctrine: namely, the persistent sameness of God’s action, viewed in itself, and of the soul’s reaction, in its essential, central laws, needs, and aspirations; and the accidental, superficial, intrinsically abnormal, inhibitory modification effected by sin in that action of God and in the corresponding reaction of the soul.—The first, dimmer and deeper saying speaks of an inflowing of God, with her usual combination of fire-and-water images. We seem here again to have the ocean of the divine fire, Itself pressing in upon the soul within It, yet here with pain and oppression, in so far as the soul resists or is unassimilated to It; and with peace and sustaining power, in so far as the soul opens out to, and is or becomes similar to, It. We hear only of an “impediment” in general, perhaps because the influx which beats against it is imaged as taking place from every side at once.—The second saying, the most vivid of the three, speaks of sun-light, and of how, whilst this sun-light itself remains one and the same, its effect differs upon one and the same object, according as that object is covered or uncovered. Here we get a “covering,” since the shining is naturally imaged as coming from one side, from above, only. But here also it is the same sun which, at one time, does not profit, and, at another time, gives a renewed life to one and the same object; and it is clear, that either Catherine here abstracts altogether from the question as to what consumes the covering, or that she assumes that this consumption is effected by the sun itself.—The third saying is the least simple, and is indeed somewhat suspicious in its actual form. Yet here again we have certainly only one agent, in this case fire, which again, as in the case of the influx and of the sun-light, remains identical in itself, but varies in its effects, according as it does or does not meet with an obstacle. The ray here is a ray primarily of heat and not of light, but which is felt by the soul at first as painful, destructive flame, and at last as peaceful, life-giving warmth.
Now, amongst these three parallel sayings, it is that concerning the inflowing, which leads us gently on to the more immanental imagery—that of fire and dross. And this image is again given us in a number of closely parallel variants which now constitute one formally consecutive paragraph,—the third of Chapter X of the Trattato. “Gold, when once it has been (fully) purified, can be no further consumed by the action of fire, however great it be; since fire does not, strictly speaking, consume gold, but only the dross which the gold may chance to contain. So also with regard to the soul. God holds it so long in the furnace, until every imperfection is consumed away. And when it is (thus) purified, it becomes impassible; so that if, thus purified, it were to be kept in the fire, it would feel no pain; rather would such a fire be to it a fire of Divine Love, burning on without opposition, like the fire of life eternal.”[289] Here the imperfection lies no more, as a covering, on the surface, nor does the purifying light or fire simply destroy that covering and then affect the bare surface; but the imperfection is mixed up with the soul, throughout the soul’s entire depth, and the purification reaches correspondingly throughout the soul’s entire substance. Yet, as with the covering and the covered object, so here with the dross and the impure gold, sin is conceived of as a substance alien to that of the soul. And, so far, God appears distinct from the fire: He applies it, as does the goldsmith his fire to the gold. But already there is an indication of some mysterious relation between the fire of Purgatory and that of Heaven. For if the very point of the description seems, at first sight, to be the miraculous character of the reward attached, more or less arbitrarily, to the soul’s perfect purification, a character indicated by the fact that now not even fire can further hurt the soul, yet it remains certain that, the more perfect the soul, the more must it perceive and experience all things according to their real and intrinsic nature.
Another conclusion to the same simile is: “Even so does the divine fire act upon the soul: it consumes in the soul every imperfection. And, when the soul is thus purified, it abides all in God, without any foreign substance (alcuna cosa) within itself.”[290] Here God and the fire are clearly one and the same. And the soul does not leave the fire, nor is any question raised as to what would happen were it to be put back into it; but the soul remains where it was, in the Fire, and the Fire remains what it was, God. Only the foreign substance has been burnt out of the soul, and hence the same Fire that pained it then, delights it now. Here too, however, God and the soul are two different substances; and indeed this Fire-and-Gold simile, strictly speaking, excludes any identification of them.
“The soul, when purified, abides entirely in God; its being is God.”[291] Here we have the teaching as to the identity of her true self with God, which we have already found further back. But the soul’s purification and union with God which there we found illustrated by the simile, so appropriate to this teaching, of the absorption of food into the living body, we find indicated here by the much less apt comparison of the transformation of gold by fire. For in this latter case, the gold remains a substance distinct from the fire, whereas the doctrine requires a simile such as a great pure fire expelling all impurity from a small, impure fire, and then itself continuing to live on, with this small fire absorbed into itself. But we shall see later on, why, besides the intrinsic difficulty of finding an at all appropriate simile for so metaphysical a doctrine, the imagery always becomes so ambiguous at this point. We shall show that a confluence of antagonistic doctrines, and some consequent hesitation in the very teaching itself, contribute to keep the images in this uncertain state. However, the possibly glossorial importation of this most authentic teaching of hers into this place and simile only helps to confirm the identity of the Fire with God, and the non-moving of the soul, throughout this group of texts. For the gold abides in the fire, as the soul abides in God; and the identification which is thus established of the painful with the joyous fire, and of both with God, is what will have suggested the introduction in this place of the further identification of the soul with God. And it is the continued abiding of the identical soul, a soul which has not moved spacially but has changed qualitatively, in the identical fire, God, which has helped to suggest the insertion in this place of the doctrine that the soul, in its true essence, is identical with God. God, in this final identification, would be the gold, the pure gold of the soul; and this pure gold itself would generate a fire for the consumption of all impurity, in proportion as such impurity gained ground within it. And, in proportion as this consumption takes place, does the fire sink, and leave nothing but the pure gold, the fire’s cause, essence, and end. In any case, we have here one more most authentic and emphatic enforcement of the teaching that the place of Purgatory is really a state; that its painfulness is intrinsic; and that it is caused by the partial discord between spirit and Spirit, and is ended by the final complete concord between both.
CHAPTER VII
CATHERINE’S REMAINS AND CULTUS; THE FATE OF HER
TWO PRIEST FRIENDS AND OF HER DOMESTICS; AND
THE REMAINING HISTORY OF ETTORE VERNAZZA
Introductory.
I now propose to attempt, in these last two biographical chapters, to give, first, an account of the fate of Catherine’s remains and possessions; and, next, of the vicissitudes in the lives of her companions and immediate disciples. I shall thus range from the day of her death on Sunday, September 15, 1510, up to 1551, the year of the publication of the Vita e Dottrina; indeed, in the instance of one particular disciple, up to 1587. And I shall do so, partly as a further contribution to the knowledge of her own character and even of her doctrine, this finest expression of what she spiritually was, and of her influence upon her immediate little world; and partly in preparation for the study of the influence of this entourage back upon the apprehension and presentation of her figure, upon the growth of her “Legend,” and upon the contemporary and gradual, simultaneous and successive, upbuilding of that complex structure, her “Life.” This latter inquiry is probably too technical to interest the majority of readers, and will be found relegated to the Appendix at the end of this volume.
I shall group all the facts, alluded to above, under five heads: her burial, and the events immediately surrounding it; the different removals of the remains, and the chief stages of her Official Cultus; the fate of her two priest friends and advisers, and of her domestics; the remaining history of her closest friend Ettore Vernazza; and finally the long career, rich in autobiographical annotations, of Ettore’s daughter, Catherine’s God-child, Tommasina (Battista) Vernazza. We shall thus first finish up what is predominantly the story of things, and of the more external, even although the most splendid and authoritative, appreciation and authentication of her holiness; and shall only then go back to what is (almost exclusively) an interior history of souls, and one which will materially contribute to our apprehension of Catherine’s special character and influence and to a vivid perception of the advantages, strength, limits, and difficulties of that particular kind of religion and of its attestation and transmission. Ettore’s and Battista’s stories, however, are so full that I must give three entire sections to Ettore, and one whole chapter to Battista.
I. The Burial and the Events immediately surrounding it. September 15 to December 10, 1510.
1. The Burial, September 16.
We have seen how, in the evening of Thursday, September 12, the already dying Catherine had, in a Codicil, declared that she desired to be buried wheresoever the priests Jacobo Carenzio and Cattaneo Marabotto should decide. She died in the early morning of Sunday, the 15th; and already on the next day, with the rapidity which, in such matters, continues characteristic of southern countries, the burial took place.
First, Dons Jacobo Carenzio and Cattaneo Marabotto declared, in a written document, that “knowing the late Donna Caterinetta to have ordained that her body should be buried in such a place as they themselves might ordain: they, in consequence, willed and ordained that her said body be buried in the Church of the Hospital.”[292] And next, the funeral took place with a certain amount of pomp: for authentic copies are still extant of the expenses incurred,—among other things for wax candles, including three white-wax flambeaux, amounting in all to over one hundred pounds weight of wax.[293] The evidently highly emaciated, and hence naturally flexible, body had been enclosed in a “fine coffin of wood,” and was now, at this first deposition, put in “a resting-place (deposito) against one of the walls” of the Church. There can be no doubt that this first resting-place was not the monument of her husband Giuliano, although the latter was still visible and readily accessible for a considerable time after,—certainly up to 1522, and probably down to 1537.[294]
2. Catherine’s possessions at the time of her death.
And next, on Tuesday the 17th, an Inventory was drawn up of the things possessed by Catherine at the moment of her death, for the use of the Hospital “Protectors,” the Trustees and Executors of her Will. An authentic copy of it is still extant, and furnishes first-hand evidence for the presence, up to the very last, and amongst the tangible objects and small possessions in daily use, of memorials and expressions of the three great stages of her life, and of the (in part successive and past, in part simultaneous and still present) layers, or as it were concentric rings, of her character. We thus get a vivid presentation of that variety in unity and unity in variety, which is of the very essence of the fully living soul; and we also see how incapable of being otherwise than caricatured, if expressed in but a few hyperbolic words, was even her spirit of poverty and of mortification, in this her last stage, which, in some sense and degree, still retained and summed up, and in other ways added a special touch of a large freedom to, all the various previous stages of her life.
The list gives the things according to the rooms in which they stood, beginning with her own death-room, and, here, with her own bed. In this “the room” (camera) there are “a down coverlet” and “two large mattresses”; “three” (other) “coverlets, one of vermilion silk” and “two of” some simpler “white” material; “two blankets, one vermilion, the other white”; “five-and-a-half pairs of sheets”; and “a pillow”: all this for Catherine’s bed. And these clothes, together with those of the bed of the “famiglia” (the maid Argentina), constitute, together with the two bedsteads, absolutely all the chattels present in this “bedroom” (camera).
“In the” adjoining “room with the blue wall-hangings and the” intervening “curtain,” there were: “three stuff gowns, one black and the other Franciscan-colour,” i.e. grey; “two silk gowns”; “two jackets, one” of which was again “of grey stuff, without a lining”; seven other garments, “one being of black silk”; a very small amount of body-linen; “three table-cloths and twenty-one towels”; “two silver cups and saucers” and “six silver spoons”; “eight pewter candlesticks”; “one casserole”; “four wooden basins”; “a kettle”; and a few other poor odds-and-ends, for kitchen and sick-room use; and a three-legged table and one or two other articles of simple furniture.
And finally “a closet” (recamera) is mentioned, with a press in it.
It is noticeable that here, again, no printed book or manuscript of any kind is mentioned: but it is clear that she herself had, some time after her Will of March 18, 1509, given away her dearly prized “Maestà”-triptych to Christoforo di Chiavaro, for this picture nowhere occurs in this list; and something of the same kind may have occurred with one or two books.
But if we group these things somewhat differently, we at once get a vivid conception of the precise, and hence complex, sense in which she can be said to have died very poor; and we get clear indications of the three stages of her life. For the silver service is a survival from her pre-conversion, worldly-wealthy days; the pewter candlesticks, and the rough, sparse furniture, belong to her directly penitential first-conversion period and mood; and the soft, warm, gay-coloured coverlets and apparel of rich material are no doubt predominantly characteristic of her last years when, largely under Don Marabotto’s wise advice, she allowed herself a greater freedom in matters of external mortification, and readily accepted bodily attentions and comforts, reserving now the fulness of her attention to matters of interior disposition and purification. She thus attained, by means of and after all those previous forms of mortification, to a perfected, evangelical liberty, in which the death to self was, if somewhat different, yet even more penetrative than before.
In the evening of this day, the Protectors of the Hospital formally renew their acceptance of the office of Trustees and Executors, imposed on them by Catherine’s Will of March 18 of the previous year.[295]
3. Distribution of Catherine’s chattels.
And thirdly, there are the various sellings, re-sellings, and distributions of her humble little collection of things, which take place with the slow multiplicity of steps, dear to all corporations. Workmen get paid, on November 22, for carrying her property on to the market-place, for the sale. On the same day Argentina receives “such things left to her in Catherine’s Will as Catherine had not herself already given to her maid.” And, on December 10, the remainder of that property, which had evidently been bought in by the Hospital on that November day, is finally re-valued, bought, and divided up by and between the Protectors, who take most of the large furniture; Marabotto, who buys ten things (a pair of fire-irons, a wardrobe, and a gilt article amongst them); her brother Lorenzo, who acquires four things (amongst them “a woman’s work-box?—capsetina a domina”); and the Rector, Don Carenzio, who becomes possessed of the down coverlet and of a piece of vermilion cloth.[296]
Here the absence of all buying by or for Vernazza or a representative of his is noticeable. He was evidently still far away, busy in putting his and his dead Saint-friend’s large ideas into practice; and his three daughters, the eldest of whom was but thirteen, were being brought up in two Convents.
The fate of Catherine’s little house is too closely bound up with that of one of her friends for its history to be easily severable from his. It stands over to the third section.
II. The Different Removals of the Remains, and the Chief Stages of her Official Cultus.
1. Opening of the “Deposito.” Successive “translations.”
Catherine’s remains were left “for about eighteen months” in their first resting-place, (deposito) by one of the walls of the “Hospital Church.” But then “it was found that the spot was damp, owing to a conduit of water running under the wall. And the resting-place was broken up, and the coffin was opened: and the holy body was found entire from head to foot, without any kind of lesion.” “And so great a concourse of people took place, to see the body, that the remains were left exposed indeed for eight days; but, owing to a part of them having been abstracted,” apparently at the opening of the coffin, “they were exhibited shut off (from the crowd) in a side-chapel, where they could be seen but not touched.” “And after this, the remains were deposited high up, in a sepulchre of marble, in the Church of the Hospital.”[297]
The interest of this removal consists in three sets of facts, the last set being of capital importance among the determining causes of her cultus and eventual canonization. For one thing, we still have the accounts of the expenses incurred in connection with it, the Hospital repaying, to two ladies (one of them Donna Franchetta, the wife of Giuliano’s cousin Agostino Adorno) and to Don Marabotto, the sums expended by them upon this translation and sepulchre: Marabotto’s expenses being in part for “causing the stone for the sepulchre to be brought.” These accounts are put down in the Hospital Cartulary under July 10, nearly twenty-two months after the first deposition; but the expenses may well have been incurred by those three friends, three or four months before. We thus find two ladies (a relative and a friend), and Don Marabotto, to the fore; but no mention of Carenzio, although the latter was at the time, as we shall see, still Rector of the Hospital and living in Catherine’s little house there.
And secondly, it is on this occasion that mention is made of the picture which I have more or less identified with the portrait reproduced in this volume. There are two highly ambiguous entries concerning it. “To account of the Sepulture of the late Donna Caterinetta Adorna, for divers expenses incurred by Don Cattaneo Marabotto: to wit, for a picture, and for causing the stone for the sepulture to be brought, £7 10s.”; “the Maintenance Committee (fabrica) of the Hospital, for a picture erected in the Church of the Hospital, above the Altar: to the credit of Don Cattaneo Marabotto, £9 7s.”[298] Now I take it that only one interpretation is at all a probable one, viz. that both these entries, in the comfortably slipshod way in which most of these accounts were kept, refer somehow to one and the same picture; and that this picture was a portrait of Catherine. For it is certain that the second account refers in some way to Catherine and to this first transference of her remains; it is highly unlikely that two pictures of herself would be produced and paid for, on one and the same occasion; and it is most improbable that Marabotto would care, on occasion of all this popular enthusiasm for his deceased friend and penitent, to spend money on a picture representative of some figure other than her own.
The reader will note that the portrait which I thus connect with this picture has not, as yet, got any nimbus, an absence hardly possible in any much later picture.[299] And I take it that the picture was placed above an altar, possibly even the Altar (the High Altar) of the Church, not only because that was the most honorific place, but also a little because the sepulchre had been placed too high up for the relatively small picture to be sufficiently visible if attached to the monument itself.
And thirdly, we have here, in this week-long public veneration of the remains, and in this erection of her picture over one of the Church Altars, the first unmistakable beginnings of a popular cultus. For the evidences and expressions of devotion to her, which I have recorded at the time of her death, were all restricted to the circle of her personal friends, and her first deposition remained, apparently, free from any popular concourse or commotion. The series of cures attributed to her intercession does not begin till this opening of the deposito. Certainly the first, and possibly the first four, of these cases, as given by Padre Maineri (1737), occurred in connection with this first opening.[300] And it is certain that, if the (greater or lesser) incorruption of the body was possibly nothing even physically so very remarkable, given all the circumstances;[301] and if this fact left the question of her sanctity intrinsically entirely where it found the matter: yet the incorruption it was that gave the first, and, as it turned out, an abiding impulse to the popular devotion. Indeed, as we shall see later on, it is highly improbable that, but for this condition of the body, a cultus would ever have arisen sufficiently popular and permanent to lead on to her Beatification and Canonization. But as things now stood, the movement had been set going, and it continued on and on.
The remaining translations were: a second one, into “an honourable sepulchre lower down,” still before 1551, and already mentioned in the first edition of the Vita of that year; a third, in 1593, when the remains were placed in their present position, but in a marble monument, up in the choir, above the Church entrance; and a fourth and fifth, in 1642 and 1694, when the body was placed, for the first and second time, in shrines having glass sides, so that the relics could be seen: that of 1694 is the one in which the remains still repose. And in 1709, Cardinal Lorenzo Fiesco being Archbishop of Genoa, the body was reclothed, on June 13, by ladies, amongst whom was a Maria B. Fiesca.[302] We thus see how unbroken was, in this case, the authentication of the remains, and how fresh remained, most naturally, the interest taken in their cultus by Catherine’s most powerful family.
2. Motives operating for Catherine’s Canonization.
It is indeed clear that Catherine’s greatness,—what made her a large, rich mind and saintly spirit,—is one thing; and that Catherine’s popularity,—what occasioned the official recognition of that greatness,—is another thing. Her mind and teaching, her character and special grace and attrait, were of rare width and penetration; in part, they were strikingly original through just this their depth of psychological and spiritual self-consistency and closeness of touch with the soul’s actual life. And these points had profoundly impressed a very small group of friends. And again, her work among the poor and sick had been long, varied, and utterly devoted. And here she had been widely appreciated. Yet these, the two lives which, between them, constituted all her sanctity and significance, had, the former nothing, and the latter but little and only mediately, to do with the forces which led on eventually to her formal canonization.
The motives for putting Rome in motion for this her canonization were, no doubt, predominantly three. There was the popular devotion, which apparently was first aroused, and was then instantly turned into a downright cultus, by the discovery, in May or June 1512, of the incorruption of her remains; and which from thenceforward continued and grew, in connection with these relics and with the physical cures and ameliorations attributed to the touch of the dead body, or of its integuments, or even of the oil of the lamp which evidently soon (presumably on occasion of that first outburst of devotion) was kept lit before Catherine’s resting-place.[303] There was next the gratitude of the Hospital authorities to Catherine for her life-work amongst them; and their most natural and laudable wish to utilize her sanctity and its recognition for the benefit of the ever-continuous and pressing necessities of their vast institution and its Church. And finally, there was the feeling of clanship and the active interest taken in the matter by the (all but regal) family of the Fieschi, backed, as they were, by the Republic of Genoa and various other sovereign bodies and persons.
The combination of these three things proved sufficiently powerful to take the place of certain ordinary incentives which were wanting, and even to overcome certain unusual difficulties which were undoubtedly present, in the case. Certain incentives were lacking. For there was, in this instance, no Religious Order to put forward and to work, with all the continuous, unresting, unhasting momentum of an institution, for a saintly subject of its own, a subject whose glorification would bring honour and profit to the body from which she sprang, and an accession of popularity to the special object and work of that Order. And certain obstacles were present. For few characters, interior ideals and explicit teachings, could be found more sui generis, more profoundly, even daringly original and all re-constitutive, and less immediately understandable and copyable, than are these of Catherine. But the enthusiasm and self-interest of the populace, of a charitable institution, and of a powerful family, replaced what was thus lacking and overcame what was thus operative; and the directly visible and universally understandable part of her life and example, was allowed to outweigh any objection that could be urged on the ground of the less obvious and more difficult, far more original and profound, sides of her special personality and piety.
And a matter which further helped on the canonization was that when Pope Urban VIII, in 1625, published his Bull forbidding thenceforth, under grave penalties, that any one, “even though he have died with the reputation of extraordinary Christian perfection, be called ‘Blessed’ or ‘Saint,’ until he has first been declared to be such, and to merit religious worship, by the Holy Roman See”; and ordaining that the same rule should be practised concerning persons already deceased, who were currently recognized as saints: he excepted, with regard to this second class, those who, “during an immemorial course of time” previous to the publication of this Bull, had been venerated as saints by the people, without opposition or complaint on the part of the Church authorities. For this “time immemorial” was considered by theologians to amount, as a minimum, to a hundred years. And since religious worship had begun to be paid to her certainly not later than 1512, and the title “Beata” had already then been publicly given to her, Catherine continued, even after Pope Urban’s Bull, to be invoked and venerated as “Blessed,” with the knowledge, though without any positive and express approbation, of the Roman Church.[304]
3. Canonization, 1737.
But the devotees of Catherine, naturally enough, were not content with less than a formal approbation, and, as usual, the obtaining of the latter was a very long and elaborate affair. At the beginning of 1630 a petition was sent in to Cardinal Cesarini in Rome; who, after much examination, gave his opinion on May 24, 1636. There the matter again rested for twenty-four years.—But in 1670 the very active and able Florentine, Cardinal Azzolini, (the same whose interesting correspondence with that undisciplined and wayward, but thoroughly sincere and much-maligned woman, Queen Christina of Sweden, has been recently published,) became the “Ponente,” the Advocate, for the cause.[305] The Cardinal wrote in 1672 to Archbishop Spinola of Genoa for his opinion; and the latter, after much further examination, declared that the cultus of Catherine, having existed for over a century before Pope Urban’s Bull, she ought, in accordance with the tenor of that Bull, to be maintained in possession of that same cultus. The Congregation of Rites approved of this sentence on March 30, 1675, and Clement X, the now eighty-five years old Altieri Pope, gave it his assent. Thus Catherine had a full official recognition as “Beata.”
Next came the examination of her doctrine and “writings,” from 1676 onwards, culminating in their approbation, for purposes of Canonization, by Pope Innocent XI (Odescalchi) in 1683. It is this investigation which, with some of the discussions concerning her virtues, adds considerably to our materials and means for judging of her teaching. I have already touched on these discussions; and they will occupy us again in the second volume.
And then, in 1682, Cardinal Azzolini, supported by King Louis XIV of France and the King of Spain, again presses Rome,—this time with a view to reaching Canonization. And on Cardinal Azzolini dying, Cardinal Imperiali became second “Ponente” of the cause. In 1690 the City of Genoa obtained leave from the Congregation of Rites for the recitation of the Office and for the Celebration of the Mass of the Common of Widows, in honour of Blessed Catherine; in 1733 an Office and a Mass proper to herself were approved; and in 1734 her eulogy was inserted in the Roman Martyrology, under date of March 22 (her conversion-day): “At Genoa, the Blessed Catherine, widow, distinguished by her contempt of the world and love of God.”
But meanwhile the long process as to the heroic degree of her virtues had issued in the Report of the Commission in 1716; and in the affirmative decree of the Congregation of Rites, confirmed by Clement XII (Corsini) in 1733.
And, before the conclusion of this investigation of her virtues, the examination of the miracles ascribed to her intercession had been begun in Genoa in 1730, by a deputation consisting of the Archbishop De-Franchi and two Bishops, sitting in the Archiepiscopal Palace; and six miracles were, in 1736, approved as valid, from amongst the numerous cases alleged to have occurred in 1730. And then three from amongst these six miracles were finally approved by Rome, on April 5, 1737, as efficient towards Canonization.
And at last, on April 30 of the same year, Feast of St. Catherine of Siena, Pope Clement, “in order that the faithful of Christ may, in Blessed Catherine, have a perfect example of all the virtues, and especially of the love of God and of their neighbour; and that a new honour and ornament may shine forth for the Republic of Genoa; orders the present Decree for the Canonization of the said Blessed Catherine,—a Canonization which has still to be carried out,—to be expedited and published.”—And on May 18 following, on the Feast of the Holy Trinity, the same Pope performed, in the Basilica of St. John Lateran, the function of the Canonization of Blessed Catherine, together with that of three other Beati: the two Frenchmen, Vincent de Paul, Founder of the Congregation of the Mission (the Lazarists) (1576-1660), and Jean François Regis, a Jesuit Mission-Preacher in the Huguenot parts of France (1597-1640); and the Italian Giuliana Falconieri, Foundress of the Third Order of Servites (1270-1341).[306]
It was now, on this canonization-day, over two hundred and sixteen years since Catherine Fiesca Adorna, that keen and ardent spirit, had flown to God, her Love. We must return to those earlier times.
III. The Fate of Catherine’s Priest Friends.
Introductory.
In thus reverting to the period which immediately succeeded Catherine’s death, and to the predominantly obscure and humble persons who had directly known her well, we bid adieu, indeed, to things massive, fixed, and final: yet we exchange the description of what, after all, was but an authoritative declaration of accomplished facts, for the study of that alone directly soul-stirring thing, the picture and drama of living, energizing human souls; of how these souls were being influenced by a greater one than themselves; and again of how these, thus influenced, lesser minds and hearts transmitted, developed, and coloured the tradition of the life to which they owed so much.
Now the effect, or at least the record of the effect, of the conception of Catherine formed by her two Priest friends and by her domestics back upon her transmitted image and upon the growth of her Legend, is, apart from the indications in the Vita already given or still to be considered, upon the whole, but slight. Still, as we shall eventually find, the few facts as to the subsequent lives of these persons, which shall now be given, are of very distinct use in appraising their respective shares in the gradual constitution of the Vita e Dottrina.
1. Don Carenzio, 1510-1513.
I take Don Jacopo Carenzio first, since he was the Priest in actual attendance upon Catherine at the last, and because he now, no doubt immediately after the funeral or at latest on the day of the removal of her chattels to the market-place, became possessed, as we shall see, of Catherine’s little house. He was thus the one who alone could continue and augment a cultus as strictly local as even Argentina’s had been, during those weeks, perhaps months, of sole night-charge of her dying mistress in these very rooms.
The identification of the building is complete. For as far back as October 6, 1497, not long after Giuliano’s death,—he was still alive on July 14,—the Protectors of the Hospital referred to their “grant to Catherine, during her lifetime, of the enjoyment and use of a house with a greenhouse, forming part of the Hospital.” And in this greenhouse she, on the evening of Sunday, March 18, 1509, had, in the presence of Vernazza and four other witnesses, dictated her Fourth Will to Battista Strata. It was, then, of a size sufficient to render it worth mentioning, and it was evidently closed in. Now there is a legal instrument, dated Saturday, August, 30, 1511, drawn up at a meeting held by the four “Protectors,” “in the chief (sitting-) room of the Residence of the Rector, in which the late Donna Caterinetta was wont to live.” And in this they declare that, “seeing that the Reverend Don Jacopo Carenzio, the Rector, is about to go to his home at Diano, for the purpose of carrying out a matter of the greatest importance to himself, and is shortly to return from thence, and that he wishes to persevere throughout his life in the said office of Rector; and since they desire that he should willingly hasten his return, and should be able to persevere with full confidence, and should not, as long as he lives, be moved from this room together with the whole building contiguous with it, to the room which, with its appurtenant building, is at present in the course of erection as the official residence of the Rector; they have altogether conceded to the above-named Reverend Jacopo, Rector, present and accepting, the said room together with the whole building belonging to this room, for him to hold and inhabit throughout his life, together with the greenhouse.”[307]
Here three points are of interest. Don Carenzio is, then, a native of the little Diano Castello on the Western Riviera hillside, some fifty English miles from Genoa and some twenty short of San Remo; and must have belonged to some humble family in that insignificant little place. His origin is thus in marked contrast to Marabotto’s, and still more to Vernazza’s. And next, it is clear that the house and greenhouse inhabited and used by Don Carenzio till his death are identical with those tenanted by Catherine, ever since at least the death of Giuliano. And thirdly, it is equally clear that this house was in no part identical with the two rooms still shown as the Saint’s. For these latter are high up from the ground; do not now form, and probably never formed, part of a disconnected house; and they no doubt stand on another site. The little house will have been demolished at latest in 1780, when the present great quadrangle was built.[308]
Now here, in these rooms full of the memory of Catherine, Don Carenzio will, not unreasonably, have hoped to live during many years. For it is not likely that he was older than, or indeed as old as, Don Marabotto, since he was now occupying that same office of Rector which Marabotto had held some six years previously. And yet Marabotto did not die till eighteen years later, whereas Carenzio’s death came soon. For his funeral took place on January 7, 1513, for which day there is an entry in the Hospital Cartulary for the cost of twenty-three pounds-weight of wax candles,—less than one-fourth the amount used at Catherine’s obsequies; and for that of the Priest’s vestments in which the body was robed and buried.[309]
It seems unlikely that Carenzio was not buried in the Hospital Church, seeing that he died whilst, apparently, still ex-officio Rector of the Hospital. But, if he was interred there, his monument, like that of Giuliano, was cut off and buried away in and with the Church end in 1537, or was covered up in some restoration; for there is no trace of it either in the Church itself or in any book treating of the sepulchral monuments of Genoa.
It is remarkable also that, though he had been the one priest present at Catherine’s death, and had tenanted Catherine’s own rooms throughout the two years and two or three months since her death, and had, alongside of Marabotto, been appointed by Catherine herself as the person to determine the place of her sepulture: his name nowhere occurs in connection with the plan for the opening of her deposito some eighteen months after her death; nor with the execution of that plan; nor with any of the consequent initiations of a public cultus. It is impossible to doubt that we have here some little counter jealousy and return exclusion, a sort of answer by Marabotto to his, Marabotto’s, own enforced absence from the death-chamber and his twenty-four hours’ ignorance of his Penitent’s death, which we had to note in its proper place. Poor little human frailties which may have appeared less petty and more completely excusable at close quarters than they look at this distance of time! I take it that, if there was a deliberate exclusion of Carenzio, the ceremony of opening the resting-place will have been timed to tally with some absence of the Rector,—say, on another visit to his native Diano.
2. Don Marabotto, 1510-1528.
As to Don Cattaneo Marabotto, I have not been able to discover much. We have already seen how he bought ten of Catherine’s chattels on December 10, after her death. On July 7, 1511, he pays over to Catherine’s old servant, the maid Maria (Mariola Bastarda), her late mistress’s little legacy, in a form to be described presently.
But the most important facts concerning him—apart from his share in the Vita, which shall be considered at length hereafter—are the following three. There is, first, the fact (already dwelt upon) that he, and apparently he alone, initiated, or at least led and directed, the plan of opening the deposito, exposing the body, giving it a marble sarcophagus, and erecting a picture over an altar in the Church to Catherine. And next, that “still in 1523 Argentina del Sale was his servant,”—she had evidently then, on Catherine’s death in 1510, become his attendant.[310] And thirdly, that he did not die till 1528.[311]
There seems to be but little doubt that he was, at least slightly, Catherine’s junior. Yet already on his first intercourse with her, he, the Rector of the Hospital, must have been a fully mature man. I suppose him to have been born somewhere about 1450; in which case he will have been about seventy-eight at the time of his death.
In any case, he lived long enough to see and hear much of a kind to console and strengthen his devotion to Catherine and his faith in the self-rejuvenating powers of the Church, and much of a nature to dismay and alarm the gentle, peaceable old man. For there were the opening of the coffin; the incorruption; the popular concourse and enthusiasm; the graces and the cures of May to July 1512. And there were Luther’s ninety-five Theses nailed to the University Church of Wittenberg, on the Eve of All-Saints, 1517; and Pope Leo X’s condemnation of forty of them in 1520, and amongst them three Theses which concerned the doctrine of Purgatory, one of which must have seemed strangely like one of Catherine’s own contentions. And there were the books of Henry VIII of England and of Erasmus against Luther, in 1522, 1524, and in Italy the foundation of the Capuchin Order in 1527; there were, too, the Peasants’ War and Luther’s marriage in Germany in 1525, and, in 1527, the sacking of Rome by the Imperial troops. And through all this world-wide, epoch-making turmoil and conflict we think of him, probably not simply from our lack of documents, as leading a quiet, obscure, somewhat narrow existence; yet one redeemed from real insignificance by his silent watchfulness and action, and still more by his writing, in honour of his large-souled Penitent, ever so sincerely felt by him as indefinitely greater than himself.
I do not know where he was buried. It was not, however, in the Hospital Church; for in that case there would have been some entry in the books of the expenses incurred in connection with his funeral.
IV. The Fate of Catherine’s Three Maid-Servants.
As to Catherine’s three maid-servants the facts that can still be traced are as follow.
1. Benedetta.
The widow and Franciscan Tertiary Benedetta Lombarda, although her name had continued to appear in the documents from Giuliano’s Will in 1496 down to Catherine’s last will of March 1509, disappears after this latter date entirely from sight. Since both Mariola and Argentina reappear in the Hospital books, (although Mariola had, like Benedetta, ceased to serve Catherine at the last), it looks as though Benedetta had died between the Will of March 1509 and Catherine’s death in September 1510. Yet it is possible that Catherine herself handed over to Benedetta her little share in the former’s money and chattels; and that Benedetta is no more mentioned after her mistress’s death because, unlike Mariola and Argentina, she did not continue to live in and belong to the Hospital, whose accounts alone are our extant sources of information for the other two servants.
2. Mariola.
But as to Mariola and Argentina, and their lives after 1510, we do know something. Mariola (Maria) Bastarda had, on leaving Catherine’s service, (probably only some weeks, but possibly some months before her mistress’s death), become one of the servants, or under-nurses (filia), of the Hospital; and, on July 7 of the following year (1511) she was clothed a Novice in the Convent of Bridgettines in Genoa, with the money left to her in Catherine’s Will.[312]
The latter fact is interesting as showing how purposely vague and ambiguous, and how little capable of being pressed, are at least some of the statements of the Vita, if taken as they stand and prior to any distinction of documents and of their varying degrees of trustworthiness. For there we read, after the scene where the evil spirit within the maid declares Catherine’s true surname to be “Serafina”: “this possessed person (spiritata) was endowed with a lofty intelligence, and lived to the end in virginity.” Who would readily guess that we have here to do with little Mariola? The passage is, I think, in part modelled upon Acts xxi, 9: “And he” (Philip the Evangelist, one of the seven Deacons) “had four daughters virgins, who did prophesy.” Even so then did Catherine, the teacher, have “a spiritual daughter,” a virgin, who “prophesied,” divined and announced, the true character of her mistress.—“We believe,” continues the Vita, “that the Lord had given her this spirit to keep her humble. She finished her life in a holy manner.” Who would guess that this meant profession as a Nun? The point is, I take it, kept vague in part to make the insertion of the words which follow possible. “Nor did the evil spirit ever depart from her, till well-nigh the very end, when she was about to die.” It is evident that this cannot be pressed: and that either the attacks continued to the end, but were rare and slight; or that they were serious and frequent, but ceased a considerable time before her death. For, though we do not know when she died, we have no right to assume, in evidently still so young a person, that death came soon.
3. Argentina.
And Argentina appears in several documents. So in an entry of the Hospital Cartulary for November 22, 1510, as to the value of the things then handed over to her in accordance with Catherine’s Will. So again in three legal documents drawn up for her and in her presence,—a Will of October 1514, a Codicil of some later (unspecified) date, and a second Will of January 15, 1522. In the Codicil she doubles the little sum she had left to the Hospital in 1514; and in the last document she declares her wish to be buried “in the Church of the Annunciata, in the monument (vault) of the late Giuliano Adorno, or in such other as may seem good to …”; and leaves moneys “for Masses to be said for her soul, by two of the Brethren of the Monastery of San Nicolò in Boschetto.”[313]
This group of papers is interesting. For we see from it how even an obscure little serving-woman was wont, in Italy, the classic country of Law and Lawyers, and during these claimful, pushing times, to have Wills and Codicils drawn up for her. We perceive, too, how proud and fond Argentina remained of her former avocation of servant to Giuliano, since only he and not his Saint-wife lay in that vault; and how, nevertheless, an uncertainty possesses her mind as to whether this can or will be carried out—no doubt owing to the fact that the vault had not received the remains of his wife, and had not indeed probably been opened again at all since his death, twenty-five years before. And we can note how Argentina, together with, and no doubt at least in part because, of her late mistress, has an affection for the Monastery and Pilgrimage Church of San Nicolò, on that wooded hill, so near to Catherine’s former villa.
And Argentina appears finally in that list of conclusions (already referred to in Marabotto’s case) as continuing to live in the Hospital; and as still living in it in 1523; and, similarly, as continuing in the capacity of servant to Don Marabotto. I have already pointed out the difficulties inherent in this statement, but believe it to be correct. Yet it would be of considerable importance if we could reach lower down, and could fix the exact death-date of poor Marco del Sale’s ardent-minded, imaginative little widow. Since she was doubtless considerably, I think quite twenty years, younger than Marabotto, and since even the latter lived on, we know, till 1528, six years after this Will, there was nothing, in the matter of actual age, to prevent her living on up to 1550 or beyond. And circumstances connected with the growth of Catherine’s legend seem to point, as we shall find, to Argentina having died in any case after Marabotto, and probably not before 1547. Similarly, Catherine herself did not die till twenty-six years after her first Will (1484-1510).