The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Mystical Element Of Religion as Studied in Saint Catherine of Genoa and her Friends, Volume I, by Baron Friedrich Von Hügel.

[95] Ibid. 14b. I have introduced into my account a note of gradualness which is presented by no single (even authentic) document of the Vita, but which any attempt at harmonizing those documents imperatively requires. For there is, on the one hand, the repeated insistence upon her four years of particular penances for her own particular sins; and the vivid account of the final complete withdrawal of all sight of those sins and of all desire for those penances (Ibid. pp. 12b, 13c; 14b, 5c). And there is, on the other hand, the, apparently, equally authentic saying, as to her performing her penances, before the end of those years, without any particular object in view (Ibid. p. 14b). The only unforced harmonization is then to assume that a period, in which the sight of her particular sins had been at first all but unintermittent and then still predominant, had shaded off into another period, in which this sight occurred in ever fewer moments, until at last, at the end of four years, a day came on which it ceased altogether.

[96] The only possible dates are 1475 or 1476. For the change referred to takes place “some appreciable time (alquanto tempo) after her conversion” (Vita, p. 10a); and yet it must be early enough to allow of twenty-three Lents and Advents between the beginning of the change up to its end. And this end came at latest in 1501 (p. 127a), but probably in 1499, the year in which Don Marabotto became her Confessor. The Lent of 1496 (what remained of it on Lady-Day of that year) seems to me the more likely of the two possible starting-points.

[97] Vita, p. 10a.

[98] Ibid. p. 11a.

[99] Ibid. p. 10b.

[100] Vita, p. 8a.

[101] See below, next page.

[102] MS. “A,” p. 24, title to chapter vii; Vita, p. 10a. Twenty-five Lents are too many, because: (1) it is impossible to interpret the “alquanto tempo dopo la sua conversione,” when these fasts began (Ibid. p. 10a), as less than two years; and (2) it is impossible to bring her resignation of the Matronship of the Hospital lower down than the autumn of 1497, a resignation which the Ibid. (p. 96) tells us took place in consequence of her “great bodily weakness,” which forced her to “take some food after Holy Communion to restore her bodily forces, even though it were a fast day.” This allows for at most twenty-three Lents and twenty-two Advents.

[103] Ibid. p. 11b.

[104] Vita, p. 11c. I take the last section of this chapter (pp. 11, 12) to be a later, exaggerating doublet to this account.

[105] Ibid. p. 11b.

[106] Ibid. p. 14b, 5c.

[107] Vita, p. 16b.

[108] Ibid. pp. 23a, 49a.

[109] Ibid. p. 15b.

[110] Vita, pp. 15c, 97a, 15c.

[111] Ibid. pp. 15c, 16a, 47b.

[112] Ibid. p. 17b.

[113] I translate Frate predicatore thus, because the generally well-informed Parpera (in his Vita of the Saint, 1681) identifies him with Padre Domenico de Ponzo, an Observant Franciscan and zealous preacher. Boll. p. 161 D. In other places, also, the Vita makes use of purely popular and misleading designations:—p. 117b “questo Religioso” is Don Marabotto, Secular Priest; pp. 94c, 95a, c, 98c, 99b, “Religioso” is Vernazza, layman; p. 123b, “Sorelle” is a Sister and Sisters-in-law. Even the final Redactor in the Preface, p. viiic, calls the Secular-Priest Marabotto and the Layman-Lawyer Vernazza, “divoti religiosi.”

[114] Vita, pp. 51, 52. I take this episode to have occurred whilst the pair were still living out of the Hospital, because of the giunta in casa, which could hardly be applied to their two little rooms in the latter, whilst this sensitiveness to the opinion of others in this matter of love appears psychologically to be more likely during the early years of her convert life than from 1490 onwards, when, as Matron, she occupied a separate little house within the Hospital precincts (hence sua casa in Vita, p. 96b).

[115] I shall give reasons in due course for holding that the rooms still shown in the Hospital as Catherine’s are different from any ever occupied by herself, and that the little house within the Hospital grounds, in which she died in 1510, and into which she (and Giuliano) probably moved in 1490, has long ceased to exist.

[116] Vita, p. 20b. This characteristic fact has been “explained away” in the Dialogo. See Appendix.

[117] Vita, p. 20c.

[118] Ibid. p. 21c. All the books and papers of the Hospital referring to these years up to her death, were long ago destroyed by fire. I have, however, no doubt as to the, at least substantial, accuracy of the above account. For ten wills and assignments, drawn up, by various lawyers, in her presence, by her desire and at her dictation,—nine of them during the years of her weakness and illness,—are still extant, have been carefully copied out for me, and will be analyzed further on. They are all, except on one minor point, admirably precise, detailed, and wise.

[119] Vita, p. 21b.

[120] The above paragraph is based, with Vallebona, op. cit. pp. 67-72, upon the assumption that Catherine took the kind of share described in the labours of this time; since it is practically unthinkable that she should not have acted as is here supposed, given the combination of the following facts, which are all beyond dispute. (1) The fully reliable Giustiniani in his Annali describes, under the date of 1493, the incidents of the Pestilence as given above; tells us how well, nevertheless, the sick and poor were looked after by those who, from amongst the educated classes, remained amongst them; and affirms that the Borgo di San Germano, identical with the Acquasola quarter, was assigned to those stricken by the Pestilence. (2) Agostino Adorno, Giuliano’s cousin, was Doge of Genoa during this year. And the friendly terms on which the cousins were at this time are proved by Giuliano’s Will of the following year (October 1494). (3) Catherine had already been Matron of the Hospital for two years and more, and was to continue to be so for another three years. She certainly did not absent herself from her post at this time. And her Hospital directly abutted against the Acquasola quarter. (4) The details furnished by all the sources conjointly with regard to her six years’ Headship of the Hospital, are so extraordinarily scanty, that we must not too much wonder at the all but complete dearth of any allusion to a work which cannot have lasted longer than as many months. (5) The Dialogo, p. 222b, says: “She would go, too,” (i.e. besides visiting the sick and poor in their own houses,) “to the poor of San Lazzaro, in which place she would find the greatest possible calamity.” This clearly refers to some special (Lazar-, Leper-) Refuge, and the term can certainly cover aid given to the pest-stricken. And we shall see that the record here is derived from the writer’s father, Ettore Vernazza, the heroic lover of the pest-stricken poor.

I have, in my text, assumed that the Vita gives us an anecdote relative to her visiting the pestiferous sick of Acquasola. But to do this, I have had (a) to take “pestiferous fever” as equivalent to “Pestilence,” and to assume that it was not an isolated precursory case of the coming general visitation; (b) to omit, in the Vita’s text, “nell’ ospedale,” as an indication where the sick woman was; and “allo stesso servizio (dell’ ospedale),” as descriptive of where Catherine went back to: the anecdote may well originally have been without indication of the place in which the infection came to reduce her to death’s door.

[121] Inaugurazione della Statua d’Ettore Vernazza (1863), Genova, Sordo-Muti, 1867. Most of my facts concerning Ettore and his daughters are taken from this brochure, with its careful biographical Discourse by Avvocato Professore Giuseppe Morro (pp. 5-31), and its ample collection of admirable wills and financial decisions (pp. 61-94).

[122] Quoted ibid. p. 21. It is absolutely certain that these words refer to the pestilence of 1493, since the epidemic did not again visit Genoa till 1503, when Vernazza must have been over thirty years of age. And Battista’s silence as to any meeting between her Father and Catherine must not be pressed, since she nowhere mentions Catherine, and yet we know for certain how close and long was the intimacy between them.

[123] The words of the Vita, p. 105c, that those who wrote this Life “saw and experienced these wonderful operations for many years,” are given in MS. “A” as “during fifteen consecutive years (per quindici continui anni),” p. 366. All points to her having got to know Don Marabotto later than at this time and than Vernazza, yet only the one or the other of these two men can be meant; hence Vernazza must be intended here. But I have nowhere in the Vita been able to trace passages that could with probability be both attributed to Vernazza, and dated before the years 1498-1499.

[124] The precise date of Vernazza’s marriage is unknown. But since his eldest child was born on April 15, 1497, it cannot have taken place later than June 1496. The date of the sale of the Palazzo is derived from Catherine’s act of consent to the sale, preserved in the Archivio di Stato; a copy lies before me. The date of her resignation is derived from the Vita, p. 96b, which says she did so “quando fù di anni circa cinquanta.” This “circa” must no doubt here, as so often (as, e.g., on p. 97b, where “circa sessanta-tre” refers to November 1509, when she was sixty-two), be interpreted as “nearly fifty”: she was really forty-nine.

[125] The date of Tommasina’s birth comes from Ritratti ed Elogi di Liguri Illustri, Genova, Ponthenier; the date of the beginning of Giuliano’s illness from his Codicil of January 10, 1497, in which he declares himself as “languishing” and “infirm in body”; and the approximate date of his death from two entries in the Cartulary of the Bank of St. George, as to investments made by Catherine (copies in Documenti su S. Caterina da Genova, University Library, Genoa, B. VII, 31), of which the first, on July 14, 1497, gives her name as “Catterinetta, filia Jacobi di Fiesco et uxor Juliani Adorni”; and the second, on October 6, 1497, describes her as “uxor et heres testamentaria quondam fratris Juliani Adorni.”

[126] Vita, pp. 122b, c, 123a. I have preserved the descriptive account of Catherine’s prayer and of its effect, although it may possibly be but a later dramatized interpretation of the undoubtedly authentic report of her declaration made to Vernazza.—The immediate cause of Giuliano’s pain and impatience is given by Vita, p. 122b, as “una gran passione d’urina”; Vallebona, p. 73, declares the malady to have been a “cestite cronica” (tape-worm). I have omitted a short dialogue which is given, after her remark to Vernazza, as having occurred between her friends and herself, concerning her liberation from much oppression, and her own indifference to all except the will of God, because her answer is given in oratio obliqua, and is quite colourless and general; the passage is doubtless of no historical value: there never lived a less conventional, vapidly moralizing soul than hers.

[127] I work from careful copies specially made for me direct from the originals, by Dre. Augusto Ferretto, of the Archivio di Stato in Genoa.

[128] Inaugurazione, pp. 12, 13.

[129] I work again from a copy made by Dre. Ferretto from the original in the Archivio di Stato, Genoa.

[130] Marabotto’s help in business matters cannot, on any large scale, have begun till considerably later than his spiritual help. For whereas her Codicil of 1503 nowhere mentions Marabotto, her Will of 1506 leaves him, as we shall see, a little legacy; her Will of 1509 protects him against all harassing inquisition into the details of his administration of her affairs; and her Codicil of 1510 mentions only him and Don Carenzio. And it is incredible that business help should have been given throughout four years, and should have failed to gain any recognition in a document which commemorates so many lesser services. Marabotto was Rector in 1504 (I owe this date to the kindness of the Rev. Padre Vincenzo Celesia, author of the MS. Storia dell’ Ospedale di Pammatone in Genova, 1897); he was no more Rector in September 1509, but Don Jacobo Carenzio then held this post (Catherine’s Codicil of that date). Indeed already in March 1509 Marabotto seems not to have been Rector (Catherine’s Will of that date mentions him repeatedly, but nowhere as Rector). I take the Offices of Rettore (Master), and of Rettora (Matron), to have never been exercised simultaneously: but that, at any one time, there was always only a Rettore or a Rettora presiding over the whole Hospital. The Office of Rettora was abolished altogether in 1730 (Storia dell’ Ospedale, p. 1135).

[131] Vita, p. 117b.

[132] The Appendix will show that the “Religioso,” the “dolce figliuolo,” of pp. 94, 95, and the “Religioso, figliuolo,” of pp. 98, 99, must be Ettore Vernazza, and not Cattaneo Marabotto.

[133] I take all these facts from F. Federici’s careful MS. work, Famiglie Nobili di Genova, sub verbo Marabotto.

[134] Vita, p. 118, a, b. The first of these two passages is followed, in the same section, by two other slightly different accounts. The third of these is no doubt authentic, but refers to a still later period: it shall be given in its proper place. These two authentic accounts are (as is often the case in the Vita) joined together by a vague and yet absolute, unauthentic account, which declares that she told him all things (apparently on all occasions): a statement untrue of any time in her life.

[135] Vita, pp. 117c, 118a.

[136] Vita, p. 94c. The three lines which follow in the printed Vita are wanting in MS. “A” of 1547, p. 235, and are a disfiguring gloss of R 2.

[137] Vita, pp. 94, 95.

[138] Vita, p. 97b; 250, a, b.

[139] Angel, 50b; Cherub, 16a, 97b; Seraph, 130b.

[140] Vita, pp. 47b, 50a, 72b.

[141] Ibid. p. 115b.

[142] Ibid. p. 115b. There are three passages in the Vita referring to cases of possession. (a) Page 39b makes Catherine, in finishing up a discourse as to Evil being essentially but a Privation of Love, refer to a “Religioso” and to a “Spiritato,” and how the latter, “costretto” by the former to tell him what he was, “answered with great force: ‘I am that unhappy wretch bereft of love.’ And he (the evil spirit) said so with a voice so piteous and penetrating, that it moved me (Catherine) through and through with compassion.” The Possessed One is here a man. In MS “A” (p. 92) the story is still quite loosely co-ordinated with her speech; it was originally no doubt an independent anecdote; and was, possibly after a good many intermediary literary fixations, introduced into this place and connection by R 1 or R 2. (b) Page 115a, b, gives the story reproduced in the text above. The Possessed One is here a woman; and here the entire passage formally claims directly to reproduce an actual scene from Catherine’s life. (c) Page 162a gives an anecdote of a “figliuola spirituale” of Catherine, who had “il demonio adosso”; and tells how, at the time of her Mistress’s death, the “spirito” within her, “costretto,” declared that he had seen Catherine unite herself with God,—and all this with “tormento,” so that “pareva a sè intollerabile.” This passage clearly refers to the same person as that of passage b.

As to the historicity of the event described in the text, we must distinguish between the general fact of Catherine’s moral and psychic ascendency over Mariola, a fact as entirely beyond dispute as it is valuable and characteristic; and the occurrence of the scene as given above. As to the latter, the question of its value is of course distinct from that of its occurrence. Its supposed evidential worth is nil, since Mariola had been intimate with and devoted to Catherine for probably a good ten years at least. But the scene may nevertheless have actually occurred. It is true that the partly parallel case of the “Spiritato” shows how easily such a dramatization of doctrine or transference of experience can occur. And Denys the Areopagite and Jacopone da Todi are full of this comparison of the soul arrived at a state of union to an Angel, Cherub or Seraph; and these writers have greatly influenced not only Catherine’s authentic teaching, but also the successive amplifications and modifications of her life and sayings. And again we shall prove that certain legendary matters were inserted in the Vita at a late date—between 1545 and 1551. But these passages all claim to be based upon evidence supplied by Argentina del Sale; and they were evidently not accepted by Marabotto (1528); the literary form of these legends differs much from that of our passage; and if the former are still absent from MSS. “A” and “B,” the latter is already present in both. And we have such entirely first-hand proof for the curiously naïf, formal, exteriorizing character of Marabotto’s mind, as to leave it always possible that he did bring about a little scene of the sort here described. If so, Marabotto’s rôle in it will have been prompted, in part, by a wish still further to increase Catherine’s hold upon Mariola’s mind.

[143] Vita, p. 112a.

[144] Vita, p. 72b.

[145] Ibid. p. 113b. I take these two motives alone to have operated throughout such actions of hers during this last period. The additional motive attributed to her (Ibid. pp. 129c, 130a, and 134a), where she is represented as applying a lighted candle or live coal to her bare arm, for the purpose of testing whether her interior spiritual fire or this exterior material one is the greater, is entirely unlike Catherine’s spirit. It belongs to the demonstrably legendary and disfiguring interpretations which shall be studied further on. The sentence on p. 134a, in which she herself is made to declare this motive, is most certainly a worthless gloss.

[146] Vita, p. 127a.

[147] It is remarkable how tough-lived has been the legend which makes Vernazza have an only child. Not only Father Sticken (Acta Sanctorum, September, Vol. V, pp. 123-195) has it in 1752, but even Vallebona, in his Perla dei Fieschi, still repeats it in 1887. And yet the Inaugurazione pamphlet had appeared in Genoa in 1867, giving on pp. 13, 14, 72, 73 the fullest proofs as to the reality of these two other children.

[148] Vita, p. 123b.

[149] I get the date of 1502 for those three deaths from Angelo L. Giovo’s MS. Vita of the Saint in the Biblioteca della Missione Urbana (Part I, ch. iii). All three names are prominent in the Will of 1498; in the Codicil of 1503, Jacobo and Giovanni are both styled “the late,” and her brother Lorenzo has become the sole residuary legatee. Limbania appears nowhere after the Will of 1498.

[150] Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria, Genova, 1868, p. 411 (with plate). The article is dated 1871.

[151] Vita, pp. 124b-126. I get Argentina’s maiden name from a Will of hers of the year 1522, of which a copy exists in the MS. volume Documenti relativi a S. Caterina da Genova, in the Genoa University Library, B. VII, 31. I have taken Argentina to have previously known, perhaps even to have served, Catherine, because of her surprise at Marco’s ignorance as to the identity of his visitor; and I have treated such possible service as but slight, because in Giuliano’s Will of 1494 and in Catherine’s Will and Codicil of 1498 and 1503, legacies are left to the two maids Benedetta and Mariola, but not a word appears as yet as to Argentina. The date as to the year I derive from the following facts:—(1) Catherine, as soon as Marco is buried, carries out her promise to him, and receives Argentina into her house: so the Vita, pp. 126c, 125c. (2) Whereas in the Codicil of 1503 there is still no trace of Argentina, in the Will of 1506 she appears, and receives legacies of personal linen, etc. These gifts are somewhat increased in the Will of 1509. Argentina has evidently not been long in Catherine’s service at the time of the drawing up of the Will of 1506. (3) The Protonotary Angelo L. Giovo (MS. Vita of the Saint of the Biblioteca della Missione Urbana Part I, ch. iii) puts down the date of Marco’s death as 1495. Although this is evidently wrong, I think it wise to keep at least one of his numbers, which I do by fixing upon 1505.

[152] Documenti su S. Caterina da Genova, University of Genoa Library, gives a note by Angelo L. Giovo, based on the Book of the Acts of the Protectors of the Hospital: “1506, Marzo, 16mo. Si vede che detta Catarinetta Adorna haveva cura dell’ Hospitale, ricevendo li figli esposti e li pegni per essi.”

[153] From Dre. Ferretto’s copy of the original in the Archivio di Stato.

[154] The clause in this Will which says, “And Testatrix, knowing that the said Giuliano her husband, left to a certain female Religious £150: Therefore she herewith annuls the said legacy, in virtue of the power given her for this purpose,” reads, at first sight, like a harsh, unjust act. But it follows upon a similar annulation of the legacy to the Hospital; and we may be quite sure that Catherine, who had now loved and served this Institution for thirty-three years, would not treat it unjustly. And in the Will of 1509 Catherine explains that the former legacy has been annulled, “in consideration of the satisfaction or settlement (solutio) already effected by Testatrix herself with regard to the said legacy.”

[155] Documenti: extracts by Giovo from “Acts of the Protectors.”

[156] From Dre. Ferretto’s copy of the original in the Archivio di Stato, Genoa.

[157] From Dre. Ferretto’s careful copy of the original in the Archivio di Stato, Genoa.

[158] In the printed Vita a passage occurs on p. 10b, describing the interior heat which accompanied her great fasts (1476-1499). But the passage is wanting in the MSS., and is no doubt only a gloss to explain how, at those times, she came to drink water mixed with vinegar.

[159] “Operazione”: Vita, pp. 106c, 117b, 121b, 143b, 148b, 149c. “Assalto”: pp. 138b, c (3); 139a; 143, b, c (3); 144a (2); 148a. “Assedio”: p. 118b. “Saetta”: pp. 141a, 145a. “Ferita”: p. 141a, c (2). “Raggio”: pp. 133b, 157c. “Scintilla”: pp. 132a, 148b. The “ferita” occurs already (as a “dolce ferita”) in the account of her Conversion, pp. 4, 5; and “saetta,” “ferita,” “raggio” and “scintilla,” appear very often in her own sayings.

[160] The passage in Vita, p. 10b, which declares that she “felt” (tasted) something sweet within her, upon drinking that salt and sour water during her long fasts, is wanting in the MSS., and is itself an interesting attempt to materialize her saying, on p. 11b, as to the “other thing” (i.e. the love of God), that she was “feeling” (tasting) within herself.

[161] Vita, p. 8a.

[162] Ibid. p. 9b. The present conclusion of the sentence, and all the parallels throughout the rest of the page, show plainly that the sentence originally read as I have given it.

[163] Vita, p. 9b.

[164] Ibid. p. 16b.

[165] Ibid. p. 5b.

[166] Vita, p. 98, a, b. This is the first of three incidents, given in chronological order, all referring to her desire for death, which make up Chapter XXXVIII of the printed Vita. The last two are, beyond all doubt, conversations with Vernazza; and this first incident is also probably transmitted to us by him.—I have in my translation left out the numerous glosses by which the various Redactors have desperately attempted to eviscerate this story, attempts based on the double conviction, that Catherine was already absolutely perfect, and that “every desire is imperfect” (p. 100a). These changes will be studied later on.

[167] Vita, pp. 118, b, c, 119b, 119a. This vivid and simple dialogue is followed (p. 119b) by a clearly secondary parallel discourse of Catherine. Only the descriptive end of this latter paragraph is no doubt authentic, and has been incorporated in the above translation.

[168] Vita, p. 127a.

[169] I translate the above from the oldest account of the event, given by MS. “A,” p. 193, at the opening of its Chapter XXIX (the number is accidentally omitted), which is headed: “How in the year 1506, on the 11th of November, there came upon her so great a burning in the heart, that she wondered at her not expiring.” This 1506, repeated in the opening line of the chapter itself, is an undoubted slip; for she is said to be 63 years old (and she was in her 63rd year in 1509), and the place occupied by the corresponding paragraph in the printed Vita, p. 133b (within a year of her death, p. 132b, and some time before December 1509, p. 138b), again clearly marks the date as 1509.