[173] Vita, p. 136c. This is one out of four or five parallel sayings which are accumulated here. They shall be examined later on.

[174] Vita, pp. 98c, 99a; 99b, c. I have, in the first conversation, omitted the introductory attribution of her use of the word “giddiness” to humility; and, in the second, suppressed the conclusion which repeatedly declares that never again did any such desire arise within her. For both clauses have got a vague and secondary form, and the second is in direct contradiction with the facts.

[175] Vita, 138c.

[176] Vita, pp. 139b, 140b, c. I have omitted the evidently derivative, transcendentally reflective, second of the three paragraphs in which this story now appears; the explanatory glosses of the same tone as that paragraph; a redundant sentence in Catherine’s speech; and the evidently late and schematic designation of “assalto” for the entire incident, which is, surely, nothing of the sort.

[177] Vita, pp. 120b; 119c, 120a. The sequence and date assumed above I think to be, all things considered, the most likely among the possible alternatives. As to her remarks to Marabotto, they appear in the Vita before his three days’ absence. But the interior evidence seems strongly in favour of my inversion of that (evidently, in any case, very loose and quite unemphasized) order.

[178] Ibid. pp. 141c, 143c.

[179] Vita, p. 141c.

[180] Ibid. 142a. MSS. “A” and “B” open out their chapter on her last illness with the statement that it was (only) four months before her death that she took to her bed. I take it that from the end of January 1510 onwards, she was often in bed, yet still sometimes out of it; but that from mid-May to the end she no more left it.

[181] Ibid. p. 142b, c. I have, in her prayer, omitted the first seven words of the present text: “(Già sono trentacinque anni in circa, che) giammai, Signor mio …” For she would hardly inform God of the approximate number of years of her convert life; the double “già” points to a gloss; and such a gloss would almost irresistibly find its way into this place, so as to mitigate the absoluteness of the statement.

[182] Ibid. p. 143b. I have omitted the words: “which (the right shoulder) appeared as though severed from the body; and similarly one rib seemed severed from the others …” They have precisely the same “colour,” and no doubt proceed from the same contributor, as the longer passage relative to her supposed stigmatization, absent from all the MSS., but given in the printed Vita on the authority of Argentina.

[183] Vita, pp. 143c, 71c. The second passage, though occurring in an early chapter of the Vita, undoubtedly belongs to these final months and fits well into this particular day.

[184] Ibid. p. 144a. I have accepted this passage, because of its great vividness. But pp. 139b-145b of the printed Vita do not exist in the MSS.

[185] Ibid. p. 145b. On pp. 145c, 146a, she is said to have, during this time, seen many visions of Angels, to have laughed in their company, and to have herself recounted this after these occurrences. She is similarly declared to have seen Evil Spirits (i Demoni), but only with slight fear. And these passages occur also in the MSS.—But they stand so entirely outside of any context or attribution to any definite days; such general assertions prove, throughout the Vita, to be so little trustworthy; and they are such vague and colourless doubles of similar, but definitely dated and characterized, reports to be accepted in their place a little lower down, that I cannot but reject them here.

[186] Vita, pp. 144b; 145c.

[187] Ibid. p. 145c.

[188] Ibid. p. 146b.

[189] Vita, pp. 146c-147c.

[190] Lingard’s History of England, ed. 1855, Vol. IV, p. 166; James Gairdner, Henry VII, London, 1889, p. 208.

[191] The five passages of the Vita concerning Physicians (pp. 71c, 72a; 145c, 146b; 146c-147c; 158c, 159a) all bear very clear marks of successive additions, glosses, and re-castings,—always in the direction indicated above.

The entire Boerio-episode (pp. 146c-147c), is wanting in all the MSS. It is, however, most plainly authentic. I believe both the episode and a further passage concerning Boerio to have been furnished by Boerio’s son, a Secular Priest, who died a septuagenarian in 1561; his monument still exists in the Church of the Santa Annunciata, at Sturla, near Genoa. See the Biografia Medica Ligure, by Dottore G. B. Pescetto, Genova, 1846, Vol. I, p. 104.—There are some suspicious symptoms connected with that first consultation of Physicians: Boerio’s interviews read as though they had not been quite recently preceded by such an activity—and it is possible that we have here an account produced by a retrogressive doubling of the undoubtedly authentic consultation of the 10th of September, to be described presently. Still, there is nothing intrinsically improbable in the account itself. I have, then, allowed both consultations to stand.

[192] Vita, p. 72a.

[193] Copies of these six entries in the Manuale Cartularii of the Hospital exist attached to the MS. Vita in the Biblioteca della Missione Urbana.

[194] From the copy of the original Codicil in the Archivio di Stato, made for me by Dre. Ferretto. The Inventory exists attached to the MS. Vita just mentioned.

[195] Vita, p. 148b. It is remarkable that, since January 10, this is the first date given by the Vita; that a series of dated days then extends onwards to August 28 (pp. 148a-152a); that then a gap occurs, filled in with a general but authentic account (pp. 152b-153c), evidently by another hand, the same writer who gave us the (also dateless) account from mid-January to mid-May (pp. 141b-145b); and that the dated chronicle is finally carried on from September 2 to the end, September 15 (pp. 153c-161a). If I am right as to the oneness of authorship as regards these two undated parts, then they are either not by Vernazza; or if they are, then Vernazza must have been about Catherine till September 2.

Now the Vita, p. 120b, tells us how Marabotto on one occasion left her “for three days,” at a time when she was already suffering much from “accidenti.” It is evident, that this absence fits in admirably with the gap already mentioned. Hence these dateless accounts can hardly be by Marabotto; and indeed their whole tone and point of view are unlike his. They might be by Carenzio: we shall see how strikingly objective and precise are the oldest constituents of the report as to the last three days of her life, during which, or at least at the end of which, Marabotto was as certainly absent as was Vernazza. There is, however, I think, some difference of tone between this latter report, and those dateless passages; whereas those passages are strikingly similar, in form and tone, to the oldest constituents of the Trattato, which are undoubtedly the literary work of Vernazza.

The probabilities then are, that these dateless accounts are by Vernazza; and that he left Genoa on September 1 or 2.

[196] Vita, p. 148c. “Disse molte belle parole al santo Sacramento [e ai circonstanti, con tanto fervore e pietà,] che ognuno ne piangeva per divozione.” I have omitted the bracketed words, as a disfiguring gloss.

[197] Vita, p. 149b. I have neglected the numerous glosses to this account, and have read “several” instead of “seven” days, since she was again in great distress on August 22, or 23 at latest (Ibid. p. 149c).

[198] Ibid. p. 149c. I have here omitted an evidently later insertion and transition between that highly localized paralysis and the death-like sickness of the whole of her; and have made the latter come on after the former, for how otherwise could any one know about that paralysis?

[199] Ibid. p. 150b. This fact and passage have occasioned an interesting succession of obvious accretions and re-statements.

[200] Ibid. p. 151a, b. I have in the text followed the MSS. as against the printed Vita, and have omitted a long clause, which attempts to find the explanation of these words of hers in a subsequent permanent change of attitude towards all those from whom she asked or received a service.

[201] Vita, p. 153b.

[202] Vita, pp. 150a, 154b, 127c, 153c.

[203] A copy of this entry exists, in the Priest Giovo’s handwriting, in the collection of Documents prefixed to the MS. Vita of St. Catherine, in the Biblioteca della Missione Urbana, Genoa.

[204] Vita, p. 154b, and the Inventory among the documents in the Vita, volume of the Biblioteca della Missione.

[205] Vita, pp. 153a, 155a; 157c, 158a. For this 7th September three heat-and-light impressions are given: (1) “A ray of divine love”; (2) “a vision of fiery stairs”; and (3) this apprehension of the whole world on fire. Perhaps the first also is authentic; the last is certainly so. The middle one seems to be secondary, and to have slipped in to form a transition and link between the other two accounts.

[206] Ibid. p. 153a.

[207] Vita, p. 155b, c. A third paragraph, pp. 155c, 156a (equally wanting in all the MSS. and claiming to be based on the authority of Argentina), follows here, and tells how the latter saw one of her mistress’s arms grow over half a palm in additional length, during the following night; and again how Catherine had told her, Argentina, that she, Catherine, “would before her death bear the stigmata and mysteries of the Passion in her own person.” These “facts” are thoroughly characteristic of the source from which they are no doubt derived.—A fourth paragraph, p. 156b, c, has also been omitted by me, although it occurs also in the MSS. It contains a long prayer put into Catherine’s mouth, and modelled on our Lord’s High Priestly Prayer in John xvii, 1-13. It is far too long, elaborate, and uncharacteristic to be authentic.

[208] Ibid. p. 156c.

[209] Ibid. p. 158b. I have here omitted, after “miseries,” the clause “through which she had passed.” For during her middle period she seems indeed not to have seen her faults till after she herself had got beyond them: yet that particular dispensation was then vouchsafed her because of the excessive pain which the sight of still present imperfections would have caused her; and it is that peculiarity which explains the extreme rarity or absence of Confession during that time. But now we have both the pain and the Confession: and I cannot find any instances, as in this case, of (evidently keen) annoyance, or of Confession, with respect to past and overcome imperfections.—I have also omitted a sentence after “departed from her”: “not that they were matters of any importance, but every slightest defect was intolerable to her.” For this is to judge the Saint by another standard than that of her own conscience, and to make her sanctity consist of scrupulosity.—And I have dropped a further notice for the same day,—a “vista” vouchsafed to her of “a pure and perfect mind, into which only the memory of divine things can still enter,” with her corresponding laugh and exclamation: “O, to find oneself in this degree (of perfection) at the time of death!” For, beautiful as it is, this clause but reproduces, in the softened form of a general and joyous aspiration, what the previous anecdote had given as a particular and depressing consciousness. And the previous anecdote was evidently offensive to both Redactors.

[210] Vita, pp. 158c, 159a, b.

[211] Vita, p. 159c. The Codicil I give from Dre. Ferretto’s copy of the original in the Archivio di Stato, Genoa. I have, in the Vita passage, omitted a sentence which now stands between the drop-of-water incident, and that of the attack at night, which declares: “All this day she remained without speaking, without ever opening her eyes or eating or drinking”; for it would be difficult, if we retain it, to find room for the drawing up of the Codicil, which certainly took place before the attack.

[212] Vita, p. 160a.

[213] Vita, pp. 169c, 161a.

[214] Vita, pp. 161c-163a.

[215] Vita, p. 162b.

[216] Ibid. pp. 163b-164a.

[217] Ibid. p. 153a (end of August or beginning of September 1510), “through the intense heat of this fire of love she became yellow all over, like the colour of saffron”; p. 161b, (“after death) that yellow colour was spread over her whole body, which at first had only been around the region of the heart”; p. 164c (on opening her coffin in the autumn of 1511), “the skin which corresponded to the heart was still red in sign of the ardent love which she had harboured in it, the rest of the body was yellow.”

[218] Vita, pp. 17c, 18a, (97c).

[219] Ibid. p. 129b, (165c). In both places there is an explicit reference to Saint Ignatius (of Antioch), “whose heart, when examined after his martyrdom, was found to have written upon it, in letters of gold, the sweet name of Jesus.” Perhaps also two lines of Jacopone da Todi had some influence here. In Loda LXXXVIII, v. 11, he says of the perfected soul: “The heart annihilates itself, undone (melted down) as though it were wax, and finds itself, after this act, bearing the figure (the seal-impression) of Christ Himself.”

[220] Ibid. p. 165c.

[221] These and similar matters will be found carefully studied in the Appendix.

[222] Lode III, XIII, XXXIII, XXXV, XLV, LVIII (a) and (b), LXXIII, LXXV (a) and (b), LXXVII, LXXIX, LXXXI, LXXXIII, LXXXV, LXXXVIII, LXXXIX, LXXXX, LXXXXVII, LXXXXIX.

[223] Vita, pp. 32c, 33a, b. I must refer the reader, once for all, to the Appendix, for the explanation of the methods used in the selection and the emendation of the texts presented in this chapter.

[224] Vita, pp. 29c; 91c; 30b; 55c, 56a; 61a.

[225] Ibid. p. 76c.

[226] Ibid. pp. 101b; 101a; 79c.

[227] Vita, pp. 36b; 80c, 81a; 74b.

[228] Ibid. pp. 9b; ibid., 8c.

[229] Vita, p. 11c.

[230] Ibid. p. 11b.

[231] Vita, pp. 22b; 25c; 26b.—105c.—25c, 26a, 80b.

[232] Ibid. pp. 15c, 16a.—9b; 53b; 67c.

[233] Vita, pp. 26b; 50b.—36b; 36c.—36b.

[234] Ibid. p. 48b.

[235] Ibid. pp. 23c; 27a. The fact of “Nettezza” remaining at last her only term for the perfection of God shows plainly how comprehensive, definite, and characteristic must have been the meaning she attached to the word. The history of this conception no doubt begins with Plato’s “the Same”; and this, through Plotinus and Victorinus Afer’s Latin translation of him, reappears as “the Idipsum, the Self-Same,” as one of the names of God in St. Augustine; a term which in Dionysius (largely based as he is upon Plotinus’s disciple Proclus) occurs continually, and can there be still everywhere translated as “Identity” or “Self-Identity” (so also Parker). But with Catherine the idea seems to have been approximated more to that of Purity, although I take it that, with her, “Purità” means the absence of all excess (of anything foreign to the true nature of God’s or the soul’s essence); and “Netezza,” the absence of all defect, in the shape of any failure fully to actualize all the possibilities of this same true nature. I have had to resign myself, as the least inadequate suggestions of the rich meaning of “Netezza” and “Netto,” to alternating between the sadly general terms “fulness” and “full,” and the pedantic-sounding “self-adequation,” with here and there “clear fulness.”

[236] Vita, pp. 15b, 22c; 23b; 49a; 69a.

[237] Vita, pp. 31c, 32a.—66a, 66b, 87c, 107a.

[238] Ibid. pp. 75b, 66b.

[239] Ibid. pp. 87c, 106a, 106c.

[240] Vita, p. 114a.

[241] Ibid. 28c, 29a, 29b.

[242] Ibid. pp. 42b, 43c.

[243] Vita, p. 42a.

[244] Ibid. pp. 83c, 84a, 86b, 87a.

[245] Ibid. p. 108b.

[246] Vita, pp. 81b.

[247] Ibid. pp. 81c; 82a; 103b.

[248] Ibid. p. 31b.

[249] Vita p. 54b, c.

[250] Ibid. pp. 52c, 53a.

[251] Ibid. pp. 95c, 125a; 122c; 76a.

[252] Vita, pp. 9b, 15b; 11b, 8c; 155a.

[253] Vita, pp. 136b, 183c; 19b, 107b.

[254] Ibid. p. 113c.

[255] Ibid. pp. 24b, 23b, 24b.

[256] Vita, pp. 59c, 76c, 77a.

[257] Ibid. p. 37a.

[258] Vita, pp. 94a; 109b.

[259] Ibid. pp. 87c, 53b.

[260] Vita, pp. 23c, 24a, 23c, 22c, 61c; 77b.

[261] Ibid. pp. 34c; 175c.

[262] Vita, pp. 171c, 172a.

[263] Ibid. pp. 30a, 29c; 43c.

[264] Ibid. pp. 171c, 172a.

[265] Vita, pp. 52a; 51b; 106c.-94c; 95b.

[266] Ibid. pp. 23a; 24a.

[267] Vita, p. 60c.

[268] Ibid. pp. 76b; 27a.

[269] Ibid. pp. 8a; 15b.—8c.

[270] Vita (Trattato), p. 169b. See also Vita, Preface, p. viiib; and p. 144b.

[271] Vita, pp. 172c; ibid.—38b, c; 39a.

[272] Vita, pp. 173a.—173b.—33b.

[273] Ibid. (Trattato), pp. 170b (169c).

[274] Vita (T.), p. 175b.

[275] Ibid. (T.), p. 177b.

[276] Ibid. (T.), p. 176a; Vita proper, p. 78c.

[277] Vita (T.), p. 175a (see p. 169b).

[278] Ibid. (T.), p. 176a.

[279] Vita (T.), pp. 169c, 170a.—182b.

[280] Vita (T.), pp. 173c, 174a; 171b.—64b; 177b.—170c.

[281] Ibid. (T.), p. 172b.

[282] Vita (T.), p. 172a.

[283] Ibid. (T.), p. 174b.

[284] Ibid.

[285] Vita (T.), p. 174b.

[286] Ibid.

[287] Vita (T.), p. 182b.

[288] Vita (T.), p. 170c.

[289] Vita (T.), p. 178b.

[290] Vita (T.), p. 178b.

[291] Ibid.

[292] A copy of this document exists prefixed to the MS. Vita of the Biblioteca delta Missione Urbana.

[293] Copy in the same volume.

[294] Vita, p. 164b. This first coffin is still extant: it stands now, empty in a glass case, in the smaller of the two rooms shown in the Hospital as her last dwelling-place. Twice over the Vita talks of a “deposito,” although directly only in connection with its opening “about eighteen months later,” i.e. not before March 1512. Now Argentina del Sale declares, in a Will of the year 1522 (a copy, in Giovo’s handwriting, exists in the volume of the Biblioteca della Missione), that she desires to be buried “in the Church of the Annunciata, in the monument of the late Giuliano Adorno.” Thus Giuliano’s grave was still generally known and fully accessible twelve years after Catherine’s death; and it was a “monumento,” not a “deposito.” I have been completely baffled in all my attempts to trace the eventual fate of that monument, or even its precise site, or the precise date of its disappearance. I can but offer two alternative conjectures. (1) It stood in the choir-end of the Church. If so, it will have been covered up, promiscuously with many another vault and mortuary slab, when, in 1537, this end was cut off, for the purpose of widening the bastion which still runs behind it and above it, outside. (2) The “monument” was a slab on the floor of the nave or of some side-chapel. The present flooring of all the former, and of a large part of the Chapels, is relatively new; and it is (all but certainly) superimposed upon the old flooring or at least upon the old sepulchral slabs, since not one inscription remains visible in the nave. And if Giuliano’s “monument” lay there, it will still be extant, hidden away under the present flooring.—In either case it remains remarkable that the slight trouble was not taken to shift nave-wards, or to raise to the newer nave- or chapel-flooring, the “monument” of Catherine’s own husband. There are certainly monuments still visible in the Church older than 1497. It is impossible to resist the conclusion that some occasion was gladly seized for not moving or raising this monument, and for thus letting the saintly wife appear entirely alone in the Hospital Church, unattended by any memorial of her very imperfect husband.