St Catherine of Siena (1347-80): mystic and mediator
Catherine was born in 1347, the youngest daughter of a prosperous
Sienese wool-dyer, Giacomo Benincasa.
A lively good-looking girl, in
adolescence she became attracted to prayer and solitude, resisted her
parents’ attempts to get her to marry, cutting off her beautiful golden
hair.
Three years’ isolation
She joined the third order
of St Dominic, wore the black and white habit but stayed at home. For
three years she never left her room, except to go to Mass and
confession, and spoke to no one except her confessor. “My cell will not
be one of stone,” she said, “but one of self-knowledge.”
She received a
vision of Christ, who told her: “Know, daughter, that I am He who is,
and you are that which is not.” From this she developed her sense of her
vocation and her spiritual life.
She trained herself to live on a
spoonful of herbs a day and a few hours' sleep every night. On Shrove
Tuesday 1367 while the town of Siena celebrated Carnivale, she
remained praying in her room where she experienced a mystical marriage
with Jesus. Jesus appeared to her and placed a ring on her finger,
visible only to herself.
A following
After three years she resumed her
share of the housework at home and began to mix with other people, first
through nursing the sick and helping the poor. She soon had a following
- men and women, friars and priests - attracted as much by her gifts of
discernment and asceticism as by her lively personality and personal
charm.
The people of Siena, puzzled by all this coming and going around a
young woman with a reputation for holiness, called them the
‘Caterinati’, of "Catherine followers". Affectionately they called her
Mama.
Call as peacemaker
In 1370 she experienced a kind
of mystical death with a vision of hell, purgatory and heaven followed
by a divine call to enter the public life of the world.
She began
dictating letters through secretaries to contending parties in disputes
advising them on the performance of their duties. She never learned to
write until quite near her death. At first she served as a local
peacemaker, mediating between feuding families in Siena.
But soon she
was called to make peace in the armed conflict between the city of
Florence and the Avignon-based papacy.
The Popes had been in Avignon since 1309 and were strongly under the
influence of France.
The Italian cities were at strife with the French
papal legates. When Florence declared war on the papal states in protest
against the legates' rule, eighty towns joined them in ten days.
While
Catherine was in Pisa, working in the cause of peace, she received the
stigmata on the fourth Sunday of Lent, 1375, although the marks remained
invisible until after her death.
At Avignon
At a certain stage in this war,
Florence asked Catherine to go to Avignon to intercede with Pope Gregory
XI on behalf of their embassy.
She agreed and went with twenty-three
members of the ‘bella brigata’, including four priests, to Avignon
arriving in May, 1376 where she stayed for four months.
It was a difficult time for Catherine.
The prelates of the
inquisition harassed her with examinations in doctrine; the women of
power made fun of her and the Florentine ambassadors did not accept her
mediation. But the Pope Gregory listened to her.
She understood the
irresolution of his character and finally succeeded in getting him to do
what he had already decided in his heart he ought to do - go to Rome.
The Papacy restored to Rome
Pope Gregory XI left
Avignon for Rome the following September, but died within a year.
The
Romans rioted, demanding a Roman pope.
The cardinals elected a
Neapolitan, Urban VI, who soon proved so arrogant, over-zealous and
prone to violent outbursts of temper that the French and other cardinals
regretted their action.
But failing to persuade him to resign, they
withdrew to Anagni and elected a second, in fact an anti-pope, who went
to live in Avignon, Robert of Geneva (Clement VII), thus starting the
great western Schism which lasted for the next forty years.
Catherine remained loyal to the belligerent Urban VI and at his
request went to Rome to work to restore unity.
She frequently wrote
letters to him urging him to moderate his harshness and to various
European leaders and cardinals urging them to recognise him as the
authentic pope.
But she felt the wound in the body of Christ could only
be healed by a great sacrifice.
Her death and influence
One evening in January,
1380, while dictating a letter to Urban, she suffered a stroke.
It
seemed as if the church, like a mighty ship, was placed on her back. She
had a second stroke while at prayer in St. Peter's and died three weeks
later on April 29th, 1380, aged thirty-three.
She was buried under the
high altar in the Dominican church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, but her
head was afterwards removed and taken to Siena, where it is enshrined
in the Dominican church.
Her friend, Raymond of Capua, later Master
General of the Dominicans, wrote her life, which was influential in
leading to her canonisation in 1461 by the Sienese Pope Pius II (Enea
Silvio Piccolomini).
Before leaving Siena for the last time, she dictated a book called The Dialogue of St. Catherine; this and her four hundred Letters comprise a great treasury of spiritual writing.
In 1970 Pope Paul VI named her, along with St Teresa of Avila, “Doctor of the Church”.