156 ST. CATHERINE Sir John Hawkwood, and other condot- tieri, the " Eight of War," bishops, nnns, citizens. Her reproofis were wonderfully gentle and respectful, yet forcible and undis- guised. She was severe towards the clergy, "having her eye," says Tom- maseo, "on a Church higher than the Vatican, the universal Church built in the Word of God." She says that " self- love has poisoned the whole world and the mystic body of the Church." She speaks of the immoral and neglectful chief pastors as " lepers puffed up with pride, insatiable in grubbing up the riches and delights of the world, which are the death of the soul." She wrote to two priests who had an inveterate quarrel, " Has the earth not yet opened and swallowed you up ? " In one of her letters to Gregory she calls herself, "Tour unworthy daughter Catarina, servant and slave," etc, and winds up,
- ' Pardon my ignorance, and may the
love and grief that make me say these things excuse me to your benignity. Give me your blessing. Bemain in the holy and sweet love of Grod." Besides her letters, she was the author of a book in the form of a dialogue between God and the soul, and of several poems. It was not until she was much over twenty that she learnt to read, and writing never became easy to her. She dictated her letters to one or other of her disciples, who were proud to act as her amanuenses. Tet Italian writers rank her with Petrarch and Boccaccio, as one of the makers of the Lingua Toscana, which became modern Italian. She had a clear head, and could dictate to her secretaries three letters at once, addressed to three different important personages. Her name is in the Roman MartyrO" logy; she appears in every collection of Lives of Saints, and every history of her time. Her secretaries, Stephen Maconi and Baymond of Capua wrote their recollections of her. More than forty Lives of this saint have been written in various languages. There are two very interesting modern English biographies of Catherine — one by Mrs. Drane, a Boman Catholic, the other by Mrs. Josephine Butler, a Protestant. I have drawn largely from both and from Tommaseo. Le Leitere di S, Catertna da Siena . . . con proemio e note^ etc., Florence, 18G0; Mrs. Jameson, Sacred and Legendary Art and Legends of the Monastic Orders; and the Contemporary Review, March, 1883, "Siena," by S. J. Capper. St. Catherine (4) of Sweden, Juno 25,|March22, j-1380. Princess. Abbess. Invoked for safe delivery by pregnant women. Bepresented with a stag by her side. Catherine was second daughter and fourth child of Fulk or Wulf Gudmars- son and St. Brioid (19). Her education was entrusted to a holy abbess of Bis- berg, in Nericia. Her parents married her to Eggard Lydersson de Eyren, a devout soldier. They lived together in the greatest harmony and affection, under a vow of perpetual celibacy, con- firmed by sacraments. Her brother, Charles Ulfsson, a soldier, councillor, and logman of Nericia, opposed her piety, and was very angry because she converted his wife to wear very plain and old-fashioned clothes, instead of such as were then worn by ladies of their rank in Sweden. In 1344, soon after Catherine's mar- riage, her father died and was buried in the monastery of Alvastro. His widow Brigid, by Divine direction, went to Bome. Catherine wished ardently to go to Bome too. Her husband would have given her leave to do so, but her brother Charles wrote, threatening to kill him if he allowed Catherine to leave the country. Eggard happened to be out when the letter arrived, and Catherine opened it. She appealed to her uncle Israel Birger, lagman of Up- land, who encouraged her to go. Accord- ingly, she went with two Swedish ladies and Gustav Thunason, who seems to have been her uncle by marriage. They arrived in Bome in August, 1350. Brigid was then at Bologna, where she went by the guidance of Christ to reform the abbot and monks of ParpensL Meantime, Catherine sought her anxi- ously in Bome for eight days. At the same time, Peter Olaf, Brigid's spiritual
