Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/242

230 CATHERINE [OF SIENA. To her and to one of her brothers, and to two of her nieces, sundry of the saint s letters are addressed As is usual in the Roman hagiography, the first and con temporary biographer of St Catherine, her confessor, the Dominican friar Eaimondo (he was great-grandson of the celebrated Pietro delle Vigne, the chancellor of the Emperor Frederick II, and became the 24th general of the Domini can order), insists largely on the tendency towards sanctity which marked Catherine in her earliest years. The austerities and self-inflictions by which she prepared herself for her career, and gave proof of her vocation to those around her, began at an incredibly early age, and went on increasing in intensity till they pass from the probable to the highly improbable, and thence to the manifestly miraculous. At five years old it was her practice in going up stairs to kneel at each step to the Virgin. She habitually flogged herself and induced other children to do the same, at six years of age. At seven she deprived her self of a great portion of her food, secretly giving it to her brother, or throwing it to the cats. At the same age she would watch from the window to see when a Dominican monk passed, and as soon as he had moved on, would run down and kiss the spot of the pavement on which he had placed his feet. At twelve years old her mother begged her to comb her hair and wash her face oftener. But this she steadily refused to do, till her mother requested a married sister to use her influence with Catherine, to which for a time she yielded to a certain degree. This yielding, however, she often in after-life, as her confessor testified, bewailed with bitter tears of penitence, always mentioning it, when she made, as she was in the habit of doing frequently, a general confession of her sins. About the same period of Catherine s life, her twelfth year, she wholly abandoned the use of animal food. At fifteen she left off wine. At twenty she gave up bread, living only on uncooked vegetables. She used to sleep but one quarter of an hour in the four and twenty. She always flogged herself till the blood streamed from her three times a day. She lived three years without speaking. She wore a chain of iron round her body, which gradually ate its way into her flesh. And, finally, she remained wholly without food for many years. Catherine began, we afe told, to have visions at six years old. Returning home one day, about that time, through the streets of Siena, she saw in the ky, immediately over the Dominican Church, a throne with Christ sitting on it, dressed in Papal robes, accompanied by St Paul, St Peter, and St John. But these practices of her infancy, and these early visions were but preparatory to the wonders of a later period. Christ appeared to her daily as soon as she retired to her cell, as she informed Father Raimondo, for the purpose of teaching her the doctrines of religion, which, as she said to her confessor, " no man or woman ever taught me, but only Our Lord Jesus Christ himself, sometimes by means of inspiration, and sometimes by means of a clear bodily appearance, manifest to the bodily senses, and talking with me, as I now talk with you." A detailed account of these manifestations will be found in the pages of Father Raimondo. It is necessary to give some account of one miraculous occurrence, which was deemed the great and culminating glory of the saint, and has occupied the most prominent position in her estimation by the church, and in the imaginations of her admirers. This is the supernatural impression on her hands and feet of the scars of wounds corresponding with those made in the hands and feet of the Saviour by the nails which fixed Him to the cross. This is stated to have occurred at Pisa, and is asserted by Father Raimondo to have happened in his presence. Catherine had received the sacrament, and fell, as usual with her at such times, into a trance. Her confessor and some others were awaiting her recovery from it, when they saw her suddenly rise with a start to a kneeling posture, with her arms stretched out horizontally, and in a minute or two more fall prostrate. Soon afterwards she came out of her trance, and immediately calling aside her confessor said, " Be it known to you, my father, that I now bear on my body the marks of the crucifixion of our Lord Jesus Christ." " And I," continues Father Raimondo, " having told her that I had observed as much from the movements of her body, while she was in her trance, asked her in what manner the Lord had performed that miracle ? And she said, I saw the crucified Lord descending towards me with a great light, which caused me, from the impetus of my soul to meet its Creator, to raise up my body. Then I saw five bloody rays descending from tho scars of his most holy wounds, arid directing themselves to the hands and feet and heart of my body. Upon which, knowing what the mystery was, I exclaimed, O, Lord, my God, let not, I pray you, the scars appear externally on my body, it is enough for me to have them internally. Then, while I was yet speaking, the rays, before they reached me, turned from blood-colour to a pure and splendid light, and touched the five parts of my body that is my hands, my feet, and my heart. I asked her further, Do you now feel in those spots any sensible pain? To which, with a deep sigh, she replied, So great ia the pain I feel in all those five places, but especially in my heart, that it appears impossible to me to live many days, unless the Lord perform some further miracle. " In order to appreciate the importance and bearing of this celebrated miracle, the fierce and bitter rivalry which existed between the Dominicans and Franciscans must be borne in mind. St Francis had, some half century pre viously, received these five wounds in the same way. The marks are familiarly known among hagiographers and their readers as the Stigmata ; and the having received them was considered the crowning glory of St Francis, and was the exclusive boast of his Franciscans. But now the Dominicans were even with them. The Sienese Pope, who canonized his townswoman Catharine, Pius II., gave his approbation to a service, in which this reception of the stigmata was prominently asserted. And so severely was the blow felt by the indignant Franciscans that they obtained from the next Pope but one, Sixtus IV., himself a Franciscan, a decree to the effect that St Francis had an exclusive right to and monopoly of that especial miracle, and that it was accordingly forbidden to represent St Catherine receiving the stigmata under pain of ecclesias tical censures. The tendency observable in many of tho austerities and miracles said to have been suffered and done by St Catherine, to outdo the austerities and miracles of other saints, especially St Francis, is particularly remarkable in this of the stigmata. The degree in which it served the purpose of the Dominicans is the measure of the suspicion attaching to it. But there is nothing incredible in the supposition that Catherine may have imagined in her trance all that she had related; and still less is it unlikely that such diseased dreamings may have been the natural product of a waking fancy, filled with, and dwelling on, this much envied manifestation. Perhaps the condition, so providently introduced, as it would seem, that the scars were not to be visible, may be suggestive of a. fraudulent intention. But on the other hand, it may be observed that if such a fraud had been planned, it would have been easy for one, who habitually subjected her body to so much suffering, to submit to the required wounds beforehand. It will, however, probably be felt by most readers of the above quoted narrative of Father Raimondo

that it bears on the face of it many of the marks of untruth.-