Agony at Rome
I close the biographical book on one of the most well-known saintly women, which I have just finished reading, and think: Maybe I should visit Italy some time soon? There one could travel from northern to central Italy finding Saint Catherine of Siena’s black mantle at the church of Santa Maria della Grazie in Milan, her head at the San Domenico church in Siena, and finally the rest of her body buried at Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome.
Saint Catherine spent the last seventeen months of her life of only 33 years in Rome. There she tried to support Pope Urban VI with her presence and her prayers, who had commanded her in November 1378 to come to Rome, as the Church had just entered into the Great Western Schism lasting until 1417, when the resolving solution agreed upon at the Council of Constance came into effect.
In the summer of 1378, just a few months after Pope Urban VI’s election, a faction of 13 cardinals dissatisfied with him had declared his election invalid, had called him “Anti-Christ, devil, apostate, tyrant, deceiver, elected-by-force“ and had chosen a counter-pope: Clement VII. Now the Church was divided: Some were backing Pope Urban VI, others Clement VII.
There is even a great saint, the Dominican preacher Saint Vincent Ferrer, who for many years thought of Clement VII, and then of his successor, Benedict XIII, the former Cardinal Pedro de Luna, who was his compatriot and friend, to be the true pope. Saint Vincent Ferrer changed his mind in 1416, only three years before his death, as he finally saw the lacking evidence for the supposed invalidity of Urban VI‘s election, and had to conclude that it were in fact Clement VII and Benedict XIII who had been elected uncanonically.
In 1417, the Council of Constance excommunicated Benedict XIII as a schismatic because he was not willing to step down. When the Council met, there were all in all three men claiming the papacy: Gregory XII, a successor to the line of Urban VI, Benedict XIII and John XXIII, a successor to Alexander V, who had been elected at the Council of Pisa during an earlier attempt at reuniting the Church. The Council of Constance managed to end the schism by asking the Roman pope to resign, which he did, imprisoning John XXIII, excommunicating Benedict XIII, and deciding that a new pope should be elected. The Council chose a Roman nobleman who as Pope Martin V took the chair of Saint Peter.
Saint Catherine of Siena only lived through the very early stages of this messy and stressful battle around authority within the Church. She had no doubt about who was the true pope. In a letter to Siena, she wrote in December 1379:
“I proclaim and will indeed continue to proclaim before the whole world, even to the point of death, that Pope Urban VI is indeed pope, the true supreme pontiff.“
Saint Catherine of Siena, quotation taken from: Don Brophy, Catherine of Siena. A Passionate Life, Blue Bridge, p. 222
In the previous year, at the time of the dissident cardinals plotting to declare the chair of Saint Peter vacant and to elect a new pope, thereby throwing the Church into schism, Saint Catherine had sent an encouraging letter to Pope Urban VI asking him to clothe himself in charity, so that:
„(…) the bitterness in which you find yourself, most holy father, will be transformed for you into the most exquisite sweetness … By innocently suffering the blows of these wicked people who want to beat your holiness with the club of heresy, you will receive light.“
Saint Catherine of Siena, quotation taken from: Don Brophy, Catherine of Siena. A Passionate Life, Blue Bridge, p. 193
During her months spent in Rome, she could not do much for “Christ‘s vicar on earth“, except pray for him. At his request, she once addressed the newly created Italian cardinals in order to encourage them. After her speech, Pope Urban VI remarked:
“This weak woman puts us all to shame. (…) By nature, it is she who should show fear, even in situations where we would feel no danger. But on the contrary it is we who play the coward, while she stands undaunted, and by her rousing words imparts to us her own courageous spirit.“
quotation taken from: Don Brophy, Catherine of Siena. A Passionate Life, Blue Bridge, p. 199
She tried to gather a council of holy men supporting the Holy Father, sending out letters to some of her friends, with a formal papal invitation attached, summoning them to gather in Rome on the Feast of the Epiphany in 1379. It was not successful, as the men wouldn’t come, and it got her into an argument with her long-standing friend William Flete, an Englishman who was living as a hermit at Lecceto. Catherine had written to him the following:
“You will come out of your woods and come here to the field of battle. If you don‘t, you will be out of tune with God‘s will. So I‘m begging you, for love of Christ crucified, come soon, without delay, in response to the request the holy father is making of you.“
Saint Catherine of Siena, quotation taken from: Don Brophy, Catherine of Siena. A Passionate Life, Blue Bridge, p. 203
William Flete declined the invitation and replied that he could only commune with God at Lecceto. Saint Catherine was disappointed. She answered him in another letter:
“It‘s my experience that for God‘s true servants every place is their place and every time is their time. When it‘s time to abandon their own consolation and embrace difficulties for God‘s honor, they do it. And when it‘s time to leave the woods and go to public places because God‘s honor demands it, they go.“
Saint Catherine of Siena, quotation taken from: Don Brophy, Catherine of Siena. A Passionate Life, Blue Bridge, p. 203
She kept spending the months in Rome in prayer. 19 of 26 prayers that after her death were published as The Prayers of Catherine of Siena were composed in Rome. Some of them were explicit prayers for Pope Urban VI, asking God that the Pope may “be directed always by your counsel“ and that God would make him “whatever sort of successor you would have him be to your dear elder Peter, and give him what is needed for your Church“ (ibid., p. 207-208).
In Rome, Saint Catherine would pray with words like these:
“In your nature, eternal Godhead, / I shall come to know my nature. / And what is my nature, boundless love? / It is fire, / because you are nothing but a fire of love.
Saint Catherine of Siena, quotations taken from: Don Brophy, Catherine of Siena. A Passionate Life, Blue Bridge, p. 206, 207, 211
And you have given humankind / a share in this nature, / for by the fire of love you created us. / And so with all other people / and every created thing; / you made them out of love.“
“We must conform ourselves to you / through suffering and anguished desires. / So through you who are life / we will produce the fruit of life / if we choose to engraft ourselves into you. / It is clear then / that though you created us without our help / you do not want to save us without our help.“
“O boundless, gentlest charity! / This is your garden, / implanted in your blood / and watered with that of your martyrs, / who ran bravely after the fragrance of your own. / Do you, then, be the one to watch over it. / For who could prevail / over the city you were guarding? / Set our hearts ablaze / and plunge them into this blood / so that we may more surely conceive a hunger / for your honor / and the salvation of souls.“
After two breakdowns in Saint Peter‘s basilica, where she used to pray every day, in the winter of 1380, she was bedridden and suffered a lot of pain and agony until she died on the 29th April that same year with “Holy God, have mercy one me“ and similar invocations on her lips. When, surrounded by many of her friends and followers, who were her famiglia and to whom she was mamma, she ordered her affairs, knowing herself to approach death, she told them:
“Love one another, my dearest children, love one another.“
Saint Catherine of Siena, quotation taken from: Don Brophy, Catherine of Siena. A Passionate Life, Blue Bridge, p. 227
“On two wings you must fly to heaven“
On 250 rich pages, the book I read dives into Saint Catherine‘s short and intense life during difficult and turbulent times of crisis in the world and in the Church. The first biography of her was completed in 1395 by her confessor Blessed Raymond of Capua. Pope Pius II declared her a saint in 1461; Pope Pius XII named her, together with Saint Francis of Assisi, as the patron saint of Italy in 1940; Pope Paul VI assigned to her the title “Doctor of the Church“ in 1970; and Pope John Paul II included her as one of the six patron saints of Europe in 1999.
Saint Catherine was born in Siena, a city-state of Tuscany, on the 25th March 1347. It was the Feast Day of the Annunciation, and in that specific year it was also Palm Sunday.
“From what is told about her, the girl Catherine was not usually silent. She grew into a happy, bubbly child who loved to talk, and was much petted by her older brothers and sisters. (…) She was also pious. Where this came from is hard to know exactly. It is fair to say that most children growing up in mediaval Siena were pious by nature. It was in the air they breathed, in the sound of the bells ringing out the hours of the day, continually reinforced by the church calendar with its parade of saints and martyrs. For most people in the Middle Ages churchgoing was serious business; praying as common and omnipresent as eating.“
Don Brophy, Catherine of Siena. A Passionate Life, Blue Bridge, p. 13-14
Later she spent her childhood and teenage years in a lot of solitude and quiet and prayerful seclusion in her family’s home at Siena. Don Brophy describes a vision Saint Catherine had as a girl that led her into years of deep contemplation and prayer.
“One could see across the valley to the imposing church of San Domenico on the crest of the opposite hill. It was late afternoon and the light was changing. Suddenly Catherine stopped and looked up. There, floating in the sky above San Domenico, she could see a number of human figures, just like in the frescoes painted on the walls of Siena‘s churches. Enthroned in the centre was Christ, wearing white papal robes and a tiara and holding a pastoral staff with his left hand. He was looking straight at her. Standing to one side of the throne were the Apostles Peter and Paul, and on the other side John the Evangelist. Grouped around them were other figures. Catherine stood, transfixed. It seemed as though Christ was smiling at her. He raised his right hand and made the sign of the cross over her.“
Don Brophy, Catherine of Siena. A Passionate Life, Blue Bridge, p. 16
Then, as a young woman of about twenty years of age, already a Dominican tertiary, belonging to the Mantellate sisters, Saint Catherine was led beyond the boundaries of her little room in her father‘s house into participating in life in the wider world.
“As the months in her hermitage at home passed Catherine fasted and prayed, prayed and fasted. She hadn‘t laid down a fixed duration for her solitude. Most likely, when she began she thought she would remain an anchorite for the rest of her life. Yet as time went on and as she reflected more intensely, her worldview inevitably widened until gradually it brought her to look beyond the walls of her room. The many conversations she had with Tommaso Caffarini and Bartolomeo Dominici about reform in the church opened her eyes to the need for broad-scale institutional conversion. Her afternoons listening to other Mantellate tell stories of their service to the sick and poor made her more aware of unfortunate and needy people in her city. (…) She had vowed then that she would have no other husband than Christ. But what did that mean, exactly? Even Catherine was not sure. She had been a child when the vow was made. Now, in 1367, she was a young woman, anchored in prayer, disciplined in spiritual practice, secure in her abilities. (…)
The turning point came – as so many turning points did come to Catherine – in the form of a vision. It was the last day of carnival in the year 1367. All over the city people were celebrating. Feasting was in progress in the house of Giacomo. The family assembled upstairs around the table while downstairs Catherine sat alone in her room with the intention of making reparation to God for the dissolute behavior that characterized Siena during carnival. As her biographer later described it, God‘s voice spoke to Catherine as she prayed in her cell. Suddenly she perceived the Virgin Mary holding the child Jesus, accompanied by John the Evangelist, Paul the Apostle, St. Dominic, and the prophet David. Mary took Catherine‘s hand in her own and held it out toward her son who placed on Catherine‘s finger a ring with pearls and a diamond. According to Raymond, Jesus said: ‘Behold, I espouse you to me in faith. That faith will be kept untarnished until the day when you will celebrate with me the everlasting wedding-feast in heaven. From now on you must never falter about accepting any task my providence may lay upon your shoulders.‘
This ‘mystical espousal‘ with Jesus marked a turning point in her life. She didn‘t recognize it immediately, being still attracted to life in her hermitage. She wanted to continue in that comfortable place. Yet she was like a woman who, before her nuptials, has eyes only for her groom, but once fortified in marriage turns her face to the needs of her work, her family, and her world. In a sense, her spirituality had become too broad for her to be content any longer with a one-to-one relationship – Catherine and Jesus, side by side. From this point on it was going to be Catherine and Jesus and everyone else. She found the change painful to contemplate. (…) She later recalled that every time she was obliged to leave her room and socialize it was so painful she thought her heart would break. Still, the voice that rose from a deep place within her sounded authentic, so she listend to it. It said: ‘On two feet you must walk my way; on two wings you must fly to heaven.‘ It was time to move on.“
Don Brophy, Catherine of Siena. A Passionate Life, Blue Bridge, p. 52-54
Contemplative prayer was not enough any more. Saint Catherine of Siena had to learn to serve, to share her gifts with others. And in some sense, she had to bring back her talkativeness of her younger childhood.
And so she started to step out and respond to the historical challenges surrounding her. Where does one begin to name all the events of her time? There were years when the plague, the Black Death, was haunting the villages, towns, and cities of Italy; there was a lot of political upheaval, chaos and social unrest going on; and there was a war waged between some of the city-states of Italy and Pope Gregory XI, who was the seventh pope in a row not residing in Rome, but in Avignon, France, completing the 67 years of the so-called “Babylonian captivity“ of the papacy.
And Saint Catherine of Siena got involved in all of it, traveling through time and space with her entourage of followers, both fellow Mantellate sisters and laymen, who had reformed their lives after encountering her and her explanations of the faith, and to whom she kept giving spiritual advice.
More than once, Saint Catherine urged Pope Gregory XI, in letters and personal conversations, to return to Rome. She tried to encourage him, as he was hesitant and afraid to do so, fearing that some of the cardinals would not like it. Finally, in late 1376, the Pope decided to move his court back to Italy, where he arrived in January 1377.
She hoped that this return of the papacy to Rome would bring about the necessary reform in the Church, cleansing her of nepotism and immorality. She placed high hopes in Gregory’s successor Pope Urban VI. But the crisis of the Church just got worse. When she died, everything seemed to be more forlorn than ever before.
A little ship on a stormy sea
Shortly before Pope Gregory XI‘s death, Saint Catherine sent one of her many letters to her confessor Raymond of Capua. At that time, she was in Florence, he was in Rome, and the city-state of Florence was still at war with the papal court. In fact, the Pope had sent Catherine to Florence hoping she might be able to make a contribution to finally reaching an agreement of peace with the Florentines.
“Those who live in selfish love do not administer justice but are guilty of injustice. That is why we must strip ourselves of ourselves and clothe ourselves in Christ crucified. We must board the little ship of the most holy cross and fearlessly navigate this stormy sea. Those of us who are aboard this little ship have no reason for slavish fear, because the ship is provisioned with every food the soul can imagine. And if head winds blow that would beat against us and delay us so that we cannot fulfill our desires, we are not concerned. We stay there in living faith, because we have plenty to eat and the little ship is so strong that no wind, no matter how terrible, can dash it against the rocks and wreck it. True, (God) may often allow the little ship to be swamped by the sea‘s waves. But he does this not to drown us, but to make us better and more perfectly able to discern peaceful weather from stormy, so that we will not be over-confident in peaceful weather but will turn in holy fear, with continual humble prayer, and with holy and burning desire to seek the honor and salvation of souls aboard this little ship, the cross. This is why he permits the devil, the flesh, and the world, with all their harassment, to swamp us with their stormy waves. But those on board shouldn‘t simply stand at the edge but should leap into the hold at the heart of the ship, into the abyss of the blazing and anguished love of Christ crucified, and the waves won‘t hurt them at all. In fact, once they have experienced and tasted divine providence in the waves, they will emerge more strengthened and courageous, willing to endure pain and weariness and reproach in the world without sinning.
Saint Catherine of Siena, quotation taken from: Don Brophy, Catherine of Siena. A Passionate Life, Blue Bridge, p. 180-181
So I beg you and I want you to board this little ship of the most holy cross, stripped of selfish love and clothed in the teaching of Christ crucified. Use it to navigate the stormy sea with the light of living faith and the pearl of true holy justice toward both yourself and those in your charge.“
It is interesting to see how Saint Catherine of Siena describes the necessary lifeboat amid the raging storm – not as an impressive and outwardly powerful fleet but as “the little ship of the most holy cross“. What is keeping one – and the whole Church – afloat is just the piece of wood Christ‘s body was nailed to, is nothing and no-one else but “Christ crucified“.
With the death of Pope Gregory XI, the ship of the Church was entering into even more tumultuous waters. The schism dawning on the horizon, Saint Catherine finished working on her book The Dialogue, which captures an intimate conversation between a soul – her soul – and God, in mid October 1378, just a few weeks before her departure to Rome. At the end of the book, the soul in dialogue with God gives thanks to Him:
“Clothe, clothe me with yourself, eternal Truth, so that I may run the course of this mortal life in true obedience and in the light of most holy faith. With that light I sense my soul once again becoming drunk.“
Saint Catherine of Siena, quotation taken from: Don Brophy, Catherine of Siena. A Passionate Life, Blue Bridge, p. 192
Saint Catherine loved Rome. She loved to be close to the bones of the martyrs, to the remains of the great Apostles Saint Peter and Saint Paul. Many times in her life she had hoped to receive the crown of martyrdom herself.
In her last couple of months she did not get this desire fulfilled, but was given an intense dose of final bodily and spiritual suffering. When she broke down in Saint Peter‘s basilica at the end of January 1380 for the first time, she received another vision:
“I saw, too, the needs of holy Church, revealed by God within his breast, and how no one can come to enjoy God‘s beauty within the depths of the Trinity except through this dear bride – since we must all pass through the gate of Christ crucified, and this gate is found only in holy Church.“
Saint Catherine of Siena, quotation taken from: Don Brophy, Catherine of Siena. A Passionate Life, Blue Bridge, p. 223
Saint Catherine of Siena, pray for us!