Mad Catherine
or holy Catherine?
by Mike Oettle
THE name
Catherine of Siena, appearing on the calendar on 29 April, brings into focus
the practice of asceticism,[1] so foreign to the Protestant tradition and somewhat strange even in Anglicanism. This article originally appeared during Lent, which is an appropriate time to look into this phenomenon.
The lass’s name was Caterina Benincasa, and she was born in the Italian city of Siena, in the hills of Tuscany south of Florence, on 25 March 1347. She was the daughter of a family of dyers in the bustling textile quarter of the city. An ordinary, happy child, she underwent a life-changing experience at the age of six. “She was out in the streets with her brother and there, up above the great church of St Dominic which crowned the hill over her home, she saw in a sky of unearthly colours and shapes, Christ enthroned as a priest, looking straight at her, Catherine, and blessing her.”[2]
Silence, self-denial and prayer became her desire and her life after that, even though her family demanded her help in the dyeing business. As a teenager, she was persecuted by her family, especially her mother, and made to work hard (although this she never minded). But when she was 16, her family gave in and allowed her her own tiny room where she slept on a plank, subsisted on a little bread, water and uncooked vegetables, and went out only to church, speaking only in confession. She was even on occasion thrown out of church in a trance.
At 19, she turned her inward spiritual life outwards to the world and, while continuing her self-denying way of life, worked as a servant to her family. Joining the Dominican order as a tertiary (one who takes simple vows but may remain outside a convent), she worked in the hospitals of Siena and ministered to the poor and to lepers, one of whom even stayed in her room.
She became something of a sensation, and priests would visit her to test her miraculous powers and her theological knowledge. She took to fasting almost all the time, often taking the communion wafer as her only food. Not surprisingly, she began to suffer excruciating pains and reportedly even displayed the marks of crucifixion, long regarded in the Catholic faith as a mark of special divine
grace.
And as people began to find that she was spiritually pure, she acquired a following.
Even her mother came to join this band. Some of them wrote letters for her as
she began corresponding with prominent people, striving desperately for peace
in an Italy that was racked by wars between cities and princes in which even
the Church was involved.
She began to see hope for her country in the return of the Pope from Avignon, where the Holy See had sat since the weak French Pope Clement V’s election in 1305. Under pressure from the French king he had failed to move to Rome.
Getting the Pope back to Rome was not Catherine’s idea to start with. In fact, when she went to Avignon in 1376 with her confessor Raymond of Capua (who later wrote her life story) her main object was peace in Italy and a crusade against Islam. But she became convinced of the need to get Pope Gregory XI to Rome and her persistence paid off – although she did not win the hearts of the cardinals. However, Gregory (died 1378) did not live long enough to make a difference. The dictatorial Urban VI succeeded him, and when he offended some of the cardinals they retaliated by electing another pope, Clement VII. Clement, when he could not gain control of Rome from Urban, retired to Avignon – thus beginning the Great Schism.
Catherine’s efforts at peacemaking – she had also mediated in other disputes – had not been crowned with success, but people had flocked to her all the same and many individual lives were changed. Towards the end of her brief life she dictated, over just a few days, a book later known as the Dialogo, containing treatises now titled Providence, Discretion, Prayer and Obedience – a book still used as a manual by people engaged in both prayer and service. She then travelled to Rome to put herself at Urban’s disposal.
Worn out and exhausted, having barely turned 33, Catherine suffered a series of strokes and died on 29 April 1380. She was canonised in 1461, and in 1939 was declared patron saint of Italy.
Was her sacrifice worth it? Who are we to say? The idea of someone sleeping on a plank and subsisting on prayer and the Body of Our Lord seems to us in the 21st
century more like madness. Yet the clergy who examined her were satisfied that
she was genuine, and she certainly had an influence for the good in the lives
of many hundreds – perhaps thousands – of people. Perhaps the best advice is
found in Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount: “Judge not, that ye be not
judged.” (Matthew 7:1)
Incidentally, Catherine is the name of five other saints, three of whom were also late mediæval Italian mystics. The name’s popularity seems to derive from Catherine of Alexandria, who was reportedly martyred by being tortured on a spiked wheel and then beheaded, in the early 4th century AD – but the earliest record of her death appears as late as the 9th century, and has been rejected as legend. Her feast day of 25 November has been dropped from the calendar, but a firework named after her remains popular.
The name itself comes from the Greek Aikaterine (Aikaterine), which is of unknown meaning and origin. However, bad scholarship has derived it from the Greek kathara (kaqara), which means pure or unsullied – a meaning no doubt
intended in the naming of many a Catherine, Kathrine, Kathleen, Catriona or
Katrina.
