Queens of the Renaissance. M. Beresford Ryley
the neighbours nicknamed her Euphrosyne, and her little person was much enticed and humoured. Unfortunately, like all children of that period, she became bewilderingly precocious, and with the first development of intelligence, the religious passion revealed itself. With Catherine the desire for spirituality was inborn. At five years old she formed the habit of going upstairs on her knees, reciting the “Hail, Mary,” at every step. She delighted in being taken to churches and places of devotion, and at the age of six years her deliberate and piteous self-martyrdom commenced.
The child, during an errand on which she was sent, believed herself to have seen a holy vision. The incident had nothing extraordinary, for her imagination was keen, and her temperament nervous. In a later century, fed upon fairy stories, she would have seen gnomes, sprites, or golden-haired princesses. Instead, saturated in religious legends, she perceived Jesus Christ in magnificent robes, and with a tiara on His head, while on each side of Him stood a saint, and several nuns in white garments. This unchallenged vision produced colossal consequences. The child went home convinced that God Himself had come to call her to a better life; proud, frightened, and exultant, she set her mind to find out, therefore, how she might best become as good as God wanted her to be.
This beginning of Catherine’s religious life is painful to remember. She decided primarily that she must give up childish amusements; in addition, she determined to eat the least possible amount of food, and to fill up her life with penances in the manner of the grown-up holy men and women about her. She also procured some cord, and, having knotted it into a miniature scourge, formed the habit of secretly scourging herself until her back was lined with weals. Describing these first spiritual struggles of a child of six years old, Cafferini, her contemporary and biographer, says, “Moreover, by a secret instinct of grace, she understood that she had now entered on a warfare with nature, which demanded the mortification of every sense. She resolved, therefore, to add fasting and watching to her other penances, and in particular to abstain entirely from meat, so that when any was placed before her, she either gave it to her brother Stephen, who sat beside her, or threw it under the table to the cats, in such a manner as to avoid notice.”
This pitiable “warfare with nature” continued until she reached the age of twelve. Her parents, so far, had been pleased at her religious fervency. But at twelve years old the girl became marriageable. The comparative freedom of childhood ceased; Catherine was kept secluded in the house, besides being harried with injunctions concerning the arrangement of her hair and her dress.
She had, as a matter of fact, charming, warm brown hair. Unfortunately, a shade of gold was then fashionable, and Lapa, ambitious for a good marriage, insisted that the girl should do like others, and have it dyed that colour. Catherine resisted with all the strength of her frightened soul. But in the end, apparently through the persuasions of a favourite married sister, she allowed her hair to become golden. It was no sooner done than conscience suffered passionate remorse. In fact, to the end of life this one backsliding remained almost the sharpest regret Catherine possessed. She could never refer to it without sobbing, from which it is at least presumable that a canary-coloured head had its attractions for a saint of twelve years old.
Meanwhile, the choice of a husband became imminent. At this Catherine’s semi-passivity turned into actual panic. It was not possible both to marry and to give up one’s life to God. Only, who would listen to the refusals of so young a girl? Following the practice of the Roman Catholic religion, she took her difficulties to her confessor, and was saved through the proposal of a rather questionable trick. She had only to cut her hair off to make marriage impossible: no Italian would marry a woman with a shaven head. Catherine rushed home, and at once did as she was told, covering her work, when she had finished, with a white linen coif. Virgins in Italy wore their hair flowing; the stratagem, therefore, did not exist an hour before discovery took place. Then followed a passionate domestic scene. The whole family appears for once to have unanimously agreed that Catherine’s piety had overstepped the bounds of common sense. The loss of her child’s hair left Lapa infuriated. Exasperation grew so intense that for a time, with the view to breaking her stubborn spirit, Catherine was deliberately ill-treated. A servant had been kept for rough work in the kitchen; she was dismissed, and Catherine made to take her place. But the girl had not a temperament that could be cowed. She was a true Sienese, and Boccaccio, as well as others, speaks of the virile character of the people of Siena. The name Euphrosyne also still expressed her disposition. With a pretty childishness of imagination, she made religious play out of their harshness. Her father, she pretended, was Jesus Christ, Lapa she made the Virgin Mary, and her brothers and sisters the apostles and disciples. The kitchen became the innermost tabernacle of the temple where sacrifices were offered to God. In consequence, she went about diffusing radiance and a sober joy, and bewildering those who wanted to see her crushed and penitent.
In the end Giacomo interfered. He had the instinct of kindness, and was himself sincerely religious. Both the question of marriage and the system of ill-treatment were abandoned. A little later he gave consent to the pursuance of a religious vocation, and Catherine, still a child, became a member of the order of St. Dominic. It was not a strict community. The sisters did not live in retirement, but in their own homes, merely wearing a white veil and a black habit called Mantellate.
Just before this Catherine experienced a very human temptation. She became possessed by the longing to dress herself in the pretty clothes of a rich married woman, and to go out flaunting in silks and extravagance. The wish is more likeable than her physical self-torturings. The latter gain their power to distress, in fact, to some extent because her few temptations show that Catherine had all the average longings of humanity, and was not devoid of the companionable frailties of ordinary men and women.
The temptation was, of course, conquered, and from the glad moment of taking her vows Catherine intensified every austerity of conduct. As a child she had been robust and hardy. But the frightful treatment to which she subjected her system would have ruined any constitution, and from the time she grew up she became more and more delicate, suffering, and neurotic. The desire to suppress her excesses is very great. One could write abundantly and give only a life overflowing in fragrant incidents. But in the case of Catherine, to pass over foolishness would entail not only a falsification of character, but a falsification also of the curious atmosphere from which she drew the principal inspirations of her conduct.
From the age of twelve she forced herself gradually to eat so little, that her stomach became finally incapable of retaining solid food at all. How she kept life in her body for the last half of her existence is difficult to understand. Her bed, from the time she became a nun, consisted of a few planks with a log of wood for pillow. An iron band made part of her wearing apparel, and her discipline—if the one now shown as hers in the sacristy of St. Dominico is genuine—consisted of an iron chain with sharp projections for piercing and tearing the flesh. The idea was monstrous and horrible; nevertheless, its fortitude uplifts it into heroism. To pursue unflinchingly martyrdom such as this may be grotesque and ridiculous, but no invertebrate creature could contemplate it. Of all the violences, however, which Catherine did to her body, the one under which she suffered most acutely was her refusal of proper sleep. It is said, though it is extremely hard to believe, that for a certain length of time she took only half an hour’s sleep in the twenty-four hours, and that—only every other day.
Notwithstanding this, a picture given of her at the time by Father Thomas Antonio Cafferini, also a member of St. Dominic, and an intimate friend of the family, is altogether charming. He asserts that her face was always gay and smiling, more especially if she were called upon to help those troubled or out of health. Other contemporaries bear out this possession of an effulgent gladness. When she spoke her face became illuminated, and her smile was like some living radiance passing into the hearts of those she looked at. The same writer mentions her delight in singing and her love of flowers. A certain Fra Bartolomeo of Siena bears similar witness. He wrote, “She was always cheerful, and even merry.” He mentioned, besides, that she “was passionately fond of flowers, and used to arrange them into exquisite bouquets.” Catherine’s personal writings are strewn with references to plants and blossoms. It was also part of the fulness of a character unusually rich in finer fascinations that she was constantly singing. Melancholy she scarcely knew. The spirituality which did not produce happiness, she could only feel as a spurious effort.