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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 August 2024
We commonly think of St Catherine as the greatest of Dominican tertiaries; and so no doubt she is; it is as natural to think that of her as to think of St Thomas as our greatest theologian. Yet it is easier to assess the greatness of a theologian than the greatness of a tertiary. Theology is a science; being a tertiary is a vocation. You can compare one theologian with another in respect of qualities that are fairly evident, at least in principle, for they are intellectual qualities expressed in rational argument. A theologian is great in the degree that he gives satisfactory answers to the questions put by the human mind when it asks, what does the Christian faith mean? It is true that a theologian will not be able to give such answers with a clarity and profundity that deserve to be called great unless his intellect is docile to the Holy Spirit, that is unless he has the Gifts of understanding and wisdom to a high degree.
A lecture to the Congress of London Dominican tertiaries, i960. Most of the quotations are from St Catherine's letters, and I have used the critical edition of these by E. Dupr6 Theseider, Epistolario di S. Caterina da Siena, Rome 1940. Unfortunately only volume I of this edition has so far been published; but as it contains 88 letters written between 1373 and January 1377—i.e., one half of St Catherine's short life as a writer—it is a fairly representative selection. For the convenience of readers I have added, in each case, to the number-reference to the Dupre Theseider edition the number of the corresponding letter in the better known Tommaseo edition (i860, and reprinted without alteration by Misciatelli in 1912). The former number is in Roman numerals, the latter in Arabic.
2 Ia 2ae . 112 . 5.
3 2 Cor. 4: 5-6.
4 cf 3a. 40. 1 ad 2.
5 Paradiso XXII, 42: The truth that so exalts us.
6 A. Levasti, My Servant Catherine, p. 1.
7 Inferno XXIX, 122: Have there ever been people so vain as the Sienese?
8 Epist. LXV (219).
9 2a 2ae. 45.2.
10 Raymund of Capua, Life of St Catherine, I, ch. 10.
11 Epist. I (30).
12 Epist. XVIII (29).
13 Epist. XVII (28).
14 Epist. LII (not in Tommaseo’ edition, this letter was discovered by Edmund Gardner and printed in the appendix to his Saint Catherine of Siena, London 1907).
15 Epist. XVIII (29).
16 Epist. XLV (137).
17 Epist. XVII (28).
18 Paradiso v, 19-22: ‘the greatest gift that God in his generosity gave in creating, and the one that most corresponds to his goodness and that he accounts the most precious, was the freedom of the w i l l ‘ … .
19 Epist. XXIV (69).
20 Epist. XVIII (29).
21 T. Deman, o.p., in Vie Spirituelle, Supplément, Oct. 1934, p. II.
22 Purgatorio XXVIII, 92.
23 Epist. XLIX (108).
24 Epist. XXIII (101).
25 Epist. XVII (28); and frequently elsewhere.
26 Epist. LVIII (164).
27 Epist. LVIII (164).
28 Epist. LII (Gardner, Appendix I).
29 Epist. XXIII (101).
20 Epist LXVIII (2O7).
31 The Light and the Rainbow (1959) pp. 252-3.
32 Epist. LXXXVIII (252).
33 Epist. LXX (211).
34 Epist. XVIII (29).
35 Epist. LXXXVI (148).
36 Epist. XVII (28).
37 Epist. LXIV (196).
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