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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
Yesterday, 29 April, happens to mark the anniversary of the death at die age of thirty-three, of Catherine of Siena, in Rome in 1380. And for that day we find her listed in the Church of England’s Alternative Service Book under the heading of ‘Lesser Festivals and Commemorations’ as a mystic — a designation she shares with Julian of Norwich and Teresa of Avila. In the Roman Catholic tradition she also shares with the latter the dignity of having in 1970 been accorded the title of Doctor of the Church. I note in passing that no women in the Church of England’s list are yet deemed to have been Teachers of the Faith!
By comparison with Teresa, Anglicans at least seem to have neglected Catherine and what she may represent for us — with the notable exception of that remarkable nineteenth century reformer, Josephine Butler, whose own day of commemoration falls on December 30. With these preliminary points in mind, therefore, I would like to take the opportunity provided by this occasion to make a small contribution to the consideration of Catherine.
Catherine’s book, her Dialogue, a biography and other memoirs of her, were among the earliest books in print, her Dialogue indeed in an English version by 1519. The book, the biography and the memoirs, copies of her letters and prayers, — all would be needed by those who wanted to advance her claim to sanctity, declared as it happened some eighty years after her death. And all these writings are now available to us in new translations and editions to provoke us to ask in our time what we might now make of her.
1 See the Appendix:The Church of England's Commemoration of Saints and Heroes of the Faith' in Symonds, Richard, Far Above Rubies Gracewing, Leominster 1993, pp.279‐281Google Scholar.
2 See Catherine of Siena.The Dialogue tr.and introd. Suzanne Noffke O.P. Paulist, New York, 1980; I, Catherine ed. and tr. Kenelm Foster O.P.and Mary John Ronayne O.P. Collins, London, 1980; Raymond of Capua, The Life of Catherine of Siena tr. and introd. Keams, Conleth O.P., Dominican Publications, Dublin, 1980Google Scholar.There is also an edition of Catherine's letters ed. Suzanne Noffke, in Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1988.
3 I, Catherine, pp.60‐61.
4 See ‘St.Dominic and the Order of Friars Preachers’.in Lawrence, C.H., The Friars. The Impact of the Early Mendicant Movement on Western Society Longman, London 1994, pp.65‐88Google Scholar.
5 See ‘Humbert of Romans’ in Tugwell, Simon O.P., Ways of Imperfection. An Exploration of Christian Spirituality, Darton, Longman and Todd,1984, pp.138—151Google Scholar.
6 The Dialogue p.26.
7 I, Catherine, p.65, p.89.
8 See the version of Raymond's Life pp. 101‐102 used in Kieckhefer, Richard, Unquiet Souls.Fourteenth‐Century Saints and their Religious Milieu, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1984, p.177Google Scholar, with some interspersed comment of my own.
9 Dialogue p. 141.
10 Dialogue p. 25.
11 And see the chapter.'The Keys' in Armour, Peter, The Door of Purgatory. A Study of Multiple Symbolism in Dante's Purgatorio Clarendon Press.Oxford, 1983, pp. 76‐99Google Scholar.
12 I, Catherine, p. 55.
13 I, Catherine, pp.71‐75. See alsoPrejean, H..'Two thousand volts and apple pie'. The Tablet, 15/22 April, 1995, pp.495‐496Google Scholar, written by a member of a religious order, who acts as a ‘spiritual advisor’ to men facing execution whom she too accompanies to their deaths, having also learned to listen to the 'unspeakable stories of loss and grief and rage and guilt” experienced by the families of the victims. She argues very clearly that even those who have committed the most terrible crime of killing are more than their worst crime, and opposes capital punishment.Catherine of Siena did not of course attempt to challenge the laws which sent the convicted to their deaths, but her Christ‐like compassion seems still to be of profound importance in analogous circumstances.
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