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By Root 1666 0

her in a torrent unhindered by need of pen. Even her devoted confessor, Raymond of Capua, a cultivated nobleman and future General of the Dominican Order, sometimes fell asleep under the redundant flow. That so much of Catherine’s talk was preserved was owed to the astonishing capacity of medieval scribes to record verbatim the prolix speech of the period. Speech was customarily filled with repetition to allow time for the listener to absorb what was being said. Information and learning were still largely acquired through listening to heralds, sermons, orations, and reading aloud, and for that very reason, scribes, before the age of printing, were far better trained to take down the spoken word than at any time since.

As word spread of Catherine’s visions and fasting, people came to see her in her trances. Between raptures, in moods of earthly and warmhearted common sense, she settled civil quarrels and converted notorious rascals to penitence and faith. She acquired fame and worshipful disciples to whom she felt as a mother, calling them to her, as she put it, “as a mother calls a child to her breast.” They in turn called her Mamma. From 1370 on, she took an increasing part in public life, exhorting rulers, prelates, town councils, and individuals in effusive letters of political and spiritual advice.

Her influence lay in her absolute conviction that God’s will and hers were one. “Do God’s will and mine!” she commanded Charles V in a letter urging crusade, and to the Pope in the same tone she wrote, “I demand … that you set forth to fight the infidels!” Next to reform, “holy sweet crusade” was her incessant theme. Gregory himself, in all the letters of his pontificate, was an advocate of crusade, not only for defensive war against the Turks, but as a means of reconciling France and England and draining the mercenaries from Europe. While Catherine pleaded for peace at home, crying, “Woe, woe, peace, peace, for God’s sake …,” she implored all the potentates no less heartily to visit war upon the infidel. For her, crusade had an exalted religious value in itself. This was Christians’ work for the greater glory of God, and the more earnest its advocates, like Catherine and Philippe de Mézières, the more ardent their summons to war.

“Be a man, Father, arise!… No negligence!” she hectored the Pope. Hawkwood was likewise exhorted to rise against Christ’s enemies instead of tormenting Italy with misery and ruin. In a letter addressed to “Messer Giovanni condottiere,” delivered in person by Father Raymond, she wrote, “Therefore I pray you sweetly, since you delight so much in making war and fighting, make no more war upon Christians because it offends God.” Rather, she told him, go to fight the Turks so that, “from being the servant and soldier of the Devil, you might become a manly and true knight.”

Catherine’s favorite admonition was “Be manly!” In her devotions, the Virgin Mary hardly appeared, all Catherine’s passion being absorbed by the Son. Yet in worldly affairs she often appealed to feminine influence, writing not to Bernabò Visconti but to his strong-minded wife, Regina; not to the King of Hungary but to his dominant mother, Elizabeth of Poland. Of the Duc d’Anjou, whom she envisioned as leader of the crusade, she begged that he (of all people) despise the pleasures and vanities of this world and unite himself to the cross and the passion of Jesus in holy war. When she visited him and the Duchess in person, the Duke, who among his other ambitions was quite prepared to lead a crusade, accepted the mission.

In Avignon she was oppressed by the atmosphere of sensuality and “stench of sin,” and by the curiosity of the grand ladies who poked and pinched her body to test her trances after communion or even pierced her foot with a long needle. To the Pope, whom she addressed in a familiar version of Holy Father as “my sweet papa” (dolce babbo mio), she poured out all her themes in endless letters and in public and private audiences in which Raymond of Capua acted as interpreter because Catherine spoke in the Tuscan dialect