Catherine of Siena
Caterina di Jacopo di Benincasa (25 March 1347 – 29 April 1380), known as Catherine of Siena (Italian: Caterina da Siena), was an Italian mystic and pious laywoman who engaged in papal and Italian politics through extensive letter-writing and advocacy. Canonized in 1461, she is revered as a saint and as a Doctor of the Church due to her extensive theological authorship. She is also considered to have influenced Italian literature.
Catherine of Siena
Caterina di Jacopo di Benincasa
25 March 1347
Siena, Republic of Siena
29 April 1380 (aged 33)
Rome, Papal States
29 December 1460
29 June 1461 by Pope Pius II
Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome and the Sanctuary of Saint Catherine, Siena
29 April; 30 April (Roman Calendar, 1628–1969); 4 October (in Italy)
habit of a Dominican tertiary, ring, lily, cherubim, crown of thorns, stigmata, crucifix, book, heart, skull, dove, rose, miniature church, miniature ship bearing papal coat of arms
against fire; bodily ills; people ridiculed for their piety; nurses; sick people; miscarriages; Europe; Italy; Diocese of Allentown, Pennsylvania, U.S.; Bambang, Nueva Vizcaya, Philippines; Samal, Bataan, Philippines
Born and raised in Siena, Catherine wanted from an early age to devote herself to God, against the will of her parents. She joined the "mantellates", a group of pious women, primarily widows, informally devoted to Dominican spirituality; later these types of urban pious groups would be formalized as the Third Order of the Dominicans, but not until after Catherine's death.[3] Her influence with Pope Gregory XI played a role in his 1376 decision to leave Avignon for Rome. The Pope then sent Catherine to negotiate peace with the Florentine Republic. After Gregory XI's death (March 1378) and the conclusion of peace (July 1378), she returned to Siena. She dictated to secretaries her set of spiritual treatises, The Dialogue of Divine Providence. The Great Schism of the West led Catherine of Siena to go to Rome with the pope. She sent numerous letters to princes and cardinals to promote obedience to Pope Urban VI and to defend what she calls the "vessel of the Church". She died on 29 April 1380, exhausted by her rigorous fasting. Urban VI celebrated her funeral and burial in the Basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome.
Devotion around Catherine of Siena developed rapidly after her death. Pope Pius II canonized her in 1461; she was declared a patron saint of Rome in 1866 by Pope Pius IX, and of Italy (together with Francis of Assisi) in 1939 by Pope Pius XII.[4][5][6][7][8] She was the second woman to be declared a Doctor of the Church, on 4 October 1970 by Pope Paul VI – only days after Teresa of Ávila. In 1999 Pope John Paul II proclaimed her a Patron Saint of Europe.
Catherine of Siena is one of the outstanding figures of medieval Catholicism due to the strong influence she had in the history of the papacy and her extensive authorship.[9] She was behind the return of the Pope from Avignon to Rome, and then carried out many missions entrusted to her by the pope, something quite rare for a woman in the Middle Ages. Her Dialogue, hundreds of letters, and dozens of prayers also give her a prominent place in the history of Italian literature.
Three genres of work by Catherine survive:
The University of Alcalá conserves a unique handwritten Spanish manuscript, while other available texts are printed copies collected by the National Library of France.[47]
Theology[edit]
Catherine's theology can be described as mystical, and was employed toward practical ends for her own spiritual life or those of others.[48] She used the language of medieval scholastic philosophy to elaborate her experiential mysticism.[49] Interested mainly with achieving an incorporeal union with God, Catherine practiced extreme fasting and asceticism, eventually to the extent of living solely on the Eucharist every day.[50] For Catherine, this practice was the means to fully realize her love of Christ in her mystical experience, with a large proportion of her ecstatic visions relating to the consumption or rejection of food during her life.[51] She viewed Christ as a "bridge" between the soul and God and transmitted that idea, along with her other teachings, in her book The Dialogue.[52] The Dialogue is highly systematic and explanatory in its presentation of her mystical ideas; however, these ideas themselves are not so much based on reason or logic as they are based in her ecstatic mystical experience.[53] Her work was widely read across Europe, and survives in a Middle English translation called The Orchard of Syon.[54]
In one of her letters she sent to her confessor, Raymond of Capua, she recorded this revelation from her conversation with Christ, in which he said: "Do you know what you are to Me, and what I am to you, my daughter? I am He who is, you are she who is not".[55] This mystical concept of God as the wellspring of being is seen in the works and ideas of Aquinas[56] and can be seen as a simplistic rendering of apotheosis and a more rudimentary form of the doctrine of divine simplicity.[57] She describes God in her work, The Dialogue (which she referred to simply as "her book"), as a "sea, in which we are the fish", the point being that the relationship between God and man should not be seen as man contending against the Divine and vice versa, but as God being the endless being that supports all things.[58]
According to the writings attributed to Catherine, in 1377 she had a vision in which the Virgin confirmed to her a thesis supported by the Dominican Order, to which Catherine belonged: the Virgin said that she had been conceived with the original sin. The Virgin thus contradicted the future dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Cardinal Lambertini (later Pope Benedict XIV) in his treatise De servorum Dei beatificatione et de beatorum canonizatione, 1734–1738, cites theologians who believed that Catherine's directors or editors had falsified her words; he also cites Father Lancicius,[59] who believed that Catherine had made a mistake as a result of preconceived ideas.[60]
The main churches in honor of Catherine of Siena are:
A statue of St. Catherine of Siena at the Parish of St. Catherine of Siena Church in Trumbull, Connecticut
Michele de Meo, Catherine of Siena, Patroness of Europe, 2003, Chapel of St. James, Church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva
Domenico Beccafumi, The Miraculous Communion of St. Catherine of Siena, c. 1513–1515, Getty Center, Los Angeles, California
Domenico Beccafumi, St. Catherine of Siena Receiving the Stigmata, c. 1513–1515, Getty Center, Los Angeles, California
The Virgin Mary Giving the Rosary to St. Dominic and St. Catherine of Siena, Church of Santa Agata in Trastevere, Rome (Bottom of painting: the souls in Purgatory await the prayers of the faithful)
Giovanni di Paolo, St. Catherine of Siena, c. 1475, tempera and gold on panel. Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, England.
St Catherine and the Demons by an unknown artist, c. 1500, tempera on panel. National Museum, Warsaw.
This painting depicts the Virgin giving the rosary to St. Dominic; in the scene also appear Fray Pedro de Santa María Ulloa, Saint Catherine of Siena and Servant of God, Mary of Jesus de León y Delgado. The fresco is located in the Church of Santo Domingo in San Cristóbal de La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain.
