Letters of Catherine Benincasa | Page 2

Brother, of Lucca Antonio,
Brother, of Nizza
Baldo, Brother Bartolomea, Sister, della Seta Bartolomeo, Brother,
Dominici Benincasa, Benincasa Benincasa, Eugenia Benincasa, Monna
Lapa Benincasa, Nanna Bologna, Anziani of
Capo, Giovanna di Canigiani, Ristoro Cardinals, Three Italian Catarina,

of the Hospital Cecca, Monna Colomba, Monna, of Lucca
Daniella, Sister, of Orvieto
France, the King of Florence, Letters to
Giovanna, Queen of Naples Giovanni, Don, of the Cells of
Vallombrosa Gregory XI.
John, Messer, Soldier of Fortune John III., Master
Lando, Brother Lapo, Buonaccorso di
Maco, Sano di Maconi, Monna Giovanna di Corrado Maconi, Stefano
Malavolti, Monna Agnese Matteo, Messer, of the Misericordia
Osimo, Nicholas of
Pagliaresi, Neri di Landoccio dei Pino, Lorenzo del
Raimondo, Brother, of Capua Religious, A, in Florence
Saracini, Monna Alessa dei Scetto, Catarina di
Tolomei, Brother Matteo di
Urban VI., Pope Usimbardi, Monna Orsa
War, the Eight of William, Brother, of England

LETTERS OF CATHERINE BENINCASA

ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA AS SEEN IN HER LETTERS
I
The letters of Catherine Benincasa, commonly known as St. Catherine
of Siena, have become an Italian classic; yet perhaps the first thing in
them to strike a reader is their unliterary character. He only will value
them who cares to overhear the impetuous outpourings of the heart and
mind of an unlettered daughter of the people, who was also, as it
happened, a genius and a saint. Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, the other
great writers of the Trecento, are all in one way or another intent on
choice expression; Catherine is intent solely on driving home what she
has to say. Her letters were talked rather than written. She learned to
write only three years before her death, and even after this time was in
the habit of dictating her correspondence, sometimes two or three
letters at a time, to the noble youths who served her as secretaries.
The modern listener to this eager talk may perhaps at first feel wearied.
Suffocated by words, repelled by frequent crudity and confusion of
metaphor, he may even be inclined to call the thought childish and the
tone overwrought. But let him persevere. Let him read these letters as

chapters in an autobiography, noting purpose and circumstance, and
reading between the lines, as he may easily do, the experience of the
writer. Before long the very accents of a living woman will reach his
ears. He will hear her voice, now eagerly pleading with friend or
wrong-doer, now brooding tender as a mother-bird over some fledgling
soul, now broken with sobs as she mourns over the sins of Church and
world, and again chanting high prophecy of restoration and renewal, or
telling in awestruck undertone sacred mysteries of the interior life.
Dante's Angel of Purity welcomes wayfarers upon the Pilgrim Mount
"in voce assai più che la nostra, viva." The saintly voice, like the
angelic, is more living than our own. These letters are charged with a
vitality so intense that across the centuries it draws us into the author's
presence.
Imagination is inclined to see the canonized saints as a row of solemn
figures, standing in dull monotony of worshipful gesture, like Virgins
and Confessors in an early mosaic. Yet, as a matter of fact, people who
have been canonized were to their contemporaries the most striking
personalities among men and women striving for righteousness. They
were all, to be sure, very good; but goodness, despite a curious
prejudice to the contrary, admits more variety in type than wickedness,
and produces more interesting characters. Catherine Benincasa was
probably the most remarkable woman of the fourteenth century, and her
letters are the precious personal record of her inner as of her outer life.
With all their transparent simplicity and mediaeval quaintness, with all
the occasional plebeian crudity of their phrasing, they reveal a nature at
once so many- sided and so exalted that the sensitive reader can but
echo the judgment of her countrymen, who see in the dyer's daughter of
Siena one of the most significant authors of a great age.
II
As is the case with many great letter-writers, though not with all,
Catherine reveals herself largely through her relations with others.
Some of her letters, indeed, are elaborate religious or political treatises,
and seem at first sight to have little personal colouring; yet even these
yield their full content of spiritual beauty and wisdom only when one
knows the circumstances that called them forth and the persons to
whom they were addressed. A mere glance at the index to her
correspondence shows how widely she was in touch with her time. She

was a woman of personal charm and of sympathies passionately wide,
and she gathered around her friends and disciples from every social
group in Italy, not to speak of many connections formed with people in
other lands. She wrote to prisoners