Letters of Catherine Benincasa | Page 3

and outcasts; to great nobles and
plain business men; to physicians, lawyers, soldiers of fortune; to kings
and queens and cardinals and popes; to recluses pursuing the Beatific
Vision, and to men and women of the world plunged in the lusts of the
flesh and governed by the pride of life. The society of the fourteenth
century passes in review as we turn the pages.
Catherine wrote to all these people in the same simple spirit. With one
and all she was at home, for all were to her, by no merely formal phrase,
"dearest brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus." One knows not whether to
be more struck by the outspoken fearlessness of the woman or by her
great adaptability. She could handle with plain directness the crudest
sins of her age; she could also treat with subtle insight the most elusive
phases of spiritual experience. No greater distance can be imagined
than that which separates the young Dominican with her eyes full of
visions from a man like Sir John Hawkwood, reckless free-lance,
selling his sword with light-hearted zeal to the highest bidder, and
battening on the disorder of the times. Catherine writes to him with
gentlest assumption of fellowship, seizes on his natural passions and
tastes, and seeks to sanctify the military life of his affections. With her
sister nuns the method changes. She gives free play to her delicate
fancy, drawing her metaphors from the beauty of nature, from tender,
homely things, from the gentle arts and instincts of womanhood. Does
she speak to Pope Gregory, the timid? Her words are a trumpet-call. To
the harsh Urban, his successor? With finest tact she urges self-restraint
and a policy of moderation. Temperaments of every type are to be met
in her pages--a sensitive poet, troubled by "confusion of thought"
deepening into melancholia; a harum-scarum boy, in whose sunny
joyousness she discerns the germ of supernatural grace; vehement
sinners, fearful saints, religious recluses deceived by self- righteousness,
and men of affairs devoutly faithful to sober duty. Catherine enters into
every consciousness. As a rule we associate with very pure and
spiritual women, even if not cloistered, a certain deficient sense of
reality. We cherish them, and shield them from harsh contact with the
world, lest the fine flower of their delicacy be withered. But no one

seems to have felt in this way about Catherine. Her "love for souls" was
no cold electric illumination such as we sometimes feel the phrase to
imply, but a warm understanding tenderness for actual men and women.
It would be hard to exaggerate her knowledge of the world and of
human hearts.
Yet sometimes Catherine appears to us austere and exacting; unsparing
in condemnation, and unrelenting in her demands on those she loves.
Many of her letters are in a strain of exhortation that rises into rebuke.
The impression at first is unpleasant. We are tempted to feel this
unfailing candour captious; to resent the note of authority, equally clear
whether she write to Pope or Cardinal; to suspect Catherine, in a word,
of assuming that very judicial attitude which she constantly deprecates
as unbecoming to us poor mortals. And perhaps the very frequency of
her plea for tolerance and forbearance suggests a conscious weakness.
Like most brilliant and ardent people, she was probably by nature of a
critical and impatient disposition; she was, moreover, a plebeian. At
times, when she is quite sure that men are on the side of the devil, she
allows her instinctive frankness full scope; it must be allowed that the
result is astounding. Yet even as we catch our breath we realise that her
remarks were probably justified. It is hard for us moderns to remember
how crudely hideous were the sins which she faced. In these days,
when we are all reduced to one apparent level of moral respectability,
and great saintliness and dramatic guilt are alike seldom conspicuous,
we forget the violent contrasts of the middle ages. Pure "Religious,"
striving after the exalted perfection enjoined by the Counsels, moved
habitually among moral atrocities, and bold vigour of speech was a
practical duty. Catherine handled without evasion the grossest evils of
her time, and the spell which she exercised by simple force of direct
dealing was nothing less than extraordinary.
It is easy to see why Catherine's plain speaking was not resented. She
rarely begins with rebuke. The note of humility is first struck; she is
always "servant and slave of the servants of Jesus Christ." Thence she
frequently passes into fervent meditation on some special theme: the
exceeding wonder of the Divine Love, the duty of prayer, the nature of
obedience. We are lifted above the world into a region of heavenly light
and sweetness, when suddenly--a blow from the shoulder!--a startling
sense of return