Letters of Catherine Benincasa | Page 6

part into spiritual or literal seclusion,
and in the quietude of cloister or forest cell busied themselves with the
concerns of their own souls.
Not so Catherine Benincasa. She had known that temptation and
conquered it. After her reception as a Dominican Tertiary, she had
possessed the extraordinary resolution to live for three years the recluse
life, not in the guarded peace of a convent, but in her own room at

home, in the noisy and overcrowded house where a goodly number of
her twenty-four brothers and sisters were apparently still living. And
these had been years of inestimable preciousness; but they came to an
end at the command of God, speaking through the constraining impulse
of her love for men. From the mystical retirement in which she had
long lived alone with her Beloved, she emerged into the world. And the
remarkable fact is that in no respect did she blench from the situation as
she found it. She "faced life steadily and faced it whole." A Europe
ravaged by dissensions lay before her; a Church which gave the lie to
its lofty theories, no less by the hateful worldliness of its prelates than
by its indifferent abandonment of the Seat of Peter. Above this sorry
spectacle the mind of Catherine soared straight into an upper region,
where only the greatest minds of the day were her comrades. Her
fellow-citizens were unable to entertain the idea even of civic peace
within the limits of their own town; but patriotic devotion to all Italy
fired her great heart. More than this--her instinct for solidarity forced
her to dwell in the thought of a world-embracing brotherhood. Her
hopes were centred, not like Dante's in the Emperor the heir of the
Caesars, but in the Pope the heir of Christ. Despite the corruption from
which she recoiled with horror, despite the Babylonian captivity at
Avignon, she saw in the Catholic Church that image of a pure universal
fellowship which the noblest Catholics of all ages have cherished. To
the service of the Church, therefore, her life was dedicated; it was to
her the Holy House of Reconciliation, wherein all nations should dwell
in unity; and only by submission to its authority could the woes of Italy
be healed.
Catherine's letters on public affairs--historical documents of recognised
importance--give us her practical programme. It was formed in the light
of that faith which she always describes as "the eye of the mind." She
was called during her brief years of political activity to meet three chief
issues: the absence of the Pope from Italy; the rebellion of the Tuscan
cities, headed by Florence, against his authority; and at a later time the
great Schism, which broke forth under Urban VI. During her last five
years she was absorbed in ecclesiastical affairs. In certain of her
immediate aims she succeeded, in others she failed. It would be hard to
say whether her success or her failure involved the greater tragedy. For
behind all these aims was a larger ideal that was not to be realised--the

dream, entertained as passionately by Catherine Benincasa as by
Savonarola or by Luther, of thorough Church-reform. Catherine at
Avignon, pleading this great cause in the frivolous culture and dainty
pomp of the place; Catherine at Rome, defending to her last breath the
legal rights of a Pope whom she could hardly have honoured, and
whose claims she saw defended by extremely doubtful means--is a
figure as pathetic as heroic. Few sorrows are keener than to work with
all one's energies to attain a visible end for the sake of a spiritual result,
and, attaining that end, to find the result as far as ever. This sorrow was
Catherine's. The external successes which she won--considerable
enough to secure her a place in history-- availed nothing to forward the
greater aim for which she worked. Gregory XI., under her magnetic
inspiration, gathered strength, indeed, to make a personal sacrifice and
to return to Rome, but he was of no calibre to attempt radical reform,
and his residence in Italy did nothing to right the crying abuses that
were breaking Christian hearts. His successor, on the other hand, did
really initiate the reform of the clergy, but so drastic and unwise were
his methods that the result was terrible and disconcerting--the
development of a situation of which only the Catholic idealist could
discern the full irony; no less than Schism, the rending of the Seamless
Robe of Christ.
With failing hopes and increasing experience of the complexity of
human struggle, Catherine clung to her aim until the end. There was no
touch of pusillanimity in her heroic spirit. As with deep respect we
follow the Letters of the last two years, and note their unflagging
alertness and vigour, their steady tone of devotion and self-control,