This was not the first time that a great Italian patriot had remonstrated with the churchmen of Italy. Catherine's letter invites inevitable comparison with that noble letter to Italian cardinals written by Dante on the occasion of the impending papal election that followed the death of Clement V. Dante, like Catherine, appealed to the cardinals on behalf of Rome and Italy: his plea, that they put an end to the Babylonian Captivity in Avignon and return to the Seat of Peter. That letter marked an early stage in the disgraceful abandonment of the Holy City; this of Catherine treats of the outcome of that great wrong. "Yet the wound will be healed," wrote Dante; "(though it cannot be otherwise than that the scar and brand of infamy will have burned with fire upon the Apostolic See and will disfigure her for whom heaven and earth had been reserved)--if ye who were the authors of this transgression will all with one accord fight manfully for the Bride of Christ, for the Throne of the Bride which is Rome, for our Italy, and that I may speak more fully, for the whole commonwealth of pilgrims upon this earth...." Over sixty years had passed since Dante wrote thus; they had been years of sin and shame. The words of Catherine, as she confronts a situation yet darker than he had faced, breathe a less assured courage. But her patriotism and her Christianity are of like temper with his own. In the Name of Jesus Christ crucified and of sweet Mary: Dearest brothers and fathers in Christ sweet Jesus: I Catherine, servant and slave of the servants of Jesus Christ, write to you in His precious Blood: with desire to see you turn back to the true and most perfect light, leaving the deep shadows of blindness into which you are fallen. Then you shall be fathers to me; otherwise not. Yes, indeed, I call you fathers in so far as you shall leave death and turn back to life (for, as things go now, you are parted from the life of grace, limbs cut off from your head from which you drew life), when you shall stand united in faith, and in that perfect obedience to Pope Urban VI., in which those abide who have the light, and in light know the truth, and knowing it love it. For the thing that is not seen cannot be known, and he who knows not loves not, and he who loves not and fears not his Creator loves himself with fleshly love, and whatever he loves, joys or honours and dignities of the world, he loves according to the flesh. Since man is created through love, he cannot live without love; either he loves God, or he loves himself and the world with the love that kills, fastening the eye of his mind darkened by self-love on those transitory things that pass like the wind. In this state he can recognize no truth nor goodness; he recognizes naught but falsehood, because he has not light. For truly had he the light, he would recognize that from such a love as this naught can result but pain and eternal death. It gives him a foretaste of hell in this life; for he who