Letters of Catherine BenincasaCatherine, of Siena, Saint
Religion
Letters of Catherine Benincasa
Catherine, of Siena, Saint
Catherine, of Siena, Saint, 1347-1380 -- Correspondence; Christian women saints -- Italy -- Siena -- Correspondence
In more grievous ways than any yet noted, Catherine was to be wounded in
the house of her friends. The letters already given have shown us how
tenderly intimate, on the human as well as on the spiritual side, were her
relations with the father of her soul, "given her by that sweet mother,
Mary." One shares her affection for good Father Raimondo as one reads the
legend. His figure might well have belonged to the trecento rather than to
the more strenuous age that followed. He was the simplest, the most modest
of men--albeit by no means lacking in homely shrewdness; he was also one
of the least heroic. Catherine, like most uplifted natures, demanded
heroism from those dear to her, as a matter of course. Others wish for
their beloved ease, delights, the gratification of ambition and desire;
Catherine sought for them sorrow, hardships, the opportunity to offer
their lives in exalted sacrifice for the sins of the Church and the world.
She craved for them only less passionately than for herself, the crowning
grace of martyrdom. Now Fra Raimondo had no affinity whatever for
martyrdom. His chance at it came, in the fortunes of those stern times,
and was promptly rejected. Urban, perhaps at Catherine's instigation, had
despatched him to the King of France, and Raimondo had bidden his
spiritual daughter and mother a solemn farewell, surmising doubtless that
he was to see her face no more. He proceeded to the port of Genoa,
planning thence to set sail for France. But the galleys of the antipope
sought to debar the passage; and Raimondo, accepting the obstacle (one
imagines with much ease), allowed himself to give up the expedition.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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