The Story of Siena and San GimignanoGardner, Edmund G.
History
The Story of Siena and San Gimignano
Gardner, Edmund G.
Art -- Italy -- Siena; San Gimignano (Italy) -- History; Siena (Italy) -- History
I wonder not thereat; for the
cloud has passed away and the serene weather has come."[38]
Not long did _il tempo sereno_ hold. While it lasted Catherine remained
quietly at Siena, dictating to her secretaries, Neri, Stefano, and a
certain Barduccio Canigiani (a young nobleman who had joined her
spiritual family at Florence), her book--the famous _Dialogue_. It
consists of four mystical treatises on Discretion, Prayer, Divine
Providence, and Obedience, in the form of a dialogue between God and a
soul "panting with greatest desire for the honour of God and the
salvation of souls." This Dialogue and her Letters represent St
Catherine's literary work.[39] It was finished in October. Already the
tempest had burst upon the Church, of which the first rumblings had been
heard during her stay at Florence, and Catherine was now to be summoned
to Rome to fight her last great battle.
Urban VI. had a high reputation for zeal and virtue; he was, in
addition, a good Italian. From the outset he announced his intention of
reforming the Roman Court, of extirpating simony and luxury in the
Church. "They say," the Prior of the Certosa of Gorgona had written to
Catherine on the first news of his elevation, "that this our Holy Father
is a terrible man, and frightens people exceedingly with his acts and
his words." The abrupt violence with which he began his work enraged and
alarmed all the Curia, and within a few months of his election he was
left alone. The French Cardinals fled to Anagni, and took the Breton
mercenaries into their pay. When the Pope nominated twenty-six new
cardinals, they held a conclave at Fondi, and, on the plea that the
election of Urban had been extorted by force and fear of the Roman mob,
and was therefore invalid, they raised the infamous Cardinal Robert of
Geneva to the Popedom as Clement VII. All Christendom was now divided in
its spiritual allegiance between two men, each claiming to be the Vicar
of the Prince of Peace; any earthly prince would have dismissed the one
with ignominy from his service, the other was soon to fall hopelessly
and shamefully from his fair beginning.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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