samedi 15 septembre 2012

Sainte CATERINA FIESCHI ADORNO da GENOVA (CATHERINE de GÊNES), veuve et mystique


Sainte Catherine de Gênes

Mystique italienne (+ 1510)

Fille d'une noble famille de Gênes, Catherine Fieschi aspire dès son enfance à se consacrer à Dieu. Mais sa noble famille ne l'entend pas de cette oreille, car, à cette époque, le mariage d'une fille est chose importante pour les stratégies familiales. A 16 ans, la jeune fille qui voulait entrer au couvent doit épouser un homme violent et mécréant, mais dont l'alliance est souhaitable pour la famille Fieschi. Désemparée, elle se livre aux frivolités de la vie mondaine. Mais elle n'y gagne que tristesse et amertume. Subitement à 26 ans, elle change de vie. Une vision du Christ crucifié lui fait mesurer l'inanité de sa conduite. Dès lors le feu de l'amour de Dieu la brûle continuellement. Elle vit tout d'abord une vie de pénitence et de dures austérités afin d'expier ses fautes passées, puis dépassant le souvenir de ses fautes, elle vit dans l'union à Dieu, au milieu d'extases et de phénomènes mystiques. D'un même mouvement, elle convertit son mari, qui mourra tertiaire franciscain, lui le mécréant et le violent. Elle visite les malades, soigne les lépreux et les pestiférés. On lui attribue des écrits qui témoignent de ses expériences mystiques. Mais il faut rendre à la vérité qu'elle n'en est pas l'auteur.

Le 12 janvier 2011, Benoît XVI a consacré sa catéchèse à sainte Catherine de Gênes (1447-1510), auteur de deux livres: "Le traité sur le purgatoire" et "Le dialogue entre l'âme et le corps".

Catherine reçut dans sa famille une bonne éducation chrétienne. Elle se maria à seize ans, et sa vie matrimoniale ne fut pas facile. Au début elle menait une existence mondaine qui suscita en elle un profond sentiment de vide et d'amertume. Suite à une expérience spirituelle particulière, dans laquelle elle vit clairement ses misères et ses défauts mais aussi la bonté de Dieu, elle prit la décision de changer de vie et d'entamer un chemin de purification et de communion mystique avec Dieu. Le lieu de son ascension vers les sommets de la mystique fut l'hôpital de Pammatone, le plus grand de Gênes, dont elle fut la directrice.

"De sa conversion jusqu'à sa mort, a observé le Pape, il n'y eut pas d'évènements extraordinaires, mais deux éléments caractérisèrent toute son existence: d'une part l'expérience mystique, la profonde union avec Dieu (...) et d'autre part (...) le service du prochain, surtout aux plus nécessiteux et aux abandonnés".

"Nous ne devons jamais oublier - a souligné le Saint-Père - que plus nous aimons Dieu et plus nous sommes constants dans la prière, plus nous aimerons ceux qui nous sont proches, car nous serons capables de voir en toute personne le visage du Seigneur, qui aime sans limites et sans distinctions".

Benoît XVI s'est ensuite référé aux œuvres de la sainte, et a rappelé que "dans son expérience mystique, Catherine n'a pas eu de révélations spécifiques sur le purgatoire ou sur les âmes qui s'y purifient". La sainte ne présente pas le purgatoire "comme un élément du paysage des entrailles de la terre: c'est un feu non pas extérieur, mais intérieur (...). On ne part pas de l'au-delà pour raconter les tourments du purgatoire (...) et indiquer ensuite le chemin pour la purification et la conversion, mais on part de l'expérience intérieure de l'homme en marche vers l'éternité".

C'est pourquoi, pour Catherine, "l'âme est consciente de l'immense amour et de la parfaite justice de Dieu et, par conséquent, souffre de ne pas avoir répondu de façon parfaite à cet amour, tandis que l'amour même de Dieu (...) la purifie des scories de son péché".

Chez la mystique génoise on trouve une image typique de Denys l'Aréopagite, a expliqué le Pape: celle du fil d'or qui unit le cœur humain à Dieu. "Ainsi le cœur humain est-il envahi par l'amour de Dieu qui devient l'unique guide, l'unique moteur de son existence. Cette situation d'élévation vers Dieu et d'abandon à sa volonté, exprimée dans l'image du fil, est utilisée par Catherine pour exprimer l'action de la lumière divine sur les âmes du purgatoire, lumière qui les purifie et les élève jusqu'aux splendeurs de la lumière resplendissante de Dieu".

"Les saints, dans leur expérience d'union avec Dieu - a insisté le Pape - atteignent un "savoir" si profond sur les mystères divins, dans lequel amour et connaissance se compénètrent presque, qu'ils aident les théologiens dans leur étude".

"Par sa vie - a conclu le Pape - Catherine nous enseigne que plus nous aimons Dieu et plus nous entrons dans l'intimité avec Lui par l'oraison, plus Il se révèle à nous et enflamme notre cœur de son amour. Dans ses écrits sur le Purgatoire, la sainte nous rappelle une vérité fondamentale de la foi, qui pour nous représente une invitation à prier pour les défunts, pour qu'ils arrivent à la vision de Dieu dans la communion des saints".

"Le service humble, fidèle et généreux, que la sainte a rendu toute sa vie dans l'hôpital de Pammatone, est d'autre part un exemple lumineux de charité pour tous, et un encouragement particulier pour les femmes qui apportent une contribution fondamentale à la société et à l'Église par leur précieuse œuvre, enrichie par leur sensibilité et par leur attention aux plus pauvres et aux plus nécessiteux."

(source: VIS 20110112 670)

À Gênes en Ligurie, en 1510, sainte Catherie Fieschi, veuve, remarquable par son mépris du monde, ses jeûnes répétés, son amour de Dieu et sa charité envers les pauvres et les malades.

Martyrologe romain



Sainte Catherine de Gênes

Veuve

(1447-1510)

Catherine Fieschi, fille d'un vice-roi de Naples, naquit à Gênes. Sa famille, féconde en grands hommes, avait donné à l'Église deux Papes, neuf cardinaux et deux archevêques. Dès l'âge de huit ans, conduite par l'Esprit de Dieu, elle se mit à pratiquer de rudes mortifications; elle dormait sur une paillasse, avec un morceau de bois pour oreiller; mais elle avait soin de cacher ses pénitences. Elle pleurait toutes les fois qu'elle levait les yeux sur une image de Marie tenant Jésus mort dans Ses bras.

Malgré son vif désir du cloître, elle se vit obligée d'entrer dans l'état du mariage, où Dieu allait la préparer par de terribles épreuves à une vie d'une incroyable sainteté. Après cinq ans d'abandon, de mépris et de froideur de la part de son mari, après cinq ans de peines intérieures sans consolation, elle fut tout à coup éclairée de manière définitive sur la vanité du monde et sur les joies ineffables de l'amour divin: "Plus de monde, plus de péché," s'écria-t-elle. Jésus lui apparut alors chargé de Sa Croix, et couvert de sang de la tête aux pieds: "Vois, Ma fille, lui dit-Il, tout ce sang a été répandu au Calvaire pour l'amour de toi, en expiation de tes fautes!" La vue de cet excès d'amour alluma en Catherine une haine profonde contre elle-même: "O amour! Je ne pécherai plus," s'écria-t-elle.

Trois jours après, elle fit sa confession générale avec larmes, et désormais elle communia tous les jours. L'Eucharistie devint la nourriture de son corps et de son âme, et pendant vingt-trois ans il lui fut impossible de prendre autre chose que la Sainte Communion; elle buvait seulement chaque jour un verre d'eau mêlée de vinaigre et de sel, pour modérer le feu qui la dévorait, et, malgré cette abstinence, elle jouissait d'une forte santé.

À l'abstinence continuelle se joignaient de grandes mortifications; jamais de paroles inutiles, peu de sommeil; tous les jours six à sept heures de prière à genoux; jamais Catherine ne se départit de ces règles; elle était surtout si détachée d'elle-même, qu'elle en vint à n'avoir plus de désir et à se trouver dans une parfaite indifférence pour ce qui n'était pas Dieu.

Ses trois maximes principales étaient de ne jamais dire: Je veux, je ne veux pas, mien, tien: – de ne jamais s'excuser, – de se diriger en tout par ces mots: Que la Volonté de Dieu soit faite! Elle eut la consolation de voir son époux revenir à Dieu, dans les derniers jours de sa vie, et de l'assister à sa mort. À partir de ce moment, Catherine se donna tout entière au soin des malades, et y pratiqua les actes les plus héroïques.

Abbé L. Jaud, Vie des Saints pour tous les jours de l'année, Tours, Mame, 1950

SOURCE : http://magnificat.ca/cal/fr/saints/sainte_catherine_de_genes.html


BENOÎT XVI

AUDIENCE GÉNÉRALE

Salle Paul VI

Mercredi 12 janvier 2011

Catherine de Gênes


Chers frères et sœurs, née en 1447, Catherine de Gênes fit une expérience de conversion étonnante. Mariée à 16 ans avec un homme qui s’adonnait aux jeux de hasard, et insatisfaite du type de vie mondain qui était le sien, elle éprouvait vide et amertume en son cœur. Se rendant un jour à l’église pour se confesser, elle reçut alors «une blessure au cœur d’un immense amour de Dieu», qui lui montra à la fois ses misères et la bonté de Dieu. Immédiatement, elle décida de fuir le péché et le monde. Pendant 25 années, elle vécut, instruite intérieurement par le seul amour du Seigneur et nourrie par la prière constante et la communion quotidienne. Elle se dévoua au service des malades de l’hôpital de Pammatone qu’elle dirigea. Au cours de sa vie toute centrée sur Dieu et sur le prochain, Catherine reçut une connaissance particulière du purgatoire qu’elle décrit comme «un feu non extérieur mais intérieur» sur le chemin de la pleine communion avec Dieu. Devant l’amour de Dieu, l’âme fait une expérience de profonde douleur pour les péchés commis, alors qu’elle est liée par les désirs et la peine du péché qui la rendent incapable de jouir de la vision de Dieu. Il s’agit en effet, d’obtenir la sainteté nécessaire pour entrer dans la joie du ciel. Chers amis, les saints, dans leur expérience d’union à Dieu, atteignent un «savoir» si profond des mystères divins, qu’ils sont une aide pour tous et pour les théologiens dans la recherche de l‘intelligence de la foi.

* * *

Je salue cordialement les pèlerins francophones présents à cette audience. Puissiez-vous, avec sainte Catherine de Gênes, découvrir que l’amour de Dieu est comme un fil d’or unissant notre cœur à Dieu Lui-même ! Avec ma Bénédiction apostolique.

© Copyright 2011 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana

SOURCE : http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2011/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20110112_fr.html

Domenico Piola raffigurante Gesù con la croce appare a Santa Caterina Fieschi Adorno. San Filippo Neri (Genova)


SAINTE CATHERINE DE GÊNES

Sainte Catherine naquit á Gênes vers la fin de 1447. Elle était fille de Jacques Fiesque et petite-fille de Robert, frère du pape Innocent IV.

Elle avait trois frères et une soeur ainée, qui portait le nom de Simbania. Le nom de Catherine lui fut donné en l’honneur de Catherine de Sienne et de Catherine d’Alexandrie. Des biographes ont cru que Dieu l’avait placée sous le patronage de sainte Catherine d’Alexandrie, qui eut le don de l’intelligence. Catherine de Gênes l’eut aussi, et le martyre visible de la première Catherine fut remplacé ici par le sacrifice invisible de l’amour.

Ce dernier mot contient la vie de cette sainte très extraordinaire et peu connue.

A l’âge de treize ans sa vie intérieure avait éclaté, sa vie profonde et mystérieuse, pleine de larmes, pleine de feu, pleine de sang. Une précocité singulière l’avait livrée avant l’âge aux étreintes de l’Esprit. Elle savait à treize ans ce que les hommes passent leur vie à ignorer. Ils savent le nom du cuisinier de Julien l’Apostat; mais ils savent à peine le nom de Catherine et n’ont rien lu de ses ouvrages.

Pauvres hommes instruits, si vous daigniez lire sainte Catherine de Gênes, même en n'y comprenant rien, vous y gagneriez quelque chose, ne fût-ce qu’un peu d'étonnement et de vagues soupçons qu’il vous reste en ce bas monde quelque chose à apprendre ! Ce soupçon, à lui tout seul, vaudrait mieux que plusieurs années d’étude. Mais continuons.

A treize ans Catherine voulut entrer dans le couvent de Notre-Dame de Grâce, soumis à la règle de saint Augustin. Son âge l’empêcha d’y être admise. Il y a généralement dans la vie des saints, et surtout dans la vie des saints contemplatifs, une série de fausses démarches tout à fait inintelligibles. Ils hésitent, ils tâtonnent, ils se trompent, ils avancent, ils reviennent sur leurs pas, ils changent de route. Ils ont l’air de perdre leur temps. Les voies insondables par lesquelles ils sont conduits semblent d’une longueur extrême. On se demande pourquoi l’Esprit, qui les guide, ne leur indiquerait pas immédiatement la route courte et droite qui va au but. Pourquoi ? Oh ! pourquoi ? La question est sans réponse.

Cependant s’il fallait absolument, pour soulager l’esprit, en imaginer une, on pourrait dire que leurs erreurs leur donnent sur eux-mêmes, par la vertu du repentir et celle de l’expérience, des lumières profondes qu’ils n’auraient pas eues si leur vie avait été constamment simple et leur route constamment droite. Sainte Catherine de Gênes, qui avait spécialement horreur du mariage, se laissa marier par ses parents. Il en résulta une série de catastrophes. Le mariage fut conclu à son insu, et elle n’osa pas résister aux intérêts de famille. Elle se laissa conduire à l’autel et prononça, dit son historien, le oui fatal.

Son mari était un des plus mauvais sujets de son époque, et ce n’est pas peu dire, Il n’était pas seulement léger, il était joueur ; il n’était pas seulement vicieux, il était railleur et méchant. Catherine était d’une beauté rare, son esprit était charmant, Julien Adorne, son mari, absolument insensible aux avantages même extérieurs de sa femme, ne songeait, dans les moments où il pensait à elle, qu’à la tourmenter de toutes les façons. Le reste du temps il l’oubliait, et ses oublis n’étaient pas innocents. Cet homme, très riche au moment de son mariage, donna à ses vices la permission de le ruiner. Accablée depuis cinq ans des traitements les plus horribles, Catherine maigrit au point de ne plus être reconnue par ses amies. Sa beauté s’en alla avec sa santé. Toute sa famille, désespérée du mariage auquel elle l’avait contrainte, la supplia de ne pas mourir de chagrin, de chercher loin de son mari les consolations que le monde donne aux esprits légers dont il est plein. Catherine, usée par le malheur, se laissa persuader, sortit de sa vie intérieure et mena pendant cinq ans l’existence d’une femme du monde, Quand je disais que les routes sont impossibles à comprendre, évidemment je ne disais pas trop, et même je ne disais pas assez. Ceux qui veulent expliquer tout pourraient trouver dans le mariage de Catherine le moyen de la conduire, par une voie terrible, à une perfection plus élevée. Mais voici qu’elle succombe. Voici qu’elle abandonne l’attrait intérieur qu’elle suivait à treize ans; voici que, désespérée, découragée, repoussée de Dieu en apparence, et en réalité repoussée de l’homme à qui Dieu l’avait unie, elle tombe de toute sa hauteur ! Après cinq années de malheurs, voici cinq années de fautes ! Voilà cinq années de perdues ! A moins que cinq ans d’erreur ne fussent nécessaires pour donner au repentir l’occasion d’entrer et de creuser l’âme !

Cependant celle qui était une sainte à treize ans ne pouvait pas tout oublier. « C’était en vain, a-t-elle dit plus tard, que tous ces plaisirs se réunissaient pour satisfaire mes appétits, ils ne pouvaient les rassasier : mon âme était d’une capacité infinie; toutes les jouissances de la terre seraient entrées en elle sans la remplir. »

Un jour Catherine se plaignit à sa soeur Simbania du vide affreux dont elle souffrait. Sa soeur, qui connaissait un très saint religieux, supplia Catherine de s’approcher du sacrement de pénitence. Catherine, ébranlée par ses propres souvenirs, ne dit pas non. Simbania fit prévenir le prêtre qu'il s’agissait d’une très grande conversion, et que celle qui allait peut-être s’adresser à lui le lendemain était apellée à gravir les sommets. En effet, le lendemain Catherine se décide; elle se rend à l’église, demande le prêtre, et s’agenouille, en l’attendant, dans le confessionnal.

Ici se passe un grand drame.

Un rayon de lumière tombe sur Catherine agenouillée ; elle voit. Que voit-elle ? Elle seule pourrait le dire, ou plutôt elle-même ne le pourrait pas. Elle voit sa prédestination, elle voit sa vie depuis sa chute. Les cinq années qu’elle vient de passer lui apparaissent telles qu’elles sont dans la lumière divine. Catherine perd la parole et le sentiment. Le prêtre, qui était entré au confessionnal, croit qu’elle se prépare en silence, et la laisse à son recueillement. Le silence continuait. Catherine était en extase. Le temps passe. On vient chercher le prêtre pour une affaire pressante. Il avertit Catherine de son départ et de son prompt retour. Catherine n’entend rien. Il s’en va; il revient : Catherine est dans la même attitude et dans le même silence. Il l’exhorte à parler. Rappelée péniblement du fond de l’extase, elle fait un immense effort, mais ne peut dire qu’un mot : « Mon Père, je ne peux pas parler. Si vous le voulez, je remettrai à plus tard cette confession ».

Elle rentre à la maison, jette loin d’elle ses ornements, répand des torrents de larmes. Le pavé de sa chambre est inondé, visiblement inondé, comme la terre après un orage. Il paraít que, pendant l’extase, un dard brûlant lui était entré dans le coeur. Elle raconte dans ses dialogues qu’à travers ses sanglots elle prononçait une seule parole : Se peut-il, ó Amour, que vous m’ayez prévenue et révélé en un seul instant tout ce que la parole ne peut exprimer ?

Elle avait eu son chemin de Damas. Elle avait été foudroyée.

Pendant quelque temps elle poussa le repentir jusqu’à la fureur. L’horreur de sa chute la conduisit à des violences dont le récit serait à peine accepté aujourd’hui. On n’oserait plus même raconter les choses qu’elle osa faire. L’hôpital de la Miséricorde fut souvent le témoin discret de ses audaces singulières. Elle se dévoua aux soins les plus difficiles envers les maladies les plus répugnantes, et dépassa ce qui était nécessaire. Elle céda à cet instinct que saint Paul appelle la Folie de la Croix. Ses actes extérieurs n’étaient que les ombres des actes intérieurs qui les inspiraient. Elle disait souvent : « Les macérations imposées au corps sont parfaitement inutiles lorsqu’elles ne sont pas accompagnées de l’abnégation du moi. »

Après quatorze mois d’une pénitence terrible, elle reçut l’assurance d’avoir complétement satisfait à la justice.

A cette époque, disent les biographes contemporains, le souvenir poignant de ses fautes, qui jusqu’alors l’avait poursuivie jour et nuit, lui fut enlevé complètement. Elle ne se souvint pas plus de ses péchés que s’ils eussent été noyés au fond de la mer.

Ici commence la vie nouvelle da Catherine, la vie sur la hauteur. Elle atteint et décrit elle-même cet état qu’elle appelle la nudité de l'amour. Depuis le jour da son foudroiement, elle ne perdit pas de vue une seule fois la présence de Dieu. Sa conversion ne procéda pas, comme tant d’autres, par degrés : elle fut soudaine et éternelle. Jamais elle n’avança méthodiquement.

« Si je revenais sur mes pas, disait-elle, je voudrais qu’on m’arrachât les yeux, et je ne trouverais pas que ce fût assez. »

La contemplation de sainte Catherine alla toujours en montant et sa fixa sur les sommets. Pendant que d’autres, comme sainte Gertrude par exemple, suivaient sur la poussière des routes humaines la trace des pas de Jésus-Christ et s’attachaient de toutes leurs forces à suivre son humanité, sainte Catherine de Gênes était emportée vers l’abîme de sa divinité. Sans exclure de son oraison et de sa contemplation les mystères qui donnent sur la vie humaine de Jésus, elle se nourrissait plus spécialement de ceux qui donnent sur la vie divine du Christ. Peu de regards partis de la terre sont allés si haut dans le ciel.

Catherine eut la vue intérieure du péché, et sachant ce qu’il y a au fond d’un péché véniel, elle en conçut une horreur telle qu’elle allait mourir si Dieu ne l’eût affermie.

Si elle croyait voir en elle la plus légère imperfection, elle était, disait-elle, jusqu’à ce qu’elle en fût délivrée, elle était dans une chaudière bouillante.

« Ma vision du péché véniel n’a duré qu’un instant disait-elle ; elle eût suffit pour réduire en poudre un corps de diamant, si elle s’était prolongée. Qu’est-ce donc que le péché mortel ? Quiconque comprend ce que sont le péché et la grâce ne peut redouter ni estimer autre chose. »

« Je vois, disait Catherine, je vois dans le Tout-Puissant un tel penchant à s’unir à la créature raisonnable, faite par lui et à son image, que si le diable pouvait se délivrer de son péché, le Seigneur l’élèverait à cette hauteur où Lucifer voulait monter par sa révolte, c’est-à-dire qu’il le ferait comme Dieu, non pas sans doute par nature ou par essence, mais par participation. »

Je livre cette sublime pensée aux méditations de ceux qui aiment à respirer l’air des montagnes. Les horizons qui s’ouvrent de ce côté sont des horizons inconnus. « Dieu peut faire, dit saint Paul, plus que nous ne pouvons désirer. »

Un jour sainte Catherine entendit cette parole que le Saint-Esprit lui adressait :

Il te serait plus doux d’être dans une fournaise ardente que de subir le dépouillement parfait auquel je veux faire arriver ton âme.

L'histoire de ce dépouillement a été écrite ou plutôt balbutiée par sainte Catherine elle-même. Sa parole consiste dans un silence tremblant. Elle s'excuse de parler, comme Angèle de Foligno. Elle nous avertit que les mots trahissent, au lieu de la révéler, l’ardeur qui la consume.

« Le Seigneur, dit-elle, voulut séparer en elle l’âme de l’esprit. Cette séparation est accompagnée d’une souffrance profonde et subtile, et absolument inexprimable. Le Seigneur versa dans l’âme de cette créature (c’est d’elle-même qu’elle parle) un nouvel amour si véhément qu’il tira l’âme à lui avec toutes ses puissances, de telle manière qu’elle était enlevée à son être naturel. L’oeuvre, ajoute Catherine, est surnaturelle. Elle s’accomplit dans l’océan de l’amour secret, et telle est la profondeur de cet océan, qu’on n’y entre pas sans se noyer. Une chose si haute ne se peut comprendre : elle excède les puissances de l’âme.

Sainte Catherine rend à chaque instant témoignage à l’impuissance de la parole humaine. Elle habite, au-dessus des choses qui se pensent, le domaine des choses qui se sentent, et ses cris ressemblent aux efforts du silence qui, mécontent de lui-même, essayerait de vaincre sa nature.

Le silence tourne en rugissant autour de la parole de saint Paul : « Le verbe de Dieu est vivant, efficace, plus pénétrant que le glaive ; il atteint jusqu’à la division de l’âme et de l’esprit. »

L’âme et l’esprit ne sont pas deux substances différentes comme l’âme et le corps. Au point de vue philosophique, il n’y a dans l’homme que l’âme el le corps. Qu’est-ce donc que la division de l’âme et de l’esprit ? Saint Paul lance dans le monde cette parole inconnue, comme un glaive de feu au milieu d’un champ de bataille, et s’en va n’expliquant rien. Sainte Catherine de Gênes relève le glaive de feu. Elle passe sa vie à commenter la parole de saint Paul ; mais son commentaire, par cela même qu’il est magnifique, augmente la nuit noire au lieu de la dissiper ; car ici, la nuit, c’est la lumière. Plus sainte Catherine développe la parole de saint Paul, plus elle dégage le mystère contenu, plus les ténèbres sacrées s’étendent et l’envahissent. Aussi, après chaque phrase elle sent grandir en elle l’impossibilité de parler ; mais le silence succombe à son tour devant un nouvel effort de langage qui ne naît que pour mourir. Ainsi la parole et le silence se succèdent, tous deux insuffisants, tous deux nécessaires. Chacun d’eux fait un effort pour racheter la misère de l’autre.

Écoutons-la :

« Et l’esprit dit à l’âme : - Je veux me séparer de toi. Maintenant je te répondrai en paroles ; plus tard je te répondrai par des faits, et alors tu porteras envie aux morts. Tu as dérobé les grâces de Dieu; tu les as rapportées à toi, tu te les appropries si subtilement que tu ne t'en aperçois pas.

« Et l’âme répondit : - Je reconnais mon larcin. J’ai volé les choses les plus importantes qui soient au monde. Mon péché est grand et subtil.

« Et l’esprit étant lui-même attiré par Dieu, quoique sans le savoir, attira tout à lui avec impétuosité, et l’âme fut consumée avec tous les sentiments corporels, et la créature demeura noyée en Dieu.

« Et l’âme s’écria : O langue, pourquoi parles-tu, puisque tu n’as pas de mots pour exprimer l’amour ?

« O mon coeur, pourquoi ne me consumes-tu pas ? Seigneur, vous m’avez montré une lumière nouvelle par laquelle j’ai vu que tout mon précédent amour n’était qu’amour-propre. Mes opérations étaient souillées, elles demeuraient cachées en moi, je les abritais sous votre ombre, et je me les appropriais ! Que dire de l’amour ? Je suis surmontée, je le sens opérer en moi et je ne comprends pas l’opération. Je me sens brûlée, et je ne vois pas le feu. O amour, tu m’as fermé la bouche. Je ne sais, je ne puis plus parler. Je ne veux plus chercher ce qui ne se peut trouver. »

Et après un silence, elle recommence à crier :

« O amour, celui qui te sent ne te comprend pas, et celui qui veut te connaître ne peut te comprendre. O coeur navré, tu es incurable, et, conduit à la mort, tu recommences à vivre ! Si je pouvais exprimer l’amour, il me semble que tous les coeurs s’enflammeraient. Avant de quitter cette vie, je voudrais être capable d’en parler une fois. Quelle chose délicieuse ce serait de parler de l’amour, si l’on trouvait des paroles ! L’amour redresse les choses tortueuses et unit les contraires. O amour, comment appelez-vous les âmes qui vous sont chères ? »

Et le Seigneur répondit: « Ego dixi, dii estis et filii Excelsi omnes. Je l’ai dit : vous êtes des dieux et les fils du Très-Haut. »

Après vingt-cinq ans, Dieu adressa Catherine à Cattaneo. Elle alla vers lui et lui dit : « J’ai persévéré vingt-cinq ans dans la voie spirituelle ; maintenant je ne puis supporter la violence des assauts intérieurs et extérieurs; c’est pourquoi j’ai été pourvue de vous. Je crois que Dieu vous a confié le soin de ma personne toute seule et que vous ne devriez vous occuper que de moi. »

Et, parlant à un de ses enfants spirituels : « Si je parle de l’amour, disait-elle, il me semble que je l’insulte, tant mes paroles sont loin de la réalité. Sachez seulement que si une goutte de ce que contient mon coeur tombait en enfer, l’enfer serait changé en paradis. »

Tel est le langage de sainte Catherine de Gênes. Ce sont des discours, des cris, des sanglots et des silences, et chacune de ces choses appelle les autres à son secours, comme pour triompher avec leur aide des faiblesses de sa nature.

Ernest Hello. Physionomies de saints.

SOURCE : https://archive.org/stream/PhysionomiesDeSaintsParErnestHello/physionomies%20de%20saints_djvu.txt

La visión de santa Catalina Fieschi Adorno, 1747


Sainte Catherine de Gênes

Veuve (1447-1510)

Catherine Fieschi, fille d’un vice-roi de Naples, naquit à Gênes. Sa famille, féconde en grands hommes, avait donné à l’Église deux Papes, neuf cardinaux et deux archevêques. Dès l’âge de huit ans, conduite par l’Esprit de Dieu, elle se mit à pratiquer de rudes mortifications ; elle dormait sur une paillasse, avec un morceau de bois pour oreiller ; mais elle avait soin de cacher ses pénitences. Elle pleurait toutes les fois qu’elle levait les yeux sur une image de Marie tenant Jésus mort dans Ses bras.

Malgré son vif désir du cloître, elle se vit obligée d’entrer dans l’état du mariage, où Dieu allait la préparer par de terribles épreuves à une vie d’une incroyable sainteté. Après cinq ans d’abandon, de mépris et de froideur de la part de son mari, après cinq ans de peines intérieures sans consolation, elle fut tout à coup éclairée de manière définitive sur la vanité du monde et sur les joies ineffables de l’amour divin : "Plus de monde, plus de péché," s’écria-t-elle. Jésus lui apparut alors chargé de Sa Croix, et couvert de sang de la tête aux pieds : "Vois, Ma fille, lui dit-Il, tout ce sang a été répandu au Calvaire pour l’amour de toi, en expiation de tes fautes !" La vue de cet excès d’amour alluma en Catherine une haine profonde contre elle-même : "O amour ! Je ne pécherai plus," s’écria-t-elle.

Trois jours après, elle fit sa confession générale avec larmes, et désormais elle communia tous les jours. L’Eucharistie devint la nourriture de son corps et de son âme, et pendant vingt-trois ans il lui fut impossible de prendre autre chose que la Sainte Communion ; elle buvait seulement chaque jour un verre d’eau mêlée de vinaigre et de sel, pour modérer le feu qui la dévorait, et, malgré cette abstinence, elle jouissait d’une forte santé.

À l’abstinence continuelle se joignaient de grandes mortifications ; jamais de paroles inutiles, peu de sommeil ; tous les jours six à sept heures de prière à genoux ; jamais Catherine ne se départit de ces règles ; elle était surtout si détachée d’elle-même, qu’elle en vint à n’avoir plus de désir et à se trouver dans une parfaite indifférence pour ce qui n’était pas Dieu.

Ses trois maximes principales étaient de ne jamais dire : Je veux, je ne veux pas, mien, tien : - de ne jamais s’excuser, - de se diriger en tout par ces mots : Que la Volonté de Dieu soit faite ! Elle eut la consolation de voir son époux revenir à Dieu, dans les derniers jours de sa vie, et de l’assister à sa mort. A partir de ce moment, Catherine se donna tout entière au soin des malades, et y pratiqua les actes les plus héroïques.

SOURCE : http://viechretienne.catholique.org/saints/4275-sainte-catherine-de-genes


Prière de Sainte Catherine de Gênes

à Jésus-Christ

Voici la Prière « Ô mon Amour doux Jésus » de Sainte Catherine de Gênes (1447-1510), Religieuse et auteur mystique qui visitait les malades, soignait les lépreux et les pestiférés et qui fut canonisée en 1737 par le pape Clément XII. La pensée de Sainte Catherine de Gênes se concentre en un seul point à quoi tout se ramène et de quoi tout jaillit : la pureté de l'amour.

La Prière de Sainte Catherine de Gênes « Ô mon Amour doux Jésus » :

« Ô Amour, le cœur qui te goûte atteint déjà en ce monde le commencement de la vie éternelle. Mais toi, Seigneur, tu gardes cachée cette œuvre à celui qui la possède, pour qu'il n'aille point gâter ton œuvre par son amour-propre. Ô Amour, que peut-on dire de toi ? Qui te ressent ne te comprend pas, qui te veut comprendre ne peut te connaître. Ô Amour, je ne puis plus me taire et jamais je ne pourrai parler comme je le voudrais de tes suaves et douces opérations. Ton amour me remplit de toute part, il me donne un vif mouvement de parler et aussitôt je m'en trouve empêchée. Je me parle alors à moi-même de cœur et d'esprit, mais quand je veux prononcer les mots et exprimer ce que je sens, aussitôt je suis arrêtée et déçue par cette langue impuissante. Je voudrais donc me taire et je ne puis, parce que l'instinct de parler m'aiguillonne ; j'ai l'impression que si je pouvais exprimer cet amour que je ressens au cœur, tout autre cœur s'enflammerait, si loin soit-il de l'amour. Ô Amour fort et suave, heureux celui que tu possèdes ! Tu le fortifies, tu le défends, tu le gardes de toute opposition de 1'âme et du corps. Tu mènes doucement toute chose à sa fin et jamais tu n'abandonnes l'homme, tu lui es fidèle, tu lui donnes lumière contre les tromperies du démon, contre la malice du monde et contre lui-même. Ô Amour, ta douceur brise les cœurs plus durs que le diamant et les liquéfie comme la cire au feu. Ô Amour, tu chasses du cœur tout chagrin, toute dureté, toute propriété et toute délectation terrestre. Ô Amour, ton nom est si suave qu'il rend suave toute chose. Douce est la bouche qui te nomme. Ô Amour, qu'elle est douce ta suavité et suave la douceur que tu apportes avec toi ! Tu en fais part à chacun et à mesure que tu te répands en plus de créatures, à mesure aussi s'accomplit ta volonté. Plus l'homme ressent et connaît ton ardeur suave, plus il en est embrasé, étourdi, affolé. Ô Amour, bienheureux le cœur que tu possèdes et que tu emprisonnes ! Ô Amour, tout ce qui se fait par toi se fait sans peine, avec joie, avec élan. Ô Amour, tes liens sont si suaves et si forts qu'ils lient ensemble les anges et les saints, ils tiennent ferme et serré et jamais ne se rompent. Les hommes liés de ce lien restent si fortement unis qu'ils n'ont qu'une volonté, un seul objet; on voit que toute chose leur est commune, soit temporelle, soit spirituelle. Dans ce lien il n'est fait nulle différence de riche à pauvre, de nation à nation, toute sorte d'opposition est exclue dès qu'existe cet amour qui redresse tout ce qui est tortu et unit les contraires. Ô mon Amour, doux Jésus, qui t'a fait venir du ciel en terre ? L'amour. Qui t'a fait subir jusqu'à la mort tant et de si horribles tourments ? L'amour. Qui t'a fait donner toi-même en nourriture à l'âme ta bien-aimée ? L'amour. Qui t'a mû au point que tu nous as envoyé et continuellement tu nous envoies, pour être notre force et notre guide, ton Saint-Esprit ? L'amour. Amen.» 

Sainte Catherine de Gênes (1447-1510)

SOURCE : http://site-catholique.fr/index.php?post/Priere-de-Sainte-Catherine-de-Genes

Denys Savchenko. Saint Catherine of Genoa, Church of St. Catherine, Genoa, Italy.


Sainte Catherine de Gênes, une sainte en Purgatoire

Florent Thibout

Sainte Catherine de Gênes (1447-1510) a été gratifiée d’une expérience mystique par laquelle il lui fut donné d’éprouver dans sa chair la souffrance des âmes du purgatoire mais surtout d’en comprendre, autant que faire se peut, la nature et les raisons.

Rappelons en passant que la doctrine du purgatoire n’est pas, comme on le croit aujourd’hui trop souvent, une trouvaille tardive de l’Église. Son existence est attestée dans les Évangiles (Mt 5,25-26 ; Lc 12,58-59), surtout dans saint Paul (1 Co 3,15), mais aussi dans l’Ancien Testament. Dans le deuxième Livre des Maccabées (ch.12), il est question de prier pour les morts, donc pour des âmes qui ne sont ni au ciel ni en enfer.

Les curieux seront déçus. La révélation de sainte Catherine de Gênes ne donne lieu a aucune imagerie fantastique mais à un véritable traité théologique dont les informations (et c’est évidemment une garantie) concordent en tous points avec l’enseignement de l’Église, qu’elles éclairent sans rien y ajouter, avec sa foi, qui est la même hier, aujourd’hui et demain. Le Traité du purgatoire est, stricto sensu, une œuvre traditionnelle.

Il pourrait aussi bien s’appeler « traité du péché » ou « traité de la justice divine », ou encore « traité de la miséricorde de Dieu ». Ce sont des pages de feu dont la lecture donne vraiment envie de gagner ici-bas notre paradis sans faire le détour par un purgatoire que l’on a tendance aujourd’hui (dans la mesure, et elle est faible, où l’on s’en soucie encore et où les paroissiens entendent prêcher les fins dernières) à considérer comme une salle d’attente assez tranquille, un peu ennuyeuse sans doute, mais guère plus, avant la vision béatifique. Détrompons-nous. Les souffrances du purgatoire sont aussi vives que celles de l’enfer quand même elles s’accompagnent, mais sans les diminuer, d’une joie intense due à la certitude d’être sauvé et, au terme de la purification, d’être pleinement uni à Dieu.

C’est dans cette tension que réside l’essentiel des souffrances des âmes du purgatoire. Elles sont unies à Dieu par un lien de charité parfaite (elles veulent ce que Dieu veut) et elles voient par conséquent toute l’horreur du péché. C’est une souffrance d’amour. Leurs peines sont d’autant plus intenses qu’elles sont attirées vers Dieu et qu’elles voient toute la laideur des souillures qui les empêchent de Lui être déjà unies. Un raisonnement hâtif pourrait faire croire que leurs souffrances diminuent à mesure que le feu de l’amour les débarrasse de leurs scories. Il est vrai qu’à mesure qu’elles sont purifiées, elles voient de mieux en mieux la bonté, la beauté et la pureté de Dieu, et c’est le motif d’une paix grandissante. Mais en même temps, c’est aussi leur regard sur leurs péchés, sur tout ce qui les sépare encore de Dieu, qui gagne en acuité, et c’est la source de la plus vive souffrance. Le temps de la peine diminue, pas l’intensité des souffrances.

C’est l’amour de Dieu, l’amour que Dieu a pour les âmes, qui les attire à Lui et suscite en elles un amour toujours plus grand :

L’amour divin, en subjuguant cette âme, lui confère une paix inimaginable, quoique celle-ci ne diminue en rien ses souffrances, puisque c’est l’amour différé qui les occasionne, et elles sont d’autant plus grandes que Dieu l’a faite plus capable de son amour ». (chapitre XII)

Et pourtant, comme la volonté de ces âmes est si complètement unie à celle de Dieu par la charité parfaite, et qu’elles se trouvent si heureuses d’être placées sous sa divine dépendance, on ne peut pas dire que leur peine (qualifiée néanmoins ailleurs « d’épouvantable ») soit une souffrance. (Chapitre II)

Les peines du purgatoire ne sont pas d’ordre « psychologique ». L’âme y souffre, elle ne se torture pas. C’est une souffrance sans médiation aucune. L’âme souffre parce qu’elle n’est pas encore unie à ce Dieu pour lequel elle est faite : la souffrance est l’effet direct de son exil ontologique et non pas la conséquence d’une quelconque ratiocination, de quelque rumination de ses fautes. Une âme exilée, oui, mais pas une conscience malheureuse.

Ses souffrances ne peuvent pas être de type psychologique parce qu’à l’heure de la mort, les âmes sauvées sont débarrassées de toute intériorité.

A l’instant où elles quittent la terre, elles voient pourquoi elles sont envoyées en purgatoire, mais plus jamais après ; autrement, elles retiendraient encore quelque chose de personnel, ce qui ne peut avoir accès en ce lieu. Étant affermies en la charité, elles ne peuvent plus en dévier par aucun défaut (la peine du purgatoire, c’est donc d’être dans un rapport de pleine charité avec Dieu mais non encore satisfait par une pleine union avec Lui) et n’ont plus d’autres désirs que la pure volonté du parfait amour, ne pouvant en être séparé par quoi que ce soit. Elles ne peuvent ni commettre le péché, ni mériter en s’en abstenant. (chapitre I)

C’en est fini du remords, de la contrition, de la considération du temps passé et des fautes commises. Nous sommes dans l’éternité. Affranchis du temps et de l’espace. Il y a un mystère de cet état qui nécessairement est hors temps, puisque nous avons franchi les portes de la mort, mais où, pourtant, l’on endure. Mystère, puisque toute endurance suppose une forme de temporalité. Au moins pouvons-nous supposer qu’au purgatoire celle-ci ne se compte plus en jours [1]. Elle doit être une sorte d’écoulement mais sans possibilité pour l’âme de se projeter vers un lendemain ou de se retourner vers un hier. Donc une sorte de durée sans passé ni avenir..., sans être pour autant l’Instant éternel, sans durée ni endurance, le perpétuel présent de l’éternité bienheureuse.

Où l’on voit aussi confirmé ce que nous avons l’occasion de constater ici-bas bien souvent : que la temporalité est peineuse et pénible. Certes, l’endurance du temps peut être sereine puisque l’espace temporel est la carrière qui nous est ouverte pour la course vers le ciel. Mais le temps demeure le milieu où la psyché trouve à languir et à souffrir ici-bas et apparemment, mais d’une façon nouvelle (plus pure dans son être donc plus dure), dans l’au-delà. Ainsi, les damnés, bien que se retrouvant dans l’éternité propre à ce qui est post mortem, semblent, d’après sainte Catherine et contrairement aux âmes du purgatoire, ne pas être affranchis de la rumination du passé, de la considération de soi et donc de l’enlisement dans la temporalité qui en est la condition. Les âmes du purgatoire souffrent de la peine de leur péché mais pas de la culpabilité. Les damnés, si. Ils demeurent dans la prison de leur moi, à jamais rongés par le désespoir, entre un passé qui les condamne et un avenir sans avenir, animés d’une éternelle volonté mauvaise que la bonté de Dieu ne peut plus toucher puisqu’avec la mort, ils sont fixés dans l’état où leur liberté les a mis.

L’intensité des souffrances des âmes du purgatoire et même celles des damnés ne doivent pas nous faire douter de la miséricorde de Dieu. Bien au contraire. Ces souffrances sont dans l’ordre. Cet ordre est juste et cette justice est miséricordieuse. Ce n’est pas Dieu qui veut la souffrance, c’est le péché qui les imposent.

On se plaît depuis quelques années à opposer de façon caricaturale (et pas toujours innocente) une Église d’aujourd’hui qui aurait « redécouvert » que Dieu est miséricorde à une Église du passé (n’y en a-t-il pas qu’une ?), dite « janséniste », qui aurait été exclusivement préoccupée, pour ne pas dire obsédée, par la justice d’un Dieu vengeur. Et d’invoquer, pour soutenir ce poncif lancinant, l’enseignement de Thérèse de Lisieux dont aucune parole, pourtant, n’a jamais opposé justice et miséricorde, mais qui toujours rappelle que la justice de Dieu est d’autant plus miséricordieuse qu’elle inclut la considération de notre faiblesse (et cela jusqu’au purgatoire où, d’après sainte Catherine, pour ne pas désespérer l’âme qui Le désire, Dieu a la bonté de la libérer de la considération réflexive des fautes dont elle doit être purifiée. Considération qui, vu leur nouvelle et entière lucidité, serait la source d’une douleur, d’un désespoir insupportable). Oui, la justice de Dieu inclut la charité mais inversement, comme dit saint Vincent de Paul, « il n’y a point de charité qui ne soit accompagnée de Justice ».

La justice de Dieu est miséricordieuse, même aux damnés. Les âmes sont conduites dans le « lieu » qui correspond à l’état de péché mortel ou de sainteté où elles sont trouvées, du fait de leur liberté, à l’heure de la mort. Ce n’est pas Dieu qui les y conduit.

A l’instant même où l’âme se sépare du corps, elle va au lieu qui lui est assigné, n’ayant besoin d’autres guides que la nature du péché lui-même, si elle a quitté le corps en état de péché mortel. Et si l’âme était empêchée d’obéir à ce décret (procédant de la justice de Dieu), elle se trouverait dans un enfer plus profond encore, car elle serait en dehors de l’ordre divin, dans lequel la miséricorde trouve toujours place et mitige la peine complète que l’âme a méritée. C’est pourquoi, ne trouvant pas de lieu mieux approprié, ni dans lequel la peine serait moindre, elle se précipite d’elle-même dans celui qui l’attend. (chapitre VII)

Il n’est nulle « partie » de l’ordre voulu par Dieu qui ne soit habitée de la présence de Celui qui l’a instituée. L’enfer est dans l’ordre des choses divines. Il faut donc croire que Dieu n’en est pas absent, pas complètement, même si l’enfer se définit comme l’état de séparation définitive d’avec Dieu — « Si descendero in infernum, ades » (Psaume 138). Il y a au moins une relation entre l’enfer et Dieu, c’est qu’il appartient à l’ordre voulu par la divine prudence. Il y a donc pire que les pires décrets de l’ordre divin, et ce serait, s’il était possible, le désordre : une situation (ou plutôt non-situation) sans aucun référent pour dire même en quoi elle serait désordonnée, une situation où Dieu serait alors, en tout sens absolument absent.

La vision de sainte Catherine nous est aussi l’occasion d’évacuer un autre lieu commun, lié au premier en ce qu’il est lui aussi l’effet d’une allergie très moderne à la notion même de justice. Il se manifeste par l’incompréhension des notions de peines et de rachats. On n’y voit guère autre chose que l’exigence d’un Dieu rémunérateur, comptable, et finalement bien peu généreux, pour ne pas dire cruel. En général, on ne manque pas de conclure la tirade en parlant de « juridisme ».

Mais ce n’est pas Dieu qui veut la peine, elle est le fruit (amer, sans doute) de la liberté — de la liberté de l’homme dans son rapport à la vérité, donc, le fruit de la justice.

On se demandera alors, pourquoi Dieu ne passe-t-il pas tout simplement l’éponge ? Ce serait Lui demander d’aller contre son ordre, au Logos d’aller contre sa Logique et de commettre une absurdité, au Tout-puissant de commettre l’impossible. Sans doute, Dieu est-il maître de l’ordre des choses, puisque celui-ci est un décret de son infinie liberté. Cela n’implique pourtant pas que Dieu puisse se contredire en le bouleversant (l’exception du miracle est une exception, qui, d’ailleurs, loin de bouleverser l’ordre, le manifeste avec plus d’éclat). La liberté de Dieu est infinie, elle n’est pas arbitraire. L’ordre qu’Il a voulu Lui est, de quelque façon, « co-naturel » (même si, évidemment, la création n’est pas pour Dieu une nécessité).

Qui réfute la nécessité des peines de l’enfer et du purgatoire, réfute aussi, contre toute évidence (quelques catholiques, ou prétendus tels, catholiques à gros tirage, le font aujourd’hui volontiers), la nécessité des souffrances que doit endurer sur terre celui qui veut se sanctifier, et même celle des souffrances du Fils pour la rédemption des hommes (et pourtant, « Il faut qu’il souffre beaucoup », dit l’évangile). A chaque fois, c’est faire peu de cas du péché originel, méconnaître la nature du mal et celle de la créature qui doit être sauvée puis, sauf accès direct au Paradis, être encore purifiée.

Récrimination classique : Dieu ne pouvait-Il pas nous sauver autrement ? D’un coup de force, ou de baguette magique, faire notre salut en expulsant à tout jamais le péché du monde ? Mais c’est l’homme que Dieu veut sauver. Et l’homme est une créature libre : une personne. Ce coup de force reviendrait à nier sa liberté. Il n’y aurait alors plus personne à sauver puisque l’objet du salut ne serait plus une personne... Sauver l’homme, c’est s’adresser à sa liberté, c’est sauver sa liberté faussée par le péché originel. Or, en toute logique (logique ontologique, certes mise à mal depuis notre père Adam), une liberté ne peut être sauvée que par elle-même. Elle se perd ou elle se sauve elle-même. Sinon, elle n’est plus libre. Le salut est son affaire, son choix. Situation paradoxale : pour se sauver, il faut une liberté parfaitement libre ; or, non seulement, celle-ci ne l’est plus — depuis la Chute, elle est bien incapable de se restaurer elle-même — mais si elle l’était encore, elle n’aurait pas besoin d’être sauvée, étant alors d’elle-même toujours en accord avec la vérité, avec la volonté de Dieu.

Cercle vicieux dont seul Dieu peut nous... libérer. Et cela, seulement par l’Incarnation, qui fait paraître sur terre, une liberté humaine authentique, parfaitement libre, qui veut toujours ce que veut Dieu parce qu’elle est aussi celle d’un Dieu : la liberté du Christ, seule liberté humaine qui n’a pas besoin d’être sauvé mais qui a le pouvoir de faire l’humainement impossible : sauver toutes les autres libertés, les libérer du péché, les sauver à leur place. A la seule condition que celles-ci acceptent de prendre place en Lui, de faire corps avec Lui. Donc, aussi de souffrir avec Lui.

Nécessité de la souffrance. L’œuvre du salut est nécessairement une souffrance. Souffrance d’une liberté parfaite, qui, dans un monde de péché, veut absolument ce que veut le Père. Souffrance du pur qui se fait impur (le sans péché s’est fait péché pour nous, dit saint Paul) pour le purifier. Abaissement de l’Incarnation : pour un Dieu, c’est la première (« Il ne s’est pas prévalu de sa condition divine, mais il s’est anéanti... devenant semblable aux hommes... », Ph 2,6) Le Christ souffrira les injures, les coups et la croix. Dans sa chair, mais plus encore, et plus durement que tout homme soumis à un même calvaire, dans son âme, avec une sensibilité surhumaine, avec une inimaginable aversion pour le mal, parce qu’il est le Bien en personne.

Une pure souffrance, plus qu’humaine, plus que physique et psychologique, une souffrance vraiment ontologique, où le Bien souffre du Mal. Et cela n’est pas arbitraire, ce n’est pas l’exigence d’un Dieu cruel, c’est dans la nature du bien et mal, de l’être et du non être. Le Christ, qui n’est que Bien et Bonheur, pur esprit qui ne peut donc souffrir, ne peut néanmoins que souffrir, et jusqu’à la croix, dès qu’Il s’incarne. C’est nécessaire et volontaire. Il veut souffrir ce que nous devrions souffrir, si nous le pouvions et le voulions, pour vaincre le mal et redevenir les êtres bons que la bonté divine avait créés à son image et ressemblance.

Toutes proportions gardées, c’est une souffrance du même ordre — en ce qui concerne la nécessité, l’acuité dans la sensibilité, et le consentement — qu’endure l’âme du purgatoire (avec, bien sûr, au moins cette différence que la sensibilité du Christ au mal est extrême et que ses souffrances sont d’autant plus cruelles qu’il ne les a mérité en rien). Elle voit en toute lucidité le mal, ce qui la sépare encore de Dieu et elle veut sa purification. Elle souffre de ses impuretés « comme » le Christ souffrait de l’impureté de sa création ; et, « comme » Lui, bien plus que physiquement (bien obligée : elle n’a plus de corps).

L’âme du purgatoire, qui est une âme sauvée, est désormais en pleine communion de charité avec Dieu. Elle veut ce que veut Dieu, à la façon dont le Fils veut tout ce que veut le Père) et elles ont donc désormais une aversion semblable pour le péché. Une aversion, en tout cas, bien plus grande que le plus grand saint sur terre, qui souffre et mérite, qui se bat contre la chair, mais qui aussi sera toujours empêché par cette même chair, jusqu’à la mort, de voir parfaitement l’horreur du péché. Le Christ a été le seul homme pour qui la chair n’a pas été une telle limite.

Le Christ devait souffrir parce qu’il est Dieu jeté dans le péché. Le Sauf dans la perdition. L’âme du purgatoire doit souffrir parce qu’elle est sauvée mais encore embarrassée par ses péchés, brûlants comme la tunique de Nessus ; parce qu’elle est dans un pur amour avec Dieu, mais pas encore avec Lui. Elle est du bien qui doit encore se séparer de ses maux, de l’être qui doit laisser se résorber le non-être qui la mine encore, afin d’être comme Dieu et pouvoir le rejoindre.

Nécessité, enfin, de la souffrance des damnés. De ce point de vue, les peines de l’enfer sont l’inverse de celles du purgatoire. Ce ne sont pas les souffrances du pur encore flétri par de l’impur, mais qui sait qu’il rejoindra le Saint. Ce sont les souffrances de l’impur qui sait qu’il ne rejoindra jamais le Pur (c’est donc, s’il est vrai que seul le même connaît le même — « nous serons comme Lui parce que nous Le connaîtrons », dit saint Jean — c’est donc que le damné garde une idée de Dieu. Comment souffrirait-il, sinon, de son éternelle séparation d’avec Dieu, le parfaitement Pur ? Une parcelle, non pour sa consolation, mais pour son désespoir. Encore que l’on puisse y voir aussi l’effet de la miséricorde divine dont parle sainte Catherine, selon laquelle, on l’a vu, il y a pire que l’enfer).

Si, à la mort corporelle, les jeux sont faits ; si l’âme ne peut plus mériter, elle n’en reste pas moins l’âme immortelle d’un être créé libre. Même en enfer, l’homme reste libre en quelques façons : non plus libre de choisir entre le bien et le mal, non plus libre de se purifier en participant aux souffrances du Christ, mais libre parce qu’il reste une personne, non une chose ni un animal. Il reste donc affronté aux conséquences de sa liberté (une liberté qui désormais a un bilan mais plus de champs d’action, une liberté qui s’est détruite en se séparant de Dieu). Il reste une liberté au sens où il reste esprit, qui pense, veut, considère, et souffre (il est, dit sainte Catherine, animé d’une éternelle volonté mauvaise). Et comme être séparé de Dieu est toujours une souffrance, il souffre pour toujours d’être à jamais séparé de Dieu.

On souffre sur terre de n’être pas à Dieu (et c’est vrai même du pire incroyant, puisqu’objectivement Dieu manque à tous — sans, en un autre sens, Lui qui est toujours fidèle, avoir jamais manqué à personne). Au purgatoire de n’être pas encore à Lui. En enfer, de n’être plus jamais à Lui, mais séparé de Dieu comme personne ne l’a jamais été sur terre.

On souffre de n’être pas ce pour quoi, ce pour Qui on a été fait. Sur terre, notre liberté souffre de n’être pas libre. On souffre, pour parler comme Nietzsche, parfois chrétien malgré lui, d’être humains, trop humains. Il aurait dû lire sainte Catherine de Gênes :

Finalement, pour tout conclure, comprenez bien que tout ce qui est humain est entièrement transformé par notre Dieu tout puissant et miséricordieux et que c’est l’œuvre du purgatoire.

Florent Thibout, né en 1959. Maîtrise de Philosophie. Auteur de Après le déluge (Gallimard).

[1] Ce qui, soit dit en passant, n’ôte rien à la pertinence des indulgences partielles que l’Église accordait naguère (elle n’en accorde plus que des plénières pour éviter justement toute équivoque dans les esprits modernes, donc calculateurs), en vertu du pouvoir que son Fondateur lui a donné de remettre les péchés et de dispenser sur terre les grâces divines. On croit souvent qu’une indulgence, par exemple de 100 jours, signifie 100 jours de purgatoire en moins. En vérité, il s’agit d’une rémission de la peine « temporelle » qui reste due (sur terre ou au purgatoire) quand le péché a été confessé et que l’âme est de nouveau en état de grâce — non pas une rémission de 100 jours de purgatoire mais une rémission équivalente à celle qu’aurait obtenu une pénitence de 100 jours, telle qu’elle se pratiquait couramment dans l’Église primitive. L’Église garantit la réalité de la réduction de peine, mais c’est Dieu seul qui connaît les termes de l’équivalence, qui sait ce que valent ces 100 jours, Lui seul qui se charge de faire la conversion de ces jours de pénitence terrestre en telle ou telle durée de cette mystérieuse temporalité propre au purgatoire.

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Saint Catherine of Genoa

Also known as

Apostle of Purgatory

Caterina Fieschi Adorno

Caterina of Genoa

Caterinetta

Memorial

15 September

formerly 22 March

Profile

Daughter of Jacopo Fieschi and Francesca di Negro, Geonese nobles; she was related to Pope Innocent V and Pope Adrian V, and her father became viceroy of NaplesItaly. Youngest of five children. A pious and prayerful girl, she early felt a call to religious life, tried to enter a convent at age 13, was turned away because of her youth. At 16 she entered into an arranged marriage with a young Genoese nobleman, Giuliano Adorno. They were a childless couple, he was careless and unsuccessful as a husband and provider, often cruel, violent and unfaithful, and reduced them to bankruptcy. Catherine became indifferent to her faith, and fell into a depression.

In 1473, while going to Confession in a convent in Genoa, Catherine was struck down by a vision, the revelation of God‘s love and her own sinfulness, and fell into a religious ecstasy; her interior state, and her contact with the truth she had received in the vision, stayed with her the rest of her life. She returned home, helped lead her husband to the faith, and the two lived together chastely the rest of their lives, working with the sick and poor till the death of Julian in 1497. She became a Franciscan tertiary, serving as a tertiary directress in 1490Caught and survived the plague in 1493. Spiritual student of Father Cattaneo Marabotti in 1499, and he helped her to write and arrange descriptions of what she had seen and learned in her visions. It is her writings that have continued her fame today; during her canonization inquiry, the Holy Office announced that her writings alone were enough to prove her sanctity. Online and downloadable versions are linked below.

Born

1447 at GenoaItaly as Caterina Fieschi Adorno

Died

15 September 1510 at GenoaItaly of natural causes

Beatified

6 April 1675 by Pope Clement X

Canonized

16 June 1737 by Pope Clement XII

Patronage

against adultery

against temptation

brides

childless people

difficult marriages

people ridiculed for their piety

victims of adultery

victims of unfaithfulness

widows

Additional Information

Book of Saints, by the Monks of Ramsgate

Catholic Encyclopedia

Little Lives of the Great Saints

Lives of the Saints, by Father Alban Butler

Lives of the Saints, by Father Francis Xavier Weninger

New Catholic Dictionary

Pictorial Lives of the Saints

Pope Benedict XVI, General Audience, 12 January 2011

Saint Catherine of Genoa and Her Contemporaries, Catholic World

Saints of the Day, by Katherine Rabenstein

Transit of the Seraphic Virgin, by Ser Barduccio di Piero Canigiani

Life and Doctrine of Saint Catherine of Genoa

read online

free EPub download

Spiritual Dialogue, by Saint Catherine of Genoa

read online

free audio book

Treatise on Purgatory, by Saint Catherine of Genoa

read online

free audio book

free audio book with images

books

Our Sunday Visitor’s Encyclopedia of Saints

Catherine of Genoa: Purgation and Purgatory, the Spiritual Dialogue, by Serge Hughes (editor)

The Mystical Element of Religion: As Studied in Saint Catherine of Genoa and Her Friends, by Friedrich Von Hugel

other sites in english

Catholic Ireland

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Franciscan Media

Independent Catholic News

New International Encyclopedia

Pope Benedict XVI

Regina Magazine

Saints Stories for All Ages

Wikipedia

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Wikimedia Commons

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Treatise on Purgatory, by Saint Catherine of Genoa (Librivox audiobook)

webseiten auf deutsch

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Stadler’s Bollstandiges Heiligenlexkion

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sitios en español

Martirologio Romano2001 edición

fonti in italiano

Cathopedia

Michele Perrone

Santi e Beati

Wikipedia

Readings

If it were given to a man to see virtue’s reward in the next world, he would occupy his intellect, memory and will in nothing but good works, careless of danger or fatigue. – Saint Catherine of Genoa

MLA Citation

“Saint Catherine of Genoa“. CatholicSaints.Info. 20 April 2021. Web. 2 October 2021. <https://catholicsaints.info/saint-catherine-of-genoa/>

SOURCE : https://catholicsaints.info/saint-catherine-of-genoa/

Mausoleo di S. Caterina da Genova di Francesco Schiaffino, 1737-1738


Mausoleo di S. Caterina da Genova di Francesco Schiaffino, 1737-1738

On St. Catherine of Genoa

“Love Itself Purifies [the Soul] From Its Dross of Sin”

JANUARY 12, 2011 00:00ZENIT STAFFGENERAL AUDIENCE

VATICAN CITY, JAN. 12, 2011 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the address Benedict XVI gave today during the general audience in Paul VI Hall. In his address, continuing the series of catecheses on the saints, he reflected on the figure of St. Catherine of Genoa, of the 15th century.

* * * 

Dear Brothers and Sisters! 

Today I would like to speak about another saint who, like Catherine of Siena and Catherine of Bologna, is also called Catherine; I am speaking of Catherine of Genoa, who is best known for her visions of purgatory.
The text that describes her life and thought was published in this Ligurian city in 1551. It is in three sections: her Vita [Life], properly speaking, the Dimostratione et dechiaratione del purgatorio — better known as Treatise on purgatory — and her Dialogo tra l’anima e il corpo (cf. Libro de la Vita mirabile et dottrina santa, de la beata Caterinetta da Genoa. Nel quale si contiene una utile et catholica dimostratione et dechiaratione del purgatorio, Genoa 1551). The final version was written by Catherine’s confessor, Fr Cattaneo Marabotto.

Catherine was born in Genoa in 1447, the last of five children. She lost her father, Giacomo Fieschi, when she was very young. Her mother, Francesca di Negro, educated them in a Christian way, so much so that the elder of her two daughters became a religious. At 16, Catherine was married to Giuliano Adorno, a man who, after several experiences in the area of trade and in the military world in the Middle East, had returned to Genoa to get married. Their conjugal life was not easy, above all because of the husband’s character [and his] affection for games of chance. Catherine herself in the beginning was induced to lead a worldly life, in which she did not find serenity. After 10 years, she had a feeling of profound emptiness and bitterness in her heart. 

Her conversion began on March 20, 1473, thanks to an unusual experience. Catherine went to the church of St. Benedict and to the monastery of Our Lady of Graces for confession and, kneeling before the priest, “I received,” as she herself writes, “a wound in my heart of the immense love of God,” and such a clear vision of her miseries and defects, and at the same time of the goodness of God, that she almost fainted. She was wounded in her heart by the knowledge of herself, of the life she led and of the goodness of God. Born from this experience was the decision that oriented her whole life, which expressed in words was: “No more world, no more sin” (cf. Vita Mirabile, 3rv). Catherine then left, leaving her confession interrupted. When she returned home, she went to the most isolated room and thought for a long time. At that moment she was inwardly instructed on prayer and became conscious of God’s love for her, a sinner — a spiritual experience that she was unable to express in words (cf. Vita Mirabile, 4r). It was on this occasion that the suffering Jesus appeared to her, carrying the cross, as he is often represented in the iconography of the saint. A few days later, she returned to the priest to finally make a good confession. The “life of purification” began here, a life that for a long time caused her to suffer a constant pain for the sins committed and drove her to impose penances and sacrifices on herself to show her love of God. 

On this path, Catherine became increasingly close to the Lord, until she entered what is known as the “unitive life,” that is, a relationship of profound union with God. She wrote in her “Life” that her soul was guided and trained only by the gentle love of God, who gave her everything she needed. Catherine so abandoned herself in the Lord’s hands that she lived, almost 25 years, as she wrote, “without the need of any creature, only instructed and governed by God” (Vita, 117r-118r), nourished above all on constant prayer and Holy Communion received every day, something unusual at that time. Only years later, the Lord gave her a priest to care for her soul. 

Catherine was always reluctant to confide and manifest her experience of mystical communion with God, above all because of the profound humility she felt before the Lord’s graces. Only in the perspective of giving him glory and being able to help others in their spiritual journey, was she convinced to recount what had happened at the moment of her conversion, which was her original and fundamental experience. 

The place of her ascent to mystical summits was the hospital of Pammatone, the largest hospital complex in Genoa, of which she was director and leader. Thus, Catherine lived a totally active life, despite the profundity of her interior life. In Pammatone a group of followers, disciples and collaborators was formed around her, fascinated by her life of faith and her charity. She succeeded in having her husband himself, Giuliano Adorno, abandon his dissipated life, become a Franciscan tertiary and go to the hospital to help her. Catherine’s participation in the care of the sick went on until the last days of her earthly journey, Sept. 15, 1510. From her conversion to her death, there were no extraordinary events; only two elements characterized her whole existence: on one hand, her mystical experience, that is, her profound union with God, lived as a spousal union, and on the other, care of the sick, the organization of the hospital, service to her neighbor, especially the most abandoned and needy. These two poles — God and neighbor — filled her life, which was spent practically within the walls of the hospital. 

Dear friends, we must not forget that the more we love God and are constant in prayer, the more we will truly love those who are around us, those who are close to us, because we will be able to see in every person the face of the Lord, who loves without limits or distinctions. Mysticism does not create distances with others; it does not create an abstract life, but brings one closer to others because one begins to see and act with the eyes, with the heart of God. 

Catherine’s thought on purgatory, for which she is particularly known, is condensed in the last two parts of the book mentioned at the beginning: “Treatise on Purgatory” and “Dialogues on the Soul and Body.” It is important to observe that, in her mystical experience, Catherine never had specific revelations on purgatory or on souls that are being purified there. However, in the writings inspired by our saint purgatory is a central element, and the way of describing it has original characteristics in relation to her era. 

The first original feature refers to the “place” of the purification of souls. In her time [purgatory] was presented primarily with recourse to images connected to space: There was thought of a certain space where purgatory would be found. For Catherine, instead, purgatory is not represented as an element of the landscape of the core of the earth; it is a fire that is not exterior but interior. This is purgatory, an interior fire. The saint speaks of the soul’s journey of purification to full communion with God, based on her own experience of profound sorrow for the sins committed, in contrast to the infinite love of God (cf. Vita Mirabile, 171v). We have heard about the moment of her conversion, when Catherine suddenly felt God’s goodness, the infinite distance of her life from this goodness and a burning fire within her. And this is the fire that purifies, it is the interior fire of purgatory. Here also there is an original feature in relation to the thought of the era. She does not begin, in fact, from the beyond to narrate the torments of purgatory — as was usual at that time and perhaps also today — and then indicate the path for purification or conversion. Instead our saint begins from her own interior experience of her life on the path to eternity. The soul, says Catherine, appears before God still bound to the desires and the sorrow that derive from sin, and this makes it impossible for it to enjoy the Beatific Vision of God. Catherine affirms that God is so pure and holy that the soul with stains of sin cannot be in the presence of the Divine
Majesty (cf. Vita Mirabile, 177r). And we also realize how far we are, how full we are of so many things, so that we cannot see God. The soul is conscious of the immense love and perfect justice of God and, in consequence, suffers for not having responded correctly and perfectly to that love, and that is why the love itself of God becomes a flame. Love itself purifies it from its dross of sin. 

Theological and mystical sources typical of the era can be found in Catherine’s work. Particularly there is an image from Dionysius the Areopagite: that of the golden thread that unites the human heart with God himself. When God has purified man, he ties him with a very fine thread of gold, which is his love, and attracts him to himself with such strong affection that man remains as “overcome and conquered and altogether outside himself.” Thus the human heart is invaded by the love of God, which becomes the only guide, the sole motor of his existence (cf. Vita Mirabile, 246rv). This situation of elevation to God and of abandonment to his will, expressed in the image of the thread, is used by Catherine to express the action of the divine light on souls in purgatory, light that purifies them and elevates them to the splendors of the shining rays of God (cf. Vita Mirabile, 179r). 

Dear friends, the saints, in their experience of union with God, reach such profound “knowledge” of the divine mysteries, in which love and knowledge are fused, that they are of help to theologians themselves in their task of study, of “intelligentia fidei,” of “intelligentia” of the mysteries of the faith, of real deepening in the mysteries, for example, of what purgatory is. 

With her life, St. Catherine teaches us that the more we love God and enter into intimacy with him in prayer, the more he lets himself be known and enkindles our heart with his love. Writing on purgatory, the saint reminds us of a fundamental truth of the faith that becomes for us an invitation to pray for the deceased so that they can attain the blessed vision of God in the communion of saints (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1032). Moreover, the humble, faithful and generous service that the saint gave during her whole life in the hospital of Pammatone is a luminous example of charity for all and a special encouragement for women who give an essential contribution to society and to the Church with their precious work, enriched by their sensitivity and by the care of the poorest and neediest. Thank you. 

NOTES 

[1] cf. “Libro de la Vita mirabile et dottrina santa, de la beata Caterinetta da Genoa” (Book of the Life and Doctrine of St. Catherine of Genoa), which contains a useful and Catholic demonstration and declaration of purgatory, Genoa, 1551. 

[Translation by ZENIT] 

[The Holy Father then greeted pilgrims in several languages. In English, he said:] 

Dear Brothers and Sisters, 

Our catechesis today deals with Saint Catherine of Genoa, a fifteenth-century saint best known for her vision of purgatory. Married at an early age, some ten years later Catherine had a powerful experience of conversion; Jesus, carrying his cross, appeared to her, revealing both her own sinfulness and God’s immense love. A woman of great humility, she combined constant prayer and mystical union with a life of charitable service to those in need, above all in her work as the director of the largest hospital in Genoa. Catherine’s writings on purgatory contain no specific revelations, but convey her understanding of purgatory as an interior fire purifying the soul in preparation for full communion with God. Conscious of God’s infinite love and justice, the soul is pained by its inadequate response, even as the divine love purifies it from the remnants of sin. To describe this purifying power of God’s love, Catherine uses the image of a golden chain which draws the soul to abandon itself to the divine will. By her life and teaching, Saint Catherine of Genoa reminds us of the importance of prayer for the faithful departed, and invites us to devote ourselves more fully to prayer and to works of practical charity. 

I am pleased to greet the many university students present at today’s Audience. Upon all the English-speaking pilgrims and visitors, especially those from Finland, Malta, China, Indonesia and the United States of America, I cordially invoke God’s blessings of joy and peace. 

Copyright 2011 — Libreria Editrice Vaticana 

[In Italian, he greeted the youth, sick and newlyweds present:] 

Finally, I address an affectionate greeting to young people, the sick and newlyweds. The events of our time bring very much to light the urgent need for Christians to proclaim the Gospel with their life. To you, dear young people, I say therefore: Always be faithful to Christ, to be among your contemporaries sowers of hope and joy. You, dear sick, do not be afraid to offer on the altar of Christ the incalculable value of your suffering for the benefit of the Church and of the world. And finally you, dear newlyweds, I hope that you will make of your family a genuine school of Christian life. 

[Translation by ZENIT]

SOURCE : https://zenit.org/2011/01/12/on-st-catherine-of-genoa/

Oratorio presso il Castello di Borgo Adorno, Comune di Cantalupo Ligure, Piemonte, Italia


Catherine (Caterinetta) of Genoa, Widow (RM)

Born in Genoa, Italy, 1447; died there, September 14, 1510; beatified in 1737 and equipollently canonized by Pope Benedict XIV a few years later (others say she was canonized in 1737); feast day formerly on March 22.

"He who purifies himself from his faults in the present life, satisfies with a penny a debt of a thousand ducats; and he who waits until the other life to discharge his debts, consents to pay a thousand ducats for that which he might before have paid with a penny."

--Saint Catherine, Treatise on Purgatory.

The biography of Saint Catherine of Genoa, who combined mysticism with practicality, was written by Baron Friedrich von Hügel. She was the fifth and youngest child of James Fieschi and his wife Francesca di Negro, members of the noble Guelph family of Fieschi, which had produced two popes (Innocent IV and Adrian V). After her birth, her father later became viceroy of Naples for King René of Anjou.

From the age of 13 Catherine sought to became a cloistered religious. Her sister was already a canoness regular and her confessor was the chaplain of that convent. When she asked to be received, they decided that she was too young. Then her father died and, for dynastic reasons, her widowed mother insisted that the 16-year-old marry the Genoese Ghibelline patrician, Guiliano Adorno. Her husband was unfaithful, violent, and a spendthrift. The first five years of their marriage, Catherine suffered in silence. In some ways it seems odd that he did not find her attractive, because Catherine was a beautiful woman of great intelligence, and deeply religious. But they were of completely different temperaments: she was intense and humorless; he had a zest for life.

Then she determined to win her husband's affection by adopting worldly airs. As it turns out, this only made her unhappy because she lost the only consolation that had previously sustained her-- her religious life. Ten years into her marriage, Catherine was a very unhappy woman; her husband had reduced them to poverty by his extravagance. On the eve of his feast in 1473, Catherine prayed, "Saint Benedict, pray to God that He make me stay three months sick in bed." Two days later she was kneeling for a blessing before the chaplain at her sister's convent. She had visited her sister and revealed the secrets of her heart. Her sister advised her to go to confession.

In following her sister's advice, Catherine experienced a sort of ecstasy. She was overwhelmed by her sins and, at the very same time, by the infinite love of God for her. This experience was the foundation for an enduring awareness of the presence of God and a fixed attitude of soul. She was drawn back to the path of devotion of her childhood. Within a few days she had a vision of our Lord carrying His cross, which caused her to cry out, "O Love, if it be necessary I am ready to confess my sins in public!" On the Solemnity of the Annunciation she received the Eucharist, the first time with fervor for ten years.

Thus began her mystical ascent under very severe mortifications that included fasting throughout Lent and Advent almost exclusively on the Eucharist. She became a stigmatic. A group of religious people gathered around Catherine, who guided them to a spirit- filled life.

Eventually her husband was converted, became a Franciscan tertiary, and they agreed to live together in continence. Catherine and Giuliano devoted themselves to the care of the sick in the municipal hospital of Genoa, Pammatone, where they were joined by Catherine's cousin Tommasina Fieschi. In 1473, they moved from their palazzo to a small house in a poorer neighborhood than was necessary. In 1479, they went to live in the hospital and Catherine became its director in 1490. The heroism of Catherine's charity revealed itself in a special way during the plagues of 1493 and 1501. The first one killed nearly 75 percent of the inhabitants. Catherine herself contracted the disease. Although she recovered, she was forced to resign due to ill health three years later.

After Giuliano's death the following year (1497), Catherine's spiritual life became even more intense. In 1499, Catherine met don Cattaneo Marabotto, who became her spiritual director. Her religious practices were idiosyncratic; for instance, she went to communion daily when it was unusual to do so. For years she made extraordinarily long fasts without abating her charitable activities. Catherine is an outstanding example of the religious contemplative who combines the spiritual life with competence in practical affairs. Yet she was always fearful of "the contagion of the world's slow stain" that had separated her from God in the early years of her marriage.

Her last three years of life were a combination of numerous mystical experiences and ill health that remained undiagnosed by even John-Baptist Boerio, the principal doctor to King Henry VII. In addition to her body remaining undecomposed and one of her arms elongating in a peculiar manner shortly before her death, the blood from her stigmata gave off exceptional heat.

A contemporary painting of Catherine, now at the Pammatone Hospital in Genoa, possibly painted by the female artist Tomasina Fieschi, shows Catherine in middle age. It reveals a slight woman with a long, patrician nose; pronounced, cleft chin; easy smile of broad but thin lips (and, surprisingly, deep laugh lines); high cheekbones; and large dark eyes punctuated by thin, graceful eyebrows.

Dialogue between the soul and the body and Treatise on purgatory are outstanding works in the field of mysticism, which were inspired by her and contain the essence of her, but were actually composed by others under her name. She is the patron of Genoa and of Italian hospitals (Attwater, Benedictines, Delaney, Farmer, Harrison, Schamoni, Schouppe, Walsh).

Of interest may be The Life and Doctrine of Saint Catherine of Genoa.

SOURCE : http://www.saintpatrickdc.org/ss/0915.shtml

St. Catherine of Genoa, 1893



St. Catherine of Genoa

(CATERINA FIESCHI ADORNO.)

Born at Genoa in 1447, died at the same place 15 September, 1510. The life of St. Catherine of Genoa may be more properly described as a state than as a life in the ordinary sense. When about twenty-six years old she became the subject of one of the most extraordinary operations of God in the human soul of which we have record, the result being a marvellous inward condition that lasted till her death. In this state, she received wonderful revelations, of which she spoke at times to those around her, but which are mainly embodied in her two celebrated works: the "Dialogues of the Soul and Body", and the "Treatise on Purgatory". Her modern biographies, chiefly translations or adaptations of an old Italian one which is itself founded on "Memoirs" drawn up by the saint's own confessor and a friend, mingle what facts they give of her outward life with accounts of her supernatural state and "doctrine", regardless of sequence, and in an almost casual fashion that makes them entirely subservient to her psychological history. These facts are as follows:

St. Catherine's parents were Jacopo Fieschi and Francesca di Negro, both of illustrious Italian birth. Two popes — Innocent IV and Adrian V — had been of the Fieschi family, and Jacopo himself became Viceroy of Naples. Catherine is described as an extraordinarily holy child, highly gifted in the way of prayer, and with a wonderful love of Christ's Passion and of penitential practices; but, also, as having been a most quiet, simple, and exceedingly obedient girl. When about thirteen, she wished to enter the convent, but the nuns to whom her confessor applied having refused her on account of her youth, she appears to have put the idea aside without any further attempt. At sixteen, she was married by her parents' wish to a young Genoese nobleman, Giuliano Adorno. The marriage turned out wretchedly; Giuliano proved faithless, violent-tempered, and a spendthrift. And made the life of his wife a misery. Details are scanty, but it seems at least clear that Catherine spent the first five years of her marriage in silent, melancholy submission to her husband; and that she then, for another five, turned a little to the world for consolation in her troubles. The distractions she took were most innocent; nevertheless, destined as she was for an extraordinary life, they had the effect in her case of producing lukewarmness, the end of which was such intense weariness and depression that she prayed earnestly for a return of her old fervour. Then, just ten years after her marriage, came the event of her life, in answer to her prayer. She went one day, full of melancholy, to a convent in Genoa where she had a sister, a nun. The latter advised her to go to confession to the nuns' confessor, and Catherine agreed. No sooner, however, had she knelt down in the confessional than a ray of Divine light pierced her soul, and in one moment manifested her own sinfulness and the Love of God with equal clearness. The revelation was so overwhelming that she lost consciousness and fell into a kind of ecstacy, for a space during which the confessor happened to be called away. When he returned, Catherine could only murmur that she would put off her confession, and go home quickly.

From the moment of that sudden vision of herself and God, the saint's interior state seems never to have changed, save by varying in intensity and being accompanied by more or less severe penance, according to what she saw required of her by the Holy Spirit Who guided her incessantly. No one could describe it except herself; but she does so, minutely, in her writings, from which may here be made one short extract: — "[The souls in Purgatory] see all things, not in themselves, nor by themselves, but as they are in God, on whom they are more intent than on their own sufferings. . . . For the least vision they have of God overbalances all woes and all joys that can be conceived. Yet their joy in God does by no means abate their pain. . . . This process of purification to which I see the souls in Purgatory subjected, I feel within myself." (Treatise on Purgatory, xvi, xvii.) For about twenty-five years, Catherine, though frequently making confessions, was unable to open her mind for direction to anyone; but towards the end of her life a Father Marabotti was appointed to be her spiritual guide. To him she explained her states, past and present, in full, and he compiled the "Memoirs" above referred to from his intimate personal knowledge of her. Of the saint's outward life, after this great change, her biographies practically tell us but two facts: that she at last converted her husband who died penitent in 1497; and that both before and after his death — though more entirely after it — she gave herself to the care of the sick in the great Hospital of Genoa, where she eventually became manager and treasurer. She died worn out with labours of body and soul, and consumed, even physically, by the fires of Divine love within her. She was beatified in 1675 by Clement X, but not canonized till 1737, by Clement XII. Meantime, her writings had been examined by the Holy Office and pronounced to contain doctrine that would be enough, in itself, to prove her sanctity.

Sources

The first published life, based on early MSS., is GENUTI, "Vita mirabile e dotrrina santa della Beata Caterina da Genova" (Florence, 1551). Founded on the above: FLICHE, "Sainte Catherine de Gênes, sa vie et son esprit' (1881); "Life and Doctrine of St. Catherine of Genoa" (Eng. Tr., New York, 1874). For a discussion of her doctrine, PARPERA, "Beata Caterina Genuensis illustrata (Genoa, 1682). See also BUTLER "Lives of the Saints", IX, 14 Sept., and a modern life by DE BUSSIERE.

Capes, Florence. "St. Catherine of Genoa." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 3. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908. 14 Sept. 2015 <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03446b.htm>.

Transcription. This article was transcribed for New Advent by John Looby.

Ecclesiastical approbation. Nihil Obstat. November 1, 1908. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor. Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York.

Copyright © 2020 by Kevin Knight. Dedicated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

SOURCE : http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03446b.htm

Saint Catherine of Genoa Catholic Church, 45603 Limestone Street, Concrete, Washington, U.S.


 September 14

St. Catherine of Genoa, Widow

CATHERINE or Catterinetta Fieschi Adorno, was born at Genoa in 1447. Her father, James Fieschi, died viceroy of Naples under Renatus of Anjou, king of Sicily. 1 From the first dawn of her reason, she appeared to be a child of spiritual benedictions. By a singular privilege of divine grace, and the attention of virtuous parents, she seemed from the cradle entirely exempt from frowardness, and little passions of anger or the like vices, with which infancy itself is often stained. It was something still more admirable and more edifying in her, to see a tender child, to join with the most perfect simplicity of heart, and obedience to her parents and others, a serious love of prayer, the most heroic practices of self-denial, and the most tender devotion, particularly towards the sacred passion of Christ. That at twelve years of age she was favoured by God with extraordinary supernatural comforts and illustrations of the Holy Ghost in prayer, we are assured by her own testimony. Experience teaches, that by humble obedience, and fervent love of prayer, the most tender age is capable of making great advancement in the paths of divine love and interior solid virtue; and that the Holy Ghost delights wonderfully to communicate himself to those who so early open their hearts entirely to him. But whilst he attracts them after the sweet odour of his ointments, he prepares them for the most severe trials, which furnish them with occasions for the exercise of the most heroic virtues, and perfects the crucifixion of inordinate attachments in their hearts. This conduct of divine providence St. Catherine experienced.

At thirteen years of age she earnestly desired to consecrate herself to the divine service in a religious state, thinking a contemplative life the most secure for her, and it best suited her inclinations. But she was overruled by obedience to her parents, and by the advice of those from whom she hoped to learn what the divine will required of her. Three years after, she was married by her father to Julian Adorno, a gay young nobleman of Genoa. Her husband, drunk with youth, and giddy with ambition, brought on her a long series of grievous afflictions, which she suffered during ten years, and which, by the good use she made of them, exceedingly contributed to her more perfect sanctification. His brutish humour afforded a perpetual trial to her patience; his dilapidation of his own patrimony, and of the great fortune she had brought him, perfected the disengagement of her heart from the world, and his profligate life was to her a subject of continual tears to God for his conversion. This, her prayers, patience, and example at length effected, and he died a penitent in the third Order of St. Francis. Catherine had a cousin named Tommasa Fieschi, who being left a widow about the same time, made her religious profession in an austere nunnery of the Order of St. Dominic, and died prioress in 1534. Our saint seeing herself freed from the servitude of the world, and in a condition now to pursue the native bent of her inclination to live altogether to herself and God, deliberated some time in what manner she might best execute her holy desire. At length, in order to join the active life with the contemplative, and to have the happiness of ministering to Christ in his most distressed and suffering members, she determined to devote herself to the service of the sick in the great hospital of the city. Of this house she lived many years the mother superior, attending assiduously upon the patients with incredible tenderness, performing for them the meanest offices, and dressing herself their most loathsome ulcers. So heroic is this charity, that with regard to the institutions set apart for the relief of the poor, and attendance on the sick, Voltaire forgets his usual censorious malignant disposition in regard to religious institutions, to give them due praise. He declares that nothing can be nobler than the sacrifice which the fair sex made of beauty and youth, and oftentimes of high birth, to employ their time at the hospitals in relieving those miserable objects, the sight of which alone is humbling to our pride, and shocking to our delicacy. In overcoming this repugnance of nature in doing many offices about certain patients it cost our saint much difficulty in the beginning, till by perseverance she had gained a complete victory over herself.

Her charity could not be confined to the bounds of her own hospital; she extended her care and solicitude to all lepers and other distressed sick persons over the whole city, and she employed proper persons, with indefatigable industry, to discover, visit, and relieve such objects. Her fasts and other austerities were incredible, and it was her constant study to deny her senses every superfluous gratification, and still more vigorously to humble her heart, and overcome her own will in every thing. Even whilst she lived in the world with her husband, it was a rule with her never to excuse herself when blamed by others, but always to be readily inclined sincerely to accuse and condemn herself. She made it her constant earnest request to God, that his pure and holy love might reign in her heart, and in her whole conduct, by the extinction of all inordinate self-love, and in this sense she took for her device that petition of our Lord’s prayer: Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. The necessity of the spirit of universal mortification and perfect humility to prepare the way for the pure love of God to be infused into the soul, is the chief lesson which she inculcates in the two principal treatises, which she wrote, the first entitled, On Purgatory, and the second called, A Dialogue. In this latter work, she paints strongly the powerful effects of divine love in a soul, and the wonderful sweetness and joy which frequently accompany it. 2 St. Catherine having suffered the martyrdom of a tedious and painful illness, in which, for a considerable time, she was scarcely able to take any nourishment, though she received every day the holy communion, expired in great peace and tranquillity, and her soul went to be united to the centre of her love on the 14th day of September, 1510, she being sixty-two years old. The author of her life relates certain miracles by which God was pleased to testify her sanctity to men. Her body was taken up eighteen months after her death, and found without the least sign of putrefaction. From that time it was exposed aloft in a marble monument in the church of the hospital, as the body of a saint; and she was honoured with the title of Blessed, which Pope Benedict XIV. changed into that of Saint, styling her in the Martyrology St. Catherine Fieschi (in Latin Flisca) Adorno. 3 See her life compiled by Marabotti, her confessor, published in 1551; also her works. And the comments of Sticker the Bollandist, ad 15 Sept. t. 5, p. 123. For the justification of her doctrine, and the commendations of her sanctity, see Parpera, the Oratorian’s book entitled B. Catherina Genuensis illustrata. Printed at Genoa A. D. 1682.

Note 1. The family of the Fieschi was for many ages one of the most illustrious in Italy. Its chiefs were counts of Lavagna in the territory of Genoa. They were for some ages perpetual vicars of the empire in Italy, and afterwards enjoyed very extraordinary privileges in the republic of Genoa, and among others that of coining money. This house gave to that commonwealth its greatest generals during its long wars, both in the East and against the Venetians; and to the church many cardinals and two popes, Innocent IV. and Adrian V. The family of Fieschi suffered much by the miscarriage of the conspiracy formed by count John Lewis Fieschi against the Dorias, then masters of the commonwealth, in 1547. The plot only failed by the death of count Fieschi, who was drowned by falling into the sea, as he was going out of one galley into another. [back]

Note 2. These treatises are not written for the common class of readers. [back]

Note 3. Bened. XIV. De Canoniz. Sanct. l. 3, c. 3, p. 20. [back]

Rev. Alban Butler (1711–73).  Volume IX: September. The Lives of the Saints.  1866.

SOURCE : http://www.bartleby.com/210/9/142.html

An image of Saint Catherine of Genoa's Church taken from a 1914 publication entitled "The Catholic Church in the United States of America: Undertaken to Celebrate the Golden Jubilee of His Holiness, Pope Pius X, Volume 3." page 320.


Weninger’s Lives of the Saints – Saint Catherine of Genoa

Article

Saint Catherine was born of noble parents at Genoa, in 1447, and derived her surname from her native place. Her father was a descendant of the house of Fieschi. She was hardly eight years of age, when she already gave distinct signs of her future holiness. It is related of her, that even at that age she was filled with intense devotion, and with a desire to suffer for the love of Christ Hence she would not use a soft bed, but rested on straw, with a block of wood for a pillow; she also sought other means to give pain to her body. At thirteen, she desired most ardently to enter a convent, and to remain there her entire life; but on account of her tender age, she was not admitted. She then continued her pious life until she was sixteen years old, when her father gave her in marriage to Julian Adorno, a youth of a noble and rich family, but unhappily not in the least suited to Catherine. He treated her, from the first day of their marriage, with so little consideration, that every one pitied her. She left nothing untried to soften his disposition, but all was useless. Julian was a slave to gaming, eating and drinking, and seeking only the comforts and pleasures of life; he hated and persecuted the pious Catherine, who falling a prey to deep melancholy, shunned all society, and lived secluded in her room. At the end of five years, her relatives advised her, in order to divert her mind somewhat, to visit her friends, and give a part of the time, now employed in prayer, to innocent amusements. She followed this advice, but was very careful, so as not to offend God by doing wrong. Thus she passed five more years; but the more she gave herself up to the pleasures of the world, the more distasteful they became to her, and her melancholy increased to such a degree, that she became tired of life, and was harrassed with fears and scruples. Not knowing how to find relief, she went to her sister, who led a very edifying life in a convent, and who advised her to make known the whole state of her mind to the Confessor of the convent. Catherine, after a severe struggle with herself, went into the confessional. Hardly, however, had she knelt down, when the thought of God’s mercy filled her soul with such love, whilst at the same time, the remembrance of her faults oppressed her with such bitter grief, that, sinking down, she could only cry. “O Lord, I will renounce the world and sin: I will sin no more, O Lord, I will sin no more.” When she was somewhat more composed, she went home with the resolution to prepare herself for a general confession. Grief and love accompanied her and increased in such a manner, that, as she afterwards said, she thought she would die under their violence. Soon after, it appeared to her as if Christ were standing before her, carrying His heavy cross, and bleeding from His holy wounds, and said to her: “Behold all this blood has been shed for thee, and to redeem thee from thy sins.” The feelings which this awakened in Catherine’s heart it is impossible to describe: it was truly a miracle of divine mercy that the greatness of her pain and love did not immediately deprive her of life. “O love!” she cried aloud, “O Love! No more sin; no more sin!” After her mind had become more quiet, she prepared herself with great care for a general confession, which she made, amid a flood of tears, on the eve of the feast of the Annunciation. On the day of the festival, she partook of holy communion, and from that moment conceived an intense desire to receive this holy sacrament as often as possible.

She was not satisfied, however, with having repentantly confessed her faults, but to atone more effectually for them, she exercised herself continually in penances. In regard to her fasting, suffice it to say that she henceforth abstained from all those viands which were agreeable to her. For twenty-three years she touched no food during Lent, and, on the ember days, only took sometimes a little water and even with this she mixed vinegar or salt. The Blessed Sacrament, which she daily received, sustained her most miraculously. Although fourteen months after her general confession she received from God the assurance that her sins were expiated, she continued her penances as long as she lived. In works of Christian charity she evinced equal perseverance. At first she nursed the sick at their homes; afterwards, she went into the large hospital, where she remained as long as her strength permitted. She had by nature a great aversion to wounds and ulcers, and the mere sight of them caused her nausea. To overcome this she frequently kissed the wounds and ulcers of the sick, and dressed them with the most tender care. In attending to the sick, she thought not only of their bodies but also of their immortal souls. Speaking gently to them, she encouraged them to bear their suffering patiently, exhorted them to repentance, and did all that Christian charity can do for the salvation of souls. For many who would have despaired in their sufferings, she obtained from God patience by her prayers. Among these stands foremost her own husband, who was laid low by a very painful malady which tormented him a long time. No remedy soothed his suffering; day and night he had not a moment’s peace, and hence often gave way to expressions of the greatest impatience. Catherine’s utmost endeavors were bestowed in comforting him. She exhorted him most kindly to submit to divine Providence, to exercise Christian patience, and other virtues; seeing, however, that all was fruitless, and fearing that he would go to eternal destruction, she addressed most fervent prayers for him to the Almighty. One day, while she was thus praying for his conversion, in a room adjoining his, she was heard to say: “O love! I pray Thee for this soul. Give it to me, for Thou hast the power.” After this, a complete change came over the sick man. He repented of his impatience, submitted to the will of the Almighty, confessed his sins, and prepared himself earnestly for his last hour. Catherine received, from God Himself, the assurance of his salvation. Her prayers effected several similar conversions.

In her widowhood she redoubled her zeal in the practice of good works, and her life affords a perfect example of all the Christian virtues, especially the most fervent devotion to God. The fire of love which burned in her heart frequently inflamed her whole body to such a degree, that she seemed to glow with heat, like iron in the fire. One day they laid her hands in cold water, which soon began to boil as if it had been long standing over the fire. It happened several times that the fire of divine love in her heart almost suffocated her, and addressing God, she cried: “O Love, come to help me!” God sent to this holy widow in the last years of her life, the most singular and painful maladies, which no remedies alleviated; she had desired to suffer for Christ’s sake, and God complied with her request. Her patience was heroic, and her cheerfulness forsook her not during the greatest pain.

Her life and suffering ended on 15 Septemper 1510, in the sixty-third year of her life, after she had spoken to those around her of the love of God. Her last words were those of the Saviour – “Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” Several holy persons saw, at the moment of her death, that her soul, arrayed in heavenly brightness, ascended to eternal bliss. Her holy body remains incorrupt to this hour, and is greatly venerated. The miracles that God wrought by her intercession, fill several volumes. Saint Catherine herself wrote two books which prove that she was not only graced by God with visions and revelations, but that she also possessed truly heavenly wisdom. Illuminated by God, she gave to many persons most wholesome advice. To one who went into a convent and desired to receive an instruction from her, she said: “Let Jesus be in your heart, Eternity in your mind, the world under your feet, and the divine will in all your actions: but above all this, let the love of God shine in your whole being.” She commended nothing more earnestly to those who came to discourse with her, than the love of God, and the avoidance of the least sin for love of Him. God once showed her the horror of a venial sin, and she acknowledged that she would have expired with fear, if she had been obliged to regard this horror one moment longer. Hence it was that she guarded herself most carefully from the least shadow of sin, and admonished others so earnestly to keep their conscience unspotted.

The Church of St. Catherine of Genoa located at 504 West 153rd Street between Broadway and Amsterdam in the Hamilton Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, was built in 1890 and was designed by Thomas H. Poole in an Eclectic version of the Gothic revival style. A rectory was added c.1926, and a schoolhouse in 1937. The parish school closed in 2006, and the building is now P.S. 226


Practical Considerations

• Did you understand the lesson that Saint Catherine gave to a person who went into a Convent and after which she herself moulded her life? “Let Jesus be in your heart, Eternity in your mind, the world under your feet, etc.” Ah! how far are you from observing these directions! Can you say that Christ lives in your heart? Jesus does not dwell in a heart possessed by vanity, pride, envy, impure love and other sinful inclinations! Is eternity in your thoughts? How seldom you think of it! Is the world under your feet? You are devoted to all that is temporal; a proof that the world is not under your feet but in your heart! Is the divine will in all your actions? Where our own will reigns, the will of the Almighty is put aside! Does the love of God shine out in your whole life and being? You offend God so often, if not by mortal, yet by venial sins, which you do not dread! Ah, this is no sign of love to the Almighty. Those who truly love God, carefully avoid everything that is displeasing to Him. If you wish to manifest a sign of true love to God, make today the resolution to shun even the smallest venial sin. Impress this deeply into your innermost heart, and let it inspire you with horror of all that can offend the Majesty of God. Make the resolution that Saint Catherine made: “I will sin no more, O Lord, I will sin no more!”

• From her tender youth, Saint Catherine exercised herself in severe penances. She sought everywhere to give pain to her body. This same body God glorifies now before the world by not allowing it to corrupt. How He will exalt it one day in heaven! Had Saint Catherine treated her body as the children of the world do in our time, it would neither be so greatly honored now in this world, nor could it ever expect great glory in heaven. What have you to say to this? All you seek after, all you aspire to, is the well-being of your body. Hence all your care is directed towards its health, and its enjoyments, even if God should be offended by them. But this is not the right way to preserve the real well-being of the body. If you desire this, be solicitous for its eternal welfare, which can be secured only by attending to the salvation of your soul, and therefore by not allowing your body anything that is forbidden, but by bridling it and mortifying it with penances. “If we neglect the salvation of our soul, we cannot even make our body happy,” writes Saint Chrysostom; and Saint Bernard says: “Time is given us to take care of our soul, not of our body. These are days of salvation, not of pleasures. Now we have to work for the salvation of our soul; for, upon it depends the happiness of our body. Nothing is more beneficial to the body than to be solicitous for the salvation of the soul. At present the body must be the soul’s companion in suffering and doing penance, that it may also be one day its companion in the glories of heaven.”

MLA Citation

Father Francis Xavier Weninger, DD, SJ. “Saint Catherine of Genoa”. Lives of the Saints1876. CatholicSaints.Info. 5 May 2018. Web. 2 October 2021. <https://catholicsaints.info/weningers-lives-of-the-saints-saint-catherine-of-genoa/>

SOURCE : https://catholicsaints.info/weningers-lives-of-the-saints-saint-catherine-of-genoa/

Palazzo Fieschi Adorno, Vico Indoratori, Genova

Palazzo Fieschi Adorno, Vico Indoratori, Genova


Saint Catherine of Genoa and Her Contemporaries

On the 13th of January 1463, the notary Oberto Foglietta, of Genoa, registered the marriage settlements of Catherine Fiesco, in the parish of Saint Lawrence, in a house belonging to the bride’s family in the lane called “del Filo,” and of Giovanni Adorno, also of noble birth, the contracting parties being the widowed mother of the bride and her two brothers on her behalf, and the bridegroom alone on his, while two neighbors signed their names as witnesses. The instrument sets forth the amount of the dowry, a thousand pieces of silver – which, reckoning by the lira, or present franc, would come to about $250 – two hundred francs of which were given by Adorno and eight hundred by Francesca di Negro, the bride’s mother and widow of Giacomo Fiesco, who promised four hundred in jewels, gala-dresses, and cash at once, and the remainder in two years, at present invested in a house in the same street where her own dowry was invested, and which during that time she agreed to give up to the young couple as a residence. The bridegroom, in his turn, swears to settle the amount upon his wife, the security being a house of his own on the street known as that of Saint Agnes.

Such complicated documents are not infrequent in the city archives of Genoa, and represent correctly the ordinary legal machinery of marriages and their attendant circumstances. Catherine Adorno, sixteen years of age at the time of her marriage, became the well-known Saint Catherine of Genoa, an extraordinary and gifted woman, who, though visited by very wonderful signs of supernatural origin as her contemporaries and, later on, her canonizers agreed was for thirty years directress of the city hospital, almoner and visitor of the city poor, and keeper of the accounts, and would have been, with more opportunities, an excellent writer, her spiritual treatises having a remarkable stamp of individuality, being expressed in fluent, elegant, and appropriate language and bearing much likeness to the quaint allegorical poems of Calderon. Yet education in her time was on a low level, that of social intercourse being the only one worth mentioning as an influence in mature life. Girls, whether in convents or at home and both systems were in full operation during the great days of the Genoese republic were taught chiefly Bible and church history and religious dogmas, besides elaborate needlework and polite demeanor. Their future was fixed almost from their birth; one daughter out of several was usually intended to marry and the others to take the veil, a wedding portion being regarded as so much money taken out of the family treasury. Thus, without regard to the inclinations of the children, crosspurposes were often effected, and sometimes disastrously, for scandals would follow and family rapacity was shown up as, for instance, in the case of Paolina Franzoni, who had been forced into a convent by fraud as well as violence, and whose profession was voided and annulled at Rome by the papal authorities on the facts being represented by her advocate several years later, when her sister, married to a Durazzo, and who had profited by Paolina’s loss of worldly goods, was her most strenuous adversary. On the other hand, girls who had a true vocation, or at any rate a decided inclination, towards conventual life, but whose beauty or priority of age made their marriage more convenient to their parents, were more or less forced into alliances which only their sense of duty made bearable to them. Catherine Fiesco was a noteworthy example of this, the more so as her husband’s temper proved both eccentric and vexatious and reacted disastrously upon his business affairs. Before ten years of her married life were over he had contrived to fritter away most of his own and her money, and they were reduced to unpleasant straits; while his fits of jealousy were such that, to please and soothe him, she spent the earlier years of her marriage in an unaccustomed seclusion. Genoese customs contained a mingling of outward devotion and actual laxity, and gave occasion to severe repressive statutes from the Council of State and equally stringent remonstrances from preachers, confessors, and episcopal authorities. The domestic annals of the middle ages, on the one hand fruitful in lives of extraordinary sanctity, are also distinguished on the other by perpetual abuses of sacred things and occasions, and among the literary productions remaining to us from mediaeval times social satires by indignant reformers, chiefly priests, form an important part. A social sketch recently published in Italian by a Genoese notary, familiar with the state archives and the details of domestic life revealed in them, gives interesting and abundant proof that human nature was not more heroic and self-restrained in days gone by than it is at present, although the temper of the special people among whom Catherine Adorno spent her life was fervid enough to explain the thoroughness with which they entered upon any occupation, whether worldly or spiritual.

The little pamphlet above mentioned vividly reproduces the background of the picture in which she forms an exceptional and admirable feature. Outside of the circle of the really pious and devoted women, whose number in all places and ages has been a minority, society in mediaeval Genoa was intensely frivolous, and well justified the horror which “the world ” inspires among saints of that time. Society, though it made festivals an excuse for dissipation, never questioned the principle of festivals; the state gravely and effectually supported the church, but quite as much by policy as by conviction. The half-oriental seclusion of women found a counterpoise in the exceptional liberty allowed under the pretexts of collecting alms or attending processions, when marriageable girls and married women were both allowed by custom to wear such disguises as afforded them chances for escapades, whether innocent or otherwise. The penitential processions known as casaccie, peculiar to Genoa, took place long after their original character and aim were lost sight of, and the sackcloth with holes for the eyes and mouth only, which had been the dress consecrated to this particular occasion, became a convenient mask for gadding and gossiping women visiting their acquaintance on the pretence of making distant “stations” at country churches or even within the city limits. Again, the collection of alms in church, known as bacili, became, like the similar French custom in modern times, and like our own too frequent churchfairs, etc., occasions for scandal and abuse; women in rich, and not seldom immodest, dresses, bedecked with flowers and jewelry, sat, wand in hand, at the door of the church and solicited alms, touching the heads and shoulders of their friends, either playfully or gallantly, in somewhat profane imitation of the forms of bestowing certain indulgences forms still kept up in Saint Peter’s at Rome. The synod of 1567 forbids women under fifty to collect alms in this fashion. Archbishops, popular preachers, and state councillors alike inveighed against the dress and manners of women in church, enacting penalties and maintaining spies to report upon the conduct of women, generally of high rank, and to guard the young from actual dangers; ecclesiastical orders were issued against the opening of churches before daylight or the prolonging of ceremonies far into the night; and some sorrowing and indignant persons, at the time of a French invasion, petitioned both the council and the archbishop to revert to the apostolical custom of dividing the sexes in church, believing, as they did, that the national calamities of the war were a punishment from Heaven. At one time there was a decree of the council, or Signoria, bidding the clergy of San Siro remove the special chairs, desks, and carpets which a Princess Doria had insisted upon keeping for her individual use in a chapel belonging to her family, and there was again a similar decree in the case of a Princess Orsini who had upholstered her pew in San Francesco with velvet benches and cushions, while unseemly quarrels of precedence often took place between noble ladies and the wives of rich and rising citizens. While the fixed seats were thus prohibited, sacristans and others managed to elude the law by providing removable ones of various degrees for various prices, and so arose the present custom of piling chairs for use at Mass in a corner or chapel of a church and renting them out. Many churches, however, have modified. the latter detail by making the chairs free; and no one can accuse these seats of coarse straw and ill-planed wood of luxury.

Outside of the regular ceremonies, whose frequent recurrence gave life and animation to the female world of Genoa, there were particular “functions,” special festivals, processions, and also private or popular devotions in house-oratories or at street shrines; and for all this, for the oil or candles which supplied the only street-lighting of the city, for the flowers and ribbons destined for a favorite image, or for the money to be distributed among certain favored poor, special collections from door to door were made by women, or windows were adorned and balconies turned into temporary shrines with rich hangings, fresh garlands, and multitudinous little lamps. Youth and high spirits could not but often turn these opportunities to worldly account; and an education which, restricted as it generally was to the catechism and needlework, was supplemented by the legend-lore and superstitious influence of old servants not too severe on clandestine love-affairs, resulted in a disposition to Romeo-and-Juliet lovemaking. What was innocent was crushed by an artificial standard of manners, while what was disreputable was unfortunately condoned with less severity. Public opinion was everywhere more lenient than civil and ecclesiastical authority, which it too often set at defiance. Such a world necessarily seemed to enthusiastic souls too corrupt to be reformed, while an individual refuge was afforded by open renunciation of it and isolation from its customs and concerns. Many of the convents maintained an honorable reputation from their foundation, the Capuchin nuns and the Turchine being especially exemplary and never’ having deviated from their original strictness; while others became scarcely less worldly than the world itself, and needed the hand of a Saint Teresa to bring them out of the state which the Prior Silvestro Prierio, one of the consulting theologians of the Council of Trent, described in forcible terms. Neither was there any lack of vulgar contentions and small, feminine spite in ancient Genoese society, whether among nuns or lay women. Again, want of education and of serious interests was to blame for the vehement partisanship of women for such and such an individual or order, in the choice of a confessor; in one convent a dispute about the organ resulted in a disintegration of the instrument, of which each sister retained one pipe as a memento or trophy; in another a ludicrous assault in the garden resulted from a personal preference for a regular over a secular spiritual adviser.

The city life of young girls was comparatively dull, excepting such occasions for display as have been mentioned already or the excitements of a friend’s wedding, which, however, were confined to visiting and gossiping among their own sex; for unmarried girls (and such is the custom in Italy even at present) did not ‘appear at marriage festivities. Little children were never taken beyond the walls of the house (a garden was attached to every house of any note and size) after their baptism until the age of seven, when they were taken to church to hear Mass; but even grown women frequented the streets very little, and of course never alone. The occasional infraction of this rule which is another still practically surviving in Italy was generally the cause of deplorable incidents; for at one time it became a custom for young men of inferior station to use violence or offer rude liberties in public to girls of noble birth and reputed wealth, with a view to compromising them sufficiently to make a marriage likely between the maiden and her rough suitor, the object being generally not the girl but her dowry. Of more villanous practices also, in the reversed case of an unprotected girl of low position and a dissipated young noble, there was no lack in a city which, like all the rest, had its hired ruffians and complaisant go-betweens in the favor and pay of its best families.

A peculiarity of Italian marriages before the Council of Trent was what we should call their civil character, although in intention they were legitimate religious ceremonies and were always styled “according to the rites and custom of the Holy Roman Church,” although as a matter of fact there was seldom any church ceremony. The betrothal and wedding were both performed in private, and generally, but not necessarily, in the presence of a notary-public, who registered them as well as the accompanying settlements. Sometimes an old friend of the family took the place of a notary, and an ecclesiastic not seldom appears on the registers in the character of this friend, his clerical capacity, however, being simply an accident. After the Council of Trent this custom was changed and the ceremony with which we are familiar substituted under pain of severe religious penalties. What really served as a proof of marriage in the earlier middle ages, in Genoa and many other Italian cities, was the public passage of a bride to her husband’s house, witnessed by the large concourse of people usually crowding the streets. The receipt for the dowry was also taken as legal evidence. These bridal processions were gay and picturesque, and gave occasion to so much display that the council, time after time, enacted sumptuary laws limiting the number of cavaliers and servants attending the bride, and the sum total expended in the ornamentation of her saddle, harness, litter, or other trappings. In the twelfth century her dresses even were carried in public behind her, hung on frames or lay figures, much as our milliners now exhibit their goods; but the council deemed this an abuse and forbade it, though as soon as one technical point was struck at the ingenuity of private luxury devised another vent. The bridal procession was known as the “traductio” and took place sometimes on the same day as the wedding, though almost as often two or three days after. Sunday was the favorite day for marriages, because a state rule allowed wedding banquets on the three first days of the week only; at times the dissipation consequent on these suppers called forth still more repressive legislation, and the bridegroom was required to limit the number of the friends he might ask to the feasts at his father-in-law’s to two for the first and to eight for the second. If the traductio did not occur the same day as the marriage the bridegroom returned alone to his own house and waited the bride’s arrival, which in other Italian and some Spanish cities, if not in Genoa itself, was occasionally delayed by the performance of a counter ceremony called the serraglio, consisting of a make-believe carrying off of the bride by her relations. The savage ideal of a bridal being an affair of force and sale survived in this odd custom long after any significance but that of a rough game remained to it in the mind of the people. However little reality there was in this fashion, it still gave opportunity at times for unpleasant practical jokes or other unseemly disturbances, and the local authorities in most cities repeatedly put bounds to these excesses or forbade the continuance of the custom, till at last a commutation came to occupy its place, and the bride gave a ring or other costly pledge, which was presented by her relations next day at the bridegroom’s house, and redeemed by the groom with a sum of money to be spent in a convivial meeting by the supposed protectors of the bride. The morning after the bride’s entrance was also marked by the custom of a public offering of broth or cordial, carried to the door of the bridal couple’s room by the mother-in-law, or some ancient female relation of the groom if his mother were dead; and various other requirements of etiquette marked the days on which she received congratulatory visits, and the first day on which she went out in state to return them. Our notion of honeymoon privacy did not make its way to Italy until the beginning of the present century, when a few rich and travelled people began to escape from the old tedious publicity by retiring for a week or two to their country villas, and thereby much scandalizing the conservative members of society, who saw nothing but perfection in those “good old times” which were really rather coarse. Marriages have gradually come to be, even among antiquated circles in Italian society, something more than “alliances” not universally so, by any means, for personal experience recalls to my mind many cases, not twenty years ago, in which these old fashions were closely followed; but still the principle of love-matches is not wholly ignored, and it follows that where there is inclination a natural desire for retirement accompanies it. But in republican Genoa of old it would have been somewhat of a contradiction to shut up together for a month two young strangers, one of whom had been looking forward to her marriage as the period of her comparative social emancipation. All that the bridegroom rejoiced in having secured was a suitable bearer and transmitter of his name, while the bride’s special subject of joy was her possession of so much jewelry, lace, and gold cloth, and the appropriate display of them to her intimates. Although the people were practically less ceremonious, even their marriages were the subject of diplomatic arrangements, and contracts of great solemnity are registered concerning business and family matters combined, though the amount of money involved is often very small. An exceptional arrangement was one recorded as occurring between a smith, Domenico Deferrari, in 1488, with another smith betrothed to his daughter, in which he promises in cash, clothes, and jewelry a dowry of four hundred francs, but fixes the date of the marriage at four years hence, admitting his future son-in-law to his home, table, and business partnership during the interval, subject to the latter forfeiting all these advantages if he should misbehave himsell towards his future bride, or even persuade her to a clandestine marriage. Though exceptional, such an arrangement is explained by the fact that, to make a marriage tolerably certain, girls of tender age were sometimes given away on paper, and such promises, and virtually marriages, were considered legal after the child, either boy or girl, had attained the age of seven, though twelve was the actual age required by the canon law for a real marriage. Such facilities for laying hands on important estates or dowries also explains the frequent trials, resulting in a dissolution of marriage between the two parties, which occur in the records of Genoa. Marriage-brokers, also, were a peculiarity of the middle ages, and something not unlike them, though no longer legally recognized, exists to this day. In old times it was a legitimate profession, and poor men, both lay and ecclesiastics, kept regular registers of marriageable youths and maidens, with personal and genealogical details, and especially commercialones touching their possessions or prospects. “Fast” women, too, were not unknown even among the jealously watched and guarded wives of the rich; a Princess Doria who figured somewhat disreputably in a divorce suit in the lax times of the eighteenth century was stated in the evidence given at the trial to have ridden on horseback in a man’s dress, attended by her male friends and admirers, several times back and forth between her villa and the city. But turning from mere social effervescence such as processions, serenades, mattinatas (the song at dawn under a bride’s window), or the less poetical and derisive welcome of tins, pots, horns, and mocking laughter which awaited a second marriage and still survives in Spanish popular custom, and which in Genoa went by the name of tenebra to the more substantial consequences of marriage, it is curious to see how, as far back as the eleventh century, a wife’s right to a third of her husband’s property was maintained by law, whether she had children or not; and how, in the case of the husband’s bankruptcy, her dowry was the first lien on his estate, and might be redeemed by application to the council before other creditors could touch anything. Also, before her first child was born, a woman had the absolute right of willing her property the only instance in which she could act by and for herself; for in all these documents the signatures are almost invariably those of male relations acting for their sisters, daughters, nieces, etc. But ignorance often deprived a woman of her few privileges, and young widows sometimes had almost a valid excuse for a second marriage in spite of the popular prejudice against; such unions in the rapacity of relations of their first husband who would try to cheat her out of her share. Dress was considered of so much importance in mediaeval times that a provision was made by law for the widow’s weeds out of the husband’s estate, and bridegrooms, as they do still in France, presented gala-dresses to their brides. In fact, it is chiefly the English-speaking nations who have evolved the independent ideal of a bride who scorns to receive necessaries from a man before he is actually her husband. A good many women, not at all given to nonsense about woman’s sphere and duties, are highly shocked and offended at the notion of even their trousseau linen being marked in their new name, and resent it as suggesting the idea that “they never had any clothes worth speaking of before they were married.” Artificial scruples had less weight with the Genoese women, who cared little whence came the supply of finery which they craved. Indeed, as a rule, the parents and husband divided the burden of supporting the bride, and her property was duly secured on certain real estate, often house property, belonging to the bridegroom.

The country or rather the autumn villeggiatura, for Italians know nothing corresponding to what we call the country was the chief delight of Genoese women, and especially of unmarried girls, who were there given a dangerous liberty in foolish contrast to the equally dangerous repression in the city. The dnnghters of the rich enjoyed dances, suppers, concerts, and gossiping leisure in their beautiful villas, where young men had opportunities, unchecked by custom, to make love. This, however, even with the most honorable intentions, generally came to an abrupt and disastrous ending through the pressure of the arbitrary code of social life. But of genuine country life and its healthy pursuits as we know them the Genoese were ignorant, as are most Italians of any position even at present. Conviviality was the amusement of the older men, gossip and gambling that of the older women, the latter passion being strangely intense in Genoa. Women of high rank were always the foremost, and, before the present lottery system was invented, vied with the men in betting on public, social, or domestic events. They had fortune-telling wheels and sundry like devices, and gathered together round tables covered with embroidered carpets of rich stuff representing numbers and combinations of figures; in the sixteenth century loto was introduced, and from that came the present popular Italian lotteries which have done so much mischief. The ecclesiastical as well as civil laws recorded in the Genoese archives were constantly prohibiting such abuses, and signalize the dangerous consequences of betting on births in illustrious families (this was prohibited under pain of mortal sin), and many other details on which the gambling propensity spent itself, both among men and women. Politics and municipal elections, as well as domestic events, were favorite betting subjects. Again, drunkenness and license we are accustomed too lightly to suppose that the former does not exist in wine-growing countries are often mentioned in these warnings, pastorals, laws, and regulations. At marriages the old Greek custom of libations, and a symbolic participation of the same cup by the bride and groom, was early perverted into an excuse for drinking and noise, and repeated injunctions under pain of mortal sin were issued against the custom by the church authorities. The use of sweetmeats of various kinds at weddings goes at least as far back as the later Roman times; nuts being the sine-qua-non of Genoese marriages, as cake is of ours, though at present fashion has tabooed these as vulgar, and boxes of French sugar-plums are the correct substitute, so that, except in country districts among the mountains, the saying, “When will you send me the nuts?” as equivalent to the query, “When are you going to be married?” has lost its meaning. At the ceremony of the taking of the veil or the profession of a nun similar customs were kept up, and the archbishop received certain vials of syrup and boxes of homemade sweets and candies as part of his fees, the vicar-apostolic and others sharing the latter. In later times the presents of candies were commuted for money contributions, paid out of thedowry of the novice or professa.

Such was the society in which Catherine Adorno found herself at the time of her marriage. Her early childhood had been, say her biographers, remarkable for devotion, bodily mortification, and obedience; her health was always delicate and precarious. Her style she wrote several spiritual dialogues and a treatise on purgatory was pure, elegant, and impassioned. Saint Francis of Sales was accustomed to read the treatise twice a year, admiring its literary merit as well as its religious import; and Schlegel, who translated the dialogues into German, considered them models of style. Her life, which was that of a Sceur Rosalie transported into mediaeval conditions, is chiefly associated in the minds of Catholics with her work and services at the city hospital, where, before becoming the head, she labored some years as a subordinate, her husband living there with her. It is quite possible, though her historians do not say so, that Adorno’s circumstances were such as to make such a home desirable; for he was both extravagant, careless, and eccentric, while her executive abilities and her peculiar tact had long been known to her large circle of friends. The hospital was very likely an honorable retreat as well as an important charge. Saint Catherine had the care of the accounts as well as of the patients, and kept them accurately and faithfully. Brought up as she had been in the use of devout practices, she experienced, nevertheless, so passionate a spiritual change some years after her marriage that she always dated from her ” conversion”; but this event was only the culminating-point of a long and painful trial of mind. Her Italian biographer says that one day toward the climax of her suspense and uneasiness of mind, and her nervous depression at the vexations of her husband, she went into the church of Saint Benedict and prayed, in a species of desperation, ” that for three months God would keep her sick in bed.” For five years after the first years of her married life, when she secluded herself to please her exacting husband, she ” sought solace for her hard life, as womem are prone to do, in the diversions and vanities of the world, . . . external affairs and feminine amusements, . . . yet not to a sinful extent . . .”; and in connection with this brief indication the foregoing social details of Genoese female life are interesting. It is a pleasure to reconstruct in fancy the ordinary and legitimate surroundings of great or holy personages, and the few glimpses afforded of Saint Catherine’s gatherings of friends at her own house, when she would discourse on holy things to them; or of her own absentmindedness, her trances, her extraordinary fasts while still living with a household of her relations and receiving visits, walking in her garden, superintending her servants, according to the domestic programme of her rank, are very interesting.

After the culminating moment of her “conversion,” which was during a ‘confession she was making at the suggestion of her sister, who was a nun, she experienced a singular self-knowledge of her smallest sins, which state lasted fourteen months, but which she took to be in itself an intellectual expiation of those sins, so that she tells us herself that, this satisfaction having been made, God ” relieved her of the sight of her sins so entirely that she never beheld again the least of them.” She gathered about her a devoted knot of spiritual followers, forming a society apart, a guild of charity and .devotion, who helped her in her outer works, and forced her to give them advice and guidance in their own daily life and troubles. She began her life of self-denial by visiting the poor of the city under the auspices of ” the Ladies of Mercy,” who, according to the custom of her day, gave certain moneys and provisions into her charge for the purpose of distribution, something after the fashion of modern district-visitors or of the members of the Brotherhood of Saint Vincent of Paul. She was deputed to cleanse the houses of the poor and to cook their food, to tend the sick in their own homes, and to take home ragged and filthy clothes to be cleansed, pieced, and mended by her own hands. Spiritual teaching formed part of her duties as visitor, and naturally she continued these ministrations when attached to the hospital. Many years after she had been there a rector was appointed, who became her spiritual friend and director; but for the greater part of her life she says that God allowed her no special spiritual help but such as he directly gave her in internal visitations. Her dialogues, exalting and celebrating divine love, remind one very much of the fourth book of the Imitation. While remaining within the church’s limits” of doctrine concerning grace and free-will, she was strangely and deeply impressed with the natural perversity of human nature, and its helplessness unless assisted by God, and she repeatedly dwells upon the superior sinfulness of man as a being possessed of a double instrument of rebellion; ” for,” she says, ” the devil is a spirit without a body, while man, without the grace of God, is a devil incarnate. Man has a free-will, … so that he can do all the evil that he wills; to the devil this is impossible, . . . and when man surrenders to him his evil will the devil employs it as the instrument of his temptation.” She was as acutely distrustful of self-love as it was natural considering her intimate union with God, and, in the quaint, direct way that characterizes mediaeval literature, she says in one of the dialogues: ” Self-love is so subtle a robber that it commits its thefts even upon God himself, without fear or shame, employing his goods as if they were its own, and assigning as a reason that it cannot live without them. And this robbery is hidden under so many veils of apparent good that it can hardly be detected. . . .” In many of the dialogues she treats ” Self ” as a separate being and a born enemy, Humanity appearing as a sort of Caliban, hindering the soul’s perfection and acting as a clog, even when only asking for toleration of its physical needs.

Some time before his death Catherine Adorno’s husband became a member of the Third Order of Saint Francis, as many pious laymen were used to do from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century; but his natural impatience was far from quelled, and broke out in excusable though vexatious bitterness during his last illness. He was sick for a long” time, and bore his sufferings as most men do; but as his death became more and more certain his wife grew very anxious about his salvation. She prayed incessantly for him, and.some inner warning seemed to tell her that her prayers were heard at least so she once hinted to one of her younger followers in the path of holiness. Her friends firmly believed in the omnipotence of her prayers, so much so that they went to her as to a spiritual physician, and even strangers to her followed their example. The story of her adoption of a young widow, Argentina del Sale, illustrates this trait. Marco del Sale was sick of a cancer, and became so impatient over his hopeless disease that his wife, as a last resort, went to the hospital and begged Saint Catherine to go and see him, which the latter did at once, and marvellously calmed him by “a few humble and devout words.” Argentina then accompanied her back, and on their way they stopped at the church of Our Lady of Grace, and there prayed for the sick man. When the poor wife returned home she found a great change for the better in her husband’s temper; he felt resigned to whatever might be God’s will, and was anxious to see Catherine again, which was readily granted him next day. But the saint and the sufferer alike had forebodings of the fatal end of the disease, and Marco, telling Catherine of a vision he believed he had had, revealing to him his approaching death, said: “Therefore I pray you, most kind mother, that you may be pleased to accept Argentina as your spiritual daughter, retaining her always near you; and I pray you, Argentina, to consent to this.” He died the eve of Ascension day, as he expected he would, and the legend adds that ” his spirit knocked at the window of his confessor’s cell, crying, i Ecce Homo,’ Avhich when the confessor heard he knew that Marco had passed to his Lord.” Argentina attached herself to Saint Catherine and became her constant companion. A lady friend of Saint Catherine, and a great contrast to her, was Tommasa, a cousin of her own, and, like herself, a married woman anxious to live a more than commonly devout life. She prudently gave up by degrees the ordinary and legitimate occupations of her rank, and dedicated her many talents to devout purposes; but Catherine, in her superior fervor, wondered how Tommasa could make such slow progress and could dream of the possibility of turning back. ” If I should turn back ” (by which she meant only a return to blameless and somewhat dull occupations), ” I should not only wish my eyes to be put out, but that every kind of punishment and insult should be inflicted upon me.” Madonna Tommasa, however, wrought a good work in a frivolous world, and, after the death of her husband, became a nun in an Observantine (Franciscan) convent, whence, after twenty years, she was sent to another convent of the same order, to reform it by introducing the strict observance which she had contributed to restore in her first monastery. She was a skilful writer, painter, and embroiderer, had exquisite and affable manners, and, though zealous, was never either fanatical or inconsiderate. Her prudence and discretion won her many disciples. Among her writings were two treatises, one on the Apocalypse and the other on Dionysius the Areopagite; her paintings and needlework were delicate and dignified representations of holy scenes, Biblical allegories, etc.; she illustrated manuscripts and copied the text with great skill. In her we see another exceptional specimen of Genoese education. Another of Catherine’s friends, an unmarried woman, who lived some years in her house and is said by the biographer to have had ” a powerful intellect,” was, to the belief of those about her, possessed by the devil; at any rate, she was subject to violent paroxysms which lasted till her death. Catherine’s presence always soothed her, and she called the saint Serafina, from her fervent spirit of heavenly love.

Catherine’s writings partook of some of the qualities that distinguish those of Saint Thomas, and abound in pleasing diversities as well as literary merit, Here they sound like a theological treatise, there like a sweet poem such as the Minnesingers of Germany in previous centuries had composed. Of the action of grace she says: ” Grace increases in proportion as man makes use of it. Hence it is evident that God gives man from day to day all that he needs, no more and no less, and to each according to his condition and capacity; . . . because we are so cold and neglectful, and because the instinct of the spirit is to arrive quickly at perfection, it seems as if grace were insufficient.” Poetical fancy was not wanting in Saint Catherine’s writings, but among similes common to most poets the following appears original: ” At length that befell the soul which happens to a bombshell when, the fire being applied to it, it explodes and loses both fire and powder; thus the soul, having conceived the fire of pure, divine love, suddenly lost that which had before inflamed her, and, deprived of all sensibility, could never more return to it.” The language of the Imitation continually occurs to one’s memory.

She constantly interchanges the personal for the abstract in her allegorical account of the journey of the Soul, the Body, and Self-Love, which reads very like some of Calderon’s poems. Occasionally the Spirit, meaning the higher part of human nature, is distinguished from the Soul, though not systematically. The Soul and Body agree to call in Self-Love as an arbiter, so that neither shall be wholly starved or confined, but both enjoy some part of the delights peculiar to each. This partnership, however, fails to work satisfactorily, and the Body, after much fasting and subjection, breaks loose and asserts itself so as to cripple the Soul, who sorrowfully allows it for a time to have its way, but subsequently is allured by earthly delights and comes down to the level of the Body. Then follows a period of sin, in which Remorse plays an occasional part as Mentor, but is often stifled, and at last, after much conversation in the mediaeval style, the light of God is restored to the Soul, who gains definitive mastery over her companion and dismisses their common arbiter. The conceit is entirely foreign to our notions, the nearest thing to it in later English being some of Herbert’s poetry.

Saint Catherine’s treatise on purgatory has some very poetical similes, and the leading idea namely, that the soul’s consciousness of the requirements of divine purity is such that it voluntarily casts itself out of God’s presence until purified is almost identical with that of Cardinal Newman’s poem on death, “The Dream of Gerontius.” A rather original simile is that of the single loaf destined for the satisfaction of the hunger of mankind. Purgatory is likened to the pains of the hungry man who is detained from possession of the loaf, the sight of which alone is supposed to appease hunger, while hell is portrayed by the despair of the man who is certain that he never will possess the mystic bread. This has a flavor of the legends of the Round Table, and would serve well for Tennyson’s pen. One thing more is worthy of remark in Saint Catherine’s writings on this subject. She warns devout persons to rely upon daily watchfulness against sin rather than upon the gaining of plenary indulgences and the precarious fact of actually possessing perfect contrition, for she says: “Did you know how hardly it is come by you would tremble with fear and be more sure of losing than of gaining it.”

– from Catholic World, July 1881

SOURCE : https://catholicsaints.info/saint-catherine-of-genoa-and-her-contemporaries/

The Transit of the Seraphic Virgin, Saint Catherine of Siena, to Sister Catherine Petriboni in the Monastery of San Piero a Monticelli near Florence

In the Name of Jesus Christ.

Dearest Mother in Christ Jesus, and Sister in the holy memory of our blessed mother Catherine, I, Barduccio, a wretched and guilty sinner, recommend myself to your holy prayers as a feeble infant, orphaned by the death of so great a mother. I received your letter and read it with much pleasure, and communicated it to my afflicted mothers here, who, supremely grateful for your great charity and tender love towards them, recommend themselves greatly, for their part, to your prayers, and beg you to recommend them to the Prioress and all the sisters that they may be ready to do all that may be pleasing to God concerning themselves and you. But since you, as a beloved and faithful daughter, desire to know the end of our common mother, I am constrained to satisfy your desire; and although I know myself to be but little fitted to give such a narration, I will write in any case what my feeble eyes have seen, and what the dull senses of my soul have been able to comprehend.

This blessed virgin and mother of thousands of souls, about the feast of the Circumcision, began to feel so great a change both in soul and body, that she was obliged to alter her mode of life, the action of taking food for her sustenance becoming so loathsome to her, that it was only with the greatest difficulty that she could force herself to take any, and, when she did so, she swallowed nothing of the substance of the food, but had the habit of rejecting it. Moreover, not one drop of water could she swallow for refreshment, whence came to her a most violent and tedious thirst, and so great an inflammation of her throat that her breath seemed to be fire, with all which, however, she remained in very good health, robust and fresh as usual. In these conditions we reached Sexagesima Sunday, when, about the hour of vespers, at the time of her prayer, she had so violent a stroke that from that day onwards she was no longer in health. Towards the night of the following Monday, just after I had written a letter, she had another stroke so terrific, that we all mourned her as dead, remaining under it for a long time without giving any sign of life. Then, rising, she stood for an equal space of time, and did not seem the same person as she who had fallen.

From that hour began new travail and bitter pains in her body, and, Lent having arrived, she began, in spite of her infirmity, to give herself with such application of mind to prayer that the frequency of the humble sighs and sorrowful plaints which she exhaled from the depth of her heart appeared to us a miracle. I think, too, that you know that her prayers were so fervent that one hour spent in prayer by her reduced that dear tender frame to greater weakness than would be suffered by one who should persist for two whole days in prayer. Meanwhile, every morning, after communion, she arose from the earth in such a state that any one who had seen her would have thought her dead, and was thus carried back to bed. Thence, after an hour or two, she would arise afresh, and we would go to Saint Peter’s, although a good mile distant, where she would place herself in prayer, so remaining until vespers, finally returning to the house so worn out that she seemed a corpse.

These were her exercises up till the third Sunday in Lent, when she finally succumbed, conquered by the innumerable sufferings, which daily increased, and consumed her body, and the infinite afflictions of the soul which she derived from the consideration of the sins which she saw being committed against God, and from the dangers ever more grave to which she knew the Holy Church to be exposed, on account of which she remained greatly overcome, and both internally and externally tormented. She lay in this state for eight weeks, unable to lift her head, and full of intolerable pains, from the soles of her feet to the crown of her head, to such an extent that she would often say: “These pains are truly physical, but not natural; for it seems that God has given permission to the devils to torment this body at their pleasure.” And, in truth, it evidently was so; for, if I were to attempt to explain the patience which she practiced, under this terrible and unheard-of agony, I should fear to injure, by my explanations, facts which cannot be explained. This only will I say, that, every time that a new torment came upon her, she would joyously raise her eyes and her heart to God and say: “Thanks to You, oh eternal Spouse, for granting such graces afresh every day to me, Your miserable and most unworthy handmaid!”

In this way her body continued to consume itself until the Sunday before the Ascension; but by that time it was reduced to such a state that it seemed like a corpse in a picture, though I speak not of the face, which remained ever angelical and breathed forth devotion, but of the bosom and limbs, in which nothing could be seen but the bones, covered by the thinnest skin, and so feeble was she from the waist downwards that she could not move herself, even a little, from one side to another. In the night preceding the aforesaid Sunday, about two hours or more before dawn, a great change was produced in her, and we thought that she was approaching the end. The whole family was then called around her, and she, with singular humility and devotion, made signs to those who were standing near that she desired to receive Holy Absolution for her faults and the pains due to them, and so it was done. After which she became gradually reduced to such a state that we could observe no other movement than her breathing, continuous, sad, and feeble. On account of this it seemed right to give her extreme unction, which our abbot of Sant’ Antimo did, while she lay as it were deprived of feeling.

After this unction she began altogether to change, and to make various signs with her head and her arms as if to show that she was suffering from grave assaults of demons, and remained in this calamitous state for an hour and a half, half of which time having been passed in silence, she began to say: “I have sinned! Oh Lord, have mercy on me!” And this, as I believe, she repeated more than sixty times, raising each time her right arm, and then letting it fall and strike the bed. Then, changing her words, she said as many times again, but without moving her arms, “Holy God, have mercy on me!” Finally she employed the remainder of the above-mentioned time with many other formulas of prayer both humble and devout, expressing various acts of virtue, after which her face suddenly changed from gloom to angelic light, and her tearful and clouded eyes became serene and joyous, in such a manner that I could not doubt that, like one saved from a deep sea, she was restored to herself, which circumstance greatly mitigated the grief of her sons and daughters who were standing around in the affliction you can imagine.

Catherine had been lying on the bosom of Mother Alessia and now succeeded in rising, and with a little help began to sit up, leaning against the same mother. In the meantime we had put before her eyes a pious picture, containing many relics and various pictures of the saints. She, however, fixed her eyes on the image of the cross set in it, and began to adore it, explaining, in words, certain of her most profound feelings of the goodness of God, and while she prayed, she accused herself in general of all her sins in the sight of God, and, in particular, said: “It is my fault, oh eternal Trinity, that I have offended You so miserably with my negligence, ignorance, ingratitude, and disobedience, and many other defects. Wretch that I am! for I have not observed Your commandments, either those which are given in general to all, or those which Your goodness laid upon me in particular! Oh mean creature that I am!” Saying which, she struck her breast, repeating her confession, and continued: “I have not observed Your precept, with which You commanded me to seek always to give You honor, and to spend myself in labors for my neighbor, while I, on the contrary, have fled from labors, especially where they were necessary. Did You not command me, oh, my God! to abandon all thought of myself and to consider solely the praise and glory of Your Name in the salvation of souls, and with this food alone, taken from the table of the most holy Cross, to comfort myself? But I have sought my own consolation. You did ever invite me to bind myself to You alone by sweet, loving, and fervent desires, by tears and humble and continuous prayers for the salvation of the whole world and for the reformation of the holy Church, promising me that, on account of them, You would use mercy with the world, and give new beauty to Your Spouse; but I, wretched one, have not corresponded with Your desire, but have remained asleep in the bed of negligence.

“Oh, unhappy that I am! You have placed me in charge of souls, assigning to me so many beloved sons, that I should love them with singular love and direct them to You by the way of Life, but I have been to them nothing but a mirror of human weakness; I have had no care of them; I have not helped them with continuous and humble prayer in Your presence, nor have I given them sufficient examples of the good life or the warnings of salutary doctrine. Oh, mean creature that I am! with how little reverence have I received Your innumerable gifts, the graces of such sweet torments and labors which it pleased You to accumulate on this fragile body, nor have I endured them with that burning desire and ardent love with which You sent them to me. Alas! oh, my Love, through Your excessive goodness You chose me for Your spouse, from the beginning of my childhood, but I was not faithful enough; in fact, I was unfaithful to You, because I did not keep my memory faithful to You alone and to Your most high benefits; nor have I fixed my intelligence on the thought of them only or disposed my will to love You immediately with all its strength.”

Of these and many other similar things did that pure dove accuse herself, rather, as I think, for our example than for her own need, and then, turning to the priest, said: “For the love of Christ crucified, absolve me of all these sins which I have confessed in the presence of God, and of all the others which I cannot remember.” That done, she asked again for the plenary indulgence, saying that it had been granted her by Pope Gregory and Pope Urban, saying this as one an hungered for the Blood of Christ. So I did what she asked, and she, keeping her eyes ever fixed on the crucifix, began afresh to adore it with the greatest devotion, and to say certain very profound things which I, for my sins, was not worthy to understand, and also on account of the grief with which I was laboring and the anguish with which her throat was oppressed, which was so great that she could hardly utter her words, while we, placing our ears to her mouth, were able to catch one or two now or again, passing them on from one to the other. After this she turned to certain of her sons, who had not been present at a memorable discourse, which, many days previously, she had made to the whole family, showing us the way of salvation and perfection, and laying upon each of us the particular task which he was to perform after her death. She now did the same to these others, begging most humbly pardon of all for the slight care which she seemed to have had of our salvation. Then she said certain things to Lucio and to another, and finally to me, and then turned herself straightway to prayer.

Oh! had you seen with what humility and reverence she begged and received many times the blessing of her most sorrowful mother, all that I can say is that it was a bitter sweet to her. How full of tender affection was the spectacle of the mother, recommending herself to her blessed child, and begging her to obtain a particular grace from God — namely, that in these melancholy circumstances she might not offend Him. But all these things did not distract the holy virgin from the fervor of her prayer; and, approaching her end, she began to pray especially for the Catholic Church, for which she declared she was giving her life. She prayed again for Pope Urban VI, whom she resolutely confessed to be the true Pontiff, and strengthened her sons never to hesitate to give their life for that truth. Then, with the greatest fervor, she besought all her beloved children whom the Lord had given her, to love Him alone, repeating many of the words which our Savior used, when He recommended the disciples to the Father, praying with such affection, that, at hearing her, not only our hearts, but the very stones might have been broken. Finally, making the sign of the cross, she blessed us all, and thus continued in prayer to the end of her life for which she had so longed, saying: “You, oh Lord, call me, and I come to You, not through my merits, but through Your mercy alone, which I ask of You, in virtue of Your Blood!” and many times she called out: “Blood, Blood!” Finally, after the example of the Savior, she said: “Father, into Your Hands I commend my soul and my spirit,” and thus sweetly, with a face all shining and angelical, she bent her head, and gave up the ghost.

Her transit occurred on the Sunday at the hour of Sext, but we kept her unburied until the hour of Compline on Tuesday, without any odor being perceptible, her body remaining so pure, intact, and fragrant, that her arms, her neck and her legs remained as flexible as if she were still alive. During those three days the body was visited by crowds of people, and lucky he thought himself who was able to touch it. Almighty God also worked many miracles in that time, which in my hurry I omit. Her tomb is visited devoutly by the faithful, like those of the other holy bodies which are in Rome, and Almighty God is granting many graces in the name of His blessed spouse, and I doubt not that there will be many more, and we are made great by hearing of them. I say no more. Recommend me to the Prioress and all the sisters, for I have, at present, the greatest need of the help of prayer. May Almighty God preserve you and help you to grow in His grace.

– Ser Barduccio di Piero Canigiani

SOURCE : https://catholicsaints.info/the-transit-of-the-seraphic-virgin-saint-catherine-of-siena-to-sister-catherine-petriboni-in-the-monastery-of-san-piero-a-monticelli-near-florence/

Santa Caterina Fieschi Adorno da Genova Vedova

15 settembre

Nasce nel 1447 in una delle principali famiglie genovesi. A sedici anni viene data in moglie a Giuliano Adorno, appartenente ad una importante famiglia ghibellina. Vive una vita frivola e mondana ma dopo un incontro con la sorella suora, decide di cambiare vita e condivide le sue esperienze mistiche e caritative con un piccolo gruppo di figli spirituali. Muore il 15 settembre 1510. Dopo la conversione, la vita di Caterina ha il proprio centro nel rapporto con Cristo. Non si dedica però solo alla contemplazione, ma anche all'azione, rivolgendo il suo impegno concreto soprattutto agli ammalati. Opera nella Compagnia delle dame della Misericordia e inizia a visitare il lebbrosario di san Lazzaro, svolge le mansioni più umili; cura pure i bambini abbandonati e fronteggia varie epidemie di peste. Nel 1497 fonda la prima «Compagnia del divino amore», che sarà il modello per analoghe istituzioni di altre città italiane nel quadro di quella che è stata chiamata la Riforma cattolica. Il suo corpo è conservato nella chiesa genovese della Santissima Annunziata in Portoria. (Avvenire)

Etimologia: Caterina = donna pura, dal greco

Martirologio Romano: A Genova, santa Caterina Fieschi, vedova, insigne per il disprezzo del mondo, i frequenti digiuni, l’amore per Dio e la carità verso i bisognosi e gli infermi.

Nel 1494-95 l’esercito del re francese Carlo VIII ha percorso l’Italia, portando con sé, come dice Francesco Guicciardini, i semi "di orribilissimi accidenti... e infermità fino a quel dì non conosciute". L’infermità che atterrisce è la sifilide. Esisteva già, ma lo scorrazzare degli eserciti l’ha propagata in dimensioni catastrofiche e con effetti ripugnanti. I malati ricchi chiamano i medici in casa, quelli poveri muoiono per le strade, nei fossi. Ma a Genova, nel 1497, emerge un gruppo che si dedica a questi scarti umani, li accoglie, li nutre, li cura. Animatrice: una signora di rango, Caterina Fieschi, moglie del nobile Giuliano Adorno. Li hanno sposati le famiglie e sono due malmaritati, che stanno insieme per ragioni di facciata; e delle avventure di lui parla tutta Genova.Lei però si libera da questa situazione attraverso un’esperienza mistica che la porta a guidare in Genova la reazione evangelica alla decadenza della Chiesa, anche attraverso la dedizione agli abbandonati; a diventare riformatrice con largo anticipo, attirando nell’impresa anche il marito, e dirigendo l’impegno dei rinnovatori verso un obiettivo preciso: vivere l’esperienza dell’amore di Dio andando dai più infelici e disprezzati. "Andava lei e nettava le miserie e brutture di detti infermi e poveri... con puzze quasi intollerabili et trovava anche quelli che dicevano parole terribili di disperazione". Qui c’è un aspetto applicato della sua esperienza, che non si ferma a quest’opera com’è descritta dai suoi discepoli. Caterina è una mistica che si tuffa nella realtà, con singolari doti che nel XX secolo si chiameranno manageriali: cambia organizzazione negli ospedali, cerca il nuovo e il meglio tra medici e cure. Ma parte sempre dall’idea di Dio-Amore, di quest’amore che va trasmesso subito a tutti, cominciando dai disperati.Il notaio e umanista genovese Ettore Vernazza, su impulso di lei, dà vita alla fraternità del Divino Amore, movimento di clero e di laici protesi a una riforma radicale della vita cristiana, che servirà di modello ad altre associazioni simili, tutte fondate sulla riforma interiore da un lato e sullo spendersi dall’altro, in ogni necessità. “Madonna Caterinetta”, come la chiamano, si ammala anche di peste curando una malata. E i suoi discepoli scrivono che, "sanata che fu, ritornò al servizio dell’hospidal con gran cura e diligenzia". Il movimento di riforma cattolica, dall’interno e senza ribellione, reagisce all’indifferenza colpevole di Roma insegnando e facendo, dando coraggio a molti cristiani anche nei tempi più demoralizzanti. Bisogna "piantare in li cori nostri il divino amore, cioè la carità". Questo è l’insegnamento di Caterina, dispensato e vissuto fino alla morte; la ricetta contro l’inerzia, la premessa per la ripresa. Morta nel 1510, Caterina Fieschi Adorno sarà canonizzata da Clemente XII nel 1737.
La Diocesi di Genova ne celebra il culto il 12 settembre.

Autore: Domenico Agasso

SOURCE : http://www.santiebeati.it/dettaglio/54375

CATERINA Fieschi Adorno, santa

di Sosio Pezzella - Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani - Volume 22 (1979)

CATERINA Fieschi Adorno (Caterina da Genova), santa. - Discendente da famiglia aristocratica - tra i suoi antenati vi furono due pontefici, Innocenzo IV e Adriano V - C. nacque a Genova nei primi del giugno del 1447 da Giacomo e da Francesca de' Negri. Ultima di cinque fratelli, ricevette un'istruzione confacente al suo rango sociale: docile di carattere e con buone predisposizioni intellettuali, acquisì sufficienti rudimenti di lingua latina e una discreta cultura letteraria completando poi, come era del resto costume delle fanciulle nobili del tempo, tale educazione con l'apprendimento del disegno e del ricamo. In tal modo giunse in possesso di conoscenze abbastanza ampie anche se per nulla sorrette da profondi interessi culturali.

Le sue tendenze erano d'altra parte rivolte altrove. Appena tredicenne C. manifestò già una spiccata inclinazione per la vita religiosa, che la spinse al tentativo di farsi accogliere nel convento delle canonichesse del Laterano presso S. Maria delle Grazie dove si trovava già la sorella Limbiana. La sua richiesta fu respinta a causa della giovane età; in realtà i suoi genitori, per motivi di politica municipale, avevano diversamente deciso del suo futuro destinandola in sposa a Giuliano Adorno, un nobile di carattere violento e di costumi immorali, ma membro di una ricca e potente famiglia ghilbellina. Il matrimonio ebbe luogo il 13 genn. 1463 e C. dopo alcuni anni trascorsi, come tramanda la tradizione agiografica, "in grande tristezza",fu coinvolta nella vita allegra e spensierata a cui era assuefatto il marito, tra feste, ricevimenti e spettacoli - questo periodo lo chiamerà più tardi di "dissipazione" - fino a quando non precipitò nel 1473 in una profonda crisi religiosa, che la condurrà a un radicale cambiamento, da una duplice visione che ella affermò di avere avuto: una ferita d'amore, mentre si stava confessando e in virtù della quale le si rivelarono i segni evidenti dei suoi peccati, della sua miseria morale e della bontà di Dio; e l'apparizione del Cristo crocifisso nella sua stanza inondatasi di sangue.

Da quel momento C. si sottopose a una dura disciplina ascetica, a penitenze rigorose, a digiuni prolungati, al cilicio, al silenzio e ad astinenze, mentre dava inizio alla sua opera di assistenza degli ammalati, che sarebbe poi durata per tutta la sua vita, nell'ospedale di Pammatone che proprio nel 1471 si era ingrandito, essendo confluiti in esso, per disposizione del governo cittadino, tutti gli altri ospedali della città. Il suo esempio determinò la ferma risoluzione del marito, che abbandonò anche lui il genere di vita condotto fino ad allora, di associarsi al lavoro della moglie insieme alla quale prenderà anche la decisione (1476) di osservare nel futuro una perfetta castità matrimoniale. Ma C. abbandonò anche la casa in cui viveva con il marito trasferendosi in una piccola abitazione contigua all'ospedale di Pammatone, di cui nel 1489 assunse la direzione della sezione riservata alle donne con specifici compiti di sorveglianza del personale e di cura dei bambini abbandonati.

A causa di questa sua vasta attività sociale, che la portava tra l'altro a intrecciare relazioni con vari ambienti anche religiosi della città e con altri luoghi di cura - visitò così l'ospedale di S. Lazzaro per i lebbrosi e l'ospedale degli Incurabili - C. divenne un necessario punto di riferimento per quanti operavano ugualmente a favore dell'assistenza e della carità pubbliche. Presso di lei si venne perciò formando come un piccolo cenacolo spirituale i cui componenti furono i sacerdoti Giacomo Carenzio e Tommaso Doria, entrambi rettori di Pammatone; suora Tommasina Fieschi, Bernardino da Feltre, Cattaneo Marabotto che diventerà direttore spirituale di C., e, tra i più significativi, Ettore Vernazza che direttamente ispirato da C. fonderà insieme ai suoi compagni la Compagnia del Divino Amore (1497) e la Compagnia del Mandiletto i cui aderenti erano impegnati, conservando l'anonimato, a portare aiuti alle famiglie che versavano nell'indigenza; e, infine, Angelo da Chivasso. Costui, avendo preso dimora a Genova nel convento dell'Annunziata di Portoria attiguo all'ospedale di Pammatone, ebbe modo di frequentare a lungo C., delle cui idee ed esperienze finì col diventare un devotissimo ammiratore. Su questi discepoli C. ebbe quindi una profonda influenza e, non avendo l'abitudine di scrivere - quasi certamente non redasse nessuna delle opere che vanno sotto il titolo di Opus Catharinianum (Libro de la Vita mirabile et Dottrina santa de la Beata Caterinetta da Genova. Nel quale si contiene una utile et catholica dimostratione et dichiaratione del Purgatorio, Genova 1551, composto da Vita et Dottrina, dal Dialogo tra anima, corpo, amor propri o, spirito, umanità e Dio e dal Trattato del Purgatorio) -comunicava di volta in volta ad essi le proprie esperienze mistiche e la dottrina spirituale che ella veniva elaborando. Tale dottrina si inserisce nel filone del misticismo italiano, che da s. Angela da Foligno discende attraverso s. Caterina da Siena, s. Bernardino da Siena, s. Lorenzo Giustiniani, s. Caterina da Bologna, ed è fondamentalmente incentrata sul principio del puro amore di Dio, che comincia ad operare dal momento in cui l'anima, caduta in potere del corpo e dell'amor proprio alleatisi insieme a suo danno, gioisce a causa degli allettamenti mondani e si volge ai beni caduchi e transitori. Il primo atto di illuminazione dell'amor divino ha allora l'immediato effetto di farle scoprire la realtà del peccato di cui è nello stesso tempo vittima e preda, e a provocare un suo radicale mutamento. Allora essa ripudia i propri peccati e insieme il mondo e i suoi beni, mentre il suo corpo e il suo amor proprio diventano i principali nemici da domare e da assoggettare a sé. La sua decisione, ora che ha conosciuto i pericoli del peccato e la realtà divina che le è stata rivelata, è quella di non volersi mai più allontanare dalla strada intrapresa verso la perfezione.

Il primo momento di questo nuovo cammino è rappresentato dalla lotta ascetica contro la resistenza, le intemperanze, gli assalti dell'orgoglio, della vanagloria, della seduzione dei sensi, della volontà che cerca di resistere al suo completo annullamento. Ma l'anima riesce alla fine a conseguire la sua completa vittoria, e a trionfare su se stessa, pronta a più ardue esperienze spirituali.

Questo primo stadio della dottrina di C., descritto nel libro primo del Dialogo è chiamato "purgativo"; ad esso segue un secondo, detto "illuminativo",in cui l'anima, invasa progressivamente dall'amore divino e perciò struggendosi per le miserie morali e per le macchie che ancora avverte in sé, è governata dalla sola ispirazione interiore. Le penitenze a cui è sottoposta, e in virtù delle quali si viene purificando, non derivano quindi dall'osservanza di norme e precetti esterni imposti dalla dottrina della Chiesa - C. si sottrasse per i primi 21 anni della sua vita mistica ad ogni direzione sacerdotale - ma sono di carattere spirituale. Ed è al termine di questo nuovo travaglio - che coincide con la fine del secondo periodo delle sue esperienze - che l'anima si sente purificata e rivestita di virtù. Ma le prove dolorose non sono ancora terminate perché lo Spirito, che è la parte superiore dell'anima, la sottopone ad altri crudeli tormenti fino a quando essa, passata attraverso lo stadio supremo delle sofferenze, e avvertita in sé la presenza stessa dell'umanità del Cristo, suo modello, non giunge ad essere completamente purificata per trasformarsi e annullarsi in Dio, termine conclusivo di ogni mistica in generale.

Questa terza fase del processo di perfezione spirituale di C. viene indicata come l'epoca del Purgatorio spirituale e corrisponde, sul piano biografico che abbraccia gli anni 1499-1510, a due avvenimenti di rilievo: la decisione di C. di cessare dai digiuni a causa delle sue pessime condizioni fisiche, e la scelta di un direttore spirituale nella persona di Cattaneo Marabotto. L'elaborazione dottrinaria corrispondente alle sue nuove esperienze è riflessa nel Trattato del Purgatorio, luogo che viene considerato non tanto il regno della sofferenza quanto quello dell'amore. In esso le anime, dovendo soddisfare le proprie colpe, accolgono infatti le pene corrispondenti con la certezza di essere guidate sulla via della purificazione dalla sapienza di Dio. E poiché la pena più grave, il peggior supplizio che provano ma che non comprendono, è proprio la privazione di Dio, le sofferenze del Purgatorio hanno allora per C. il preciso significato di annullare progressivamente quei peccati che impediscono tale visione. Grazie a questo processo, si ha il confluire di due volontà, quella divina e quella umana cooperanti insieme ai fini della salvezza eterna.

Gli ultimi anni di C. trascorsero in continue e crescenti sofferenze fisiche di inaudita violenza. Pochi anni dopo la morte del marito, avvenuta nel 1497, C. cominciò ad avvertire i segni di una grave malattia che la tormentò per circa un decennio. Gli agiografi la considereranno di carattere soprannaturale e perciò impossibile a curare; in realtà si trattò di un cancro allo stomaco o al duodeno che provocava reazioni fisiche dolorose, l'impossibilità di bere e di mangiare, continue emorragie. Le conseguenze più immediate comportavano comunque anche stati di delirio e visioni (ad es. la scala di fuoco, il mondo che brucia, la tenaglia che lacera la carne, un cuneo rovente nel cuore) che C. riferiva e che sono descritte nella sua Vita.

C. morì a Genova il 15 sett. 1510.

Fu sepolta nella chiesa dell'Annunziata di Portoria e sulla sua tomba sorse subito un culto popolare. Clemente X la beatificò il 6 apr. 1675; fu proclamata patrona di Genova nel 1684 e canonizzata da Clemente XII nel 1737; infine papa Pio XII, nel 1944, la proclamò compatrona degli ospedali italiani.

Sull'origine, redazione e formazione dell'Opus Catharinianum esiste una complessa questione critica che F. von Hügel ha per primo riassunta nel suo volume The Mystical Element of Religion as studied in Saint Catherine of Genua and her Friends, I-II,London 1908. Egli giunge qui alla conclusione che la composizione delle opere attribuite a C. sarebbe il risultato di una lunga elaborazione avvenuta tra il 1495 e il 1551 ad opera dei suoi discepoli; a costoro sì dovrebbe la redazione materiale di tali scritti composti sulla base di ricordi orali, di testimonianze scritte e della conoscenza diretta delle idee e fatti avvenuti. Ad Ettore Vernazza si dovrebbe pertanto la composizione della Vita e del Trattato del Purgatorio mentre Battistina Vernazza avrebbe scritto il Dialogo e approntata l'edizione del 1551 sistemando gli scritti anche con interpolazioni di carattere teologico. Tali ipotesi si trovano però ampiamente confutate in un saggio di Umile da Genova, L'Opus Catharinianum et ses auteurs: étude critique sur la biographie et les écrits de s. C. de G., in Revue d'ascét. et de myst., XVI (1935), pp. 351-70,in cui sono contenute le nuove conclusioni su cui gli studiosi sostanzialmente concordano e a cui ancora si attengono. E cioè che l'autore della Vita non sarebbe il Vernazza bensì Cattaneo Marabotto il quale avrebbe composto anche il Trattato del Purgatorio ampliando con testimonianze scritte e orali un originario capitolo della stessa Vita. Il Dialogo sarebbe invece il risultato di una giustapposizione di due distinti scritti, il primo composto materialmente da C., il secondo di autore anonimo ma che, escludendo i Vernazza, potrebbero essere Tommaso Doria o Angelo da Chivasso. L'editore dell'edizione del 1551, infine, non sarebbe Battistina Vernazza ma un altro discepolo di C., forse un sacerdote.

Fonti e Bibl.: In alcune biblioteche di Genova si trovano fonti mss. riguardanti la bibl. di C. e testim. sulla sua opera; nella Bibl. Urbana di Genova, ms. E 30-8-14.: A. L. Giovio, Elenco delle scritture da esibirsi nella causa della b. C. e,specialmente, un Compendium chronol. historiae b. Catherinae Genuensis ab ipsius ortu usque ad hodiernum diem (1675); Ibid., ms. 32.7.16: G. Giscardi, Diario dei beati, venerabili e servi di Dio della città e dominio di Genova (1739), ff. 593-600; Ibid., ms. 31.7.18: Origine delle chiese e dei luoghi pii di Genova, ff. 391 s.; Biblioteca Brignole, ms. A. 1.12.: A. Schiaffino, Annali eccles. della Liguria, III, 1510, ff. 957-962; Arch. della Curia arciepisc., Atti del processo di beatificaz. di s. C. da Genova ; Bibl. dell'Università, ms. B. VIII. 31: Carte e docum. concernenti s. C.;G. Parpera, Vita mirabile ossia varietà de successi spirituali osservati nella vita della b. C. da Genova, Genova 1682; Id., B. C. da Genova Fieschi negli Adorni illustr., Genova 1682; Acta sanctorum, 15 sept., Venetiis 1770, pp. 123-95; [l'abbé P...], Vie de s. Catherine de Gênes et Traité du Purgatoire, Clermont 1840; F. Ratte, Die heilige Katerine von Genua und ihre wunderbaren Kenntnisse von den arme Seelen in Fegfeuer, Dulmen 1880; P. Fliche, S. Catherine de Gênes, sa vie et son esprit, Paris 1881; Th. de Bussière, Les oeuvres et la vie de s. Catherine de Gênes, Paris 1883; F. M. Paradi, La compagnia del Mandiletto in Genova, La Spezia 1901; L. de Grandmaison, L'élément mystique dans la religion, in Recherches de sciences religieuses, I (1910), pp. 180-208; G. A. Cervetto, S. C. F. A. e i Genovesi, Genova 1910; Gabriele da Pantasina, S. C. da Genova: album storico-artistico, Genova 1915; P. Paschini, La beneficenza in Italia e le Compagnie del Divino Amore nei primi decenni del Cinquecento, Roma 1915, pp. 14 s.; H. Getton, Sainte Catherine de Gênes et l'élément mystique de la religion, in Rev. de phil., XXI(1921), pp. 461-479, 632-665; V. Hostachy, Le Purgatoire de s. Catherine de Gênes, in Rev. des jeunes, XXXVIII(1924), pp. 230 ss.; P. Pourrat, La spiritualité chrétienne, II, Paris 1924, pp. 441-447; J. Baruzi, Saint Jean de la Croix et l'experience mystique, Paris 1924, pp. 142 s.; H. Michel, S. C. von Genua, Mainz 1925; Vita Cateriniana, Genova 1928-1943; Cassiano da Languasco, Gli Ospedali degli Incurabili, Genova 1929, pp. 61-65, 135 s., 175, 187, 190; Gabriele da Pantasina, Vita di C. F. A., Genova 1929; Teodosio da Voltri. S. C. da Genova...,Genova 1929; Valeriano da Finale, Trattato del Purgat. di s. C. da Genova, Genova 1929; Teodosio da Voltri, S. C. da Genova e il mov. dell'amor divino, in Vita Caterin.,IV(1931), pp. 10-19; V (1932), pp. 92-103; VI(1933), pp. 131-142; Valeriano da Finale, La cronist. del processo di beatificaz. e di canonizz., ibid., IV(1931), pp. 5864; F. Steno, La santa di Genova, ibid., pp. 3-9; Tino da Ottone, Il principio della mistica di s. C., ibid.,VI(1933), pp. 173-183; N. M. Lugaro, La dottoressa del Purgatorio, ibid., pp. 143-147; M. Viller-G. Joppin, Les sources ital. de l'Abrégé de la Perfection. La vie de s. Catherine de Gênes, in Rev. d'ascét. …,XV(1934), pp. 381-402; Tino da Ottone, La dottrina della catarsi, in Vita Cater., VII (1934), pp. 208-229; P. Paschini, Amour (Compagnie du divin), in Dict. de Spirit.,I, Paris 1937, pp. 531 ss.; P. Debongnie, Le Purgatoire de s. Catherine de Gênes, in Etud. carmelit.,XXIII (1938), pp. 92 ss.; L. Sertorius, Katharina von Genua: Lebensbild und geistige Gestalten ihrer Werke, München 1939; L. de Lapérouse, La vie de s. Catherine de Gênes, Tournai-Paris 1948; P. Debongnie, Catherine de Gênes, in Dict. d'Hist. et de Geogr. Eccl., XI, Paris 1949, coll. 1506-15; Umile da Genova, Catherine de Gênes, in Dict. de Spirit.,II, Paris 1953, coll. 290-325; P. Debongnie, La grande dame du pur amour s. Catherine de Gênes, Bruges 1960; Umile da Genova, S. C. F. A., Genova 1960-62; G. D. Gordini, C. da Genova, in Bibl. Sanct.,III, coll. 984-989.

SOURCE : https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/caterina-fieschi-adorno-santa_(Dizionario-Biografico)/

Katharina von Genua

italienischer Name: Caterina

Familienname: Fieschi-Adorno

Gedenktag katholisch: 15. September

Messe an einigen Orten

Name bedeutet: die Reine (griech.)

Mystikerin

* 1447 in Genua in Italien

† 15. September 1510 daselbst

Tomasina Fieschi: Gemälde, um 1510 

Katharina war Tochter der adligen Familie Fieschi, aus der auch die beiden Päpste Innozenz IV. und Hadrian V. stammten; ihr Vater war Vizekönig von Neapel. Mit 16 Jahren heiratete sie gezwungenermaßen den Genueser Edelmann Giuliano Adorno. Nach zehnjähriger schlechter Ehe, während der sie oft zurückgezogen im Gebet, zeitweise auch aushäusig in Vergnügungen lebte, besuchte sie ihre Schwester in einem Franziskanerordenkonvent in Genua. Dort erfuhr sie 1474 die erste Erleuchtung und Erscheinung des gekreuzigten Christus; sie lebte nun in Enthaltsamkeit und Askese, geißelte sich, pflegte Arme und Kranke und schloss sich 1479 als Tertiarin dem Franziskanerorden an.

Katharina kümmerte sich v. a. um die Kranken im Spital Pammatone in Genua, wo sie 1489 Vorsteherin der Frauenabteilung wurde. Während zweier Pestepidemien arbeitete sie unermüdlich für die Kranken und Sterbenden. Unter ihrem Einfluss enstand die Gemeinschaft der Göttlichen Liebe mit Aufgaben in der Krankenpflege. Sie selbst kasteite sich, während der Fastenzeit ernährte sie sich nur von der Kommunion, ihr wurden mystische Gnadengaben zuteil.

Nachdem er seinen ganzen Besitz verloren hatte, folgte auch ihr Mann in seinen letzten Lebensjahren Katharinas Beispiel, bis er 1497 starb. Nun begann ihr Seelenführer mit der Aufzeichnung ihrer Lebensgeschichte mit den spirituellen Erfahrungen und Lehren: 1551 erschien dieses Libro de la Vita mirabile e dottrina santa di S. Caterina Fieschi, das Buch des wunderbaren Lebens und der heiligen Lehre der Heiligen Katharina Fieschi. Ihre Offenbarungen geben die beiden Bücher Dialogo del Divino Amore, Dialog von der göttlichen Liebe, sowie Trattato del purgatorio, Abhandlung über das Fegefeuer wieder. Das Fegefeuer ist für sie zwar ein Ort des Leidens, aber die Seelen sind dort von Freude erfüllt, weil sie sich von Gott geleitet wissen, deshalb verstärken sich zwar der Schmerz, aber auch die Freude, je näher der Zeitpunkt ihrer Erlösung heranrückt.

Kanonisation: Katharina wurde am 6. April 1675 von Papst Clemens X. selig- und am 16. Juni 1737 von Papst Clemens XII. heiliggesprochen. 1944 ernannte Papst Pius XII. sie zur zweiten Patronin der italienischen Krankenhäuser. 2004 gab es Meldungen, Katharina könne als vierte Frau in der Geschichte und als erste Verheiratete zur Kirchenlehrerin ernannt werden.

Patronin der italienischen Krankenhäuser

Worte der Heiligen

Im Dialog über die göttliche Liebe fragt Katharina den Herrn nach der Ursache der Liebe Gottes zu uns Menschen und erhält folgende Antwort :

Der Herr: Du fragst mich da um etwas so Großes, dass du gar nicht fähig bist, es zu verstehen. Doch um deinen schwachen, armen Verstand zu befriedigen, werde ich dir bloß einen Funken dieser Wahrheit erstrahlen lassen. Sähest du diesen Funken der Wahrheit deutlich, so könntest du nicht mehr leben, wenn ich dich nicht gnädig stützte. Wisse vorerst, dass ich unveränderlicher Gott bin.

Ich liebte den Menschen, noch ehe ich ihn erschaffen hatte, mit unendlicher, reiner, einfacher und aufrichtiger Liebe ohne irgendeine Ursache. Es ist mir unmöglich, etwas nicht zu lieben, was ich geschaffen und zu meiner Verherrlichung bestimmt habe. Außerdem habe ich den Menschen sehr reichlich ausgestattet mit allen Mitteln, die ihm dienlich sind, sein Ziel zu erreichen. Es sind dies die natürlichen Gaben und übernatürlichen Gnaden, die ihm, soweit es von mir abhängt, nie fehlen. Ja, meine unendliche Liebe umgibt ihn auf verschiedenerlei Weise und geht ihm nach auf verschiedenartigen Wegen, um ihn unter meinen Schutz zurückzurufen. Ich finde auch nichts in ihm, was mir widerspräche, außer der freien Selbstentscheidung, die ich ihm gegeben habe. Mit dieser kämpfe ich beständig aus Liebe, bis er sie mir übergibt und mir daraus ein Geschenk macht. Und nachdem ich sie angenommen habe, schaffe ich sie langsam um durch mein verborgenes Wirken und meine liebevolle Sorgfalt. Nie und nimmer verlasse ich den Menschen, bis ich ihn zu dem ihm bestimmten Ziel geführt habe.

Du fragst mich, warum ich den mir so widerstrebenden Menschen liebe, der so übersät ist mit Erbärmlichkeiten, dass sie ihren üblen Geruch von der Erde zum Himmel verbreiten. Ich antworte dir, dass ich aus meiner unendlichen Güte und meiner reinen Liebe, mit der ich diesen Menschen liebe, seiner Mängel nicht achten noch es unterlassen kann, mein Werk zu vollbringen, das darin besteht, ihm immer Gutes zu erweisen. Durch mein Licht, das ich ihm leuchten lasse, erkennt er seine Fehler. Und da er sie erkennt, beweint er sie. Und da er sie beweint, reinigt er sich davon. Wisse, dass ich nicht anders vom Menschen beleidigt werden kann, als wenn er dem Werke Hindernisse setzt, das meiner Anordnung gemäß ihn zu seinem Ziel bringen soll, d. h., dass er mich nicht meiner Liebe gemäß so wirken lässt, als er dessen bedürftig wäre. Nur allein die Todsünde [die ein Mensch absichtlich und willentlich begeht, wodurch die Verbindung zu Gott zerstört wird] ist es, die mich hindert.

Die drei Weisen der menschlichen Gottesliebe:

Man sagt, die Werke werden für die Liebe vollbracht, wenn der Mensch alles, was er tut, aus Liebe zu Gott tut, aus jener Liebe, die ihm von Gott gegeben ist mit dem Verlangen, für sein und seines Nächsten Heil zu wirken. In diesem ersten Stadium der Liebe lässt Gott den Menschen viele und verschiedenartige, nützliche und notwendige Werke vollbringen, und zwar werden sie mit einem Gefühl frommer Zuneigung und erbarmender Güte gewirkt.

Die Werke des zweiten Stadiums der Liebe werden in Gott vollbracht. Das sind jene Werke, die ohne Ausblick auf irgendeinen eigenen oder eines Nächsten Nutzen getan werden, die aber in Gott verbleiben ohne irgendeinen anderen Zweck desjenigen, der sie gewirkt hat. [Und wegen der Gewohnheit, die sich der Mensch erworben hat, Gutes zu wirken, verharrt er im Wirken, obwohl ihm Gott seinen eigenen Teil dabei entzogen hat, der ihm früher half und ihn erfreute. Aus diesem Grund ist ein solches Werk vollkommener als die ersteren Werke, weil der Mensch im ersten Stadium noch viele Zwecke verfolgte, die Leib und Seele befriedigten. Die Befriedigung an den eigenen guten Taten wird weggenommen.]

Die Werke endlich, die von der Liebe vollbracht werden, sind noch vollkommener als diejenigen der beiden anderen Arten, denn sie werden ohne eine Beteiligung des Menschen vollbracht. Die Liebe hat den Menschen so sehr überwunden und besiegt, dass er sozusagen ganz untergegangen ist im Meer der Liebe, ohne zu wissen, wo er ist. Er ist in sich selbst ganz vernichtet und nicht imstande, irgend etwas zu wirken. In diesem Falle ist es die Liebe, die in dem Menschen wirkt. Ihre Wirkungen sind Werke der Vollkommenheit, da sie ohne eigenes Dazutun des Menschen vollbracht werden. Es sind Werke der Gnade, die Gott alle entgegennimmt. Diese süße und reine Liebe hat den Menschen genommen und vollständig in sich hineingezogen und ihn ganz von seinem Selbst befreit. Sie hat von ihm vollkommen Besitz ergriffen. [Sie wirkt fortwährend in diesem Menschen und durch diesen Menschen, nur zu seinem Wohl und Nutzen, ohne dass er selbst sich einmischt.]

Quelle: Katharina von Genua: Dialog über die göttliche Liebe, Kapitel 1 und 5 - http://www.gottliebtuns.com/katharina_von_genua.htm

zusammengestellt von Abt em. Dr. Emmeram Kränkl OSB,

Benediktinerabtei Schäftlarn,

für die Katholische SonntagsZeitung

Stadlers Vollständiges Heiligenlexikon

Catholic Encyclopedia

Katharinas Abhandlung über das Fegefeuer und ihre Lebensgeschichte gibt es online zu lesen in den Documenta Catholica Omnia.

SOURCE : https://www.heiligenlexikon.de/BiographienK/Katharina_von_Genua.htm

Catherine de Gênes, Traité du purgatoire, 1571, tr. fr. 1598, tiré du Vita mirabile e dottrina santa della Beata Caterina de Genova (Corpus catharinianum) :
http://christus-web.com/traite-du-purgatoire-de-catherine-de-genes/

Catherine de Gênes, Dialogues http://voiemystique.free.fr/catherine_de_genes_dialogues_01.htm

Vie de Sainte Catherine de Gênes : http://livres-mystiques.com/partieTEXTES/Textes/index.html

Voir aussi : https://web.archive.org/web/20090503015857/http://www.lanternafil.it/Public/SantaCaterina/caterina.htm