Saint Catherine of Siena

Life and historical context

Caterina Benincasa was born on 25 March 1347 (the feast of the Annunciation) in Siena, the twenty-fourth child (and twin sister of a child who died in infancy) of Jacopo Benincasa, a wool-dyer, and Lapa Piagenti. The family was numerous, prosperous, and devout. Catherine's earliest years were lived in the brief decade between the Black Death (which struck Siena in 1348-1349) and the political upheavals of the mid-fourteenth-century Italian peninsula.¹

Her vocation manifested at extraordinary age. The standard hagiographical source, the Legenda Major of Blessed Raymond of Capua (her confessor, completed about 1395), records that Catherine experienced a mystical vision of Christ in pontifical robes when she was about six years old, and that she made a private vow of virginity at age seven. Her family's resistance to her religious aspirations was sustained: they wanted her to marry her deceased older sister's widower. Catherine cut off her long hair, the principal mark of female beauty in medieval Italy, in protest. The family eventually relented when Catherine was about sixteen, and she was admitted as a tertiary (a lay associate) of the Dominican Order, joining the Mantellate (the Dominican lay sisters whose name came from the long black mantle they wore).

The next three years (approximately 1364-1367) Catherine spent in almost continuous solitude in a small cell in the family home, devoted to prayer, fasting, and the simple labors of the household. The Legenda Major describes this period as the cave phase of her spiritual life, in which the foundations of her later mystical theology and apostolic activity were laid in silence. Around 1367, at about the age of twenty, she experienced what later spiritual writers have called the mystical espousals, a vision in which Christ gave her a ring (visible to her alone) as the seal of his betrothal to her soul. The vision was followed by an interior command that she should leave her solitary life and engage with the wider Catholic world.

The remaining thirteen years of her life (1367-1380) were lived in extraordinary public activity. She nursed plague victims in Siena during the recurrences of the Black Death. She gathered around herself a circle of disciples (the famiglia, including priests, lay men, and lay women) who supported her work and recorded her teaching. She traveled extensively through northern and central Italy, mediating peace between feuding Italian cities and feuding noble houses, and her diplomatic activity drew her increasingly into the politics of the Catholic Church.

The principal political achievement of her life was her successful intervention in the Avignon papacy. From 1309 to 1377, the popes had resided not in Rome but at Avignon in southern France, a relocation that had become both a scandal to the Roman faithful and a corruption of papal independence under French royal pressure. Catherine, in 1376, traveled to Avignon and over a period of months persuaded Pope Gregory XI to return to Rome. The return was effected in January 1377. The subsequent disputed papal election of 1378 (which produced the Western Schism, with rival popes at Rome and at Avignon) was the principal sorrow of her last years. She remained in Rome from 1378 onward, dictating letters and treatises and praying continuously for the unity of the Church, until her death on 29 April 1380 at the age of thirty-three.²

Theological and spiritual significance

Catherine of Siena's theological significance rests principally on her Dialogue (composed in dictation in 1377-1378, also known as Il Dialogo della Divina Provvidenza, the Dialogue of Divine Providence). The work is a sustained mystical dialogue between Catherine's soul and God the Father on the central themes of the Catholic spiritual life: the truth of the soul, the bridge of Christ, the mystical body of the Church, the relationship between divine providence and human freedom, the doctrine of the priesthood, and the love of the Trinity. The Dialogue is one of the most influential works of medieval Catholic mystical theology and was a principal source for the Catholic spiritual writers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.³

Her surviving correspondence consists of over 380 letters addressed to popes, kings, cardinals, princes, ordinary lay people, and her own spiritual children. The letters are remarkable for their combination of mystical depth and direct prophetic challenge. Catherine addressed Pope Gregory XI as Babbo mio dolce (my sweet daddy) and at the same time told him in unmistakable terms to do his duty as Vicar of Christ. The letters constitute one of the principal documentary witnesses to fourteenth-century Catholic life and to the lay mystical tradition that developed alongside the institutional medieval Church.

She received what the Catholic mystical tradition recognizes as the invisible stigmata (the wounds of the Lord's Passion impressed on her body but invisible to others except by Catherine's permission) on 1 April 1375 in Pisa, in the church of Santa Cristina, while praying before a crucifix. The Catholic Church has recognized this in its own theological judgment, distinguishing the visible stigmata of Saint Francis of Assisi (1224) and others from the invisible stigmata of mystics including Catherine and the modern Saint Padre Pio.

She was canonized by Pope Pius II (himself a Sienese) in 1461. She was declared co-patron of Italy (with Saint Francis of Assisi) by Pope Pius XII in 1939. She was declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Saint Paul VI on 4 October 1970, becoming with Saint Teresa of Avila the first two female Doctors. She was named co-patroness of Europe (with Saint Benedict, Saints Cyril and Methodius, Saint Bridget of Sweden, and Saint Edith Stein) by Pope Saint John Paul II in 1999.⁴

Devotion and liturgical observance

The feast of Saint Catherine of Siena is celebrated on 29 April in the universal Roman Calendar with the rank of memorial. In Italy, where she is co-patron alongside Saint Francis of Assisi, the feast is observed with greater civic and ecclesiastical solemnity and is traditionally celebrated as a festa nazionale on 29 April.

The principal pilgrimage destinations associated with Saint Catherine are the Basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome (where her body lies in a glass-walled tomb beneath the high altar) and the Sanctuary of the Casa di Santa Caterina in Siena (preserving her family home, including the room she lived in during her cave years). Her head is preserved as a relic at the Basilica of San Domenico in Siena, having been translated there from Rome in the fifteenth century. Smaller relics are at major Dominican foundations across the Catholic world.

The traditional iconography of Saint Catherine shows her in the black-and-white habit of the Dominican tertiaries (the white tunic and black mantle of the Mantellate) with the lily of virginity, the crown of thorns, and the book of her Dialogue. She is frequently depicted with the stigmata visible on her hands or with the mystical ring of her espousals. She is sometimes shown in the act of receiving the sacred Heart of Jesus into her own body in mystical exchange. Her liturgical color on the feast is white.

Prayers and novenas associated with Saint Catherine

The principal devotion to Saint Catherine is the Novena to Saint Catherine of Siena, prayed for the unity of the Church, for the wisdom of those in positions of ecclesiastical or civil authority, and for the gift of mystical contemplation. The novena is most commonly prayed in the nine days leading up to her feast on 29 April.

Saint Catherine's own most-prayed devotion was the Holy Rosary, which she received from the Dominican tradition and prayed daily in her cell. Her Dialogue speaks at length of the love of Christ in the Eucharist, and her own daily Communion (received at a frequency unusual for her age, when most Catholics received only at Easter) was the foundation of her spiritual life.

Catholics commonly pair Saint Catherine devotions with the Holy Rosary, particularly the Sorrowful Mysteries, and with the Anima Christi. For the broader theological context, see Communion of Saints, Saint Teresa of Avila (with whom Catherine was named the first female Doctor of the Church), and Saint Faustina Kowalska (whose Divine Mercy theology developed the same Catholic conviction of the love of Christ that Catherine articulated centuries earlier).

Sources

Footnotes

1. Blessed Raymond of Capua, Legenda Major Sanctae Catharinae Senensis (the Major Legend of Saint Catherine of Siena, completed c. 1395). The standard biographical source. Catholic Encyclopedia (1907), "Saint Catherine of Siena," available at newadvent.org. Modern critical biography: Sigrid Undset, Catherine of Siena (1951; English translation 1954). ↩

2. The Avignon return is documented in Catherine's own Letters (especially Letters 196 and 218 to Pope Gregory XI) and in the contemporary chronicles preserved in the Vatican archives. The Western Schism is treated in W. Ullmann, The Origins of the Great Schism (1948). ↩

3. Saint Catherine of Siena, Il Dialogo della Divina Provvidenza (composed by dictation in 1377-1378). The standard English translation is by Suzanne Noffke, OP, The Dialogue (1980). The standard Italian critical edition is in Edizione Nazionale delle Opere di Caterina da Siena. ↩

4. Pope Pius II, Misericordias Domini (canonization bull, 29 June 1461). Pope Pius XII, Licet Commissa (declaration of co-patronage of Italy, 18 June 1939). Pope Paul VI, Mirabilis in Ecclesia Deus (declaration of Doctor of the Church, 4 October 1970). Pope Saint John Paul II, Spes Aedificandi (apostolic letter, 1 October 1999), declaring co-patronesses of Europe. All available at vatican.va. ↩