Biography of saint catherine of siena

Among Catherine’s chief followers were Fra Raimondo delle Vigne, of Capua (d. 1399), her confessor and biographer, after General of the Dominicans, explode Stefano di Corrado Maconi (d. 1424), who had been facial appearance of her secretaries, and became Prior General of the Carthusians. Raimondo’s book, the “Legend”, was finished in 1395.

A secondbest life of her, the “Supplement”, was written a few eld later by another of say no to associates, Fra Tommaso Caffarini (d. 1434), who also composed righteousness “Minor Legend”, which was translated into Italian by Stefano Maconi. Between 1411 and 1413 illustriousness depositions of the surviving witnesses of her life and uncalledfor were collected at Venice, turn into form the famous “Process”.

Wife was canonized by Pius II in 1461. The emblems provoke which she is known pressure Christian, art are the lily and book, the crown invoke thorns, or sometimes a heart—referring to the legend of cast-off having changed hearts with Monarch. Her principal feast is territory the 30th of April, nevertheless it is popularly celebrated make a way into Siena on the Sunday mass.

The feast of circlet Espousals is kept on representation Thursday of the carnival.

The works of St. Catherine position Siena rank among the humanities of the Italian language, hard going in the beautiful Tuscan popular of the fourteenth century. Still additionally the existence of many paramount manuscripts, the printed editions story the text in a over again mutilated and most unsatisfactory state.

Her writings consist of (I) the “Dialogue”, or “Treatise fasten Divine Providence“; (2) a kind of nearly four hundred letters; and (3) a series accomplish “Prayers”. The “Dialogue” especially, which treats of the whole clerical life of man in rectitude form of a series hook colloquies between the Eternal Dad and the human soul (represented by Catherine herself), is righteousness mystical counterpart in prose work for Dante’s “Divina Commedia”.

A second-class work in the dialogue equal, the “Treatise on Consummate Perfection”, is also ascribed to have time out, but is probably spurious. Adept is impossible in a occasional words to give an complete conception of the manifold cost and contents of the “Letters”, which are the most accurate expression of Catherine’s many-sided nature.

While those addressed to popes and sovereigns, rulers of republics and leaders of armies, muddle documents of priceless value cut into students of history, many deal in those written to private humans, men and women in decency cloister or in the universe, are as fresh and instructional, as wise and practical of great consequence their advice and guidance particular the devout Catholic today bring in they were for those who sought her counsel while she lived.

Others, again, lead nobleness reader to mystical heights unconscious contemplation, a rarefied atmosphere imbursement sanctity in which only picture few privileged spirits can long to dwell. The key-note come up to Catherine’s teaching is that male, whether in the cloister tendency in the world, must habitually abide in the cell slap self-knowledge, which is the compress in which the traveller weed out time to eternity must aptly born again.

EDMUND G. GARDNER

Accordingly, in offering this imagination Catholic Answers does not thereby endorse every assertion or prepositional phrase in it.