Catherine’s life. I shall first take those last thirteen years of admitted illness, as those which are alone at all fully known to us by contemporary evidence.—I shall then make a jump back to her first period,—to the first sixteen years up to her marriage, with the next ten years of relaxation, and the following four years of her conversion and active penitence. I take these next, because, of these thirty years, we have her own late memories, as registered for us by her disciples, at the time of her narration of the facts concerned.—And only then, with these materials and instruments thus gathered from after and before, shall I try to master the (for us very obscure) middle period, and to arrive at some estimate of her temperamental peripheral condition during these twenty years of her fullest expansion.—I shall conclude the chapter by taking Catherine in her general, lifelong temperament, and by comparing and contrasting this type and modality of spiritual character and apprehension with the other rival forms of, and approaches to, religious truth and goodness as these are furnished for us by history.

The ultimate metaphysical questions and valuation are reserved for the penultimate chapter of my book.

I. Catherine’s Third Period, 1497 to 1510.

1. Increasing illness of Catherine’s last years.

Beginning with her third and last period (1497-1510), there can be no doubt that throughout it she was ill and increasingly so. Her closest friends and observers attest it. It is presumably Ettore Vernazza who tells us, for 1497, “when she was about fifty years of age, she ceased to be able to attend either to the Hospital or to her own house, owing to her great bodily weakness. Even on Fast-days she was obliged, after Holy Communion, to take some food to sustain her strength.” Probably Marabotto it is who tells us that, in 1499, “after twenty-five years she could no further bear her spiritual loneliness, either because of old age or because of her great bodily weakness.” We hear from a later Redactor that, “about nine years before her death (i.e. about 1501), there came to her an infirmity.” And then, especially from November 1509, May 1510, and August 1510 onwards, she is declared and described as more and more ill.[12] Indeed she herself, both by her acts and by her words, emphatically admits her incapacitation. For it is clearly ill-health which drives her to abandon the Matronship and even all minor continuous work for the Hospital. In her Wills we find indeed that, as late as May 21, 1506, she was able to get to the neighbouring Hospital for Incurables; and that even on November 27, 1508 she was “healthy in mind and body.” But her Codicil of January 5, 1503, was drawn up in the presence of nine witnesses at midnight,—a sure sign of some acute ill-health. Indeed already on July 23, 1484, she is lying “infirm in bed, in her room in the Women’s quarter of the Hospital, oppressed with bodily infirmity.”[13]

2. Abnormal sensations, impressions and moods.

Her attendants are all puzzled by the multitude and intensity, the mobility and the self-contradictory character of the psycho-physical manifestations. Perhaps already before 1497 “she would press thorny rose-twigs in both her hands, and this without any pain”; and so late as about three weeks before her death “she remained paralyzed (manca),” and no doubt anaesthetic “in one (the right) hand and in one finger of the other hand.”—Probably again before 1497 “her body could not,” at times, “be moved from the sitting posture without the application of force.” In February or March 1510 “she could not move out of her bed”; in August, “on some occasions she could not move the lips or the tongue, or the arms or legs, unless helped to do so,—especially on the left side,—and this would, at times, last three or four hours.”—In December 1509 “she suffered from great cold,” as part of her peculiar condition; on September 4, 1510, “she suffered from great cold in the right arm.”[14]

On other occasions she is, on the contrary, intensely hyper-aesthetic. Some time in February or March 1510, “for a day and a night, her flesh could not be touched, because of the great pain that such touching caused her.” At the end of August “she was so sensitive, that it was impossible to touch her very bedclothes or the bedstead, or a single hair on her head, because in such case she would cry out as though she had been grievously wounded.”—These states seem to have been usually accompanied by sensations of great heat: for on the former occasion “she seemed like a creature placed in a great flame of fire”; whilst on the latter “she had her tongue and lips so inflamed, that they seemed as though actual fire.”

And movement appears to have been more often increased than diminished. In the last case indeed “she did not move nor speak nor see; but, when thus immovable, she suffered more than when she could cry out and turn about in her bed.” But in the former instance “she could not be kept in bed”; and in April 1510 “she cried aloud, and could not keep herself from moving about, on her bed, on hands and feet.”—There are curious localizations of apparently automatic movements. During an attack somewhere in March 1510 “her flesh was all in a tremble, particularly the right shoulder”; on later occasions “an arm, a leg, a hand would tremble, and she would seem to have a spasm within her, with all-but-unbroken acute pains in the flanks, the shoulders, the abdomen, the feet and the brain.” On an earlier occasion “her body writhed in great distress.” On another day “she seemed all on fire and lost her power of speech, and made signs with her head and hands.” On one day in February or March 1510 “she lost both speech and sight, though not her intelligence”; and on September 12 “her sight was so weak, that she could hardly any further distinguish or recognize her attendants.”—The heat is liable to be curiously localized. Early in September 1510 “she had a great heat situated in and on her left ear, which lasted for three hours; the ear was red and felt very hot to the touch of others.”

Various kinds of haemorrhage are not uncommon. On the last-mentioned occasion bloody urine is passed; bleeding of the nose, with loss of bile, occurs in December 1509; very black blood is lost by the mouth, whilst black spots appear all over her person, on September 12, 1510; and more blood is evacuated on the following day. In February or March 1510 “there were in her flesh certain places which had become concave, like as paste looks where a finger has been put into it.” At the end of August 1510 “her skin became saffron-yellow all over.”

Troubles of breathing and of heart-action are frequently acute. Somewhere about March 1510 “she had such a spasm in her throat and mouth as to be unable, for about an hour, to speak or to open her eyes, and that she could hardly regain her breath.” “Cupping-glasses were applied to her side, to ease her heart, and lung-action, but with little effect.” On one occasion “she made signs indicative of feeling as though burning pincers