Catherine of Siena, Letters

From early years, Catherine had cherished the simple-hearted desire that the affairs of Christ's people be put in the hands of His truest followers. Now, in this last period of her life, surrounded by the corruption and intrigue of the papal court, her thoughts turned more and more wistfully to the reserves of spiritual passion and insight that lingered in the hearts of obscure "servants of God" living in monasteries or in hermits' cells.

To invite these holy men to Rome--to gather them around Urban, and so show by triumphant witness of those in nearest fellowship with God on which side lay God's truth--was doubtless the political idea of a very unworldly saint. Nevertheless, it commended itself to the Pope. At his request, then, though probably by her own suggestion, Catherine wrote to sundry of those eremites with whom she had long held spiritual converse, summoning them to the Holy City. Her letters were a thrilling call to the champions of Christ, to cast off timidity and indolence, and betake them swiftly to the field where difficulties and troubles, and it might be a martyr's death, was waiting them.

In the third of the letters that follow, Catherine gives a touching picture of two bewildered hermits--Dominican "dogs of the lord" from the gentle Umbrian plain--who obeyed the call. "Old men, and far from well, who have lived such a long time in their peace," they have made the laborious journey, and are now valiantly suppressing their homesickness, and unsaying their involuntary complaints. But not all the hermits summoned were equally docile. Visionary raptures could hardly be looked for in the streets of the metropolis: dear was the seclusion of wood and cell. Father William Flete, whom Catherine had always persisted in admiring, despite his failings, flatly declined to stir; so did his comrade, Brother Antonio. The Abbot of St. Antimo, another person for whom she had always entertained a deep respect, although he came, appears from her letters to have played the part of a coward.

We cannot be surprised if peaceable Religious who had lived their long days in unbroken quiet objected to enter the unpleasant whirlpool of Roman politics. A similar attitude on the part of eremites of culture is not unknown to-day. But their refusal was a blow to Catherine. She could hardly have drawn the natural conclusion that a recluse life unfitted men to fight for practical righteousness, but she did feel deeply troubled. From early youth she had been, as we have repeatedly seen, alive to the dangers of selfishness and indolence peculiarly incident to the contemplative life; at the same time she had firmly believed that, did the flame of intercession only burn bright enough, this life might be profoundly sacrificial. Now her best-beloved recluses did not stand the test in the hour of trial, and their naif egotism disappointed her unspeakably. Her grief, her amaze, her all but scathing contempt for a religion that declined to forego its inward comforts even at the dramatic summons of a crisis in the Church, find expression in these letters. Doubtless the "great refusal" thus offered by men whom she had trusted helped to darken her last months. Not even in the hearts of her intimates, not even among the elect of God, was Catherine to find here on earth a continuing city.