Letters of Catherine Benincasa by Catherine Benincasa

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Now, then, do we wish to have that glorious hunger which these holy and
true shepherds of the past have felt, and to quench in ourselves that fire
of self-love? Let us do as they, who with fire quenched fire; for so great
was the fire of inestimable and ardent charity that burned in their hearts
and souls, that they were an-hungered and famished for the savour of
souls. Oh, sweet and glorious fire, which is of such power that it
quenches fire, and every inordinate delight and pleasure and all love of
self; and this love is like a drop of water, which is swiftly consumed in
the furnace! Should one ask me how men attained that sweet fire and
hunger--inasmuch as we are surely in ourselves unfruitful trees--I say
that those men grafted themselves into the fruitful tree of the most holy
and sweet Cross, where they found the Lamb, slain with such fire of love
for our salvation as seems insatiable. Still He cries that He is athirst,
as if saying: "I have greater ardour and desire and thirst for your
salvation than I show you with My finished Passion." O sweet and good
Jesus! Let pontiffs shame them, and shepherds, and every other creature,
for our ignorance and pride and self-indulgence, in the presence of so
great largess and goodness and ineffable love on the part of our Creator!
He has revealed Himself to us in our humanity, a Tree full of sweet and
mellow fruits, in order that we, wild trees, might graft ourselves in Him.
Now in this wise wrought that enamoured Gregory, and those other good
shepherds: knowing that they had no virtue in themselves, and gazing upon
the Word, our Tree, they grafted themselves in Him, bound and chained by
the bands of love. For in that which the eye sees does it delight, when
the thing is fair and good. They saw, then, and seeing they so bound them
that they saw not themselves, but saw and tasted everything in God. And
there was neither wind nor hail nor demons nor creatures that could keep
them from bearing cultivated fruits: since they were grafted in the
substance of our Tree, Jesus. They brought forth their fruits, then, from
the substance of sweet charity, in which they were united. And there is no
other way.

This is what I wish to see in you. And if up to this time, we have not
stood very firm, I wish and pray in truth that the moment of time which
remains be dealt with manfully, following Christ, whose vicar you are,
like a strong man. And fear not, father, for anything that may result from
those tempestuous winds that are now beating against you, those decaying
members which have rebelled against you. Fear not; for divine aid is near.
Have a care for spiritual things alone, for good shepherds, good rulers,
in your cities--since on account of bad shepherds and rulers you have
encountered rebellion. Give us, then, a remedy; and comfort you in Christ
Jesus, and fear not. Press on, and fulfil with true zeal and holy what you
have begun with a holy resolve, concerning your return, and the holy and
sweet crusade. And delay no longer, for many difficulties have occurred
through delay, and the devil has risen up to prevent these things being
done, because he perceives his own loss. Up, then, father, and no more
negligence! Raise the gonfalon of the most holy Cross, for with the
fragrance of the Cross you shall win peace. I beg you to summon those who
have rebelled against you to a holy peace, so that all warfare may be
turned against the infidels. I hope by the infinite goodness of God that
He will swiftly send His aid. Comfort you, comfort you, and come, come, to
console the poor, the servants of God, your sons! We await you with eager
and loving desire. Pardon me, father, that I have said so many words to
you. You know that through the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.
I am certain that if you shall be the kind of tree I wish to see you,
nothing will hinder you.

I beg you to send to Lucca and to Pisa with fatherly proposals, as God
shall instruct you, supporting them so far as can be, and summoning them
to remain firm and persevering. I have been at Pisa and at Lucca, up to
now, influencing them as much as I can not to make a league with the
decaying members that are rebelling against you: but they are in great
perplexity, because they have no comfort from you, and are constantly
urged to make it and threatened from the contrary side. However, up to the
present time, they have not wholly consented. I beg you also to write
emphatically to Messer Piero: and do it zealously, and do not delay. I say
no more.

I have heard here that you have appointed the cardinals. I believe that it
would honour God and profit us more if you would take heed always to
appoint virtuous men. If the contrary is done, it will be a great insult
to God, and disaster to Holy Church. Let us not wonder later if God sends
us His disciplines and scourges; for the thing is just. I beg you to do
what you have to do manfully and in the fear of God.

I have heard that you are to promote the Master of our Order to another
benefice. Therefore I beg you, by the love of Christ crucified, that if
this is so you will take pains to give us a good and virtuous Vicar. The
Order has need of it, for it has run altogether too wild. You can talk of
this with Messer Niccola da Osimo and the Archbishop of Tronto; and I will
write them about it.

Remain in the sweet and holy grace of God. I ask you humbly for your
blessing. Pardon my presumption, that I presume to write to you. Sweet
Jesus, Jesus Love.

TO GREGORY XI

There is less formality here than in the first letter to Gregory.
Catherine in writing to the Pope soon felt herself as much at home as a
child in her earthly father's house. The little pet name, "Babbo," which
she habitually uses to him, could be translated only by "Daddy"--which
would sound so strange in English ears that it seems best to let the
Italian stand. There is something touching as well as entertaining in the
spirit of childlike freedom to which such a term bears witness.

The Anti-Papal League has become a grim reality. The un-Christian pomp and
arrogance of ruling prelates, the mean cruelty of William of Noellet in
refusing to allow corn to be imported from the Papal States in Tuscany in
time of famine, the harshness and lack of tact in the policy of Gregory
toward his unsatisfactory children, were all forces potent to destroy
among the rebels any strong sense of committing a religious crime in their
opposition to the Church. Catherine stands as mediator between the two
parties. Not for a moment condoning the sin of a rebellion heinous indeed
in her eyes, she yet does not allow the Pope to forget that the chief
cause of the trouble has been the unjust and iniquitous things which the
Florentines have endured from the Legates--men "whom you know yourself"--
so she writes with vigorous plebeian candour--"whom you know yourself to
be incarnate demons"! Let God's vicegerent, then, show forth the love of
God, and find in the divine attitude toward rebellious man an example for
his own attitude toward his rebellious cities. Conciliation is to her mind
the only wisdom. There is practical sagacity in her remark in another
letter: "On with benignity, father! For know that every rational creature
is more easily conquered by love and benignity than by anything else: and
especially these Italians of ours in these parts. I do not see any other
way in which you can conquer them, but if you do this you can do anything
you like with them."

The beautiful opening meditation on the Love of God as shown in creation
and redemption is then no mere general exordium, but in close dramatic
unity with the sequel of the letter. The Augustinian theology, however
alien to our modern modes of thought, has, as she puts it, a nobility not
to be ignored. As presented briefly here, and more grandly by Dante in the
seventh canto of the _Paradiso_, it represents the supreme effort of the
law-reverencing mind of the Latin Church to formulate the methods of
Infinite Love. In the curious figure of the Tournament, we have a
characteristic play of mediaeval fancy. As Langland puts it, a little
differently:

"Then was Faith in a fenestre, and cryed: Ah! Fili David!
As doth an heraude of armes when adventrous cometh to jousts.
Olde Jewes of Jerusalem for joy they sungen,
Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini.
Then I frayned at Faith what all that fare meant,
And who should joust in Jerusalem: 'Jesus,' he said,
'And fetch that the fiend claimeth: Piers' fruit the Plowman.'
'Is Piers in this place?' quoth I: and he winked at me,--
'This Jesus of His gentrice will joust in Piers' armes,
In his helme and in his habergeon, humana natura.'"

In the Name of Jesus Christ crucified and of sweet Mary:

Most holy and most reverend my father in Christ Jesus: I Catherine your
poor unworthy daughter, servant and slave of the servants of Christ, write
to you in His precious Blood; with desire to see you a good shepherd. For
I reflect, sweet my "Babbo," that the wolf is carrying away your sheep,
and there is no one found to help them. So I hasten to you, our father and
our shepherd, begging you on behalf of Christ crucified to learn from Him,
who with such fire of love gave Himself to the shameful death of the most
holy Cross, to rescue that lost sheep, the human race, from the hands of
the demons; because, through man's rebellion against God, they were
holding it for their own possession.

Then comes the Infinite Goodness of God, and sees the evil state and the
loss and the ruin of these sheep, and sees that they cannot be won back by
wrath or war. So, notwithstanding that it has been wronged by them--since
man deserved an infinite penalty for his disobedient rebellion against
God--Highest and Eternal Wisdom will not do thus; but finds an attractive
way, the most gentle and loving possible to find. For it sees that the
heart of man is in no wise so drawn as by love, because he was made by
love. This seems to be the reason why he loves so much, that he was made
by nothing but love, both his soul and his body. For by love God created
him in His Image and Likeness, and by love his father and mother gave him
substance, conceiving and bearing a son. God, therefore, seeing that man
is so ready to love, throws the book of love straight at him, giving him
the Word His Only-Begotten Son, who takes our humanity, to make a great
peace. But justice wills that vengeance should be wrought for the wrong
that has been done to God: so comes Divine Mercy and unspeakable Charity,
and to satisfy justice and mercy condemns His Son to death, having clothed
Him in our humanity--that is, with the clay of Adam, who sinned. So by His
death the wrath of the Father is pacified, having wrought justice on the
person of His son: so He has satisfied justice and has satisfied mercy,
releasing the human race from the hands of demons. This sweet Word jousted
in His arms upon the wood of the most holy Cross, death making a
tournament with life, and life with death: so that by His death He
destroyed our death, and to give us life He sacrificed the life of His
body. So then with love He has drawn us, and has conquered our malice with
His benignness, in so much that every heart should be drawn to Him: since
greater love one cannot show--and this He Himself said--than to give one's
life for one's friend. And if He commends the love which gives one's life
for a friend, what, then, shall we say of that most burning and complete
love which gave its life for its foe? For we through sin had been made
foes of God. Oh, sweet and amorous Word, who with love hast found thy
flock once more, and with love hast given Thy life for them, and hast
brought them back into the fold, restoring to them the Grace which they
had lost!

Holiest sweet "Babbo" mine, I see no other way for us, and no other help
in winning back your sheep, which have left the fold of Holy Church in
rebellion, not obedient nor subject to you, their father. I pray you
therefore, on behalf of Christ crucified, and I will that you do me this
grace, to overcome their malice with your benignity. Yours we are, father!
I know and recognize that they all feel that they have done wrong; but
although they have no excuse for their evil deeds, nevertheless it seemed
to them that they could not do otherwise on account of the many sufferings
and unjust and iniquitous things that they endured from bad shepherds and
governors. For, breathing the stench of the life of many rulers whom you
know yourself to be incarnate demons, they fell into the worst of fears,
so that they did like Pilate, who, not to lose the government, killed
Christ; so did they, for not to lose the state, they persecuted you. I ask
you, then, father, to show them mercy. Do not have regard to the ignorance
and pride of your sons; but with the food of love and of your benignity,
inflicting such sweet discipline and benign reproof as shall please your
Holiness, restore peace to us miserable children who have done wrong. I
tell you, sweet Christ on earth, on behalf of Christ in Heaven, that if
you do thus, without any strife or tempest, they will all come, grieving
for the wrong they have done, and will put their heads in your bosom. Then
you will rejoice, and we shall rejoice, because by love you have restored
the wandering sheep to the fold of Holy Church. And then, sweet my
"Babbo," you will fulfil your holy desire and the will of God, by making
the holy Crusade, which I summon you in His Name to do swiftly and without
negligence. They will turn to it with great eagerness; they are ready to
give their life for Christ. Ah me, God, sweet Love! Raise swiftly,
"Babbo," the gonfalon of the most holy Cross, and you will see the wolves
become lambs. Peace, peace, peace, that war may not delay this happy time!
But if you will wreak vengeance and justice, take them upon me, poor
wretch, and give me any pain and torment that may please you, even to
death. I believe that through the stench of my iniquities many evils have
happened, and many misfortunes and discords. On me, then, your poor
daughter, take any vengeance that you will. Ah me, father, I die of grief
and cannot die! Come, come, and resist no more the will of God that calls
you; and the hungry sheep await your coming to hold and possess the place
of your predecessor and champion, Apostle Peter. For you, as the Vicar of
Christ, should rest in your own place. Come, then, come, and delay no
more; and comfort you, and fear not for anything that might happen, since
God will be with you. I ask humbly your benediction, for me and for all my
sons; and I beg you to pardon my presumption. I say no more. Remain in the
holy and sweet grace of God. Sweet Jesus, Jesus Love.

TO GREGORY XI

"Ahi, Constantin, di quanto mal fu matre,
Non la tua conversion, ma quella dote
Che da te prese il primo ricco patre!"

"For ever since Holy Church has aimed more at temporal than at spiritual
things, matters have gone from bad to worse." Catherine's sorrowful
denunciations of the sins of the Church recall the thought of Dante, the
thought of Petrarch--which is also the thought of all the great saints,
seers, and loyal Catholics, to whom through the Christian ages the
shortcoming of their spiritual mother has meant grief beyond words. The
lovely conception of Holy Church as a garden, borrowed though it be from
Holy Writ, she has made peculiarly her own by constant repetition. We
recognize in it the womanly imagination which, we are told, always found
refreshment in wreathing fragrant flowers and walking abroad through the
fields and woods.

Catherine in this letter presents explicitly her threefold policy: reform
of the Church, return to Rome, the initiation of a Crusade. In her little
letter to Sir John Hawkwood, we have already seen her devotion to this
last cause. A Crusade in the fourteenth century was not to be.
Nevertheless, Catherine never showed more political wisdom than in this
matter, and it was the one aim of her life in which she wholly failed. We
have in the Legenda Minore a racy account of a personal interview with
Gregory on the subject, in which she presented cogent considerations to
him. She shrewdly suggested that the mercenary troops who ravaged Italy,
and were "the very cause and nourishment of war," would gladly turn their
arms against the infidel, "For there are few people so wicked that they
are not willing to serve God by indulging their taste: all men would
gladly expiate their sins by doing what they enjoy." Behind all such
considerations of policy, however, lay, as we clearly see, the intense
desire that the infidels should be saved. And not for their own sake only.
Desperate and desolate as she beheld the worldliness of Christian folk,
and their remoteness from the faith and ardour of an earlier time,
Catherine ventured to dream that new converts, won from the peoples that
sat in darkness, might revive the spiritual life of Christendom by the
infusion of spiritual passion strong in young purity. "Oh, what joy it
would be," she wrote to Gregory, "could we see the Christian people
convert the Infidel! For when they had once received the Light, they might
reach great perfection, like a young plant which has escaped the wintry
cold of faithlessness, and expands in the warmth and light of the Holy
Spirit; so they might bear flowers and fruits of virtue in the mystical
body of Holy Church; so that the fragrance of their virtue might help us
to drive away the sins and vice, the pride and impurity, which abound to-
day among the Christian people, and above all among those high in Holy
Church."

It was a strange dream, and hopeless; but it was the dream of a saint.

In the Name of Jesus Christ crucified and of sweet Mary:

Most holy and dear and sweet father in Christ sweet Jesus: I your unworthy
daughter Catherine, servant and slave of the servants of Jesus Christ,
write to you in His precious Blood. With desire have I desired to see in
you the fulness of divine grace, in such wise that you may be the means,
through divine grace, of pacifying all the universal world. Therefore, I
beg you, sweet my father, to use the instrument of your power and virtue,
with zeal, and hungry desire for the peace and honour of God and the
salvation of souls. And should you say to me, father--"The world is so
ravaged! How shall I attain peace?" I tell you, on behalf of Christ
crucified, it befits you to achieve three chief things through your power.
Do you uproot in the garden of Holy Church the malodorous flowers, full of
impurity and avarice, swollen with pride: that is, the bad priests and
rulers who poison and rot that garden. Ah me, you our Governor, do you use
your power to pluck out those flowers! Throw them away, that they may have
no rule! Insist that they study to rule themselves in holy and good life.
Plant in this garden fragrant flowers, priests and rulers who are true
servants of Jesus Christ, and care for nothing but the honour of God and
the salvation of souls, and are fathers of the poor. Alas, what confusion
is this, to see those who ought to be a mirror of voluntary poverty, meek
as lambs, distributing the possessions of Holy Church to the poor: and
they appear in such luxury and state and pomp and worldly vanity, more
than if they had turned them to the world a thousand times! Nay, many
seculars put them to shame who live a good and holy life. But it seems
that Highest and Eternal Goodness is having that done by force which is
not done by love; it seems that He is permitting dignities and luxuries to
be taken away from His Bride, as if He would show that Holy Church should
return to her first condition, poor, humble, and meek as she was in that
holy time when men took note of nothing but the honour of God and the
salvation of souls, caring for spiritual things and not for temporal. For
ever since she has aimed more at temporal than at spiritual, things have
gone from bad to worse. See therefore that God, in judgment, has allowed
much persecution and tribulation to befall her. But comfort you, father,
and fear not for anything that could happen, which God does to make her
state perfect once more, in order that lambs may feed in that garden, and
not wolves who devour the honour that should belong to God, which they
steal and give to themselves. Comfort you in Christ sweet Jesus; for I
hope that His aid will be near you, plenitude of divine grace, aid and
support divine in the way that I said before. Out of war you will attain
greatest peace; out of persecution, greatest unity; not by human power,
but by holy virtue, you will discomfit those visible demons, wicked men,
and those invisible demons who never sleep around us.

But reflect, sweet father, that you could not do this easily unless you
accomplished the other two things which precede the completion of the
other: that is, your return to Rome and uplifting of the standard of the
most holy Cross. Let not your holy desire fail on account of any scandal
or rebellion of cities which you might see or hear; nay, let the flame of
holy desire be more kindled to wish to do swiftly. Do not delay, then,
your coming. Do not believe the devil, who perceives his own loss, and so
exerts himself to rob you of your possessions in order that you may lose
your love and charity and our coming be hindered. I tell you, father in
Christ Jesus, come swiftly like a gentle lamb. Respond to the Holy Spirit
who calls you. I tell you, Come, come, come, and do not wait for time,
since time does not wait for you. Then you will do like the Lamb Slain
whose place you hold, who without weapons in His hand slew our foes,
coming in gentleness, using only the weapons of the strength of love,
aiming only at care of spiritual things, and restoring grace to man who
had lost it through sin.

Alas, sweet my father, with this sweet hand I pray you, and tell you to
come to discomfit our enemies. On behalf of Christ crucified I tell it
you: refuse to believe the counsels of the devil, who would hinder your
holy and good resolution. Be manly in my sight, and not timorous. Answer
God, who calls you to hold and possess the seat of the glorious Shepherd
St. Peter, whose vicar you have been. And raise the standard of the holy
Cross; for as we were freed by the Cross--so Paul says--thus raising this
standard, which seems to me the refreshment of Christians, we shall be
freed--we from our wars and divisions and many sins, the infidel people
from their infidelity. In this way you will come and attain the
reformation, giving good priests to Holy Church. Fill her heart with the
ardent love that she has lost; for she has been so drained of blood by the
iniquitous men who have devoured her that she is wholly wan. But comfort
you, and come, father, and no longer make to wait the servants of God, who
afflict themselves in desire. And I, poor, miserable woman, can wait no
more; living, I seem to die in my pain, seeing God thus reviled. Do not,
then, hold off from peace because of the circumstance which has occurred
at Bologna, but come; for I tell you that the fierce wolves will put their
heads in your bosom like gentle lambs, and will ask mercy from you,
father. I say no more. I beg you, father, to hear and hark that which Fra
Raimondo will say to you, and the other sons with him, who come in the
Name of Christ crucified and of me; for they are true servants of God and
sons of Holy Church. Pardon, father, my ignorance, and may the love and
grief which make me speak excuse me to your benignity. Give me your
benediction. Remain in the holy and sweet grace of God. Sweet Jesus, Jesus
Love.

TO BROTHER RAIMONDO OF CAPUA
AT AVIGNON

The last letter tells us that Catherine had sent to the Pope her beloved
Confessor, who was later to become her biographer--Fra Raimondo of Capua.
It is evident that the simple Italian priest and his companions have
become somewhat daunted by the conditions they have encountered at
Avignon; and, indeed, the subtlest temptations and most perplexing
problems that Europe could furnish were doubtless focussed at the Papal
Court. Just what the difficulties were which Raimondo had confided to
Catherine and which called forth this spirited answer, we do not know, but
we can easily imagine their nature. A holy man of considerable learning,
Fra Raimondo was also of mild disposition, much inclined to sigh over
dangers and blench before exposure. Catherine, on more than one occasion,
showed herself the better man of the two. There was a militant strain in
her bright nature; she was really the "Happy Warrior"--

"Whose powers shed round him in the common strife
Or mild concerns of ordinary life
A constant influence, a peculiar grace;
But who if he be called upon to face
Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined
Great issues, good or bad for human kind,
Is happy as a Lover; and attired
With sudden brightness, like a man inspired;
And, through the heat of conflict, keeps the law
In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw."

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