Written by Clara Kernodle
On Wednesday we went to Siena, south of Florence, and saw the preserved head of Saint Catherine. It was a small, ghoul-like face, with hollowed eyes and a yellowish upturned nose encased in an ornate reliquary; our guide gestured to the height of her own shoulder and said Catherine must have been a very small woman. Physically she may have been small, but to the Italian Church in the 1300s, she was a giant — intellectually and spiritually influential with both the Pope and laity.
Catherine was born into poverty in 1347 and spent her childhood defying her less pious parents, giving away the family possessions to the poor and committing to the Dominican order. At 19 she had a vision of her marriage to Christ and believed he gave her a pearl-and-diamond ring, which she alone could see on her finger throughout her life. During the Black Plague, Catherine, who suffered from fragile health, served in the hospitals of her home, Siena, Italy. After a vision in 1370, she began her public ministry, dictating nearly 400 letters to people of all classes and kinds, including the Pope, whom she rebuked for being too soft on moral issues. She was canonized shortly after her death and later named the patron saint of Italy with Francis of Assisi. In 1970 she was named with Thérèse of Lisieux, Teresa of Avila and Hildegard of Bingen as the only female Doctors of the Church.
As one can imagine, Catherine’s legacy is a hybrid of veneration and disdain. The Roman Catholic church has worshiped her without criticism for centuries: Our guide in Siena told Catherine’s bizarre story without showing signs of anything but admiration. Christians still travel to see and pray before her relics in the Basilica of St. Dominic in Siena, though most come to take a forbidden (and stealthy) picture of the gilded, ghostly reliquary. The Protestant half of Christianity, however, tends toward considering Catherine as a slightly insane, malnourished mystic given too large of a stage. (She died after an epileptic seizure induced by severe emaciation). In this view, the good work she did in her life consisted of Roman Catholic paraphernalia and Church-wide fame for her probable anorexia. While I am closer in agreement with the Protestant view, it is difficult to discount the weight of her doctrinal writings and her work among the needy. She was made a Doctor of the Church for good reason: Despite her illiteracy, she dictated hundreds of letters and treatises on doctrines such as divine simplicity and the Immaculate Conception. A large part of her theology was devoted to enjoying the love and presence of Christ through the mystical experience (that is, through prayer, visions and intense emotion). Instead of focusing on the things of the world, she lived on Christ alone.
If we had lived Catherine’s life, we would have lived it complaining, unhappy and unfulfilled. Despite her weak health and inability, however, Catherine lived in complete joy — her nickname as a child was Euphrosyne, “child of mirth.” Her piety was one of self-denial and pain, but she worked tirelessly to comfort and sustain the sick, poor and dying, just as Christ had commanded. In this way we Protestants can also honor Catherine by remembering her selflessness — so that we, constantly sustained by the love of Christ, may also share him without reservation.
