The Story of Siena and San Gimignano. Gardner Edmund G.
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Cross should be squandered with harlots.”26 Then comes the news that the Sovereign Pontiff is meditating a crusade. She throws herself heart and soul into the undertaking. She addresses Queen Giovanna of Naples, the Queen Regent of Hungary and many other princes, all of whom answer favourably and promise men and money. She cherishes the design of freeing Italy from the mercenary companies, and sends Frate Raimondo to the camp of Sir John Hawkwood, with a letter urging the great English condottiere and his soldiers to leave the service and the pay of the devil, to fight no more against Christians but “take the pay and the Cross of Christ crucified, with all your followers and companions, so that you may be a company of Christ to go against those infidel dogs who possess our holy place, where the first sweet Verity reposed and sustained death and torment for us.”27 It is said that Hawkwood and his captains, before the Friar left them, swore upon the Sacrament and gave him a signed declaration that, when once the crusade was actually started, they would go.
In February 1375, Catherine left Siena for Pisa, charged with negotiations on the Pope’s behalf with the latter republic. Here she stayed, with a band of her disciples, some months, so enfeebled with continual ecstasies that they thought her at the point of death. Here, on the Fourth Sunday of Lent, she is said to have received the Stigmata – the wounds of Christ’s Passion – in her body, in the little church of Santa Cristina on the Lungarno. Be this as it may, a new epoch in her life begins at this date – the epoch of her two great struggles for the Church and for Italy.
Since Clement V. removed the papal chair to France in 1305, the Popes had resided at Avignon. Their court had become a scandal to Christendom; Rome was abandoned to ruin and ravage. Previously to this date, the temporal sovereignty of the Popes had been little more than a nominal suzerainty over the cities of the Papal States, many of which were either swayed by petty despots or governed themselves as free republics. But now things were changing. While the Roman Pontiffs remained beyond the Alps, their legates were attempting to fuse these various elements into a modern State. At the head of foreign mercenaries they were subjugating city after city, and building fortresses to secure their hold. Florence, though forming no part of the Papal States, saw her liberties threatened. The refusal of the Legate of Bologna, although he had letters to the contrary from the Pope, to allow corn to be sent from his province into Tuscany in time of famine – followed, as it was, by the appearance of Hawkwood in the territories of the Republic – precipitated matters. War broke out in the latter part of 1375. The Florentines appointed a new magistracy, the Eight of the War, to carry it on, and sent a banner, upon which was Libertas in white letters on a red field, round to all the cities, offering aid in men and money to any who would rise against the Church. Città di Castello began; Perugia followed; and in a few days all central Italy was in arms against the Temporal Power. “It seemed,” wrote a contemporary, “that the Papal States were like a wall built without mortar; when one stone was taken away, almost all the rest fell in ruins.” The republics of Siena and Arezzo promptly entered the league; Pisa and Lucca wavered. Conciliatory overtures from the Pope, who offered to leave Città di Castello and Perugia in liberty and to make further concessions for the sake of peace, were cut short by the expulsion of the Papal Legate from Bologna. Florence was solemnly placed under the interdict, and an army of ferocious Breton soldiers taken into the pay of the Church, under the command of the Cardinal Robert of Geneva, for the reconquest of the Papal States.
Even at this moment the more moderate spirits on either side looked to the dyer’s daughter of Siena for light and guidance. Her eloquent appeal – which has fortunately been preserved to us – secured the neutrality of Lucca and Pisa.28 Her whole heart was set upon the reconciliation of the Pope with Italy, to be followed by the return of the Holy See to Rome, and a complete reformation of the Church. She addressed letter after letter to the Sovereign Pontiff, calling him dolcissimo babbo mio, claiming to write “to the most sweet Christ on earth on behalf of the Christ in Heaven.” The wickedness and cruel oppression of evil pastors and governors have caused this war. Let him win back his little rebellious sheep by love and benignity to the fold of the Church. Let him uplift the gonfalone of the most holy Cross, and he will see the wolves become lambs. Let him utterly extirpate these pastors and rulers, these poisonous flowers in the garden of the Church, full of impurity and cupidity, puffed up with pride, and reform her with good pastors and governors “who shall be true servants of Jesus Christ, who shall look to nought but the honour of God and the salvation of souls, and shall be fathers of the poor.” The Divine Providence has permitted the loss of states and worldly goods, “as though to show that He wished that Holy Church should return to its primal state of poverty, humility, and meekness, as she was in that holy time, when they attended to nought save to the honour of God and the salvation of souls, caring only for spiritual things and not for temporal.” Let him come straightway to Rome, “like a meek lamb, using only the arms of the virtue of love, thinking only of the care of spiritual things;” for God calls him “to come to hold and possess the place of the glorious shepherd St Peter.” He may claim that he is bound to recover and preserve the treasure and the lordships of the cities that the Church has lost; far more greatly is he bound to win back so many “little sheep, who are a treasure in the Church.” Let him choose between the temporal power and the salvation of souls; let him win back his children in peace, and he will surely have what is due to him. He can conquer only with benignity and mildness, humility and patience. “Keep back the soldiers that you have hired, and suffer them not to come.” Let him come as soon as possible, come uomo virile e senza alcun timore; but “look to it that you come not with a power of armed men, but with the Cross in your hand, like a meek lamb.”29 But to the Signoria of Florence she wrote in another strain: “You know well that Christ left us His vicar, and He left him for the cure of our souls; for in nought else can we have salvation, save in the mystical body of Holy Church, whose head is Christ and we are the members. And whoso shall be disobedient to Christ on earth, who is in the place of Christ in Heaven, shareth not in the fruit of the blood of the Son of God; for God hath ordained that from his hands we have communion, and are given this blood and all the sacraments of Holy Church, which receive life from that blood. And we cannot go by another way nor enter by another gate.” “I tell you that God wills and has commanded so, that even if Christ on earth were an incarnate demon, much less a good and benign father, we must be subject and obedient to him, not for his own sake, but in obedience to God, as he is the vicar of Christ.” Let them hasten to the arms of their father, who will receive them benignly, and there will be peace and repose, spiritually and temporally for all Tuscany, and the war will be directed against the Infidels under the banner of the Cross. “If anything can be done through me that may be to the honour of God and the union of yourselves with the holy Church, I am prepared to give my life, if need be.”30
Catherine had already sent first Neri di Landoccio and then Frate Raimondo to the Pope, and she herself was summoned to Florence. This was in May 1376. This pale estatica, who was believed to live solely upon the consecrated Host of the Blessed Sacrament, and who seemed already of the other world, was bidden by the Signoria and the Eight to plead their cause before the Sovereign Pontiff. In June she reached Avignon – that city of luxury and corruption, that nido di tradimenti upon which Petrarch had invoked the rain of fire from heaven. The Pope received her graciously. “In order that thou mayest see clearly that I desire peace,” he said, “I put it absolutely into thy hands; but be careful of the honour of the Church.” The embassy was a complete failure; the Florentines threw her over contemptuously. No trace of personal resentment was seen in the saint, and she continued to intercede for them with the Pope, to whom she spoke plainly concerning the infamy of the place in which he stayed, and the corruption of the Roman Curia, until even Frate Raimondo was astounded at her temerity. In one respect she was more successful. Her impassioned pleading overcame the pusillanimity of Gregory, and in September he left Avignon for Rome. Catherine – in spite of the paintings that you may still see in Rome and Siena – did not accompany him to the Eternal City. She met him again at Genoa, where her indomitable will prevailed over the counsels of the Cardinals, and prevented him from turning back. Then he went on his way, and she saw him no more.
At Genoa, many of her company
Letter 109.
Letter 140.
Letter 168.
Letters 185, 196, 206, 209, 218, 229. She has no thought of the Pope’s return as a temporal sovereign. (
Letter 207.