In CWR
Catherine of Siena was the most
important and influential person in Europe during the latter part of the
14th century. It could not happen now.
When
the novelist Sigrid Undset was making her way from atheism to the Catholic
faith, her most powerful guide was the Dominican laywoman Saint Catherine of
Siena. The central moral insight in Undset’s most renowned works, the trilogy Kristin Lavransdatter and the tetralogy The Master
of Hestviken, is that self-love—egotism—is the seedbed of all of the evil in the world, as it crowds out
of the heart any room for love of God and neighbor, as weeds choke a garden. It
is not an insight that requires a doctorate in philosophy to arrive at. That
makes it all the more likely to be true, since the Father, says Jesus, has
hidden his truths from the wise and the prudent in this world, and has revealed
them unto innocents and fools, whose hearts are not clotted with pride. And no
woman in 14th century Italy was more innocent than Catherine of Siena.
Undset’s
biography, Catherine of Siena, is
a fascinating
book, not only for its meticulous account of the life of Saint
Catherine, based
upon the remarkable memoirs of Blessed Raymond of Capua, Catherine’s
long-time
confessor and close friend, and upon the hundreds of letters which
Catherine
dictated to popes, cardinals, bishops, priests, governors, warlords,
kinsmen,
and friends. What really sets it apart from any hagiography I know of is
Undset’s continuing comparison, usually implicit but sometimes bold and
clear,
of the Middle Ages with our own times. Now, Undset’s greatest novels are
set in
those same centuries, and she is under no illusion about their waves of
cruelty
and brutality. Indeed, Catherine was born into a world of bitter strife,
the
same world against which the aged Dante inveighed. The cities of Italy
were
economic and military rivals, the pope had moved the Curia to
Avignon—across the Rhone from the kingdom of France—and French legates
governed the Papal States, earning the hatred
of the native Romans. It was a century of ever-shifting military
alliances and
civil war, with bands of robbers and murderers under mercenaries like
Sir John
Hawkwood helping to stoke the flames.
Now
it is true, as Undset points out, that the 20th century has not been behindhand
in bloodshed. If we are weighing blood with blood, the Middle Ages may well
come out cleaner. Yet that is not the most important thing. The plain fact,
staring us in the face, demanding attention and explanation, is that a Saint
Catherine, ever preaching the love of God and the peace of Christ, was the most
important and influential person in Europe during the latter part of the 14th
century, and what was she? According to her own accounts, she was nothing, just
an ignorant girl, a slave of Jesus, a sinner. She had never learned to read,
till the ability suddenly came to her as an adult. She dictated her letters,
because she had never learned to write. She was grilled by suspicious
theologians, and won them over with her wisdom. She was scoffed at by the
worldly, and won them over by her persevering love. Almost single-handedly she
compelled the Vicar of Christ himself, the genial but weak-willed Gregory XI, a
Frenchman surrounded by French cardinals, to return to Rome after the 70-year-long
“Babylonian Captivity” of the Church. The lords of Italian cities sought her
assistance in brokering peace. That could and did happen in the Middle Ages. It
could not happen now.
What
is the difference? Here Undset is describing Catherine’s first trip abroad,
from Siena to Pisa, rather early in her “political” years. The Pisans had been
friendly to the pope, but their allegiance was wavering, under pressure from
the strongman Bernabo Visconti of Milan. Catherine hoped to strengthen their
loyalty to Gregory. Note, then, how she was greeted.
On
their arrival in Pisa the nuns from Siena received a welcome such as people in
the Middle Ages reserved for a guest who was generally considered a saint. The
governor of Pisa, the archbishop, and crowds of other prominent personages went
out to meet Catherine, and the crowds cheered her as the crowds always,
everywhere, cheer their favorite heroes, whether they be victorious generals,
highly publicized leaders, popular football players, or world-famous film
stars. But in the Middle Ages it was chiefly saints who were popular heroes,
even for people who themselves were very far from being saints, and had not the
faintest desire to be saints because, as everyone knew, holiness demands
heroism—heroism of an unusually severe and difficult kind.
Was
Catherine a famous scientist, like Einstein? Not even Einstein could have
commanded such happy crowds. Was she a famous politician, like Franklin
Roosevelt? No. Had she written any great novels or poems? Not one. What made
her known was her astonishing commitment to Jesus—and the marvels that attended her (duly recorded by Blessed
Raymond, after he had hunted down the witnesses and received their testimony;
Raymond was a most sensible man).
What
in our time is comparable? Elton John, a man of immense musical talent, often
questionable taste, and dubious morals, can fill a stadium with devotees. Many
of them will wait in line for a day or two, just as they might camp out in
front of a department store, waiting for its opening on Black Friday. Elton
John can at least play the piano, and has a pleasant personality. Things go
downhill from there. Millions of people buy tawdry magazines to learn the
latest about the sex lives of “stars,” many of them no more than professional
pornographers, whores and whoremasters. What is their claim to fame? Slickness
rather than talent, flash rather than beauty. I think of Hollywood and wonder
if, in this world’s long and sorry tale of sin and folly, a klatsch of men and
women have ever pitched their tents in deeper depravity, stupidity, luxury, and
vanity, and been admired for it. It seems too ridiculous to believe. But then
the title of a show like American Idol comes
to mind, and I see that it is all too true.
“The
Signoria of Florence,” writes Undset, relating an attempt by the
Florentines to
return to the papal fold, “the government of the proudest of the Italian
republics, had given the power to decide all matters of vital importance
for
its future greatness and well-being to a young woman who was regarded as
a
saint.” We had a similar saint in our midst, the wizened little nun from
Albania, Mother Teresa. She, like Catherine, drew to her “family” many
men
and women, whose lives were utterly changed by her holiness and her
friendship:
Malcolm Muggeridge, for instance. She too dwelt in an inner world of
intense
spiritual conflict, unrelieved by the protracted periods of ecstatic
bliss that
comforted Saint Catherine. She too challenged the worldliness of
everyone about
her, by a love whose fount was the radical love of Jesus. As Catherine
bathed
and dressed and tended people struck by the Black Plague, Mother Teresa
bathed
and dressed and tended the poorest of the world’s poor, the sick and the
dying
in the ditches of Calcutta.
How
did we treat Mother Teresa? We gave her, rather late in the day, the
Nobel
Peace Prize. We held her up as a model of humanitarian achievement—quite
mistaking what she was about. Christopher Hitchens slandered
her; the slanderers you will always have with you. She was something of a
celebrity for a while. President Clinton and his wife stood stony-faced
while Mother
Teresa urged them and all Americans to care for the weakest of the weak,
the
unborn child. No statesman took her advice. No statesman sought her
advice.
Gandhi himself could not bring peace to the Muslims and the Hindus of
his
country. Mother Teresa could have played in India the role that
Catherine so
often played in northern Italy. No one asked her to try.
We
scoff at the supposed bigotry of the Middle Ages, but no woman in the last
hundred years, none at all, was ever so surrounded by learned men who drank at
her fountain than was Saint Catherine of Siena. Which professors of philosophy
left their comfortable offices to learn from Mother Teresa? Consider a Peter
Singer, the “ethicist” who argues that parents should be able to dispose of their
newborns if they should have second thoughts—if the babies come out deformed or feeble-minded or otherwise
imperfect. Imagine him saying to himself, “What do I know, really, about how to
live a good life? I should seek out the one person on this planet who really
does know. I am going to learn from Mother Teresa.” Of course, no “renowned”
professor of philosophy is going to take notes from a mere nun, without the
fancy credentials. It’s unthinkable. But many men as brutal and as morally
stupid as Singer did go to Saint Catherine, and repented of their evils.
I
suppose we shouldn’t be surprised if the world ignores holiness. Our world
today has the attention span of a flea, and holiness requires attention at the
least. But what about the Catholic Church? Mother Teresa walked among us, but
the proud theologians scoffed at her lack of learning, and the proud Church
officials scoffed at her simplistic championing of the unborn, and the proud
nuns, in their proud orders, proudly dying away, scoffed at her submission to
the male priesthood—ignoring her iron will and their own supine submission to the fads
of the day. And I, proud also, salve my conscience by saying that we are not
all called to be Mother Teresa. More’s the pity.
Why
do we, at least, not turn out in crowds? The men of the Middle Ages made sure
we could learn about Saint Catherine. But even Catholics seem disposed to make
sure we will not learn about Mother Teresa. The
men of the Middle Ages tried, and usually failed, to raise their politics to
the height of Christian teaching; we try to lower Christian teaching to the
gullies of politics, and we usually succeed.
We
want to justify, not to change, our desires. We sit in judgment upon saints,
and listen to the whispering of fools and devils. We want to see the
credentials of the theologian, not his holiness. The world’s excuse is simple
enough. The world is stupid. What is our excuse?
(Editor's note: Mother Teresa was from Albania, not Yugoslavia as the essay orginally indicated.)
