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    Writings of Catherine of Siena (Annotated)
    Writings of Catherine of Siena (Annotated)
    Writings of Catherine of Siena (Annotated)
    Ebook61 pages1 hour

    Writings of Catherine of Siena (Annotated)

    By Upper Room Books

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    About this ebook

    With:

    • Historical commentary
    • Biographical info
    • Appendix with further readings

    For nearly 2,000 years, Christian mystics, martyrs, and sages have documented their search for the divine. Their writings have bestowed boundless wisdom upon subsequent generations. But they have also burdened many spiritual seekers. The sheer volume of available material creates a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. Enter the Upper Room Spiritual Classics series, a collection of authoritative texts on Christian spirituality curated for the everyday reader. Designed to introduce 15 spiritual giants and the range of their works, these volumes are a first-rate resource for beginner and expert alike.

    Living in turbulent 14th-century Italy, Catherine was driven to submit her will completely to God's will for her. Her intense prayer life led her to write hundreds of letters to friends, other monastics, and heads of state, urging them to turn away from sin and draw closer to God. Catherine's life of total prayer has long inspired admiration.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUpper Room Books
    Release dateApr 1, 2017
    ISBN9780835816762
    Writings of Catherine of Siena (Annotated)

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      Book preview

      Writings of Catherine of Siena (Annotated) - Upper Room Books

      Introduction

      Saint Paul urged Christians, Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God (Rom. 12:1). Thirteen centuries later, Catherine of Siena tried to live according to Paul’s word. She drove herself tirelessly for the reconciliation of enemies and the reform of the church, offering her physical sufferings as atonement for the sins of others. With Paul, she could truly say, In my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church (Col. 1:24).

      This self-sacrifice was driven by a burning desire to submit her will completely to God’s will for her. This, in turn, was fueled by a prayer life so intense that she often lost all consciousness of the world around her. Even in the midst of dictating letters, she sometimes burst into prayer and praise.

      Fortunately Catherine was very good at putting her experiences into words. She wrote hundreds of letters to friends and religious and government leaders. Whatever the occasion, her writing always moved on to deeper matters, urging her correspondents to turn away from sin and draw nearer to God. Her teaching earned her the title of Doctor of the Church, one of the first two women (the other was Teresa of Avila) to be so honored.

      Catherine’s World

      The fourteenth century was a tumultuous time in Italy and throughout Europe. Several years of poor crops were followed in 1348 by the Black Death, an epidemic of bubonic plague that killed one-third of the people of Europe. Bands of mercenary soldiers that helped cities to pursue feuds with neighbors turned to banditry when no one would hire them. Many cities in central Italy, though officially subject to either the pope or the Holy Roman emperor, had a great amount of self-government and very turbulent politics. One of these city-republics was Siena, about 180 miles north of Rome and 43 south of Florence.

      The church reached a high point in the twelfth century. The pope was powerful enough to demand and receive penance from kings, but his power declined drastically by the early fourteenth century. In 1303 the king of France forced the election of a French pope, the first of several. In 1309 Pope Clement V moved his headquarters from Rome to Avignon in southern France. That was the beginning of the so-called Babylonian Captivity of the church. For nearly seventy years the papacy was controlled by the French monarchy, and the pope’s territory in central Italy was ruled by proxies, often French bishops. Several cities, led by Florence and Milan, rebelled against papal authority.

      At the end of the twelfth century, Dominic and Francis founded orders of friars who helped to revitalize the church with enthusiasm and scholarship. Both orders established universities and produced outstanding theologians in the Franciscan Bonaventure and the Dominican Thomas Aquinas. By the fourteenth century, the orders became institutionalized and scholarship stagnated. Still, the Dominicans in Siena maintained a standard of theological training and preaching through which Catherine absorbed a first-rate education.

      Catherine’s Life

      Catherine Benincasa was born March 25, 1347, the twenty-third of twenty-four children born to Giacomo di Benincasa, a cloth dyer, and his wife, Lapa. A twin sister died in infancy. The next year the Black Death came to Siena, killing half the people. When she was six, Catherine had a vision of Christ that led her to dedicate her life to God. As a child she practiced a variety of devotions, tempered somewhat by the desire to be a typical girl.

      In 1362, when she was fifteen, Catherine cut her hair to discourage her parents’ plans for her marriage, and she began to live as a servant in her home. Two years later she became one of the Mantellate, a Dominican lay order of women (primarily older widows) who took special vows and who were named for the cloaks (mantella) they wore in public. As an unmarried teenager, Catherine needed special permission to join the order. For the next three years she remained primarily in her room in prayer. She left each morning to attend Mass, where she sometimes went into ecstasy and had to be carried out at the end of the service. Often she did housework while her family slept. By this time she ate only bread, water, and raw vegetables. She wanted to be able to read, but struggled to learn her letters. She prayed for help and found she could read from then on.

      At the beginning of Lent in 1368, Catherine had a vision in which Christ took her as his bride. At the same time, Christ sent her out of solitude to a life of service. At first she worked in the hospitals of Siena. By that point, she had gathered a circle of friends—male and female, clergy and lay—who looked

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