to the still unnamed mother of Thobia; and by remembering her sister, although she had long been provided for in her Convent, her three brothers, who were no doubt indefinitely richer than herself, and especially her two marriageable nieces. Altogether, of the £2,304 definitely accounted for in the Will, she leaves £69 for her own funeral and for Masses for herself; £400 for Thobia and her mother; £210 to her own relations; £125 to servants; and £1,500 to her husband’s nephew. There is no trace here of any indifference to the natural ties of kindred, or of an abstraction of mind rendering her incapable of a careful consideration and firm decision in matters of business: a point which we shall find to be of much importance, later on.
5. Ettore’s “Mandiletto”-work.
In this year, too, if not already in the previous one, Vernazza founded the institution of the “Mandiletto.” Still a young man—for he was now at most but twenty-eight—Ettore had been noticing, in his work among the poor, how much misery of all kinds obtained in commercial, money-making, hazard-loving Genoa, amongst persons who, even though ill, refused to take refuge in the hospitals; and who, however poor at present, had known better, even brilliant days, and were too proud to beg, or even to accept alms from any one who could recognize them. And hence he now organized a system for discovering and visiting such persons in their own homes and for minimizing their pain in accepting help, by arranging that the members of this little fraternity should never visit such houses, except with some kind of little veil or handkerchief (fazzoletto, mandiletto) applied to their faces.[128]
Catherine, who had helped the Uffizio della Misericordia so much, and who herself so greatly disliked being noticed or even simply seen whenever she was doing or suffering anything at all out of the common, had no doubt, at least in a general way, inspired this beautifully delicate means of preserving and sparing the bashfulness of the giver and the dignity of the recipient. Throughout the remaining years of her life she must have cared to hear Vernazza’s report as to the progress of this work.
XI. Beginning of her Third, Last Period; End of the Extraordinary Fasts; First Relations with Don Marabotto.
But it is in the next year, 1499, that we reach the actual beginning of the third and last period of Catherine’s Convert life.
1. End of the Fasts; transfer of the “carati.”
Some of the events of this year are again predominantly external, or but continuations or consequences of previous inclinations of her will. It must have been at the end of the Lent of this spring-time that all extraordinary fasting-power, of a kind that could be foreseen and that more or less synchronized with the ecclesiastical season, left her for good and all. And she had gone on feeling strongly her share of responsibility for the government of that far-off island. Hence she betook herself, on September 18 of this year, with the Notary Battista Strata, who has drawn up nine out of the fourteen Legal Acts of Giuliano and herself, to the great palace of the Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, who, four years later, became Pope Julius II. This palace stood by the (now destroyed) Church of San Tommaso, and was at this time the residence of Giovanni Adorno. And there, in the great Loggia looking south, Catherine dictated the substance of an Act of Cession then and there to her husband’s nephew of those two carati, which weighed so heavily on her mind. Perhaps Giovanni was in poor health, and Catherine was too eager to eschew her responsibility in the matter to be willing to wait any longer.[129]
2. Beginning of Catherine’s relations with Don Marabotto.
The chief event, however, from the point of view of her inner life, and which gives us a second close and most important eyewitness for her last period, was the beginning of her spiritual relations with Don Marabotto.[130] “At the end of the twenty-five years during which she had persevered the way of God without the means of any creature,” says the Vita, “the Lord gave her a priest, to take care both of her soul and of her body; a spiritual man and one of holy life, to whom God gave light and grace to understand His operations within her. He had been appointed Rector of the Hospital; and hence was in a position to hear her Confession, say Mass for her, and give her Holy Communion according to her convenience.”[131] Now the rare and profound isolation and independence of her middle period render this turning to and finding of human help specially significant; the numerous sayings addressed to her Confessor to be found throughout the Vita were all, with the sole exception of those contained in the Conversion-scene, spoken to Marabotto and transmitted by him to us;[132] and probably at least half of the narrative of her Life and well-nigh all her Passion are due to Don Marabotto’s pen. It is then important, and it is possible to get a fairly clear idea as to the sort of man he was.
3. Don Marabotto’s family and character; Catherine’s attitude towards him.
Don Cattaneo came from a stock even more ancient and distinguished than that of Vernazza. A Marabotto had had a lawsuit with the Bishop of Genoa in 1128; Roggiero Marabotto had lent money to the King of Sardinia in 1164; Martino Marabotto had been Ambassador to Rome, Florence, and Lucca in 1256; Pelagio of that name had been Notary to the Mint in 1435; Giorgio, a Doctor of Medicine in 1424; Ambrosio, Lieutenant-Governor of Corsica in 1459. And the family, like the Fieschi, had always been Guelph: Federico Marabotto had armed nine galleys against the Ghibellines and had had a narrow escape from the latter, during a dark night of 1330; and Antonio and Domenico were known Guelph leaders in 1450 and 1452. Indeed the latter was Procurator to the Fieschi family in 1443, and thus anticipated, by sixty years and on a larger scale, Don Cattaneo’s management of Catherine Fiesca’s modest affairs.[133]
Don Cattaneo himself we find ever gentle, patient, devoted and full of unquestioning reverence towards Catherine; most valuably accurate and detailed in his reproduction of things, in proportion to their tangibleness; naïf and without humour, thoroughly matter of fact, readily identifying the physical with the spiritual, and thus often, unconsciously, all but succeeding in depriving Catherine’s spirit, for us who have so largely to see her with his eyes, of much of its specially characteristic transcendence and of its equally characteristic ethical and spiritual immanence. Such a mind would appear better fitted to follow,—at a respectful distance,—than to lead such a spirit, as Catherine’s; and, indeed, to be more apt to help her as a man of business than as a man of God. As a matter of fact, however, he was quite evidently of very great help and consolation, even in purely spiritual matters, to Catherine, during these last eleven years of her life. Not as though there were any instances of his initiating, stimulating, or modifying any of her ideals or doctrines: she entirely remains, in purely spiritual matters, her own old self, and continues to grow completely along the lines of her previous development. And again he did attend, with an all but unbroken assiduity, to matters not directly belonging to his province qua priest,—to her much-tried, ever-shifting bodily health, and, probably some three or four years later on, to her financial affairs, which latter were still of some variety and complication, owing to her generous anxiety to do much for others, with but little of her own. But between these two opposite extremes of possible help or influence lay another middle level, in which his aid was considerable. For “whenever God worked anything within her, which impressioned her much either in soul or body, she would confer about it all with her Confessor; and he, with the grace and light of God, understood well-nigh all, and would give her answers which seemed to show that he himself felt the very thing that she was feeling herself.” “And she would say, that even simply to have him by, gave her great comfort, because they understood each other, even by just looking each other in the face without speaking.”[134] Marabotto’s Direction consists, then, in giving her the human support of human understanding and sympathy, and, no doubt, in reminding her, in times of darkness, of the lights and truths received and communicated by her in times of consolation. Never does Marabotto see, or think he sees, as far or as clearly as she sees, when she sees at all; and it is the light derived by him from herself at one time, which he administers to her soul at another.
4. Catherine’s first Confession to Don Cattaneo.
The general tone and character