Unschooled, Catherine spontaneously learned to read while in her anchorite cell, but she could not write for most of her life. Undeterred, Gardner tell us, she would dictate multiple letters to different scribes, simultaneously:
We see her dictating simultaneously to these three young men three letters: one to Pope Gregory, another to Bernabo Visconti, and a third to a certain nobleman. … She dictates first to one, then to another. At times, her face is covered by her hands of veil, as though she is absorbed in thought. … Then suddenly, all three of the scribes stop writing, look puzzled, and appeal to Catherine for help. They have all taken down the same sentence, not knowing for whom it was intended. Catherine reassures them saying, “Dear sons, don’t trouble over this, for you have done it all by the work of the Holy Spirit. When the letters are finished, we will see how the words fit in with our intentions, and then we’ll arrange what had best be done!”
By this same method was her book, The Dialogue of Divine Providence, dictated, and Catherine, in typical detachment, would refer to that masterpiece as “the book in which I found some recreation.”
Detachment was the key for Catherine; a virtue she cultivated from early childhood when she was forced to labor for her family as punishment for refusing marriage. It was a startling contrast to the society around her which, still dazed by the cruel efficiency of the plague, took refuge in the tangible and the worldly, becoming all-too-attached to material possessions, recreation, honors, and titles. Because she was detached, she was able to assess clearly what others could not, to see what must be done when others would not.
It was this detachment that made her the necessary instrument to bring the vacillating and weak Pope Gregory XI back from Avignon to Rome. “Be a manly man,” she urged him. “Wanting to live in peace is often the greatest cruelty. When the boil has come to a head it must be cut with the lance and burned with fire and if that is not done, and only a plaster is put on it the corruption will spread and that is often worse than death. I wish to see you as a manly man so that you may serve the Bride of Christ without fear, and work spiritually and temporally for the glory of God according to the needs of that sweet Bride in our times.”
Read it all.
