CHAPTER VII

_In the Footsteps of St Catherine_

"In the name of God, Amen. To the honour and praise and reverence of God, and of His Mother, Madonna Holy Mary Virgin, and of all the Saints of God, and to the honour and exaltation of the Holy Roman Church, and of the Commune and of the People of the City of Siena, and to the good and pacific state and to the increase of the Spedale of Madonna Holy Mary Virgin of Siena, which is placed in front of the chief church of the said City, and of the Rector and Brothers of the Chapter of the said Spedale, and to the recreation of the sick and poor and foundlings of the said Spedale."

Thus open the Statutes of 1305 of the famous Spedale of Siena, the united hospitals of Santa Maria della Scala. The buildings occupy the whole side of the Piazza del Duomo opposite the façade. According to the legends, the Spedale was founded at the end of the ninth century by a cobbler named Sorore, who began by lodging pilgrims who passed through Siena on their way to Rome, and mending their shoes, then nursing those of their number who fell sick by the way, and ended by founding a sort of order or company of men--the "Frati Ospitalieri"--to carry on his work. Thus began the hospital for the sick; while a dream of a devout woman, who saw upon this spot a ladder reaching up to Heaven, and little children passing up it into the arms of the Blessed Virgin, caused a home for foundlings to be united to it. Modern writers, however, question the existence of the Beato Sorore, and assign the foundation of the Spedale to the eleventh century.[103] Be that as it may, throughout the whole course of Sienese history the Spedale has a sublime record of devotion and charity, especially in those terrible epochs--that recurred again and again at intervals--when the pestilence and black death devastated Siena. Its revenues were largely increased by donations from the Bishops, by papal commutations of vows, and by bequests from victims of the pestilence who, having lost their natural heirs, bequeathed all that they had to the institution. The order of the "Frati Ospitalieri" was reformed in the thirteenth, and lasted on till the end of the sixteenth century. The Rector of the Spedale, in the days of the Republic, had the right of sitting in the Consistory with the Signoria.

Beyond the entrance-hall is a large room known as the Pellegrinaio, because originally intended for the reception of pilgrims, with a pleasant view from the window at the end. The walls and ceiling are covered with frescoes--those on the walls being practically unique in the story of Sienese art. They represent scenes from the history and illustrate the work of the Spedale. On the right are three by Domenico di Bartolo. They represent the marrying of the maidens, with the Baptism of the children and their nursing (1440); the giving of alms (1443); the care of the sick and diseased (1440). We are struck at once by their realism, which we shall find nowhere else in Sienese painting; some of the heads are powerful, there is excellent grouping and a study of Sienese costumes in the Quattrocento which is of no small value to the student. But withal there is a certain uncouthness, at times exaggerated to the verge of grotesqueness. The painter is following the Florentine methods, but is not fully equipped with Florentine science; the nude figure which we see in the foreground of the second fresco is a striking innovation in a Sienese picture, but it will not stand the comparison--which it inevitably invites--with the naked youths in Masaccio's famous scene of St Peter baptising in the Carmine of Florence. The two frescoes on either side of the window are unimportant. Then, on the left wall, is another by Domenico di Bartolo (1443), fairly well preserved, representing the granting of privileges to the Spedale, in the person of its Rector, by Celestine III.; a magnificent young Sienese gentleman in the costume of the fifteenth century stands in the centre of the picture. The next fresco, the entry into the Spedale and a lady of Siena taking the robe of the order, is by Priamo di Pietro della Quercia, the brother of the more famous Giacomo; it is somewhat in the style of Domenico, but with more than his uncouthness and falling a long way below his excellence. Following that, by Domenico di Bartolo, badly preserved, is the increase of the buildings of the Spedale with alms given by the Bishop, the group of horsemen approaching, and nearly riding down the builder, being presumably fresh benefactors inspired by the episcopal example. The fresco over the door on the left is by Vecchietta and represents the "Scala del Paradiso," the dream of the devout woman, in which the little deserted children are seen mounting up the ladder to be received into the arms of the Mother of God.

There are other frescoes of less importance in other parts of the Spedale. In the room on the left of the entrance is a fresco by Beccafumi, one of his early works, painted in 1512, representing the meeting of Joachim and Anne. The Infirmary of San Pietro has unimportant frescoes by Vecchietta, and (inclosed in a tabernacle) the "Madonna of Mercy," by Domenico di Bartolo. In the Infirmary of San Pio a "Beato Sorore" is likewise ascribed to Domenico, and in the Infirmary of San Galgano is a Crucifixion by Taddeo di Bartolo. The church of the Spedale, dedicated to the Madonna of the Annunciation, was built in the fifteenth century. The bronze Christ over the high altar is by Vecchietta; the organ is said to have been designed by Peruzzi.

In the vaults under the Spedale are the meeting-places of several devout confraternities, which are said to trace their origin from the first Sienese Christians, the converts of St Ansanus, who met in secret on this spot in the days of the Roman persecutions. You enter by the last door in the Piazza. The chapel of Santa Maria sotto le Volte dello Spedale, now sometimes called Santa Caterina delle Notti, was the oratory of the "Disciplinati of the Virgin Mary of the Spedale." St Catherine was intimately associated with this confraternity, which was conspicuous for its active works of charity, and to which a number of her disciples belonged. One of her latest letters was written from Rome to the Prior and Brothers of the Company.[104] It was whilst praying here in 1380 that Stefano Maconi heard a voice in his heart telling him that Catherine was dying, and he at once hastened to Rome to receive her last injunctions. In a little cell, adjoining the oratory, St Catherine passed long hours in prayer, and from it she assisted at the offices of the Disciplinati. Here is still shown the hard bed of stone upon which she slept, in the intervals of tending the sick at the hospital. In a room beyond, belonging to the confraternity of St Catherine, are some pictures; a Madonna and Child with Saints by Taddeo di Bartolo, and four small paintings, much restored, in the manner of Girolamo del Pacchia. One of the latter represents the members of the confraternity dressed as you may still see them at the door of St Catherine's house on the day of her festa. Before reaching the oratory, another flight of steps to the left leads down to the meeting-place of the Confraternity of the Madonna. Here are a number of pictures, including a Holy Family by Bazzi; St Catherine leading Pope Gregory back to Rome (though, as a matter of fact, she was present only in spirit) by Benvenuto di Giovanni; a Madonna and Child with Saints by Sano di Pietro. Hung very high up are two small triptychs--the one representing the Crucifixion, Flagellation, Entombment--the other the Blessed Virgin with the two Catherines and other Saints. Mr Berenson ascribes them to Duccio and Fungai respectively. Beyond is the chapel of the confraternity, with remains of frescoes by some pupil of Ambrogio Lorenzetti.

San Bernardino commenced his religious life as a member of this confraternity of Our Lady's Disciplinati. When the pestilence broke out anew in 1400, and the Spedale was overwhelmed with the sick and the dying, Bernardino collected a band of young men to aid the Rector in his task, and devoted himself to the plague-stricken for four months, while his cousin, Tobia, attended to the women.

From the back of the Spedale the Via di Valle Piatta leads to the little church of San Sebastiano, the oratory of the Contrada della Selva. Its interior is in the form of a Greek cross. It was built by Girolamo di Domenico Ponsi, at the end of the fifteenth century, and its sacristy contains Madonnas by Matteo di Giovanni and Benvenuto. The adjoining convent, originally of the Gesuate, has since 1818 been the Foundling Hospital--Ospizio dei Gettatelli.

From the Via di Valle Piatta the steep Via del Costone winds down the side of the hill upon which the Duomo and Spedale stand, to the Fontebranda. Let us take this way into the valley--for we shall be

treading in the steps of St Catherine. Here, in her sixth year, she was returning with her brother from a visit to their sister Bonaventura, whose husband had a house near the Tower of St Ansanus, and had reached the turning at which the great red brick mass of San Domenico first becomes fully visible--rising up grandly on the brow of the opposite hill, over the humble valley of the tanners and dyers. A shrine and a faded fresco on the left at the corner still mark the spot of her first vision. "She saw in the air, above the church of the Friars Preachers of Siena, our Saviour seated on a wondrous throne, robed as Sovereign Pontiff, accompanied by the Holy Apostles. He gazed lovingly and smilingly upon her, and with His holy hand making the sign towards her of the most holy Cross, He blessed her."[105]

At the foot of the hill is the famous Fontebranda, with its colonnade of three arches and its four lions' heads. Although the first certain mention of it is in a document of 1081, and in its present form it only dates from the middle of the thirteenth century, the fountain has been famous throughout Tuscany from time immemorial. Possibly, when Siena was the Roman colony of the Sena Julia, the soldiery of the legions drank from its waters; before them, the fair-haired Senonian Gauls--if we accept that form of the legend of the foundation of the city--may have lingered a moment by it as they followed Brennus in his march to Rome. It hardly needs the adventitious fame that has accrued to it from the supposition--stated as a fact by the earliest commentators, but at present generally rejected by scholars--that it is the Fonte Branda recorded by Dante in the thirtieth canto of the _Inferno_, for whose waters, even to cool the burning thirst of Hell's foulest circle, Maestro Adamo would not have given the sight of his aristocratic seducers sharing his agony. There is a curious tradition that certain streets of Siena were--or possibly still are--infested by were-wolves, who rush through the city at night, and throw themselves into Fontebranda to recover human form.[106] Be that as it may, Fontebranda gives its name to the whole of the picturesque district--"il Rione di Fontebranda"--below the two hills upon which the Duomo and San Domenico respectively stand. The valley is still, as in St Catherine's days, the haunt of the tanners and the dyers, and redolent of that peculiar odour of the curing of hides that ever after haunts the lover of Siena.

The steep Via Benincasa--once the Via de' Tintori--leads up from Fontebranda into the town. It is the headquarters of the most typical and vivacious of the Sienese contrade--the "Nobile Contrada dell'Oca." A few houses up the street, on the left, is a graceful building in the style of the early Renaissance, which now occupies the site of the house of Giacomo Benincasa: the _Oratorio di Santa Caterina in Fontebranda_. "Many from beyond the mountains," so runs an entry in the _Libro dei decreti di Concistoro_, at the time when Catherine's canonisation was in progress at Rome, "French, Venetians, Romans and of other nations who have come to your city, have with great diligence asked for the house where dwelt in your city the blessed Catherine of Siena; and they have gone to it with great reverence and devotion, kneeling down in many places and kissing the walls and the door, saying with many tears: Here she stood and touched, that precious vessel and gift of God, blessed Catherine of Siena, who in her life did so many miracles. And many have wondered that the Commune of Siena in that place has not made some temple to the praise of God and honour of that Spouse of Christ."[107] The house had passed through many hands since the death of St Catherine (who, during the latter part of her life, lived with her mother in another house in the present Via Romana), and was then in a ruinous condition, as the document just quoted goes on to state. But in 1464 the inhabitants of the Costa Fontebranda petitioned the Signoria to buy the house, offering themselves to pay all the rest of the expenses for the building and adornment of the chapel or oratory, "the which they are disposed to do in such form and so well adorned, that it will be to the honour of God and St Catherine of Siena and of your Magnificent Signory, and the consolation of all your city." The oratory was begun in the same year and finished in 1473, after several appeals from the Esecutori di Gabella to the Signoria for aid in money. In one of these, they remind the Signoria that "it pertains to the Republic to study that spiritual devotions and divine temples should increase in the city; especially in yours, because of the celestial gift of the sweetest liberty which we enjoy among very few cities in the world." And in another they set forth that, with the aid of their Magnificent Lordships, the oratory has been built, "which has been a thing very devout and honourable, especially by reason of the great concourse of citizens and strangers who go there on the days of her feast"; but that they need some more things to make it complete--such as a picture for the altar, candlesticks, an image of the Saint in high relief, and a sacristy--for which they want three hundred gold florins.[108]

The lower chapel--now the church of the Contrada--is the one referred to in these documents, the upper oratories being the result of later acts of devotion. It is uncertain who was the architect; a certain Francesco di Duccio del Guasta, as well as Antonio Federighi and other masters, seems to have had a hand in it. Over the door is a relief of St Catherine with Angels--an unworthy work by Urbano da Cortona--and on the façade are the four shields: the _Libertas_ and the _balzana_ between the Lion of the People and the Goose of the Contrada. The church was the workshop of Giacomo Benincasa and his sons. Over the altar is a statue in coloured wood of their glorious daughter and sister, by

Neroccio. The five frescoed _putti_ above and the scene of the reception of the Stigmata are probably by Girolamo del Pacchia. On the right wall are two admirable frescoes by Girolamo who, like all true Sienese, was never so truly inspired as when painting Catherine. In the first, she is saving two Dominican friars from a band of robbers by her intercession. In the second, she is visiting the convent of Santa Agnese of Montepulciano, and when she stoops to kiss the foot of the dead virgin it moves itself to meet her lips, while "a very white manna falling like heavenly dew" descends upon her. Here the painter has combined two different legends about her visits to Montepulciano. The two girls kneeling on the left are Catherine's two nieces (Lisa's daughters) whom she placed in the convent; the young man in the foreground is apparently Neri di Landoccio. On the left wall we see her raising up Messer Matteo di Cenni, the Rector of the Casa della Misericordia, "a notable servant of God and very devout to this Virgin," when he lay dying of the pestilence; her figure is full of wonderful dignity and sweetness. This also is by Girolamo del Pacchia. The fresco representing the Saint at Florence, assailed by the Ciompi, is by Ventura Salimbeni.

We go up the stairs--which, without unduly stretching a point, we may surely imagine to be those up which Monna Lapa saw her little daughter ascending without touching the ground. On the left, we enter a small oratory, which was one of the rooms of the Benincasa family--probably that in which they took their meals together. The frescoes, by the modern Sienese painter, Alessandro Franchi, represent legendary scenes of Catherine's childhood and life in the family, and her earliest visions before her public life began. They are at least unpretentious and devout in sentiment, and the one in which the worthy dyer finds his daughter at prayer, with the mystical dove hovering over her head, is decidedly pretty. The picture over the altar, of her receiving the Stigmata, is perhaps by Girolamo di Benvenuto. The little cell beyond is the chamber which was made over to her as her own, when her father was convinced that she was following a supernatural call. Under the wooden covering of the floor is the very pavement upon which her feet trode, and, shown beneath bars and glass, is the hard pillow of bricks upon which her head rested when she slept. Out of the little window above it, she gave food to the poor--for these rooms are practically on a level with the upper street. In a glass case certain relics of hers are preserved; her scent-bottle for the sick; the lantern which she carried when she visited the plague-stricken or went to the hospital after dark; the handle of the stick with which she walked--the stick we see sometimes in her pictures; her veil and a piece of her hair-shirt; and the covering in which her head was brought from Rome to Siena.

At the head of the stairs, on the right, is the door opening out upon the little side street that runs off from the steep Costa Sant' Antonio, by which the house is more usually entered. It bears the inscription "The house of Catherine, the Spouse of Christ," and when we mount up into the little court and loggia, we may read another hard saying on our left: "Living, I beheld Him whom I loved." The design of the court and loggia is ascribed to Baldassare Peruzzi. Here are two oratories. The first--which is said to have been Monna Lapa's kitchen--is now somewhat gorgeously decorated in the style of the Renaissance; the ceiling and pavement (which latter is kept covered) belong to the end of the sixteenth century. Over the altar, the picture representing the reception of the Stigmata--which we find repeated in one form or another in each of these chapels--is by Fungai. The pictures--with fine Renaissance pilasters between--date from the latter part of the sixteenth century onwards, and represent scenes from St Catherine's life, with other Saints and Beati of Siena. In contrast with those in the lower oratory, they are largely concerned with her later life and with her public actions; her saving the souls of the tortured felons; her freeing a woman from an evil spirit (by Pietro Sorri); her persuading the Roman People to submit to Pope Urban (by Alessandro Casolani); and her inducing Gregory to return to Rome. The more artistically important of the series are her mystical marriage with Christ, by Arcangiolo Salimbeni, and her canonisation by Pope Pius II. (with the Blessed Bernardo and the Blessed Nera of the Tolomei below), by Francesco Vanni. The second oratory--the _Oratorio del Crocifisso_--was built in the sixteenth century on the site of the garden of the family. Over the altar is the sacred Crucifix from Santa Cristina at Pisa--a painting ascribed to Giunta Pisano--praying before which, on the Fourth Sunday in Lent, 1375, in that little church on the banks of the Arno, Catherine is said, like Francis of Assisi, to have received in her flesh the _ultimo sigillo_. "I saw," she told Frate Raimondo, "our Crucified Lord coming down upon me surrounded by a great light. Thereat by the force of my spirit, that desired to go forth and meet its Creator, my body was constrained to rise. Then from the marks of His most sacred wounds I saw descend upon me five bloody rays, which were directed towards the hands, the feet and the heart of my body. Wherefore, knowing the mystery, I cried out suddenly, 'Ah, my Lord God, I beseech you, let not these wounds appear outwardly in my body; it is enough for me to have them internally.' Then whilst I was yet speaking, before those rays reached me, their blood-red colour changed to a marvellous brightness, and in the semblance of pure light they came to the five parts of my body, to wit, the hands, the feet, and the heart."[109]

In the Via Benincasa to the right of the door of the church--over which is a bust of Catherine by Giacomo Cozzarelli, who is said to have designed the loggia--are the rooms belonging to the "Nobile Contrada dell'Oca." In the Sala delle Adunanze, you may see the trophies that their _fantini_, or jockeys, have won in the race for the Palio.

The Contrada should be visited on the Sunday after the feast of Santa Caterina. The whole Via Benincasa is decorated--_ammaiata_, as they say in Siena--with bunting, with the flags of their own and the allied contrade, with brackets to hold lights and with white wooden geese in every form of flight or rest, but always combined with a green perch and a red bracket to give the Italian tricolour which is also the _divisa_ of the Contrada. The corners of the streets that lead into the Via Benincasa are guarded by larger wooden geese of this type, set upon the walls of the houses, while at the bottom of the street, at the church, the way is closed by a temporary tabernacle and altar. From earliest morning, Mass is offered up unceasingly in the three oratories, while the _figurino_ (the gaily decked representative of the Contrada) and the _alfieri_, waving their banners and preceded by a band, march through the city, to pay honour in this fashion to the houses of their friends and the headquarters of the allied contrade. All through the day the throng moves unceasingly through the street and the sacred house, until in the evening there is the procession. Starting from the parish church of Sant' Antonio, it makes its way down the steep, densely packed Via Benincasa. Following the band, comes the _figurino_; then a long train of little children dressed as saints and angels--foremost among

them being a group of three, a little boy, a little girl, and an elder girl, representing the Sposalizio of Caterina with the divine Bambino under the patronage of the Madonna. The brothers of the Company of St Catherine follow, bearing the silver bust of their patroness, with the priest of the Contrada. The end of the procession is brought up by the picturesque young Ancients, waving and tossing up their banners in the approved Sienese fashion, until all the steep, crowded Via Benincasa seems a whirling mass of colour.

And St Catherine's power of healing factions in her native city has not yet ceased. In this present year of grace, 1902, on the day in which the popolani of the Oca celebrated the feast of their glorious patroness, there was a solemn reconciliation between them and the rival Contrada of the Torre, the healing of the famous feud of many years' standing. I am writing too soon after the event to know whether the peace has proved durable!

Upon the hill above Fontebranda rises the great red brick church of San Domenico--after the Duomo the most important Gothic ecclesiastical building in Siena. It dates almost from the very beginning of the Dominican order, being begun shortly after 1220, though not finished until the middle of the fifteenth century. St Dominic himself may be said to have presided over its beginning, and the Angelical Doctor has walked in the cloisters where once the convent was. The soaring Campanile was raised in 1340. Though considerably altered--in the sixteenth century it was used as a fortress from which the Spanish soldiery might command the city--it is always the same building that St Catherine knew, and that is so intimately connected with the events of her life; presumably there are few buildings in Italy so quick with the living spirit of one woman. Her beloved Dominicans, alas, are here no longer; the convent was suppressed by the French invaders at the beginning of last century, and, after the restoration of the Austrian Grand Dukes, the Benedictines were substituted for the Dominicans. The black monks have gone too--leaving a few to serve the church--and the convent has been transformed into barracks for the cavalry of modern Italy.

The interior has been completely restored, but its original austere simplicity is still preserved. The picture over the third altar on the right in the nave, representing the Assassination of St Peter Martyr, and painted by Arcangiolo Salimbeni in 1579, is one of the most meritorious works of the later school of Sienese painters. Over the last altar on the right the altar-piece is formed of three different pictures by different artists and without the slightest connection with each other, save that they were all painted in the latter part of the fifteenth century; the Nativity of the Saviour is by Francesco di Giorgio, one of his best works, showing a curious imitation of Luca Signorelli in the adoring Angels and shepherds; above, the Pietà with Angels, St Michael and the Magdalene, is by Matteo di Giovanni; the predella--representing St Catherine's visions, the Martyrdom of St Sebastian, the Massacre of the Innocents, St Dominic preaching, St Mary of Egypt--is ascribed to Fungai. Over the high altar the beautiful marble Ciborium, with the risen Christ above and the four Evangelists below, is the work of one of the chief Florentine sculptors of the latter half of the Quattrocento, Benedetto da Maiano. The two marble Angels, kneeling on either side of the altar, are also his. There is a fine view of the Duomo from the back of the choir. In the second chapel, to the left of the choir, is one of the loveliest and most characteristic pictures of the Sienese school--the "Santa Barbara" painted by Matteo di Giovanni in 1479. The Virgin Martyr of the Tower sits enthroned, in robes gorgeous with gold and embroidery, accompanied by St Mary Magdalene and St Catherine of the Wheels; two Angels crown her, two more make melody behind her throne. The faces of the three women--particularly the golden-haired maidens, Catherine and Barbara--are full of pensive sweetness; they have dreamed among the lilies all day and all night of love, such passionless love as that of which the _Vita Nuova_ tells, while the faction fights have splashed Siena's streets with blood, and in her palace chambers the things have been done of which her novelists speak. And, surely, when the Angels sing to their lutes or viols, it will be no hymn, but some such amorous canzone as that with which Casella refreshed Dante's soul on the shores of Purgatory. The lunette above represents the Adoration of the Magi, and was especially stipulated for by the worthy bakers who gave Matteo the commission. The bright picture opposite shows a trace of the influence of Benozzo Gozzoli; it represents the Madonna and Child with Saints and Angels, with the Pietà and four Angels in the lunette, and was painted by Benvenuto di Giovanni in 1483. In the chapel beyond there is another Matteo di Giovanni: the Madonna and Child with Angels, St Jerome and the Baptist, in three divisions, with a rocky landscape background, damaged and neglected. In the chapel on the right of the choir, the Madonna of the Rosary--or rather the Deity with Saints, surrounding an old votive picture of the Madonna--is by Bazzi, the predella of the fifteen mysteries being by one of his pupils. The second chapel on the right belonged to the "German Nation" of the University of Siena, and is full of tombstones of noble young German students, who came to the famous Studio to acquire wisdom, and found a grave. One epitaph begins, _Svevia me genuit, Senae rapuere sed ossa_. The chapel has the pathos that inevitably clings to the thought of hopes cut short, of untimely death in a foreign land.

It is not for these things that we visit San Domenico to-day, but for the glorious chapel of St Catherine. Over it we read another of those hard sayings that sum up, mystically, the story of her inner life: "This chapel holds the head of Catherine. Dost thou seek her heart? Nay, that Christ bears inclosed in His breast." The shrine itself, over the altar, which contains this sacred relic--sacred, surely, to all lovers of the noblest things in the literature of mysticism no less than to Roman Catholics--is a work of the third quarter of the fifteenth century, and is probably by Giovanni di Stefano. The frescoes on either side of it--representing the _Svenimento_, St Catherine fainting into the arms of her two attendant nuns, Alessia and Francesca, overcome by the glory of the vision of her celestial Bridegroom, and St Catherine miraculously fed with the Food of Angels in the Sacred Host--are by Bazzi, and were painted in 1526. Hardly elsewhere (save, perhaps, in the St Sebastian of the Uffizi painted in the previous year) has the wayward painter of Vercelli touched such a height of inspiration; in conception and execution alike, they are among the supreme triumphs of Italian art. The fresco on the left--representing the execution of Niccolò di Toldo, St Catherine ecstatically following the upward flight of the soul she has saved--is also Bazzi's, but less excellent. It is overcrowded and badly composed, carelessly executed in parts; the brawny figure and bearded head of the victim hardly suggest the delicate young nobleman, the _agnello_ of the _Leggenda minore_ whose blood has been unjustly shed;[110] but nothing could be more beautiful than the kneeling figure of the Saint herself. The beautiful pilasters between the frescoes, and the Angels and Prophets under the arch, are likewise Bazzi's. Bazzi left the work unfinished, and some fifty years after his death Francesco Vanni took

it up, in 1593. By Vanni (who, of course, will not be confused with Andrea di Vanni, Catherine's contemporary and friend) is the picture on the right, painted in oil colours, where she is seen liberating a possessed woman from a demon; by him, too, are the figures of her two first biographers, the Blessed Raimondo da Capua and Frate Tommaso Nacci Caffarini, the authors of the _Leggenda_ and the _Leggenda minore_ respectively. Beautiful as the shrine is--and it would have been perfect in its harmony had only Bazzi completed the decorations--it is impossible at times not to feel that there is something more melodramatic in its treatment than quite accords with the simpler spirit of the dyer's daughter of Fontebranda. The _graffito_ work in coloured marble on the pavement represents Aesculapius among wild beasts. It is doubtful whether this is connected with the fact that several physicians of the Benzi family were buried in the chapel, or a part of the decorations in honour of the Saint.

San Domenico should be visited on the day of St Catherine's Feast, which in Siena is kept on April 29th. The nave is hung with the bright banners of the contrade; Mass after Mass is offered up without intermission throughout the morning at the shrine, while crowds of the devout humbly and silently approach the altar, to be fed with that Bread of the Angels, "which," says the collect for that day, "sustained even the temporal life of the blessed Virgin Catherine." The curtain is raised, and behind the gilded bars of the shrine the pale, strange face appears, its features still recognisable. The altar blazes with candles and glares with artificial lilies, while natural flowers, lilies of the valley and white roses--more fitting tribute to her who so loved the simple flowers of the field--are offered up at the chapel rails. And, in this sudden advent of reality, Bazzi's beautiful melodrama palls.

In the sacristy, on this day, are shown certain other relics--her discipline; her portable altar-stone; the sacramental cloths which she made for it with her own hands; the bull from Pope Gregory at Avignon granting her the dispensation to have Mass upon it wherever she went; and one of her fingers. The latter relic is--somewhat unfittingly--carried in procession through the church at sunset. The sacristy contains a banner painted with the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin by Bazzi.

The chapel on the right of the entrance, the Cappella delle Volte, over which is a large painted Crucifix of the fifteenth century, was not separated from the rest of the church in the days of St Catherine, as it is now. It was the chapel in which she habitually prayed, and by one of its pillars she knelt always, to hear Mass in the church below. Here her visions came to her, here had she those strange mystical revelations of the Divine Word. "Disposing wondrous ascensions in her heart, Catherine went up these steps, to pray in the chapel to Christ her Spouse." Thus runs the writing over the original steps, piously preserved and guarded by bars, on the left, by which Catherine mounted into the cell of mystery; not those modern ones by which we now go up into the little chapel that witnessed this wondrous union of a woman's mind and heart with the suprasensible.

It is somewhat bare to-day, painfully coated with modern paint and whitewash. It is hung with paintings representing scenes from her life and death, of little value from an artistic point of view, though one--that of her walking with her Master and Spouse--has a certain pathos and sweetness. Two narrow pictures over the entrance--representing her giving the cross of her rosary, and clothing the Divine Beggar with her robe--are earlier and better than the larger canvasses. But over the altar is a priceless treasure, the famous portrait of her by her friend and correspondent Andrea di Vanni, perhaps painted in her life-time and in any case her authentic likeness, in which the _mantellata_ is giving her hand to kiss to a kneeling follower of her own sex--in the way to which (when men were concerned) such exception was taken during her life. In the centre of the chapel a piece of the old pavement where she trode--walked with Christ, in the phrase of the legend--is religiously preserved. Elsewhere, marble tablets on the floor are marked with heart, cross or robe, and inscribed: "Christ changeth heart with Catherine"; "Catherine bestoweth her cross on Christ"; "Catherine clothes Christ with her robe." For into this chapel, as into others, the beggars came--and among them the disguised Spouse of her soul. Still may we see the pillar against which she leaned in her ecstasies--the pillar that is idealised in Bazzi's two frescoes on either side of the shrine below--though now it is covered and modernised like the rest of the chapel. An inscription hung upon it--a seventeenth century copy of one of much older date (but not earlier than her canonisation)--strikes the keynote of the whole chapel, and I will therefore translate it in full:--

"In this chapel, there befell many wonderful actions to St Catherine of Siena, among the which are those set down below, as the blessed Raimondo her confessor telleth, and they are also known by ancient tradition, besides the many others that befell in this present church.

"Here she was clothed in the habit of St Dominic, and she was the first virgin who up to that time had been thus clothed.

"Here she stayed apart to hear the divine offices, and here continually had she divine colloquies, conversing familiarly with Jesus Christ her Spouse. Here she said the divine office, she had frequent ecstasies, and for the most part in these she used to lean against this pilaster, in one of which ecstasies she was zealously portrayed by a painter on the wall outside of this chapel.[111] And from that time this pilaster has been, and still is formidable to the furies of Hell, and many persons possessed of devils have been delivered thereby.

"Here she gave a little cross of silver, that she had threaded to her rosary, to Jesus Christ in the shape of a poor man, who afterwards told her that He would show it on the Day of Judgment to all the world.

"Here she gave her vest to Jesus Christ in the shape of a poor man, who afterwards robed her with an invisible robe whereby she never again suffered cold.

"Here Jesus Christ appeared to her surrounded by light, as she was wishing to descend by this place and go back to her house; and when straightway she fell to the ground thereat, He opened her breast and put there His own heart, saying, 'Lo, most dear daughter mine, even as the other day I took from thee thy heart, so now do I give thee Mine own, by the which shall thou ever live.'

"While she was leaning in ecstasy against this pilaster, a candle that was there alight, in honour of some saints, fell upon the veils of her head and entirely burnt itself out upon them, without doing any harm or making any mark.

"While her confessor, Frate Raimondo, was celebrating Mass at the altar of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, she remained at the foot of this chapel and desired to be fed with the Holy Communion; but because it was late, and the confessor knew not that she was there, she stayed there patiently; then did Jesus Christ in person communicate her with part of the Host consecrated at that Mass, and the confessor, not finding it, remained much afflicted until it was revealed to him by her."

To many of us these things may seem mere priestly legends, and we may find, even in Catherine's more solemn revelations, but little to meet our daily needs. Assuredly, few would maintain that Christ actually appeared, objectively, to His servant--that she walked with Him in aught save the spirit--that He spoke words to her otherwise than in her own heart. Yet, who shall set limits to the potential ascents of the human spirit when held so slightly by its _mortal velo_, when so little encumbered or shadowed by the _nube di sua mortalità_ as was that of Caterina Benincasa? In those mystical suprasensible regions--during that half hour in which there is silence in Heaven--Catherine was a voyager alone, a sure wanderer in fields where our footsteps to-day cannot tread even in imagination. Let us adapt to ourselves the word of Frate Raimondo: "We are in the valley, and we presume to judge concerning what is on the summit of the Mountain."