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The opening pages of Catherine of Siena | by Sigrid Undset, the Nobel Prize
winning author of Kristin Lavransdatter | Ignatius Insight
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In the city-states of Tuscany the citizens—Popolani—businessmen,
master craftsmen and the professional class had already in the Middle Ages
demanded and won the right to take part in the government of the republic side
by side with the nobles—the Gentiluomini. In Siena they had obtained a third of the seats in the High Council
as early as the twelfth century. In spite of the fact that the different
parties and rival groups within the parties were in constant and often violent
disagreement, and in spite of the frequent wars with Florence, Siena's
neighbour and most powerful competitor, prosperity reigned within the city walls.
The Sienese were rich and proud of their city, so they filled it with beautiful
churches and public buildings. Masons, sculptors, painters and smiths who made
the exquisite lattices and lamps, were seldom out of work. Life was like a
brightly coloured tissue, where violence and vanity, greed and uninhibited
desire for sensual pleasure, the longing for power, and ambition, were woven
together in a multitude of patterns. But through the tissue ran silver threads
of Christian charity, deep and genuine piety in the monasteries and among the
good priests, among the brethren and sisters who had dedicated themselves to a
life of helping their neighbours. The well-to-do and the common people had to
the best of their ability provided for the sick, the poor and the lonely with
unstinted generosity. In every class of the community there were good people
who lived a quiet, modest and beautiful family life of purity and faith.
The family of Jacopo Benincasa was one of these. By trade he was a wool-dyer,
and he worked with his elder sons and apprentices while his wife, Lapa di
Puccio di Piagente, firmly and surely ruled the large household, although her
life was an almost unbroken cycle of pregnancy and childbirth—and almost
half her children died while they were still quite small. It is uncertain how
many of them grew up, but the names of thirteen children who lived are to be
found on an old family tree of the Benincasas. Considering how terribly high
the rate of infant mortality was at that time, Jacopo and Lapa were lucky in
being able to bring up more than half the children they had brought into the
world.
Jacopo Benincasa was a man of solid means when in 1346 he was able to rent a
house in the Via dei Tintori, close to the Fonte Branda, one of the beautiful
covered fountains which assured the town of a plentiful supply of fresh water.
The old home of the Benincasas, which is still much as it was at that time, is,
according to our ideas, a small house for such a big family. But in the Middle
Ages people were not fussy about the question of housing, least of all the
citizens of the fortified towns where people huddled together as best they
could within the protection of the walls. Building space was expensive, and the
city must have its open markets, churches and public buildings, which at any
rate theoretically belonged to the entire population. The houses were crowded
together in narrow, crooked streets. According to the ideas of that time the
new home of the Benincasas was large and impressive.
Lapa had already had twenty-two children when she gave birth to twins, two
little girls, on Annunciation Day, March 25, 1347. They were christened
Catherine and Giovanna. Madonna Lapa could only nurse one of the twins herself,
so little Giovanna was handed over to a nurse, while Catherine fed at her
mother's breast. Never before had Monna Lapa been able to experience the joy of
nursing her own children—a new pregnancy had always forced her to give
her child over to another woman. But Catherine lived on her mother's milk until
she was old enough to be weaned. It was all too natural that Lapa, who was
already advanced in years, came to love this child with a demanding and
well-meaning mother-love which later, when the child grew up, made the
relationship between the good-hearted, simple Lapa and her young eagle of a
daughter one long series of heart-rending misunderstandings. Lapa loved her
immeasurably and understood her not at all.
Catherine remained the youngest and the darling of the whole family, for little
Giovanna died in infancy, and a new Giovanna, born a few years later, soon
followed her sister and namesake into the grave. Her parents consoled
themselves with the firm belief that these small, innocent children had flown
from their cradles straight into Paradise—while Catherine, as Raimondo of
Capua writes, using a slightly far-fetched pun on her name and the Latin word
"catena" (a chain), had to work hard on earth before she could take a
whole chain of saved souls with her to heaven.

When the Blessed Raimondo of Capua collected material for his biography of St.
Catherine he got Madonna Lapa to tell him about the saint's
childhood—long, long ago, for Lapa was by that time a widow of eighty.
From Raimondo's description one gets the impression that Lapa enjoyed telling
everything that came into her head to such an understanding and responsive
listener. She told of the old days when she was the active, busy mother in the
middle of a flock of her own children, her nieces and nephews, grandchildren,
friends and neighbours, and Catherine was the adored baby of a couple who were
already elderly. Lapa described het husband Jacopo as a man of unparalleled
goodness, piety and uprightness. Raimondo writes that Lapa herself "had
not a sign of the vices which one finds among people of our time"; she was
an innocent and simple soul, and completely without the ability to invent
stories which were not true. But because she had the well-being of so many
people on her shoulders, she could not be so unworldly and patient as her
husband; or perhaps Jacopo was really almost too good for this world, so that
his wife had to be even more practical than she already was, and on occasion
she thought it her duty to utter a word or two of common sense to protect the
interests of the family.
For Jacopo never said a hard or untimely word however upset or badly treated he
might be, and if others in the house gave way to their bad temper or used
bitter or unkind words he always tried to talk them round: "Now listen,
for your own sake you must keep calm and not use such unseemly words."
Once one of his townsmen tried to force him into paying a large sum of money
which Jacopo did not owe him, and the honest dyer was hounded and persecuted
till he was almost ruined by the slanderous talk of this man and his powerful
friends. But in spite of everything Jacopo would not allow anyone to say a word
against the man; Lapa did so, but her husband replied: "Leave him in
peace, you will see that God will show him his fault and protect us." And
a short while afrer that it really happened, said Lapa.
Coarse words and dirty talk were unknown in the dyer's home. His daughter
Bonaventura, who was married to a young Sienese, Niccalo, was so much grieved
when her husband and his friends engaged in loose talk and told doubtful jokes
that she became physically ill and began to waste away. Her husband, who must
really have been a well-meaning young man, was worried when he saw how thin and
pale his bride was, and wanted to know what was wrong with her. Bonaventura
replied seriously, "In my father's house I was not used to listening to
such words as I must hear here every day. You can be sure that if such indecent
talk continues in our house you will live to see me waste to death."
Niccolo at once saw to it that all such bad habits which wounded his wife's
feelings were stopped, and openly expressed his admiration for her chaste and
modest ways, and the piety of his parents-in-law.
Such was the home of little Catherine. Everyone petted and loved her, and when
she was still quite tiny her family admired her "wisdom" when they
listened to her innocent prattle. And as she was also very pretty Lapa could
scarcely ever have her to herself; all the neighbours wanted to borrow her!
Medieval writers seldom trouble to describe children or try to understand them.
But Lapa manages in a few pages of Raimondo's book to give us a picture of a
little Italian girl, serious and yet happy, attractive and charming—and
already beginning to show that overwhelming vitality and spiritual energy which
many years later made Raimondo and her other "children" surrender to
her influence, with the feeling that her words and her presence banished
despondency and faint-heartedness, and filled their souls with the peace and
love of God. As soon as she left the circle of her own family, little Catherine
became the leader of all the other small children in the street. She taught
them games which she had herself invented—that is to say innumerable
small acts of devotion. When she was five years old she taught herself the Angelus,
and she loved tepeating it incessantly. As she went up or down the stairs at
home she used to kneel on each step and say an Ave Maria. For the pious little daughter of a pious family,
where everyone talked kindly and politely to everyone else, it must have been
quite natural for her as soon as she had heard of God to talk in the same way
to Him and His following of saints. It was then still a kind of game for
Catherine. But small children put their whole souls and all their imagination
into their games.
The neighbours called her Euphrosyne. This is the name of one of the Graces,
and it seemed that Raimondo had his doubts about it; could the good people in
the Fontebranda quarter have such knowledge of classical mythology that they
knew what the name meant? He thought that perhaps, before she could talk
properly, Catherine called her something which the neighbors took to be
Euphrosyne, for there is also a saint of that name. The Sienese were however
used to seeing processions and listening to songs and verse, so they could
easily have picked up more of the poets' property than Raimondo imagined. Thus
for example, Lapa's father, Pucio de Piagnete, wrote verse in his free time; he
was by trade a craftsman—a mattress maker. He was moreover a very pious
man, generous towards the monasteries and to monks and nuns. He might easily
have known both the heathen and the Christian Euphrosyne. Catherine was for a
time very much interested in the legend of St. Euphrosyne, who is supposed to
have dressed as a boy and run away from home to enter a monastery. She toyed
with the idea of doing the same herself. . . .
Related IgnatiusInsight.com Book Excerpts:
Chapter One of The Living Wood: Saint Helena and the Emperor Constantine (A Novel) | Louis de Wohl
Chapter One of Citadel of God: A Novel About Saint Benedict | Louis de Wohl
Sigrid Undset (1882-1949), a renowned literary author and one of the most acclaimed novelists of the twentieth century,
won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1928 for her epic work Kristin Lavransdatter.
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