Spirituality & Religious StudiesCatherine of Siena
Her birth name is: Caterina di Jacopo di Benincasa. She lived from March 25, 1347 to April 29, 2380, making her 33 years old when she passed away. She was an Italian mystics & pious laywoman who took part in papal & Italian politics through sizable letter-writing & advocacy. She was canonized in 1461. She’s revered as a saint & a Doctor of the Church because of her considerable theological authorship.
She was born & raised in Siena. At an early age, she wanted to devote herself to God. Her parents were against this. Her parents wanted her to marry. She ends up cutting her hair. She resisted any attempts to conform.
Her dad relents, eventually. He gives her a room dedicated to prayer & contemplation. She developed the spiritual practice of building an inner cell in her mind. This is a place of constant prayer from which she could never flee. This would become a core tenet of her mystical teaching.
She joined the Mantellates at 18. This was/is a group of pious laywomen informally devoted to Dominican spiritually. Later on, these types of urban pious groups would be formalized as the Third Order of the Dominicans. This wasn’t until after Catherine’s passing. She lived in near solitude initially.
Shortly after joining the Mantellate, Catherine started fasting for longer periods. But she found it challenging. While tending to a woman with cancerous breast sores, she was disgusted. Intending to overcome her disgust, she gathered the sore pus into a ladle & drank it all. (Yep, yep. You read that right.)
That night, she was visited by Jesus who invited her to drink the blood gushing out of his pierced side. It was with this visitation that her stomach “no longer had need of food and no longer could digest.”
Around the age of 21, following an experience she described as a “Mystical Marriage” with Christ. She received a divine command to leave her solitary life & dedicate her life to public ministry. She started serving the sick & poor in the hospital, particularly during the Black Death. Her wedding ring wasn’t the traditional gold band that nuns wear after they become nuns. Catherine’s wedding ring was the Holy Prepuce, or Jesus’ foreskin. (Yes, you read that correctly.)
Her influence with Pope Gregory XI played a role in his 1376 decision to leave Avignon for Rome. The Pope sent Catherine to negotiate peace with the Florentine Republic. After Gregory XI (March 1378) & the end of peace (July 1378), she went home to Siena. The Great Schism of the West led Catherine to go to Rome with the Pope.
She sent many letters to princes & cardinals to encourage obedience to Pope Urban VI & defend what she calls the “vessel of the Church.” She passed away on April 29, 1380 after she was weary by fastidious fasting. Urban VI celebrated her funeral & burial in the Basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome. This is 1 of the major churches of the Order of Preachers in Rome.
The people of Siena wanted to have Catherine’s body after she passed away. A story is told of a miracle where they were partially successful. They knew they couldn’t smuggle her whole body out of Rome. They decided to take only her head, which they put in a bag. When they were stopped by the Roman guards, they prayed to Catherine to help them. They were confident she (Catherine) would want her body (or at least part of it) in Siena. When they opened the bag to show the guards, it appeared to not have her (Catherine’s) head but it was full of roses.
Devotion around Catherine of Siena developed rapidly after her passing. Pope Pius II canonized her in 1461. She was declared a patron saint of Rome in 1866 by Pope Pius IX. She was only the 2nd woman to be made a Doctor of the Church, on October 4, 1970 by Pope Paul VI. This was only days after Teresa of Avila. In 1939, Pope Pius XII named her joint patron saint of Italy, along with St. Francis of Assisi. In 1999, Pope John Paul II proclaimed her a patron saint of Europe. Along with Teresa Benedicta of the Cross & Bridget of Sweden. She’s also the patroness of the historically Catholic American sorority, Theta Phi Alpha.
There are 3 main churches in honor of Catherine of Siena:
- Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome. This is where her body is kept. This church gets its name from that the 1st Christian Church structure on the site was directly over (or Italian sopra) the ruins or foundations of a temple dedicated to the Egyptian deity Isis. This had been mistakenly thought to be the temple of Minerva. Possibly due to interpretatio romana, meaning that the ancient Greeks had a tendency to identify foreign gods with their own gods.
- Basilica of San Domenico, in Siena. This is where her incorrupt head is. This incorrupt head doesn’t look like the incorruptible bodies of other saints.
- Shrine of St. Catherine, in Siena. This is a complex of religious buildings built around Catherine’s birthplace.
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Jakub Russecki