Faith Filled Friday: St. Catherine of Siena’s Letter to the Queen of Naples

Today, April 29^th, is the feast day of St. Catherine of Siena, patron saint of this blog and my personal patron, as many of you know.  In honor of this day I want to go through one of her letters, a letter to Giovanna d’Angiò, also known as Joanna I of Naples, the queen of Naples in Catherine’s day.  This letter is remarkable for several reasons, which I’ll get to. 

First some context.  Suzanne Noffke in her editing of The Letters of Catherine of Siena provides this biographical note about Queen Joanna:

 

GIOVANNA D’ANGIÒ (Jeanne d’Angou): Letters T133, T138, T143, T312, T317, T348, T362.

Great-granddaughter of Charles Martel, she became queen of Naples in 1333, when she was only seven.  She was licentious, violent, and fickle, an opportunist of the first degree.  It was she who had sold Avignon (which she owned as Countess of Provence) to the pope for a nominal sum in 1347 after convincing him of her innocence in the murder of her husband, Andrew of Hungary.  She ruled over the liveliest and most splendid court in the peninsula, and eventually sided with the Clementine cause in the schism of 1378.  Urban VI excommunicated her in 1380 and enthroned Charles of Durazzo in her place. (p. 540, The Letters of Catherine of Siena, Vol 1, 2000)

The “T133, etc” are a numbering scheme of Catherine’s letters, and it shows that Catherine sent seven letters in all to Joanna in her life.  We also see that Joanna was a very worldly woman, experienced in court intrigue going back to her childhood.  She came from a long lineage of famous aristocracy, and was a very powerful woman who had to kill off a husband in order to retain power.  She herself would later be murdered as well.  The letter we are going to examine is T143, and despite the numbering sequence, this is the second letter to Joanna.  The first letter was to ask Joanna to contribute to a crusade that Pope Gregory XI was trying to organize. 

There are six paragraphs to the letter after the heading and introduction, and I’ll number them at the beginning for clarity.  The letter was written on the fourth of August in 1375, before Catherine’s trip to Avignon to convince the Pope to move back the papal court to Rome.  Since her first letter, it seems from the language that Joanna has written back to Catherine.  The letter is also taken from Suzanne Noffke’s The Letters of Catherine of Siena, Volume 1.

 

To Giovanna d’Angiò, Queen of Naples

4 August 1375

 

In the name of Jesus Christ Crucified and of gentle Mary

 

Honorable and dearest mother, milady the queen,

 

(1) Your unworthy servant and the slave of Christ’s servants is writing to you in the precious blood of God’s Son.  I long to see you a true daughter and spouse consecrated to our dear God.  You are called daughter by First Truth because we were created by God and came forth from him.  This is what he said: “Let us make humankind in our image and likeness.”  And his creature was made his spouse when God assumed our human nature.  Oh Jesus, gentlest love, as a sign that you had espoused us you gave us the ring of your most holy and tender flesh at the time of your holy circumcision on the eighth day.  You know my reverend mother, that on the eighth just enough flesh was taken from him to make a circlet of a ring.  To give us a sure hope of payment in full he began by paying this pledge.  And we received the full payment on the wood of the most holy cross, when this Bridegroom, the spotless Lamb, poured out his blood freely from every member and with it washed away the filth and sin of humankind his spouse.

We see in the first paragraph Catherine’s humble diminution of herself, “servant” and “slave”and taking on Christ’s mantle by writing in His “precious blood.”  The blood imagery is of paramount importance to Catherine, and we’ll see it in the body of this letter. Now here’s one of the amazing things of this letter.  Catherine was a twenty-eight year old uneducated woman of no title, and yet she tells the queen “I long to see you a true daughter and spouse consecrated to our dear God.”  Who is Catherine to tell the queen she wants to see her in any manner at all?  We will see this sort of chutzpah throughout the letter. 

Now the italic writing is Noffke’s way of showing Catherine’s spontaneous breaking from addressing the letter’s recipient to addressing Christ in prayer.  “Oh Jesus, gentlest love, as a sign that you had espoused us you gave us the ring of your most holy and tender flesh at the time of your holy circumcision on the eighth day.”  Now here we get the second remarkable thing of this letter, Catherine’s imagery of ring when envisioning the snipped off flesh of Christ’s circumcision, when “on the eighth just enough flesh was taken from him to make a circlet of a ring.”  And then she calls this flesh and loss of blood an initial payment for the final payment of blood He will make on the cross.  Isn’t that unbelievably creative, to see that particular piece of flesh as a ring?  Catherine had poet’s eye for imagery and it spills over in all her writing.  Let’s continue with the letter.

 

(2) Notice that the fire of divine charity gave us a ring not of gold but of his own purest flesh.  This gentlest of fathers celebrated his wedding with us in a feast not of animal flesh but of his own precious body.  This food is Lamb, roasted over the fire of charity on a wood of the sweet cross.  So I beg you most courteously in Christ Jesus to lift up your heart and soul with all your affection, energy, and caring, to love and serve so gentle and dear a Father and Spouse as God, high eternal Truth, who tenderly loved us without being loved.

Here she continued with the ring imagery, the wedding imagery, the crucified Christ imagery, and her exhortation for the queen to be holy. 

 

(3) Let no one then, nor any status or grandeur, any power or other human glory (all of which are empty and vanish like the wind) lure us away from this true love, our soul’s life and glory and happiness.  So will we show that we are faithful spouses.  And when we love no one other than our Creator and desire nothing apart from him, then everything we love and everything we do is for him.  Whatever we see to be outside his will—vice and sin, all injustice and every other wrong—we hate so much that, because of the holy hatred we have conceived against sin, we would sooner die than break faith with our eternal Spouse.  Let us, oh let us be faithful, following in the footsteps of Christ crucified, scorning vice and embracing virtue, undertaking and accomplishing for him every great deed!

Now here’s the third remarkable moment in the letter, telling the queen not to seek status, grandeur, power, or glory!  This is Queen Giovanna d’Angiò she is writing to.  Catherine may not know the queen’s full history, but she must know the queen has a reputation of seeking power.  Or perhaps not.  Now here’s another bit of irony, telling this queen they should be “faithful spouses” of Christ.  Giovanna will be married four times and one of her husbands she had killed off.

 

(4) I want you to know, my reverend lady, that my soul is jubilantly happy after receiving your letter.  It gave me great consolation because, it seems to me, you have a holy and wholesome readiness to give both your possessions and your life for the glory of the name of Christ crucified.  You can show no greater sacrifice or love than to be ready to give even your life, if necessary, for him.  Oh what a great joy it will be to see you giving blood for blood!  May I see the fire of holy desire so growing in you at the resemblance of the blood of God’s Son that you may be leader and patroness of this holy crusade just as you bear the title of the queen of Jerusalem.  Thus the holy place will no longer be held by these evil unbelievers but honorably possessed by Christians, and by you as something of your own.

Now in the fourth paragraph Catherine finally gets to the point of the letter.  She is responding with gratitude in what seems the queen’s letter back from Catherine’s request to contribute to the crusade was in the affirmative.  And then Catherine prays that the queen will be the leader of the crusade to take back what she thinks is Joanna’s rightful title of Queen of Jerusalem.  Now she cannot be alluding to Joanna as another Joan of Arc, who was not born for another 37 years.  But it does seem to give imagery of Joanna off to battle in a suit of armor.  I’ll just provide the last two paragraghs:

 

(5) I want you to know that the holy father wants this very badly.  So I would like you to show your good will (which the Holy Spirit has put into your soul) by sending him word of it to even further increase his desire.  I would like you to ask to make this holy crusade—you in particular, and all the other Christians who might want to join you.  For it would stand up and declare your willingness to do this, and if you put your holy resolution into action, you will find Christians very willing to follow you.  I beg you for love of Christ crucified to be zealous about this.  And I, as far as my weakness allows me, shall pray God’s supreme eternal goodness to give you clear guidance in this and all your good works, and to increase in you desire upon desire.

 

(6) Ablaze with the fire of love may you go forward from your reign in this poor fleeting life to that eternal city of Jerusalem, the vision of peace, where divine mercy will make us all kings and queens, lords and ladies.  There he who in his tender love helps us carry every load will himself reward our every effort.

            Keep living in God’s holy love.

            Jesus!  Jesus!  Jesus!

                                                                                    Done on the fourth day of August.

I love the passion of Catherine’s exhortations.  Unlike the queen she has a simple innocence.  The future letter will not have Catherine speaking so reverently to the queen.  In 1378 the Church experienced the Great Western Schism, and Catherine and the Queen fell on opposite sides of the issue.  Indeed, Queen Joanna would be excommunicated for her support of the schismatic pope.  Catherine would not be pleased with the queen.  I wrote about this later interaction when I discussed Catherine's biography.  

I pray that all who read this receive God’s blessing on St. Catherine’s feast day.

Faith Filled Friday: St. Catherine on Fastening to the Cross

There was a marvelous meditation in the June 2021 Magnificat taken from a letter of St. Catherine of Siena.  The Magnificat editors pull parts of that letter to form this wonderful quote:

 

In the name of Jesus Christ crucified and of gentle Mary.  I Caterina, useless servant of Jesus Christ, send you my greetings.  I long to see us united with and transformed into the gentle pure eternal truth, the truth that rids us of all falsehoods and lies…I shudder at the thought of the devil’s deceptiveness.  My only trust is in God’s goodness.  I do not—I know that I cannot—trust in myself…

 

I am always fearful of my own weakness and the devil’s cleverness.  For I realize that though the devil lost beatitude he did not lose his intelligence—or better, cleverness—I know, as I said, that he could deceive me.  But then I turn to the tree of the most holy cross of Christ crucified; there I lean; there I want to nail myself fast.  I have no doubt that if I am nailed fast with him in love and in deep humility, the devils will have no power over me.  And this is not because of my own power but because of the power of Christ crucified.

 

Keep living God’s holy and tender love.  Gentle Jesus!  Jesus love!  O fire, oh abyss of charity!  You are a fire ever burning but not consuming.  You are filled with gladness, with rejoicing, with gentleness.  To the heart pierced by this arrow, all bitterness seems sweet.  Oh sweet love the feeds and fattens our soul!

 

Yet even though we said it burns without consuming, I say also that it burns and consumes: it dissolves and destroys all sin, all ignorance, all indifference in the soul, for charity is not inactive; no, it does great things.  (Magnificat, June 2021, p. 421-2)

That is such an incredible quote, and the entire letter can be found in Suzanne Noftke’s The Letters of Catherine of Siena: Volume I.  Indeed, I found it and it’s identified as “Letter T92/G305/DT19” for those who understand that numbering scheme, and the letter is addressed to “a religious person in Florence.”  There was no name provided of the addressee but from the contents of Catherine’s letter we can tell she was responding to a religious person, that is, one with religious orders.  Also from the entire content of Catherine’s letter we can see that the religious person has written to her criticizing what he sees as her severe fasting, which he suggests can be at the result of the devil.  The letter is dated as being between “July 1375 to early 1376.”  This would put St. Catherine as being twenty-eight to twenty-nine years old.  She died in 1380.

For those that may not know, St. Catherine did subject herself to severe fasting, especially from her late teens to her early twenties, which in time caused her digestive system to shut down.  And in this letter, which I think is the central intent of the letter, is to explain her situation and that she no longer can hold food down and that she prays for this to change. 

So in the quoted part from Magnificat, we see that in the first stanza, after her typical way of opening a letter, she acknowledges she cannot trust herself.  In the second paragraph she acknowledges that the devil is capable of deceiving her.  But then in that paragraph she identifies what ultimately saves her: “But then I turn to the tree of the most holy cross of Christ crucified; there I lean; there I want to nail myself fast.  I have no doubt that if I am nailed fast with him in love and in deep humility, the devils will have no power over me.  And this is not because of my own power but because of the power of Christ crucified.”

The third paragraph is one of her typical disjointed digressions—but which are so poetic—where she starts speaking to Christ.  Notice that she ends that it is Jesus who “fattens her soul.”  So while addressing the thinning of her physical body, she refers to the fattening of her soul.

She concludes by modifying her metaphor to say that by grasping the cross with crucified Jesus, it consumes sin, ignorance, indifference, and leads her to holy charity.

St. Catherine of Siena, pray for us!

Letters of St. Catherine of Siena: Catherine Extols Mary Magdalene

I recently acquired new three of the four volumes of Suzanne Nofke’s wonderfully edited The Letters of Catherine of Siena at the ridiculously low price of $10 each.  These are each 600 hundred page scholarly, hardcovers for research libraries.  They should easily go ten or twelve times that each.  I have Volumes I, III, and IV.  I am missing Volume II.  Oh I would love to complete the set.  Right now Amazon lists available one used copy of Volume II for $250, and it is only in an “acceptable” condition.  I’m holding out for something more affordable, or at least in better condition.  You can read about Sr. Susan Nofke O.P. and her translation of the letters here.  

In honor of today, St. Catherine of Siena’s feast day—and bear in mind, she’s my patron saint—I want to post something from them.  Here’s is a paragraph from the very first letter, identified as “Letter T61/G183/DT2,” dated “Before May 1374” but one scholar dates this as early as 1365 or 1366.  That would make Catherine eighteen or nineteen years old. 

Some context to the letter.  The letter is addressed to Mona Agnesa Malavolti, a widow and a member of one of the leading families of Siena.  She is also a Montellate, which was a group of Dominican tertiaries which Catherine herself was a member.  The letter’s intent is to bring her order into unison with St. Mary Magdalene, who, as one of the first Resurrection preachers of Christ, holds a special place in the Dominican Order. 

Catherine in her letters has a habit of breaking into dialogue with a saint or God, and so the italicized sections of this paragraph are actually addressing the Blessed Virgin or Magdalene herself.

Oh sweet virgin, how well you imitated that devoted disciple Magdalen.  See, dearest daughters, how Magdalen knew herself, and humbled herself.  With what great love she sat at our gentle Savior’s feet.  And speaking of showing him love, we surely see it at the holy cross.  She wasn’t afraid of the Jews, nor did she fear for herself.  No, like a passionate lover she ran and embraced the cross.  Indeed, in order to see her Master she was bathed in blood.  Surely you were drunk with love, oh Magdalen!  As a sign that she was drunk with love for her Master, she showed it in her actions toward his creatures, when after his holy resurrection she preached in the city of Marseille.  And, I tell you, she had the virtue of perseverance.  You showed this, dearest Magdalen, when you were seeking your beloved Master after not finding him in the place where you had laid him.  So, oh Magdalen, love, you were beside yourself; you had no heart, since it was buried with your dearest Master and our dear Savior.  But you took it upon yourself to find your dear Jesus.  You didn’t give up; you didn’t stop grieving.  How commendably you acted!  For you found out by your persevering you were able to find your Master.

Legend has it that Mary Magdalene, after the Gospel accounts, traveled to southern France (Marseille) to preach and convert.  That’s part of why the Dominican order hold her as one of their patronesses. 

In many ways Magdalene is almost a stand in for Catherine herself here.  She seems to be projecting herself into Magdalene’s situation.  It’s Catherine who is always embracing Christ crucified and his blood.  I am also amazed that a eighteen or nineteen year old girl speaks in this manner to someone above her in experience and station.  My dear Catarina was not shy.

Today, April 29^th, is the feast day of St. Catherine of Siena, my patroness.  Pray for us St. Catherine of Siena.