The Mystical Element of Religion. Friedrich von Hügel

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СКАЧАТЬ £4,000 of this sum-total demanded careful and even anxious consideration, whilst £650 of it could not but provoke painful memories and make a call upon all her generosity. And by his Codicil of January 1497, he had given her still greater latitude of action, by declaring that, as regarded his legacy to the Hospital, Catherine should have full power and leave to abrogate or to modify it, according to her will and pleasure.[127] Thus these documents constitute an impressive proof of Giuliano’s full trust in the wisdom, balance of mind and magnanimity of his wife, now herself already so broken in health.

      4. Catherine’s execution of Giuliano’s Will.

      It is nine months after Giuliano’s death, on May 19, 1498, that we can watch and see how Catherine has been attempting to execute her trust, and how her nature has responded to these various difficult calls upon it, and to the claims of her own family. She first of all, then, orders her body to be buried in the same grave with her husband, in the Hospital Church; and that only the Friars and Clergy of the Hospital shall be present at the funeral; and leaves £10 for her obsequies and £50 for Masses for herself. She next leaves to the Priest Blasio Cicero four shares of the Bank of St. George (about £200), of which he is to pay £150 to a certain female Religious, in satisfaction for a certain debt. And she abrogates Giuliano’s legacy to the Hospital, and, in its place, herself leaves it four shares of St. George’s (at the time about £200, but always tending to increase in value), in liquidation of the £300 that remained unpaid from among the £500 of that legacy. She next leaves to Benedetta Lombarda one share of Saint George’s, in addition to the similar share left her by Giuliano; and to “Antonietta, dwelling with Testatrix, £25, in case she shall live with her up to her death.” As to the two carati, she leaves them to Giovanni Adorno, in lieu of the money bequeathed to him by Giuliano. As to her own relations, she leaves two shares of St. George’s apiece to her two nieces Maria and Battista, the daughters of her eldest brother Jacobo, for their marriage portions; and, if they all die before marriage, then all this money is to go to their father. She leaves £10 to her Augustinian Canoness sister Limbania; and institutes her three brothers Jacobo, Giovanni and Lorenzo, and their heirs, her residuary legatees.

      Here four things are noticeable. Catherine has herself undertaken the expenses of Thobia’s keep; the apparent lessening on her part of the sum originally apportioned for the purpose by Giuliano is doubtless only apparent, and must proceed from the same cause which has produced a similar apparent diminution in the amount of Giuliano’s legacy to his nephew from £2,000 to £1,500. In the next place, this is the only one out of the couple’s four Wills, in which the second maid is not Mariola Bastarda, but a certain Antonietta. Catherine feels uncertain as to whether Antonietta will persevere in her service to the end; and we shall find that she has again disappeared in Catherine’s next Will of 1506, and that Mariola has again taken up her old place. We shall find that a story, of which the authenticity and significance are most difficult to fix, attaches without doubt to one or the other of these maids. In the third place, Catherine does not sell the two carati, but leaves them, in lieu of the money bequeathed to him, to Giovanni Adorno; no doubt from the feeling that thus, at her death, this her share in the government and exploitation of the Greek island would be in the hands of a man in the prime of life, who could help to check malpractices. And lastly, she shows a generous forgiveness of Giuliano, a delicate magnanimity towards Thobia and Thobia’s mother, and a thoughtful affection for all her own near and grown-up relations, by ordering her body to be buried in the same grave with Giuliano; by herself undertaking the charges of Thobia’s keep, and appointing a priest by name for handing over Giuliano’s legacy to the still unnamed mother of Thobia; and by remembering her sister, although she had long been provided for in her Convent, her three brothers, who were no doubt indefinitely richer than herself, and especially her two marriageable nieces. Altogether, of the £2,304 definitely accounted for in the Will, she leaves £69 for her own funeral and for Masses for herself; £400 for Thobia and her mother; £210 to her own relations; £125 to servants; and £1,500 to her husband’s nephew. There is no trace here of any indifference to the natural ties of kindred, or of an abstraction of mind rendering her incapable of a careful consideration and firm decision in matters of business: a point which we shall find to be of much importance, later on.

      5. Ettore’s “Mandiletto”-work.

      In this year, too, if not already in the previous one, Vernazza founded the institution of the “Mandiletto.” Still a young man—for he was now at most but twenty-eight—Ettore had been noticing, in his work among the poor, how much misery of all kinds obtained in commercial, money-making, hazard-loving Genoa, amongst persons who, even though ill, refused to take refuge in the hospitals; and who, however poor at present, had known better, even brilliant days, and were too proud to beg, or even to accept alms from any one who could recognize them. And hence he now organized a system for discovering and visiting such persons in their own homes and for minimizing their pain in accepting help, by arranging that the members of this little fraternity should never visit such houses, except with some kind of little veil or handkerchief (fazzoletto, mandiletto) applied to their faces.[128]

      Catherine, who had helped the Uffizio della Misericordia so much, and who herself so greatly disliked being noticed or even simply seen whenever she was doing or suffering anything at all out of the common, had no doubt, at least in a general way, inspired this beautifully delicate means of preserving and sparing the bashfulness of the giver and the dignity of the recipient. Throughout the remaining years of her life she must have cared to hear Vernazza’s report as to the progress of this work.

      XI. Beginning of her Third, Last Period; End of the Extraordinary Fasts; First Relations with Don Marabotto.

      But it is in the next year, 1499, that we reach the actual beginning of the third and last period of Catherine’s Convert life.

      1. End of the Fasts; transfer of the “carati.”

      Some of the events of this year are again predominantly external, or but continuations or consequences of previous inclinations of her will. It must have been at the end of the Lent of this spring-time that all extraordinary fasting-power, of a kind that could be foreseen and that more or less synchronized with the ecclesiastical season, left her for good and all. And she had gone on feeling strongly her share of responsibility for the government of that far-off island. Hence she betook herself, on September 18 of this year, with the Notary Battista Strata, who has drawn up nine out of the fourteen Legal Acts of Giuliano and herself, to the great palace of the Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, who, four years later, became Pope Julius II. This palace stood by the (now destroyed) Church of San Tommaso, and was at this time the residence of Giovanni Adorno. And there, in the great Loggia looking south, Catherine dictated the substance of an Act of Cession then and there to her husband’s nephew of those two carati, which weighed so heavily on her mind. Perhaps Giovanni was in poor health, and Catherine was too eager to eschew her responsibility in the matter to be willing to wait any longer.[129]

      2. Beginning of Catherine’s relations with Don Marabotto.

      The chief event, however, from the point of view of her inner life, and which gives us a second close and most important eyewitness for her last period, was the beginning of her spiritual relations with Don Marabotto.[130] “At the end of the twenty-five years during which she had persevered the way of God without the means of any creature,” says the Vita, “the Lord gave her a priest, to take care both of her soul and of her body; a spiritual man and one of holy life, to whom God gave light and grace to understand His operations within her. He had been appointed Rector of the Hospital; and hence was in a position to hear her Confession, say Mass for her, and give her Holy Communion according to her convenience.”[131] Now the rare and profound isolation and independence of her middle period render this turning to and finding of human help specially significant; the СКАЧАТЬ