Catherine of Siena
After all that war and strife, it is perhaps just as well that we end with the peaceful but iron-willed Saint Catherine of Siena (c.1347-80). She showed signs of her resilience early in life, as she rejected her parents’ plans to marry her off to a rich suitor and took religious orders. She chose to become a tertiary of the Dominican Order; her parents’ insistence could not compete with a vision of Christ she had when she was just 6. Over her life, she had numerous religious visions, including one of St Dominic, which influenced her choice of order.
After several years of training and mystical visions, Catherine was told by Christ to leave her solitude, and to intervene in the troubles of the world. Her brave work with the poor and sick in Siena – this at a time when plague was common – gained her an enthusiastic band of followers. However, wider Italian politics began to impact negatively on her hometown, and in 1374 Catherine made her first foray into ecclesiastical matters by traveling to Florence. A year later, she used her influence to persuade the city-states of Pisa and Lucca to support the Pope against his enemies.
She had long-held that the Church was in need of reformation, and she did not let her status as a female tertiary hold her back. Catherine began corresponding with Pope Gregory XI, urging him to reform the clergy and his administration of the Papal States, and intervened on his behalf with his enemies. In 1376 she travelled to Avignon as ambassador for Florence to make peace with the Papal States, but was disowned after failing to do so, sending a stinging rebuke to the Tuscan city in response. She may even have been instrumental in the Pope’s return to Rome.
Catherine successfully negotiated peace between Florence and the Papacy in July 1378, and barely 4 months later involved herself in the Great Schism, when rival popes lived at Avignon and Rome. Though she supported Urban VI, the Roman Pope, and wrote to European leaders to gain their backing, this did not stop her from being openly critical of Urban in her letters to him. Assisting Urban in Rome, Catherine sadly died of a stroke in 1380. So great was her influence and strength of personality that even the head of the misogynistic medieval church had to listen to her advice.
Where did we find this stuff? Here are our sources:
Farmer, David Hugh. The Oxford Dictionary of Saints. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Seward, Desmond. The Hundred Years War. London: Constable, 2003.