her sacred husband, by which name her
biographer and confessor designates the
Christus Consolator of men.

Very early did Catherine begin the
austerities and penances which afterwards
made her so celebrated, and earned her
canonisation by the church. At five years of
age, in going up-stairs, she used to kneel at
every step to the Virgin. At six she habitually
flogged herself, and encouraged other
children of her own age to do the same; at
seven she deprived herself of the largest half
of her food, secretly giving it to her brother,
or flinging it out to the cats; and, "at the same
age, she would watch from the window to see
when a Dominican monk passed, and as soon
as ever he had moved on, she used to run out
and kiss the spot on the pavement on which
he had placed his feet."

At twelve, being then marriageable and
abominably dirty, her mother began to beg of
her to comb her hair and wash her face
oftener. This she refused to do, until a
favourite married sister, one Bonaventura,
took her in hand. To her entreaties the
young saint yielded, a very little way;
condescending sometimes to wash herself, and even
to smooth her hair; but, soon repenting of
her complaisance as of a deadly sin, she
bemoaned her backsliding as bitterly as she
might have bemoaned a murder. In punishment
to Bonaventura for thus enticing the
young saint to sin, the young saint declared
that God had struck her with death in her
next confinement, and was penetrated with
the truth and justice of the sentence. For
the future, Catherine was let alone in her
dirt, and soon after joined the order of
Cloaked Women. About this time she wholly
abandoned the use of animal food; at fifteen
she left off wine; at twenty she found
bread a heavy sin. and lived on uncooked
vegetables. She slept only one quarter of
an hour in the twenty-four, thrice a day
flogged herself till the blood streamed down
the lash; remained for three years without
speaking; wore a chain of iron round her,
and let it gradually eat into her flesh,
Finally, she remained without food altogether,
living on the holy sacraments alone.

Very early, too, she began to have visions.
At six years of age she saw in the sky a throne
immediately over the Dominican Church with
Christ sitting on it, dressed in Papal robes,
accompanied by Saints Peter, Paul, and John.
Later carne her daily conferences with her
eternal spouse, who made himself her tutor,
and taught her reading and writing, as well
as theology and doctrine, afterwards marrying
her in the presence of the Virgin, Saints
John, Paul, and Dominic, and of David, "who
had a harp on which he played very sweetly."
The marriage-ring had four great pearls set
round a magnificent centre diamond, and
never afterwards left Catherine's finger;
though visible only to her, and invisible to
all the world beside.

One day, being in a trance before the altar,
she suddenly flung herself into the attitude of
the cross, and there received the stigmata, or
the Five Wounds which hitherto none but
Saint Francis had received. But the wounds
were no more visible than was the wedding-
ring or the purple garment, to the better
satisfaction of faith, if not of sight and reason. The
Franciscans were so annoyed at this communising
of their speciality, that they procured a
decree whereby men were forbidden to assert
the reception of the stigmata by Saint Catherine
under pain of ecclesiastical censure. More
than once the dyer's daughter strove with
her eternal spouse for sinners,—he on the
side of condemnation—she on that of love
and mercy. She prayed against death in
many instances when he was not wanted,
and beat him by a full length; she wrote
expostulatory letters to the Pope and the
French Emperor, and induced the first-
named—Pope Gregory the Eleventh—to quit
Avignon and return to Holy Rome.

This was the life of Saint Catherine of
Siena, the saint whose marriage Murillo,
Coreggio, and others have painted with such
marvellous beauty, but who was simply a
diseased "sensitive," cataleptic, imaginative,
not over-careful as to exactness, and an
admirable tool in the hands of an unscrupulous
body like the Dominicans, ravening
for ecclesiastical power.

We will not follow Mr. T. Adolphus Trollope
(whose "Decade of Italian Women" we
are quoting) through the intricate mazes of
adventure and intrigue which marked the
career of Catherine Sforza, but pass at once
to when Catherine Sforza was dying in the
convent, Vittoria Colonna was celebrating her
marriage with Ferdinand Pescara. Brought
up under the care of Costanza d'Avalos,
Duchess of Francaville, one of the most
cultured women of her generation, the young
Roman girl had full scope for the exercise of
such intellectual faculties as she possessed,
and was not likely to waste her powers for
the want of proper training. She had the best
the times could give: and the times were by
no means poor or scant, so far as the Court
of Naples went, under the political auspices
of which she was reared by Costanza, on the
rocky island of Ischia. The young Ferdinand
Pescara was both handsome and
accomplished, and Vittoria Colonna was
matchlessly beautiful: and when each was nineteen,
and their betrothal of fourteen years' standing
was ended by marriage, the world said
that a nobler pair never stood before the altar,
than the two now wedded in the church
at Ischia. Two happy years passed away,
unchronicled and unnoted: Pescara was all
that a young and gallant husband should be,
and Vittoria was too peaceful and blessed to
write poetry, which was the most noticeable
fact in her career. Afterwards, when Pescara
was away at the wars, she found her solace
in the sonnets and odes which have made her