Many biographies have been written about Siena’s most famous saint, Catherine Benincasa, but few have captured her as beautifully and accurately as the one written by the famous Norwegian author, Sigrid Undset. Undset felt a deep kinship between herself and Catherine, and she poured her heart into this book which has been described as “her spiritual testimony.” Surprisingly, this last work of the winner of a 1928 Nobel Prize was rejected by her publisher, Doubleday & Co., who told her it was too Catholic for a broader audience.[1] Undset died the following year in 1949, but Catherine of Siena would go on to be discovered and published posthumously by the reputable English publishing house Sheed & Ward in 1954, and would eventually win critical acclaim as one of the best biographies on the Sienese saint.
The best stories about people are told by the people who love them, and who have made their beliefs and values their own. This is why G.K. Chesterton has written one of the most insightful and popular biographies of Thomas Aquinas, and it is also why Sigrid Undset has given us one the best literary portraits of the gentle yet powerful Catherine Benincasa. Undset was an outspoken critic of Hitler and had to flee her own country, and she expressed openly that Catherine’s efforts to bring about reform in an era of religious and political corruption resonated with her own experience.[2] This shared experience and sympathy shines through in every chapter, giving this unique and remarkable chronology of Catherine’s life an added depth and credibility.
There are two major themes which Undset draws out in the course of the book. The first is self-knowledge, the realization that God is everything, and we are nothing. Christ revealed to the apostle Paul that his power is made perfect in weakness (1 Cor 12:9), and Catherine’s whole life bore witness to this perfect kind of power. Her body was small and frail, and she was constantly beset by illness and often bedridden; she was also an insignificant and unlearned woman, the youngest daughter of a middle-class city dyer. And yet, through her complete surrender to Christ’s will and Gospel she became one of the most renowned and influential people of fourteenth century Europe: working miracles and driving out demons, brokering peace between warring countries, persuading the Pope to leave the corrupted luxury of Avignon and return to his See in Rome, confounding the wisest theologians on the mysteries of God, and converting even the most hardened sinners and criminals. As Christ told Catherine at the beginning of her mission: “Today I have chosen unschooled women, fearful and weak by nature, but trained by me in the knowledge of the divine, so that they may put vanity and pride to shame."[3] It is the apparent absurdity of God’s chosen vessels that prove his intervention in history, for they do not arise in the normal course of events by means of man’s skill or power; the triumph of weakness over strength is not natural. Catherine came to know herself as she who is not, and to know God as He Who Is,[4] and it is this self-knowledge before God that is the only key to unlocking her many mystifying and sometimes bizarre deeds and accomplishments.
A second theme is the essential interdependence of mankind. In her famous Dialogue God reveals to Catherine: “I have given many gifts and graces, both spiritual and temporal, with such diversity that I have not given everything to one single person, so that you may be constrained to practice charity towards one another... I have willed that one should need another and that all should be my ministers in distributing the graces and gifts they have received from me."[5] Catherine was to be God’s exemplary minister, and her entire life was a testament to this profound truth: we need God and he made us to need each other. No man is an island, no man can pull himself up by his own bootstraps. Every crisis that took place during Catherine’s lifetime, the wars, the famines, the scandals, was a direct or indirect result of men forgetting this simple truth. However, despite the inclination of men and women towards the dysfunction of evil, Catherine showed every soul that came within her reach another Way: she cared for the diseased, fed the hungry, clothed the nakedness of the poor, held the hands and heads of the dying, made peace between enemies, and radiated love and joy toward all. She wrote letters of counsel to men and women of all classes, reprimanded irresponsible clergy and government leaders, and adeptly negotiated critical international affairs. With unconcealed admiration Undset writes that “the woman who had once had no other wish than to live the life of a hermit was now as occupied with the problems of her time as any ruling queen, and obediently she took upon her thin shoulders everything which she knew her bridegroom laid upon her."[6]
Any book can tell you about someone, but only a few can actually help you get to know a person. Catherine of Siena is the perfect title for this biography because it is more than a book; there is a person whose beautiful face, sometimes smiling and sometimes crying, becomes clearer with every page you read. The editors of Doubleday & Co. wouldn’t publish it because it is too raw, all at once surreal and earthy, an encounter with a dangerous and uncomfortable person that you might not want to know yet because she will challenge you to be different. This is not something you read for entertainment or information; it is a literary process of transformation. All hagiography should aspire to be like this. Every saint is a living Gospel of Jesus Christ, and reading his or her life should be reminiscent of this truth. Sigrid Undset has given us such a book.
Would you like to meet this strange, noble, lovable, and irresistible Italian woman? Join Sigrid as she takes you on a journey with “Mammina,” our little mother, where you will walk with her through rowdy towns and beautiful countryside, talking to her about life with Christ and the troubles of the times.
[1] Natalie Van Deusen, “‘Doubleday Affaren’: The Story of Sigrid Undset’s Caterina Av Siena,” Scandinavian Studies vol. 87, no. 3 (2015), 390.
[2] Van Deusen, “Doubleday Affaren,” 383.
[3] Sigrid Undset, Catherine of Siena (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2009), 52.
[4] Thomas McDermott, “Catherine of Siena’s Teaching on Self-Knowledge,” New Blackfriars vol. 88, no. 1018 (2007), 639.
[5] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 2000), 1937.
[6] Undset, Catherine of Siena, 217.
Product details
- Publisher : Ignatius Press; First edition (October 28, 2009)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 335 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1586174088
- ISBN-13 : 978-1586174088
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