A Companion to Catherine of Siena ed. by Carolyn Muessig, George Ferzoco, and Beverly Mayne Kienzle (review)

This book aims, in the words of its publisher, to present a “substantial introduction to the world of Catherine of Siena, her works and the way her followers responded to her religious leadership”; to provide an overview, in English, of her historical and cultural contexts; and to “make accessible hitherto elusive details” of her life and works.

The introduction and thirteen essays may be divided, broadly, into three groups. The first group (consisting of the introduction and essays on the “Historical Reception of Catherine,” “Catherine and the Papacy,” “Catherine and Preaching and Hagiography in Renaissance Tuscany,” the “Processo Castellano and the Canonisation of Catherine,” “Catherine in Late Medieval Sermons,” “Laude for Catherine,” and the “Iconography of Catherine’s Stigmata”) fulfills these aims. Each of these essays provides a genuinely accessible introduction to and overview of its chosen theme, combining clear narrative and interpretation with extensive and valuable footnotes to relevant literature.

The second group (consisting of essays on “Female Urban Reclusion in Siena at the Time of Catherine,” “Catherine on the Value of Tears,” “Penance in the Life of Catherine,” and “Writing and Religious Women in Late Medieval Italy”) is less successful in terms of accessibility and also in the aim of providing both introductions and overviews. These essays are, instead, detailed case studies of particular aspects of St. Catherine and her context, are much more densely written and indebted to particular theoretical perspectives, and require considerably greater existing familiarity with Catherine on the part of the reader.

The third group (consisting of essays on “The Manuscript Tradition” of Catherine’s writings and the history of the text of the “Legenda maior of Catherine of Siena” by Blessed Raymond of Capua) provides detailed analyses of the various surviving texts. Although both essays include useful and accessible introductions and explanations of the manuscript traditions involved, their principal—and considerable—value lies in their potential as reference works for scholars seeking information on these texts and their histories. To these two essays may be added the overall bibliography for the whole volume, running to just over twenty pages, which similarly provides the reader with extensive guidance on both primary and secondary sources relating to Catherine.

The reservations regarding the introductory function and accessibility of the second group of essays notwithstanding, this collection, taken as a whole, succeeds in its aim of providing, in English, an overview of Catherine of Siena, her context, her reception both immediate and over several centuries, and of a range of scholarly approaches to her life and significance. If a single theme may be said to predominate across the various essays, it is that of the tension between “the historical Catherine” who was an active and public figure, and the “mystical and ascetic Catherine” promoted by so much of the hagiographical tradition relating to her from Raymond of Capua onward. It is a strength of the book that the contributors seek—in various ways and with varying degrees of success—to restore a sense of the historical Catherine. One puzzle remains. Despite the excellent essay on the “Historical Reception of Catherine of Siena”—which includes reference to her use (or abuse) by the Italian fascist regime in the 1920s, 1930s, and early 1940s—there is no reference to her subsequent and most recent re-presentation, especially in the European policies of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, as co–patron saint of Europe. It is an odd lacuna in an otherwise wide-ranging collection, particularly since reflection on this latest version of Catherine would have offered further opportunity to consider the theme of the historical Catherine as active participant in public life.