The Letters Of Saint Catherine Of Siena

Paperback: The Letters of Saint Catherine of Siena have become an Italian classic yet perhaps the first thing in them to strike a reader is their unliterary character. Her letters are the impetuous outpourings of the heart and mind of an unlettered daughter of the people, who was also as it happened, a genius and a saint. 

Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio and other great writers of the Trecento (the fourteenth century), are all in one way or another intent on choice expression; Catherine, however, is intent solely on driving home what she has to say. 

Her letters were spoken rather than written. She learned to write only three years before her death, and even after this time was in the habit of dictating her correspondence, sometimes two or three letters at a time, to the noble youths who served her as secretaries. 

The Letters of Saint Catherine of Siena is translated from the Italian and edited with introduction by Vida D Scudder in 1905. It it subsequently edited by Darrell Wright in 2016.

About the author: Saint Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) is widely considered one of the greatest saints of all time. She is best known for her mystical Dialogue with God the Father, composed and dictated in trance in 1378, for which she was declared a Doctor of the Church, but her letters are also unmatched in their spiritual power and profundity. Many people do not know that St Catherine was also a stigmatist, bearing the wounds and suffering the passion of Christ for the salvation of souls. She prayed to God to make the wounds invisible so as not to draw attention to herself. Only her confessor, Blessed Raymond of Capua, knew of her sharing in the sufferings of Our Lord until the day the saint died, when the wounds became visible for all to see.

This edition of The Letters of St Catherine, originally published in 1905 (but now in modern English), includes 1) an Introduction on the Life and Times of the saint, 2) a description of St Catherine as Seen in her Letters, 3) the Chief Events in the Life of St Catherine, and 4) a Brief Outline of Contemporary Public Events.