Miracles of the Gods: A New Look at the Supernatural (82 page)

her the holiness of the saints ...

Katherine hastened through Siena in a white wool robe with a black cloak draped round it. Her visions and ecstasies had been bruited abroad. She was well known in the town. She had an irresistible influence with her 'compelling eyes'. Miracle after miracle took place in her presence. The people made pilgrimages to her.

From 1374 people testified to 'her coming universal mission', which at first consisted of dictating fiery committed letters -'political letters' - to kings and queens, popes and bishops (she only learnt to write in the last years of her life). She was a passionate advocate of participation in the Crusades:

'God wants it and I want it.'

As we can see, Katherine was no model of Christian humility and modesty. Her activities, which were ostensibly inspired by religious motives, had political effects in reality.

Pope Gregory XI (1370-1378) lived in exile with the papal government in Avignon. Urged on by the mission given her in a vision, Katherine wanted to bring the Pope back so that he could maintain the unified power of the Church and rule it once again from its spiritual home, i.e. Rome. She enlisted sympathy for her ecclesiastical-cum-political mission in the castles of powerful nobles and among everyone she credited with worldly power. She also travelled 'to the brilliant worldly court of the Popes at Avignon ... Katherine was first and always the favoured mystic ... Only from that starting point is it possible to understand her political missions ...'

A dubious bit of whitewashing!

For one long year Katherine fought bitterly for the return of the Pope. In 1377 she achieved her goal.

Rome was Rome again, the church at the seat of its power.

While people constantly and all too clearly emphasize her credulous naivety and quote her visions as first-class references for her political commitment, they wrap the political tool Katherine of Siena in so much cotton wool that we completely lose sight of her. It may be that visions cannot be proved; but ecclesiastical and political power achieved by them can. That is something we should understand, if we are not 'smitten with blindness' (Genesis 19:11).

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inhabitants, all eager to show tourists the house in which their famous saint was born.

The peasant girl from Domremy - known in literature as Jeanne d'Arc, St. Joan or the Maid of Orleans, the central figure of many great dramas - intervened in major European politics, claiming that she was instructed to do so by visions.