Chapter 50: Catherine of Siena

She was the twenty-fourth of twenty-five children, born to a dyer in Siena. At the age of six, she had her first vision. At sixteen, she became a Dominican tertiary — a laywoman living under religious rule. By the time she died at thirty-three, she had shaped the politics of popes, negotiated between warring cities, and written one of the great mystical works of the Christian tradition.

Catherine of Siena could not be contained. When her family tried to force her into marriage, she cut off her hair. When the Church tried to silence her, she dictated hundreds of letters to kings, cardinals, and the Pope himself. When the Pope refused to return from Avignon to Rome, she traveled to France and confronted him. He returned.

Her masterwork, "The Dialogue," is a record of her conversations with God. It came to her in ecstasy — she would fall into trances lasting hours, sometimes days, and upon awakening would dictate what she had heard.

"You are nothing by yourself," God tells her. "You are nothing apart from me. But through union with me, you become all that I am." This is not crushing the self but transforming it. The soul becomes a channel for divine love to flow into the world.

Catherine taught that the soul is like a tree: self-knowledge is the soil, love is the root, discernment is the trunk, patience is the fruit. Without deep roots in self-knowledge and love, the tree cannot bear fruit. Without patience, whatever grows will wither.

She died exhausted, having given everything. Her last words: "Blood! Blood!" — referring to the blood of Christ that had become her obsession and her sustenance. She was made a Doctor of the Church — one of only four women to receive that title.