While Mechtild of Magdeburg might well have influenced Dante concerning the imaginary shape of Purgatory (see DM Nov. 21), another woman is remembered as the greatest “expert” of Purgatory itself. Her name is Catherine of Genoa (1447-1510).
Married to a nobleman of the Adorno family, and coming herself from the noble and powerful Fieschi family — one of her relatives became a pope — she lived a life of luxury and misery at the same time, as she was extremely troubled in her mind.
Then, one day, she saw blood covering the walls of her bedroom inside her palace. All four walls entirely. She probably thought that she was going mad. She locked herself in for days. When she emerged, she was a calm, balanced, and secure person. She left the palace at once and she founded a hospital where she adapted some small rooms as her headquarters. She left her husband as well, never looking back. She devoted the rest of her life on earth to serve the sick and the poor, without disdaining to perform the most humble services as a simple nurse.
An Italian city of the late 1400s is not a place where a woman leaves her husband, at least not without his consent — which was not given for quite a time — and surely not a place where a noblewoman “degrades” herself by mingling with the bodies of the poor. Granted, her status might have bought her some slack, and when she decided that she would receive daily communion — a privilege that was not accorded even to the saintliest of nuns — her insistence was indulged, while a poor person could have been chased away from the church.
Yet, we can only surmise what living scandal she represented, and her written works preserve several mean objections raised to her by men of the cloth.
She later wrote: “If the world, or husbands, could prevent a woman from loving, what would such Love be is not a thing of very small power and dignity? But what I felt and I feel within me is something that nobody can stop; rather, Love wins over everything.”
The kernel of her personality can be known through her interpretation of her initial shocking experience. She decided that the blood on her walls was that of Jesus, washing her from all her sins once and forever. This is why she could take communion every day, without the need for a confession like everybody else. She simply was no longer a sinner, and nobody could convince her otherwise.
What does Purgatory have to do with this story? In short, Catherine felt that in this life she had gone through purgation, that she now communed with the blessed souls in heaven (very much like Mechtild) and that, because of her experience, she was particularly apt at helping out troubled people, both in this world and the otherworld. Mind you, she did not ever say that her efforts at purgation bought her anything, but that she suddenly felt overwhelmed by Love. That changed everything and stopped her mental pain.
By applying strict reasoning in putting together God as infinite Love and the necessity for souls to improve through trials and tribulations, Catherine came to define Purgatory* as a place of joy, because the souls who are aware of their need to get rid of impurity know that they are loved by God and trust the process they go through. Moreover, their mental pain cannot be construed as any kind of punishment, which would be contrary to God’s Love, but simply as an absence within them of the feeling of God’s presence. Again, as with Mechtild, these are great psychological insights.
Paradoxically, in the 18th century, Catherine of Genoa was claimed by both Catholics and Protestants as their hero. Catholics saw her as the great defender of the doctrine of Purgatory on the eve of Luther’s challenge to it. Protestants saw her as a forerunner of Luther himself, inasmuch as she states that her “works” did not produce anything of worth, but she was “washed by the blood of Christ” while praying alone in her room. In my mind, they both get something right, yet they fail to see the greatness of the freedom of this woman as they try to squeeze her mystical experience into their dogmatic systems.
See St. Catherine of Genoa, Treatise on Purgatory (Sensus Fidelium Press, 2023)
Banner Image: Dante speaks to the shade of Pope Adrian V in Purgatorio, Canto 19. Wikimedia Commons
Queries for Contemplation
How do you deal in your life with the “necessity” of purgation/refinement? Do you accept it or reject it? What aspects of it?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
Christian Mystics: 365 Readings & Meditations
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Hildegard of Bingen, A Saint for Our Times: Unleashing Her Power in the 21st Century
Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic–and Beyond
Meditations with Julian of Norwich
Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society
2 thoughts on “Nothing can Prevent a Woman from Loving”
Despite the unease I feel reading such examples of lives in the clutches of shame-based redemption spirituality (the polar opposite of “original blessing” and “creation spirituality”), when I read “Catherine came to define Purgatory as a place of joy, because the souls who are aware of their need to get rid of impurity know that they are loved by God and trust the process they go through,” I remembered a comment I posted in a previous DM in which I wrote that “November is the cruellest month.” Although I stick to that view on a meteorological and physical level (for the Northern hemisphere), I also experience November as a place of joy because I know that Light will triumph before December is over, precisely in one month minus one day today (Alleluia!) The concept of “Felix culpa” behind Julian of Norwich statement that “Sin is behovely, but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well” is made clear with Catherine’s view of Purgatory as a place of joy, but it nevertheless remains the cornerstone of the controversial (and blood-stained) redemption spirituality.
I feel the need to read Matthew’s “Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society” for continued shadow work and understanding in more contemporary terms for our spiritual journeys.