Baring-Gould’s sources: Roman Martyrology; canonized by Benedict XIV. Authorities: — Her Life attributed to Marabotti, her confessor, Hector Vernaccia, his coadjutor, and a third whose name is unknown.] S. Catharine Fieschi (in Latin, Flisca) belonged to an ancient family of renown at Genoa, which had given two popes to the Church, Innocent IV. and Adrian V. The brother of Innocent IV. was Robert Fieschi, who had acted as Viceroy of Naples for King Rene of Anjou. From Robert Fieschi, Giacomo Fieschi, the father of our saint, derived his pedigree. His wife was Franeisca de’ Negri, member of another ancient Genoese family. Catharine was born to them in 1447. From earliest infancy her mind took a serious turn * above her little crib hung a picture of our Lord, taken down from the cross and laid in His mother’s arms. It made a profound impression on her young fancy, as she begged her parents to let her take the religious habit in the house of the Canonesses of S. Mary of Grace at Genoa, with a sister of which Society she had contracted a childish friendship. Her father and mother refused to grant her request, as she was not of an age to be capable of forming a mature judgment. Her father died before she was sixteen, and then she married Julian Adorno, at the desire of her mother and brothers, who were anxious by this means to establish a reconciliation with the Adorno family, with which there had been a long feud.
S. Catharine of Genoa. The marriage was not a happy one. Julian was a man of rough temper, fond of pomp and pleasure; he liked to keep open house, and cut a splendid figure in Genoese society. His wife detested pomp, shrank from society, and instead of spending her time in attending to his guests, devoted it to prayer in her oratory. This led to a quarrel, and Catharine became hysterical; she refused to associate with any one, and for five years moped in her private apartment, growing thin and wan, and pretending that she could not eat. Instead of awakening sympathy in the breast of her husband as she had hoped, her conduct only confirmed his disgust. Sturdy men have no patience with hysterical women. But her relations at length interfered, took up her cause warmly, the old family quarrel bade fair to break out again over Catharine, who found herself now the object of demonstrative sympathy on one side, and of cold contempt on the other. She was allowed to follow her own devices, a separation between herself and her husband was effected, and so she was freed from the society of a man and a family which could not appreciate her, and she became the centre of sympathy and admiration to the rival faction. At the same time she discovered a confessor [in old usage, a saint who was not martyred, or who suffered for the faith without being killed] who could understand her case, the chaplain of S. Maria degli Grazia. She fell at his feet in hysterics, unable to speak. He waited patiently for some time, but found her still silent, so he went off about some business, and, when he returned, found her still gasping on the floor. He asked her to begin her confession, when she said, “ Father, I must put it off till later.’' Then she went home, and at the moment she reached her room fell into a trance, and saw Christ crucified, and the blood spouting from His wounds so that all the walls of the house were splashed with it. She returned to consciousness shrieking, “ O Love ! I will sin no more, no more !” She now felt courage and strength to make her confession, and she returned to S. Maria degli Grazia, where she confessed with such compunction that the priest was greatly edified. She now adopted a penitential life. She never raised her eyes from the pavement nor spoke an unnecessary word. If, by hazard, she uttered something which she was not absolutely obliged to say, she threw herself on the ground and drew her tongue along the soil to punish it. Into her food she put pounded aloes and wormwood, and laid thistles and brambles in her bed.
She drew out for herself three rules, which she resolved to follow strictly. 1. “ Never say I will and I wont.” 2. “ Never call anything mine, but ours.” 3. “Never find excuses when blamed.”
She next took it into her head to fast for forty days, beginning at the Feast of the Annunciation, and only intermitting her fast for Easter Day and the Monday and Tuesday following. During all that time she gave out that she ate nothing except the B. Sacrament which she received daily. She was at once surrounded by solicitous relatives who brought her all kinds of dainty bits to tempt her appetite. She consumed what they put into her mouth, and then vomited it forth before their very eyes. Their concern increased. The confessor was called in, and amidst a crowd of relatives and servants she was required to eat, the director laying a solemn injunction on her to obey. Amidst breathless excitement she ate, and all eyes looked for the consequence. She fell back into a fit of prostration, and every one supposed she would die. Thereupon the confessor advised that no more attempts should be made to force Catharine to eat when she wished it to be believed that she was fasting rigorously. After this, for twentythree years, she maintained, or was supposed to maintain, annually an absolute fast from S. Martin [St. Martin of Tours (d. 397), soldier turned bishop]’s Day to the vigil S. Catharine of Genoa.
of the Nativity, and from Monday after Quinquagesima to Easter eve. If Catharine had confined herself to similar exhibitions, she would have been but one out of scores of hysterical women who faint and starve themselves to attract sympathy, but such was not the case. She did what hysterical women very rarely do, she devoted herself to the performance of good works. Not a day passed in which she was not to be seen in the hospitals, and in the cottages of the poor, ministering to the sick, and doing for them offices which would revolt even trained nurses. Hysterical women are universally the most self-absorbed of beings. Catharine was indifferent to self, and she is no doubt held up to weak and foolish women, who prey on their morbid feelings, as an example of what a hysterical woman ought to be, of how she should devote her attention to the sufferings of others, instead of tormenting others by appeals for sympathy with her imaginary maladies. There are saints of every order, class, and physical and mental calibre. Catharine is a saint of a type of woman not uncommon, which is a general nuisance. She exhibited a character such as ordinarily deserves contempt; but ennobled by grace and made useful in its generation. In her visits to the sick her delicate hands washed and dressed the most loathsome sores. She rubbed ointmenc into the wounds of the lepers, cleaned abscesses, removed the filthy linen, washed it, and made the beds for the sick. The tatters, swarming with vermin, of some poor beggars, she took and purified; and at the same time was so careful of her own person, and so scrupulously cleanly, that she was never troubled with the insects from which she freed the dirty garments of the poor.1 1 fl Ad vincendam nauseam.. frequenter ori imponebat, quin imo diglutiebat ulcerum putredinem, nonnullasque e sordidis istis bestiolis mandcbat eo temporis puncto, quo stomachum vehementius naturae vi commoveri sentiebat.” [Sept. is.
Among the lepers in the hospital of S. Lazarus, many had their tempers embittered by their misery, and they would abuse her with gross ingratitude if she attended to others and did not devote all her charities to themselves. She bore their ill-temper with the sweetest forbearance, and never made the slightest difference in her treatment of the most abusive and the grateful. The more readily to attend to the wants of the sick, she took a house and garden close to the hospital, and, removing into it, lived there till her death. She died of a painful disease on the 14th of September, a.d. 1510, but her festival is observed on the 15th. She left behind her two works, a dialogue between God and the soul, and one on Purgatory.
Her body is preserved in the church of the hospital at Genoa in a marble monument. S. Euphemia.
