Catherine of Siena

Ignatius Press, October 2009. Paper Back. New. Published in 1951, shortly after Undset's death, this consummate biography reflects the maturing spiritual insight of the great Norwegian novelist. Her vast familiarity with medieval history and manners enabled Undset to recreate, in intimate detail, the environs of St. Catherine's fourteenthcentury Italy. Even more importantly, the author's immersion in the Catholic faith (she converted in 1924) allowed her to penetrate sympathetically into the unusual dimensions of Catherine's mystical life. 'It is not easy for us to understand her,' Undset frankly acknowledges, 'but it was not easy for her contemporaries either.' Indeed, from childhood St. Catherine found herself misunderstood, first by angry parents who wanted her to marry, unaware she had vowed herself to Christ, later by townsfolk who mistook her charitable work for promiscuity and nuns who envied her spiritual gifts. She baffled even her confessors (whose accounts Undset weaves skillfully into the narrative) when, for example, she accused herself of faults they scarcely recognized as sinful. A recluse by inclination, she traveled widely at Christ's bidding to minister to the sick, urge papal reforms, and beg for peace among the warring Italian republics. Amidst the paradoxes of her controversial life, 'the Holy Spirit taught her how to build herself an inner cell, a place of refuge where she could pray and think of her Beloved, and from this no one could recall her..' 335 pp.