Excerpt from Saint Catherine of Siena: A Study in the Religion, Literature and History of the Fourteenth Century in Italy From the very outset, the biographical and historical value of Catherine's letters has been, to a considerable extent, impaired by the copyists (and the editors who followed them) omitting or suppressing passages which appeared to them of merely temporary interest, or not tending immediately to edification. A certain number appear to have been deliberately expurgated, in cases where the writer's burning words seemed likely to startle the susceptibilities of the faithful. This process seems to date back to the generation that immediately followed that of Catherine's original disciples. A striking instance is seen in a certain letter, of which the subject is sufliciently obvious, which Aldo introduces with the rubric To one whose name it is better not to write, because of certain words used in the letter. Let not whoso reads, or hears it read, wonder if the sense seems to him broken for, An excellent selection from the letters, based on Gigli's text, has been published in English by Miss Vida D. Scudder (london, where et cetera is written, many words are passed over, which it is not meet that every one should know, nor even the name of him to whom it went. 1 Neither these words nor the omissions are due to Aldo himself; the same heading occurs in every manu script containing this letter which I have examined, and evidently dates back to the end of the fourteenth century. Other letters, though for different reasons, have been subjected to a similar process, with the general result that, even in the editions of Gigli and Tommaseo, the text is still sadly corrupt and too often mutilated. The printed versions of several apparently short letters are little more than the devout exhortations with which Catherine usually opened her correspondence, the real substance of what she had to say being in these cases still unpublished. Of peculiar interest and importance in this connection are two manuscripts which have hitherto strangely escaped the notice of students: the Casanatense ms. 292, and the ms. Numbered xxxviii. 130 in the Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze both of which were evidently copied direct from Catherine's original letters. The former contains the full text of a number of those written in her name from Rome by Barduccio Canigiani; the latter the authentic and complete version of her correspondence with the Florentine tailor, Francesco di Pippino, and his wife, Monna Agnese, after the Saint's final departure from Florence. In an appendix to the present volume, besides six entirely new letters of St. Catherine, I print two of these latter in full, by comparison of which with the previously published versions, the reader may estimate the amount of work still to be done by whoso would restore to the world the true and complete correspondence of the seraphic virgin. I am not without hope of myself ultimately undertaking this task, unless some scholar in Italy should, in the meanwhile, accomplish it. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.