§ 11. KE-ESTABLISHMENT OF THE PAPACY IN HOME. 109
On the death of her husband, St. Brigrttti left her Scaj^dinavian home and joined the pilgrims whose fiiees_wer§ §^t towards Rome in the Jubilee year of 1350,^ Arriving in the papal city, the hope of seeing both the emperor and the pope once more in that centre of spiritual and imperial power moved her to the devotions of the saint and the messages of the seer. She spent her time in going from church to church and ministering to the sick, or sat clad in pilgrim's garb, begging. Her revelations, which were many, brought upon her the resentment of the Romans. She saw Urban enter the city and, when he announced his purpose to return again to France, she raised her voice in prediction of his speedy death, in case he persisted in it. When Gregory ascended the throne, she warned him that he would die prematurely if he kept away from the residence divinely appointed for the supreme pontiff. But to her, also, it was not given to see the fulfilment of her desire. The worldliness of the popes stirred her to bitter complaints. Peter, she exclaimed, " was appointed pastor and minister of Christ's sheep, but the pope scatters them and lacerates them. He is worse than Lucifer, more unjust than Pilate, more cruel than Judas. Peter ascended the throne in humility, Boniface in pride." To Gregory she wrote, " in thy curia arrogant pride rules, insatiable cupidity and execrable luxury. It is the very deepest gulf of horrible simony. ^ Thou seizest and tearest from the Lord innumerable sheep." And yet she was worthy to be declared a saint. She died in 1373. Her daughter Catherine took the body to Sweden.
Catharine of Siena was more fortunate. §he saw tlip papacy re-established in Italy^ but she also witnessed the unhappy beginnings of the schism. This Tuscan prophetess, called by a sober Catholic historian, "one of the most wonderful appearances in history," ^ wrote letter after letter J4?
1 Brigitta was born near Upsala, 1303. See Gardner, St. Catherine of Siena, p. 44 sqq. Dollinger has called attention to the failure of her prophecies to be fulfilled, Fables and Prophecies of the Middle Ages, trans, by Prof. Henry B. Smith, pp. 331, 398.
- Vorago pessinia horribilis symoniae, Brigitta's Bevelationes, as quoted by Gieseler, Haller, p. 88, and Gardner, p. 78 sq.
3 Pastor, I. 103.
110 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
Gregory XI. whom she called " sweet Christ on earth," appealing to him and admonishing him to do his duty as the head of the Church, and to hreak away from his exile, which she represented as the source of all the evils with which Christendom was afflicted. " Be a true successor of St. Gregory," she wrote. " Love God. Do not bind yourself to your parents and your friends. Do not be held by the compulsion of your surroundings. Aid will come from God." His return to Rome and the starting of a new crusade against the Turks, she represented as necessary conditions of efficient measures to reform the Church. She bade him return "swiftly like a gentle lamb. Respond to the Holy Spirit wlio calls you. I tell you. Come, come, come, and do not wait for time, since time does not wait for you. Then you will do like the Lamb slain, whose place you hold, who, without Aveapons in his hands, slew our foes. Be manly in my sight, not fearful. Answer God, who calls you to hold and possess the seat of the glorious shepherd, St. Peter, whose vicar you are." i
Gregory received a letter purporting to come from a man of God, warning him of the poison which awaited him at Rome and appealing to his timidity and his love of his family. In a burning epistle, Catherine showed that only the devil or one of his emissaries could be the author of such a communication, and called upon him as a good shepherd to pay more honor to God and the well-being of his flock than to his own safety, for a good shepherd, if necessary, lays down his life for the sheep. The servants of God are not in the habit of giving up a spiritual act for fear of bodily harm.^
In 1376, Catherine saw GrfigQiy_f ace tO-iaceJ.n Avignon,
whither she went as a commissioner from Florence to arranofe - — — o
a peace between the city and the pppe. The papal residence she found not a paradise of heavenly virtues, as she expected, but in it the stench of infernal vices. ^ The immediate object
1 Scudder : Letters of St. Catherine, p. 132 sq.; Gardner, pp. 158, 176, etc.
2 Scudder, p. 182 S(|(i.
2 This was Catherine's deposition to her confessor. See Mirbt : Quellen, p. 154, in romana cnria, nbi deheret paradisus esse coelicarum virtutum, inveniebat foetovem infernalium vitiarum.