Mystic · Early modern
St. Catherine of Genoa
1447–1510 · Genoese lay mysticism of pure love
Caterina Fieschi Adorno; canonized 1737 by Clement XII.
A Genoese noblewoman married at sixteen to a spendthrift, Catherine was overwhelmed by the love of God in a confession in 1473 and spent the rest of her life as a laywoman in the Pammatone hospital, nursing the sick, running the hospital as its director and staying through the plague of 1493; her husband, ruined, joined her in the work. She received Communion daily, then very rare, kept long fasts, and spoke of a love so pure that “my me is God.” Her Treatise on Purgatory, compiled by disciples, describes purgatory as the soul's own glad choice to be burned clean by the love it now sees.
Why he matters: Her account of purgatory as love rather than penalty has shaped Catholic thought on it ever since, and her life joins ecstatic prayer with hard hospital administration.
Where to be careful
Her writings were compiled and shaped by her disciples after her death, and her language of “pure love” and the annihilation of self was later claimed by the Quietists (Fénelon, Madame Guyon), whom the Church condemned.
Reading
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Purgation and Purgatory; The Spiritual DialogueSt. Catherine of Genoa (trans. Serge Hughes), 1979 · Start with the short Treatise on Purgatory.
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The Mystical Element of Religion as Studied in Saint Catherine of Genoa and Her FriendsFriedrich von Hügel, 1908 · Von Hügel's classic study of her, and of mysticism through her.
Documented positions
Where this thinker stands on each dispute the test covers.