Catherine Benincasa (1347–1380), a dyer’s twenty-fourth child, Dominican tertiary, who could barely write and dictated a body of work that made her a Doctor of the Church. She nursed plague victims, mediated between Florence and the papacy, and was the decisive voice persuading Gregory XI to bring the papacy back from Avignon to Rome in 1377.
Works (2)
- Letters — Letters to popes, kings, mercenaries, prisoners, prostitutes and her own family, written by a dyer’s daughter who could not write and dictated them — including the letters urging Gregory XI to leave Avignon for Rome. Scudder groups them by correspondent and prefaces each group. (71 notes)
- The Dialogue — Dictated in 1378, much of it in ecstasy: a dialogue between the Eternal Father and a soul, on discretion, prayer, obedience, and the bridge that is Christ, by which the soul crosses the flood. (95 notes)