Obeying the Truth: Discretion in the Spiritual Writings of Saint Catherine of Siena by Grazia Mangano Ragazzi

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 657 not proof-texting but the deployment of “vocabulary drawn from the Scriptures to interpret and present the teaching of the Scriptures.” Although the quaestio format is not entirely absent from Aquinas’s scriptural commentaries, “Thomas’s attention remains fixed on the actual words of St. Paul, and the aim of the exposition is to explain why Paul uses the words he does and what they mean within the context of the Bible as a whole” (292). As tends to be the case with a collection of essays, the presentation is eclectic; but consequently it has the advantage of a diversity of perspectives, and it is ideal for provoking discussion in a seminar or in a course on Aquinas on Scripture. I have used it profitably to supplement a Latin readings course on Aquinas’s commentary. This volume, like its companion Reading John with St. Thomas Aquinas, makes a unique contribution to Thomistic literature. JOHN BAPTIST KU, O.P. Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception Washington, D.C. Obeying the Truth: Discretion in the Spiritual Writings of Saint Catherine of Siena. By GRAZIA MANGANO RAGAZZI. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Pp. 224. $45.00 (cloth). ISBN: 978-0-19-934451-2. Saint Catherine of Siena (1347-80) is unique among the thirty-five doctors of the Church in that she was an illiterate and therefore wrote nothing. Illiteracy among women not of noble birth was not unusual in her day. She was, however, very intelligent, as can be seen in the works she dictated to secretaries: the Dialogue, 381 letters (8 of which were discovered in 1907), and 26 prayers. Every doctor of the Church has a particular doctrine or teaching, and Catherine is no exception. Unfortunately her doctrine has not been fully explored, particularly in the English-speaking world where even Dominicans have often passed over her teaching and dwelt solely on her life, frequently focusing on her bold stance before Gregory XI in Avignon when she insisted on his return to Rome. It is to be hoped that this situation will change now that her complete works have finally been translated into English. It is unusual, given her devotion to the papacy and her repeated references to the Real Presence, that Catherine has attracted the attention of Protestant scholars, some of whom have made significant contributions to Catherinian studies. Chief among them is the Italian Eugenio Dupré-Theseider, a 658 BOOK REVIEWS Waldensian, who undertook a critical edition of Catherine’s letters but who died after publishing only 88 of them in 1940. Earlier, in 1921, the French scholar Robert Fawtier set off a fire-storm of criticism with his historicalcritical examination of the primary biographical sources as well as Catherine’s writings. Still earlier, the Anglo-Catholic Vida Scudder, a professor at Wellesley College, published a translation of 64 letters in 1905 which is available on the Internet. The extent of Catherine’s popularity today can be seen in the publication in the 1998 collection of selected writings published by the Methodist devotional The Upper Room. Reliable presentations in English of Catherine’s spiritual thought are few. Although thematic studies have been written, many are flawed because writers have often lacked a grasp of the whole of her teaching along with knowledge of Catholic spiritual theology and the Dominican tradition. To understand her writings better, a knowledge of Italian is necessary not only because it enables one to study her actual words but also because it also allows access to the work of sturdy Italian Dominican commentators, the greatest of whom in recent times were Giacinto D’Urso, Giuliana Cavallini, and Alvaro Grion. D’Urso and Grion contributed significantly to the positio compiled prior to Catherine’s being proclaimed a doctor. Cavallini advanced Catherinian studies with her quasi-critical text of the Dialogue first published in 1968 and revised in 1995. The first edition was translated into English by Suzanne Noffke, O.P., in 1980 and remains the standard text. Much of Catherine’s thought in the Dialogue would be incomprehensible without reference to her letters and, to a lesser extent, her prayers. The oldest of Catherine’s extant letters was written in 1374 when...