The Road to Siena: The Essential Biography of St. Catherine

by Edmund Gardner, Jon M. Sweeney (Noted by)

Overview

Catherine of Siena’s influence was felt throughout the kingdoms of Europe. She enjoyed the confidence of popes, royalty, and most of all, the common people of Italy. A complicated woman, she was able to speak bluntly to a queen: “Instead of a woman, you have become the servant and slave of nothingness, making yourself the subject of lies and of the demon who is their father”; and also encourage the wife of a simple tailor: “Clothe yourself in the royal virtues.”

Her story is told in this landmark biography, first published a century ago and praised by Evelyn Underhill as the best modern biography of a saint ever written. Long out of print, this new edition has been slightly abridged and generously supplemented with the reflections of other biographers, historians, and artists—who shed fresh light on what we know about an amazing woman.

“The Road to Siena is a fairly brief-but-concentrated book illustrating a rather brief-but-concentrated life. Our instincts to distrust Catherine’s visions as delusions and her hearty exhortations as mania are natural, but repeatedly Gardner manages to put them down in turn, and all of our modern understanding must be humbled a bit when we read that the invisible stigmata Catherine claimed in her life became manifest and quite visible upon her death, even if her mystical wedding ring did not. Taken together, the book brings the reader into close contact with Catherine’s flame; one feels the heat that singed the consciences of popes and monarchs alike.”
—Elizabeth Scalia, Benedictine Oblate, author of the award-winning Strange Gods: Unmasking the Idols in Everyday Life, and Word on Fire Editor-at-Large

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781557257291
Publisher:	Paraclete Press
Publication date:	08/01/2009
Series:	US
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	204
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Edmund G. Gardner's work on Catherine of Siena was groundbreaking in its day, and is still one of the most important biographies ever written of a medieval saint. He was the professor of Italian at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and wrote many books over a long career on Dante, English mystics, the cities of Florence and Siena, Arthurian legends, and Italian Renaissance painters.
Jon M. Sweeney is an author, husband, and father of four. He has been interviewed on many television programs including CBS Saturday Morning, Fox News, and PBS's Religion and Ethics Newsweekly. His popular history The Pope Who Quit: A True Medieval Tale of Mystery, Death, and Salvation was optioned by HBO. He's the author of thirty-five other books, including The Complete Francis of Assisi, When Saint Francis Saved the Church, the winner of an award in history from the Catholic Press Association, and The Enthusiast: How the Best Friend of Francis of Assisi Almost Destroyed What He Started. Sweeney is also the author of The Pope's Cat series for children. He presents often at literary and religious conferences, and churches, writes regularly for America in the US and The Tablet in the UK, and is active on social media (Twitter @jonmsweeney; Facebook jonmsweeney).

Table of Contents

Foreword vii

List of Illustrations xiii

Introduction 3

1 Catherine's Hidden Life 11

2 From Dante to Saint Catherine 33

3 Catherine Enters into Her Vocation 39

4 Pope UrbanV 49

5 The Beginnings of Her Public Life 55

6 From the Cell to the World 63

7 Her Influence Grows 83

8 Mediating Between Florence and Avignon 91

9 From the Babylon of the West 99

10 The Angel of Peace 109

11 The Beginning of Schism in the Church 127

12 From Siena to Rome 143

13 The Field of Battle 153

14 Catherine's Death 161

15 Her Literary Legacy 183

16 Dissolution of the Fellowship 187

Acknowledgments 199

Bibliography 201

Index 203

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“The Road to Siena is a fairly brief-but-concentrated book illustrating a rather brief-but-concentrated life. Our instincts to distrust Catherine’s visions as delusions and her hearty exhortations as mania are natural, but repeatedly Gardner manages to put them down in turn, and all of our modern understanding must be humbled a bit when we read that the invisible stigmata Catherine claimed in her life became manifest and quite visible upon her death, even if her mystical wedding ring did not. Taken together, the book brings the reader into close contact with Catherine’s flame; one feels the heat that singed the consciences of popes and monarchs alike.”
—Elizabeth Scalia, Benedictine Oblate, author of the award-winning Strange Gods: Unmasking the Idols in Everyday Life, and Word on Fire Editor-at-Large

“[This is] the story of the life and times of one of the most treasured saints of Italy, Catherine of Siena. A bold woman who stood up for the people while speaking out against the queen with honesty, her life is covered with much depth to help readers gain a feel for who the woman truly was.” 
—Midwest Book Review, “Reviewer’s Choice”