St. Catherine of Siena, fifteen, joins an order that takes only widows

SIENA, 1362 AD — Saint Catherine of Siena, fifteen, has been clothed in the black and white habit of the Dominican Sisters of Penance, in the church of the Friars Preachers on the hill above her father’s dye-works at Fontebranda. She is the second-youngest of the twenty-five children of the dyer Giacomo Benincasa and his wife Monna Lapa. Since she turned twelve the family had been looking for a husband whose family would strengthen the Benincasa position in the city, and she was not let out of the house alone. None of them knew she had vowed her virginity to God at seven.

The Sisters of Penance are not nuns. They take no monastic vows and keep no cloister, and each of them lives under a rule in her own house. That, they say, is why they have to be careful whom they admit. Siena calls them the Mantellate (the cloaked women), for the long black mantle worn over the white habit. They take widows of mature age. Until now they had never taken a girl.

The house lies down the Valle Piatta, the dip between the cathedral hill and the hill to the north where San Domenico stands. At the bottom is the fountain of Fontebranda, which gives the district its name. Turn right and the Strada dell’Oca climbs steeply; the house is on the left, rented from the wool-workers’ guild as a dye-works and a home. A fire burns in it all day, more wood than any house needs, because the dyes have to be prepared. From the street above you look down on the meadows where Giacomo’s men wash the wool and lay it out to bleach; the quarter smells of dyeing and tanning. St. Catherine was born in this house on March 25, 1347 AD. From her room she hears the bell of San Domenico calling the friars to choir.

Her married sister Bonaventura died in childbirth in August, and the family pressed harder: they asked Fra Tommaso della Fonte, a Friar Preacher brought up in their own house, to talk her into the marriage. Fra Tommaso told her to do the opposite: “Cut off your hair, entirely; perhaps they will then let you enjoy tranquility.” She cut it all off and hid her head under a coif. Monna Lapa pulled the coif off and found her daughter’s head shorn. The family dismissed the kitchen-maid and put St. Catherine to the maid’s work. Then, in her sleep, St. Catherine saw the founders of the religious orders. St. Dominic was among them, and he offered her the habit of the Sisters of Penance. The next day St. Catherine called Giacomo, Monna Lapa and her brothers together and told them she was already vowed and would take no husband. Giacomo gave his blessing: “God preserve us, dearest child, from longer opposing the resolution with which he inspires you.”

Monna Lapa took her daughter’s request to the Sisters twice and was refused twice. Then St. Catherine fell ill, and an eruption covered and disfigured her whole body. From her bed she asked Monna Lapa to go a third time. “Dearest mother, if you wish me to recover my health and strength, try to obtain for me the habit of the ‘Sisters of Penance,’” St. Catherine said. “I am convinced that God and St. Dominic who call me, will take me from you, if I wear any other religious dress.”

This time the Sisters named a condition, and it was her looks. “If your daughter be not over fair we are content to receive her,” the Sisters told Monna Lapa. A good-looking girl, they said, would put her own name and the order’s at risk from the gossip of the city. Monna Lapa answered: “Come, yourselves, and judge whether she be fair or no.” Three or four of the Sisters, the most level-headed among them, came up to the house. The eruption settled the question of her looks. They questioned her about her vocation instead, and put the matter to the friars. Then the Sisters met and received her with no one against. She prayed to be well enough to take the habit, and was well within days.

The clothing was on a Sunday, in the Sisters’ chapel inside San Domenico, the one called Delle Volte. She was given the white habit and veil and the black mantle, black for humility and white for innocence. Blessed Raymond of Capua records that she is the first virgin ever received among the Sisters of Penance at Siena, and that many followed her. Her name is written twice in their register, once as Katerina Jacobi Benincasa and once as Catherina di Lapa. Like the rest of the Sisters, she goes on living in her father’s house.

The year is not agreed. Butler’s Lives puts her at fifteen. The Catholic Encyclopedia puts her at fifteen, before her sixteenth birthday. The chronology printed with her letters gives 1363 or 1364 AD. Pope Paul VI’s apostolic letter on her and the Vatican’s own notice give 1363 AD. Augusta Theodosia Drane argues for about 1364 AD, because Bonaventura died only in the August of 1362 AD. No account gives the day.

What is there now. After the Benincasa family fell on hard times the house passed to another dyer, and in 1466 AD, soon after St. Catherine’s canonisation, the commune of Siena bought it at the urging of the people of Fontebranda. Over the door are the words Sponsa Christi Katherina Domus (the house of Catherine, the spouse of Christ); her father’s workshop, the stairs and the cell are still shown. Her head, carried from Rome in 1384 AD, is in the basilica of San Domenico on the hill above.