ambassadors tɔ Avigaon; but instead of apologizing for their undeniable aggressions, they laid all the blame on the pontifical delegates, and were dismissed by Gregory with a confirmation of their sentence. A mediator, therefore, was necessary; and instead of asking the kind offices of the emperor, or the king of France, or some other of the sovereigns of Europe, they determined to seek the help of Catharine of Siena.

Catharine had been in the midst of the tumult, doing what she could to maintain peace. It seems that Gregory XI. had beggel her to go to Lucca, where she was held in great veneration, to keep that city from joining the league against the Church. She hal also exerted her influence at Pisa, and seems to have succeeded in both places, though with sone dificulty. From Pisa she wrote the first of her series of letters to the Pope. She was still there when the magistrates of Florence invited her to undertake their cause. She visited the city, conversel with the principal men of all parties, and it was agreed that they should send another and a hum bler embassy to Avigaon, on coalition that she should precede the envoys, and en leavor to soften the heart of the Holy Father toward his rebelloas children. She was already sending letters to Avignon imploring peace, and urging the Pope to retura to Rome, and to raise the standard of the crusaders, in order to unite all discordant elements by directing them to a connɔɔ object. She had seat her most intimate confilant and confessor, Father Raymond, to plead the cause of the Florentines; and soon followed him herself, accompanied by a number of her "disciples," arriving at Avignon about the middle of June, 1376.

As is so often the case in the lives of the chosen instruments of Providence, Catharine was to do a great work at Avignon, but not the work for which she apparently went there. She was received by the Pope with

the greatest kin laess and distinction; she was even intrusted by him with full powers to make peace with the Florentines. But Gregory XI knew the mea with whom he was dealing better thin she. The government of Florence was s ill in the hands of the eight; they did not really desire peace, at least on any terms that the Pope could grant them. They had yiellel to the vast majority of their fellow-citizens in seen ng to wish for what would be in reality the end of their own pover. The envoys delayed their journey to Avigaoa: when they did arrive, and Catharine proposed to use the full powers the Pope had given her, they replied that they had nɔ authority to treas with her; nor were they more honest in their dealings with the Pɔpe himself. The time, then, for the patie alır task that Charine hil uileraken was not yet cɔne; but she was at Avigaɔa now, at the side of Gregory XI, and she was to decide him to a step far more important than the granting a peace to Florence.

The character of Gregory XI. is so constantly represented in the sını colors by historians of every grade, that it would seen almost rash tɔ sippose that they could all have been mistaken in the pictare. It his a softness and beauty about it that are extremely touching, when viewel in the light of his many misfortunes and early death, overshadowel as it was by the threats of the still greater troubles from which it savel him. He had been marked out for high ecclesiastical dignity from the very first, and was but eighteen when his uncle, Clement VI., made him cardinal. His career after his elevation justified his premature advance nent; he made himself famous for learning, and even more so for his tender piety and the unsullied purity of his life. His humility and sweetness won all hearts: perhaps the more because his frail health, his pale countenance, and evident delicacy of constitution, gave a kind of plaintive charm to his very

appearance. Though he was barely forty years of age at the death of Urban V., he had been elected Pope after the conclave had lasted but a single night. He had refused at first, but at last had been forced to accept the crown of St. Peter as a matter of duty. He was then only in deacon's orders. No one has ever questioned the purity of his aims, or even the rightness of his views and the soundness of his judgment. We have already said, with regard to one great paramount question of the time, that he hal secretly vowed to take back the papacy to Rome, if he ever should be elected pope. But, inheriting as he did the traditions of Clement VI., surrounded in France by noble and powerful relatives, and by cardinals almost exclusively his fellow-countrymen, and with health and constitution that were almost sure to be ruined at once by the air of Rome, everything seemed to forbid him to make the effort that was require 1. The earlier years of his reign had passed away, not indeed without many thoughts and even declarations on the subject, but without any steps being taken to put the design in execution. In 1374 he had announced his intention of visiting Rome to the emperor; in the following January he had written in the same sense to Elward III. and to other kings of Europe. But that summer and autumn saw the outbreak at Florence, and the great revolution that arrayed almost the whole of the Ecclesiastical States in rebellion against the Church; and the advocates of the French residence of the papacy must have thought themselves safe now that Italy had risen against Gregory. He was not, like Urban V., a pope elected from outside the College of Cardinals, with little sympathy and but few ties with them. He was of one of the great Limousin families, the nephew of the most brilliant of the Avignon popes, surrounded by powerful relatives, all of whom were interested in keeping him where he was. The quiet security of Provence suited

him, an1 he was one of those t characters, not wanting in ordin firmness and decision, which s are more fitted for tranquil & than for days of disturbance. are more capable of suffering of patience than of initiating measures and breasting the waves a great emergency. Family personal influence had much we with him; not from any a ambition or spirit of nepotism, much as that it had become at Avg: a matter almost of coirse that m of the splendid prizes in the gift of t Popes should be bestowed on the relatives. He himself owel is position originally to that eusta At a time when reform was m needed in the prelazy, and my abuses and scan lals existel whitirquired to be sternly rebuked al punished, he could see who wis wanting more easily than carry it o with a severity alien to his natur He was influenced by the atmosphe around him. In the same way, D withstanding his own strong inclinatic to grant peace on any terms to Florentines, he seems to have yiel as to his actual policy to the more ve lent and relentless counsels of th French cardinals, headed by Robert of Geneva, who led the Breton con panies over the Alps. It might wel have been thought that such a pontf would not now act against the advie and the wishes of all around him, an that the actual state of Italy would be enough to make him adjourn indef nitely his promised journey to Rome.

To such a character it is sometimes everything to have support and companionship the mind and the voice of another, however inferior, tha seem to give body and life to thoughs and designs not new indeed, but which seemed before to belong rather to the world of dreams and imaginations than of possible realities; to change wishes and longings into practical res olutions; to chase away phantom difficulties, and nerve the will to efforts and sacrifices which the conscience

has long prompted. With all of us our own ideas and designs seem sometimes to date their real existence from the moment that we found they were shared by some one else. In the case of Gregory XI., he seems, before the arrival of Catharine at Avignon, to have been almost alone in his wish to return to Italy; and he had already seen something of St. Bridget, and learnt from intercourse with her what the personal influence of great sanctity might be. Catharine at once won his perfect confidence, and her presence gave him the courage to follow out the course which he had long felt to be the right one. It is this which makes it historically true that she had so great a part in the final return of the Holy See from Avignon. It is easy to find reasons why Gregory should have returned; it is easy to show that there was danger that an attempt might be made by the Romans to give their city a bishop of their own creation; or, on the other hand, that Gregory had intended to take the step long before he took it. If these things are alleged to show that the influence of St. Catharine has been exaggerated by her historians, they are beside the point. Her providential mission at Avignon was not to put new considerations before the mind of Gregory, but to strengthen his will to act upon considerations already familiar to him.

The esteem in which the Pope held her was not only manifested by the reception he gave her, and by his inviting her even to speak in public as to what she thought to be required for the best interests of the Church; it also shielded and defended her from the dislike with which her unwelcome presence was viewed by many a magnificent prelate and many a brilliant offical of the court of Avignon. The reforms that she spoke of as so necessaty, and the return to Rome that she recommended, were equally distasteful to them. Three of the most learnel prelates asked leave of the Pope to visit her, and began to catechise her

most severely both as to her presumption in coming as the envoy of Florence, and as to her preternatural gifts of prayer and her extraordinary mode of life. But they left her overwhelmingly convinced of her sanctity and wonderful gifts. The fine ladies about the court-the sisters, nieces, and relations of the Pope and the cardinals-looked on her with instinctive dread. Some of them even tried to patronize and make her the fashion; but she either exhorted them plainly to conversion, or turned from them with that stern silence with which her Master received the overtures of the blood-stained paramour of Herodias. One of them-a niece of the Popeknelt beside her in apparent devotion, as she was rapt in prayer before communion, and plunged a needle or bɔdkin into her bare foot, to see whether she could feel it. When her state of abstraction ceased, Catharine could hardly walk, and her sandal was full of congealed blood. The French king heard of her influence with the Pope, and sent his brother, the Duke of Anjou, to dissuade Gregory from listening to her; but Catharine won the respect and admiration of the duke, prevailed on him to offer himself for the crusade, and suggested him to the Pope as its captain-in-chief. Then an attempt was made to influence Gregory by means of the deference that he paid to the advice of saintly souls. A forged letter was sent him--as it appears, in the name of the holy Peter of Aragon-telling him that if he went to Italy he would be poisoned. Catharine showed him that the letter was not such as a servant of God would write, and that poison could be given him in France as well as in Italy. After all, the Pope still hesitated; he made preparations and issued orders, but it was with slowness and reluctance; and at any time a change might come over the state of affairs in Italy that might be the occasion of indefinite delay. One day again he asked her opinion. She said she was a poor weak woman; how should she

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give advice to the sovereign Pontiff? I do not ask you to counsel me," he replied, "but to tell me what is the will of God." Again she excused herself; and Gregory again urged her, commanding her at last, by virtue of her obedience, to tell him what she knew of God's will as to the matter. She bowed her head-" Who knows the will of God better than your holiness, who have promised him by vow to return to Rome?" Gregory had never revealed his vow to living soul; and from that moment his determination was taken. Still the opposition was great and powerful. The cardinals urged him with the example of an excellent Pope, Clement IV., who had never done anything without the approval of the Sacred College. Catharine met their arguments, she even went so far as to urge the Pope to depart secretly, so obstinate and so influential was the party that wished to retain him in France. At length, on September 13, 1376, amid the remonstrances of his family and the tears of his aged father, as well as the sullen complaints of the whole court, Gregory XI. left Avignon. Catharine had remained to the last, and then went on foot with her companions to Genoa, whither the Pope was to pass by sea.

It seemed as if every kind of influence that could beat down his courage was to be allowed to work upon the failing heart of Gregory. Every thing that could be turned into a bad omen was carefully noted. His horse refused to let him mount; then it became so restive that another had to be brought. As he passed by Novis, Orgon, and Aix to Marseilles, everywhere the inhabitants were in tears and gloom. Marseilles itself, when he came to embark, was the scene of a grand explosion of grief. Then there came the terrors of a dangerous voyage, from the extremely severe weather encountered by the fleet. The grand master of the Knights of St. John himself took the helm of the galley in which the Pope sailed-a weather-beaten veteran, accustomed

to perils of all sorts, who had to exert all his skill under the storm that came on as they made across toward Genoa. They were obliged to pr into Villafranca for some days. I was not till the 18th of October, sixteen days after leaving Marseilles that Genoa was reached. Here t Pope was met by bad news from Rom and from Florence; the Florentines. alarmed at his approach, were preparing for the most desperate hostilities: the Romans seemed quite unwilling to put the government of the city into his hands. A consistory was held (the greater number of the cardinals wer with the Pope), and the resolution was adopted not to proceed further with the journey. All seemed lost; but Catharine with her company was in Genoa. The Pope sought her outit is said, by night; and from he calm and fervent words gained fresh strength and courage to pursue his journey to the end.*

So, after ten days spent at Geno1. the fleet once more put to sea, to b driven again into Porto Fino, wher the feast of All Saints was kept. It arrived at Leghorn on the 7th of November, and there again lingered ten or eleven days. As far as Piombino all went well. When the galleys lett that port, another storm-the most violent of all they had met with-aros? and drove them back shattered and disabled; three cardinals were seriouly ill, one of whom died at Pisa a few days later. At last Corneto was reached on December 6, more than two months after the departure from Marseilles. Gregory remained ther for several weeks to regain his strength. and then sailed up the Tiber, landing near the basilica of St. Paul on January 17, 1377 the day before the feast of the Roman Chair of St. Peter. His entrance was a triumph that seemed to promise him every security for peace and tranquillity; and the joy and devotion of the Romans may

See Capecelatro, Storia di Santa Catarina," lib. v., p. 222, 2d ed.