, soon returning
to Siena to tend the plague-stricken. Here first she met the Dominican
friar, Raimondo of Capua, her confessor and biographer.

The year 1375 found Catherine entering on a wider stage. At the
invitation of Piero Gambacorti, the ruler of the republic of Pisa, she
visited that city and there endeavoured to arouse enthusiasm for the
proposed crusade, urging princes and presidents, commanders and private
citizens alike to join in "the holy passage." To this task was added
that of trying to keep Pisa and Lucca from joining the Tuscan League
against the pope. It was at Pisa, in the church of Santa Cristina, on
the fourth Sunday in Lent (April 1), while rapt in ecstasy after the
communion, that Catherine's greatest traditional glory befell her, viz.
the _stigmata_ or impression on her hands, feet and heart, of the wounds
corresponding with those received by Christ at his crucifixion. The
marks, however, were at her prayer not made visible. There is no need to
doubt the reality of Catherine's exaltation, but it should be remembered
that she and her circle were Dominicans, and that the stigmata of St
Francis of Assisi were considered the crowning glory of the saint, and
hitherto the exclusive boast of the Franciscans. The tendency observable
in many of the austerities and miracles attributed to St Catherine to
outstrip those of other saints, particularly Francis, is especially
remarkable in this marvel of the stigmata, and so acute became the
rivalry between the two orders that Pope Sixtus IV., himself a
Franciscan, issued a decree asserting that St Francis had an exclusive
monopoly of this particular wonder, and making it a censurable offence
to represent St Catherine receiving the stigmata.

In the year 1376, the 29th of Catherine's life, Gregory XI. was living
and holding the papal court at Avignon. He was the last of seven French
popes in succession who had done so, and had perpetuated for
seventy-three years what ecclesiastical writers are fond of terming "the
Babylonian captivity of the church." To put an end to this absenteeism,
and to bring back the papacy to Italy was the cherished and anxious wish
of all good Italians, and especially of all Italian churchmen. Petrarch
had urgently pressed Urban V., Gregory's immediate predecessor, to
accomplish the desired change; and Dante had at an earlier date laboured
to bring about the same object. But these and all the other influences
which Italy had striven to