powers out in restraining his impatient temper, quieting the revolt of
the people of Rome, and trying to win for Urban the support of Europe.
After prolonged and continual suffering she died on the 29th of April
1380.

Catherine of Siena lived on not only in her writings but in her
disciples. During her short course she gathered round her a devoted
company of men and women trained to labour for the reformation of the
individual, the church and the state. Her death naturally broke up the
fellowship, but its members did not cease their activity and kept up
what mutual correspondence was possible. Among them were Fra Raimondo,
who became master-general of the Dominicans, William Flete, an
ascetically-minded Englishman from Cambridge, Stefano Maconi, who
joined the Carthusians and ultimately became prior-general, and the
two secretaries, Neri di Landoccio and Francesco Malavolti. The last
of her band, Tommaso Caffarini, died in 1434, but the work was taken
up, though in other shape, by Savonarola, between Francis of Assisi
and whom Catherine forms the connecting link.

Catherine's works consist of (l) a treatise occupying a
closely-printed quarto volume, which Fra Raimondo describes as "a
dialogue between a soul, which asked four questions of the Lord, and
the same Lord, who made answer and gave instruction in many most
useful truths," (2) letters, and (3) prayers. The dialogue is
entitled, _The Book of Divine Doctrine, given in person by God the
Father, speaking to the mind of the most glorious and holy virgin
Catherine of Siena, and written down as she dictated it in the vulgar
tongue, she being the while entranced, and actually hearing what God
spoke in her_. The work is declared to have been dictated by the saint
in her father's house in Siena, a little before she went to Rome, and
to have been completed on the 13th of October 1378. The book opens
with a passage on the essence of mysticism, the union of the soul with
God in love, and the bulk of it is a compendium of the spiritual
teachings scattered throughout her letters. There is more monologue
than dialogue. The book has a significant place in the history of
Italian literature. "In a language which is singularly poor in
mystical works it stands with the _Divina Commedia_ as one of the two
supreme attempts to express the eternal in the symbolism of a day, to
paint the union of the soul with the supra