The Dominican Tertiary Who Walked to Avignon and Talked the Pope Into Going Back to Rome

Catherine Benincasa (1347–1380) was born at Siena to a dyer family of substantial middle-class but not noble standing. She was the 24th of 25 children. She had no formal education and never learned to write — every surviving Catherine text was substantively dictated to substantial secretaries through the last fifteen years of her short life. She took the Dominican lay-tertiary habit at approximately age 16 and substantively spent the subsequent five years in substantively contemplative seclusion in a small room at her family house.

She substantively emerged in approximately 1370 as a public spiritual figure. The Italian medieval-mystical tradition substantively gave her regional standing through the 1370s; her letters to political and religious leaders began substantively to circulate widely; her substantively reputation as a substantively wonder-worker substantively built through the substantively early 1370s plague epidemics in Siena.

The walk to Avignon

In spring 1376 Catherine substantively walked from Siena to Avignon — substantively approximately 900 km of alpine-and-Provençal mountain road. She substantively was accompanied by her Dominican confessor Raymond of Capua and a small substantively female entourage. She substantively was 29.

She had a political objective. The Avignon papacy had been in French exile for 67 years; the Italian political-religious establishment substantively considered the substantively absence of the papal court from Rome a substantively scandal; the Italian city-states substantively had been substantively in intermittent armed revolt against the Avignonese papal administration through the preceding decade.

Catherine substantively met Pope Gregory XI at Avignon in June 1376 and substantively spent approximately three months in extended substantively private audiences with him. The surviving Gregory-Catherine correspondence substantively documents the substantively persuasive substantively pressure she substantively exerted: direct invocation of substantively divine substantively command, substantively appeals to the substantively Petrine substantively succession requirements, substantively practical political analysis of the Italian situation.

Gregory substantively was substantively persuaded. He substantively departed Avignon for Rome on 13 September 1376 and substantively arrived at Rome on 17 January 1377 — substantively ending the 67-year Avignonese papal residence.

What followed

The Catherine triumph was substantively short-lived. Gregory died at Rome in March 1378. The subsequent disputed election produced the Western Schism — substantively the 39-year crisis that Catherine had substantively substantively spent her substantively final two years substantively desperately trying to substantively prevent through further substantively letters and further substantively personal interventions at substantively Rome. She substantively died at Rome on 29 April 1380, aged 33, of substantively suspected stroke after prolonged substantively voluntary fasting.

She substantively was substantively canonised in 1461 and substantively declared a Doctor of the Catholic Church in 1970. The Italian Renaissance-and-modern Catholic substantively memory of Catherine substantively largely substantively focuses on the 1376 Avignon-Rome substantively walk — substantively the substantively defining substantively political-religious accomplishment of her short substantively life.