Letters
Letters of Catherine of Siena to popes, cardinals, rulers and friends. Those written after the double election of 1378 take the side of Urban VI against the cardinals who had turned on him.
Catherine wrote to people of every rank, and her letters to the powerful are blunt. After the double election of 1378 she wrote to three Italian cardinals who had gone over to the other side, telling them that they knew they had chosen Urban VI lawfully and that their plea of fear was false.
Her letters to Gregory XI, written about 1376 while the papal court was at Avignon, urge him to return to Rome; Scudder prefixes to the collection tables of Catherine’s life and of public events, which are an editor’s chronology of 1905 and not a source of Catherine’s own time. In the dispute of 1378 she is a partisan witness, who held to Urban and wrote on his behalf. Her letter shows how the cardinals’ declaration was answered at the time by those who held to the Roman pope. See the Great Western Schism.
Cited in
- 1309 to 1377, estimated date
- 1378 to 1417, firm date