s with the utmost splendour, and in
certain dioceses in France was a holy day of obligation as late as the
beginning of the 17th century. Numberless chapels were dedicated to her,
and in nearly all churches her statue was set up, the saint being
represented with a wheel, her instrument of torture, and sometimes with
a crown and a book. The wheel being her symbol she was the patron saint
of wheelwrights and mechanics; as the confounder of heathen sophistry
she was invoked by theologians, apologists, preachers and philosophers,
and was chosen as the patron saint of the university of Paris; as the
most holy and illustrious of Christian virgins she became the tutelary
saint of nuns and virgins generally. So late as the 16th century,
Bossuet delivered a panegyric upon her, and it was the action of Dom
Deforis, the Benedictine editor of his works, in criticizing the
accuracy of the data on which this was based, that first discredited the
legend. The saint's feast was removed from the Breviary at Paris about
this time, and the devotion to St Catherine has since lost its earlier
popularity. See Leon Clugnet's article in the _Catholic Encyclopaedia_,
vol. iii. (London, 1908).

St Catherine of Siena.

St Catherine of Siena was the youngest of the twenty-five children of
Giacomo di Benincasa, a dyer, and was born, with a twin-sister who did
not survive her birth, on the 25th of March 1347. A highly sensitive and
imaginative child, she very early began to practise asceticism and see
visions, and at the age of seven solemnly dedicated her virginity to
Christ. She was attracted by what she had heard of the desert
anchorites, and in 1363-1364, after much struggle, persuaded her parents
to allow her to take the habit of the Dominican tertiaries. For a while
she led at home the life of a recluse, speaking only to her confessor,
and spending all her time in devotion and spiritual ecstasy. Her innate
humanity and sound sense, however, led her gradually to return to her
place in the family circle, and she began also to seek out and help the
poor and the sick. In 1368 her father died, and she assumed the care of
her mother Lapa. During the following years she became known to an
increasingly wide circle, especially as a peacemaker, and entered into
correspondence with many friends. Her peculiarities excited suspicion,
and charges seem to have been brought against her by some of the
Dominicans to answer which she went to Florence in 1374