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-sensible while still imprisoned in the flesh." The prayers (twenty-six in all) are mostly mystical outpourings repeating the aspirations found in her other writings. Of more interest are the letters, nearly four hundred in number, and addressed to kings, popes, cardinals, bishops, conventual bodies, political corporations and private individuals. Their historical importance, their spiritual fragrance and their literary value combine to put their author almost on a level with Petrarch as a 14th century letter-writer. Her language is the purest Tuscan of the golden age of the Italian vernacular, and with spontaneous eloquence she passes to and fro between spiritual counsel, domestic advice and political guidance. AUTHORITIES.--The sources for the personal life of Catherine of Siena are (l) the _Vita_ or _Legenda_, Fra Raimondo's biography written 1384-1395, first published in Latin at Cologne, 1553, and widely translated; (2) the _Processus_, a collection of testimonies and letters by those of her followers who survived in 1411, and had to justify the reverence paid to the memory of one yet uncanonized; (3) the _Supplementum_ to Raimondo's _Vita_, compiled by Tommaso Caffarini in 1414; (4) the _Legenda abbreviata_, Caffarini's summary of the _Vita_, translated into beautiful Italian by Stefano Maconi; (5) the _Letters_, of which the standard edition is that of Girolamo Gigli (2 vols., Siena, 1713, Lucca, 1721). A selection of these has been published in English by V.D. Scudder (London, 1905). A complete bibliography is given in E.G. Gardner's _Saint Catherine of Siena_ (London, 1907), a monumental study dealing with the religion, history and literature of the 14th century in Italy as they centre "in the work and personality of one of the most wonderful women that have ever lived." FOOTNOTE: [1] See the study in Baron Fr. von Hugel's _Mystical Element in Religion_ (1909). CATHERINE I. (1683-1727), empress of Russia. The true character and origin of this enigmatical woman were, until quite recently, among the most obscure problems of Russian history. It now appears that she came of a Lithuanian stock, and was one of the four children of a small Catholic yeoman, Samuel Skovronsky; but her father died of the plague while she was still a babe, the family scattered, and little Martha was adopted by Pastor Gluck, the Protestant superintendent of the
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