Issue 09 Preaching about MoneyBlog | The Late Greats Catherine of Siena
The Late Greats Catherine of Siena
Author: Andy PeckPost Date: 16.12.16
At first sight, it might be hard to see what a twenty-first-century preacher might learn from Catherine of Siena (1347–80). Not only are there no sermons amongst her surviving works (which comprise a Dialogue, about 400 letters, and a compendium of prayers), she lived in an age when women (at least Catholic women) did not preach.
The liberties accorded to Hildegard of Bingen in the twelfth century had been removed by the popes of the early thirteenth.1 But it appears that Catherine did preach and that she described herself as an itinerant preacher.2 Born into a large family (she was her parents’ 24th child), Catherine was notably pious and had visions from an early age. She resisted the pressure to marry and embraced the life of a tertiary in the Dominican order which had been founded in the early thirteenth century with a particular calling to preach publicly;
