We commonly think of St Catherine as the greatest of Dominican tertiaries; and so no doubt she is; it is as natural to think that of her as to think of St Thomas as our greatest theologian. Yet it is easier to assess the greatness of a theologian than the greatness of a tertiary. Theology is a science; being a tertiary is a vocation. You can compare one theologian with another in respect of qualities that are fairly evident, at least in principle, for they are intellectual qualities expressed in rational argument. A theologian is great in the degree that he gives satisfactory answers to the questions put by the human mind when it asks, what does the Christian faith mean? It is true that a theologian will not be able to give such answers with a clarity and profundity that deserve to be called great unless his intellect is docile to the Holy Spirit, that is unless he has the Gifts of understanding and wisdom to a high degree.

‘Look (said the Eternal Father to St Catherine) at the ship of your father Dominic, my beloved son, and see how perfectly it is rigged. He wanted their sole concern to be my honour and the salvation of souls by the light of true knowledge. This light was to be his main object, but he did not neglect real voluntary poverty. He observed it himself, and as a sign of this and his disapproval of the contrary he left as his last will and testament to his sons his own curse, and mine, upon any who might have private possessions. But he took as his particular aim the light of true knowledge, for the uprooting of the errors of the times. He assumed the office of the Word, my only-begotten Son , … he was a light, which by means of Mary I placed in the world within the mystical body of Mother Church, as an uprooter of heresy.

On March the 25th 1347, in the Fontebranda, Siena, were born to Jacomo Benincasa and his wife Lapa, twin girls, the last of a family of twenty five. One, Giovanna, died shortly after birth, the other, Catherine, lived to become the glory of her city.

On January the 23rd 1802, over four and a half centuries later, in Saint Giles Rookery, one of London's slums, was born to Edmund Hallahan and his wife, Catherine, Margaret, the only child of povertystricken parents, but who grew up to be one of the very faithful followers of the dyer's daughter.

Both belonged to the people, but whereas one was the daughter of well-to-do parents, the other was the child of a casual—a very casual—labourer. Catherine died at the age of thirty three on April the 29th. Margaret doubled the life's span of her prototype and died on May the n t h at the age of sixty six.

And how should Aeneas Sylvius not be the first to beckon’ When on die opening page of that bulky folio (Bale 1551) there is a formula so close to us: that one should be grown up at twenty, prudent at thirty, rich at forty? Measure that formula against Dante, or even Petrarch (whom it might fit, yet who could not have uttered it), and you will see why Aeneas Sylvius claims kinship forward, more than back. The quality of his mind was also therefore sceptical, as witness that little anecdote on Scotland. ‘I had heard once there was a tree in Scotland which growing on the river bank produced fruits in the shape of duckings; and these when they reach maturity fall of their own accord, some on the land, some in the water; and those that fall on the ground rot, but those falling in the water soon come to life and straight away fly up into the air with wings and feathers.