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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 August 2024
Enerable Battista Vernazza is probably only known in this country to members of the religious Order to which she belonged and to those who have read Baron von Hugel's The Mystical Element in Religion. In it he studies the spiritual and mystical life of St Catherine of Genoa, 20 as illustrating his theme, and to her life he adds notices of considerable length on two of her friends and disciples: Ettore Vernazza and his daughter Battista, whose spiritual life Catherine greatly influenced, and in both of them Baron von Hugel finds affinities and contrasts with the character and supernatural experiences of the saint. No one undertaking even a brief sketch of Battista's life could overlook his valuable work, but it is written from a special point of view, as showing forth the outcome of St Catherine's spirit on those two disciples of hers though he recognises that 'they are in no sense simple copies of her', and that their lives are in themselves worthy of record; indeed the life of the Venerable Battista, consulted for this sketch, bears the title: Una Gloria di Genoval and her father, Ettore, was both a man of eminent holiness and one of the most prominent citizens of Genoa, where in 1867 a statue was erected to his memory, as a public benefactor.
1 By C. Antonio Boeri
2 We have an example of Tommaso's composition at this time: Santissima mea Diva Do thou, most holy Queen divine Questo meo cor ricevi; Eeceive my heart, I pray, Che qttando al sole apriva For lo: when first these eyes of mine Le luci ai giorni brevi, Opened to life's brief day Insin d'allor fi votoPromised with love on fire that e'er Con animo devoto That heart should own thy sway; Non mai, Madre adorata, Wherefore, sweet Mother,” hear my prayer Esser da Te sviata. Let it ne'er from thee stray.
3 It was in the church of St Maria delle Grazie that Catherine had the spiritual experience which she calls ‘conversion'. It was the grace to give her heart entire'? to God after five years of a more or less worldly life in which she had tried to fi“? some compensation for the want of happiness in her marriage. It is sad to think that the Canonesses were obliged to leave this church so full of hallowed memories when the suppression of monasteries took place under Kapoleon in 1810. The convent has been converted into dwelling-houses and the church was used as a theatre. The nuns first found refuge in a Dominican convent, but in 1822 Ac bishop Lambruschini assigned to them that of Sancta Maria di Passione, they still carry on their life of prayer and praise.
4 Una Gloria di Genova. C. Antonio Boeri
5 Limbania was one of the foundresses of the convent, which was approved of by Nicholas V in 1451. She was named after St Limbania, a young virgin who, according to a legend, came from Cyprus in a small sailing vessel, and after miraculous journey, landed at Genoa, where she entered an Augustinian convent and lived a life of extraordinary penance and contemplation.
6 A writer who, in 1906, visited St Maria di Passione (the convent to which the community of St Maria delle Grazie passed in 1822) attributes the perfection with which divine Office is still chanted by the Canonesses to the tradition established Venerable Battista Vernazza in the sixteenth century.
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