The childhood and family of Catherine of Siena:
During the fourteenth century, the
city of Siena where Catherine was born was second only to Rome itself in its importance
in Italy. It was a major commercial center connected to the Via Cassia, which merchants
and pilgrims used to enter Rome, and which connected the city to several other
important cities and ports.(Vauchez) Thus, having been born to wool dyers, Catherine
Benincasa (the future Catherine of Siena) and her family were part of the upper
middle class of merchants and manufacturers which held a significant amount of
political power and influence in Siena at the time. (O'Driscoll)
This is especially true during the rule of The Twelve which rose to power after
the fall of the Nine in 1355. Catherine even
had brothers who entered the local government at that time. Speaking of siblings,
Catherine had a lot of them having been born in 1347, with her and her twin
sister as the 24th and 25th child of their mother Lapa.
From the start, Catherine appeared to be somewhat of a favorite child of her
mother’s having been breast-fed as an infant while her twin sister (Giovanna)
was entrusted to a nurse and subsequently died. However, such early deaths were
not uncommon for the time as at the age of 15 Catherine also had to witness the
death of her sister Bonaventura
during childbirth. However, Whatever favoritism, Lapa may have shown the child
when she was an infant did not last throughout her adolescence. This is most
vividly demonstrated in the rift that formed between mother and child when
Catherine decided to follow a path that God was calling her to that, not only
conflicted with her parent’s expectations of her, but also with the
expectations placed upon all women of the time. (Vauchez)
Catherine
demonstrated a deep spirituality and connection with God that can only be
described as mystical from an astonishingly young age. As soon as she learned
how to walk she developed a habit of wandering away from home which caused her
mother great anxiety whenever someone in the family had to announce that “the
baby is lost again.” (Butler pp.22-23). As she grew older and read stories
about the “fathers of the desert” she longed to immolate their asceticism and
devotion to God. She would often run away from home in an attempt to find “the desert.”
One time as a child she went as far as to go far outside the bounds of the city
until she came across a ghetto, sat under a rock, and began to pray. (Butler pp.25-26)
It was through such prayer and solitude that Catherine felt closest to God and
such habits were maintained well beyond her childhood and she soon developed a
reputation for near-ceaseless prayer. (Vauchez) While she was praying under the
rock, God supposedly spoke to her and told her that that was not the kind of
life He wanted her to live and to remain with her parents and stop trying to
run away. Other spiritual experiences of her childhood include the time when
she was 6-7 years old and while she was passing the church of Sait Dominic with
one of her brothers she looked up and saw Christ Jesus dressed in the papal
garments atop the church extending his hand out to her as a blessing. (Vauchez)
(Butler) However by far the most significant and impactful spiritual encounter
of her life occurred in 1362 when she went to confession and swore a lifelong
vow to virginity. She subsequently cut off her hair as a sign of the
irrevocability of her vow. This move
enraged her mother, for she was not only defying the societal norms for women
which deemed that marriage the only chance for any kind of social advancement (despite
being from a well-to-do family she did not even have any kind of formal
education) but also her mother’s wish to have Catherine married off to her
recently widowed brother-in-law. As punishment, she was forced to live in a
small room under the stairs for a long time. However, young Catherine relished
the suffering that came with following what she saw as God’s plan for her life.
She began to refuse to eat or drink anything apart from bread and water while using
the possibility of just letting herself die as a form of blackmail to get what
she wanted. Eventually, her father (Jacopo di Benincasa) who was more
level-headed and compassionate than her mother, relented, taking Catherine out from
under the stairs and giving her her room back. As a matter of fact, biographers who wrote about
her adolescence and childhood at the time portray her mother as the major obstacle
to her relationship with God, which is contrary to custom since it is typically
the father who takes on that role in the biographies of saints.
The childhood and family of Hafez (or
Hafiz):
Next to nothing is known about the poet
known as Hafez (or Hafiz) and any attempt to find accurate and reliable
information about his family and close relations does not fare much better. For
instance, even his father’s name is unknown (Some sources say he was called Bahāʾ-al-Din
from Isfahan while others say that he was called Kamāl-al-Din and came from
Tuyserkān (Dominic p.3), and we do not know if Hafez was ever married. There
are two reasons for this: (1) Islamic historians of the time did not find it as
important to record all the same type of information that modern Western
historians do. For instance, due to the patriarchal culture that Hafez lived
in, who a man’s spouse was was often viewed as unimportant information. And (2),
a lot of the information that does exist on Hafez’s life comes from unreliable
sources such as the multitude of rumors about his love life. This puts
historians who wish to learn about Hafez’s adolescence and family in a
difficult situation where one of their main sources of investigation ends up
being his poetry, whose lyrics they have to interpret in an over-literal way
that the author likely did not intend for them to do, to try and decipher any
details possible about his life. By
doing this we can conclude such things (true or not) as the fact that he likely
had a son (or someone he viewed like a son) because he seems to be grieving the
death of a child in one of his poems, and the fact that he was well educated.
After all, he refers to his “forty years of study”, “the porch and arch of
seminary college”, and “the numbing hum empty chatter of debate” in some of his
writings. On this, there is definitely more evidence that he had a good education
than there is that he had a family. For instance, we know for certain that he
was well-read and versed in all the classics of his time. We can tell clearly
from his writings that he was steeped in the teachings of ‘The Greatest Master’
(Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn al-‘Arabī) and strove to imitate the Akbarian treatises (Leonard)
Even his name Hafez (or hafiz) means ‘one
who has memorized the Qur’an by heart’ (this is the general consensus although
there is some debate over this because the name could also mean a professional
singer). (Domonic p.3) He was also a skilled calligrapher. Here is more of what
we know: He was born between the years of 1310-1320 in the city of Shiraz. He came
from a well-to-do family given the fact that his epithet Khwāja (Esquire) was
reserved for nobility and gentility. His father died sometime during his life. We
know that the subjects of study he excelled in were those of debate, theology, recitation,
and commentary. That is the extent to which we can discuss his adolescence.
Comparisons between the childhoods
and families of Catherine of Siena and Hafez:
Despite
living in different parts of the world, and worshiping different Gods, there
are several notable similarities within the early lives of Catherine of Siena
and Hafez. First, they both were born and grew up in economically and
artistically prosperous, but politically tumultuous cities. During Catherine’s
lifetime, she witnessed the overthrow of The Nine and the ascension of The
Twelve as the governing body of Siena, economic challenges, and a plague that
killed a large percentage of the city. However, simultaneously Siena was one of
the most prosperous and artistically alive cities in Europe at the time often
being compared to the likes of Florence. (Vauchez) Similarly Shiraz, despite seeing
near-constant violence and bloodshed from besieging armies and city mobs, was a
philosophical and theological hotspot in the Muslim world at the time with it
being home to more than 500 mosques and some of the greatest Muslim thinkers of
the time. (Limbert) (Leonard) Similarly, they both also came from prosperous
families. Catherine and Hafez also both witnessed tragedy in their youth,
Catherine through the death of several of her siblings and Hafez through the
death of his father. The differences between the two mystics are definitely more
pronounced, however. Most notably Hafez received an advanced and high-quality
education while Catherine received little education as women typically did not
in her time and place. How they experienced the divine, the central feature of
mysticism was also distinctly different. Catherine heard directly from God and experienced
visions while Hafez’s experiences were less direct and more philosophical in
nature.
References:
Butler, Josephine Elizabeth
Grey. Catharine of Siena : A Biography. 3d ed., H. Marshall, 1894.
Catherine, and Mary O’Driscoll. Catherine of Siena-- Passion for the Truth, Compassion forHumanity : Selected Spiritual Writings. Edited by Mary O’Driscoll, New City Press, 1993.
Dominic Parviz Brookshaw. Hafiz and His Contemporaries : Poetry, Performance and Patronage In Fourteenth Century Iran. I.B. Tauris, 2019. https://bereacollege.on.worldcat.org/oclc/1089126002.
Leonard Lewisohn. Hafiz and the Religion of Love in Classical Persian Poetry. I.B. Tauris, 2010. https://bereacollege.on.worldcat.org/oclc/680041068.
Limbert, John W. Shiraz in the Age of Hafez : The Glory of a Medieval Persian City. University of Washington Press, 2004. https://bereacollege.on.worldcat.org/oclc/758005969.
Vauchez, André. Catherine of Siena : A Life of Passion and Purpose. Paulist Press, 2018. https://bereacollege.on.worldcat.org/oclc/1022075124.
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