** Catherine of Siena

* Catherine of Siena

Saint Catherine of Siena, T. O. S. D, ( 25 March 1347 in Siena – 29 April 1380 in Rome ) was a tertiary of the Dominican Order, and a Scholastic philosopher and theologian.

The house of Saint Catherine in Siena

The Chapel of Saint Catherine with parts of her relic s in the Basilica of San Domenico in Siena

When stopped by the Roman guards, they prayed to St Catherine to help them, confident that she would rather have her body ( or at least part thereof ) in Siena.

File: CatherineSienaMeo. jpg | Michele de Meo, " Catherine of Siena, Patroness of Europe ," 2003, Chapel of St. James, Church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva

File: CatherineCommunionBeccafumi. jpg | Domenico Beccafumi, " The Miraculous Communion of St. Catherine of Siena ," circa 1513-1515, Getty Center, Los Angeles, California

File: CSienaStigmataBeccafumi. jpg | Domenico Beccafumi, " St. Catherine of Siena Receiving the Stigmata ," circa 1513-1515, Getty Center, Los Angeles, California

File: RosaryStaAgata. jpg |" The Virgin Mary Giving the Rosary to St. Dominic and St. Catherine of Siena ," Church of Santa Agata in Trastevere, Rome ( Bottom of painting: the souls in Purgatory await the prayers of the faithful )

File: Giovanni Battista Tiepolo 096. jpg | Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, " Saint Catherine of Siena ", circa 1746, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

File: Giovanni di paolo, St Catherine of Siena. jpg | Giovanni di Paolo, " St. Catherine of Siena ", c. 1475, oil on tempera.

File: Catherine of Siena Demons. jpg |" St Catherine and the Demons " by an unknown artist, c. 1500, tempera on panel.

* Catherine of Siena ( 1707 – 1721 ) Opere, ed.

* The Dialogue of St. Catherine of Siena, TAN Books, 2009.

* EWTN Library: Saint Catherine of Siena, Virgin

* Saint Catherine of Siena: Text with concordances and frequency list

* Drawn by Love, The Mysticism of Catherine of Siena

* St. Catherine of Siena page at Christian Iconography

lb: Catherine vu Siena

Catherine II of Russia visits Mikhail Lomonosov in 1764.

Sir Edward Warner, the Lieutenant of the Tower, permitted secret visits between Catherine and Edward.

Between 1517 and 1522, Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon paid separate visits to the shrine, as did Sir Thomas More and Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, who was born in Ipswich.

On the second and third visits he taught at the University of California, Berkeley, through arrangements made by Catherine Urmer, who afterward lived with him until 1933.

After the wartime separation, Jim visits, and later stays with, Jules and Catherine in their house in the Black Forest.

Pope Pius II canonized St Catherine in the year 1461.

Disappointed at the lack of a male heir, and eager to re-marry, Henry attempted to have his marriage to Catherine annulled, but Pope Clement VII refused his requests.

He had been a descendant of the Israelite tribe of Issachar ; he had been educated by his grandfathers, who had both been physicians to the court of Good King René of Provence ; he had attended Montpellier University in 1525 to gain his first degree: after returning there in 1529 he had successfully taken his medical doctorate ; he had gone on to lecture in the Medical Faculty there until his views became too unpopular ; he had supported the heliocentric view of the universe ; he had travelled to the north-east of France, where he had composed prophecies at the abbey of Orval ; in the course of his travels he had performed a variety of prodigies, including identifying a future Pope ; he had successfully cured the Plague at Aix-en-Provence and elsewhere ; he had engaged in scrying using either a magic mirror or a bowl of water ; he had been joined by his secretary Chavigny at Easter 1554 ; having published the first installment of his Propheties, he had been summoned by Queen Catherine de ' Medici to Paris in 1556 to discuss with her his prophecy at quatrain I. 35 that her husband King Henri II would be killed in a duel ; he had examined the royal children at Blois ; he had bequeathed to his son a ' lost book ' of his own prophetic paintings ; he had been buried standing up ; and he had been found, when dug up at the French Revolution, to be wearing a medallion bearing the exact date of his disinterment.

Urban was declared excommunicated by the French antipope and was called " the Antichrist ", while Catherine of Siena, defending Pope Urban, called the cardinals " devils in human form.

In 1530, More refused to sign a letter by the leading English churchmen and aristocrats asking Pope Clement VII to annul Henry's marriage to Catherine, and also quarrelled with Henry VIII over the heresy laws.

In 1530, he wrote The Practyse of Prelates, opposing Henry VIII's planned divorce from Catherine of Aragon, in favour of Anne Boleyn, on the grounds that it was unscriptural and was a plot by Cardinal Wolsey to get Henry entangled in the papal courts of Pope Clement VII.

Since Pope Clement VII had already rejected Henry's petition for annulment in 1530, Catherine continues to believe herself Henry's wife until her death.

Since Spain and England still wanted an alliance, a dispensation was granted by Pope Julius II on the grounds that Catherine was still a virgin.

In 1527 William Knight, the King's secretary, was sent to Pope Clement VII to sue for the annulment of his marriage to Catherine, on the grounds that the dispensing bull of Pope Julius II permitting him to marry his brother's widow, Catherine, had been obtained under false pretences.

The Pope was still a veritable hostage of Charles V, and Charles V was the loyal nephew of Henry's queen, Catherine.

King Francis wanted Catherine to be raised at the French court, but Pope Leo had other plans for her.

The Medici produced four Popes of the Catholic Church — Pope Leo X ( 1513 – 1521 ), Pope Clement VII ( 1523 – 1534 ), Pope Pius IV ( 1559 – 1565 ), and Pope Leo XI ( 1605 ); two regent queens of France — Catherine de ' Medici ( 1547 – 1559 ) and Marie de ' Medici ( 1600 – 1610 ); and, in 1531, the family became hereditary Dukes of Florence.

Numerous other Roman Catholic churches within Valletta include Our Lady of Pilar Church, the Carmelite Church, Our Lady of Liesse Church, St. James Church, St. Barbara Church ( offering services in French, English and German ), Our Lady of Damascus ( a Byzantine Rite Catholic church ), St. Lucy Church, St. Roch Church, St. Catherine of Italy Church ( offering services in Italian ), St. Nicholas Church ( known as the ' Church of All Souls '), St. Catherine of Alexandria Church and the Parish Church of Saint Mary of Porto Salvo and Saint Dominic, accredited the first basilica in Malta in the Bolla Pont by Pope Pius V.

In the ensuing war, Charles's sack of Rome ( 1527 ) and virtual imprisonment of Pope Clement VII in 1527 prevented the Pope from annulling the marriage of Henry VIII of England and Charles's aunt Catherine of Aragon, with important consequences.

* 1529: Envoy to a meeting of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and Pope Clement VII, to seek support for the annulment of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon.

He accompanied Sir John Russell, 1st Earl of Bedford to Rome to help petition Pope Clement VII to annul the marriage of Henry VIII to his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, an embassy whose goal was to make Henry free to marry Anne Boleyn.