The Naylors by J.I.M. Stewart Page B

San Domenico’s just stuffing with Saint Catherine, you remember.’
    ‘So it is.’ Uncle George was far from solemn. ‘Those awfully important steps, for instance. Only three or four of them. But I expect she took them levitating.’
    ‘Yes, I know. I read quite a bit about her, as a matter of fact. But it wasn’t the steps. It was her skull.’
    ‘It would be that, of course.’ Uncle George was now a little more serious.
    ‘There it is, in a glass box in a very special little chapel. Glaring at you. Or not quite that, because I think they’ve put something dull behind the eye sockets. But what really shook me was two or three colour photographs they’d pinned up near it. You see, the Pope had been there a couple of weeks earlier. And there he was in the photographs, with an entourage of cardinals and bishops and people all in purple and scarlet. Venerating the skull.’
    ‘It struck you as remarkable?’ Uncle George asked gently.
    ‘I think he’s rather a good Pope.’ Hilda paused for a moment and drove more slowly: she was abashed at having produced this patronising testimonial. ‘Highly intelligent, and all taken up with ghastly things happening all over the world. And there he was, doing this venerating.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Pigges’ bones.’
    ‘That’s good Chaucer, but not quite fair to His Holiness, Hilda. Or His Nibs, if you like. It is a human skull, you know.’
    ‘Yes, of course. You get a hand-out saying that another Pope set up a high commission or something of important medical people. And they said, Yes, it is a very old skull of rather a small woman and quale si osserva net tipo femminile senese . Think of that.’
    ‘It seems to have struck you in a distinctly unfavourable light.’ Uncle George said this in a puzzled voice, so that Hilda realised he was feeling he must proceed with caution. He probably had no clear idea whether his niece was now a sceptic, or a devout Christian of a firmly Protestant kind, or some sort of waverer between one thing and another. If this last, he would certainly not want to push his own new stance of unbelief on her. He was too diffident a person for that. ‘But consider, Hilda,’ he was now saying. ‘It may, for a start, very well be Catherine’s skull. The mortal remains of saints or persons tipped for sainthood were through some centuries pretty well dismembered and lodged here and there in bits and pieces.’ Uncle George paused on this. ‘Put that way,’ he said, ‘it sounds frivolous. But you know what I mean.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Catherine of Siena is one of the most remarkable women in the history of the Christian church. Her only rival is Teresa of Avila. Catherine was the daughter of a dyer, and she ended up sorting out and rearranging the papacy. Of course, odd things, as you know, happened to her on the way. She received the stigmata, but concluded it would be impolitic to compete with St Francis on that particular ground, so she secured through prayer that the wounds would be invisible to other people. She can be seen as wildly hysterical and good for any number of laughs. But she was astounding. Over that business of getting the papal family back from Avignon she succeeded where Petrarch had failed – and Dante himself before that. And she wrote, it seems, like an angel in the purest Tuscan going.’
    ‘All right: Catherine was a paragon.’
    ‘Yes – but come back to your present Pope. Here, in front of him in Siena, is what millions believe to be the woman’s noddle. Call it that if you like.’
    ‘But I don’t like.’ Hilda was now becoming rather uncomfortable. ‘I don’t want to be mocking.’
    ‘I’m sure you don’t. But the point is that the Pope goes into this chapel with his clergy around him. And he contemplates the thing with respect and reverence. That’s all that ‘venerate’ means, you know. It doesn’t mean ‘worship’. Your colour photographs aren’t of a Golden Calf affair.’
    ‘Yes, I see.’