A Teacher
Catherine of Siena
Self-knowledge and mystical union — the inner cell
The transmission
Catherine of Siena lived from 1347 to 1380, an Italian mystic born the youngest of a large Sienese family. As a young woman she joined the Dominican lay tertiaries and, after years of secluded prayer, emerged into an extraordinarily active public life — nursing the sick, mediating civic disputes, and urging the popes toward reform through a remarkable body of letters.
She dictated her central spiritual work, The Dialogue, in 1377-1378, reportedly while in states of ecstatic prayer. She died at thirty-three and was later named a Doctor of the Church. For a mind-power lineage, Catherine’s enduring teaching is the primacy of self-knowledge as the gateway to God.
Her famous counsel to build an “inner cell” of self-knowledge — “make a cell within yourself, from which you need never come out” — internalizes the whole work of contemplation, locating the meeting with the divine within one’s own depths.
In The Dialogue she presents the soul’s growth through this self-knowledge into ever-deeper mystical union with God, who is found dwelling in the soul’s own ground. Her insistence that knowing oneself truly and knowing God are inseparable movements makes her a clear voice for the inward turn at the heart of the contemplative tradition.
What they gave
The inner cell of self-knowledge: Taught that one can build an interior cell of self-knowledge to inhabit always, internalizing contemplation as a portable inner refuge.
- Self-knowledge as the gate to God: Held that knowing oneself and knowing God are inseparable, making honest interior insight the path to union.
- Mystical union in the soul’s ground: Presented God as dwelling within the soul’s own depths, so that union is found by descending into the self rather than escaping it.
- Contemplation fuelling action: Modelled an interior life so grounded that it overflowed into bold service and reform, joining inner depth with outer power.
In their words
this is the way, if thou wilt arrive at a perfect knowledge and enjoyment of Me, the Eternal Truth, that thou shouldest never go outside the knowledge of thyself, and, by humbling thyself in the valley of humility, thou wilt know Me and thyself, from which knowledge thou wilt draw all that is necessary.
knowledge must precede love, and only when she has attained love, can she strive to follow and to clothe herself with the truth.
they are another Myself, inasmuch as they have lost and denied their own will, and are clothed with Mine, are united to Mine, are conformed to Mine.
It is therefore true, indeed, that the soul unites herself with God by the affection of love.
the will alone is the cause of man’s pain, and because My servants are deprived of their own will, and clothed with Mine, they do not feel afflicting pain, but are satisfied, feeling Me by grace in their souls
He has been redeemed from slavery, and made free in order that he might govern his own sensuality, and obtain the end for which he was created.
I loved you before you were, and I created you without your help I will not save you without it.
Discretion is the only child of self-knowledge, and, wedding with charity, has indeed many other descendants
If you are what you ought to be, you will set fire to all Italy, and not only yonder.
The line they stand in
Taught by / Influenced by: Dominican spirituality; Augustine’s interiority; the affective mysticism of her fourteenth-century milieu; and scripture, which she knew largely by ear.
- Taught / Influenced: the later Catholic mystical and devotional tradition; subsequent women mystics; the canon of Doctors of the Church (she was among the first women named); and modern contemplative spirituality.
Revelations they taught
Essential Works
- The Dialogue of Divine Providence1378
- Lettersc.1375