GHOSTS OF SIENA, ITALY

(I found another essay in my files. This I wrote after our last visit to Italy in 2006.)

"There are ghosts here," I say. My husband and I are seated in an outdoor restaurant on the Campo of Siena. “What do you think?” I prod him.

“Uh – nothing,” he replies. “It’s nice here,” he continues, and sips his beer.

The view is magnificent – the plaza stretches wide with the imposing Palozzo Pubblico and Torre del Mangia at the far end. But I can’t help thinking about the plagues, the numerous dead, the medieval ghosts.

This is my second visit to Siena and I'd visit it again. I like the place. My connection with the place is multilevel. First, there is the matter of the name, Catherine of Siena’s name that is; my second name is Catalina. My parents had taken two patron saints for November, my birth-month, and named me after them – Cecilia and Catalina. So the first time my husband and I visited Siena, I was very curious about the place and, gruesome as it may sound, I looked forward to seeing St. Catherine’s head in St. Dominic’s Basilica in Siena. Her body parts are scattered in different places: her torso in Rome, her foot in Venice, and her right thumb and head in her birthplace of Siena.

The truth is that even though she was my patron saint, I knew little about her, confusing her even with the other St. Catherine (of Alexandria). So it was the trip to Siena that made me read up on Catherine of Siena. Born in 1347, she became a Dominican Tertiary, which meant she stayed at home instead of a convent. A mystic, she had visions of heaven, hell, and purgatory, and communicated with God. One day God ordered her to enter public life. She wrote heads of State and the church for peace and she was instrumental in returning the papacy from Avignon, France to Rome. St. Catherine of Siena was named Doctor of the Church, a title bestowed on only one other woman saint, St. Teresa of Avila.

During my first visit, I hurried to St. Dominic’s. To my surprise her head was not in the main altar, but was on a side altar, within a glass case, and perched on top of the retablo. If you did not know it was there, you would simply take it for a bust. Maybe it was the distance, but her head looked small, and maybe it was the lighting, but it looked, well, like a decomposing corpse’s head.

The Benincasa house where she had lived was walking distance and my husband and I trudged to it, climbing down to her house which is now a chapel/museum with a bookstore. It was small, but lovely. Even though the place had been fixed up and was probably unlike what it had actually been in the 14th century, the place still had a special feeling. It felt good to imagine that she actually lived and prayed where the chapel was. There is a portion which is glassed off, which shows a statue of St. Catherine in ecstasy.

Aside from St. Dominic’s we also saw the Duomo, said to be one of Italy’s greatest cathedrals. There was reconstruction going on, and we were barred from visiting sections of it. My overall impression of it was that it was a huge cathedral, dimly lit, with huge elaborate altars and statues. Up along the ceiling were statues of popes looking down.

For this second visit to Siena, I read more about the history of the place, and learned that Siena had been hit by the Black Plague during 1348. Out of a population of 40,000, only 8,000 survived. The plague was reportedly so ferocious that people died, standing up. Pits were dug from mass graves. Siena, which had been as wealthy as Florence, never recovered. In fact Siena was ravaged by subsequent plagues: 1363, 1374, 1383, 1389, and 1399.

This is why I'm certain ghosts linger in Siena. I wonder where the Sienese of the Middle Ages had dug their mass graves. Outside the city walls, I decide. Not here, where the elegant Fonte Gaia flows. This fountain has been flowing since 1343, and the Sienese would have kept dead bodies away from it.

My husband continues drinking his beer oblivious to my ramblings. The Campo is starting to glow like a gem. The sun has gone down, and the night sky is darkening. In Siena, the night sky does not turn black; it turns blue, like the crayola blues in Giotto paintings. And so it’s really quite beautiful to be sitting in a restaurant on the upper corner of the Campo, and looking across at the glowing buildings all around. The golden buildings plastered against the Giotto blue sky is incredible.

I take a deep breath and silence my musings on medieval ghosts, and just take in the night sky and air, all of Siena in.