the Wisdom of Catherine Genoa: Pure Love, Joyful Fire, and Annihilation Self

What if the love that transforms a soul is the same fire that purifies the dead, the same fire that burns at the heart of every contemplative tradition worth knowing?In the busy port of Renaissance Genoa, a married noblewoman walked into a confessional in 1473 and walked out a different person. She had been pierced inwardly by the love of God and would spend the next thirty-seven years working out what that piercing meant. She nursed the dying. She managed her hospital through the plague of 1493. She received daily communion when daily communion was almost unheard of. She taught a doctrine of pure love so radical that her later interpreters in the seventeenth century would face condemnation for teaching it less carefully than she had.The Wisdom of Catherine of Genoa: Pure Love, the Joyful Fire, and the Annihilation of Self traces the life and teaching of one of the most original figures of the late medieval Christian contemplative tradition. From her birth into the patrician Fieschi family, through the unhappy marriage that prepared her for conversion, into the hospital wards where her wide heart became visible to all of Genoa, this study presents Catherine as the contemplative who saw further than her age and the teacher whose insight continues to instruct readers four and a half centuries later.Inside, you will find: - A clear account of Catherine's signature doctrine of puro amore, the love of God that wants nothing in return- An analysis of her teaching on self-love as the one true enemy of the spiritual life- A reading of her remarkable theology of purgatory as a school of joy as well as cleansing- Her Eucharistic devotion, her hospital service, and her thirty-four-year marriage to Giuliano Adorno- The disciples who preserved her teaching and the modern reception that has made her among the most carefully studied of all Christian mysticsFor readers drawn to mysticism that does not depend on visions, for students of Christian contemplative tradition seeking a teacher whose doctrine has been tested by an unflinching life, and for anyone wanting to understand how love can transform a soul without consuming what is most truly its own, the wisdom of Catherine of Genoa remains as alive now as it was in the wards where she first taught it.