SOURCE: "'Io Catarina': Ecclesiastical Politics and Oral Culture in the Letters of Catherine of Siena," in Dear Sister: Medieval Women and the Epistolary Genre, edited by Karen Cherewatuk and Ulrike Wiethaus, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993, pp. 87-121.

In the following essay, Scott concentrates on Catherine of Siena's Epistolario (her letters) as "examples of female activism," arguing that Catherine used her letters as a means of furthering both her religious and political causes.

It is May 6, 1379. Rome is divided by a civil war into camps supporting two contending Popes, Urban VI and Clement VII. The mercenary soldiers of the Company of St. George have just succeeded in recapturing the Castel Sant'Angelo for Urban VI after a long siege. Soon the Antipope Clement VII will have to flee Rome and establish his court in Avignon.¹ That day Catherine of Siena dictated at least four letters concerning the events of...