Mediaeval and Modern World

On a bright day in June of 1376, With the mistral blowing the brown waters of the Rhone into waves, and the sunlight shining on the walls of the new palace at Avignon, a woman on horseback entered beneath the town gates and went to her lodgings in the twisting streets. The woman was one of twenty-five children of a poor Sienese dyer. Persuaded of her religious vocation, she had persisted in a life of chastity and self-discipline, become a Dominican Tertiary, and, while still carrying on her household duties, had acquired a reputation in Siena for sanctity and for that power, miraculous in the uneducated daughter of an ordinary citizen, of solving the most difficult problems with a sanity and common sense, a grasp of principle, and an insistence in purpose, which are the marks of great Saints alone. Her reputation had spread through Siena, through Italy, and to-day she was entering Avignon as the mediator between the city of Florence and the Frenchman Pierre Roger, become Pope at Avignon. The embassy, however, was not the main purpose in the remarkable woman's mind. She had quietly resolved in the back streets of Siena to bring back the Pope from Avignon to Rome

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