Catherine of Siena 1347 – 1380

Catherine of Siena was an Italian Dominican tertiary, mystic, and political activist whose influence on the fourteenth-century Church was extraordinary for a woman of her time. From a large Sienese dyer's family, she received no formal education but learned to read and write in the course of an interior life of intense visions and ascetic practice. Her Dialogue of Divine Providence is one of the great works of Italian mystical literature, while her nearly four hundred surviving letters intervened in papal and political affairs across Europe. She helped to persuade Pope Gregory XI to return from Avignon to Rome and was named a Doctor of the Church in 1970.