to any one, not even to her Confessor as was usual with her, what she beheld in this ecstacy, because as she afterwards told me, she could find no expression for rendering things, which according to St. Paul, it is not permitted to man to recount: but the ardor of her heart, the continuity of her prayer, the efficacy of her teaching, proved sufficiently that she had seen heavenly secrets which none can understand without witnessing them.
At the same time, she told her Confessor, who transferred her relation to writing, that St. Paul, the Apostle, had appeared to her and warned her to apply continually to meditation. She obeyed with earnestness. On the vigil of the Feast of St. Dominic, while she was praying in the church she received great revelations concerning St. Dominic and several saints of his Order. These revelations or visions were so vivid, that she often thought that she still saw them when she was describing them to her Confessor; this was a proof that God wished her to make them known for the benefit of the faithful. On that day, therefore, a little before Vespers, while she was receiving these revelations. Friar Bartholomew of St. Dominic, of Sienna, happened to enter the church. He is now a doctor in theology; he was then the friend of Catherine's Confessor, who placed great confidence in him also, and took him for her Confessor when her own was absent. She was aware of his arrival more by an effect of her mind than of her exterior senses; she arose directly, and went and informed him that she had something to communicate to him. When they had gone aside in the church, she related what God had shown her concerning St. Dominic. "At this moment," said she to him, "I see St. Dominic more distinctly and perfectly than I see you. He is more intimately present to me."
