Dialogo de la Seraphica Vergine Santa Catharina da Siena: elqual profondissimamemte tratta de la divina providentia: de quasi tutti li peccati mortali & de molte altre stupende, & maravigliose cose: como in el suo repertorio lucidamente appar. Insieme con la sua vita & canonizatione & alcuni notabili capitoli co[m]posti in sua gloria, & laude. Nuovamente revisto, & con summa diligentia castigato

12mo, ff. (16), 17-293 (294). Printer’s ornament on verso of (294), printer’s ornament on title page, early 19th century quarter vellum, bookplate of the Franciscan Central Library, University of Kent on the front paste-down endpaper, early ink inscription for college on title-page. Saint Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) was a tertiary of the Dominican Order and a scholastic philosopher and theologian. She also worked to bring the papacy of Gregory XI back to Rome from its displacement in France and to establish peace among the Italian city-states. She is believed, in Catholicism, to have had miraculous visions and felt herself to be united in marriage with Jesus, stating in her letters that she wore the wedding ring he gave her but that it was invisible. To achieve a union with God, she practiced extreme fasting and ascetism. Catherine viewed Christ as an intermediary between God and the soul and systematically discussed this idea, along with her other mystical theological teaching, in her book The Dialogue. This second of Sessa’s editions is greatly expanded from the first of 1540