‘“In this yard the young woman set up a sort of refuge or sanctuary for the poor and the destitute of the streets and alleys. We would call it a soup kitchen today, but of course then there was no such thing. She cut off her long and lustrous hair and fashioned a simple shift of grey cotton, walking barefoot among the filth.

‘“In that yard the poorest of the poor, the outcasts of society, the halt and the lame, the beggars and the dispossessed, the evicted pregnant serving girls, the blind and even the diseased, most feared of them all, could find sanctuary from the hell of the streets.

‘“They lay in their filth, among excrement and rats, for they knew no different, and she swabbed and cleaned them, tended their wounds and sores, used her remaining dowry to buy food and then begged in the streets for money to keep going. Her family disowned her, of course.

‘“But after a year went by the city’s mood changed. People began to refer to her as Caterina della Misericordia, Catherine of Mercy. Anonymous donations began to arrive from the wealthy and the guilty. Her fame spread through the city and beyond the walls. Another young woman of good family gave up her wealth and came to join her. And then another, and another. By the third year all Tuscany had heard of her. More and worse, she came to the attention of the Church.

‘“You must understand, signore, that these were terrible times for the Holy Catholic Church. Even I must say so; it had grown venal and corrupt on too long a diet of privilege, power and wealth. Many princes of the Church, bishops, archbishops and cardinals, led lives of earthly princes, dedicated to pleasure, violence and all the temptations of the flesh.

‘“This had already created a reaction among the people, and they were finding new champions; it was a movement they called the Reformation. In northern Europe things were even worse. Luther had already preached his doctrine of heresy, the English king had broken with Rome. Here in Italy true faith was like a boiling cauldron. Just a few miles away in Florence the monk and preacher Savonarola had been burned at the stake after terrible tortures to make him recant, but even after his death the mutterings of rebellion went on.