Dorothy Byrne on Catherine of Siena
Great Lives
BBC
4.2 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 14 September 2021
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The president of Murray Edwards College, Cambridge and former Channel 4 editor champions the life of a 14th-century mystic. Like Dorothy Byrne, famous for her scathing attacks on broadcasting executives in the 2019 MacTaggart Lecture, Catherine of Siena stood up to powerful men. She lobbied Popes, attacked corruption in the Catholic church, and played an active role in the troubled Italian politics of the late 14th century. Alongside Francis of Assisi, she is one of two patron saints of Italy. Carolyn Muessig, Chair of Christian Thought at the University of Calgary, provides the expert analysis.
Presented by Matthew Parris and produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Chris Ledgard
Transcript
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| 0:47.9 | Now honestly, 1376 isn't nearly as long ago as you think. |
| 0:52.7 | About eight long lifetimes laid end to end. |
| 0:55.3 | Sevens, my own goes more than a tenth of the way back. |
| 0:58.8 | And in 1376, the most powerful man in Western Europe sat in the Papal Palace in Not Rome |
| 1:06.2 | but Avignon in the south of France. |
| 1:09.4 | The papacy was in a crisis. |
| 1:11.4 | For nearly 70 years it had been an exile from Rome. |
| 1:14.7 | Now there was a chance to return, but Pope Gregory XI was uncertain what to do and needed |
| 1:21.4 | convincing. |
| 1:23.4 | The person he turned to for guidance was a 29-year-old, frail-looking woman from Siena, |
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