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Treatise on Purgatory

St. Catherine of Genoa

AI-assisted English translation from the Italian; selected passages reviewed. Source, method & review limits

Nineteen brief chapters on the purification of the soul, its longing for God, and the meeting of suffering and hope.

19 chapters · English translation from the Italian

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Contents

  1. About this edition
  2. Prologue
  3. I. The perfect conformity of the souls being purified to the will of God.
  4. II. The joy of the souls being purified and their growing vision of God. The example of the rust.
  5. III. The pains of the souls being purified. The separation from God, their greatest pain.
  6. IV. The difference between the damned and the souls being purified.
  7. V. God shows His goodness even toward the damned.
  8. VI. Purified from sin, the souls being purified joyfully expiate their pains.
  9. VII. With what violence of love the souls being purified long to enjoy God. The example of the bread and the famished man.
  10. VIII. Hell and Purgatory reveal the wondrous wisdom of God.
  11. IX. The necessity of Purgatory.
  12. X. The terrible nature of Purgatory.
  13. XI. The love of God which draws the holy souls to itself, and the impediment they find in sin, generates the pain of Purgatory.
  14. XII. How God purifies the souls. The example of gold in the crucible.
  15. XIII. The ardent desire of the Souls to be transformed into God, and the wisdom of God in hiding their imperfections from them.
  16. XIV. Joy and sorrow of the souls being purified.
  17. XV. The souls being purified can no longer merit.
  18. XVI. The Souls will their perfect purification.
  19. XVII. Exhortations and reproofs to the living. And so that blessed soul, seeing the aforesaid things in the divine light, said:
  20. XVIII. The spontaneous and joyful suffering of the souls being purified.
  21. XIX. The Saint concludes her doctrine on the souls being purified with the application of what she experiences in her own soul.
About this translation

This English translation from the Italian was drafted with AI assistance using SWE-2 Max and prepared as a reading edition for this library. Review has included source provenance, section structure, and selected source comparisons and corrections. It has not included a complete independent, sentence-by-sentence translation audit.

Catherine’s teaching was transmitted by her disciples and first printed in 1551. This translation follows the supplied Italian transcription; the introductory note is editorial.

This is a reading copy, not a critical edition. No professional translation certification or ecclesiastical approval is claimed for this modern edition.

No general reuse licence is specified for this modern translation or its source transcription. The age of the original work does not by itself establish their reuse terms.