Source: St. Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue, Paulist Press, 1980

The Dialogue was dictated by Catherine over a period of five days. Three scribes worked to keep up with Catherine as she related a conversation she was having with God the Father in a vision. Catherine was the 25th child of her parents, and being a typical woman in the 1300’s, she was uneducated. It is miraculous that an uneducated woman could write a book as sophisticated and brilliant as the Dialogue over just five days, when she didn’t even have the ability to write.