Saint Catherine of Siena
Letter to Frate Felice da Maas, Augustan Hermit of Lecceto
「14th c.」Catherine of Siena, “Letter to Frate Felice da Maas,” in vol. 2 of Letters of Catherine Siena「Archive.org」, trans. Suzanne Woffke, 2nd ed. (2001).
We love God’s creatures because we see that God loves them supremely. It is the very nature of love to love everyone and everything that our beloved loves. (6)
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(Note: Although quoted by Rod Preece in Awe for the Tiger, Love for the Lamb (2004) as “a religious basis for the love of animals,” since she uses the term creatures repeatedly in her letters to refer exclusively to human creatures, I question whether she is here referring to human creatures and not other animals as Preece suggests.
