ring her self in her family's house except to attend mass or remain at length in church. This period was marked by mystical experiences of various kinds: visions of and conversations with Jesus, Mary, and Mary Magdalen, possibly abetted by the various images and icons of the Holy Family and saints decorating Catherine's room; intellectual/spiritual insight into "metaphysical reality." More generally (and often, it appears) she experienced "states of ecstasy."
The social context for Catherine's determined mysticism partly explains the scope of her accomplishments and the mind-set informing them. Donaghy connects the increase in the number of lay communities, usually women, devoted to prayer and communal work, to the Black Death, which "focused the reality of a 'last judgment,' along with a greater interest in and appreciation of Eucharist and the crucifixion." The preoccupations of Catherine of Siena were in keeping with this analysis. De la Bedoyere refers to Catherine's "extravagant asceticism," or deliberate and programmatic mortification of the flesh, by such means as fasting, scourging, and the donning, first, of a hairshirt and later a bodice constructed of a chain of mail.
Though not formally educated or literate, Catherine is credited as author of the Dialogues, mystical writings dictated to colleagues that make much use of metaphor and intensity of feeling but that also have a logical pattern that conforms to Catholic theology of virtue and the soul. Chief among the concerns of the Dialogues are relationship between God and world, including the problem of evil, and the reality or nature of God, and the manner of presentation has been described as being informed by "passion, working in a logical mind."
The content of the Dialogues articulates a metaphysics of the soul that finds its highest and best expression through
continuous prayer, founded on knowledge of herself [the soul] and of God; because prayer . . . ...