I’ve received an e-mail from someone asking for recommendations of good lives of the saints. I thought I’d share my response. I’d be interested to receive recommendations from visitors to the Ink Desk, adding to this list:
St. Augustine, Confessions
Blessed John Henry Newman, Apologia pro Vita Sua
Evelyn Waugh, Edmund Campion
Mark Twain, Joan of Arc
G. K. Chesterton, St. Francis of Assisi
G. K. Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas
Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons
Penguin has a good collection of early hagiography published under the title “Early Christian Lives.” It’s a good jumping off point, as is the “Confessions.”
Another good study of St. Joan is the short one by Jules Michelet. His testimony is all the more striking as it comes from a protestant whose hatred of the Church elsewhere makes Voltaire’s seem downright innocuous by comparison. The only book on the subject of the Maid that one definitely ought to avoid is that lousy mess of psychobabble which Mary Gordon put out for the “Penguin Lives” series. Truly wretched.
Christopher Hollis wrote two exceptional (and sadly out of print) biographies of St. Thomas More and St. Ignatius Loyola about fifty years back. Truly outstanding work, especially the book on More.
“The Life of St. Anthony” by St. Athanasius the Great.
“Vladimir: The Russian Viking” by Vladimir Volkoff
“The Martyrdom of St. Polycarp.” by Anonymous.
“The Murder of Charles the Good” by Galbert of Bruges.
“The Retrial of Joan of Arc” by Regine Pernoud.
“Saint Josaphat Kuntsevich” by Fr. Demetrius Wysochansky.
“St. Catherine of Siena” by Edmund Gardiner.
“Exarch Leonid Feodorov: Bridgebuilder Between Rome and Moscow” by Fr. Paul Mailleux, S.J.
St. Therese of Lisieux, Story of a Soul