In the latest installment, we will look at the rise of St. John Fisher, as the medieval England of his youth passes to the new world of the renaissance, at least in court and intellectual circles. We will look to Fisher’s world, and his early life in it, until his creation as a bishop and […]
Today we begin a groundbreaking series of readings of St. Robert Bellarmine’s Exhortationes Domesticae, or Household Exhortations. These were a series of Spiritual Conferences given by St. Robert Bellarmine to his Jesuit confreres between 1583 and 1615 when he was no longer able to give them. The manuscripts were discovered by the Jesuit historian Van […]
I’ve been behind on podcast production, and owe a few back episodes. I am currently upgrading some equipment to more easily produce video. In the meantime, I am producing these podcasts on the English Reformation. This is one from a few years ago that was meant to kick off the series which never came to […]
Raymond belonged to the noble Lull family and was born at Palma on the island of Mallorca in 1236. At a very early age he became a page at the royal court; and before he was thirty years old, he had been advanced to the position of marshal and high steward to King James of […]
Blessed Gentle was born at Matelica, a little town in the March of Ancona, of the noble and ancient Finaguerra family. As a young man he entered the Franciscan Order. After he completed his studies and was ordained a priest, he went to Mt. La Verna, where he experienced the sweetness of intimate union with […]
Liberatus of Lauro was a count belonging to the noble family of the counts of Brunforte in the March of Ancona. The glory of the world held no attraction for him, and so he left the castle of his forebears and repaired to the solitary little convent of Soffiano where he was invested with the […]
Born in the March of Ancona about 1260, Thomas became a Friar Minor in early youth and soon distinguished himself by his strict observance of the Franciscan rule, especially its precepts concerning the practice of poverty, and by his zeal for the salvation of souls. In 1289 he went with several other friars as a […]
Almighty God did marvelous things in the soul of St. Rose. It appears that her parents gave her that name by divine inspiration, for it was symbolic of her entire career. As long as she lived, she bloomed like a sweet-scented rose in the garden of the Church, and in full bloom was she transplanted […]
Practically every page in the history of the French Revolution is stained with blood. What is known in history as the Carmelite Massacre of 1792, added nearly two hundred victims to this noble company of martyrs. They were all priests, secular and religious, who refused to take the schismatic oath, and had been imprisoned in […]
The two Friars Minor, John of Perugia, a priest, and Peter of Sassoferrato, a lay brother, were sent to Spain with a large number of other friars by St. Francis himself. There they were assigned to the kingdom of Aragon, where they built a small convent in the little town of Teruel, and reaped much […]
