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 […]

Father Martin of Valencia came not from the large Spanish city of that name, but from a little village in the diocese of Leon. There he was born in 1470. Martin manifested a decided attachment for St. Francis and his order from his youth. He begged for the habit of the Franciscans shortly after he […]

Davanzato was a young student preparing for the priesthood when Blessed Luchesio was received in the Third Order at Poggibonzi. It was not long afterwards that Davanzato, who associated much with the devout Luchesio, also received the holy habit, in which he shone for many years as a special glory of the order. Shortly after […]

This blessed man belongs to the most outstanding clients of our Lady in the Franciscan Order. He was a native of France. As a result of a sermon on the Immaculate Conception, which had been delivered by a member of the Franciscan Order, he himself became a Franciscan. Due to his great learning and virtues, […]

Margaret was born in Wuerttemberg at the end of the sixteenth century, and was a member of the Lutheran Church. One day two Franciscans came to the palace in which she lived. That evening they spoke of the evil that was resulting everywhere from the heresy of the so-called Reformation, and of the power which […]

Our Divine Lord says: “By their fruits you shall know them” (Mt. 7,16), and in these words He bestows great praise on Queen Blanche, for St. Louis IX of France was her son, and his holiness was in great measure the result of her maternal rearing. Blanche, the daughter of the king of Castile, Spain, […]

      Francis was the first child of a wealthy Spanish count and heir to a rich family estate. He was endowed with rare mental gifts. When he was scarcely sixteen years of age, he attended the University of Salamanca. At the time, Father John of Puebla, who was also a count by birth, […]