The Life of Lydwine, Virgin, is of all the works of Thomas à Kempis certainly the least original and to English readers generally the least familiar. The latter fact is most probably due to the subject matter. That the work is not original, Thomas himself is our authority, when he states in his Prologue that he has read through the "book of the life of the holy and most patient virgin Lydwine," and has now sent it on to his brothers, the Canons Regular of Briel, composed in a style more brief and clear, with certain omissions and his own division of chapters and books. In fact, our venerable Author contented himself with merely editing the biography already published by one John Brugman. A comparison with the latter shows that almost throughout à Kempis has retained even the language of Brugman. This circumstance has rendered the task of translation somewhat ungrateful: but a full compensation has been found in the intense interest which a study of the life itself of this servant of God evoked. Aeterna Press

St. Lydwine was bedridden from age 15, when she broke a rib, endured a lifelong illness which was recognized to be of supernatural origin. Her body became covered with sores and abscesses and virtually came apart into three pieces-symbolically representing the condition of the Church. She ate no food except Holy Communion and experienced many mystical phenomena. An incredible story of one of the most heroic victim souls in the history of the Church.

Legends, tales, and mysteries featuring saints captivated the French at the end of the nineteenth century. As Jean Lorrain pointed out in an 1891 article for the popular weekly Le Courrier Francais, the seemingly simple language of the saints' lives, their noble battles between good and evil and the atmosphere of religious mysticism appealed to many, especially those involved in the visual and performing arts. Ironically The Third Republic (1870-1940), a regime that claimed to reinforce and institute the secular ideas of the French Revolution, was witness to this great popular interest in the saints and religious imagery. The eight essays in this work explore the popularity of the saints from the 1850s to the 1920s. The essays evaluate the role they played in literature, art, music, science, history and politics, examine portrayals of the saints' lives in both low and high culture (from children's literature, shadow plays and the popular press to literature, opera and theological studies), and reveal the prevalence of the saints in fin-de-siecle France.

Using a multidisciplinary approach, this book argues that the operation of art-as-mirror is the key to the hidden unity of Huysmans' fiction. The author claims that only the elimination of Huysmans' stylistic distortions enabled his art finally to become faithful and clear.