LIFE AND WISDOM OF CATHERINE OF SIENA, THE

Saints Alive: The saints are gurus for our times. Despite historical distance, bizarre stories about them, and their obvious human frailty, their lives reflect a deep level of truth. They have become icons to last through the ages, pointing beyond themselves to profound truths about the spiritual world and our place within it. Saints Alive introduces the stories of the saints, reflects on their meaning for today and shows that true wisdom is timeless.

Was Catherine of Siena a mystic who restrained her appetites by rigorous fasting, or was she an anorexic? Was she a visionary who gazed on God, or was she a hysteric? She learnt to read in her late teens and to write at the age of thirty. As a virtual illiterate, how can she have contributed to the high tradition of spiritual writing? To recapture the life of Catherine of Siena, Lavinia Byrne dismantles some of the stories told about her and allows her to tell her own.