This book is important because it examines with academic reverence the lives of some holy lay people, how some became saints and why others of dazzling virtue didn't. . . . This is inspiring reading. . . . The author's scholarship is impressive throughout. Cultural influences get careful attention, Vatican II documents root their judgements in contemporary theology, and the range and quality of their sources is impressive. -National Catholic Reporter
More than thirty five-years ago, the Second Vatican Council emphasized anew the universal call to holiness. Yet many lay women and men still ask: how can one respond to this call to holiness in the midst of the world? In other words, how can one live a 'secular sanctity'? Part of the problem is that there has been a scarcity of lay models, especially when searching among the canonized saints. This collection of essays creatively fills that gap. -INTAMS Review
Ann W. Astell is professor of English at Purdue University and author of The Song of Songs in the Middle Ages (1990), Job, Boethius, and Epic Truth (1994), Chaucer and the Universe of Learning (1996), and Political Allegory in Late Medieval England (1999).