Saint Francis of Assisi is arguably the most attractive saint ever produced by the Catholic Church. The unusually high regard with which he is held has served to insulate him from any real criticism of the kind of sanctity that he embodied: sanctity based first and foremost on his deliberate pursuit of poverty. In this book, Kenneth Baxter Wolf takes a fresh look at Francis and the idea of voluntary poverty as a basis for Christian perfection. Wolf's point of departure is a series of simple but hitherto unasked questions about the precise nature of Francis's poverty: How did he go about...

In The Life and Afterlife of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, Kenneth Baxter Wolf offers a study and translation of the testimony given by witnesses at the canonization hearings of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, who died in 1231 in Marburg, Germany, at the age of twenty-four. The bulk of the depositions were taken from people who claimed to have been healed by the intercession of this new saint. Their descriptions of their maladies and their efforts to secure relief at Elizabeth's shrine in Marburg provide the modern reader not only with a detailed, inside look at the genesis of a saint's cult,...

Originally published in 1988, this book offers an important insight into the so-called 'martyrdom movement' that occurred in Cordoba in the 850s. It includes a biographical treatment of the ninth-century Cordoban priest Eulogius, who witnessed and recorded the martyrdoms of over forty Christians at the hands of Muslim authorities. Eulogius' hagiographical task was complicated by the fact that many of the Christians in Cordoba at the time resented the provocative actions of the martyrs that led to their executions, claiming that their public denunciations of Islam were inappropriate given the...