Life of Saint John Francis Regis

This life of the sainted missionary, John Francis Regis, of the Society of Jesus, was undertaken by the author very much as a labor of love, and not altogether without a certain sense of justice, so to speak, toward a man highly honored in his own country, but of whom English-speaking readers of sacred biography know scarcely anything at all. Or, if indeed, a few may perhaps have heard of Saint Regis, still their ideas have been so obscured by the clouds of misunderstanding and even calumny which overshadowed the man himself, when he lived, that it were better to know nothing at all than to lend credence to some of the things said of this Saint, -for instance, that he was headstrong and untractable, that he was even dismissed from the Society of Jesus. It is the aim of this biography to tell in a simple and straightforward way the true story of what manner of man Saint John Francis Regis really was. The so-called "ultra-pious" method has been avoided, -yet, on the other hand, the idea of some recent writers, who seem to delight in emphasizing the human failings of the saints, is considered a more serious fault than over-idealization, and so finds no place in this book