Saints are the men and women who best love Christ and His Church. They may be kings or queens, statesmen or soldiers, scholars, visionaries, workmen or beggars. They teach us the real meaning of human history, and they show us how to live in any walk of life or set of circumstances.

Included in this anthology are famous saints Francis of Assisi, Dominic, Joan of Arc, Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Avila but also more obscure ones, such as Raymond Lull and Hugh of Lincoln.

Many of these saints were martyrs, killed in periods of persecution. Others died trying to bring the knowledge of Christ to pagan tribes. Yet others built up the Church through their example and their teaching, but were never called upon to shed their blood.

These beautifully written stories follow one from another, linked through time in such a way that the reader easily obtains a vivid picture of the sweep of history, the history of Christendom as it unfolds in the lives of individual men and women right up to modern times, with the first citizen of the United States to be pronounced a saint, Mother Cabrini.

Every saint is different, every one a unique personality. Each of them finds his vocation and destiny in a different way teaching us that God has in mind for you and me a very special adventure that will be all our own. The purpose of our lives is to find that mission that only we can fulfill in the body of the Church, for the love of God and our neighbor.

Hugh Ross Williamson (1901-1978) was a prolific British historian and playwright. At first a Nonconformist, he became an Anglican clergyman and later converted to Catholicism.