This book first appeared in 1849, during the renaissance of English Catholicism that followed the 1829 Relief Act. It contains three anonymous translations of early modern biographies. The first, published in Latin in Cologne in 1617 by Sebastiano Berettari (1543–1622), and translated here from an Italian manuscript version of 1670, focuses on the Jesuit missionary to Brazil Joseph Anchieta (1534–97), praising his 'talent and diligence in human affairs' and his 'heroic virtues'. The second, based on Caspar Peter Lull's account published in both Latin and German in 1682, briefly describes the life of the nun Alvera of Virmundt (1617–49) as a model of female piety full of 'virtue and perfection'. The third is devoted to the Belgian Jesuit John Berchmans (1599–1621), remembered as a 'holy young man', and is translated from an 1826 Paris edition of a text published in 1706 by Nicholas Frizon (d. 1737).
