By François Mauriac

“Where sin abounded, grace did more abound.” A mistress at the age of seventeen, a mystic at her death, Saint Margaret of Cortona exemplifies these words of Saint Paul. Born in 1247 to a farming family in the village of Laviano, Margaret was just seven years old when her mother died, leaving her headstrong and restless daughter without the steadying influence her character and temperament needed. At seventeen, Margaret took a lover who promised her marriage but provided her only an illegitimate son. After nine years, Margaret’s life was upended when her child’s father was found murdered. Struck to the heart with the magnitude of her sins and the fleeting nature of mortality, Margaret henceforth devoted herself to prayer and penance; in 1277, she was received into the Third Order of Saint Francis and devoted herself to caring for Cortona’s poor and sick until her death in 1297. 

From the sanguine pen of François Mauriac comes the riveting account of a great sinner and even greater saint, whose recklessness in sin was outdone only by her zeal in devotion to the Crucified One who had saved her. First published in English in 1948, Saint Margaret of Cortona shows its subject as a living person, a poor one made rich by the merciful love of the heavenly Bridegroom.

Lord, Thou hast struck my heart with Thy words and I have loved Thee. (Saint Augustine of Hippo)

I neither seek nor wish for aught but Thee, my Lord Jesus. (Saint Margaret of Cortona)

François Mauriac (1885–1970) was a French Catholic novelist, essayist, and critic. Critically acclaimed and respected, he received the Grand Prix du roman de l’Académie française, the Grand Cross of the Légion d’honneur, and the 1952 Nobel Prize in Lit­erature. Best-known, in English, among his many works are A Kiss for the Leper, Thérése, and Vipers’ Tangle—all available from Cluny.

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Paperback: 166pp.

ISBN: 978-1685954383