Between 1594 and 1598, a preacher named Francois converted 72,000 Protestants to the Catholic Faith. These are his words. One of the most remarkable and well-documented events in Catholic history began when a young priest, St. Francis de Sales, volunteered to re-evangelize the Calvinists of the Chablais. Finding his preaching forcefully rejected, St. Francis de Sales shrewdly switched tactics and began a written apologetics campaign, posting pamphlets on walls and slipping them beneath doors under the cover of night. His defense of the Faith was so clear and thorough that at the end of four years nearly the entire population of 72,000 had returned to the Catholic Faith! These powerful little tracts are as relevant today as they were in the late 1500s. St. Francis de Sales draws support from Scripture, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church to address questions still frequently posed by modern Protestants. Revered as some of the most cogent arguments against Protestantism ever penned; they present a defense of the Catholic Faith that has never been equaled. Now with beautiful new cover, easier to read size, updated typesetting, and the original content. 320 pps PB St. Francis de Sales was one of the most effective Catholic apologists and evangelists of the past five centuries. Undoubtedly, he is the most effective apologist to Protestant Calvinists who has ever lived. Steve Wood (Family Life Center International)

The Catholic contribution to English literary culture has been widely neglected or misunderstood. This book sets out to rehabilitate a wide range of Catholic imaginative writing, while exposing the role of anti-Catholicism as an imaginative stimulus to mainstream writers in Tudor and Stuart England. It discusses canonical figures such as Sidney, Spenser, Webster and Middleton, those whose presence in the canon has been more fitful, and many who have escaped the attention of literary critics. Among the themes to emerge are the anti-Catholic imagery of revenge tragedy and the definitive contribution made by Southwell and Crashaw to the post-Reformation revival of religious verse in England. Alison Shell offers a fascinating exploration of the rhetorical stratagems by which Catholics sought to demonstrate simultaneous loyalties to the monarch and to their religion, and of the stimulus given to the Catholic literary imagination by the persecution and exile so many of these writers suffered.