What to read after The Life of St. Catherine of Siena?

THOUGH saints have sometimes been at loggerheads and, for instance, you would trust St. Jerome on St. Augustine no more than you would Manning on Newman, a special authority invests one saint when he does bring himself to write the life of another. Not that literary skill is guaranteed, but that, in the first place, informed sympathy with the heart of the matter can be expected, a response to what holiness is about, some account of the essential business which does not reduce it to the terms of a psychological case-history or substitute for it merely a natural, if unusual, reaction to the conditions of environment. Next, when the two have lived and prayed closely together, have followed the same daily round and undergone the same weather, have shared friends, acquaintances, and critics, have belonged to the same religious family and engaged in common enterprises, and, finally, have kept no secrets from each other, then you rightly look for an appreciation of the individual embodiment of holiness, together with the moods, the cast of countenance, and even the quirks that went with this falling and remaining in love with God.