ABSTRACT
William H. Neligan was an Irish writer, minister, and scholar at the Trinity University, Dublin. Little is known about him other than his surviving writings. His book, Saint Characters, offers an account of the lives of various people presented for canonisation within the Roman Catholic church with the intention of producing a text both ‘interesting and instructive’. In this chapter the author focuses on Neligan's chapter on Francis Xavier Bianchi, who was eventually canonised in 1951. Bianchi was born in Italy, felt called to religious life in his teens, and eventually entered the Roman Catholic Barnabite Order. He was especially known for his charity towards the poor, ascetic living, and his experience of religious ecstasy. Neligan describes Christian saintly experience as an embodied transformation, educating his readers on how to identify not only future saints amongst them but providing a model for their own spiritual health.
