The Library
1693 works catalogued century by century, from the literature the Bible was written among to the present — each with a note on what it is, why it lasted, and where to read it.
1201–1300
2 works
1225
Italian
Cantico delle Creature
Francis of Assisi · 1181/82–1226
Praise offered through Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Brother Wind, Sister Water, and finally Sister Bodily Death — composed while nearly blind and in constant pain.
c. 1270–1306
Italian
Laude
Jacopone da Todi · c. 1230–1306
Vernacular songs of love, self-mockery, and savage satire against a pope who imprisoned him, alongside a dramatic lament of Mary at the cross.
1301–1400
4 works
c. 1354
Italian
Specchio di vera penitenza
Jacopo Passavanti · c. 1302–1357
Lenten sermons on confession and penance, illustrated with vivid cautionary tales of the damned appearing to the living.
c. 1370–1380
Italian
Catherine of Siena · 1347–1380
Nearly four hundred letters to popes, queens, mercenaries, and prisoners — including one telling the pope to be a man and come back to Rome.
1377–1378
Italian
Il Dialogo della Divina Provvidenza
Catherine of Siena · 1347–1380
A conversation between a soul and God the Father, built on the image of Christ as a bridge over the flood, and unsparing about corrupt clergy.
c. 1370–1390
Italian
I Fioretti di San Francesco
Anonymous
Stories of Francis and his companions — the wolf of Gubbio, the sermon to the birds, the discourse on perfect joy in the freezing rain.
1401–1500
4 works
c. 1425–1444
Italian
Bernardino of Siena · 1380–1444
Sermons preached in town squares for hours at a stretch and taken down verbatim by listeners — on usury, on gossip, on family life, on the holy name of Jesus.
c. 1438; published 1475
Italian
Catherine of Bologna · 1413–1463
Seven weapons against temptation, written by an abbess who also describes her own long assault by doubts about whether anything she believed was true.
c. 1490–1510; recorded by disciples
Italian
Catherine of Genoa · 1447–1510
Purgatory described not as punishment but as the soul's own joyful burning away of what keeps it from a love it can already see.
c. 1495–1510; recorded by disciples
Italian
Catherine of Genoa · 1447–1510
A dialogue among the Soul, the Body, and Self-Love on the long process of being stripped of self-interest, based on her own account of forty years.
10 of 1693 works