Saints Behaving Badly | Thomas J. Craughwell

Saints are not born, they are made. And many, as Saints Behaving Badly reveals, were made of very rough materials indeed. The first book to lay bare the less than saintly behavior of thirty-two venerated holy men and women, it presents the scandalous, spicy, and sleazy detours they took on the road to sainthood. In nineteenth- and twentieth-century writings about the lives of the saints, authors tended to go out of their way to sanitize their stories, often glossing over the more embarrassing cases with phrases such as, "he/she was once a great sinner." In the early centuries of the Church and throughout the Middle Ages, however, writers took a more candid and spirited approach to portraying the saints. Exploring sources from a wide range of periods and places, Thomas Craughwell discovered a veritable rogues gallery of sinners-turned-saint. There's St. Olga, who unleashed a bloodbath on her husband's assassins; St. Mary of Egypt, who trolled the streets looking for new sexual conquests; and Thomas Becket, who despite his vast riches refused to give his cloak to a man freezing to death in the street. Written with wit and respect (each profile ends with what inspired the saint to give up his or her wicked ways) and illustrated with amusing caricatures, Saints Behaving Badly will entertain, inform, and even inspire readers. 

About the Author

Thomas J. Craughwell was the author of Saints Behaving Badly, Urban Legends, Alligators in the Sewer and 222 Other Urban Legends, Saints for Every Occasion: 101 of Heaven’s Most Powerful Patrons, and Do Blue Bedsheets Bring Babies? He wrote about saints for the the Wall Street Journal, St. Anthony Messenger, and Catholic Digest, and discussed saints on CNN and EWTN. His book Stealing Lincoln’s Body was made into a two-hour documentary on the History Channel. He passed away in 2018.