The Life of St. Charles Borromeo

by Edward Healy Thompson

The life of St Charles Borromeo being one of extra­ordinary and ceaseless activity, it is necessarily quite impossible within a limited space to do full justice to the subject. A mere specimen of his labors could not but fail of conveying an adequate impression of this marvelous saint, the multiplicity no less than the per­fection of whose actions constituted one of the most striking features in his career of sanctity. On the other hand, to attempt to enumerate all with anything like the minuteness of detail which his biographer Giussano has judged necessary for enabling the world to form a due estimate of his merits, would be either to swell the vol­ume to the dimensions of a quarto, or to present the reader with a mere catalogue of facts as bare and dry as the index of a book. The writer has endeavored to adopt the middle course, of giving sufficient detail to the most prominent actions and labors of the saint's life, while according a more passing and general notice to the rest. Much, therefore, has been necessarily omitted, or but slightly touched upon, which in itself was well worthy of an ample record.

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Published January 1, 2020

About the author

Edward Healy Thompson (1813, Oakham, Rutland - 21 May 1891, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire) was an English Roman Catholic writer.

He was educated at Oakham School and Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Having taken Anglican orders, he obtained a curacy at Calne, Wiltshire.

After some years of the Anglican ministry at Marylebone, Ramsgate, and elsewhere, he became a Catholic in 1846. The rest of his life, the latter years of which were spent at Cheltenham, he devoted to religious literature.