St. Catherine of Bologna, much venerated in her own city, has been little known outside of her native region but interest in her is now increasing. The outline of her life is clear and her own work, The Seven Spiritual Weapons, tells a good deal about her inner experiences and early years in the cloister. The introduction to this translation situates her life in the history of Ferrara and Bologna and studies how the external history of the community impinged on Catherine's own religious experience and how it was interwoven with her successful struggle against depression.

St. Winefride, beheaded by a lustful suitor, was brought back to life by the power of prayer. On the site where her blood was spilled, a spring of healing water erupted and became the focus of a miracle-working cult which gained influence throughout the Middle Ages and the early modern period. Two Medival Lives of Saint Winefride brings together two twelfth-century accounts of her life, miracles and relics, with a study of British well-cults and her significance in medival and early modern Britain.