The Nature of Sanctity

The Nature of Sanctity: A Dialogue by the Catholic author Ida Friederike Coudenhove is a book about holiness and what it means to be a saint.

Burns selected the short book The Nature of Sanctity to include as part of volume one, Essays on Religion and Culture, in the series The Persistence of Order.

Essays on Religion and Culture was first published in 1932 by Sheed and Ward in London and then republished in 2019 by Cluny Media.

“A” and “B” argue whether sainthood is loving friendship with God, expressed through humility and sacrifice, and the nature of St. Elizabeth's banishment from Wartburg.

Part three is The Cloister and the World about discerning one's vocation in life (published in German in 1934 and translated into English 1935).

writes that, “Coudenhove's rapid but searching analysis of the ideas of sacrifice, of self-denial, and of human and divine love will help many to understand the problem more truly and to catch a glimpse of the solution.”[7] In a review from 1934 in the Catholic magazine America, The Nature of Sanctity is described as “strong spiritual meat, and there is a deal of frank–at times, maybe a bit too frank–discussion; but this is needed badly if men and women of today are to be enticed at all to try to be saints.”[8] Agnus Dun in Anglican Theological Review writes that The Nature of Sanctity’s “value lies in its interpretation of the dominant motives and inner tensions of the radically ascetic life.”[9]

Also, The Nature of Sanctity received mention in The Times Literary Supplement of London in 1933, which wrote a short synopsis of the book.