A Man to Heal Differences: Essays and Talks on St. Frances de Sales

This volume collects ten talks and essays by Dr. Stopp delivered or published over four decades. These pieces focus on De Sales' education at the Jesuit College de Clermont in Paris, attitudes to friendship, literary art, ecumenism, reception in Anglican England, and links with other major figures of the Christian tradition, such as St. Francis of Assisi, St. Teresa of Avila, and Cardinal Newman.

Upon her death in November 1996, The London Times described Dr. Stopp thusly: "A gifted scholar who achieved distinction in two quite different fields, Elisabeth Stopp was also a laywoman of quiet authority and influence in English Roman Catholicism." Dr. Stopp received her Ph.D. in 1937 from Cambridge, where she was later made a Fellow of Girton College and University Lecturer in Modern and Medieval Languages. In the area of Salesian studies, she published many articles and a half-dozen books, including St. Francis de Sales: Selected Letters (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), Madame de Chantal: Portrait of a Saint (London: Faber & Faber, 1962; Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1963; Spanish translation, Madrid: Rialp, 1966), and St. Francis de Sales: A Testimony by St. Chantal (London: Faber & Faber, 1967). Dr. Stopp also published widely on German Romanticism. Recently, she completed an annotated translation of Goethe's Maxims and Reflections for the "Penguin Classics" series.


Dr. Stopp was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1963. In recognition of her scholarship in the field of Romanticism, she received in 1982 the medal of the Eichendorff-Gesellschaft. This is the first time the medal was awarded to a woman and a non-German. In 1986, she received the Cambridge Doctorate of Letters. Her Salesian work was recognized by the honor of Affiliation to the Order of the Visitation.