{
	"slug": "the-life-of-st-alonso-rodriguez",
	"url": "https://manualistpress.com/books/the-life-of-st-alonso-rodriguez/",
	"title": "The Life of St. Alonso Rodriguez",
	"subtitle": "A Biography of the Jesuit Lay-Brother",
	"fullTitle": "The Life of St. Alonso Rodriguez: A Biography of the Jesuit Lay-Brother",
	"status": "published",
	"contributors": [
		{
			"name": "Father Francis Goldie, S.J.",
			"role": "author",
			"url": "https://manualistpress.com/authors/francis-goldie/"
		}
	],
	"summary": "The life of the Jesuit lay brother who became a saint keeping a school door, built from his own notebook and the men who lived with him.",
	"description": "Alonso Rodriguez kept the gate of the Jesuit college in Majorca for more than twenty years. He came to it after the failure of his father’s cloth business in Segovia, the deaths of his wife and three children, and a refusal from the Jesuits at thirty-eight, when he had no Latin and a body worn down by his own penances. Admitted in his fortieth year as a lay brother, he was sent to the island and never left it. When the bell rang he said, “I am coming, my Lord,” and opened the door as if God himself had rung. Asked how much of a day his mind was away from God, he said about the length of a Creed.\n\nFr. Francis Goldie, S.J., wrote this life from the account the saint was made to write under obedience, from the unpublished manuscript of his confessor, and from the sworn testimony taken for his canonization, some of it from men who had been schoolboys at his gate. A superior had to mark out how far the porter could walk before turning back to answer a second ring. For eight years prayer made him physically sick until the bell ended the hour. Told one night by his Rector to go to the Indies, he went straight to the gate in his cassock.\n\nThe book also follows the people he shaped. St. Peter Claver came as a student of twenty-five, spent a quarter of an hour with him every day for three years, and left for the Americas at his urging. His death in 1617, the eight thousand rosaries passed over his body, and the canonization of 1888 close the book, with his own sermon on St. Ignatius as an appendix.",
	"categories": [
		"Saints and Biography"
	],
	"cover": {
		"url": "https://manualistpress.com/_astro/cover.D0dOqoSK_Z1JKOGT.jpg",
		"alt": "Cover of The Life of St. Alonso Rodriguez, showing The Vision of St. Alonso Rodriguez by Francisco de Zurbarán"
	},
	"sourceEdition": {
		"title": "The Life of the Venerable Alonso Rodriguez",
		"year": 1889,
		"language": "English",
		"note": "First published in 1889 by Burns and Oates, London, as volume seventy of the Quarterly Series."
	},
	"historicalApprovals": [],
	"published": "2026-03-09",
	"updated": "2026-10-22",
	"formats": [
		{
			"type": "kindle",
			"label": "Kindle",
			"url": "https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GRWJ4WKP",
			"asin": "B0GRWJ4WKP",
			"listPrice": {
				"amount": "2.99",
				"currency": "USD",
				"asOf": "2026-10-22"
			}
		},
		{
			"type": "paperback",
			"label": "Paperback",
			"url": "https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GS6VND86",
			"asin": "B0GS6VND86",
			"pages": 262,
			"trimSize": "6 × 9 inches",
			"listPrice": {
				"amount": "14.99",
				"currency": "USD",
				"asOf": "2026-10-22"
			}
		},
		{
			"type": "hardcover",
			"label": "Hardcover",
			"url": "https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HMVNYXHF",
			"asin": "B0HMVNYXHF",
			"isbn13": "9798251388527",
			"pages": 262,
			"trimSize": "6 × 9 inches",
			"listPrice": {
				"amount": "24.99",
				"currency": "USD",
				"asOf": "2026-10-22"
			}
		}
	],
	"readOnline": "https://manualistpress.com/books/the-life-of-st-alonso-rodriguez/read/",
	"opening": "https://manualistpress.com/books/the-life-of-st-alonso-rodriguez/sample/"
}