Catherine of Genoa was an Italian Catholic saint and mystic, admired for her work among the sick and the poor and remembered because of various writings describing both these actions and her mystical experiences. She was a member of the noble Fieschi family, and spent most of her life and her means serving the sick, especially during the plague which ravaged Genoa in 1497 and 1501. She died in that city in 1510.

Friedrich von Hügel was an influential Austrian Catholic layman, religious writer, and Christian apologist. Although classified with Modernists due to his friendships with Alfred Loisy and George Tyrrell, von Hügel rejected the Modernist theory of belief.