Like private prayers, the sacred sonnets of Gabrielle de Coignard (c. 1550–1586) and Vittoria Colonna (1492–1547) have long been soft utterances in a quiet corner of devotional literature. Bright expressions of faith amongst the problems and businesses of writing as women in sixteenth-century France and Italy, of illnesses, long widowhoods, personal grief and politics, these sonnets speak both passionately and practically about the trials and triumphs of living, and of living with faith.