BUTLER'S LIVES OF THE SAINTS
COMPLETE EDITION
EDITED, R E V I S E D A N D S V l> 1' L E M E N T E D B Y
HERBERT J. THURSTON, S.J.
and DONALD ATTWATER
Foreword by Cardinal Basil Hume, O.S.B. Archbishop of Westminster
VOLUME I JANUARY- FEBRUARY- MARCH
General Index in Volume IV
CHRISTIAN CLASSICS
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Lives of the Saints originally published 1756-9.
Revised edition by Herbert J. Thurston, S. J.,
published 1926-38. Copyright by Burns & Oates.
Second Edition, by Herbert J. Thurston, S. J. and
Donald Attwater, published 1956.
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FOREWORD
We live in a sophisticated, if not cynical, age in which the former "certainties" of faith, which brought comfort to so many, are now widely questioned. But surely a living faith can have no absolute certainties? Which of us has matured in religious belief without having experienced any intellectual difficulty? Faith, by very definition, grows through a constant, indeed daily, process, whereby doubts, old and new, must ever be conquered afresh.
This growth in faith can be helped by stories and legends of the saints. Some of these members of the Church in glory who were commemorated liturgically in former days are rather forgotten today. Yet they may have much to teach us. Furthermore, the lives of good men and women can be, and often are, an inspiration to us. Happily, their memory is recorded in this, one of the great classic works on Christian sainthood.
The heroic men and women described and speculated upon in these pages have bequeathed to us an inspiration that transcends ordinary history. It is not surprising then, that there should be a demand today for yet another edition of Butler's Lives. For this present generation seems to be seeking not the letter which kills, but the spirit which awakens.
A fresh edition of this work then, is welcome, not least because of the curiously attractive echoes of its original eighteenth-century style. The modern re-editing, moreover, tends to belie Fr Thurston's modest comment that "This book is not intended for scholars". I hope that many people will find inspiration in reading it. _ '
Archbishop of Westminster
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
IT is now over a quarter of a century since Father Herbert Thurston, S.J., was asked to undertake a drastic revision and bringing up-to-date of Alban Butler's Lives of the Saints. The first, January, volume was published in 1926. Beginning with the second, February, volume (1930), Father Thurston invoked the help of Miss Norah Leeson in the revision or rewriting of many of the lives that appear in Butler and the compilation of others ; and Miss Leeson continued to contribute in this way down to the end of the June volume, as is testified by Father Thurston's repeated grateful acknowledgements to her in the pertinent prefaces (notably June, page viii). Beginning with the July volume (1932), the present editor was entrusted with the preparation of practically the whole of the text and the writing of additions thereto, down to the end of the series in 1938. Throughout the whole work Father Thurston himself always wrote the bibliographical and other notes at the end of each " life ". The general principles upon which the work was done are set out in Father Thurston's own words in the introduction which follows.
The issuing of this second edition of the " revised Butler " in four volumes has in- volved a certain abbreviation of the 1926-38 text (one tenth was the proportion aimed at). For example, while shortened forms of Butler's daily exhortations had gener- ally been retained, it has now been found necessary to discard them entirely. While recognizing and welcoming the solid, unfanciful, scriptural character of Butler's homilies — so characteristic of eighteenth-century English Catholicism — it must also be recognized that they were often excessively repetitious and monotonous. Father Thurston points out that " Butler's main purpose in writing was undoubtedly the spiritual profit of his readers ". And it can hardly be denied that in our day and generation that purpose can be better served by letting the lives of the saints speak for themselves than by direct exhortation and " moralizing " about them. More- over, some idea of the true life of a saint, such as we, and Butler, tried to give, must be more conducive to true devotion than a false or doubtful idea : as Abbot Fernand Cabrol once wrote, " The exact knowledge of facts is of the greatest assistance to true piety ". For a Lives of the Saints in English as wholly appropri- ate to our time as Butler's was to his, the work must be done again from the begin- ning : and for that we have to await the coming of another Alban Butler, another Herbert Thurston. It has also been necessary to omit, especially in certain months, some of the brief notices of the very obscure or uncertainly-venerated saints : Father Thurston himself expressed the desirability of this in his preface to the December volume. On the other hand, room has been made for the very con- siderable amount of fresh material provided by the beatifications and canonizations of the past fifteen years, and also for some earlier holy ones who were not included in the first edition. Butler's original work contained some 1,486 separate entries ; the present version contains about 2,565.
THE LIVES OF THE SAINTS
The excisions from the 1926-38 text vary in length from one word to a page or more. But need for compression, or the addition of fresh or different matter, has also sometimes involved the rewriting of passages, or even of a whole " life ".* I have especially welcomed the opportunity to revise a great deal in July-December which I knew to be unsatisfactory, and to bring it at any rate more into line with Father Thurston's commentaries and with the text of January- June, written either by Father Thurston himself or more directly under his eye than were my contributions. Apart from verbal modifications, abbreviations and the like, the bibliographical and critical notes have been left as Father Thurston wrote them ; but some attempt has been made to bring the bibliographies up-to-date (May 1954). It was not possible to go through all the learned periodicals in various languages that have appeared since 1925, but due attention has been paid to the Analecta Bollandiana ; and I have added what is, I hope, a representative selection of new biographies and similar works. Among these last is included a number of " popular lives " for the general reader. Some of Father Thurston's critical notes have been incorporated at the end of the pertinent text for the convenience of the more casual reader.
In this edition a uniform order of presentation has been adopted. With a few special exceptions {e.g. March 1, June 9, July 9, September 26) the first saint (or feast) dealt with each day is that which is commemorated in the general calendar of the Western church, when there is one. The order of the rest is chronological. The choice of day of the month on which a saint should be entered is a far less simple matter. In general I have followed Father Thurston's arrangement (which has involved not a few alterations of date) : viz. to adopt in the case of canonized saints the indications of the 1930 {secunda post typicam) edition of the Martyr ologium Romanum, and in the case of saints and beati not included in the martyrology, to deal with them, so far as was ascertainable, on the days appointed locally for their liturgical observance. This last rule, however, does not always provide any satisfactory guidance, for the same saint may be commemorated in half a dozen different dioceses on half a dozen different days. But for those who belong to religious orders a feast-day is usually assigned in the order itself, and this I have done my best to adhere to. When for one reason or another {e.g. 3. very recently beatified subject) I have been unable to ascertain the feast-day, that person is entered under the day of his death. While this work was in progress, the Friars Minor adopted a new calendar, too late for me to make more than some of the consequent changes of date. In the title of each entry the saint is generally described according to the categories of Western liturgical usage, except that the description " confessor " is omitted throughout : any male saint not a martyr is a confessor. Occasionally the description does not agree with the office at present in use : e.g. on July 29, Felix " II " is referred to as " pope and martyr " by the Roman Martyrology and as " martyr " in the collects of the Missal and Breviary ; but he was neither a true pope nor a martyr.
As it has now been my privilege to have a considerable part in the revision of Alban Butler's Lives of the Saints it is not out of place perhaps for me here to express my complete submission to Father Thurston's judgement as to how and in what spirit that work should be done, and our full agreement in admiration of
# In doing which I have ever had in mind Alban Butler's own warning in his Introductory Discourse : " Authors who polish the style, or abridge the histories of others, are seldom to be trusted ".
vi
PREFACE
Butler and his work. As I wrote in a foreword to the July volume, I first came to the work with a good deal of prejudice against Butler. But the prejudice was due to ignorance, and was soon dispelled. In common, I think, with most people who have never had occasion to read his Lives attentively, I had supposed him to be a tiresome, credulous and uncritical writer, an epitome of those hagiographers whose object is apparently at all costs to be " edifying ", sometimes in a rather cheap and shallow way. Certainly his manner of writing is tiresome, but it does not obscure his sound sense and the solid traditional teaching of his exhorta- tions. Credulous and uncritical he is not. He is as critical a hagiographer as the state of knowledge and available materials of his age would allow, and if he from time to time records as facts miracles and other events which we now, for one reason or another, have to question or definitely reject, he neither attaches undue import- ance to them nor seeks to multiply them : holiness meant to Butler humility and charity, not marvels. In only one respect does his critical faculty seriously fail him : he wrill hear nothing against a saint and nothing in favour of a saint's opponent, whether heretic, sinner or simply opposed. That is an attitude we can no longer tolerate : without wanting to remove St Jerome's name from the calendar or to canonize Photius, we now recognize that truth is better served by admitting that St Jerome gave rein to a censorious and hasty tongue and that Photius was a man of virtuous life and great learning : that people on the right side of a controversy do not always behave well or wisely and those on the wrong side not always badly or foolishly. It was a saint, and one no less than Francis de Sales, who wrote :
There is no harm done to the saints if their faults are shown as well as their virtues. But great harm is done to everybody by those hagiographers who slur over the faults, be it for the purpose of honouring the saints ... or through fear of diminishing our reverence for their holiness. It is not as they think. These writers commit a wrong against the saints and against the whole of posterity (GEuvres, Annecy ed., vol. x, p. 345).
In the Analecta Bollandiana, vol. lvii (1939), there appeared a general review of the revised edition of Butler's Lives from the pen of Father Hippolyte Delehaye, s.j., president of the Bollandists. Therein he enumerates some of the writers who, since the days of the Golden Legend of Bd James of Voragine, applied themselves to the task of adapting the lives of the saints to the ever-changing needs of time and place : " Among the more recent and the better known, who proceed above all from Ribadeneyra, may be named Rosweyde, Giry, Morin, Baillet, Butler, Godescard, down to the deplorable compilation of Mgr Guerin, to whom we owe the Petits Bollandistes" And he adds : " The palm goes to Alban Butler . . .." But it is only fitting that there should also be quoted here Father Delehaye's more lengthy appreciation of Father Herbert Thurston.
Father Thurston is today unquestionably the savant wTho is best up in hagiographical literature, in all related matters and in the surest critical methods. His numerous writings in this field keep him always in touch with the understanding public that takes interest in this branch of knowledge ; and there was no one better qualified than he to find the answer to the delicate problem of recasting the old collection [scil., Butler's Lives] in such a way as to satisfy piety without incurring the scorn of a category of readers generally difficult to please. . . . The summary commentary as he uses it gives the new
vii
THE LIVES OF THE SAINTS
" Butler " a scientific value which makes this work of edification a tool for students as well.
Referring to Father Thurston's writings in general Father Delehaye says :
The considerable body of work wherein this learned man exercised his unusual abilities of research and criticism nearly always bears a relation, direct or indirect, to our [scil.9 the Bollandists'] studies : such are his articles on the origin of Catholic feasts and devotions ; and on those wonderful phenomena that, rightly or wrongly, are looked on as supernatural, of which the lives of the saints are full : apparitions, stigmata, levitations — a world wherein one is continually brushing against illusion and fraud, into which one may venture only with a reliable and experienced guide.*
Those words had not long been in print when Herbert Thurston was called to his reward, on November 3, 1939, to be followed eighteen months later by their writer, Father Delehaye. There may suitably be applied to them certain words of Alban Butler : " Great men, the wisest, the most prudent and judicious, the most learned and most sincere, the most free from bias of interest or passion, the most disengaged from the world, whose very goodness was a visible miracle of divine grace, are in themselves vouchers of the truth of the divine revelation of the Chris- tian religion. Their testimony is the more unexceptionable as they maintained it in a spirit of humility and charity, and in opposition to pride and all human interest."
I cannot leave this preface without expressing my warmest thanks to Father Paul Grosjean, Bollandist, for his great kindness in reading the proofs of this second edition. That he should have undertaken this task is one more example of the wide-spiritedness of the Society of Bollandists, whose learning is always at the service of the humblest student, and whose interest extends to the most modest work in the field of hagiography and associated subjects. Whatever errors, omissions and faults of judgement this edition contains are all mine : it is thanks to Father Grosjean that they are not more : and I owe to him a number of valuable corrections and references. It was thanks to the work of the Bollandists that in the first instance Father Thurston was able to accept the formidable undertaking of revising Butler. It is thanks to Father Grosjean that I can let this further revision go before the public with considerably less trepidation than I should have felt had the proofs not come under his eye : the eye, moreover, of a scholar whose learning is particularly exercised upon the hagiological history of Great Britain and Ireland.
Donald Attwater.
Feast of St Bede the Venerable, May 27, 1954.
# In 1952 Father Joseph Crehan, S.J., published a memoir of Father Thurston, which includes an invaluable bibliography of his writings, from his first article published in The Month in 1878 down to his death. Father Crehan has also edited in a single volume those of his articles that deal with stigmatization, levitation, second-sight and the like, as manifested in the lives of certain saints and others : The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism (1952).
INTRODUCTION
[The following introduction has been compiled from the relevant parts of Father Herbert Thurston's prefaces to the volumes of the 12-volume edition of the revised Butler's Lives, especially from the January preface. Words in square brackets are explanatory or connecting additions by the present editor. These prefaces were written between 1925 and 1938 ; and this must be borne in mind when reading, e.g. the second paragraph below, written in October 1925. The number of canonizations, etc., since then reinforces Father Thurston's words : it includes the beatification of groups of 191 French martyrs in 1926 and 136 Eng- lish martyrs in 1929.]
THIS is not a book intended for scholars, though it is hoped that even scholars may sometimes find it useful. Its main object is to provide a short, but readable and trustworthy, account of the principal saints who are either venerated liturgically in the Western church, or whose names for one reason or another are generally familiar to Catholics of English speech. The work has developed out of a projected new edition of the well-known Lives of the Saints by the Rev. Alban Butler, which was originally published in London between 1756 and 1759.* Upon a more careful examination of the text — many times reprinted since the eighteenth century, but always without adequate revision — it soon became apparent that to render this venerable classic acceptable to modern readers very considerable changes were required, affecting both its form and its substance. Of these modifications it is necessary to give some brief account.
To begin with, Alban Butler died in 1773, rather more than 150 years ago. During the interval the Church's roll of honour has been enlarged by the addition of many new names. Even if we consider only the period which has elapsed since the death of Pope Pius IX in 1878 — i.e. not quite half a century — there have been in that time twenty-five canonizations and fifty-one formal and independent)* beatifications, some of them involving large groups of martyrs. But over and above this, we have a constant succession of equivalent beatifications, for the most part attracting little public notice, which take the form of what is called a confirmatio cultus. This is a decree sanctioning authoritatively and after due inquiry the
* The full title of the first edition, which appeared without the author's name, was " The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs and Other Principal Saints ; compiled from original monu- ments and other authentick records ; illustrated with the remarks of judicious modern criticks and historians". Bishop Ward states that it was issued " nominally in four, really in seven octavo volumes " ; Mr Joseph Gillow, on the other hand, declares that there were five. The fact seems to be that there were only four paginations, but that the more bulky volumes, some of more than 1,000 pages, were divided into two parts by the binders and new title-pages supplied. On Bishop Challoner's advice some part of the notes, notably a long dissertation on the writings of St John Chrysostom, was omitted when the work was first published. These, however, with other supplementary matter, were printed from the author's manuscript in the second edition, which appeared in twelve volumes at Dublin in 1 779-1 780, after Butler's death.
| Each saint canonized is previously beatified. Only those beatifications are here numbered which have not so far been followed by canonization.
THE LIVES OF THE SAINTS
veneration alleged to have been paid from time immemorial to this or that servant of God who lived before 1634, when the enactments of Urban VIII regarding the canonization procedure came into force. Thus what is often called " the Beati- fication of the English Martyrs " [in 1886] was not, strictly speaking, a beatification at all. There was no solemn ceremony in St Peter's, no papal document taking the form of bull or brief, but simply a confirmatio cultus, published in 1886 with the pope's approval, but emanating from the Sacred Congregation of Rites. Never- theless, the effect of the decree was equivalent to that of a formal beatification. It justifies, subject to certain restrictions, the public veneration of any of the fifty-four martyrs therein named ; it allows Mass to be celebrated in their honour ; and it permits the faithful to invoke them individually and collectively as " Blessed ". When it is remembered that in this group are included such champions of the faith as Cardinal Fisher, Sir Thomas More, several monks of the London Charterhouse, the Countess of Salisbury (mother of Cardinal Pole), and Father Edmund Campion, s.j., not to speak of many others, secular priests, religious and laymen, it becomes clear that in virtue of this one decree Butler's lists need to be supplemented by half a dozen new entries, or possibly more.
[But many others have been added to this edition, over and above those canonized or beatified since Butler's day. In the month of June, for example, over half the separate entries] are concerned with saints or groups of saints of whom there is no record in Alban Butler's original work. Of course such a computation of numbers warrants no inference as to the adequacy or inadequacy of the selection made. It would always be easy to add a multitude of other names borrowed from the martyrologies, from local service-books and calendars, or from the oriental synaxaries. But no good purpose would be served by attempting completeness . . . completeness of any sort is a simple impossibility. No authority save that of the Holy See can pronounce upon the claims of the thousands and thousands of alleged martyrs or ascetics whose names are heaped together in local martyrologies, synaxaries, episcopal or relic lists, and similar documents, and the Holy See very wisely has taken the course of remaining silent, unless on certain occasions when it has been specially appealed to. The oriental and Celtic "saints", so called, would alone create a most formidable problem. In the " Martyrology of Gorman ", a twelfth-century compilation, 72 presumably different Colmans are mentioned, and there are also 24 Aeds, 23 Aedans and 21 Fintans. Similarly anyone who will consult the index of the most recent edition of the Martyr ologium Romanum will find that 67 saints named Felix are therein commemorated. Even in the sixty-six folio volumes of the Bollandist Acta Sanctorum, quotquot toto orbe coluntar vel a catholicis scriptoribus celebrantur, there is no assumption of exhaustiveness. Under each day a long list is printed of praetermissi aut in alios dies rejecti, and the reason why these names are passed over amounts in most cases either to a doubt whether a title to inclusion on the ground of cultus has been made out, or else to the lack of information concerning the facts of their individual history. At a period when the public recognition of holiness amounted to no more than a local veneration, sanctioned at least tacitly by the bishop, it is exceedingly hard to decide which of the devout servants of God who have had the epithet " sanctus " or " beatus " at one time or other attached to their names, are to be regarded as invested with the religious halo of an aequipollent canonization.
The principal aim of such a revision as the present must be to provide a brief account of the lives of those holy people whose claims to sanctity have either been
INTRODUCTION
attested by a formal pronouncement of the Holy See, or have met with definite liturgical recognition at an earlier period in response to popular acclaim. Unfor- tunately we must admit that in not a few cases veneration has been widely paid to personages of whose real history nothing certain is known, though the pious imagination of hagiographers has often run riot in supplying the deficiency. Further, there are names included in the Roman Martryology which stand only for phantom saints, some of them due to the strange blunders of medieval copyists, others representing nothing more than prehistoric sagas which have been embel- lished and transformed by a Christian colouring. Where such stories have become familiar and dear to the devout believers of earlier generations, it did not seem right to pass them by entirely unnoticed, even though the extravagance of the fiction is patent to all who read.*
It has been suggested above that in the case of holy people held in honour during the first thousand years of the Church's history either for their virtues or for their violent death in the cause of Christ, it is by no means easy to determine which among them should be recognized as saints and as entitled to the prefix often attached to their names in historical records. In none of these cases can we point to a papal bull of canonization or to any formal acceptance by the Holy See other than inclusion in the Missal or a notice in the official martyrology read at Prime. So far as such servants of God have a claim to the honour of saintship, they owe the privilege to what is called an " aequipollent " (i.e. virtual) canonization. It is a sort of courtesy title in fact. In view of the confused ideas entertained by many people upon this subject, I have ventured, in Appendix II of the [last] volume, to reproduce with some additions a brief statement on the matter which I had occasion to wrrite in another connection and which appeared in The Tablet of January 15, 1938. Appendix I consists of some few biographical notes concerning Alban Butler himself. The memoir published in 1799 by his nephew, Mr Charles Butler, seemed to me too verbose and characteristic of the tone of the eighteenth century to bear reprinting entire, but I have borrowed from it a few passages and excerpts from letters which preserved matter of biographical interest.
More serious, however, than the comparatively simple task of supplying the lacunae of a book compiled nearly two centuries ago is the difficulty caused by the peculiarities of Butler's style. Charles Butler, in a memoir prefixed to an edition of the Lives brought out in 1798, seems to have formed an estimate of his uncle's literary gifts which most modern readers will find it difficult to endorse. He says, for example :
Our Author's style is peculiar to himself ; it partakes more of the style of the writers of the last century than of the style of the present age. It possesses great merits, but sometimes is negligent and loose. Mr Gibbon mentioned it to the editor [i.e. Charles Butler] in warm terms of commendation ; and was astonished when he heard how much of Our Author's life had been spent abroad. Speaking of Our Author's Lives of the Saints, he calls it a " work of merit — the sense and learning belong to the author, his prejudices are those
* [Even exploded legends have their spiritual, and other, significance : one reader has pointed out what an excellent lesson in recollection and freedom from curiosity is provided by St Manna's sojourn undetected in the monastery (February 12). But didactic fiction has gone rather out of fashion, and it is not everyone who can say of his amusement at hagiographical excesses that " it is a sympathetic and tolerant smile and in no way disturbs the religious emotion excited by the picture of the virtues and heroic actions of the saints " (H. Delehaye).— D. A.]
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of his profession ".* As it is known what prejudice means in Mr Gibbon's vocabulary, Our Author's relatives accept the character.
It will be noticed that Gibbon's judgement upon the style of the Lives of the Saints is not recorded in his Decline and Fall. We only know it by Charles Butler's report, and it is possible that the nephew was mistaken in attaching serious import- ance to phrases which may have been spoken merely out of politeness and not without a suspicion of irony. Even when full allowance is made for the peculiarities of eighteenth-century diction, Butler's English impresses the reader nowadays as being almost intolerably verbose, slipshod in construction, and wanting in any sense of rhythm. He is hardly ever content to use one verb or one adjective where he can possibly employ two, and it seems difficult to believe that when he had once written a passage, it ever occurred to him to revise it with a view to making his meaning clear. As compared with the language of such contemporaries as David Hume, Smollett, Goldsmith, and even Samuel Johnson, I seem to detect a curiously foreign and latinized note in all that Butler published. One gets the impression that while he wrote in English, he often thought in French, and that a good many of the oddities of phraseology which continually jar upon the modern ear are due less to the fact that his diction is archaic than to a certain lack of familiarity with the English idioms of his own time.
It may not perhaps be out of place to quote here a single example — and it is typical — of how Butler has often filled out his space with mere verbiage. In his account of St Ethelbert, King of Kent, the bretwalda who received St Augustine and was converted by him to Christianity, Butler writes as follows. I quote from the library edition of 1812 :
Divine providence by these means [i.e. the marriage with Bertha, etc.] mercifully prepared the heart of a great king to entertain a favourable opinion of our holy religion, when St Augustine landed in his dominions : to whose life the reader is referred for an account of this monarch's happy conversion to the faith. From that time he appeared quite changed into another man, it being for the remaining twenty years of his life his only ambition and endeavour to establish the perfect reign of Christ, both in his own soul and in the hearts of all his subjects. His ardour in the exercises of penance and devotion never suffered any abatement, this being a property of true virtue, which is not to be acquired without much labour and pains, self-denial and watchfulness, resolution and constancy. Great were, doubtless, the difficulties and dangers which he had to encounter in subduing his passions, and in vanquishing many obstacles which the world and devil failed not to raise ; but these trials were infinitely subservient to his spiritual advancement, by rousing him continually to greater vigilance and fervour, and by the many victories and the exercise of all heroic virtues of which they furnished the occasions.
Now this wordy panegyric is justified in precisely the measure in which such statements would probably be true of any other holy person. We know absolutely nothing about St Ethelbert beyond what Bede tells us, and there is no hint in Bede of any of the things here dwelt upon. He says not one syllable about a sudden change of conduct, or about unremitting " exercises of penance and devotion ", or
* See Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Bury's edition), vol. v (1911), p. 36, note 76.
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INTRODUCTION
about his struggles with temptation and the obstacles which the world and the Devil failed not to raise. The whole description has been evolved by Butler out of his inner sense of the probabilities of the case. This atmosphere of superlatives, without foundation in known facts, is surely regrettable. It can hardly fail to undermine all confidence in the author's statements, and when heroic deeds are recounted which really are based on trustworthy evidence, the reader is naturally led to ask himself whether these things also are mere padding introduced to give substance to a narrative which was too conspicuously jejune.
I must confess, then, that in the almost hopeless effort to secure some sort of harmony between Butler's Lives and the large number of biographies now added to bring the work up to date, I have constantly treated his original text with scant respect. It was impossible to leave unaltered such a description as the following — I quote one example out of hundreds — " melting away with the tenderest emotions of love, he [St Odilo] fell to the ground ; the ecstatic agitations of his body bearing evidence to that heavenly fire which glowed in his soul " ; or, again, a few lines lower down, " he excelled in an eminent spirit of compunction and contemplation. Whilst he was at prayer, trickling tears often watered his cheeks."* Moreover, some considerable economy of space was necessary in order to make room for the additional material and so I have more or less systematically eliminated the footnotes and the small-type excursuses which are found in the second and subsequent editions. Butler made excellent use of his authorities, and he un- doubtedly went to the best sources then available, but in almost every department of knowledge new and momentous discoveries have been made since the beginning of the nineteenth century, so that almost all the English hagiographer's erudition is now out of date. The only practical course seemed to be to omit the notes, replacing them at the end of each biography by a few references to standard authori- ties, and adding, where the matter seemed to call for it, a brief discussion of the historical problems involved. In not a few instances it has, for one reason or another, seemed best to set aside not only the notes, but the biography itself, and to rewrite the whole. f
Butler's main purpose in writing was undoubtedly the spiritual profit of his readers, and from the beginning of January to the end of December it is his practice to conclude the first biography of the group belonging to each day with a short exhortation.^ In this connection an extract or two from Butler's preface to the Lives will serve to illustrate the ideal which he had before him in compiling his magnum opus, and will at the same time furnish a more favourable specimen of his thought and of his style than is commonly met with in the body of the work. He says, for example, very truly :
The method of forming men to virtue by example is, of all others, the shortest, the most easy, and the best adapted to all circumstances and dis- positions. Pride recoils at precepts, but example instructs without usurping the authoritative air of a master ; for, by example, a man seems to advise and teach himself. ... In the lives of the saints we see the most perfect maxims
* In the life of St Odilo on January i, vol. i, p. 43, of the edition of 1812. t [On pages vi-viii of the March volume (1931), readers interested in the matter will find a note by Father Thurston about the relation between certain passages in the text of Butler's " Lives " and passages in The Lives of the Saints (1872-77) by the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould. — D.A.] J Cf. page v above.
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THE LIVES OF THE SAINTS
of the gospel reduced to practice, and the most heroic virtue made the object of our senses, clothed as it were with a body, and exhibited to view in its most attractive dress. . . . Whilst we see many sanctifying themselves in all states, and making the very circumstances of their condition, whether on tht throne, in the army, in the state of marriage, or in the deserts, the means of their virtue and penance, we are persuaded that the practice of perfection is possible also to us, in every lawful profession, and that we need only sanctify our employments by a perfect spirit, and the fervent exercises of religion, to become saints ourselves, without quitting our state in the world. . . . Though we cannot imitate all the actions of the saints, we can learn from them to practise humility, patience, and other virtues in a manner suiting our circum- stances and state of life ; and can pray that we may receive a share in the benedictions and glory of the saints. As they who have seen a beautiful flower-garden, gather a nosegay to smell at the whole day, so ought we, in reading, to cut out some flowers by selecting certain pious reflections and sentiments with which we are most affected ; and these we should often renew during the day ; lest we resemble a man who, having looked at himself in the glass, goeth away, and forgetteth what he had seen of himself.
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CONTENTS OF VOLUME I JANUARY
PAGE
1. Octave of the Birthday of Our Lord Jesus Christ .... I
St Concordius, martyr ......... 3
St Almachius, or Telemachus, martyr ...... 3
St Euphrosyne, virgin ......... 4
St Eugendus, or Oyend, abbot ....... 5
St Fulgentius, bishop ......... 6
St Felix of Bourges, bishop ........ 9
St Clams, abbot .......... 10
St Peter of Atroa, abbot . ....... 10
St William of Saint Benignus, abbot . . . . . . 12
St Odilo, abbot 12
Bd Zdislava, matron . . . . . . . . .14
Bd Hugolino of Gualdo ......... 14
Bd Joseph Tommasi ......... 15
2. The Holy Name of Jesus 18
St Macarius of Alexandria ........ 19
St Munchin, bishop .... ..... 21
St Vincentian .......... 22
St Adalhard, or Adelard, abbot 22
Bd Ayrald, bishop ......... 23
Bd Stephana Quinzani, virgin ....... 24
St Caspar del Bufalo ......... 25
3. St Frances Xavier Cabrini, virgin. (See Vol. IV, p. 593ff)
St Anthems, pope and martyr ....... 26
St Peter Balsam, martyr 26
St Genevieve, or Genovefa, virgin . 28
St Bertilia of Mareuil, widow . 30
4. St Gregory of Langres, bishop 30
St Pharaildis, virgin . . . 31
St Rigobert, archbishop ........ 32
Bd Roger of Ellant 32
Bd Oringa, virgin 32
Bd Elizabeth Ann Seton (See Appendix III)
5. St Telesphorus, pope and martyr . . . . . . 33
St Apollinaris, virgin 33
St Syncletica, virgin . . . . . . . . -33
St Simeon the Stylite 34
St Convoyon, abbot 37
St Dorotheus the Younger, abbot . . . . . . .38
StGerlac 38
Bd John Nepomucen Neumann (See Appendix III)
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January] THE LIVES OF THE SAINTS
PAGE
6. The Epiphany of Our Lord Jesus Christ 39
St Wiltrudis, widow ......... 42
St Erminold, abbot ......... 42
St Guarinus, or Gu6rin, bishop ....... 42
Bd Gertrude of Delft, virgin ........ 43
St John de Ribera, archbishop ....... 43
Bd Raphaela Mary, virgin ........ 44
7. St Lucian of Antioch, martyr ........ 46
St Valentine, bishop ......... 47
StTillo 47
St Aldric, bishop .......... 48
StReinold 48
St Canute Lavard, martyr ... ..... 49
Bd Edward Waterson, martyr . . . . . . . .49
8. St Apollinaris of Hierapolis, bishop . . . . . . .50
St Lucian of Beauvais, martyr . . . . . . .51
St Severinus of Noricum . . . . . . . .52
St Severinus of Septempeda, bishop . . . . . . 53
St Erhard, bishop . 53
St Gudula, virgin .......... 54
St Pega, virgin 54
St Wulsin, bishop .......... 55
St Thorfinn, bishop ......... 55
9. St Marciana, virgin and martyr . . . . . . .56
SS. Julian and Basilissa, and Companions, martyrs . . . . 56
St Peter of Sebastea, bishop . . . . . . . .57
St Waningus, or Vaneng ........ 58
St Adrian of Canterbury, abbot . 58
St Berhtwald of Canterbury, archbishop . . . . . 59
Bd Alix Le Clercq, virgin . . . . . . . -59
10. St Marcian ........... 63
St John the Good, bishop ........ 63
St Agatho, pope .......... 64
St Peter Orseolo .......... 64
St William of Bourges, archbishop ....... 65
Bd Gregory X, pope ......... 66
11. St Hyginus, pope 67
St Theodosius the Cenobiarch ....... 68
St Salvius, or Sauve, bishop ........ 70
12. St Arcadius, martyr 70
SS. Tigrius and Eutropius, martyrs . . . . . .71
St Caesaria, virgin ......... 72
St Victorian, abbot ......... 72
St Benedict, or Benet, Biscop, abbot 72
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CONTENTS
[January
PAGE
13. St Agrecius, bishop St Berno, abbot Bd Godfrey of Kappenberg Bd Jutta of Huy, widow Bd Veronica of Binasco, virgin
14. St Hilary of Poitiers, bishop and doctor St Felix of Nola .... St Macrina the Elder, widow . SS. Barbasymas and his Companions, martyrs The Martyrs of Mount Sinai . St Datius, bishop .... St Kentigern, or Mungo, bishop Bd Odo of Novara St Sava, archbishop Bd Roger of Todi .... Bd Odoric of Pordenone Bd Giles of Lorenzana . St Antony Pucci ....
15. St Paul the Hermit St Macarius the Elder . St Isidore of Alexandria St John Calybites .... St Ita, virgin .... St Maurus, abbot .... St Bonitus, or Bonet, bishop .
St Ceolwulf
Bd Peter of Castelnau, martyr Bd Francis de Capillas, martyr
16. St Marcellus I, pope and martyr St Priscilla, matron St Honoratus of Aries, bishop St Fursey, abbot .... Bd Ferreolus, bishop and martyr St Henry of Cocket
SS. Berard and his Companions, martyrs Bd Gonsalo of Amarante
17. St Antony the Abbot SS. Speusippus, Eleusippus and Meleusippus, martyrs St Genulf, or Genou, bishop . St Julian Sabas .... St Sabinus of Piacenza, bishop St Sulpicius II, or Sulpice, bishop . St Richimir, abbot Bd Roseline, virgin
18. St Peter's Chair at Rome St Prisca, virgin and martyr . St Volusian, bishop St Deicolus, or Desle, abbot .
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January] THE LIVES OF THE SAINTS
PAGE
Bd Beatrice cTEste of Ferrara, widow 1 16
Bd Christina of Aquila, virgin 117
19. SS. Marius, Martha, Audifax and Abachum, martyrs . . .117 St Germanicus, martyr . . . . . . . . .118
St Nathalan, bishop 118
St Albert of Cashel, bishop . . . . . . . .119