Alban Butler (1710–1773)

First written in the mid-eighteenth century, Butler's Lives of the Saints, now available in a four-volume set was revised in 1956 to include 2,565 saints compared to the original 1,486. Carefully edited Herbert J. Thurston, S.J., and Donald Attwater to retain the charms of Butler's original prose style, this work of devotion and scholarship offers truths central to Christianity and underlying themes of Christian love.

Fr. Alban Butler’s Lives of the Saints provides believers with saints that are spread over the Roman Catholic Church’s liturgical year. Each entry is approximately one page long and is complimented with a reflection on a particular saint. Fr. Butler’s work spans a career of over 30 years of meticulous research on the Lives of the Saints. This edition was originally published in the 1750s. Since then the text has been updated to include saints who have been canonized by the Catholic show more Church after that period. These were martyrs, confessors, virgins, popes, and bishops.
The introduction to this book lists and describes a number of movable feast days in the Church’s calendar like Advent, Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Easter Sunday, and Christ the King among others. But the overall benefit of this devotional to Roman Catholics is the value of all the virtuous lessons that the saints have to teach. Daily a catholic can be guided by the teachings of a saint for that day. show less

First written in the mid-eighteenth century, Butler's Lives of the Saints, now available in a four-volume set was revised in 1956 to include 2,565 saints compared to the original 1,486. Carefully edited Herbert J. Thurston, S.J., and Donald Attwater to retain the charms of Butler's original prose style, this work of devotion and scholarship offers truths central to Christianity and underlying themes of Christian love.

First written in the mid-eighteenth century, Butler's Lives of the Saints, now available in a four-volume set was revised in 1956 to include 2,565 saints compared to the original 1,486. Carefully edited Herbert J. Thurston, S.J., and Donald Attwater to retain the charms of Butler's original prose style, this work of devotion and scholarship offers truths central to Christianity and underlying themes of Christian love.