Butler's Lives of the Saints: Concise Edition, Revised and Updated by Alban Butler and Michael J Walsh (ed)

Paperback: Growth in faith can be helped by stories and legends of the saints. The lives of good men and women can be, and often are, an inspiration to us. Happily, their memory is recorded in one of the classic works on Christian sainthood, Butler's Lives of the Saints. - Cardinal Basil Hume, OSB, Archbishop of Westminster.

For more than two centuries, Butler's Lives of the Saints has been hailed as the authority on the Christian patron saints. It has come to be known as one of the most influential works of piety produced within the English Catholic community.

Now, in this new edition of the original classic, Michael Walsh has culled the rich resources of earlier editions to accentuate the more modern and best-documented saints. Echoing the charm and style of the eighteenth-century edition, Walsh's volume has been edited to make the fascinating and inspiring lives of the saints easily accessible to readers today. 

This edition features saints from many nations and backgrounds and includes new articles on recently canonized saints. The index offers the list of saints from the complete edition, and includes all new canonizations and new dates, making it the most up-to-date listing of saints available. 

Butler's Lives of the Saints was originally published in 1756-9. The revised edition in four volumes edited by Herbert J Thurston SJ was published in 1926-38. 

This edition (1991) remains a remarkable reference source and, through its comprehensive biographies, a valuable aid to devotion and a rich source of historical information.

About the author and editor: Alban Butler (1710-1773) was an English Roman Catholic priest and hagiographer. He taught philosophy and theology at the English college at Douai for a time. The middle years of his life he spent on the mission in England, working chiefly in Staffordshire, and in Norwich as chaplain to the family of the Duke of Norfolk. In 1766, he was appointed President of the English College at St Omer, from which the English Jesuits had recently been expelled, and died in that office on 15 May 1773. In the midst of a very busy life, he had found time to copy manuscripts for Bishop Challoner's Memoirs of Missionary Priests, and to write a number of learned works of his own. Butler's Lives of the Saints has remained his masterpiece.

Michael Walsh is the author of The Triumph of the Meek and editor of Butler's Lives of the Patron Saints.