St. Mary Magdeline, by Titian [1565] (Public Domain Image) -- See July 22. |
Lives of the Saintsby Alban Butler, Benziger Bros. edition[1894] |
This is the Benziger Brothers edition of Alban Butler's Lives of the Saints. Butler (1711-1773), was an English Roman Catholic priest. This, his principal literary work, was published between 1756 and 1759. Lives of the Saints has hundreds of capsule descriptions of Catholic saints, organized by the saint's day of the year. The 1894 Benziger Brothers edition, originally published in 1878, was heavily edited by John Gilmary Shea (here uncredited. Source: MELVYL). The 'Reflections' were not in the original Butler text, and were probably added by Shea.
The full text of Alban Butlers' work, which occupies over 1,200 pages of two-column small type, will have to wait for another time. However this imprimatur edition was apparently widely used by American Catholics at the turn of the 20th century, and remains accessible to contemporary readers.