Lives of the Saints

In this all-new Lives of the Saints renowned author and scholar Richard P. McBrien provides the first one-volume compendium of the saints since the classic seventeenth-century work by Alban Butler. Featuring fascinating profiles of over six hundred saints, blesseds, and holy people, Lives of the Saints traces the paths and politics by which saints have been chosen over the centuries. Also included are concise histories of the various schools of Christian spirituality inspired by the saints' lives and their teachings.

In addition to offering a contemporary account of the saints, McBrien recognizes that there is a more universal understanding of sanctity: Catholics whose holiness has not yet been formally acclaimed, such as Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Mother Teresa, Thea Bowman, and Oscar Romero; non-Catholic Christians who have been recognized and celebrated by other churches, such as Martin Luther, John Donne, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Dag Hammarskjöld, Albert Schweitzer, Stephen Biko, and Martin Luther King Jr.; and non-Christians such as Abraham Heschel and Mohandas Ghandi. McBrien also addresses the political nature of the canonization process and argues that there is a need to expand the ranks of saints to properly include women, Asians, Africans, married people, and those who identify with the poor and the oppressed.

With brief biographical portraits of the saints arranged according to the church calendar, Lives of the Saints is a remarkable reference source and, through its extensive biographies that are liturgically arranged by months and days, a valuable aid to devotion. Comprehensive, highly accessible, illustrated throughout, and including a bib-liography and glossary, Lives of the Saints captures these remarkable lives and powerfully reveals how they have transformed Christianity and the world.