Butler's Lives of the Saints began as an eighteenth century compilation by the English priest Alban Butler and has been revised by later editors since, this New Full Edition prepared by Herbert Thurston and Donald Attwater, both serious Catholic scholars, correcting and updating Butler's original entries against more recent historical and hagiographic research. Its strength is that Thurston and Attwater's revision explicitly flags where earlier legendary material about a saint lacks solid historical support, rather than repeating uncritical tradition, unusual rigor for a reference of this kind. Its limit is that later scholarship on individual saints has continued to develop since this mid twentieth century revision, so a specific contested biographical claim benefits from checking against more recent specialist research.
Facts
Assessment
Reliability Tier1
A standard Catholic reference compiling the lives of saints by feast day, descending from Alban Butler's eighteenth century original and revised in this mid twentieth century edition; hagiography, devotional biography written to edify, not critical historical scholarship, so a claim about a saint's more legendary episodes should be checked against historical critical sources. NotesA standard Catholic reference compiling the lives of saints by feast day, descending from Alban Butler's eighteenth-century original and revised in this mid-twentieth-century edition. Use for a saint's basic biographical facts and feast day as the Catholic tradition records them; it is hagiography, devotional biography written to edify, not critical historical scholarship, so a claim about a saint's more legendary episodes should be checked against historical-critical sources.
Citation
AuthorHerbert Thurston and Donald Attwater (eds.)
PublisherBurns and Oates / Liturgical Press
Publication Year1956
URLhttps://archive.org/details/butlerslivesofsa0000herb
Source Typereference
Claims Backed By This Source (81 claims)
This source backs 81 claims across the atlas. As facts: 68 well-attested. As cited relationships: 2 holds. Plus 11 entities citing it as a general reference with no single fact or relationship attached.
Disposition By Topic
- Figures, 67 claims: 54 well-attested, 2 holds, 11 general references.
- Sources, 8 claims: 8 well-attested.
- Articles, 6 claims: 6 well-attested.
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