Little Pictorial Lives of the Saints / Alban Butler

Father Alban Butler - Hardcover - 538 pages - Illustrated

With reflections for every day of the year compiled from Butler’s Lives and other approved sources

This beautifully illustrated book is the perfect solution for so many Catholics anxious to get reacquainted with the lives of the saints, but who have too little time to read more thorough biographies. There are approximately five hundred entries covering the feast days for each day of the year with an accompanying pictorial sketch of the saint being honored, and some pious reflection useful for daily meditation.

This is the original version of Butler’s Little Pictorial Lives first published in 1874 and largely taken from Butler’s original work. This work is a popular, but very scholarly, abridgement of the complete Butler’s Lives published in twelve volumes in 1847. That is the best edition of Butler’s work with no late 19th or early 20th century ‘modernizations.’

This collection makes excellent reading at table or after the family rosary where in the bosom of intimate familial unity, the history of sanctity may be passed to young minds eager to hear stories of true heroism. Many saints, indeed some very well known and popular ones, took their first steps toward a life of heroic virtue by reading or hearing the lives of other saints who went before.

Father Alban Butler was born in 1710, at Appletree, North-amptonshire, the second son of Simon Butler, Esq. Orphaned at the age of eight, he was sent to be educated at the English College, Douay, in France. In 1735, Butler was ordained a priest. At Douay, he was appointed professor of philosophy, and later professor of theology. It was at Douay, he began his principal work The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs and Other Principal Saints. He also prepared material for Richard Challoner’s Memoirs of Missionary Priests, a work on the martyrs of the reign of Elizabeth.

He labored for some time as a missionary priest in Staffordshire, and was finally appointed president of the English seminary at Saint Omer in France, where he remained till his death in 1773.