<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: More than Lives
Review: An entertaining and informative dictionary of saints that not only gives the lives of the saints but also a history of their folklore, veneration and relics. Farmer includes "popular" saints like St. Werner (who was never formally canonized), desanctified saints like Barbara, and a few saints of the Orthodox traditions. Appendices list patron saints and symbols associated with the saints. You will not find every saint in this work, but the ones you do find are described in rich detail. I bought this book for a narrow purpose and soon found myself reading it from cover to cover in bed. The only bothersome thing, for me, is Farmer's Anglophilia: he gives space to many obscure English and Irish saints while ignoring some key figures from other parts of the world, like St. Diego of Alcala (for whom San Diego is named). Nonetheless, it is a useful book for either reference or entertainment.
Rating:
Summary: More than Lives
Review: An entertaining and informative dictionary of saints that not only gives the lives of the saints but also a history of their folklore, veneration and relics. Farmer includes "popular" saints like St. Werner (who was never formally canonized), desanctified saints like Barbara, and a few saints of the Orthodox traditions. Appendices list patron saints and symbols associated with the saints. You will not find every saint in this work, but the ones you do find are described in rich detail. I bought this book for a narrow purpose and soon found myself reading it from cover to cover in bed. The only bothersome thing, for me, is Farmer's Anglophilia: he gives space to many obscure English and Irish saints while ignoring some key figures from other parts of the world, like St. Diego of Alcala (for whom San Diego is named). Nonetheless, it is a useful book for either reference or entertainment.
Rating:
Summary: Oxford Dictionary of Saints
Review: An excellent source for information on saints of the Roman Catholic Church and the Ortodox Church up through the Schism. It does not include saints of the Episcopal Church, but does include those popular saints such as Barbara and Christopher removed in the 1968-69 time frame. I use it in writing my monthly column for my parish newsletter.
Rating:
Summary: Oxford Dictionary of Saints
Review: An excellent source for information on saints of the Roman Catholic Church and the Ortodox Church up through the Schism. It does not include saints of the Episcopal Church, but does include those popular saints such as Barbara and Christopher removed in the 1968-69 time frame. I use it in writing my monthly column for my parish newsletter.
Rating: 
Summary: Balanced and interesting
Review: Balanced, informative, and interesting summary of available information on approximately 1300 saints, with useful system of indexing and cross-referencing.In summarizing the lives of the saints, some sources seem to want to gloss over the more fantastic, fairy-tale aspects of some stories, while other sources will drift off into a Daily Meditation self-help format. This text takes an even-handed and academic approach, that allows the reader to draw his own conclusions. As a Californian, it is a little frustrating to deal with the British bias on saints, and find nothing about saints who were chosen for California place names like San Dimas, San Luis Obispo, San Diego (Didacus?), and San Ysidro. But overall this is an excellent source for hagiographic trivia and history.
<< 1 >>
| 
