Selected Product:
| The Oxford Dictionary of Saints (Oxford Paperback Reference)
Paperback
Edition: 5
Author: David Hugh Farmer
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Release Date: 2004-09-23
ISBN-10: 0198609493
ISBN-13: 9780198609490
List Price: $16.95
Average Customer Rating:
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Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
This is far more than a dry hagiographical account of the lives of saints. This entertaining and authoritative dictionary breathes life into its subjects and is as browsable as it is informative. Critically acclaimed in its many editions, the dictionary is now reissued into the rebranded best-selling Oxford Paperback Reference series.
The entries are concise accounts of the lives, cults, and artistic associations of over 1,400 saints, from the famous to the obscure, the rich to the poor, and the academic to the uneducated. From all walks of life and from all periods of history, the wide varieties of personalities and achievements of the canonized are reflected. Featuring maps of pilgrimage sights in Europe and fully updated appendices, this remains the standard reference paperback in its field.
Recently-added saints include the Martyrs of Korea, Vietnam, and the Spanish Civil War, Andrew of Crete, and Emily Rodat, a female hermit of the 7th century. There are also more Scottish and Irish saints, and ancient Welsh saints; more European saints from all centuries, as well as more saints from Eastern Europe; more recently canonized saints and female saints from the USA.
An exellent, balanced, . . .
| Customer Rating: | . . . reasoned, and readable presentation of many, many of the saints of the Church, with particular emphasis on those saints important in the British Isles.
Other reviewers have pointed out the balanced nature of the author's presentation, balancing known fact, pious tradition, legend and just plain superstition with scholarship and tact. I have to completely concur. I was also particularly impressed with the primary source material used and referenced, so that the interested reader can dig more deeply into those particular lives of interest (and perhaps come to conclusions different from those of the author!) The introduction, giving a brief background of the "history" of the making of saints was also helpful.
Very highly recommended. |
Indispensable for the Casual Anglo-Saxonist
| Customer Rating:  | | Other reviewers have cogently noted Farmer's English bias in his otherwise witty and eminently readable accounts of Saints' lives, but I might add that this fills a necessary niche in a crowded field. English and Welsh saints are lacking in many major references of this kind, and Farmer, publishing under the appropriate Oxford imprint, provides a welcome reprieve from this omission. |
Endlessly fascinating
| Customer Rating: | | This book is an interesting and engrossing catalogue of saints, primarily from the British Isles. Far from exhibiting the "bias" of which other reviewers accuse it, that focus on British/Irish saints was the_intent_of the book. Although the major saints of the universal Church are included, this book fills a vacuum by concentrating on the saints of the British Isles, the majority of which are obscure and of purely local interest and devotion. In the lives of these forgotten saints, Mr. Farmer has dug deeply through the layers of history to give us a fascinating snapshot of British piety and devotion since the earliest times. Although the tone of this book is scholarly rather than devotional, and some of the early legends and beliefs tend to amuse rather than edify, on the whole the lives of these saints cannot but inspire the faithful. |
The Oxford Dictionary of Saints
| Customer Rating: | | A must for anyone who wishes to sort fact from fiction! |
solid scholarship, endless entertainment
| Customer Rating: | The Oxford Dictionary of Saints will not disappoint you, no matter what your reasons are for buying it.
It's an excellent reference book. David Hugh Farmer has a real gift for summarizing large amounts of material without sacrificing either natural language or the particularity of the information being summarized. He's especially good at conveying the nuances of sources and their reliability.
Also: no matter what your religious and educational background may be, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints is one of the very best bathroom books ever printed: endlessly varied, always interesting. It's a trove of self-contained little stories. |
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