[MR] Book of Days? (fwd)

[Craig Levin]

Ciaran:

> I'm looking for a "book of days" resource for period Christian feasts,
> festival and what have you.  Can anyone recommend a good cheap
> (preferably free) resource?  I only need names, dates, and approximate
> year of sainthood.

For figuring out the general outline of the calendar, I would
suggest a skinny book that historians of English history happily
push on their grad students, called the Handbook of Dates for for
Students of English History. It's got a list of saints' days &
other landmarks of the year. If you need something that gives you
the date when the person was recognized as a saint, yes, the
Catholic Encyclopedia's pretty good, but I'd like to point out
that a lot of saints weren't created in the same way as the
modern RCC creates them. Some, like Christopher, were completely
fictional people. Others were local martyrs or philanthropists or
preachers whom the neighborhood recognized as obvious saints, &
the bishop was happy to go along with it. Still others may have
been baptized versions of the local religion's pantheon-I believe
that some of the stories surrounding St. Bridget of Ireland have
roots in pre-Christian Irish legends.

Pedro