THE
Lives of the Saints
REV. S. BARING-GOULD
SIXTEEN VOLUMES
VOLUME THE FIRST
THE
Lives of the Saints
BY THE
REV. S. BARING-GOULD, M.A.
New Edition in 16 Volumes
Revised with Introduction and Additional Lives of
English Martyrs, Cornish and Welsh Saints,
and a full Index to the Entire Work
ILLUSTRATED BY OVER 400 ENGRAVINGS
VOLUME THE FIRST
January
LONDON
JOHN C. NIMMO
14 KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND
MDCCCXCVII
Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.
At the Ballantyne Press
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
TO FIRST EDITION
(1872)
he Lives of the Saints, which Ihave begun, is an undertaking, of whosedifficulty few can have any idea. Let itbe remembered, that there were Saints inevery century, for eighteen hundred years; that theirActs are interwoven with the profane history of theirtimes, and that the history, not of one nation only,but of almost every nation under the sun; that therecords of these lives are sometimes fragmentary,sometimes mere hints to be culled out of secularhistory; that authentic records have sometimes sufferedinterpolation, and that some records are forgeries;that the profane history with which the lives of theSaints is mixed up is often dark and hard to be read;and then some idea may be formed of the difficulty ofthis undertaking.
After having had to free the Acts of a martyr froma late accretion of fable, and to decide whether thepassion took place under—say Decius or Diocletian,Claudius the Elder, or Claudius the younger,—thewriter of a hagiology is hurried into Byzantine politics,and has to collect the thread of a saintly confessor's [Pg vi]life from the tangle of political and ecclesiastical intrigue,in that chaotic period when emperors roseand fell, and patriarchs succeeded each other withbewildering rapidity. And thence he is, by a step,landed in the romance world of Irish hagiology,