Since its original publication over two hundred years ago, Butler's Lives of the Saints has been one of the best-known and most-used religious reference works of all time. The original work has been updated twice previously in the twentieth century, in 1926-1938 and again in the 1950s. The need has become urgent for this most thorough revision yet undertaken, completely rewritten and with substantial amendments to the selection of entries. These amendments have been made necessary, first by the major reform of the calendar, which removed many saints for whom reliable historical evidence was lacking, and, second, by the unprecedented number of canonizations and beatifications of recent decades. To these factors must be added the ongoing revision of the Roman Martyrology in progress at the Congregation for Divine Worship in Rome, which has altered a number of dates for commemoration, and which this new revision follows.
