Reading Guides, VOLUME 12

A History of the Church in 20 Biographies [ All Saints Day ]

Today is All Saints Day, the day on the Church calendar on which we celebrate the great cloud of witnesses that have gone before us.

 

How much do you know about the history of the saints? 

 

For All Saints Day, we offer the following history of the church in twenty biographies , of one saint from each century from the first century to the twentieth century.  (It’s too early to choose a saint to celebrate from the twenty-first century.) With each we offer a brief snippet of their lives, and a biography of each, most of which can be downloaded for FREE. Many of these saints lives and work intersect with those who went before them, and what emerges as we dig into these stories is a fuller and richer history of God’s presence and work among the people of God throughout the full span of our history.

Eighth Century:

All Saints Day Biographies

The Venerable Bede

The Venerable Bede (672/3 – 26 May 735), was an English Benedictine monk at the monastery of St. Peter and its companion monastery of St. Paul in the Kingdom of Northumbria of  the Angles (contemporarily Monkwearmouth–Jarrow Abbey in Tyne and Wear, England). Born on lands likely belonging to the Monkwearmouth monastery in present-day Sunderland, Bede was sent there at the age of seven and later joined Abbot Ceolfrith at the Jarrow monastery, both of whom survived a plague that struck in 686, an outbreak that killed a majority of the population there. While he spent most of his life in the monastery, Bede travelled to several abbeys and monasteries across the British Isles, even visiting the archbishop of York and King Ceolwulf of Northumbria. He is well known as an author, teacher (a student of one of his pupils was Alcuin), and scholar, and his most famous work, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, gained him the title “The Father of English History”. (via Wikipedia)

The Venerable Bede:
His Life and Writings

By G.F. Browne

[ Download Free Ebook ]

Look for the red button on the page linked above
to download as a PDF or EPUB file.

Ninth Century:

All Saints Day Biographies

Kassia

Kassia   (805/810 – before 865) was an Eastern Roman abbess, poet, composer, and hymnographer. She is one of the first medieval composers whose scores are both extant and able to be interpreted by modern scholars and musicians. Approximately fifty of her hymns are extant and twenty-three are included in Orthodox Church liturgical books. The exact number is difficult to assess, as many hymns are ascribed to different authors in different manuscripts and are often identified as anonymous. Additionally, some 789 of her non-liturgical verses survive. Many are epigrams or aphorisms called “gnomic verse”, for example, “I hate the rich man moaning as if he were poor.”

Kassia is notable as one of only two Eastern Roman women known to have written in their own names during the Middle Ages, the other being Anna Comnena. (via Wikipedia)

Kassia the Nun in Context
By Kurt Sherry

Not Available as a Free Ebook

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