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On Tue, 3 Sep 1996 [log in to unmask] wrote: > Where did the September 2 date for St Stephen of Hungary come from? > I thought I was puzzled enough, as per my post a few weeks back, about > why Stephen was feted on August 20 in Hungary but, at least now, on August 16 > in the universal (Roman) calendar. Sigh, I always knew hagiography was > so difficult only the patient Belgians could attempt to sort it out. :-) Some of this shuffling about of saint's days which so perplexes Monica is perhaps simply to resolve conflicts arising from feasts falling on the same day. Down here in the antipodes we have recently had St Mark and St Dominic reassigned: Mark had to move from 25 to 26 April when the Catholic bishops gave liturgical standing to Anzac Day (our equivalent of Remembrance Day with a bit of July 4 thrown in); and Dominic was moved from 8 to 5 August to make way for the first local saint, the recently beatified Mary McKillop. Poor Dominic has moved so many times he's probably used to it. Sometimes there is also a discrepancy between the liturgical feastday (found in calendars and changeable) and the _dies natalis_ or date of death (used in martyrologies and of course, at least in principle, unvarying). Butler, I think, can use either. Paul Burns has a note about the difficulties posed by these annoyances in his introduction to v. 1 of the new Butler, xxv-xxvi, compounded by the fact that there is a new Roman Martyrology in course of publication. (_Butler's Lives of the Saints: New Full Edition_. Revised by Paul Burns. London: Burns & Oates; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1995. ISBN 0-86012-250-6 (UK); ISBN 0-8146-2377-8 US.) The only volume of this new edition I've seen so far is the one for January (perhaps all published so far?) and I've only had the merest glance at it. Would anyone who has used it more extensively like to comment on the strengths and weaknesses of the new Butler? -- Paul Chandler || Yarra Theological Union [log in to unmask] || Melbourne College of Divinity %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%