Page:A Dictionary of Saintly Women Volume 2.djvu/6



"Miss Dunbar has accomplished in this first volume a really valuable portion of a most useful task. With the help of the 'Acta Sanctorum' and a very considerable knowledge of later work, she has compiled an excellent summary of a vast number of lives of female saints. Her survey extends over the whole Church prior to the severance of East and West, the Western Church as a whole up to the Reformation, and the Roman Church afterwards. 80 far as we have been able to test the book, it is very well done, and from the best authorities."

"The present compiler has gone to the best sources....Unquestionably, it will be found to be an exceedingly useful book of reference."

"The authoress of this book undertook a work which demanded ability and discrimination. In performing it she has displayed both....The biographical sketches are well written, and the dictionary will be valuable both as a work for pious use, and a book of reference."

"It is a work of intense human interest, and at the same time of real scientific value. The best authorities have been used, and they have been used in the best way, the utmost care being taken to have all the references exact, and at tho same time to let these holy women speak and act in their own tongue and in their own time. This is the way in which short dictionaries should be written. Every article should be made to touch some human sympathy, every date as exact as pains and patience can make it."

"This work is a useful collection of interesting lives of holy women...who in all ages of the Christian era have illustrated God's Church....Much historical information concerning the Middles Ages will be found in the lives of saints of that period."