Donald Attwater (24 December 1892 – 30 January 1977) was a British Catholic author, editor and translator, and a visiting lecturer at the University of Notre Dame.
Life
Attwater was born in Essex, England, on 24 December 1892. His parents were Methodists who became Anglicans while Attwater was a child. He himself became a Catholic at the age of 18. He studied Law but did not earn a degree.[1]
He served in the Sinai and Palestine campaign during the First World War, developing an interest in Eastern Christianity while in the Middle East. After the war, he lived for a time on Caldey Island, undergoing the influence of the monks of Caldey Abbey.[2] He also became a friend and admirer of Eric Gill. Throughout the 1930s, 40s and 50s he was a frequent contributor to the Catholic press in both Britain and America, and a prolific author of books on Christian themes.
In 1936, he was one of the founders of the Catholic peace movement Pax, which opposed the invasion of Abyssinia by Fascist Italy.[3]
Attwater was married to Rachel Attwater of South Wales, a fellow historian and published author on Catholic saints in the Orient.[4] He died in Storrington, Sussex, in February 1977.[5]
Writings
- As author
- Father Ignatius of Llanthony: A Victorian (1931)
- The Catholic Church in Modern Wales (1935)
- The Dissident Eastern Churches (1937)
- The White Fathers in Africa (1937)
- The Golden Book of Eastern Saints (1938)
- Life of St. John Chrysostom (1939)
- Names and Name Days (1939)
- Eastern Catholic Worship (1945)
- The Christian Church of the East (1947)
- The Black Friars in Wales (1949)
- Saints Westward (1953)
- A Dictionary of Mary (1956)
- Martyrs, from St. Stephen to John Tung (1957)
- Saints of the East (1963)
- Dictionary of the Popes (1965)
- The Cell of Good Living (1969)
- As translator
- Vladimir Solovyov, God, Man, and the Church
- Nikolai Berdyaev, The End of Our Time (1933)
- Nikolai Berdyaev, Christianity and Class War (1933)
- Nikolai Berdyaev, Dostoievsky: An Interpretation (1934)
- Charles de Foucauld, Memories of Charles de Foucauld: Explorer and Hermit, Seen in His Letters, edited by Georges Gorrée (1938)
- Hippolyte Delehaye, The Legends of the Saints (1962)
- Yves Congar, Lay People in the Church (1963)
- Jean Daniélou, Primitive Christian Symbols (1964)
- Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God (1974)
- An Anthology of Mysticism, edited by Paul de Jaegher (1977)
- As editor
- A Catholic Encyclopedic Dictionary (1931)
- Dictionary of Saints (1938); later Penguin Dictionary of Saints
- Butler's Lives of the Saints (4 vols., 1956), a revision of Herbert Thurston's edition.
- Modern Christian Revolutionaries (1971)
References
- ^ Catherine Rachel John, "Donald Attwater 1892 - 1997: A Man for His Time and Ours", The Chesterton Review, 29:4 (2003), p. 519.
- ^ Karen Jankulak, "Present and Yet Absent: The Cult of St Samson of Dol in Wales", in St Samson of Dol and the Earliest History of Brittany, Cornwall and Wales, edited by Lynette Olson (Boydell & Brewer, 2017), p. 166
- ^ Tom Villis, British Catholics and Fascism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 199-200.
- ^ Attwater, Rachel (1963). Adam Schall: A Jesuit in the Court of China, 1592-1666. Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Company.
- ^ Obituary in The Catholic Historical Review, 63:3 (1977), p. 497.
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This page was last edited on 8 September 2023, at 11:28