Lives of the Saints
 

I was thinking about starting to get a collection of the Lives of the Saints, with the Church new year coming up I was going to start with September. What is the best one out there? I am looking for one that has not only ancient Saints but modern ones as well. Any suggestions?
Anthony

There is an ongoing translation of St Dmitri of Rostov's Lives of Sts done by Chrysostom Press.
http://www.chrysostompress.org/

They begin with September. I think they've worked their way up to March so far.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

Dear Joshua,

Much depends on the length of the lives you wish to read. If you want full-length lives, there are some good collections - though you'll also have to do a great deal of searching for individual accounts of specific saints, etc. Lives are, by nature, originally independent things.

If you are looking for a good central collection of overviews and essential lives of the saints, by far the best edition in English is The Synaxarion published by Simonos Petras monastery on Mt Athos - the work of Hieromonk Makarios. It is really an unparalleled resource, and is the first edition of the synaxaria to contain in a large-scale way the saints of the British Isles.

I would concur with Fr. Irenaeus on the Synaxarion from Simonos Petra. However on a more practical basis - you might want to consider the Prologue of Ohrid. Also, if you install a free software programme called Menologion 3.0, you woud have access to a full synaxarion as well as the daily readings and the tropars etc.

St Justin Popovich's one is good i heard if people can get enough support for it to be translated.
I think I shall ask for it to be translated into Romanian.

St. Justin's work is praised in the Synaxarion from Simonos Petra. Another lighter and more digestible form of the Synaxarion is to be found in a publication called Daily Lives, Miracles and Wisdom of the Saints. In addition to the DSynaxarion, therefasting rules of the day , the scripture readings and a word from the Fathers is provided for every day of the year.
You can contact:
Tom and Georgia Mitrakos
P.O. Box 11331
Pittsburg, PA 15238
Tel: 412-968-9111
or email this address - mitrakos.calendar@yahoo.com

To get a look at the Prologue of Ochrid by St. Nikolai Velimirovic, go to the link below. It's entirely online.

http://www.westsrbdio.org/prolog/my.html

Be careful of the link! When I follow it using Firefox I get a warning that it is an attack page. The explanation says that the page has been reported a number of times in the past while. The site/page could be legitimate but malicious code has been added to it.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

How odd! Fr. Raphael, I have that site bookmarked on both my MacBook, my netbook, and my iPod Touch, and have never gotten that message before, but I just did.

Yes- I also visited that page a number of months ago without any warnings coming up. Perhaps this is a recent event.

I've always wondered, how many Saints are there in the Orthodox Church?

Many are not and will never be known until we stand in God's unadulterated presence. Many, maybe most, saints, have not been officially recognized by the Church, but only those whom God has decided could teach us something we specifically needed to know. The lives of the saints teach us practical theology, applied perfection.

Or so it seems to this bear of little brain.

Herman the Pooh

Great answer Herman!

Having had volumes from both the Simonos Petras Synaxarion and St. Demetrius' collection, I have to say that, overall, St. Demetrius collection is far preferable. While Hieromonk Makarios does collect many lives from Britain as well as other places (e.g. Georgia) that aren't found in the older collections, so many lives are so abbreviated as to be often bland and indistinct. The constraints of fitting two months of lives into each volume mean that many interesting or memorable details are glossed over or simply omitted. For example, for St. Mamas (September), we learn from the Hieromonk Makarios version that he escaped to a mountain and prayed and fasted for a while before coming back to the city. In St. Demetrius' version, we learn that he not only prayed and fasted, but built a little church, conversed with the animals as with men, received a gospel book and a staff from heaven, and then went to the city accompanied by a lion. These may seem like inconsequential, whimsical little details, but when so much colour is left out, the lives become less memorable.

I would agree with you except that the St Demetrios collection is as yet incomplete and seems to be taking a long time in coming out. Does anyone have any idea on this series - The Synaraxistes published by Hopy Apostles Convent, Buena Vista?

The Synaxaristes of Holy Apostles Convent has the longest and most complete lives available in English. Most volumes are around 1,000 pages. Unfortunately, the collection is lacking many non-Greek saints and only selectively includes modern saints.

In Christ,
Chris

Hi Christophoros,

Thank you for the information - I've not heard of any reviews of that series, and I would suppose this 'deficiency is partly remedied by the synaxarion that can be found in the Menologion software? I noticed that the menologion had lots and lots of Slavic saints. I am not sure about any sources for modern saints though some of the Greek ones have been published recently