Alban Butler

Alban Butler (1710–1773) was an English Catholic priest and scholar. Because Catholics were barred from English universities, he was educated at the English College at Douai in northern France, where he was ordained and later taught philosophy and theology. He spent some thirty years compiling The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints, published in the 1750s and arranged by feast days through the year, drawing on the Bollandists and many other sources. After serving as a priest in England, he became president of the English College at Saint-Omer, where he died. His Lives of the Saints has been revised and reprinted ever since.