Donald Attwater by , 1929, private collection.">Eric Gill, 1929, private collection.
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
Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and Gr ...
,
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.
He served in the
Sinai and Palestine campaign during the
First World War, developing an interest in
Eastern Christianity
Eastern Christianity comprises Christian traditions and church families that originally developed during classical and late antiquity in Eastern Europe, Southeastern Europe, Asia Minor, the Caucasus, Northeast Africa, the Fertile Crescent and ...
while in the Middle East. After the war he lived for a time on
Caldey Island
Caldey Island ( Welsh:''Ynys Bŷr'') is a small island near Tenby, Pembrokeshire, Wales, less than off the coast. With a recorded history going back over 1,500 years, it is one of the holy islands of Britain. A number of traditions inherited fr ...
, undergoing the influence of the monks of
Caldey Abbey. He also became a friend and admirer of
Eric Gill
Arthur Eric Rowton Gill, (22 February 1882 – 17 November 1940) was an English sculptor, letter cutter, typeface designer, and printmaker. Although the ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' describes Gill as ″the greatest artist-cra ...
. 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.
Attwater was married to Rachel Attwater of South Wales, a fellow historian and published author on
Catholic saints
This is an incomplete list of people and angels whom the Catholic Church has canonized as saints. According to Catholic theology, all saints enjoy the beatific vision. Many of the saints listed here are to be found in the General Roman Calen ...
in the Orient. He died in
Storrington
Storrington is a small town in the Horsham District of West Sussex, England, and one of two in the civil parish of Storrington and Sullington. Storrington lies at the foot of the north side of the South Downs. it has a population of around 4,6 ...
,
Sussex, in February 1977.
[Obituary in '' The Catholic Historical Review'', 63:3 (1977), p. 497.]
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)
* ''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
Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev (; russian: Никола́й Алекса́ндрович Бердя́ев; – 24 March 1948) was a Russian philosopher, theologian, and Christian existentialist who emphasized the existential spiritual signi ...
, ''The End of Our Time'' (1933)
* Nikolai Berdyaev, ''Christianity and Class War'' (1933)
* Nikolai Berdyaev, ''Dostoievsky: An Interpretation'' (1934)
*
Charles de Foucauld
Charles Eugène de Foucauld de Pontbriand, Viscount of Foucauld (15 September 1858 – 1 December 1916) was a French soldier, explorer, geographer, ethnographer, Catholic priest and hermit who lived among the Tuareg people in the Sahara in Al ...
, ''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
Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, OCD (c. 1614 – 12 February 1691) served as a lay brother in a Carmelite monastery in Paris. Christians commonly remember him for the intimacy he expressed concerning his relationship to God as recorded in ...
, 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
Herbert Henry Charles Thurston (15 November 1856 – 3 November 1939) was an English priest of the Roman Catholic Church, a member of the Jesuit order, and a prolific scholar on liturgical, literary, historical, and spiritual matters. In h ...
's edition.
* ''Modern Christian Revolutionaries'' (1971)
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Attwater, Donald
1892 births
1977 deaths
People from Essex
Converts to Roman Catholicism from Anglicanism
20th-century English writers
20th-century English male writers
Translators to English
20th-century translators
People from Storrington
Military personnel from Essex
British military personnel of World War I