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)
• 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