For All the Saints

When the Provincial Commission on Prayer Book Revision, which produced A New Zealand Prayer Book - He Karakia Mihinare o Aotearoa, disbanded on the completion of the Prayer Book, it left in an incomplete state some material intended to serve as a guide to the Calendar. Various members of the Commission had offered to produce the material on various commemorations, or had promised to persuade others to do so. Most of the entries in the Calendar had had some work done on them by the end of 1989. Some had been very carefully prepared, but quite a lot of the material was only in rough note form. Up to that point quite a number of people had been involved in the gathering of material.

The project then languished for a while. Eventually Margaret Wood and I offered to see it through to completion, and the Standing Committee of General Synod gave its approval. Margaret and I committed ourselves to providing a draft version of the work for use by the church during 1991. I undertook the editorial work and the commissioning of some of the remaining material from others, and Margaret saw to the data entry and printing of the hard copy. The incomplete state of the material we took over and the very tight production schedule meant that many of the entries had to be included without detailed checking. The work, published as For All The Saints, was very warmly welcomed by the church.

It had always been understood that in due course a thorough revision of the material would be done and a definitive publication arranged. Many of those who subscribed to the trial publication sent in corrections. This volume is the result of the work of checking and correcting the entries. The revision proved to be a very large task, as some of the material hastily put together for inclusion in For All The Saints proved to be erroneous or incomplete. Nevertheless, some of the material prepared for the first edition was of a high standard and needed no modification beyond the requirements of stylistic consistency. While, therefore, I must take due responsibility for the final form of the work, including any remaining errors, and for the parts I wrote myself, I would not want anyone to think that all the work is my own. In the nature of the case, one element calling for original creative writing was the collects, and these owe their form to the particular individuals or groups who produced them.

The task of compiling and editing this publication has been absorbing and rewarding. If at times the commitment required by the task seemed daunting, I have completed it with a profound sense of respect and admiration for the people commemorated by the church. They represent almost every century of the church's history and most corners of the world. Of particular interest are the commemorations marking the history of the church in New Zealand and the Pacific.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfector of our faith. Hebrews 12:1,2

A Note to the Revised Edition

The decision to make the publication available electronically has provided an opportunity to correct some minor mistakes in the text, make any changes to observances that had been adopted by General Synod/Te Hinota Whanui since the original publication, and to update the bibliographies were appropriate.

Ken Booth
Theology House
Christchurch
31 December 2005

A Note about Further Reading

No bibliographies are provided for most of the individual entries in this compilation. However, those interested in exploring further are invited to consult the following scholarly works, each of which provides additional bibliographical information.

On the Feasts and Holy Days of the Church Year:

Paul F Bradshaw, ed., The New SCM Dictionary of Liturgy and Worship, London, SCM, 2002.
Cheslyn Jones, et al., The Study of Liturgy, revised edition, London, SPCK, 1992.
A.G. Martimort, ed., The Church at Prayer: An Introduction to the Liturgy, vol. 4, The Liturgy and Time, Eng trans., Collegeville, The Liturgical Press, 1986.

On the saints of the world-wide church, including figures not formally canonised:

Donald Attwater with Catherine Rachel John, The Penguin Dictionary of Saints, 3rd ed., Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1995.
Butler's Lives of the Saints, new full edition, 12 vols, London, Burns & Oates, 1995-2000.
F.L. Cross and E.A. Livingstone, The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd ed., London, OUP, 1997.
D.H. Farmer, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, 2nd ed., Oxford, OUP, 1987.
New Catholic Encyclopedia, 15 vols., New York, McGraw-Hill, 1967.
The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th ed., 32 vols., Chicago, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1974.

On the New Zealand Commemorations:

The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, Vol. one, 1769-1869. Wellington, Allen & Unwin/Dept. of Internal Affairs, 1990; Vol. two, 1870-1900. Wellington, Bridget Williams Books/Dept. of Internal Affairs, 1993; Vol. three, 1901-1920. Auckland, Auckland University Press/Dept. of Internal Affairs, 1996; Vol. four, 1921-1940. Auckland, Auckland University Press/Dept. of Internal Affairs, 1998; Vol. five, 1941-1960. Auckland, Auckland University Press/Dept. of Internal Affairs, 2000.
This dictionary is also available on the web at http://www.dnzb.govt.nz/dnzb/

Other Sources:

There are a few entries for which no information is available in any of the above reference works. A note on relevant sources is given at the end of such entries.

Acknowledgements

Scripture quotations in English (other than from the Psalms) are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. and used by permission.

Quotations in English from the Psalms are from A New Zealand Prayer Book - He Karakia Mihinare o Aotearoa, copyright © by The Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia and used by permission.

Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia

Te Hāhi Mihinare ki Aotearoa ki Niu Tīreni, ki Ngā Moutere o te Moana Nui a Kiwa