Excerpt from Lives and Legends of the English Bishops and Kings, Medieval Monks, and Other Later Saints IT would be impossible to over-estimate the interest and im portance of the history of the Church, as re ected in the lives of its noblest members, between the seventh and eighteenth centuries, during which, in spite of all the political and social changes continually taking place, the light of the true faith was kept burning by generation after generation of holy men and women, who, however much they may have differed in race, in character, and in position, were alike in their devotion to the Master they all served, and their readiness to lay down their lives for Him. A very noteworthy feature of the first half of the period treated in this, the third and last volume of 'the Saints in Christian Art, ' is the great number of anglo-saxons who have been admitted to the hierarchy of the saints. To this fact due prominence has been given, although, unfortunately, there exist but few works of art in which they are introduced, the result, of course, to a great extent, of the ruthless destruction after the Reformation of all that could recall the memory of the men who had upheld the rights of the Church, but still more to there having been no national school of religious art in England, such as was so long the glory of Italy, and in a minor degree of Germany and of the Netherlands. Beginning with the first Bishops of Canterbury, the narrative in the present volume passes on to tell of the great work, in the North of England, of Saints Paulinus and Aidan, aided by their royal converts Saints Edwin and Oswald, and of their successors. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."