Elizabeth A. LIVINGSTONE

This remarkable reference book contains over 5000 entries on all aspects of the Christian Church, from Aaron to Zwingli. The principal Christian doctrines and denominations are discussed in historical and theological detail. The book's impressive range also includes accounts of the Biblical Books and their backgrounds, major Christian feasts, the lives of saints, resumes of Patristic writings, histories of heretical sects and summaries of the opinions of theologians and philosophers. While its main emphasis is naturally on the history of the Christian Church in all its forms, it also explores a host of related subjects. Listed here are composers, painters, sculptors, and writers of religious works; accounts of non-Christian religions; descriptions of cathedrals; and significant discoveries in textual criticism and archaeology. This Concise Dictionary is an abridgement of the revised and updated Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (2nd edition, 1974), and a quarter its length. It omits the bibliographies and many of the etymologies of the large edition, but retains the vast majority of its entries, shortened and modified to suit the lay reader, and includes some additional articles. No other handbook to the Christian Church so succinctly and so attractively combines comprehensiveness with the authority of scholarship.

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PREFACE

In 1939 Dr. G. F. J. Cumberlege commissioned two fairly young Librarians of Pusey House in Oxford to produce quite quickly what he envisaged as a handy Oxford Companion to the Christian Religion. Eighteen years later his successor published The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, edited by F. L. Cross, who had meantime become the Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity in the University of Oxford. This quickly became a standard reference book; it provides, as Gregory the Great said of Scripture, water in which lambs may walk and elephants may swim. The aim of the present work is to offer basic information for the lambs who do not need, and perhaps cannot afford, the elephants' swimming-pools. It seeks in most cases to answer the questions who or what; for further information and for lists of books in which the subject may be pursued, the reader is referred to the corresponding article in the parent volume, and especially the second edition of 1974, on which this abridgement is based. Unless otherwise stated, Biblical references are to the Authorized Version.
It is my pleasant duty to acknowledge and offer thanks to the many people who have given me help and guidance in a variety of ways. There are too many to name them all, but 1 am particularly indebted to the Rev. Prof. J. Macquarrie, the Rev. J. O. Mills, O.P., and Dr. P. H. Rousseau, who supplied material for new entries or the revision of existing ones; to Mr. D. Bevan, the Rev. J. D. Crichton, the Rev. Canon D. L. Edwards, Mr. B. J. T. Hanson, the Rev. Dom Daniel Rees, O.S.B., and the Very Rev. Dr. K. T. Ware, who answered my questions on matters in their various spheres of expertise; to the Librarian of Downside, who graciously allowed me to use the community library whenever I asked, and to Miss J. K. F. Swinyard of Wells Public Library whose helpfulness far exceeded the bounds of duty; to Miss F. M. Williams and Miss A. Pickles, who both read the first proofs; to the Rev. Canon P. M. Martin, who checked the Hebrew and helped me in many other ways; and to the staff of the Oxford University Press who laboured unstintingly on the book.

E.A.L.

Edited by F. L. CROSS, Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity in the University of Oxford, 1944-68
Second Edition edited by F .L. CROSS and E. A. LIVINGSTONE

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On its publication in 1957 this book immediately established itself as the indispensable one-volume reference work on Christianity. The success of the first edition led to several reprints, but during the sixties it became evident th.it a complete revision and up-dating was necessary. The Second Vatican Council initiated a whole process of change in the Roman Catholic Church which has had far-reaching repercussions on other communions; there have also been many ecumenical developments, and new personalities have come to the tore.
Taking account of these changes, important though they are, represents only part of the work of revision, which has also' involved a critical review of the entire existing text and its amendment wherever the advance of scholarship seemed to call for it. In consequence, the extent of the book has been increased by one tenth and the type completely
All told the dictionary contains about 6,000 entries, ranging from a few lines to about 2,500 words in length, and 4,500 bibliographies. A feature new in this edition is the chronological list of popes; the book also includes a memoir of Dr Cross.
Though Dr Cross did not live to see the new edition completed, the work has been done on lines which he laid down and with the help of a lai urc number of contributors, many of them specialists in their fields. Since his death the enterprise has been in the hands of Miss E. A. Livingstone who worked very closely with Dr Cross on the first edition and since.