BUTLER, ALBAN: English Roman Catholic; b. at Appletree (70 m. n.w. of London), Northamptonshire, Oct. 24, 1710; d. at St. Omer (22 m. s.e. of Calais), France, May 15, 1773. He was educated at Douai and became professor there of philosophy and divinity; was ordained priest, 1735; traveled through France and Italy, 1745-46, and then was sent for a short time to the Roman Catholic mission in Staffordshire. Later he was tutor to Edward Howard, duke of Norfolk, and accompanied him to Paris; about 1766 he became president of the English college at St. Omer. He labored for thirty years on his chief work, The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints, which was published anonymously in four volumes (vol. iii., 2 parts) at London, 1756-59. The second edition, with notes and other matter omitted in the first edition, edited by Dr. Carpenter, archbishop of Dublin, appeared at Dublin in twelve volumes in 1779-80. It has appeared in several later editions and abridgments (as by F. C. Husenbeth, with omission of the notes and most of the shorter lives, 2 vols., London, 1857-60), and was translated into French and Italian. His nephew, Charles Butler, prepared a continuation (London, 1823). A complete general index was published in 1886.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Charles Butler, An Account of the Life and Writings of Alban Butler, Edinburgh, 1800, contained also in vol. iii of the works of Charles Butler, London, 1817, and in many editions of the Lives; DNB, viii. 33-34.

BUTLER, ALFORD AUGUSTUS: Protestant Episcopalian; b. at Portland, Me., Sept. 23, 1845. He was educated at Griswold College, Davenport, Ia., where he completed his theological education in 1873. He was ordered deacon in the same year, and was ordained priest in 1874. He was successively assistant in Grace Cathedral, Davenport, Ia. (1873), and rector of Grace Church, Cedar Rapids, Ia. (1873-77), Trinity Church, Bay City, Mich. (1877-84), Church of the Epiphany, New York City (1884-91), and Christ Church, Red Wing, Minn. (1891-94). Since 1894 he has been warden and professor of homiletics, liturgies, and religious pedagogy in Seabury Divinity School, Faribault, Minn. He was active in organizing the Parochial Mission Society of the United States, and was chosen secretary of its executive committee, and also took a prominent part in establishing the first deaconess school in the Protestant Episcopal Church. He is likewise a member of the Joint Commission on Sunday Schools and of the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church. He has written: How to Study the Life of Christ (New York, 1902); How shall we worship God? (1904); and The Churchman's Manual of Sunday School Methods (Milwaukee, 1906).