Bright, William

BRIGHT, WILLIAM: English church historian and patristic scholar; b. at Doncaster (30 m. s. of York), Yorkshire, England, Dec. 14, 1824; d. at Oxford Mar. 6, 1901. He studied at Rugby and University College, Oxford (B.A., 1846; M.A., 1849), and became fellow 1847; was theological tutor in Trinity College, Glenalmond, Perthshire, 1851–58; tutor of University College, Oxford, 1862; appointed regius professor of ecclesiastical history and canon of Christ Church, Oxford, 1868. His publications were very numerous and have gone through many editions; besides sermons and addresses, poems, and devotional works they include: Ancient Collects and Other Prayers selected from various rituals (London, 1857); A History of the Church from the Edict of Milan, A.D. 313, to the Council of Chalcedon, A.D. 451 (1860); Eighteen Sermons of St. Leo I, surnamed the Great, on the Incarnation, translation and notes (1862); Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History, text and introduction (1872); Orations of St. Athanasius against the Arians, text, with life (1873); Socrates's Ecclesiastical History, text and introduction (1878); Chapters of Early English Church History (1878; 3d ed., 1897); Select Anti-Pelagian Treatises of St. Augustine (1880); St. Athanasius's Historical Writings (1881); Later Treatises of St. Athanasius, translation, notes, and an appendix of St. Cyril (vol. xlvi. of A Library of the Fathers, ed. E. B. Pusey and others, 1881); Notes on the Canons of the First Four General Councils (1882); Lessons from the Lives of Three Great Fathers (1890); Morality in Doctrine (1892); Waymarks in Church History (1894); The Roman See in the Early Church and Other Studies in Church History (1896); The Law of Faith (1898); Some Aspects of Primitive Church Life (1898). With P. G. Medd he edited a Latin translation of the English prayer-book (1865), and he contributed the section on the Litany to J. H. Blunt's Annotated Book of Common Prayer (1866).

Bibliography: W. Bright, Selected Letters, ed. B. J. Kidd, with Memoir by P. G. Medd, London, 1903.