About twenty years from now mankind will reach the 2000th anniversaries of all the events that created Christianity. Two millennia will have passed from the time of every known event in the life of Christ. Opportunities for spiritual growth will be everywhere. They have already begun to appear.
For anyone interested in his or her own genealogical links to medieval Europe and early Christianity, this book offers an extraordinary opportunity. For the first time, the lives of 275 early European saints are retold and accompanied by lineages connecting those saints to twenty-four of the great men and women of medieval Europe (see below for a list of saints). Today, those twenty-four men and women have hundreds of millions of living descendants. Anyone living today who can connect to these medieval personages can claim forefathers among the princes of the earth as well as ancestors among the princes of Heaven. (Readers can consult any of the standard works on colonial American genealogy to help make the connection.)
The historical period covered by this work is vast. From St. Gregory “the Illuminator” (b. 256 – d.326) to St. Thomas, 2nd Earl of Lancaster (b. ca 1277 – d. 22 March 1322), the saints presented in this book span ten centuries. On earth, some were great men, such as Alfred “the Great,” Bernard of Clairvaux, and Charlemagne. Others, such as Elizabeth of Hungary, Marie of Brabant, and Odilia, led lives that are just as moving today as in their own time.
The following are the medieval figures with connections to the 275 saints covered in this book:
Aethelred II “the Redeless,” King of England; St. Alfred the Great, King of Wessex and England; St. Edgar “the Peaceful,” King of England; Edmund “Ironside,” King of England; Edmund I “the Magnificent,” King of England; Edward “the Elder,” King of England; Edward I, King of England; Eleanor of Aquitaine, who married (1) Louis VII, King of France, and married (2) Henry II, King of England; Eleanor of Castile, the first wife of Edward I, King of England; Bl. Eleanore of Provence, who married Henry III, King of England; Henry II, King of England; Isabel of Mar, the first wife of Robert I the Bruce, King of Scotland; Isabella of France, who married Edward II, King of England; John Stewart of Balveny, first Earl of Atholl; Mathilda (also known as Eadgyth) of Scotland, who married Henry I, King of England; Mathilde of Flanders, who married William I the Conqueror, King of England; Matilda of Huntingdon, who married (1) Simon de St. Liz, Earl of Huntingdon and Northampton, and married (2) David I, King of Scotland; Philippa of Hainault, who married Edward III, King of England; Robert I the Bruce, King of Scotland; Robert III Stewart, King of Scotland; Saher de Quincy, first Earl of Winchester, Magna Carta Surety, and Crusader; Stephen of Blois, King of England; William de Plumpton, Knight and High Sheriff of Yorkshire; William I the Conqueror, King of England.
For the first time, A Who’s Who of Your Ancestral Saints merges centuries of Catholic and Protestant scholarship and gives members of all Christian faiths the chance to welcome the third millennium of their religion knowing that they are the descendants of many of its early heroes.
Alan J. Koman
2010, Paper, Index, 457 pp.
ISBN: 9780806318240
102-3260