Excerpt from Studies in Church Dedications, or England's Patron Saints, Vol. 1 of 3 The bond of association between our churches and the names of the saints is one that is very precious to many of us. Probably we are most of us agreed that London Cathedral would be a poor exchange for S. Paul's - that time-honoured dedication-name which enfolds twelve hundred years of history. The very sound of these names - S. Mary, S. Laurence, S. Cuthbert, and so forth - serves to call up visions of some much-loved church - whether in crowded city or in quiet village, whether venerable with age or newly built to meet the needs of to-day - churches differing widely from one another, yet alike in their purpose alike also in this, that they are stamped with the name of some saint of God. From the dawn of English Christianity up to the present day, the great majority of our churches, if not associated directly with one or all of the Persons of the Blessed Trinity, have been dedicated either to All Saints or All Angels collectively, or to the saints of Scripture. Dedica tions such as these meet us on every side, and demand no explanation. But the value of dedications does not lie merely in their obscurity or in their rarity, and there is, as we shall endeavour to show hereafter, much more to be learnt than might at first sight be supposed, from the propor tion and distribution of these commonest of dedication-names. 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.