Thurston, Herbert

THURSTON, HERBERT. - Jesuit, hagiographer and liturgist, b. in London on 15 Nov. 1856, d. there on 3 Nov. 1939.

Having entered the Order on 28 Sept. 1874, from 1894 he was attached to the periodical The Month, though with ample freedom to attend to his own particular studies. He dealt, in fact, in a special way with subjects of hagiography and the history of the liturgy, on which he wrote many articles in The Month, The Tablet, The Dublin Review, Studies, in the Catholic Encyclopedia and in the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics; separately he published: History of the Eucharist in Great Britain, The life of St. Hugues of Lincoln; The holy Year of Jubilee, Lent and holy Week; The Stations of the Cross; The Rosary, etc. He edited the new edition of the Lives of the Saints, by A. Butler, now edited, revised and copiously supplemented (12 vols., London 1926-38), in which the critical observations on the individual biographies are worthy of note. He also occupied himself with passion and a critical spirit with the study of psychology, mystical facts, and spiritualistic phenomena; on these there are the works: Spiritualism (London 1935; Italian trans., La Chiesa e lo spiritismo, Milan 1937; 2nd ed. there 1945 and The physical Phenomena of Mysticism posthumous, London 1952). He enjoyed the esteem and fame of a keen objective critic, of a serious and erudite scholar, even if at times he incurred some exaggeration of hypercriticism.

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