Agnes Baillie Cunninghame Dunbar

“ There are moments when it seems as though the presenting of a subject so remote from modern tendencies almost asks for an apology. If such be needed, let it be found in the reflection that in the same way as the monasteries preserved the slumbering germs of culture and civilization through hundreds of years of barbarism, so, throughout the darkness of the Middle Ages and the spirit-deadening struggle for material prosperity, it was by those who are remembered as saints that the light of the Christian ideal was kept alive. ”

“ For nearly half of a long life it has been my vocation to collect and arrange legends and records of women worshipped as saints or so considered. Although the work has been to me a sanctuary from the anxieties and vexations of daily life, I have, during the whole time, been painfully conscious of my unworthiness to write on the subject of saints, and my inability to approach the degree of excellence to which such a book might attain in better hands. ”