Unlike other books of saints which are selective - based on locale, gender, art-historical interest, or spiritual appeal - this one is rigorously comprehensive and historically objective. It includes entries for all those who have been formally canonized or beatified to date, or have had their local veneration approved by the church as a whole, or have been listed in the old Roman martyrology. It also includes the more prominent of those local saints who have been venerated in the distant past, before the process of canonization was formalized, who are no longer liturgically honored anywhere, but who feature in historical records.
