ACTA MARTYRUM, ACTA SANCTORUM,
ac'ta mar'ter-um, ac'ta sanc"to'rTjm.
I. Acts of Martyrs.
Acta martyrum sincera (§ 1).
Legendary Acts (§ 2).
Calendaria and Gesta martyrum (§ 3).
II. Histories of the Saints.
In the Churches of the East (§1). In the Western Church (§ 2). English Lives of Saints (§ 3).
By Acta Martyrum and Acta Sanctorum are meant collections of biographies of holy persons, especially of the older Church. The former title refers particularly to those who have suffered death for the faith; the latter is more general, including all " saints," i.e., Christians canonized by the Church on account of their eminently pious and pure lives.
I. Acts of Martyrs (Acta sive passiones martyrum ; M artyrologia) : The oldest authentic sources for the history of the early martyrs are the court records of the Roman empire (Acta proconsularia, prasidialia). They are not preserved in their original form, but more or less complete extracts from them constitute the kernel of the passion histories recorded by Christian hands; and they are acknowledged to be the authentic bases of these histories (cf. the works of Le Blant and Egli cited below), which, so far as they are based upon these official documents and thus demonstrate that they belong to the
i. Acta class of acta martyrum sincera, are Martyrum either written in the form of a letter
Sincera. or are devotional narratives without the epistolary character (passiones, gesta martyrum). The former class includes the oldest of these histories; the chief examples are: the Passio Polycarpi, in a letter of the congregation of Smyrna, of which extracts are given by Eusebius (Hist. eccl., IV xv.), while the complete text is handed down in five Greek manuscripts; the letter of the churches of Lyons and Vienne to the Chris-
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Acta Martyrum
tians of Asia and Phrygia concerning their sufferings under Marcus Aurelius in 177 (Eusebius, Hist, eccl., V. i.-iii.); the report of the Alexandrian bishop Dionysius to the Antiochian Fabianus on the sufferings of the Christians of his church during the persecutions under Decius (Eusebius, Hist, eccl, VI. xli.-xlii.); and certain reports concerning North- African martyrs and confessors of the same time, in Cyprian's collection of epistles (xx., xxi., xxii., xxvii., xxxix., xl., etc.).
Passions in narrative form are more numerous. Among the oldest and historically most important are: From the second century, the Acta Justini philosophi et martyris ; the Acta Car-pi, Papyli, et Agathonicce (cf. Eusebius. IV. xv. 48); the Passio sanctorum Scilitanorum of the year 180, a report of the martyrdom at Carthage of six Numidian Christians under the proconsul Vigellius Saturninus' July 17, 180, distinguished by its strictly objective form, reproducing the official proconsular acts without Christian additions; the Acta Apollonii, belonging to the time of Commodus (cf. Eusebius, V. xxi.). To the third century belong the Passio Perpetuce et Felicitatis, covering the martyrdom of certain Carthaginian Christians, belonging probably to Tertullian's congregation, Mar. 7, 203; the martyrdom of Pionius (cf. Eusebius, IV xv. 47), of Achatius, and of Conon, all three belonging to the epoch of Decius; the Acta proconsularia which record the trial and execution of Cyprian of Carthage under Valerianus, Sept. 14, 258. Finally, belonging to the beginning of the fourth century (the time of persecution under Diocletian and his coemperors, 303-323), there are the records collected by Eusebius, which now form an appendix to book VIII. of his church history, and treat of the Palestinian martyrs of that time, as well as somewhat numerous martyria of the period, to which must be ascribed a greater or less historical value (such as the Testamentum xl martyrum from Sebaste in Armenia, belonging to the time of Licinius, the newly discovered Greek text of which has full documentary value).
Much greater than the number of such acta martyrum sincera sive genuina is that of the non-authentic histories of martyrs which contain 2. Legend- little or nothing of contemporaneous
ary Acts, notices and have an essentially legendary character. To these belong, among others: two accounts of the martyrdom of Ignatius of Antioch; the Martyrium Colbertinum and the Martyrium Vaticanum ; the Acta Nerei et Achillei ; the Passio Felicitatis et septem filiorum ; the Acta S. Cypriani et Justince ; the legends of St. Agnes, St. Cecilia, St. Catherine, St. Maurice (qq. v.), and others.
After the cessation of persecutions the memory of the martyrs was cherished mainly by two kinds of written records: (1) calendaria, i.e., lists of the names of martyrs in calendar form for the purpose of fixing their memorial days for the liturgical use of individual congregations or greater church dioceses; (2) more detailed memorial books (gesta martyrum) for the purpose of private devotion and instruction, incorporating also longer passion narratives, and avoiding as much as possible the
putting together of mere names in calendary statistical form. Of the latter kind may have been that copious collection of martyrological material from all branches of the Church which Eusebius composed in addition to the booklet on the Palestinian martyrs already mentioned (cf. his references to this collection, Hist, eccl., IV xv. 47; V. Proem., iv. 3; also V xxi. 5), but which was 3. Calen- lost at a very early period (cf. Gregdaria and ory the Great, Epist. , viii. 29). Bio- Gesta Mar- graphical and other notices were tyrum. gradually added to the names of the martyrs in many of the calendaria; and by such inclusion of general hagiological matter they somewhat approached the character of the devotional reading-books. This enrichment of the calendaria with material not strictly martyrological in its nature (i.e., additions of a narrative character, not mere names) commenced in the West. While a calendarium of the Syriac Church from the year 412 (ed. W Wright, 1865) still shows a strictly martyrological character, the old calendar of the Roman congregation from the year 354 (ed. jEgidius Bucher, Antwerp, 1633; T. Mommsen, in Abhandlungen der sachsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschajten, 1850) gives, besides the names of martyrs, those of Roman bishops (twelve in number). The same is true of the Calendarium Africanum vetus from the year 500, edited by Mabillon (Vetera Analecta, iii. 398 sqq.). The martyrologium of the Church of Rome mentioned by Gregory the Great in his epistle to Eulogius of Alexandria {Epist., viii. 29) consisted of martyrological and non-martyrological (especially papal) elements, and had even admitted the older Roman festival calendar. The so-called Martyrologium Hieronymianum is an enlarged revision of this Roman calendar. In its present form it is a compilation edited about the year 600 at Auxerre in Gaul; but it was previously recast in upper Italy, as is indicated in the correspondence of the alleged author Jerome, with the bishops Chromatius of Aquileia and Heliodorus of Altinum, which stands at the beginning. It is a medley of names of places and saints, data of martyrs, and the like, collected from older local and provincial calendars. The Syriac calendarium already mentioned was used (in a somewhat enlarged form) by the compiler as a source of information for the East; for North Africa a Calendarium Carthaginense (probably from pre-Vandalic times) was used; and for Rome, no doubt, the Roman martyrologium to which Gregory the Great referred. Jerome probably contributed nothing to the collection (cf. the critical edition of the work, ed. J. B. de Rossi and L. Duchesne, from numerous manuscripts, in ASB, Nov., ii., 1894, and the criticism of B. Krusch in Neues Archiv fiXr alter e deutsche Geschichtskunde, xx., 1895, 437-440). To still later times belong similar compilations ascribed to the Venerable Bede, to Florus Magister of Lyons (c. 840), to the abbot Wandelbert of Prum (848), and others (see below, II., 2).
II. Histories of the Saints (Acta sive vital sanctorum) : From the end of the fourth century, under the influence of the Vitce patrum, dissemi-
Acta Martyrum Acton