PASSIONARIO. – P. (from *passionarius* or *passionale*) or *leggendario* is a collection of booklets devoted to the account of the life, martyrdom, translations, and miracles of the saints. The two terms have been used interchangeably, one for the other. In the 12th century, however (cf. Beleth, *De div. off.*, c. 60: PL 202, 66), *passionarius* and *leggendarius* were two distinct liturgical books and formed part of the normal equipment of a good monastic community and of the more important churches; the *p.* contained the *passiones martyrum*, while the *leggendario* contained the life, death, and miracles of confessors, but only insofar as they were read on the day of their feast in the Divine Office. The distinction between the two categories (martyrs–confessors) is certainly much older than Beleth, since it is already found in the 6th century, albeit with a different purpose, in Gregory of Tours (*Liber in gloria martyrum*, *in gloria confessorum*). For liturgical use, compilers preferred a mixed genre, collecting *passiones* and lives according to the natural course of the ecclesiastical year: the “hagiographic lectionary,” in contrast to the “biblical lectionary” and the “homiletic lectionary.”
The liturgical purpose of the *p.* in manuscripts is evident when the narrative is divided into paragraphs corresponding to the lessons of the Office, marked by Roman numerals I, II, III, etc., or by the expressions *finitis* or *faci finem* (ms. lat. 11750, Bibliothèque nationale de Paris). The collection of material in the *p.* follows various criteria: most often either the order of the calendar or the qualification of the eponyms (apostles, martyrs, holy virgins…). There are *p.* that present no order whatsoever.
The intrinsic value of the collections varies according to their origin. Different is the value of authentic collections, in which the compiler is also the editor (such as St. Gregory of Tours and Eulogius); different is the value when the editor merely assembled various hagiographic texts and copied or had them copied; and finally different is the value when the compiler is at the same time an author, at least in part, in that he himself supplied the missing *passiones* or lives. For the most part, the *p.* are anonymous.
Unlike the martyrology, the *p.* was intended to serve for public reading with a view to edification. Over time, martyrologies, by expanding their skeletal data, approached the *passiones* from which they drew narrative elements (historical martyrologies); the *passiones*, on the other hand, through an opposite process and with the aim of making the reading less burdensome, pruned the narrative of superfluous elements.
I. HISTORY
The only primitive source for reading in liturgical assemblies was the *codex Scripturarum*, the Bible, from which the lector read *prout tempus fert* (Justin, *Apologia*, I, c. 65) a passage, resumed at the point left off the previous time (lectio continua). But already in the subapostolic period (2nd century, up to 175 AD) the custom was introduced of reading other writings, such as circular letters of great heroes of the faith and, on the anniversaries of martyrs, the account of their deeds (cf. *Martyrium Polycarpi*, 155 AD, and the Acts of the Martyrs of Lyons, 177 AD).Anniversaries multiplied when, after the 4th century, confessors were admitted, like martyrs, to the honors of worship. Thus the number of panegyrics, *passiones*, and lives of the saints increased. Cassiodorus (d. 575) prescribed to his monks: “Vitas Patrum, confessiones fidelium, passiones martyrum legite constanter” (*De Institut. divin. litter.*: PL 70, 1147). But the text certainly refers to spiritual reading. Rome, faithful to the canon of the Scriptural books, did not look favorably upon these foreign compositions, all the more so since, for martyrs, to the authentic *acta* had been added literary embellishments and fantasies by uncontrolled writers, often anonymous (mostly monks or *infideles seu idiotae*, who not infrequently altered and falsified even the historical data themselves); so much so that Gelasius I (492–96) issued the famous decree: “Gesta sanctorum martyrum… quia et eorum, qui conscripsere, nomina penitus ignorantur… ne vel levis subsannandi oriretur occasio, in sancta Romana Ecclesia non leguntur” (PL 59, 160–61: Denz-U, n. 165). The East was also opposed (Council of Laodicea, can. 69) to the *passiones*, which instead found a good reception in Africa, Milan, and Gaul. St. Augustine refers several times to the reading of the *Passiones* in his discourses: “Modo legebatur Passio beati Cypriani” (cf. *Misc. Agostiniana*, I, Rome 1930, p. 67, 80; *Serm.*, 273, c. 2: PL 38, 1249). The custom was codified at the Council of Hippo in 393 (Mansi, IV, 924) and at the Fourth Council of Carthage in 397 (Ph. Labbé, *Conc.*, II, Venice 1728, col. 1409). See ACTS OF THE MARTYRS.
At the beginning of the 5th century, in the monastery of virgins founded in Palestine by St. Melania the Younger, three lessons were found in the liturgical Office, as was customary in the East, taken from the Old and New Testaments. But in the last nocturnal Office recited by the Saint in honor of St. Stephen, on the night of 25–26 Dec. 439, she added two more lessons; one narrated the martyrdom of the Saint, the other the discovery of his relics: “quia consuetudo erat ei per vigilias sanctorum quinque legere lectiones” (M. Rampolla del Tindaro, *S. Melania iuniore*, Rome 1905, p. 265). Since neither in the East nor in Rome was the reading of the Acts of the Martyrs admitted in the psalmody, Melania must have learned the custom in Africa in 415.
For Milan, in the discourses of St. Ambrose, the *Passiones* of St. Agnes, St. Cecilia, etc., are widely used, while for Gaul a text of Arnobius the Younger (mid-5th century) bears witness: “cotidie legitur in ecclesia in conspectu Dei, quanta mala fecerunt Christo, apostolis et martyribus” (PL 53, 494), which Morin interprets without doubt in the sense of the *passiones* (*Rev. bénéd.*, 28 [1911], p. 173). The strictness of Gelasius seems to have been limited to the eucharistic synaxis; in the Office, there was more leniency. Traces of this are found in the Rule of St. Benedict (ch. 14): “In sanctorum festivitatibus… lectiones ad ipsum diem pertinentes dicantur.” It is likely that such lessons were gathered in a special volume, an incipient *p.* to which St. Gregory the Great may refer when, in 598, to Eulogius of Alexandria who had asked him for “cunctorum martyrum gesta,” he replied that the Archive of the Roman Church knew only “pauci quaedam in unius codicis volumine collecta” (cf. A. Dufourcq, *Le passionnaire occidental du VIIe siècle*, in *Mélanges d'arch. et d'hist. de l'Ecole franç. de Rome*, 26 [1906], pp. 27–65).
The initial intransigence gradually gave way to tolerance and then to official recognition with the spread of the cult of the saints. Until the 9th century, the *passio* was read only in the church where the saint was venerated. Adrian I (772–95) extended it also to St. Peter’s when their Office was celebrated there (it is the period of the great translations and the diffusion of relics). This is attested by the Ordo XII (between the end of the 8th and the first half of the 9th century; cf. M. Andrieu, *Les Ordines Romani du haut moyen-âge*, II, Louvain 1948, p. 466): “Passiones sanctorum vel gesta ipsorum usque ad Adriani tempora tantummodo ibi legebantur ubi ecclesia ipsius sancti vel titulus erat. Ipse vero tempore suo renovare iussit et in Ecclesia Sancti Petri legendas esse instituit.” The papal favor facilitated its diffusion and growth, to the point of constituting in the Divine Office a threat even to the *lectio divina*.
The reading was done in choir, but when it was very lengthy it continued in the refectory, as noted in ms. lat. 798 of the Bibliothèque nationale de Paris (see Leroquais [q.v.], p. LI), or it was distributed over the days of the week (if the feast had an octave).
II. CLASSIFICATION
Among the *passiones*, some are particular or local, i.e., they contain the *passiones* of the martyrs of a region, diocese, or those venerated in a specific church; others are general or universal, whether as a type of saint or as a place of veneration. Examples of particular *passiones* include, for Egypt, the *Vitae Patrum*; for Gaul, the *Vitae* of St. Gregory of Tours; for Italy, the *Dialogues* of St. Gregory the Great; for Spain, the *Memoriale sanctorum* of Eulogius of Córdoba; for Ireland, the *Codex Salmanticensis*; for England, the *Sanctilogium Angliae* of John of Tynemouth; and for Brabant, the *Hagiologium Brabantinorum*. The universality of the *passiones* depends on the number of saints, the limits of time, etc.
The two oldest manuscripts of *passiones* date to the 7th century and are found: one, the Codex Velser, in the Library of Munich (lat. 3514), and the other in the Municipal Library of Montpellier (ms. 55). Manuscripts from the 8th century are more numerous. From the 9th century onward, *passiones* multiplied everywhere and became increasingly voluminous. In the 12th century, sections were extracted from them—already present in the codices—contrasted and marked with distinct paragraphs, intended for reading in the Divine Office. The first types of breviaries were indeed beginning to take shape, and the *passiones* became the most frequent source of historical lessons in the *proprium sanctorum*.
From anonymous and legendary *passiones*, texts of lessons and responsories for several ancient martyrs—such as St. Agatha, St. Cecilia, St. Lucy, St. Clement, and St. Lawrence—have been taken and remain in the Office, even though authentic acts of these saints are not extant. Toward the middle of the 13th century, a final type of abbreviated and legendary compilations spread, intended to provide private devotion with edifying reading. It seems that the Dominicans particularly distinguished themselves in this regard.