Acts of the Martyrs

ACTS OF THE MARTYRS. - I. ACTS OF THE GREEK AND LATIN MARTYRS. - Under the name of acts of the martyrs (acta martyrum) we include all that abundant literary production whose subject is the narration of the sufferings of the martyrs of the first Christian centuries in giving testimony to their faith. Less properly, therefore, one could join with it the inscriptions, panegyrics, and lyric poems that were composed in honor of the martyrs themselves. Such narrations are usually divided into three groups: 1) official documents drawn up by public registrars during the judicial proceedings, to be preserved in the archives (acta, gesta); for the most part they have come down to us within a framework compiled by Christian writers in such a way as to make them edifying accounts: the best example is that of the acts of St. Cyprian; 2) narrations by eyewitnesses or by writers who had direct communication with eyewitnesses, always coming from Christian writers, who sometimes speak in the name of an entire Christian community, like the acts of St. Polycarp, and thus offer the best guarantee of authenticity; 3) accounts (passiones) by authors who were not contemporaries and often posterior by centuries to the events they narrate; and in this case it will fall to the critic to scrutinize whether they worked from good sources and to extract from those accounts those nuclei of reliable information that may have been preserved in them, to discard everything fantastic, anachronistic, or unhistorical contained therein, and to reject those compilations that preserve nothing genuine. More simple and clear, however, is the division of all this literature into truly historical and original narrations; narrations reworked in various ways by later writers; fantastic narrations, that is, true sacred romances.

It should be noted at once that the historical existence of a martyr is in no way compromised by the lack of any narration concerning him, or by a clearly fabulous narration, or even by an entire particular literature of fantastic accounts about him, often in full contradiction with one another. The Church never had a particular office that supervised or favored the compilation of acts of martyrs or concerned itself with their genuine preservation; and in particular this preservation is due to different circumstances according to the individual documents. It is true that in the Liber Pontificalis of the Roman Church there is mention of seven notaries instituted by the popes Clement (d. c. 97) and Fabian (d. 250), also recalled in the biography of Anterus (d. 236), for the purpose of collecting the memorials of the martyrs; but this notice, if it were reliable, would apply only to the Roman Church. Instead it is by now established that those notaries were instituted later and for a wholly different purpose. The Church sometimes intervened in a completely contrary sense: that is, to repress the audacity of writers who would compromise with their fantasy the seriousness of genuine tradition. The first hagiographer of whom there is memory is a completely discredited figure: having presumed to compile the Acta Pauli et Theclae with the aim of honoring the apostle more greatly by working from fantasy, he was removed from the presbyteral office (Tertullian, De baptismo, 17; Jerome, De viris illustr., 7). He had emulators who got off better, but they were not encouraged. The Decretum Gelasianum (ed. E. von Dobschütz, Leipzig 1912) clearly expresses the distrust that the acts of the martyrs then in circulation inspired: «therefore according to ancient custom, out of singular caution, they are not read in the Holy Roman Church, since the names of those who wrote them are not known at all and they are supposed to be by infidels and private individuals... for example the passions of Sts. Quiricus and Julitta or those of St. George and others similar, which prove to have been composed by heretics. Therefore, as has been said, lest even a shadow of derision arise, in the Holy Roman Church they are not read». St. Gregory the Great in his letter to Eulogius almost provides the commentary on this disposition: in the Roman Church the martyrs were commemorated on the anniversary day of their martyrdom, but in the list kept of them there was indicated only the name, the place, and the day of martyrdom; as for their deeds, none was preserved in the pontifical archives or in the libraries of the city «except a few in a single codex» (Registrum, VIII, 28).

Not only were the acts of the martyrs in Rome excluded from liturgical reading, but they were ignored. They were introduced very timidly into the office: only under Pope Adrian I did they begin to be read in the Vatican basilica; previously they were read only in the churches that bore their title. In Africa, in Gaul, in Spain the use was much more ancient. St. Augustine in one of his sermons summarizes the passion of St. Fructuosus which had been read to the people; on the day of St. Stephen the account of the Acts of the Apostles had been read, and the same holy doctor was forced to say that «of the acts of the martyrs we can find very few to be read on their solemnities» (Sermo, 315; PL 38 1426). And yet in Africa we find a body of excellent documents, indeed the best that ancient Western hagiography has preserved for us.

In Gaul, alongside the Scriptures, the lives of the saints were admitted into the liturgy. Avitus of Vienne (MGH, Auctores Antiquissimi, VI, II, p. 145) and St. Gregory of Tours (In Gloria Martyrum, 85; De virtutibus s. Martini, II, 29, 49) make mention of this. For Spain, Braulio bishop of Saragossa bears witness, who speaks of a life of St. Aemilianus written by him so that it might be read on the day of his feast (PL 72, 208).

Also in the Greek Church, from the beginning, hagiographic literature did not officially enjoy favor. By can. 63 of the Trullan Council of 602 the diffusion of the apocryphal accounts of the martyrs was prohibited, since they offered occasion for contempt and unbelief to the hearers; it commanded that they be burned, and excommunicated those who accepted them as truthful. At the beginning of the 9th century the patriarch Nicephorus repeated such a condemnation, striking particularly the acts of St. George and those of Sts. Quiricus and Julitta. It is certain, however, that hagiographic texts entered the office relatively early thanks to liturgical poetry.

An exposition of the history of the martyrs was intended to be compiled by the historian Eusebius of Caesarea, but all that remains to us is the part concerning the martyrs of Palestine, while of the great work we know that in the time of St. Gregory the Great it was known neither at Rome nor at Alexandria. In his Historia ecclesiastica, among the other documents he reports, there are also those of famous martyrs such as St. James the Apostle, Simon of Jerusalem and the martyrs of Lyons, or of persons who, like St. Dionysius of Alexandria, although they had not undergone martyrdom, were tried and persecuted. After him no one was able to take up the subject again with the seriousness of a historian, and for this reason too many documents, especially of the Western Church, were lost or wretchedly disfigured. In any case it is striking that, while Eusebius in the Historia speaks repeatedly of the great number of martyrs, those of whom he gives us detailed information are not many; and the authentic and certain acta are anything but numerous. Many of these can certainly have been lost, but the majority were not written. The trial, condemnation and execution of the martyrs were for the most part of a very arid simplicity and uniformity; only some special and extraordinary circumstance could make the account more lively; yet even in these cases it is not said that a written memory of them was always preserved; the appellation of martyr was more than sufficient to call to mind a generic, but no less glorious scene of a Christian who defies death so as not to betray the faith, who obeys the law of God without caring for that of men. Contemporaries easily completed the scene with their personal memories; it was posterity that reconstructed it according to their own tastes and their historical and literary abilities. In compensation, Christian antiquity has handed down to us sincere accounts of inestimable beauty; while some, in their protocol-like aridity, bear good witness to us only of the manner in which proceedings were conducted, when legal forms were observed, against the Christians, and serve us as a term of comparison for judging the authenticity of the others. The first document of this kind, come down to us in its integrity, is the Martyrium Polycarpi, a letter that the community of Smyrna had sent to that of Philomelium and to the other Churches of Asia in the very year of the Saint's martyrdom (in 156). In his second apology St. Justin narrates the martyrdom of Sts. Ptolemy and Lucius and of a third unknown person. Contemporary are the Acta ss. Iustini et sociorum, written in Greek, which reproduce in their central part the protocol of the trial; the martyrdom took place at Rome under Junius Rusticus, prefect of the city. In 177-78 the Christian community of Lyons and Vienne transmitted to the East a letter in which it narrates the persecution then suffered and the heroism of its martyrs. More controversial as to the original text are the Acta s. Apollonii, a distinguished and esteemed personage who defended the faith before the Roman Senate and was condemned by the praetorian prefect Perennius (185) and who is also remembered by Eusebius in his history. These Acta exist in Greek and in an Armenian version. To the persecution of Decius, according to Father Delehaye and other critics, are referred the Acta ss. Carpi, Papyli et Agathonicae, martyrs at Pergamum, and the Acta s. Pionii, martyr at Smyrna, which according to others should be backdated to the time of Marcus Aurelius. Eusebius narrates to us the martyrdom of Potamiaena and Basilides in Alexandria and of Marinus the centurion at Caesarea in Palestine (Hist. eccl., VI, 5; VII, 15). The acta of the martyrdom of Maximus in Asia under Decius, those of Conon the gardener at Magydus in Pamphylia, those of Claudius, Asterius, Neon, Domnina and Theonilla at Aegea in Lycia are recognized as reliable. As for the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste in Armenia, only their testament is held to be genuine. For Illyricum we have the acta of Julius the veteran, martyr at Durostorum in Moesia, those of Sts. Agape, Chione and Irene at Thessalonica and those of Irenaeus bishop of Sirmium, all under Diocletian. Spain has preserved for us the Passio Fructuosi, Augurii et Eulogii, martyrs at Tarragona in 259; Sicily, in Greek and in Latin, that of Euplus at Catania during the Diocletianic persecution. To the second half of the 4th century belong the martyrs of Anaunia and St. Vigilius bishop of Trent, killed by fanatical pagans.

Africa is the region that has preserved for us the greatest number of authentic documents concerning its martyrs. First of all in order of time are the Acta Martyrum Scillitanorum, killed at Carthage on 17 July 180; of these the shorter Latin text contains in substance nothing but their interrogation before the proconsul. The Acta Perpetuae et Felicitatis (202) and companions of martyrdom are one of the most touching documents of the hagiography of the first centuries; embedded in them is the account that the martyr Perpetua herself made of her sufferings, to which an eyewitness added the account of the final ordeal in the amphitheatre. To the persecution of Valerian (258) are referred the most celebrated acta of St. Cyprian bishop of Carthage, of Sts. Montanus, Lucius and companions killed also at Carthage, the Passio Mariani et Iacobi, martyrs at Lambaesis. To 295 the Acta Maximiliani martyr at Teveste bring us, and to 298 the Passio Marcelli centurionis killed at Tingi in Mauretania in quite particular circumstances. Under Diocletian in 304 we have the brief Passio Crispinae martyr at Teveste; to Abitina the Acta Saturnini, Dativi et sociorum bring us, which a Donatist retouched according to the conceptions of his sect. Of Donatist origin, on the other hand, are the Passio Donati, the Passio Marculi and the Passio Isaac et Maximiani. It is commonly agreed that the use made at an early date in the African Church of these accounts in the liturgy contributed to their preservation, because they were thus withdrawn from the audacity of the reworkers who instead exercised their baneful activity so extensively elsewhere. It must not be forgotten, however, that even these accounts held to be authentic did not always pass through the centuries in their genuine original integrity: they have been subject to curtailments or to expansions, have undergone retouches and thus given rise to redactions more or less different from one another which have sometimes put the acumen of critics to a hard test.

There is then the case of accounts in which a part important must be considered original and authentic, while the rest cannot be accepted as historical, since it was introduced into the document only for the purpose of completing it in what it seemed to lack or was really incomplete. To this special group can be assigned the acta of St. Dasius martyr at Durostorum in Moesia, those of the Four Crowned Martyrs in Pannonia, the Disputatio Acacii before the consular Marcian, following which Acacius was released by Decius, the Passio s. Sabbae de Gothia (Scythia) which refers to an episode of the end of the 4th century.

Sometimes the writer, although well informed, compiling his account from good sources, does not know how to prescind entirely from the circumstances of his own times and does not know how to refer back accurately to those of his hero's times, and does the work of a not altogether exact editor, completing the original account with suppositions and contrivances of his own; such is the case of the one who compiled the passion of St. Philip, bishop of Heraclea. Whoever, at the end of the 4th century, compiled that of St. Theodore of Ancyra acted with even greater freedom. With less critical assurance there sometimes proceeded Pope Damasus in his metrical epitaphs and Prudentius in his hymns in honor of the martyrs. As for the legends of the martyrs of Rome and the surrounding places, it is easy to note that they, for the most part, strive to group into a single connection persons who had no true relation among themselves, usually attributing the principal part to one among them who thus becomes the hero of a cycle; sometimes imaginary persons are added as a necessary setting, or ties of kinship are established. The most characteristic example of this manner of proceeding is the passion of St. Sebastian. Some of these passions go back already to the 5th and 6th centuries and became popular thanks to the boldness of the inventions and to a certain liveliness of coloring that assured them general credit.

When at Rome the use of reading the passions began, it would have been necessary to proceed to a careful selection of what could be accepted amid the abundant literature of the genre that had been forming to the detriment of historical truthfulness; but attention was paid only to whatever edification could come from it, and everything was admitted without that prudence which had been counseled by St. Gregory the Great. The popularity of those accounts increased still further when they, entering the martyrologies, became known throughout all Europe, and when the transfer of true or supposed relics led to the founding of new sanctuaries.

What happened at Rome was largely repeated in the West and in the East where there were memories of martyrs. Of very many of them local tradition could say nothing certain except that they had borne witness to the faith by their death; and even if sometimes some characteristic episode could have been reported, none of the contemporaries took care to leave a written memory of it, while what remained entrusted to oral tradition soon underwent those contaminations and transformations that usually occur in such cases. But those who in the succeeding ages hastened to venerate the martyr at his tomb, or who in more distant lands heard of him, or who believed they possessed his relics (when people began to make anxious search for these), were not content with so little; they demanded fuller information, more in keeping with the celebrity, also because in this way they felt themselves more stirred to veneration and glorification of the martyr. The writers who set their hand to satisfying these demands of the public were anything but learned persons or historians of worth and conscience and writers of genius: and just as relics multiplied without any scruple to satisfy devotion, so too the accounts were compiled without any concern for making researches which, moreover, for the most part would not have led to results worthy of note. We can even sometimes ask ourselves whether the truth was not deliberately set aside in order to obey preoccupations of another kind. Very poor and unknown writers for the most part undertook such compilations: they were not contemporaries of the events they intended to narrate and were forced to work on distant memories, on scanty information, on rumors without substance; they had, for the most part, not even an approximate knowledge of the times and the historical vicissitudes in which the martyrs lived: hence puerile conceptions and historical anachronisms; lacking taste and good literary traditions, they had to resort to a cheap rhetoric, making use of a wearied imagination devoid of resources, of commonplaces such as were held necessary in this kind of composition. Many times these authors, short of literary expedients, did nothing but transcribe or adapt as best they could for their hero writings meant for others. In this living off borrowed goods, the editors of passions have sometimes rendered us an excellent service by inserting into their text documents that today we would no longer possess: thus the author of the legendary life of Abercius inserted into it the text of his funerary inscription, which was also held apocryphal until, in recent times, a large fragment of the stone on which it was carved was discovered. He who wrote the passion of Barlaam and Josaphat, making use even of Buddhist elements, interpolated into it the apology of Aristides which otherwise would have been lost. The legend of St. Ariadne (v.), spurious in its first and last parts, preserves in the middle a fragment of excellent origin; something analogous has also happened for that of St. Tryphon. At other times, instead, the ill-advised writer has resorted even to pagan tales: thus the episode of the tyrant Phalaris returns in the passion of St. Eustace; that of the punishment of the treacherous schoolmaster of Falerii from early Roman history returns in that of St. Cassian of Imola; the punishment of Hippolytus torn apart by horses is inserted by Prudentius into the martyrdom of St. Hippolytus; the salvation of Arion thanks to a dolphin is repeated for St. Lucian, and other examples of the kind can also be adduced.

Nor is it permissible to conclude critically that, once there has been removed from an account of this kind whatever inadmissible, extravagant and, let us say it plainly, repugnant is encountered in it, for that very reason whatever remains can be accepted, because the compiler may indeed also have worked on a canvas of good origin, but it does not follow for this reason that in other cases it was not borrowed from another document that could easily be kept at hand. Thus too it has happened that if many times the panegyrists resorted to the passions to find a way of exalting their heroes, it is also true that the authors of the passions resorted to panegyrics to find material for writing their story, and this is precisely the case encountered by the panegyric of the Forty Martyrs, written by St. Basil and by St. Gregory of Nyssa, that of Sts. Juventinus and Maximinus, composed by St. John Chrysostom, that of St. Theodore the Recruit, owed to St. Gregory of Nyssa.

It cannot be a matter of wonder, consequently, that sometimes for the same person there are passions totally different or nearly so, nor even that the same passion, passing through different hands, has undergone insertions of episodes, expansions, curtailments or modifications; this is a matter on which it was held permissible to proceed with the greatest freedom and lack of critical scruple; it is moreover established that in the Carolingian age many passions were redone in style, to satisfy a more refined taste or to remove strident anachronisms, and these cleanings were often not limited merely to form.

It is evident that the historian of the Church can derive no real usefulness from this literature, which continued to be produced throughout the Middle Ages. The only reliable datum that he can often extract from it is that of the place and the day of the annual feast celebrated in honor of the martyr or the group of martyrs, because, since the passion was written expressly to glorify them, the author was in a position to transmit with certainty, as the conclusion of his generic notices, at least this sure and specific indication; as for the indication of the year in which the martyrdom would have occurred, however, the matter was different, because recourse was preferably had to some emperor famous for the violence of his persecution: for the most part Nero, Decius or Diocletian, when, who knows for what whim, recourse was not had to Hadrian or Numerian. It is not surprising, however, that this kind of literature, at once artificial and banal, met with favor; it gratified at little cost that taste for the marvelous and the extraordinary which lies at the bottom of the popular soul, and it seemed to satisfy the glorification of the heroes of Christianity better than the exact truth. Even today legendary and romantic tales satisfy more than genuine history. As for its value, Father Delehaye could justly write: «There is between the historical acts written under the impression of events and the accounts of the martyrs that follow them the difference that we put between the work of an artist and an industrial product» (Les Passions des Martyrs et les genres littéraires, Brussels 1921, p. 236).

Studying the immense congeries of the passions and the rhetorical form of their redactions, Father Delehaye, in the same work, believed he could reduce them to certain classes. The first and perhaps most numerous is that in which the martyr appears as an epic hero (epic passions): he converts pagans by the thousands, causes temples to collapse and idols to be cast down, endures the most savage and prolonged torments, confounds idolatrous judges and priests with his eloquence, and cannot die except by the sword, because he himself asks God to grant him at last eternal joys. A second class is that of the passions compiled on the model of the Greek adventure novels, rich in intrigues, recognitions, and unforeseen encounters: the passion of St. Eustace and his companions is one of the most characteristic examples. A third class is that of the passions of a predominantly idyllic and domestic character, such as that of St. Cecilia. A fourth class is that of the passions directed to a didactic purpose, such as that of demonstrating how martyrdom grants a complete spiritual rehabilitation even to those who had once apostatized or had stained themselves with grave sins; or of setting off the merit of virginity above the married state; or of inculcating the obligation to observe some evangelical precept, such as that of forgiving one's enemies (passion of Nicephorus). Another task of the passions is also that of completing in all their parts authentic documents, as was done with the passion of St. Ignatius of Antioch in relation to his letters, or with the narration of the life of St. Polycarp as a preparation for the authentic history of his martyrdom.

In imitation of what had been done early on with accounts of monastic origin, people began in the Middle Ages to gather together the passions of the martyrs, but not with the aim of making complete and exclusive collections of them. The Passionaries (v.) and the Synaxaria (v.), among the Westerners and the Byzantines respectively, did indeed include predominantly the accounts of the martyrs, but without excluding the holy confessors, and, being destined for choral reading, they gathered by preference the accounts of the saint for whom some celebration was held in the church. One can speak in an analogous way also of other collections made for purposes of edifying reading, such as the Legenda aurea of Giacomo da Varagine or da Varazze (v.), archbishop of Genoa in the 13th century; of the legendary of Pietro Calo of Chioggia (v.) and of Pietro de Natalibus (v.); in the 14th century, of the Sanctuarium of Bonino Mombrizio (v.), printed in the second half of the 15th century. In the 16th century there appeared the collection of Luigi Lippomano (v.), bishop of Verona, and that of Laurentius Surius (v.), a German Carthusian monk, put together with a primary concern for historical criticism. A general and complete collection of hagiographic documents is the one begun at Louvain in the 17th century by the Jesuit Jean Bolland (v.) and which was for that reason called that of the Bollandists. He, however, who first conceived the purpose of sifting out from the immense congeries of the Acta or Passiones that group of accounts which could be considered truly historical was the Benedictine monk Thierry Ruinart (v.) with the work, published in Paris in 1689, Acta primorum Martyrum sincera et selecta, in which, after a critical introduction, there found a place one hundred and seventeen documents, of which not all can truly be called acts and passions; each of them is illustrated by critical notes of the same author. Ruinart's work, reprinted several times afterward, received in 1777 a good Italian version in 4 vols. through the efforts of Francesco M. Luchini; it aroused discussions and profound opposition; later criticism eliminated many of those documents, while introducing some that came to light later; in any case it, together with the Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire ecclésiastique des six premiers siècles, published by L. Le Nain de Tillemont in Paris in 1693 and reprinted afterward, constitutes the first scientific guidance for the evaluation of the hagiographic material concerning the ancient martyrs. Alongside the Acta SS. of the Bollandists, who continued to gather the hagiographic documents, the periodical publication Analecta Bollandiana, begun in 1882, intends to complete the collection by publishing new texts or republishing texts imperfectly edited in the past, or accompanying them with critical dissertations.

As regards in particular Rome and Italy, let us recall the much-discussed work of A. Dufourcq, Etude sur les Gesta Martyrum romains, 6 vols., Paris 1900-1908, which represents an attempt at a classification of the legends studied in their origins and in their mutual relations; H. Delehaye, Etude sur le légendier romain: les saints de novembre et de décembre, Brussels 1936; Lanzoni (Studi e Testi, 35) summarizes and completes his previous studies in relation to the legends concerning the ancient episcopal sees. Finally, let us recall the works on various particular subjects published by P. Franchi de' Cavalieri in his Note Agiografiche, 8 vols., Rome-Vatican City 1902-1935 (Studi e Testi, 8, 9, 22, 24, 27, 33, 45), and in Bagiographica, Rome 1908 (Studi e Testi, 10). A good manual edition of texts held to be authentic is that of R. Knopf, Ausgewählte Märtyrerakten, 3rd ed. edited by G. Krüger, Tübingen 1929 (cf. Anal. Boll, 48 [1930], pp. 369-71). Useful are the little volumes of S. Colombo, Atti dei Martiri, Turin [1928]; C. Gallina, I martiri dei primi secoli, Florence 1940; see also AGIORNAFIA.

Pio Paschini

II. ACTS OF THE EASTERN MARTYRS

1. Syriac Acts

Among the Oriental Acts these are the most important for their historical value. Many have already been published by S. E. Assemani, Acta sanctorum martyrum orientalium et occidentalium, Rome 1748 (ASM), by P. Bedjan, Acta martyrum et sanctorum, Paris 1890-97 (AMS), and by the Bollandists both in the Acta SS. and in the Analecta Bollandiana (An. Boll).

Martyrs of Edessa. - We possess rather unreliable acts, written toward the end of the 4th century, of St. Šarbil, formerly a pagan priest, and of the bishop St. Barsamja (ed. AMS, I, 95-130), martyred, it seems, under Decius. To the time of Diocletian, on the other hand, belong St. Gürja and St. Šemona (ed. I. Rahmani, Acta sanct. conf. Guriae et Shammae, Rome 1899), and the deacon St. Habib (ed. AMS, I, 144-60), whose acts, written by a certain Theophilus, contain chronological errors and inaccuracies that make them somewhat suspect.

Persian Martyrs. - Before the great persecution of Shapur II, special acts, said to have been written by the eyewitness Isaiah bar Haddābō, recount the martyrdom of Sts. Bērīkīšō and Jāunān in the year 327-28 (ed. ASM, I, 211-24; AMS, II, 39-51), though in a form that raises some doubt.

The persecution of Shapur II, which began in 339-340, struck the bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, St. Simeon Barsaba, and many other martyrs. Generally speaking, the acts of this period are substantially historical, written by contemporaries and even by eyewitnesses, and collected partly during the persecution itself and partly toward the end of the 4th century through the efforts of Mārūtā of Maiferqat. Two collections can be distinguished, the first of which, arranged chronologically, comprises the acts of St. Simeon Barsaba (the oldest recension in the ed. O. Kmosko, Patrol. Syriana, II, Paris 1907, 715-77), of the massacre in Bēt Hūzājē, of Tarbō, of Sāhdōst, of 111 men and women; of Barba'šmīn, of 40 martyrs, of Bādēmā, of 'Agebāēmā and of other anonymous martyrs (ed. ASM, I, 1-59; 83-91; 104-20; 141-207; AMS, II, 248-60; 276-81; 291-306; 325-96). The second collection, or Passional of Adiabene, offers us, also chronologically, the martyrs of that region (ed. AMS, II, 307-16; IV, 128-41; ASM, I, 121-31. Cf. P. Peeters, An. Boll., 43 [1925], 261 ff.). To this period belong the three martyrs Milēs, Baršabjā and Daniel (ed. ASM, I, 60-80; 92-95; AMS, II, 260-75; 281-84), whose acts form a single whole; the bishop Narsaj of Šāharqad, killed in Bēt Garmaj (ed. Acta SS. Novembris, IV, coll. 424-32); a group of prisoners of war martyred in 362 and whose account was written 11 years later (ed. ASM, I, 131-39); the martyrs of Karkā of Bēt Sēlōk (ed. AMS, II, 284-86); a group of Persian soldiers killed in 350 in Ģilān (ed. AMS, II, 166-70); the priest Baddāj of Argūl (ed. AMS, II, 63-65) and, a little later, 'Abd al-Masīh of Singar, known not only from Syriac acts (ed. An. Boll., 5 [1887], 5-52), but also from Armenian acts and from an Arabic version (ed. An. Boll., 44 [1926], 270-341)

which seems the closest to the Syriac original. In any case these documents are accepted with certain reservations imposed by their anachronisms.

From the time of the persecution of Yazdegerd I come the authentic acts of St. 'Abdā and companions (ed. AMS, IV, 250-53), of St. Narsaj of Bēt Rāziqājē (ed. AMS, IV, 170-80), of St. Sabor (ms. British Museum 7200), of the royal page St. Tāṭāq (ed. AMS, IV, 181-84) and of a group of 10 martyrs of Bēt Garmaj (ed. AMS, IV, 184-88).

Among the acts of the persecution of Bahram V, those, historically reliable, of Miharšābōr (ed. ASM, I, 234-36), of Peroz (ed. AMS, IV, 253-62) and of the notary Ja'qōb (ed. AMS, IV, 189-200) contrast with the spurious acts of St. James the Intercisus (ed. AMS, II, 539-558). Those of St. Petion, killed in 447, seem to have had a primitive contemporary recension (ed. An. Boll., 7 [1889], 8-44).

Finally, from the time of the persecution of Khosrow I, although not written by eyewitnesses, the acts of St. Gregory and of St. Jazdpanāh (ed. P. Bedjan, Histoire de Mar Jabalaha, Paris 1895, 347-451) have historical value. Those of the prince Gābarlāhā and of his sister Qāzō (ed. An. Boll., 9 [1891], 11-103), on the other hand, arouse greater suspicion, for they offer a strange resemblance to the acts of St. Dādū (ed. AMS, IV, 210-21).

Versions from the Greek. - Besides the oldest martyrology, composed at Nicomedia by a probably Arian author in the second half of the 4th century and preserved in a Syriac codex of 411 (ed. Nau: PO 10, 2 ff.), there are numerous Greek legends translated into Syriac. Among the versions belonging to the earliest period (end of the 5th century, beginning of the 6th) we may mention those of the 40 martyrs of Sebaste (ed. AMS, II, 355-75), of Sts. Cosmas and Damian (ed. AMS, VI, 107-19), of St. Pantaleon and companions (mss. British Mus. 944; Vatic. Syr. 461), of St. Babylas and of others still. The Jacobites continued these translations later on.

2. Armenian Acts

They have not yet been the object of a systematic and critical study, made difficult by the lack of translations of the copious material, which has been largely published by the Mechitarist Fathers of Venice, especially in the Vitae et passiones sanctorum, Venice 1874 (VP) and in the Sanctorum acta pleniora, I-IX, XII, Venice 1810-13; XI, ibid. 1814, by J. B. Aucher. Alīšan too, in the Bibliotheca armena, Venice 1853-61, gathers abundant material. I. Manandian-Adjarian, Valarsapat 1903, has published the acts of modern martyrs from 1115 to 1843.

The Armenians have translated many Greek and Latin legends, such as those of St. Anthimus of Nicomedia (VP, I, 113-34), of St. Blaise of Sebaste (VP, II, 382-89) and many others. Often, however, the Armenian translations are made directly from the Syriac. Among the Syriac acts preserved today only in the Armenian version we may cite those of the Persian martyr under Khosrow I, St. Izbozet, Acta SS. Novembris, IV, 200-16).

The most important for their originality are the acts that refer to Armenian martyrs. These are those published so far: Atom and companions under Yazdegerd II (Aucher, Sanctorum acta, II, 86-87); Davide Dune (d. in 693; ed. Bibl. arm., XIX, 85-96); Isaac and Hamazasp (d. in 785-86; Bibl. arm., XII, 61-80); Joseph of Karni (d. ca. 808; VP, II, 266-71); the martyrs of Oski (who died in 130; ed. Bibl. arm., XIX, 59-66); the virgins Rhipsime and Gaiana of the 3rd century, to whom the pseudo Moses of Chorene dedicated a panegyric (ed. Venice 1843, pp. 304-25); St. Sanducht of the 1st century

(Bibl. arm., VIII, 77-83); Sukhias Luciano and Polieueto in Lesser Armenia (d. in 107; Bibl. arm., XIX, 33-56); the virgin Susanik (d. in 458; ed. Bibl. arm., IX, 11-47), of whom there exists a Georgian passion translated by P. Peeters (An. Boll., 53 [1935], 5-49; 245-308); St. Theodore Salahunio, 3rd century; (Ališan, Eclogarii ex Armeniae historii, I, Venice 1901, 175-79) and St. Vardan with his companions (who died ca. 454; ed. Mechitariati, Venice 1893). The critical judgment on these acts cannot be uniform. In them one passes from legend empty of value to contemporary documents worthy of belief. The Armenian Synaxarion of Ter Israel has already been published in PO 6, 181-355; 345-556.

3. Georgian A

They depend in large part on Armenian literature and therefore offer a double interest. In the field of translations, in which the great translator Seith distinguished himself (late 8th century, early 9th), we note the collection of lives and passions made by him (26 of them are known), all unpublished with the exception of the life of St. Agathangelus of Damascus, edited by C. Kekelidze, in Christiansky Vostok, 4 (1916), fasc. III. Imitators of Seith were, in the 10th century, David of Tbethi and, in the 12th century, a certain Theophilus, whose works are in part published by C. Kekelidze in the Monumenta Hagiogr. Georgica, I, Tiflis 1918 (vol. II appeared in 1946). Among the Georgian translations we find, besides those mentioned above, the martyrdom of 9 children of Kola killed in the 5th-6th century and described in a document that seems to be of the 8th century. It is contained in the "polycephalous" codex no. 57 of the Iberian Convent of Mount Athos. Furthermore, the passion of St. Theodore and companions has been published (An. Boll., 44 [1926], 70-102). Of properly Georgian martyrs treat: 1st a fine account of the 12th century on the protomartyr St. Raideni, d. in the 5th century (ed. Sabinin, Il paradiso della Georgia, St. Petersburg 1882, pp. 169-80; Latin version An. Boll., 33 [1915], 294-317); the narrative goes back to ancient sources. 2nd Joane Sabanisdze who in the 8th-4th century describes the martyrdom of St. Abo of Tiflis (d. in 780-90; ed. M. Brosset, Vite dei santi georgiani, pp. 321-41); 3rd Stephen of Tbethi who at the beginning of the 10th century narrates the martyrdom of St. Gobroni. These two contemporary authors have great historical value. Other martyrs killed by the Arabs are recalled in the later memorials (cf. M. Brosset, Catalogue des livres géorgiens, p. 141). The Synaxarion or Georgian Martyrology has been published by N. Marrin in PO 19, 5 ff. See also GEORGIA (literature).

4. Coptic A

Besides the Coptic Synaxarion, composed in Arabic at the beginning of the 15th century (ed. Corpus Scriptorum Christ. Orientalium. Scriptores arabici, 3rd series, XVIII, Paris 1905) and in which mention is made of the Egyptian martyrs, there also exist ancient A. of the m., written in Coptic. Some are known only from an Arabic or Ethiopic version. Fr. Delehaye (Les martyrs d'Égypte, in An. Boll., 40 [1922], 5-154; 299-352) has made the historical and literary criticism of this material. Deriving in large part from Greek sources, the Coptic passions offer little or nothing to the historian. Fantasy, often in bad taste, pervades them all, elaborating certain types or cycles of martyrs that then fit like a template onto different saints. Thus there is the cycle of Basilides or of Diocletian and that of Julius of Aqfas. The martyrs are generally attributed to the time of Diocletian. There is no point in reviewing by name all this mediocre literature. The Coptic A. have been published especially by Hyvernat and Balestri in the Corpus Scriptorum Christian. Orientalium. Scriptores Copt., by Winsted (Coptic Texts of st. Theodore), by von Lemm (Bruchstücke koptischer Märtyrerlegenden, in Memorie dell'Acc. di Pietroburgo, 8th series, XII), by W. Budge (Coptic Martyrdoms in the Dialect of Upper Egypt, London 1914), by W. Crum (Anecdota Oxoniensia, Semitic series, XII, 1913) and by W. Till (Koptische Heiligenund Martyrerlegenden, in Orientalia Christ. Analecta, nos. 102 [Rome 1935] and 108, [ibid. 1936]).

Ethiopic Acts. - They refer to versions almost always from Coptic. Pereira has published a good part of them in the Corpus Scriptorum Christ. Orientalium. Scriptores aethiopici, 2nd series, XXVIII. These are versions of uncertain date, earlier than the 16th century, and of almost no historical interest. The same may be said of other versions of which I. Guidi speaks in the Storia della letteratura etiopica, Rome 1932, pp. 32-34.

Ignazio Ortiz de Urbina