Primary source · Latin

The Martyrologium Hieronymianum

Anonymous compilers (pseudonymously ascribed to Jerome) · c. AD 431–450 (northern Italy); reworked in Gaul, late 6th c.

What this text is

The oldest general calendar of the martyrs — for almost every day of the year, a terse notice of place and names. Textually the most corrupt major document of Christian antiquity (names split, doubled, and migrated between entries), yet the widest net of early cult attestation that survives: for many minor figures of the apostolic age, its feast entry is the only evidence that the ancient church kept their memory. Cited here with that double character honestly stated.

Profile of The Hieronymian compilers →

Public-domain translations

Working translation (from the Latin, ed. De Rossi–Duchesne)

Eighth before the Kalends of January: the birth of Christ in Bethlehem of Judaea. [The prefatory letter answers the bishops Chromatius and Heliodorus:] through the whole course of the year, on nearly every day, the birthday of a martyr is set down.

Manuscript witnesses

Codex Epternacensis (Paris, BnF lat. 10837)

c. AD 700–710

The calendar carried in the circle of St Willibrord's Echternach mission — the oldest surviving carrier of the Hieronymian text.

EARLIEST WITNESS

Codex Bernensis (Bern, Burgerbibliothek 289)

c. AD 800

With Epternacensis and Wissemburgensis, one of the three witnesses on which the modern text rests.

PRINCIPAL WITNESS

Codex Wissemburgensis (Wolfenbüttel, Weissenburg 81)

8th c.

The third pillar of the tradition, from the Weissenburg scriptorium.

PRINCIPAL WITNESS

Acta Sanctorum Novembris II/1

1894

The De Rossi–Duchesne edition printing the three witnesses in parallel columns — the citation base used here.

PRINTED PROXY

Provenance

Compiled from the Roman Depositio of 354, an eastern (Syriac) martyrology, and African calendars

Editions & scholarship

Critical editions and standard translations behind the text above.

Figures named in this text (50)