The 6th/7th c. recension of the Latin Martyrologium Hieronymianum, as transmitted in 8th c. manuscripts, records the feasts of a number of saints on 20 December.
Evidence ID
E05059
Type of Evidence
Liturgical texts - Calendars and martyrologies
Major author/Major anonymous work
Martyrologium Hieronymianum
The Martyrologium Hieronymianum is preserved in a number of early manuscripts which share much in common, but also diverge, making it impossible to reconstruct from them a single authoritative text. Below, we therefore offer separate English translations of each important early manuscript. By clicking 'Latin Text' (above), you can view these different versions in their original Latin, set side-by-side for ease of comparison, with also the editions and interpretations of the text suggested by the scholars Quentin and Delehaye. For a full discussion of the Martyrologium, click 'Discussion/Bibliography.'
The Martyrologium Hieronymianum commemorates on 20 December the following feasts:
Probably *Iulius, soldier and martyr at Durostorum on the Danube, (S02416),
*Thekla, follower of the Apostle Paul, (S00092),
The burial of *Zephyrinus, bishop of Rome, ob. c. 217, (S00546),
*Ignatios, bishop of Antioch and martyr of Rome, (S00649),
Probably *Anastasius I, bishop of Rome, ob. c. 401, (S00571),
*Secundus, Zosimus, Paulus, and Cyria/Ciriacus, martyrs of Antioch or Bithynia, (S02053),
*Gregory, bishop of Auxerre, (E02904),
*Chrysanthus and Daria, chaste couple and martyrs of Rome, (S00306),
*Other saints, on 20 December in the Martyrologium Hieronymianum: in Nicaea and 'in the East' (S2905).
BnF 10837:
'On the thirteenth day before the Kalends of January, in Thrace, the feast of Iulus.
And in Iconium, [the feast of] Tecla.
And in Rome, [the feast of] the burial of bishop Zephirinus, of the martyr Ignatus, and of bishop Athanasus.
In the city of Nicaea of Bithynia, [the feast of] Zosimus, Paulus, Secundus, Cyriacus, Anatasus and bishop Siddinus.
In the city of Auxerre, [the feast of] blessed bishop Grigorus.
And elsewhere, [the feast of] Crisantus and Darus.'
Weissenburg 81:
'On the thirteenth day before the Kalends of January, in Thrace, the city of Gildoba, [the feast of] Iulus.
And in Rome, [the feast of] bishop Zeferinus.
In the East, the feast of Tecla and Liberatus.'
In Bern 289 all the entries from 22 November to 24 December are missing from the manuscript.
Quentin follows the early manuscripts.
Delehaye highlights a selection of saints from the early manuscripts.
Translation and comments: M. Vukovic.
Festivals
Saint’s feast
Cult PlacesBurial site of a saint - unspecified
RelicsBodily relic - entire body
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesEcclesiastics - bishops
Source
The Martyrologium Hieronymianum ('Martyrology of Jerome'), is the oldest extensive martyrology of the Latin West, listing the feast days of the saints for the entire calendar year, generally also specifying where their feasts are held (which is normally their place of burial). It derives its name from prefatory letters copied at the start of the martyrology, which attribute the text to the Church Father, Jerome of Stridon (ob. 420). These letters are present in all the earliest manuscripts, but it is uncertain when they were first attached to the text. The Hieronymianum is the primary source of all later martyrologies of the Latin world.It is universally accepted that the attribution to Jerome, intended to give the text greater authority, is false, and the predominant scholarly view is that the first version of the martyrology was compiled in northern Italy during the 5th century (probably in Aquileia), though no manuscript of this Aquileian redaction has survived. The text was then evidently revised and added to in Gaul, probably in Burgundy, around AD 600. The north Italian origin of the text, and its Gallic revision, are deduced from the presence in the martyrology of saints from northern Italy, and then of saints from Frankish Gaul. This Gallic version (sometimes referred to as the recensio gallica), just like its north Italian predecessor, does not survive in its original form in any manuscript (Lifshitz 2006, 14).
At some point in the 7th century, and no later than the early 8th, the Martyrologium reached Northumbria (in northern Britain), where it underwent some further revision and additions (Lapidge 2005, 45-46). From Northumbria, the text returned to the continent in the 8th century, and it is here that the earliest surviving manuscript copies were made, as listed below (Lapidge 2005, 73).
Some of the sources that were used by the compilers of the Martyrologium in northern Italy, and subsequently in Gaul, can be identified: the so-called Chronography of 354, a mid-4th-century list from Rome of saintly commemorations, primarily of local martyrs (E010151 and E01052); a lost Greek martyrology compiled at Nicomedia around 360 (drawn basically from Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History and Martyrs of Palestine), which was also a prime source for the Syriac Martyrology of 411 (E00465); the African Calendar of Carthage of 505/535 (E02195 - E02205); and early local calendars from Aquileia and Auxerre (Lifshitz 2006, 20).
The four earliest manuscripts of the Martyrologium Hieronymianum (three of them complete, one a fragment), on which all editions, including our own, are based, are all from eastern Francia and were copied in the eighth and early ninth centuries. They are as follows:
Ms Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), lat. 10837
Written in the abbey of Echternach (in present-day Luxembourg) by a single scribe, Laurentius, between 703 and 710 (Lifshitz 2006, 32). The Catalogue of the BnF, which publishes BnF lat. 10837 on-line, also provides brief information about the dating: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b6001113z/f22.image (click Information). The text of the Hieronymianum is at fol. 2r-32v.
Ms Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Weissenburg 81
From the abbey of Weissenburg in Alsace. Dated to around 800 by the Wolfenbüttel on-line catalogue: http://diglib.hab.de/?db=mss&list=ms&id=81-weiss&lang=en. Lifshitz argues that the manuscript dates from around 772, and was written in the Carolingian royal sphere, in or around Maastrict (Lifshitz 2006, 4). The text of the Hieronymianum is at fol. 7r-103r.
Ms Bern, Burgerbibliothek, Bongars 289
From the abbey of Saint-Avold, near Metz. De Rossi and Duchesne, in the introduction to their edition, argue that Bern 289 must have been written after 766. The text of the Hieronymianum is at fol. 53v-129v. This manuscript is not yet available on line, but we have been able to check it through a microfilm.
Ms Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Pal. lat. 238
From the abbey of Lorsch, near Worms. The manuscript contains only a fragment (five pages) of the Hieronymianum, covering 25 December to 3 January, and 27 January to 31 January, written in Lorsch in the first half of the 9th century: http://bibliotheca-laureshamensis-digital.de/bav/bav_pal_lat_238). The fragment is at fol. 74-75, 1-2.
The standard edition of 1894, by G. B. de Rossi and L. Duchesne, published these four manuscripts in parallel columns. In 1931, H. Quentin produced a new edition, with a commentary by H. Delehaye, which attempted to collate the different manuscript readings into a single text.
Even though all the early manuscripts are believed to descend from the same redaction, they are by no means identical. In particular, BnF lat. 10837, the earliest of all, often contains a text which differs markedly from Bern 289 and Weissenburg 81, which are much closer to each other. Because the text varies between manuscripts, in content as well as spelling, it is now universally agreed that it will never be possible to create an 'authoritative' single text of the Martyrologium Hieronymianum. De Rossi and Duchesne in 1894, facing the same problem, decided to print for each day of the year the text of all four early manuscripts, in four columns, and we have followed their lead. Our edition is essentially based on their edition, though we have checked their readings against the manuscripts, and corrected or removed some letters, words, diacritical marks, and comments introduced by the editors that do not exist in the manuscripts. We have then added three more columns: for Quentin’s text for the feast day, which sometimes comes in one version, sometimes in two, and for Delehaye’s reconstruction of much of the text, drawn from his Commentary. Delehaye's erudition was, and remains, unmatched, and we have leaned heavily on his commentary (which is in Latin), but it should be noted that his reconstructed text often departs markedly from the manuscripts. Using his extraordinary knowledge of the saints and their hagiography, he felt able to combine different parts of the Hieronymianum's text, and to correct garbled versions of names, to produce a more coherent 'original'. We consider each of his principal suggestions in our Discussion (below), and attempt a judgment as to how plausible they are. In Delehaye's extensive notes there are also other, more tentative, suggestions, which we have not discussed systematically.
The reason the Martyrologium Hieronymianum is such a difficult text is because it consists primarily of long lists of names (with no punctuation and no consistency in the use of capital letters), which were often unfamiliar to copyists and so easily garbled. Generally, we cannot get behind these garbled variants, but occasionally we can, allowing us to shed light on how the text evolved into its current, often confused, state. For instance, an entry for 9 March (E04711) probably originally read something like 'In Armenia minore Sebastia milit(um) XL', 'In Lesser Armenia, at Sebasteia, [the feast of] the Forty Soldiers' - in other words a commemoration of the 'Forty Martyrs of Sebaste' (S00103), prominent saints in the East, but less well-known in the Latin West. In one of our manuscripts (Weissenburg 81) this has become 'In arminia minore sabastiani et milia XL', 'In Lesser Armenia, [the feast of] Sebastianus and the forty-thousand'; somewhere in the process of transmission, the city of Sebasteia has become the martyr Sebastianus, and the 'soldiers' (militum) have become 'thousands' (milia).
Discussion
The two early manuscripts of the Hieronymianum with entries for 20 December, BnF 10837 and Weissenburg 81, both open with the commemoration in Thrace of a certain Iulus, who is probably *Iulius, (soldier and martyr of Durostorum on the Danube, S02416). Weissenburg 81 specifies that the commemoration occurs in the city of Gildoba (which is probably Gildava / Γιλδαβα, a town of Dacia, on the Danube). The same Iulus appears again on 21 December (E05060).Both early manuscripts also record (though in slightly different places in the record) commemoration of *Thekla (follower of the Apostle Paul, S00092). BnF 10837 specifies that the commemoration takes place in Iconium (central Asia Minor), the city where Thekla was born and grew up, while Weissenburg 81 only records it as 'in the East'. Weissenburg 81 also names a Liberatus as commemorated with Thekla; he is otherwise unknown, nor is it known why Thekla was commemorated on this day.
Both also record commemoration in Rome of *Zephyrinus (bishop of Rome, ob. c. 217, S00546), BnF 10837 specifying that this is the date of his burial. The same manuscript (but not Weissenburg 81) adds commemoration of two further saints in Rome: a martyr Ignatus and a bishop Athanasus. Ignatus, as Delehaye argues, is certainly *Ignatios (bishop of Antioch and martyr of Rome, S00649). He is also commemorated on 20 December in the Church Calendar of Ioane Zosime (E03964) and in the Greek Synaxaria, as well as on 17 December in Bede´s Martyrology (E05685). The identification of bishop Athanasus is less certain, but he is probably, as suggested by Delehaye, *Anastasius I (bishop of Rome, ob. c. 401, S00571).
Weissenburg 81 has no further entries for 20 December, but BnF 10837 continues with the commemoration in Nicaea in the province of Bithynia (north-west Asia Minor, close to Constantinople) of six saints: Zosimus, Paulus, Secundus, Cyriacus, Anastasus and a bishop Siddinus. The first four are readily recognised as a group of martyrs (S02053), who also appear in the Hieronymianum on 19 December (E05058) and 21 December (E05060). Anatasus could be, as Delehaye explains, a repetition (more accurately spelt) of the already mentioned *Anastasius I (bishop of Rome, ob. c. 401, S00571). Bishop Siddinus is unidentified.
BnF 10837 alone then records commemoration in Auxerre (central Gaul) of *Gregory, (an early 6th-century bishop of the city, S02904), who is also recorded on the preceding day (E05058).
Finally, BnF 10837 alone records commemoration 'elsewhere' (alibi) of *Chrysanthus and Daria (chaste couple and martyrs of Rome, and companion martyrs, S00306). They are also recorded in the Hieronymianum on the preceding day (E05058), but is not known why these days served as feast for them.
All unidentified saints are listed by us among *Other saints, on 20 December in the Martyrologium Hieronymianum: in Nicaea and 'in the East' (S2905).
Bibliography
Editions:De Rossi, G. B., and Duchesne, L., Martyrologium Hieronymianum ad finem codicum adiectis prolegomenis. Acta Sanctorum Nov.II.1 (Brussels, 1894).
Quentin, H. and Delehaye, H., Acta Sanctorum Nov.II.2 (Brussels, 1931).
On the Martyrologium Hieronymianum:
Duchesne, L., "A propos du martyrologe hiéronymien," Analecta Bollandiana 17 (1898), 421-447.
Lapidge, M., The Roman Martyrs. Introduction, Translations, and Commentary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).
Lapidge, M., "Acca of Hexham and the Origin of the Old English Martyrology," Analecta Bollandiana 123 (2005), 29-78.
Lifshitz, F., The Name of the Saint. The Martyrology of Jerome and Access to the Sacred in Francia, 627-827 (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006).
Ó Riain, P., "A Northumbrian Phase in the Formation of the Hieronymian Martyrology. The Evidence of the Martyrology of Tallaght," Analecta Bollandiana 120 (2002), 311-363.
On the manuscripts of the Martyrologium Hieronymianum:
Butzmann, H., Die Weissenburger Handschriften (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1964), 242-243.
Muller, J. C., "Trois manuscrits liturgiques de l'abbaye d'Echternach à Paris," in Abteistadt Echternach, éd. P. Schritz, A. Hoffmann (Luxembourg, 1981), 202-206.
Ó Cróinín, D., "Rath Melsigi, Willibrord, and the Earliest Echternach Manuscripts," Peritia 3 (1984), 17-49.
Libaert, P., "Notice sur 43 manuscrits d'Echternach conservés à la bibliothèque nationale de Paris," Hémecht 1 (1985), 53-73.
McKitterick, R., Books, Scribes and Learning in the Frankish Kingdoms, Sixth-Ninth Centuries (Aldershot: Variorum, 1994).
On saints and calendars:
Farmer, D. H., Oxford Dictionary of Saints (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978).
Nilles, N., Kalendarium Manuale utriusque Ecclesiae Orientalis et Occidentalis I-II (Farnborough: Gregg International Publishers Ltd, 1971).
Watkins, B., The Book of Saints: A Comprehensive Biographical Dictionary (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015).
Datum Table
| BnF 10837 | Bern 289 | Weissenburg 81 | BAV 238 | Other Mss | Quentin | Quentin | Delehaye |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| XIII k iañ in tracia nt̃ iuli | XIII KL. IAN. in tracia civit̃ gildoba iuli | In Tracia natale Iuli. | In Tracia civitate Gildoba natale Iuli. | in Thracia civitate Gildoba Iuli. | |||
| et in liconio teclae | ---------------- | et in Liconio Teclae. | ---------------- | in Iconio Teclae. | |||
| et rom̄ depos̃ zephirini ep̃i et ignati mar̃ et athanasi ep̃i | et romae zeferini ep̃i | et Romae depositio Zephirini episcopi et Ignati martyris et Athanasi episcopi. | et Romae depositio Zephirini episcopi. | Romae Zephyrini episcopi. 〈item Romae〉 Ignatii martyris. | |||
| --------------- | In oriente nat̃ teclȩ et sc̃i liberati | ---------------- | in Oriente natale Teclae et sancti Liberati. | ---------------- | |||
| in nicea civĩ bithiñ zosimi pauli secundi cyriaci anatasi et siddini ep̃i | --------------- | in Nicea civitate Bithiniae Zosimi Pauli Secundi Cyriaci Anatasi et Siddini episcopi. | ---------------- | ---------------- | |||
| autisiodor̃ civĩ beati grigori ep̃i | --------------- | Autisiodero civitate beati Grigori episcopi. | -------------- | ||||
| et alibi crisanti et dari. | --------------- | et alibi Crisanti et Dari. | alibi Crisanti et Dariae. |
Record Created By
Marijana Vukovic
Date of Entry
26/03/2021
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00092 | Thekla, follower of the Apostle Paul | Tecla | Certain | S00306 | Chrysanthus and Daria, chaste couple and martyrs of Rome, and companion martyrs | Crisantus; Darus | Certain | S00546 | Zephyrinus, bishop of Rome, ob. c. 217 | Zephirinus/Zeferinus | Certain | S00571 | Anastasius I, bishop of Rome, ob. c. 401, buried on the via Portuensis | Athanasus | Uncertain | S00649 | Ignatios, bishop of Antioch and martyr of Rome | Ignatus | Certain | S02053 | Secundus, Zosimus, Paulus, and Ciriacus, martyrs of Antioch or Bithynia | Zosimus; Paulus; Secundus; Cyriacus | Certain | S02416 | Iulius, soldier and martyr of Durostorum on the Danube | Iulus | Uncertain | S02904 | Gregorius, bishop of Auxerre, early 6th c. | Grigorus | Certain | S02905 | Other saints, on 20 December in the Martyrologium Hieronymianum: in Nicaea and 'in the East' | Liberatus; Siddinus | Certain |
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