in the order of the days of their death on the successive days of the year, with or without statements of the place and manner of their passion. This simple skeleton became gradually animated with biog- raphical sketches, coming down from different times and various authors, containing a confused mixture of history and fable, truth and fiction, piety and superstition, and needing to be used with great critical caution. As these biographies of the saints were read on their annual days in the church and in the cloisters for the edification of the people, they were called Legenda. The first Acts of the Martyrs come down from the second tmd third centuries, in part from eye-witnesses, as, for exam- ple, the martyi'dom of Polycarp (a. d. 167), and of the martyrs of Lyons and Yienne in South Gaul ; but most of them oi-igin- ated, at least in their present form, in the post-Constantinian age. Eusebius wrote a general martyrology, which is lost. The earliest Latin martyrology is ascribed to Jerome, but at all events contains many later additions ; this father, however, furnished valuable contributions to such works in his " Lives of eminent Monks " and his " Catalogue of celebrated Church Teachers." Pope Gelasius thought good to prohibit or to re- strict the church reading of the Acts of the Saints, because the names of the authors were unknown, and superfluous and in- congruous additions by heretics or uneducated persons ijAiotw) might be introduced. Gregory the Great speaks of a martyr- ology in use in Rome and elsewhere, which is perhaps the same afterward ascribed to Jerome and widely spread. Tlie present Martyr ologium Homanum^ which embraces the saints of all countries, is an expansion of this, and was edited by Baronius with a learned commentary at the command of Gregorv XIII. and Sixtus Y. in 1586, and afterward enlarged by the Jesuit Ileribert Rosweyd. 7 J n , are simply the lists of the martyrs in monthly order, with short biographical notices. The Ifencea, yuriralo, are intended for the public worship, and comprise twelve foho volumes, corresponding to the twelve months, with the officia of the saints for every day, and the proper legends and hymns. 448 THLBD PEKIOD. A.D, 311-590. Rosweyd (f 1629) also sketclied, toward the close of the sixteenth century, the plan for the celebrated " Acta Sancto- rum, quotquot toto orbe coluntnr," which Dr. John van Bol- land (f 1665) and his conq^anions and continnators, called Bol- landists (Henschen, f 1681 ; Papenbroek, f 1Y14 ; Sollier, 1 1740 ; Stiltinck, f 1762, and others of inferior merit), publish- ed at Antwerp in fifty -three folio volumes, between the years 1643 and 1794 (including the two volumes of the second series), under the direction of the Jesuits, and with the richest and rarest literary aids.* This work contains, in the order of the days of the year, the biography of every saint in the Catholic calendar, as composed by the BoUandists, down