{"id":27234,"date":"2021-01-22T14:41:07","date_gmt":"2021-01-22T14:41:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/?p=27234"},"modified":"2021-01-22T14:41:07","modified_gmt":"2021-01-22T14:41:07","slug":"the-roman-martyrology-editions-and-origins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/2021\/01\/22\/the-roman-martyrology-editions-and-origins\/","title":{"rendered":"The Roman Martyrology – editions and origins"},"content":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0Roman Martyrology<\/em> or\u00a0Martyrologium Romanum<\/em> is one of the service books of the Roman Catholic church.\u00a0 It contains a list of martyrs, organised by the date on which they are commemorated, with a short notice of their life and death.\u00a0 In the daily church service, there is a point at which the martyr or martyrs for the day can be remembered, and the Roman Martyrology supplies the necessary text.[ref]My apologies to Roman Catholic readers who will know all this and more.\u00a0 But protestants have very little idea about the manuals used by the Roman Catholic Church.[\/ref]<\/p>\n

The full title of the work is\u00a0Martyrologium Romanum ad novam kalendarii rationem et ecclesiasticae historiae veritatem restitutum<\/em> (Roman Martyrology, by the new reckoning of the calendar, and the truth of church history restored).\u00a0 This was part of a programme of work on liturgical texts, headed by Cardinal Sirleto.\u00a0 In 1580 Baronius and others on the commission drew up the list of martyrs to be included.[ref]Katherine Van Liere &c (ed), Sacred History: Uses of the Christian Past in the Renaissance World<\/em>, 2012, p.55.\u00a0 Link to Preview<\/a>.\u00a0 See also [\/ref]<\/p>\n

According to the old Catholic Encyclopedia (here<\/a>), this first printed edition appeared in 1583 – Romae : ex typographia Dominici Basae; excudebat Franciscus Zannettus, MDLXXXIII<\/em>. It is dedicated to Pope Gregory XIII.\u00a0 A second edition appeared, also at Rome in the same year, but I’m not sure how to distinguish it from the first.\u00a0 One of these is online here<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0The title page has only brief details:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But the colophon at the end gives us a little more, including the date of printing – the 26th May.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Other editions appeared at Venice and Lyons in the same year.<\/p>\n

On 14 January 1584 Pope Gregory XIII issued a breve<\/em> entitled “Emendato iam kalendario”, ordering the use of the revised edition.<\/p>\n

In 1586 a further revised edition appeared, to which Baronius added a Tractatio\u00a0de Martyrologio Romano<\/em>.\u00a0 (Online here<\/a>), and Baronius himself revised it further in the Antwerp edition of 1589.<\/p>\n

In 1630, Urban VIII produced a new edition.<\/p>\n

Finally in 1748 there appeared the version of Benedict XIV, which remained the standard version until very recently (I couldn’t find this online, but a transcription of the Latin is here<\/a>).\u00a0 An English translation of this appeared in the USA at some date.\u00a0 I was able to find editions from 1869 (online here<\/a>), 1897 (online here<\/a>), and 1916 (online here<\/a>), although I do not know whether these are the same.<\/p>\n

After Vatican 2, there was a need for a new edition, purged of legendary material.\u00a0 This appeared in 2001, at the Vatican press – Martyrologium romanum: ex decreto sacrosancti \u0153cumenici Concilii Vaticani II instauratum auctoritate Ioannis Pauli PP. II promulgatum. Editio typica<\/em>.<\/p>\n

There is a useful article online about the Martyrologium Romanum – G. Marino, “Approaching the Martyrologium Romanum<\/em>: A semiotic perspective”,\u00a0 in: Lexia. Rivista di semiotica, 31\u201332 (2018), 175-275 (online here<\/a> and here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The material contained in the Roman Martyrology<\/em> is derived from many sources, and grew organically over a period of a thousand years, in manuscript.\u00a0 Much of this period was a time of ignorance and superstition.\u00a0 The value of the information provided is of very questionable historical value.\u00a0 Duplicate entries for martyrs abound.\u00a0 There is a useful but very old article by E.C. Butler, “Achelis on the martyrologies: Die Martyrologien, ihre Geschichte und ihr Wert: untersucht von H. Achelis. 247 pp. (Berlin, 1900.)”, JTS os-2 (1901), 447-458, which summarises work on the text to that date.\u00a0 More recent overviews must exist, but these are unknown to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0Roman Martyrology or\u00a0Martyrologium Romanum is one of the service books of the Roman Catholic church.\u00a0 It contains a list of martyrs, organised by the date on which they are commemorated, with a short notice of their life and death.\u00a0 In the daily church service, there is a point at which the martyr or martyrs for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[19],"tags":[1099,1446],"class_list":["post-27234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-from-my-diary-announcements","tag-martyrologium-romanum","tag-roman-martyrology"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27234\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}