Chapter XIX: Part III: The Material Upon Which the History of the Ecclesiastical Year Is Based (3)

Two or three decades later, Usuardus composed his martyrology after Ado’s example, which he dedicated to Charles the Bald in 875. Usuardus was a monk of St Germain des Près, then outside the gates of Paris, but now surrounded by the city; his work is by no means so full as Ado’s, but is more polished in style, and more uniform in its treatment of the different entries, and on this account is more suited for use in choir. It was accordingly used throughout the entire West, and in all Benedictine monasteries,[825] and even in Rome itself with the exception of the Vatican basilica. At the end of the fifteenth century it was so to speak, the universal martyrology of the Western Church, and indeed no other was known.[826]

The value of these works depends naturally upon the sources employed by the redactor, and also upon his personal qualities, as, for instance, whether he revelled in the miraculous or was inclined to be critical.

Two martyrologies by German authors must now be dealt with—those of Rabanus Maurus and Notker Balbulus.

The former when Archbishop of Mainz completed a martyrology which he had compiled from secondary sources; it is dedicated to Abbot Radleich of Seligenstadt, who died in 853-54, and whose epitaph was composed by Rabanus,[827] but the composition of the martyrology must be dated a few years earlier, about 850, though the exact date cannot be discovered. As sources, he drew upon the Acts of the martyrs which he found ready to hand, and also the _Hieronymianum_, Bede, and Florus; the treatment of the material is very unequal, sometimes a long account being given, sometimes nothing more than the name; legends and historical errors are frequent.

The same is true of the martyrology of Notker Balbulus who was a monk at St Gall from 840 to 912, and composed his work under Pope Formosus (891-896). He knew and used the _Hieronymianum_, as, for example, for the 9th August, _V. Id. Aug._ First class sources were beyond his reach, a loss of which he was himself conscious.[828]

All these martyrologies of which we have spoken, were private compilations without anything of an official character about them. The existence of so many following upon the _Hieronymianum_ shows that it did not satisfy liturgical requirements and was little used. On this account, martyrologies were drawn up at a later date containing full descriptions of the lives and sufferings of the saints for each day of the year, which would serve as edifying and entertaining reading for religious, priests and other pious persons. However even the best of them were no longer practicable in the sixteenth century, and Gregory XIII. conceived the purpose of putting out one better adapted for use in divine service. A further step was taken in 1580 when he commissioned the learned Cardinal Sirleto to compare the martyrology used in Rome with the oldest and best MSS. and to correct the errors which had crept into it in course of time.[829] Sirleto associated ten other learned men with himself among whom were Cæsar Baronius and Aloysius Lilius, the astronomer. Baronius was the soul of the undertaking, and, after three years’ labour, the _Martyrologium Romanum Gregorii XIII._ was completed, and a papal brief of the 14th January 1584, prescribed the exclusive use of this work in choir at the canonical hours. Baronius based his labours on Usuardus, correcting and enlarging his martyrology by means of the materials then forthcoming; could he have used the materials discovered later, or those which we now possess, his work would naturally have been much better; many, too, of the earlier mistakes remain uncorrected. The editors were far from claiming freedom from errors for their work, and made improvements in later editions, beginning with that of 1586. It is not necessary to regard all the individuals named in the Roman martyrology as saints in the liturgical sense of the word, and their admission there, according to the expression of Benedict XIV. is in no wise equal to canonisation.[830] Since the time of Baronius, the official martyrology has indeed remained untouched, but science has not been inactive during this long period; much has been explained and corrected, and, on the whole, it has come to be recognised as a principle which must be followed in investigating the histories of the saints of ancient times, that recourse is to be had to the earliest existing sources of information, and also, where the evidence is contradictory, local official sources, where they exist, are to have the preference.

13. _Important Calendars from the Eighth to the Eleventh Centuries_

While the martyrologies were for the most part the outcome of individual effort, the calendars, on the other hand, are entirely official in their origin. In times when annual calendars, like our present ordos, had not yet appeared, their place was taken by the official calendar, and every one had to make out his ordo for himself with its assistance. From many points of view they are more important for our purpose than the martyrologies.

As complete missals took the place of the sacramentaries they were usually provided with a table, like an index, which gave a list of the saints’ days contained in the missal; these so-called calendars have from then until now formed an integral part of written and printed missals, and even appear by themselves like abbreviated martyrologies. A remarkably large number of calendars of this kind have come down to us from the Middle Ages, and, since they are important for the history of local churches, they have recently been published, as, for example, by Martène-Durand, Misset and Weale, Grotefend, Ulysse Chevalier, Lechler, etc.[831] For our purpose, the following deserve to be noticed:

1. A Roman calendar of the seventh century, discovered by Prof. de Ram, and printed in Binterim, Denkw. vii. 56-67. It begins with Christmas, March is called _mensis primus_, the station churches of Rome are given in Lent, on the 13th May there is the _Dedicatio Mariæ ad Martyres_, All Saints does not appear. The only litany is the so-called _litania major_; the Annunciation and the _Cathedra Petri_ are omitted, in March a _pascha annotina_ is inserted without date, St Athanasius is passed over on the 20th January; there are only faint traces of Advent. This calendar is very ancient and formed part of the codex of the gospels written under Louis the Pious; in the time of Lothaire I., it belonged to the Monastery of Münsterbilsen in the diocese of Liège.

2. A calendar belonging to Bologna. It is found in a codex of the Monastery of Leno, was discovered by Giovanni Mercati in the Ambrosiana, and published in the Révue Bénédictine, 1902 (353-355). It has the _Ordinatio Episcopatus Jacobi Apost._ on the 27th December, and, on the 17th May a _natalis S. Marci Evang._, found nowhere else.

3. The so-called calendar of Charlemagne forms, along with an Easter table, the beginning of an _Evangeliarum_ written in 781 by command of the emperor and his consort by a scribe called Godescale.[832] It is only deserving of notice from the number of names of Frankish saints inserted into a calendar originally Roman, _e.g._ Bishop Maximin of Treves (31st May), Boniface (5th June), Medard (8th June), Martialis (30th June) Kilian (1st August), Mauritius (22nd September), Remigius (1st October), etc. The Apostle Thomas is placed, strange to say, on the 3rd July, and St Petronilla on the 31st May.

4. A calendar is incorporated in a treatise _De Computo_, by an unknown author, written in 810 (published by Muratori, _Analecta_, iii. 108, and also in Migne, _Patr. Lat._, cxxix. 1274). It seems to come from the diocese of Sens on account of _S. Columbæ Virg._ on the 31st December; All Saints is omitted. This calendar is Roman with Frankish additions; for the date see chap. 153, Migne, cxxix., 1364.

5. The last four months of the year are unfortunately missing from the calendar of Alt-Corbie (Corbeiense) given by Martène-Durand, _Thes. Nov. Anced._, iii., 1591, Paris, 1717. The same is the case with a very old calendar of Tours.

6. Codex 83ᴵᴵ. of the cathedral library in Cologne contains an ancient calendar, fol. 72 B-76. This codex contains a large collection of annalistical writings and computation tables and was written under Archbishop Hildebold. The second treatise in the volume is Isidore’s chronicle which concludes with the words: “Seven hundred and eighty-nine years have passed since Christ’s Nativity”; further on, fol. 76 B, was inserted after the death of Charlemagne, and also of Hildebold (818). Thus the codex was written between 798 and 818, and belonged to the old cathedral of Cologne which was dedicated to St Peter. The calendar, however, does not belong to Cologne for the local saints are absent, but there is a number of names of Frankish saints, pointing to the north of France as the locality where it was drawn up; no explanation of the legend of St Ursula can be learnt from it. For a calendar of its early date, it is remarkably full of saints, while the Cologne Calendar, shortly to be referred, to has many vacant days. The codex has been described by Jaffé and Wattenbach, _Ecclesiæ Metrop. Colon. codices manuscripti_, Berlin, 1874, 29 _et seqq._

7. The _Gellonense_ comes from the Monastery of St Guillaume du Désert in the diocese of Lodève, and belongs to the beginning of the ninth century, and has been edited by D’Achery, _Spicilegium_, ii. 25 _et seqq._ It begins with Christmas and is preceded by a _Breviarum Apostolorum_ in thirteen sections containing information concerning the apostles.

8. A _Kalendarium Gothicum_ (ed. Lorenzana) of the seventh century (Migne, lxxxvi. 38 _et seqq._). Besides this, there is the Mozarabic _Sanctorale_ (_ib._ 1031 _et seqq._) and a fragment of a _Kalendarium Gothico-Hispanum_ (Migne, lxxxv. 1050 _et seqq._).

Of later date, but still always useful for historical investigation are:—

9. Two Anglo-Saxon calendars of the tenth century belonging apparently to the diocese of Winchester (Migne, lxxii. 619 _et seqq._).

10. Two from Corbie; in Martène and Durand (_Thes. Nov. Anecd._, iii. 1571-1594).

11. A calendar of Floriac and a martyrology of Auxerre (Migne, cxxxviii. 1186-1258).

12. A calendar of Mantua and two of Vallombrosa (_Ib._ 1258 _et seqq._).

13. A calendar of Besançon of the eleventh century, which goes by the name of _S. Protadii_ (Migne, lxxx. 411), and an old French calendar called after the name of its first owner Chauvellin (Migne, lxxii. 607).

For convenience we separate the most ancient calendars of German origin from the others, and consider them by themselves.

1. The oldest calendar of Mainz belongs to the first half of the ninth century, and was published from a codex in the Vatican by Jostes in the Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum (Schröder and Röthe) for 1896, 148-158. All Saints is absent, and the resurrection of Christ is entered on the 25th March.

2. A _Kalendarium Verdinense_, from the Monastery of Werden on the Ruhr, published by Bandini (_Catal. Bibl. Lauretianæ Suppl._, Migne, cxxxviii. 1203 _et seqq._). It contained All Saints, and the _Dedicatio S. Mariæ s. Turris Vincentii_ on the 13th May as well. Among the special saints of Cologne are given the two Ewalds, Kunibert, Gereon, the Moors, and the eleven thousand virgins, but without Ursula, and designated as simply virgins and not martyrs; it also contains the names of the two first bishops of Halberstadt, Thiatgrim († 840) and Hildegrim († 21st December 888), which indicates the date of its composition, and it has the name of the first abbot of Werden, Hetharicus, and the _Dedicatio Eccl. Majoris_. Unfortunately the months from April to July are missing.

3. The sacramentary in the cathedral library of Cologne (codex 88, fol. 3-9) contains a complete calendar for this cathedral. It is essentially the Roman Calendar of the ninth century, with the addition of the local saints of Cologne, the two Ewalds, Kunibert, Brictius, Quintinus, Severin, Gereon and his 318 companions, the 360 Moors, and the 11,000 virgins without Ursula, and designated simply as virgins. Other names deserving notice are: Briga (Brigida) 1st February, Arealis (?) 28th April, _Marcus episcopus_, Boniface the martyr, Medard, Lambert, and Mauricius with 6666 companions. The calendar belongs to the second half of the ninth century, and is proved to have belonged to the cathedral of Cologne begun by Hildebold and consecrated by Willibert in 873, by the fact that it gives the day of the consecration of the cathedral correctly (23rd September), and is described as belonging to the Church of St Peter, to whom the former cathedral was dedicated. The sacramentary, but not the calendar, has been printed by J. Pamelius in his “Liturgicon Ecclesiæ Latinæ,” tom. ii. (Col. Agr. 1571), but unfortunately with so many arbitrary alterations that it is quite useless as an edition of the text.

4. In the library at Düsseldorf there is a sacramentary, (codex D. I.) written in the lifetime of Bishop Altfrid of Hildesheim († 874), which contains (fol. 217-222) a calendar showing northern French influence. Only the 11,000 virgins are given of the local saints of Cologne, and here again Ursula is not named, and the virgins are not called martyrs. The book belonged to the Convent of Essen on the Ruhr founded by Altfrid. This MS. gives in fol. 64 A the order of the festivals observed within the jurisdiction of the monastery during the ninth century: “Istas præcipuas solemnitates in anno totus populus sabbatizare debet: In die Nat. Domini dies IV., in octabas Domini, in Teophania, in Purificatione Mariæ, in Pascha Domini dies IV., in Ascensione Domini, in Pentecoste dies IV., in Nat. S. Johannis, in Nat. Sanctorum Apostolorum Petri et Pauli, in Assumptione S. Mariæ, in Nat. S. Remedii [Remigii], in Missa Michahelis, in Solemnitate Omnium Sanctorum, in Nat. S. Martini, in Nat. S. Andreæ.”

Binterim published a Cologne calendar, apparently of the ninth century, under the title _Kalendarium Ecclesiæ Germ. Coloniensis Sæculi Noni_ (Cologne, 1824), and Harless attributes it to the second half of the same century (Archiv. f. die Gesch. des Niederrheins, vi. 67). It is, however, much later, for it gives all the feasts of the apostles, and provides them with vigils, and all the days of the year are filled in with the names of saints. For these reasons I should date the calendar as belonging to the eleventh century at the earliest.

5. The _Kalendarium Germanicum Pervetustum Sæc. X._, printed by M. Fr. Beck (Aug. Vind., 1687). Gerbert (_Mon. Lit. Alem._ i. 455 A. I.) correctly regards it as coming from Alsace and probably from Strassburg, because it contains the saints venerated in that city, Arbogast (20th July), Florentius, Ottilia and Aurelia. The basis of this document is again the Roman Calendar, still many Frankish saints have been added, but Gereon alone of the saints of Cologne. The latest date given in it is the _Dormitio S. Uodalrici_ (4th July). It has only one name from the Old Testament, that of the prophet Ezechiel.

6. A calendar of Freising, drawn up under Bishop Abraham, between 893 and 993. The 25th March is marked as _Conceptio Domini_. There is only one feast of St Peter’s Chair. The calendar has been printed by Lechler, “Mittelalterliche Kirchenfeste und Kalendarien in Bayern,” Freiburg, 1891.

7. The so-called _Martyrologium Stabulense_, the calendar of the Monastery of Stablo. The date of the original MS. can be deduced from the fact that on the _vii. Idus Junii_ the coronation of King Henry II., which was performed by Archbishop Willigis at Mainz on the 7th June 1002, is entered by the first hand, while the ordination of Archbishop Tagino of Magdeburg in the 2nd February 1004, has been entered by a second hand. Archbishop Tagino’s death is not entered. The calendar has only Gereon with 319 companions of the local saints of Cologne. St Ulrich of Augsburg, although he died in 997, is entered by the second hand. The calendar has been published by Martène, _Ampl. Coll._, and by Zaccaria, _Antiq. Med. Ævi_ (see Migne, cxxxviii. 1194).

8. Hontheim has published the five most ancient calendars of Treves in the _Prodromus Historiæ Trevirensis_, i. 378-405. According to him, only the first belongs to the tenth century, all the others being later. For a calendar of the tenth century, it is very full of names, many of them being from the old Testament—Ezechial, Daniel, etc.; it mentions neither the legend of the Innumerable Company of Martyrs at Treves on the 4th and 5th October, nor Palmatius, Thyrsus, etc.; neither does it contain All Souls, St Catherine, or St Peter’s Chair, but it has Gereon and his 318 companions. It is only in the fourth and fifth calendars which belong to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that Thyrsus, Palmatius, etc., appear.

When one considers the details presented by calendars, one is bound to acknowledge that the Roman _Depositio Martyrum_ stands at the head of this long line of liturgical documents, and was the model after which they were composed. Like them, the _Depositio Martyrum_ was drawn up according to months, and commenced with Christmas. Like them, it contained the official list of the martyrs who received ecclesiastical veneration in the local church of Rome in the fourth century. Were it not so, it would not have deserved to be incorporated in the Philocalian collection, the _Hemerologium Valentini_, since this comprised only official documents; had it not been official it would not have been worth transcribing.