The Old English "Martyrology"

Master of The Menologion of Basil II, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The Old English Martyrology (OEM) is one of the longest and finest Old English prose texts to survive today. The OEM is an extensive and prodigiously learned encyclopaedia of Christian martyrs, generally thought to have been composed in Mercia during the ninth century. The text synthesises an astounding range of Latin sources into a coherent and cohesive Old English text suitable for education or as a reference work. There are over 230 entries which vary considerably in length, from a single sentence of twenty words to an extended narrative of nearly 400 words. Together, these entries cover 6000 years of Christian history, contain more than 450 characters, and take place all over the Christian world.
The anonymous person responsible for the OEM is usually known simply as the ‘martyrologist’. We do not know much about the martyrologist, but it is most likely that the he was male, based on the scholarly background and library access required to compose the text. The extremely large number of Latin source texts that he would have required access to does not align with our knowledge of female monastic houses or the movements of female monastic personnel. However, it is not impossible that the martyrologist was a woman, or that there was more than one martyrologist: the text might have been compiled by several martyrologists working together. Whoever the martyrologist was, it is clear that he was a person of great learning and Latinity, who was able to digest and synthesise an enormous number of Latin materials into a single vernacular text.
The martyrologist wrote in a Mercian dialect, meaning that the OEM is one of the most important English-language witnesses to the literary output of the early medieval kingdom of Mercia. (To read more about Mercian prose, click here). The text therefore arose out of a distinct political and literary milieu which was different from the more well-known West Saxon culture of King Alfred the Great. Like other early Mercian prose texts, the OEM demonstrates a literary culture interested in translation and in standardisation of knowledge. Given the OEM’s educational impetus, it is tempting to associate it with Alfred’s educational reforms, but the text probably pre-dates Alfred, and seems stylistically at odds with his aims: it uses a relatively Latinate style, which regularly employs obscure vocabulary, Latin word order, and Latin terminology.
Though it was composed in Mercia, the OEM was not simply a regional phenomenon. The popularity of this text was widespread, and it was copied down for at least two centuries, during which time it was used by various later writers including Ælfric of Eynsham (955–1010). Testament to the text’s wide interest is the fact that during the ninth century a revised version of the text was produced which introduced more West Saxon dialect. This version also substantially clarifies the original text, editing out or replacing difficult vocabulary, and rearranging syntax. Whilst medieval scribes often made changes to the texts that they were copying, the extent of the OEM’s revision is unusually extensive. The text therefore had two traditions: one closer to the original text (sometimes called the B-tradition, after the main manuscript version) and one considerably revised (sometimes called the C-tradition). The C-tradition did not replace the B-tradition: rather, they circulated at the same time, independently of each other.
Despite (or perhaps because of) its widespread use, no complete manuscripts of the OEM survive. There are six medieval manuscripts, ranging from the ninth to the eleventh centuries, all of which are fragmentary. Four of these were probably once complete, but became fragmented during transmission (London, British Library, MS Additional 23211, fol. 2; London, British Library, MS Cotton Julius A. x, fols 44–175; Cambridge, Cambridge Corpus Christi College MS 196, pp. 1–110; and London, British Library, MS Additional 40165 A. 2, fols 6–7). However, two of the manuscripts (Cambridge, Cambridge Corpus Christi College MS 41, pp. 122–32, and London, British Library, Harley 3271, fol. 92v) are fragmented by design: the compilers of these two manuscripts selected only specific entries for inclusion. Almost all of the manuscripts present the text in the same way: each entry begins on a new line, and opens with a large initial. Notably, this layout is even preserved in Cambridge, Cambridge Corpus Christi College MS 41, where entries from the OEM are written into the margins of a copy of the Old English translation of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History.
The text itself comprises entries, arranged according to the calendar of the year. Each entry is linked to a specific date, but not all 365 days of the year are covered, and there are sometimes multiple entries linked to a single date. As the modern title of the Old English Martyrology suggests, the vast majority of the entries describe the lives, deaths and miracles of the saints. Martyrologies were extremely popular texts across the European middle ages, and in early medieval England, all priests were encouraged to own a martyrology from the eighth century. These texts catalogued the feast-days of the saints, and the saints represented could be adapted to reflect the particular interests of any given person, group, or local community. Saints’ feast days were fixed on a particular date of the year form one of two major cycles that defined the liturgical year: the sanctorale. The sanctorale occurred alongside a second cycle, the temporale, which focused on the feasts relating to Christ and included both fixed feasts (such as Christmas) and moveable feasts (such as Easter). The sanctorale provided Christians with examples to aspire to; guided the devotion of worshippers; granted a sense of order and stability to the calendrical year; and could serve political and social purposes through the celebration and veneration of local saints.

The Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence; (reverse) Giving Drink to the Thirsty; Gift of The Jack and Belle Linsky Foundation, 1981; 1460–1470
Master of the Acts of Mercy, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
Unlike most Latin martyrologies, the selection of saints in the OEM does not seem to have been updated by later scribes to reflect the interests of specific communities. This is testament to its broadly applicable sanctorale, which largely invokes universal saints who had been venerated for some time. This broad interest might have contributed to the OEM’s popularity, and rendered it useful as a tool of standardisation. Most of entries in the OEM focus on a particular saint or groups of saints. These entries are often formulaic in their opening statements. For example, the entries from the 10th–13th of January open as follows:
On ðone teoþan dæg þæs monðes bið Sancte Paules tid ; se wæs sexteyne geara þa he ærest on þæt westen gewat.
[On the tenth day of the month is the feast of St Paul; he was sixteen years old when he first went into the desert.]
On ðone twelftan dæg þæs monðes bið Sancte Benedictes tid þæs halgan abbodes; se wæs angelcynnes man.
[On the twelfth day of the month is the feast of the holy abbot St Benedict, who was English.]
On ðone ðreotteoþan dæg þæs monðes bið ðæs halgan biscopes gemynd Sancte Hilaries; he wæs on ðære ceastre Pictauie.
[On the thirteenth day of the month is the commemoration of the holy bishop St Hilary; he lived in the city of Poitiers.]
As these examples show, the entries have formulaic aspects with some variation between saints. Most entries open with the date of the saint’s feast day and the name of the saint, but entries may also provide further information about the nationality or geographic association of the saint; their saintly type (e.g. bishop, virgin, priest, hermit); and some general information such as Paul’s age when he entered the desert. In this way, the OEM resembles the earliest Latin catalogues of saints, called kalendars, and early Latin martyrologies such as the fifth-century Martyrologium Hieronymianum. These texts provided extremely brief notices of the saints, listing only their names, dates, and place of martyrdom.
However, most entries within the OEM also provide further narrative and contextual information. These longer, more descriptive entries mean that the OEM belongs to the tradition of ‘historical martyrology’ or ‘narrative martyrology’. Interest in this more expanded form of martyrology was led by Bede, whose eighth-century Latin martyrology was innovative for its inclusion of details about the lives of saints taken from their hagiographies alongside the traditional date, name and place information. Such narrative information could serve practical purposes: furnishing worshippers with a greater understanding of the context of the saint who they were venerating; encouraging a greater sense of familiarity with the saint; and encouraging further access to the saint via pilgrimage or intercession if their churches, shrines or miracles were described.
The OEM therefore offers brief information about each saint, sometimes drawing on multiple sources to do so. This information is often sensational and specific, focussing on the most remarkable or memorable moment of any given saint’s life. For example, the entry for St Felix reads as follows:
On ðone feowerteogðan dæg þæs monðes bið Sancte Felices tid mæssepreostes on Rome, on ðære stowe þe Pincis is nemned; þone rice men hæþne ðreadon þæt he Criste wiðsoce ond hæþengeldum gelyfde. Þa he þæt nolde, he wæs nacod ond on carcern onsænded, ond þær wæs understregd mid sæscellum ond mid scearpum stanum. Ond þa Godes engel on ðære ilcan niht tobræc ðæs carcernes duru ond hine þonan alædde.
[On the fourteenth day of the month is the feast of the priest St Felix, in Rome in the place which is called Pincian [Hill]; powerful pagans forced him to renounce Christ and to adopt the pagan religion. When he refused he was sent to prison naked, on a floor of sea-shells and sharp stones. And then God’s angel broke the prison door open that night and led him away.]
In this entry, the martyrologist offers various pieces of information that would have been useful in venerating the saint, but also enriched the audience’s broader understanding of Christian history. Drawing attention to the saint’s specific location in ‘Pincis’ granted audiences a more precise way of imagining the saint himself, but also the city of Rome, which occupied a central place in the early English geographic imagination as one of the centre points of the Western Christian Church. The miraculous nature of Felix’s escape from prison and from persecution at the hands of his pagan captors serves as proof of the saint’s sanctity and also offers an image of hope to those facing similar persecution. The martyrologist also supplies an arresting and easy to visualise image of the saint nacod, in a prison whose floor was littered with sharp objects (mid sæscellum ond mid scearpum stanum). This image grants Felix specificity within the sanctorale, and makes it easier to identify and remember him. Yet Felix’s Roman background and experience of being sent to prison also links him to a number of other saints, and allowed audiences to understand how the saints formed a communion. Within the OEM saints Eugenia, Silvester, Columba, Ananias, Felicity, Mark, Erasmus and Benignus are all described as being imprisoned by pagans: Felix’s individual suffering, then, joins him to a community of saints.
As can be seen from this entry, the OEM uses a sparse prose style with relatively simple syntax. The martyrologist usually favours short, clear sentences, and his writing is more often paratactic than hypotactic. The clarity of the syntax can be seen in the entry for Felix in the grammatically unnecessary repetition of mid in the phrase mid sæscellum ond mid scearpum stanum; the frequent use of the word ond (‘and’) to link clauses together; the repetition of the adjective hæþen (‘pagan’); and the recapitulation of the pronoun he in the phrase þone rice men hæþne ðreadon þæt he Criste wiðsoce (‘him [Felix] powerful pagan people forced that he renounce Christ’). Though this style appears simplistic, the martyrologist uses a very high number of difficult or rare words. In this entry, for example, the words sæscill (‘seashell’) and understregdan (‘to scatter underneath’) are rarely attested. These two terms compound otherwise familiar terms and would therefore likely have been understood. Elsewhere in the martyrology, however, more complex vocabulary caused confusion for later scribes and resulted in copying errors or editorial intervention, such as the terms sealtige (‘female dancer’) and tindiht (‘spiked’). Several entries also include Latin terms. Some of these terms, such as sacramentorum (‘sacramentary’) or arithmetica (‘arithmetic’) are technical words; others grant Latin equivalents to English calendrical or liturgical terms such as Iulius (‘July’) or Litania (‘Rogation’); others still, such as ursa (‘female bear’) might have been added simply to grant a sense of learnedness and foreignness to the text.
Entries about the saints in the OEM, then, could educate audiences in a range of aspects outside of the saint’s life itself: granting insight into world geography and teaching technical vocabulary, for example. In fact, the OEM far exceeds the expectations of its genre, and includes information on a huge range of subjects, including geography, history, astrology, meteorology and theology. Some entries do describe saints, but rather grant a sense of the rhythm of the calendrical year. These entries often include meteorological or astrological information:
On ðone seofoþan dæg þæs monðes bið wintres fruma. Se winter hafað tu ond hundnigontig daga, on ðonne gongað þa seofon seorran up on æfen ond on dægeredon setl.
[On the seventh day of the month is the beginning of winter. Winter is ninety-two days long, and at that time the Seven Stars [i.e. Pleiades] rise in the evening and set at dawn.]

Thedarksideobservatory, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Though this kind of entry might seem unrelated to the entries about saints, they both ultimately serve similar aims: namely, that they make the Christian world and its history intelligible and interpretable for audiences.
There is also some information that might be classed as ‘trivia’, as seen in the entry for ‘The Beginning of May’:
Þonne on þone fiftan monað on geare bið an ond þritig daga. Se monað is nemned on Læden Maias, ond on ure geðeode Ðrymycle, forðon swylc genihtsumnes wæs geo on Brytone ond eac on Germania lande, of ðæm Ongla ðeod com on ðas Breotone, þæt hi on þæm monðe þriwa on dæge mylcedon heora neat.
[Then in the fifth month of the year there are thirty-one days. The month is called Maius in Latin, and in our language ‘Þrimilce’ (‘Three Milkings’), because there used to be such abundance in Britain and also in Germany, from where the Angles came to this Britain, that in that month they milked their cattle three times a day.]
It is unclear exactly what the function of such an entry might have been, but it offers a great deal of information for interested audiences. It presents the equivalent Latin and Old English terms for the month of May; gives etymological information on the origins of the Old English name Þrimilce; describes the migration of the Angles to Britain; depicts the British past as a time of abundance; and even informs audiences about historical cow-milking practices. This kind of information might have served practical purposes, or simply contributed to the audience’s sense that they were consulting a learned and scientific work. In entries such as this one, the martyrologist also creates a shared British identity. The reference to ure geþeode (‘our language’) and ðas Breotone (‘this Britain’) imagine a British community in which both the martyrologist and his audiences are a part.
The variety of information contained within the OEM, the fragmented nature of the extant manuscripts, and the range of contexts in which it was copied render it difficult to establish a precise audience or usage for the text. It is clear that the OEM was read and consulted in a range of contexts and found use far outside of its immediate time and place of composition. The fact that one manuscript (London British Library, Harley 3271) includes only the entries for the Beginning of Summer and Beginning of Winter testifies to the fact that audiences consulted the OEM in a range of ways that might have differed considerably from those originally envisioned by the martyrologist. It is unlikely that the text was used for commemorative reading in a monastery given the number of non-hagiographical entries. Instead, it is probably best thought of as a reference work. The text might have been suited to a range of possible readerships and uses: as a kind of ‘Sparknotes’ for homilists; as a brief digest of sanctity for those without access to the Latin sources in libraries; or a guide for priests and monastic scholars who could then access further Latin library materials on the given saint or festival. In all of these contexts, it is important to note that the OEM did not just educate individual, interested readers. Rather, it provided the encyclopaedic knowledge and guidance necessary to guide preachers and homilists in their task of educating a broader community of Christian faithful.
Select Bibliography
Manuscripts
A London, British Library, MS Additional 23211, fol. 2
B London, British Library, MS Cotton Julius A. x, fols 44–175
C Cambridge, Cambridge Corpus Christi College MS 196, pp. 1–110
D Cambridge, Cambridge Corpus Christi College MS 41, pp. 122–32
E London, British Library, MS Additional 40165 A. 2, fols 6–7
F London, British Library, Harley 3271, fol 92v
C* London, British Library, MS Cotton Vitellius D. vii, fols 131r–132r (an early modern transcript of parts of Cambridge Corpus Christi College MS 196)
Edition
Rauer, Christine, ed., The Old English Martyrology: Edition, Translation and Commentary, Anglo-Saxon Texts 10 (Cambridge, 2013).
Criticism
Bately, Janet M. 'Old English Prose before and during the Reign of Alfred', Anglo-Saxon England 17 (1988), 93–138.
Cross, James E. ‘Saints' Lives in Old English: Latin Manuscripts and Vernacular Accounts: The Old English Martyrology', Peritia 1 (1982), 38–62.
——. ‘On the Library of the Old English Martyrologist', Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England: Studies Presented to Peter Clemoes on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. Michael Lapidge and Helmut Gneuss (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 227–49.
——. ‘The Latinity of the Ninth-Century Old English Martyrologist', Studies in Earlier Old English Prose, ed. Paul E. Szarmach (Albany, 1986), pp. 275–99.
——. ‘English Vernacular Saints' Lives before 1000 A. D.', Hagiographies: Histoire internationale de la littérature hagiographique latine et vernaculaire en Occident des origines à 1550, ed. Guy Philippart (Turnhout, 1996), II, 413–27.
Cubitt, Catherine. 'Universal and Local Saints in Anglo-Saxon England', Local Saints and Local Churches in the Early Medieval West, ed. Alan Thacker and Richard Sharpe (Oxford, 2002), pp. 423–53.
Gallagher, J. J. 'Liturgy and Learning: The Encyclopaedic function of the Old English Martyrology', Religions 13 (2022), 236.
Hamilton, Susan. 'Understanding the Church's Past: Usuard's Martyrology in Tenth- and Eleventh-Century England', Medieval Worlds 10 (2019), 46–60.
Jacobsen, Devin. 'The Testimony of Martyr: A Word History of Martyr in Anglo-Saxon England', Studies in Philology 115 (2018), 417–32.
Kotzor, Günter. ‘Anglo-Saxon Martyrologists at Work: Narrative Pattern and Prose Style in Bede and the Old English Martyrology', Leeds Studies in English 16 (1985), 152–73.
Lapidge, Michael. ‘Latin Learning in Ninth-Century England', in his Anglo-Latin Literature 600–899 (London, 1996), pp. 409–39.
——. 'Acca of Hexham and the Origin of the Old English Martyrology', Analecta Bollandiana 123 (2005), 29–78.
——. 'The Saintly Life in Anglo-Saxon England', The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature, ed. Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 251–72.
Palmer, J. T., Early Medieval Hagiography (Leeds, 2018).
Rauer, Christine. ‘Usage of the Old English Martyrology’, Foundations of Learning: The Transfer of Encyclopaedic Knowledge in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Rolf H. Bremmer jr. and Kees Dekker, Medievalia Groningana ns 9 (Leuven, 2007), pp. 125–46.
——. ‘Direct Speech, Intercession, and Prayer in the Old English Martyrology’, English Studies 93 (2012), 563–71.
——. ‘Errors and Textual Problems in the Old English Martyrology’, Neophilologus 97 (2013), 147–64.
——. ‘Female Hagiography in the Old English Martyrology’, Writing Women Saints in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Paul E. Szarmach (Toronto, 2013), pp. 13–29.
——. 'The Old English Martyrology and Anglo-Saxon Glosses’, Latinity and Identity in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Rebecca Stephenson and Emily V. Thornbury (Toronto, 2016), pp. 73–92.
——. ‘Old English Literature before Alfred: The Mercian Dimension’, The Age of Alfred: Rethinking English Literary Culture c.850–950, ed. Amy Faulkner and Francis Leneghan, Studies in Old English Literature 3 (Turnhout, 2024), pp. 51–71.
Roberts, Jane. ‘Fela martyra ‘many martyrs'': A Different View of Orosius's City', Alfred the Wise: Studies in Honour of Janet Bately on the Occasion of her Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. Jane Roberts, Janet L. Nelson and Maldolm Godden (Woodbridge, 1997), pp. 155–78
——. 'Hagiography and Literature: The Case of Guthlac of Crowland', Mercia: An Anglo-Saxon Kingdom in Europe, ed. Michelle P. Brown and Carol A. Farr (London, 2001), pp. 69–86.
Stodnick, Jacqueline. 'Bodies of Land: The Place of Gender in the Old English Martyrology', Writing Women Saints in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Paul E. Szarmach (Toronto, 2013), pp. 30–52.
Thijs, Christine. 'Levels of Learning in Anglo-Saxon Worcester: The Evidence Re-Assessed', Leeds Studies in English 36 (2005), 105–31.
For further bibliography, see the online Annotated Bibliography by Christine Rauer here.
Luisa Ostacchini is the Nelson J. Carr Career Development Fellow at Jesus College, University of Oxford. She is the author of Translating Europe in Ælfric's Lives of Saints (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024), and is currently writing a study of the global imaginary of the Old English Martyrology.