and inserted the mention of them in
her liturgy. This Ruinart proves by many examples: he also shows that
the greatest care was taken to procure the genuine acts of the martyrs;
or, when they could not be had, to procure exact accounts of their
trials and sufferings. By this means the church was in possession of
authentic histories of the persecutions she had suffered, and through
which she had finally triumphed over paganism, and of particular
accounts of the principal sufferers. The greatest part of them was lost
in the general wreck which sacred and profane literature suffered from
the barbarians who overturned the Roman empire. In every age, however,
some were found who carefully preserved whatever they could save of
those sacred treasures. Copies were frequently made of them; and this in
this, as in every other important branch of Christian learning, the
chain of tradition has been left unbroken. Much, however, of these
sacred documents of church history has been irretrievably lost; and,
speaking generally, the remaining part came down to us in an imperfect
state. Hence Vives, at the end of the fifteenth century, exclaimed,
"What a shame it is to the Christian world, that the acts of our martyrs
have not been published with greater truth and accuracy!" The important
task of publishing them in that manner was at length undertaken by Dom
Ruinart, a Maurist monk, in his _Acta primorum martyrum sincera et
selecta_. He executed it in a manner that gained him universal applause.
His prefatory discourse, respecting the number of martyrs, has been
generally admired. An invaluable accession to this branch of sacred
literature was published by Stephen Evodius Assemani, in two volumes
folio, at Rome in 1748. The title of the work expresses its contents:
"_Acta Sanctorum Martyrum orientalium et occidentalium editore Stephano
Evodio Assemano, que textum Chaldaicum recensuit, notis vocalibus
animavit, Latine vertit, et annotationibus illustravit_." It is to be
observed, that the eastern and western martyrs mentioned in this place,
are not the martyrs of the eastern of Greek church, and the martyrs of
the Latin or western church, in which sense the words eastern and
western are generally used by ecclesiastical writers. By the eastern
martyrs, Assemani denotes the martyrs who suffered in the countries
which extend from the eastern bank of the Euphrates, over Mesopotamia
and Chaldea to the Tigris and the parts beyond it; by the weste