he place and time of their martyrdom." The
Roman calendar seems to have been adopted generally through the western
church. It certainly was received in England. At the council held at
Shovesham in 747, by Cuthbert, the archbishop of Canterbury, it was
ordered, "That throughout the year, the feasts of the saints should be
celebrated on the days appointed by the Martyrology of the church of
Rome, with the proper psalms." It was once generally believed to have
been composed by St. Jerom; but this opinion is now universally
rejected. It suffered much in the middle ages. Pope Gregory XIII.,
immediately after he had completed the great work of reforming the
calendar, used the most earnest endeavors to procure a correct edition
of the Roman Martyrology. He committed the care of it to some of the
most distinguished writers of his time on ecclesiastical subjects. Among
them, Bellarmin, Baronius, and Gavant deserve particular mention. With
this edition Baronius himself was not satisfied. He published another
edition in 1586: and afterwards, at the instigation of cardinal Sirlet,
published a still more correct edition, with notes, in 1598. He prefixed
to his edition a dissertation, in which he appears to have exhausted the
subject. A further correction of the Roman Martyrology was made by pope
Urban VIII. They were all surpassed by that published by pope Benedict
XIV., at Cologne, in 1751. But the most useful edition is that published
at Paris, in 1661, by father Lubin, an Augustinian friar. It is
accompanied with excellent notes and geographical tables. Politus, an
Italian divine, published, in 1751, the first volume of a new edition of
the Roman Martyrology. It comprises the month of January, but the plan
of annotation is so extended, that it fills five hundred folio pages of
the smallest print; from the time of Drackenborch's edition of Livy, so
prolix a commentary had not been seen. Among other principal
Martyrologies, is that of the _Venerable Bede_. After several faulty
editions of it had appeared, it was correctly published by Henschenius
and Papebroke, and afterwards by Smith, at the end of his edition of
Bede's Ecclesiastical History. Notwithstanding Bede's great and deserved
celebrity, the Martyrology of _Usuard_, a Benedictine monk, was in more
general use; he dedicated it to Charles the Bald, and died about 875. It
was published by Solerius at Antwerp, in 1714, and by Dom Bouillard, in
1718; but the curious still seek fo