List #1:  Acts (Acta, Passiones) of the Martyrs                        

Early Primary Sources:

Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers.  Translated by Maxwell Staniforth.  Baltimore:  Penguin Books, 1968. 

The Acts of the Christian Martyrs.  Edited and Translated by Herbert Musurillo.  Oxford Early Christian Texts.  Oxford:  Clarendon Press, 1972.  These are the two dozen surviving acta sincera, direct witnesses of the passiones, given here in the original Greek or Latin with facing English translations.

Acta Alexandrinorum:  The Acts of the Pagan Martyrs.  Edited and Translated by Herbert Musurillo.  Oxford:  Clarendon Press, 1954.

“Second and Third Century Acts of Apostles.”  In New Testment Apocrypha.  Edited by Wilhelm Schneemelcher.  Translated by R. McL. Wilson.  2 vols.  Second edition.  Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991-92.  2: 75-482.

Donatist Martyr Stories: The Church in Conflict in Roman North Africa. Translated by Maureen A. Tilley. Translated Texts for Historians 24. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press,1996.

Les légendes grecques des saints militaires.  Edited by Hyppolyte Delehaye.  Paris:  Librairie Alphonse Picard, 1909.

Gregory of Tours:  Glory of the Martyrs.  Translated by Raymond Van Dam.  Translated Texts for Historians Latin Series 3.  Liverpool:  Liverpool University Press, 1988. 

Source Collections:   English translations of many of the early acts are included in the texts presented in The Fathers of the Church. 79- vols.  Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 1946-; and in A Selected Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Church Fathers.  First Series of 14 vols; second series of 14 volumes.  1882-86; 1890-99.  Rpt. by Eerdmans Publishing Company in the 1950s. Now available at several Web  locations including The Common Man's Prospective, the Christian Classics Ethereal Library, etc.

            Latin and/or Greek original texts can be found in J.-P. Migne’s Patrologia (ca. 400 vols.), available at TTU on microfiche; and in the Acta Sanctorum (67 vols.), available at TTU on microfilm.  Both of these immense source collections were accessible online for free through Documenta Catholica, but recently its postings have been scaled back, possibly because of copyright complications.  The Acta Sanctorum is available in a searchable proprietary electronic version produced by Chadwick Healey and now published by Proquest, has an index by Roger Pearse posted online, and may be available in pdf form on various sites.

Secondary Sources:

Altman, Charles.  “Two Types of Opposition and the Structure of Latin Saints’ Lives.”  Medievalia et Humanistica 6 (1975), 1-11.

Barnes, Timothy D.  “Pre-Decian Acta Martyrum.”  Journal of Theological Studies, 19 (1968), 509-31.                      

Bisbee, Gary A.  Pre-Decian Acts of Martyrs and Commentarii.  Harvard Dissertations in Religion 22.  Philadelphia:  Fortress Press, 1988.

Blennemann, Gordon. "Martyre et prédication: Adpatations d'un modèle hagiographique dans les sermons de Césaire d'Arles." In Normes et hagiographie dans l'Occident (VIe-XVIe siècle): Actes du colloque international de Lyon 4-6 octobre 2010, edited by Marie-Céline Isa ïa and Thomas Granier. Hagiologia 9 Turnhout: Brepols, 2014. Pp. 253-71.

Bowersock, Glen W.  Martyrdom and Rome.   Cambridge, England:  Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Boyarin, D.  “Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism.”  Journal of Early Christian Studies 6 (1998): 577-627.

Castelli, Elizabeth.  Martyrdom and Memory:  Early Christian Culture Making.  New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.

 de Gaiffier, Baudouin.  “Réflexions sur les origines du culte des martyrs.”  La Maison-Dieu 52 (1957), 19-43.  Rpt. in his Études critiques d’hagiographie et d’iconologie.  Subsidia Hagiographica 43.  Brussels:  Société  des Bollandistes, 1967.  Pp. 7-30.

Delehaye, Hyppolyte.  Les origines du culte des martyrs.  2nd ed.  Subsidia Hagiographica 20.  1933, rpt. Brussels:  Société des Bollandistes, 1976.

________.  Les Passions des martyrs et les genres littéraires.  2nd ed.  Subsidia Hagiographica, vol. 13b.  Brussels:  Société des Bollandistes, 1966.

Dupont, Anthony.  “Imitatio Christi, Imitatio Stephani.  Augustine’s thinking on Martyrdom Based on his Sermons on the Protomartyr Stephan.”  Augustiniana 56 (2006): 29-61.

Elliot, Alison Goddard.  Roads to Paradise:  Reading the Lives of the Early Saints.  Hanover:  Brown University Press, 1987.

Fontaine, Jacques.  “Le culte des martyrs militaires et son expression poétique au IVe siècle:  L’idéal évangélique de la non-violence dans la christianisme théodosien.”  Augustinianum 20 (1980):  141-71.

Frend, W. H. C.  Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church:  A Study of a Conflict from the Macchabees to Donatus. Garden City, NY:  Anchor Books, 1967.

Leclercq, Henri.  “Martyr.”  Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie.  15 vols.  Paris:  Letouzey et Ané, 1924-53.  10(2): 2359-2512.

Luongo, Genaro. "Santi martiri."  In Forme e modelli della santità in Occidente dal tardo antico al medioevo, ed. Massimiliano Bassetti, Antonella Degl'Innocenti, and Enrico Menestò. Spoleto: CISAM, 2012. Pp. 1-33.

Mertens, Cées.  “Les premiers martyrs et leurs rêves:  Cohésion de l’histoire et des rêves dans quelques Passions latines de l’Afrique du Nord.”  Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 81 (1986): 5-46.

Newbold, R. F.  “Personality Structure and Response to Adversity in Early Christian Hagiography.”  Numen 31 (1984): 199-215.

Palmer, Anne-Marie.  Prudentius on the Martyrs.  Oxford Classical Monographs. Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1989.

Rhee, Helen.  Early Christian Literature:  Christ and Culture in the Second and Third Centuries.  The Apologies, Apocryphal Acts, and Martyr Acts.  Routledge Early Church Monographs.  New York: Routledge, 2005.

Carole Straw, "Martyrdom and Christian Identity: Gregory the Great, Augustine, and Tradition." In The Limits of Ancient Christianity: Essays on Late Antique Thought and Culture in Honor of R. A. Markus, edited by William E. Klingshirn and Mark Vessey. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999. Pp. 250-66.

Saxer, Victor.  Bible et hagiographie.  Textes et thèmes bibliques dans les actes des martyrs authentiques des premiers siècles.  Bern:  Peter Lang, 1986.

Shepkaru, Shmuel. Jewish Martyrs in the Pagan and Christian Worlds.  New York:  Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Straw, Carole. “Settling Scores:  Eschatology in the Church of the Martyrs.” In Last Things:  Death and the Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, edited by Caroline Walker  Bynum and Paul Friedman. Philadelphia:  University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000.  Pp.. 21-40.

Thacker, Alan.  “Rome of the Martyrs:  Saints, Cults and Relics, Fourth to Seventh Centuries.”  In Roma Felix:  Formation and Reflections of Medieval Rome, edited by Éamonn Ó Carragáin and Carol Neuman de Vegvar.  Aldershot, UK:  Ashgate 2007.  Pp.13-49.  See also Caroline J. Goodson.  “Building for Bodies:  The Architecture of Saint Veneration in Early Medieval Rome,”  Ibid.  51-79

Van Henten, Jan Willem.  “The Martyrs as Heroes of the Christian People:  Some Remarks on the Continuity between Jewish and Christian Martyrology, with Pagan Analogies.”  In Martyrium in Multidisciplinary Perspective:  Memorial Louis Reekmans, edited by M. Lamberigts and P. Van Deun.  Louvain:  University Press, 1995.  Pp. 303-22. 

[Later Martyr Legends (Studies listed below are NOT readings for class on Sept. 21, but illustrate the afterlife that passiones of martyrs enjoyed in medieval and early modern Christianity):

Colbert, Edward P.  The Martyrs of Córdoba (850-859):  A Study of the Sources.  The Catholic University of America Studies in Medieval History n.s. 17.  Washington, D.C.:  Catholic University of America Press, 1962.

Coope, Jessica A.  The Martyrs of Cordoba:  Community and Conflict in an Age of Mass Conversions.  Lincoln:  University of Nebraska Press, 1995.

Cutler, A.  “The Ninth-Century Spanish Martyrs’ Movement and the Origins of Western Christian Missions to the Muslims.”  Muslim World 55 (1965):  321-39.

Drees, Clayton J.  “Sainthood and Suicide: The Motives of the Martyrs of Cordoba, A.D. 850-59.”  Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 20 (1990): 59-89.

Jacobus da Voragine.  The Golden Legend.  Any edition.  Four-fifths of this legendary consists of accounts of martyred saints as these were envisioned in the thirteenth century.

Dailey, Alice. The English Martyr: From Reformation to Revolution: ReFormations, Medieval and Early Modern. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012.

White, Helen Constance.  Tudor Books of Saints and Martyrs.  Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1963.

Gallonio, Antonio.  Torture:  Torments of the Christian Martyrs, translated by A. R. Allinson.  New York:  Walden Publications, 1939.  Martyred saints as envisioned in the sixteenth century.

Gregory, Brad F.  Salvation at Stake:  Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe.  Cambridge:  Harvard University Press, 1999.

Kolb, Robert.  For All the Saints:  Changing Perceptions of Martyrdom and Sainthood in the Lutheran Church.  Macon:  Mercer University Press, 1987.

Le Martyr(e): Moyen-Âge, Temps modernes. Texts edited by Marc Belissa and Monique Cottret. Paris: Kimé Éditions, 2010.]