CONCERNING THE HOLY FORTY-TWO MARTYRS IN PERSIA
CommentaryThe Forty-Two Martyrs in Persia (Saints)
[1] There is a great consensus of almost all Latins in assigning the birthday of these holy Martyrs to March 10, but no particular notification of the time, city, province, persecution, or any name is provided. The Saints inscribed in the sacred calendars: These things are indicated almost everywhere: In Persia, the birthday of the holy Martyrs, forty-two in number. So Usuard, Ado, Notker, Bellinus, Maurolycus, Galesinius, the Old Roman Martyrology of Rosweid and the present one of Baronius, along with very many manuscript Martyrologies. In the Martyrology of Saint Jerome published at Paris they are called forty-seven Martyrs, but in our manuscript twenty-two Martyrs, and more correctly with others in the Luccan and Blumian copies of the same Saint Jerome they are recorded as forty-two Martyrs. The manuscript Florus in the supplement to Bede agrees, and so do others generally. Concerning the various persecutions raised in Persia we have treated frequently, and that Assyria itself, subject to the Kings of Persia, was included under Persia was stated on January 21 in the Life of Saint Anastasius the Persian. Wandelbert once praised them with this couplet:
A band of forty-two coheres in blood, Whom slain in savage Persia alike we celebrate.
[2] Ancient manuscript codices of the said Martyrologies free us from a scruple that troubled us, lest these forty-two Martyrs should be the same as those reported by us above on the sixth day, who were captured at Amorium and killed in Syria. distinct from the 42 captured at Amorium and killed in Syria. For they too are forty-two Martyrs in number, very famous among the Greeks, almost unknown to the older Latins, inserted by Molanus in his additions to Usuard. Galesinius and Baronius followed, who as different Martyrs inscribed them on both that and this day in the Roman Martyrology: and rightly, since the Amorian Martyrs were killed by the Saracens around the year 861, before which time by a full century and more our copy of Saint Jerome had been written, as we have frequently indicated.