The Old English Martyrology is a collection of over 230 hagiographies

Hagiography

Hagiography is the study of saints.From the Greek and , it refers literally to writings on the subject of such holy people, and specifically to the biographies of saints and ecclesiastical leaders. The term hagiology, the study of hagiography, is also current in English, though less common...

, probably compiled in Mercia

Mercia

Mercia was one of the kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy. It was centred on the valley of the River Trent and its tributaries in the region now known as the English Midlands...

, or by someone who wrote in the Mercian dialect of the Old English language

Old English language

Old English or Anglo-Saxon is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and southeastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century...

, in the second half of the 9th century.

The sources of the Old English Martyrology include the works of Bede

Bede

Bede , also referred to as Saint Bede or the Venerable Bede , was a monk at the Northumbrian monastery of Saint Peter at Monkwearmouth, today part of Sunderland, England, and of its companion monastery, Saint Paul's, in modern Jarrow , both in the Kingdom of Northumbria...

, Aldhelm, Eddius

Eddius

Stephen of Ripon is the author of the eighth-century Vita Sancti Wilfrithi . Another name which has been traditionally attributed to him is Eddius Stephanus or Æddi Stephanus, but since his identification with the bearer of this name is no longer accepted by historians today, modern usage tends to...

, Adomnán, Gregory the Great, and Isidore of Seville

Isidore of Seville

Saint Isidore of Seville served as Archbishop of Seville for more than three decades and is considered, as the historian Montalembert put it in an oft-quoted phrase, "le dernier savant du monde ancien"...

, showing that the author had access to a significant library.

Five principal manuscripts survive, but parts of January, and much of February and December are lost. The standard modern edition is by Günter Kotzor, Das altenglische Martyrologium (Abhandlungen der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, volumes 88/1 and 88/2, 1981). Earlier editions, replaced by Kotzor's work, include Herzfeld's An Old English Martyrology (Early English Text Society

Early English Text Society

The Early English Text Society is an organization to reprint early English texts, especially those only available in manuscript. Most of its volumes are in Middle English and Old English...

, no. 116, 1900). An English translation by Christine Rauer is in preparation.