taken from old Christian writers, like Eusebio, John Chrysostom, Basil and even Prudentius, of whose hymns had extracted paragraphs relative to the martyrs Hippolytus of Rome and Saint Lawrence. It is true that in most cases they are historical figures, but the selection of the texts was not carried out under a uniform or safe criterion, nor was it accompanied by a critical analysis. The Benedictine, who had a rather vague idea of the purpose of its collection, only intended to make known the oldest and most trustworthy document for each of the martyrs, with the intention of excluding falsified documents. In 1882 Edmond-Frederic Le Blant had the idea to continue and complete the compilation of Ruinart and added another group of records, which he considered authentic by the adequacy of the narrative with the Roman legal phrases. The criterion of Le Blant is not firm and shows once again the complexity of the critical work aimed at establishing the authentic records; the various authentic acta martyrum lists, which other authors have sketched or compiled later do not represent the result of a rigorous and scientific analysis, but rather are insignificant retouchings of Ruinart's work With much greater seriousness, although very slowly, they are occupied with these works according to an organic plan by the Bollandists. In recent years, a series of principles and norms of hagiographic criticism have been exposed in relation to the records by several specialists, such as, H. Achelis, J. Geffken, A. Harnack, in Germany; P. Allard, J. Leclercq, in France; the Jesuit F. Grossi-Gondi, Fr. Lanzoni and Pio Franchi de 'Cavalieri, in Italy. The most valuable contribution, however, is due to the bolandist H. Delehaye, from whose writings it would be possible to extract a critical summula. Ihe contributed, in effect, the safest classification of the records; He has pointed out the various components of a martyr's dossier, has reconstructed the iter of the legend, underlining the special function of the massa and local traditions; He has studied hagiographic documents parallel to the narrative texts, such as martyrologies and synaxes, and has established the different value of literary, liturgical and monumental sources, specifically establishing that of chronological and topographical data (doctrine of hagiographic coordinates). In summary, he has outlined and perfected the discipline of the method. It has been said, with a certain air of reproach, that the hagiographic criticism has been interested until the