that distinguish the six groups are considered, it is possible to verify that the first and the second refer to a uniform type of texts because of the contemporary and direct nature of the information; the next two contain stories, based in varying degrees, on at least partially secure data; the last two, on the other hand, are true fantasies without a historical basis. Maintaining the same criteria as Delehaye, the texts can be classified into three simpler groups: The official records and the accounts of direct testimonies. Narratives based on documents belonging to the first group or, at least, on a certain number of safe historical elements. The novels or hagiographic fantasies. Literary scheme Except for the records, all of the narrative documents mentioned above offer, from a literary point of view, common characters, since they are all the result of an elaboration and compositional process typical of hagiographic literature; the tendency to the schematic form has a remote origin, whose trace already manifested in ancient texts, close to the type and narrative sincerity, of the same record. This has happened, for example, in the Martyrium Polycarpi, in which it is possible to recognize the attempt of the hagiographer to assimilate the death of the martyr to that of Christ. This theme, of the martyr who imitates Christ, appears already in the first Christian writers. When subsequently, from the fourth century on, certain patterns or essential criteria are fixed, the hagiographers adopt certain narrative characteristics that become the literary genre of the passions. In the first place the legal tone of the Roman criminal process of the first records has been preserved; sometimes even some of the passions make reference to it, showing how, on more than one occasion, the lost records served as sources. The introductory formula of the consular date of the records preserve the indication of the emperor, governor or proconsul, even in historically erroneous cases. The phases of the procedure, arrest, appearance, interrogation, torture, judgment and torment are preserve and constitute the structure of the narrative; likewise, the protagonists, usually few in number, of the ancient records are preserved: the martyr, the judge or magistrate and the executioner; in the second place, the Christian spectators who animate their companion and, finally, the hostile mass of the pagans. On a similar scheme, the evolutionary process of the passions develops (throughout the centuries IV to XX), with