type of documentation can be explained in part by the destruction ordered by Diocletian in the year 303 of the sacred books that existed in the churches and that would have affected the records equally. There are no traces suggesting that the churches got involved in restoring the heritage of the destroyed hagiographic texts after the persecution ended. The events of later centuries, such as the western Germanic invasions in the fifth (V) and sixth (VI) century, may have consummated the irreparable loss of the writings still preserved. Division and classification Given the enormous number of hagiographic texts and the heterogeneous nature of their origin, authority and value, critics have proposed a classification to guide their study. It has been observed in the first place that a classification of the texts based on the criterion of the authenticity of the martyr or the legitimacy of his cult is not valid or useful. A classification based on extrinsic characteristics, such as the one that divides the hagiographic documents in Acta, Passiones, Vitae, Miracula, Translationes, etc., also lacks value, according to the object of the story. Neither does the classification meet the demands of criticism two large groups, contemporary documents and subsequent documents, since it does not express anything about the value of the document. The safest criterion is the one indicated by Hippolyte Delehaye, which is based on the degree of sincerity and historicity offered by the literary genre of the document. According to this criterion, six groups of texts are established: They Understand the verbal processes contained in official relations preceding the proconsular archives or direct transcriptions, such as the S. Cypriani Act, for example. They group together accounts of eyewitnesses or trustworthy contemporaries, whether they are direct testimonies, testimonies of other people or of a mixed type, such as De martyribus Palaestinae by Eusebius of Cesarea. They contain narrations from which an information or document can be extracted from one of the two preceding groups such as the Menologion of Symeon Metaphrast. They cover all those stories that lack a historical basis, except for the name of the sepulcher, and the cult of the martyr like the Passio S. Felicitatis. They are made up of purely fantastic stories, authentic products of the imagination, such as the Passio S. Nicephori. They group narrations of legendary character that falsify the historical truth and can be defined as false. If the elements