successive enrichments and formal improvements, including fantasies, common places and errors, due to both ignorance and blind piety of the hagiographers. These unsubstantiated relationships can be broken down like this: The apostle and even the small initial group of martyrs came to be united with topographically or liturgically close groups; The figure of the persecutor was typified in the cruelest of those known and traditionally considered as such: Decius, Valerian and Diocletian; and the same happened with the figure of the governor (praeses, proconsularis), who was often called Anulinus, historical figure of the fourth century. The interrogation was prolonged in an inordinate way, often putting into the mouth of the martyr professions of faith imitating the theology of the time and the New Testament writings; The martyr was made to pronounce controversial discourses, plagiarizing the content of other works, generally of the apologetic writings, addressed to the pagans or against heresies. The same happened with the narrations of the pains and tortures, prolonged and multiplied without saving prodigies made by the martyr, adorned with the spectacular element provided by fantasy and legend. In this transformation and development, negative from the critical point of view, several factors influenced to a considerable degree: the spread of the cult of the relics, with the inevitable abuses easily imaginable; veneration of the martyred saint, patron saint of the city, monastery or church, which obliged him to find or invent a living; the particularly religious and devout environment of the Middle Ages, favored by the monks who were among the most active writers of the hagiographic texts. Compilation Dispensing from the first records collected, incomplete and that are already considered lost, it can be said that the first compiler was Eusebius of Cesarea, of whom the title of the writing of martyribus is known which unfortunately has been lost; On the other hand, Martyribus Palestinae is preserved. This was the only collection known in Rome during the sixth century, in the time of St. Gregory the Great, as the Pope himself informed the bishop and patriarch of Alexandria, Eulogio, who had requested documentation about the collections of gesta martyrum. Almost at the same time, great martyrology was forming, called jeronimiano with the commemorations of all the martyrs, which grouped the oldest martyrologies of the churches. This fact is important, because the compilation of many of the passions is intimately related to this martyrology, which served