MARTYRS, MARTYROLOGY, from the Greek Martur or Ailartus (stelprep or Ayres), a witness.
By the term martyr we now generally understand a person who suffers death rather than renounce his religious opinions ; and those who have made a profession of their faith and thereby endured sufferings short of death, are called confessors. These terms appear to have been used in the same sense by some of the early Christian writers; but others give the title of martyr to all who suffered tortures on account of their faith, and that of confessor to those who were only imprisoned for its avowal. Tortullian calls the latter " martyrea desi6mati," martyrs elect. The annals of the early Christian church contain the histories of many martyrs, whose astonishing fortitude under the most cruel tortures was doubtless one great cause of the rapid diffusion of Christianity. Among the earliest and most valuable documents relating to this subject are the letter of the church at ' Smyrna, giving an account of the martyrdom of Polyearp (A.D. 167), and that of the church at Lyon and Vienne, (A.D. 177), concerning the martyrs who suffered in the same reign, namely, that of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. (Eusebius, Eec. Hist.,' iv. 6; v. i. ; and
Lardner's Works,' vol. vii., p. 150, edition•of 1831.) The histories of these martyrs areIcalled Martyrologies, of which the earliest is that of Clement L, bishop"of Rome. Middleton has shown that many of the accounts in the early Martyrologies are fabulous. Ho mentions, in his • Letter from Rome,' some curious instances in which persons who never existed, heathen deities with their names slightly or not at all changed, and even inanimate objects, have been canonised as saints and martyrs. As examples of this description of works we may mention the Martyrology' of Eusebius, which was translated into Latin by Jerome, and was celebrated in the early church, but is lost ; that ascribed to the venerable Bede, but the genuineness of which is very doubtful ; and the ' Acts and Monuments ' of Fox, which is an elaborate and valuable record of the sufferings of the English reformers, Much interesting information on this subject may be found in Ruinart's Ada Martyrum ; Dodwell's Dissertations Cyprianicee, v., xi., xii., xiii., and Dr. Conyers Middieten's Free Enquiry into the Miraculous Powers supposed to hare subsisted in the Christian Church.