The Catholic Church began compiling “martyrologies”—lists of saints, typically martyrs—during the first centuries after Constantine. In the pre-Vatican II breviary, a reading from the Roman Martyrology, or what we might call the Catholic Book of Witnesses, was an integral part of the Office of Prime, the “hour” recited after sunrise. The day’s date was given, followed by a reading of the names of the saints commemorated that day, with information about each saint’s origin and place of death—and, if the saint were a martyr, the name of the persecutor, a description of tortures endured, and the method of execution. It was a bracing way to begin the working day and a reminder of Tertullian’s maxim that the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church.
It is somewhat ironic that the loss of Prime from the Liturgy of the Hours—and thus the loss of a daily liturgical reading from the Roman Martyrology—coincided with the greatest century of persecution in the history of the Church. It’s a point well-established but little appreciated within American Catholicism: we have been living, and we’re living now, in the greatest era of persecution in Christian history. More Christians died for the faith in the 20th-century than in the previous 19 centuries of Christian history combined. And while the character of the persecutors has changed, from the lethal heyday of the 20th-century totalitarianisms to the first decades of the 21st century, the assault on the Christian faithful today is ongoing, extensive, and heart-rending.
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