The Roman martyrs mark the historical narrative of early Christianity while churches bearing their names dot the contemporary landscape of Rome. The ecclesiological tradition of the Western Church comfortably approves and assimilates their legends into its liturgical calendars and hagiography. However, the historical evidence for them is not as apparent as the hagiographical tradition, while their texts have not been readily available and their legacies have not been systematically analysed. There is a lack of critical editions of many martyr accounts and this had led to a neglect of their stories.

Michael Lapidge has finally organised these essential histories and provides translations of forty Latin passiones of Roman martyr saints. Each chapter of his book deals with a single early Christian martyr in Rome, offering introductions, new translations and commentaries on their passion stories. Well known are the passiones of Laurence, Sebastian and Agnes. Unfamiliar stories are numerous and will be new to most readers: Pancratius and Pigmenius, for example, and the four obscure stonemasons of The Four Crowned Martyrs. These illustrate the immeasurable research that Lapidge has undertaken in order to secure data and provide analysis of martyrologies usually out of reach of most scholars.

The introduction to each chapter surveys all the martyr entries, providing a traditional burial location when available. It provides an overview of the historical context of the passiones martyrum, including the milieu of persecution, as well as the charges laid against Christians and their trials. It explains the literary representation of the epic passio, mainly its theatre, characters, sermons, executions and burials. The introduction explains the dating and dynamics of the Latin texts from early and medieval manuscripts, typically less than one hundred, but sometimes more than 450 for Agnes and 500 for Sebastian, providing evidence for their use and celebration in the medieval era (p. 39). Finally, the passio translation is explained, one of the greatest contributions made by the book. Appendices extend the resources offered with translated martyrological data from the Depositio martyrum, the Epigrammata of Damasus, the Martyrologium Hieronymianum, pilgrim itineraries to Roman sites and passages of Roman martyr commemoration from liturgical books. The primary sources available in this work are enormous and invaluable: descriptions and footnotes abound with critical analysis of key texts, historical background and the principal scholarship. The author is most at home when sources are evaluated as medieval Latin literature.

The historical difficulties of these stories emerge immediately. Lapidge discerns that these martyrological works are late fifth- through late seventh-century creations, written as ‘a literary response to this upsurge in pilgrim activity’ to martyr shrines (p. v). A historian's concerns include the conflation of legends between martyrs, the multi-source textual judgment required, and the recognition of developed hagiography at work over the early centuries. For example, Urban assumes his own passio which is shared with that of Caecilia. His biography seems pieced together from the Liber pontificalis, the imperial Scriptures historiae Augustae, plus his own hagiographical tradition by the author of his passio, including speech acts for his encounters. The commemoration of his martyrdom is rounded out in the Martyrologium Hieronymianum, where his martyr date of 5 May finds agreement with the passio. Lapidge recognises its relationship to the recensions of the Liber, while also identifying the anachronism of the manuscript erroneously placing Urban's death under Diocletian rather than Severus Alexander (pp. 528–31). Similarly, each passion story brings its own manuscript and historical challenges. The author examines each contributing and competing manuscript tradition with methodological clarification, precise explanation of source reliance and fair adjudication of the authenticity of the originally developed legend. Yet, like a thesis statement, throughout the work the legends, for Lapidge, are not historical events, but historically invented.

Arguing that any authentic transcripts of the martyr trials had long disappeared, the author insists that the accounts are ‘works of fiction … utterly unreliable as historical evidence’ (p. v). While such a hypothesis is acceptable, little attention is given to oral traditions as the basis for the literary accounts. For example, given that the passio of Urban was created from multiple sources, this synthesis could also function as an expression of a known tradition and not merely as an act of ancient creative sentimentality. Burial locations that prompted supposed literary inventions have value for historical legitimacy. For that matter, one cannot confidently assume that the transcribers lacked documents in their crafting of written accounts. However, Lapidge seeks substantiation that is out of reach, so the accounts function only to capture in time the values governing the authors and their era. They can explain the topography of titular churches, the social hierarchy and theology of early Christian life.

The treatment of church history from these sources is briefer in this work than the insights into the literary sources themselves. Yet the historical and theological assessment of these martyrs and their stories is unparalleled. The story of Felicitas illustrates the dedication of virgins to the faith, contains references to the devil and idols as religious enemies, and sheds light on attitudes toward the ruling emperor (pp. 50–3). Sebastian provided his passio author Arnobius the Younger with the opportunity for an apologetic for Christian belief (p. 80). Primus and Felicianus convey striking familiarity with the forum, amphitheatre, walls, basilica and catacombs of an ancient suburb of Rome (p. 412). The author delivers on his claim that these stories, even if invented, contextualise ancient life and place for the modern reader.

Lapidge has made an inestimable contribution to Early Church studies. The work captures the ecclesiastical ethos at the time of the passions, both in Christian values and the counter-values of paganism. The cultural insights are often brief rather than comprehensive, but the collection of information about each martyr, source and hagiography is unparalleled. Most important, the author provides martyrdom accounts in English of the hagiography still dominating the landscape of ecclesiastical Rome.