¹ DB: Modern Niksar, in the province of Tokat, Türkiye (Turkey).

² DB: According to the martyrology of Usuard, Pope Sixtus temporibus Adriani … libenter mortem sustinuit temporalem, ‘freely suffered worldly death in the time of Hadrian’ (6 April: ed. Dubois, 207). See AD 143 (below) for the alternative view that Sixtus was martyred in the time of Antonius Pius. In Hugh of St Victor’s chronology given earlier in the manuscript (f. 29r), Sixtus becomes pope in AD 128 and is succeeded in AD 139 by Telesphorus, a year before Antonius Pius succeeds Hadrian as emperor in AD 140.

³ DB: The sentence is in CM (ed. Mommsen, §319), but with ‘almost a hundred and seven years’ (annos fere centum et septem) instead of ‘a hundred years’.

⁴ DB: In CM (ed. Mommsen, §§321, 322) sub Pio Romę episcopo (‘under Pius bishop of Rome’) begins a new sentence, following the sentence on the martyrdom of Justin the philosopher (which is given only briefly in the Chronicle of Melrose). The punctuation in the manuscript (with enlarged H in Hermes following a punctus in the middle of the line, suggesting a longer pause), however, suggests that sub Pio Romę episcopo was understood to come at the end of the sentence on Justin’s martyrdom.

⁵ DB: CM (ed. Mommsen, §323) has the same sentence, but with Cerdonis (‘of Cerdo’) rather than Credonis. Cerdo (and Valentinus) are discussed as heretics by Eusebius (see Rufinus, trans. Amidon, 152–3).

⁶ DB: Prudens in the manuscript; the martyrology of Usuard (19 May, ed. Dubois, 232) has Pudens. According to the martyrology of Usuard, Pudens and Potentiana were martyred on the same day (19 May); Praxedes on 21 July (ed. Dubois, 270–1).

⁷ DB: CM (ed. Mommsen, §321) has the same sentence (up to ‘persecution’), but with Iustinus philosophus (‘The philosopher Justin’) instead of A. Eusebius’s history includes an account of Justin and his martyrdom because of Crescens the stoic (see Rufinus, trans. Amidon, 165–7).

⁸ DB: The translation reads oddly, partly because percrescente (translated here as ‘extremely intensifying’) is not a known word (it is in neither DMLBS or Lewis and Short), and partly because the material from CM here has been abbreviated so much that the sentence as it stands appears to be incomplete: perhaps the reader was expected to supply passus est (‘suffered’) or something similar so that ‘A.’s’ (i.e., Justin’s) martyrdom is inferred. In CM (Mommsen, §321), this passage reads: qui non longe post suscitante persecutionem Crescente cynico pro Christo sanguinem fudit, ‘who (i.e., Justin) not long after arousing persecution by the cynic Crescens, shed (his) blood for Christ’. Two stages of development from CM’s statement could explain how this passage became so awkward. The first is the addition of per (per Crescente, ‘by Crescens’, although per Crescentem would be expected grammatically); and then, perhaps because per Crescente is grammatically unusual, this could have been read as one word, percrescente (taking per to be an intensifier to crescere). Crescens is the name of an opponent of Justin who is noted in CM (derived ultimately from Eusebius) as Justin’s persecutor, leading to his martyrdom (see previous note).