A false kind of patriotism and national pride often goes along with credulity, so that we find here and there in literature of this kind even downright fabrications. After the introduction of printing, by which literature became more widely diffused and comparative criticism was rendered possible, it at once became evident among Catholics that error was mixed with truth, and that a sifting of the one from the other was necessary, and, in many cases, quite possible. In this province of criticism, those who have most distinguished themselves for judgment and insight are Launoi, Henschen, the Bollandists, Tillemont, Baillet, Ruinart, and in more modern times, Franchi di Cavalieri and others who have avoided extremes in either direction. The matter from these writings incorporated in the service books possesses the same historical value as the source from which it is drawn. For, as Bäumer justly remarks, “it was not the intention of the Church, or of the compilers and authors of the service books, to claim historical authority for their statements. And so the Popes themselves have directed many emendations to be made in the legends in the Breviary, although many others still remain to be effected.”[461] The legends, by their incorporation into the Breviary, gain no higher degree of credibility than that which the person who incorporated them is able to confer upon them from a purely natural standpoint. This must be emphasised and maintained, for since the time of Bishop Aurelian of Arles,[462] the reading of the histories of the martyrs made its way more and more into the psalmody in the West, and became an essential part of the Breviary. The honour of having cultivated for the first time the province of hagiography as a whole and not merely in a few particulars, belongs, as far as we know, to the historian Eusebius. Before he completed his history of the Church, he planned a collection of the Acts of the Martyrs (συλλοωὴ τῶν μαρτυρίων), which he quotes in his history (v. 1, 6). Unfortunately this compilation has been lost, although it was probably used by Gregory of Tours.[463] He gives further information in his work on the martyrs of Palestine which took place in his own lifetime during the Diocletian persecution, between 303 and 310. This book seems to have been composed after the completion of his History of the Church.[464] Had we similar writings of the same period relating to other provinces of the Church, we should be better informed concerning those extraordinary events.