Although the only correct view is to maintain that the commemorations of the apostles were treated in the same way as the days devoted to the memory of the martyrs, and that their names appeared in the calendars on the day of their death (_dies natales_), still this is true of only a few indeed of their commemorations in the calendars actually in use. For the majority of the apostles died in barbarian countries with no one on the spot to collect information, and only much later a few floating pieces of information concerning them were collected from popular tradition. Another difficulty may have arisen from the different systems of chronology in use, and so even when the day of an apostle’s death was set down it was probably not understood by the Greeks and Romans, and so was forgotten. For these and other reasons it came to pass that, later on, when the commemoration of a certain apostle had to be fixed in the calendar, the date of the invention or translation of his relics was generally chosen, or finally the date was fixed simply by chance. As absolutely trustworthy, I can, therefore, regard only the day of the death of St Peter, St Paul, and St Andrew, perhaps also the day of the death of St Mark and St Luke, since they ended their days in civilized countries, at a period when the hierarchy of the Church had already been established in those parts. With regard to St John, the question is open to doubt, first, because he did not die a martyr’s death, and secondly, because he did not preside as bishop over a particular congregation. Had he done so, the list of bishops for that particular city would have been careful to inform us of the fact. Although the cultus of each apostle was originally local, yet there are early traces that the cultus became universal. Thus already in the fifth century a day within the octave of St Peter and St Paul seems to have been dedicated to the cultus of all the apostles in common. We find in the so-called Sacramentary of Leo I. the following prayer: _Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, qui nos omnium apostolorum merita sub una tribuisti celebritate venerari_, etc. The same prayer appears also in the Gelasianum, where it is found in _lib._ 2, No. 33.[597] A mediæval liturgist, Beleth, gave expression to the view that the separate apostles had no special festivals in the primitive Church, but that all together were commemorated on the 1st May,[598] and that finally only St Philip and St James continued to be commemorated on this day. The facts, however, as far as we have been able to learn, do not bear out the opinion of this writer which he inferred from the greater calendars, but the festivals of each of the apostles came into existence one by one, from the ninth century onwards, until they reached their full number. The council of Erfurt in 932 raised all feasts of apostles to the rank of holy days of obligation for Germany. Pope Boniface VIII. in 1293 made them all _duplicia_.