The editors go yet further, and show that the compiler was also very well informed concerning ecclesiastical matters in Italy, especially in Northern Italy and Milan; while he has comparatively little to say about Spain, Rhætia, Dalmatia, Pannonia, and nothing at all about Scotto-Irish saints. This postulates the existence of a yet older work, used by the compiler of Auxerre, which may have been identical with the work familiar to Cassiodorus.[775] This document, however, has entirely disappeared without leaving behind it any other documents derived from it. If one follows the perspective thus opened out, the connecting links may finally come to light which connect this document with the work of Eusebius, referred to by Eulogius of Alexandria and in the two letters attributed to St Jerome. However, we shall not follow these interesting suggestions further, but shall content ourselves with the fact that in the _Hieronymianum_, in the earliest form in which it has come down to us, we have a primitive martyrology,[776] with additions and alterations made to it by a Frankish transcriber or compiler between 592-600. In its original form it contained only saints belonging to the Græco-Roman empire, and this accounts for the absence of the Irish saints and those of Mesopotamia. Thus at last the so-called _Hieronymianum_ has been made serviceable for use in historical and liturgical investigations; the learned editors, in giving us as far as possible the original text, have given us for the first time a reliable edition of the document, and the Bollandists have rendered the work still more serviceable by the addition of a reliable alphabetical index, thus considerably lightening the labours of those who use this work. This is no common gain for liturgical study, since the _Hieronymianum_, obtained in the course of time, an increasingly prominent position, more prominent indeed at last than it deserved; moreover it has not been without its influence upon later martyrologies and calendars, and has had an appreciable effect even on the development of the Church’s cycle of festivals. To know the number and condition of the Christians who had laid down their lives for the faith within the limits of the Roman empire would be of the highest interest now and always; to record the name, date, and locality of each with statistical accuracy would have been a work deserving the thanks of posterity. It might have been done immediately after the cessation of the Diocletian persecution, but only with the assistance of the secular authorities. Eulogius and the writer of the letters ascribed to St Jerome were on the right track in thinking that Eusebius had undertaken to furnish a work of this character with the assistance of the emperor; the latter informs us that Eusebius actually did so, and that the collection contained the names of from five to eight hundred martyrs for every day of the year, thus giving a total of between 182,500 and 292,000 martyrs.