Bede’s Martyrology is the earliest known historical example of a calendrical list of martyrs, or martyrology, composed by Bede c. 725–731. All surviving manuscript copies are Continental and date to the ninth century or later. Historical martyrologies were popular in ninth-century Francia. Thus far, most scholars have focussed on Usuard’s Martyrology (c. 850–879), which would eventually form the basis of the modern Roman Martyrology. The nature of the so-called Carolingian reforms has been reconceptualised in recent scholarship. The role of liturgical manuscripts within this context has also received renewed analysis. Following these historiographical developments, the manuscript circulation and use of Bede’s Martyrology provide a case study for the application and long-term effects of Carolingian correctio. I examine manuscript copies of Bede’s Martyrology to clarify ninth-century developments in religious practice and their consequences.

In the first chapter of the dissertation, I focus on the compilation of Bede’s text and the attribution of manuscript copies. In chapter two, I discuss one component included in top-down efforts at reform, the use of a martyrology in chapter, to ascertain the extent to which manuscript copies of Bede’s Martyrology reflect the prescriptive sources. In chapter three, I analyse correctio in the localities through the use of Bede’s text by ninth-century bishops and local priests in education and pastoral care. In chapters four and five, I examine copies of Bede’s Martyrology in the former Carolingian lands and Montecassino and Rome, respectively, to characterise uses of the Carolingian inheritance 900–1250. I argue that the presentation, circulation, and use of manuscript copies of Bede’s Martyrology reveal not only the entwined liturgical creativity and historical consciousness of ninth-century Carolingian Francia but also the subsequent influence of Franco-Roman liturgical practice in the Latin West.