The book of pontiffs (liber pontificalis)

the long version

An English version of the first ninety papal biographies, from St. Peter down to AD 715. These lives were first compiled in the sixth century and then regularly brought up to date. In them the reader will find the curious mixture of fact and legend which had come by the Ostrogothic period to be accepted as history by the Church in Rome, and also the subsequent records mantained through to the early eighth century while Rome was under Byzantine sovereignty. In no sense was the "Liber Pontificalis" as 'official' chronicle of these centuries, and there emerge throughout the interests and prejudices of compilers who belonged, it seems to the lower levels of the papal administration.