Marcellinus, Pope, Saint

MARCELLINUS, Pope, Saint. - According to the Catalogus Liberianus he succeeded Pope Caius on 1 July 296 and governed the Roman Church until 304. This is the only certain datum concerning his pontificate, since the two decretals attributed to him by Pseudo-Isidore are certainly spurious. On the other hand, unfavorable reports circulated about M.'s conduct during the persecution of Diocletian, reports which have also been collected in certain writings and seem confirmed by the absence of his name in documents in which one would expect to find it. It is therefore necessary to examine the various testimonies, negative and positive, in order to judge the consistency of such reports and the legitimacy of raising doubts.

The name of M. is omitted in the Depositio Martyrum, in the Jeronymian Martyrology and in most papal catalogues of the 5th-7th centuries. It stands in its place, however, in the Catalogus Liberianus and in the Depositio Episcoporum on 16 January. Since, however, on that day the Jeronymian Martyrology reports the deposition of Pope Marcellus, some scholars hold that in the Depositio Episcoporum one should read Marcellus and not M.

The Donatists repeatedly accused M. of weakness during the persecution: handing over the Scriptures and offering incense to idols. This accusation, launched around 400 by Petilian, bishop of Constantina, and repeated in the Donatist Chronicon of 427, was taken up and developed at the beginning of the 6th century in the Acts of the pseudo-Council of Sinuessa, which narrate how, following the fall of M., who had offered incense to idols, 300 bishops gathered at Sinuessa to judge him. M. at first denied, then confessed his sin. But since the bishops refused to condemn the bishop of the first see, M. excommunicated himself and deposed himself. A further development occurs in the Passio Marcellini, now lost, and from this it passed around 530 into the Liber Pontificalis, which recounts how M. sacrificed, then after a few days repented and was therefore beheaded together with three other Christians, and his body was buried by the priest Marcellus in the Cemetery of Priscilla.

Is it permissible from these testimonies to conclude the fall of M. during the persecution? It seems not. Indeed, the accusation coming from the Donatists must certainly be rejected, since it appears a century after the event: the Donatists themselves kept silent about it at the Conference of Carthage of 411, and St. Augustine, who reports it, firmly rejected it as unproven. The Liber Pontificalis has no value in this kind of notice. The Acts of the Council of Sinuessa are an evident falsification, fabricated at the beginning of the 6th century, on the occasion of the Laurentian schism, to support the legitimate Pope Symmachus and to prove the proposition: « prima sedes a nemine iudicatur ». It is by no means certain that in the Depositio Episcoporum one should read Marcelli and not Marcellini. The omission of his name in the Depositio Martyrum is very well explained by supposing that he died a natural death, which, if it is not confirmed, is also not denied by the passage of Eusebius: « Μαρκελλῶνος... ὃν καὶ αὐτὸν ὁ διαυγμός κατελήσεν » (Hist. eccl., VII, 32). The omission in many catalogues of the popes can be explained by the easy confusion of the two names and by the fact that, very probably, there would have been no Pope Marcellus (v.) and M. would therefore have been understood under the name of Marcellus. The omission, finally, in the Jeronymian Martyrology means only that his cult was little spread. Moreover, it is certain that M. received cult at his tomb. Therefore the question of the fall of M. would have no foundation. Consequently, the theory of Caspar, which sees in those omissions a « damnatio memoriae », similar to that which was in use in the Empire, makes no sense. In the Church such a procedure was never in force, since the legitimacy of bishops was founded precisely on their succession and continuity. And if after the 4th century the expunction of the name of some bishop from the liturgical diptychs became customary among the Orientals, under the influence of the Byzantine court, never was the name erased from the episcopal catalogues.

Vincenzo Monachino