MARCELLINO, PAPA, 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 information concerning his pontificate, since the two decretals attributed to him by Pseudo-Isidore are certainly spurious. On the other hand, unfavorable reports circulated concerning M.’s conduct during the persecution of Diocletian; these were also recorded in several writings and seem to be confirmed by the absence of his name from documents in which one would expect to find II. It is therefore necessary to examine the various testimonies, negative and positive, in order to assess the substance of these reports and the legitimacy of raising doubts.
M.’s name is omitted from the Depositio Martyrum, the Martirologio geronimiano, and most of the papal catalogues of the fifth to seventh centuries. It does, however, appear in its proper place in the Catalogus Liberianus and in the Depositio Episcoporum under 16 January. Since, however, on that day the Martirologio geronimiano records the burial of Pope Marcello, some scholars believe that Marcello, and not M., should be read in the Depositio Episcoporum.
The Donatists repeatedly accused M. of weakness during the persecution: surrendering the Scriptures and offering incense to idols. This accusation, launched around 400 by Petilianus, bishop of Constantina, and repeated in the Donatist Chronicon of 427, was taken up and developed at the beginning of the sixth century in the Acts of the pseudo-Council of Sinuessa. These relate that, following the fall of M., who had offered incense to idols, 300 bishops assembled at Sinuessa to judge him. M. initially denied the charge, then confessed his sin. But when the bishops refused to condemn the bishop of the first see, M. excommunicated and deposed himself. A further development appears in the Passio Marcellini, now lost; from this it passed, around 530, into the Liber Pontificalis, which relates that M. sacrificed, then repented a few days later, and was therefore beheaded together with three other Christians; his body was buried by the priest Marcello in the Cemetery of Priscilla.
Is it permissible, on the basis of these testimonies, to conclude that M. fell during the persecution? It seems not. Indeed, the accusation originating with the Donatists must unquestionably be rejected, since it appears a century after the event: the Donatists themselves kept silent about it at the Conference of Carthage in 411, and St. Augustine, who reports it, categorically rejected it as unproven. The Liber Pontificalis has no value for this kind of information. The Acts of the Council of Sinuessa are an evident forgery, fabricated at the beginning of the sixth century on the occasion of the Laurentian schism, in order to support Pope Simmachus as the legitimate pope and to prove the proposition: « prima sedes a nemine iudicatur ». It is by no means certain that Marcelli, rather than Marcellini, should be read in the Depositio Episcoporum. The omission of his name from the Depositio Martyrum is readily explained by supposing that he died a natural death; this, although not confirmed, is not contradicted by the passage of Eusebius: « Μαρκελλῶνος... ὃν καὶ αὐτὸν ὁ διαυγμός κατελήσεν » (Hist. eccl., VII, 32). The omission from many catalogues of the popes can be explained by the easy confusion of the two names and by the fact that, very probably, there was no Pope Marcello (v.), and M. would therefore have been understood under the name of Marcello. Finally, the omission from the Martirologio geronimiano means only that his cult was not widely propagated. In any case, it is certain that M. received cult at his tomb. Thus the question of M.’s fall would have no foundation whatsoever. Consequently, there is no sense in Caspar’s theory, which sees in these omissions a « damnatio memoriae », similar to that practiced in the Empire. Such a procedure was never in force in the Church, since the legitimacy of bishops was founded precisely on their succession and continuity. And although after the fourth century the expunging of the name of some bishop from the liturgical diptychs became customary among the Easterners, under the influence of the Byzantine court, their name was never erased from the episcopal catalogues.