Marcellus I, Pope, Saint

MARCELLUS I, Pope, Saint. - Roman by origin, he succeeded Marcellinus in the Roman See, after some years of vacant see, caused first by the persecution of Diocletian and then by political instability. His pontificate should be placed in the years 308-309; it is better, however, not to try to define the chronology too precisely.

It is probable that M. was already the chief presbyter during the vacancy. The Lib. Pont., I, p. 164 makes M. the reorganizer of the Roman Church after the damage of the persecution by attributing to him the division of the city into 25 tituli, for the preparation of catechumens for Baptism and of the faithful who had fallen into Penance and for the care of the tombs of the martyrs, and in general of the Christian cemeteries. The persecution of Diocletian, like that of Decius before it, had produced a great number of "lapsi." When M., conscious of his duty, wished to impose penance on them, the laxist party led, as the Damasan epigram attests (A. Ferrua, op. cit. in bibl., n. 40, p. 181), by one who had apostatized in time of peace, provoked serious disorders within the Christian community. The emperor Maxentius, seeing in this a danger to public order, sent M. into exile, where he died. His body was transported to Rome and laid in the cemetery of Priscilla.

To M. the Liber Pontificalis ascribes the founding of the cemetery of Novella on the Via Salaria. To him is due, in all probability, the founding of the Titulus Marcelli, to explain whose origin there later arose the legend, collected in the Passio Marcelli (Acta SS. Ianuarii, II, pp. 3-14) and in the Lib. Pont., I, p. 164, that Maxentius had turned the church into a stable and had condemned M. there to serve as a groom, in which service he died from ill-treatment. The Martyrology and the Roman Breviary commemorate him on 16 January.

This is what the sources narrate concerning M. It will not, however, be out of place to ask the question: is the pontificate of M. really certain? The question was examined by Mommsen, studying the chronological data furnished by the Catalogus Liberianus and by the Index that underlies the various papal catalogues of the 5th-7th centuries. The Liberianus, followed by the Liber Pontificalis, places Marcellinus and M. and records between the one and the other a vacancy of 7 years, 3 months and 25 days, which would bring the beginning of M.'s pontificate to 311-12; the Index instead has only one Pope, who in the 5th catalogue is called Marcellinus, in the others M. This and other facts suggest the suppression of the pontificate of M. Such a conclusion seems confirmed by the following observations: the Depositio episcoporum, the Chronicon of Eusebius and that of St. Jerome, Optatus of Milevis and some later Eastern historians report only the name of Marcellinus; St. Augustine instead, with some Eastern historians, only that of M. Furthermore, the various documents speak of a single tomb, of Marcellinus or of M., in the cemetery of Priscilla; the Liber Pontificalis is the exception, speaking of two tombs, both however in Priscilla. The liturgical documents, finally, know of only one feast. All the documents, therefore, except the Liberianus and the Liber Pontificalis, which depends on it, attest a single pontificate. Now, the pontificate of Marcellinus, begun a full eight years before the persecution, cannot be called into doubt. It would therefore be that of M. that ought to be erased. Does this also deny the existence of M.? No. He may have been the founder of the cemetery of Novella and of the Titulus Marcelli and may also have had directive functions during the interregnum and as such may have taken some initiative for the penance of the "lapsi," and since his functions lasted some years he may have been believed by some to be a true pope. Nor should it be a matter for wonder that in the documents the two names were confused, since a similar confusion is noted for many other names having an identical or similar sound. Everything, therefore, seems to suggest the suppression of the pontificate of M.

Vincenzo Monachino