MARCELLO I, POPE, saint. — Roman by origin, he succeeded Marcellinus in the Roman See, after several years of vacancy, 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 seek to establish the chronology too precisely.
It is probable that M. had already been the chief presbyter during the vacancy. The Lib. Pont., I, p. 164, makes M. the reorganizer of the Roman Church after the ravages of the persecution, attributing to him the division of the city into 25 titular churches, for the preparation of catechumens for Baptism and of the faithful who had fallen into Penitence, 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 large number of «lapsi». When M., conscious of his duty, wished to impose penance upon them, the laxist party, led—as the Damasian epigram attests (A. Ferrua, op. cit. in bibl., n. 40, p. 181)—by someone who had apostatized in a time of peace, provoked serious disturbances 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 taken to Rome and buried in the cemetery of Priscilla.
The Liber Pontificalis attributes to M. the foundation of the Novella cemetery on the Via Salaria. In all probability, he was responsible for the foundation of the Titulus Marcelli; to explain its origin, the legend later arose, recorded in the Passio Marcelli (Acta SS. Ianuarii, II, pp. 3–14) and in the Lib. Pont., I, p. 164, according to which Maxentius transformed the church into a stable and condemned M. to serve as a stableman there; he died in that service from the hardships he endured. The Martyrology and the Roman Breviary commemorate him on 16 January.
This is what the sources relate concerning M. It will not, however, be out of place to ask: is M.’s pontificate really certain? The question was examined by Mommsen, who studied the chronological data supplied by the Catalogo Liberiano and by the Index underlying the various papal catalogues of the fifth–seventh centuries. The Liberian, followed by the Liber Pontificalis, places Marcellinus and M. one after the other and records a vacancy of 7 years, 3 months, and 25 days between them, which would place the beginning of M.’s pontificate in 311–12; the Index, on the other hand, has only one Pope, who in the fifth catalogue is called Marcellinus and in the others M. This and other facts suggest the suppression of M.’s pontificate. This conclusion seems to be confirmed by the following observations: the Depositio episcoporum, Eusebius’s Chronicon and that of St. Jerome, Optatus of Milevis, and certain later Eastern historians report only the name of Marcellinus; St. Augustine, on the other hand, together with certain Eastern historians, gives only that of M. Moreover, the various documents speak of a single tomb, belonging either to Marcellinus or to M., in the cemetery of Priscilla; the exception is the Liber Pontificalis, which speaks of two tombs, both of them, however, in Priscilla. Finally, the liturgical documents know of only one feast. All the documents, therefore, with the exception of the Liberian and the Liber Pontificalis, which depends upon it, attest a single pontificate. Now, Marcellinus’s pontificate, which began a full eight years before the persecution, cannot be called into question. It would therefore be M.’s pontificate that ought to be deleted. Does this also deny M.’s existence? No. He may have been the founder of the Novella cemetery and of the Titulus Marcelli, and he may also have exercised administrative functions during the interregnum; in that capacity he may have taken some initiative concerning penance for the «lapsi», and since his functions lasted several years, he may have been regarded by some as the true pope. Nor should it cause surprise that the two names were confused in the documents, since a similar confusion is found with many other names having identical or similar sounds. Everything, therefore, seems to suggest the suppression of M.’s pontificate.