MARCIAN, Emperor of the East. - Born perhaps in Thrace around 390, of humble condition, he opened a path for himself, as was then customary, in the military, and his singular fortune gave rise to a quantity of little stories, predictions, dreams, prodigies.
Even the king of the Vandals, Genseric, whose prisoner he had fallen, would have released him because he had received a revelation of his brilliant future. The truth is that he won the esteem of the powerful magister militum Flavius Ardabur and of his son Aspar, and was close to them not only on the battlefields, but also at the court in Constantinople, where the need for a strong personality was making itself felt. Indeed the prestige of the memory of Theodosius I had made Ravenna and Constantinople tolerate two feeble figures of descendants, for whom two women had more or less governed: Galla Placidia, mother of Valentinian III, at Ravenna, Pulcheria, sister of Theodosius II, at Constantinople. When in 450 Theodosius II died, Pulcheria, knowing she could not remain alone at the head of the State, chose as her spouse, with the pact that he respect her vows of virginity, the sixty-year-old M. Aspar must certainly have consented to the choice, since he, a barbarian, would not have been easily tolerated on the throne of Rome, whereas M. was at least born within the boundaries of the Empire.
M. immediately gave a sign of what were to be the characteristics of his government: a high sense of the dignity of the Empire and right Christian faith. He notified Attila, and the Huns, that the Empire no longer intended to pay the tribute that Theodosius II had agreed to pay, and respectfully communicated to Pope Leo I his own election. Although he had lived among arms, he proclaimed that he wished to preserve peace as far as possible, and to this program he adhered, though he had not failed to march against the Huns, to lighten their pressure on the western regions of the Empire, and having defended the borders of the provinces of Syria and Egypt against the Saracens and the Blemmyes of Nubia. The tribute to the Huns having been discontinued made it possible to reduce taxes that were extraordinarily burdensome for this age. Relations with the western part of the Empire were, as usual, not entirely cordial, partly through the fault of the petty Augusti of the West, partly because M. aimed to assert a primacy of his own in the defense of the Empire, justified also by the catastrophe of the sack of Rome by Genseric.
Toward the Church of Rome M. was quite deferential, as certainly the most pious woman who had called him to the Empire wished, and as the epithets with which he is hailed declared: Christianisimus Imperator, Studiosissimus ecclesiasticæ pacis, Custos fidei. Indeed, to repair the violences of the Council of Ephesus (v.) of 449 (the I. rocinium Ephesinum as Pope Leo I called it), he wished to convene the Council of Chalcedon (v.) in which the Monophysite heresy of Eutyches was condemned, and the dogmatic directives sent by Pope Leo I to the patriarch of Constantinople Flavian (tomos of Leo I) received full recognition. But in Palestine and in Egypt the decisions taken against Eutyches aroused violent oppositions.
An almost sudden death, which naturally did not fail to arouse suspicions of poisoning, took M. from life, on 26 Jan. 457, after 7 years of government (450-57).
Bibliography2 works
Roberto Paribeni