MARINUS I, Pope. - Also designated as Martin II. Born at Gallese near Rome, died at Rome on May 15, 884. As a deacon he was part of the legation sent by Nicholas I (Nov. 866) to Constantinople to clarify the situation of the Bulgarian neophytes, whom the Byzantine patriarch claimed to include within his own jurisdiction; but the legation was stopped at the border of Bulgaria. M. was later in Constantinople among the presidents of the Eighth Ecumenical Council (869-70), in which Photius was condemned.

Having returned to Rome, M. was appointed bishop of Cere (Cerveteri), and the Bulgarians asked for him in vain as their bishop. At Naples, in 882, he worked to break the alliance of Bishop Athanasius with the Saracens. He was serving as treasurer and archdeacon of the Church of Rome when he was raised to the pontificate upon the death of John VIII (Dec. 16, 882): the first case of a bishop elected pope, contra statuta canonum (cf. Annales Fuldenses, ad an. 882, in MGH, Script., I, p. 397), since bishops were forbidden to change see.

The pontificate of M. marked a sharp reaction against the stance of his predecessor. Many condemnations inflicted by John VIII were annulled, and several exiles were reinstated, among them the bishop of Porto, Formosus (the future pope), who had been reduced to the lay state with the prohibition of ever re-entering Rome.

Since Guy, duke of Spoleto, had resumed hostilities against the patrimony of St. Peter, M. met (June 883) in the abbey of Nonantola, near Modena, with the emperor Charles the Fat, to agree on an action against him; but because of the Pope's death he suspended all action.

MARINUS I, pope - Silver denarius.(from C. Serafini, Le monete e le bolle pontificie, I, Milan, 1916, pl. 3, no. 6)

Bibliography7 works

BIBL.: PL 126, 966-70; Lib. Pont., II, pp. 224; Jaffé-Wattenbach, I, pp. 525 ff.; J. M. Watterich, Pontificum Romanorum vitae, I, Leipzig 1862, pp. 29, 650; L. Duchesne, Les premiers temps de l'Etat pontifical, Paris 1898, pp. 144-45; P. Brezzi, Roma e l'Impero medievale (774-1252), Bologna 1947, pp. 83 f., 87; Fliche-Martin-Frutz, VI, pp. 456-58, 496 f., 502, 505, 515 f.

Stanislao Majarelli

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Marinus I, Pope

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