PACIAN, Bishop of Barcelona, Saint. - The few pieces of information we have about him are owed to St. Jerome (De vir. inl., 106).
His testimony has value, thanks to his relationship with Dexter, son of P., at whose request he wrote the De viris inlustribus. The imperial election of Theodosius in 379 and the composition of the De viris inlustribus of St. Jerome in 392 indicate the period within which the death of P. can be placed, which occurred in extreme old age; this presupposes that his life unfolded from the beginning of the 4th century. His birth, or at least a long stay in Barcelona before his episcopal consecration, can be inferred from the ancient rule of appointing a member of the community as bishop. His origin from an illustrious lineage is proved by the position of his son Dexter, «clarus in saeculo» and praetorian prefect. The limpid eloquence praised by St. Jerome is attested by the excellence of his style and denotes a careful humanistic education. Virgil must have been his favorite author: from his own testimony it is known that he read him from childhood (Epist., 2, 4); and he was able to vigorously defend against an adversary of his the appropriateness of a Virgilian citation. His is the famous saying: «Christian is my name; Catholic my surname». His works mark a milestone in the history of penance. In the anti-Novationist polemic he clarifies not a few points concerning the doctrine and practice of penance in the Church of his time. There remain of him three letters, in which he discusses the innovating objections of Sempronianus; the Paracensis sive exhortatorius libellus ad poenitentian; the Sermo de Baptismo, which exalts the life of grace communicated by the first Sacrament, all dogmatic works and of a more ascetic than disciplinary character, but which reveal the penitential life in the second half of the 4th century in Spain. Lost, on the other hand, is the little work Cervulus, of which he speaks in the introduction to the Paracensis, condemning certain pagan spectacles (cervulum facere) that were held at the beginning of the year. The work De similitudine carnis peccati, attributed by its first editor, Dom Morin (Etudes, textes, découvertes, Paris 1913, pp. 81-150) is instead by the priest Eutropius (Gennadius, De vir. inl., ch. 49; cf. J. Madoz, Herencia literaria del presbitero Eutropio, in Estudios eclesiásticos, 16 [1942], pp. 27-54).
In the history of penance of the early Spanish Church P. occupies a leading place among the Spanish bishops of the age immediately following the Council of Elvira, who seem to adhere to a discipline more tempered than that contained in the canons of this assembly. He universalizes forgiveness, without any exception, for every kind of sin, in reaction to Novationist rigorism. For the three capital sins the ordinary remedy was canonical penance, with the acts of confession, satisfaction and absolution: the latter was a function of the bishop with his clergy. For non-capital sins a private extracanonical penance is introduced, although in P. references to it do not appear as clearly as in Gregory of Elvira. The same practice of penance was being mitigated more each day as regards its rigor and its duration. It was a step of transition from the rigors of the ancient canons to the excessive and degenerate indulgence of the time of the Third Council of Toledo.
Bibliography8 works
Giuseppe Madoz