CONCERNING ST. MARCIANUS THE BISHOP,
OF PAMPLONA IN TARRACONENSIAN SPAIN.
ABOUT A.D. 700.
Notice of his age, from the 16th Council of Toledo; of his cult from Prudentius Sandoval.
Marcianus, Bishop of Pamplona, in Tarraconensian Spain (St.)
D. P.
Prudentius Sandoval, of the Benedictine Order in Spain, a man most illustrious in erudition and writings, from the Bishopric of Tuy to that of Pamplona translated in the year 1612, just as before the antiquities of Tuy and the series of its Bishops there he had unearthed, in that work which we much used on June 26, treating of St. Pelagius the Martyr, a native of the same place; so soon he applied his mind to writing a Catalogue of the Bishops of Pamplona, which we have printed in the year 1614. There about the 16th Council of Toledo, at the year 693 thus he has it:
[2] In this year Flavius Egica, King of the Spains, at Toledo celebrated the Assembly of his Kingdom, or Council of the Nobles of both Orders; Subscribed through a Vicar at Toledo in the year 683. at which on the part of the Ecclesiastics were present, Bishops 59, Abbots 5, and Episcopal Vicars 3; on the part of the Nobles, Counts 14, Knights 2. At this council was present, the same who with the title of Vicar, in the year 683 at the 13th Council of Toledo had been present in the name of the Bishop then Attilanus; and so he signed "Vincomalus the Deacon, acting in place of my Lord Marcianus, Bishop of the See of Pamplona, have subscribed." And this is the last of the Bishops of Pamplona before the perdition of the Spains, whose notice from the Councils is drawn.
[3] But he was a holy man, and of virtue so noted, that his memory to this day perseveres in this city, he reposes in the monastery of Leyre, and his cult on June 30, in memory of the victory, at Noáin on such a day reported in the year 1521, with many signs of public joy amid frequent lights of festive fires. His blessed body is preserved among the Relics of the church of St. Salvator of Leyre, and him the ancient Kings, in signing the tablets of their pious Donations, are found to have invoked, equally as the holy Nunilo and Alodia, and the Abbot St. Virila, Abbot and restorer of the monastery of Samos in Galicia, and also of Leyre. the last of the Bishops of Pamplona. The common people call him St. Martialis; and the principal door of the church, which seems to have been his work, is named St. Martialis. But it is fitting that we believe that he by the Moors, occupying Pamplona, was put to martyrdom, or that in the Mountains of Leyre as a fugitive he died. For in the twentieth year after the aforesaid Council Spain was desolated by the Moors, and the Bishops of Pamplona ceased to be had.
[4] So p. 8 Sandoval: but p. 18, where he treats of the bodies translated to the monastery of Leyre, in the year 842, in the Moorish incursion, of the aforesaid Saints, he says that the author of that translation, King Eneco Arista, who died in the year 866, wished before those same and other Saints to be buried, whose bones are there; and namely of St. Marcianus or Martialis, who was Bishop, when the Moors in the year 714 this city destroyed; and his Relics to this monastery were brought, without any notice of his passion, which indeed had come down to posterity. Whence then, what before under doubt he had said, now so definitely he writes, that he died a Martyr? Yet this was enough for Tamayo, that his June with these words he concluded: "At Pamplona in Navarre of Spain, of St. Martianus, Bishop of that very city, who in the destruction of the Spains, by the Saracens for the confession of the faith and the defense of his sheep slain, to the glory with the laurel of martyrdom hastened eternal."
[5] But I from the old memory of him, as a Saint, plainly persuade myself, that some years before he died, there probably a fugitive and in the monastery of Leyre was buried. For in that confusion of all things, Bishops slain by the Moors or other Christians, whom it is credible were by no means few, you would not find honored with the cult of the Saints by the faithful, involved in that whirlwind, either immediately at death or a little after; since, the chief men of both orders having slipped away to the Mountains, only the common folk, with the Monks choosing to dwell among the Moors, and confused with St. Martialis of Limoges. scarcely retained any appearance of Christianity, without Bishops and Princes and Magistrates, sacred and profane. I would believe also that this St. Marcianus to be venerated on June 30 was mutually taken from St. Martialis of Limoges, with whose name his name was commonly confused, the notice of his true Natale being obliterated, and only the appellation of sanctity persevering in popular use.