ON ST. MARCIANUS,
BISHOP OF RAVENNA IN ITALY.
ABOUT CXXVII.
HISTORICAL SYLLOGE.
His cult and age: distinction from St. Marcianus, Bishop of Tortona.
Marcianus, Bishop of Ravenna in Italy (S.)
G. H.
[1] Often must we treat of the Holy Bishops of Ravenna: the first of these is St. Apollinaris, the disciple of St. Peter the Apostle, and the chief Patron of the city, who is venerated on July XXIII. To him succeeded as second St. Aderitus, to whom the day September XXVIII is sacred. Concerning the third, Eleocadius, we treated on February XIV, and his death we referred to the year of Christ CXII, in whose place then was substituted St. Marcianus, the fourth Bishop of this See, who has this XXII of May sacred to himself, Sacred cult. and is venerated with the Ecclesiastical office under a double rite, but all things from the Common of a Confessor and Pontiff are recited, and the Lessons begin: of the first Nocturn, Faithful is the saying; of the second, To the holy; of the third, A man going abroad. The Mass, He established, with the Gloria in excelsis and Credo. His sacred memory is inscribed in the Ms. Florentine Martyrology, found by us in the library of the Grand Duke and with Charles Strozzi the Senator: in which these things are read, At the city of Ravenna the natal day of S. Marcianus the Archbishop and Confessor. But because in those times the title of Archbishop was not yet wont to be used, it is more correctly recited in today's Roman Martyrology thus: At Ravenna the natal day of S. Marcianus, Bishop and Confessor. Concerning him Ferdinand Ughelli in the Bishops of Ravenna proclaimed these things: The time of his See. The IV Bishop S. Marcianus, by the indication of a dove sent down from heaven, succeeded Eleocadius about the year CXII: which Church he ruled until the year CXXVII. But full of merits he went to those above on the XI Kalends of June, and was buried with his predecessor. To these Ferrarius in the Catalogue of the Saints of Italy adds these things: Zeal for the faith. He preached Christ with so great an ardor of soul, that he not only confirmed the people of Ravenna in the religion they had received, but also vehemently inflamed them to endure any calamities whatever, and to undergo bravely death itself for Christ. For when they were assailed by various assaults of adversaries, yet by no blows could they be broken, and cast down from the degree of piety. But many having been initiated, he himself, most heaped with the glory of deeds done, on the XI Kalends of June in the year CXXVIII flew away to the heavenly fatherland, and was buried in the church of S. Eleocadius.
[2] Another flourished at the same time in Italy, S. Marcianus the Bishop, but of the city of Tortona; from him S. Marcianus Bp. of Tortona is distinct, and who under Trajan attained the palm of martyrdom for the name of Christ, and as on the VI day of March. Hieronymus Rubeus, elsewhere a diligent and accurate writer, deceived by the similarity or identity of name, from certain apocryphal Mss. fused both Marcianuses into one in book 1 of the History of the Ravennates page 55, as if S. Marcianus, Bishop of Ravenna, had undergone martyrdom at Tortona for the Christian faith; and his holy body had been brought back to Ravenna to his church. But it is certain that the body of S. Marcianus, Bishop of Tortona and Martyr, is kept in his own Church, and that there he is venerated as a Martyr: on the contrary the body of S. Marcianus Bishop of Ravenna was buried among his own, and that he is held, as we have shown above, not a Martyr, but a Confessor. Hieronymus Fabri, among the sacred memorials of ancient Ravenna, published in the year MDCLXIV, confirms the same distinction by the authority of S. Peter Chrysologus, who before the year CCCCXXXXVIIII, in which he died, in Sermon 128 on S. Apollinaris says, that B. Apollinaris in the first Priesthood alone adorned this Church of Ravenna with the native and renowned honor of Martyrdom. More expressly also S. Peter Damian, but more than six hundred years after Chrysologus, in Sermon 3 on S. Apollinaris asserts, that his disciples, namely the blessed Aderitus and Calocerus, Marcianus and Eleuchadius, although they were by no means struck by the swords of executioners, are yet by no means believed to have been strangers to the desire of martyrdom.