Marcianus
Acta Sanctorum, May 22
Source text: Public Domain. English translation/apparatus/encoding: CC BY-NC 4.0, Wroot Press.
https://actasanctorum.org/may/day-22/marcianus.html
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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.
