June XVIII

SS. Marcus and Marcellianus, Martyrs

From the acts of St. Sebastian. See Tillemont, t. 4; Baronius ad an. 286, n. 23.

A. D. 286.

Marcus and Marcellianus were twin brothers of an illustrious family in Rome, had been converted to the faith in their youth, and were honorably married. Dioclesian ascended the imperial throne in 284; soon after which the heathens raised tumultuary persecutions, though this emperor had not yet published any new edicts against the church. These martyrs were thrown into prison, and condemned by Chromatius, lieutenant of the prefect of Rome, to be beheaded. Their friends obtained a respite of the execution for thirty days, that they might prevail with them to comply with the judge, and they wore removed into the house of Nicostratus the public register. Tranquillinus and Martia, their afflicted heathen parents, in company with their sons’ own wives and their little babes at their breasts, endeavored to move them by the most tender entreaties and tears. St. Sebastian, an officer of the emperor’s household, coming to Rome soon after their commitment, daily visited and encouraged them. The issue of the conferences was the happy conversion of the father, mother, and wives, also of Nicostratus, and soon after of Chromatius, who set the saints at liberty, and abdicating the magistracy retired into the country. Marcus and Marcellianus were hid by Castulus, a Christian officer of the household, in his apartments in the palace; but they were betrayed by an apostate named Torquatus, and retaken. Fabian, who had succeeded Chromatius, condemned them to be bound to two pillars with their feet nailed to the same. In this posture they remained a day and a night, and on the following day were stabbed with lances, and buried in the Arenarium, since called their cemetery, two miles out of Rome, between the Appian and Ardeatine roads. All the ancient Martyrologies mark their festival on the 18th of June.

Virtue is often false, and in it the true metal is not to be distinguished from dross until persecution has applied the touchstone, and proved the temper. We know not what we are till we have been tried. It costs nothing to say we love God above all things, and to show the courage of martyrs at a distance from the danger; but that love is sincere which has stood the proof. “Persecution shows who is a hireling, and who a true pastor,” says St. Bernard.¹

St. Marina, V.

She flourished in Bithynia in the eighth century, and served God under the habit of a monk, with extraordinary fervor. Her wonderful humility, meekness, and patience are celebrated in the lives of the fathers of the desert. She died about the middle of the eighth century. Her relics were translated from Constantinople to Venice in 1230, and are venerated there in a church which bears her name. She is also titular saint of a parish church in Paris, which is mentioned by the celebrated William of Paris, in 1228. In it is preserved a portion of her relics, brought from Venice. St. Marina is commemorated in the Roman Martyrology and in the New Paris Breviary on the 18th of June; and the feast of the translation of her relics is kept at Venice on the 17th of July. On her, see the Bollandists on the 17th of July, t. 4, Julij.

St. Elizabeth of Sconauge, V., Abbess

Three monasteries in Germany bear the name of Sconauge: one of Cistercian monks near Heidelberg, founded by Buggo, bishop of Worms in 1135; another of nuns of the same order in Franconia; a third, of monks of the order of St. Bennet in the diocese of Triers, four German miles from Bingen, was founded by Hildelin, a nobleman, who, in 1125, took himself the monastic habit, and was chosen first abbot. Not far distant he built a great nunnery of the same order and name, which is now extinct, though the three former remain to this day. Soon after the foundation of this house, when regular discipline flourished there with great edification to the church, St. Elizabeth, who from her infancy had been a vessel of election, made her religious profession, and was afterwards chosen abbess. At twenty-three years of age she began to be favored with heavenly visions.* She died in the year 1165, of her age thirty-six, on the 18th of June, on which day her name is inserted in the Roman Martyrology, though she was never solemnly beatified, as Chatelain takes notice. See her encomium by an abbot of Sconauge, &c., in the Bollandists, t. 3, Jun. ad diem 18.

St. Amand, Bishop of Bourdeaux

We read in St. Paulinus of Nola that St. Amand served God from his infancy; that he was educated in the knowledge of the scriptures, and that he preserved his innocence from those stains which are generally contracted in the commerce of the world. Being ordained priest by St. Delphin, bishop of Bourdeaux, who employed him in his church, he manifested great zeal for the glory of God. It was he who instructed St. Paulinus in the mysteries of faith, to prepare him for baptism. From this time there subsisted between them a most intimate friendship. Paulinus wrote him many letters, and we see by those that remain of them that he paid the greatest veneration to Amand’s virtue. After the death of St. Delphin, St. Amand was elected to the see of Bourdeaux, but shortly after resigned the dignity in favor of St. Severinus, upon whose death he was again prevailed upon to reassume it. St. Paulinus tells us that he always conducted himself as a zealous guardian of religion, and of the faith of Christ. He is mentioned this day in the Roman Martyrology. The precise year of his death is not known. It is to him we are indebted for the preservation of the writings of St. Paulinus, who died in the year 431. See St. Paulinus of Nola, Ep. 2, 9, 12, 48; and Gallia Christ. Nov. t. 2, p. 789.

¹ St. Bern. l. de Convers ad Clericos. c. 22.

* The visions printed under her name were committed to writing by her brother Egbert. Lewis du Mesnil, the learned Jesuit, complains that he confounded without discernment private opinions and histories with revelations, as is evident from what he writes of St. Ursula, and Cyriacus, whom he Imagines to have been pope after St. Pontian. See on the same the remark of Papebroke; also Amort, de Revelationibus.

 Butler, A. (1903). The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs and Other Principal Saints (Vol. 2, pp. 597–599). New York: P. J. Kenedy.