St. Marcellinus

St. Marcellinus was a priest of Rome who was martyred, together with St. Peter the Exorcist, around the year 304 during the persecution of the emperor Diocletian. The two are among the most solidly attested of the Roman martyrs of that era: their veneration began immediately at their tomb, and their names were inscribed together in the Roman Canon of the Mass, where they are still invoked today. The most reliable early witness is Pope St. Damasus I, who as a boy heard the account of their deaths from a man said to have been their executioner. According to the verses Damasus composed for their tomb, the two were beheaded in secret at a place outside the city called the Silva Nigra, or Black Forest, so that their burial place might remain unknown — but faithful Christians recovered their bodies and buried them in the catacombs on the Via Labicana that now bear their names. Later hagiographical accounts add that Marcellinus and Peter converted their jailer and his household while imprisoned, a tradition the Church has long cherished even where it cannot be historically verified. After the peace of the Church, the emperor Constantine built a basilica over their resting place, and his mother, St. Helena, chose to be buried in a mausoleum beside it — a measure of how greatly these martyrs were honored in fourth-century Rome. In the ninth century relics of the two saints were translated to Seligenstadt in Germany by Einhard, the biographer of Charlemagne, spreading their veneration north of the Alps. The catacombs of Sts. Marcellinus and Peter, with their remarkable early Christian frescoes, can still be visited on the Via Casilina in Rome. The Church celebrates Sts. Marcellinus and Peter together with an optional memorial on June 2 in the General Roman Calendar, honoring in them the countless Roman clergy who gave their lives for Christ in the last and fiercest of the ancient persecutions.