Labora sicut bonus miles Christi Iesu. Nemo militans Deo implicat se negotiis sæcularibus: ut ei placeat, cui se probavit. “Labour as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No man, being a soldier to God, entangleth himself with secular businesses; that he may please him to whom he hath engaged himself.” — 2 Timothy 2:3-4
I. A note on this entry
St. Marcellus has no proper Mass, no Collect, and no commemoration in the Missal of 1962. His place in the Church’s memory is in the Roman Martyrology, which reads for this day, in substance: At Tangier, in Mauretania, St. Marcellus, a centurion, who was beheaded under the deputy prefect Agricolanus. He is included here because his passion is one of the best-documented of the age of the martyrs, and because it raises, in sharp form, a question every Christian faces sooner or later: what to do when the oath of an earthly office collides with the oath of baptism.
Unusually for a saint of the third century, we have something close to the court record of his trial. The Acts of St. Marcellus survive in more than one recension, and the scholars disagree on details, but the core has been accepted as authentic since Ruinart included it among his Acta sincera in 1689, and Fr. Hippolyte Delehaye, the great Bollandist, defended its substance in 1923. Around that core grew a later Spanish legend, which the Church has prayed with for centuries but which cannot be treated as history. What follows keeps the two apart.
II. Tangier at the end of the third century
Tingis, the modern Tangier, was the capital of Mauretania Tingitana, the westernmost province of Roman Africa, facing Spain across the strait. It was a garrison country. At the end of the third century the Empire was governed by four rulers, two senior Augusti, Diocletian and Maximian, and two junior Caesares, and their rule was surrounded by an elaborate cult. The emperors were addressed as sons of Jupiter and Hercules. Their birthdays and the anniversaries of their accession were kept as religious festivals, especially in the army, with sacrifice before the standards and the images of the emperors.
Christians had served in the legions for generations. The general persecution would not begin until 303. But in the last years of the century the army was being quietly purged. Eusebius records that a commander named Veturius began to force soldiers to sacrifice, dismissing or punishing those who refused, some years before the great edicts (Hist. eccl. VIII.4). Three years before Marcellus, in March 295, a young conscript named Maximilian had been beheaded at Theveste in Numidia for refusing to be enrolled at all; his Acts survive as well. Marcellus belongs to this transitional moment, when the Church was still at peace in law but the camp was already the place where a Christian was first asked to choose.
III. The emperor’s birthday
According to the Acts, Marcellus was a centurion of the legion called Trajan’s, and a centurio ordinarius, a regular centurion of the line. When the legion kept the emperor’s birthday with sacrifice and feasting, in the summer of 298, Marcellus refused to take part. Before the standards of the legion he took off his military belt, the cingulum that was the mark of a soldier’s sworn service, and threw it down. He cast away his vine-staff, the centurion’s badge of rank, and his arms.
The Acts give his words, in substance: I serve Jesus Christ, the eternal King. From now on I cease to serve your emperors, and I scorn to worship your gods of wood and stone, which are deaf and dumb idols. If such is the condition of soldiering, that men are forced to offer sacrifice to gods and emperors, then I throw down my staff and my belt, I renounce the standards, and I will not serve.
It is worth seeing exactly what he did. He did not desert. He did not slip away. He made his refusal in public, at the standards, on the day of the sacrifice, and he gave his reasons aloud. He then waited to be arrested. Butler’s Lives puts it well: he would not defile himself with the impious celebrations, and he made no secret of why.
IV. Before Fortunatus
The soldiers reported him, and he was brought before Anastasius Fortunatus, the commander of the legion, who had him held in custody. When Fortunatus questioned him, Marcellus admitted all of it: that he had thrown down his belt, that he was a Christian, and that he could not keep the oath of a soldier and the faith of Christ together under those conditions. Fortunatus did not judge the case himself. The matter was grave, a centurion repudiating his oath before the standards on the emperor’s feast, and he sent Marcellus under guard to the deputy of the praetorian prefects, Aurelius Agricolanus, who held court at Tingis. With him went a letter reporting the facts.
The dates that the Acts attach to these events are given differently in the different manuscripts, and the place of the first hearing is also disputed; this is one reason some later Spanish writers moved the whole story to León. What all the witnesses agree on is the sequence: the public refusal at the feast, the arrest and confession before the commander, and the transfer to the higher court at Tingis.
V. Before Agricolanus
On the thirtieth of October, 298, in the consulship of Faustus and Gallus, Marcellus stood before Agricolanus. The record of that hearing is short, and its brevity is part of its power. Agricolanus had the commander’s letter read. He asked whether Marcellus had said what was reported. Marcellus said that he had. He asked whether Marcellus had served as a centurion of the line. Marcellus said that he had. Agricolanus asked what madness had come over him, that he should throw away his oath and speak in this way. Marcellus answered that there is no madness in those who fear God. Asked whether he had thrown down his arms, he said that he had, because it was not fitting for a Christian, who serves the Lord Christ, to serve in the warfare of this world on such terms.
Agricolanus then gave sentence. In substance: that Marcellus, who held the rank of centurion of the line, having publicly renounced his oath, declared that it defiled him, and spoken further words of madness as recorded, is to be put to death by the sword.
According to the Acts, as he was led away Marcellus said to the judge who had condemned him: Agricolane, Deus tibi benefaciat. “Agricolanus, may God do you good.” He was beheaded the same day. It is the whole of the Sermon on the Mount in four words: pray for them that persecute and calumniate you (Matt. 5:44).
VI. Cassian the notary
Appended to the Acts of Marcellus is a brief Passion of St. Cassian. Cassian was the exceptor, the shorthand clerk of the court, whose task was to take down the proceedings. When Agricolanus pronounced sentence on Marcellus, Cassian threw his stylus and tablets to the ground and refused to record what he called an unjust sentence. The officers laughed, but Agricolanus, trembling with anger, had him seized. Cassian confessed that he too was a Christian. He was put to death some weeks later, on the third of December, the day on which the Roman Martyrology names him.
The Passion of Cassian is later and thinner than the Acts of Marcellus, and some scholars regard it as an addition modelled on them. But Cassian’s cult at Tingis is old. The Spanish poet Prudentius, writing at the end of the fourth century, numbers Cassianus among the glories that each city will bring before Christ on the last day, Tingis offering him as its martyr (Peristephanon IV). Whatever the details, the Church of Tangier remembered two martyrs from that court, the soldier who would not sacrifice and the clerk who would not write.
VII. The Spanish legend and the relics at León
A very different story of Marcellus grew up in Spain. In this account he was a native of León, a centurion of the Seventh Legion, the Legio VII Gemina, whose camp gave the city its name. He had a wife named Nonia and twelve sons, all martyrs: Claudius, Lupercus and Victorius at León, Facundus and Primitivus at Sahagún, Servandus and Germanus at Cádiz, Acisclus at Córdoba, and others elsewhere. The traditional Roman Martyrology itself reflects part of this, naming on this same day at León in Spain, the holy martyrs Claudius, Lupercus and Victorius, sons of the centurion St. Marcellus.
This must be said plainly. The martyrs named as his sons were real martyrs with ancient cults of their own, but the family that joins them to Marcellus is a later construction, assembled in the Middle Ages from separate Spanish cults and attached to the famous centurion. The Acts know nothing of it, and they place the trial at Tingis, not León. The legend is retained here as traditio pia, a devotion that honours real martyrs, not as history.
What is historical is the bond that León later formed with him. On Holy Saturday, the twenty-ninth of March, 1493, the remains of Marcellus, venerated until then at Tangier, were brought to León with the involvement of King Ferdinand the Catholic, the cathedral chapter and the city council. They were enshrined in the ancient parish church of San Marcelo, whose foundation goes back to the tenth century. He is the patron of the city and province of León, and the people of León still call him el Santo Legionario.
VIII. Was Marcellus a pacifist?
In modern times Marcellus has often been presented as a patron of pacifism, a Christian who taught that soldiering is itself incompatible with the Gospel. Some of his words, read alone, could seem to say that. The traditional theology of the Church reads him otherwise, and the reasons are worth setting out with care.
Scripture does not condemn the soldier’s calling. When soldiers came to St. John the Baptist and asked what they should do, he did not tell them to leave the army. He said: Do violence to no man; neither calumniate any man; and be content with your pay (Luke 3:14). Our Lord praised the faith of the centurion at Capharnaum above any He had found in Israel (Matt. 8:10), and did not tell him to resign his command. The first Gentile received into the Church was Cornelius, a centurion of that which is called the Italian band, a devout man who feared God (Acts 10:1-2), and St. Peter baptised him as he was.
The Church did not follow the rigorists. In the early third century Tertullian argued that military service was forbidden to Christians, above all in his treatise On the Soldier’s Crown. But Tertullian wrote much of this after he had gone over to the Montanists, and on this point, as on others, the Church did not follow him. Christians continued to serve, often with distinction. Sixteen years after Marcellus, with the persecution over, the Council of Arles of 314 decreed that those who throw down their arms in time of peace were to be kept from Communion (canon 3). The precise meaning of that canon is disputed, but it shows at least that the Church did not hold the soldier’s oath to be sinful in itself once its idolatrous conditions were gone.
St. Augustine and St. Thomas. St. Augustine taught that it is not soldiering which is blameworthy but the love of violence, cruelty, and the lust for power, and that a just war waged under lawful authority can be an act of love toward the enemy who must be restrained (Contra Faustum XXII.74-75; Letter 189 to Boniface). St. Thomas gathered this into the doctrine of the just war: a war is lawful when it is declared by legitimate authority, for a just cause, and with a right intention (Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 40). He asks in the same question whether clerics may fight, and answers no, not because fighting is evil in itself but because their office is ordered to the altar.
What Marcellus actually refused. Read in full, the Acts make the object of his refusal clear. He would not sacrifice to the gods and the emperors, and he would not keep an oath that bound him to such worship. If such is the condition of soldiering, he said, that men are forced to offer sacrifice, then I throw down my belt. The Roman sacramentum, the soldier’s oath, was sworn by the gods and to an emperor who claimed divine honours, and on that birthday it was renewed with sacrifice. To keep it on those terms was to deny Christ. Marcellus did not refuse the duty of defending the commonwealth. He refused idolatry. His martyrdom belongs with that of the Theban Legion, of St. Sebastian, of St. George, and of all the soldier-saints who served faithfully until the day they were commanded to worship what was not God.
This does not make him a lesser witness. It makes him a more exact one. The Church honours him not because he found the army distasteful but because, when the oath of Caesar and the oath of baptism could no longer both be kept, he knew which came first, and paid for it with his head. Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and to God, the things that are God’s (Matt. 22:21). Marcellus rendered to God what Caesar was demanding for himself.
IX. What his life teaches
That baptism is an oath. The Latin Fathers called the sacraments by the soldier’s word, sacramentum, and spoke of baptism as enrolment in the army of Christ. St. Paul calls his disciple to labour as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. Marcellus understood that a Christian has already sworn his first allegiance, and that no later oath can override it.
That the conflict comes at the point of worship. The Empire did not first ask Marcellus to deny Christ in so many words. It asked him to take part in a feast. The pressure on Christians rarely arrives as a demand for apostasy. It arrives as a ceremony that everyone attends, a pinch of incense that seems to cost nothing, an observance that is merely expected. The test is whether we recognise what is being asked.
That witness is public and patient. Marcellus did not fly and did not hide. He made his confession openly, accepted arrest, answered his judges plainly, and blessed the man who condemned him. There is no bitterness in the record, no railing, and no self-pity.
That courage is contagious. A court clerk heard the sentence and could not bring himself to write it down. One man’s fidelity drew out another’s, and Tangier gained two martyrs instead of one.
That Christ is the eternal King. Marcellus died five days after the date on which, in our calendar, the Church now keeps the feast of the Kingship of Christ. His confession, I serve Jesus Christ, the eternal King, is that feast spoken in a single sentence by a soldier who meant it.
Practice
Examine. Is there any observance, custom, or expectation in my work or my world that quietly asks me to put something before God? Have I treated my baptismal promises as an oath, or as a ceremony that happened to me in infancy? When I have been treated unjustly, have I been able to pray for those responsible?
Do. Renew your baptismal promises today, slowly and deliberately: the renunciation of Satan, all his works, and all his pomps, and the profession of the Creed. If you serve in the armed forces, the police, or any office bound by oath, offer your service today explicitly to Christ the King, and ask for the grace to know where Caesar’s claim ends.
Pray. St. Marcellus has no Collect in the 1962 Missal. Pray instead the Collect of today’s Mass:
Deus, refugium nostrum et virtus: adesto piis Ecclesiæ tuæ precibus, auctor ipse pietatis, et præsta; ut, quod fideliter petimus, efficaciter consequamur. Per Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum Filium tuum, qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitate Spiritus Sancti Deus, per omnia sæcula sæculorum.
“O God, our refuge and strength, Thou who art the author of all godliness, give ear to the devout prayers of Thy Church; and grant that what we ask in faith we may effectually obtain. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end.”
Aspiration. Iesu Christo, Regi æterno, milito. “I serve Jesus Christ, the eternal King.”
Devote. It is Friday, the day of the Passion, in the last days of the month of the Holy Rosary. Pray the Sorrowful Mysteries, dwelling on the Crowning with Thorns, when soldiers mocked the true King with a false crown and a reed for a sceptre. Offer the decade for all Christians who serve under arms, that they may keep both their duty and their faith, and for those in any land who are pressed to honour what is not God.
If you wish to go deeper: the Lives of the Saints path sets Marcellus among the soldier-martyrs of the Great Persecution: Maximilian of Theveste, Julius the Veteran, the Theban Legion, St. Sebastian, and St. George. The Theology and Doctrine path treats St. Thomas on the just war (II-II, q. 40), St. Augustine on war and the love of enemies, and the obligations and limits of oaths (II-II, q. 89). The Church History path follows the army purges that preceded Diocletian’s edicts of 303, Tertullian’s rigorism, and the canons of the Council of Arles. The Sacred Liturgy path takes up baptism as sacramentum, the soldier’s oath of the Christian.
Sancte Marcelle, ora pro nobis.
Sources consulted: the Holy Scriptures in the Douay-Rheims version with the Vulgate; the Acta Sancti Marcelli Centurionis (BHL 5253–5255a), as given in Ruinart’s Acta primorum martyrum sincera et selecta (1689), the Acta Sanctorum (October, vol. XIII), and the studies of H. Delehaye, “Les Actes de S. Marcel le centurion,” Analecta Bollandiana 41 (1923), and J. Leoni, Wiener Studien 130 (2017); the Passio Sancti Cassiani*; the* Acta Maximiliani*; Eusebius,* Historia ecclesiastica VIII.4; Prudentius, Peristephanon IV; Tertullian, De corona militis*; the Council of Arles (314), canon 3; St. Augustine,* Contra Faustum XXII and Epistula 189; St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 40; the Roman Martyrology for 30 October and 3 December; Butler’s Lives of the Saints*; the Catholic Encyclopedia (1912), s.v. “Tingis”; records of the City of León on the translation of 1493. The words of the* Acts and the Fathers are given in paraphrase. The Spanish account of his family is given as tradition, not as history.