MARCIAN OF CONSTANTINOPLE

Marcian the Presbyter is canonized by the Church for the construction of churches and priestly holiness. Ancient sources have preserved the names of many churches erected in Constantinople by Saint Marcian. He departed to the Lord in 471. His relics were placed in the Church of John the Baptist that he built, from where his veneration soon spread. His memory is celebrated on January 23 (10).

The life of this saint is not just a story of virtues, but an invisible history of redemption in a single human biography. As is almost always the case, cause and effect relationships remain under a veil of obscurity. Historians say that Marcian was initially a schismatic from the Novatian party. This movement preserved Orthodox dogma, but was distinguished by the extreme strictness of its demands on the Church and especially on its ministers. Paradoxically, this is also the case with modern unbelieving modernity! The Novatians also differed from the Catholic Church in that they denied the possibility of repentance for serious sinners and practiced re-baptism of those who came to them.

Communication with the great elder of that time, the Venerable Auxentius of Bithynia (400-473), who founded one of the four Holy Mountains of Byzantine monasticism, of which only Athos has survived to this day, brought Marcian into unity with the Orthodox Church. The Holy Patriarch Anatolius (+458), a native of Alexandria and heir to the strict monastic tradition of Egypt, himself elevated him to the rank of presbyter.

Soon Marcian lost his parents. Being from a noble Roman family, hence, apparently, the “heritage” of “Roman Novatianism”, he decided to give all his inheritance to the construction of churches. Thus, as if the schism, which in itself consists in the division of Churches among themselves, was suspended in their construction. Previously, Marcian belonged to those who demanded virtue from others. Now he began to live in poverty. “Give to him who asks you” (Matthew 5:42). “Having food and clothing, we are content with these” (1 Timothy 6:8). These words of the Gospel and Paul became a rule for him.

An episode has been preserved in his life when the Goths, a people who lived separately from the Byzantine Church, presented precious vessels to the church that Marcian had built. In gratitude, he did not ask for any rewards or privileges for them, as was the custom of that time, but simply gave them the permission to read the Scriptures in this church in the Gothic language. Such acceptance of another, “barbarian”, according to the Byzantines, presence and culture into the sacred sphere had colossal missionary significance. It is not enough to build churches; they must be filled with people. “Go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled,” says the Gospel of Luke (Luke 14:23).

The life also tells of the great mercy of the saint and the miracles and signs he performed during his lifetime. He shared his last with the needy, buried the homeless dead. “Rise, brother, let us embrace,” he would usually say to the dead and dress them in new clothes before burial. His prayer stopped a fire in the city, and a pregnant woman who died in the pandemonium was resurrected from the dead by him, so that “the fetus she was carrying in her womb also turned out to be alive,” the life says. For Constantinople, the priest Marcian became a true city saint.

The example of Marcian teaches that the construction of churches becomes the foundation, literally, the “real cause” of holiness, if it is combined with orthodoxy, virtue, non-acquisitiveness and mercy. Thanks to Marcian and its other creators, the Byzantine capital over the centuries became a great holy Orthodox city, the City of God, the likes of which has never been and never will be on earth. Sadly, nothing of its former sacred appearance has been preserved. The final reasons for such a global turn in history will remain unclear. “People will erect sacred buildings, but the buildings will be abandoned by people,” St. Augustine once wrote. This happens when the Christian mission no longer accompanies the construction of churches. This is the great teaching of Marcian to his spiritual descendants.