medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On 12/01/11, Terri Morgan sent:
> Diodorus / Diodore, Marianus, and companions (d. 283) This group of Roman martyrs consisted of a priest, a deacon, and their congregation martyred under Numerian; apparently they were surprised at prayer in the catacomb of SS Chrysanthus and Daria, and the authorities simply walled up the exit.
>
The foregoing notice repeats one by Phyllis Jestice for 1. December 2002. Its "apparently" gives more credit than modern scholars and even many modern books of saints usually accord to this tale, which latter occurs in abbreviated form (and lacking the names of any victims) in St. Gregory of Tours, _In gloria martyrum_, 37, and in full form in the standard version (BHL 1787) of the highly legendary Passio of Sts. Chrysanthus and Daria. In the following year's notice Phyllis replaced "apparently" with a less accepting "Legend tells that". The chances are excellent that Diodorus and Marianus were added to the developing story for versimilitude and as representatives of the two major orders of the Roman clergy, in which case they will be either complete inventions or else actual but otherwise unknown saints who, having been buried near Chrysanthus and Daria in the same cemetery on the Via Salaria, furnished the names used by the latter's hagiographer when elaborating their Passio. Usuard entered them in his martyrology immediately after Chrysanthus and Daria, who in the medieval Latin west were often but not always celebrated on 1. December rather than on 25. October (the latter being the day under which they appear in the [pseudo-]Hieronymian Martyrology, in the earlier ninth-century Marble Calendar of Naples, and now in the revised RM of 2001).
From Usuard Diodorus and Marianus passed into the RM in the later sixteenth century. They remained there until 2001, when the revisers dispensed with their services. Also entering the RM in the later sixteenth century, but not from Usuard, was a feast of the Finding of Diodorus, Marianus, and Companions on 17. January. This latter feast, which likewise was dropped from the RM in 2001, commemorated a discovery in 886 of these martyrs' remains by diggers in the Roman catacombs who had been acting on the instructions of pope St. Stephen V (or VI). Stephen's Vita in the _Liber pontificalis_ is incomplete; our only source for this event is a Passio e Translatio that exists in two versions (BHL 2164, 2164a) and whose earliest witness is dated to the eleventh century. According to this account, when found the martyrs' bodies gave off a sweet odor of sanctity; Stephen had them translated into the city proper, where some of the relics were placed in the Lateran, others went to the basilica of the Apostles (i.e. San Sebastiano fuori le Mura), and still others were distributed to various monasteries.
Miracles ensued; an account of these survives as BHL 2165, whose earliest witness is again of the eleventh century. Diodorus and Marianus are also the subjects of an only partly preserved praise poem in elegiac distichs (the first and last of these are epanaleptic) that survives in a twelfth-century hagiographic miscellany now in the Ambrosiana (BHL 2166; printed in _AB_ 11 [1892], pp. 232-233).
Best,
John Dillon
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