medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Marcellinus of Ancona (d. 5th or 6th cent.) is that city's traditional third bishop and one of its holy protectors. He is also a member of the sanctoral fire brigade, a distinguished group that includes, among others, St. Agatha, St. Cuthbert, St. Florian of Lorch, St. Remigius of Reims, and St. Richardis. According to pope St. Gregory the Great (_Dialogi_, 1. 6), when a fire had broken out in Ancona and could not be put out by ordinary means bishop Marcellinus, who suffered from gout, instructed that he be brought in his litter to a point next to the flames and be set down there; this was done and right away the fire recoiled from him and ceased its advance, thus sparing the remaining buildings. That story, widely read in the Middle Ages, is the source of all subsequent knowledge about Marcellinus. In an early example of its influence St. Bede the Venerable observes that Cuthbert imitated Marcellinus when he prevented a fire in a village from assailing a house into which he had entered (prose _Vita sancti Cuthberti_, ch. 13). Marcellinus' own seemingly very late Vita (BHL 5225; all witnesses early modern) is based on Gregory's narration.
A fragmentary sixth-century gospels (after 550; _Codices Latini Antiquiores_, III, no. 278) preserved in Ancona's Museo diocesano has long been associated with Marcellinus and in pious legend is said to have been held by him when he operated the miracle of the fire. Here's a view:
http://www.museodiocesanoancona.it/ancona/allegati/22857/F780058Arid.jpg
Remains believed to be those of Marcellinus were brought in the eleventh century from Ancona's palaeochristian cathedral of St. Stephen into its new one dedicated to St. Lawrence that later, in the thirteenth or fourteenth century, came to be known as that of St. Cyriac (San Ciriaco). They still repose in the crypt of that since much damaged and then rebuilt structure.
Marcellinus of Ancona as portrayed (at lower right on p. 3 of a Google Books instance of Bruce Boucher, _Earth and Fire: Italian Terracotta Sculpture from Donatello to Canova_ [Yale Univ. Pr., 2001]) in an early fourteenth-century terracotta statue, formerly polychromed and gilt, in the Museo diocesano di Ancona:
http://tinyurl.com/95jzja
Another view of this statue:
http://www.santiebeati.it/immagini/Original/36710/36710B.JPG
Best,
John Dillon
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