Pope St. Marcellinus
?–304 CE · Rome
Marcellinus became bishop of Rome in 296 and his pontificate was engulfed by the outbreak of Diocletian's persecution in 303, the fiercest the Church had faced. His conduct under pressure is one of the most contested questions of early papal history. Some sources—including hostile Donatist polemic and the Liber Pontificalis—allege that he lapsed, surrendering scriptures or offering incense to the gods, though a later tradition holds he repented and died a martyr. The supposed Council of Sinuessa that addressed his case is a forgery. Catholic tradition came to honor him as a saint, but the historical record leaves his behavior during the crisis genuinely uncertain.
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RomeרומאItaly
We know they were here, but the specifics of what they did at this stop aren’t recorded yet in our corpus.
Rome in this era
Governed by the Roman emperors from the Antonines through the Tetrarchy, Rome housed a bishop's see of growing prestige, was the scene of periodic persecutions, and saw theologians such as Justin Martyr debate and die for the faith in the second century.
About Rome
Rome, on the Tiber in central Italy, grew from an Iron Age settlement into the capital of the Roman Republic and then of an empire that by the 1st century CE ruled the whole Mediterranean. Its Jewish community, attested from the 2nd century BCE, is among the oldest in Europe. Christian tradition holds that the apostles Peter and Paul died there, and the city became the seat of the popes. After the Western Empire ended in 476 it passed to Gothic kings, to Byzantium and then to papal rule as capital of the Papal States, until it became the capital of unified Italy in 1871. Vatican City, independent since 1929, lies within it.
In Rome at the same time
Across the traditions, in Rome at the same time
In the same place & time
Sages whose lives overlapped with Pope St. Marcellinus’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
Across the traditions
In the same tradition
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Pope St. Marcellinus’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Works
No works attributed in the corpus yet.