Marcian of Cyrrhus

Our Venerable Father Marcian, Hermit of Cyrrhus

Venerable · b. c. 320 — d. 388

Marcian of Cyrrhus (c. 320–388) was one of the foremost hermits of the Syrian desert in the fourth century, and among the ascetics whom Theodoret of Cyrrhus knew by report and described in his History of the Monks of Syria. Well-born and once a courtier, he withdrew to the wilderness of Chalcis, south-east of Cyrrhus, where he shut himself in a cell so small he could neither stand nor lie at full length, ate once a day, and prayed by a divine light that filled the enclosure at night. Sought out by bishops and pilgrims, he confuted heresy without leaving his cell, and on his deathbed had himself buried in secret to escape the strife already brewing over his relics. He is commemorated on November 2.

Origins and withdrawal

Marcian was a native of Cyrrhus in northern Syria — the city whose bishop, a generation later, would be his chief biographer — born into a distinguished family around the beginning of the fourth century. Theodoret, who gathered the memory of him from those who had known him, describes a man of striking stature and bearing who had spent time at the imperial court before renouncing the world. Leaving city and rank, he went out into the desert of Chalcis, on the arid southern edge of the territory of Cyrrhus, to take up the solitary life.

Ascetic struggle

There he built himself an enclosure and, within it, a cell so cramped that its low roof would not let him stand upright and its narrow walls would not let him stretch out to sleep; his body, Theodoret says, was folded to the measure of his dwelling. He ate but once a day, and then only a small ration of bread, so sparingly that he took just enough to remain alive without ever being satisfied. When he kept his rule of prayer through the night he lit no lamp, for — as the tradition preserved by Theodoret and repeated in the synaxaria relates — the cell was filled with a divine radiance by which he read the Scriptures in the dark.

After some years he consented to receive two disciples, chief among them Eusebius, settling them in an adjoining enclosure while he himself continued to live walled away as a recluse. A monastic community gathered in the neighbourhood under his influence, and Agapetus, another of his followers, is remembered as founding monasteries of his own; but Marcian would not be drawn out of his solitude to govern them. Flavian, Patriarch of Antioch, together with other bishops, came in person to entreat him to leave his enclosure for the good of the wider Church, and he courteously refused. What he would do was teach: those who came to his cell for counsel he instructed in the faith, and he was noted for turning many away from the Arian and other errors of the age and confirming them in Orthodoxy — a labour of consequence in a region and a century torn by the doctrinal struggles that Theodoret himself would chronicle.

Repose and the hiding of his relics

By the end of his life Marcian's fame had made his body a coveted prize. Churches and shrines had already been raised in expectation of receiving his relics, and he foresaw that his death would set off unseemly contention among those who wished to possess them. He therefore bound his disciple Eusebius by oath to bury him secretly, far from the cell, in a place known to no one, so that no faction might seize the body and no shrine be built over him against his will. Eusebius kept the charge: Marcian died, about the year 388, and was laid in a hidden grave, his resting-place concealed for many years before the relics were at last brought to light and honoured.

Feast and commemoration

November 2 (church date; Old Calendar civil November 15), kept together with the Persian martyrs Acindynus, Pegasius and their companions, who are the day's principal commemoration and carry its proper service. In the Greek Menaion Marcian is a synaxarion commemoration without proper hymns; the common of a venerable ascetic serves where his memory is kept liturgically. The Slavic and Antiochian calendars keep the day identically. As a saint of the territory of Cyrrhus he belongs peculiarly to the Antiochian ascetic tradition that Theodoret set down in the History of the Monks of Syria.

Hymns

Troparion — Tone 8 (from the common of a venerable)

In thee, O Father, that which is according to the image was preserved unfailing; for taking up the Cross thou didst follow Christ, and by thy deeds thou didst teach us to despise the flesh, for it passes away, but to care for the soul, a thing immortal. Therefore, O venerable Marcian, thy spirit rejoices with the Angels.

Original translation from the Greek

Iconography

No pre-modern icon of Marcian has been identified for storage. He is depicted as an aged desert hermit in the monastic habit, thin from fasting, with a long beard, blessing or holding a scroll — the standard type of the Syrian anchorites of Theodoret's history, indistinguishable in attributes from his fellow solitaries save by inscription.

Disputed questions

Not to be confused with several other saints of the same common name: the notaries Marcian and Martyrius of Constantinople (†c. 355, October 25); Marcian of Syracuse, the bishop and martyr; and Marcian the Oikonomos, presbyter of the Great Church of Constantinople (January 10). Only this Marcian is the hermit of the Cyrrhestic desert described by Theodoret.