Marcellus of Embrun

Saint Marcellus of Embrun was the first archbishop of Embrun, in Provence, from 771 to 810. The Russian source calls him a locally venerated saint of the Roman Catholic Church; in the medieval diptychs of the archdiocese of Embrun he is mentioned as a saint, but without a day of commemoration. Our sources show no Orthodox glorification.

Marcellus' governance fell in a time very poorly lit by the historical sources of his day, chiefly because most of the documents were destroyed in the repeated devastations of Provence by the Spanish Moors, between the eighth century and the first third of the tenth. According to church tradition, Marcellus headed the diocese of Embrun from 771, succeeding Saint Alphonsus. Some historians suppose that a bishop Possessor, mentioned in two letters of Pope Hadrian I of 775 and 784, might have been head of the diocese of Embrun, although most probably he is the same as the bishop of Tarentaise. Marcellus zealously set about restoring his bishopric, greatly impoverished by the Muslim attack in the time of his predecessor, but soon received a command from the king of the Franks, Charlemagne, to go to Saxony to preach Christianity to the pagan Saxons. The bishop of Embrun carried out the mission successfully, baptizing many locals and consecrating several churches.

On returning to his diocese, on 27 June 788 he took part in the council of Narbonne, at which the bishops, headed by their metropolitans, Daniel and Elifant, condemned as heretical the adoptionist views of Archbishop Elipandus of Toledo and Bishop Felix of Urgel. On 1 June 794 Marcellus, together with several other suffragans of the metropolis of Arles, took part in the council of Frankfurt, convened by order of Charlemagne, attended by many clergy and laity, including the monarch himself. At the assembly the bishop of Tarentaise, Saint Possessor, Saint Marcellus and the head, unnamed, of the diocese of Aix-⁠en-⁠Provence raised the question of the restoration to their dioceses of the status of metropolises lost several centuries before. The eighth canon of the council of Frankfurt says that the decision on this was referred to Pope Hadrian I. According to church tradition, later in the same year the pope agreed to raise all three dioceses to the rank of metropolises, but for a long time afterward the heads of these sees were mentioned in official documents only as bishops.

The signature of Saint Marcellus is on an act of consecration performed on 10 October 804 by Pope Leo III. Although the document describing the event has come down in a late copy and contains some unreliable information, historians hold that it reflects real facts from an earlier prototype. Traditions say that the emperor Charlemagne made him his confessor and sent him as ambassador to Constantinople, where the archbishop of Embrun helped to conclude peace between the ruler of the Frankish state and the Byzantine emperor Nikephoros I. Traditions also place in Marcellus' time the gift by Charlemagne to the archdiocese of Embrun of the relics of Saint Cyprian of Carthage, received by the emperor of the Franks from the caliph Harun al-⁠Rashid. The date of Marcellus' death is taken as 810. His successor on the throne of Embrun was Archbishop Bernard I.