Mary the Confessor

Saint Mary the Confessor (in Latin Marius) is a saint of Upper Auvergne, venerated by Catholics and Orthodox. The time in which he lived is little known and disputed. Gregory of Tours does not mention him, which suggests that he came after the historian. The sources for his life are few and sometimes contradictory: the three Passions of Saint Austremonius and the Life of Saint Marius, a manuscript from the abbey of Mauriac.

In the third Passion, a tenth-⁠century writing, Marius appears as a disciple of Austremonius: learning that he is dying, he goes to his bedside with Nectarius and Mamet, consecrating on the way the church of the village of Marojol. Austremonius, arriving after the death of Marius, had a mausoleum built for him and a basilica above it; the nobles he had converted endowed the church with thirty estates. The Life of Saint Marius, from the twelfth or thirteenth century, says that Marius was neither priest nor deacon, but that we see him converting pagans. The prayers sung at the office speak of his life as a cleric born "of noble lineage", of a holy life and miracles, but details are few. The Bollandists doubted the chronology given by these sources. He is commemorated on 8 June (where the Acta Sanctorum places him) and, according to the record, also on 10 September (new style).