Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature to the End of the Sixth Century/Marcus, bp. of Rome

Marcus (6), bp. of Rome, probably from Jan. 18 to Oct. 7, 336, having been ordained 18 days after the death of his predecessor Sylvester. The above dates, from the Liberian Catalogue and Depositio Episcoporum, are confirmed by St. Jerome (Chron.), who gives him a reign of 8 months, and are consistent with historical events. He is said (Catal. Felic. and Anastasius) to have ordained that the bishops of Ostia should consecrate the bishops of Rome and bear the pallium, and to have been buried in the cemetery of Balbina on the Via Ardeatina, "in basilica quam coemiterium constituit." Baronius notices this as the earliest mention of the pallium. The cemetery of Balbina, called also that of St. Mark from this pope's interment there and variously spoken of in old itineraries as on the Ardeatine and Appian Ways, has been identified as lying between the two by De Rossi, who supposes the "basilica" to have been a chapel, or cella memoriae, built by Marcus at the entrance of an existing cemetery

and intended as a place of burial. Interment near the surface of the ground seems about this time to have begun to supersede the use of subterranean catacombs.

[J.B—Y.]