La Passio sanctae Marcianae (BHL 5256) : editio princeps

Abstract

Since its publication by the Bollandists in the seventeenth century (Januarii, t. 1, pp. 569-571), the Passio sanctae Marcianae has never been reedited. A new examination of this group of hagiographical North African texts brings into light two manuscripts from the Bibliotheque nationale de France : lat. 17 002, ff. 129v-131r , written in Moissac during the tenth and eleventh centuries (P), and lat. 3809 A, ff. 176v-177v, from the south of France, composed during the fourteenth century (X). Grouped under the BHL 5256 number, they have passed down a text which is significantly different from that edited by the Bollandists, even if the story of the martyrdom of the young virgin, condemned first to be raped in a school for gladiators and then to be fed to beasts in an amphitheatre, for having broken a statue of Diana in the Mauretanian city of Caesarea (Cherchel), remains, in any case, around the same. This paper offers a presentation of the manuscript tradition and an edition of the text, based on the oldes...