St. Marcian the Emperor

Marcian was born in Thrace around the year 392, the son of a soldier, and spent the greater part of his life in the ranks of the army, serving with distinction in the eastern wars. He was already an old man when, on the death of Theodosius the Younger in 450, the empress Pulcheria chose him as her consort and raised him to the throne of the East, on the condition, which both honoured, that her vow of virginity be preserved.

He came to the purple at the height of the christological crisis. The Robber Council of Ephesus had two years before acquitted Eutyches and driven out Flavian, and the East was in confusion. Marcian, with Pulcheria, resolved to set the matter right by a true and general council.

In 451 he summoned the Fathers to Chalcedon, across the water from the capital, where more than six hundred bishops gathered. The Emperor and empress attended in person at the session that set forth the Definition of the faith, and the acts record the bishops hailing Marcian as a new Constantine and a new David, a priest as well as a king for the firmness of his confession.

He governed the East for some seven years, kept the peace, husbanded the treasury, and upheld the council to the end of his reign. He reposed on the twenty-seventh of January, 457.

The Church keeps his memory together with Pulcheria on the seventeenth of February, honouring the Emperor who gave the Fourth Ecumenical Council its summons and its peace.