Martyrs Marcian and Martyrius the Notaries

Marcian and Martyrius were two notaries of the Patriarch Paul the Confessor of Constantinople in the fourth century — secretaries entrusted with the keeping of the patriarchal records and the conciliar documents of the orthodox party. Paul was repeatedly deposed and exiled by the Arians under Constantius II; on one of these depositions he was strangled in his exile at Cucusus (the same town that would later receive John Chrysostom).

After Paul's death, the Arian patriarchs who succeeded him demanded the records of the previous orthodox councils — particularly the documents from the First Ecumenical Council at Nicaea — so that they could be destroyed and the conciliar memory rewritten. Marcian and Martyrius refused to surrender the records, hiding them and themselves throughout the city. When they were eventually captured, they were beheaded outside the city walls around 355.

The records they preserved — particularly the acta of Nicaea — survived to be vindicated at the Second Ecumenical Council in 381. Their joint feast falls on October 25.