Just at the time when Diocletian had spent his first violence against the Church, St. Marcellus was elected Pope (308). He reorganized the Catholic hierarchy disrupted by the persecution. His epitaph, composed by St. Damasus tells us that by enforcing the canons of holy penance, he drew upon himself the contradictions and persecutions of many tepid and refractory Christians, and that for his severity against a certain apostate, he was banished by the Maxentius. He died in 310, having sat one year, seven months and twenty days.

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