[Roman, Spanish, German, and other Martyrologies. There is some difficulty as to whether the African S. Marciana and the Saint of the same name, honoured at Toledo, are to be distinguished; but probably they are the same. Some hagiographers have supposed that there were two, because at Toledo, S. Marciana is commemorated on July 12th, but that is in all probability the day of her translation. The Acts of the African Saint and the Toledan hymn to S. Marciana, as well as the account of her in the Mozarabic Breviary, relate the same incidents. None of these are of any great authority.] Saint Marciana was a native of Rusuccus, in Mauritania. When at Caesarea, in Mauritania, she was brought before the governor on the charge of having overthrown a marble statuette of Diana, which stood above a drinking fountain in the public street. For this outrage on the established religion, she was scourged, and then delivered over to the lust of the gladiators, but was miraculously delivered, for God was as careful to protect the modesty of his servant, as was she to proclaim the honour of His name. She was exposed in the amphitheatre to a lion, which, however, spared her; but a bull gored her with its horns, and a leopard despatched her. Patroness of Tortosa, in Spain. SS. JULIAN, BASILISSA, CELSUS, AND COMPANIONS, MM. (ABOUT 310.) [Roman Martyrology and Greek Menaea. Authority:--The Acts of these martyrs. They are referred to by S. Eulogius, the martyr, who flourished about A.D. 850. They have been inserted by Metaphrastes in his collection of the lives of the Saints, in Greek. S. Aldhelm of Sherbourne, wrote a panegyric on these Saints, in Anglo-Saxon, in 700; and S. Venantius Fortunatus wrote a hymn in honour of them in 620. The Acts purport to have been written by an eye-witness of the martyrdom, for he says:--"We write the Acts of the Saints from what we saw with our eyes, wherefore we hope to receive some little share in future blessedness." The writer survived to the time of Constantine the Great, for he speaks of churches erected to the memory of these martyrs. Nevertheless, the Acts cannot be regarded as genuine. They are nothing but a religious romance, possibly founded on fact. Such religious romances were common in the 5th cent., written to supply Christians with wholesome reading in place of the sensual fictions of Heliodorus, Achilles, Tatius, &c. As there are no less than thirty-six Julians in the Roman Martyrology, and of these seven are commemorated in January, there is great liability to confusion. S. Julian seems to have suffered on the 6th January; but on account of the concurrence of the Epiphany, his memorial was transferred to different days in different dioceses, and this again has proved an element of confusion.]