Marcian

Marcian is known only as a presbyter (priest) who corresponded with Isidore of Pelusium, the title "presbyter" appearing in four of the six surviving letter-addresses to him. Isidore writes to him chiefly as a spiritual and intellectual mentor: explaining a difficult passage of Paul on the "rest" of Joshua son of Nun (Hebrews 4), counseling him on how a priest should rebuke wrongdoing without falling into unseemly speech himself, urging him to hear both sides and not believe tale-bearers, and instructing him in the difference between bare assertion and genuine demonstration in argument. One letter responds to news Marcian had sent about church affairs at his locale, contrasting the virtuous priest Hermogenes with the unworthy Eusebius who "plumes himself on the priesthood alone." Beyond his role as a priest receiving Isidore's exegetical and pastoral guidance in the early-to-mid-5th-century Pelusium milieu of the eastern Nile Delta, he is otherwise unattested.