Saint Mark the Evangelist

Saint Mark the Evangelist is the apostle the Coptic Orthodox Church holds as its founder and its first patriarch. The church traces its line of popes from him: the head of the church is styled Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of the See of Saint Mark, and the Patriarchate's list of popes opens with him as Pope Mark I. His feast falls on 30 Baramouda of the Coptic calendar, which is 8 May in the Gregorian calendar, the day the church keeps as that of his martyrdom in Alexandria in the year 68.

The saint as the church holds him

The Coptic Encyclopedia's entry, which summarises the account written by Pope Shenouda III, presents the traditional view from within the church. On that account Mark, known in scripture as John Mark, was born in Cyrene in North Africa to a Jewish family that later settled in Jerusalem. The church counts him among the seventy disciples sent out by Christ, and holds that he travelled with Paul and Barnabas to Antioch, Seleucia and Cyprus before turning back at Perga. The Gospel that bears his name is, in the church's tradition, his own work.

The Patriarchate's history page dates his arrival in Egypt to about the year 43, in the reign of Claudius, and his service there to the years 61 to 68; the Synaxarium gives 1 Bashans 61 for his entry into Alexandria. The encyclopedia places the founding of the church in the forties of the first century and treats the chronology as a question the sources leave open.

Every version tells of his first convert: a cobbler, Anianus, pierced his finger while mending the apostle's sandal and cried out that God is one; Mark healed the wound and baptised him and his household. Before leaving the city Mark ordained Anianus bishop, with three priests and seven deacons, and Anianus is counted as the second patriarch of the See of Saint Mark.

The martyrdom

The church holds that in 68 the feast of the Resurrection fell on the day of a festival of Serapis, and that a crowd from the temple broke into the church at Bucalis, by the eastern shore of Alexandria, where Mark was leading the prayers. He was dragged through the streets with a rope around his neck, held overnight, and dragged again the next morning until he died. The Synaxarium says the crowd tried to burn the body and was scattered by a storm, and that the faithful buried him in a hidden place in the church at Bucalis. The Patriarchate's page gives the date as 30 Baramouda, which it equates with 26 April of the year 68, in the reckoning of that era; the 8 May equivalence below is for the present Gregorian centuries.

The relics

The encyclopedia records that the body stayed at Bucalis until 828, when, in its words, Venetian pirates stole it and carried it to their city, which thereafter called itself the Republic of Saint Mark; the basilica's own chronology gives 829 for the transport from Alexandria. Doge Justinian Partecipazio received the body and built the first church of San Marco, consecrated in 832. The present basilica was begun in 1063 and consecrated in 1094, when Doge Vitale Falier placed the body in its crypt. The head, by the church's tradition, stayed in Egypt, in the cathedral Pope Benjamin I began in Alexandria to house it.

In 1968, the 1,900th year after the martyrdom, the Catholic Church returned part of the relics. On 22 June 1968 Pope Paul VI received a delegation of the Coptic Orthodox Church in Rome and handed over a relic of the saint for the main altar of the new cathedral in Cairo. The Patriarchate's history page dates the return to Egypt to 24 June 1968, and its page on the papal residence says the cathedral at Anba Ruways was opened for prayer the next day, 25 June, under Pope Cyril VI, with President Nasser and Emperor Haile Selassie present. The relics lie in a granite casket in the crypt of Saint Mark's Cathedral, Abbassia, which the encyclopedia describes as a place of pilgrimage.

The feast and the name

The Synaxarium commemorates the martyrdom on 30 Baramouda. In the Gregorian calendar, for the years 1900 to 2099, that is 8 May. The Catholic and Orthodox churches keep his feast on 25 April. The encyclopedia notes that of the 116 patriarchs who had followed him by 1991, eight took the name Mark and nineteen the name John. His emblem is the winged lion.

1. 68

   Mark is martyred in Alexandria on 30 Baramouda, by the church's reckoning.

2. 828

   Venetians take the body to Venice, by the encyclopedia's account; the basilica's chronology gives 829.

3. 1094

   The present Basilica di San Marco is consecrated and the body placed in its crypt.

4. 22 June 1968

   Pope Paul VI hands a relic of the saint to a Coptic delegation in Rome.

5. 25 June 1968

   The new cathedral at Anba Ruways in Cairo is opened for prayer; the relics are placed in its crypt.