The Life
Mark — known in full as John Mark, the Hebrew name John and the Roman name Mark — is the author of the earliest of the four Gospels, composed probably in Rome in the late 60s AD, within a generation of the crucifixion. His Gospel is the shortest, the most urgent, the most physically immediate of the four: it begins without a prologue, without a genealogy, without an annunciation or a birth narrative, but with a quotation from Isaiah and then, immediately: John the Baptist appeared, baptising in the wilderness. Everything in Mark moves fast. The word most frequently used to connect events is euthus — immediately, straightaway, at once. Jesus heals someone; immediately he goes to the next town. The Gospel of Mark is the Gospel of relentless, urgent action.
Mark was not one of the twelve apostles. He was the son of Mary of Jerusalem, whose house in Jerusalem was a gathering place for the earliest Christian community (Acts 12 records that Peter, released from prison by an angel, goes directly to Mary's house, where a community is praying). He is identified in Colossians 4:10 as the cousin of Barnabas. He accompanied Paul and Barnabas on the first missionary journey but turned back early from Perga in Pamphylia — a defection that caused Paul to refuse to take him on the second journey, provoking a sharp disagreement between Paul and Barnabas (Acts 15:37-39). Paul and Mark were later reconciled: in 2 Timothy 4:11, Paul writes: Get Mark and bring him with you, because he is helpful to me in my ministry.
The most important relationship in Mark's life was with Peter. The tradition, preserved by Papias of Hierapolis around 120 AD and repeated by Eusebius, states that Mark was the interpreter of Peter — the one who recorded Peter's preaching about Jesus, not in order but faithfully. This is the origin of the Gospel of Mark: it is, in essence, Peter's eyewitness account of Jesus's ministry as translated, arranged, and written down by Mark. This explains why the Gospel of Mark is the most vivid and physically immediate of the four: it reflects the way a fisherman from Galilee would tell the story, with specific details of gesture and emotion that the other evangelists, working from written sources, have smoothed away.
The tradition of the Coptic Orthodox Church holds that Mark was sent by Peter to Egypt, where he founded the Church of Alexandria — one of the oldest and most important Christian communities in the world. He is venerated as the first Patriarch of Alexandria. He was martyred in Alexandria during the reign of Nero, dragged through the streets by a rope tied around his neck, and buried in the city. His relics were translated to Venice in 828 AD by Venetian merchants who removed them from Alexandria — stealing them, essentially, smuggling them under pork and vegetables to discourage Muslim inspection — and deposited them in the Basilica of San Marco, which was built to receive them. Mark became the patron of Venice, the lion his symbol, the great basilica his home for twelve centuries. The combination of the ancient Egyptian church and the Venetian republic, united by the bones of the same fisherman's interpreter, is one of the great improbabilities of Christian history.
The Linen Cloth — the mysterious witness
Mark's Gospel contains a small detail found in no other Gospel that has fascinated scholars and commentators for centuries. At the arrest of Jesus in Gethsemane, after all the disciples have fled, there follows a brief notice: A young man, wearing nothing but a linen garment, was following Jesus. When they seized him, he fled naked, leaving his garment behind (Mark 14:51-52). Who is this young man? The question has never been definitively answered. The most widely accepted identification — among both ancient and modern commentators — is that it is Mark himself, including himself as a small, anonymous, slightly embarrassing witness to the events he is recording. He was there. He ran away. He left his linen cloth behind. He became, fifty years later, the person who wrote it all down. This may be the most self-effacing act of autobiography in the history of literature: a single anonymous detail in a two-verse note. The Translation to Venice — stolen saints On a night in 828 AD, two Venetian merchants in Alexandria — Buono da Malamocco and Rustico da Torcello — bribed two of the custodians of Mark's tomb and removed the saint's relics. They covered the bones with pork and cabbage leaves to deter inspection by Muslim customs officers (pork being forbidden in Islamic law), loaded them on their ship, and sailed for Venice. The doge and the city received them with extraordinary honour and immediately began building a chapel to house them — the chapel that grew into the Basilica of San Marco, the political and spiritual heart of the Venetian Republic for a thousand years. The lion of Mark — the winged lion, Mark's Gospel symbol — became the emblem of Venice, carried on Venetian ships and imprinted on Venetian coins, flying above columns in the Piazza San Marco. A saint's stolen bones became a republic's identity. The Coptic Church — the oldest African church Mark's founding of the Church of Alexandria is the foundation of one of the oldest and largest Christian communities in the world: the Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt, which traces its patriarchate directly and continuously to the Evangelist. Mark is the patron of Egypt, revered equally by Coptic Orthodox, Coptic Catholic, and Greek Orthodox Christians. The Coptic Cathedral of Saint Mark in Cairo contains a portion of Mark's relics returned by Pope Paul VI to Coptic Pope Kyrillos VI in 1968 — a gesture of ecumenical respect that the Coptic Church received as a historic act of restitution. The church of Alexandria, which Mark founded in the first century, still exists and still venerates its founder.
Walk in Their Footsteps
Pilgrimage sites connected to St Mark the Evangelist
Ask St Mark the Evangelist to Intercede
Bring these intentions to this saint in prayer:
Mark left his linen cloth behind in Gethsemane and ran away naked. Then he turned back from the first missionary journey before it was finished. Paul refused to take him on the second journey. He looked, at that point in his life, like someone who began things and did not complete them. Then he became the interpreter of Peter, the recorder of the oldest and most urgent Gospel, the founder of the church in Egypt, the patron of Venice. The young man who ran away in Gethsemane wrote the first Gospel. The one who left the linen cloth behind became the one whose bones were covered with linen and carried across the Mediterranean. God finishes what God begins. Mark is the proof.
“The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God.”
St Mark, Evangelist and interpreter, patron of Venice and Egypt — teach me the urgency of your Gospel. Help me move immediately — euthus — when I know what I am called to do. Help me record faithfully what I have received from those who were eyewitnesses before me. And if I have run away from something — if there is a Gethsemane behind me and a linen cloth left on the ground — help me come back, as you came back, and finish what I was given to do. Amen.