The majority of medieval writers on the subject state that Mark was a Levite; but this is probably no more than an inference from his supposed relationship to Barnabas. The Alexandrian tradition seems to have been that he was of Cyrenaean origin; and Severus, a writer of the 10th century, adds to this the statement that his father’s name was Aristobulus, who, with his wife Mary, was driven from the Pentapolis to Jerusalem by an invasion of barbarians (Severus Aschimon in Renaudot, Hist. patriarch. alex., p. 2). In the apocryphal Acts of Barnabas, which profess to be written by him, he speaks of himself as having been formerly a servant of Cyrillus, the high priest of Zeus, and as having been baptized at Iconium. The presbyter John, whom Papias quotes, says distinctly that “he neither heard the Lord nor accompanied Him” (Eusebius, loc. cit.); and this positive statement is fatal to the tradition, which does not appear until about two hundred and fifty years afterwards, that he was one of the seventy disciples (Epiphanius, pseudo-Origen De recta in Deum fide, and the author of the Paschal Chronicle). Various other results of the tendency to fill up blank names in the gospel history must be set aside on the same ground; it was, for example, believed that Mark was one of the disciples who “went back” because of the “hard saying” (pseudo-Hippolyt., De LXX Apostolis in Cod. Barocc. Migne, Patrol. graec. x. 955); there was an Alexandrian tradition that he was one of the servants at the miracle of Cana of Galilee, that he was the “man bearing a pitcher of water” in whose house the last supper was prepared, and that he was also the owner of the house in which the disciples met on the evening of the resurrection (Renaudot, loc. cit.); and even in modern times there has been the conjecture that he was the “certain young man” who “fled naked” from Gethsemane, Mark xiv. 51, 52 (Olshausen).
A tradition which was widely diffused, and which is not in itself improbable, was that he afterwards preached the gospel and presided over the church at Alexandria (the earliest extant testimony is that of Eusebius, H. E. ii. 16, 1; ii. 24; for the fully-developed legend of later times see Symeon Metaphrastes, Vita S. Marci, and Eutychius Origines ecclesiae Alexandrinae). There was another, though perhaps not incompatible, tradition that he preached the gospel and presided over the church at Aquileia in North Italy. The earliest testimony in favour of this tradition is the vague statement of Gregory of Nazianzus that Mark preached in Italy, but its existence in the 7th century is shown by the fact that in A.D. 629 Heraclius sent the patriarchal chair from Alexandria to Grado, to which city the patriarchate of Aquileia had been then transferred (Chron. patriarch. Gradens., in Ughelli, Italia sacra, tom. v. p. 1086; for other references to the general tradition see De Rubeis, Monum. eccles. aquileien., c. 1; Acta sanctorum, ad April, xxv.). It was through this tradition that Mark became connected with Venice, whither the patriarchate was further transferred from Grado; an early Venetian legend, which is represented in the Cappella Zen in the basilica of St Mark, antedates this connexion by picturing the evangelist as having been stranded on the Rialto, while it was still an uninhabited island, and as having had the future greatness of the city revealed to him (Danduli, Chron. iv. 1, ap. Muratori, Rer. ital. script. xii. 14).
The earliest traditions appear to imply that he died a natural death (Eusebius, Jerome, and even Isidore of Seville); but the Martyrologies claim him as a martyr, though they do not agree as to the manner of his martyrdom. According to the pseudo-Hippolytus he was burned; but Symeon Metaphrastes and the Paschal Chronicle represent him to have been dragged over rough stones until he died. But, however that may be, his tomb appears to have been venerated at Alexandria, and there was a firm belief at Venice in the middle ages that his remains had been translated thither in the 9th century (the fact of the translation is denied even by Tillemont; the weakness of the evidence in support of the tradition is apparent even in Molini’s vigorous defence of it, lib. ii. c. 2; the minute account which the same writer gives, lib., ii. c. 11, of the discovery of the supposed actual bones of the evangelist in A.D. 1811, is interesting). There was another though less widely accepted tradition, that the remains soon after their translation to Venice were retranslated to the abbey of Reichenau on Lake Constance; a circumstantial account of this retranslation is given in the treatise Ex miraculis S. Marci, in Pertz, Mon. hist. german. script., tom. iv. p. 449. It may be added that the Venetians prided themselves on possessing, not only the body of St Mark, but also the autograph of his Gospel; this autograph, however, proved on examination to be only part of a 6th-century book of the Gospels, the remainder of which was published by Bianchini as the Evangeliarium forojuliense; the Venetian part of this MS. was found some years ago to have been wholly destroyed by damp.
It has been at various times supposed that Mark wrote other works besides the Gospel. Several books of the New Testament have been attributed to him: viz. the Epistle to the Hebrews (Spanheim, Op. miscell. ii. 240), the Epistle of Jude (cf. Holtzmann, Die synoptischen Evangelien, p. 373), the Apocalypse (Hitzig, Ueber Johannes Marcus, Zürich, 1843). The apocryphal Acta Barnabae purport to have been written by him. There is a liturgy which bears his name, and which exists in two forms; the one form was found in a MS. of the 12th century in Calabria, and is, according to Renaudot, the foundation of the three liturgies of St Basil, St Gregory Nazianzen and St Cyril; the other is that which is used by the Maronite and Jacobite Syrians. Both forms have been published by Renaudot, Liturg. oriental. collect, i. 127, and ii. 176, and in Neale’s History of the Holy Eastern Church; but neither has any substantial claim to belong to the ante-Nicene period of Christian literature.
The symbol by which Mark is designated in Christian art is usually that of a lion. Each of the “four living creatures” of Ezekiel and the Apocalypse has been attributed to each of the four evangelists in turn; Augustine and Bede think that Mark is designated by the “man”; Theophylact and others think that he is designated by the eagle; Anastasius Sinaita makes his symbol the ox; but medieval art acquiesced in the opinion of Jerome that he was indicated by the lion. Most of the martyrologies and calendars assign April 25 as the day on which he should be commemorated; but the Martyr. Hieron. gives the 23rd of September, and some Greek martyrologies give the 11th of January. This unusual variation probably arises from early differences of opinion as to whether there was one Mark or more than one.
See Canon Molini of Venice, De vita et lipsanis S. Marci Evangelistae, edited, after the author’s death, by S. Pieralisi, the librarian of the Barberini library (1864); R. A. Lipsius, Die apokryphen Apostelgesch. und Apostellegenden (1883 foll). vol. ii. part 2, pp. 321-353.
[1] The divergent lines of the later attempts at a literal interpretation—e.g. he amputated his thumb in order to escape the Levitical priesthood (Latin Prologue), or it was a natural defect (Cod. Tolet.)—suggest that all they had to start from was the epithet itself.
[2] Nicephorus Callistus, Hist. Eccl. ii. 43, assumes this in his picturesque account of Mark’s preaching in a quarter of the city which seems to have contained the tomb of the early bishops of Alexandria (cf. his Acts).
