St. Mark.
Mr. Audley says, “It is generally allowed, that Mark, mentioned i Pet. v. 13. is the Evangelist, but it has been doubted whether he be the same as John Mark, mentioned in the Acts, and in some of Paul’s epistles. Dr. Lardner thinks there is but one Mark in the New Testament, John Mark, the evangelist, and fellow-labourer of Paul, Barnabas and Peter. He was the son of Mary, a pious woman of Jerusalem, at whose house the disciples used to meet. It is not known at what period Mark became a follower of Christ. His gospel was probably written about the year 63 or 64, and it has been said, that Mark going into Egypt first preached the gospel which he had written, and planted there many churches. He does appear to have been a martyr; but died in the eighth year of Nero, and was buried at Alexandria.” Butler says, “It is certain that he was appointed by St. Peter, bishop of Alexandria,” that he was martyred in the year 68, and that when he was discovered by his persecutors, he was “offering to God the prayer of oblation or the mass.” So that we are to believe from Butler, that there was the “mass” in Mark’s time!
St. Anianus, A. D. 86.
Alban Butler gravely quotes the “Acts of St. Mark” to acquaint us that St. Anianus, whom he calls the second bishop of Alexandria, “was a shoemaker of that city, whose hand being wounded with an awl, St. Mark healed when he first entered the city: such was his fervour and progress in virtue and learning, that St. Mark constituted him bishop of Alexandria during his absence; and Anianus governed that great church four years with him, and eighteen years and seven months after his death.” Robinson lowers the inflation of Butler’s language by stating that Mark, as he was walking in Alexandria, “burst the stitching of his shoe, so that he could not proceed till it was repaired; the nearest cobler was the man; he mended the shoe or sandal, or whatever it was; the man was taught the gospel by Mark; he taught others; and this was the first pontiff of Alexandria, that is, the first regular teacher of a few poor people at Alexandria, who peradventure had no other cathedral than a garret: a teacher of primitive christianity is not to be confounded with a patriarch of Alexandria.”[112] This is a very different picture from that of the “great church” represented by Butler. In truth, the early christian pastors were poor and lowly men, and hence the ideas we affix to the denominations which they and their flocks receive from catholic writers should be derived from plain common-sense views of their real situations, so far as they can be ascertained.
SHOES AND SANDALS.
Shoes or slippers were worn in the East, but sandals, which leave the toes bare, very seldom. The Egyptians made their shoes of papyrus or palm leaves. The Greeks and Romans of both sexes wore rich sandals of gold, silk, or other precious stuffs; the soles were of cork, which for that reason was called sandal wood, and they were, in general, at least one finger thick; sometimes they sewed five soles one over another. They were covered within and without with leather broader than the cork. Sandals were among the early, but not the later, Anglo-Saxons.[113]
Curious old Sandal.
The preceding [cut] is of a “very curious sandal,” in three different views, from one made of leather, partly gilt, and variously coloured. It was formerly in the possession of Mr. Bailey, leather-stainer, Little Wild-street, Drury-lane, and afterwards in that of Mr. Samuel Ireland, of Norfolk-street, by whose permission, an engraving on copper was made by Mr. J. T. Smith, of the British Museum, and from this the present representation is given. The age of the sandal is not by the writer determinable, but as a remarkable relic of antiquity, its form and make deserve preservation. It will be observed, that it belonged to the left foot of the wearer; so that if other evidence could not be adduced, this is proof that “rights and lefts” are only “an old, old, very old” fashion revived.