Mark the Evangelist

Mark the Evangelist is the traditionally named author of the Gospel of Mark and is identified in Christian tradition with John Mark, a figure who appears in the Acts of the Apostles and in several New Testament epistles. Acts describes a Jerusalem household belonging to Mary, the mother of John who was also called Mark, which served as a gathering place for the earliest Christian community. John Mark accompanied Barnabas and Paul on a missionary journey from Antioch but withdrew at Perga in Pamphylia and returned to Jerusalem, an episode that later contributed to the separation of Paul and Barnabas. Subsequent letters present Mark as a valued co-worker: Paul, writing from imprisonment, commends him to the Colossians as the cousin of Barnabas and later asks Timothy to bring Mark because he is useful for ministry; the First Epistle of Peter, sending greetings from Babylon (commonly understood as Rome), refers to Mark as a spiritual son. Whether every New Testament reference to Mark denotes one and the same person, and whether that person is identical with the Evangelist, cannot be demonstrated from contemporary evidence, but the identification became standard in the Church from the second century onward.

Early Christian writers connected Mark closely with the Apostle Peter. Papias of Hierapolis, writing in the early second century and quoted by Eusebius of Caesarea, described Mark as Peter's interpreter who wrote down carefully, though not in order, what he remembered of the Lord's words and deeds as Peter had related them. Irenaeus of Lyons, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Jerome repeated and developed this tradition, locating the composition of the Gospel in Rome in association with Peter's preaching. Modern scholarship generally regards the Gospel of Mark as the earliest of the four canonical Gospels, composed in Greek, probably in the latter decades of the first century, and used as a source by the authors of Matthew and Luke. The work is noted for its terse, vivid narrative, its emphasis on the suffering Messiah, and its abrupt style.

From at least the early fourth century, ecclesiastical historians presented Mark as the founder of the Christian community in Alexandria in Egypt and as its first bishop. Eusebius records that Annianus succeeded Mark in that see. Coptic Orthodox tradition venerates Mark as the first Pope of Alexandria and as the apostle who brought Christianity to Egypt and, more broadly, to Africa; the Coptic Church styles itself the See of Saint Mark. Later hagiographical texts, including the so-called Acts of Mark, add that he was born of a Jewish family in Cyrene in the Pentapolis of North Africa (in present-day Libya), that the family later lived in Jerusalem, and that he was related to Barnabas. These details of origin are not confirmed by first-century sources and remain matters of tradition. The same later narratives describe missionary activity in Cyrenaica and Alexandria, including the conversion of Anianus (Annianus), a cobbler who became Mark's successor as bishop.

Accounts of Mark's death likewise rest on later tradition rather than on contemporary documentation. Coptic and Greek hagiography relate that he was seized by a pagan crowd in Alexandria during a festival, dragged through the streets with a rope around his neck, and martyred; the Coptic calendar commemorates this on 30 Parmouti, corresponding to 25 April, and later sources often assign the event to the year 68. Eusebius's chronological work associates the transition from Mark to Annianus with the eighth year of the emperor Nero, around 62. The exact year and manner of death cannot be established with certainty. Mark was originally buried in Alexandria, at a site later associated with the Church of the Bucalis (Baucalis). In 828, Venetian merchants removed what were believed to be his principal relics to Venice, where they were enshrined in the Basilica of San Marco; Coptic tradition holds that the saint's head remained in Alexandria, where it is associated with Saint Mark's Coptic Orthodox Cathedral.

In Christian iconography Mark is represented by a winged lion, one of the four living creatures of the visions in Ezekiel and Revelation that were assigned to the four Evangelists; the lion was linked to the opening of his Gospel, with John the Baptist's voice crying in the wilderness. His principal feast day is 25 April in the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, and Lutheran calendars. He is the patron saint of Venice and of Egypt, and is invoked by lawyers, notaries, secretaries, stained-glass workers, interpreters, and prisoners, among others. Through the Gospel that bears his name and through the churches of Alexandria and Venice that claim him as founder or protector, Mark occupies a central place in the memory of both Eastern and Western Christianity.