Saint Mark the Evangelist and Martyr

Saint Mark the Evangelist, one of the seventy disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ and writer of one of the four Gospels, was born three years after the birth of Christ, of Jewish parents who later settled in Palestine.

The house of Saint Mark was where Jesus met with the Apostles and where He celebrated Passover with them. It was also in his house that the Apostles were gathered when the Holy Spirit descended on the day of Pentecost. Thus the house of Saint Mark is well known in all the Apostolic Churches as the first church in the world.

He is an evangelist disciple of the apostles Peter and Paul and the author of the Gospel according to Mark of the New Testament.

His Gospel is the second of the New Testament and the first of the three so-called “synoptic” gospels with the Gospel according to Matthew and the Gospel according to Luke.

He becomes the disciple of the apostle evangelist Paul of Tarsus, whom he follows with his uncle Barnabas on Paul's first trip to Asia Minor. But before that he left with Paul and Barnabas to evangelize the island of Cyprus. Barnabas is indeed of Cypriot origin. In Paphos, then capital of the island, they convert the Roman proconsul Sergius Paulus. Saul, who now takes the name of Paul, becomes the head of the mission in place of Barnabas and decides to leave Cyprus for the city of Perge in Asia Minor.

On the road to Perge, he opposes Paul and leaves for Jerusalem. About five years later, in the early 1950s, Marc will find Paul and Barnabas in Antioch. To Barnabas who would like to take back his nephew in the mission, Paul opposes a refusal: this time Marc and Barnabas leave him to go and evangelize Cyprus, while Paul leaves for Asia Minor with Silas. It was not until about ten years later (around the year 62) that Mark found Paul, then a prisoner in Rome. Mark became the disciple, the secretary and the inseparable companion of the apostle Peter with whom he evangelized the Jews of Judea. He then directed Jewish communities in Rome. Paul will therefore call him “his collaborator”. He is Peter's Latin interpreter and participates in Peter's apostolic works. He evangelizes and converts the pagans of Rome, explains Jewish culture to them, translates the Aramaic and Hebrew biblical writings into Latin and writes the second gospel under the dictation of the memories of Peter around the year 65 during the captivity then the martyrdom of Paul by the Roman authorities.

He left Italy to return to evangelize in the Pentapolis and in Egypt where he founded the Church of Alexandria, of which he became the first bishop.

He was captured and martyred by idolaters irritated by his many conversions and died as a martyr of Christianity in 67 (29 Barmoudah). His relics were kept in a small chapel in the small fishing port of Bucoles near Alexandria where he had suffered martyrdom.

Near the tomb of Saint Mark were buried all the patriarchs who succeeded him until Saint Peter, the last of the martyrs in 311.

Between 815 and 828, the city of Venice in Italy is looking for a new powerful heavenly protector to protect it to replace Saint Theodore and compete with Rome and its patron saint Saint Peter. Two Venetian merchants manage to steal her relics from the small chapel where she has been since her death. Saint Mark's Basilica in Venice was specially built for the occasion and he thus became the patron saint of the Serenissima with his lion as the symbol of the city. Marc had come to evangelize the region by boat and had been shipwrecked in the lagoon which was to give birth in 452 to the City of the Doges. An angel appeared to him and then said these words to him: Peace be upon you Mark my evangelist, you will find rest here.

Saint Mark the Evangelist is the first Primate of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. His relics were returned to Egypt at the request of Pope Cyril IV in 1975. Since then, Saint Mark rests today under the altar of the Cathedral bearing his name in Cairo.