Hagiographia · Eastern Orthodox · Roman Catholic · Coptic Orthodox

Mark the Evangelist

The evangelist remembered as the man who set down Peter's preaching and founded the church of Alexandria, whose body two Venetian merchants later smuggled out of Egypt under a load of pork. His symbol is the winged lion of Venice. In Serbia his day is Markovdan, 8 May.

Feast day May 8 / 25 April old calendar (Markovdan, Serbian Orthodox); April 25 (Roman Catholic)

Era 1st century; the Gospel's attribution rests on Papias, early 2nd century

Region Alexandria (his see and martyrdom); relics at St Mark's Basilica, Venice

Status canonical (evangelist and apostle; founder of the see of Alexandria; patron of Venice)

Patronage Venice and Egypt, notaries and glaziers, protection of the fields from storm and hail (Serbian folk tradition)

Primary Sources

The Gospel of Mark (traditionally attributed to Mark; the attribution first recorded by Papias of Hierapolis, early 2nd century, preserved through Eusebius)
Acts of the Apostles 12:12 (his mother Mary's house) and 15:37-39 (the parting from Paul); Colossians 4:10; 1 Peter 5:13 ('Marcus my son')
The Translatio Marci, the account of the theft of Mark's relics from Alexandria to Venice in 828 (earliest written version 11th century)
Jerome, Commentary on Matthew (the assignment of the lion to Mark)
Orthodox synaxarion for the Apostle and Evangelist Mark (25 April / 8 May); OCA and Coptic synaxaria on the Alexandrian martyrdom
Serbian ethnographic and church coverage of Markovdan (the storm and hail customs, the anti-napping belief), May 2024-2025

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In the year 828 two merchants from Venice walked a body out of Alexandria. Saint Mark had lain in the Egyptian city for centuries, and the city was now under Muslim rule; the Venetians packed the relics into a basket and covered them over with joints of salt pork. When the customs officers looked in the basket and saw the pork, which their law forbade them to touch, they waved the whole thing through. So the evangelist came to Venice, where his lion still stands over the water.

John Mark

Before the lion and the basilica there was a young man from Jerusalem. The New Testament knows him as John Mark, and his mother Mary kept a house in the city where the first Christians gathered to pray; it was to that house that Peter went when an angel let him out of prison. Mark travelled with Paul and his own cousin Barnabas on the first missionary journey, then left them partway and went home, and when Paul refused to take him again the two apostles quarrelled and went separate ways, and Barnabas sailed off with Mark to Cyprus.

The gospel that carries his name does not name him. The church has credited the second gospel to Mark since the early second century, on the word of Papias of Hierapolis, who wrote that Mark became the interpreter of the Apostle Peter and set down what he remembered of Peter’s preaching, faithfully but not in order, and that Mark had not himself walked with Jesus. Peter, in his first letter, sends greetings from “Marcus my son.” So the tradition reads the shortest and probably the earliest of the four gospels as the memory of Peter, written in the hand of a younger man who listened.

Alexandria

The tradition takes Mark from there to Egypt. He is remembered as the founder of the church of Alexandria and its first bishop, and the Coptic church counts him as its father. In Alexandria, the tradition says, he was seized during the liturgy and dragged through the streets by a rope around his neck until he died.

The date is not fixed. The Coptic memory puts his death around the year 68, the Orthodox synaxarion earlier, and there is no record of his martyrdom before the fourth century; the churches keep the manner of it, the rope and the streets, the bishop killed at his own altar. He was buried where he fell.

The lion of Venice

Mark’s symbol is the winged lion, one of the four living creatures, and it came to him by a reading. Jerome gave the lion to Mark because the gospel opens in the desert with John the Baptist, a voice crying in the wilderness, which Jerome heard as the roar of a lion in the waste. So the lion became Mark’s, and when the Venetians brought his body home in 828 they took his lion too. The winged Lion of Saint Mark, a book open under its paw, has stood for Venice ever since, on the flag and on the column in the piazza.

Did You Know?

Of the four evangelist symbols the man belongs to Matthew, the ox of sacrifice to Luke, the eagle to John, and the lion to Mark. The pairing was fixed by Jerome in the fifth century, and each creature answers to the way its gospel opens.

Markovdan

In the Serbian lands the evangelist’s feast on 8 May (25 April on the old calendar) is Markovdan, and many households keep it as their krsna slava, and here he becomes a saint of the weather. The day falls in the season of spring storms, when a fall of hail can ruin the young crops, and folk custom holds that whoever works the fields on Markovdan will call down the thunder and the hail on his own land. So the fields are left alone and the day is kept for rest, a blag dan, a mild day. The saint himself, the story goes, walks the world with a basket full of hail.

Behind the lion and the basilica, the man left one thing above the rest: the shortest gospel, written down from an old apostle’s memory by a younger man who had not seen the events himself and said so. It is the plainest of the four, and probably the earliest, the account the others built on. The evangelist whose body was stolen and whose lion guards a city is remembered, in a Serbian village on the eighth of May, as the saint you do not cross with a plough.

Sources

Bibliography. The same list is held in the article’s frontmatter for the citation tools that read it programmatically.

The Gospel of Mark (traditionally attributed to Mark; the attribution first recorded by Papias of Hierapolis, early 2nd century, preserved through Eusebius)
Acts of the Apostles 12:12 (his mother Mary’s house) and 15:37-39 (the parting from Paul); Colossians 4:10; 1 Peter 5:13 (‘Marcus my son’)
The Translatio Marci, the account of the theft of Mark’s relics from Alexandria to Venice in 828 (earliest written version 11th century)
Jerome, Commentary on Matthew (the assignment of the lion to Mark)
Orthodox synaxarion for the Apostle and Evangelist Mark (25 April / 8 May); OCA and Coptic synaxaria on the Alexandrian martyrdom
Serbian ethnographic and church coverage of Markovdan (the storm and hail customs, the anti-napping belief), May 2024-2025

Common Questions

Who was Saint Mark?

An evangelist, traditionally identified with the John Mark of the New Testament, whose mother Mary kept a house in Jerusalem where the early church met. He travelled with Paul and Barnabas, his cousin, then parted from Paul after leaving the first missionary journey early. Tradition and the early writer Papias hold that he became the interpreter of the Apostle Peter and wrote his gospel from Peter’s preaching, and that he founded the church of Alexandria, where he died. His evangelist symbol is the winged lion.

Did Mark really write the Gospel of Mark?

The tradition says so, and it is old, but the gospel itself names no author. The attribution to Mark is external: the earliest witness is Papias of Hierapolis, early in the second century, who reports that Mark set down what he remembered of Peter’s preaching, not in order, and that he was not himself an eyewitness of Jesus. So the church has read the second gospel as Peter’s memory through Mark’s hand since the second century, while the text stays formally anonymous.

How did Mark's body end up in Venice?

By theft. Mark was buried in Alexandria, then under Muslim rule. In 828 two Venetian merchants, named in the tradition as Buono of Malamocco and Rustico of Torcello, took the relics and carried them to Venice by ship. The story says they hid the body in a basket and covered it with salt pork, so the Muslim customs officers, who would not touch pork, waved it through. Mark displaced the old patron of Venice, and the great basilica of San Marco was raised to hold him. His winged lion became the emblem of the city.

Why is Mark's day a day of storms?

Markovdan falls on 8 May, in the season of spring storms, and Serbian folk custom fears the hail that can flatten the young crops. The custom holds that whoever works the fields on Markovdan will call down thunder and hail that ruin the harvest, so the day is kept as a day of rest, a ‘blag dan’. The saint is even said to walk the world with a basket full of hail. The customs are kept on the day’s own page, Markovdan.