Saint Mark the Evangelist: Life, Lion, Feast and Prayer

Saint Mark the Evangelist is the author of the second Gospel, the "John surnamed Mark" of the Acts of the Apostles, the companion of St Paul and St Barnabas, and above all the disciple and interpreter of St Peter, whose preaching his Gospel sets down. Tradition makes him the founder and first bishop of the Church of Alexandria, where he died; his emblem is the lion, and Venice, which claims his body, has honoured him as its principal patron for more than a thousand years. His feast falls on 25 April, a feast of the second class in the 1962 calendar, on the same day as the Greater Litanies; here is his life, his Gospel, his death, his symbol and the prayers of his feast.

Who was Saint Mark the Evangelist?

What we know of Mark comes first from the New Testament, and Butler is frank that beyond it "we are dependent more or less upon conjecture." He is generally held to be the same man as the "John who was surnamed Mark" of the Acts. When St Peter was delivered from prison by the angel, "he came to the house of Mary the mother of John, who was surnamed Mark, where many were gathered together and praying" (Acts xii. 12). Mark's mother, then, kept the house in Jerusalem where the first Christians met, and Mark grew up in the very heart of the apostolic Church.

St Paul calls him "Mark, the cousin german of Barnabas" (Colossians iv. 10). Since St Barnabas was a Levite of Cyprus, Butler thinks it likely that Mark too came of a levitical family. Many commentators have also seen Mark himself in a detail that only his Gospel records, on the night of the Passion: "a certain young man followed him, having a linen cloth cast about his naked body. And they laid hold on him. But he, casting off the linen cloth, fled from them naked" (Mark xiv. 51-52). Why else, they reason, would the Evangelist keep so small a memory, unless it were his own?

Saint Mark with St Paul and St Barnabas

When Barnabas and Saul came back to Antioch from Jerusalem, they took "with them John who was surnamed Mark" (Acts xii. 25), and on the first missionary journey, at Salamis in Cyprus, "they had John also in the ministry" (Acts xiii. 5). But at Perge in Pamphylia "John departing from them, returned to Jerusalem" (Acts xiii. 13).

The departure cost him dearly. When a second journey was planned, "Barnabas would have taken with them John also, that was surnamed Mark. But Paul desired that he (as having departed from them out of Pamphylia and not gone with them to the work) might not be received. And there arose a dissension so that they departed one from another. And Barnabas indeed, taking Mark, sailed to Cyprus" (Acts xv. 37-39).

The quarrel did not last. Years later, during his first Roman captivity, St Paul names Mark among his "fellow labourers" (Philemon 24) and commends him to the Colossians: "If he come unto you, receive him" (Colossians iv. 10). In his last letter, shortly before his martyrdom, St Paul asks Timothy: "Take Mark and bring him with thee: for he is profitable to me for the ministry" (2 Timothy iv. 11). The young man who had turned back at Perge became, by perseverance, the man the Apostle wanted at his side at the end.

The disciple and interpreter of St Peter

The tradition of the early Church is unanimous that Mark was, above all, the companion of St Peter. Peter himself, writing from Rome, sends greetings from "my son, Mark" (1 Peter v. 13). Papias, St Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria, as Eusebius reports them, call Mark the interpreter of Peter, and Papias adds that Mark had not himself heard the Lord.

The Roman Breviary reads on his feast the words of St Jerome: "Mark was the disciple and interpreter of Peter, and it was from what he had heard Peter tell, that, at the request of the brethren at Rome, he wrote the shortest of the Gospels. When Peter had heard it, he approved it, and gave it to the Church to be read, by his authority."

The Gospel of Saint Mark

The second Gospel is the shortest of the four and the most vivid: it moves quickly, from deed to deed, and keeps details that read like an eyewitness's memories, which is what the Fathers say they are, Peter's memories. It opens without any account of the infancy, straight into the preaching of St John the Baptist: "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in Isaias the prophet: Behold I send my angel before thy face, who shall prepare the way before thee. A voice of one crying in the desert: Prepare ye the way of the Lord; make straight his paths" (Mark i. 1-3).

It is this "voice of one crying in the desert" that gave the Fathers their reason for St Mark's lion, as we shall see. In the traditional Mass, the Gospel of Mark is read on several Sundays and great days, and his account of the Resurrection is the Gospel of Easter Sunday itself. Our page on the Catholic Bible explains how the four Gospels stand in the canon received by the Church.

Saint Mark at Alexandria

After Rome, Mark went to Egypt. The Breviary continues with St Jerome: "Mark betook himself to Egypt, with the Gospel which he had compiled, and was the first man who preached Christ at Alexandria. There he founded a Church with such teaching and austerity of life, that all who followed Christ were constrained to imitate him." Jerome adds that Philo, the learned Jew, described the first Christians of Alexandria as having "all things in common," as St Luke says of the Church at Jerusalem.

Butler notes that Clement of Alexandria and Origen do not mention the connection, but that Eusebius and the ancient Latin preface to St Mark's Gospel in the Vulgate both record it, and he concludes that "it is quite probable that St Mark did end his days as bishop of Alexandria." The see of Alexandria, one of the great patriarchates of the ancient Church, has always counted him as its founder; its succession continued with Anianus, who, the Breviary says, succeeded him.

How did Saint Mark the Evangelist die?

The Roman Martyrology, which Butler quotes, gives the traditional account on 25 April: "At Alexandria, the birthday of St Mark the Evangelist, who was the disciple and interpreter of Peter the Apostle. He was sent for to Rome by the brethren and there wrote a gospel, and having finished it, went into Egypt. He was the first to preach Christ at Alexandria and formed a church there. Later he was arrested for his faith in Christ, bound with cords and grievously tortured by being dragged over stones. Then, while shut up in prison, he was comforted by the visit of an angel, and finally, after our Lord Himself had appeared to him, he was called to the heavenly kingdom in the eighth year of Nero."

So the tradition holds that he died a martyr at Alexandria, dragged through the streets by those who rejected his preaching, and the Breviary says simply that "Mark died in the eighth year of Nero, and was buried at Alexandria." Honesty requires one reserve, which Butler states plainly: the later "acts" of his martyrdom, on which the details rest, are not a document "we can put confidence in." The substance, that he ended his life at Alexandria, where he was buried, is what the old writers agree on. His death is set beside those of the Twelve in our page on how the Apostles died.

The relics of Saint Mark in Venice

The city of Venice claims to possess the body of St Mark, brought there from Alexandria, Butler says, "early in the ninth century," and it raised over it the basilica that bears his name. Butler, writing as a careful historian, notes that the authenticity of the remains "has not passed unquestioned," and that water seeping for long periods into the crypt may have damaged the shrine. What is certain, he adds, is that "St Mark has been honoured from time immemorial as principal patron of the city." The winged lion of St Mark became the emblem of the Venetian Republic itself.

Saint Mark the Evangelist symbol: why a lion?

The four Evangelists have been figured since the age of the Fathers by the four living creatures of the prophet Ezekiel and of the Apocalypse. The Epistle of St Mark's Mass is precisely the vision of Ezekiel: "And as for the likeness of their faces: there was the face of a man, and the face of a lion on the right side of all the four: and the face of an ox, on the left side of all the four: and the face of an eagle over all the four" (Ezechiel i. 10).

St John saw them again around the throne of God: "And the first living creature was like a lion: and the second living creature like a calf: and the third living creature, having the face, as it were, of a man: and the fourth living creature was like an eagle flying" (Apocalypse iv. 7).

In the arrangement that prevailed through St Jerome, the man is St Matthew, the lion St Mark, the ox St Luke and the eagle St John. Butler records the reason the holy doctors gave for the lion: St Mark's Gospel begins with the voice crying in the desert, and the lion is lord of the desert. The lion, often winged and holding the book of the Gospel, is therefore his symbol in every icon, painting and statue of St Mark.

What is Saint Mark the patron saint of?

The patronages that the tradition firmly attests are:

• Venice, whose principal patron he has been "from time immemorial," in Butler's words;
• Alexandria and the Church of Egypt, which he founded.

The feast of Saint Mark and the Greater Litanies

The feast of St Mark the Evangelist falls on 25 April. In the Roman calendar of 1962 it is a feast of the second class, with Gloria, Creed and the Preface of the Apostles; its Mass opens with the Introit Protexisti me, Deus, "Thou hast protected me, O God, from the assembly of the malignant," the Epistle is the vision of Ezekiel quoted above, and the Gospel is the sending of the seventy-two disciples, "two and two before his face into every city and place whither he himself was to come" (Luke x. 1-9).

The same day is the day of the Greater Litanies (Litaniae maiores): the procession in which clergy and people go forth singing the Litany of the Saints, followed by the Rogation Mass, to ask God's protection on the fruits of the earth and to turn away His chastisements. Butler points out that this procession is older at Rome than the feast and has no connection of origin with St Mark; the two simply fall on the same day.

The Roman Ritual is explicit that if St Mark's feast is transferred, the procession is not, "save when that feast falls on Easter day: then it is transferred to the following Tuesday." In the Mass of St Mark a commemoration of the Rogations is made. St Mark himself is invoked in that same litany, among the Evangelists: Sancte Marce, ora pro nobis. See our guide to the traditional liturgical year for where these days fall in the Church's year.

Saint Mark the Evangelist prayer: the collect of his feast

The collect of St Mark in the Missal of 1962:

Collect of the feast, 25 April

Deus, qui beátum Marcum Evangelístam tuum evangélicæ prædicatiónis grátia sublimásti: tríbue, quǽsumus; ejus nos semper et eruditióne profícere et oratióne deféndi. Per Dóminum nostrum Jesum Christum, Fílium tuum: qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitáte Spíritus Sancti Deus, per ómnia sǽcula sæculórum. Amen.

O God, who didst exalt blessed Mark, Thine Evangelist, by the grace of preaching the Gospel: grant, we beseech Thee, that we may ever profit by his teaching and be defended by his prayer. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.

And the collect of the Rogations, said at his Mass as a commemoration:

Commemoration of the Rogations

Præsta, quǽsumus, omnípotens Deus: ut, qui in afflictióne nostra de tua pietáte confídimus; contra advérsa ómnia, tua semper protectióne muniámur. Per Dóminum nostrum Jesum Christum, Fílium tuum: qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitáte Spíritus Sancti Deus, per ómnia sǽcula sæculórum. Amen.

Grant, we beseech Thee, almighty God, that we who in our affliction trust in Thy loving-kindness may ever be fortified by Thy protection against all adversities. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.

The collect asks exactly two things of the Evangelist: that we may learn from his Gospel, and be defended by his prayer. Reading a chapter of St Mark and then praying this collect is the simplest and most traditional way to honour him. St Mark the Evangelist takes his place among the saints of the year in our guide to the Catholic saints, listed by feast day.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Saint Mark the Evangelist?

The author of the second Gospel, identified with the "John surnamed Mark" of the Acts, son of a Mary whose house in Jerusalem sheltered the first Christians, cousin of St Barnabas, companion of St Paul, and the disciple and interpreter of St Peter, whose preaching his Gospel records. He founded the Church of Alexandria.

How did Saint Mark the Evangelist die?

According to the Roman Martyrology, he was seized at Alexandria for his faith, bound with cords and dragged over stones, comforted in prison by an angel and by Our Lord, and died in the eighth year of Nero. Butler warns that the later acts of his martyrdom are unreliable in detail, but the old writers agree that he ended his life at Alexandria and was buried there.

What is Saint Mark the Evangelist the patron saint of?

He is above all the patron of Venice, which claims his relics, and of Alexandria and the Church of Egypt, which he founded.

Why is Saint Mark's symbol a lion?

The Fathers saw the four Evangelists in the four living creatures of Ezekiel i. 10 and Apocalypse iv. 7. St Mark received the lion because his Gospel opens with "a voice of one crying in the desert," and the lion is lord of the desert.

When is the feast of Saint Mark the Evangelist?

On 25 April, a feast of the second class in the 1962 calendar. The Greater Litanies, the solemn procession with the Litany of the Saints, are held the same day.

Who canonized Saint Mark the Evangelist?

No one, in the modern sense. Formal canonization by the Pope only developed many centuries later. Mark was venerated as a saint from the earliest days of the Church as an Evangelist and founder of the Church of Alexandria, and his cult entered the calendars and the Litany of the Saints by universal tradition.

Was Saint Mark one of the Twelve Apostles?

No. He was not one of the Twelve, and Papias says he had not himself heard the Lord. He was a disciple of the Apostles, of Peter above all, and that is why the Fathers call his Gospel the preaching of Peter.

Who was Mary the mother of Saint Mark?

The Acts speak of "Mary the mother of John, who was surnamed Mark," at whose house the Christians of Jerusalem were gathered in prayer the night St Peter was delivered from prison (Acts xii. 12). Nothing more is known of her with certainty.

The Iter Fidei app carries the Roman Missal and the Breviary of 1962, the Douay-Rheims Bible with the Gospel of St Mark, and the Litany of the Saints for 25 April. Join early access here.

Sources. Holy Bible, Douay-Rheims version: Acts xii. 12, 25; xiii. 5, 13; xv. 37-39; Colossians iv. 10; Philemon 24; 2 Timothy iv. 11; 1 Peter v. 13; Mark i. 1-3; xiv. 51-52; Ezechiel i. 10; Apocalypse iv. 7; Luke x. 1-9. Alban Butler, Lives of the Saints, 25 April (St Mark, Evangelist). Roman Breviary, 25 April, lessons from St Jerome, On Illustrious Men, ch. 8. Roman Martyrology, 25 April. Roman Missal (1962), Proper of Saints, 25 April. Roman Ritual, title IX, the procession of the Greater Litanies.