The Martyrdom

The tradition of Mark’s martyrdom at Alexandria — his seizure during a pagan festival, his being bound with ropes and dragged through the streets of the city until his body was torn, and his death at the place called Boukolou — is preserved in the Greek Acts of Mark and the Coptic and Arabic traditions. This file sets out the martyrdom narrative, its place and date, and the burial of the saint, distinguishing the late hagiographic sources from the slender early record, which attests Mark’s Alexandrian episcopate but not the details of his death.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle and Evangelist)

The Early Record and Its Silence

It must be said plainly at the outset: the earliest sources do not narrate a martyrdom. Eusebius records that Mark founded the Alexandrian church and that Anianus succeeded him “in the eighth year of Nero” (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 2.24.1), but he does not say that Mark died a martyr; Jerome likewise records Mark’s death and burial at Alexandria “in the eighth year of Nero” without calling it a martyrdom (Jerome, On Illustrious Men 8). The detailed martyrdom — the dragging through the streets, the death at Boukolou — comes from the later Acts of Mark (Martyrium Marci, usually dated to the fourth or fifth century) and the Coptic and Arabic traditions [Disputed: that Mark died a martyr at Alexandria is the universal tradition of the Coptic and Orthodox Churches, narrated in detail by the *Acts of Mark* (4th–5th c.) and the Coptic/Arabic sources; but the earliest witnesses (Eusebius, *HE* 2.24; Jerome, *On Illustrious Men* 8) record his death and burial at Alexandria without explicitly describing a martyrdom. The martyrdom narrative is received tradition, pinned here to its late attestation per METHODOLOGY §3.5]. The whole subsequent Church, Eastern and Coptic alike, receives Mark as a martyr; the honest note is that the martyrium genre supplies the detail.

The Narrative of the Martyrdom

According to the Acts of Mark and the Coptic tradition, the growth of the Christian community Mark had planted (see The Alexandrian Mission) provoked the hostility of the pagan Alexandrians, devoted to their gods and especially to Serapis. The crisis came at a festival. As the pagans were celebrating — in the tradition, the feast of Serapis, which fell near the Christian Pascha — they fell upon Mark while he was celebrating the liturgy in the church at the place called Boukolou (Boucalis, the “cattle-pastures,” a district by the sea east of the city). They seized him, bound a rope around his neck, and “dragged him through the streets” of Alexandria, crying “Drag the ox to Boukolou!” — over the rough stones, so that his flesh was torn and the ground was stained with his blood (the Acts of Mark; the History of the Patriarchs, trans. Evetts, PO 1; the Coptic Synaxarion). At nightfall they cast him into prison, where (the tradition relates) he was comforted by a vision of an angel and then of the Lord himself. The next day they brought him out and dragged him through the streets again until he died, giving up his spirit with the words, “Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit” (cf. Luke 23:46; Acts 7:59) — the martyr’s death conformed, as the genre intends, to the death of the Lord and of the protomartyr Stephen.

The Burial of the Saint

The tradition continues that the pagans wished to burn the saint’s body, but a sudden storm — wind, rain, and thunder — scattered them, and the Christians were able to recover the body of Mark. They wrapped it and buried it reverently “in a place which they had hewn out of a rock” at Boukolou, the site of the church, where it was honored and where the relics remained until the ninth century (the Acts of Mark; the History of the Patriarchs, trans. Evetts, PO 1). The church and tomb at Boukolou became the center of Mark’s veneration at Alexandria and the resting-place from which his relics would later be carried to Venice (see The Relics and Venice). The burial in the rock-hewn tomb, like the dying words, draws the martyr’s end into conformity with the burial of Christ — the hagiographic art shaping the narrative toward its theological meaning.

Date and Place

The tradition places the martyrdom in the reign of Nero. Jerome’s “eighth year of Nero” would correspond to about A.D. 62/63, and many Coptic and Orthodox sources give the year as A.D. 68; the day is kept on April 25 in the Orthodox and Western calendars and on 30 Baramudah (Paremoude) in the Coptic calendar (Jerome, On Illustrious Men 8; the Coptic Synaxarion) [Disputed: the year of Mark's martyrdom is given variously — Jerome's "eighth year of Nero" implies c. 62/63, while the Coptic and much Orthodox tradition gives A.D. 68 (the fourteenth year of Nero, the year of Nero's own death); the sources do not agree, and the date is traditional rather than documented]. The place, Boukolou (Boucalis), is the maritime district east of ancient Alexandria; its identification is consistent across the sources. These data belong to the received tradition; the early record fixes only that Mark died at Alexandria under Nero and was buried there (Jerome; Eusebius, HE 2.24).

The Meaning of the Martyrdom

The martyrdom completes the figure of Mark as the Church venerates him: apostle, evangelist, founder, and martyr. The arc of his life, as the tradition tells it, runs from the young man who turned back from the mission at Perga (Acts 13:13) to the bishop who gives his life for the church he planted — the deserter become the martyr, failure crowned by the supreme witness. There is, too, a fitting symmetry between the evangelist and his death: the man who wrote the Gospel most relentlessly shaped toward the cross (see The Way of the Cross) and who recorded the call to “take up the cross and follow” (Mark 8:34) is remembered as himself taking up that cross at Boukolou. The Orthodox Church sings him as “the all-praised Mark,” apostle and evangelist, who “poured out his blood for Christ”; the Coptic Church reveres him as the first martyr of the See of St. Mark and the father of its long line of patriarchs (see The See of St. Mark). The honest distinction between the early record and the later martyrium has been kept; what the whole Church confesses is that Mark sealed his apostolate with his blood at Alexandria.

See Also

References

  • The Martyrdom of the Holy Apostle and Evangelist Mark (Acta Marci / Martyrium Marci). Greek text in Acta Sanctorum, April III; English in the Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 8.
  • The History of the Patriarchs of the Coptic Church of Alexandria (Severus of Al’Ashmunein). Ed. and trans. B. Evetts, Patrologia Orientalis 1.
  • The Coptic Synaxarion (entry for 30 Baramudah / Paremoude).
  • Eusebius of Caesarea. Ecclesiastical History 2.24. Trans. McGiffert, NPNF II/1.
  • Jerome. On Illustrious Men 8. Trans. NPNF II/3.
  • The Great Synaxaristes of the Orthodox Church (entry for April 25).