Veneration and the Lion
The Church venerates St. Mark as Holy Apostle of the Seventy and Evangelist, founder and first bishop of Alexandria and martyr, commemorating him on April 25 and among the Seventy on January 4. In iconography he is identified by the lion — one of the four living creatures of Ezekiel and the Apocalypse — which the Fathers assigned to him as his evangelist symbol. This file sets out Mark’s liturgical veneration, the patristic origin of the four-creatures symbolism, and the iconography of the evangelist.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle and Evangelist)
The Feast and the Commemorations
The Orthodox Church keeps the principal feast of the Holy Apostle and Evangelist Mark on April 25, the day of his martyrdom (kept on the same date in the Western calendar; on 30 Baramudah / Paremoude in the Coptic calendar). On this day the Church sings him as apostle, evangelist, founder of the Alexandrian church, and martyr. He is also commemorated among the Seventy Apostles on January 4, the Synaxis of the Seventy, in the company of those whom the Lord sent out two by two (Luke 10:1; see John Mark of Jerusalem). The Coptic Orthodox Church, for which Mark is the founder of the patriarchate, accords him a special prominence, keeping both the feast of his martyrdom and the feast of the consecration of his church and the appearance of his head. The liturgical texts for April 25 praise Mark as the one who “received the grace of the Spirit” and “enlightened the nations” with his Gospel, and as a martyr who “poured out his blood for Christ” — joining in one commemoration the evangelist’s pen and the martyr’s witness.
The Four Living Creatures
The most familiar emblem of St. Mark is the lion, and its origin lies in the early Church’s reading of the four living creatures. The prophet Ezekiel saw, in his inaugural vision, four living creatures each with four faces — “the face of a man… the face of a lion… the face of an ox… the face of an eagle” (Ezekiel 1:10, KJV) — and the Seer of the Apocalypse saw around the throne “four beasts” (living creatures): “the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle” (Revelation 4:7, KJV). The early Fathers, seeking a figure for the four-fold Gospel, matched the four creatures to the four evangelists.
The decisive early text is Irenaeus of Lyons, who in arguing for exactly four Gospels — no more and no less — likened them to the four living creatures, the four regions of the world, and the four winds (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.11.8; trans. ANF 1). Irenaeus’s own assignment of the creatures, however, differs from the one that later prevailed: he gave the lion to John, the ox to Luke, the man to Matthew, and the eagle to Mark (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.11.8) [Disputed: the assignment of the four creatures to the evangelists varied among the Fathers. Irenaeus (*Against Heresies* 3.11.8) gave the eagle to Mark and the lion to John; the assignment that became standard in the West and in most later iconography — Matthew the man, Mark the lion, Luke the ox, John the eagle — derives from Jerome (prologue to his *Commentary on Matthew*; *Homilies on Ezekiel*), and it is Jerome's scheme that fixed the lion as Mark's symbol].
Why the Lion for Mark
It was Jerome’s assignment that became standard: Matthew the man (his Gospel begins with the human genealogy of Christ), Mark the lion, Luke the ox or calf, and John the eagle (Jerome, prologue to the Commentary on Matthew; Homilies on Ezekiel). The reasons given for the lion of Mark are several and complementary. Mark’s Gospel opens with “the voice of one crying in the wilderness” (Mark 1:3) — the desert being the lion’s haunt, and the cry like a lion’s roar; the lion is the royal beast, fitting a Gospel that proclaims the kingly Son of God; and the lion was held to be a symbol of the resurrection (by a legend that lion-cubs were born dead and roused to life on the third day by their father’s breath), fitting a Gospel that, even in its abrupt ending, proclaims “he is risen” (Mark 16:6). The lion, in patristic and medieval reading, thus gathers up the desert opening, the royal Christology, and the resurrection of Mark’s Gospel into a single image.
The Iconography of the Evangelist
In Orthodox iconography St. Mark is depicted as an evangelist, often seated and writing his Gospel, or holding a Gospel-book, vested as a bishop (in recognition of his episcopate at Alexandria) or as an apostle. In the iconographic and artistic tradition that follows Jerome’s scheme — especially in the West and in the winged-creature symbolism of church decoration — Mark is accompanied by the winged lion. This winged lion became, through the relics at Venice (see The Relics and Venice), the emblem of the Venetian Republic, shown holding an open book inscribed Pax tibi Marce, evangelista meus — “Peace to thee, Mark, my evangelist” — words by which the tradition has the angel greet Mark, and which the Venetians made the motto of their city. In Orthodox church decoration the four evangelist-symbols are commonly placed in the four pendentives beneath the central dome, the four living creatures bearing up the heaven of the dome as the four Gospels bear up the Church’s proclamation of Christ — a visual confession that the one Gospel is given in four, of which Mark’s, the lion, is one (on the four-fold Gospel see The Synoptic Problem).
The Honor of the Apostle
The veneration of St. Mark gathers together everything this collection has traced: the New Testament companion of the apostles, the evangelist of the Second Gospel, the founder of Alexandria, and the martyr of Boukolou. The Church honors him not as one of the Twelve but as a true apostle and evangelist whose written Gospel is read at the holy altar throughout the world and whose see became a patriarchate and a fountain of theology. The lion that marks him in iconography is, finally, a confession of his Gospel — the royal, desert-voiced, resurrection-proclaiming Gospel of the crucified Son of God. In the words of the Church’s hymnody for his feast, Mark is “the all-praised apostle and evangelist,” who “having drawn from the fountain of Christ, gave the nations to drink the waters of salvation,” and who now intercedes for the Church he served in life and sealed with his blood.
See Also
- The Relics and Venice — the winged lion as the emblem of Venice and the relics’ history
- John Mark of Jerusalem — Mark among the Seventy (January 4)
- The Synoptic Problem — the four-fold Gospel of which Mark’s is one
- The Gospel of Mark — the desert-voiced, royal, resurrection Gospel the lion figures
- Great Feasts — the liturgical calendar in which his feast stands
References
- The Holy Bible (Ezekiel 1:10; Revelation 4:7; Mark 1:3; 16:6; Luke 10:1). King James Version consulted.
- Irenaeus of Lyons. Against Heresies 3.11.8. Trans. Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 1 (the four Gospels and the four living creatures; the eagle assigned to Mark).
- Jerome. Prologue to the Commentary on Matthew; Homilies on Ezekiel (the standard assignment of the lion to Mark).
- The Great Synaxaristes of the Orthodox Church (entries for April 25 and January 4).
- Ouspensky, Leonid, and Vladimir Lossky. The Meaning of Icons. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1982 (on evangelist iconography and the four creatures).