Further thoughts on the literature related to the Martyrium of St. Mark

A sample of what appears in the Real Messiah order it here

Here is another reason to think that the martyrium was located BESIDE the church rather than under it. Otto Meinhardus (Two Thousand Years of Coptic Christianity p 31) mentions that after the pagans killed St. Mark "they carried it to the church in which they used to celebrate the liturgy and they enshrouded it and prayed over it according to the established rites. And they dug a place for him and buried his body there that they might preserve his memory." His source seems to be Severus who writes in chapter one of his History of the Patriarchs

First comes a statement about his building a church BESIDE this rock which keeps coming up in relation to the church - i.e. "Then he returned to Alexandria, and found that the brethren had been strengthened in the faith, and had multiplied by the grace of God, and had found means to build a church in a place called the Cattle-pasture [Ta Boukolou], near the sea, beside a rock from which stone is hewn." The last line seems related to the statement in Matthew "Thou art Peter and upon this rock will I build my assembly." It has been noted that Jesus did not mean 'Peter' or he would have said=2 0'upon thee will I build my church." The word Peter (petros) as you know means a part of a rock, that is a stone. When Jesus says upon what he was going to build the church he no longer speaks of a petros - a stone - but he uses the word petra which means a rock out of which petros the stone is hewn. The word petra, rock, he uses for the first time in Matthew 7:24, 25. The house there is built upon a petra and cannot fail and one wonders if - and this is a big if - the reference was somehow originally taken from an original association with this Boucalia church. I can explain my theory about the original gospel of Mark when I meet you but for the moment let us just admit that Severus' source sees two things in the area of the martyrium - a Church which can be identified in some sense as a 'house' and a 'rock' AND STRANGELY CONNECTS THEM WITH MATTHEW 7:24, 25 for reasons we can no longer understand.

Another observation - Severus source is very old. He makes clear that the pagans try and kill St. Mark during the Passover and THEN GIVES THREE DATES FOR HIS DEATH - one according to the Egyptian calendar, the Latin calendar and according to a Hebrew calendar - i.e. the last day of Barmuda, the eighth day before the calends of May and the 24th of Nisan. It is well known that the early Alexandrians continued to calculate Easter using the Jewish lunar calendar so Sever us' source is at least as old as that practice. What is even more intriguing is the fact that the Jews celebrate the feast of the unleavened bread from 15 - 21 Nisan. The day which St. Mark's martyrdom is fixed on is explicitly connected with Easter. St Mark is seized "on the first day of the week, the day of the Easter festival of the Lord Christ, which fell that year on the 29th of Barmudah" and the 23rd of Nisan. He is martyred the next day. Yet what is most intriguing - and I don't know if anyone else has picked up on this - is the fact that this 'Easter Monday' date is now celebrated as Sham El Nessim.


Severus also seems to be using a Greek source that he or someone before him misunderstands as he identifies St. Mark as being burned. He correctly identifies the name of the place as Ta Boukolou and goes on to speak of the pagan mob shouting "Drag the serpent through the cattle-shed! [Syromen ton boubalon en tois Boukolou!]" yet he also wrongly identifies the same mob as "gathering much wood in a place called Angelion" for the fire which is obviously a=2 0mistake for an original reference to them preparing a fire on 'the beach.' Peason has already written about this extensively.

So it is that when we turn to the final description of what they did with St. Mark's body after he is killed we see what should have been a clear reference to a situation WHERE NO REMAINS COULD HAVE ORIGINALLY BEEN RECOVERED. St. Mark was supposedly burned alive. Yet a miracle apparently happened for we are then told that the believers "took the body of the holy Saint Mark from the ashes; and nothing in it had been changed. And they carried it to the church in which they used to celebrate the Liturgy; and they enshrouded it, and prayed over it according to the established rites. And they dug a place for him, and buried his body there; that they might preserve his memory at all times with joy and supplication, and benediction, on account of the grace which the Lord Christ gave them by his means in the city of Alexandria. And they placed him in the eastern part of the church, on the day on which his martyrdom was accomplished (he being the first of the Galileans to be martyred for the name of the Lord Jesus Christ in Alexandria), namely the last day of Barmudah according to the reckoning of the Egyptians, which is equivalent to the 8th day before the kalends of May among the months of the Romans, and the 2 4th of Nisan among the months of the Hebrews."

I have to admit it is very difficult to make sense of what is being suggested here. The only thing that I can say with certainty is the idea that it doesn't make sense to suggest that the faithful took the body inside of a church and took out shovels and made a hole of sufficient size to hold not only Mark's body but all those of the sixteen or so patriarchs which followed him. The only thing that makes sense to me is that there must have been a tradition originally where NO BODY was ever recovered and the absence of a body was explained by stating that St. Mark's body was burned. One may also argue that St. Mark really was burned here or somewhere else - we simply don't know (it is worth noting that Severus' account of the Patriarch Demetrius has Demetrius already cite the miracle of St. Mark's body being fire resistant). I would argue that the Alexandrians later added the bit about this miraculous fire resistant body as a way of claiming that they had St. Mark's relics. It is my belief that Severus' source was probably a Melkite document which assumed what would only have been natural - i.e. that the relics of a martyr should be underneath the altar of a church. The real location of the burial however was that petra out of which stone was hewn. I would guess that the church is built on a solid rock which happened to have a cave or hole hewed out of it at some place outside of the church proper. It is here where the bodies of the various patriarchs were buried and it served as a symbol of the church being founded literally on the episcopal pillars of the Alexandrian tradition. This cave might well be located east of the church - I don't know if this is possible but its my guess that the hole open to the south and that would explain the reference in the Acts of Peter where Peter and the Roman soldiers stand are understood to stand on the southside of the commemorative chapel.

A possible explanation of the reference to Matthew 7:24, 25 might be if Peter I was somehow taken to be the 'Peter' related to the Petra. This would fit with the Peter, the first apostle, Peter the last martyr business in the tradition. It also seems strange how closely related the circumstances of Peter I's death are to Mark. Both were originally placed in a prison and then released and then martyred in the locale of Boucalia. I have already argued in a paper that the body the Venetians stole thinking it was St. Mark was really that of Peter. Meinhardus was the first to argue this. One of the reasons is that the Venetian body was beheaded while Mark clearly kept his head intact. My assumption now might be that Peter's death had the effect o f completely reshaping the whole cult of the Patriarchs. As I mentioned in the last email the whole business of being buried together with one's throne is a conscious imitation of the events described in the Martyrdom of Peter. My best guess would be to say that the Peter's death was so important to fourth century Christianity that Peter became a second Peter to Simon Cephas and he was compared in a number of different ways to the Galilean fisherman (perhaps under influence from Constantine and Imperial Rome in the period?). The motive for this was in my mind to close the chapter on having Alexandrian Christianity defined by this extra-Alexandrian site (Boucalis) and move authority to the main (Greek speaking) center of the city in the period. Yet it could equally well be argued to have been developed in Cyril's time as part of his campaign to enlist the help of Rome (the See of Peter) in efforts against the power of Constantinople.

Meinhardus gets makes the mistake in thinking that there are two different places where the Alexandrian Patriarchs were buried 'Boucalia' and 'the Church of the Cave.' As I said I think they are one and the same just from different sources

http://books.google.com/books?id=Cmey73GtfuUC&pg=PA279&lpg=3 DPA279&dq=%22church+of+the+cave%22+alexandria&source=bl&ots=Klzt2ELzUB&sig=9FtkO_pwQK2fIxLZ3vTDEtcq_mI&hl=en&ei=4pTFSdCgKZKWsQOsqMT-Bg&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result

The point is again that someone in antiquity is the source for a 'church cave' which I think is separate from the church you have identified but in the same general location - Boucalia.

I have a strong suspicion that the church you have discovered was actually called the Church of Dionysius. A building with this name appears in the period without ever being properly identified. I can't prove this of course but there is something which makes good intuitive sense here. For one the Orthodox seemed to have control of all the churches in the city of Alexandria proper (i.e. among the Greek population) in the fourth century. There seems to have been a major building program where Orthodox churches dominated the physical landscape of the city by the Constantine period. The Church of Dionysius is never mentioned alongside Theonas and the other familiar buildings in this part of the city. Nevertheless it is a very significant center of dispute between the Arians and Orthodox.

Philostorgius (HE, II. 11) says Athanasius was consecrated as bishop here through deceit. I will leave Philostorgius' obvious pro-Arian bias for a moment but the fact that Arius was in some form expecting to be named bishop from this gathering implies that the Church of Dionysius was a traditional center to both faiths as the name would suggest. Athanasius mentions that the Arians always invoked Dionysius as one of the fathers of THEIR tradition. The frequent identification of Arians as 'Origenists' and Dionysius' obvious Origenist beliefs reinforces the idea that not only did the Arians represent traditional Alexandrian values (as opposed to the Orthodox who in my mind ultimately represent a dilluting of these traditions with foreign (even recent) ideas.

The fact that we see the Arians and Orthodox fighting over the church throughout much of the fourth century tells us that it had great significance. The only way I can reconcile the disputed election taking place here only to see Athanasius concentrate authority in new churches subsequent to his election coupled with continued Arian veneration of this Church and Dionysius generally makes me suspect that 'St Dionysius' was the name of the church you discovered BESIDE what I believe to be the still undiscovered 'cave chapel' of the Martyrium of St. Mark.

Yet that isn't the most powerful argument in favo r of this identification of the original church as St Dionysius. All scholars note that Alexandrians were very careful to ensure a smooth transition from one pope to another. As Telfer notes "the dead pope's body is washed, vested, and carried into church to be seated in the chair of St. Mark; the city presbyters elect his successor and bring him to the throne where he kneels and lifts the dead man's right hand to lay it on his head (thus taking the authority of his office directly from his predecessor)' the presbyters now transfer the omophorion to the new pope's shoulders and take their seats on the bench; the living pope standing beside the dead now presides over the liturgy and finally completed the obsequies.

The Greek Martyrdom of Peter supports much of Telfer's conjecture as does the history of Severus. But if all of this is true then the idea that a few years later when Alexander was dying and Arius and Athanasius were vying for his chair how can anyone seriously imagine that the Church of Dionysius would be located many miles away in Alexandria proper if the ordination took place in Boucalis. Of course some might argue that by this time the ordinations took place in Alexandria. Yet this can't possibly make sense as Arius was so firmly attached to Boucalis; he was its presbyter up until almost this very period. How could he and his Arian followers like Philostorgius have accepted the legitimacy of any appoinment that didn't come from the sacred site that Arius was intimately connected with? It can't be argued that the Arians elected Arius at Boucalis and the Orthodox another at Theonas or some other church. It is clear from Philostorgius that the election happened here and given the vitriol directed against the Orthodox accusing them of forging a letter from Constantine and the battle over this Church of Dionysius which raged between the two parties for much of the rest of the fourth century. The Arians were very attached to this site. The only thing which makes sense is that Alexandrian Patriarchs were still ordained here in the fourth century. Antoninus Martyr who visited Alexandria between 560 and 570 stated that there reposed the relics of Athanasius, Faustus, Epimachus, Antonius, Marcus and of many other saints "Of Holy Places Visited" Palestine Pilgrims Text Society. II p 35

As such I think the Church was originally called 'St. Dionysius' and the martyrium of St. Mark was located to the east. There can be no doubt that later sources do refer to the Church as that of 'St Mark.' The Church was in the hands of the Melkites from 451 to the time of the Arab conquest (Meinhardus p 32). Meinhardus gives two different accounts of what happened in this period. In one book he says that it was destroyed during the recapture of Alexandria by Manuel and his Roman troops. In another book he says that "in the first half of the fifth century, a new church was con secrated by St Cyril to replace the former martyrdom of St. Mark. This church was destroyed by the Arabs in the middle of the 7th century and although Benjamin I (623 - 662 AD) had received permission to restore the church it was not until the time of the patriarch Isaac (690 - 692 AD) that the church was rebuilt." (p. 165) This last claim seems to be based on a story regarding Cyril's relationship with the martyrs Cyrus and John. http://books.google.com/books?id=-_4eC4SxuH8C&pg=PA119&dq=cyril+%22church+of+st+Mark%22

It is identified as 'the Church of St. Mark' even in Severus' text.