In the codex Marcianus lat. 21, 10 (13th century), according to J. Valentinelli (Bibl. ms. ad S. Marci Venetiarum, Codd. Lat., vol. V, Venice 1872, p. 214), there stands—after Peter Comestor’s Historia scholastica—a list, written by another hand, of the burial places of the apostles, in which Clement of Alexandria is cited at the end. Zahn therefore had it printed as Fragment 12 of the Hypotyposeis. The same list, in identical wording, is also found in codex Paris lat. 9562 (12th–13th century), fol. 142v; R. A. Lipsius discusses this manuscript in the same work (vol. I, p. 214 f., and Supplement fascicle p. 17). The list reads, according to Valentinelli, Lipsius, and Schermann (Propheten- und Apostellegenden, p. 296, and Prophetarum vitae fabulosae, p. 213), as follows (P = Paris, M = Marcianus):
Peter and Paul are buried at Rome.
Andrew [is buried] at Patras, a city of Achaia.
James [son] of Zebedee [is buried] in the citadel of Marmarica.
John [is buried] at Ephesus.
Philip, with his daughters, [is buried] at Hierapolis of Asia.
Bartholomew [is buried] at Albone, a city of Greater Armenia.
Thomas [is buried] at Calamia, a city of India.
Matthew [is buried] in the mountains of the Parthians.
Mark [is buried] at Alexandria in the Bucolis.
James of Alphaeus [is buried] beside the temple.
Thaddaeus and Judas [are buried] at Berytus of the Edessenes.
Simon Cleophas, who is also Judas, after James the bishop, at the age of 120 years, was crucified at Jerusalem, at the command of Trajan.
Titus [is buried] in Crete.
Crescens [is buried] in Gaul.
The eunuch of Queen Candace, one of the seventy apostles, suffered [martyrdom] in Arabia, which is called “Felix,” as Clement says in the fifth book of the Hypotyposeis, that is, of the “Information(s).” [Stählin XXXIV]
Every so often a line turns up in a manuscript catalogue that looks almost too convenient for modern debates. One such line is the terse notice, that Clement of Alexandria (i.e. the attributed author of the Letter to Theodore discovered at Mar Saba) said “Marcus Alexandriae in Bucolis” — “Mark [is buried] at Alexandria in the Bucolis.” What makes it more arresting is that, in several witnesses, the list that contains this line closes with a claim of authority: “ut ait Clemens in quinto libro hypotyposeon, id est informationum” — “as Clement says in the fifth book of the Hypotyposeis, that is, the ‘Information(s).’” It is tempting to treat such a Clementine tag as a scribal flourish or a late medieval fiction. The surviving evidence, however, points in a different direction. Whatever we decide about the ultimate value of the attribution, the formula itself is not a quirky one-off. It belongs to a transmissible textual unit with a demonstrable manuscript history.
The unit in question is a short Latin dossier on the burial (and in some cases martyrdom) locations of apostles and a few associated disciples. Its incipit is stable: “Petrus et Paulus Romae sepulti sunt.” It proceeds through brief entries — “Andreas Patrae civitate Achaiae,” “Ioannes in Epheso,” “Philippus… in Hierapoli Asiae,” and, crucially, “Marcus Alexandriae in Bucolis.” In at least one edited witness it concludes with the Clementine warrant cited above, tying the list (or at least its final notice) to a supposed statement by Clement in book five of the Hypotyposeis.
An early stratum of this transmission is visible in Theodor Schermann’s edition of what he calls a “Laterculus quidam anonymus.” Two manuscript witnesses are explicitly identified there: A = Paris, lat. 9562 (saec. XII–XIII, fol. 112v) and B = Marcianus 21, 10 (saec. XIII). In that laterculus the line “Marcus Alexandriae in Bucolis” stands squarely within the list, and the Clementine tag appears as an inherited closing formula: “Eunuchus Candacis reginae… in Arabia quae felix est, ut ait Clemens in quinto libro hypotyposeon, id est informationum.” The point is not that Schermann has suddenly uncovered Clement’s lost Hypotyposeis; rather, by the twelfth and thirteenth centuries a Latin list of apostolic burial places was already circulating in a form that carried this “Clement, Hypotyposeis book five” credential as part of the text’s own apparatus.
A second carrier, and the one that helps explain wide diffusion, is the manuscript tradition of Peter Comestor’s Historia scholastica. Friedrich Stegmüller’s repertory of medieval biblical commentaries records a recurring Comestor-associated attachment: a chapter identified as “Cap. 121: Ubi apostoli sepulti sint,” whose incipit is again “Petrus et Paulus Romae sepulti sunt,” and whose explicit again invokes Clement and the “fifth book of the Hypotyposeis / Informationes.” Stegmüller’s listings indicate multiple codices in which this Comestor-plus-laterculus package appears (Aarau Wettingen; Milan Ambrosiana; Munich Clm witnesses; Naples; Yale; New York, among others). Even where the repertory does not quote every internal line of the list, the combination of a distinctive incipit and a distinctive Clementine explicit makes it clear that we are dealing with the same dossier migrating into a scholastic “host text” with enormous copying reach.
This context is essential for reading a witness such as Vatican, Urb. lat. 386 (olim 629), a fifteenth-century parchment codex (330×232 mm, ff. ii + 382). The catalog description is explicit: the volume contains Peter Comestor’s Historia scholastica, and then, on folio 381, “subnectuntur… nonnulla de locis, in quibus passi aut sepulti sunt apostoli et aliquot discipuli” — “there are appended some items about the places in which the apostles and a few disciples suffered or were buried.” The appended dossier begins “Petrus et Paulus Romae sepulti sunt” and ends “ut ait Clemens in quinto libro ypoposeon (!) idest informationum.” The cataloger’s exclamation point after the spelling ypoposeon is a caution about form, not a denial of what the manuscript transmits: the Clementine warrant is present and is presented as the closing credential of the dossier.
Put differently, Urb. lat. 386 is not best read as an isolated scribe’s fantasy about Clement. It is a late witness to a piece of paratext that had already achieved stability and portability: the apostolic burial laterculus. The same incipit and the same explicit, appearing in multiple codices across centuries and libraries, is precisely the kind of evidence that turns “quirk” into “tradition.”
At this point, the transmission can be sketched in two broad branches, not as a speculative stemma but as a sober account of carriers.
First, there is an independent “Laterculus” line, attested at least by Paris lat. 9562 (s. XII–XIII) and Marcianus 21, 10 (s. XIII), where the list plainly includes “Marcus Alexandriae in Bucolis” and where the Clement/Hypotyposeis tag appears as a closing formula.
Second, there is a Comestor-associated line, where the laterculus is transmitted as a chapter or appended dossier attached to the Historia scholastica (“Ubi apostoli sepulti sint”). Because Comestor’s work was copied widely for medieval instruction, this attachment functions like a textual multiplier: once the dossier becomes “Comestor-adjacent,” it acquires new routes of replication, new copying-centers, and new opportunities for minor local modification — while retaining a remarkably consistent opening and closing.
The distinction matters for how the evidence is used. None of these manuscripts provides a direct witness to Clement’s Hypotyposeis as a continuous patristic text. The surviving Greek Hypotyposeis is not in view here; what is in view is a medieval Latin dossier that appeals to Clement’s name as an authority. That is a common medieval strategy: short topographical or hagiographical notices are stabilized by being anchored to a venerable author, even when the ultimate pedigree is opaque. The Clement tag may reflect a genuine ancient snippet mediated through earlier collections, or it may be an early medieval authority-label that attached itself to the list and then hardened into tradition. The manuscripts, by themselves, cannot adjudicate that question. What they can adjudicate is whether the tag is a late eccentricity. It is not.
This is why the “Mark in Alexandria in Bucolis” line deserves to be treated with methodological care. It is neither a modern conjecture nor a solitary fifteenth-century curiosity. It is part of a laterculus that is already securely attested in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and that is demonstrably portable across codicological settings. The more interesting historical question, therefore, is not “why did one scribe say this?” but “when and why did this dossier — and this Clementine credential — become attached to the apostolic burial tradition in Latin?”
For readers who want a practical takeaway: if you are studying medieval reception of apostolic topography and the construction of “patristic authority” in miniature, this dossier is a textbook case. A short list, an easily remembered incipit, a gravitating closing authority-tag, and a high-diffusion host text (Comestor) that propagates it. In such a system, “Marcus Alexandriae in Bucolis” is not an isolated claim; it is a datapoint in the life of a text that medieval copyists clearly regarded as worth carrying forward.
And that, in turn, is the real contribution of the manuscript evidence. It shifts the discussion from authenticity-proving to transmission-mapping: identifying the textual unit, tracing its carriers, and recognizing that the Clement/Hypotyposeis attribution is itself a tradition with a history — a history that can be followed, and tested, manuscript by manuscript.
