Of course it goes against the grain of modern scholarship to even suggest that a relic associated with the disciples could have survived down to the present day. The stories contained in the gospels and the Acts of the Apostles are viewed as having questionable historical foundations. It is well known that Helena the mother of Constantine established an industry promoting ‘pieces of the Holy Cross’ and other relics which derived their origin from scripture. Nevertheless the chair of St. Mark is striking by the fact that there is no recorded reference to such an object anywhere in the New Testament or related traditions. By contrast the ancient Alexandrian authorities went out of their way to obscure the historical background of how and why a disciple of Jesus ended up sitting on a throne. No historical information is ever given as to the historical circumstances which led to Mark’s supposed ‘enthronement’ at the church in the Boucolia. Indeed the very idea that a disciple of Jesus made his way to Alexandria in order establish himself on a “lofty throne” is as Eusebius notes rather unlike a disciple of Christ. It seems a little too worldly to square with our image of the ‘primitive church.’
Nevertheless there can be no doubt that the ‘throne of St. Mark’ is one of the most recognizable features of the Alexandrian Church. The seemingly absurd notion of St. Mark establishing not only a personal chair from him to sit upon but indeed a holy object which was used to establish each of the successors to his See is among the most basic articles of faith in the Coptic tradition. Whenever the throne is mentioned it appears to have a most primitive superstition. A number of ancient witnesses claim to see Jesus already established in the chair. Of course it is difficult to make a direct sighting of the throne before Peter’s martyrdom. Yet at the same time it is impossible not to acknowledge that even the exact dates and composition of the list Alexandrian patriarchs between Demetrius and Peter cannot be answered definitely. It is important to put things in their original historical context. From the end of the second century to the beginning of the fourth century there were a series of Imperial persecutions directed against Alexandrian Christianity. There were also significant political upheavals through the first half of this period which are often overlooked by scholars when explaining the assault against Egyptian Church.
According to Eusebius’ chronology Demetrius the first truly Catholic bishop of Alexandria started his reign near the end of the bloody reign of Commodus, survived the persecutions of Alexander Severus and ends his tenure just before the period of ‘crisis’ and near collapse the Empire (c 234). He was followed by Heraclas who was the first acknowledged historical individual to be identified as Pope or ‘Papa’ (the Roman adoption of this term would come centuries later). Heraclas was succeeded by Dionysius, a fellow student of Origen, whose tenure stretched through the persecutions of the Emperors Decius (249 – 251) and Valerian (253 – 260). The Alexandrian histories conveniently avoid connecting Dionysius with two important theological and political crises that raged in the period which immediately followed. His absence from an important synod which condemned Paul the bishop of Antioch (otherwise known as ‘Paul of Samosata’) is explained away by illness. The underlying connection between Paul and Arius, an important fourth century spokesman for the native faith of Alexandrian Christianity in the Boucolia questions this explanation as does the consistent Arian claim that they preserved his original theological tradition.
As many scholars have already noted long before us, there was a common theological understanding linking Egyptian and Eastern churches which seemed to have been actively repressed in the third century. What often gets overlooked in this discussion is the role of Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra. Zenobia had carved for herself a large kingdom in the Roman East. Initially she protected and encouraged men like Paul of Antioch who shared what later detractors would call ‘Jewish’ understandings of Christ. What this means exactly is never explained but the charge later extended to the party of Arius. The fact that Paul and other bishops had thrown in their lot with Zenobia against Rome when she decided to conquer Egypt in 269 certainly accounts for the reorganization of the faith by various Emperors over the subsequent period. We aren’t allowed to know what Dionysius role in this conquest because the official history claims that died just before the council which condemned Paul and Zenobia’s conquest One may suspect however that the invention of a figure named ‘Maximus’ is really only a Latin preservation of Dionysius’ familiar title ‘the Great.’ Indeed not a single mention, book title or even a sentence has ever been attributed to this pseudo-Patriarch.
The point then is clearly that if we assume that ‘Dionyius’ and ‘Maximus’ were not separate individuals but rather the deliberately manipulated preservation of ‘Dionysius Maximus’ or ‘Dionysius the Great’ we see the distinct possibility that Dionysius, the bishop who had escaped numerous Imperial persecutions, threw his lot with Zenobia when she conquered Egypt and was likely deposed in the ensuing Imperial re-conquest of the territory (c. 274 – 275). Only a single other shadowy Pope – a figure named ‘Theonas’ -separates Dionysius from Peter, the fourth century and the occultation of our Sedia di San Marco. It also sheds light on another overlooked aspect of this transition period. Almost immediately after his triumph over Zenobia, Aurelius accepted the request of the Antiochene community to expel Paul. However it is impossible to see this action was immediately followed by the adoption of a new holy day in Christianity – December 25th as the birth date of Jesus. As Thomas J Talley notes “the syncretistic threat posed by Aurelian’s solar monotheism was the single disruption of the peaceable circumstances in which the Church found herself between the extension of toleration by Gallienus (260 – 261) and the beginning of Diocletian’s persecution in 303.”
Yet it should be immediately obvious to the reader that Talley’s observation is only true from the perspective of those who eventually accepted Christmas as a legitimate Christian holiday. There can be no doubt that there were an abundance of religious conservatives in Alexandria who resisted these changes owing to their novelty. Indeed a much older tradition identified Epiphany as the date for BOTH Christ’s birth and his baptism (more on the mystical significance of that relationship later). The fact that we don’t hear much about a collective resistance to these innovations isn’t surprising as we have virtually no information about what was going on in Alexandria at this time. Our only remaining clue to navigate through the period is the curious fact that the surviving Coptic tradition of Alexandria dates its calendars from a period ten years later. While Copts take the year 284 as the inauguration of an ‘age of martyrs’ for granted it is a fact which has always puzzled scholars as the only recorded persecutions in Diocletian’s reign occurred a generation later. We noted elsewhere that it cannot be seen as coincidental that the Peter the Patriarch’s assassination occurred on the first day of what would have been the forty day fast of advent. The murder occurred on the sacred shrine of St. Mark in the Boucolia. It was a place where the sanctity of the gospel message of the evangelist of Alexandria was preserved and St. Mark’s text does not record anything about a birth for Jesus.
The fact that 284 CE is understood to be a starting point of sorts for the surviving Alexandrian tradition has great significance for the burial of the throne of St. Mark along with St. Peter at the end of the Diocletian persecutions. The Nicene faith which would emerge in the generation following Peter’s assassination can only be seen as a developed away from the ancient mysteries associated with St. Mark. This is made absolutely explicit in the letter of Constantine to Arius. Alexander, Anathasius and their successors had forever turned their back on that problematic amorphous Alexandrian tradition which preceded Nicea. When scholars are forced to identify that original faith they typically designate it ‘Origenism’ which leads to a further determination as the number of ‘Origenists’ among the Patriarchs which followed. It is worth noting that much of anti-Arian polemic identifies Arius as an ‘Origenist.’ Yet a critical reading of this material also makes clear that a much more substantial charge is leveled against him – namely that he and his followers preferred the shrine in the Boucolia – the sanctuary of the throne of St. Mark - to the magnificent cathedrals which were sprouting all around Alexandria in the years following Constantine’s reform efforts.
The importance of St Mark's Church in the Boucolia over Egyptian Christianity in the early period cannot be overstated. Not only was it the earliest church in Egypt, the bishop who sat on this throne was the only bishop in the Egyptian Church until the reforms of Demetrius. Given the topography of the Boucolia and the manner in which Greek residents of Alexandria would have undoubtedly felt rather unsafe in this region, I find it difficult to believe that Demetrius ever actually sat on its throne.
Indeed I see Demetrius as a foreign administrative figure who kept an eye on the Church of St Mark. I can't see how he managed to last forty three years on the throne while Clement and Origen end up either fleeing persecutions in Alexandria or having to torture.
I prefer to imagine the Catechetical school of Alexandria to be located at the Church of St. Mark in the Boucolia and the head of the academy to be one and the same with the Papa. This understanding that the Papa was necessarily also the head of the academy was obscured by Demetrius who is said to have been bishop the whole time Origen was SUBORDINATED to being only the head of the academy.
Notice that Demetrius lasts until the beginning of the Crisis of the Third Century - when Egypt - and we must imagine the Egyptian Patriarchy - left the Empire for a period. Notice the chain of events:
1) Origen flees Alexandria to Caesarea in 231 after challenging the authority of Demetrius
2) Demetrius is said to have died within the year and then
3) Heraclas is then said to have been BOTH Pope and head of the Catechetical school
All of this in the very period the Empire began its slide toward anarchy.
It seems very strange indeed that all of this occurs in light of the fact that - as Tim Vivian notes - ALL of the subsequent Popes of Alexandria are identified as 'Origenists.'
Could it be that someone wants to obscure the fact that Origen was indeed the real (occultated) Pope who sat on the Episcopal throne of St Mark and later historians wrote him out of history owing to his controversial views and his controversial status in the oiperiod?
Whatever the case – the holy chair preserved among its tombs provides us with the ultimate ground for that amorphous Alexandrian faith which dared to challenge the collective will of a series of Emperors. At its most basic, Arius was the presbyter in charge of St. Mark’s sanctuary in the Boucolia in the period following Peter’s death. Could he also have been an occultated Pope?
Philostorgius claims that Arius rather than Alexander was the legitimate successor to Peter’s heir apparent Achillas for the Patriarchy of Alexandria. The fact that Alexander broke with tradition and established his headquarters in a newly built Church of Theonas across town perhaps speaks volumes as to why Arius might have turned down the job. The new Church of Alexandria was going to concentrate its support among the Greek speaking populace in the western part of the city. The Arian historian seems to acknowledge Alexander’s turning his back on Mark's sanctuary in the Boucolia when he calls Arius’ rival “Baucalis on account of a lump of superfluous flesh which had grown upon his back to the size of an earthen vessel, such as the Alexandrians call “Baucala” in their provincial dialect.” In other words, Arius retained the holy church in the Boucolia; the only equivalent his rival could lay claim to was the large disfiguration on his back.
Arius’ obstinate devotion to the church in the Boucolia would ultimately prove his downfall. After withdrawing his communion with Alexander’s new church he was excommunicated from the greater Catholic assembly in the year following the Emperor Constantine’s defeat of his rival Licinius (324 CE). It was then that a gather of bishops at the city of Nicea in Asia Minor anathematize Arius and those bishops who supported his cause. It might be difficult to grasp at first why any bishop would hitch his boat to a loser like Arius. There could be no doubt that these men knew they were going up against the wishes of Caesar. Yet even the most cynical historian must acknowledge that these so-called ‘Arianists’ saw something legitimate in his claims. They must have seen him as a victim of a series of deft political maneuvers perpetrated by the Emperor Constantine through his court ‘advisor’ on Christian doctrinal issues – Hosius of Cordoba. Already when Constantine was ruler of the Eastern Empire he had used Hosius to sort out an earlier schism in north Africa. In that case the Emperor clearly sided against those who upheld conservative tradition. In the unfolding circumstances in Alexandria a decade later Philostorgius makes clear that the Emperor was clearly working through Hosius to undermine the traditional faith of that locale too.
The end result of all these plots was the universal creed of Nicea. Now the entire Empire would be governed by one standard of religious orthodoxy. Yet where did this leave the Church of St. Mark in the Boucolia and its most sacred possession, the Evangelist's throne? Clearly it placed it on the wrong side of history. Already at the time of Peter local custom was coming into conflict with Imperial decrees. Not only did Peter’s death occurred on the first day of the newly sanctioned forty day fast of Advent, the Patriarch seemed to have difficulty carrying out one of the most important duties of any Alexandrian Pope – fitting his behind into the tight confines of the cathedra. As we read in the Passion of Peter:
this blessed priest, when he celebrated the sacrament of the divine mysteries, did not, as is the ecclesiastical custom, sit upon his pontifical throne (of St. Mark), but upon its footstool underneath, which, when the people beheld, they disliked, and complainingly exclaimed, You ought, O father, to sit upon your chair; and when they repeated this frequently, the minister of the Lord rising, calmed their complaints with tranquil voice, and again took his seat upon the same stool. So all this seemed to be done by him from motives of humility. But upon a certain great festival it happened that he was offering the sacrifice of the mass, and wished to do this same thing. Thereupon, not only the people. but the clergy also, exclaimed with one voice, Take your seat upon your chair, bishop. But he, as if conscious of a mystery, reigned not to bear this; and giving the signal for silence,— for no one dared pertinaciously to withstand him,— he made them all quiet, and yet, nevertheless, sat down on the footstool of the chair.
There are various explanations given in the apologetic literature for Peter’s strange behavior. Sometimes Peter is depicted as being ‘too modest’ to take his seat; other times he says that he saw the power of ‘Christ’ or ‘the Lord’ already sitting on the throne. Yet as we have demonstrated elsewhere there is a much more compelling explanation to this strange behavior – the Cattedra di San Marco would be quite an uncomfortable fit for any normal sized individual. Only someone with an ascetic build, someone like Arius himself, would find it bearable to remain in a seated position for any lengthy period of time. This apparently excluded Peter and likely too Alexander with his bulbous baukale.
As we already noted within a few years of Peter’s death Alexander established a new cathedral in the western quadrant of Alexandra though we have no specific mention of a new throne of Mark. This evidence only appears a generation later in the course of Gregory of Nyssa’s panegyric of Anathasius’ return to the see in 346 CE. The Patriarch is said here to have been “led up to the throne of Saint Mark, to succeed him in piety, no less than in office; in the latter indeed at a great distance from him, in the former, which is the genuine right of succession, following him closely. For unity in doctrine deserves unity in office; and a rival teacher sets up a rival throne; the one is a successor in reality, the other but in name.” Again it is worth nothing Gregory does not say that Athanasius sat on the same chair as previous generations of Patriarchs but rather than he assumed the same office of Pontiff which had been held previously by a succession of authorities beginning with St. Mark.
One cannot help notice that despite St Theonas being understood to be ‘the church of Athanasius’ in the early period of his rule, we see the Patriarch never getting entirely free of the traditional significance of the shrine of St. Mark in the Boucolia. His election (an event where according to Arian sources, Athanasius attained by fraud) occurs at a Church of Dionysius though the location is never specified. Athanasius nevertheless went out of his way to attack the Arian devotion to Dionysius. He published a treatise entitled “On the Opinions of Dionysius” designed to demonstrate “that the Arians in vain libel him in claiming him as on their side.” They appealed to his original letters to prove that he was “a partisan and accomplice of their own.” Moreover the Arian seat of power at the time of their rival Patriarch George was at the aforementioned ‘Church of St. Dionysius’ (which Athanasius later had burned to the ground). It is difficult to envision where else but this church could have been located other than Boucolia. Dionysius himself was understood to have been buried at the martyrium of St. Mark. Many scholars have supposed the existence of a cathedral established in the third or fourth century beside the original cavernous shrine although they never manage to come up with its original name. The Church of Dionysius seems as reasonable as any other suggestion given all that we have brought forward.
The intriguing possibility then emerges from this identification of the church of St. Dionysius as the cathedral adjacent to St. Mark’s shrine in the Boucolia that did not completely lose its significance in the Nicene period. Cyril’s eventual completion of an even larger cathedral in the fifth century further confirms this. It is possible that Alexander, Anathasius and the Patriarchs which immediately followed them continued to participate in an ancient enthronement ritual with the original throne of St. Mark despite its apparent ‘burial’ with Peter. All of this, in spite of the fact that the real seat of authority in Alexandria was located across town (religious tradition is a difficult thing to completely overturn).
If you are interested in reading how this observation fits within my greater understanding of the workings of Secret Mark WITHIN the contemporary Alexandrian Church please go here
If you want to read more about how Alexandrian Christianity was rooted in the Jewish traditions of Alexandria, Philo of Alexandria and more feel free to purchase my new book here
