If You Don't Pay Careful Attention to What Severus of Al'Ashmunein Says About the Enthronement of the Alexandrian Patriarchs in St. Mark's Throne It Will Sail Right Over Your Head ...

When I realized that the throne of St Mark in Venice was the original Episcopal throne of Alexandria (or a copy the lost original) it was like a light when off in my head. ALL of the mysteries of the Alexandrian tradition suddenly made sense to me. I know that even experts in the field scratched their heads when I claimed that St. Mark was once held to be the 'real messiah' of that tradition. Yet I eventually found the reference in Severus of Al'Ashmunein that proved my suspicions.

In the very same way I have always maintained that the throne itself tells us - through an Aramaic cipher on its backrest - that it actually functioned as a kind of mechanism for establishing future generations of Christs in the Church. All you have to do is listen to the ancient source - the Passio Petri Sancti for example - and you see what Origen meant when he alludes to a uniquely 'Christian metempsychosis.' The Alexandrian Church believed that 'Jesus' became united with each successive occupant of the throne of St. Mark.

Now I will reveal another long statement in the writing of Severus of Al'Ashmunein which bears out my suspicions. It comes from the so-called 'second introduction' to the History of the Patriarchs where Severus begins by announcing:

Praise be to God, the origin and source of learning, the maker and creator of all things, who forms and brings into being all that exists, who guides and elects those whom he pleases, and raises those whom he desires among his servants to be his chosen ones and his holy people, whom he picks out and in whom he takes pleasure; who lifts up the poor from the ground, and the needy from the dunghill, that he may make him ruler over his people, and a prince to govern his servants and his land; and gives him as his inheritance the throne of power, that he may rule over the earth with justice, and among men with truth; that he may deliver the weak from the mighty, and save the oppressed from the oppressor. This is the judgment and wisdom of God which none of his creatures can comprehend, for his mysteries are hidden from the wise and learned; and he raises up at all times those who shall gently guide his people.

That there is a 'mystery' associated with the election of the Patriarch of the Alexandrian community is not surprising. But the reference to Isaiah 16:5 - "A throne will even be established in mercy, And a judge will sit on it in truth" - takes us back to Clement's Letter to Theodore and his statement that Mark acting "as a mystagogue" wrote a secret gospel to "lead its hearers into the innermost sanctuary of that truth hidden by seven veils."

I have already cited Stephen J Davis' excellent work on the mystery of the Incarnation. Yet he overlooks that the apparatus which "encourages" the transformation of mortals into gods is the aforementioned throne of St. Mark. As we read in what immediately follows:

The merciful, the compassionate one, the Lord Christ, who gave himself by the mystery of his Incarnation to save his creatures, and vanquished the mighty by humility and weakness; who speaks through the mouth of his prophets by the Holy Ghost; when it pleased him to manifest himself on earth and become incarnate, that he might save his creatures whom he had created after the likeness of the image of his majesty, appeared among them in a human body, born of the Virgin Mary, most excellent of women in creation. For he had elected her from among the offspring of Adam, the sinner and rebel against his Lord, who obeyed his enemy and broke the commandment of his Creator, so that it was necessary that he should die, as God had said to him when he warned him not to disobey; but Adam would not listen, desiring to be a god and similar to his Creator, and so was caught in the net of stumbling. Yet even then God the Word had mercy upon him in pity for him, and became incarnate, ----He, the uncreated in respect of his Godhead, the Man in respect of his Humanity, the pure from all sin. And the Virgin Mary bore him in her womb and brought him forth, by a mystery to which the intelligence of creatures cannot attain, and by which he exalted her above above all other created beings in heaven or on earth; above the Angels, the Powers, the Principalities, the Cherubim and the Seraphim, and all whom God has made in heaven or on earth. For she became the throne of him who is Lord of the first and the last, without division or change, ---- of him whom no space can enclose, and no time contain.

My friends, I hope at least some of you can see what I have discovered. The Alexandrians must have developed their traditional mystical devotion to the throne of St. Mark in terms of the 'acceptable' doctrine of the Virgin Birth.

In other words, Davis only gets PART of the Coptic Incarnation formula. It clearly developed out of the idea that WHOEVER SAT ON THE THRONE became an incarnation of Christ or as Severus declares in what immediately follows:

And when, in his unattainable wisdom, he established his dispensation, and the Union of his Humanity with his Divinity, the mystery of which is hidden from all in heaven or on earth, he chose his disciples, the apostles, and gave them the great commission, authorising them to bind and to loose. And so likewise their successors after them inherit this gift in all regions of the world, each one following his predecessor. Thus the inheritance of this power, which Christ gave to the great father and evangelist, Mark, the apostle, is carried on to his successor, the patriarch who sits upon his episcopal throne in the great city of Alexandria, in the midst of the regions where he preached.

So it should be no surprise that he concludes with the idea that:

Saint Mark, then, was the first patriarch who fed the flock of Christ; and in after times he was followed by the inspired fathers and patriarchs, generation after generation. This see of his is independent, and separate from all other sees. And no patriarch is promoted to it, nor does any obtain from God this glorious station and this high and sublime degree, save one whom he has proved and tried, and who has experienced such trouble and adversity and resistance of enemies and attacks of heretics that by these things he resembles Christ's disciples and apostles, who were assisted by his Holy Spirit

I know many people will look at these passage and shrug their shoulders and say 'there is nothing more than superstitious behavior.' But that's precisely the point. Something is still left standing from the original belief - a veneration of the original Episcopal throne, the chair of St. Mark - which actually looked like a replica of the divine chariot. You can begin to see how the enthroned Patriarch served as an 'earthly model' of heavenly things.

You just have to think it through and you will see it. I promise.