SOME Greeks rank among the saints on this day, Mark, bishop of Arethusa,
in Syria, in the fourth age. When Constantius put to death his uncle,
{676} Julius Constantius, brother of Constantine the Great, with his
eldest son; the two younger, Gallus and Julian, narrowly escaped the
sword. In that danger Mark concealed Julian, and secretly supplied him
with necessaries for his subsistence. When Julian became emperor, he
commanded that the temples which had been demolished by Christians,
during the two preceding reigns, should be rebuilt at their expense.
Mark had, by the authority of Constantius, demolished a very magnificent
temple which was held in great veneration by the idolaters: he had also
built a church, and converted a great number of infidels. Authorized by
the law of Julian, the heathens of Arethusa, when they saw themselves
uppermost, fell on the Christians; and Mark, finding that they were
ready to show their resentment against him in particular, which they had
long concealed, he at first, pursuant to the gospel precept, betook
himself to flight to escape their fury. But understanding that they had
apprehended some of his flock instead of him, he returned and delivered
himself up to the persecutors, to animate others in the same cause by
his example and instructions. They seized him soon after his return,
dragged him through the streets by the hair, or any part they could lay
hold of, without the least compassion for his age, or regard for his
virtue and learning. Having stripped him, and scourged him all over his
body, joining ignominy and insults with cruelty, they threw him into the
stinking public jakes. Having taken him from thence, they left him to
the children, ordering them to prick and pierce him, without mercy, with
their writing-styles, or steel pencils. They bound his legs with cords
so tight as to cut and bruise his flesh to the very bone; they wrung off
his ears with small strong threads; and in this maimed, bloody
condition, they pushed him from one to another. After this they rubbed
him over with honey and fat broth; and shutting him up in a kind of
cage, hung him up in the air where the sun was most scorching, at
noonday, in the midst of summer, in order to draw the wasps and gnats
upon him, whose stings are exceeding sharp and piercing in those hot
countries. He was so calm in the midst of his sufferings, that, though
so sorely wounded and covered with flies and wasps, he bantered them as
he hung in the air; telling them, that while they were grovelling on the
earth, he was raised by them towards heaven. They frequently solicited
him to rebuild their temple, but though they reduced their demands by
degrees to a trifling sum, he constantly answered, that it would be an
impiety to give them one farthing towards such a work. This indeed would
be to concur to idolatrous worship; but his demolishing the temple would
have been against the order of law and justice, had he done it without
public authority. At length the fury of the people was turned into
admiration of his patience, and they set him at liberty; and several of
them afterwards begged of him to instruct them in the principles of a
religion which was capable of inspiring such a resolution. Having spent
the remainder of his life in the faithful discharge of the duties of his
station, he died in peace under Jovian or Valens. He is not named in the
Roman Martyrology, nor venerated by the church among the saints. He had
been long engaged in the errors and intrigues of the Semi-Arians; but
the encomiums given him by St. Gregory Nazianzen, Theodoret, and
Sozomen, when they relate his sufferings, show that towards the end of
the reign of Constantius, he joined in the orthodox communion.
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