Blackthorn. _Prunus Spinosa._
Dedicated to _St. Fidelis_.
~April 25.~
_St. Mark_, Evangelist. _St. Macull_, or _Macallius_, or _Maughold_,
5th Cent. _St. Anianus._ _St. Phœbadius_, or _Fiari_, Bp. A. D. 392.
_St. Ivia_, or _Ivo_, Bp. 7th Cent. _St. Kebius_, Bp. 4th Cent.
_St. Mark._
Mr. Audley says, “It is generally allowed, that Mark, mentioned i Pet.
v. 13. is the Evangelist, but it has been doubted whether he be the same
as John Mark, mentioned in the Acts, and in some of Paul’s epistles. Dr.
Lardner thinks there is but one Mark in the New Testament, John Mark,
the evangelist, and fellow-labourer of Paul, Barnabas and Peter. He was
the son of Mary, a pious woman of Jerusalem, at whose house the
disciples used to meet. It is not known at what period Mark became a
follower of Christ. His gospel was probably written about the year 63 or
64, and it has been said, that Mark going into Egypt first preached the
gospel which he had written, and planted there many churches. He does
appear to have been a martyr; but died in the eighth year of Nero, and
was buried at Alexandria.” Butler says, “It is certain that he was
appointed by St. Peter, bishop of Alexandria,” that he was martyred in
the year 68, and that when he was discovered by his persecutors, he was
“offering to God the prayer of oblation or the mass.” So that we are to
believe from Butler, that there was the “mass” in Mark’s time!
_St. Anianus_, A. D. 86.
Alban Butler gravely quotes the “Acts of St. Mark” to acquaint us that
St. Anianus, whom he calls the second bishop of Alexandria, “was a
shoemaker of that city, whose hand being wounded with an awl, St. Mark
healed when he first entered the city: such was his fervour and progress
in virtue and learning, that St. Mark constituted him bishop of
Alexandria during his absence; and Anianus governed that great church
four years with him, and eighteen years and seven months after his
death.” Robinson lowers the inflation of Butler’s language by stating
that Mark, as he was walking in Alexandria, “burst the stitching of his
shoe, so that he could not proceed till it was repaired; the nearest
cobler was the man; he mended the shoe or sandal, or whatever it was;
the man was taught the gospel by Mark; he taught others; and this was
the first pontiff of Alexandria, that is, the first regular teacher of a
few poor people at Alexandria, who peradventure had no other cathedral
than a garret: a teacher of primitive christianity is not to be
confounded with a patriarch of Alexandria.”[112] This is a very
different picture from that of the “great church” represented by Butler.
In truth, the early christian pastors were poor and lowly men, and hence
the ideas we affix to the denominations which they and their flocks
receive from catholic writers should be derived from plain common-sense
views of their real situations, so far as they can be ascertained.