Journal of CopticTHE Studies REDISCOVERY 11 (2009) OF 71–114 THE ORIGINAL EPISCOPAL THRONE 71 71 doi: 10.2143/JCS.11.0.2044700

THE REDISCOVERY OF THE ORIGINAL EPISCOPAL THRONE OF THE ALEXANDRIAN SEE OF ST. MARK

B Y S T E P H A N H Ü L L E R

By the ninth century a simple but quite beautiful alabaster chair was transferred from to . For centuries thereafter it un- doubtedly languished in the crypts beneath the newly built Basilica di San Marco. When it resurfaced again in 1534 it was identified as the original Episcopal throne of St. Mark and erected with this title behind the high altar of the basilica1. The Jesuit scholar Giampietro Secchi wrote a 390 page study of the object entitled La cattedra Alessandrina di San Marco evangelista e martire justifying this idenitification. The has been identified as the Cattedra di San Marco or the Sedia di San Marco ever since. Secchi’s interpretation of the throne stood essentially unchallenged until the Byzantine art scholar Andre Grabar’s 1954 article entitled “La ‘Sedia de San Marco’ à Venise” argued that the object was really an Alexandrian reliquary from the sixth or seventh century. Grabar’s study was widely influential until 1989 when another art histo- rian, Mab van Lohuizen-Mulder, essentially argued on behalf of the original claims for the object — viz. that it was an Alexandrian Episco- pal throne. In essence then scholarship has now come full circle. Van Lohuizen- Mulder argued that that the throne must have originally resided in the martyrium of St. Mark in the Boucolia, a region just beyond the eastern walls (p. 175). There is some dispute about the original meaning of the name but it is usually translated as ‘cow pasture.’2 Van Lohuizen-Mulder identifies the martyrium of St. Mark was the beating heart of . Pilgrims continued to come to this site even until after the Islamic conquest3. While ultimately declining to give an exact date for its manufacture, van Lohuizen-Mulder concedes that it is likely as old as the Boucolia itself which she tentatively

1 Buckton, The Treasury of San Marco, 105. 2 There is great variation in the spelling (Baucalia, Boucalis etc.). We will assume throughout that all refer to the same place.

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assigns to the beginning of the fourth century but allows some flexibility in her dating4 (p. 176). Indeed van Lohuizen-Mulder’s establishing the fourth century as the earliest date for the throne is almost entirely based on literary evidence — philology being a field essentially outside her area of expertise5. Her argument relies heavily on one literary tradition in particular — the texts associated with the martyrdom of I the 17th of Alexandria in 311 C.E. There are several versions of the Martyrdom of Peter (Passio Petri)6. Most of these texts infer that a single cathedra was used by the first of Alexandria down to the time of Peter I’s death7. Van Lohuizen-Mulder’s limiting the earliest possible dating of the Cattedra to the fourth century is inconsistent with her supposition that the chair and the were established at the same time. As Christopher Haas notes, while “the martyrium of St. Mark is attested as early as the fourth century … it is likely that some sort of shrine existed at an earlier date.”8 Van Lohuizen-Mulder bases a lot of her work on the research of Otto Meinardus so it is again very puzzling that she should assign such a late date for the Cattedra given that Meinardus accepts traditional Alexandrian claim that a shrine of St. Mark was first estab- lished sometime in the early first century and adds that “in 311 A.D., at the time of the martyrdom of Peter, the 16th , the of St. Mark were kept at Bucalia.”9

3 Cf. Palladius, The Lausiac History, transl. by R.I. Meyer, 123. 4 Ibid. van Lohuizen-Mulder says that the throne could be from as late a date as the eighth century but leans in favour of the earlier date. 5 It has to be noted that most of the scholarship that has been written on the Cattedra di San Marco has been advanced by art historians. The way that art historians assign dates to things is through a comparison of stylistic elements with other known and firmly datable objects. The difficulty with employing this methodology with regards to our Alexandrian throne is that we have precious little Egyptian Christian art from the 3rd and 4th centuries. 6 Vivian, St. Peter of Alexandria, 67. Devos, “Une Passion grecque”, 157-187. The English translations of Devos’ text used in this article are taken from Vivian’s English in St. Peter of Alexandria. 7 Devos, “Une Passion grecque”, 18, infers that Peter’s successor Achillas was en- throned on the cattedra before it was buried with Peter. Severus of Al’Ashmunein’s History of the Coptic Patriarchs does not explicitly mention the burial of the throne with Peter. 8 Haas, Alexandria in Late Antiquity, 213. 9 Meinardus, Christian , 165. Neale, The Holy Eastern Church, 7 says that dur- ing the time of St. Mark’s ministry “the first church in Alexandria is said to have been built, at a place called Boucalia, near to the seashore, and thence called Boucalis or .” Strabo (17.1.19) says that the name arose because it used to be used as pasture for cattle. Some claim (Hypotyposes fragment in Zahn, Forschungen iii, 70) represents our earliest witness to existence of St. Mark’s tomb at Boucalis.

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So while it is very difficult to squeeze any more information out of the surviving Christian sources to help establish the earliest possible date for both the Church and the throne of St. Mark, an interesting possibility emerges from rabbinic sources which we must also consider. Haas notes that “the martyrium of St. Mark [was] located just outside the eastern wall close to the Mediterranean shore” and his understanding is sup- ported by most other scholars10. Yet this would place the Church in almost the exact place that the most prominent synagogue in the Delta district originally stood11. This synagogue is remembered for its massive double stoa or “a stoa within a stoa” structure described in Tosefta Sukkah 4:6 where a basilica (i.e. royal stoa) is described as standing on one end of the building. It is noteworthy that cathedrae (Aram sing. qathedra) were said to have been prominently displayed in this building down to at least the 2nd century C.E12. While it is impossible to establish a source which helps identify who manufactured this remarkable relic we might be better served develop- ing an understanding for how the Cattedra made its way to Venice. Both Secchi and Grabar have argued that our throne was taken from Alexan- dria by the Emperor Heraclius at the twilight of Roman rule in Alexan- dria and made its way to Venice by way of the nearby city of Grado. Yet this entire reconstruction of history is so dependent on legendary narratives that one could by the same token infer the existence of dragons owing to the fact that knights are said to be so often engaged

10 Haas, Alexandria in Late Antiquity, 213. Harry E. Tzalas has written an article on the underwater surveys of the Greek Mission with finds related to the Martyrium St. Mark “Greco-Egyptian underwater archaeological survey near Alexandria”, Towards inte- grated management of Alexandria’s coastal heritage, Coastal management and small island papers 14, Unesco, Paris 2003, 76. There are also a number of articles on the two old maps showing the location of St. Mark Martyrium. “The Two Ports of Alexandria, Plans and Maps from the 14th century to the time of Mohamed Ali” Focus on Alexandria, Underwater Archaeology and Coastal Management, Coastal Management Source Books 2, Unesco, Paris, 2000. “The Codex Urbinate 277 and the Plan of Simancas, Two of the Earliest Maps of Alexandria.” In: Tradition and Transition, Proceedings of a Conference held in October 2007 at the Institute of Nautical Archaeology at the A & M University of Texas in honor of George Bass and K. Van Doorninck [under press]. 11 Cf. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue, 92: “this rabbinic tradition immediately calls into mind the large Alexandrian synagogue that Philo describes in his narrative of events of 38 C.E. and it is quite plausible that rabbinic tradition and Philo refer to the same building.” Pearson, Gnosticism, 110 agrees and adds that “the beach(es) referred to by Philo and by the author of the Acts of Mark are the very same location.” 12 The fact that ‘seventy one’ cathedrae are identified as being present in the building is glossed over in most accounts. The number of seats in a was seventy. The extra seat necessarily implies a seat for which would have been left empty and thus the other seventy seats were probably also left empty and represent the presence of the seventy elders.

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in combat with them13. Garrucci points us in a much better direction when he suggests that the Cattedra was probably stolen with the body of St. Mark during the Venetian operation in Alexandria in 828 C.E14. Van Lohuizen-Mulder points to underlying similarities in the accounts of Italian and Coptic sources to support her theory and notes that “the Cattedra has been in Venice from 828 onwards … but was not given the prominent place that was due to it, but a secret one [because] Venice was afraid of ‘pious robberies’ - the very sort of ‘pious theft’ which had brought the throne from Alexandria to Venice in the first place!” (p. 176) According to van Lohuizen-Mulder the Venetians were so frightened that they might suffer the same ignominy as the Alexandrians that every- thing that was stolen from Egypt during that operation was hidden in the crypts beneath the Basilica for centuries15. There were long periods were many were convinced that the body of St. Mark had been lost only to have it resurface many centuries later when it was rediscovered in the church’s subterranean depths. As we already noted our earliest mention of the throne doesn’t happen until the sixteenth century where it is essentially paired with the stolen corpse. Then the body of the lay under the main altar of the Basilica and the throne stood behind the altar — the very place as van Lohuizen-Mulder notes where the ’s chair is said to have stood in the Coptic churches of old. (p. 167)16

Did the Venetians Steal the Body of St. Mark or Peter I?

If we accept van Lohuizen-Mulder’s suggestion that the body and the throne of St. Mark were taken together from Alexandria the idea that the Cattedra might be the Episcopal chair mentioned in the Passio Petri be- comes increasingly plausible. At the same time there is good reason to suspect that the body of the saint taken from Egypt was actually Peter I.

13 A number of studies have questioned the various assumptions regarding the legen- dary tradition of the ‘throne of St. Mark’ at Grado, cf. Mackie, Early Christian Chapels, 46, 277. 14 Garrucci, Storia dell’arte, 16. 15 The Architect and Contract Reporter, 1870, v. 4 p. 60 f. 16 Butcher, The Story of the Church, 172 note 1. Fortini-Brown, Venice & Antiquity, 300 notes “the seat was first recorded in the basilica in 1534 when it was moved from behind the high altar to the baptistery. The date of the arrival in Venice is unknown. Although some have suggested that it was brought from Alexandria with Mark’s relics in 828, others propose that it came from Grado when thrones of both St. Mark and St. Hermagoras are recorded in early sources.”

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Peter is consistently identified as having been buried with the original Alexandrian Episcopal chair after suffering decapitation. Yet St. Mark is remembered as having died in the almost exact same spot as Peter owing to a lynching where his persecutors tied a noose around his neck and dragged his corpse around Alexandria. The Evangelist is never said to have had his head severed from his body in the reports emerging out of Egypt. Indeed the narrative continued with his persecutors “kindling a fire to burn his body” with no explicit mention of his head separated from that body. This might be understood to suggest that St. Mark died from suffocation rather than decapitation17. It is very significant that the corpse brought to the Basilica di San Marco from Alexandria is consistently identified as decapitated mummy — an apparent reflection of the kind of punishment that Peter under- went18. It is not surprising therefore that there has been a suspicion raised since at least the thirteenth century that theVenetian sailors actu- ally took the remains of Peter the 17th Patriarch, the man who happened to have been buried with the Evangelist’s throne19. A careful reading of the current Coptic Patriarch Shenouda III’s recent work on St. Mark seems to throw some light on how this historical misidenti- fication might have developed. During the course of discussing the story of what happened in the im- mediate aftermath St. Mark’s martyrdom Pope Shenouda III notes that the followers of the Evangelist “dug a tomb under the church, in the east side and buried the Saint. The church was named after him, as St. Mark Church. Ironically in the year 310 A.D., and at the same site, the Patriarch of Alexandria St. Peter, the last of the , was killed.”20

17 Smith Lewis, The Mythological Acts, 150. Although there is apparently a tradition in Passio of Acta Sanctorum that the Evangelist was beheaded before having the with the flames (Bibliotheca Sanctorum, vol. 8, 1967, coll. 724-725). 18 For those who would object that no body from the period could be expected to re- tains its original anthropomorphic appearance with the passing of the centuries they should consider the well documented use of embalming on Coptic Patriarchs a little over a century from Peter I’s reign. In other words, one should expect to be able to distinguish between a beheaded Coptic Pope and one whose head was not cut off. Antony’s deathbed request to Athanasius not embalm him demonstrates how current the practice was in the fourth century. The bodies of found at Thebes show signs of having been dried using salts and wrapped in bandages and shrouds (cf. Taylor, Death and the Afterlife, 91). Also Harlan, Life History of Embalming, 23. 19 Eusèbe Renaudot, Liturgiarum orientalium collectio, Paris 1904, 400: “verum autor vitae testator dubitatum esse jam illo ipso tempore, de hujus tradiitionis, licet antiquae, veritate, adeo ut multis persuasum fuerit, caput fuisse Hieromartyris, nor Marci Evange- listae, quod simul cum ejus corpora, Venitias a Rumaeis seu Graecis asportatum fuerit.” 20 Shenouda, The Beholder of God, 51. He also mentions a modern church in Egypt interestingly enough that is dedicated to both St. Mark and St. Peter I.

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In fact according to the authoritative of Severus of Al’Ashmunein (a text which figures heavily in Shenouda’s reconstruc- tion of events) Peter wasn’t just murdered here but was also buried at the martyrium in the Boucolia21. The parallels have struck almost every author who has ever written on the subjects of the martyrdoms of St. Mark and Peter I. As Birger Pierson notes “the topical references in this account [the Passio Petri] match those of the Acts of Mark, with ad- ditional amplification.”22 These similarities only get stronger the more we peel back the layers behind the literary traditions associated with each man. In the end, we are left wondering — was the Martyrium Marci developed out what was deliberately obscured in the historical record by Passio Petri? It is important to see how transparent the claims of St. Mark’s death in Alexandria really are. The first firmly datable reference to the Evan- gelist’s martyrdom in Alexandria occurs in ’s Lives of Illustrious Men which was composed in 392 C.E23. Paulinus of Nola represents the first reference to any of the details from the Acts of Mark and he wrote at the beginning of the fifth century24. This state of affairs makes certain that the details of Mark’s death in Alexandria actually appear subsequent to the actual assassination of Peter I but interestingly at almost the exact time as the introduction of the earliest literary texts related to the Passio Petri25. One can even construct a scenario where the martyrdom

21 Evetts, Severus ibn Muqqafac, chap. XVII, 400. 22 Pearson, Gnosticism, 107. 23 Yet this reference is so superficial it is difficult to tell whether he was just develop- ing ’ original mention of Mark leaving Alexandria at the beginning of Anianus’ reign. 24 Walsh, The Poems, 134, Poem XIX: “On you Alexandria, Mark was conferred, so that the bull could be driven out with Jupiter, and so that Egypt would not stupidly wor- ship cattle under the name of Apis.” The poem was clearly written after ’ destruction of the Serapium for it goes on to say: “But to prevent that holy man's being venerated with further unholy honour, God's hidden mind sent goads to prickthe hearts of that devout people. They destroyed and shattered Serapis, and ended the worship of that wicked spirit.” The destruction of the Serapeum occurred in 391 C.E. we may take the reference to ‘followers of Serapis’ attacking St. Mark was developed as a historic justifi- cation for the attack in the early 5th century. 25 The closest we get to a firm date for the institution of the Passio Petri is a reference from the Life of Peter the Iberian (Hood, “John Rufus”, 257 f.) by where it is said that the latter “always had such affection and faith and his love for the high priest and that every year when the memorial was being celebrated he recited in person the account of his martyrdom and was offering the holy oblation diligently with all his exultation so that he could see him [i.e. Peter I] standing and serving as priest with him.” Peter the Iberian died in 491 C.E. but his acquaintance with Peter I undoubtedly came his acquaint- ance with Monophysite monastic circles from his first visit to Palestine at the beginning of the 5th century.

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of Mark was developed to justify the destruction of the Serapeum in 391 C.E26. We will put forward instead that Peter I’s body was likely re-discov- ered during the reign of Theophilus and identified as that of St. Mark owing to the presence of the accompanying throne. This body was buried in Cyril’s newly rebuilt Basilica. That this ‘rediscovered’ body suffered from decapitation is discernable by a near contemporary inter- est of the Monophysite community in Egypt in the ‘head of St. Mark.’ As Meinardus notes “following the that separated the Chalce- donians, or , from the non-Chalcedonians, or , in 451, the church in which the body of the Evangelist still reposed remained in the hands of the Melkites.”27 It can’t be coincidence that it is from this period that we see the Copts begin using a severed head of ‘St. Mark’ for their rituals. Telfer demonstrates that a significant transformation of the ritual governing ordination of the Coptic took place in the period imme- diately following — or within a few years of the death of Peter I. As he succinctly puts it — “a new order came with Atha- nasius.”28 What that original ritual involved is anyone’s guess — yet the original throne of St. Mark must have figured prominently in that procession. If we really think about it as the various Patriarchs came and went the cathedra remained consistent. It was almost as if the individual Popes were temporal ‘stand ins’ for the authority of the original father Mark. To this end it is very tempting to suggest that Coptic tradition learned to substitute the severed head for their traditional employment of the throne when it was ultimately taken away from them around 311 C.E29. 26 In a version of the story preserved by Severus ibn al-Muqaffa (Bargés, Homélie sur St. Marc, 59) appears to Mark just before he is about to die and tells him that his death “sera cause que le culte des idoles y sera aboli, et que les esprits impurs n'auront plus désormais le pouvoir de s'y montrer.” 27 Meinardus, Two Thousand Years, 30. 28 Telfer, “Episcopal Succession in Egypt”, 4. 29 Ibid. p. 10 for instance draws from the eyewitness testimony of Liberatus a sixth century Carthaginian who received his authority through the right hand of his dead predecessor being placed on his head. However Kemp rejects the imposition of the dead bishop’s hand. Indeed what Telfer is undoubtedly describing is the innovation made after the Passio Petri and based entirely on its narrative. As Telfer notes in this ritual “the dead pope’s body is washed, vested and carried into the church to be seated in the chair of St. Mark; the city elect his successor and bring him to the throne where he kneels and lifts the dead man’s right hand to lay it on his head (thus taking the authority of his office directly from his predecessor); the presbyters now transfer the omophorion to the new pope’s shoulders and take their seats on the bench; the living pope standing beside the dead, now presides over the and finally completes the obsequies.”

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It is also worth noting that Meinardus demonstrates how the interest in the ‘head of St. Mark’ became even more pronounced in the period after the Venetian plunder of the Evangelist’s relics in 828 C.E. There is a remarkable confusion in Coptic sources about whether the Venetians took the remains of Peter I or St. Mark with them when they returned to Italy. We see that the biography of Cyril ibn Laqlaq (1235-1243), the 75th Patriarch of Alexandria, recognizes that the head which passed among the Copts as St. Mark’s “was the head of Peter the beatified martyr because the head of the Apostle, the Evangelist, was with his body when the (al-Rum) transported him to Venice.”30 Meinardus goes much further here noting that “it is interesting that the chronicler should include the tradition that ‘it was the head of Peter.’ Mawhub who in the latter part of the 11th century had recorded all the relics which he could identify omitted the relics of St. Peter and merely stated that he had seen the blood of Peter the Martyr, the 17th Patriarch of Alexandria.”31 Of course the reality of the situation was that there never was a ‘real’ body of St. Mark in Alexandria because the Evange- list never died in this city. His martyrdom narrative was developed from the hidden (and ultimately embarrassing) details of the circumstances of Peter I’s death in the exact same locale 250 years later32.

The Translatio of the Relics of St. Mark from Alexandria

It is worth revisiting the account of a visitor to Alexandria who testifies to seeing both body and throne residing in the Boucolia church just before the Venetian plunder. Bishop Arculf dictated an account of his travels throughout the Holy Land, Egypt and to Adamnan, abbot of Iona on his return voyage home. He expressly states that in eastern part of Alexandria to the right of the Rosetta Gate (i.e. toward the sea) “there is a large church in which St. Mark is interred. The body is buried in the eastern part of the church, before the altar with a memoria of squared marble over it.”33 Arculf’s original visit to

30 Meinardus, Two Thousand Years, 32. 31 Ibid. 32 One may entertain a number of possible explanations here. the Syrian’s testimony that St. Mark was actually buried in Paneas (modern in the Golan Heights) is only possibility. 33 (Hist. Eccles. Angl., V, 15): “cujus corpus in orientali parte ejusdem ecclesiæ ante altare humatum est, memoria superposita de quadrato marmore facta.” (Bede, On the Seven Wonders of the World, XVIII). The equivalent Latin in the surviving manuscripts of Adamnan reads (Pomialovsky, Arculfi relatio scripta ab Adamnano):

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Alexandria must have occurred in 680 C.E. His description of a monu- ment or memorial to St. Mark of squared marble standing above the buried body assumed to be that of the Evangelist is very significant for our purposes. It is difficult to imagine a more perfect description of the Cattedra in Venice. It is also noteworthy that by the time Bernard the Wise visits Alexan- dria in 869 the Italians seem to have cleared the building of any relics related to St. Mark — “outside the eastern gate of the city is the monas- tery of the saint [Mark] with the church in which he was formerly reposed. But the Venetians coming there obtained his body by stealth and carrying it on shipboard sailed home with it.”34 We should not be at all surprised that Bernard fails to mention the stealing of the “memoria of squared marble.” The translation of the St. Mark’s corpse was with- out a doubt the story that everyone in Europe was interested in. Yet it is hard to deny how important the throne must have been to those carrying out the original plunder of the Alexandrian tomb. As van Lohuizen-Mulder notes the original Italian grave robbers would have needed to bring back something to prove the identity of the stolen corpse. She puts forward a scenario where “the Venetians planned … to steal the relics of St. Mark i.e. in the first place the most important relic the body of St. Mark … Whether it was intended before- hand or not, it can easily be imagined that the two Venetians ‘visiting’ Alexandria and seeing the cathedra in the same church as the tomb of St. Mark took it with them together with the body knowing that it would be important for Venice also to possess a secondary Marcan relic.” (p. 175) Indeed we can take matters one step further. If the Venetians brought back a body WITHOUT the throne it would be difficult for them to prove that the dead person was really St. Mark. After all it really could have been anyone’s corpse. The Venetians must have seen the same set up as Arculf — the throne functioning as a memoria for the person buried below. Indeed this is likely how the body of Peter I was misidentified in the first place. There must have been an impetus to consolidate all the dead Patriarchs under one roof as the fifth century neared. As the body was being exhumed from

cuius sepulcrum ante altere in oriental eiusdem quadrangule loco ecclesie, memoria superposita marmoreis lapidibus constructa. On the difficulty of Adamnan’s surviving manuscript MacPherson De Loc 1895. Meinardus, Two Thousand Years, 31 cites the ver- sion in Bede as do most others (Butler, The Arab Conquest, 372) owing to accuracy in locating the actual church of St. Mark. 34 Palestine Pilgrims Text Society vol. iii p. 5 as cited by Butler, The Arab Conquest, 372.

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its original resting place a misconception developed about its identity based on the presence of the ‘throne of St. Mark’ in the tomb. We must strongly suspect that at least some of the officials in the Church knew that this wasn’t really the Evangelist’s body as information about its real iden- tity somehow makes its way to Cyril III. Severus of Al-{Ashmunein makes clear that this same body remained buried under the rubble of the fifth century Basilica and transferred to the newly completed church in the immediate aftermath of the Muslim conquest — the one visited by Arculf and which Venetians ultimately robbed a century and half later35. To this end we can begin to see that the throne was undoubtedly caus- ing Peter to be mistaken for Mark every step along the way. This rela- tionship would certainly continue as both objects passed into the hands of owners across the Mediterranean. Indeed we can imagine that as the old mummified body was undoubtedly taken to the leading officials in Venice it was the Hebrew inscription prominently displayed on the front of the accompanying throne which effectively certified its identity: It reads (Pl. 3, Fig. 1):

eirdnskla shslgnav aqrm[b*wvm] [M W S * B] M R Q { W { N G L S T S { L K S N D R Y H The See of Mark(os), Evangelist of Alexandria36

As such no one should doubt the value of the throne any longer. The Cattedra was absolutely necessary to confirm to the authorities in Venice that the sailors had really ‘rescued’ the remains of the Evangelist from the Muslim rulers of Egypt. Yet as we shall soon see, those who actually saw the remains of the person inside the coffin weren’t so sure this really was St. Mark. Shortly after their glorious reception in front of the leading men of Venice, both body and throne effectively disappear in the crypts below the newly built Basilica di San Marco. Was this because the authorities feared the idea of someone stealing the relics away from them as van Lohuizen-Mulder suggests or was it because they wanted to prevent anyone from viewing the body of their fourth century Patriarch? There

35 Severus of Al-{Ashmunein, Homelie sur St. Marc, apotre et evangeliste, p. 61 f. 36 For a detailed discussion of the inscription see my forthcoming monograph The Inscription and Iconography of the Cattedra di San Marco with Rory Boid of Monash University Melbourne. All translations hitherto have identified the first words as saying that the throne belonged to St. Mark which is for the purposes of this argument the same thing. In the meantime a general overview of the topic is available in my Real Messiah: The Throne of St. Mark, 166-197.

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is no clear cut answer here. Our only hope of finding out whether this body really belonged to Peter I lays in uncovering some of the circum- stances of the actual plunder in the Church of St. Mark. Of course here again we face an almost insurmountable obstacle as “the famous Venetian merchants who the body of St. Mark in Alexandria were there in violation of an edict prohibiting trade of any kind with Muslim ports.”37 Even with this difficulty I think we can attempt to reconstruct the most likely scenario for the translatio. The Venetian undoubtedly learned the location of the sacred relics from an informant in Alexandria and arranged to plunder the Church of St. Mark and bribe local officials to let them leave the harbour. It would seem at first glance that this is about as far as we can go with piecing the story of how the relics were stolen from Alexandria. Yet there is one other precious testimonial which gets often overlooked in any discussion of the translatio story. A nineteenth century Venetian aristocrat named Leonardo Manin was chosen to be part of a select group of people who had the unique privilege to view the original con- tents of the coffin of St. Mark38. Apparently the body of St. Mark had been so well hidden by previous generations that it became lost and only recently ‘rediscovered’ in the crypts beneath the Basilica in Manin’s day39. He managed to write down a detailed account of everything that he saw as well as the reactions of the other eyewitnesses to these discov- eries. So it is that we see from his journal entry for May 9th 1811 Manin provides a description of a skull and cranial bones separated from a mostly intact skeleton40. In short a situation which mirrors exactly what

37 Madden, , 121. The edict was lifted in the 11th or 12th centuries. 38 Manin, Memorie storico-critiche. 39 Manin provides a number of proofs that the body he examined was the original brought back from Alexandria in the ninth century. Manin describes a lead tablet, found accompanying the remains, which commemorated their installation in the crypt, when the current Basilica was constructed in 1094 A.D. Manin also found coins in the coffin from “the Emperor Henry II which were undoubtedly coined at Venice by order of the senate in honor of the Emperor’s pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Mark when on his way to Milan for his coronation as king of Italy, 1004. In the field a cross with a dot on each of its an- gles and inscribed after a crosslet, ENRICVS.IMP.+ (Enricus Imperator). Reverse: the bust of St. Mark, inscribed S.MARCVS.VEN.” There were also a number of other coins from the same period from Milan and Lucca. (The Numismatic Journal John Yonge Akerman, vol. II, June 1837 - 1838, p. 209). 40 Manin, Memorie storico-critiche, 42, para 2 “… and attentively extracted the sa- cred corpse consisting of a Cranium and various bones…”, p. 45, para 2 (re-interment beneath the high altar on 30th Sept. 1811) “… he himself opened the same chest and he observed the sacred corpse consisting of a skull, cranial bones, and partial bones of one skeleton already put back between cotton. In the same casket were shut up two tins/boxes containing ashes produced from the bones and from perished shrouds…”40 I won’t dwell

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we would have expected if we were looking at a preservation of Peter I’s corpse. A great deal of other fascinating information emerges which tends to confirm the body as being that of a fourth century Patriarch. For instance Manin notes that the whole body was wrapped in a dark red mantle; exactly the kind of cloak that Popes in Alexandria and Rome wear on formal occasions41. Yet the biggest bombshell of all came when Manin and his group noticed a small box inside of the coffin next to the severed head: On the left, near the place of the Evangelist’s head, a round wooden box was found, with a lid in the shape of a cyma reversa (S-shaped moulding in classical architecture) minutely decorated with drawings, but plain and unadorned in its other parts. This box contained some relics wrapped in a silk cloth, more substantial than the others, and, scattered among them, there were ancient silver coins. At first sight it was thought that these relics were some specially precious part of the sacred body itself that time had reduced to dust, of a colour partly ashen-grey and partly dark blood-red; the presence of the coins seemed to show that this was true, and that this part of the sacred body, whichever it was, had been made an object of special devotion. But when the box was more thoroughly observed, some words could be seen in its middle, which, read and examined by signor Counsellor Cavalier Abbot Morelli, late royal librarian, were interpreted by him as AGIOS ANTONIOS, that is sanctus Antonius (Saint Anthony). Since this saint was particularly famous in Egypt, one could infer that the relics contained in the case belonged to him and had been directly trans- ferred from Egypt together with Saint Mark’s and that this wooden vase too, whatever it was, had come from Alexandria. This argument was dis- puted by some malevolent people, who took this discovery as a pretext for discrediting the others, and claimed that it was very difficult to reconcile the idea of Saint Mark with what the box suggested. Manin acknowledges that those who were present couldn’t believe that this corpse could be that of the first century Evangelist. They seemed to upon describing them in detail, but I’ll confine myself to saying that those present saw a head furnished with its teeth, the principal bones which form the skeleton of a man, completely bare and dry, besides many little bits already pulverised/smashed and many ashes. The chest was internally lined by a red mantle, and the holy relics were covered by another hand-weave of a lighter colour and of a greater solidity than veil/shroud, the which was by the humidity and by the time become adhered to the saintly bones, almost forming a parcel Manin, Memorie storico-critiche, 23, 24. 41 Manin, Memorie storico-critiche, 23, 24 “… those present saw a head furnished with its teeth, the principal bones which form the skeleton of a man, completely bare and dry, besides many little bits already pulverised/smashed and many ashes. The chest was internally lined by a red mantle, and the holy relics were covered by another hand-weave of a lighter colour and of a greater solidity than veil/shroud, the which was by the humid- ity and by the time become adhered to the saintly bones, almost forming a parcel.”

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recognize at once that they were staring at a decapitated fourth century Patriarch. Yet if we leave the issues related to Peter I for a moment we should also see that the description of what was contained in this coffin repre- sents something of a snapshot if you will of the original tomb robbery. The appearance of the box of St. Antony is consistent with the idea that the body of St. Mark lay in a cut tomb where the remains of a number of other Alexandrian were also found. The sailors presumably grabbed whatever they could from the loculi that were nearby. Yet there is another intriguing possibility which might suggest that the box was taken in order to help confirm the identity of a second body stolen at the same time as that of Peter I. Indeed it is a mostly unreported fact that Athanasius the 20th Patriarch of Alexandria, in circumstances that are never fully explained, ends up residing in the Church of Santa Croce just across the canal from the Basilica di San Marco42. As such we might consider the possibility now that in fact not only were two bodies were stolen from Alexandria but two memoria taken that stood above their burial sites in the Church of St. Mark. In 1968 at least some of the relics of ‘St. Mark’ were returned to Alexandria. The official request from the Coptic Church seems to ac- knowledge that they never had the true head of the Apostle. Meinardus notes that “on March 29. 1967 it was announced in that once these relics were returned, they would bury the head of the evangelist together with the relics of the forty two popes of the Coptic Church in the (new) Cathedral of Saint Mark in Alexandria.”43 The specific wording of the original Coptic request is quite telling noting that it was their desire to “join the head with the body of the Evangelist (i.e. his congregation in Alexandria) as a tribute to the African Church.” It was only with the return of the head of St. Mark that the new Cathedral in downtown Alex- andria was sufficiently sanctified. We then see that in 1973, the relics of

42 Smith, Dictionary, 202. As with the translatio of St. Mark there is a claim that the body really belongs to Athanasius I patriarch of Constantinople and that his body was se- cretly transported to Venice in 1454, where it was taken to be the body of St. Athanasius the Great of Alexandria.” (Majeska, Russian Travellers, 273) but the arguments are highly dubious and sound suspiciously similar to the Heraclius story (i.e. that relics were stolen to Venice at the twilight before Islamic conquest). It is noteworthy that the Church of Santa Croce was first established in the 9th century at virtually the same time as the first Basilica di San Marco. 43 Meinardus, Two Thousand Years, 33.

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Athanasius were also returned44. Both now reside in the newly built church. As such we can begin to postulate that when the bodies were origi- nally taken the throne of St. Mark was used to prove the identity of the one body and the box which had the name ‘St. Antony’ written on it would have been used to prove authenticate the other. Athanasius’ rela- tionship with the very popular St. Antony was well known the world over. In the end we must imagine that the Venetians were more excited about the arrival of ‘St. Mark’ than his lesser known companion. As St. Athanasius never elicited much excitement among the local populace there wasn’t much of a need to prove his identity and the wooden box remained with the body of St. Mark. So we should ask ourselves, given the trade restrictions between the Christian world and Muslim ports like Alexandria down through to the twelfth century whether it is really all that likely that the two saints made their way to Venice entirely independent of one another. It is again very interesting that we see in the legends associated with the so-called translatio make explicit that there were TWO Venetian ships that happened to be docked in the Alexandrian harbor. Indeed the famous characters of Buono of Malamocco and Rustico of Torcello are always identified as captains of separate vessels45. Why would it be necessary to develop a legend were two ships were needed to transport one body? Moreover the Venetian tradition also seems to confirm that the body of St. Mark was taken from a martyrium where a number of saints were laid to rest as there is explicit mention of them “substituting the body of St. Claudian” for St. Mark so that “they prevented the Christian devo- tees from perceiving the removal of the more holy relic.”46

44 McKenzie, The Architecture, 241. 45 JBAA 7 (1853), 261. 46 While Meinardus denies the existence of a St. Claudian the Coptic Encyclopedia (vol. 2) mentions an St. whose feast day was the 19th Amshir and who is known from various documents including the typica of Dayr Anba Shinudah, known as the White Monastery (Insinger, 38c-d, Pleyte and Boeser, 1897, p. 199; Oxford, Bodleian Hunt. 3); a colophon (National Library, Paris, Coptic 129/19, fo1. 55v, published by Van Lantschoot, 1929, no. 81), which indicates that a church was dedicated to him conjointly with Seth, abbot of the monastery situated to the south of the White Monastery; and the life of Thomas of Jinjif (National Library, Paris, Arabic 263, fo1. 113). He is absent from the Coptic Synaxarion but his name is mentioned in the calendar of the White Monastery. We know only that he was a count (Oxford, Bodleian Hunt. 3) and a contemporary of Shenute. His mention indicates that were venerated equally with cenobites by the monks of the White Monastery and that consequently the anchorite life was recog- nized even in Pachomian cenobitism.

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The Cattedra as Alexandrian Episcopal Throne

No study of the Cattedra has ever seriously doubted that it was originally manufactured in Alexandria. There are two main theories as to how the object made its way to Venice van Lohuizen-Mulder being the first to suggest that the throne was taken along with the body presumed to be St. Mark during the Venetian ‘operation’ of 828 C.E. Opinions also differ as to what the function of the Cattedra was in Alexandria. Grabar identified the object as a sixth century reliquary — an ornamental con- tainer to hold relics associated with St. Mark — or in essence a memoria. Those who reject Grabar’s thesis generally follow Secchi’s suggestion that the Cattedra was an Alexandrian Episcopal Throne. The inscription clearly supports this identification but Grabar’s unfounded doubts about the engraving (he suggests that after the object was brought from Alexandria the Venetians assembled some Jews from the city’s ghetto to add some mystical import to the relic!) have influenced almost all subsequent studies of the throne47. (Pl. 3, Fig. 2)

47 Grabar tells us he happened to ask Février to translate the text because he had an office just down the passage-way at the Sorbonne. Février’s specialisation was Punic epigraphy. Neither Grabar nor Février took the presence of Hebrew letters seriously and so the Punic epigraphist came up with this: “The Throne of Marco Evangelist, and don- keys have dedicated it.” The transcription’s inadequacy by any of academic integ- rity or even sanity must be demonstrated so it can be forgotten. A large part of Février’s justification of a late dating was the bizarreness of his reconstruction. He assumed a bizarre reading because he thought the inscription to be a mediaeval attempt at giving a false impression of antiquity. This circular thinking has infected all later work, including the catalogues. To make the reconstruction, the wrong Hebrew word for donkeys was as- sumed, showing absence of feeling for the language. The object pronoun suffix had to be assumed to be feminine gender, even though moshav is a masculine noun, a fact Février didn’t notice. They developed a scenario whereby the Venetian authorities decided to add something in order to give the throne a mystical aura, so they asked local Jews to write something in Hebrew. The Jews took the opportunity to write something disparaging about the throne and its owners, but thought they had better put the words in mirror-writ- ing so no-one could read what they had written. We’re not making this up. Février’s fur- ther argument for a mediaeval dating for the inscription from its spelling of Mark’s name as Mem Resh Qof Vav, as if it were the Italian Marco, is recklessly careless. The actual letters are clearly MRCAO [Mem Resh Qof Alef Vav]. For this purpose, Février ignored the Alef, even though it is one of the clearest letters in the inscription. The Alef and the Vav are the beginning of the next word, ‘Evangelistes.’ Yet Février found the word Evangelistes in the inscription, starting with the letters Alef Vav. So first the Alef had to vanish so the Vav could be read as the end of the name Marco. Then the Alef that had been made to vanish had to come back and become the first letter of Evangelistes, and the Vav that had been at the end of Marco had to be used again as the second letter of Evangelistes, after the Alef that had vanished before and was back again. In the cata- logues, the reading “donkeys” is dropped, but Février’s misreading of Alexandria as “they dedicated it” has been kept, along with the mutually incompatible Marco and Evangelistes. This reading “they dedicated it” is NDRWH. The spelling of Alexandria is

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In the end there is no need for us to decide between identifying the Cattedra as being either a memoria or a functioning Episcopal chair. Secchi for instance argues on behalf of the latter interpretation while at the same time frequently referring to the object as a functioning memoria for the Italian people. (p. 12) Indeed when we really think about it the object would have still functioned as a ‘memorial’ or monu- ment to St. Mark while it was used by subsequent Patriarchs as an Epis- copal chair. In other words, the two are certainly not mutually exclusive concepts. The real question we have to consider is whether or not the Cattedra originally functioned as an Episcopal chair. In other words was there a period in time when it stopped being used by the of Alexandria as a functioning synthronos and reverted to simply being a memoria? If this was the chair that was buried with Peter I then clearly the first part of the question has already been answered — i.e. yes, there was a time when the Cattedra stopped being used as a functioning Epis- copal chair. The next part of the question is answered by our identifica- tion of the Cattedra with the memoria in Arculf’s report. If our working hypothesis holds up we should expect that when it was developed into a memoria in the time of Theophilus. However it has to be recognized that we have no information about the throne until the time of Arculf. Yet for the moment let’s address what about the Cattedra made Arculf, Grabar and generations of Christians around the time of the Islamic conquest to think it wasn’t a functioning Episcopal chair. The an- swer would be immediately apparent to anyone who has actually seen the throne in its natural setting in Venice. The relic is a small — almost miniature — throne. As Donald MacGillivray Nicol notes, it was “more likely to have been a reliquary than a chair, unless its incumbent was a dwarf.”48 Our inherited presuppositions tell us that thrones are supposed to be impressive objects. This relic seems at first glance to be too small to seat a ‘regular size’ adult however Andrea Bianchini the director of the Basilica di San Marco vehemently disagrees with this assessment. He

3LKSNDRYH. Février has read the second-last letter, Yod, as Vav. He has done this be- cause he had no experience in Hebrew epigraphy. Punic epigraphy, yes. If Février had had extensive acquaintance with old inscriptions or mss., he would have known that the form of Yod was once bigger, so that it looked very much like a printed Vav. This is why Secchi and Le Hir took the Yod as part of a Mem. Now this apparently minor mistake leads to the removal of the word Alexandria from the inscription, and the inscription be- comes pointless, regardless of whether the donkeys are brought in or not. I'm grateful to Prof. Boid's input and expertise for this summary. 48 MacGillivray Nicol, Byzantium and Venice, 7.

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emphatically disputes Nicol’s conclusions pointing to the fact that the di- mensions of the Cattedra exactly conform to a standard sitting chair (the seat is identified by Dorigo as being 55 cm wide and 53 cm deep)49. Be that as it may it is impossible for anyone who has ever seen the throne in Venice to shake the feeling that the chair was indeed designed for a little child50. While the seat portion might have typical dimensions you might associate with furniture in your home, no one in their right mind would want to sit in that same ‘standard sitting chair’ chair with constricting alabaster armrests. There can be no doubt that this would be an uncomfortable place to sit for long hours unless of course that indi- vidual was small or thin like the little child at the heart of the early Alexandrian tradition. As such the diminutive size of the Cattedra might be explained as a memoria to St. Mark’s discipleship as a child. This understanding is clearly reflected in Peter’s vision of Mark as a twelve year old child in the Passio Petri where the Evangelist implores him to choose the right candidate “to succeed you in shepherding my church on behalf of which I became like a child [Matt 18:3-5]51 and died, although I live always.” This boy is later described as being “clothed with a linen tunic divided into two parts, from the neck to the feet, and holding in his two hands the rents of the tunic, he applied them to his breast to cover his nudity.” This is clearly a development of the traditional Alexandrian identification of Mark as the naked child dressed in only a linen cloth

49 See my Real Messiah, 167. 50 Ibid. 51 Origen does offer us an interesting suggestion for how an ‘example of a little child’ might have been developed as a central metaphor in the contemporary Alexandrian church. One can easily read Origen’s discussion (Comm. Matt 13:18) of the phrase ‘be like this little child’ [Matt 18:3] as being ultimately connected with the institution of the Alexandrian Papacy especially Origen’s inference that “he, therefore, who has humbled himself more than all those who have humbled themselves in imitation of that little child, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. For there are many who are willing to humble themselves as that little child; but the man, who in every respect has become like to the little child who humbled himself, in the name of Jesus — especially in Jesus Himself, — in reality, would be found to be he who is named greater than all in the kingdom of heaven.” (Schaff/Wace, The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers). Thus Origen is no longer talking about Jesus or the child but someone imitating or recognized as a ‘likeness’ of that chosen child. Origen was making this bold interpretation Dionysius was sitting in our throne of St. Mark (c. 255 C.E. Markus N.A. Bockmuehl, The Written , p. 286). Does this mean that he — Dionysius — would also have been viewed as one who ‘hum- bled himself more than all those who have humbled themselves in imitation of that little child’ and thus ‘the greatest in the kingdom of heaven’? We should perhaps turn around this question and ask — if not the Papa who would Origen and his contemporaries have viewed as ‘the greatest in the kingdom’? Origen does infer the child was John at the start of the discussion (ibid:14). The Coptic tradition consistently identifies Mark’s original name as ‘John’ (Severus Homelie sur St. Mark).

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at the time of Jesus arrest. [:52] The idea that Mark was just a boy during Jesus’ ministry is still reflected in various Orthodox hymns including “from your childhood the light of truth enlightened you, O Mark, and you loved the labor of the Savior.”52 In this way, if we discount the idea that St. Mark ever visited Alexan- dria then the chair was originally conceived as a memoria to the original child of Jesus. If it is acknowledged that there actually was a historical visit by the apostle to Alexandria the Coptic tradition infers that it was done by a child of eight to fifteen years of age53. Van Lohuizen-Mulder argues that the only reason why the chair looks small is because it was originally placed on a raised platform. (p. 167) Yet as I argue elsewhere the throne’s iconography makes it absolutely certain that it was originally designed for a ‘sprout.’54 This Alexandrian Episcopal chair clearly had a great influence over the contemporary Egyptian Church. Van Lohuizen-Mulder points to something of a trend in Coptic Christianity, citing the fact that the Cattedra is strongly reminiscent of a fifth-century stone pulpit chair from the monastery of Jeremias at Saqqara. Not only does it show the same kind of disc at its summit “the chair in Venice and that from Saqqara have more or less the same measurements, the seat of Saqqara, which was definitely used to sit on.” Indeed van Lohuizen-Mulder goes one step further and adds that “this is a very important fact because up to now most scholars have said that the chair is really too small to sit on and this has led them to conclude that it could not serve as a seat. But the Saqqara chair shows … that it is perfectly possible that the cathedra in Venice was made as a real throne.” (p. 167) Van Lohuizen-Mulder also sees proof from the seat portion of the throne that a great number of individuals sat on the object a great number of times. She notes that: the cathedra in Venice was meant for actual use as a chair, the fact that seat and the arm rests have an unmistakable shiny patina which the other parts do not show. The patina was apparently caused by cushions and the robes, sleeves and hands of the persons who were once seated on the throne. ( ibid)

52 Toparion, Tone 4. 53 Severus places Mark’s birth at 31 C.E. while Shenouda dates his visit to Alexandria in 43 C.E. Severus, Homelie sur St. Mark, p. 22: “Or Jean, autrement dit Marc, était âgé de trois ans, à l'époque où Notre-Seigneur Jésus-Christ fut crucifié, c'est-à-dire la trente- quatrième année de sa tres santé Incarnation.” Interestingly Severus’ reconstruction of Mark’s visit to Alexandria seems to reflect contact with the Marcionite canon acknowledging Paul as having visited Alexandria before Mark “Avant lui, il est vrai, l'apôtre saint Paul avait paru dans Alexandrie, où il avait prêché la foi nouvelle.” (p. 32) 54 See my discussion of this theme in the Real Messiah, 187 f.

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As such there is little reason for us to doubt that the Cattedra di San Marco was once used by the Alexandria Church as an Episcopal Throne. The fact that it might have lost this function in the newly rebuilt Church of St. Mark does not prove that it never had this role. As we will demon- strate in our examination of the Passio Petri tradition, we know of a serious conflict arising in the fourth century Church of St. Mark as to whether its synthronos was meant to be used as a chair or a memoria. Indeed the congregation at martyrium was adamant that the sixteen Patriarchs who preceded Peter had all sat in the throne each Sunday since the beginning of Christianity in Alexandria. If we give the claims of Peter’s opponents the benefit of the doubt and we at least entertain the idea that there was a throne of St. Mark which was established by Demetrius and used by the Patriarchs Heraclas through Theonas (231-300 C.E.) we have the groundwork for identifying our Cattedra with that Episcopal chair. For while we have tentatively es- tablished that the Venetians stole both the Cattedra and the body identi- fied as belonging to St. Mark we have absolutely no evidence that this chair was ever sat on in the period immediately following the Islamic conquest or indeed dating back to the time of Cyrus. The only period that we hear of a single throne of St. Mark being used to seat a continuous stream of Patriarchs is in the Passio Petri tradition and that chair was clearly occultated for a time being buried with Peter in the graveyard near the Church of Theonas. The only period that could account for the rubbing marks on the Cattedra is the line of Patriarchs that begins with Demetrius and ends with Achillas (Peter did not sit on the throne). There is an unmistakable sense now that the latest possible date that the throne could have been used as a functioning synthronos was around 311 C.E. The various traditions which preserve the details of Peter I’s martyrdom make clear that he was buried with the original throne of Alexandria. In the years which immediately follow Peter’s death the center of Christianity (at least for the Orthodox Party) moved to the main city Alexandria and away from the Boucolia. In the first half of the fifth century a new Basilica of St. Mark was consecrated by Cyril to replace the one in the Boucolia and this church was in turn destroyed by the Arabs in the middle of the seventh century55. We do not hear about the throne in this period. All that is clear for us now is that by the time the new Church of St. Mark was established in the early Islamic period both throne and

55 Meinardus, Two Thousand Years, 144.

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corpse were presented essentially as a unit — the one confirming the identity of the other. It is worth noting that our Cattedra has been identi- fied as having been modified in a later period by a number of Italian scholars56. They have noted that the top of the throne was deliberately cut, this piece was removed and reworked and reset in order to establish the current design of an Orthodox cross and the image of four Evange- lists (Matthew and Mark on the front, Luke and John on the back). It is impossible to say what appeared here originally but one can at least see signs of a ‘resurrection’ of the throne and an ‘updating’ of its iconogra- phy to make it appear more like an Orthodox memoria.

A Historical Background for Peter's Martyrdom

We shall now proceed to demonstrate that our Cattedra is the Episcopal throne of St. Mark mentioned in the Passio Petri. We are by no means the first make this connection. Secchi rhapsodizes that fu dunque la cattedra a noi visibile tuttora nel Tesoro marciano quella stessa, che il patriarca e martire alessandrino Pietro mirò posseduta e custodita da virtu divina. (p. 28) Yet is Secchi correct? In order to put his claims to the test we will have to critically examine the Passio Petri and related texts and see if his enthusiasm is justified. We begin our examination by acknowledging that through first three quarters of the Passio Petri there isn’t so much as a mention of the throne of St. Mark. The story begins with a wicked Emperor Diocletian giving orders to decapitate Peter the Alexandrian Patriarch57. (1). Of course it is worth noting how implausible this suggestion is. Diocletian was no longer in office in 311 having retired to his homeland in Dalma- tia six years earlier never to assume office again. If we overlook this little difficulty we have the next implausibility to deal with — Peter is imprisoned but the tribunes apparently don’t have the key to his cell door. They have to secretly tap on the wall and employ stonecutters to cut a hole through the wall to the very place he tapped back to them in order to release the Patriarch from jail. (10) Why all this confusion? It is said that there were too many Christians surrounding the prison so that tribunes couldn’t kill him in his cell. (4)

56 Bettini, intro ex. cat. Venezia e Bisanzio, 46; cf. Dorigo, “La cosidetta cattedra di San Marco”, 10. 57 The numbered sections which appear here and below in brackets ( ) are supplied by Devos. The sections of the English translation which follows are from Vivian, St. Peter of Alexandria, 70-78.

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Be that as it may it becomes more implausible still to see that once the tribunes get their hands on Peter they march him down a road that leads directly to the martyrium of St. Mark on a Sunday in his pallium58. (11) Fancy finding Christians at their holiest shrine on the Lord’s day! When they arrive at the martyrium the story even becomes more implausible still. These same tribunes who didn’t want to kill Peter at the prison be- cause there were too many Christians around somehow agree to let him take a break from his death march and visit with St. Mark in his shrine. Not surprisingly Peter attracts the attention of at least two Christian walking down the street. He calls them over to ‘help out’ with his mar- tyrdom and in due course Peter quite literally directs the tribunes as to the best way to kill him. (14) As soon as the beheading occurs the tribunes disappear and the congregation discovers the decapitated martyr in the company of the two Christians initially called over from the side of the road. The throne of St. Mark is only introduced into the narrative after Peter has already been beheaded. (17) As the faithful begin to file into the Church of St. Mark they discover their Patriarch has been killed in the neighbouring martyrium. (15) So it is that they end up doing what is natural and stuff his corpse into the Episcopal Chair before carrying on with the liturgy. (18) When the service ended the crowd buries Peter with the throne59. A number of attempts have been made to rescue a ‘historical kernel’ from this bizarre narrative. Yet few of them have taken into account Haas’ observation that the martyrium of St. Mark and the whole Boucolia region was very much the stronghold of those who resisted the efforts of the Orthodox party. As such it is not difficult to see the so-called ‘Meletians’ and ‘Arians’ could better be identified as ‘Bouco- lians’ and their common cause was to defend traditional culture from the perceived ‘meddling’ of outsiders60. Nevertheless the Meletian epithet ‘Martyr Church’ is a more than satisfactory substitute as all the martyrs

58 While the text doesn’t identify the location of the prison where Peter was being kept it is difficult to imagine that it was in the Boucolia. The most likely place would be somewhere in the heart of the main city of Alexandria. As such we have to imagine that the tribunes marched the Patriarch through the main city and then along the Canopic Way then through the Eastern Gate and then down one of two roads towards the seashore and the Church of St. Mark. Indeed when you take the physical topography of Alexandria the narrative is utterly senseless. The tribunes would have to have set out to kill Peter at the holiest shrine in Egyptian Christianity on the holiest day of the week for Christians! 60 This is what appears in the Coptic history of Severus p. 400: “And they took him to the church, and placed him there on the synthronus, until the celebration of the liturgy. And, when the liturgy had been performed, they buried him with the fathers.”

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of Egypt of any notoriety were buried in the environs of the Boucolia anyway61. The information here is so fragmentary it is difficult to gain a firm sense of what was going on beyond the walls of Alexandria except that it was irreconcilably hostile to the Orthodox camp. That was the of the martyrium is pregnant with possibilities62. Did it mean that the throne of St. Mark was his bishop’s chair? Moreover Peter had just dismissed Meletius from sitting in the throne of St. Mark in the months, weeks or even days leading up to his martyrdom63. Did this circumstance factor in his martyrdom? Well let’s look at what the facts tell us about the Martyr Church before the 25th of November, 311 C.E. Meletius clearly sat on the throne of St. Mark during Peter’s absence and ordained not only in Egypt but (Aelia). Gaza and Eleutheropolis64. Yet Telfer also points out something very significant from the earliest manuscripts related to the Passio Petri — “Meletius” is identified as the name of “the tribune charged with Peter’s execution in the original narrative”!65 It is not difficult to see however that even this explicit identification of Meletius leading the operation to ‘take out’ Peter becomes more diluted the more the narrative becomes moulded after the Passion of Christ. While Meletius is no longer identified as the lead tribune, a likening of Meletius’ actions in the period to the soldiers who killed Christ remains. We read for instance in the later Latin trans- lation of Anastasius that “Meletius — in mind and name most black — was made the schismatical bishop of the city of Lycopolis, doing many things against the rule of the canons, and surpassing even the bloody soldiery in cruelty who, at the time of the Lord's Passion, feared to rend His coat.”66 [emphasis mine] The allusion to the ‘dividing’ of Peter’s

61 Williams, Arius Heresy and Tradition, 223: “In Alexandria he [Arius] represented not only a conservative theology, but also a conservative understanding of his presbyteral role vis-a-vis the bishop, and a traditional Alexandrian confidence in the authority of the inspired contemplative and ascetic teacher.” 62 Epiphanius, Against Heresies, 68,3. 63 Ibid. 69.1-2; cf. 68.4. 64 Schaff, History of the Christian Church, II, Section 58 on “Church ” Alexander writes only a few years later that Meletius “wished to seize the archbishopic. Now he saw an opportunity while Abba Peter was in flight and went to Alexandria and sat on the (Episcopal chair)… Peter returned to Alexandria and threw Meletius out.” (Vivian, St. Peter of Alexandria, 83). 65 Epiphanius, Against Heresies, 68:3.8. 66 Telfer, St. Peter of Alexandria, 120 Peter is also made to refer to Meletius in the following manner “quomodo Meletius Christianorum gregem ab ecclesia separavit, pro quo Dei filius animam suam posuit et effudit sanguine; adversus quem Meletius impie repugnans, sanctos episcopos ac religiosos viros in carcerem claudebat ac tribulabat, cogens eos praevaricari.”

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garments [Matt 27:35; John 19:23] remains a fixture in ALL references to Meletius in the fourth century (even Epiphanius’ which mentions Peter and Meletius being imprisoned together but no specific details of the martyrdom). The idea that ‘tribunes’ were responsible for Peter’s death only developed from this allegory — viz. an original ‘understand- ing’ which only likened Meletius to the soldiers who killed Christ. In other words the Seventeenth Patriarch was never really executed by tribunes. Meletius’ alleged involvement in undermining Peter’s influ- ence over the Church was the kernel of truth behind the development of the familiar story we now see represented in the Passio Petri narrative. Indeed while the Orthodox literature likes to emphasize that Meletius essentially split the Alexandrian Church into two at this time the ‘Martyr Church’ undoubtedly saw matters in a slightly different way. They saw themselves as facing a concerted effort to transform their church into something more in line with the Christian communities outside of Egpyt. This is reflected in Philostorgius’ portrait of Alexander the nineteenth Patriarch of Alexandria actively conspiring with Constantine‘s hench- man Hosius of Cordoba67. Who is the man who is left in the cold as result of these plots? The man vested with the traditional authority of the martyrium of St. Mark in the Boucolia — viz. Arius. Alexander’s protégé Athanasius only accelerated this transformational process effectively exploiting traditional regional rivalries in Alexandria. In his lifetime we see the ecclesiastic tradition firmly established on the ‘wrong side’ of the walls of Alexandria — i.e. in the traditional Greek quarters of the city while his enemies clung to the martyrium as the source for their authority. The Church of St. Mark becomes the virtual epicentre of the anti-Orthodox movement in Egypt68. While it must be acknowledged that there are no explicit statements confirming that the both the Meletian and Arian traditions were specifically ‘Markan,’ Meletius and Arius’ relationship with the throne and the martyrium of St. Mark and the Boucolia circumvents the need to develop that argu- ment. The martyrium was the most important shrine in Egyptian Christi- anity. Eutychius tells us that the occupant of the throne of St. Mark was the only ‘bishop’ for all of Egypt down through to the dawn of the third century69. At the same time the martyrium of the Evangelist was the one and only church of any notoriety in Egypt until Peter’s time70. A tradition

67 Ante-Nicene Christian Library. Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325. Edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson. Vol. 14, 273, 274. 68 Philostorgius Book 1.7, 7a, 9a (cf. Amidon, Philostorgius, 7 f.). 69 Haas, Alexandria in Late Antiquity, 272. 70 Eutychius, Annales (Arab.) Corp. Script. Or. 50.93 ed. Cheikho; Migne Gr., vol. 3,982.

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associated with Peter says that before the 17th Patriarch built the church of Theonas to give Christians an alternative to congregating in caves!71 As long as scholarship fails to recognize the significance of the Boucolia martyrium in earliest Egyptian Christianity Alexander and Athanasius’ claims to represent the ‘continuation’ of the ‘most ancient ’ will essentially go unchallenged. The truth is only made manifest when we look carefully and see how these men were so physically alienated from the original martyrium — the place where all the saints of the early Church were buried and venerated72. This reality is clearly reflected in ’ Praise of Athanasius (c. 380?) where he is pictured being: 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 name73. Gregory’s statements make explicit what often gets overlooked in schol- arship — both Alexander and Athanasius were ruling Alexandria away from the tradition seat of authority. They might have been on the right side of history, but as noted earlier, they were certainly on the wrong side of the walls of Alexandria to claim ‘continuity’ with the traditional seat of authority in Egyptian Christianity.

The Real Circumstances of Peter's Death

So why did Alexander and Athanasius abandon the Boucolia? Most interpretations choose to accent the positive — i.e. that in essence

71 McKenzie, The Architecture, 240; Severus, History of the Coptic Patriarchs, 400. 72 Severus, History of the Coptic Patriarchs, 107. 73 Origen, De Principiis, II:11.6 likely gives us a (veiled) portrait of the mystical significance of the martyrium in the following reference (notice the reference to ‘para- dise’ the image on the back of the throne) — “some such view, then, must we hold regarding this abode in the air. I think, therefore, that all the saints who depart from this life will remain in some place situated on the earth, which holy Scripture calls paradise, as in some place of instruction, and, so to speak, class-room or school of souls, in which they are to be instructed regarding all the things which they had seen on earth, and are to receive also some information respecting things that are to follow in the future, as even when in this life they had obtained in some degree indications of future events, although ‘through a glass darkly,’ all of which are revealed more clearly and distinctly to the saints in their proper time and place.” (Schaff/Wace, The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers). Was the graveyard of the martyrium the location of the otherwise unidentified ‘Catechetical school’ of Alexandria?

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Egyptian Christianity was growing and it was ‘only natural’ that it move to the heart of the city. Yet this is sheer nonsense. A tradition doesn’t just give up its spiritual centre unless it is forced to do so. Haas makes it clear that the Boucolia was a dangerous place to be for Orthodox offi- cials. If this reality is acknowledged for the era of Alexander and Athanasius — why isn’t it generally considered a factor at the time of Peter I’s death only two years earlier? Consider the snapshot of Peter being killed wearing his on a Sunday standing beside the very church which was off limits for the Orthodox community for the next seventy years by an armed group under the direction of a man named Meletius. Isn’t that enough to make us suspect that the true historical cir- cumstances of Peter’s death remain buried within the existing text? The Passio Petri makes repeated reference to the hostility that was present in the church when Peter came to the church. The congregation seems to be a little too enthusiastic to replace him with an Arian candi- date more to their liking. We are told that “the ministers of the Levitical priesthood with haste entered the sanctuary and putting on the emblems of their office took the holy martyr with the crowd gathered around the bishops and elders of the city they set him on the throne. And all the church rejoiced saying, ‘Even if while living thrice-blessed and holy father, you refused to sit on you throne, now you have been seated.’” According to this tradition moreover the priests rushed in Peter’ succes- sor Achillas “and stood him near the throne where they had also seated the martyr and they took the pallium of the most holy and famous bishop Peter and placed it on him.” (Vivian, p. 78) This narrative is all the more amazing given how Arius and Achillas are consistently paired together as heretics of the same mind in the hostile contemporary witness of Alexander74. We should take a moment to consider all the changes that have taken place in the the real center of Alexandrian Christianity in just a matter of a few short months. Meletius used to sit on the throne of St. Mark until he was dismissed by Peter I and banished to the mines. Peter arrives in the Church after a prolonged absence only to be killed under mysterious circumstances. Achillas is immediately ordained in his stead but dies a short while later under equally mysterious circumstances75. Alexander the clear favorite of Constantine is said to have been made Pope after Arius declined to accept the post76. Yet we should take note of how he

74 Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration (Schaff). 75 Theodoret, Ecclesiastical History (Schaff) I.2. 76 Epiphanius (Panarion 48.1.3.5) interestingly makes Achillas the successor of Alex-

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acknowledges his decision to effectively abandon the Boucolian shrine for good. The formerly inviolably sacred martyrium of St. Mark claim- ing is now disparaged. Alexander speaks of Arius and Achillas as having “built for themselves robbers’ dens and now constantly assemble in them, and day and night speak slanderously there against Christ and against us. They revile every godly apostolic doctrine, and in Jewish fashion have organized a gang to fight against Christ, denying his divin- ity, and declaring him to be on a level with other men.”77 This climate of violence WITHIN contemporary Alexandrian Christi- anity makes it difficult to believe the claim of the Passio Petri that Diocletian was responsible for ordering Peter’s death on November 25, 311. After all Galerius was really in charge in this period and he had issued an edict half a year earlier — on May 13, 311 — granting all Christians an “indulgence, they ought to pray to their God for our safety, for that of the republic, and for their own, that the commonwealth may continue uninjured on every side, and that they may be able to live securely in their homes.”78 Indeed this often gets lost in even the best studies of the Passio Petri. It is absolutely implausible to believe that ‘Diocletian’ or any other Emperor living or deceased ordered Peter’s assassination that year. The age of the martyrs was already over. His death had more in common with the ongoing Christian on Christian violence that would sweep through Alexandria in the coming years. So it is that if we scrutinize the conclusion of the Passio Petri and the scene where Peter’s corpse and the throne of St. Mark had to be ‘rescued’ from a wild mob in the Boucolia it is impossible to deny that there was already great strife between two clearly defined camps. We

ander which might mean that Achillas didn’t actually die. He could have continued as the rival bishop at the martyrium in the Boucolia. 77 Philostorgius, Church History, 3. 78 Theodoret, Ecclesiastical History, 3, 4 The letter is obviously corrupt given that Constantinople is mentioned when the city hadn’t yet been built in Alexander’s life time. The mention of Achillas still being alive is glossed over by scholars. The martyrium and the accompanying grave sites are what is being referred to in the text. It has to be as- sumed that Arius and Alexander were eventually rival Archbishops in the period that fol- lowed even if Arius didn’t openly declare his assumption title. It is amazing to think of the continuing bloodshed between the two Christian parties through Athanasius’ conten- tious reign. There were a number of attacks against Athanasius person and each time he had to run for his life. His Arian rivals were not so lucky. There were so many who came and went in the period George being almost typical of them all. He was beaten to within an inch of his life by an Orthodox mob and then rotted in prison before being beaten again and cast into the sea under the Emperor Julian.

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read the editor acknowledge that “there was a great uproar, and the people were about to fight. Some from Dromos saw the uproar among the people and were afraid that there was going to be a great battle.” (Vivian p. 77) At the same time those who participated in the mock enthronement seemed particular joyous to see the dead body of Peter stuffed into the throne of St. Mark. We read that “once all the people were gathered there they did not allow the martyr to be buried until they had brought him into the holy sanctuary and had enthroned him, seating him on his own throne. And the people saw and rejoiced when they viewed the dead man seated on the throne as if he were living.” (ibid.) So let us ask again — what is really going on in the Boucolia? The problem of course is that the editor of the Passio Petri won’t let us get a clear picture of the historical circumstances surrounding Peter’s death. Indeed there is a reason why it is called the Passion of Peter — the title confirms that there has been a deliberate attempt by the original author to develop the events into an imatatio Dei. Virtually every authority who has ever studied the text has noticed this. However these studies have not gone far enough to discern the artificiality of the text. The only three things that we can be certain of is that (a) Peter I ended up dying in the environs of the martyrium (b) there was a dispute about his refusal to sit on the traditional seat of authority for Alexandrian patriarchs, the throne of St. Mark and (c) the existing text itself was developed by later authorities to make Peter and the circumstances of his death seem more ‘Christ-like.’ We can identify these layered additions intended to make the original events ‘conform’ to the Passion of Christ to include specific mention of (i) Peter’s initial imprisonment, (ii) his being led to his death by soldiers (iii) his betrayers being compared to Judas and (iv) specific mention that during his death ‘the garment of Christ — the Alexandrian Church — was divided. Each of these references can be demonstrated to have origi- nally been developed from familiar elements in Christ’s Passion. They were originally put forward as rhetorical arguments or allegorical proofs as part of Alexander and Athanasius’ anti-Arian polemic. It was only in the sixth century that the final editor transferred these allegories into something approaching the ‘real historical circumstances’ related to the martyrdom of the seventeenth Patriarch79.

79 Eusebius (H.E., Bk. VIII, 17).

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Peter's Vision of the Throne

There can be no doubt that Peter’s death was a real historical event. However what we can see crystallize in the Passio Petri and related traditions is a deliberate attempt to reshape the original events of Peter’s death into a Passion narrative. By the sixth century these ideas have completely taken over the narrative. Telfer helps us greatly here by noting that the earliest references to Peter’s martyrdom avoid mention- ing exactly what happened when Peter left his prison cell — “the shorter form, by not saying explicitly what that Peter died in his cell, left the way open to extension by a later hagiographer who thus incorporated in the Peter-legend Alexandrine beliefs and traditions that had no place in the mind of the first author of the Passio.”80 Indeed the most likely possibility is that the original author wanted to avoid revealing what happened in Boucolia because it might reignite ancient passions. It was decided that the prudent course of action would be to blame his death on the Roman state especially given the continued influence of Meletians into the period81. We need only acknowledge for the moment that the real circum- stances behind Peter’s death were undoubtedly rooted in the fact that the local congregation viewed Peter as being a ‘usurper’ of the authority originally given Meletius to sit on the Episcopal throne of St. Mark82. As such we should argue that rather than being marched down a road by a group of tribunes and stumbling upon the shrine ‘by accident’ (the road from the Canopic Way to the martyrium literally leads to a dead end) dressed as the bishop of Alexandria, Peter was wearing his pallium that Sunday because he was going to the martyrium with the intention of pre- siding over the sacred mysteries83. Indeed this is precisely why the origi-

80 Indeed we can even identify an earlier layer which has been deliberately filtered out of the final draft of the Passio Petri — the identification of the Arians playing the role of wicked ‘Jews’ who killed Christ. This element is present in the earliest references to Peter’s death (i.e. the emcomium of Alexander) but deliberately removed by the final redaction of the text to ensure that Peter’s ‘Passion’ is seen as a factual historical narra- tive rather than a fanciful development of allegory. 81 Telfer, “St. Peter of Alexandria”, 119. 82 Goehring, Ascetics, 204: “At the beginning of the sixth century, the peaceful coex- istence of Melitian and non-Melitian ascetics is confirmed by three documents concerning the possession, occupancy, and sale of a cell in the monastery of Labla in the district of Arisinoe.” 83 Telfer clearly acknowledges as much when he argues that Peter’s death grew out of rising tensions between the two communities: Telfer, “Meletius”, 231 and “St. Peter and Arius”, 124.

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nal editor of the Passio had to go out of his way to address the historical animosity directed against Peter by the Boucolia congregation. His point was to prove that the immediate ordination of Achillas, a known ‘com- panion of Arius,’ had nothing to do with the contemporary calls from those who felt Peter wasn’t fit to serve as the living representative of St. Mark. This is why we see this same editor immediately goes on to develop a lengthy refutation of a charge that Peter was killed for his refusal to carry out his most basic duty as Alexandrian Patriarch — i.e. seating himself in the throne of St. Mark. He begins his apologia by acknowl- edging that tensions had been rising for sometime between Peter and the flock at the martyrium. He explains that: For some time the blessed one did not sit on the throne of the churches but mounting the raised step of the throne he made his prayer for the people, and in this way would sit on the footstool of the throne. Because of this the people would often times grumble and complain. Indeed we are even told that at the end of a great feast when Peter again sat on the footstool rather than the throne: The people became angry and cried out saying: “Bishop sit on your throne where you were ordained, there you should also sit.” While they were crying out the blessed one stood silent, bowing his head. The were calling on him along with the people. He nodded to the clergy to keep silent, calmed down the people with soothing words, crossed himself, and once again sat on the footstool. (ibid.) After completing his functions in the church we are told that Peter went back to the council chamber and chastised the clergy giving them orders that “when the people try to force me to sit on the throne, you will silence them.”84 It is utterly shameful the manner in which other scholars have tried to gloss over this strange narrative. Vivian acknowledges that “this detail … is unique among Martyrdoms and may well be true.” (p. 49) Yet there is something much more significant here that even Vivian hasn’t yet fully recognized. The Passio Petri essentially acknowledges that the only way the congregation could get its wish to have Peter sit in the tra- ditional seat of authority in Alexandria was to have him killed. Of course all of this doesn’t answer the most obvious question — why wouldn’t Peter sit in the throne of St. Mark? It’s almost too baffling to

84 This idea seems to be present in the earliest witnesses to Peter’s martyrdom includ- ing Peter the Iberian (C.B. Horn, John Rufus, The Lives of Peter the Iberian, 257).

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comprehend. It’s like hearing about a king who was ordained by his people only to reject being seated in the traditional throne, or worse yet, hearing that this same monarch attempted to conduct his duties by sitting on the steps leading up to the chair. His subjects would ask one another “what’s wrong with this guy? Why can’t he just sit in that damn chair?”

Identifying our Cattedra as Peter I's Episcopal Throne

The Passio Petri gives a number of explanations for Peter’s odd behavior. It has Peter begin by declaring how his personal “modesty” wouldn’t let him sit in the chair. Yet this excuse really doesn’t make much sense. Not only is humility often serves as a stock excuse for ques- tionable habits associated with the saints Peter’s answer actually seems quite arrogant. What did his refusal say about St. Mark and all his pred- ecessors? Were these men ‘boastful’ because they agreed to sit in the traditional seat of authority? Of course if Peter’s Episcopal chair was our Cattedra his refusal is a little more comprehensible. After all a ‘humble man’ might think it a little audacious to be seated here amid the Seraphim on a replica divine throne. Maybe he was simply trying to say that he didn’t believe that he should be taken to be a living representa- tive of God the Father85. Peter seems to hint at this understanding in another point in the narra- tive where he says that he can’t sit on the throne of St. Mark because he saw Christ, the divine Presence — or indeed a ‘Power’ — already rest- ing there. The idea appears in a striking scene where we are told that: The people became angry and cried out saying “Bishop sit on your throne. Where you were ordained, there you should also sit.” While they were crying out, the blessed one stood silent, bowing his head. The clergy were calling on him along with the people … After he dismissed the congrega- tion, he went into the council chamber and order that no one should come in except the bishops and elders and . When this was done as he wished he rebuked them, saying why did you distress me along with all the people? Do you not know the fear and trembling my heart feels and how much that oppresses me? For beloved, whenever I ascend the Episcopal chair and come near to the throne while standing in prayer — as you see — and I look on the throne and see what radiant and inexpressible power

85 The Latin text of Anastasius has a slightly different version of the same story: “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.”

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resides there fear mixed with joy comes over me and mightily crushes my bones and I am unable to do anything. (Vivian, p. 77) At first glance this might seem like another excuse Peter invented out of thin air. Yet we can once again demonstrate that Peter’s claims about Jesus’ presence on the chair are entirely consistent with the inscriptions and iconography of the Cattedra di San Marco. The first thing that we should do is briefly acquaint ourselves with the images which adorn the surface of the throne. The Cattedra is flanked on all sides by images of the four Seraphim described in , and Revelations. It is clearly meant to be interpreted as a living repre- sentation of the throne on which the heavenly Father sat in heaven. On the backrest there is also a depiction of the Tree of Life which stood in Eden, the source of the four rivers of Paradise. There is no way that any- one could mistake any of this. Yet before we move on to demonstrate that this image of the Tree has something to do with Peter’s vision we should take a moment to show that there is good circumstantial reason to believe that the throne Peter inherited from the Patriarch Theonas (283- 300 C.E.) shared some of the very same features we just described on our Cattedra. Indeed we can see our initial suspicions confirmed when we take a closer look at an important story which emerges from Alexander’s encomium on Peter which must have been delivered within a generation of his martyrdom. Not only does Alexander infer that Peter died at the hands of Arians but he describes some of the details of the original throne at the Church of St. Mark. He tells us that when Theonas knew he was about to die he announced the following to the faithful: “When I had finished the short office [as ] according to my strength, I lay down to sleep on the bed, praying to the Lord on behalf of his flock that he might help them. Immediately the King, the Lord of Glory, appeared to me and said, ‘you who water well the spiritual garden, give the garden to Peter the presbyter so he can water it and come and rest with your fathers.’ [emphasis mine] And forgive me O my beloved chil- dren, because I was foolish, but I cannot conceal the righteousness of God in my heart for his great congregation which is you. Behold, therefore, I did not hinder my lips; I have proclaimed to you the righteousness of the Lord.” And all of them cried together saying, “Worthy, worthy, worthy, for he is truly worthy of the rank of the .” Then the archbishop said to Peter: “Have courage, my son and be strong and work well the garden of your Lord.” But [Peter] prostrated himself, weeping and saying, “I am not worthy, nor will I be able to do this great thing.” The archbishop said, “It is Christ who commands you. Let no one oppose the one who has chosen you. It is he who will give you strength.” And when he had heard

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these things Abba Theonas said, “May peace be will all of you,” and he looked upwards toward heaven and spoke thus, “Behold the King of Glory and his holy .” [emphasis mine] And thus he went to him whom he loved, our Lord Jesus Christ, on the second day of Tobi, in the peace of God. Amen. After these things was seated on the throne of the high priesthood by the decree of God Almighty.” (Vivian, p. 82) The command from the Father to Theonas to ‘give the garden’ to Peter is without a doubt intended to say that he ‘gave the throne’ to the new Archbishop. In short the Episcopal chair which was passed from Theonas to Peter likely shared many of the features the Cattedra (i.e. it had images of Eden, the Seraphim etc.). So let’s get back to Peter’s vision of the ‘power of God’ being present on the throne. As I have demonstrated in greater detail elsewhere there is a message embedded in the thirty five fruit hanging from the five princi- ples branches of this tree. When the number of fruit on each branch is translated into their equivalent Hebrew letter the phrase — the ‘ninth vision’ is spelled out in Aramaic86. There is only one possible scriptural reference that makes any sense here — it is a reference to the ‘ninth vision’ of Zechariah, the one which describes the messianic king enthroned and ruling with Jesus the High Priest87. In other words, if this saying is applied to the Patriarch of Alexandria, it is implies that he ruled with Jesus on the throne of St. Mark. This certainly explains the reason why the Archbishop’s chair was also called a synthronos. While the term has taken on a number of different meanings in later Christianity it certainly derives from the concept of him as sitting with or ‘co-regent’ with God88. It is impossible to regard Peter’s claim that he saw Jesus residing on the seat of the throne as an idiosyncratic occurrence. It is consistently

86 I am struck by an apparent remembrance of the image of this throne in Severus’ Homily on St. Mark where Severus prays “par l'intercession des quatre animaux incorporels qui portent le trône du Maître des mondes.” (p. 74) The traditional title of the Patriarch of Alexandria is ‘Judge of the Inhabitable World’ (ecumene). In Ezekiel and John the animals are never described as “carrying” the throne. The idea would follow naturally from the Cattedra as the Seraphim are attached to the chair and thus could be interpreted as ‘carrying’ the object. 87 See the extensive discussion in my Real Messiah, 181,182. 88 In the Alexandrian text of Zechariah the priest’s name is Jesus while the messianic king is only identified as the Dawn [anatole]. The text begins by telling of the historical ‘crowning’ of both Jesus and immediately goes on to announce the royal messiah who would follow him: “Behold the man whose name is Dawn; over the horizon he will dawn [anatelei], and build the house of the Lord. And he will take on nobility [aretê], and sit and rule upon his throne; and there will be a Priest on his right hand, and there shall be concord between them.”

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invoked by Alexandrian Fathers of the period. For instance we hear in the Life of Pachomius that ‘Athanasius used to see the Savior seated upon his throne in his church.’ The same idea comes up again and again Pachomius’ discourses where he repeatedly mentions visions or remembrances when “he saw all the brothers in the church and Our Lord seated on a high throne. He was speaking to them about the parables in the holy Gospel. He saw the Lord, he heard the words and at the same time he understood their explanation.”89 The anonymous Coptic Epiphany Homily usually attributed to Peter has the Patriarch acknowl- edge much the same thing with the author alluding to his humility but also declaring that “I also told you this on another occasion, at the time when I drew back, (choosing) not to sit upon the throne because of the fearful thing that I saw in the holy place resembling a flame of fire.”90 It is difficult to now argue against the idea that our Cattedra was Peter’s Episcopal throne. Not only did it have images of the four Seraphim adorning its sides and thus likely offending Peter’s sense of ‘modesty’ and the image of the Garden of Eden as we have just demon- strated in the story with Theonas, it also was established with the hidden concept that Jesus sat enthroned at the right hand of the one occupying the throne. Thus it seems highly likely that our throne was the same as the one used by generations of Alexandrian Popes up until Peter’s time. Yet there is one more proof which I believe removes all doubt as to the relationship between our throne in Venice and the one used as an Epis- copal throne throughout the third century which deserves our attention.

The Acts of Mark and the True Story of Peter's Death

In the last section we discovered two contemporary interpretations of the ‘power’ which allegedly rested on the Episcopal throne(s) of Alexandria. There was the approach of Peter and after him Athanasius and Pachomius who thought it was wrong for men — any man but Jesus — to sit with God on the divine throne. Humanity was encouraged instead to gaze at the divine presence rather than becoming one with it. In

89 Cf. Neale, The , 21: “The synthronos is the seat in the depth of the Eastern apse, in the centre of which the Bishop sat with his face towards the altar, — the altar itself occupying the central position in the chord of that apse, — and having his Clergy on his right and left hand… he [the Pontiff] advances to the divine synthronos which typifies the session of Christ at the right hand of the Father… and sitting down in the synthronos where he is a type of Christ… for it is Christ, saith Paul, who hath put an end to enmity in His Flesh and made both one, both things in heaven and things on earth.” 90 The Bohairic Life, 86.

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essence this understanding likely set in motion the transformation of the Cattedra into a memoria91. At the same time we still hear the remarkable cry of the congregation at the martyrium in the Passio Petri. They repre- sent the rawest expression of the traditional Alexandrian hope that “the human nature and the divine began to be woven together in order that the human, by communion with that which is more divine, might be- come divine, not in Jesus alone but in all those with the help of faith, grasp hold of the life that Jesus taught.”92 Stephen J. Davis has written extensively on what he calls “the func- tion of human bodies in Alexandrian theologies of the Incarnation”93 or “the relationship between the body of Christ and the bodies of persons who participate in the divine Word.”94 While one might justifiably argue that the Coptic understanding of the term ‘Incarnation’ was restricted to the life of Jesus one can at least tentatively reconstruct a scenario where this process was understood in Alexandria to have continued beyond the life of Jesus95. Our rediscovery of the original Episcopal chair of Alex- andria develops and refines many of the mostly abstract theological dis- cussions and grounds them in something concrete — or if you will a throne carved out of one block of alabaster. It must be acknowledged that the various Popes who were seated for a time on this chair were understood to possess the image of Father in heaven. This understanding isn’t documented in the Patristic writings. Yet one would expect something to be left unsaid in a mystery religion like Christianity. The title ‘Papa’ is first employed by the bishops of Alexandria in the early third century. Papa is the Greek equivalent of ‘Abba’ — the term used throughout the of the New Testament to describe the mystical process of divine adoption where one essentially ‘takes on the image’ of the Father. It can be argued that the earthly Papa manifested the knowledge of the Father in heaven which “relocates the soul to what is akin to it — to the divine and holy — and transports humanity by a certain light of its own across the mystical stages of advancement… having taught the person who is pure in heart to gaze upon God, face to face with knowledge and comprehension.”96

91 Pearson/Vivian, Two Coptic Homilies, II, 167. 92 Davis, Coptic Christology, 10. It is worth noting that Grabar (Christian Iconogra- phy, 114-116) provides a number of examples supporting the idea that the empty throne was understood by the Orthodox to denote the presence of God the Father. 93 Ibid. 94 Ibid., 1. 95 Ibid. 96 Consider for instance the statement in Photius (Bibliotecha 106) regarding the

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It can be argued that the divine throne was originally conceived as ‘missing link’ between St. Mark’s gospel and St. Mark’s church. Indeed what stands between the two is the concept of Pope and Papacy — we should just ask Clement of Alexandria. Our earliest representative of the Alexandrian Church explicitly says that St. Mark the “mystagogue” established his true gospel to lead its “hearers into the innermost sanctu- ary of that truth hidden by seven veils.” (Clement of Alexandria, To Theodore I, 25-26). This metaphor of a hidden something obscured by ‘seven veils’ is essentially our earliest reference to the throne of St. Mark (the divine throne is identified as being ‘hidden by seven veils’ in earlier Jewish sources viz. Qumran fragment 4Q405 15 ii-16 3)97. Clement is essentially saying that Jesus came to announce the Papacy founded on St. Mark authority “that you may learn from a human being how a human being may become god.”98 This isn’t the place to critique the Protestant presuppositions which guide most interpretations of early Christianity. It is enough to say that the underlying sense of Clement’s original observation is still true for Copts today. Their Papa is the living “image and likeness” of the heav- enly Father. American missionaries to Egypt in the nineteenth century say that these Popes were “regarded by all devout Copts as the vicar of Christ on earth and called by them ‘earthly Christ.’”99 Indeed we still hear something that has deep resonance for our study of the Passio Petri namely that while working to counter American missionary activity in the Nile, the Patriarch’s into the city was made to imitate Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Seated on a donkey and pre-

contents of the third century Alexandrian Church Father Theognostus book Outlines which apparently dealt with ‘the Incarnation.’ We are told that Theognostus “relates how the Saviour became incarnate, and attempts, after his manner, to show that the incarnation of the Son was possible. Here, also, he trifles greatly, especially when he ventures to say that we [i.e. Christians] imagine the Son to be confined now to this place, now to that, but that in energy alone He is not restricted” i.e. to the body of Jesus. 97 Alexander, Mystical Texts, 36,37: “The celestial curtain was a subject of extensive speculation in later mystical texts (Hofius 1972)… The veil is also pluralized, for while 4Q405 15 ii-16 3 speaks of ‘the veil of the debir of the King’ in the singular, two lines later we have a reference to ‘the veils of the wondrous debirim’ in the plural. If there are seven debirs, then, logically, there must be seven veils. It is probable that the description of the celestial veil was followed by a description of God's heavenly throne, which would have stood behind the veil… The mention of ‘eternal thrones’ (kis’ei ‘olamim) in the pre- vious line is important. The reference must be to God's throne… The throne, like the cur- tain, may have been depicted as engraved with figures of angels which praise and bless God. The idea of God's throne ties in with the royal imagery of the Songs. The common- est title for God in Sabbath Songs is ‘the King’.” 98 Clement, Stromata, 7.10.57.1 as cited in Davis, Coptic Christology, 6. 99 Ibid. Prot. 1.8.4 in Davis, Coptic Christology, 5.

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ceded by priests and boys, bearing crosses, flags, palm branches, lighted candles and burning censers, beating on cymbals and chanting in Coptic as they went along, “Hosanna to the Son of blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.”100 The point of course is that a millennia and a half may separate the Passion of one Coptic Patriarch and another but the same underlying Alexandrian concept is present in both — the idea that the line of Popes passed along from one to another the divine Christ soul originally received by St. Mark. We see this reflected in the most important scene in the Passio Petri. As Peter prays in the martyrium of St. Mark he makes specific reference to the passing of the ‘Christ soul’ through a chain of representatives beginning with Mark through the agency of the throne. Notice the specific choice of words which appear at the conclu- sion of Peter’s prayer to the Evangelist describing him as the magister “of all preceding and subsequent occupiers of this pontifical chair, and who, holding its first honours, art the successor not of man, but of the God-man, Christ Jesus.”101 There can be no mistaking the idea that ALL the Popes were understood here to have taken on a divine soul which was first given to St. Mark through his original “witness of the Passion of Christ.” (ibid.) We should also see now the various rituals which expressed the conti- nuity of the Papacy — viz. the nuzzling of the supposed ‘head of St. Mark,’ the laying of hands from the dead Patriarch to new living repre- sentative — reinforce the very same idea and they are all indispensible to proper understand the development of both the Passio Petri and the Acts of Mark. Peter is essentially envisioned as undergoing a ‘Passion’ because he is heir to the ‘Christ soul’ that was given to St. Mark. At the same time we should see it was only natural to transfer historical elements from Peter I’s death to St. Mark because Peter I was in essence a reincarnation of St. Mark’s ‘Christ soul’ in the fourth century. This idea was likely present in the original Alexandrian interpretation of the words that came from at the moment Peter I’s decapitation — viz. “Peter, the arche of the apostles, telos of the martyrs!” Indeed it is impossible to believe that the who — according to the text — literally slept night and day beside the martyrium devoted to St. Mark identified Simon Peter as arche apostolon. Those who think this are projecting their own inherited presuppositions onto the text. The

100 Watson, In the Valley of the Nile, 151. 101 The Acts of Peter of Alexandria. Ante-Nicene Christian Library: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers, ed. by A. Roberts and J. Donaldson. Vol. XIV, p. 284.

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Passio Petri describes the Evangelist as makariou Markou tou apostolou as well as proton episkopon and archiepiskopos and the Latin explicitly identifies Mark as the magister of the throne which perfectly captures the meaning of arche102. It is also worth noting that while the developed Matt 16:18 “And I tell you that you are petros (a little stone) but on this petra (rock) I will build my church” into a state- ment of praise for Peter the same expression was clearly turned around by Alexandrians as a foreshadowing of Mark’s establishing his naos described in the earliest sources as “a church in a place called the Boucolou, near the sea, beside a rock from which stone is hewn.”103 The tradition preserves a very early understanding of Jesus predicting that the Alexandrian Papacy based at the martyrium of St. Mark104. We should emphasize again how natural it would be to blur the distinction between Peter and St. Mark. When Peter stands in the martyrium of St. Mark he beholds the Evangelist and essentially sees his true self. The same idea is present in descriptions of other Patriarchs in Coptic history. The description which emerges of the twelfth of Patriarch of Alexandria makes a similar blur of distinction between Demetrius the man and Demetrius the representative of the Evangelist when he like St. Mark withstands being exposed to flames unaffected105. There should be no wonder when we see Peter’s corpse identified as belonging to the Apostle as he was the very incarnation of the Evangelist at the end of the age of martyrs, the last in a chain of bodies who inher- ited his Christ soul and occupied his holy throne. It is important to note how similar the descriptions of their martyrdoms really are. Both Mark and Peter receive a vision while in prison the night before their respective martyrdoms. In the Passio Petri Peter’s angelic visitor reveals to him that “yours is the lot of martyr- dom.” In the Acts of Mark, we read that while the Evangelist was wait- ing in prison the of the Lord descended from heaven, and entered

102 Roberts/Donaldson, The Ante-Nicene , 266. The word magister ap- pears in the parallel section in Devos’ earlier Latin text (p. 183): “Etenim et meus magister es et eorum qui post me future sunt, veluti qui et sedis habes primatum, cum sis successor ipsius domini nostril Iesu Christi.” 103 Clearly the interpretation of the text has been shaped by assumptions about the primacy of the Greek. 104 Origen (Comm. Matt 12) interestingly argues against the exclusive authority of Peter and goes so far as to argue that Jesus might have had John in mind (the Copts inevi- tably identify ‘John’ as Mark’s other name). 105 This strikingly similar to the Acts of Archelaus’ application of Matt 7:25/Luke 6:48 to the Church of ‘little Mark.’ The Passio Petri also With regards to Peter’s recogni- tion as telos martyron, Mark is identified as tou martyriou teleiosin epoiesato.

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to the saint, and said to him “O Mark, , behold thy name is written in the book of life; and thou art numbered among the assem- bly of the saints, and thy soul shall sing praises with the angels in the heavens; and thy body shall not perish nor cease to exist upon earth.”106 Indeed what is especially significant is the fact that even though both men end up dying at almost the exact same location Peter never once makes specific reference to the circumstance of his predecessor’s death107. He merely acknowledges that he is about to die in the place where St. Mark was martyred. Of course almost nobody today believes the Acts of Mark has any his- torical merit. The story of Mark being dragged with a noose around his neck is usually ranked with similar legends associated with St. Catherine and other fictitious saints in the Church. However there is something present in this story which is remarkably consistent with the theory we are developing here. In the same way that we developed an argument that Peter was undoubtedly in the sanctuary preparing to preside over the holy mysteries when he was attacked by the Apostle’s enemies: “… found him in the sanctuary [and] they rushed forward and seized him, and fastened a rope round his throat, and dragged him along the ground, saying: «Drag the boubalon through Boukolou!» But the saint, while they dragged him, kept praising God and saying: «Thanks be to thee, O Lord, because thou hast made me worthy to suffer for thy holy name». And his flesh was lacerated, and clove to the stones of the streets; and his blood ran over the ground. So when evening came, they took him to the prison, that they might take counsel how they should put him to death. And at mid- night, the doors of the prison being shut, and the gaolers asleep at the doors, behold there was a great earthquake and a mighty tumult. And the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and entered to the saint, and said to him: «O Mark, servant of God, behold thy name is written in the book of life; and thou art numbered among the assembly of the saints, and thy soul shall sing praises with the angels in the heavens; and thy body shall not perish nor cease to exist upon earth». And when he awoke from his sleep, he raised his eyes to heaven, and said: «I thank thee, O my Lord Jesus Christ, and pray thee to receive me to thyself, that I may be happy in thy goodness». And when he had finished these words, he slept again; and the Lord Christ appeared to him in the form in which the disciples knew him, and said to him: «Hail Mark, the evangelist and chosen one!» So the saint said to him: «I thank thee, O my Saviour Jesus Christ, because thou hast made me worthy to suffer for thy holy name». And the Lord and Saviour gave him his salutation, and disappeared from him. And when he awoke, and morning had come, the multitude assembled, and brought the saint out of the prison, and put a rope again round his neck, 106 Severus of Al'Ashmunein, History of the Coptic Church, 180,181. 107 Smith Lewis, The mythological Acts, 151.

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and said: «Drag the boubalon through Boucolou!» And they drew the saint along the ground, while he gave thanks to the Lord Christ, and glori- fied him, saying: «I render my spirit into thy hands, O my God!» After saying these words, the saint gave up the ghost.” Immediately following the attempt to burn the body we see an almost identical situation from what we came across in the story of the martyr- dom of Peter: “Then the faithful brethren assembled, and took the body of the holy Saint Mark from the ashes; and nothing in it had been changed. And they car- ried it to the church in which they used to celebrate the Liturgy; and they enshrouded it, and prayed over it according to the established rites. And they dug a place for him, and buried his body there; that they might pre- serve his memory at all times with joy and supplication, and benediction, on account of the grace which the Lord Christ gave them by his means in the city of Alexandria. And they placed him in the eastern part of the church.”108 The reference to the ‘eastern part of the Church’ is particularly striking as it recalls the exact place where Arculf says that he saw the body dur- ing his visit to the Church of St. Mark — i.e. “the body is buried in the eastern part of the church, before the altar with a memoria of squared marble over it.” Could this have also been the throne’s original place in the demolished Basilica of Cyril? Yet let’s leave these matters aside for a moment and keep our eyes on the most important part of the narrative — the words which come out of the mouth of the wild mob from the Boucolia. When we look to the cir- cumstances of the Evangelist’s death in the Acts of Mark we see that they almost perfectly match what we have constructed in our present study. The Acts of Mark identifies St. Mark as being “found him in the sanctuary” by a hostile mob. We have just finished demonstrating that Peter must also have been confronted by a wild mob from the Boucolia in the same Church of St. Mark only two hundred and fifty years later. Thus the fourth century Christians who killed Peter act essentially like the ‘idolators’ who murder the Apostle in the wholly mythological Acts of Mark. They must have also “rushed forward and seized” Peter, bring-

108 It would be easy to explain why Mark’s death had been eclipsed by the most obvi- ous being that it could introduce the innovation at a later date. Severus interestingly pre- serves the date for St. Mark’s Day in Hebrew months and days — the 24th of Nisan. While the feast day of the Evangelist no long falls the day after Easter Sunday it has long been noticed that Alexandrians originally calculated the by means of the Jewish lunar calendar. It should also be mentioned that the current Egyptian calendar celebrates the Monday following Easter Sunday as Sham El Nessim “the smell of the breeze.”

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ing him outside the church, assaulting his person before finally decapi- tating him. Of course there is one clear difference — the controversy at the heart of the death of Peter was his refusal to sit in the throne of St. Mark. The angry Boucolian mob in the Passio Petri can still be heard shouting at him ‘Why won’t you sit in the chair?’ Yet isn’t it interesting that the angry Boucolian mob in the Acts of Mark shouts “súrwmen tón boúba- lon ên to⁄v Boukólou!” when they chase him out of the same shrine. This scream is repeated twice in the text but is never properly explained in any of the studies of the material. As we shall demonstrate here in our conclusion they make almost no sense whatsoever in the Acts of Mark and must be seen to be a reflection of the original historical circum- stances of Peter’s death and his refusal to sit in the throne only now pro- jected back in the relative safety of the wholly mythical account of the Evangelist’s death. The central difficulty is explaining why Mark would be identified as a boúbalon by his persecutors. At best some vague waffling about the mob being devotees of Sarapis and a particular devotion to bulls is put forward but these explanations are absolutely untenable. The cult of Sarapis did not involve the sacrifice of bulls or humans. Indeed it would be difficult to imagine a scenario where devotees of this god would mis- take Mark who came to Alexandria supposedly to end the idolatry asso- ciated with their cult as a bull given the sacredness of the animal. Of course if these words are an adaptation of something said by the hostile fourth century Christian attacking Peter then we have immediately solved the two thousand year old mystery as to why he didn’t sit in the traditional throne of St. Mark. It all comes down to the everyday Greek use of the word boúbalon, when applied to a human being. boúbalon refers to a wild ox or buffalo and is derived from the Greek bous or ox (the syllabic “l” add to bous to make “boúbalon” essentially denotes an impressive big cow)109. It also represents a play on the words with the name of the region where the martyrium was located — i.e. boucolou or ‘cattle shed.’ Whoever was being lynched at the Cattle-shed was being identified by the angry mob as a large cow, ox or buffalo. There are of course going to be people who go back to the idea that there is some kind of ‘pagan rites’ being alluded to here. Yet these people lack any Sprachgefühl. The reason the individual is being liked to a large cow is because he was an extra-ordinarily large person (the word boúbalov is

109 Ibid.

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used in everyday Greek today to denote a fat person i.e. ‘of, for, like an ox’)110. Of course the idea that St. Mark was ‘big like an ox’ doesn’t make any sense at all. After all the size of his throne makes it obvious that he was remembered as either a small child or someone with an ascetic build. However if this first century martyrdom was originally modelled on Peter’s death in the fourth century the reference to the victim as a ‘large cow’ makes perfect sense. It also helps explain why the Seven- teenth Patriarch couldn’t fit into the throne of St. Mark in the first place111. Peter was physically incapable of seating himself in our mini- ature throne because he was as ‘big as an ox.’ As such we can imagine now that the tragic events of the 25th of November were the culmination of years if not generations of tension between the Boucolian and Alexandrian camps. The crowd at Boucolia must have been insulted by the image of this Orthodox bishop’s appar- ent rejection of established tradition. When he dismissed their demands that he should be seated in the throne that countless generations of Patri- archs had ruled over Christian community in Egypt the congregation attacked and Peter ran from the church to the apparent safety of the nearby beaches. When they finally caught Peter they tied a rope around his neck and shouted: “Let’s chase the fat cow through the Cow Pas- ture!” — his heaviness likely contributing to the decapitation which fol- lowed112. The final point then is that only with the original scenario worked out by Secchi — namely that the small throne in Venice was in fact the Episcopal chair at the heart of the narrative of the martyrdom of Peter — is the Archbishop’s refusal to sit in the throne explained. The chair quite literally demanded a certain kind of candidate fill the role of St. Mark’s representative in Egypt. They had to be ascetical or dwarfish or both (as in the case of Athanasius. Indeed with this insight we can take our argu- ment one step further and see the Passio Petri as an effort to rescue Pe- ter’s reputation from the charge that he wasn’t enough like Mark. Not only does Peter receive a visit from ‘little Mark’ and see him again when he arrives at the martyrium but the narrative ends with Peter sitting in his throne. Every step along the way to his eventual martyrdom he is

110 Agath.1.4 111 Cf. Agathius, History, 1.4. 112 It also offers another explanation how Peter’s head became severed from his body. Prisoners on death row routinely gain weight in order to prevent their hanging arguing that their extra weight would ensure that they would end up being decapitated.

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very conscious of ‘measuring up’ to the greatness of the arche of the Alexandrian Episcopal line. Of course up until that time Mark had not been developed as an Alexandrian martyr by any of Peter’s predeces- sors. Moreover one would be hard pressed to find any Alexandrian Popes who actually died as martyrs. When taken together we can see why the Acts of Mark had to have been developed slightly before the Passion of Peter (late fourth century vs. early fifth century). In order to make Peter more ‘Christ-like’ or even more ‘Mark-like’ (and thus above Heraclas, Dionysius or the other ‘Origenist’ Fathers — i.e. the favourites of the Arian tradition) St. Mark needed to be made into a martyr. The now uncanny — but ultimately artificial — parallels between the first and last occupants of the throne of St. Mark served to obscure the original standard for worthiness — actu- ally ruling from the supernatural throne — and line them up with tradi- tional emphasis on martyrdom within the Alexandrian ‘Martyr Church.’ Indeed this very same Peter now considered to be the ‘last martyr’ and the greatest of Popes (even though he was undoubtedly chided by his contemporaries for running away from the Diocletian persecutions) end up legitimizing the abandonment of the throne altogether by subsequent generations of Alexandrian pontiffs. Nicaea apparently did not have a seat at its table for a miniature apos- tolic throne from Egypt.

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Stephan Hüller Kirkland WA USA

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