Note 132 — Chapter XI

The sequel of this story as made known through the Epistles is most interesting. The quarrel between St. Paul and St. Barnabas was not a permanent one. Five years or so later, when writing the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians (ix. 6), St. Paul associates himself with Barnabas as if they were companions once again: "Or I only, and Barnabas, have we not a right to forbear working?" It is interesting too to trace the change that came in subsequent years over the relations between St. Paul and St. Mark as revealed by the Epistles. About the year 50 St. Paul treated Mark sternly, and that same sternness was most beneficial to the young man. It was just what his character wanted. Fifteen years passed over both their heads, and the scene was then very different. In Col. iv. 10, 11 Mark is commended unto the Church of Colossæ as one of the few Jewish Christians who had been a comfort in his bonds to the prisoner of Jesus Christ; while again, when on the point of his departure, in the 2nd Epistle to Timothy, iv. 11, the once weak disciple is most touchingly and lovingly remembered: "Only Luke is with me. Take Mark, and bring him with thee: for he is useful to me for ministering." St. Mark, after being the cause of this quarrel, appears no more in the Acts. The traditions about him will be found collected in English in Nelson's Fasts and Festivals, under his Feast Day, April 25th; or better still in Cave's Lives of the Apostles, pp. 217-23 (London, 1684); and in Latin in the Acta Sanctorum, Ed. Boll., April, iii., 344-58. Cave and the Bollandists give all the traditions about his foundation of the Church of Alexandria, the patriarchs of which still claim descent from him. Some historical writers have maintained, that they used to be ordained by the imposition of St. Mark's dead hand. This seems a mistake, however. Mr. Butler, in his Coptic Churches of Egypt, vol. ii., p. 311, says that the newly ordained Patriarch of Alexandria used to hold St. Mark's head in his hands during the celebration of Mass after his consecration. (See also Coptic Church in Dict. Christ. Biog.). Renaudot, a learned French writer, published a history of the Alexandrian Patriarchate in 1713, which industriously collects all the details of St. Mark's life true and imaginary alike. St. Mark's supposed body was carried to Venice from Alexandria about A.D. 1235.