552 M A 11 M A R the evangelist, as of other persons whose names are pro minent in the New Testament, there is a large mass of traditional biography, in which possible fact and obvious fiction are so closely interwoven as not to be easily dis entangled, and which would not be worth recording were it not for the later historical associations which have clustered round it. Of Mark s birth and country nothing is positively known ; the m ijority of medieval writers state that he was a Levite ; but this is probably no more than an inference from his supposed relationship to Barnabas. The Alexandrian tradition seems to have been that he was of Cyrensean origin ; and Severus, a writer of the 10th century, adds to this the statement that his father s name was Ariitobulus, who, with his wife Mary, was driven from the Peutapolis to Jerusalem by an invasion of barbarians (Severus Aschimon, ap. Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch. Alex., p. 2). In the apocryphal Acts of Barnabas, which profess to be written by him, he speaks of himself as having been formerly a servant of Cyrillus, the high priest of Zeus, and as having been baptized at Iconium. The presbyter John, whom Papias quotes, says distinctly that " he neither heard the Lord nor accompanied Him" (ap. Eusebius, I.e.} ; and this positive statement is fatal to the tradition, which does not appear until about two hundred and fifty years afterwards, that he was one of the seventy disciples (Epiphanius, pseudo-Oiigen De recta in Deumfida, and the author of the PascJud Chronicle}. Various other results of the tendency to fill up blank names in the gospel history must be set aside on the same ground ; it was, for example, believed that Mark was one of the disciples who "went back" because of the "hard saying" (pseudo-Hippolyt., De LXX, Apostolis in Cod. Birocc. ap. Migne, Patrol. Gr&c., vol. x. 955) ; there was an Alexandrian tradition that he was one of the servants at the miracle of Cana of Galilee, that he was the " man bearing a pitcher of water" in whose house the last supper was prepared, and that he was also the owner of the house in which the disciples met on the evening of the resurrection (Renaudot, I.e. ) ; and even iu modern times there has been the conjecture that he was the " certain young man" who "fled naked" from Gethsemane, Mark xiv. 51, 52 (Olshausen). A tradition which was widely diffused, and which is not in itself improbable, was that he afterwards preached the gospel and presided over the church at Alexandria (the earliest extant testimony is that of Eusebius, H. E., ii. 16, 1; ii. 24 ; for the fully-developed legend of later times see Symeon Metaphrastes, Vita S. Marci, and Eutychius, Origincs Ecdesix Alexandrine). There was another, though perhaps not incompatible, tradition that he preached the gospel and presided over the church at Aquileia in North Italy. The earliest testimony in favour of this tradition is the vague statement of Gregory of Nazianzus that Mark preached in Italy, but its existence in the 7th century is shown by the fact that in 629 A.D. Heraclius sent the patriarchal chair from Alexandria to Grado, to which city the patriarchate of Aquileia had been then transferred (Cliron. Patriarch. Gradens., ap. Ughelli, Italia Sacra, torn. v. p. 1086 ; for other references to the general tradition see De Rubeis, Monum. Eccles. Aquileicn,, c. 1 ; Acta Sanctorum, ad April, xxv.). It was through this tradition that Mark became connected with Venice, whither the patriarchate was further transferred from Grado ; an early Venetian legend, which is represented in the Cappella Zen in the basilica of St Mark, antedates this connexion by picturing the evangelist as having been stranded on the Rial to, while it was still an uninhabited island, and as having had the future greatness of the city revealed to him (Danduli, Chron. f iv. 1, ap. Muratori, Rer. Ital. Script., vol. xii. 14). The earliest traditions appear to imply that he died a natural death (Eusebius, Jerome, and even Isidore of Seville) ; but the Martyrologies claim him as a martyr, though they do not agree as to the manner of his martyrdom. According to the pseudo- Hippolytus he was burned ; but Symeon Metaphrastes and the Paschal Chronicle represent him to have been dragged over rough stones until he died. But, however that may be, his tomb appears to have been venerated at Alexandria, and there was a firm belief at Venice in the Middle Ages that his remains had been translated thither in the 9th century (the fact of the translation is denied even by Tillemont ; the weakness of the evidence in support of the tradition is apparent even in Molini s vigorous defence of it, lib. ii., c. 2; the minute account which the same writer gives, lib. ii. c. 11, of the discovery of the supposed actual bones of the evangelist in 1811 A.D., is interesting). Thera was another though less widely accepted tradition, that the remains soon after their translation to Venice were retranslated to the abbey of Reichenau on Lake Constance ; a circumstantial account of this retranslation is given in the treatise Ex Miraculis S. Marci, ap. Pertz, Mon. Hist. Pauline and not of the Petrine Mark are used by other writers in support of the hypothesis that in its present form it is not the work of which Papias speaks. German. Script., torn. iv. p. 449. It may be added that the Venetians prided themselves on possessing, not only the body of St Mark, but also the autograph of his Gospel ; this autograph, how ever, proved on examination to be only part of a 6th-ccntury book of the Gospels, the remainder of which was published by Bianchini as the Exanyeliarium Forojidiensc ; the Venetian part of this MS. was found some years ago to have been wholly destroyed by damp. It has been at various times supposed that Mark wrote other works besides the Gospel. Several books of the New Testament have been attributed to him : viz., the Epistle to the Hebrews (Spanheim, Op. Miscell., vol. ii. p. 240), the Epistle of Jude (cf. Holtzmann, Die Synoptische Ei-angdicn, p. 373), the Apocalypse (Ilitzig, Ueber Johannes Marcus, Zurich, 1843). The apocrypluil Ada Barnabae purport to have been written by him. There is a liturgy which bears his name, and which exists in two forms ; the one form was found in a MS. of the 12th century in CaLibria, and is, according to Renaudot, the foundation of the three liturgies of St Basil, St Gregory Nazianzen, and St Cyril ; the other is that which is used by the Marouite and Jacobite Syrians. Both forms have been published by Renaudot, Liturg. Oriental. Collect, vol. i. p. 127, and vol. ii. p. 176, and in Neale s History of the Holy Eastern Church; but neither has any substantial claim to belong to the ante-Nicene period of Christian literature. The symbol by which Mark is designated in Christian art is usually that of a lion. Each of the "four living creatures" of Ezekiel and the Apocalypse has been attributed to each of the four evangelists in turn ; Augustine and Bede think that Mark is desig nated by the " man " ; Theophylaet and others think that he is designated by the eagle ; Anastasius Sinaita makes his symbol the ox ; but mediseval art acquiesced in the opinion of Jerome that he was indicated by the lion. Most of the martyrologies and calendars assign April 25 as the day on which he should be commemorated ; but the Martyr. Huron, gives September 23, and some Greek martyrologies give January 11. This unusual variation probably arises from early differences of opinion as to whether there was one Mark or more than one. The work of Canon Molini of Venice, De Vita el Lipsanis - v . J/rd Eeangelistx, edited, after the author s death, liy S. Pieralisi, the librarian of the Barberinl library, in 18G4, gives full information on all that relates to the subject of the present article. (E. HA.) MARK, GOSPEL OF. See GOSPELS. MARKIRCH (in French, Ste-Marie-aux-Mines a flour ishing industrial town of Germany, in Upper Alsace, circle of Rappoltsweiler, is prettily situated in the valley of the Leber or Liepvrette, an affluent of the Rhine, near the French frontier. The once productive silver, copper, and lead mines of the neighbourhood are now no longer worked ; and the present chief industries of the place are weaving and dyeing. In and about Markirch there are nearly forty ! wool and cotton factories, besides numerous looms in the I cottages of the weavers ; and these produce cloth to the
- annual value of 625,000. It is estimated that there are
about 40,000 workpeople in the industrial district of which Markirch is the centre. The small river Leber, which intersects the town, was at one time the boundary between the German and French languages, and traces of this separation still exist, The German-speaking inhabitants on the right bank were Protestants, and subject to the counts of Rappoltstein, while the French inhabitants were Roman Catholics, and under the rule of the dukes of Lorraine. The population in 1880 was 11,824. MARLBOROUGII, a municipal and parliamentary borough of Wiltshire, England, situated on the great high-
- road between London and Bath, and distant 75 miles from
the former, 32 from the latter, and 13 from Devizes. It 1 stands on the left bank of the Kennet, a tributary of the ! Thames, in 51 25 N. lat. and 1 43 W. long. It is an agricultural centre, and has a weekly market. In the days of its prosperity forty-two public coaches halted daily at its J doors, and it had a fair trade in corn and malt ; but its traffic was to a great extent diverted by the opening of the Great Western Railway, and it now carries on a very small trade in tanning, rope-making, and malting. It consists mainly of a long and broad street, terminated at one end 1 by St Mary s church and the town-hall, and at the other j by St Peter s church and the college. The municipal council consists of a mayor, four aldermen, and twelve
1 councillors, and the borough returns one member to parlia-