Mark of Rome

Saint Mark of Rome was bishop of Rome in the year 336, for less than nine months. He shepherded the Church in the first years of peace after the persecutions ended under Emperor Constantine the Great. He should not be confused with the holy Apostle and Evangelist Mark. Very little is known of his life.

According to the Book of the Popes (Liber Pontificalis), Mark was a Roman by birth and his father's name was Priscus. He succeeded Saint Sylvester in the see of Rome on 18 January 336. The same chronicle credits him with building two churches: one in the city, the basilica of San Marco, and another over the catacomb of Balbina outside the walls, on land given by Constantine. It also says that he decreed that the bishop of Ostia, who consecrated the bishop of Rome, should wear the pallium, though this cannot be proved.

Some evidence suggests that the early lists of the bishops and martyrs of Rome (the Depositio episcoporum and Depositio martyrum) were begun in his time, and later calendars grew out of them.

He reposed in the Lord of natural causes on 7 October 336 and was buried in the catacomb of Balbina. In 1048 his relics were taken to Velletri, and in 1145 they were placed in the basilica of San Marco in Rome, in an urn beneath the altar. The English Orthodox calendar remembers him on 7 October, the same day on which the Church of Rome keeps his feast. For the Orthodox Church he is a saint of the undivided Church.