Pax Tibi Marce

I was looking at the Lectionary today and noticed that April 25 is the the Feast of St. Mark, the gospel-writer and patron saint of Venice. I visited Venice (as a guest of my friend Pamela, who gets to live in Italy, the lucky duck) for the first time a year and a half ago, over a couple of gorgeous, cool-but-sunny days in October. Being there gave me giddy sense of what felt like deja-vu. I think this is because Venice has been written about and photographed and filmed so much that most people have some kind of Disney/Casanova/Merchant of Venice-infused picture of it in their minds, even if they haven't been there. It's an outlandishly beautiful, magical city. I can't wait to go back.

But back to St. Mark, and how he came to be the patron saint of Venice: it's a fascinating story. I've got a few books on Venice, but this explanation on the website www.europeforvisitors.com is concise and actually kind of funny:

So why does a maritime city like Venice have a lion as its mascot? Wouldn't a seagull, a fish, or a duck from the marshy Venetian Lagoon be a more appropriate symbol?

The answer to that question lies in the ninth century, when--according to legend--two or three ambitious Chamber of Commerce types from Venice stole the remains of St. Mark the Apostle from his tomb in Alexandria, Egypt. William Lithgow tells the story in his "Comments on Italy" from The Rare Adventures and Painfull Peregrinations, published in 1614 and quoted in Ian Littlewood's Venice: A Literary Companion:

"They placed the corpse in a large basket covered with herbs and swine's flesh which the Musselmans [Muslims] hold in horror, and the bearers were directed to cry Khwazir (pork), to all who should ask questions or approach to search. In this manner they reached the vessel. The body was enveloped in the sails, and suspended to the mainmast till the moment of departure, for it was necessary to conceal this precious booty from those who might come to clear the vessel in the roads. At last the Venetians quitted the shore full of joy. They were hardly in the open sea when a great storm arose. We are assured that S. Mark then appeared to the captain and warned him to strike all his sails immediately, lest the ship, driven before the wind, should be wrecked upon hidden rocks. They owned their safety to this miracle."

After crossing the Mediterranean and cruising up the Adriatic, the grave robbers reached Venice and handed their cargo over to the Doge. The local religious and civic authorities quickly elected St. Mark as Venice's patron saint, and the apostle's traditional symbol--a winged lion--became the logo of the Venetian Republic.

My haiku for St. Mark and his city:

A lion with wings

presides over a city

that floats--Ah! Venice.