By your profession of faith, O all-praised Mark, the Church has found you to be a zealot for truth. You fought for the teaching of the Fathers; you cast down the darkness of boastful pride. Intercede with Christ God to grant forgiveness to those who honour you!

 

Saint Mark Eugenikos was born in 1392 to devout and faithful parents, George, a deacon of the Church of Constantinople, and Maria, the daughter of a pious physician named Lucas. Due to his many spiritual gifts, he pursued brilliant theological and philosophical studies and was a disciple of the most renowned teachers of his time. He himself also became a distinguished professor of rhetoric. At the age of twenty-five, he decided to become a monk, and so he left for a monastery on the Princes’ Islands (Πριγκηπονήσια) in the Sea of Marmara. There, he was placed under the spiritual guidance of a virtuous monk, Symeon, who tonsured him and changed his name from Emmanuel to Mark. He was later ordained a priest at the Monastery of Mangana, and in 1436, he was elected Archbishop of Ephesus.

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He followed Emperor John VIII Palaiologos to Ferrara and Florence, where a synod was held to discuss the union of the Eastern and Western Churches. There, Mark proved to be the most zealous and steadfast defender of Orthodoxy, refusing to sign the terms of the false union, so much so that when Pope Eugene IV (1431-1447) learned of his decision, he said, “Mark did not sign; therefore, we have achieved nothing.”

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When the Orthodox delegation returned to Constantinople, the people received them with hostility and condemned those who had signed the union, but they honoured and revered Saint Mark. In 1440, by imperial order, he was imprisoned on the island of Lemnos for two years where he suffered greatly. From Lemnos, the Saint issued his famous ‘Circular Letter to the Orthodox Christians throughout the World and the Islands’ in which he harshly reproved those Orthodox who accepted the union and proved with irrefutable evidence that the Latins were innovators. The Saint also called on the faithful to avoid the unionists, as they were “false apostles and deceitful workers.”

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After his release from prison, Saint Mark returned to Constantinople, where he was welcomed and honoured as a saint and confessor. The many persecutions, hardships, and pressures worsened his health and contributed to his premature death on June 23, 1444, at the age of just fifty-two years old. Immediately after his passing, Mark was honoured as a saint. The very first service in his honour was composed by his brother, John the Philosopher. Initially, his feastday was celebrated on the 23rd of June, but Patriarch Gennadios Scholarios, a former disciple of his and the heir to his spiritual struggle, established by synodal decree in 1456 that his feast would be celebrated on January 19th, apparently the day of the translation of his relics and their burial at the Monastery of Saint Lazarus in Galatas.

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The struggles of Saint Mark and Gennadios were recognized by the Great Synod of Constantinople which was held in 1484 and recorded their names as holy fathers in the Synodicon of Orthodoxy.