A Secret Gospel of Mark of Alexandria in Late Cypriot Sources

 If you listen to the people who keep saying “no one in antiquity ever associated Mark with a ‘secret gospel’ from Alexandria,” the Life of Auxibius might as well not exist. The anonymous Cypriote hagiographer quietly assumes exactly that sort of Mark, and he does it in a way that lines up uncannily with Clement’s picture of an Alexandrian “more spiritual gospel” that is taught only to the advanced.

The story begins in Rome. Auxibius is a young aristocrat who has heard of Christ, wants baptism, and refuses marriage. His pagan parents push back; he slips out of the city, finds a ship sailing east, and ends up in Cyprus at a village called Limne, not far from Soloi. At just this point Barnabas and Mark are touring the island. They’ve landed at Lapithos, worked their way across to Salamis/Constantia, and set up Heraclides as archbishop, ordaining clergy and organizing churches. After Barnabas is martyred, Jewish opponents hunt Mark; he hides in a cave near Ledra for three days, then moves through the mountains and finally reaches Limne—with Timon and Rhodon in tow—where they bump into the newly arrived Auxibius.

Here comes the crucial scene. Mark asks him where he is from and why he came. Auxibius answers: from “the great city of Rome,” and he has fled because he became a Christian. Seeing that Auxibius is seized with desire for Christ, is faithful, eloquent and already well instructed in the word of God, Mark takes him down to a spring, baptizes him in the name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, lays hands on him to confer the Spirit, and then ordains him bishop. Only then does Mark “teach him the method of proclaiming Christ’s gospel” and send him off to Soloi with a very particular set of instructions.

Soloi, Mark explains, is still “devoted to the worship of idols” and has not yet received “the oracles of God” but dwells in “the darkness of idolatry.” Auxibius is to go there, but for the time being “let no one know that you are a Christian; rather, pretend to practice their religion.” Once he is settled, “in due time,” he is to “begin secretly to instruct them as infants, feeding them with speech as with milk until, made mature, they can partake of solid food.” Mark embraces him, dismisses him in peace, finds an Egyptian ship, and sails back to Alexandria “where, fulfilling the office of Evangelist, he taught the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.”

On the face of it this is just missionary advice: don’t blow your cover on day one, move your audience along gently, watch your back. But look at how the Life frames it. Mark does not simply tell Auxibius “be prudent”; he hands on a “method” of gospel proclamation that is explicitly staged and graduated: initial concealment, then a period of secret, infant-level instruction, and finally the shift to “solid food.” The imagery is pure catechetical mystagogy. Auxibius is to administer a hidden curriculum, a “secret gospel” in the broad sense, that only emerges in public when the city is ready.

Auxibius carries out the plan to the letter. Leaving Limne, he arrives at Soloi and is welcomed by the high priest of Zeus, whose house stands by the western gate of the city. He moves in, accepts hospitality, and when asked who he is explains that he is a Roman who landed at Limne and decided to settle in this pleasant city. He asks to stay with the priest “until I find a place to live.” The priest agrees. Auxibius lives “for a long time” in “the place of Zeus,” hiding the fact that he is a Christian and deliberately “pretending to follow their superstition.”

The rationale he gives himself is telling. If the devil can “transform himself into an angel of light” and, by fluent speech and a torrent of words, drag believers “from light to darkness”—and if his ministers do the same—“how much more ought we to transform ourselves into men subject to the same affections” so that we can snatch people out of the power of darkness into the “marvelous light” of the knowledge of Christ? It is deliberate dissimulation in the service of a deeper, truer revelation.

Only after some days does Auxibius begin the real work. He tells the priest of Zeus that idols are “stones and wood,” that they have mouths but cannot speak, eyes but cannot see, ears but cannot hear, and that the Christians’ God—the God Auxibius has quietly worshiped all along—is the true God who works wonders. The priest is “cut to the heart,” stops sacrificing to the idols and becomes Auxibius’ first catechumen. For a long time Auxibius continues this pattern: “entering the city secretly, teaching in secret, then withdrawing again and staying outside the city” at the temple of Zeus. The entire mission is structured around secrecy, staged revelation, and transition from darkness to light.

Meanwhile, back in Alexandria, Mark is preaching the gospel, compiling another dossier of martyrdom (Barnabas at Salamis), and eventually joining Paul. The Life stitches its story into the canonical fabric by quoting Colossians and 2 Timothy; Paul acknowledges Mark as his co-worker and, when he hears that Barnabas has died and no apostle remains in Cyprus to preach Christ, he writes to Heraclides with instructions to ordain Epaphras for Paphos and Tychicus for Neapolis and to “go down also to the city of Soloi and seek out a Roman man named Auxibius and appoint him bishop of Soloi.” The kicker is Paul’s final admonition: Heraclides must not lay hands on Auxibius, since “he already bears the priesthood, having been ordained by Mark.” Paul thus ratifies the Alexandrian ordination and the whole “method” that went with it. Mark’s hidden mission in Cyprus is not some rogue side-project; the Life quietly folds it into apostolic succession.

At this point Heraclides arrives at Soloi, finds Auxibius still hiding out at the temple of Zeus, and delivers a sermon that all but quotes Matthew. How long, he asks, will you “hide in this place and not show yourself? How long will you hide the lamp under a bushel and not put it on the Savior’s lampstand so that it may give light to those in this city?” He urges Auxibius to stop burying the “money” entrusted to him and instead increase it sevenfold, to “sow in tears” now so that he can “reap in exultation,” not to fear those who kill the body, but to trust the promise that when he is brought before rulers and kings the Holy Spirit will teach him what to say. In other words, the time of secrecy is over; the time has come for open proclamation.

From there the Life becomes more conventionally hagiographical—church-building, healings, casting out demons—but the pattern established at the start never disappears. Auxibius is consistently portrayed as the man who infiltrated a pagan city under cover, converted the high priest, slowly drew the populace into the light, and finally, with apostolic backing, turned his “secret” mission into a public church with bishops, deacons and a full liturgical life. The text even gives us a visual allegory of succession when Auxibius’ disciple falls asleep under a tree and ants encircle his head like a crown: the wise master recognizes this as a sign of future episcopal dignity and installs him as successor.

Now fold into this picture the other strand of Cypriote-Alexandrian tradition that Dean Furlong has drawn attention to: the claim that Jesus, at the Last Supper, “initiated the disciples through participation in the secret mysteries,” and that the man carrying the water jar whom the disciples were told to follow was none other than Mark, “the son of that blessed Mary.” Here the chain is explicit. Jesus celebrates Passover, initiates the disciples into “secret mysteries,” and Mark is the trusted insider who leads them to the upper room and receives those mysteries from the Lord. In the Life of Auxibius, the same Mark transmits a “method” of hidden, graded instruction to his own disciple and then returns to Alexandria to continue his role as Evangelist and keeper of the mysteries.

What emerges is not a single text called “Secret Gospel of Mark” in our modern sense, but a whole imaginative world in which Mark is precisely the figure Clement describes: the custodian of “more spiritual” teaching in Alexandria, the man who knows how to move people from milk to solid food, who can hold things in reserve and then disclose them when the time is ripe. Jesus initiates Mark into secret mysteries at Jerusalem; Mark becomes the Evangelist of Alexandria; from Alexandria he ordains Auxibius with a secret method for Soloi; Paul later endorses Mark’s work. The secrecy is not about fraud; it is about mystērion—hidden wisdom, sacraments, deeper instruction reserved for those who are ready.

Seen from this angle, the Cypriote traditions do something very awkward to the reassuring narrative in which Morton Smith supposedly invented the idea of a “secret” Markan gospel ex nihilo and smuggled it into Clement. Here, in an entirely different corner of the late antique and medieval world, Mark is already imagined as the teacher of secret mysteries, as the mastermind of a carefully staged, semi-hidden evangelization, and as the Alexandrian Evangelist whose disciples preserve his method long after his death. One can still argue about the authenticity of the Letter to Theodore. But the claim that “no one” before Smith ever thought of Mark in these terms simply collapses once Auxibius and his Cypriote dossier are admitted into evidence.

So, yes, it looks suspiciously like a “secret gospel of Mark” for Soloi, authorized from Alexandria and executed under cover of pagan ritual, with catechesis whispered in the shadows of Zeus’ temple until the city is ready to step into the light. If you are committed to the idea that any association between Mark, Alexandria, and secret teaching must be a twentieth-century mirage, you will have to explain why this independent Cypriote tradition tells exactly that story—without any help from Morton Smith.