The Episcopal Consecration of St. Mark

St. Mark's chapel, Barcelona Cathedral

According to the Golden Legend, St. Peter consecrated St. Mark as Bishop of Alexandria, where Mark had been preaching. The artist puts Peter on a gilt and canopied throne and dresses all four bishops in medieval "pontificals" (the copes, the gloves, etc.). This not only elevates Mark, whose chapel this relief adorns, but makes a solid statement about Peter's primacy and the importance of the "apostolic succession" – the Catholic tenet that all bishops are successors of the Apostles in an unbroken line.

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Photographed at the cathedral by Richard Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.