The Winged Lion Of Venice

Many cities have the lion as an emblem or mascot and the ‘king of the jungle’ is exceedingly loved when it comes to heraldry. But the winged lion belongs to Venice. The winged lion is the Republic’s guardian angel and he, in some form or another, is watching every step you take in the city. He is the symbol of Saint Mark the Evangelist; when the Venetians stole the body of the Evangelist in 828 from Alexandria and brought him to Venice for safekeeping, Mark became the patron saint of the Republic, knocking Saint Theodore and his dragon off their patron perch.

The winged lion became the most loved symbol of the city. All four Evangelists -Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – have wings on their attributes, which could symbolise the sacredness of their writings and the holiness of the first four books of the New Testament; how their attributes were allocated to the four men in the first place, however, remains a mystery.

One thought is that they refer to the beginning scene in each of the Evangelists’ gospels. For example, Mark begins his book with Saint John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness, and the lion is a wilderness animal; Luke’s symbol is the bull because he starts his gospel with Zechariah in the temple, where sacrifices are made, and the bull is symbolic of sacrifice. Another explanation comes from the Old Testament. It is written that the prophet Ezekiel had a vision of a winged creature with four faces, those of an eagle, a bull, a lion and a man.

This is interpreted as the premonition of the Four Evangelists.In the 12th century, Venice was on the fast track to becoming the dominant sea-faring republic in Europe. She was getting wealthy from spoils and trade. It was about this time that she decided she needed a glamorous, ‘Hollywood’ beginning, one that would become legendary throughout the lands and elevate her above all other nations.

Venice began to spread the legend that, while Mark was passing through the Venetian lagoon in the 1st century AD, an angel appeared to him while he was napping and announced that the location where the future Saint Mark’s Basilica would be built was to be his final resting spot, and that he would be protected by these great people. The angel began his encounter with Mark by saying “Peace unto you, Mark, my Evangelist.”

Mark was killed in Alexandria in 68 AD and a huge storm immediately after his death (a miraculous intervention?) made it possible for Christians to take his body from his persecutors and give him a Christian burial, and he was kept in a local monastery. In the 9th century the area was under Moorish domination and no longer secure, so two Venetian merchants took the matter into their own hands and smuggled Mark’s body out of Alexandria to Venice, where he would receive eternal protection and worthy veneration.

The mosaics in the five lunettes on the facade of Saint Mark’s Basilica show the journey of the body and how the merchants were able to leave the East with Mark, smuggling him in a box covered with pork so that the Muslim custom officials wouldn’t want to look closely at their load. Like the crumbs in Hansel and Gretel, the winged lion tracks Venice’s journey in territorial expansion.

He can be found in cities such as Hvar on the Dalmatian coast, and in Verona and Padua, as testimony to the Republic’s domination. He holds his Evangelist’s book, shown open, with the angel’s first words of his announcement to Mark. Often, paintings of the winged lion from the 1400s onwards showed the lion’s front paws on land and the hind ones in the sea, symbolic of Venice’s prowess both in the Mediterranean and on the Italian peninsula.

The wily Venetians knew how to tell a tale and launch a national branding that would leave today’s multinationals in awe. They went straight to the top for their testimonial: Saint Mark, to whom they very astutely didn’t even have to offer a large contract. Au contraire, it seems that the heavens chose Venice over all other contenders as the safe haven for one of Christianity’s greatest stars, just because she was so special.