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Mary Magdalene
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Saint Mary Magdalene or Mary Magdalene is described, both in the canonical New Testament and in the New Testament apocrypha, as a devoted disciple of Jesus. She is considered by the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Anglican churches to be a saint, with a feast day of July 22. She is also commemorated by the Lutheran Church with a festival on the same day. The Orthodox Church also commemorates her on the Sunday of the Myrrhbearers, which is the second Sunday after Pascha (Easter).
In the New Testament, Mary Magdalene is distinguished from other women named Mary as "of Magdala", a town on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee.
The life of the historical Mary Magdalene is the subject of ongoing debate, while the less-obscure development of the "penitent Magdalene" as the most beloved medieval female saint after Mary, both as an exemplar for the theological discussion of penitence and as a social parable for the position of women, provides matter for the social historian and the history of ideas.
Apostle to the Apostles - Identification in the New Testament
In the earliest extant Biblical accounts now available Mark; Mark ; Mark Mary of Magdala is described as a Galilean disciple, a witness to the crucifixion and the mystery of Jesus of Nazareth's resurrected body.
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Saint Mary Magdalene or Mary Magdalene is described, both in the canonical New Testament and in the New Testament apocrypha, as a devoted disciple of Jesus. She is considered by the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Anglican churches to be a saint, with a feast day of July 22. She is also commemorated by the Lutheran Church with a festival on the same day. The Orthodox Church also commemorates her on the Sunday of the Myrrhbearers, which is the second Sunday after Pascha (Easter).
In the New Testament, Mary Magdalene is distinguished from other women named Mary as "of Magdala", a town on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee.
The life of the historical Mary Magdalene is the subject of ongoing debate, while the less-obscure development of the "penitent Magdalene" as the most beloved medieval female saint after Mary, both as an exemplar for the theological discussion of penitence and as a social parable for the position of women, provides matter for the social historian and the history of ideas.
Apostle to the Apostles - Identification in the New Testament
In the earliest extant Biblical accounts now available Mark; Mark ; Mark Mary of Magdala is described as a Galilean disciple, a witness to the crucifixion and the mystery of Jesus of Nazareth's resurrected body. adds to Mary's persona by alluding to her having had seven demons cast out of her, which some have taken to signify a perfected status within the movement. Together with other female followers, Mary accompanied Jesus on his journey to Jerusalem (Mark ; Matthew ; Luke ) and witnessesed the Crucifixion. (Mark ; Matthew ; Luke ; John ) Mary remained at the cross until the body was taken down and laid in a tomb.(Mark , Matthew , Luke , John ) In the early dawn, when the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene (with other women) (Mark , Matthew , Luke , John , Gospel of Peter ), came to the sepulchre with spices to anoint the body. They found the sepulchre empty and were informed of Jesus' resurrection. Mary's epithet of 'Apostle to the Apostle' comes from her ascription as the first witness to the empty tomb who then shared the good news with Jesus' other close disciples. (John ) According to John she was the first witness of the Resurrection appearances of Jesus, though at first she did not recognize him. When he said her name, she recognised him and cried, Rabboni. She wanted to cling to him, but he forbade her (: "'Do not cling to Me, for I have not yet ascended to My Father; but go to My brethren and say to them, "I am ascending to My Father and your Father, and to My God and your God."'"
This is the last mention in the canonical Gospels of Mary Magdalene, who now returned to Jerusalem. She is probably included in the group of women who joined the Apostles in the Upper Room in Jerusalem after Jesus' ascension .
Identification with Mary of Bethany and "the woman sinner"
Tradition as early as the third century (Hippolytus, in his Commentary on Song of Songs) identifies Mary Magdalene with Mary of Bethany and with the woman sinner who anointed Jesus' feet:
- And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, and stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.
Though the woman remains unnamed, she has been identified with Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and the resurrected Lazarus ( and ), as says:
Now there was a certain man sick, named Lazarus, of Bethania, of the town of Mary and Martha her sister. And Mary was she that anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped his feet with her hair: whose brother Lazarus was sick.
The identification of Mary Magdalene with Mary of Bethany and "the woman who was a sinner" is reflected in an influential sermon Pope Gregory I gave in 591, which said: "She whom Luke calls the sinful woman, whom John calls Mary [of Bethany], we believe to be the Mary from whom seven devils were ejected according to Mark."
Following this line of thought, in December 2008, a team of Franciscan archaeologists of the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum working at the site identified as Magdala discovered stoppered vases containing residues of perfumed ointment which they asserted were possibly of the type used to anoint Jesus's feet.
Though Gregory's identification of all three women as the same Mary was generally accepted in the West, the Catholic Church celebrates Mary Magdalene on her feast of 22 July as the woman of that name "to whom Christ appeared after his resurrection, not as the sister of Saint Martha nor as the sinful woman whose sins the Lord forgave (Lk 7:36-50)." The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1910 also stated that "there is no suggestion of an identification of the three persons (the 'sinner', Mary Magdalene, and Mary of Bethany)." Eastern Orthodox Christians distinguish them all as three different persons: Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany (whom the Orthodox commemorate on 4 June, together with her sister Martha), and the unnamed "woman who was a sinner" of Luke 7:36-50. Protestants mostly reject all these identifications, except for Seventh-day Adventists.
Identification as a prostitute
Mary Magdalene is sometimes referred to as a prostitute or adulteress, but she was never called one in the New Testament. Luke writes that Jesus casts seven demons from her, after which she joins his disciples and provides for them. She witnesses the crucifixion from the foot of the cross, the male disciples having fled. And she was the first witness to the resurrection and was sent by Jesus to tell his other disciples of his return.
Jeffrey Kripal, a religion scholar, wrote, "Migdal or Magdala (meaning "tower" in Hebrew and Arameic respectively) was a fishing town known, or so the legend goes, for its perhaps punning connection to hairdressers (medgaddlela) and women of questionable reputation. This is as close as we get to any clear evidence that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute." According to Kripal, the identification of Mary Magdalene as a prostitute also goes back to the above-mentioned sermon by Pope Gregory. However, Gregory identified Mary merely as a peccatrix, a sinful woman, using her as a model for the repentant sinner, not a meretrix, a prostitute. However, he also identifies Mary with the adulteress brought before Jesus (as recounted in the Pericope Adulterae, ), concurring with 3rd and 4th century Church fathers that had already considered the sinful woman's sin as "being unchaste". Gregory's identification and the consideration of the woman's sin as sexual later probably gave rise to the image of Mary as a prostitute.
This viewpoint is also espoused by much Western medieval Christian art. In many medieval depictions, Mary Magdalene is shown as having long hair which she wears down over her shoulders, while other women follow contemporary standards of propriety by hiding their hair beneath headdresses or kerchiefs. The Magdalene's hair may be rendered as red, while the other women of the New Testament in these same depictions ordinarily have dark hair beneath a scarf. This disparity between depictions of women can be seen in works such as the Crucifixion paintings by the Meister des Marienlebens.
This image of Mary as a prostitute was followed by many writers and artists until the 20th century. Even though it is less prevalent nowadays, the identification of Mary Magdalene with the adulteress is still accepted by some Christians. This is reflected in Martin Scorsese's film adaptation of Nikos Kazantzakis's novel The Last Temptation of Christ, as well as in José Saramago's The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, Andrew Lloyd Webber's rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ and Hal Hartley's The Book of Life.
Veneration
Eastern Orthodox
The Eastern Orthodox Church maintains that Mary Magdalene, distinguished from Mary of Bethany and the "sinful woman", had been a virtuous woman all her life. This view finds expression both in her written life (ß??? or vita) and in the liturgical service in her honor that is included in the Menaion and performed on her annual feast-day. There is a tradition that Mary Magdalene led so chaste a life that the devil thought she might be the one who was to bear Christ into the world, and for that reason he sent the seven demons to trouble her.
Mary Magdalene is honored as one of the first witnesses of the Resurrection of Jesus, and received a special commission from him to tell the Apostles of his resurrection . Mary's role as a witness is interesting due to the fact women at that time could not be witnesses in legal proceedings. Because of this, and because of her subsequent missionary activity in spreading the Gospel, she is known by the title, "Equal of the Apostles". She is often depicted on icons bearing a vessel of ointment, not because of the anointing by the "sinful woman", but because she was among those women who brought ointments to the tomb of Jesus. For this reason, she is called a Myrrhbearer.
According to Eastern traditions, she retired to Ephesus with the Theotokos (Mary, the Mother of God) and there she died. Her relics were transferred to Constantinople in 886 and are there preserved.
Roman Catholic
Gregory of Tours, writing in Tours in the sixth century, supports the tradition that she retired to Ephesus, with no mention of any connection to Gaul.
How a cult of Mary Magdalene first arose in Provence has been summed up by Victor Saxer in the collection of essays in La Magdaleine, VIIIe – XIIIe siècle and by Katherine Ludwig Jansen, drawing on popular devotions, sermon literature and iconology.
Mary Magdalene's relics were first venerated at the abbey of Vézelay in Burgundy. Jacobus de Voragine gives the common account of the transfer of the relics of Mary Magdalene from her sepulchre in the oratory of Saint Maximin at Aix-en-Provence to the newly-founded abbey of Vézelay; the transportation of the relics is entered as undertaken in 771 by the founder of the abbey, identified as Gerard, duke of Burgundy. The earliest mention of this episode is the notice of the chronicler Sigebert of Gembloux (died 1112), who asserts that the relics were removed to Vézelay through fear of the Saracens. There is no record of their further removal to the other St-Maximin; a casket of relics associated with Magdalene remains at Vézelay.
Afterwards, since September 9 1279, the body of Mary Magdalene was also venerated at Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume, Provence. This cult attracted such throngs of pilgrims that the earlier shrine was rebuilt as the great Basilica from the mid-thirteenth century, one of the finest Gothic churches in the south of France.
The competition between the Cluniac Benedictines of Vézelay and the Dominicans of Saint-Maxime occasioned a rash of miraculous literature supporting the one or the other site. Jacobus de Voragine, compiling his Legenda Aurea (Golden Legend) before the competition arose, characterized Mary Magdalene as the emblem of penitence, washing the feet of Jesus with her copious tears, protectress of pilgrims to Jerusalem, daily lifting by angels at the meal hour in her fasting retreat and many other miraculous happenings in the genre of Romance, ending with her death in the oratory of Saint Maximin, all disingenuously claimed to have been drawn from the histories of Hegesippus and of Josephus.
The French tradition of Saint Lazare of Bethany is that Mary, her brother Lazarus, and Maximinus, one of the Seventy Disciples and some companions, expelled by persecutions from the Holy Land, traversed the Mediterranean in a frail boat with neither rudder nor mast and landed at the place called Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer near Arles. Mary Magdalene came to Marseille and converted the whole of Provence. Magdalene is said to have retired to a cave on a hill by Marseille, La Sainte-Baume ("holy cave." baumo in Provencal), where she gave herself up to a life of penance for thirty years. When the time of her death arrived she was carried by angels to Aix and into the oratory of Saint Maximinus, where she received the viaticum; her body was then laid in an oratory constructed by St. Maximinus at Villa Lata, afterwards called St. Maximin.
In 1279, when Charles II, King of Naples, erected a Dominican convent at La Sainte-Baume, the shrine was found intact, with an explanatory inscription stating why the relics had been hidden.
In 1600, the relics were placed in a sarcophagus commissioned by Pope Clement VIII, the head being placed in a separate reliquary. The relics and free-standing images were scattered and destroyed at the Revolution. In 1814, the church of La Sainte-Baume, also wrecked during the Revolution, was restored, and, in 1822, the grotto was consecrated afresh. The head of the saint now lies there and has been the centre of many pilgrimages.
Other religions, especially Christian Mysticism and many New Age faiths, venerate Mary Magdalene as the Bride of Christ, an avatar of Sophia, and even the Co-Messiah with Jesus Christ, or simply combine all three.
Mary as a penitent
The traditional Roman Catholic feast day dedicated to Mary Magdalene celebrated her position as a penitent. This was changed in 1969, with the revision of the Roman Missal and the Roman Calendar, and now there is no mention in either of Mary Magdalene the sinner.
The Magdalene became a symbol of repentance for the vanities of the world to various sects. Mary Magdalene was the patron of Magdalen College, Oxford, and Magdalene College, Cambridge (both pronounced "maudlin"). In contrast, her name was also used for the Magdalen Asylum, institutions for "fallen women".
In the Orthodox Church, Mary Magdalene is not celebrated as a penitent, but rather as a woman who lived a virtuous life.
Protestant views
Mary is viewed as a highly respected disciple of Jesus.
Veneration is not usually practiced by Protestant denominations.
Among Protestants, Seventh-day Adventists hold special views, as they consider the three women to be the same:
Mary had been looked upon as a great sinner, but Christ knew the circumstances that had shaped her life. (…) It was He who had lifted her from despair and ruin. Seven times she had heard His rebuke of the demons that controlled her heart and mind. (…) It was Mary who sat at His feet and learned of Him. It was Mary who poured upon His head the precious anointing oil, and bathed His feet with her tears. Mary stood beside the cross, and followed Him to the sepulcher. Mary was first at the tomb after His resurrection. It was Mary who first proclaimed a risen Saviour.
Seventh-day Adventists believe she's mentioned differently in the passages that talk about a woman anointing Jesus' feet in Simon's house (; ; ; ), in order to reflect the change of character, "distinguishing her" from the Mary that she was before
Easter Egg tradition
For centuries, it has been the custom of many Christians to share dyed and painted eggs, particularly on Easter Sunday. The eggs represent new life, and Christ bursting forth from the tomb. Among Eastern Orthodox Christians this sharing is accompanied by the proclamation "Christos anesti" ("Christ is risen!") and the response "Alathos anesti" ("Truly He is risen!").
One tradition concerning Mary Magdalene says that following the death and resurrection of Jesus, she used her position to gain an invitation to a banquet given by Emperor Tiberius. When she met him, she held a plain egg in her hand and exclaimed "Christ is risen!" Caesar laughed, and said that Christ rising from the dead was as likely as the egg in her hand turning red while she held it. Before he finished speaking, the egg in her hand turned a bright red, and she continued proclaiming the Gospel to the entire imperial house.
Another version of this story can be found in popular belief, mostly in Greece. It is believed that after the Crucifixion, Mary Magdalene and the Virgin Mary put a basket full of eggs at the foot of the cross. There, the eggs were painted red by the blood of the Christ. Then, Mary Magdalene brought them to Tiberius Caesar (see above).
Gospel of Mary
A group of scholars, the most familiar of whom is Elaine Pagels, have suggested that for one early group of Christians Mary Magdalene was a leader of the early Church and maybe even the unidentified Beloved Disciple, to whom the Fourth Gospel commonly called Gospel of John is ascribed.
Ramon K. Jusino, an internet writer, offers an explanation of this view, based on the textual researches of Raymond E. Brown, in , 1998, available on-line. Ann Graham Brock (see ref.) summarized this reading of the texts in 2003. She demonstrated that an early Christian writing portrays authority as being represented in Mary Magdalene or in the church community structure.
These scholars also observe that the Mary Magdalene figure is consistently elevated in writings from which formal leadership roles are absent. In certain texts, while either the Peter or the Paul figure is more involved, Mary Magdalene's role is often diminished, while in other texts, the opposite occurs. A tug-of-war is evident between these two opposing systems of church government, revealing debates regarding the importance of the key roles of women in Biblical texts.
Scholars of the Mary who appears in the Nag Hammadi Gnostic texts have identified her with the Magdalene, even though she is merely given the (Coptic) equivalent of "Mary." However, Stephen J. Shoemaker thinks that this Mary is actually the Blessed Virgin Mary (Shoemaker 2001), that this fits in better with the notions that Mary was intimate with Jesus, was his greatest disciple, and was to be the center of Jesus' religion; Shoemaker has made a study of Marian liturgies and devotion in Early Christianity.
Further attestation of Mary Magdalene and her role among some early Christians is provided by the gnostic, apocryphal Gospel of Mary Magdalene which survives in two 3rd century Greek fragments and a longer 5th century translation into Coptic. In the Gospel the testimony of a woman first needed to be defended. All of these manuscripts were first discovered and published between 1938 and 1983, but as early as the 3rd century there are Patristic references to the Gospel of Mary. These writings reveal the degree to which that gospel was despised and dismissed by the early Church fathers. In the fragmentary text, the disciples ask questions of the risen Savior (a designation that dates the original no earlier than the 2nd century) and are answered.
Then they grieve, saying, "How shall we go to the Gentiles and preach the Gospel of the Kingdom of the Son of Man? If even he was not spared, how shall we be spared?" And Mary bids them take heart: "Let us rather praise his greatness, for he prepared us and made us into men." She then delivers—at Peter's request—a vision of the Savior she has had, and reports her discourse with him, which shows Gnostic influences.
Her vision does not meet with universal approval:
Karen King of Harvard Divinity School has observed, "The confrontation of Mary with Peter, a scenario also found in The Gospel of Thomas, Pistis Sophia, and The Greek Gospel of the Egyptians, reflects some of the tensions in second-century Christianity. Peter and Andrew represent orthodox positions that deny the validity of esoteric revelation and reject the authority of women to teach." (introduction, The Nag Hammadi Library)
Relationship with Jesus
Many modern writers have come forward with claims that Mary Magdalene was the wife of Jesus. These writers cite Gnostic (an apocrypha text) writings to support their argument. Sources like the Gospel of Philip depict Mary Magdalene as being closer to Jesus than any other disciple. However, there is no known ancient document that claims she was his wife; rather, the Gospel of Philip depicts Mary as Jesus' koinonos, a Greek term indicating a "close friend." "companion" or, potentially, a lover:
The closeness described in these writings depicts Mary Magdalene, representing the Gnostics, as understanding Jesus and his teaching while the other disciples, representing the Church, did not. Kripal writes that "the historical sources are simply too contradictory and simultaneously too silent" to make absolute declarations regarding Jesus' sexuality. On the other hand, the historian John Dickson argues that it was common in early Christianity to kiss a fellow believer by way of greeting (see 1 Peter 5:14 in the New Testament), and as such kissing would have no romantic connotations. Dickson also argues that if Jesus were indeed in love with Mary, then the disciples' question "Why do you love her more than all of us?" would imply romantic jealousy on their part, a theory which he describes as "utterly implausible for historians."
Mary Magdalene appears with more frequency than other women in the canonical Gospels and is shown as being a close follower of Jesus. Mary's presence at the Crucifixion and Jesus' tomb, while hardly conclusive, is at least consistent with the role of grieving wife and widow, although if that were the case Jesus might have been expected to make provision for her care, as well as for his mother Mary. It also seems to contradict Jesus refusing physical contact in John (see Noli me tangere).
Proponents of a married status of Jesus argue that bachelorhood was very rare for Jewish males of Jesus' time, being generally regarded as a transgression of the first divine commandment: "Be fruitful and multiply." According to this reasoning, it would have been unthinkable for an adult, unmarried Jew to travel about teaching as a rabbi.
A counter-argument to this is that in Jesus' time the Jewish religion was very diverse and the role of the rabbi was not yet well defined. It was really not until after the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in A.D. 70 that Rabbinic Judaism became dominant and the role of the rabbi made uniform in Jewish communities. Before Jesus, celibate teachers were known in the communities of the Essenes, although these communities were quite separate from mainstream Judaism. John the Baptist was celibate. Later, Paul of Tarsus was an example of an unmarried itinerant teacher among Christians. Jesus himself approved of voluntary celibacy for religious reasons and explicitly rejected a duty to marry: "There are eunuchs, who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven. He that can take, let him take it." (Matthew ). The Gnostics, the community that Mary represented, did not condone marriage and sexuality, considering the material world and the body as imprisoning spirit.
The idea that Mary Magdalene was the wife of Jesus was popularized by books like The Jesus Scroll (1972), Holy Blood, Holy Grail (1982), The Gospel According to Jesus Christ (1991), The Woman with the Alabaster Jar (1993), Bloodline of the Holy Grail: The Hidden Lineage of Jesus Revealed (1996), The Da Vinci Code (2003), and Jesus the Man (2006); and by films like Bloodline (2008).
The medieval book "Golden Legend" says "Some say that S. Mary Magdalene was wedded to S. John the Evangelist."
Metaphysical marriage
Writers employing metaphysical analogy and allegory have asserted that Christ was already married—to the Church, in the literary topos of The Bridegroom that was developed and enlarged upon in medieval theology.
This image goes back to Old Testament depictions of the covenant between God and his people as a marriage, especially in the books Hosea, Ezekiel and the Song of Songs. Imagery of marriage also appears in the Gospels and is applied to Jesus in the letters of the Apostle Paul (e.g. Ephesians ) and in the Apocalypse of John in the New Testament. This was later expanded by the Church fathers. Some writers, following an early tradition that Jesus is in a mystical sense the second Adam that began with Paul and continued with Irenaeus and others, embody this sense with literal parallels: like the first Adam, his bride was taken from his side when he had fallen asleep (died on the cross). In medieval Christian anagogic exegesis, the blood and water which came from his side when he was pierced, was held to represent the bringing forth of the Church with its analogy in the water of baptism and the wine of the new covenant. Thus Christ can be said in an allegorical sense to already have a wife in the Church.
Cultural references
In film and literature
- Picknett, Lynn and Prince, Clive. The Templar Revelation (1997)
- Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln's 1982 book Holy Blood, Holy Grail
- Dan Brown's novel and later movie The DaVinci Code (2006)
- Bruce Chilton's Mary Magdalene: A Biography, Doubleday, 2005. ISBN 978-0385-51318-0
- Elizabeth Cunningham's "Maeve Chronicles." including Daughter of the Shining Isles, The Passion of Mary Magdalen, and Magdalen Rising
- Abel Ferrara's 2005 film Mary:, with Juliette Binoche as Mary Magdalene.
- Margaret George's novel Mary, Called Magdalene (Peguin Books: New York, 2002)
- Nikos Kazantzakis's novel, The Last Temptation of Christ (Martin Scorsese's film of the same title)
- Ki Longfellow's novel, The Secret Magdalene (Crown/Random House, 2007–2008) is in preproduction for Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner, writer/director Nancy Savoca
- Kathleen McGowan's novel The Expected One (Simon & Schuster, 2006)
- Antoinette May's novel Claudia, Daughter of Rome
- Christopher Moore includes Mary Magdelene (called 'Maggie' in the book) as a childhood friend of Jesus (called Joshua in the book) and Biff in his book Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal.
In music
Other
See also
External links
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- by Dr. Barbara Thiering
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- Gospel of Mary
- The Gospels: Metaphor as "The Great Code"
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