|
Photo courtesy of New York Magazine |
For those who took part in the Women’s March today, January
21, 2017.
“But now this
one word hath my sense restored,
Lightened my
mind, and quickened my heart,
And in my soul
a living spirit poured,
Yea, with sweet
comfort strengthened every part:
For well this word
a spirit dead may rise,
Which only word
made Heaven, World, and Seas.”
Gervase
Markham
“Marie
Magdalens—Lamentation #6”
On a starless night, a
woman and child huddled in the front of a battered wooden boat as it was
propelled by the waves toward the beachhead.
Water, cold and bracing, sloshed over the bow and pooled around their
sandaled feet. Dark and shadowy men met
them and pulled the craft up onto the sand and hands extended to help the woman
and child disembark on the black-shrouded coast of Gaul. “I am Mary of Magdala,” the women
whispered. “I am Mary of Magdala, and I
come bearing the blood of Jesus Christ, our savior,” She wrapped her arm around the small child
and pulled him close to her. “This is
the sang raal, the blood of our
Lord.” They made their way up the beach
and into the trees. It would be light
soon, and they had many miles to travel to spread the good news of Jesus
Christ.
This is a story of
Mary Magdalene, as the West names her, and her arrival in Gaul bearing the
child of Jesus, her lover or possibly husband, the literal blood of Christ, the
Holy Grail. Is any of it true? Some of it, may be, or none of it. This is how fact becomes history becomes
legend becomes mythology. All it takes
is a little imagination. In the realm of
narrative, characters become who we need them to be, and facts can be
conveniently manipulated for the sake of plot and theme.
This version of the
story is not accepted by scholars. It is
Da Vinci Code nonsense, but it is
entertaining. Her fanciful narrative
also highlights a truth: Mary of Magdala
has been reinvented several times over the centuries to fit the prevailing
culture of the time. This imaginative
reworking of her story leaves us wondering about her true identity. She is who we need her to be, and that has
clouded her historical presence in the narrative of divinity, the life of Jesus
Christ.
There is a tradition
and narrative that comes from the New Testament Gospels regarding the
Magdalene’s life. How much of that is
true and how much is open to interpretation?
Her name is significant—Mary, there are multiple Marys—because we are
not certain if she is an amalgamation of several women in the Bible or is each
Mary a different person, as Mary was a common name. The Gnostic sources tell a far richer story
of the Magdalene, but how much of those works can we take as valid? Is she a feminist icon? How is she portrayed in art down through the
ages? Again, we get a variety of
personas in painting and sculpture. Do
these works give us a clear vision of this singular woman, one of the chief
apostles, in fact, the apostle of the apostles, a rival to Peter? And after a thorough analysis, what are we
left with in the story of Mary of Magdala?
Who is she?
Mary of Magdala first
appears in the Gospel of Luke 8:2-3:
“Accompanying him [Jesus] were the Twelve and some women who had been
cured of evil spirits and infirmities.
Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, Joanna, the
wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, Susanna, and many others who provided for them
out of their resources.” There are a
number of unique aspects in this passage.
One, as the notes in the Bible explain, it is rare to find mention of
women in such a prominent position within Jesus’ followers given the patriarchal
attitudes of the time in first century Palestine. Two, it is clear that the women, at least in
part, were subsidizing Jesus’ ministry by providing “for them out of their
resources.” What exactly did these women
provide?
Biblical critics often
point to Luke 7:37-38, the story of the sinful woman, as the first mention of
Mary Magdalene, but these two women are not the same. The sinful woman who is pardoned for her sins
and then bathes Jesus’ feet with ointment is moved to tears of gratitude for
the forgiveness. Mary Magdalene had
seven demons cast out of her—seven demons representing the seven sins. She goes on to prove herself worthy of
healing others, especially those who are possessed in other biblical
stories. What is also clear here is that
she is not a prostitute. That assertion,
says Birgit Breninger, is directly from the Middle Ages and Church Fathers such
as Saint Augustine and Tertullian who needed to link the Magdalene to Original
Sin caused by the first woman, Eve. They
needed Mary Magdalene to be more “religiously authentic” as the “penitent
prostitute” to remind women of the weakness of their sex, especially in regard
to sexual matters.
Bruce Chilton writes
that “Luke does not present Mary as the wealthy, elegant seductress of medieval
legend and modern fantasy.” What we must
remember is that the Magdalene arrived possessed by seven demons; much of her
property had been lost or stolen as she followed Jesus’ entourage across the
region. “Revisionist readings, like
medieval legends, can divert and refresh our imaginations, but they also show
us how much the Western religious imagination still wants a rich and powerful
Mary to protect the poor, defenseless Jesus,” Chilton writes. Mary Magdalene distinguishes herself as a
true apostle; her worth comes through her witness of Jesus’ death and
resurrection, not from the proceeds of a life of prostitution or from a wealthy
family from which she fled when the demons came.
Matthew’s Gospel has
Mary Magdalene with Jesus’ mother, Mary, witnessing the crucifixion. They remain behind after others have left
“facing the tomb” (27:61). It is of
utmost importance to note that the Eleven are not present—the men fled and are
in hiding. It is the women,
significantly Mary Magdalene, who remained in Jesus’ hour of need. This, of course, sets up the Magdalene as the
prime witness to Jesus’ resurrection when she finds the empty tomb. Mark also has Mary Magdalene and other women
watching from the distance in 15:40. In
this account, the women observe what is happening and where Jesus’ body is laid
to rest so they can return to anoint it properly after the Sabbath. John moves the women closer to the action, to
the foot of the cross. “Standing by the
cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas
and Mary of Magdala” (19:25). There are
a number of Mary figures in each account and in other literature, but the consistent
figures always present are Mary, Christ’s mother, and Mary Magdalene. This consistency, Edward A. Mangan argues,
comes from the need for “historical witnesses.”
This is “to show that the story of the Resurrection is not based on a
fable but on strict historical truth.”
What adds to the veracity of these accounts is that the patriarchal
society of the first century would most definitely not want Mary Magdalene, a
woman, as witness to the resurrection.
If she appears in all four Gospels, her presence cannot be disputed. She can be depicted as a whore with her hair
down and flowing all around her as she sobs for her Christ; she can wear the
bright colors, namely red, in the art of the Renaissance; she can be seen
crying and throwing her hands in the air with hysterical grief, but she was
there and all but one disciple were not.
John writes it is Mary
Magdalene who discovers the empty tomb, but unlike in the other Gospels, she
runs to Simon Peter to tell him. This
shifts the narrative back to the men but this is not consistent with the other
narratives. In fact, it may indicate
what Claudia Setzer describes as “the embarrassment over women’s essential
place in the resurrection story…within the Christian community.” However, Mary Magdalene stays at the tomb and
later experiences a direct encounter with Jesus. In disguise, he asks her why she is weeping,
and she, believing him to be the gardener, begs for the return of Christ’s
body. Jesus then calls her name and she
responds, recognizing him now, “Rabbouni,” teacher, and immediately falls at
his feet but he tells her not to touch him yet (John 20:11-18). “Noli
me tangere,” he tells her, “stop holding on to me,” because he has not yet returned
to his father. According to Barbara
Baert, “no other utterance by Christ has been the subject of so much discussion
by the first Church Fathers.” There are
several theories why Jesus does not want her to touch him. Baert writes that the admonishment “is an
explicit statement of the transformation of the belief in Christ as a human being into the belief in Christ as
God.”
The touching is for the human Christ, but one cannot touch the divine
entity he has now become after his death and resurrection. Baert takes this idea from the work of Augustine. She goes on to borrow from Ambrose of Milan as
well: “Mary Magdalene was prohibited
from touching Christ because, at that moment, she lacked the capacity to grasp
Christ in his risen and divine form.”
Ambrose “compares the Mary of John 20 with Eve: if the first sin was committed by a woman,
the first person to see the Risen Christ will also be a women.” So in the congruent patriarchal views of this
Church Father, Mary Magdalene is making up for Eve causing the downfall of
humanity. Baert brings in Hippolytus of
Rome who “proposed a more women-friendly meaning of the Noli me tangere…Mary is the apostola
apostolorum, sent by Christ himself to redeem Eve’s sin. Mary Magdalene is Ecclesia, the proclaimer of salvation, or the New Eve.” She “is also the woman who is elected to
receive an insight into the incarnation, the cycle of salvation and the divine
aura.”
Luke’s version of the
resurrection contains several interesting elements. The women, Mary Magdalene among them, enter
the tomb at daybreak only to find it empty.
They are not sure what to do next when “two men in dazzling garments”
appear to them (24:1-4). Of course, the
women are deeply afraid but the men ask a strange question coupled with an even
more disturbing statement: “Why do you
seek the living one among the dead? He
is not here, but has been raised.
Remember what he said to you while he was still in Galilee, that the Son
of Man must be handed over to sinners and crucified, and rise on the third
day.” (24:5-7) Evidently, this sounded
plausible to the women and they returned to the now eleven apostles and told
them what they had seen. Peter does not
believe them and returns to the tomb to see for himself.
Matthew constructs a
rather violent scene witnessed by Mary Magdalene and another Mary (it is not
clear which Mary this is). There is an
earthquake with the angel of the Lord descending from heaven. It is this angel who rolls back the stone in
cinematic fashion. Matthew says “His
appearance was like lightning and his clothing was white as snow.”
(28:1-3) Like Luke’s account, Matthew’s
also contains figures in brilliantly white garments. Even the guards in Matthew are shaking in
fear, but to the women, the angel instructs them not to be afraid. He actually invites them into the tomb to see
where Jesus’ body had only recently been laid.
As in the other accounts, the women are told to go and tell the
apostles, but here, Matthew differs on one major point. Jesus actually appears to them as they are
making their way back to the apostles.
He tells them again not to be afraid and to report what they have seen
to Jesus’ “brothers.” (28:10)
Mark’s Gospel offers a
lengthy account that has similarities with the other texts. In his version, Mary Magdalene is accompanied
by Mary, the mother of James, and Salome, the disciple. This is not the Salome who demanded John the
Baptist’s head on a platter. The women
find the stone, again, rolled away from the mouth of the tomb, and just inside
there is a man, young, in a white robe.
“Do not be amazed,” the man tells them.
“You seek Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Behold the place where they laid him.”
(16:1-6) The strange figure tells them,
as in the other accounts, to go report back to the apostles, but in this
narrative, the women are too frightened to tell their story, so they tell no
one. An alternate ending is tagged on to
Mark’s Gospel here. In the parallel
narrative, it is told from Jesus’ point of view as he first comes to Mary
Magdalene and she in turn goes to the apostles who do not believe her
story. Jesus also appears to two other
disciples on the road, but the apostles do not believe them either. It is not until Jesus appears to all of them
gathered for a meal and chastises them for not believing. Then they accept that Jesus walks among
them. The newly resurrected figure sends
them out into the world with a clear mission:
“Go into the whole
world and proclaim the gospel to every creature…These signs will accompany
those who believe: in my name they will
drive out demons, they will speak new languages. They will pick up serpents [with their
hands], and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not harm them. They will lay hands on the sick, and they
will recover.” (16:9-18)
Although Mary
Magdalene’s story and person are reconstituted over the centuries to reflect
what Church Fathers needed her to be, or to illustrate some moral rectitude, it
is clear in the Gospel accounts that she is the witness not only to Jesus’
death on the cross, but to his resurrection, one of the most important narratives
in Christianity. This cannot be altered
or denigrated; this is as close as we can come to a historical certainty. Of all the things Mary Magdalene might have
been, she is most definitely the witness to a man rising from the dead and
walking among the living. We have a
plethora of sources to validate this.
The Gnostic Gospels
offer a much fuller and more imaginative account of just who Mary Magdalene
was. These texts were discovered in the
mid-20th century at Nag Hammadi in Egypt. According to Robin Griffith-Jones in her
book, Beloved Disciple, Thomas in his
Gospel tries to refute John’s assertion that women understood Jesus better than
men. Thomas quotes Simon Peter saying to
the disciples, “Let Mary go out from among us, because women are not worthy of
life.” Jesus retorts that he will make
her male because every woman “who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of
heaven.” These words, on both sides, are
bold and confrontational. Why does
Thomas see women as expendable? It seems
more than just patriarchy; it is clearly misogyny. And what does Jesus mean that Mary Magdalene
will be made male? In a backhanded way,
his words are misogynistic as well; women cannot be admitted to heaven as
women? Notice that Jesus does not
contradict Peter in his words, or Thomas for writing them down. However, there could be something richer and
more modern here. Is Jesus arguing that
gender is fluid, that the ultimate destination of humanity is an end where sex
does not matter: men must become more
like women and women like men, and once this androgynous perfection is in
place, only then can the human being enter heaven? It is tempting to read into this as an
assertion of gender fluidity completely absent from the New Testament
texts. And in the center of it is Mary
Magdalene, a woman who leads the disciples like a man and can more than hold
her own in a patriarchal society.
It is in the Gnostic
Gospel of Mary that the Magdalene comes into her own in a way much more fully
realized than the New Testament accounts.
Clearly, she is more than just another disciple to Jesus. Previous Gospels, such as Philip’s, even
characterize the relationship between the Magdalene and Jesus in terms of a
marriage bed. He is seen kissing her on
the mouth. If there is something more
here, it is a sacred marriage.
In Mary’s Gospel, it
is Peter who must ask Mary for information from the Christ. As quoted by Griffith-Jones, “Peter said to
Mary Magdalene, ‘Sister, we know that the Savior loved you more than the rest
of women. Tell us the words of the
Savior which you remember—which you know, but we do not, nor have we heard
them.’” Peter is turning to a woman to
teach the others what Jesus has told her.
This is extraordinary in the patriarchal times of the first century. Peter may question her authority, or send her
out because she is expendable, but she is vindicated by this scene in her
Gospel.
However, the most
stunning moment is yet to come. The
disciples were deeply afraid of persecution, or even being put to death for
preaching the word of Christ. They hid
in dark rooms and kept out of sight, trying to maintain a low profile. It is Mary Magdalen who must rally their
courage and flagging spirits. In one
scene from her Gospel, she rises and embraces each disciple. “Do not weep and do not grieve,” she tells
them, “nor be irresolute, for his grace will be entirely with you and will
protect you. But rather let us praise
his greatness, for he has prepared us and made us into humans.” At her words, the fear dissipated among these
men and they began to plan their teaching and eventual re-entry into the
world. It is a startling, triumphant
moment for a woman once possessed of seven demons and left bereft to wander the
countryside. Griffith-Jones stresses
that Mary Magdalene was an “ideal believer and spokesperson for Jesus himself,”
and she fulfilled this role as a woman.
It is an evocation of the “true convergence of the female soul and the
Son of the Human One.”
Ann McGuire broadens
out the Gnostic version of Mary Magdalene in her chapter in Women and Christian Origins. She tells us that the Magdalene fills a
number of roles in the texts. In many of
these characterizations, she is the lone woman in a room full of men, and she
is teaching them how to be a follower of Christ. She is clearly special to Jesus and has a
special relationship to him that the male disciples do not have. The Gospel of Mary pushes front and center
the leadership and authority of women in the early Church. When the disciples are weeping in dark rooms
and despairing of ever seeing the light, it is Mary Magdalene who rallies them
and tells them not to weep because even though Jesus is gone, he is still with
them. “Here, Mary shows herself to be an
unwavering leader who understands that the disciples must turn toward their
nongendered nature as anthropoi
[human beings] in order to gain salvation.”
If Mary Magdalene was
a leader among the apostles, a witness to Jesus’ death and resurrection, how
did she become the repentant prostitute, the suffering sinner, the example for
Christians that even the most sinful among them could be saved through the
glory of Jesus Christ? How did she
become a feminist icon in a new age? To
understand this transformation, we must look to history and those who attacked
her and reconstituted her starting in the second millennium.
The most virulent
critic of Mary Magdalene and Christianity was Celsus, a Greek philosopher
living in the second century. Most of
his writing survives in rebuttal by Origen.
The two did battle over many issues related to the developing Christian
world. Because Origen quoted Celsus at
length, we can access much of his diatribe.
He describes the resurrection episode with Mary Magdalene and other
women as witnesses as a moment “created by ‘hysterical women’ who [were]
deluded by sorcery.” He questions
“whether anyone who really died ever rose again with the same body?” He calls the whole event as “dreamt in a
certain state of mind and through wishful thinking,” a “hallucination” and a
“cock-and-bull story.” Hysteria has long
been a charge leveled at women through the ages. It has bled into the sciences with women
having hysterectomies—the uterus and ovaries removed due to cysts or
tumors. MacDonald tells us that “Celsus’
labelling of a woman with a talent for the invention of religious belief as
‘hysterical’ reflects a well-attested sentiment in the Roman Empire that women
were inclined toward excesses in matters of religion.” It also appears that Roman men found them
excessively emotional.
Celsus argues that
Jesus was not the Lord and Savior as Christians tried to tell the world, but
the son of a common woman, an adulteress.
The child grows to become a magician, a sorcerer. As for Jesus’ parentage, his father,
according to Celsus, was a Roman soldier named Panthera.
When he attacks Mary
Magdalene, he does so with vicious abandon.
He challenges the very notion of resurrection, mainly because it is the
central event of the developing Christianity.
MacDonald writes “Celsus’ focus upon the role of Mary Magdalene may
reflect second-century controversy about the importance of this woman in Jesus’
circle and about the implication of this importance for leadership by
women.” Celsus was against Christianity,
but it did not take long for Church Fathers, popes, and other figureheads
within the Church to take up this attack on Mary Magdalene.
Mary Magdalene
becoming the repentant prostitute was a direct result of the Catholic hierarchy
in the Middle Ages needing a sinner who is redeemed as an example for
Christians that one could repent one’s ways and find a place in the heavenly
firmament no matter how grave the sin.
Because of the confusion of Marys in scripture, there was an ongoing
discussion about just which Mary was being referred to in different sections of
the New Testament. Pope Gregory the
Great presented a case in his Homily 33 that Mary Magdalene was the sinful
woman of Luke 7:37-38, even though she does not appear by name until after this
point in the timeline. It was a
connection that would be difficult to sever going forward. Often, the Magdalene would be referred to as
the woman who bathed Christ’s feet with her tears and dried them with her hair,
descriptive language from the sinful woman verses. Gregory writes that “She whom Luke calls the
sinful woman, whom John calls Mary [of Bethany], we believe to be the Mary
[Magdalene] from whom seven devils were ejected according to Mark [16:9]. And what did these seven devils signify, if
not all the vices?” Mary Magdalene,
through no fault of her own, became the repentant prostitute that most
Catholics and Christians think they know.
Gregory went on to say that:
“It is clear that in
the past Mary Magdalene, intent on forbidden acts, had applied the ointment to
herself, to perfume her flesh. So what
she had used on herself, to her shame, she was now offering to God, to her praise. Everything about her that she had used for
pleasure, all this she now offered up as a sacrifice. She offered to God every service in her
penitence which she had disdained to give God her guilt.”
Down through the ages,
Mary Magdalene has been the leader of men, the eleven disciples, and was known
as the beloved disciple as well as the apostle to the apostles. She appears in every Gospel account of Jesus’
death and resurrection. In medieval
times, she became the sinner, the one who gave hope to Christians carrying the
weight of sin on their backs. If they
truly repented, they too could find the kingdom of God like Saint Mary of
Magdala. In her sin, though, she became
the fallen woman, the prostitute, revered both for her penitential weeping and
her sexual energy, as we see in some of the art depicting her image. In the 20th century, Mary
Magdalene would again be reinvented for a new audience, the proponents of a
movement known as modern feminism.
Writers and researchers in feminist theology would make her a religious
role model for a new age.
Feminist theologians
accuse the patriarchal hierarchy of the Church of forgetfulness when it comes
to Mary Magdalene. Regardless of which
incarnation one attaches to, through every remaking of her remarkable character,
she has played a vital role in the development of Christianity. She was a leader of the early Church, as much
as Peter was. So, as Kieran Scott notes,
the first goal of this new interest in the Magdalene is to recover the shared
memory of her as a vital woman of Christian history. The story of women in the Church has not been
done well, says Scott, and we would do well to remember that women were some of
Jesus’ closest companions and disciples.
It is also necessary
to understand that rehabilitating the image of Mary Magdalene and revising
previous imaginings of her means reclaiming the female body. This reclamation has its roots in the
biblical passages at the resurrection where the Magdalene discovers Jesus in
his divine glory. This means truly recognizing
the imago dei of every person, male
and female, and that those designations may no longer have weight in our
gender-fluid modernity. Because she was
open to her life experiences as a disciple of Christ, the message is clear that
the modern Church must reimagine her place in society and in culture. Feminist theologians demand that the Church
not just recognize, but celebrate gender and promote inclusion. Mary Magdalene, according to Scott, was very
good at sensing “the sacred in the secular and the divine in the details of our
ordinary, everyday lives.” In this, she
is a role model.
Feminist theologians
have been crucial to the re-emergence of women in the history of the Church as
more than second-class citizens serving the more important males as they built
the faith. Chilton calls this a
demonstration of the way “history is flexible, a work of inferential
imagination.” In terms of literary
analysis, the text is fluid. Different
interpretations result in metamorphosing societies and cultures, and Scripture
can stand the test of time through re-interpreting and re-evaluating themes and
ideas in new ages. The Church is people,
and people are multi-varied. The Church
is amorphous not in its structure—the pope and his bishops remain in the hierarchy—but
in the people who fill the pews and collection boxes. Every great religion must be incomplete
because human evolution and development are always works-in-progress. So there is room for a revision of women and
their role in the Church. Mary Magdalene
offers a living example of that in the way she has survived as a Catholic
heroine through multiple incarnations.
She fills a traditional and a symbolic position. She is witness and activist; saint and
sinner; woman and lover to Christ. No
one person should be the final word on history or its characters. Heroes and saints do something that few mere
mortals can do: they give a unique piece
of themselves to those who admire them.
Mary Magdalene can be the strong leader, able to bear witness and her
own grief at the dying of Christ on the cross, and be there to tell the news
when he rises to walk the earth again.
Care must be taken,
however, to understand and develop counter-arguments to the forces that would
reduce someone like Mary Magdalene, or indeed, any woman or “other,” to a bit
player or bystander. For example, many
fundamentalist Christians see the need for what they call family values within
their faith. Yet, although Jesus
traveled with his own “family” of disciples, he asked these same disciples to
give up their families to follow him.
These kinds of incongruences must be examined and studied. In another part of New Testament Scripture,
Saint Paul has strong words about the role of women. Here, too, the culture in which his words played
out must be considered. The role Paul
advocates for women may be part of his culture, but it is not a part of 21st
century beliefs about gender roles.
It is significant that
even though Mary Magdalene plays a prominent role in every Gospel account of
Christ’s death and resurrection, in Mark’s Gospel, he has the habit of
presenting women without names. They are
mere faces in the crowd. They wait on
the men and serve them. Trying to erase
women from the early Church picture, or at the very least, make them stand-ins
for their sex, simply cannot happen.
One, biblical exegetes know to look to the culture of the time to
understand this effacement. Two, other
texts and Gospels do use names and descriptors so history can be checked and
verified. It is a grave error to ruin a
reputation, as medieval scholars did to the Magdalene, to diminish her to a bit
player. In this case, they used a
time-worn trick of making a good woman, a devoted disciple, into a whore. Mary, the mother of Jesus, is proclaimed a
virgin. And there, in the two Marys, we
have the classic misogynistic and patriarchal pairing: virgin and whore. People are real and much more layered than
that insulting simplicity.
There are ways to view
Mary Magdalene and determine how a particular culture values and personifies
her. Art conveys characterization. In the Middle Ages, we see a number of pieces
that have Magdalene characters. In many
cases, she wears red and her long hair is long.
There are numerous images of her washing the feet of Jesus with her
tears and drying them with her hair, again pointing to the confusion with the
sinful woman of Luke 7:37-38. She is
nearly always the beata peccatrix, or
blessed sinner, says Vassiliki A. Foskolou.
It is even clear the transition from one incarnation to another. “Though the cult of the composite saint had
considerable success in the West in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, it was
in Italy from the thirteenth century onward that the aspect of the repentant
sinner was particularly emphasized.” The
composite saint refers to the combination of the Magdalene with other Marys as
featured in the New Testament while the repentant sinner is the imagination of
Mary Magdalene as a prostitute who is begging forgiveness for her
transgressions.
In several depictions,
her physical appearance contains clues to her incarnation. She might be pictured with a scroll with
words indicating her penance and salvation.
Often there are scenes surrounding her in miniature that depict moments
from her life as a disciple, such as at the crucifixion or the tomb after
Christ’s resurrection. She stands at the
foot of the cross with her hands in the air in a gesture of supplication or
extreme duress. The Italian artists were
very good at imagining the intensity of her grief in these moments. She is a saint of sorrow and witness. Her accoutrements reveal her persona; in
some, she is carrying a vase or vessel of ointment with which she will anoint
Christ as the sinful woman. In others
she is a myrrophore bearing the fragrant oil in a Sinai Crusader icon. These depictions are often part of the
Byzantine period of art when the Magdalene is often portrayed as the chief
mourner and supporter of Mary the mother of Jesus. In these paintings, she is a figure of much
strength and much sorrow, helping men bring Jesus down from the cross.
One final place do we
find a characterization of Mary Magdalene:
the lore of saints. These sources
contain hagiographic descriptions that are noted for their reverence to the subject
person and the liberal use of purple prose to describe her. Here are a few examples from Raymond-Leopold
Bruckberger, O.P. in his book, Mary
Magdalene, as translated by H.L. Binsse.
He characterizes her family as Sadducean “with a country house on the
shores of Lake Genesareth in Galilee and a town residence at the gates of
Jerusalem.” Definitely, his Magdalene is
a Town &Country girl. He goes on to describe her in somewhat
prurient detail: “At the age of thirteen
or fourteen, already radiantly beautiful and completely developed, as women are
at that young age in those lands, her mind sharp like the minds of all the
daughters of her race, saucy and sensual…”
If we can ignore Bruckberger’s salacious drooling and how he knows she
was “completely developed,” it is clear that he is definitely imagining her in
a new incarnation. All of it is
unsupportable hogwash that says more about his interests than trying to create
an accurate biography of the woman we know as the Magdalene. Later, he admits that he does not know what
young Mary fantasized about: “Can we
know the dreams of a young girl when she feels gushing within her a sap so
torrid that it could set fire to the world?”
Still later, Bruckberger summons the literary ecstasy of a romance
novelist:
“For any observer of
the human heart…it is impossible that Mary Magdalene was not in love with
Christ. He cured this woman of a serious
and perhaps horrible illness; he freed her from bondage to seven devils; he
publicly accepted her act of homage; he no less publicly took up her defense and
humiliated her enemies; he was handsome, young, eloquent, courageous, and beset
by danger, having something intangible, strange, and holy not possessed by
other men.”
Who knew the biblical
story of the ministry of Jesus Christ could be such a bodice ripper?
So back to that
mythological and magical journey to Gaul in the cover of night with the living,
breathing Holy Grail tucked under the cloak of his fierce and determined
mother. Who is Mary Magdalene, and has
the truth of her been lost to history?
There are many arguments in a number of sources, reputable and
otherwise, that she did not have a child with Jesus, and instead, accompanied
his mother and others to Ephesus where she lived out her life in service to
others and died there. This story
belongs primarily to the churches in the East while the West clings to the hope
that she brought the blood of the cross to a new continent and died there in what
is now France. Lots of earth has been
displaced looking for her bones and relics.
A barren skull in a nun’s headpiece is said to be the “Head relic of
Mary Magdalene” and is from a crypt in Saint-Maximin in the south of
France. When it was found, a piece of
skin was still attached to the forehead.
For Mary Magdalene hunters, this area is Ground Zero in the great relic
hunt.
But Mary herself
remains an enigma. She is the woman we
want her to be, down through history across a swath of documents and decrees
and papal bulls. In the end, we know she
existed because there is far too much documentation to dispute the fact of her
life. In the fires of patriarchy and
misogyny, if a man could have erased her presence in history’s timeline, he
would have. A woman, the patriarchs
grumble, should never be the only witness to the greatest moment in divine
revelation, the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
If one listens closely, he or she can hear a thousand men—apostles,
disciples, followers, popes, priests, and scholars—demanding to know why? Why a woman?
But she is there, standing in sorrow at the foot of the cross, Jesus’
blood spotting her tunic, dripping on her outstretched arms. And there she is again, as the sun breaks
over the mountain to illuminate the cave of darkness where her Christ has been
placed in the vestibule of death, her bottle of fragrant oils clutched to her
chest, full of fear and trepidation and grace.
In every incarnation,
in every persona, in every characterization, in every act, in every fiber of
her body, every nuance of her soul, it is she, Mary Magdalene, witness and
teacher, leader of men and women. Mary
of Magdala, lover of Christ, saint, and a woman.
Works cited in this essay:
Baert, Barbara. “The
Gaze in the Garden: body and embodiment in ‘Nolo me tangere.’”
Netherlands
Yearbook for History of Art Vol. 58,
Body
and Embodiment In Netherlandish Art (2007-2008):
14-39. Accessed November 19, 2016,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/24707927
Breninger, Birgit. Feminist Perspectives on Cultural and
Religious Identities: Rewriting Mary Magdalene, Mother Ireland and Cu Chulainn
of Ulster. Frankfurt, DE: Peter Lang GmbH, 2012. ProQuest ebrary
accessed November 23, 2016.
Bruckberger, O.P.
Raymond-Leopold. Mary Magdalene. Translated
by H.L. Binsse. New York: Pantheon,
1953.
Chilton, Bruce. Mary Magdalene: A Biography. New York:
Doubleday, 2005.
Eggen, William. “Mary
Magdalene’s Touch in a Family Church.”
New
Blackfriars Vol. 78 No. 920 (October, 1997): 429-438. Accessed on November
19, 2016.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/43250380
Foskolou, Vassiliki A.
“Mary Magdalene between East and West: Cult and Image, Relics And Politics in
the Late Thirteenth-Century Eastern Mediterranean.”
Dumbarton Oaks Papers
Vol. 65/66 (2011-2012): 271-296. Accessed November 23, 2016.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/41933712
Griffith-Jones, Robin.
Beloved Disciple: The Misunderstood
Legacy of Mary Magdalene, The Woman Closest to Jesus. New York: HarperOne, 2008.
Kraemer, Ross Shepard and
Mary Rose D’Angelo, eds. Women &
Christian Origins. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1999.
MacDonald, Margaret Y.
Early Christian Women and Pagan Opinion:
The Power of the Hysterical Woman. Great Britain: Cambridge University
Press, 1996.
Mangan, Edward A. “The
Women At The Tomb.”
The Catholic Biblical
Quarterly Vol. 7 No. 2 (April, 1945): 191-200. Accessed on November 19,
2016.
http://jstor.org/stable/43723969
New American Bible, Revised Edition. New Jersey: World Catholic Press, 2010.
Schaberg, Jane. “The
Resurrection of Mary Magdalene: Legends, Apocrypha, and the Christian
Testament.”
CrossCurrents Vol. 52,
No. 1 (Spring, 2002): 81-89. Accessed November 23, 2016.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/24461145
Setzer, Claudia.
“Excellent Women: Female Witness to the Resurrection.”
Journal of Biblical Literature Vol. 116, No. 2 (Summer, 1997):
259-272. Accessed on
November 19,
2016.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3266223