‘Will the real Mary Magdalene please stand up?” That question might be said to underlie Philip Almond’s new reception history of one of the New Testament’s most represented, and most contested, figures. At the heart of Mary’s story lies a paradox. We know almost nothing about her for certain – the canonical Gospels say little – yet, as Almond observes, “this very paucity of information made possible and necessary the construction within Christianity of a variety of ‘lives’ of Mary Magdalene”.
Of the figure scripture explicitly identifies as Mary Magdalene, we know only that she was possessed by demons, whom Jesus exorcised (Luke 8:2, Mark 16:9); observed His crucifixion (Mark 15:40); was first witness to His resurrection (Mark 16: 9) and announced it to the apostles (John 20:18). Meanwhile, Matthew (27:55-6) implies – without quite stating it – that Mary was a woman of means.
Even her birthplace is doubtful. A small Galilean settlement named Magdala (today an archaeological site) persisted into the 20th century, but goes unmentioned in literary sources for 300 years after Jesus’s death. Only from the sixth century did Christian writers associate it with Mary’s home – beginning in 530 with Archdeacon Theodosius’s Topography of the Holy Land.
The Greek Μαρία ἡ καλουμένη Μαγδαληνή (Luke 8:2) means not “Mary of Magdala” but “Mary called the Magdalene”. In Aramaic, Jesus’s vernacular, “magdal” means “tower”. It may, Almond argues, have been Jesus’s nickname for her – like Peter’s “cephas”: “the Rock”. Mary as “the tower woman” fits Matthew’s placing of her among those who cared for Jesus’s needs and from whom He drew strength.
All else we now associate with this basic-Mary arises either from combining her speculatively with other Gospel figures, producing a composite-Mary, or from tradition’s elaboration of her biography. The composite-Mary, inspiration for poets and artists, unites basic-Mary with the unnamed “sinful woman” (Luke 7:38-9) who anoints Jesus’s feet with her tears and ointment and dries them with her hair, and also with Mary the sister of Lazarus who behaves similarly in John 12:3.
In 591, St Gregory the Great fused the three women in his sermon on Luke 7:36-50. Not only did Gregory declare the three Marys to be one, but his interpretation of Mary’s “seven devils” as the Deadly Sins inaugurated her identification as a prostitute. In an age when sex workers were distinguished by excessive perfumery, there were clear implications to Gregory’s claim that while Mary once “used the ungent to perfume her flesh for forbidden acts”, she now did so to worship God instead.
Tradition’s elaboration of Mary’s life story, Almond argues, addresses local pastoral needs more than perennial questions of doctrine or ecclesiology. Curiously it was Mary’s later years, after Christ’s ascension, which experienced development first – long before hagiographers troubled themselves with exploring her life prior to recruitment into Jesus’s entourage.
From the early ninth century, texts emerged, typified by the Old English Martyrology, presenting Mary’s biography after the pattern of the vita ermetica – the hermit life – particularly that of her namesake Mary of Egypt. These accounts stimulated the long pictorial tradition of the cave-dwelling, perpetually fasting, mystic Magdalene or “hairy Mary” – her body lifted to heaven by Angels to receive spiritual food and her nakedness hidden by flowing locks. The tradition is manifested exquisitely in Giovani Birago’s illustration for the Sforza Hours book of hours (c.1490).
Conversely, the tradition of viewing Mary in terms of an active vita apostolica – apostolic life – originated in the 11th century in France, but gained popularity in the 13th century. The legend that she had been not only “apostle to the apostles” but also apostle to Provence helped establish more respectable pedigrees for relics of her body which found their way to France following the sack of Constantinople in 1204.
This is an impressive book, but some quirks frustrate. Almond carefully contrasts views of the Magdalene taken by Calvin and Luther, but skips the rich seam of developments stimulated by the Council of Trent’s teaching on penance. Likewise he offers illuminating juxtapositions of Eastern Orthodox and Western Catholic Magdalenes, but ventures none between today’s west and the global south. Some comparison of Mary’s afterlives in post-Christian Europe and the vibrant Catholic cultures of South America might be instructive.
These points should not deter readers from enjoying this work. As Passiontide leads us into Holy Week, Almond’s book stimulates reflection on Tradition’s penitential saint par excellence.
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