Mary Magdalene, Saint

MARY MAGDALENE, Saint. - A woman called thus because...

(courtesy of Msgr. A. P. Frutaz)
MARY MAGDALENE (Magdalene), saint. - Woman called thus because because, it seems, she was a native of Magdala (v.); she is named explicitly for the first time in the Gospel (by Lk. 8:2) among the pious women who followed Jesus. From her the Savior had cast out seven demons (ibid.; Mk. 16:9). She was present on Calvary (Mt. 27:56-61; Mk. 15:40-47; Jn. 19:25); she witnessed the burial of Jesus (Mt. 27:61; Mk. 15:47); on the morning of the Resurrection she went to the tomb and was favored with an appearance of Jesus (Mt. 28:1-9; Mk. 16:1-9; Lk. 24:10; Jn. 20:11-18).

The Latin liturgy (July 22) identifies M. M. with Mary of Bethany, sister of Martha and Lazarus, as well as with the anonymous sinful woman of whom Lk. 7:36-50 speaks. The Greek liturgy, on the other hand, celebrates the feast of Mary of Bethany on March 18, that of the sinful woman on March 31, and that of M. M. on July 22. This is the famous question of the "three Marys," which some, with J. Durand (St Jean, 13th ed., Paris 1938, pp. 309, 333), call insoluble, while others resolve it differently.

Some distinguish three women: Faber Stapulensis, M.-J. Lagrange, U. Holzmeister, G. Sickenberger, Innitzer, Marchal, F. Prat, Dorado and many others. Some distinguish two: A. Calmet, F. S. Patrizi, G. Belser, L. Murillo, who identify M. M. with Mary of Bethany, distinct from the anonymous sinful woman of Luke. G. Knabenbauer too distinguishes two women, but identifies the sinful woman with Mary of Bethany.

Many, however, with the Latin liturgy, speak of a single woman: this opinion could be called common in the Latin Church from St. Gregory the Great until the 16th century. Yet the ancient Latin Fathers held discordant opinions. St. Augustine and St. Jerome changed their view in different works. Among recent authors who still maintain the unity of the three Marys, mention should be made of Didon, Le Camus, Fouard, F. Kaulen, Lesêtre, A. Lemonnier, Simon, G. Mezzacasa.

The best way to attempt a solution of this intricate question seems to be the exegetical one. The Gospels never explicitly identify the three women. In fact: St. Luke, after speaking of the anonymous sinful woman, who in the house of the Pharisee Simon perfumed the feet of Jesus, bathed them with her tears and dried them with her hair (7:36-50), passes immediately to speaking of the pious women healed of unclean spirits and infirmities who followed Jesus: among these he lists M. M. without alluding to the sinful woman (Lk. 8:1-2). Further on (ibid. 10:38-42) he speaks of the sisters Martha and Mary without identifying the latter with any of those presented before. He will speak again of M. M. among the pious women who went to the tomb (ibid. 24:10), calling her by the same name as in 8:2, without identifying her with others.

Mt. 26:6-13 and Mk. 14:3-9 speak of a woman who, in the house of the Pharisee Simon the leper, anointed the head of Jesus, arousing comments for the waste. St. John specifies that the woman who anointed the Lord was Mary, sister of Lazarus and Martha: the banquet had been offered at Bethany in thanksgiving for the resurrection of Lazarus (Jn. 12:1-8; cf. 11:2). No allusion to the sinful woman or to M. M. It is not possible to identify this anointing, which preceded the Passion by a short time, with that referred to by Lk. 7:36-50, because of the difference of time and place.

Those who maintain the identity of Mary of Bethany with the sinful woman base themselves especially on the fact that John (11:2), presenting for the first time Mary the sister of Lazarus, says that she was the one "who had anointed (ἡ ἀλείψασα) the Lord and had wiped (καὶ ἐκμάξασα) his feet with her hair." From the aorist participles (ἀλείψασα, ἐκμάξασα) it might seem that John alludes to a preceding action, and precisely to that of Lk. 7:36-50. Here then is Mary of Bethany identified with the anonymous sinful woman! The supporters of the distinction reply that the aorist participles can refer to a fact not yet narrated (and precisely to the anointing that will be related in ch. 12), but already known to all. Judas too is presented as the one who betrayed (ὁ παραδούς) before his betrayal is narrated (Mt. 10:4; cf. Mk. 3:19; Lk. 6:16). From the comparison of the Synoptics with John it results that Mary of Bethany had anointed the Lord (Jn. 11:2), beginning from the head (Mt. 26:7; Mk. 14:3) and ending at the feet (Jn. 12:3).

A note common to the three women, emphasized by the supporters of the identification, is love for Jesus. Prat replies (v. bibl.), p. 500 ff.: "This same love, examined carefully, does not have the same characteristics in the three women: penitent love in the anonymous sinful woman of Luke, love of gratitude in M. M., love of ecstatic contemplation in Mary of Bethany."

The fact that M. M. was freed from seven demons does not imply that she was stained with sins; in the account of the sinful woman of Luke there is no mention at all of diabolical possession. Other reasons for distinguishing Mary the sister of Lazarus from M. M. are based on the differences of the names of persons and places: the former is always called simply Mary by both Luke and John, while the latter is distinguished by the appellation Magdalene, which seems to indicate her native city (Magdala). The Synoptics recall M. M. among the pious women who had followed Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem (Mt. 27:55; Mk. 15:

(from Vilpert, Sarcofagi, III, suppl., p. VI)

MARIA MADDALENA, saint - Mary of Bethany pours the balm and the sinful woman anoints the feet of the Lord. Polychrome wooden bas-relief (11th century) - Castelchiodato, frazione of Mentana (Rome).

41; Lk. 23:55) and who assisted him on his journeys (Lk. 8:2). The sister of Lazarus, on the other hand, is presented as being from Bethany, near Jerusalem.

Pietro De Ambroggi

ARCHAEOLOGY

According to G. Wilpert, the appearance of the risen Jesus to M. M. would be carved on one of the sides of a sarcophagus found in the 16th century in St. Peter's in the Vatican (Sarcofagi, pl. 121, 2-4).

On a marble capsella in St. John the Baptist in Ravenna, Jesus appears to M. M. and to the other Mary (R. Bartoccini, La capsella marmorea cristiana rinvenuta a Ravenna, in Riv. di archeol. crist., 8 [1930], pp. 299-302; reproduced at the entry MARIA [various biblical women]); the same scene is in a miniature of the evangelary of Rabbula of the year 586 (H. Leclercq, Croix et Crucifix, in DACL, III, II, fig. 3380).

The appearance of the angel to M. M. and to the other Mary at the tomb, according to the Gospel texts (Mt. 28, 1-10; Mk. 16, 1-13; Lk. 24, 1-12; Jn. 20, 1-18), is the one most often represented in ancient Christian art.

It is found in fact in Christian sarcophagi, as in the lost Vatican sarcophagus published by A. Bosio (Roma sotterranea, Rome 1632, p. 79; Wilpert, Sarcofagi, p. 325) and in the sarcophagus of S. Celso in Milan (id., loc. cit., p. 330; and pl. 243, 6); in the sarcophagus of Servanne, on the other hand, there is also M. Salome, mentioned by St. Mark (16, 1-7; id., loc. cit., pl. 15, 2). It also occurs in a series of ampullae from Bobbio and Monza (H. Leclercq, Ampoules, in DACL, I, II, figs. 457, 458, 459; id., Monza, ibid., XI, II, fig. 8439). It recurs then in one of the panels of the wooden door of St. Sabina in Rome (5th century); in one leaf of the ivory diptych of Munich (5th century); in the ivory diptych of the cathedral of Milan (Venturi, I, fig. 390); in one of the mosaics of St. Apollinaris the New in Ravenna (years 493-526); in a metal cover of a liturgical book with repoussé figures (9th century) in the Louvre museum in Paris (Venturi, II, p. 643 and fig. 483); in the 9th century in the silver casket of Paschal I from the treasury of the "Sancta Sanctorum" (Ph. Lauer, Le trésor du Sancta Sanctorum, in Mémoires et Monuments Piot, 15 [1907], pl. 9); in an ivory of the Saltikoff collection (H. Leclercq, Ascension dans l'art, in DACL, I, II, fig. 989), and later in one of the mosaics of the cathedral of Monreale.

Together with the legend of Lazarus (v.), that of St. M. M. flourished in Provence. In Provence, near St-Maximin, there existed a great cavern called S. Maria de Balma or Ste Marie-de-la-Baume. In this place, from the middle of the 13th century, the episode of the penance of St. M. M. was localized, taken from the legend that flourished about the life of St. Mary of Egypt at Vézelay, where from the middle of the 11th century the cult of St. M. M. had appeared, imagining that M. M. and Maximinus had come from Palestine to Provence, where their tombs were pointed out, which from 1279 were instead held to be at St-Maximin (L. Duchesne, La légende de ste Marie Madeleine, in Fastes épiscopaux de l'ancienne Gaule, I, 2nd ed., Paris 1907, pp. 321-59).

ICONOGRAPHY

Giotto and his school executed two important series of frescoes, both with the story of M. M., in the chapel of the Saint at Assisi and in the Bargello in Florence. While the latter are by now lost, the Assisi series is still preserved, and presents scenes from the life, among which iconographically notable is the one in which she extends her hand to Bishop Pontano, founder of the Chapel. From the frescoes of Florence was derived the cycle of the Rinuccini Chapel in S. Croce, the work of Giovanni da Milano and dated 1365, in which appears a rare miracle of the Saint, who is said to have restored alive to a prince or merchant, on his return to Marseilles, his wife and little children who had been left dead on an island. The cycles with stories of the Saint spread throughout the West. It is known from Fra Nicolò da Poggibonsi, in 1346, that near the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem there existed frescoes and a tribune in mosaic with the figure of the Saint. But numerous examples are also found in Germany: thus the very important altar of Tiefenbronn in Baden, which bears a plastic group at its center and which in 1431 was decorated on the cusps and on the shutters by Luca Moser, with the supper in the house of the Pharisee, the voyage of M. M. and of Lazarus in a ship, the rest after the arrival at Marseilles, the Communion of M. M.; thus the six panels of an altar at Donaueschingen and two at Rottweil on the Neckar, owing to an anonymous Swiss; thus two reliefs with episodes of the legend in the celebrated altar of Riemenschneider, and thus in that in Mariastern, a work of the 15th century, as in a triptych by Gillis Van Coninxloo of 1508 in Brussels.

In scenes of the Crucifixion M. M. stands beside the Cross, praying with hands raised (see the fresco by Giotto at Assisi and the cusp of the polyptych of Pisa, by Masaccio, in the Museum of Naples). Luca da Leyda in an engraving and Marco Koffemann in a large painting depicted her, in the 16th century, as a dancer.

In devotional images, dating back to the 15th century, M. M. is initially depicted as the bearer of the jar of ointments. Thus Piero della Francesca in the cathedral of Arezzo, Carlo Crivelli in a panel of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin, il Chiodarolo at Bergamo in the Accademia Carrara, Timoteo Viti in the cathedral of Gubbio, Bartolomeo Montagna in the church of S. Corona at Vicenza (M. M. here is depicted in sacred conversation with other saints), furthermore in paintings by Piero di Cosimo, by Luini, by Giampietrino, etc. Images of the Saint are also frequent in the northern countries and frequent in those regions are the wooden sculptures, which represent her almost always cloaked and with the jar of ointments in hand. Donatello, in the baptistery of Florence, clothes her still only in her hair. The frequency of such isolated images does not, however, prevent the further diffusion of particular scenes of the Gospel narrative, such as that of the supper in the house of the Pharisee (a scene which in paintings by Veronese in the Louvre, at Turin, at Genoa, is transformed into a sumptuous banquet), and that of the Assumption of the Saint, as in a 16th-century portal of the Certosa of Pavia, and in engravings by Dürer, by L. Cranach, etc.

With the 16th century and the Baroque age the preferred representation of the Saint is that in the aspect of penitent in the desert and in the cave, as in the paintings of Titian, and of Timoteo Viti at Bologna (1508). At other times she appears in ecstasy, and in the act of receiving Communion. Thus in paintings by Ribera at Naples in the Museo Filangieri, by Calvaert in the Gallery of Turin, by Cerezo in the Gallery of Vienna, by Becerro in the Museum of the Prado, etc.

Also worthy of remembrance are the cycles with scenes of the life of M. M. depicted in the stained-glass windows of the Gothic cathedrals. In the stained-glass windows of the cathedrals of Bourges, of Lyons and of Chartres only the Gospel scenes are recorded. Instead, also the events of the legend of the Saint are included in the 10 panels of the stained-glass window of the chapel dedicated to her at Assisi. - See pl. XIII.

Eugenio Battisti