Mary Magdalene

by Bruce Chilton

  The building at Saint-Maximin, in the south of France, is grander and more recent, the scale accentuated by the flattish sun-baked land and smaller buildings that surround it. This thirteenth-century Gothic complex, comprising both basilica and cloister, was deliberately designed to put Vezelay to shame. The Dominican friars of Saint-Maximin said that the bones they had unearthed in their ancient cemetery were the true relics of Mary Magdalene, whatever the Benedictines up north claimed. The crypt still boasts several sarcophagi and inscriptions, and the work of excavating the nearby cemetery, displaying ancient artifacts, and offering tours to pilgrims and visitors occupies Dominican friars to this day. Guided tours focus on a complete glass-encased skull, allegedly Mary Magdalene’s.

  During the Middle Ages, Vezelay and Saint-Maximin were prominent, although far from unique. Pilgrims streamed every year to scores and scores of sites that venerated the Magdalene, and many of them also claimed her earthly remains, the holy relics of flesh transformed by Jesus. When Jesus said to Mary, “Do not touch me” (John 20:17), legend adds that he touched her on the forehead to ward her off. The Dominicans at Saint-Maximin still repeat the claim that the bit of skin that received Jesus’ touch never did decay, but clings tenaciously to her skull. That was a sight worth a long pilgrimage; becoming a pilgrim earned an indulgence from the Pope to escape many years of purgatory, and seeing Mary’s flesh on her skull, however shriveled, confirmed the promise of life beyond the grave.

  During the Middle Ages, penitents made their way to sites that venerated the Magdalene, from Constantinople to Exeter. Many of these sites offered worshipers the opportunity of seeing the Magdalene’s relics, usually bones or cartilage, but several churches boasted her skull, and her alleged fingers and locks of hair were scattered throughout Europe. However a saint died, the anniversary of his or her death became that saint’s feast day, marking the transition from this earth to the realm where the saint would be with Jesus forever. Since the eighth century, Orthodox tradition has recognized July 22 as the anniversary of Mary Magdalene’s death, and the Catholic calendar fell in with that custom.

  Bishops, archbishops, priests, and Popes, civic authorities, kings, and peasants took part in solemn ceremonial parades, known as processions, in her honor. (Both Vezelay and Saint-Maximin continue this tradition on July 22 of each year.) Processions filled cathedrals and churches, whose dedicated purpose was pilgrimage and festival. Dignitaries carried Mary’s relics, displayed them on palanquins, and paraded inside the basilica and outside, then pushed through the streets of towns, where worshipful crowds of pilgrims and local people sang, chanted, and danced. Opportunistic vendors sold food and holy trinkets; the inevitable pickpockets, petty thieves, and thugs posed a constant threat. But in the midst of all the danger and noise and expense of pilgrimage and procession, if you could gaze in adoration upon Mary Magdalene’s relics as they moved through the streets and churches, and if you had followed the penitential disciplines of the Catholic Church, you felt that your own flesh was being transformed in the way the Magdalene’s had been. Each day spent in pilgrimage, every penny dispensed for the glory of Mary’s memory, the heavy toll miles on dangerous roads exacted from travelers—all were recompensed by the knowledge that these payments bought a personal lease on heaven.

  There were darker claims about the Magdalene—difficult to document or date, but without doubt circulating by the thirteenth century—which claimed she had been Jesus’ wife or concubine. On July 22, 1209, Crusaders dispatched by the Pope torched the town of Beziers, punishing the heretical teaching that Mary and Jesus had had sexual relations. One pious chronicler of the time rejoiced “that these disgusting dogs were taken and massacred during the feast of the one that they had insulted.” Some fifteen thousand people died that day, including the heretics and those who protected them.

  A recent spate of books has connected the legend that Jesus and Mary were lovers with the myth of the Holy Grail, the cup Jesus allegedly used at his last supper. The Grail myth has always been ripe for deconstruction, since it usually involves some sort of metal beaker, a far cry from the earthenware vessels accessible to people of Jesus’ time and class. In any case, the real Grail wasn’t a cup at all, according to this new variant of the myth; rather, the Grail was Mary’s womb—the holy vessel that gave birth to Jesus’ children. Esoteric stories of this kind need mysterious names and suppositions of conspiracies to keep them going—and “the Magdalene” (frequently spelled “Magdalen” for added cachet) invokes this whole theory by synecdoche in the minds of many people.

  These stories and their variants, whether recounted in the hushed crypts of Vezelay and Saint-Maximin or filmed for the entertainment and curiosity of pilgrims who do not need to leave their couches, blend the memory of Mary Magdalene with the religious sensibilities of the storytellers. The skull at Saint-Maximin, with its alleged patch of skin, and the published genealogies of families claiming lineal descent from Jesus on the basis of forged documents don’t tell us much about Mary Magdalene, but they do illuminate the deep attraction she exerts on people of very different orientations. Amid the claims and counterclaims, the common element driving each and every legend forward is the sense of an intimate association between Jesus and Mary. However outlandish the results may seem, that instinct proves accurate. From 25 C.E. onward in Capernaum, Mary was part of Jesus’ inner circle. She became his disciple, dedicated to learning his wisdom.

  Women as well as men became Jesus’ disciples and gathered around him in Capernaum between the years 24 and 27 C.E. The Gospels name several of these female followers, and their place in Jesus’ movement is beyond doubt. Nonetheless, many churches have ignored these women, claiming that Jesus chose only twelve disciples, all of them male.

  This confusion is due, in part, to the common tendency to confuse disciples with apostles, and to attribute a stature to apostles that doesn’t really reflect their role in Jesus’ movement. Mary should not be denied the standing within nascent Christianity to which she is entitled simply because she wasn’t one of the Twelve.

  After the end of his time in Capernaum, during the year 29 C.E., Jesus selected twelve of his disciples, all men, to be his delegates. He whittled his disciples down to that all-male company in response to a specific threat. By exorcising demons and preaching the triumph of God’s Kingdom, Jesus took up the protest against Herod Antipas and the forces of Rome that his rabbi, John the Baptist, had pioneered. Herod Antipas, who governed Galilee and Peraea under Roman authority, had ordered Jesus’ arrest and execution.

  Galilee became a place of mortal danger for Jesus as a result of Herod’s threat, so he chose twelve of his disciples to be his envoys or “apostles,” the apostoloi of the Greek Gospels. He sent them out to preach, heal, and exorcise in the same way he did. They spread Jesus’ message while at the same time acting as decoys. This gambit could only work with mature men who could double for him and were capable of traveling quickly and lightly, handling themselves on dangerous roads, and eluding Antipas’s agents. Rabbi Jesus’ exclusion of women from this company reflects the desperate circumstances he faced and the stark reality that travel in Galilee could be perilous.

  Jesus’ use of disciples as envoys to befuddle Antipas was a move of strategic genius. But without the larger cohort of disciples in Capernaum who were familiar with him and his teaching, his maneuver would have been impossible. In Capernaum, he gathered more than twelve disciples; they numbered around thirty—and they weren’t all men.

  The fact that Mary bore the nickname “Magdalene” among Jesus’ followers supports the impression that she became part of his inner circle in Capernaum. He gave such names to his closest disciples, after he had known them for an extended period of time. But in looking for the meaning and tenor of the sobriquet “Magdalene,” we should not automatically assume it was a compliment; that simply wasn’t Jesus’ style.

  Jesus enjoyed his students’ company and loved to tease them. Although Simon was a fisherman, Jesus dubbed
him “Rock” (Kepha in Aramaic, Petros in Greek). This name made fun of the instability of Simon’s boat when Jesus used it as a platform to preach to crowds on the shore. (Given Simon Peter’s sluggishness in understanding what Jesus said on several occasions, “Rock” might allude to some mental density, as well.) The two other leading apostles, James and John, were obviously a noisy pair: Jesus called them “Boanerges, that is, Sons of Thunder” (Mark 3:16-17).

  The Gospels don’t report that Jesus personally gave Mary the name Magdalene. No one can prove he called her that, if that means finding a text that says that in so many words. But by inferring that he identified one Mary among the several other Marys the Gospels mention by calling her “Magdalene,” we can explain why that name appears so consistently. Handing out monikers was characteristic of him, and this one stuck. How much less romantic might later legends of Mary’s wealth, elegance, and seductiveness have been had scholars and fabulists alike remembered that Magdala was a fishing town, known throughout the region for its fish?

  Instead of a portraying her as peasant fishmonger in a stained tunic, portraits of Mary Magdalene during the Renaissance typically depict her as a stylish urban lady prior to her encounter with Jesus, with jewelry, a low-cut dress, and beautifully coiffed hair. To make it unmistakable how vain she was at this stage, she is also shown staring into a mirror; a famous painting by Caravaggio provides one example among many. Church dogma considered that wealth often prompted self-indulgence and indolence, sins to which women were particularly prone and which were gateways to promiscuity.

  This theology explains why the medieval Mary Magdalene as well as her successors in later times became a prostitute despite all her wealth. Sexual excess was considered the result of the sin of luxuria— too much love of pleasure and too much time to indulge it. According to this way of thinking, women didn’t prostitute themselves from necessity; rather, they enjoyed sexual indulgence, which was considered to be sinful even within marriage. Outside of marriage, it was theoretically beyond the pale, although the behavior of those in the royal houses of Europe shows there were different pales for different people.

  The Magdalene became a poster girl for female aberration because her sexuality, and the drive to repress female sexuality in particular, took precedence over the evidence of the Gospels and over the commandment in the Torah that humanity should “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28). At the same time, inventing and heightening her excesses perpetuated the myth that women were more inclined toward illicit sex than men were. Mary Magdalene became a working girl for the same reason she became rich—so that she could be depicted as the epitome of female indulgence.

  By getting the converted Magdalene away from her mirror, out of bed, and into postures of penitential prayer, proponents of Christian piety during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance provided a powerful model for appropriate feminine behavior. At the same time, this image of the Magdalene offered a model of sanctity that covered the spectrum of human behavior, from degradation to the height of religious fervor. A penitent prostitute, however many times she might relapse, could join the procession for Mary, and there are reports of prostitutes in medieval cities who were required to do just that, sometimes after they had been stripped half-naked. At the other end of the spectrum, a cloistered nun could also take Mary’s name as her own, a reminder to herself and others of the sexuality that she had left behind in order to follow Christ on her ascetic path. The symbolic power of the Magdalene was so great that even male ascetics took her name.

  he designation “Magdalene” distinguishes Mary from the other Marys who were associated with Jesus. Several women named Miriam, the Semitic name anglicized as Mary, were close to Jesus, including his mother and the mother of the disciples James and Joses (Mark 15:40). Moses’ sister was called Miriam, and Jews in Galilee and elsewhere proudly embraced that name for their own daughters. But only one of the Miriams in Jesus’ group was identified as coming from a town called Magdala in the Aramaic spoken there.

  Magdala was important both practically and symbolically for Jesus and his disciples. The name Magdala derives from the term migdal, a low stone tower for keeping fish. Holding facilities were part of the complex of stone breakwaters, docks, and reservoirs that distinguished this town of about three thousand residents. Local fisherman netted fish from the Sea of Galilee, especially trying for the plentiful sprat, a small bony fish about six inches long that could be dried for export. They dragged loads of live fish into stone holding tanks and then stockpiled them for drying and salting.

  The Galilean sprat was one of Rabbi Jesus’ favorite foods, as it was for many of his countrymen. Dried fish was also popular among his followers long after his death and far from Galilee, because Jews and non-Jews in Jesus’ movement could eat fish together without raising the question of whether it was kosher, always an issue in cases when meat was involved. In fact, the fish became a symbol for Christians during the second century: The letters of the word fish in Greek were an acronym for “Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Savior” and stood for Christ.

  Fish meant currency, trade, and prosperity for Magdala’s Jews. Their dried and salted fish was sold inland in Galilee and across the water in the self-governing Gentile region of Decapolis (a confederation often cities). But most significantly, Magdala supplied Tiberias, a vast city that Herod Antipas started building in 19 C.E.

  Tiberias proved central to Mary Magdalene’s identity all her life. Antipas wanted a new capital for Galilee to replace the garrison town of Sepphoris inland. He chose a spot along the Sea of Galilee, three and a half miles south and somewhat east of Magdala, and named it after Tiberius, the reigning Roman emperor (Josephus Antiquities 18.36-38).

  The city was built in the Roman style, with aqueducts, temples, baths, theaters, and a stadium. Pious Jews reacted negatively, to say the least, to this monument to Roman values arising in their midst. Temples for idols like Mars, Apollo, and Diana were bad enough. Statues of Venus in the baths made them trysting places for lovers and aspiring lovers of all kinds of tastes, a flagrant example of exactly the kind of behavior that the Torah abhorred. As if this wasn’t enough, Antipas desecrated a cemetery to make room for his sprawling metropolis. Devout Jews contended that this made the whole place unclean. In short, the new city of Tiberias was a monument to impurity and idolatry, far worse than the incidental uncleanness involved in doing business with its Gentiles or coping with their slaves.

  In the early years of Tiberias, Antipas had to give land away to Galilean Jews to get them to live there. The first-century Jewish historian Josephus says that the Jews who moved to the city were the flotsam of Galilee, trash washed up on the shore (Josephus Antiquities 18.36-38). The offer of free property drew debtors, drifters, runaway slaves, common criminals, and mamzerim. These marginal types had a chance to improve their lot by living alongside the dead and becoming service personnel to the Roman and Herodian occupation forces. Those whose purity was already suspect had little to lose, but from the point of view of the standard practice of Judaism, these settlers became vehicles of the uncleanness that Herod Antipas had released throughout the Galilean region.

  Tiberias’s proximity to and economic domination of Magdala subjected Mary’s town to the forces of impurity. Tiberias produced contagion, and this contagion is what Mary carried in her body. Beyond its obvious association with fish, this is what the cognomen “Magdalene” meant to Mary’s contemporaries.

  Mary’s nickname, “Magdalene,” also resonates with a name applied to Jesus, linking the two of them in key Gospel texts with a verbal echo. Jesus “the Nazarene” (Nazarenos in Greek) is the grammatical equivalent of “Magdalene” (which also represents the Greek usage), allowing for a change of gender. (In Aramaic, which both Jesus and Mary spoke, the antecedents would have been the equally resonant Natsaraya and Magdalata.) English pronunciation conceals a rhyme that would have caught the ear of any Greek or Aramaic speaker who heard these names spoken aloud: The texts reverberate with an
implicit connection between Jesus and Mary.

  To call Jesus “the Nazarene” naturally evokes Nazareth as his native village, just as the designation “Magdalene” evokes Magdala on the Sea of Galilee. The verbal echo between the names reflects the geographical proximity between the two villages and their contacts with each other. Mark’s Gospel, the earliest of the Gospels and the closest to the Aramaic idioms of Jesus’ movement, preserves the resonance between Rabbi Jesus’ nickname and Mary’s.

  The use of “Nazarene” also resonates with the traditional word usage “Nazarite” (Nazir in Hebrew), which means “consecrated.” The name Nazarene, paired with the designation “the holy one of God,” evokes Jesus’ consecration and reinforces his spiritual threat to the world of the demons in the dramatic opening exorcism in Mark’s Gospel (1:23-27):

  And at once there was in their synagogue a person with an unclean spirit. He cried out and said, We have nothing for you, Nazarene Jesus! Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the holy one of God! Jesus scolded it and said: Shut up, and get out from him! The unclean spirit convulsed him, sounded with a big sound, and got out from him. And all were astonished.