Mary Magdalene, the Church’s Anima

Peter Harper, Smoke Signals #32, June-September 1998

Men - well I suppose most men - tend to be endlessly fascinated by women.  Sometimes, it is with one woman in particular, but more often it is with woman in general. Each man has a unique view of the perfect woman, yet there are common elements in all men's perceptions, so much so that Jungian psychologists posit the existence in the unconscious of an innate representation of woman, which they call the "Anima". This Anima is not only the result of each person's particular experience of womankind and of the female elements (bisexuality) of one's bodily constitution, but it is also apparently the fruit of the collective human experience since prehistoric times. This image tends to be singular, though complex and typically bipolar: young and old, virgin and mother, fairy and witch, siren and hag, saint and whore... It is projected onto actual persons (friends, lovers, spouses, crushes...) and generates the feelings of attraction, revulsion and apprehension,.. and bridges the unconscious with reality.

The Church has also had to come to grips with the existence of women; and to this day, women are looked at with suspicion and fear, yet also (secretly) with awe and enthralment. Yet, in a way, the Catholics have succeeded better than the Protestants:

"Protestantism's neglect of the feminine leaves it with the odium of being nothing but a man's religion." "The neglect of the feminine is but one aspect of Protestantism's abandonment of the dogmatic symbols, codified ritual, and ecclesiastical authority that serve Catholics as "spiritual safeguards" against the powerful forces of the unconscious. Left alone with God, Protestants must accept the grave risk of facing unaided the terrifying power of the images that have sunk back into the unconscious." (Jung)  

The Catholic view of women is remarkably incorporated into two women, Our Lady and St. Mary Magdalene. The first represents the glories of motherhood without the slightest taint of sexuality, while the other typifies the defilement of sexuality without the merest hint of fertility. Thus, reproduction and sex are curiously disjoined, for the glorification of the former and the reprobation of the latter. While Our Lady as Virgin and Mother has always been seen as the noblest of God's creatures, worthy to become the Bearer of God, Mary Magdalene has been diversely assessed throughout the history of the Church.

1 The Disciple and Follower of Jesus

The Gospels present Mary Magdalene as one of the followers of Jesus: "and the twelve were with him, and certain women, which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils" (Lk 8:1-2). The women are said to "minister unto him" (Mk 15:41) and provide for him "of their substance" (Lk 8:3). Mary was further present at Calvary (Jn 19:25) and she went to the tomb of Jesus on Easter morn to anoint His body(Jn 20:1), where she met Him (Jn 20:14-16) and became the first recorded witness of His resurrection. She is the apostles' apostle, bringing to them the news of the risen Christ.

In the early Gnostic texts found in 1945 at Nag Hammadi, Mary is often called Marian, and described as the "companion of Jesus", His consort, His partner, and His spouse . She is a disciple on the same footing as the males and in many respects she appears to be their leader. She is the visionary who is privy to esoteric knowledge and the messenger who brings secrets information and who mediates between the apostles and Jesus. Her role is predictably challenged by the others, and particularly by Peter who is jealous of Jesus' affection for her. Jesus is said to have "loved her more than all the disciples and (...) kissed her often on the mouth" (Gospel of Philip), which offended the other disciples. Her role as first witness of the resurrection was soon taken from her by Peter who becomes the "major official witness to the resurrection", a role to this day claimed by the Pope whose mission is to be the central Easter witness.

As Jesus' special companion, Mary is assimilated to the terrestrial counterpart of the celestial Sophia or Wisdom. Her early trip to the empty tomb makes her the type of all Christ-seekers: the early Church will use to describe her the image of the Shulamite of the Song of Solomon seeking her lover. As the epitomic seeker, she represents the Synagogue seeking Christ, but after being witness to resurrection, she then represents the Church and becomes the new Eve. As the first Eve lost humanity in the garden of Eden, Mary discovers the restored humanity in another garden. that of the tomb. This primordial role of Mary Magdalene is still recalled in the Easter sequence "Victimae Paschali Laudes" (Tell us, Mary, what did you see?) which in earlier times used to be reenacted on Easter Morning, a deacon, his head covered with an amice, playing the role of Mary.

Tradition holds that Mary Magdalene followed John and Our Lady to Ephesus, where she died a martyr. Her tomb was indeed venerated there in the sixth century, and Gregory of Tours (+594) enigmatically reports, "It is in this town that Mary Magdalene rests, with nothing to cover her".  In the 10th c. the body was transferred to Constantinople by Emperor Leo VI, from where it was stolen by the Crusaders. It was later reported to be in Rome at St. John's Lateran.  

2 The Multifarious Mary

Such an image of Mary Magdalene is essentially that of the Gospels and preserved as such in the Eastern churches. In the West, Mary has been variously assimilated to other women referred to in the Gospels, some of which were also called Mary. They include: Luke's "sinner" who washed Jesus' feet with her tears, drying them with her hair, and anointing them with ointment from an alabaster box. (Lk 7:37ss). This woman appears in the Gospel just before Mary of Magdala is first mentioned (Lk 8) and is therefore naturally assimilated to her. Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus (Lk 10:38). She is associated with the contemplative life, since she "sat at Jesus' feet and heard his word" (Lk 10:39). She also anointed His feet (or head, Mk 14:3; Mt 26:7) with spikenard and wiped them with her hair (Jn 12:3). The Samaritan woman (Jn 4:7ss), often considered the first disciple to the Gentiles. The woman caught in adultery (Jn 8:3).

The original Mary is said to have been delivered from 7 devils, in which Tradition reads the 7 deadly sins. There is no mention in the Gospels that she was particularly guilty of any sexual sin nor that she was a public sinner. However, ever since St. Gregory the Great (+604) in his sermons 25 and 33 (the first traditionally read at the 2nd nocturn at Matins on Mary's feast-day), Mary Magdalene has become at least three women in one: the original Mary of Magdala, Mary of Bethany, and Luke's sinner. She is the image of extremes, both in sin and in grace. Her life is reinterpreted as a spiritual journey, representing the passage from sinful woman to Christ's beloved, "from sinful woman to perfect man", as St. Ambrose strangely puts it. Her feast Day first appears in Yarrow in Bede's Martyrology on the 11th day of the Calends of August, our July 22nd.  

3 The French Magdalene

Mary Magdalene's story takes on a new twist in the Abbey Church of Ste-Marie-Madeleine de Vézelay in Burgundy. This is one of the most remarkable Romanesque churches of France begun in 1096 and famous for its great pink and grey arches in the nave. It was both a pilgrimage site and the starting point for one of the pilgrim routes (Via Lemovicencis) to Compostella. It was also the starting point for the 2nd Crusade, preached by St. Bernard of Clairvaux in 1146.

The new story popularised in Vézelay was known as early as 750 in England. It held that Mary Magdalene together with Martha, Lazarus and the two other Marys was put to sea on a rudder-less and tackle-less ship and left to drown. The ship eventually landed at Marseilles. Lazarus became first bishop of the city and Magdalene worked as a missionary, an apostle and preacher in the neighbouring countryside.  She later retired to Aix-en-Provence for 30 years of solitary and contemplative life in the cavern of Ste-Baume, "so desirous was she to see Jesus again that she could not bear sight of another male". During all those years, she did not feed, but was regularly carried to heaven by angels for her celestial nourishment. The story becomes inextricably intermingled with those of St. Agnes and St. Mary of Egypt. She is thus said to have spent her time naked, covered only by her long mane of hair.

Mary Magdalene became the patron saint of the Vézelay monastery c.1050. There are many contradictory stories to explain the presence of the body at Vézelay and its transfer from southern France (through robbery?). When in 1265, serious doubts arose concerning the authenticity of the relic, the monks staged a dramatic "rediscovery" of the body. During a solemn opening of the tomb, an extraordinary amount of female hair was found and held to authenticate the relic, although it was most certainly planted beforehand by the monks.

In 1279, the "true" body of Mary Magdalene was "discovered" in the crypt of Church of St. Maximin in Provence where it apparently had been hidden during the incursions of the Saracens in 716. The body was complete except for a missing leg. A series of miracles immediately proved the authenticity of the relic - and simultaneously disproved that of Vézelay. Jean Gobi (c. 1315) compiled a Book of the Miracles which showed that Mary was invoked for repentance (she was a repentant sinner), bodily and spiritual healing (she was cured by Christ), against leprosy (she anointed Christ's body), persecution (as she was persecuted by the Pharisee), blindness (first to see and recognise the risen Christ), deafness (she listened to Jesus) and so on...

To this day, the main pilgrimage site to Mary Magdalene is in the south of France. Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer is the place where the ship is held to have struck land; a fortified church holds the relics of the two other Maries with their companion Sarah and is the site of great annual pilgrimages by Gypsies. The skull of Mary Magdalene is still kept at St-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume in the crypt of a Gothic church erected at the time of the discovery of the relics.  

4 Beloved Sinner and Chaste Prostitute

Beginning in the 11th century, there was an increased stress on Mary Magdalene the sinner. A story was concocted in which Mary was the bride at Cana where she married St. John the Evangelist . When John left her "in maidenhood" to follow Jesus, she was very vexed and began living a profligate life during which the seven devils entered her. She eventually repented her ways and entered the house of Simon the Pharisee to ask for forgiveness and become a follower of Jesus.

It is obvious in the story that Mary's sin is sexual (porneia). Fornication is the prototypical female crime and sin, because women naturally burn with the "ignis libidinis", the fire of passion. Males are lured by female beauty: "A beautiful woman is a temple built over a sewer" as Bromyard, a Medieval preacher, puts it.  Female beauty is the instrument of the devil to tempt the unsuspecting male. The men in the Church constantly forget that Jesus, when dealing with the question of lust, transferred the sin from the woman (the object) to the lecherous man (the subject), who"commits adultery in his heart" (Mt 5:28).

Mary with her loose flaming golden red hair and her red cloak thus becomes the model of everywoman, the sinful sexuate female redeemed by being rendered sexless. Her eyes that used to lure men now weep; her hair which enticed so many men to sin now serve to dry Christ's feet; her mouth that delighted them now kisses His feet; her prostrate body which laid under so many men now lies at Christ's feet. Her journey from sin to redemption mirrors that of every Christian. Even the greatest sinner can reach heaven. Out of a prostitute, Christ made an apostle. Magdalene even becomes an honorary virgin, and her traditional service is largely borrowed from the Common of Virgins.

Mary thus became the patron of confraternities of penitents and of redeemed prostitutes; obviously, Christ and Our Lady could never be proper models for such penance. Orders were founded to receive and redeem fallen women, for instance the Penitents of St. Mary Magdalene at Worms in 1227 who operated a sort of halfway house.  Prostitutes were omnipresent in Medieval towns and would openly proposition passers-by on the street, calling any man who refused their services a "sodomite". Since St. Augustine, prostitution was seen by the Church as a necessary evil - it was a trade which could sometimes be considered marginally moral if it was conducted only for money to live by and if no pleasure was taken in the operation. St. Mary Magdalene is also invoked by men who battle the temptations of fornication or adultery; she is known to protect them by rendering them impotent for the duration of the encounter.

5 Mary the Contemplative

By the late Medieval period, Mary Magdalene was often assimilated to the Mary of Bethany who sat at Jesus' feet listening to him and she thus became the particular patron of female mystics. Contemplation by women became an important urban phenomenon associated with the development of beguine-houses; this was in a way a rebellion by women against the slavery of their lives as wives and mothers. It also emphasised the current belief that sanctity was incompatible with married life. This was the period of the great female mystics, such as St. Theresa of Avila... Some of these appear to us unbelievably excessive and sick; Saint Margaret of Cortona (+1297), who earlier lived with a nobleman and had a child by him, converted on seeing her dead lover's body. Her life was spent in wild visions and horrific bodily punishments. She even abandoned the child of her sin in her saintly madness. "Une maudite folle", used to say my late mother-in-law, not otherwise prone to crude language.

Part of the piety of the female mystics was to associate themselves with the sufferings of Christ, for which they thought themselves personally responsible. Again Mary Magdalene grieving at the foot of the Cross represented an ideal for them. Indeed, Mary Magdalene was the first female mourner after the Virgin (who could not really weep for theological reasons, privy as she was to the coming Resurrection).  

6 Mary the Penitent

The logical sequence leads from mourning for Christ to an actual association with his sufferings. And again Mary Magdalene came to the forefront, assimilated this time with St. Mary of Egypt - this was the Egyptian whore who converted during a trip to Jerusalem and atoned for the wickedness of her former life by spending 30 years in the desert - whose garb or rather lack of garb she assumed. So arose a new image of the Magdalene, depicted in her grotto with loose hair, bare breasts, and with a book, a skull and a crucifix at her side. This nakedness represented a return to the primal state of nature, to innocence redeemed. Earlier representations (13th c.) are more modest and show the "hirsute penitent", which was reminiscent of the so-called "Wild woman" of Medieval lore, her entire body covered with hair except her hands, feet and breasts. However, by the 15th century, she is shown completely naked with ample curves and by the next century she is more suggestive than penitent in a kind of religious "legitimised voyeurism". She borrows much from the Venus pudica figure of classical Antiquity, becoming the new Christian Venus of divine love, who chastely covers herself, while still revealing all her charms. She is depicted in radiant health and in the fullness of her body, and only rarely as the emaciated wraith one would expect in someone who has spent years fasting in the desert. Titian explained the paradox in that she is painted as she was "on her first day in the desert". According to the taste of the day, she has golden red hair, the famous Venetian blond colour, the secret recipe of which could be found in the "arte biondeggiante".  

During the Council of Trent, new rules were established for the making of religious images and Cardinal Borromeo in his "De pictura sacra" (1642) decreed that no nudity should be allowed except when absolutely necessary. But to no avail, the trend continued, particularly in paintings destined for private use. By the 17-18th c., posing for a Magdalene picture was the proper way for a woman of the world to expose her charms for all to admire; it was a scheme used by Kings to show off their mistresses; and we thus have intimate pictures of many of these famous beauties in "saintly portraits": Barbara Villiers, Nell Gwynn, Louise de Kéroualle, Hortense Mancini, Louise de la Vallière, Béatrice de Cusance, Isabelle de Lude, Mme de Fontanges, Mme de Montespan....

7 Magdalene and the Magdalens

The 19th c. saw the creation of Magdalen-Houses, the first of which opened in London c. 1758 for repentant prostitutes and was financially supported by London merchants. They aimed at providing the girls with moral education (middle-class Christian values) and feminine employment as domestics and seamstresses. The results were not very satisfactory because the redeemed girls were not readily accepted back into society. And indeed, many prostitutes were already seduced and abandoned servants from family estates.

The 19th c. fallen woman was called a "magdalen" and prostitution, the "great social evil", was referred to as "magdalenism". In the Victorian mind, women fell into two categories, the Madonna and the Magdalene, the prostitute and the virtuous wife. By mid-century there were c. 40 000 prostitutes and 4 000 cat-houses in England; most of the women were driven by want of honest work and low wages.

The rescue-work of fallen women became for many Victorians an important act of love and charity. Still, Victorian men had a strange fascination for fallen women. It became a favourite subject for Pre-Raphaelite painters, viz. Gabriel Dante Rosetti's "Found" showing a country drover finding in the gutter the woman he had earlier seduced and abandoned; Ford Madox Ford's "Take your son, Sir!" on the plight of single mothers; and William Holman Hunt's "The Awakening Conscience" on the conversion (?) of a kept woman. Magdalene also appears under innumerable guises in operas, as Maddalena, Mimi, Violetta, Norma...

The 19th century was also the heyday of the great courtesan, forming the "demimonde", that class of women whose social standing is only half-acknowledged because of their uncertain reputation. They were the "kept women" of the aristocracy and the very rich; the French referred to them as the "grandes horizontales".  As many of them were in the habit of showing off in late afternoon by riding in Hyde Park, they were called the "beautiful horse-breakers". None was so famous in the 1860s as the lovely "Skittles". Even the staid and proper Mister Gladstone, the Prime Minister, was her close friend and he never forgot her birthday.  A devout Christian, Gladstone had a grave manner which proved to be irresistible to women, and he relished in their company, particularly if they were good-looking. Since his undergraduate days, Gladstone devoted one tenth of his income to the reclamation of prostitutes. A few evenings a week for years, he would walk alone on the streets looking for fallen women willing to accept his offer of help and shelter. This allowed him to "combine his missionary meddling with a keen appreciation of a pretty face" and he is not known to have shown any interest in any ugly girl.

While in Paris this summer, I was fascinated by a small painting in the Musée d'Orsay by Jean Béraud called "La Madeleine chez le Pharisien" (1891). The scene is the familiar Gospel scene of the sinful woman lying at Christ's feet while he is at meat with Simon the Pharisee.  What is remarkable is that all the actors are in 19th c. dress except for Christ. As well, all the personages are based on actual people: Ernest Renan is the Pharisee, Alexandre Dumas a guest, the Duc de Quercy Christ... and the well-known courtesan Liane de Pougy is the Magdalene. This Liane de Pougy would eventually later become a true "magdalen" herself, by joining the Third Order and leading a saintly life. A bit of religion at the end was a common occurrence, and one of the first tombs one sees upon entering Le Père Lachaise shows a beautiful Madonna and Child by Gustave Doré which adorns the grave of Alice Ozy whose spectacular body charmed and delighted the Tout-Paris; we can still dream of her while admiring Chasseriau's delicious paintings of her.

8 A Truly Modern Mary

The 19th c. proponents of so-called "higher criticism" of the Bible, such as David Friedrich Strauss and Ernest Renan, re-evalued the role of Magdalene. She is represented as "a highly excitable woman" who spread the rumour of the Resurrection, and hence founded Christianity: "le christianisme repose sur le délire imaginatif de la Madeleine" (Renan).

The theme of the Magdalene also persists in modern literature: she is the Magdalene-Venus-Eros of Lawrence's "Man Who Died" which draws a parallel between the Christ- Magdalene story and Isis-Osiris myth. She also figures prominently in Kazantakis' "Last Temptation of Christ", the film version of which in 1988, by Martin Scorsese showing Christ struggling to assume his identity as Messiah, caused immense scandal. And there is also Denys Arcand's 1989 "Jesus of Montreal", in which Magdalene (Mireille), as a model, sells her body for publicity.

In 1969, the new Roman calendar reduced Mary Magdalene to her initial role of follower of Jesus and witness to the resurrection. She is no longer the penitent the Church celebrated for so long. And she appears to be taking on a new life in this guise. Many contemporary woman writers see in her the complete (read not asexual) woman who was the companion and disciple of Christ and make her the model for the modern woman. There is even a Gruppe Maria von Magdala founded in 1986 in Germany which fights for women's rights in the Church, including that of ordination.

Duperray, Ève. Marie-Madeleine dans la mystique, les arts et les lettres. (Paris: Beauchesne, 1989)
Haskins, Susan. Mary Magdalen. Myth and Metaphor. (New York: Riverhead Books, 1993)
Saxer, Victor. Le culte de Marie-Madeleine en Occident; des origines à la fin du Moyen-âge. (Auxerre: Librairie Clavreuil, 1959)