St. Mary Magdalene

Mary Magdalene occupies a singular place in the Gospels and an equally singular place in the tradition of interpretation, and navigating both requires the care they demand. The Gospel record is specific and consistent on the essential points: she was a woman from Magdala in Galilee from whom Jesus had cast out seven devils; she was among the women who followed Jesus from Galilee and supported his ministry; she was present at the Crucifixion when most of the disciples had fled; she was at the tomb on the morning of the Resurrection; and she was the first person to whom the risen Christ appeared, receiving the commission to tell the disciples. This last fact — the apostola apostolorum, apostle to the apostles, as she has been called in the tradition since at least Hippolytus — is the central theological datum about her.

The question of identification — whether Mary Magdalene is the same person as Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, or the same as the unnamed penitent woman who anointed Jesus' feet in the house of Simon the Pharisee — deserves honest address. The Western church from Gregory the Great onward identified all three, producing the composite figure of the penitent saint who was also the contemplative and the friend of Jesus. Eastern Christianity never accepted this identification. The complexity is real and cannot be resolved definitively: the identification is traditional in the West rather than exegetically certain.

The tradition that she spent the last decades of her life in Provence — at La Sainte-Baume, in a cave where she lived as a penitent — is early French tradition, probable in its geographical specificity, unverifiable in its biographical claims. The relics at Vézelay and at Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume were among the most venerated in medieval France, and pilgrimages to both sites were among the most frequented in Europe. The tradition carries weight for what it expresses even when what it asserts cannot be confirmed.