[Editor’s Note: This poem was included in the journal, S/HE: An International Journal of Goddess Studies (Vol 3 No 2, 2024).]
The cover description of this book describes it as “the first major work on the Magdalene in more than thirty years.” This is an exaggeration, since major two edited books on Mary Magdalene have been published recently (Edmondo F. Lupieri, ed., Mary Magdalene from the New Testament to the New Age [Leiden: Brill, 2020]); Mary Ann Beavis and Ally Kateusz, eds., Rediscovering the Marys: Maria, Mariamne, Miriam [London: T. & T. Clark, 2020]). However, it is, the first sole-authored work to give an overview of Magdalene traditions since the publication of The Da Vinci Code (2004), so it is a significant publication. For readers of this journal, it will be of special interest that it contains a section on Mary Magdalene as Goddess (pp. 273-279), a development that will be discussed below.
The book contains six main chapters, plus Prologue and Epilogue. As the Prologue notes, Mary Magdalene has always been a popular saint; among women saints, second only to the Virgin Mary. Thus, the traditions clustering around her have had a rich and varied history. Chapter 1 (“Who Was Mary Magdalene?”) begins with the notorious sermon of Gregory the Great (590 C.E.) which declared that the unnamed “sinful” woman who anointed Jesus’ feet and was forgiven by him (Luke 7:36-50) was none other than Mary Magdalene, whom he also conflated with Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus (pp. 9-10), a sensual woman who had previously used the anointing ointment “to perfume her flesh in forbidden acts” (p. 11). The chapter goes on to unpack the process by which these three distinct biblical figures were combined into one, with Mary Magdalene being by far the most prominent in the Gospels. A brief discussion of the Gnostic Mary as evidenced by such texts as the Sophia of Jesus Christ, the Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of Philip and The Great Questions of Mary (although it should be noted that in two of these documents, Gos Mary and Ques Mary, the Mary figure is not identified as the Magdalene). The chapter ends with a review of the contradictory opinions of early Christian writers concerning Mary’s identity and significance, noting that none of these identified her as sinful, and that the first (slanderously intended) reference to the Magdalene as a prostitute is from the pagan philosopher Porphyry (c. 234 – d. 305), who sarcastically wondered why the risen Christ would appear to such a woman rather than to a Jewish or Roman dignitary (p. 52).
The next two chapters (“The ‘Lives’ of Mary Magdalene” and “The ‘Afterlives’ of Mary Magdalene”) review the legends that developed about the “composite” Mary’s life, especially subsequent to the resurrection (chap. 2), and her prominence in the cult of relics that emerged in the fourth century. Beginning with the Old English Martyrology (c. 800–900), the representation of the Magdalene as a hermit who, after the ascension, spent the remainder of her life fasting in the desert became a feature of her legend. A little later, the Sermon in Veneration of Saint Mary Magdalene attributed to Odo of Cluny (c. 860–1050), the first Christian writer to identify her as a prostitute, made her a wealthy but vain and lascivious woman who was forgiven by Jesus, a model of repentance and salvation, and even as the bride of the wedding at Cana (John 2:1-12), deserted by her groom, the apostle John, after the miracle of water into wine. Subsequent vitae made her a paradigm of the contemplative life and a preacher of the Gospel, culminating in Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend (13th century) the definitive telling of the tale of Mary’s voyage to southern France and her career as an evangelist, miracle worker and ascetic. Chapter 3 discusses the dispersal of the relics of the Magdalene throughout Europe from the fourth to the sixteenth century, most famously in several locations in France (most notably, Vézelay and St. Maximin). The chapter also details the association of Mary Magdalene, and her remains, with Ephesus and Constantinople in the Byzantine Empire. The chapter ends with an account of the role of Charles II of France in the identification of St. Maximin as the most accepted site of the Magdalene’s tomb and cult.
Chapter 4 (“Mary Divided: Sacred and Profane”) begins with an account of the renewed attention in the 15th and 16th centuries to the question of whether Mary Magdalene of western piety was actually a composite figure erroneously arrived at by the conflation of the Magdalene, Mary of Bethany and the “sinner” of Luke, a question that had implication for the cult of Mary Magdalene—who was it who was actually buried at Saint-Maximin? Should there be two feast days for two saints, or only one, the long-established date of July 22? The rejection of the three Marys doctrine associated with the Humanist Jacques Lefèbre d’Étaples was officially censured by the church in the mid-16th century, as the Reformation swept across Europe. The Reformers banned the cult of the saints and their respective relics, and interpreted the Magdalene in a variety of ways: for Martin Luther she was the ideal Lutheran, saved by faith alone; for John Calvin, as one of the women to whom the risen Christ had revealed himself in order to shame the male disciples, whose faith was deficient. Although both accepted the biblical account of the Magdalene as the one who announced the resurrection to the twelve, both rejected the clear implication that women should preach. In the 17th century, however, the Quakers used the Magdalene as a paradigm for women preachers, and a number of English Protestant commentators advocated Mary’s traditional medieval title of “apostle of the apostles.” The chapter ends with an account of the eroticization of Mary Magdalene in European art beginning in the 16th century. Chapter 5 (“Many Magdalenes: Redeemed and Redeeming”) rehearses the many ways in which the Magdalene was represented in the 19th century: as the patron of Magdalene-Houses, institutions for the reform of prostitutes, as a reputed demoniac whose condition begged for rational explanation in the light of modern science, as a paragon of domesticity, as a benefactor of Jesus, for the pre-Raphaelites, as a young, beautiful and sensual woman.
In the final chapter (“Mary Magdalene: Lover and Wife”), Almond brings his discussion of the Mary Magdalene tradition into the twenty-first century. As he observes, popular conceptions of the Magdalene have been significantly altered by the publication of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code in 2003. This best-selling novel claimed that the true, secret history of Mary Magdalene and Jesus had been transmitted by generations of sages. This secret tradition taught that Mary and Jesus were husband and wife, and that their union had produced a royal bloodline that survives to the present day. The “esoteric tradition” upon which Brown’s story relies, Almond shows, actually originated in the late twentieth century (see pp. 264-73), but it appealed to a wide readership who found the idea of a married Jesus with a female consort intriguing. In a section entitled “Mary the Goddess,” Almond shows how Brown portrayed the Magdalene not only as the intimate companion of Jesus but as a Goddess figure, with the medieval cult of Mary Magdalene being a survival of “the pre-Christian religion of the goddess” (273). This portrayal was, as Almond rightly notes, highly dependent on the works of Margaret Starbird, an influential proponent of the view that the Magdalene was Jesus’ wife, as well as a symbol of the sacred feminine. The chapter continues with a consideration of Starbird’s claim that Cathar doctrine held that Mary was the wife of Jesus (a claim actually based on the testimony of heresy-hunters), Barbara Thiering’s association of Mary Magdalene with the Essenes, and a discussion of the debate around the so-called “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife,” now widely judged to be a modern forgery.
In a brief Epilogue (“On Myth and History”) Almond admits that little can be known about the “original” Mary Magdalene: “we can say that she was a disciple of Jesus from a town called Magdala [although see pp. 22-26, which show that Mary’s association with a town called ‘Magdala’ is anything but certain], that she was one of a number of women sufficiently wealthy to provide for Jesus and his followers out of their own means, and that she was present at the crucifixion” (p. 311). He judiciously concludes that while most of the traditions about her are not records of events in the first century, they are “stories that reflect the religious lives of those who created them and of those who, whether or otherworldly or more this worldly reasons, engaged with them” (pp. 312-313). The legends of Mary Magdalene “were myths that mattered—and still are” (p. 315).
Overall, this book lives up to its billing as a major work on Mary Magdalene—one that brings its review of Magdalene traditions into the twenty-first century. Of course, the book is not impervious to criticism. In my view, the author overestimates the role of Mary Magdalene in the Gnostic scriptures, since several of these writings (including the Gospel of Mary) refer only to “Mary” and could refer, e.g., to Mary of Nazareth, Mary of Bethany, or to a composite “Mary” symbolizing the ideal female disciple. As is usual in the scholarship on Mary Magdalene, the focus is on western (Catholic and Protestant) tradition, although this study gives the Orthodox Magdalene more coverage than most (pp. 130-148). A chapter on the relatively numerous novels and films featuring Mary Magdalene that have appeared in the past 25 years would have been welcome. However, my main criticism is that although the author admits that the “feminist movement in the twentieth century” has had an important role in shaping recent “alternative lives” of the Magdalene (p. 278), he does not adequately credit feminist biblical scholarship, theology and thealogy as the most important catalysts for the resurgence of academic, ecclesial and more broadly cultural interest in Mary Magdalene since the 1980s. Nonetheless, this book is a welcome addition and update to the scholarly literature on Mary Magdalene.
[Editor’s Note: This book review was first published in the journal, S/HE: An International Journal of Goddess Studies, V3 N2 2024.]