The Myth of Mary Magdalene
TW: discussion of rape and violence, mention of suicide
Mary Magdalene is mentioned around fourteen times in the canonical gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) and is arguably one of the most important women in the Bible. Whether you believe in Christian doctrine or not, the treatment of Mary Magdalene throughout Church history is a fascinating (and very revealing) lens to investigate gender and power. To explore the afterlife of Mary Magdalene is to dip into the murky theological and theoretical foundations of Christianity, and to consider why the men who decided on Christian canon wanted women to behave.
Before looking closer at Mary, let’s introduce Lucretia. A Roman noblewoman who died around 510BC, she is most famous for being raped by Tarquin and for the overthrow of the Roman monarchy that followed. The catalyst for rebellion, it was Lucretia’s self-sacrificial and virtuous death – stabbing herself in the heart – that gave her a martyr’s status in the eyes of contemporary historians.
Today, feminist historians and historians of gender criticise the idea of Lucretia’s death being a show of virtue – sexually impure by a man other than her husband assaulting her, the admirable thing for her to do in the circumstances was to end her now-ruined life – and instead suggest it was her response to a horrifically traumatic experience (Glendinning, 2013).
Whatever her motivations, Lucretia became a favourite subject of (male) artists, composers, and writers, most often depicted at the moment of rape or the moment before her suicide. The way that Lucretia was presented by different artists tells us a lot about how women (particularly women who were known to be sexually available) were viewed and supposed to behave at different points in history. Lucretia is variously modest or fully nude, (often whilst Tarquin, the rapist, is fully clothed), eroticised or innocent.
In the same way, Mary Magdalene was tailored to suit the needs of the church at different times. In the earliest copies of the gospels and the apocrypha (the writings that didn’t make it into the official version), Mary Magdalene was mentioned repeatedly as a key figure in Jesus’ group of disciples and one of the witnesses of the crucifixion. The synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) say that Mary was also at Jesus’ burial, and that she, either alone or with other women, were the first to see Jesus’ resurrection. And this is pretty much the last point of consensus.
For the first five-hundred years or so, Mary Magdalene was, as the gospels recorded, known as a woman who was part of the J-crew with little focus on her.; it wasn’t until 591AD when Pope Gregory I gave a sermon that said that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. This claim was most likely a conflation of another Mary (Mary of Bethany, who was recorded as a prostitute) with Mary Magdalene and, according to historians there is “not an iota of genuine evidence to suggest such a reputation” (Lockyer), but the salacious rumour stuck.
It was useful for the church to create this composite female character in the stories of Jesus. In the Middle Ages, the increasingly fictionalised stories of Mary Magdalene as a sinner, a harlot, and a generally bad influence happened to coincide with the growth of the church as s a powerful social and cultural authority across Europe. The authority of Holy Roman Empire, which united most of Western Europe for the first time in the 800s, was wrapped up with the Pope, and the network of churches that stretched into practically every town across the continent was the perfect way to legitimise the new ruling regime and social order, which was patrilineal or male-centric and where sexuality was tightly controlled (hello, priestly celibacy)!
And what was the best way to justify this new social order that kept women firmly inferior to men? Religious “evidence” of the godly-ordained order of things. Biblical texts, which were translated from the earlier Hebrew or Greek into Latin, were interpreted and translated to support the political and social norms, whether or not they were accurate. Male scholars changed female names to their male equivalents (e.g., Junia became Junius), pronouns were changed from “her” to “his”, and references to husbands and men were added into passages about responsibility and hierarchies (Nyland, 2004).
This mistranslation continued as the first English translation appeared (the King James Version in 1611), with scripture being reconned to fit the version of society that royalty and powerful church leaders wanted. If you believed that women weren’t allowed to be leaders in the church, and you were responsible for the translation of a particular passage that mentions “authority” (such as 1 Corinthians 11:10), then there wasn’t any problem in just tweaking the meaning to make it clearer that women should wear a veil to show that she’s under the authority of her (previously unmentioned) husband, right?
Unfortunately for the leaders of the church from the 6th century onwards, it’s much harder to erase important people who are explicitly named multiple times in the gospels than it is to change a feminine name to a masculine one. Mary Magdalene, so-called-sinner, presented the church with a problem.
According to the gospel, Mary Magdalene was the first witness of the resurrection; the central event in Christianity was reported by someone who the church claimed to be a prostitute. According to some apocrypha, Mary Magdalene had a close relationship with Jesus and was an early leader after his ascension. How could the leaders reconcile a doctrine that preached male superiority if one of the Messiah’s favoured disciples was a woman, and a sinner at that?
The answer, much like for Lucretia, was to change how Mary Magdalene was depicted. The character of Mary as a repentant prostitute who was sorry for willingly being sexual was compelling and gave credence to the church’s proclamations of sexual sin and social control. This Mary recognised her sinful ways and fully repented to piously serve her Lord like a good, godly woman should. She was often depicted in art and sculpture as an honourable servant of Christ or in the midst of her conversion. The figure of Mary Magdalene painted by Titian (in 1531) and by Vouet (in 1627), literally as a penitent woman, allowed artists to cross the boundary of eroticism and religion in the same way that Lucretia allowed artists to play with virtue and eroticism. Both women could be painted with their tits out but in a ~virtuous~ way. In 2003’s The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown plays with the same subversion of sanctified vs. human nature, and sold more than 80 million copies in the process.
Ultimately, Mary Magdalene was wheeled out by the church when she was useful. She could be used to justify strict sexual controls, or to demonstrate the (holy) benefits of total repentance. The myth of Mary Magdalene as both whore and holy woman meant that men in authority could utilise her to justify the rules they wanted to impose.
There’s a lot more to be said about religion as a method of social control, and about the use of women’s bodies in art and literature as a form of propaganda. A product of a patriarchal society, Mary Magdalene is one in a long lineage of women mythologised by men in power to serve their needs, with any complexities or personality deemed important enough to remember.
Written by Beth Price
Beth is a writer, hiker, and enthusiastic baker when she’s not researching Chinese gender identity or studying Mandarin for a Master’s degree. You can find her on Twitter and see more of her writings and research here.
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