“Bringing the West Back East, or How to Make Sure the Magdalene Belongs to Byzantium: The Life of Mary Magdalene”

The Life of Mary Magdalene, written in later Byzantine Greek, is a fascinating text.[1] Before going into depth about the narrative’s contents, I’d like to highlight a few ways its translation into English contributes to larger scholarly conversations. The Life compiles multiple traditions, including sources that have no original affiliation with Mary. In particular, the author has integrated her into dialogues otherwise known from Pilate-cycle texts by imagining speaking roles for her. Moreover, the Life also sheds light on competitions for the Magdalene’s legacy and relics between Latinate and Byzantine Christians in the context of the Fourth Crusade and its immediate aftermath (1204 CE+). In particular, the text witnesses to the ways one author sought to reconcile competing traditions around Mary Magdalene while still asserting Byzantine primacy. What results is a sort of sandwiching of East-West-East traditions so that more prominent Western traditions about the Magdalene become incorporated into an Eastern-centered frame that lays claim to her life and her remains. That is, beyond its contents, the narrative’s structure supports historical reconstructions underscoring the Byzantine elevation of lesser known saints and their relics in a post-Fourth Crusade world, one in which Western Christians had stolen most Byzantine relics and translated them West.

To a lesser extent, the text is also valuable as another example of Christian struggles to articulate clearly the relationships among the various Marys of the Bible, and between the Magdalene and Virgin in particular. While these relations do not play a prominent role throughout the text, their mere presence points to a continued concern for how best to situate the women in relation to one another. In a text that I translated for the first volume of MNTA, Encomium on Mary Magdalene,[2] we see an earlier and stronger example of such wrestling, but the Life should likewise be set alongside other Marian texts. The mingling of competing versions of the Magdalene’s life also tells us about how emerging veneration for her competed with and complemented cults of the Virgin Mary.

The text’s struggle against western coopting of Mary along with its attempt to relate her to Mary of Nazareth similarly affects its stance on the Magdalene’s relationships to the other biblical Marys, likely engaging Western traditions identifying her with Mary of Bethany and Luke 7:38’s penitent woman. Again, the ownership and location of relics loom large here; while the Byzantine tradition originally located Mary’s body at Ephesus, the author of our text must concede that the Magdalene’s remains were later translated to an alternate Eastern location: a monastery in Constantinople named for Lazarus, Mary of Bethany’s brother.[3]

Beyond contributions to the history of Latinate and Byzantine struggles over Mary’s legacy, her body, and her biblical context, the narrative constitutes another weird and wonderful bios of an early Christian leader. The story begins by tracing Mary Magdalene‘s life from her birth, building on traditions that name her parents (Cyrus and Eucharistia) and describe Magdala’s location on the boundaries of Syria. Having quickly dispensed with her background, the text describes her possession by seven demons. Paralleling other Eastern traditions (cf. Modestus of Jerusalem, as reported by Photius, Bibliotheca, cod. 275)[4] explaining the meaning of her seven demons (seven simply means “a multitude,” but also allows the demons to correspond to the seven virtues), the text differs from Western depictions of her as a sinner and emphasizes instead her holiness and devotion to Jesus. Having been healed by him, she becomes one of his most committed disciples and the anointer of her fellow women. From this point forward, the text explicitly urges the reader to understand the Magdalene as playing a prominent role in Jesus’s ministries as a disciple equal to her male counterparts, if still occasionally subservient to them.

Briefly threading together references to her from the four canonical Gospels, the remainder of the narrative shifts to her post-ascension adventures. Here is the first attempt to engage Western traditions, as the author rewrites sections from the Pilate cycle, borrowing from both the Epistle of Tiberius to Pilate and the Death of Pilate. Our author has the Magdalene take the lead in bringing Jesus’ murder to the emperor’s attention. But after traveling to his court and convincing the emperor of the guilt of Pilate, Caiaphas, and Annas, Mary recedes from the story. The author, unable to integrate Mary more fully, must merely assert after narrating Pilate’s death that it’s time to return “to that set before us.”

Having achieved justice for Jesus’ death, the Magdalene returns to Jerusalem and becomes a disciple of Peter. Without further explanation, after some fourteen years, Peter heads off to Rome, and Mary attaches herself to another apostle, Maximus. Being among the few Christians who remained behind in Judea, Maximus, Mary, and a few other Christians are thrown on a boat by local Jews without supplies as a death sentence. Of course, they miraculously survive, coming ashore at Marseille. From here the text shows heavier Latin influence. The Magdalene and her counterparts discover a bunch of “pagan” worshippers. Ultimately, Mary grabs the local ruler’s attention by threatening him and his wife by appearing in a terrifying dream. The ruler suggests that if she can help them conceive a child, then they will believe her God is the true God. Unsurprisingly, the Magdalene immediately intercedes, and the wife becomes pregnant. Given her success, you would think the ruler would want to learn more from Mary, but instead he decides to seek out her male counterpart, Peter, in Rome.

At this point in the Life, the author again has the Magdalene recede somewhat into the background. The ruler and his wife sail to Rome and Mary stays back to watch their belongings. While at sea, the wife goes into labor early and dies. The ruler finds a rocky outcropping and places her body in a cave and continues on to Rome. In the absence of a wet nurse, the ruler leaves the child for dead alongside the mother. In Rome, the ruler meets Peter and learns more about this strange new faith that has both allowed his wife to be pregnant but has also cost her and his newborn child’s lives. The ruler and Peter become friendly and decide to road trip to Jerusalem to see all the places that Jesus himself had walked. Convinced of Christianity’s truth, the ruler is sent back by Peter to be baptized by the Magdalene.

On his return voyage, the ruler revisits the same small island to retrieve the remains of his wife and child so that he might properly bury them. There he discovers that Mary’s miraculous powers far exceeded her intercession for his wife’s pregnancy. From far-off Marseille, she has brought his wife back to life and somehow provided for both her and the child during their years on the island. Most impressive of all, his wife and child, along with Mary, joined him on all his adventures, observing everything in some kind of unexplained ghostly, invisible form. The happy, reunited family continues home to find the Magdalene still taking good care of their belongings. She baptizes the family as well as the surrounding community. A church is built, and Mary further educates the community in the Christian way before heading out of town.

Mary’s itinerary at this point remains something of a mystery. The author merely states that she “journeyed to other places, preaching the name of Christ.” But in order to assert Byzantine prominence, Mary must end her journeys in Ephesus, linking up with John the Theologian. She dies and is buried there, though her remains later take one final trip. Under Emperor Leo VI, her body is translated from Ephesus to Constantinople, where she is interred at the Monastery of Lazarus, named for her or another Mary’s brother. As with other motifs in the Life, her final journey incorporates Latinate traditions while laying her to rest at the heart of Byzantine power.

Christine Luckritz Marquis is a historian of late antiquity and Associate Professor of Church History and Director of the Masters of Theology at Union Presbyterian Seminary.

[1] The text appeared first in scholarship in an edition and French translation by François Halkin, “Une Vie grecque de sainte Marie-Madeleine BHG 1161x,” AnBoll 105 (1987): 5–23. The edition is based on Oxford, Bodleian Library, Holkham gr. 9, fols. 105v–118v (16th cent.). My translation for MNTA 2 (“Life of Mary Magdalene,” in New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, vol. 2 [ed. Tony Burke; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2020] 223–38) favors Mount Sinai, Monē tēs Hagias Aikaterinēs, gr. 20, fols. 77r–88v (15th/16th cent.), but major variants with the Oxford manuscript are provided in the notes. An additional nine manuscripts are known (see the entry for the text on NASSCAL’s e-Clavis: Christian Apocrypha site for more information. Portions of the text are found also in the Golden Legend 96; see Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints (trans. William G. Ryan; 2 vols.; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 1:374–85.

[2] “Encomium on Mary Magdalene,” in New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, vol. 1 (ed. Tony Burke and Brent Landau; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2016), 196–216.

[3] This detail is found in the entry for Mary Magdalene in the Constantinopolitan Synaxarion; see Hippolyte Delehaye, Synaxarium ecclesiae Constantinopolitanum e codice Sirmondiano nunc Berolinensi (Bruxelles: Apud socios Bollandianos,1902), 833–35 (July 22.1).

[4] Drawing on the “account of her martyrdom,” Modestus says that Magdalene was a virgin her entire life. On her possession by seven devils, he remarks that “seven is used, in Holy Scripture, for all the virtues as also for all the vices.” Greek text and French translation in René Henry, ed., Photius: Bibliothèque (9 vols.; Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1959–1991), 8:118–19.