full version see Church Life Journal
The enormous cult to Mary Magdalene that existed during the Middle Ages was animated by a very particular perspective. From its earliest days, Western Christianity championed the view that Mary Magdalene is simply another title for Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus, whom today we tend to call Mary of Bethany; and they further identified this Mary with the unnamed sinful woman who anoints the feet of Jesus in the seventh chapter of Luke’s Gospel.
Thus conceived, Mary Magdalene garnered extraordinary appeal throughout the Middle Ages as a potent symbol of what God’s grace could accomplish in the hearts of his wayward children. The popular portrayal of her as a reformed prostitute (a characterization never explicitly stated in Scripture, but often inferred on the basis of Luke 7), far from being an attempt to denigrate her, served only to strengthen ordinary people’s devotion to this fascinating heroine. Here was one who had dramatically overcome her vices, offering hope to the most hardened sinner.
Although a number of Eastern Fathers took a different view, this vision of the Magdalene as sinner-turned-saint became the consensus position in the West for over a thousand years. Yet today the traditional view has been almost entirely rejected. With the rise of critical scholarship in the twentieth century, it became increasingly fashionable for academics to dismiss the ancient devotion as pious reverie. Some feminist scholars went even further, arguing that by depicting the saint as a reformed prostitute, the Medieval Church was actively trying to disparage the role of women in the Christian community.
I think these critics are wrong, and I am convinced that the Medievals and the early Western Church got it right. I shall therefore attempt to recover the alluring yet elusive figure of Mary Magdalene as presented to us in the canonical Gospels. On the basis of what the French exegete André Feuillet termed a “convergence of probabilities,” I shall argue, first, that Mary of Bethany is very likely the same person as the “woman of the city, who was a sinner” (Luke 7:37). Secondly, I shall argue that a plausible case can be made for the further identification of this composite figure with the person of Mary Magdalene.
If my argument is successful, then it demonstrates that the traditional Western view remains exegetically reasonable, and believers today can be intellectually justified in holding to the ancient devotion. In addition, it suggests that modern critics have been overly hasty in jettisoning—and, more often than not, ridiculing—some fifteen hundred years of liturgical and hagiographical testimony which favors the traditional view.
In making this case, I have freely drawn from Fr. Davidson for inspiration. Like him, it is my firm conviction that if the traditional depiction can be vindicated, then Mary Magdalene shines forth as a far greater saint as a result—a vivid instantiation of John Henry Newman’s “Saint of Love,” the model of perfect penitence whose heart burned with ardent longing for her Master and Friend.
