“Brace yourself!” reads one of those memes going around Catholic Twitter that shows the actor Sean Bean as Tolkien’s Boromir looking into the wind. It continues, “Bad Mary Magdalene takes are coming.” Though I prepared for some very bad takes in Diane Apostolos-Cappadona’s new book Mary Magdalene: A Visual History, the ones that appeared did not overwhelm the rest of the book’s delightful history of this figure in literature, devotion, and art.
There are good reasons to await bad takes on the one known as “the Apostle to the Apostles.” After all, the last few decades of popular culture have brought the embrace of a good bit of early Christian and Gnostic schlock, along with a reversal of many of the values that went into earlier, most likely mistaken, Christian portraits of Mary of Magdala as a sexual sinner.
These days we get such treatments as Mark Adamo’s two-act opera The Gospel of Mary Magdalene (2013), in which, as Apostolos-Cappadona describes, the saint “is not a reformed prostitute but an independent, intensely intelligent, and sensual woman.” Given that the show begins with “five modern-day seekers” who “begin a journey to find the truth and voice their negative thoughts about contemporary Christian attitudes toward sex and the subservient place of women in the Church,” I can safely say I’ll be skipping it if it ever comes to town.
If she wasn’t a modern-day sex-positive feminist—and she wasn’t—what was she? What do we know of her from the Gospels and the Tradition? Apostolos-Cappadona’s book is divided into two parts. Part I is titled “Towards a Visual History” and Part II is “Motifs.” In both parts she uses gorgeous images (65 total) and sensitive artistic and literary readings to show how Mary Magdalene was understood and represented throughout the history of the Church. (An appendix at the end surveys some recent exhibitions focused on the saint and offers a bibliography for those interested in going further than this 150-page work.)
In Part I, Apostolos-Cappadona lays out the complex history of her identification in Scripture. We do know that Jesus cast seven devils from her (Mark 16:9; Luke 8:2-7), and that she was one of those close to Jesus, a witness to the Crucifixion, the empty tomb, and the Resurrection. In fact, she was the first witness, told to go tell the twelve the good news—hence the later title “Apostle to the Apostles.”
Was she a sexual sinner? From fairly early on, there developed what the historian Marina Warner called a “muddle of Marys,” in which Mary Magdalene was conflated with other New Testament figures. The fact that even in the certain scriptural identifications she had had seven devils led easily to the notion that she must have been mixed up in sexual sin, given the common connection between spiritual, moral, and physical realities. Tertullian thought Mary Magdalene was actually Mary of Bethany (Luke 10:39) and the woman caught in adultery and nearly stoned (John 8:1-11). Ambrose was unclear on the question, Jerome thought this mistaken, and Augustine thought the identification was “open to question.” Pope Gregory I sealed the popular understanding, however, with his conflation of the Magdalene with both Mary of Bethany and the “sinful woman” of Luke 7:36-50 who anoints Jesus’ feet by Pope Gregory I in 591 A. D.
Gregory’s portrayal achieved a kind of canonical status in the West. The Gospel for the old rite Latin Mass on Mary Magdalen’s day is Luke 7:36-50, and she was identified on the General Calendar as “penitent.” But the questions did not abate. They continued in the Middle Ages with Bernard of Clairvaux, Albertus Magnus, and Thomas Aquinas all issuing opinions. And they became a point of debate in the sixteenth century, as John Fisher of Rochester publicly debated the topic (among other things) with the Protestant Jacques Lefévre d’Etaples.
The outcome in the Catholic Church was that Jerome won out over Tertullian and Gregory. In 1969, Paul VI changed the description of Mary Magdalene in the Roman Calendar from “penitent” and identifying her as “the disciple of the Lord.” This identification has been followed by both Popes John Paul II and Francis, the latter of whom introduced a new preface to her feast day and promoted her day from obligatory memorial to a feast equivalent to those of the Apostles.
Of course, this history is interpreted at the end of the book by Apostolos-Cappadona, Professor Emerita of Religious Art and Cultural History at Georgetown, as itself sexist. In a chapter titled “Feminist Icon,” she tells us that the problem is that the early Church was corrupted by the Roman Empire’s “androcentric vocabulary” and “patriarchal exclusivity” such that “women like Mary Magdalene were no longer agents of religious discourse but simply saintly exempla as they suited the purposes of the ecclesiastical hierarchy.”
Well, okay. This is a bit reductive (and also without footnotes). Tertullian, we might note, was confused long before Christianity was even legal, much less the official religion of the Empire. Thankfully, this chapter, the last one in the book, does not overshadow the rest of the history Apostolos-Cappadona tells, in which all the mistaken identity stuff is not simply attributed to bad hierarchs. In fact, the rest of Part I is of great interest not only for how this saint, supposedly wronged by the patriarchy, seems to have been loved by men and women of all types who not only confuse her with other New Testament figures but also the fifth-century Mary of Egypt—another sexual sinner who repented. They develop stories and legends about her that have to do with penitence but also many other subjects, including travels to India with Thomas, last days spent in Ephesus with John the Beloved and the Blessed Virgin, and traveling on to the south of France with two other Marys. Apostolos-Cappadona herself notes that Mary Magdalene went “from supporting actress to star of medieval dramas.”
In fact, though the identification (or misidentification) of the Magdalene with sexual sinners continued (no doubt until this day), what fascinated many of the great artists is precisely her role as the disciple at the foot of the Cross and the first witness. “Botticelli has created a devotional picture of the highest order,” Apostolos-Cappadona writes of the master’s “Mystic Crucifixion” (ca. 1500). And when the penitent part is present, it does not overwhelm but enhances the focus. In Bernat Martorelli’s altar painting of Mary in the Garden (Noli me tangere), the saint “has become the feminine symbol of penitence, humility, and love as communicated through her kneeling posture ad the Risen Christ’s feet and her eloquent gestures of prayer in relation to his right hand—both positioned directly above her golden unguent jar.” Even if her anointing jar was never used in sorrow for sexual sins, the understanding that it was does not undercut her role as disciple; instead, it enhances it.
Despite Apostolos-Cappadona’s blessedly infrequent feminist lectures, the story she tells of this saint’s place in Christian thought and life is an inspiring one. Thus, the second part of her book, “Motifs,” brings out the varied ways in which Mary Magdalene was understood: not only as seductress, penitent, or feminist icon, but also as weeper of holy tears, witness, preacher, contemplative, reader, and patron. With the exception of the feminist icon, almost all of these images are found long before the twentieth century. One early-sixteenth-century French panel of an altarpiece, painted by an artist now known only as the “Master of the Magdalene Legend,” depicts our saint on an elevated dais preaching in an outdoor setting to a group of men and women. This painting clearly is based on the legend of the saint traveling to France and bringing the Good News there.
While it might be argued that much of the Christian tradition was based on a bad historical take, what Apostolos-Cappadona’s book brings out is how to the pure, all things are pure—even misattributed sexual sins. It is fine to correct the legends with historical truth, but it is even better to see how the splendor of moral and spiritual truths can put a shine even on imperfect knowledge and inspire art and stories that captivate audiences centuries later.
Knowledge can puff up, but love of the saints and the One they love will always build up souls, as well as a cultural legacy worth reading about in this informative and fascinating book.
Mary Magdalene: A Visual History
By Diane Apostolos-Cappadona
Bloomsbury, 2023
Hardcover, 176 pages
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I still believe that Mary Magadalene was indeed a prostitute or, at the very least, a promiscuous highly intelligent woman whose promiscuity, like all sexual sins, opened doors to demons. That is the fact that anti-God-extreme-feminists and their voluntary or involuntary sympathizers try so hard to obscure by saying she was just either a regular sinner, a regular witch, etc. Sexual sins carry dangerous demonic viruses more deadly than the physical ones. We are now in a Sexual Sins Worldwide Pandemic and demons are just perverting us and crazifying us more and more with no end.
That’s why, instead of being pushed away from Mary Magdalen, I have a great devotion to her, as she so greatly deserves. She brightly shines with the testimony of Jesus’ Absolute Victory over any and all sin. Even the Most Holy, Most Pure Virgin Mary acknowledged this and they stayed as lifelong best friends. Mary Magdalen is a great Saint to ask for intercessory help in this sexually depraved times, together with Saint Peter Damian and Saint Pope Leo IX, victorious against sexual sins and homosexuality within the Church.
Blessed Catherine Emmerich, the great time traveler visionary, describes Mary Magdalene as promiscuous and in our times she would amount to a play girl. Martha and Lazarus purchased an estate for her to live with her lover. She had to sell her vineyard because of her lavish spending. The Lord Jesus drove out her demons but Mary Magdalene relapsed and Jesus taught that demons like to return to their dwelling all clean and swept and it will be worse with that sinner as before. Then the Lord Jesus drove out seven demons and that brought her total conversion.
Mary Magdalene, bereft of specifics in the New Testament, has become a lens through which souls become assisted by her. The person seems to see in her what most fits personal spiritual need and world view. Let it always be so, just as art always mysteriously accomplishes the parallel task.
Outside of the Gospels, our only source of specifics about saints have come through the witness of living contemporaries and private revelation.
Private revelation is always understood to be non-primary as far as the acceptance and living of true Christian faith. But, having been a reader of much revelation published in the Church, I have come to recognize how they supplement what did not get revealed in Scripture or in the biographies of saints. The Bible is the seat of faith; post-biblical revelation is a bonus from Heaven magnifying what is already attested. You don’t need the filigree of revelation, but its there if a closer view is needed.
Having completed a painting of Mary Magdalene based on a living victim souls encounter with her in vision during July 2022, but also after 17 years of study in two prodigious historical revelations, Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich and Third Order Servite Maria Valtorta, I am a witness that the clarifying specifics of Mary Magdalene have been abundantly provided. Believing them is not necessary to faith, but they remain very beneficial for private use.
Mr. Alcoceli’s first paragraph comment is right over the target IMO.
The revelations of Emmerich (in Germany between 1819-1824) and Valtorta (in Italy between 1943 and 1951) give us the same portrait of the Magdalen, but without the same (ie redundant) details! The conversion of the Magdalen spans the entire 766-page second volume of Valtorta’s Poem of the Man God, and 55 separate chapters of that 5-volume Poem.
[The case for the Poem is over btw: 28 bishop imprimatur’s from all over the world, affirmation by 7 saints and blesseds, Steve Austin’s magisterial 1300 page research document addressing every known “defect” attempted to be ascribed to it. Then there is reading the Poem, a 4200 page excursion (five bibles worth) that (for me) consumed 7 careful delicate years. No one should judge it who does not read the work. Direct quote from Venerable Pope Pius XII “Who reads it will understand”. Valtorta’s writing hand was found incorrupt when they transferred her body to the Servite basilica. She wrote the whole fabulous tome in one draft. This merely scratches the surface as to all of its known marvels and supernal words that only a God could utter…]
Neither lady knew each other nor their respective catholic religious writing office, nor were probably aware of how Pope Gregory had gone before them to do the biblical sleuthing, later confirmed by the Bollandists and Fr Hugh Pope OP, that Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany, and the foot washing penitent are all the same person.
In Emmerich and Valtorta, her sinner image is identical, she had been a young wealthy idler, not a public harlot, but a fulltime playgirl, perhaps like our country suddenly saw after 1953 (legalization of pornography) and 1960 (legalization of contraception), noting also the arrival of Pitirim Sorokin’s book The American Sex Revolution in 1957. I knew people growing up in the 60s and 70s who slept with hundreds of partners and not for any money.
There are no revelations as comparably deep and singular on the Magdalen before the 19th and 20th centuries. Why not? Sex and love addiction could not even be named until these later times.
In Valtorta’s secretarial mega-work, Jesus is recorded giving the complete appraisal of her soul’s journey including why she is allowed place first at the tomb on Easter Sunday. Jesus reveals that Eve passes the fruit to Adam in the Error, the symbol of arrogated and misused faculty. If the Enemy corrupts the woman in the nucleus of the sexual purpose, he can take the whole of society in destruction. The Magdalene is the file leader; if He saves her, He can save all women of the gravest threat to breathing humanity. There are no souls without births! The mercies of Heaven have saved these details for the end times. He came for the sickest of the sick, what else could that be in a woman to which all is ordered on earth?!
The Church gave the Magdalen a memorial July 22 and waited almost 2000 years to elevate the day to a Feast… and did it under Pope Francis’ time! Why is that?! Someone answer this question!
One could examine the times (“does anyone know what a woman is?” did anyone ask that before 2016?) and the timing of Mary Magdalene’s cult surging yet again but with more power and necessity than ever before couldn’t be more gracious, more mysterious or more prompt.
The only people nowadays who say the words ‘sexual intoxication’ and ‘sexual expressionism’ are the Catholic Church and the sexual problem recovery groups. The enemy has everyone else (our whole country) under a fog of muteness.
If you struggled with sexual issue, you know exactly what the Magdalen accomplished. The Savior said it: she received exorcism and strangled Satan in his attempted retaliation.
Lucia of Fatima told us: lust will be (and is now) thee sin at the top of the list when the end times go down. Look all around! Dr Bob Schuchts spoke in Be Restored (2021), that virtually every American is now wounded in some way by the sexual revolution.
Her charism and intervention are rising at the critical time. Our Catholic Church always has the goods no other body has. The clearest answers are in plain sight for those who need to find them about Mary of Magdala. Few want to find the indictment. Penitent woman, pray for us!
Jst, Emmerich and Valtorta’s books have major differences on many issues, so let us not mingle them. And as I replied to Edith below, Brentano invented much of Emmerich’s book. As for the case for Valtorta being “over” and accepted, the jury is still out on that. Steve Austin’s work is OK but verbose, repetitive and exaggerated. Search for De Caro and Mattriciani plus Valtorta and you will see solid, published, refereed scientific articles that support Valtorta. And see the Italian foundation for Valtorta, then feed it to Google translate. The archbishop of Lucca talks there.
There is proof that Bl Catherine Emmerich’s visions are true. 19th century explorer had this idea to track the clear instructions of Bl Catherine at the shore of what is today Tukey’s coast line to hike to the hills of Ephesus. Matter-of-fact they found MARY’s house that was built by St John for the Mother of God. To their amazement at the time they found Muslims coming to the house of Mary because of the peace and tranquility and Islam does honor the Bl. Virgin (they just do not believe in Jesus being crucified and being God). It is a great pilgrim place and Bl Catherine Emmerich describes in detail what it looked like inside the house at the time of the Bl Virgin residing their.
Edith, you should read the front page of the Oct 7 2004 issue of the Osservatore Romano. In an article there Cardinal Jose Saraiva wrote that the Church had determined that most of Emmerich’s book was INVENTED by Clemens Brentano and Emmerich did know about it.
Carl, thank you for letting me know, I appreciate it. Clemens Brentano was a well known writer at that time and gave up his career to document all her visions. Bl. Catherine revealed the relationship of all of Jesus’ family, confirming that Mary was of the line of David also. There are many things this little suffering nun could not have known at the time but by divine inspiration. My book states that the only reason she was not canonized was a few antisemitic writings. I have to leave it at that.