Mary Magdalene

Apostle to the Apostles

First attested
the 70s CEThe Gospel of Mark, composed c. AD 70, which names her at the crucifixion, the burial and the empty tomb (Mark 15:40, 15:47, 16:1–8). Mark 16:9, which makes her the first to see the risen Christ, belongs to the longer ending and is absent from the earliest manuscripts.
Claimed
around 40 CEasserted by The Provençal tradition, standardised in Jacobus de Voragine's Legenda Aurea (c. 1260), which has her sail to Gaul soon after the crucifixion; Vézelay claimed her relics from the 1050s and Saint-Maximin announced her tomb in 1279.

No gospel calls her a prostitute. That is Pope Gregory I's homily of 591, which fused her with Luke 7's unnamed sinner and Mary of Bethany — and the Eastern churches never accepted it, so she was an apostle in the East throughout the fourteen centuries she was a penitent in the West.

Twice defined by a man and a body: a prostitute she never was, then a bloodline vessel.

Matthew, Mark and John place her at the crucifixion, all four at the empty tomb; John 20 has her first to meet the risen Christ. Luke 8:2 says seven demons left her, and no gospel calls her a prostitute: that is Pope Gregory I's homily of 591, fusing her with Luke 7's unnamed sinner and Mary of Bethany. The Eastern churches never merged them; Rome's 1969 calendar revision separated them. Two texts outside the canon give her more. The second-century Gospel of Mary, in a fifth-century Coptic codex bought in Cairo in 1896, has Peter dispute that Christ taught her privately. The third-century Gospel of Philip calls her Christ's companion and has him kiss her often — the word for where is a hole in the papyrus, and 'mouth' is an editor's restoration.

Light

John 20 makes her the first to see the risen Christ and the one sent to tell the rest. Apostle to the apostles runs from third-century Hippolytus through Aquinas; the Vatican invoked it in the 2016 decree raising her 22 July memorial to a feast.

Shadow

Gregory's homily of 591 reduced an apostle to a penitent prostitute for fourteen centuries. The modern correction substitutes another: Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln (1982) and Dan Brown (2003) made her a bloodline vessel, defining her again by a man and a body.

Sources and verification5 sources · 2 links

Primary source

  • Gregory I, Homiliae in Evangelia, 591, Homily 33That the identification of Mary Magdalene with the sinful woman of Luke 7 and with Mary of Bethany originates in Gregory the Great's preaching, not in the gospels.
  • Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Decree Apostolorum Apostola, 2016, 3 June 2016That her 22 July memorial was raised to a feast in the General Roman Calendar, the decree invoking the title apostle to the apostles rather than conferring it.

Scholarship

  • Karen L. King, The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle, 2003The second-century composition date, the fifth-century Berlin Codex manuscript history, and the passage in which Peter disputes that Christ taught her privately.

The tradition itself

Where this claim originates

  • Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, 1982Where the modern claim that Mary Magdalene bore Jesus's child and founded a surviving bloodline actually originates.

Linked entries

  • Often confused withThe Holy GrailA modern connection

    Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln (1982) read 'san greal' as 'sang real', royal blood, making Magdalene herself the vessel; no medieval Grail romance identifies her with it, and the Priory of Sion dossiers underpinning the reading were a forgery Pierre Plantard admitted under oath in 1993.

  • Often confused withThe Knights TemplarDisputed

    Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln's The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (1982) made the Templars guardians of a Magdalene bloodline, resting on Priory of Sion papers deposited in the 1960s that Pierre Plantard later admitted composing.

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