Recently I acquired all three volumes of the “New Testament Apocrypha: More noncanonical Scriptures”, edited by Tony Burke. These volumes contain rarely seen apocrypha texts, some of which are making their English debut. I noticed volume 2 and 3 had some Mary Magdalene stories. With this post, I am going to talk about the story in volume 2 titled The Life of Mary Magdalene. This story is pretty unique in that it has aspects from the western and eastern traditions! When one reads up on various tales of Mary Magdalene post resurrection, she usually ends up in France and most stories have her staying in that area until she leaves this world. The east doesn’t seem to have many stories of Mary. There is the red egg story where Mary is having a conversation with Emperor Tiberius about Jesus and his resurrection, and an egg changed colors from white to red as a sign from God that her message was true. As of now I still have not found the source of that story and it just seems to be an oral legend that has been passed down through the centuries. The eastern tradition also has Mary passing away in the east, typically in the company of Saint John the Theologian and sometimes including the Theotokos (Mother Mary). I was pretty excited when I first heard of this Life of MM apocrypha text. So what exactly is in it? It is a rather short text, only about ten pages long and features a mixture of various other texts, stitched together to form a narrative. Sort of reminds me of the Pseudo-Matthew infancy Gospel that stitches together various stories to form a longer tale. The Golden Legend is used quite a bit in this Life of MM. If you have not remind my three blog posts on that story, you can check them out here: #1, #2 & #3.
The dating of this story is unknown but the academic introduction places it around the 11th/12th centuries. It appears the story was assembled to emphasize the Byzantium relics of Mary Magdalene as this would have been after the looting of Constantinople by the Latin west. This was post Church Schism so there were a lot of issues between the Latins and Greeks. That being said, let’s take a look!
The story starts with a prologue introducing the reader to who Mary Magdalene was in the bible. The second chapter dives into her history. It is presented that her father’s name is Cyrus and her mother’s name is Eucharistia, and that the family is of a noble and wealthy line from Magdala. Mary had heard of a teacher from Jerusalem preaching and performing miracles so she left home to seek him out. Once finding the teacher, Jesus, she became a disciple of his. The story mentions about Mary having seven demons within her. This is of course referenced in Luke 8:2. These seven demons are referred to as the opposites of the seven virtues. Thus they are 1) Irreverence, 2) Stupidity, 3) Ignorance, 4) Lying, 5) Vanity, 6) Conceit and 7) Beauty. I don’t think I ever read this before in any text so I found this to be quite interesting.
Chapter 3 portrays Mary as a witness to the death and resurrection of Jesus. She is mentioned as giving up her wealth, glory, beauty and all material things to become a follower of Christ. Like in the biblical narrative, it mentions her at his death, then seeing various angels at the tomb before eventually seeing the resurrected Christ.
Chapter 4 takes place after the ascension. In the bible, Mary Magdalene disappears. We hear of the other apostles in Acts, but no mention of Mary. Per this story, Mary travels to see the Emperor to report what Pilate had done. She gains an audience with the Emperor (no name is given, but it’s Tiberius) and explains how the chief priests, Annas and Caiaphas, had delivered Jesus to Pilate for trial and the later crucifixion. She mentioned the signs that happened after his death, such as the world going dark, and Tiberius had remembered that incident happening. So he calls for the priests and Pilate to come to Rome to stand trial. Caiaphas had died in Crete but Annas did make it to Rome where a judgment was made against him and he was sentenced to death being tightly bound in wet buffalo skin and “cooked” under the sun light. I must say I never heard of this type of death penalty before!
Chapters 5, 6 & 7 deal with Pilate. Apparently these chapters are taken from the medieval apocrypha text “The Letter of Tiberius to Pilate”. I had not heard of this text before but upon seeking it out and reading it, I see the connections. I will post a link to that story at the end of this blog post. To make a long story short, and especially since it doesn’t deal with Mary Magdalene, Pilate arrives in Rome and is wearing one of Jesus’ clothes as an aid (? good luck charm perhaps?) under his other clothes. Mary had pointed out the specific cloth and that was enough for Tiberius to continue the interrogation. Pilate retells his story of the priests handing over Jesus, how he thought Jesus should be handled under Jewish law, but it was not until the king / Caesar reference is made, that Pilate proceeds to go along with the sentence. The Emperor puts Pilate into a prison that is outside the walls of Rome to await his death sentence. Later on, the Emperor was on a deer hunting expedition outside the city when his party came close to the prison. Pilate had leaned out of his cell window telling the Emperor to hurl the arrow at the deer since the hunt was not going well. This enraged the Emperor and he hurled the arrow at Pilate instead, which stabbed him right in the heart and killed him! This side story is kind of out of place and reminds me of that side story in the Book of Mary’s Repose where the story includes another apocrypha tale that has nothing to do with the main narrative. The last part of chapter 7 has us returning back to the Mary Magdalene story and she travels to Jerusalem to become a disciple of Peter where she would stay for the next fourteen years.
Chapter 8 now starts to use references from the Golden Legend story. It mentions that Peter told Mary of an apostle by the name of Maximus. It then states that the Hebrews in the area put Maximus and Mary, along with other Christians, onto a boat without sails or oars, nor food and water, and left to drift onto the sea as they did not want them in the area anymore. Thanks to the will of God, the boat landed at Marseille (France). Once there, they found the people to be idolaters and no one to host them. Mary began to preach to the people there and was able to convert them. Now this differs from the Golden Legend as there is no Lazarus or Martha. In the Golden Legend, Mary Magdalene was merged with Mary, sister of Martha, thus becoming Martha’s sister and Lazarus’ brother. I always disliked that aspect of the story and was so happy to see it left out here. I never viewed those two Marys to be the same person.
Chapter 9 has Mary appearing in the visions of the local ruler’s wife. Mary tells her that she should give aid to the foreigners since they were hungry and in need of help. The wife was too afraid to inform her husband of this. A second vision occurred and the wife did not say anything. The third time Mary appeared to both the ruler and wife in quite the furious rage. She had cursed them both before leaving. Again, this comes from the Golden Legend story. Chapter 10 continues their story as the ruler and wife wake up from this dream, discuss what happened and decided to do good with the people who were in need of aid. After giving aid, the two spoke to Mary and it was mentioned of the miracles performed by God. The two had requested to God that they would be able to have a child. Mary proceeded to pray to for them so the wife would get pregnant, and as it would happen, she did. This made the couple happy and the ruler wanted to accompany Mary to Rome to meet Peter. His wife wanted to go as well even though her husband was against the idea. Eventually she got her way and the couple travelled abroad with Mary.
Chapters 11 & 12 continue their story. If you have read the Golden Legend, then you are aware of what happens. The wife labors at sea and dies. The sailors wanted to toss the body over board but her husband objected. They found a mountain along the water and placed her body in a cave. The ruler and Mary then proceeded on their trip to Rome and met with Peter. Peter had told the man not to be grieved but do what Mary tells him to do. The man is then taken to various pilgrimage sites. After two years, the man wished to return home. Before leaving, he was baptized by Mary. On the way back to his home land, the cave was spotted where his dead wife was laid. Wanting to give her a proper burial at his home land, they stopped to gather the bones. To his surprise, a small child and his wife were there, alive. The wife explained that Mary Magdalene was at her side the whole time.
Chapter 13 ends the story with everyone arriving back at France where Mary explained to everyone what had happened during their journey. Once she established a church and leaders to run it, Mary left and visited other places to spread the word. She eventually ends up in Ephesus where she finds John the Theologian. She later falls asleep (dies) in his company. The text ends with a footnote that the great king Leo VI transferred Mary’s relics to Constantinople to the Monastery of Holy Lazarus. Now in the Golden Legend, it mentions that “some say” Mary and John the Theologian had married. This particular story mentions them getting together but nothing about marriage. In my opinion, it would have been more of a spiritual bond those two had together. Some stories have Mother Mary living with John at the time of Magdalene’s arrival. Those three were all together at the death of Jesus thus they would have come full circle with this reunion.
I’ve always enjoyed the Golden Legend story but the mixing of the two Marys annoyed me. So with this different version, I am glad that issue is not present. I am also happy to see nothing mentioned of Mary being a prostitute. That was never an issue in the Eastern Orthodox church. My only (slight) complaint with this story is the ending. I absolutely love the west’s ending where Mary becomes a hermit in a cave for 30 years, only being fed by angels on a daily ascension and eventually is covered entirely by hair (as I like to refer to that incarnation as “Hairy Mary”). That particular story is very inspired by Saint Mary of Egypt’s ordeal, but I always liked the hermit aspect and the visual art that often accompanies it.
Featured artwork: St. Mary Magdalene preaching at Marseilles by Antoine de Ronzen 1513
The Letter from Tiberius to Pilate: https://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2016/10/03/the-letter-of-tiberius-to-pilate-epistola-tiberii-ad-pilatum/
bP
Culmination of Wisdom 