The Iconography of Mary Magdalene from Its Origins to the Fifteenth Century

Chapter 10 Suspended between Sacred and Profane: the Iconography of Mary Magdalene from Its Origins to the Fifteenth Century

Marcello Mignozzi

The figure of Mary Magdalene always fascinated medieval artists,1 who saw in her a woman of ambivalent character, torn between her human nature and the desire for the sacred.2 Abandoning a life corrupted by sin, carnal desire, and the longing for earthly things was an ambition that many Christians would have understood. Mary Magdalene rose to the level of an exemplum for all those who were seeking the path of pardon and redemption. The ability to free one- self from sin and from the bonds of material necessities certainly implied an elevated spirituality, an incorruptible faith capable of recalling at all times that Christ had taken the place of the ephemeral. Mary Magdalene’s love for Jesus Christ is therefore also an admonition, the practical indication of the road to follow in order to obtain pardon. The catechetical value of the images of the saint was therefore very high. She, with her corruptible human nature, allowed believers to identify with her and to perceive pardon as something actually attainable. At the same time, however, she was also the symbol of uprightness and of surpassing human limits. The striving for the divine was clearly visible in the figure of Mary Magdalene, who at a decisive moment stripped herself of sinful human nature and was thus able to adapt to a new spiritual dimension, aimed at holiness. As always, religious images convey, in figurative language, the tradition of what was known about a character or a theme through the sacred scriptures and their interpretation developed over the centuries. Besides the sources de- rived from the New Testament, one can consider some of the apocryphal read- ings and, especially, the patristic literature. Alongside exegesis must be placed all the homiletic literature produced in the course of the Middle Ages up to the

1 This chapter is a translation from the Italian original by Claudia Defraia (Loyola University Chicago), revised by the editors. 2 Marilena Mosco, La Maddalena tra sacro e profano (Milan: Mondadori, 1986).

Gothic age.3 The hagiographical sources, as we shall see, are of fundamental importance in reconstructing the story of the saint and above all in explaining the renewed cult from the thirteenth century on.4

1 Mary of Bethany or Mary of Magdala: Which Mary?

A fundamental concept for understanding the development of the iconography of Mary Magdalene is the identity of the saint. The character of Mary Magdalene, in fact, appears several times in the New Testament, but rarely with a specific identification, so much so that she was also identified with an- other Mary, the one from Bethany,5 sister of Martha6 and Lazarus, both at the supper at which Jesus Christ was a guest in their home (John 12:1–7; Lk 10:38– 42) and at the moment of the Raising of Lazarus (John 11:1–45); but she is also the woman freed from the Seven Demons (Luke 8:1–2) and is identified with

3 Frédéric Manns, “Magdala dans les sources littéraires,” in Studia Hierosolymitana: In onore di P. Bellarmino Bagatti, ed. Emanuele Testa, Ignazio Mancini, and Michele Piccirillo, 3 vols., SBF.CMa 22 (Jerusalem: Franciscan, 1976; repr. 1983), 1:307–37. 4 The studies on the iconography of Mary Magdalene are innumerable. We made a selection that includes the most significant texts in that regard. The works by Anstett-Janßen (Marga Anstett-Janßen, “Maria Magdalena in der abendländischen Kunst: Ikonographie der Heiligen von der Anfängen bis im 16 Jahrhundert” [Ph.D. diss., Freiburg im Breisgau, 1962]) and by LaRow (Magdalen LaRow, “The Iconography of Mary Magdalen: The Evolution of a Western Tradition until 1300” [Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1982]) remain basic. To them one can add the texts cited below case by case. 5 Victor Saxer agrees that they do not refer to the same woman (see Victor Saxer, “Les Saintes Marie Madeleine et Marie de Béthanie dans la tradition liturgique et homilétique orien- tale,” RevScRel 32 [1958]: 1–37; and idem, Le culte de Marie Madeleine en Occident: Des origi nes à la fin du moyen âge, 2 vols., Cahiers d’archéologie et d’histoire 3 [Auxerre: Société des fouilles archéologiques et des monuments historiques de l’Yonne, 1959], 2:174–317). See also Italo Roveri, “Maria Maddalena la santa dei profumi,” Costume 80 (1963): 53–56; Victor Saxer, “Maria Maddalena,” in Bibliotheca Sanctorum, ed. Filippo Caraffa and Giuseppe Morelli, 13 vols. (Rome: Città Nuova, 1967), 8:1078–104; Martin Bocian, “Maria di Betania,” in Grande dizionario illustrato dei personaggi biblici: Storia, letteratura, arte, musica, trans. Enzo Gatti (Casale Monferrato: Piemme 1991), 414; Esther A. de Boer, Maria Maddalena: Oltre il mito alla ricerca della sua vera identità, trans. Thomas Soggin, PBT 51 (Turin: Claudiana, 1996), 9–90; Mario Arturo Iannaccone, Maria Maddalena e la dea dell’ombra: La spiritualità della dea, il femminile sacro e l’immaginario contemporaneo (Milan: Sugarco, 2006); Robert A. Powell, Maria Maddalena: Mistero, biografia, destino, trans. Mario Messina (Trent: Estrella de Oriente, 2010). 6 Balduino Kipper, “Marta,” in Enciclopedia della Bibbia, ed. Armando Rolla et al., 6 vols. (Turin: Elledici, 1970), 4:978; Martin Bocian, “Marta,” in Grande dizionario illustrato dei personaggi biblici, 421–23.