Note: From The Mary We Forgot (Brazos 2024). Reprinted by permission of the publisher. Citations have been omitted.
One summer, our family lived in Provence in the south of France. As you might suspect, our time there was less celebrity yachts and Cannes film festival premieres (as in, not at all!) and more library archives, churches, historical sites, and lavender fields. We loved every second. Coming from America, we reveled in the region’s many layers of history. As it turns out, one of the prime destinations for celebrity sightings, fashion, and luxury vacations remains a touchstone for some of Western Christianity’s earliest history. Paris alone is enough reason to head to France, but is Mary Magdalene another compelling reason? Few of us outside the country would associate her with France. But Mary Magdalene matters immensely to France, in the south especially. She is remembered as the first evangelist of France, and by that account, she represents France’s claim to apostolic succession. To this day, she is so well ingrained in the cultural memory and identity of southern France that if you mention Mary, they will assume you mean Mary Magdalene rather than the Virgin Mary.
The importance of apostolic lineage was first developed by the early Christian bishop Irenaeus of Lyon in his effort to strengthen the church against early Christian heresies (such as Gnosticism). He contended that faithful teaching of the church was passed down directly from Jesus to the apostles and on through the succession of bishops. It is a historical claim that declares, in a manner of speaking, What we have received from him, we pass on to you. Irenaeus is remembered as a disciple of Polycarp, who was a disciple of John the apostle, Jesus’s disciple. Interestingly, John’s first epistle also stresses the importance of eyewitness accounts in rooting the claims of Christianity (1 John 1:1-3). The reference talks about seeing Christ, hearing Christ, and touching Christ. In France’s case, Mary Magdalene became that apostolic link who saw, heard, and touched Christ.
Many churches worldwide have traced their Christian origins and legitimacy back to an early traveling evangelist. Christians in India, for example, attribute their apostolic lineage to the apostle Thomas. The Mar Thoma Syrian Church claims this heritage in southern India to this day. This practice recognizes the ways in which regional churches’ biblical roots of authority reach back to Christ, and such claims are certainly plausible given the expansive geographical reach of the Roman Empire and the routes of travel available at the time. In France’s case, association with Mary Magdalene deserves our attention and consideration, especially given that both the Eastern and Western traditions remember Mary Magdalene at this juncture as a missionary traveler, preacher, and evangelizer. Christ’s sending of her, in the church’s mind, was more than delivering a message but embarking on a mission as a witness to the good news. Where did she go? Was her departure linked to Pentecost? The biblical text does not specify.
Luke’s Gospel indicates that it was not just a few or some but “many” women (Mary Magdalene the first of several named) who traveled with Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem (Luke 8:3). Luke 24 recounts how Mary Magdalene and the other women returned to tell the eleven and others about Christ’s resurrection (vv. 9-10). While they were gathered together (v. 33 specifies “the eleven and companions”), Jesus appeared and declared to them that they are the “witnesses of these things” and to await the coming of the Holy Spirit (24:48-49). Luke continues the account in Acts 1. Later, Paul echoes this account in his sermon from Antioch in Pisidia, declaring, “For many days he appeared to those who came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, and they are now his witnesses to the people” (Acts 13:31). And Mary Magdalene was prominent among them.
That’s probably why it is surprising that she is not named in Acts 1:14 as present in the upper room prior to Pentecost (though Jesus’s mother Mary is named). Mary Magdalene is possibly assumed to be among the “certain women” recognized as present. We would certainly expect her to be there, but we would also expect her to be named. Biblical scholar Beverly Gaventa explains how Luke’s specific wording that “these all were persisting together” (Acts 1:14) was a repeated phrase he used to emphasize the unity of the Jerusalem community, which included the women from Galilee. Acts 1-2 attests to the presence of the women and as equal recipients of the Holy Spirit in fulfillment of the Joel 2 prophecy. The circles of preaching, healing, gathering, and ministering in Jesus’s name gain momentum after Pentecost, fueled by the Holy Spirit. Mary Magdalene is remembered by the church as part of that expanding geography and demography of Christ’s post-ascension ministry, despite questions surrounding her presence at Pentecost.
Mary Magdalene’s departure from Jerusalem is not hard to imagine as there was certainly a flurry of travel among Jesus’s followers after Pentecost. Given her role at the resurrection and the importance of her testimony, she would have been a target of persecution. She was, after all, ridiculed by second-century Greek philosopher Celsus for bearing “hysterical” witness to the resurrection, which signals that her significance became widely known and recognized early on. The Eastern church identifies Paul’s mention of a Mary in Romans 16:6 as a reference to Mary Magdalene, which would place her among those ministering in Rome. Importantly, both branches associate her with missionary travel, but the Western tradition situates the postbiblical portion of her life in France.
The eighth-century church contributed to the formalizing of Mary Magdalene’s remembrance in Western church life. Venerable Bede’s martyrology, for example, established her feast day on July 22 (observed to this day), according to the Byzantine tradition. Liturgy, prayers, and sermons began to fill medieval worship. During the ninth century, a biography emerged from Charlemagne’s court attributed to scholar Rabanus Maurus, who traced details of Magdalene’s expulsion from Jerusalem and travel to the south of France with Martha and Lazarus. He recounts them preaching, converting, and performing miracles. Mary Magdalene’s withdrawal to an ascetic, contemplative life in the environs of Aix-en-Provence according to Maurus mirrors the monastic developments of the period. There she was miraculously provided for by angels lifting her to the heavens each day, nourishing her with the Eucharist.
Meanwhile, miracles associated with her relics multiplied in Marseille. Her relics, and her legacy with them, were formally transferred to Vézelay Abbey in Burgundy. The apostolic claims of France were deepened by this move. By the eleventh century, the church of Vézelay came under the reforming wing of Cluny, and the church’s patronage shifted from the Virgin Mary to Mary Magdalene, with papal approval following. A Cistercian version of Mary Magdalene treated her as a model for the life of contemplation and reform, elevated in station by Jesus himself from reformed sinner to apostle (specifically as the apostle to the apostles). Historian Margaret Arnold describes the “multiplicity of Magdalenes” that developed from medieval legend and liturgical remembrance as evidence of a rich popularity and accessibility in contrast with the almost ethereal Virgin Mary: “Mary Magdalene, on the other hand, offered the hopeful example of an ordinary woman, even one with a sinful past, who had renounced the flesh for contemplation and pious attachment to Christ.” [The Magdalene in the Reformation, p. 18-19] The Mendicant version of Mary Magdalene particularly stressed her preaching, which suited a movement of preaching orders. In striking ways, her story came to mirror the arc of the church’s story, points out Arnold: “Her progress from sinner to penitent, from prodigal to ascetic, from witness to missionary, describes the arc of the church’s founding narrative.” [p. 18] Through the eyes of France, Mary Magdalene came to be without question the most significant female preacher and evangelist in Western Christian memory.
By the thirteenth century, Mary Magdalene’s story and her relics were repositioned to Aix-en-Provence. The Golden Legend reflects that shift in a number of ways, including by recounting how Peter left Mary Magdalene in the care of Maximin, described as one of the seventy-two disciples sent by Jesus. Under threat of persecution, she was herded onto a rudderless boat along with Maximin, her brother Lazarus, her sister Martha, and Martha’s maid Martilla, and guided by God’s will alone to land at Marseille. To be sure, considerable variation on this story exists, which is cause for confusion.
My family and I visited the church at Les-Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, which dates back to the ninth century and is purported to mark where she disembarked on the southern coast of Gaul near Arles. She is described there as among “Three Marys” along with Mary of Jacob, Salome, or Cleopas (the trio varies but also echoes the names of some of the seven Eastern Orthodox myrrhophores). Interestingly, a maid named Sarah is included, which connects with an early Ethiopic version of the Epistula that names a mysterious Sarah as the first alongside Mary Magdalene and Martha at the resurrection tomb. The list of names truly varies depending on the site and source. There is agreement, however, that she set out to evangelize the towns of Marseille and Aix, preaching Christ all the way to the governor of the province. The destruction of temples and idols was followed by the building of churches in Marseille. Lazarus was elected bishop of Marseille, and the same evangelism came to Aix where Maximin was elected bishop. Mary Magdalene then withdrew to a cave in the wilderness for thirty years to live as a hermit.
And so, France came to claim Mary Magdalene by remembering her as more than a witness to the resurrection but also a missionary, preacher, and evangelist to France as well as a model of the contemplative, severely ascetic, and hermitic pious life. To this day, her story is linked to the area known as Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume.
Note: From The Mary We Forgot, Jennifer Powell McNutt, Brazos Press, a division of Baker Publishing Group, copyright 2024, used by permission.
Jennifer Powell McNutt, Franklin S. Dyrness Associate Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies, Wheaton College
