Legend of Mary Magdalene

Screen capture. Hugh Montgomery, The God-Kings of Europe. Image courtesy of Google Books.

Hugh Montgomery cites this story in his God-Kings of Europe (2006:124) and also God-Kings of Outremer (2008:Appendix C).

"Now it came to pass in those days that a Priestess of the Goddess from the village of Bethany of the Tribe of Benjamin and a keeper of the Sacred Doves was affianced to a man called Jeshua for she had served her six years. Now Jeshua was of the House of David the King and they were married.

And Jeshua rebelled against the oppressors against Rome and was defeated, but many Romans were devotees of the Mother and were unwilling to kill her priestess who was with child. So Miriam took ship and was secretly smuggled into Gaul where she was delivered and there she abode many years. Now she bore a daughter who was exceedingly fair and the King of that place looked upon her and demanded that she be his wife but she was promised to the Goddess. But the King would not have it so and took her and made her his wife and she bore him a son and a daughter.

But the Goddess was exceeding wrath for his rape of her daughter and cursed him saying, 'Thy seed shall be estranged from me and thine inheritance taken from thee. Thy seed shall end by the piercing of an eye and so shall thine inheritance cease.

Yet for the sake of my priestess whom thou ravished shall I forgive thee and thy seed if they fulfil those labours which I shall give to them.

They must fight and capture that which was lost to the oppressors of thy wife though they shall not hold it for they shall suffer betrayal (as thou betrayed me). Unless one of thy seed shall end the House of their betrayers by piercing the eye of its Liege. To this family shall I award greatness if they return to me and from this time to that shall be four and one hundred generations.'"

Early South English Legendary Life of Mary Magdalen

From the TEAMS Middle English Texts at The Camelot Project comes the following early South English text based on the life of Mary Magdalen:

Sleighe men and egleche, and of redes wise and bolde,
Lustniez nouthe to mi speche, wise and unwise, yongue and olde.
Nothing ich eou nelle rede ne teche of none wichche ne of none scolde,
Bote of a lif that may beo leche to sunfule men of herte colde.
Ich nelle eou nother rede ne rime of kyng ne of eorl, of knyght ne of swein,
Ake of a womman ich chulle ou telle that was sunful and forlein;
A swythe fol wumman heo bicam, and thorugh Godes grace heo was ibrought ageyn,
And nouthe heo is to Crist icome, the fayre Marie Maudeleyn.
Of hire ichulle yeou telle nouthe al hou and hware heo was ibore,
Yif ye to me wullez iheore and habben of God thonk tharefore.
This word "Marie" so is brightnesse and bitokne the steorre of the se,
And soruwe also and biturnesse, ase the bok tellez me;
For hwane a man fielez in is heorte that he havez muche misdo,
And him tharefore biguynnez to smeorte, that is to him bitur and wo,
He mournez and he sikez ofte. This ilke Marie fierde also,
That thing that was hire leof and softe was seththe hire fulle fo.
In the Castel of Magdalé this faire wumman was ibore;
Heo was icleoped in propre name the Maudeleyne right tharefore.
To speken of hire ich am wel fous, and it likez me ful murie.
Ire fader was hoten Sire Titus, and hire moder Dame Euchirie,
Hire brothur was cleoped Lazarus, and Martha was hire soster.
Heo was debonere and pitiuous, and heo was a seli foster.
Heore fader and heore moder bothe comen of riche kunne,
Of bolde kyngus and of quienes, men of muchele wunne, [More]

SOURCE: Sherry L. Reames, ed., "Early South English Legendary Life of Mary Magdalen," TEAMS Middle English Texts. Retrieved 17 June 2009. Originally published in Middle English Legends of Women Saints (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2003).

See also:

John Mirk, Sermon on St. Mary Magdalen
Legend of Mary Magdalen, Penitent and Apostle, The
Mary Magdalen, from Speculum Sacerdotale

The Legend of Mary Magdalen, Penitent and Apostle

From the TEAMS Middle English Texts at The Camelot Project comes the following article regarding the Legend of Mary Magdalen:

INTRODUCTION

The Mary Magdalen of medieval legend was a composite figure who had her origins in the Biblical passages about three different women - not just the woman explicitly called Mary Magdalen in the Gospels, but also Mary of Bethany, sister of Martha and Lazarus, and the unnamed female sinner who washed Christ's feet with her tears. Biblical exegetes in the Latin West tended to equate the three from the time of Gregory the Great on, but the various New Testament passages about these women were first woven into a single narrative vita in a tenth-century sermon attributed to Odo of Cluny. Odo's sermon, which was subsequently used as a source of lessons in the liturgy for Mary Magdalen's feast day (July 22), relates her life up to the time of Christ's Ascension. The post-Ascension portion of the legend developed in a great variety of ways, but
the dominant version in the West was clearly the one that claimed that she journeyed to Provence in a rudderless boat, had a successful career as an apostle in Marseilles and Aix-en-Provence, and then spent thirty years alone in the wilderness nearby as a contemplative hermit.

Victor Saxer, who did most of the pioneering work on both the cult and the legend, found that the legend of Mary Magdalen in Provence has four major components, which originated separately. (1) The vita eremitica, recounting her years of solitude in the wilderness and her death, was probably borrowed in the ninth century from the Greek legend of a reformed prostitute, Mary of Egypt. As Katherine Ludwig Jansen has pointed out, the Bible never actually specifies the nature of Mary Magdalen's sins, but medieval exegetes and preachers found it natural to connect female sinfulness with prostitution (The Making of the Magdalen, pp. 146 ff.). (2) The vita apostolica, recounting Mary Magdalen's apostolic work in Provence but not the story of the prince of Marseilles, dates from around the same time in the tenth century as Odo's sermon. (3) A translation story was added in the eleventh century to explain how her body had been rediscovered in Provence some 200 years earlier and brought north - with her consent - to the abbey of Vézelay in Burgundy. (4) The story of the prince of Marseilles, which bears close resemblances to secular romance and would become a favorite part of the vernacular legends of Mary Magdalen, was added even later - probably in the twelfth century. In addition to these major components, the Provençal legend in its fully developed form often includes two other kinds of relatively late additions: brief accounts of Martha, Lazarus, and other saints who supposedly accompanied Mary to Marseilles and participated in the evangelization of France, and stories about her miraculous intercessions for believers who have prayed to her or honored her memory in other ways. [More]

SOURCE: Sherry L. Reames, ed., "The Legend of Mary Magdalen, Penitent and Apostle," TEAMS Middle English Texts. Retrieved 17 June 2009. Originally published in Middle English Legends of Women Saints (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2003).

See also:

Early South English Legendary Life of Mary Magdalen
John Mirk, Sermon on St. Mary Magdalen
Mary Magdalen, from Speculum Sacerdotale

The Magdalen Legend

David Mycoff has an analysis of the legend of the Magdalene in the introduction to his translation of the Pseudo-Rabanus Life of St. Mary Magdalene and her sister St. Martha. I've divided the material into smaller paragraphs in the following quotation:

There are, then, five parts to this fully-developed Magdalen legend: the pre-ascension life; the story of the voyage to Marseilles; the account of the thirty-year solitude, death, and burial; and the post-burial miracles and translation of relics.

The pre-ascension life is the product of the patristic harmonizing of scattered scriptural passages which, in the view of the medieval Western Church, all pertained to Mary Magdalene. The earliest extant text that assembles these patristic motifs into a single, concise, coherent narrative appears to be a tenth-century sermon on the Magdalen attributed to Saint Odo of Cluny (BHL 5439).[7]

Close in date is a legend, titled by the prominent scholar of the Magdalen legend and cult, Victor Saxer, Vita apostolica Mariae Magdalenae, [8] which tells of the Magdalen's voyage to Marseilles and her career in Gaul, omitting the stories of the prince of Marseilles and the thirty year seclusion.

The remote source of the account of Mary's solitude is the legend of Mary of Egypt, first told in the Life of Cyriacus by Cyril of Scythopolis. [9] By the ninth century, the Egyptian's story had been adapted for Mary Magdalene in a piece titled by Saxer, Vita eremitica Mariae Magdalenae (BHL 5453-5456). [10]

The Vita apostolica and Vita eremetica were conflated into a single piece to form Vita apostolico-eremitica (BHL 5443-5448), [11] apparently in the eleventh century during the resurgence of Western eremiticism that began in northern Italy.

Another composite piece, Vita evangelico-apostolica (BHL 5450) [12] assembles the pre-ascension material of Odo's sermon with the post-ascension material of Vita apostolico-eremitica, abbreviating the account of the contemplative retreat.

NOTES:

[7]. Printed in Acta Sanctorum, July V: 218-221; also in PL 133: 713-721 with variants in accidentals.

[8]. Étienne-Michel Faillon, Monuments inédits sur l'apostolat de sainte Marie-Madeleine en Provence . . . , 2 vols. (Paris, 1848), calls this the 'Ancienne Vie' of Mary Magdalene and prints it in vol. II, pp. 433-436.

[9]. J. Misrahi, 'A vita Sanctae Mariae Magdalenae . . . ,' Speculum 18 (1943) 335-337 and Sr Benedicta Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind (Philadelphia: Univ. Penna. Press, 1982) p. 260, n. 65.

[10]. Edited by Misrahi, ibid., pp. 335-339.

[11]. Faillon considers the part drawn from Vita eremitica an addition and prints it in Mon. inéd., II; 445-451

[12]. Printed by Faillon, Mon. inéd., II; 437-445, with the title 'Vie Anonyme Sainte Marie-Madeleine'.