22nd July: Feast Day of St Mary Magdalene

Feast Day of St Mary Magdalene, who, according to the Bible, travelled with Jesus as one of his followers. She is said to have been the first to witness Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection. That's what everyone knows. Here are some things you might not know:

1. She is mentioned by name twelve times in the Gospels - more than some of the male apostles. However, all but one of the mentions relate to her witnessing the resurrection, and she isn't mentioned in any other New Testament books, so from the Bible alone, we don't know that much about her.
2. Bible scholars through the ages seem to have had little idea who she really was at all, and have got her mixed up with just about every other woman mentioned in the Gospels, apart from the Virgin Mary. Most famously, Pope Gregory I ("Gregory the Great") claimed she was the sinful woman who washed the feet of Jesus and dried them with her hair.
3. Gregory's claim led to the general belief that Mary Magdalene was a reformed prostitute, although there is no evidence for this in the Bible. The town of Magdala was, according to ancient Jewish texts, known as a den of iniquity and therefore a woman coming from there was bound to be a member of the oldest profession. The mention of the "seven devils" were sometimes interpreted as being the seven deadly sins, so people believed she was proud, jealous and lazy, too. Sounds like a smear campaign to me!
4. The Eastern Orthodox Church, by contrast, believes she was almost as virtuous as the Virgin Mary, so much so that the Devil thought she might actually be the one who'd be chosen as the mother of Jesus - which is why he sent seven devils after her.
5. There are references to her in Talmudic passages that suggest she may have been a hairdresser.
6. She is patron of apothecaries; contemplative life; converts; glove makers; hairdressers; penitent sinners; people ridiculed for their piety; perfumeries; pharmacists; sexual temptation; tanners and women, particularly fallen ones.
7. In Western medieval Christian art, she was the most commonly depicted female figure after the Virgin Mary. She was usually shown as either fashionably dressed or completely naked with long, loose, reddish blonde hair, while any other Biblical female was shown as dark haired, and covering most of their hair with a headscarf.
8. In apocryphal texts, she is portrayed quite differently. They show her as a visionary, a leader, and as important a disciple as any of the men, if not more so. According to the Gospel of Mary, written in the early 2nd century, she "got" the teachings of Jesus much more quickly than the men and was asked to explain it all to them. This didn't go down too well with the male disciples and these texts describe tensions between them, suggesting the other disciples were jealous because they thought Jesus liked her better than them.
9. The monk and historian Domenico Cavalca suggested that Mary Magdalene was betrothed to St John the Evangelist, and that he jilted her when he received his calling. There is a legend that they were the couple at the wedding in Cana. Others, including the Cathars, have gone so far as to claim that Mary Magdalen was married to Jesus himself, possibly based on a fragment of parchment found in 2012 in which Jesus says "My wife ... she will be able to be my disciple." The fragment mentions no names and might not even be genuine.
10. One legend about her is that soon after the resurrection, Mary got herself invited to a to a banquet given by the Roman Emperor Tiberius (suggesting in itself that she had some standing by then) and turned up holding an Egg. When she told the Emperor that Christ was risen, he laughed and said that was as likely as that egg turning red while still in her hand. When he looked back down at the egg, it had indeed turned red.