Equal to the Apostles Mary Magdalene. Holy Mary Magdalene Equal to the Apostles

Recently, many Russian media discussed a sensation: in the museum of the small town of Irbit, Sverdlovsk region, viewers were presented with the original painting by P. Rubens “The Penitent Mary Magdalene and Her Sister Martha.” Experts will decide whether the 17th-century painting belongs to Rubens or not, but the title of the painting has caused bewilderment among believers: on what basis did the great Flemish relate Mary Magdalene and Martha? It turns out that in the Catholic West there is a widespread belief that Mary Magdalene is the repentant sinner who anointed Jesus’ feet with ointment and wiped them with her hair (Luke 7:37-38), and that she was not only a harlot, but also the sister of Lazarus Four days old. So to what extent do the characters depicted in paintings popular in the West called “Penitent Mary Magdalene” correspond to the prototype?

Before we begin our reasoning, let us clarify that in the lines of Scripture telling about the anointing of Christ with fragrant myrrh, they only talk about the harlot and Mary from Bethany - Mary Magdalene is not mentioned anywhere in this situation.

The fact that all four evangelists write about this act indicates its unusualness, but not its exclusivity. The very anointing of Jesus by a harlot, presumably, was widely discussed among the Jews, and caused idle talk not in favor of Christ. Perhaps that is why the pious Mary of Bethany repeated the anointing in order to stop rumors that only harlots gather around the Teacher? And the fact that Lazarus’ sister was a pious woman can be assumed from the following. From the Gospel text it follows that Mary’s brother Lazarus was a man of strict rules and highly respected in society. It is very, very difficult to present a man whose sister, who lived with him, was a despised harlot, respected in Jewish society.

In fairness, we note that all of the above is just reasoning; it is much more interesting to analyze the gospel lines in order to separate the harlot and Lazarus’ sister.

How many anointings were there?

The 11th chapter of the Gospel of John says: “And Mary, whose brother Lazarus was sick, was the one who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped His feet with her hair.” We know about the woman who wiped the Savior’s feet with her hair from the Gospel of Luke (Luke 7:37-38). And it is there that it is reported that this woman was a harlot, which gives rise to some researchers to claim that Lazarus’ sister is that same harlot. Those who disagree with this statement believe that in the 11th chapter, the Apostle John mentions another case of anointing, which he cited a little later, in the 12th chapter: “Mary, taking a pound of pure precious ointment of spikenard, anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped it with her hair. His feet; and the house was filled with the fragrance of the world” (John 12:3).

But here the question arises: why does the Evangelist John, in the 11th chapter, report the fact of anointing with chrism even before its detailed description in the next chapter? It can be assumed that by the time the Gospel of John was written, the story about the woman who anointed Christ on the eve of His burial was known to many, and the evangelist decided to clarify that this woman was Lazarus’ sister Mary, and a little later he describes the very fact of anointing. Inconsistency in the presentation of the Apostle John is not something unusual for the Holy Scriptures. Suffice it to recall the book of Genesis, which twice mentions God’s creation of man, which is one of the main imaginary arguments for incompetent critics of the Bible.

Supporters of the identification of the harlot and the sister of Lazarus, as proof of their assertion, often cite the following lines of the hymn of the Lenten Triodion, which are sung at matins in Holy Week: “Whore, come to You, pouring ointment with tears on Your nose, O Lover of Mankind, and the stench of evils is delivered from Your command! Breathing in Your grace, the ungrateful disciple puts it aside and dresses himself in stench, selling You with the love of money.” In their opinion, if Mary of Bethany anointed Christ with chrism on the eve of His burial, and the hymn clearly states that the one who anointed Him on the day when the money-loving Judas betrayed Christ was a harlot, then it turns out that this harlot was Lazarus’ sister.

To agree or refute this statement, let us read a passage from the Gospel of Matthew, which speaks of the anointing of Christ and the betrayal of Judas: “When Jesus was in Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper, a woman came to Him with an alabaster flask of precious ointment and poured it on Him as he reclined. head. Seeing this, His disciples were indignant and said: Why such a waste? For this ointment could have been sold for a high price and given to the poor. But Jesus, realizing this, said to them: Why are you embarrassing the woman? she did a good deed for Me: for you always have the poor with you, but you do not always have Me; having poured this ointment on My body, she prepared Me for burial... Then one of the twelve, called Judas Iscariot, went to the high priests and said: What will you give me, and I will betray Him to you? They offered him thirty pieces of silver; and from that time on he looked for an opportunity to betray Him” (Matthew 26:6-16). If we consider that Judas betrayed the Savior on Wednesday, and Lazarus’ sister Mary anointed Christ on another day - six days before Easter (John 12:1), then we can conclude that the song is not talking about Mary from Bethany.

When comparing the above hymn with the text of the Gospel of Matthew, one can see some, at first glance, contradiction: if the hymn speaks of anointing the Savior’s feet, then from the Gospel it follows that the woman anointed His head with ointment. But is this a contradiction? We have already mentioned that in the Holy Scripture the presentation of events did not always strictly correspond to chronology; the main goal for the inspired authors was to convey to the reader the facts that, to one degree or another, determined the development of world history. The same principles were followed by the authors of the Holy Tradition, which, in particular, includes church hymns. In this case, the authors of the hymn of Holy Week combined two events into one, confident that the woman who anointed the Savior’s head on the eve of His Passion on the Cross was the same harlot who once wiped His feet with tears with her hair. That is, the repentant former harlot, who had once anointed Christ with chrism in Galilee (Gospel of Luke), followed Christ, and in Bethany on Holy Wednesday she came to the local residence of the Pharisee Simon, a former leper, where at that time he was staying who had cleansed him from leprosy Lord. The woman repeated the anointing here, but this time she dared to pour the precious ointment on the Savior’s head, thereby, as it were, preparing Him for burial.

This is exactly how the compilers of the “Interpretation of the Gospel of Matthew”, based on the interpretations of the Church Fathers (Trinity Leaves, 1896-1899), reveal these events: “The Holy Orthodox Church, following St. Chrysostom, Blessed Theophylact and other ancient fathers, adheres to that tradition, that Jesus Christ was anointed three times - through the zeal of two Gospel women: for the first time, among His public service to the human race, as a clearly repentant sinner in Galilee, in the house of Simon the Pharisee, as Saint Luke preaches; in the other - in Bethany, in the house of Lazarus, by Mary, sister of Lazarus, six days before Easter, as preached by Saint John; and the third time in the house of the same Simon the Pharisee, in Bethany, and by the same repentant sinner who anointed Him the first time, as St. Matthew and St. Mark preach.”

So, analyzing the Gospel texts, we can conclude with a certain degree of confidence that Mary of Bethany, sister of Lazarus the Four-Days, was not a harlot known to Jewish society. It remains to be seen, what does Mary Magdalene have to do with it?

Who was Mary Magdalene?

As already mentioned, based on the opinion of some holy Fathers of the Western Church, in particular St. Gregory the Great, Pope of Rome, a tradition has developed in the Catholic Church to identify Mary Magdalene with the evangelical harlot. Many paintings were written on the theme of Mary Magdalene’s repentance, the most famous of which is Titian’s painting “The Penitent Mary Magdalene.” This opinion is so widespread that even the painting by the Russian artist Alexander Ivanov, “The Appearance of Christ to Mary Magdalene after the Resurrection,” painted in 1835, is unhesitatingly called by our contemporaries “The Penitent Mary Magdalene.” Moreover, the name Magdalene has become a catchword characterizing repentant representatives of the ancient profession, and is often used in works of art.

Meanwhile, there is no information in the New Testament that Mary Magdalene was a famous harlot. It only says that Christ cast out seven demons from her. Of course, if we assume that one of the seven demons was a demon of fornication, then she can be called a sinner-harlot, but this stretch is too great.

It is known that Mary followed Christ during His earthly life, and after His crucifixion and Resurrection, she boldly preached faith about the Savior who had appeared in the world. It is unlikely that the pagan world, not yet enlightened by the Christian light of forgiveness and love, could adequately perceive the words of a harlot, albeit a former one. Here is what is written about this in the notes to the life of the holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Mary Magdalene (July 22 according to the church calendar): “But the Orthodox Eastern Church does not confuse the sinner of an unknown name, forgiven in the house of Simon the Pharisee, with Mary Magdalene... But Saint Demetrius of Rostov writes: “If Magdalene were a harlot, then after Christ and His disciples she is clearly a sinner who has been walking for a long time, so that the haters of Christ would speak to the Jews, seeking some kind of guilt against Him, so that they would blaspheme and condemn Him. If the disciples of Christ once saw the Lord with Talking to the Samaritan woman, she wondered, as if she were speaking to her wife, if only the hostile woman would not have kept silent if they had clearly seen a sinner following and serving Him all the days.”

Regarding the alleged identity of Mary Magdalene with Mary from Bethany, the following excerpt from the life of Mary Magdalene can be cited: “By originating from the city of Magdala, Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Mary is called Magdalene, to distinguish her from other pious women mentioned in the Gospel with the name Mary.”

The question remains, where did Lazarus’ sister Mary from Bethany go during the Savior’s suffering on the Cross? Why wasn’t she next to her beloved Teacher? Why doesn’t any of the evangelists mention her when they talk about the myrrh-bearing women? But actually, why should she be in Jerusalem at this time? In the texts of the New Testament, Mary, together with her sister Martha, appears only when the Savior visits His friend Lazarus in Bethany. It is quite possible that even at the time of the Passion of the Cross, the sisters remained close to their brother in their hometown. Although it can be assumed that the evangelists noted both Mary and Martha among other myrrh-bearing women, calling them “others” (Luke 24:10), it is not for nothing that in the church calendar they are called myrrh-bearing women. In any case, the assumption that the evangelists, for the purpose of conspiracy, called Mary of Bethany Mary Magdalene (from Magdala) sounds somehow unconvincing.

He who repents is innocent

I would like to especially note: the very fact that an Orthodox saint could be a former harlot is in no way something offensive or unacceptable. Even in the genealogy of Jesus Christ, set out by the Evangelist Matthew, the harlot Rahab (Rahab) from Jericho is mentioned. There are many examples in Orthodoxy when people possessed by the most terrible sins, having been cleansed by the Sacrament of baptism, like the “bath of rebirth,” became revered saints. And the purpose of the above reasoning is not to cleanse Saint Mary Magdalene from some kind of slander, but to present the opinion that has developed in Orthodoxy about the story of the anointing of Christ.

As for Mary Magdalene herself, whom Christ cleansed from the enslavement of seven demons, in conclusion I would like to cite poems that were published several years ago in the newspaper “Evening Novosibirsk”, written by the Novosibirsk poetess Anna Vil.

You are healed by faith!

Arise, Mary of Magdala!

Your disease is defeated!

And Magdalene became a light;

Listening to the subtle wise speech,

Taking in the purity of the eyes,

Maria straightens her shoulders

And the pain of the nights subsides...

Touched with a gentle hand,

He taught not to feel sorry for yourself,

He showed her a different life,

Christian traditions about Mary Magdalene, preserved in all four New Testament Gospels, tell of her as a faithful follower of Jesus Christ. According to the scriptures, Jesus began preaching in Galilee, where he gathered a small group of disciples from the lower classes. In the area of ​​Lake Genisaret there were fishing villages, the center of which was Magdala. Mary, known as the harlot, was from Magdala.

“And Joseph took the body, wrapped it in a clean shroud, and laid it in his new tomb, which he had hewn out of the rock;
and rolling a large stone against the door of the tomb, he departed" (Matthew 27:59,60).

She was present both at the crucifixion of Jesus and at the discovery of the tomb, which was empty the next morning of the Resurrection. Yet Mary Magdalene remains the most overlooked and mysterious figure.

Speculation around its role in the formation and development of early Christianity dates back to the first centuries. For a long time it has been the subject of discussion of many dissimilar theories and myths. Apart from the beliefs imposed by popular traditions, the Gospels do not say anywhere, either directly or indirectly, that Mary Magdalene was once a harlot before meeting Jesus personally.

In the story of the “repentant sinner” who wiped Jesus’ feet with her hair, the Evangelist Luke (7:36-50) does not name her. But this does not mean that Mary Magdalene was not the “sinner.” She is also not mentioned by name as the woman convicted of unfaithfulness and saved by Jesus from being stoned to death (John 8:1-11). The same Luke finally mentions her as one of the women whom Jesus healed “of evil spirits and diseases” and “seven demons came out of Mary” (8:2). It has been suggested more than once that the seven expelled demons are actually a symbol of the sins of Magdalene, who, based on this, became a sinner. Therefore, the sinfulness of Mary, as Ramon C. Jusino writes in “Mary Magdalene - Author of the Fourth Gospel?” (afield.org.ua/ist/magdalena), allows the assumption of her sexual sin, which is usually not done in relation to those men who are identified as former sinners. 22 The author's hypothesis includes the claim that the pre-canonical version of the Fourth Gospel clearly identified Mary Magdalene as the same beloved disciple who is believed to be the Apostle John. This explains the identification of Mary Magdalene as the beloved disciple in several ancient Gnostic sources from the collection of books known as the Nag Hammadi Library. 23

There are two versions of the life of Mary Magdalene after the ascension of Jesus Christ - Greek and Latin.

In the Orthodox calendar we find a statement by Greek authors of the 7th century: “Equal to the Apostles Mary Magdalene, one of the myrrh-bearing women” was born in the town of Magdala in Galilee, after the dramatic event on Calvary she preached the gospel not only in Jerusalem. In Rome she met with Emperor Tiberius (14-37), told him about Jesus and presented Caesar with a red egg with the words: “Christ is risen!”

Then she went to Ephesus (Asia Minor), where she helped the apostle and evangelist John the Theologian in his preaching. She died and was buried here. In 869, at the behest of the Byzantine emperor Leo the Philosopher, her incorruptible relics were transferred to Constantinople to the Church of St. Lazarus, and during the Crusades, presumably, they were taken to Rome, where they rested in the temple in the name of St. John Lateran under the altar. Pope Honorius III (1216-1227) consecrated this temple in the name of St. Equal-to-the-Apostles Mary Magdalene. Some of her relics are located in France, in Provages near Marseille, where a temple dedicated to her was erected. Other parts are kept in the monasteries of Mount Athos and in Jerusalem. (days.ru.)

The Latin version takes us to the journey of Mary Magdalene to Gaul. And here we plunge into the sacred secret of the Holy Grail, legends about which have been passed down from generation to generation.

The image of the Grail was presented in different ways: either the cup from which the disciples of Jesus Christ received communion at the Last Supper, or a precious stone, symbolically identified with the sacrament of knowledge, which the elect were deprived of. It is believed that the Grail cup was filled by Joseph of Arimathea with the blood of the crucified Jesus and preserved by him. He carried the body of Christ from Calvary to the tomb-tomb prepared for himself.

Fleeing from persecution, Mary Magdalene, along with her sister Martha, brother Lazarus and Dionysius the Areopagite, landed near Marseille. Before her death, Mary Magdalene allegedly hid the Grail in a cave. Here she preached Christianity and died in 63. She was buried in the Abbey of Saint-Maximin. When the tomb of Mary was opened in the 13th century, an alabaster vessel was discovered containing the remains of dried blood. The remains were transferred to the city of Vezelay and a cathedral was erected in honor of Mary Magdalene. During the Great French Revolution they were destroyed.

In the “Golden Legend” - the lives of saints collected by the Genoese archbishop Jacopo de Voragini - the origin of Mary Magdalene is attributed to the royal dynasty of the tribe of Benjamin. She allegedly owned the fortress of Magdala not far from Gennesaret in Bethany near Jerusalem, and hence her nickname Magdalene. The legend states that Joseph of Arimathea also arrived on the ship along with Mary Magdalene.

According to another version, Joseph of Arimathea took the cup and spear of the Roman legionary who pierced the nailed Jesus to Glastonbury, England, where Glastonbury Abbey was founded. These relics disappeared without a trace after a fire in the old church in which they were housed.

In medieval France, Mary Magdalene was revered as an educator and many temples and chapels were erected in her honor. “The cult of Mary Magdalene became especially widespread in the town of Rennes-le-Chateau in the province of Languedoc, where a large temple built in her honor was painted with wonderful frescoes about the life of the saint.” 24

We find an “unconventional” view of Mary Magdalene in Dan Brown’s book and blockbuster “The Da Vinci Code.” Mary Magdalene and her child left the Holy Land and found refuge in Gaul, where the descendants of Jesus Christ took root.

Many theories have been created about the Holy Grail and the Brotherhood of the Grail. The earliest version of the Grail stories is “Perceval or the Tale of the Grail” (“Conte de Graal”), created around 1180 by the famous poet and troubadour Chrétien de Troyes. The story remained unfinished. This work was used by Wolfram von Eschenbach in his poem about Parzival, in which the Grail is a stone from paradise, the “stone of light”, brought by angels to earth. And for him, the Brotherhood of the Grail is a religious union, different from the Catholic Church, a kind of community of the elect. The Holy Grail is magical. Near the Chalice, diseases disappear and death is no longer omnipotent. Then interpretations of this theme appeared, quickly spreading throughout Europe. In the first versions of works about the Grail, different names were used for the same symbols: Sant Graal, San Graal, Sangraal.

Henry Lincoln, one of the creators of “The Sacred Blood and the Holy Grail,” in the introduction of the book, writes how in 1969 he became acquainted with the “secret dossiers” buried in Rennes-le-Chateau, which, in fact, gave rise to the idea for writing their study .

According to English journalists, if you divide this word correctly, you get “Sang Raal”, or “Sang Real”, and this in modern English means “Sang Royal”, i.e. “royal blood”, which means the heirs of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene, the Frankish Merovingian dynasty, the most famous of whose kings was Merovian's grandson, Clovis I, who reigned from 481 to 511. “All French schoolchildren know this name, for thanks to it France adopted Christianity, and the Roman Catholic Church won a primacy in Western Europe that lasted no less than a thousand years.” 25 The faithful guardians of the Grail as “royal blood” were the Templars, directly descended from the secret society “Priority of Sion”. On the other hand, the Grail is the vessel that received and preserved the blood of Jesus. And in a broad sense, this is “the breast of Mary Magdalene,” then she herself, whose cult is gradually mixed with the cult of the Virgin Mary.

The Priory of Sion Society, founded in 1099 in Jerusalem by the French king Godefroy de Bouillon, set itself the task of allegedly restoring the Merovingian dynasty. The military-monastic order of the Knights of the Temple (Templars) 26 took shape in 1128 on the initiative of the mystical writer Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux, who was canonized as a saint during his lifetime. Knights who took part in the second crusade and returned from Palestine became members of the order. The ranks of the Order consisted of 15 thousand knights and 45 thousand sergeants and they were ruled by the Grand Master, who was formally subordinate to the Pope. However, historical documents do not reflect the facts of the connection between the Templar Order and the legend of the “Jesus family”. In 1307, King Philip the Fair of France accused the Templars of heresy, destroyed their residences and seized their property. According to one of the interrogation protocols of the knights, on the night before the arrests began, the Templars managed to remove and hide carts with countless valuables of the Order. After the defeat of the Order, until the 19th century, there were numerous societies and organizations that carried through the centuries the mysterious knowledge of the Gnostics and Templars about the Holy Grail.

At the beginning of the last century, the occult society “Thule” arose in Germany, which raised the question of the Grail. In 1930, research was led by Otto Rahn, one of the developers of the theory of the existence of the Nordic race. He visited the ruins of Montsegur - an impregnable fortress of the Albigensians, followers of the heretical teachings of the Middle Ages, who kept the relic of the Grail. Montsegur fell in 1244. Having returned, Rahn published the book “The Crusade against the Grail,” and after another trip to France in 1937, he disappeared without a trace. In 1943, a huge expedition organized by the Ahnenerbe scientific institute again arrived in Montsegur. The institute worked so successfully that in January 1939 it was included in the SS, and “by this time the Ahnenerbe had 50 scientific institutes, the activities of which were coordinated by Professor Wurst, a specialist in ancient cult texts, who headed the department of Sanskrit at the University of Munich.” 27 Some newspaper articles after the war reported that the Holy Grail, brought by Mary Magdalene to southern France 1900 years ago, was discovered by the Nazis, but there is no reliable information about the whereabouts of the shrine.

Metropolitan Kirill, whom we quoted above, appropriately raised the family issue in the ancient Jewish tradition: celibacy in those days was ostracized there. Jesus himself paints a picture of family life here and in the world above like this: “the children of this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are counted worthy to reach that age and the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage” (Luke 19:34-35). From here the falsifiers of the so-called “family life” of Christ draw their conclusions: “an unmarried Jesus, thus separating himself from his contemporaries and violating the law of his ancestors, would not fail to attract attention to himself, and the Gospels would speak of this as a feature worthy of it.” to mark it. But nowhere is there a question about the possible celibacy of Jesus, and this silence in itself, in our opinion, constitutes a fairly serious sign that he was married.” 28 They also refer to the fact that the teaching status of “rabbi” 29 indicating the high level of education of Jesus, according to Jewish law, a priori meant: “An unmarried person cannot claim to teach others.” The intensified search for the “wife of Jesus,” according to the storyline cherchez la femme (French - look for the woman), led the authors to the gospel “wedding in Cana,” which miraculously turns into the wedding of... Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

Dan Brown had earlier predecessors. For example, before “The Sacred Riddle”, back in 1970, a novel by a member of the French Academy of History, Robert Ambelain, “Jesus, or the Deadly Secret of the Templars” appeared. In the 60s, Gerard de Sède (“The Templars Among Us”) and Louis Cherpentier (“Secrets of the Templars”) wrote about the Order of the Temple.

Another Englishman, Lawrence Gardner, went further than his fellow workers, who, according to His Royal Highness Prince Michael of Albany, Head of the Royal Stuart family in the preface to his monograph “The Grail and the Descendants of Jesus Christ” (Moscow, 2000), penetrated “into the very essence of all available manuscripts and archival documents” and traced the genealogical line of Jesus Christ through the centuries among the ruling royal houses of Europe.

Gardner argues that the heirs of the Davidic line, which was the Jesus of the Gospels, were required by law to marry and produce at least two sons. Since intimacy was allowed within strictly regulated periods, reproduction was carried out in two stages: by September the so-called “first marriage” followed, and already in December carnal relations were allowed. The rest of the year the couple lived separately from each other. “In the event of a bride’s conception, in order to give the marriage a legal status, a “second marriage” was concluded in March” 30. During this entire period between “marriages,” the “bride” (regardless of pregnancy) was considered a young woman, “alma,” or virgin.

Gardner calls the two cases of “anointing the feet of Jesus with ointment of ointment” by Mary Magdalene (the first mentioned above in Luke, the second in John 11:1-2) the performance of an ancient rite, which was the exclusive privilege of the bride of the Messianic family during the ceremony of the “first” and “second marriage” ”: “Only as the legal wife of Jesus and a full-fledged priest could Mary anoint his head and feet with the consecrated ointment.” 31 (Mary Magdalene’s father, according to Gardner, belonged to the priestly family of Jairus, since we find the very first mention of her in the story of her resurrection from the dead as the daughter of Jairus. Mary was born in 3 AD, i.e. was nine years younger than Jesus.) Such extravagance outraged Judas Iscariot: “Why not sell this ointment for three hundred denarii and give it to the poor?” (John 12:4-5), and thus he allegedly “prepared the ground for the betrayal of Jesus.” The wedding in Canna of Galilee, to which Jesus was invited with his disciples and mother, was not the marriage of Jesus with Magdalene, but only a “consecrated meal” that preceded their betrothal.

Mary entered into her “first marriage” with Jesus in 30. She had three children: having become pregnant in December 32, she entered into a “second marriage” the following year and gave birth to a daughter, Tamar. Four years later, Jesus the Younger was born, and in 44 Joseph was born. At this time she was already in Massilia (Marseille). Her sister Martha and her maid Marcella came there with her. The Apostle Philip, Mary of Jacob, and also Elena-Salome were also there. They landed in the small port town of Ratis, later called La Seine-sur-Mer.

Since 63, the ashes of Mary Magdalene rested in the city of Aix-en-Provence (during the Roman Empire, Aqua Sextia). The Latin “aqua” (water) was distorted in the Middle Ages into “axa” (“exa”). Therefore, in the traditions of Languedoc, Mary Magdalene is called “Lady of the Waters” or “Mary of the Sea.” The children of Mary and Jesus, who later laid the foundation for the Merovingian family, respectively turned into the “family on the waters” - the Ax dynasty.

Gardner, like the three Englishmen, also believes that the Roman Church, in opposition to the true and pure tradition of the “family of Christ”, for obvious reasons, decided to discredit Mary Magdalene and, embodying this plan, presented her, unmarried, in the Gospels as a “sinner”, when in reality she was a chaste woman undergoing “post-engagement testing” at the time. Thus, with the light hand of the bishops, Magdalene the sinner turned into a harlot, which means a harlot.

For those who don’t know, ask where the place of a woman is in a Jewish synagogue: it has not changed over thousands of years. And among the Gnostics and Nazarenes, according to Gardner, a woman was a teacher, a doctor, a preacher, and even a clergyman. That is why the decent Mary Magdalene was revered in southern France as the “mother of the Grail” of true Christianity in the West. And that is why Tertullian condemned the heretical rebels who accepted the doctrine of equality, and, of course, their impudent women: “They dare to teach, argue, cast out spirits, promise healing, and maybe even baptize.” 32

To continue the conversation on a given topic, it is necessary to understand a serious issue directly related to the personality of Jesus Christ and his relationship to family life.

22. It was not until 1969 that the Roman Catholic Church stopped portraying Mary Magdalene as a prostitute.
23. The Nag Hammadi Library was found in 1945 in the Nag Hammadi region of Egypt.
24. Tatyana Fadeeva. The former harlot is the keeper of the Grail. The mysterious figure of Mary Magdalene has attracted attention at all times / Tatyana Fadeeva // Nezavisimaya Gazeta. 2006. - April 5.
25. M. Baigent, R. Ley, G. Lincoln / M. Baigent, R. Ley, G. Lincoln. - St. Petersburg, 1993, p. 170-171.
26. The first information about the Order of the Temple is given by the historian Guillaume of Tire between 1169 and 1184 in his book “History of Overseas Events” (“Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum”). The order was founded in 1118 by Hugh de Payns and Godefroy de Saint-Omer, who came to the court of King Baldwin II of Jerusalem and asked permission to guard a pilgrim on the way from Jaffa to Jerusalem. The king gave them the southern wing of the palace near the Temple of the Lord at their disposal. So, ten years later, the future order received its name - the Order of the Temple.
27. Louis Pauvel, Jacques Bergier. Morning of the Magicians / Louis Pauvel, Jacques Bergier. - Kyiv, 1994, p. 337.
28. M. Baigent,.. Decree. cit., p. 231.
29. Rabbi - a minister of worship, the spiritual leader of believers in the Jewish religious community.
30. Gardner L. The Holy Grail and the descendants of Jesus Christ / L. Gardner. - M., 2000, p. 80.
31. Ibid., p. 81.
32. Tertullian. Selected Works / Tertullian. - M., 1994. P. 127.

My friend had a question about the life fate of Mary Magdalene. Was she a sinner before Jesus Christ cast out seven demons from her? In the West, her image is interpreted as a repentant sinner, but nowhere in the Gospel texts have we found confirmation of this. Only that Mary Magdalene became one of the myrrh-bearing women, faithfully following Christ until His death on the cross.

Hieromonk Job (Gumerov) answers:

Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Mary Magdalene was from the Galilean city of Magdala (tribe of Issachar), located on the western shore of Lake Gennesaret, near Capernaum. She is mentioned by all four evangelists. After the Lord healed her from evil spirits (see: Luke 8:2), she joined those pious wives who accompanied the Lord everywhere during His earthly life and served Him in their name. She witnessed the Savior's suffering on the cross and was present at His burial. At dawn on the first day after the Sabbath, she and other pious women went to the tomb of Jesus Christ to anoint His body with incense. Therefore, the Church calls them myrrh-bearing women. They were the first to be told by an angel about the Resurrection of the Lord (see: Mark 16: 1-8). For her great devotion and sacrificial love for her Teacher, she was honored to be the first to see the risen Savior. He instructed her to announce to the apostles about His resurrection. Saint Mary Magdalene appeared to the apostles as an evangelist. This is sung in the Easter stichera (the work of St. John of Damascus):

“Come from the vision of the wife of the good news, and cry to Zion: receive from us the joy of the annunciation of the Resurrection of Christ; show off, rejoice and rejoice, O Jerusalem, seeing King Christ from the tomb like a bridegroom.”

There is not a single word in the New Testament that Saint Mary Magdalene was a sinner. This opinion has taken root only in Western culture. A certain stage in the formation of this opinion was the identification of Mary Magdalene with the woman who anointed the feet of Jesus with ointment in the house of Simon the Pharisee (see: Luke 7: 36-50). The Gospel text does not provide any basis for such a statement. The Lord forgave that woman her sins, saying: “Your faith has saved you; go in peace” (Luke 7:50). However, nothing is said about casting out demons. If the Savior did this earlier, then why weren’t sins forgiven at the same time? Following this, the Evangelist Luke immediately (chapter 8) speaks of godly women who served the Lord. The mention of Mary Magdalene is accompanied by a remark (“out of whom came seven demons”), which clearly shows that she is being spoken about for the first time.

The final establishment in the West of an arbitrary and erroneous opinion about Saint Mary Magdalene as a former sinner was facilitated by the book of the Italian Dominican monk, Archbishop of Genoa James of Voragin (now Varazze) “The Golden Legend” (“Legenda Aurea”), the creation of which dates back to 1260. This collection of legends and biographies of saints became a source of subjects for painting and literature. The author of the collection identifies Mary Magdalene with Mary, the sister of the righteous Lazarus and Martha. He writes that the names of their parents are Sirus and Eucharia, and they came from a royal family. Their children shared a rich inheritance: Mary received Magdala, Lazarus received part of Jerusalem, and Martha received Bethany. In this story it is easy to see a naive projection of the feudal relations of medieval Europe onto ancient Palestine. Arriving by ship in Massilia (modern Marseille), Mary preached to the pagans. Then it is told about her removal to the desert, where there is no water and food, but where she received heavenly food. She spent 30 years there. “This is witnessed by a certain priest who settled nearby. He meets Mary Magdalene, who tells him about her imminent death and instructs him to inform Blessed Maximinus about this. Having met Blessed Maximin on a certain day and having received the last communion from him, she dies. Maximin buries her and orders after his death to bury himself next to the saint. As the source of this part, James presents us with “some treatise” of Josephus and “the books of Maximinus himself.” It is unknown what works we are talking about" ( Narusevich I.V. The Life of Mary Magdalene in the “Golden Legend” of Jacob of Voraginsky).

It is easy to notice the mixture of subjects: the legendary life of Mary Magdalene and the adapted life of the Venerable Mary of Egypt († c. 522). This combination of two personalities - the holy evangelist and the repentant harlot, who later became the great hermit - from the “Golden Legend” passes into European art and becomes a stable phenomenon. So, around 1310, Giotto di Bondone and his students painted the chapel of Mary Magdalene in the Lower Church of San Francesco in Assisi. On the wall above the entrance to the chapel there is a scene that is directly borrowed from the Life of the Venerable Mary of Egypt - “Mary Magdalene receives the robe of the hermit Zosima.” Donatello's bronze-tinted wooden sculpture (1445) expressively depicts a desert woman exhausted by her feat. Her body is covered with shabby rags. This masterpiece has little connection with the real-historical image of St. Mary Magdalene. Once again we see a mixture of the images of two saints. An extensive gallery of paintings on the theme “Penitent Mary Magdalene” is gradually being created. Suffice it to recall such artists as Vecellio Titian (1477-1576), El Greco (1541-1614), Michelangelo da Caravaggio (1573-1610), Guido Reni (1575-1642), Orazio Gentileschi (1563-1639), Simon Vouet ( 1590-1649), José de Ribera (1591-1652), Georges Dumenil de Latour (1593-1652), Francesco Hayes (1791-1882); sculptors Pedro de Mena (1628-1688), Antonio Canova (1757-1822) and others.

The Orthodox Church, in its narration of the life of Saint Mary Magdalene, Equal-to-the-Apostles, strictly adheres to the Gospel testimonies and reliable church tradition. The saint preached the Gospel in Rome. Some researchers believe that the Apostle Paul in his Epistle to the Romans has Saint Mary Magdalene in mind: “Greet Miriam, who labored much for us” (Rom. 16:6).

Life Mary Magdalene, shrouded in many myths and legends, still
causes desperate debate among historians of religion and theologians. Who is she, this mysterious woman, who was she to Christ, why was her image deliberately distorted, and who benefited from attributing to her the past of a harlot. This review answers these controversial questions.

In the Orthodox and Catholic faiths, the interpretation of the image of Mary Magdalene is radically different: in Orthodoxy she is revered as the holy myrrh-bearer, cured by Jesus of seven demons, and in the tradition of the Catholic Church she is identified with the image of the repentant harlot Mary of Bethany, sister of Lazarus. Although it is reliably known from the Bible that the Holy Scriptures do not directly say anywhere that Magdalene was a harlot at any period of her life.

Mary Magdalene - evangelical harlot

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It was the Roman Catholic Church, either by accident or intentionally, in the person of Pope Gregory the Great, that came up with an offensive nickname for Magdalene - “harlot” and identified her with the gospel sinner.

Mary Magdalene - Equal-to-the-Apostles Holy Myrrh-Bearer

However, the Orthodox Saint Dmitry of Rostov spoke out against considering Mary a corrupt woman, who argued his opinion as follows: “If Magdalene had a tarnished reputation, Christ’s opponents would not fail to take advantage of this. But with all their hatred of the Savior, the Pharisees never convicted Him of having a former harlot among the apostles.”

The Orthodox Church was inclined to see in Mary one of the women healed by Christ who was possessed by demons. This liberation became the meaning of her life, and in gratitude the woman decided to devote her entire life to the Lord. And according to the Orthodox tradition, unlike Catholicism, Mary is considered a symbol of the personification of a Christian woman and is revered as the Holy Myrrh-Bearer Equal to the Apostles.

Mary Magdalene - the best disciple of Christ and the author of the Fourth Gospel

Not only that, most Bible scholars today claim that the Fourth Gospel was created by an unknown follower of Jesus, referred to in the text as the Beloved Disciple. And there is an assumption that this was Mary Magdalene, who was one of the first founding apostles and leaders of the early Christian church.

But over time, her image became a banal victim of the struggle for church power. By the 4th-5th centuries, even imagining a female leader had already become heresy, and they decided to overthrow Mary Magdalene. “This topic has become part of a constant internal church struggle between supporters of the authority of the Church and defenders of personal revelation of God.”

Mary Magdalene - wife of Jesus Christ and mother of his sons

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The image of the Gospel Magdalene was widely popularized by the masters of Italian painting, especially Titian, Correggio, and Guido Reni. By her name"кающимися магдалинами" стали называть женщин, после развратной жизни одумавшихся и вернувшихся к нормальной жизни.!}

According to the traditions of Western art, Mary Magdalene has always been depicted as a penitent, half-naked exile with her head uncovered and her hair flowing. And all works of art on this topic are so similar that most of us are still convinced of its great sinfulness.

https://static.kulturologia.ru/files/u21941/0mariya-0005.jpg" alt=""Penitent Mary Magdalene." Paul Getty Museum (USA). Author: Titian Vecellio." title=""Penitent Mary Magdalene." Paul Getty Museum (USA).

In 1850, the first version of this painting was acquired by Nicholas I for the Hermitage museum collection. Now it is in one of the Italian cabinets of the New Hermitage.

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The Holy Grail is a symbol of immortality, spiritual purity, the door to heaven, the cosmic principle, inspiration, renewal and rebirth, a way of communicating with the spiritual world, the mystical center of the Earth. The search for the Grail symbolizes the desire for self-realization and merging with the Divine.

The mystery of the Holy Grail is one that will never be solved. You can only touch it. We don't even know what the Grail was. His image, dimly visible through the curtains of centuries, was presented to people of different eras in different ways: in the form of a vessel, a bowl, a casket, a precious stone.

The legend of the Grail arose in the 12th century, seemingly suddenly. Its appearance is associated with the chivalric novels of Chrétien de Troyes and Robert de Boron about King Arthur. Their continuation and at the same time “correction” a century later, at the beginning of the 13th century, was undertaken by Wolfram von Eschenbach under the leadership of a certain Kyoto, who allegedly found in Toledo the original source of the legend, written in Arabic by a pagan astrologer named Flegetan.

Earlier documentary references to the Grail, dating back to the 8th century, describe it as a vessel studded with precious stones, shining so dazzlingly that the flames of candles dim next to it.

. Descent from the Cross. 15th century / DESCENDIMIENTO ARAGONES (S.XV)

More ancient European legends say that the Grail is a sacred cup with divine blood. The vessel carved from a solid emerald, from which Jesus drank with his disciples during the Last Supper with the words “this is my blood,” after the arrest of Jesus was first handed over to Pilate, and later filled with the blood of the crucified Jesus Christ and preserved by Joseph of Arimathea.

According to the Gospel text, a member of the Sanhedrin, Joseph of Arimathea, removed the body of Jesus from the cross and buried it in a tomb-tomb he prepared for himself not far from Golgotha. According to the apocryphal “Gospel of Nicodemus,” Joseph served the Roman governor, and therefore his request to remove the dead body was not refused, and at the same time they gave the found vessel.

. Giovanni di Paolo (c.1400-1482) Lamentation of Christ, 1445 / GIOVANNI DI PAOLO DI GRAZIA. Il Lomento. 1445. settemuse.it. Mary Magdalene in a red dress with her hair down.

When Joseph, with the help of the Gospel Nicodemus, removed the body of Jesus, blood flowed again from the wound inflicted by the centurion’s spear, and it was collected in this vessel.

. Limburg brothers. The magnificent book of hours of the Duke of Berry "Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry", 15th century / Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry, Folio 157r - The Entombment the Musée Condé, Chantilly. Clickable via

After the resurrection of Christ, the Jews accused him of secretly stealing his body and threw him into prison. According to legend, the resurrected Jesus came there and returned the vessel with the precious blood to Joseph, calling it the “chalice of communion.” Only after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans was Joseph released from prison: he spent all these years without food or drink, miraculously fed from the Holy Grail.

After his release from prison, Joseph gathers a community around him, and together they go to distant lands.

According to legend, Joseph of Arimathea arrived on the southern coast of France in 35 AD. He then crossed Gaul, crossed the strait, and landed in England, where he settled at Glastonbury and founded a monastery. It preserved the legend about the wonderful vessel brought by Joseph and the famous Round Table created for him, which became the prototype of King Arthur's Round Table.

. Joseph of Arimathea brings the Holy Grail to Britain. Miniature from the 14th century. / The Rochefoucauld Grail, a 14th century manuscript, Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, MS 1 via1 via2
Joseph of Arimathea brings the Holy Grail to Britain by passing through water. Joseph's followers walk to the Grail on the surface of the water using Joseph's cloak. While the unbelievers drown.

At the same time, on the southern coast of France, for many centuries there was a legend that the Grail was brought to Marseille by Mary Magdalene, her sister Martha, brother Lazarus and Dionysius the Areopagite. Local residents revered Mary Magdalene as a close and devoted friend of Jesus, the myrrh-bearing wife who was the first to see Christ after the resurrection. They considered her the founder of true Christianity and the “mother of the Grail,” which, as the old legend tells, she hid in a cave until her death.

. Mary Magdalene carries a vessel with myrrh. Morning of the Day of the Resurrection of Christ.
Jean Colomb (1430/35 - 1493), Magnificent Book of Hours of the Duke of Berry. Marginal miniature, 1485-1486.

. Mary Magdalene and Jesus. "Do not touch me!". Jean Colomb (1430/35 - 1493), Magnificent Book of Hours of the Duke of Berry. Marginal miniature, 1485-1486. / "NOLI ME TANGERE"

There are two versions about what became of Mary Magdalene after the ascension of the Teacher - Greek and Latin.

According to Greek authors of the 7th century, together with the Apostle John and the Mother of God, she settled in Ephesus, where she died and was buried. In 869, the Byzantine Emperor Leo the Philosopher ordered the body of Mary Magdalene to be transferred from Ephesus to Constantinople to the Church of St. Lazarus. In 1216, the crusaders who sacked Constantinople captured her remains and brought them to Pope Honorius III, who ordered them to be placed in the Lateran Cathedral under the altar in honor of the saint.

According to the Latin version, Mary Magdalene, together with Lazarus and sister Martha, fleeing persecution, reached the south of France to Provence by sea, where the travelers landed between Marseille and Nîmes. Maria settled in a “grotto of solitude” among rocky cliffs near the village of Sainte-Baume - “Holy Fragrance”. It was named after the incense with which Mary Magdalene anointed the body of Jesus during the Last Supper. [here I didn’t understand why “during the Last Supper” apparently means in Simon’s house - approx. gorbutovich]

. Christ in the house of Simon the Pharisee. Mary Magdalene wipes Jesus' feet with her hair after anointing them with chrism. Giovanni da Milano, 14th century (active 1346-1369), Italy.

Here she preached Christianity and died here in 63. Mary Magdalene was buried in the Abbey of Sainte-Maximin, located 30 miles from Marseille.

In the 13th century, her tomb was opened and, according to legend, an alabaster vessel was discovered containing the remains of dried blood, which became liquid on Good Friday. At that time, there was an opinion that this was the same vessel of incense mentioned in the Gospel, with which Mary Magdalene anointed the feet of Jesus before wiping them with her hair.

. "Do not touch me!". Martin Schongauer (1448-1491), Germany / MAGDALENA MARTIN SCHONGAUER - NOLI ME TANGERE

The remains were transferred to the city of Vezelay, and a huge cathedral was erected in her honor at the new burial site. In 1267, King Louis the Saint was present when the remains of the saint were transferred from one shrine to another, richer one. And later, during the Great French Revolution, they were barbarically destroyed.

This legend was persistent in the south of France. The Cluny Museum houses a 15th-century painting attributed to King René of Provence, Saint Mary Magdalene Preaching the Word of God in Marseilles.

#10 . Carlo Crivelli (1430/35-1495), Italy. Mary Magdalene.

In the 13th century, many legends about St. Mary Magdalene were reflected in the famous “Golden Legend” - the lives of saints collected by the Genoese archbishop Jacopo de Voragini. It was first published in Latin, and later in French.

#eleven . Jan Gossaert, called Mabuse, Netherlands, around 1530

Like early Christian authors, he identifies Mary Magdalene not with the gospel harlot, but with Mary of Bethany, sister of Lazarus, resurrected by Jesus. The Golden Legend says that “Mary Magdalene was born of noble parents who came from a royal family. Her father's name was Sirus, her mother's name was Eucharia. Together with her brother Lazarus and sister Martha, she owned the Magdala fortress next to Gennesaret in Bethany, near Jerusalem, and a significant part of this city. This entire vast domain was divided in such a way that Lazarus had part of Jerusalem, Martha had Bethany, and Magdala itself belonged to Mary, and hence her nickname Magdalene.”

“After the Ascension of the Lord,” writes Voragini, “those faithful to him were subjected to severe persecution, and the Jews, wanting to get rid of Lazarus, his sisters and numerous Christians, put them on a ship without a rudder and sails; but, led by an angel according to the will of God, they landed in Marseilles.”

#12 . Master of the German school. Ascension of Mary Magdalene. I draw attention to the clothes of the Saint.

In another place it is indicated that Joseph of Arimathea was also on the ship along with the sisters Mary and Martha and brother Lazarus.

Interestingly, this sea voyage is depicted among other scenes from the life of Jesus’ beloved disciple on the left side of the altar in the southern German city of Tiefenbronn. So, it would seem, the different stories of Joseph of Arimathea and Mary Magdalene merge into a single one.

In honor of Saint Mary Magdalene, revered as the enlightener of Gaul and Frankia, many churches and chapels were erected in different regions of southern France in the early Middle Ages. The majestic basilica, founded in 1096 in Wezelay, also went down in history with the call of Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux to the Second Crusade. It was here in 1146 that he called on King Louis VII, Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, knights and people to move to the East to protect Christian relics.

#13 . Giovanni Pietro Rizzoli (worked 1495-1549), Italy. Reading Magdalene.

The cult of Mary Magdalene became especially widespread in the town of Rennes-le-Chateau in the province of Languedoc, where a large temple built in her honor was painted with wonderful frescoes about the life of the saint. In Languedoc traditions, Mary Magdalene is referred to as “Lady of the Waters” and “Mary of the Sea.”

#14 . Jan Massys (Matsys or Metsys; c. 1509-1575), Flemish mannerist artist. Mary Magdalene in a cave with a vessel and a book.

The life of Mary Magdalene still excites the imagination of many scientists and writers. Let's remember Dan Brown's scandalous novel The Da Vinci Code. His intrigue is based on the fact that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and their descendants continued his family tree in Western Europe.

#15 . Mary Magdalene. Byzantine icon.

One can also say that her mysterious image captures the idea of ​​searching for eternal femininity; it is not without reason that, according to some legends, she was also the earthly embodiment of Sophia the Wisdom of God.

Tatyana Mikhailovna Fadeeva - Candidate of Historical Sciences, leading researcher at the Institute of Scientific Information for Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

#16 . Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898) Galahad reaches the Holy Grail / Edward Burne-Jones. Achievement Galahad the Sang Graal. via

Source of images unless otherwise noted.