Nothing is really known to us of the subsequent history of the Ν agdalene. The Greek Church believed that she died at Ephesus, whither she had followed St. John,* and that her relics were removed from thence to Constantinople by the Emperor Leo vi. The story, however, which took root in the West was very different. It was said that she belonged to a wealthy family possessed of great estates at Magdala and Bethany; that she abused all her admirable gifts to tempt others to sin; that after the Ascension she remained at Bethany till the disciples were scattered by the
ersecution which fallawed the martyrdom of stephen. The two sisters and others were placed in a boat by their persecutors, and were provi- dentially carried without oars or sails to Massilia, where, by their preaching and miracles, they con- verted the heathen, and Lazarus was made bishop, while Mary retired to the wilderness and lived a life of extreme asceticism for thirty years. Finally, she was carried up to heaven in the arms of ascending angels.
Apparently the earliest document which gives the legend is the Life by Rabanus Maurus, a pupil of Alcuin, who flourished at the beginning of the 9th cent. This was greatly amplified by Vincent of Beauvais in the 13th cent. The story was not known to Gregory the Great, or to Gregory of Tours in the 6th cent., as he mentions the death of the Magdalene at Ephesus (Mirae. i. 30), nor, if we may believe Launoi,t is there any allusion to it in the writings of Bernard or Peter of Cluny or Peter Damianus, all of whom took the Magdalene as the subject of panegyric. It is treated as unworthy of examination by the Bol- landists, and is probably due to misapprehension arising from the great place occupied in the traditions of Provence by Marius, alte defeated the Ambrons and Teutons in the battle of Aix, B.c. 102. Marius was accompanied, as we learn from Plutarch, by a Syrian prophetess of the name of Martha, and it is erence by Baring-Gould, after Gilles, that the connexion of these two names may have been the starting-point of the whole legend. At Les Baux, where Marius was encamped, there are some ancient sculptures on a limestone block, one, known as the Jrémaié, con- taining three standing figures, which tradition holds to be the three Marys, but Gilles is of opinion that they represent Marius with his wife Julia and the prophetess Martha. The Trois Maries here are said to be Martha with her attendant Marcella and the Magdalene. It is curious that at another Trois Maries in the Camargue, the landing-place, according to the legend, of the whole party from Palestine, the three Marys are said to be the mother of James, Salome, and the attendant Sara. As there is really only one or, at most, two Marys
* Modestus ap. Phot. cod. 275, speaks of her as σαρθίνος διὰ βίου, and says she was martyred at Ephesus, t See Faillon, i. 1368.
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in either case, we naturally ask how the number three came in, and it may not be irrelevant to remember that the famous Fosse Mariane from Arles to Massilia were constructed by Marius in his third consulship, while he was preparing for his campaign against the Ambrons, and would no doubt be commemorated by inscriptions which might run something as follows: C. Marius C. F. cos ITT. fossas faciendas curavit ; and these, as they got defaced with age, might easily be supposed to bear witness to Trois Maries. The tradition had pretty well established itself by the 11th cent., though it was a matter of hot dispute whether Aix or Vezelay possessed the true relics of the Magdalene. Fortunately, in 1279 Charles the nephew of Louis Ix. (who had himself made a pobomege to her cell at St. Baume) discovered ner body in St. Maximin’s Church at Aix, and since then the cult of the Magdalene has had hardly less vogue than that of the Virgin. The romantic character of her story and the feeling of a common frailty endeared her to all classes, and even reformers were loth to disturb a belief which on the whole worked for good. For an account of her place in art the reader is referred to Mrs. Jameson’s Sacred and Legendary Art, vol. ii. p. 343 ff
Lireratore.—Acta Sanctorum for July 22; Faillon, Monu- ments inédits sur [Apostolat de 5. Marie Madeleine, 1859; Gilles, Campagne de Marius dans la Gaule, 1870; Baring- Gould, In Troubadour Land, p. 180 ff.
vi. MARY THE MOTHER OF MARK.—The only place in which she appears in the NT is Ac 12", where we read that many were gathered together and praying in her house when Peter knocked at the door after his escape from prison. As Mark is called cousin (ἀνεψιός) of Barnabas (Col 419), she would be aunt of the latter. Later writers believed that her house was situated on Mt. Zion, and that it was the place of meeting for the disciples from the Ascension to the day of Pentecost. It was said to have escaped the destruction of the city by Titus, and to have been used as a church at a later petioe (Epiphanius, de Pond. et Mens. ec. 14; Cyril
erus. Catech. 16).
vii. MARY SALUTED BY ST. PAUL.—Nothing is known of her except that her name appears after Priscilla, Aquila, and Epnetus in the list of 24 persons to whom St. Paul sends greetings in the 16th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. She, like the other women (Tryphena, Tryphosa, and Persis) mentioned in ν. 3, is said to have ‘laboured much’ for the Church, and may possibly have held the position of deaconess or ‘ widow’ at Rome.