Mary of Magdala
Mary Magdalene by Pietro Perugino, c 1500; Palazzo Pitti, Florence
The Gospel of Mary, written by an unknown author in the 2nd century CE and lost for over 1500 years, was discovered in Cairo as a fragmentary copy in Coptic translation and brought to Berlin in 1896. Two additional fragments, both in the original Greek, have since been found, but only about eight pages of the papyrus text survive, and perhaps about half the gospel is lost. A compelling document that highlights the apostolic importance of Mary of Magdala (more often called Mary Magdalene), it also gives a very unusual account of spiritual perfection. As such, it challenges many established views of the supposed harmony and doctrinal unanimity of the early Christians.
The text, its first pages missing, opens with a dialogue between Jesus and his disciples about the end of the material world and the nature of sin. He tells them that in our present life all things, material and spiritual, are interwoven with each other - as in the well-known parable of the tares and wheat - but that this will not always be so. People sin, he says, because they don’t reflect their spiritual nature, choosing instead to follow their lower feelings, which deceive them and lead to illness and death, but we must find instead the original spirit within ourselves, develop inner peace, and go out and spread the gospel. The disciples, when they hear this, become distressed, fearing that to do so in the aftermath of Jesus’ crucifixion might cost their lives. Mary tries to comfort them, explaining how - and at this point there is another gap in the text - our souls ascend from the world, adding that she received this teaching directly from Jesus in a vision. They are not consoled; an argument ensues and two of them challenge her. Andrew remarks that her teaching is strange and that it doesn’t come from Jesus; Peter, characteristically vehement, declares that this teaching would never have been given to a woman and that it is not possible that he could have preferred Mary to his male disciples.
The gospel implies that gender belongs to material nature and that the body is merely a temporary shell to which the soul has become attached; we must therefore accept our spiritual nature, which is the ultimate reality. These ideas run counter to the beliefs of orthodox Christianity, and Mary’s gospel has consequently been dismissed as heretical, a form of Gnostic thinking that was more influenced by Platonism than by Judaism. Nevertheless, as Karen King points out in her book The Gospel of Mary of Magdala, there was no ancient religion called Gnosticism; the term ‘Gnostic’ is a way of calling texts and persons ‘heretical’ while maintaining the appearance of impartiality, with the consequence that orthodox Christians are usually considered to be ‘true’, while others are regarded as heretics. Similarly, in older histories of the early Church the roles of women were often ignored; they tend to emphasise that Jesus chose male disciples, who in turn passed on correct teaching to male successors. Recent research, however, has revealed the more complex character of early Christianity and has encouraged alternative interpretations of its traditions; Mary Magdalene herself, the subject of wide-ranging books by Susan Haskins and others, has become something of a popular feminist icon.
It is interesting, in that light, to consider a pair of the numerous Renaissance paintings that feature Mary Magdalene. In Titian’s early 16th century ‘Noli Me Tangere’, the depicted scene, as Kathryn Murphy describes it in her article Touching distance - the fine art of keeping apart, ‘is a turning point, in which grief is turned to wonder, and suffering recouped in joy: the first encounter with Jesus after the Resurrection, as told in the 20th chapter of the Gospel of John. Mary Magdalene, weeping at Jesus’s tomb, which she has discovered open and empty, encounters a man whom she takes for a gardener. She asks him if he knows where Jesus’s body is. In response, the gardener says only her name: ‘Mary’. She turns towards him, and realises he is the resurrected Jesus. It is a recognition scene: a narrative motif of comedy and romance, in which mistaken identity is resolved, a relationship believed interrupted by death renewed, and joy redeemed from disaster’.
The underlying theology in Titian’s painting is conventional; it suggests, despite his tender pose and expression, that Jesus, the Son of God, is recoiling from the touch of Mary, a repentant woman, because he has not yet ascended to sit by by his Father. The painting does not fully reflect the ambiguous original story. Why does Mary mistake Jesus, whom she knows well, for a gardener? Why does Jesus, immediately after she has recognised him, tell her, with the words ‘noli me tangere’, not to touch him? Is this a rebuff? In the context of The Gospel of Mary this would be unlikely; it would be more probable that Jesus is indicating to Mary that he is still between the two worlds of spirit and matter, and that her touch would hold him back from fully realisng his true nature . Jesus’ liminal consciousness, which has changed him, might also account for Mary’s identification of him as the gardener, and for her later assertion that she has received his teaching in a vision.
A late 15th century painting by Pietro Perugino in the Palazzo Pitti, Florence, gives a very different impression of Mary. Her surprisingly confident humility is suggestive of spirituality rather than suffering or repentance; she is shown with her head gently inclined to the right and eyes modestly averted from the viewer’s gaze; her hands are placed gently on top of each other in a gesture of unhurried calmness, and it is only the inscription in gold on the neckline of her elegantly simple fur-trimmed dress, coloured in red and green, that identifies her as the Magdalene. The model for Mary was probably the artist’s wife, Chiara Fancelli, which may help to explain the painting’s affection and refinement; it might also be said, perhaps, that it illustrates Jesus’ assertion in The Gospel of Mary that ’sin as such does not exist’, except when we fail to reflect our true spiritual nature.
For further exploration:
https://parabola.org/2015/01/29/the-gospel-of-mary-magdalene/
http://www.gnosis.org/library/GMary-King-Intro.html
https://www.apollo-magazine.com/noli-me-tangere-depictions-touch-distance/
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/who-was-mary-magdalene-119565482/
https://www.menariniblog.com/menarini-pills-of-art-mary-magdalene-by-pietro-perugino
‘Noli Me Tangere’, Titian, c 1514, National Gallery, London